Catapulting the propaganda

Crooks & Liars has a piece up on the media's complicity in acting as “deferential enablers of the administration’s propaganda leading up to the war." It's enough to make you hurl. But this is the part that got to me (emphasis mine):

[Katie] Couric admits that mistakes were made and that she could have done a better job vetting the administration’s claims; although she also admitted that the White House threatened to cut off her access after she filed critical reports.

So, what? Do you go after the story anyway and tell your audience that it may be the last piece you do because the Bush junta has promised to shitcan you? Or do you just roll over like a good little lapdog? Uh-huh. Right. Yeah, we all know what happened.

From a great piece by Glenn Greenwald:

Perish the thought that journalists should be adversarial to our political officials, challenge what they say or point out when they're lying. Instead, their job is merely to pose polite questions, let political officials say what they want in response, and then go home -- just as Charlie Gibson said. This is why most establishment journalists will never be convinced that they failed to do their job, no matter how much evidence is presented: because of the understanding they have of what "their job" actually is. If anything, by Gibson's understanding of what they're supposed to be doing, they did their job brilliantly, by letting Bush officials go on their shows and -- as Cheney aide Cathy Martin said about what happens when they went on Tim Russert -- "allow[ing Bush officials] to control the message."

And from Politico:

"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," [CNN's Jessica] Yellin said.

Fucking sheep. They have less balls than Jeff Gannon.