(The incredible C&L video archives comes through again. Via a post from 02/08/07 The Guide: How Dick Cheney uses "Meet the Press" to control the message )
In ‘01, Cheney said this on MTP:
CHENEY: It‘s been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April.
on 6/19/04 CNBC, he said:
GLORIA BORGER, TV SHOW HOST: You have said in the past that it was, quote, “pretty well confirmed.”
CHENEY: No, I never said that. BORGER: OK.
CHENEY: I never said that. BORGER: I think that is…
CHENEY: Absolutely not.
It's not like we haven't seen this tale before. Cheney is getting ready to go on a Sunday Talk Show to discuss important issues, a big article appears that tries to completely justify his positions almost at the same time he's about to take the center stage. Wow. What a shock. One of Cheney's first victims and allies was the NY Times. Judy Miller was used as a a willing pawn when Cheney needed cover right before he was going on Meet the Press to help push the country into war with Iraq in 2002.
Cheney's team admitted during the Scooter Libby trial that using Meet the Press allowed them to control the message which was a major embarrassment for Tim Russert.
BILL MOYERS: Was it just a coincidence in your mind that Cheney came on your show and others went on the other Sunday shows, the very morning that that story appeared?
TIM RUSSERT: I don't know. The NEW YORK TIMES is a better judge of that than I am.
BILL MOYERS: No one tipped you that it was going to happen?
TIM RUSSERT: No, no. I mean-
BILL MOYERS: The Cheney office didn't leak to you that there's gonna be a big story?
TIM RUSSERT: No. No. I mean, I don't have the-- This is, you know-- on MEET THE PRESS, people come on and th4ere are no ground rules. We can ask any question we want. I did not know about the aluminum tubes story until I read it in the NEW YORK TIMES.
BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable. Someone in the Administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.
TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.
My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.
Now the Washington Post has taken the job since Miller isn't around to pass along Bush talking points. I understand that at times anonymous sources play a role in breaking news, but this piece which is rife with anonymous sources is clearly there to provide cover for Cheney as he takes up his cause of justifying his horrific torture regime once again to the American people, but this time with a brand spanking new piece of propaganda from the elite media. The Sunday shows will have a field day with this...
Glenn Greenwald has more: 'The Washington Post's Cheney-ite defense of torture.'
If anyone ever tells you that they don't understand what is meant by "stenography journalism" -- or ever insists that America is plagued by a Liberal Media -- you can show them this article from today's Washington Post and, by itself, it should clear up everything. The article's headline is "How a Detainee Became An Asset -- Sept. 11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding" -- though an equally appropriate headline would be: "The Joys and Virtues of Torture -- how Dick Cheney Kept Us Safe." I defy anyone to identify a single way the article would be different if The Post had let Dick Cheney write it himself...read on
