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Was Press a War Enabler? 2 Offer a Nod From Inside
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: June 4th, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/washington/30press.html?pa...
In his new memoir, What Happened, Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, said the national news media neglected their watchdog role in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, calling reporters complicit enablers of the Bush administrations push for war. Surprisingly, some prominent journalists have agreed. Katie Couric, the anchor of CBS Evening News, said ... that she had felt pressure from government officials and corporate executives to cast the war in a positive light. Speaking on The Early Show on CBS, Ms. Couric said the lack of skepticism shown by journalists about the Bush administrations case for war amounted to one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism.She also said she sensed pressure from the corporations who own where we work and from the government itself to really squash any kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it. At the time, Ms. Couric was a host of Today on NBC. Another broadcast journalist also weighed in. Jessica Yellin, who worked for MSNBC in 2003 and now reports for CNN, said ... that journalists had been under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation. For five years, antiwar activists and media critics have claimed that the national news media failed to keep the White House accountable before the invasion. Greg Mitchell, the author of So Wrong for So Long, a book about press and presidential failures on the war, argues that some media organizations have yet to come to terms with their role.
Note: For a powerful overview of the media cover-up by top, award-winning journalists, click here.
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