I linked another item on E&P Editor Greg Mitchell earlier today. Conservative blogs are buzzing over this piece, basically calling for the press to protect America from President Bush. I looked around some and found some older interviews with Mitchell.
Greg Mitchell is the author of six nonfiction books, including TRICKY DICK AND THE PINK LADY: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas; THE CAMPAIGN OF THE CENTURY: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California (winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize); and with Robert Jay Lifton, HIROSHIMA IN AMERICA.
2003: With Moyers on NPR: the embedded reporters-- often seem a little too rah-rah. They-- you know-- they-- there has been very little censorship, I have to say, outright censorship. But one worries about self-censorship. About their worries of being kicked out-- if they report something that the military doesn't want them to report.
Right. Well-- I-- a good question whether they know but also whether they care. I think-- as we found in polls-- over the years, that the American people-- large numbers of them don't even quite agree with freedom of the press completely--
You know, the press often is reporting factual matters. And the public sometimes turns away from it. We entered this war, with upwards of half the people in the country believing that-- Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack.
Now, that's of enough importance in terms of-- support for the war. Now, how did that happen?
Was that the media's fault? Was it the government's fault for putting out the stories? Or is the public sometimes not receptive so that the-- media can expose things. The media can paint a complex picture.
2004: Yeah. Well, we noticed in the months leading up to what became the invasion of Iraq that most newspapers were kind of going along quietly with the Bush administration claims. And we were quite alarmed with that and we speak to the entire newspaper industry ... Eventually we’ve brought a lot of places around to admitting the failures, and hopefully doing a more of a watchdog approach in the future.
Well there are various factors why the press was not asking tough questions often enough. Of course, one was just patriotism. You know, as Dan Rather said, ‘When we’re at war, I’m biased in favor of my own country.’ And that’s understandable. I mean, you can’t get away from that completely. But people took too much of a "rah-rah" attitude.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: -- and can you comment on issues that -- You know, there was a big debate of whether or not -- The administration was saying that they had authorization, but everyone else in the world was saying that they didn’t.
MITCHELL: Well, I mean it was just -- authorization -- it was just a Congressional thing -- I don’t know. It just didn’t --
... One factor in the coverage, although it can’t really be proven, is how much the hammering at the media for years now about the alleged liberal bias had to do with the media -- particularly television -- bending over backwards to support the administration to support the patriotic cause. Where ordinarily they might have been more skeptical. But it’s almost the feeling like ‘We get hammered. We get hammered. We get hammered. Now here’s a chance to really show how patriotic we are. How we stand up for America as much as anyone else. How we’ll stand up for the Republican President even if we have some doubts.
So if you want to characterize, the press has certainly been, at the most, moderate on international coverage -- no matter what you might say about them in terms of some of their domestic coverage. The war plays into that as well. The press wants to show it can be tough. It’s almost like a politician. The press wants to show it can be tough and that’s partly what went into the glorification of the embedded reporters. Because here was their people risking their lives on the front lines, and you got tremendous visuals. So it was a great package. But I think in general, a statement I would make is that -- The coverage of the war itself on the ground -- except for the fact that they underplayed the civilian casualties -- I don’t think that was the real problem. The problem was getting into the war. Once we were into the war it was going to be played out the way it went. You know -- there was going to be a lot of death. It was going to take that long to win because of the state of the opposition. And then as we predicted, it was going to be a long, deadly occupation. It was going to be worse than people were saying, and so forth. But the embedded reporters, while I have a lot of questions about the work they did, they’re not the real problem. The problem was the getting us into the war. It was the many reports in the New York Times and other places that led to the war. And those are the people that really have to answer the tough questions.
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