Eliminating "common facts"

Over at Salon, Erik Boehlert ties up all the disparate stories about the Bush administration's attitudes and actions towards the press and sees more than just "message discipline." He sees an effort via Armstrong Williams, video press releases posing as "news," and Guckert/Gannon to "decertify" the press. To those generally paying attention, those stories look like ham-handed bungling by the administration in its effort to pursue their agenda; but to less observant folks, a story like Gannon's is just more evidence that most journalists are a bunch of uncredentialed freaks. And not to be trusted to be providing "truth."

If journalists are so "decertified," then for most people, nothing they write in the press or say on TV can be relied upon. If that is the case, there are no "common facts" upon which public debate can be centered. That was the case regarding WMD and al Qaeda connections in Iraq (regular FOXNews viewers still believe that WMD were found in Iraq and that bin Laden was a bunkmate of Saddam Hussein), and Bush has been trying to the same thing with Social Security.

One small example, the type that occurs almost hourly on Fox, came during the recent controversy over comments by CNN's news president Eason Jordan about U.S. troops targeting journalists in Iraq. (The comments eventually led to his resignation.) On Feb. 14, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade interviewed Reese Schonfeld, one of CNN's founders, who years ago left the company.

Schonfeld: "But remember that a U.S. tank [in April 2003] rolled up in front of the Hotel Palestine, which is where all the journalists were, turned the turret around, pointed its gun, and fired up at the building."

Kilmeade: "That's what CNN reported."

Schonfeld: "No, that's what is reported. The guy from Reuters was killed, and a Spanish journalist was killed. Nobody knows why. The U.S. Army has never completed its investigation into that incident."

Schonfeld was correct on the facts regarding the Hotel Palestine incident, which are not in dispute. But the Fox host wanted to suggest the facts were in dispute, or subject to CNN's bias, therefore making them easier to set aside. "They have an ability to confuse an issue and neutralize the facts that aren't in their favor," says [Media Matter's David] Brock. "When a reader looks at a story and does not know what to make of it, than Fox has done its job."

The consequences are enormous, says [Ken] Auletta. "In a democracy, you need a common set of facts."

[Ron] Suskind notes, "If you believe there is no inherent value to public dialogue based on fact, then that frees you up to try all sorts of things other people in power wouldn't have ever thought of. And we're seeing the evidence of that now."

Boehlert is actually pretty restrained. He notes the documents scandal at CBS as being a lucky break for the administration. I'd go a lot farther than that. This is an administration that's awfully adept at creating its own "luck." [Pause while I put my tinfoil hat on]. I would love to see a real investigation into where those TANG documents really came from and why they were so easily exposed.