Kinsley: Bush's Filtered News

By Michael Kinsley in the http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38769-2003Oct16.html">Washington Post, Friday, October 17, 2003

...Bush doesn't really want people to get the news unfiltered. He wants people to get the news filtered by George W. Bush. Or, rather, he wants everyone to get the news filtered by the same people who apparently filter it for him. It's an interesting question how our president knows what he thinks he knows and why he thinks it is less distorted than what the rest of us know or think we know. Every president lives in a cocoon of advisers who filter reality for him, but it's stunning that this president actually seems to prefer getting his take on reality that way.

Bush apparently thinks (if that is the word) that the publicly available media contaminate the news with opinion but Condi Rice and Andy Card are objective reporters. Anyone who has either been a boss or had a boss will find it easier, knowing that Bush believes this, to understand how he can also believe that things are going swimmingly in Iraq. And where does the Rice-Card News Service obtain its uncontaminated information? Bush conceded his shocking suspicion that Rice and Card "probably read the news themselves." They do? Whatever's next?

The president noted, though, that Rice and Card also get "news directly from participants on the world stage." ("Hi, Ahmed -- it's Condi. What's going on there in Baghdad? What's the weather like? And how's traffic? Thanks, I'll go tell the president and call you again in 15 minutes.") The notion that these world stagers are sources of objective information while newspaper reporters are burdened by unsuppressible opinions and hidden agendas is another odd one.

When it comes to unfiltered news, the president says he can dish it out and actually brags that he can't take it. In fact, he can't do either one.

News is for the literate.

Try this one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38769-2003Oct16.html


Cher

George W. Butthead's problems is that too many reporters and "news" organizations did filter the news from the White House, propping up the idiots and accepting too much "misinformation" for the Bushies, for far too long. Finally, they've become aware of being led around by their noses, and reporting things as they are, and the White House Babies are crying foul.

I think the misadministration is going to end up looking really foolish and out of touch and uncaring if they carry on with their "all is well in Iraq" attitude while bad news grows increasingly worse. (But let's not tell them that--let 'em go ahead with their "we know best" attitude.)

...they don't read it-they create it. Other authoritative sources of information about our world don't exist.