Bush And The Press
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Media, The War On TerrorismLooks like he’s trying to keep sensitive information out of the public eye, and he’s taking his case to the editors of our major newspapers.
From the Washington Post:
President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security.The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration’s anti-terror tactics.
Leonard Downie Jr., The Post’s executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest’s Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.
But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.
Personally, I understand Bush’s actions, but it still seems like a really questionable way to go about keeping this information silent. I mean, doesn’t he realize that this story was inevitably going to get out eventually? Why not simply crack down on the leaking inside the government? You can’t expect the watchdogs to not report on things like warrantless wiretapping and torture sites inside Eastern bloc nations.
Thoughts?
This entry was posted on Monday, December 26th, 2005 and is filed under Media, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 26th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
This whole adminstration, and their hanger-ons don’t seem to realize that newspaper and magazine writers have a vested interest in digging out this dirt.
And there are enough free-lancers who have the need to prove themselves able to swim with the big fish in the pond that cracking down on “established” media people won’t get the story to stay underground.
December 26th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
It would stay underground if it wasn’t being leaked. Nobody really does investigative journalism any more… what’s going in is that various parties are feeding reporters bits of information.
Something seriously wrong is going on for so many people to leak classified information, but I don’t know what, and the leaks are not enlightening. For example, I think it’s a good idea to monitor phone numbers found in the phones and papers of terrorists- that the number is in the possession of a terrorist is, IMO, sufficent probable cause to justify tapping it. But the NYT and WaPo are making a big deal out of it, but don’t explain why we shouldn’t be doing this.
What am I missing?
December 27th, 2005 at 4:17 am
Froggy Nightingale,
If it was such a good idea, the Prez could have asked Congress for an amendment to FISA to make what he wanted to not a crime. Instead he commited crimes.
What’s your take on mandatory penalties and truth in sentencing?
December 27th, 2005 at 9:14 am
If George W. Bush seriously expects the MSM, of all institutions, to effectively censor itself for whatever purpose, I guess he has never heard the old fable of the fox and the scorpion. (Refresher: Scorpion hitches ride on fox’s back as fox crosses river. Halfway across, scorpion stings fox, condemning them both to death. Dying fox asks scorpion why he stung him, to which scorpion replies, “What did you expect; I’m a scorpion!”)