A pair of Blockbuster Revelations!!1! this week. First, former MSNBC reporter Jessica Yellin told CNN co-worker Anderson Cooper that editors at the news outlet pushed her to trim her stories covering the White House to a more positive breeze:
“The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings,” Yellin said.
“And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives ‚Äî and I was not at this network at the time ‚Äî but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time….”
But then a shocked Cooper jumped in, asking, “You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?”
“Not in that exact…. They wouldn’t say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces,” Yellin said. “They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical, and try to put on pieces that were more positive. Yes, that was my experience.”
This bit of dialogue was generated in response to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s assertion (among others) that the press corps badly mishandled their job to scrutinize administration claims, especially those having to do with Saddam’s WMD programs. Which, considering the fact that intelligence agencies around the world shared the national intelligence bureaucracy’s consensus on the matter, seems like problematic hindsight at best, and a difficult wake to steer by. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that CNN was already self-editing to make the Iraqi dictator look better than he otherwise might have looked.
No, we haven’t forgotten about that.
Still, the wheel comes full circle. McClellan himself – transformed suddenly through his critique of the Bush White House from consensus dullard to left-wing saint – admits that when he started his book he’d intended a much more gracious perspective of his time at the capital but was persuaded to cast it otherwise:
He suggests that the process of working with editors and publishers helped shape his thinking. “Many of the conclusions I’ve reached are quite different from those I would have embraced at the start of the process,” he writes. He came to realize, he writes, that Washington culture is “a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin.”
What’s remarkable is that it took the efforts of editors – whose task it is, after all, to make an author’s oeuvre not merely readable but also, crucially, profitable – to make the scales fall from McClellan’s eyes. Spin, in Washington?
I’m shocked.
There is a lesson in here of course: News media sell to news markets. Everyone knew Saddam was a bad man, having done horrible things and showing every sign of willingness to keep on doing them going forward. A nation traumatized by 9/11, and suddenly aware of a vital vulnerability, looked for reasons to have done with him and the media went congenially along because to do otherwise would have cost them market share.
The public mood became first restless and then shifted as the occupation of Iraq groaned on with no end in sight. Terrorists and jihadis sensed that public opinion was on the tipping point and – knowing that to be our strategic center of gravity – engaged in an escalating public orgy of violence that was duly reported to the target audience by a cooperative media. Because bad news sells, and no one covers the plane that lands on time.
You get what you pay for.
He was a Washington insider for 6 years before resigning. He started as a deputy press secretary during Bush’s 2000 campaign.
Was he asleep during that time,that it took him until now to “realize” what Washington’s culture is all about???
You’re right Lex and Kris … and I think Scott McClellan is going to have real difficulty finding a job in Public Affairs now. Who wants to hire a guy who sits around soaking up all the private details of a company’s plans and efforts and then goes very public with a slashing critique blasting everything the company [or the government] tried to do.
Hindsight is 20-20, Scott. Get out of my office.
Marianne
McClellan fits into that group that the Chairman was talking about last week and you posted.
More of this to come, I’m sure. The administration after 7 years has a lot of employees
PAOs are staff geeks. Same as in the Navy- not line officers. Visible, to be sure, but simply tools. Unelected, without a true insiders grasp of leadership, management or any visible skills except being a mouthpiece.
Vetted info, finalized consensus decisions is all they get to defend and disseminate. They do not see brainstorming, arguing and decsion-making. Some think they do I guess.
This guy turned- for $$ it seems. 20 pieces of silver.
b2
Re: the CNN claim – I call bull@hit and I call it hard. CNN actively fought and misrepresented every decision in the war, and at least two of its execs publicly accused US troops of having an official policy of murder and murdering journalists. If CNN was reporting ‘patriotically’, I’d hate to see what it would have been like if they’d been doing otherwise.
Mike
$cott McClellan wa$ a mediocre pre$$ $ecretary and he ju$t $old hi$ $oul to a publi$her owned by $oro$.
Hope he got big buck$. He’ll never work in that field again.
I noticed in a post on another site where they quoted from McClellan’s preface. In it he made reference to begining this journey seeking “his” truth… not the truth, but “his” truth. IIRC, it was over at NRO. I think “his” truth had more to do with the healthy advance he got for playing Judas. 30 pieces indeed…
Jim C
“Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he’s raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book. Certainly let’s look at the politics of it.”
Ten bucks to the person who can name the source and the subject about whom the quote references. Extra credit for a date.
That’ s Scott McClellan about Richard Clarke.
journalism= prostitution-dignity
2004, wasn’t it?
I disagree that McClellan will have difficulty finding a new job. He is fully qualified to work in broadcast media.
I hear the 1960’s tv voiceover say,
“This former insider hitpiece event is brought to you byyyyy:
“I want my media/Liberal Cred cuz I can’t get work!”
Starring:
Unemployed Journalist Unfairly Suspected of a Right Wing Slant!!
Craig and Ernie win the prizes! Checks are in the mail.
Hypocrisy, along with blatant stupidity (on McClellan’s part, not on the part of Craig or Ernie), are two things I detest most.
W00T!!!11! ONE!!
HF6, I thought I had the whole thing, but it was really a SWAG until Craig confirmed my suspicions; then I knew I had the right year. Just toss my share in CAPN Lex’s tip jar!
Fascinating little bit of gossip from Robert Novak:
“While McClellan’s attack on Bush shocked Washington, it was no surprise to many people in Austin, Texas. They say McClellan’s mother, veteran Texas politician Carole Keeton Strayhorn, has been predicting that her son would get back at the people who fired him. Elected state comptroller as a Republican in 1998, she left the party to launch a losing independent race for governor in 2006.”
Notice the date of her losing run… same year he was fired.
Add this to the mix: our friendly local editor could probably give us the definitive answer, but I’ve been told it takes about 18 months to two years (at least) to go from first manuscript to stocking shelves for this kind of book.
I’m sorry, but I can’t stop thinking two words: “momma’s boy?” Geez!