The Truth Will Out, Even By Katie Couric - Years too late... Today on The Today Show

First, they reported on Scottie's kiss and tell book and he'll be on tomorrow.

Later on in the show, they had on Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson on promoting a new fight cancer public service program that they are behind. After discussing it, Matt Lauer asks them all The Question..Do you feel the media didn't do their job during the run-up and the beginning of the war.

Katie Couric said that the media was remiss and didn't ask the hard questions. She also said that when they reported something that the Pentagon or WH didn't like, they were called and pressure was put on them. If they didn't play ball, they would be denied access.

Needless to say, Gibson and Williams and Lauer tried to play her response down.

I hope video will eventually find its way online.

I can't decide if this is a crooked law firm or a vaudeville team...

:eyes:

"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants."

Poor Katie exposes herself even more since access was/is more important than truth or the constitution. They are all complicit.

under the pressure? How many lives could have been saved????

:cry:

most of them made money out of Bushco's lies. The Press Corp were upset with Colbert remember!!

would have shunned Shrub, as they still should.

Yet these were the same assholes that laughed at Shrub looking for WMDs on the floor in the oval office, 2 years before.

Yeah, it's about the bottom line for the corporations that hire these aiders and abettors, but how much of those profits do these hacks receive? I guess defending true liberty isn't as important as an ordinary paycheck.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Which I would not automatically attribute to intelligent planning but rather a herd instinct.

In a panel or an isolated blip, some newsperson blurts out a not too pointed critique of the journalistic behavior of the past Reich years. Silence or mumbled softenings or disagreements follow. Usually very muffled then the issue vanishes faster than Gore's proved victory in the unofficial recount. The new "hero of truth" rarely surpasses that moment in the sun and rejoins the club, supposedly at a round of melancholic drinks at the club bar to drown out the faint residual, foggy sense of guilt or menace.

Waiting for the truth to leak out of any member of the club is like trying to discern sanity in a madhouse or morality in a squad of camp SS guards. It points out the valueness nature of national "news" media. Too much time is wasted here and everywhere on listening for the faint echoes of disappearing conscience and the disappeared truth far beneath that surface. True, most people don't want to know or believe terrible things, especially those they participate in- like watching the 6 'clock news and thinking it guiding facts or wisdom, or something demanding full legitimacy, respect and full time, not just equal time.

The mass aggregate of the US, a great many of whom do not directly watch the diversified pablum of corporate propaganda, is still at the stage of inchoate rage and distrust. Just as with the pols they do not trust and maybe never show up at the polls, the present result is they acquiesce to their power, submit to the bully pulpit, the raped microphones, the fact of the top being the top. The lack of anyone offering an alternative and most reformers ignoring or simply bouncing retorts off the top of the wall keeps the population from being led up and over or through that wall.

Tune out, turn on was the expression of that surrender to garbage in the sixties. Tuning out with the Internet available for real searching and activism still sounds like the first best step. The first isolated baby steps of a bare few in the media itself are obscenely pathetic in comparison and a waste of our time to applaud.

:thumbsup:

Right on :)

Did you see her entourage of SUV's and all the assistants that came out of it? It looked like a clown car. :P

So many corporate news folks are now fessin up! Gee, who would have guessed that as soon as the pressure was off and ANYONE could speak about the obvious truth but not lose their job for doing it, we'd see a brave parade of news stars finally doing their jobs instead of protecting them? Politicians are doing it, too.

I think this has happened before in history. Just guessing here, of course.

the media has a grand self-reflective moment in which they admit they failed and that they will try to do better next time and then next time they screw it up again.

The media DOES NOT need access to the POWERFUL -- Amy Goodman (DemocracyNow!) has said over and over again that journalists do their best work when they are not trying to get the story from the powerful.

:thumbsdown:

Each time the MSM closes the barn door long after the horse has escaped they expect to be congratulated for it. Not from me.

That reminded me of the ironic quote above by Mara Liasson of Fox "News":

Media Attacks Democracy Now! Questions for Former Senator Bob Kerrey About War Crimes

http://i1.democracynow.org/2001/5/7/media_attacks_democracy_now_questions_for

right there, she'd at least be more honest about her capabilities.

This silliness that if "we didn't toe the line, we'd lose access" WAS THE NEWS! If someone in the WH said nobody will talk to me anymore if i report something they don't like, my very next story would be about being threatened by the White House if i TOLD THE TRUTH!

That was the story, you bunch of cocktail party syncophants!
The Professor

real journalists who knew you talk to everyone in the chain of command (which is where Hersh got the title of his book) to get the whole picture.

"Journalists" who rely on the officeholders for their version of the news remind me of Einstein's remark about certain scientists being like carpenters who find a spot where the wood is very thin and then drill a great many holes there. These "journalists" get their news where the getting is easy, not where the news is newsworthy. And their Money$treamMedia employers hand out salaries based on Q-score, not IQ score.

and now your credibility is lost and now nobody cares what the hell you say

She's all but a corpse at CBS...just a matter of time until the network eats the big one and lets her go. Her 15 minutes are at 14:55...so better to get it out now before she becomes invisible and "media poison".

In her defense, she wasn't a network anchor during the run-up...not like Gibson and Williams. Damn right they're all gonna "pooh-pooh" this stuff and try to play the "fifth estate" game...how all they did was report what they were told. Their silence speaks volumes...their attempt to laugh it off is comptemtable.

Floodgates opening??

Sept, 2007.....

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/28/couric-on-iraq/

Couric: ‘Not My Job’ To Critically Report On Iraq, ‘Unless Something Is Really Egregious’»

Recently, CBS anchor Katie Couric traveled to the Middle East for a “heavily promoted week in the war zone,” reporting the situation on the ground from Iraq. Her reporting was superficial and uncritical, airing several “puff pieces” mouthing Bush administration talking points.

This week, Couric spoke at the National Press Club with host Marvin Kalb to discuss “Democracy and the Press.” Couric explained that her goal in Iraq was to appear neutral and avoid “a Walter Cronkite moment,” as she put it:

Is it my job to go over and say this war is terrible and withdrawal is necessary? I don’t necessarily think that is the case. … I don’t necessarily feel that unless there is a clear cut factual element to it. … I have never really saw it as my role, unless something is really egregious and without question wrong.

Kalb rebutted Couric’s assertions, charging that she offered only neutered judgments about the status on the ground and missed an opportunity to critically assess the situation in Iraq:

You offered only one judgment about the war. And you cushioned that by the way. You said, “There are definitely areas where the situation is improving.” Fine. But you then asked nine questions, nine important questions about Iraq. But you didn’t even make an effort to answer them. … You have been there. You’re an anchor every night. You’ve seen the material that flows into you. Surely on some of those nine issues, you must have had a strong feeling.

Watch it:

Brian Unger had a very funny take on this:

The Unger Report: Couric's Interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards

I was reading U.S News yesterday and item after item seemed to be agreeing with our point of view. I think there is change in the wind.

Nothing like TIME to flush out the BS Crap......

"Ya can't Fool um ALL of the Time"

Katie spoke up, I guess she has less to lose.

They could have done something about that too had they been interested! FED THE FUCK UP WITH YOUR ILK KATIE

Now that it's too late for close to a million or more dead, she's developed a conscience.

:grr:

Cowards too.

Thanks Ommm!