Chicago Tribune: Bush reaping the benefits of journalistic professionalism

Edit: Fixed link

Link here

<excerpt>

Why is the press protecting George W. Bush?

You heard me right, Russ. And Larry. And Byron. And all the rest of you folks who pen those jeering notes to me every day about anti-Bush bias in the Tribune's news reports.

Why is the Democrat-loving, Republican-hating, pond scum-swilling, lower-than-the-rug-on-the-floor, biased, liberal press protecting George W. Bush?

You don't believe it's happening? Well, then, tell me about the furor over W's speech last week to a joint meeting in Washington of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Newspaper Association of America.

</excerpt>

Does anybody know where one can get an unedited transcript of the speech mentioned in boldface? Worse than the "press conference"? That's too good to be missed.

El Redacto!

Musta hit a little too hard that time.

--bkl

I don't have time right now to go thru these

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=ascii&q=%22American+Society+of+Newspaper+Editors%22+%22Newspaper+Association+of+America%22&btnG=Search+News

I had problems with that one... it hasn't been redacted... yet. ;-)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0404290089apr29,1,4516177.column?coll=chi-news-col

nt

Bush reaping the benefits of journalistic professionalism
Covering an inarticulate president

Published April 29, 2004


Why is the press protecting George W. Bush?

<snip>But you didn't read about any of that, because the reporters, trained to seek meaning and the meaningful in any utterance by the president, focused on what could be understood.

Bush has benefited from this journalistic professionalism throughout his presidency. In a column almost two years ago, in July 2002, I quoted the complaint of a reader who claimed we had misquoted the president's statement in a press conference denying any "`malfeasance' in his business dealings prior to becoming president."

"The word that he actually used ... sounded to me something like `misfeance'--something which is not a word in any dictionary I've ever seen," the reader, Sean Barnawell of Chicago, wrote. "I feel the Tribune should not be in the business of `cleansing' what the president says in order to make him sound more articulate than he is."

I replied thus: "Ideally, we would have a president so articulate that we would never be in doubt as to what he said. In reality, we have one who regularly mispronounces. ... This confronts us with the question whether our purpose is to transmit to readers what the president means when he speaks out or to simply relate what he says. I have always felt that transmitting meaning is paramount. .."

And so "nuculer" becomes "nuclear" in the newspaper. And "misfeance," unknown to any dictionary, becomes "malfeasance," because an experienced White House reporter has learned to translate Bushspeak.

Bush benefits from the reporters' professionalism. And his cheering section jeers from the sidelines about journalistic "bias."<snip>

Don Wycliff is the Tribune's public editor. dwycliff@tribune.com.

Transcript link (white house): http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040421-5.html

NAA article link: http://www.naa.org/conferences/annual04/live/bush.cfm

Note: WH site has video and audio if you can stand it.

I appreciate it.

Club or Reporters or something. It was a joke! He sounded like a raving idiot, mispronouncing words, not connecting sentences and in general acting as if his audience was a uninformed and idiotic as he is.

I'm sure if this is the transcript, it's been heavily scrubbed, because my husband who watched it with me was howling with laughter over the Chimps ravings while I was standing with my mouth open in shock at how bad he was. (and, I've seen more of the Chimp's ravings than my husband has, so you gotta believe me that this was shockingly bad).

I'll check out the transcript and see if it's what I remember. :-(

for those of you who don't want to read the whole thing. You can get a flavor of his ravings in just this snip. When you have time read the whole thing. It will show how demented he is. He starts off thanking members of the "Politboro" (old Soviet Union term) in this speech. :eyes:

-------------------
Office of the Press SecretaryApril 21, 2004

President Outlines Path for Lasting Prosperity in Wednesday Speech
Remarks by the President at the Newspaper Association of America Annual Convention
Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington, D.C.

1:30 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, all. Burl, thank you very much. I kind of like ducking those questions. (Laughter.) I appreciate you having me. I hope this toast business becomes a habit -- (laughter) -- if you know what I mean. (Laughter.)

Thanks for letting me come. Tom, thank you for your invitation. Dean, thank you for having me here. Members of the politburo -- (laughter.) I mean, my fellow Americans. (Laughter and applause.)

I was thinking about what I was going to tell you when I came over here today, and I thought I'd talk a little bit about the role of the President in creating an environment so that our prosperity lasts, and then the role of the President in securing America. And then I'll be glad to -- I'll be glad to duck some questions. (Laughter.) Just like my mother told me to do. (Laughter.)

We're prosperous now, which is good -- particularly if you're a guy seeking the vote. New jobs are being created, I think we had 308,000 in the month of March. Industrial production rose at 6.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, which is a positive sign. Homeownership is at the highest rate ever, which is really positive for America. The more people who own something, the better off the country is. Inflation is low. Interest rates are low. And the economy is growing, which is good news.

And the question is, really, from a presidential perspective is, what do you do to keep in place an environment so that prosperity lasts beyond just a recovery? It's amazing that we're growing in spite of the fact that we've been through a recession, a war, an emergency and corporate scandals -- which speaks to the resiliency of the American people and the strength of the entrepreneurial spirit.

The way I view the role of government is that the government's role isn't to create wealth, the government's role isn't to say, "I created jobs," -- the government's role is to create an environment in which entrepreneurs feel comfortable about expanding the job base and risking capital. (SNIP)

More of this bizarre rambling....................

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040421-5.html

Oh my God, he's more of an idiot than I thought. That this dipwad is pResident of this country is appalling.