"I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."
-- Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s top war correspondent
Amanpour fessed up on last week’s “Topic A With Tina Brown” on CNBC. The other panelists were satirist Al Franken and former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke. When Brown asked Amanpour if there was any point at which she felt she could not report, she replied:
"It's not a question of couldn't do it, it's a question of tone. It's a question of being rigorous. It's really a question of really asking the questions. All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it's the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels."
Clarke, unsurprisingly, dismissed that allegation out of hand. The really astounding response came from Irena Briganti, a flack for Fox News, who responded to Amanpour’s comments with this: "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."
Quite aside from her slander of Amanpour, whose work over many years from a number of difficult and dangerous places speaks for itself, this is a “choice” that could only have been dreamed up by the hacks of “fair and balanced” Fox. Don’t these idiots have even the slightest idea about the traditions of the craft they’re supposedly practicing?
Unfortunately, they all lie
The Bush administration seems so worried about the political implications of Iraq, the economy and the budget deficit that it’s having a hard time telling the truth about anything. David Corn of The Nation has a rundown on the latest fibs and whoppers.
“Is there some deadline approaching, after which Bush administration officials have to engage in honest debate?” Korn wonders. “It seems as if there has been a rash of misleading, deceptive, and disingenuous remarks coming from on high in recent days.”
But it’s not just Republicans who lie, as William Saletan reminds us in this piece at Slate.
“I have a message for my liberal friends, relatives, and colleagues: If you think Republicans play dirty and Democrats don't, open your other eye,” says Saletan.
“… Are Republicans nasty? Do they refuse to accept election defeats? Do they subvert respect for democracy? If so, they have no monopoly on these vices. They aren't the ones claiming that our current president ‘was not elected by the American people.’ They aren't the ones declaring ‘a nonmilitary civil war.’ And it was [Bill] Clinton, not a Republican former president, who asserted at the Iowa steak fry that the other party ‘tried to put more arsenic in the water.’ "
Yeah, they all lie. It’s politics. But it does appear that the long political season we’re now embarked on may prove one of the more shrill of recent memory.
Well, are we or aren’t we?
"As long as we're here, we are the occupying power. It's a very ugly word, but it's true."
-- Paul Bremer, head of the U.S. provisional government in Iraq.
"We are not occupiers. We have come under a legal term having to do with occupation under international law, but we came as liberators."
-- Secretary of State Colin Powell at a Baghdad news conference
Has a diet fad changed the economy?
The diet in question is the high-protein, high-fat Atkins diet. It’s being blamed (or credited perhaps) for all kinds of things.
“Suddenly, Wall Street is blaming the diet craze for all sorts of economic upheavals, and the deafening buzz is almost enough to drown out economic sense,” Charles Duhigg writes at Slate. “Time, the Economist, USA Today, and countless media outlets—marveling at the idea of slimming pork chops and heavy cream—have touted the commercial impact of the Atkins plan. The diet has been blamed for falling wheat prices and booming beef sales.
“But is there really an Atkins economy?” Find out here.
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