Softballin’

2:09 am EST September 28th, 2005 | Republicans | 1 Comment

Softballin’.

I don’t have a problem with softball, per se. I played it in elementary school and I think Jennie Finch and the US Olympic Team were great for the nation (and easy on the eyes) but softball has no place in journalism.

Yet, the chattering classes of the journalistic universe have made it clear that softballin’ is their official policy for working with the Bush administration in the presentation of the news

In recent weeks, several prominent journalists have publicly acknowledged that the U.S. media accorded President Bush too much deference following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams both noted that it was only in observing government failures in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort that journalists began seriously to challenge the administration. NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell conceded that reporters have been “less challenging” since the attacks. Friedman wrote that the 9-11 attacks created in the media a “deference” towards the administration. Williams described the press corps as “settling in to too comfortable a journalistic pattern,” a phenomenon he described as the “9/11 syndrome.”

This is just those who are on the record, there are numerous instances documented by more than a couple individuals and organizations of the mainstream media’s reluctance to produce actual journalism with regard to the Republican party and their leadership. I attribute most of it to a press that is fat, dumb, and lazy that needs to be led around by its nose to do even the most basic work, but I wonder if it goes even further than that, from negligence to downright complicity.

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One Response to “Softballin’”

  1. Oliver Willis » Rove: Where Are The Cameras says:
    October 6, 2005 at 11:10 pm

    [...] halanx of cameras as they went off to be grilled by Ken Starr. How come the Bush team gets softballed yet again by the media?

    This entry was posted
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