AMERICA'S NEUTERED PRESS

Through intimidation, playing favorites, withholding routine information, excessive use of secrecy, formidable deceptions, and endless complaints about the so-called "liberal media bias," the Bush administration has succeeded in reducing the mainstream press to a largely stenographic role, that of simply putting out the Bush administration line. Bush media advisor Karen Hughes rightly observed that "We don’t see there being any penalty from the voteres for ignoring the mainstream press." Under the second Bush, the press has been forced to largely forfeit its role as critic and source of alternative information. Journalism students are taught that the press has the First Amendment role of holding those in power accountable, but the function is only inform. Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card has denied that the mainstream press has a check and balance function. Without it, democracy will not function very well, but it will be easier for the Right to govern.

By the end of George W. Bush’s third year in the White House, Harpers’ Magazine publisher Rick MacArthur told a radio interviewer that the "White House press corps...has now turned into ...[a] full time press agency for the President of the United States." Later in the interview he added that the public should "assume that the press is now part of the government." On reflection, Mac Arthur would certainly back off from full meaning of these assessments, but he was correct in noting that the national press had lost its ability to critically cover this GOP administration.

The Bush administration had shown enormous skill in information management. It insists upon enforcing the Pentagon’s 1991 ban on taking photographs of coffins carrying the bodies of American soldiers at Dover Air Force Base. When the President held a huge rally for troops at Fort Carson, the press was ordered not to talk to any soldiers before, during, or after the rally. They obeyed, and only the Rocky Mountain News reported on the orders given to t he press. 1
The skill of the Bush administration in manipulating the press was demonstrted in 2004, when the Social Security Administrtion ran many advertisements clearly touting the advantages of Bush’s prescription care plan.

Few noticed that the advertisements could have a political effect. Later that year, the Department of Education, paid $700,000 to an agency to advertise Bush’s No Child Left Behind program, a major Bush bragging point. A public relations firm was also paid to rank and evaluate media outletes and reporters on whether they were favorable to this legislation. For some, this seemed like the enemies list Charles Colson created for Richard M. Mixon. The department also paid TV talk show host Armstrong Williams $240,000 to talk up the program in the black community. When the payment came to light, what little discussion there was about blurring the lines between a journalist and an paid advocate.

The federal government paid Maggie Gallagher $21,500 to promote the Bush approach to marriage, and another conservative columnist was paid $10,000 to do the same. The use of taxpayer money for political purposes was nearly a non-issue.

Even abuses of the White House press secretary’s briefings did not cause a great uproar. Minor conservative journalist Jeff Gannon–his real name was Guckert– was issued temporary passes to attend press conferences. Gannon once broke the story that John Kerry could become the first gay president. Scott Mc Clellan seemed to call on Gannon when he was in a spot and Gannon would get him off the hook, sometimes by manufacturing quotations from leading Dcemocrats. Gannon claimed to be one of the reporters who broke the story that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent, and he was the only one to see a confidential CIA document revealing her identity. In 2005, President Bush began pushing his plan to privatize Social Security, and Social Security Administration employees protested that their Administration had been forced to twist the facts about the systems solvency in order to generate support for the personal retirement accounts.

Writing in November, 2003, Russell Baker referred to "the curiously polite treatment President Bush was receiving from most of the mainstream media." James Warren, Washington bureau chief of the Republican Chicago Tribune claimed the press was so busy "sucking up to Bush" that "We have been effectively emasculated...." Columnist Anna Quindlen noted that Bush enjoyed " a Teflon coating slicker and thicker that that of Ronald Reagan." Even after turning a budget surplus into a huge deficit, failure to find Ossama bin Laden and Saddam and Saddam Hussein, and admitting that there was no evidence to connect Iraq with the 9/11 attack on America, Bush enjoyed gentle treatment from the press. Quindlen asked, "imagine what the response from Republicans—and reporters—would have been if Bill Clinton had been responsible for one of those things…."