Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Restoring honor and dignity

White House spokesman Scott McClellan has been caught once again pretending that up is down (while of course admonishing reporters to do likewise), in this report from USA Today's Mimi Hall:
Dealing with criticism that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice wouldn't testify in public before the 10-member commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, White House spokesman Scott McClellan complained last month that when she testified in private, "only five members showed up" to hear what she had to say.

What McClellan didn't tell reporters was that on Nov. 21 -- long before Rice met with the five commissioners in February -- the White House counsel's office had sent the commission a letter saying no more than three commissioners could attend meetings with White House aides of Rice's rank.

Given that demand, "we are a little surprised that the White House has repeatedly implied to the public that commissioners were uninterested in attending these meetings," commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said Tuesday.

Susan Strahan at CJR Campaign Desk has more, pointing out that it took Hall -- who at least had the gumption to check out a basic fact -- a whole month to do so:
Unlike McClellan, Felzenberg didn't do his own lecturing to the media about "context." Or even about that little trick they teach you in Journalism 101 -- get both sides of the story. As in: Pick up a phone.

By now, the picture should be clear to everyone in the press room: This White House will lie without compunction. Everything it says needs double-checking. It's a simple matter of integrity.

Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler has been documenting for years now just how abysmal the Washington press corps has become. This is yet another crystalline example of just how lazy and propaganda-prone the journalism coming out of D.C. is these days.

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