Newsweek: Bush’s News War

http://www.msnbc.com/news/982193.asp

Bush’s News War

Fed up with the gloom-and-doom coverage of the conflict, the White House is taking aim at the press

By Richard Wolffe and Rod Nordland
NEWSWEEK

Oct. 27 issue — It started out as a little crowd control in Baghdad. But as U.S. troops entered the streets to restore order earlier this month, the protest turned ugly.

SOMEONE THREW A homemade grenade at the Americans, wounding 13 servicemen. According to the Oct. 8 Daily Threat Assessment—the Coalition’s internal casualty report, which was shown to NEWSWEEK—eight soldiers were wounded seriously enough to be evacuated to military hospitals. Yet at a press conference the next day, there was no mention of the attack. Pushed by reporters, U.S. officials would only say the incident was under investigation. It was as if the ambush, and the casualties, had never happened.

In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city’s hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day’s dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren’t accompanied by a Coalition escort. Iraqi police refer reporters’ questions to American forces; the Americans refer them back to the Iraqis.

Reporters and government officials have always squabbled over access; but the news coverage of the messy, ongoing conflict in Iraq has worsened the already tense relationship between the press and the administration. American officials accuse reporters of indulging in a morbid obsession with death and destruction, and ignoring how Iraq has improved since Saddam Hussein was toppled. Reporters grumble that the secretive White House and Pentagon hold back just how grim and chaotic the situation really is.

Read the whole thing.

And check out the poll on the left hand side. Public seems to agree that the media depiction is inaccurate... but not in the direction that the bushfolks are pushing.

63% said things are much worse that they're being reported in Iraq. Looks like the people aren't buying the BS any more.

still hasn't figured out the rest of the lines on"You can fool some of the people".

CNN had one along the same lines last week but the question was terrible: something like "do you think the press is biased" yes/no implying Bush was right. I usually don't send e-mails to the news outlets on the web but was so mad I did for them.

it's moving up and down pretty wildly. It shouldn't really do that...although the votes are compiled every 60 seconds, which could explain some of the fluctuation.

An exclusive contract with Faux for "fair and balanced" priviatiztion of the news?

62% thought things were worse than reported, when I voted.

:kick:

is he kidding?

he lies and distorts everything about Iraq and then criticizes the press for focussing on the deaths and injuries to our service personnel ??

if bush wants to "get his message out", why is he so afraid to hold regular press conferences with the national media?

we now have the "War on Truth".

:kick:

reassuring that somebody out there thinks like we do.

i.e. the media SUCKS. Is it just me or has CNN become an absolute whore-machine in the last week or two? They're almost as bad as Fox now, even worse in a way because Fox is at least pretty transparent about their motives (at least to people with an IQ over 40)

"'I was not told by the media... that thousands and thousands of Iraqi schoolchildren went back to school,' said Larry Craig of Idaho, who recently toured Iraq.
The senator neglected to mention that he slept both nights of his trip in Kuwait, not Iraq."