Newsweek White House Correspondent Richard Wolffe has a major beef with bloggers who say that he and his White House press corps colleagues have been doing anything other than a “fantastic job” over the past couple years, during which they justified the Iraq war in print by mindlessly spreading the talking points given to them by their buddies in the Bush administration.
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald handed Wolffe’s ass to him this morning in a scathing and revealing article about just how “fantastic” Wolffe’s journalism really is. Read it here.
FrontLine on PBS is in the midst of a four-part documentary called “Media War.” Part two aired on Tuesday night and talked about the White House’s relationship with the media. It’s definitely worth checking out.
A reporter is only as good as his/her sources, most of whom remain off the record, their privacy assured. Once upon a time journalists were intended to be objective and report both sides of a story. White House reporters are not really reporters, they are correspondents who exist at the behest of the White House they cover. To expect them to be investigative reporters or public advocates is disingenuous. Bloggers offer no vestige of impartiality, and as such are a valuable resource that complements the MSM of which the White House correspondence is a part.
It’s sad how the media climate in the United States right now supports people like Wolffe and not the Washington Post when it reveals things like the NSA wiretapping executive order.