Since Katrina, many in the press have begun to admit that after 9/11 they gave the Bush administration a lot of latitude and failed to challenge the White House on many issues. Though I'm pleased they're finally admitting it, I'm sickened that they let us down so much for so long -- reverting back to a pre-Watergate, pre-Vietnam style of reporting which plays more like patriotic claptrap and propaganda than actual reporting. Media Matters has the full on-the-record story. But meanwhile, here's Andrea Mitchell on REAL TIME:
MAHER: But by the same token, I don't think you would ever be able to ask those kind of questions you were asking to that man to George Bush either, would you?
MITCHELL: Well, I think you can. It doesn't always happen. I've been looking back at all of this -- it's one of the reasons I wrote the book -- and I think there has been self-censorship. And that since 9-11, or after 9-11, there was sort of a rallying around -- and understandable sort of patriotic effect -- and I think reporters were less challenging.
Brian Williams:
"I think we've always had our voice," he said. Still, "I do think -- and this is a subject for a long-term study -- the news media have been operating under a loose kind of 9/11 syndrome.
"Perhaps we are guilty of settling in to too comfortable a journalistic pattern, and perhaps this tragedy did serve as a reminder that this is what we do," Williams added. "I think too many people had forgotten that. There is a reason we show up after awful events. We really were the viewers' advocates on this."
Attention future leaders of America! Allow an attack to occur on American soil early in your first term and you'll get a free pass from the press!
It's been a dark era for this nation and I hope it's not too late to turn things around.