Hillary (and Sidney) slams "timid" US press

Matt Lombard of Temple University's Mass Media & Communication listserv notes that the latest broadside against the "timid" press comes from Senator Hillary Clinton. Speaking "at her first major fund-raiser for her 2006 reelection campaign in New York," Clinton excoriated the press for their timidity in tackling abuses from those (right-wingers) in power. She charges that they "had become a pale imitation of the reporters who brought down Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal" - a charge that Sidney Blumenthal, writing in today's Guardian, would surely agree with. Clinton said of the news media:

"It's shocking when you see how easily they fold in the media today. ... They don't stand their ground. If they're criticized by the White House, they just fall apart. I mean, c'mon, toughen up, guys, it's only our Constitution and country at stake."

Poor old Hillary must be disgusted by the memory of the press hounding her and Bill for years over the huge non-story that was Whitewater, not to mention one "-gate" after another (remember "travel-gate", "file-gate", "Billing-gate" - "Whitewater-gate" was maybe too much of a mouthful). Monica Lewinsky was a story, but it only emerged out of this unfair, constant hounding process. On the other hand, President Bush gets one Get-out-of-jail-free card after another, over the much more serious issue of the war (not to mention one should-be scandal after another, from Valerie Plame to the Downing Street memo to the running joke that is the Department of Homeland Security to just about everything that comes out of the mouth of Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay). And then there's the gross mismanagement of the economy . . . Wow, Hillary might just have a case! Just don't expect to hear much about it in the press. And don't expect anything Bush ever does to have a "-gate" attached to it. That media standard applies only to Democrats, I think Senator Clinton would agree.

Sidney Blumenthal provides a clear and concise answer to Hillary's concerns, drawing a direct line from Nixon's to Bush's Grand Media Strategy:

One of the chief lessons learned from Nixon's demise was the necessity of muzzling the press. The Bush WhiteHouse has neutralised the press corps and even turned some reporters into its own assets. The disinformation WMD in the rush to war in Iraq, funnelled into the news pages of the New York Times, is the most dramatic case in point. By manipulation and intimidation, encouraging atmosphere of self-censorship, the Bush White House has distanced the press from dissenting professionals inside the government. Mark Felt's sudden emergence from behind the curtain of history evoked the glory days of the press corps and its modern creation myth. It was a warm bath of nostalgia and cold comfort.