This Scott McClellan tell-all certainly has seized the media and blog spotlight of late, and well it should. There's much meaning to mine from this former Bush administration insider's many post-hoc accusations.
I've been wishing I had more time lately to blog - particularly now, with all the things that are being said about McClellan's story. Last night, for instance, I was idly listening to Anderson Cooper's show on CNN while getting ready for bed, when something Jessica Yellin said caught my otherwise distracted ear:
Catch all that? Many people did, and thankfully one of them was Glenn Greenwald:
Jessica Yellin -- currently a CNN correspondent who covered the White House for ABC News and MSNBC in 2002 and 2003 -- was on with Anderson Cooper last night discussing Scott McClellan's book, and made one of the most significant admissions heard on television in quite some time:
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.
And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.
I think, over time...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?
YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.
...As noted in Update II below, Yellin today said that she was referring to her time at MSNBC.
Yellin's admission is but the latest in a growing mountain of evidence demonstrating that corporate executives forced their news reporters to propagandize in favor of the Bush administration and the war, and censored stories that were critical of the Government. Katie Couric yesterday said that threats from the White House and accusations of being unpatriotic coerced the media into suppressing its questioning of the war.
If you haven't already, I encourage you to read all of what Glenn had to say about this latest, unbelievably belated admission by an establishment media figure concerning the media's own responsibility for the invasion of Iraq. I'd like to elaborate on the theme, because I think there are many facets of these developments worth examining.
More than anything else, the defining traits of today's establishment media are passivity (disguised as "objectivity") and addiction to access at all costs. As I discussed in my first post here, these characteristics have allowed the most aggressive and emotionally exploitative voices (on the right) to dominate news coverage, particularly in the fearful, hyper-patriotic aftermath of 9-11.
Media dysfunction is not a product of some sort of innate, institutional "conservative bias" per se, even when one considers the influence of corporate executives who may or may not have such a bias themselves. Instead, the problem has its root in the establishment media's useful-idiocy, laziness, and profit-seeking obsequiousness to power.
What the latest closing of ranks by the likes of Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, and others defending the pre-invasion coverage demonstrates yet again is that the more famous journalists become, the more feverishly they guard their image and position as "connected insiders," and the more they confuse blind deference to sources with professional temperance and restraint. The ongoing establishment media tragedy that has enabled the worst government excesses of the past several years - and the media's complete inability to recognize its own failings - stems directly from vanity and a fear of falling from a high position of privilege. Closely related to this, oddly enough, is yet another reason for the media's current rightward sympathies: a self-conscious and narcissistic reaction to the last few decades' steady drumbeat from the right that the media has a liberal bias.
I thought this dynamic was painfully obvious in the run up to the Iraq War, but apparently many Serious folks are still catching on, all these years later. I don't need a former press secretary to tell me this, like some startling revelation of a dark, closely guarded secret (although I'm glad it's being said by someone establishment figures might, ironically, take seriously). Unmistakably, what I saw pouring from the news stations every single day in 2002 and 2003 was a painfully adolescent, almost crazed, lustful craving for domination and glory. I saw not necessarily an inherent "conservative" bias, but an intense, sweaty worshipping of a government that was promising simple answers, straightforward solutions, and unmitigated displays of strength to salve the deep wounds of a great national tragedy.
Then, the media's naked groveling at the shined shoes of nationalism and military might were smoothly coaxed into a more sustained deference to the party that controlled the government and the message - the party that had most completely and unreservedly soaked itself in the oils of hyper-patriotism. This flash-fire obsequiousness to the Republican administration and Congress made perfect kindling for a slower-burning media passivity that allowed the many other political excesses of the GOP to go largely unchecked, even when those excesses didn't remotely relate to national security.
In essence, every titanic failing of the establishment media for the last several years was the inevitable product of an unapologetically manipulative and Machiavellian government on the one hand, and a thoroughly browbeaten, trained, and privilege-addicted corporate media system on the other. The media had simply been cleansed, softened, and prepared like lambs for the Republican slaughter, beginning with the steadily eroding effects of constant accusations of liberal bias, then culminating with the mind-rending, nationally unifying horrors of September 11, 2001.
None of this is remotely to excuse what the establishment media did - or, more accurately, failed to do. For quite some time, one of the many Opposite-Day perversions of reality that has gripped our national culture has been the predominance of the apparent attitude that with greater power and privilege comes less responsibility. One manifestation of this pervasive attitude, of course, is that the most wealthy and influential news organizations and figures are readily forgiven for blatantly failing to exercise the slightest independent judgment or professional due diligence, while the unwashed bloggers and lesser observers are expected to perform miraculous feats of investigative journalism just to scratch out a living and a seat at the kids' table.
Really, what other reason than the blithe acceptance that we expect so incredibly little of our most coddled and rewarded media stars can possibly explain how the nation suddenly blinks with wincing astonishment at the truths now shared by Scott McClellan - that the overfed, overprivileged establishment media, perish the thought, perhaps might not be so liberal or competent after all.
These bloated media figures and institutions have stored plenty of fat during their many years of sloth and trough-feeding - let them go hungry on their shame, if they have any.