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?"

[Cultural Jihad]

Ah, the Project for Excellence in Being the Mouthpiece For the Latest Fashionable Fad Liberal Cause.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Why read the "news" when you have access to the "truth"?

[Clinging Bitterly]

>> The media was Monica during the clintoon admininstration.

Or at least seemed to wish it was. Bet the guy with the kneepad concession at the Whitehouse pressroom misses those good old days.

[suzyq5558]

I dont blame president Bush for disdaining the media,not at all. the media is so crazed with hostility towards this administration why bother?
the media make's me ill,i dont listen to them or read them any longer myself.

[Burkeman1]

You don't read them or listen to them? So you listen to the government now only? That is conservative? The gubmint tells the truth? GW is a decent man but he is no dictator. The many bureacracies he rules over have their own agendas and myriad byzantine political goals. To not watch or read even liberal dominated media and simply rely on the word of the administration you happen, at the time, to agree with is just not wise.

[ForGod'sSake]

death rattle
n.

A gurgling or rattling sound sometimes made in the throat of a dying entity(eg, maintsream medis), caused by loss of the reality reflex and passage of the thought processes through accumulating arrogance.

FGS ;^)

[Williams]

This entire article is contrived nonsense. Bush's relationship with the press is nothing like Vietnam or Wtaergate, unless it's the reporters who are delusional. None of the President's or anyone else's quotes in the article substantiate the strawman that they set up - an isolated Bush seething at the media. It just ain't happening that way.

[Luke21]

Where is the phrase "liberal news media" in this nonsense? These people are complete idiots. How could the animosity Republicans have to these Bolshevik nags in the press not even be mentioned? But it is so very predictable.

[TASMANIANRED]

"Except for our VERY local "free sheet" that covers local town issues, I've not read a line in the newspaper since the Internet came along. Still, I guarantee that I know more about what's going on then 99% of people that read any "major" newspaper from cover to cover every day...including "journalists" that still work for those same papers. I'm sure there are many here that can say the same."

I gave up the Louisville rag about 10 years ago, should have done it 5 years earlier but I liked the Sunday crossword. It got to the point that the first 2 paragraphs slanted the whole story. There simply are not enough local stories that intrest me. I am not intrested in the local stick up's, what the various basketball, football, track teams are doing.

The feature articles were a total joke. I canceled my subscription with the welfare reform debate. This supposed unbiased series was a total barf.

The fear mongering when the legislature passed concealed carry was a puke fest.

No matter what the local story was they had to seek out a minority voice and point out what a "local black businessman" had to say about a wedding , a sale on shoes, new styles in brassiers. A minority opinion isn't necessary on everything, what the hell happened to reporting facts.

I think most of it was column filler, like a bunch of teenagers filling a term paper with fluff to come up with the right number of pages.


Why in the world would GW want to waste his time reading tripe?

[suzyq5558]

What i meant to say is that do not need to read the newspapers, i used to work for our local rag intill this past summer.what a crock of BS.
i come to the internet to get my news without the spin.
i get tired of the hostility don't you? wheres both sides of the issue? why is it that on the sunday shows they have five dems to one repub?
and i never did say that iam a blind follower of all guvmint all the time now did i?
I just dont need the print media to get the news nor do i need the alphabet channels.

[dighton]

Journalists Easily Puzzled, Angered

[Utah Girl]

President Bush is starting to bug the media even more (I didn't think it was possible.)

[BushMeister]

Wow. Those little bolsheviks really came out of the woodwork in the last three paragraphs, didn't they?

[Cultural Jihad]

Whatsamatter? Afraid someone isn't going to read one of the irrelevant liberal media's anti-Bush screeds, and that makes you squeal?

[My Favorite Headache]

Perfect.

[ladyinred]

Oh come on! The media bashes this guy constantly and they wonder why he doesn't like them? Are they really this stupid?

[right way right]

I heard GWB looks at the drudge report when he sits on the can.

And wipes with the NYT.

[cyncooper]

It's nothing like the Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton examples. Also, the media were too soft on Clinton and he still whined like a big ole baby because they dared to report the obvious goings on.

Now they're turning themselves into the story, since President Bush does dismiss them, but he is never outright rude, unless they are so brazenly rude to him first. In fact, he's downright pleasant and nice to them, beyond what they deserve, IMO.

[Cultural Jihad]

Why in the world would GW want to waste his time reading tripe?

But, but they have degrees in journalism, wear cool tweed jackets with elbow patches, and smoke pipes with a nonchalance that says "I don't care how much I stink." Their hairy arms are covered in tatoos, and they like to get into fights in bars. And then there's the men ...

[cyncooper]

And to buttress my point, Bill Plante appears in this year's "BarneyCam" Christmas production. And what does he do? Turns around and bellyaches about how "secretive" this WH is.

Sheesh.

(And he did a fine job in the Barneycam thingy)