Sunday, June 13, 2004

Media promises to be watchdog again, then rolls over for Reagan A week or so ago, several print-media giants, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the head of the Associated Press declared they had collectively read John Dean's new book, Worse Than Watergate, and were now going to battle the Bush Administration's secrecy. Well, Dean's book wasn't mentioned, but clearly his point has begun to get through. Democracy cannot function without a recognition that government business is the public's business. Meetings where our elected representatives (and their non-elected staffs) make decisions large and small that affect people must be open, and the records they produce must be public. This was the most important lesson of the Watergate scandal (yes, even more important than the reining in of the intelligence agencies and the dictum to never break the law to go after your partner in the two-party shell game). Certainly it's wonderful that perhaps some journalists will get a chance to perform like Woodward and Bernstein did 30 years ago, but investigative reporting (frequently based on the availability of public records) has been woefully underfunded for so long, it will be interesting to see what comes out of this new effort. One wonders especially now that we've seen the almost universally fawning coverage of Ronald Reagan's death. Mark Hertsgaard wrote a terrific book (out of print now) on the White House press corps in the Reagan years and called it On Bended Knee. And here they were again. Here's a more contemporary piece from Hertsgaard in The Nation. It's always fun to watch the mainstream media handle events like this (and clearly Wonkette was having more fun than most), but we had a G8 summit going on, Europeans went to the polls this week, and Canadians will soon (and may even elect a Conservative Party further to the right of this one!). And this was the only story? Sure sounds like business as usual to me. 8:45:55 PM    comment []