This month we’ve heard a lot of talk about journalists who got tough
with President Bush. And it’s true that he has been on the receiving end of
some fiercely negative media coverage in the wake of the hurricane. But the
mainstream U.S. press is ill-suited to challenging the legitimacy of the
Bush administration.
The country’s largest media institutions operate on a basis of enormous
respect for presidential power. Major news organizations defer to that power
even while venting criticisms. Overall, mass media outlets restrain the
momentum of denunciations lest they appear to create instability for the
Republic.
Initially, when the lethal character of Bush’s “leadership” became
clear in New Orleans, the journalistic focus on federal accountability was
quick to bypass the president. For several days, the national political
story seemed to mostly revolve around the flak-catching FEMA director,
Michael Brown, a cipher who obviously was going to be tossed overboard by
the administration.
On Tuesday, the day after Brown resigned, President Bush adjusted the
damage-control weaseling. “Katrina exposed serious problems in our response
capability at all levels of government,” he said at the White House, “and to
the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take
responsibility.”
It was a classic hollow statement, meant to sound important and
meaningless at the same time. On Wednesday, more than a dozen paragraphs
into its story headlined “President Says He’s Responsible in Storm Lapses,”
the New York Times reported: “In saying he took responsibility for any
failures of the federal response to the storm, Mr. Bush stopped short of
acknowledging that he or anyone else had made mistakes.”
So, according to the Times headline, Bush said that “he’s responsible”
for “storm lapses” -- but, according to the article, Bush did not say “that
he or anyone else had made mistakes.” Got that?
Such tap-dancing evasions are small compared to what’s on the horizon.
With a prime-time speech Thursday night from Louisiana, followed by a
ceremonial service at the National Cathedral in Washington the next morning,
Bush will use the stature of the presidency to pose as an icon of can-do
patriotism and piety.
Sure, we can expect more outcries of condemnation from the nation’s
press. Many news outlets have adopted a critical tone unmatched by previous
coverage of the Bush administration. But you might read the editorials of
virtually every daily newspaper in the United States and not find a single
paper calling for the impeachment or resignation of the deadly Bush-Cheney
duo, whether for deceptions about Iraq or failures to protect lives from
Hurricane Katrina.
By avoiding even the hint that President Bush and Vice President Cheney
should be ousted from office, major news outlets are circumscribing public
discourse and limiting the prospective remedies. Meanwhile, we hear about
low-level resignations, official investigations and proposals for
blue-ribbon commissions.
What happened to thousands of people in the path of the hurricane was
the horrific result of criminal negligence that came from the top of the
U.S. government. Is it too outlandish to suggest that the news media begin
to discuss what kind of punishment would truly fit the crime?
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Norman Solomon is the author of the new book “War Made Easy: How Presidents
and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com