Comments on: Scott McClellan: Awakening From A Mickey Finn?

By: spirasol

spirasol — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:45:26 +0000

Well, he’s not a journalist. He’s a press manager. In doing so he tells a lot of white lies and lots of lies of omission. If he wants to come out now and betray the team, well, hell, this administrations secrecy is criminal, so yea, add what he says to the smelly lump that piles up everyday. Maybe this will be the proverbial straw that begins impeachment. No, okay, I can wait, so long as it happens.

As for journalism, –I’m not so sure it exists anymore. The corporate conglomarates run the show, and the bland news that serves the general public is bias, if not extensions of the white house, like FOX, for instance. If it weren’t for the web, where would we be?

By: domajot

domajot — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:46:23 +0000

If a spikesman imagines his job is to tell the truth, he is in the wrong line of work. A spokesman ’sells’ his client, just like a criminal lawyer markets his client’s version of the truth.
What each spokesman has to decide, however, is jsut how far into half-truth territory he is willing to stray and whether he is okay with straying into actual lies.
That’s a matter of personal choice and responsibility

Press conferences are, to a considrable extent, a game, whete everyone knows what the role of a spokesman is and doesn’t (or shouldn’t, if he’s over 12) expect to hear the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s after the press conference that real jounalists are separated from pretend journalists.
It’s called fact checking and double checking and triple checking.

They face a real chanllenge, but dealing with challenges is what journalists are obligated to do, if they are true to their profession. To gain access to insider information, they have to make friends in the right places or they’ll be frozen out. The failure of the press lay in the next step, that of checking out the insider information they thus gleaned. It’s hard and time consuming. Giving in to the pressures of the 21/7 news cycle and competition over scoops, is what leads to journlistic failures, IMO.

The public does not help the journlists. They eat up the unchecked scoops and the splashy headlines.
Also, a mob mentality often rules. Any journalist openly questioning the admisnistration during the lead up to the war would have been tarred and feathered, not thanked for his journlistic principles.

McClellan made his choices and took far too long to wake up.
Many journalists and much of the public are still sound asleep, as far as I can tell. Just don’t expect a Press Secretary to ring the alarm bell. That’s not his/her job.

By: Jilly Dybka

Jilly Dybka — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:53:01 +0000

ps. Thanks for the laugh (that final sentence)

By: Jilly Dybka

Jilly Dybka — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:52:11 +0000

After the Jeff Gannon incident, I stopped listening.

***

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

By: University Update - White House - Scott McClellan: Awakening From A Mickey Finn?

University Update - White House - Scott McClellan: Awakening From A Mickey Finn? — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:48:09 +0000

[...] Mine Scott McClellan: Awakening From A Mickey Finn? » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]

By: hanginjohnny

hanginjohnny — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:42:59 +0000

Naive at best, but anyone in this administration who believes anything that that the President on down says has a kernel of truth in it, needs their head examined.