Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Journalists are bad for Bush

I love this article about the Shrub encountering a foreign journalist that appeared in Madison's afternoon paper. Apparently an Irish journalist caused the president's head to explode from tough questions.

My question is: Can we hire her and get rid of all of the kowtowing White House corps?

It's funny. I read some of the questions posed to Bush by the press corp and they appeared to be more about showing how much the reporters knew about a situation than what Bush knew. Frankly, sending in an idiot for a reporter may not be a bad thing -- asking the blunt questions could be good for the public.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Official transcript (From whitehouse.gov)

The video itself (from the station, requires RealPlayer)

If you've got ten minutes, the video is better, you can see how reasonable the interviewer is being. The transcript suggests that she is constantly cutting in; in the video itself it's clear that she's picking reasonable points to interrupt; it's just that Bush tends to ramble on and on and on, occasionally pausing only to repeat things he's already said.

God, this just reminds us how chicken-shit our media and politicians are on the whole. Hard hitting reporters. Blair regularly engages in firey debate with his Parlament. Bush just gets warm fuzzies from the press. Cheney has the balls to claim that the problem isn't that people are dying daily in Iraq, but that the bad news is being overcovered. Grrrr.

-- Alan

Anonymous said...

I suppose the thing that really irritates me is that whenever Bush is unscripted, whenever he's fielding unexpected questions, he falls apart. The man cannot think on his feet. I don't think it's too much to ask of a president that he understand major issues (like, say, a war he started) with enough depth to answer just about any question on the fly with a certain level of grace. Part of his job is to communicate with the citizens of this country and with the rest of the world.

-- Alan

Viv said...

The thing is that the White House reporters are trying to show off. I think that the television cameras have gotten to them (especially with the press conferences). But it's easy to do. I've made that mistake at times. I was reminded once never to do that. No matter what, it's a journalist's job to ask the stupid questions and to look stupid as a result. It pays off if you get the answers you want and feel are right.

As for Bush -- he's like a trained animal that's so pleased he knows a few tricks. He'll keep repeating them and watching his trainers for the reward. Dammit. I hoped for more from our leaders. So much for high expectations.

K. said...

The real reporters are out there -- they are just not being allowed any access to the White House. And the networks and cable news outlets know if they fuck with Bush, they will lose their access to him and his inner sanctum later on-- no interviews granted from Condi, Rummy, etc.

It's an "i'll scratch your back so you won't scratch mine' situation to quote Metallica. (shut up)