Bush's Disdain For The News Media Puzzles, Angers Many Journalists

USA Today ^ | 12-22-2003 | Peter Johnson

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Lyndon Johnson got so angry watching Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News that he'd call during the broadcast and demand to speak to the anchor right then, while Cronkite was on the air.

In person, Johnson would get right in Cronkite's face, sometimes lifting up The Most Trusted Man in America by his lapels.

"He was a strong man," says Cronkite, 87. "I was sure my suits would give way before he did."

Today, President Bush's relations with the media are no less tense than Johnson's were during Vietnam, Richard Nixon's during Watergate and Bill Clinton's throughout Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky affair.

But unlike his predecessors, analysts say, Bush openly brags about not reading newspapers, watching TV news or TV newsmagazines - dismissing the news media as unworthy of his time.

"I get my news from people who don't editorialize," Bush told ABC's Diane Sawyer last week. "They give me the actual news, and it makes it easier to digest, on a daily basis, the facts."

"It's the old MBA thing: 'Give me the five points, the nut graph,' " says veteran CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante. He says this is one of the most secretive administrations ever - highly distrustful of the media.

Bush's wife, Laura, told Sawyer she read newspapers and columnists and tells her husband what they are saying.

CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller says that getting the news from his wife or aides seems to work for Bush. "We very rarely catch him unaware of something in the way that we used to catch Ronald Reagan. He is a very well-informed president."

And a deliberate one. Questioned at a recent press conference about a critical New York Times editorial about Vice President Cheney, Bush dismissed that influential editorial page, saying he never read it. And at last week's ceremonies honoring the Wright brothers' first flight, Bush took a dig at the Times, noting that it opined after the first flight that man was not destined to fly. "He enjoyed that a lot," Knoller says. The Times had no comment.

Bush may in part be playing to people who have distrusted the media ever since the Watergate days, when Vice President Spiro Agnew railed against the media's "nattering nabobs of negativity."

Cronkite thinks Bush may be exaggerating how little attention he pays to the media. "It's a defensive move. It must be very hard to have every move you make put under the microscope."

But that goes with the job and "it's difficult to understand why a president who spends so much time promoting the virtues of democracy would want to insulate himself from one of democracy's most important institutions, namely, a free and independent press," says Stanford University journalism professor Ted Glasser.

"One of the great ways to learn about America is by reading a newspaper on your own, whether it's the letters to the editors or anything else," says Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "It makes you wonder if the only people he is talking to are people who work for him or agree with him and whether everything he sees about America he learns through them or through the window of a motorcade. One of the few ways to not do that is to read a newspaper or watch TV."

Says Playboy editor James Kaminsky: "It's appalling to think that the man who runs the country somehow finds time for a long gym workout each day, but can't muster up the intellectual curiosity to peruse the newspaper. Is it laziness, arrogance or a willful combination of the two? Does the president really need a human filter to deliver only news the White House staff thinks he wants to hear? Do gossip items sometimes get thrown into the daily 'readings'? How about the funnies? How hard is it to watch the damn TV news, even while working out?"

[Steely Tom]

C'mon, this is really from The Onion, right?

(steely)

[Dan from Michigan]

I'm with Bush on this, especially when it comes to the NY Slimes.

[Keith in Iowa]

What that whazoo-aperture, Mr. James Kaminsky, does not realize is that what is being put on TV as 'news' really isn't. It's infotainment or propaganda.

[section9]

Fools.

Bush watches the Snooze and reads the papers.

But he pulls this Ike stuff to make the press think he's just a dummy.

And they will fall for it, hook, line, and sinker.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[billva]

What this guy misses is that with the internet and cable tv there are a lot of alternatives to the biased evening news on the major networks and to the N Y Times. They are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Which is good.

[farmfriend]

a free and independent press

Free and independent yes but certainly not unbiased.

[T Lady]

With the majority of what the 'Rat Media says about the man, I really can't blame him for not reading any newspapers; as for the snotty comment made by the Smut-er-I mean Playboy editor, Mr. Bush has better things to do with his time than read the snide and crass things you all often print about him--and by the way, Ms. Editor, the man DOES read. Besides, when you read most of what are supposed to be 'news stories', you're reading the Editor's opionions as opposed to the facts about any given subject--notably the way Mr. Bush is running the country.

-Regards, T.

[Snuffington]

Says Playboy editor James Kaminsky: "It's appalling to think that the man who runs the country somehow finds time for a long gym workout each day, but can't muster up the intellectual curiosity to peruse the newspaper. Is it laziness, arrogance or a willful combination of the two? Does the president really need a human filter to deliver only news the White House staff thinks he wants to hear? Do gossip items sometimes get thrown into the daily 'readings'? How about the funnies? How hard is it to watch the damn TV news, even while working out?"

Money paragraph here. It has the full-blown self-importance of the old media, delivered with anger and scorn by a proud pornographer. And the media left wonders why America thinks they're out of touch, instead of Bush.

[dirtboy]

File this one under "C" - as in Cry Me a Frickin' River...

[Roscoe Karns]

[wizardoz]

Gee, too bad all the people who really know how to run the country are too busy editing freshman essays on dorm policy or snapping pictures of naked waitresses.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

" When you ARE the news, you don't have to read it"..GW BUSH.

Ok, I made that up.

[FreedomCalls]

So what does the New York Times have that the President's Daily Brief doesn't?

[dirtboy]

A further dissection of the money paragraph:

Does the president really need a human filter to deliver only news the White House staff thinks he wants to hear?

The guy only gets his info straight from the leading intel agencies in the country - but somehow his worldview would be improved by reading Playboy (only for the articles, of course...)

[dirtboy]

So what does the New York Times have that the President's Daily Brief doesn't?

The stuff they use to grow mushrooms...

[prov1813man]

These guys just don't get how irrelevant they have become to many, if not most, Americans. Their claims to be "influential" or important are where the real arrogance lies.

Once, when I was refusing a telephone solicitation offering me a free subscription to the local rag I was asked "how do you find out what is going on ?". I answered, "I know what's going on. It's just different stuff than you know. "

The great newsrooms of the past have been replaced by "journalistic enterprises" staffed by a bunch of college re-educated former hall monitors who spend much of their time interviewing each other between visits to their shrinks working out the issues that caused them to get their a$$es kicked so much in high school. Why would anyone with important things to get done take them seriously ?

[squidly]

I count it as a positive that the C-in-C isn't wasting his time reading the stuff that passes for journalism these days. Post 13 sums it up pretty well.

[T Lady]

I'll answer that: Their snotty, rotten, and mean-spirited attitude towards him, or something else they don't like-like the clearing out of forest dead wood or missile defense, or the military-disguised as 'reporting'.

-Regards, T.

[malia]

this should be good - bump - on my way to view a Manger Scene!