The Media: No Intelligence Allowed

It is sad to be so consistently disappointed in the news media. From science to politics, it seems the the media is too lazy to think things out and do some leg work, or just too comfortable to rock the boat.

If you saw Bush's news conference today, instead of taking the president to task about lies over Iran and possible war (another war), we got some wascky Bush humor and the press poll rolling in the aisles. You may remember the Correspondent's dinner from a few years back when Bush made the lack of justification for invading Iraq as a punchline, that the journalist just loved.

AMERICAblog:

It was all one big happy boys' and girls' club today, when the mainstream media got its chance to question President Bush about the recent bombshell that when Bush warned about Iran's nuclear program leading to "World War III" he already knew that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program 4 years ago. Bush then upped the ante by lying to the media again during his press conference this morning. In response to one question Bush said that he hadn't heard about any contrary intelligence until just last week. Funny, then, that his own national security adviser told the media yesterday that Bush was told months ago that there was intelligence showing that Iran had ceased its program. Did the ace White House reporters, who had Bush right in front of them, respond to Bush's assertion by saying "uh, Mr. President, your own National Security Adviser says that's a lie." Not a word. Even ABC's Martha Raddatz, who is one of the rare White House reporters to ask good, hard questions, could only come up with a polite little ditty about how our international credibility might be harmed by all of this.

So Bush lied to the press this morning, again, they knew it, again, and they said nothing, again. After only a handful of softball questions, clearly geared towards not ruffling any of Bush's very important feathers, CNN's Ed Henry, who's usually quite the pit-bull, dutifully switched the topic away from imminent World War III based on a lie to the much more important issue of a rape case in Saudi Arabia. It was downhill from there. (And yes, we reported on the rape issue as well - it's horrendous. But as compared to Bush having been caught lying in an effort to start World War III, it's just not in the same league.)

Bush lied to the media and got us into a war with Iraq. The media refused to do their job, and led us into that war. Now Bush has been caught lying to us again, repeatedly, about going to war with Iran, and the media has, again, rolled over and kicked its legs up in the air. What could the media have done differently? How about this line of questions:

Mr. President, you warned the American people about an impending World War III with Iran when you knew that we had intelligence showing that Iran had ceased its nuclear program four years ago. How is that not a lie?

Or

Mr. President, you just said that you had never been told, prior to last week, that we had intelligence showing that Iran was no longer trying to get nuclear weapons. Yet just yesterday, your National Security Adviser said that you had been told about this intelligence months ago. Which one is of you is lying?

I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I really cannot believe that the mainstream media, the networks, the newspapers, were handed this gift of a press conference, less than one day after we find out that Bush knew that Iran was no longer trying to build nukes, and they totally dropped the ball. They were freaking laughing during the press conference. It was all one big joke to the reporters assembled. Unfortunately, the joke's on us. One of my readers has just named them the "White House Press Corpse." And these are the people we rely on to keep our democracy honest.