‘Yet Another Failure of the Tame Media’

Crooks and Liars blogger Cernig posts (12/15/08) the video of George W. Bush responding to an ABC interviewer’s point that Al-Qaeda did not actually “take their stand” in Iraq “until after the U.S. invaded”: “Yeah, that’s right. So what?” The sad part is that Martha Raddatz’s correction of the inverted justification timeline shows what can be considered an extraordinary amount of spine by corporate news standards. Cernig thinks “Raddatz should have thrown out her script at that point and eaten him alive, but she didn’t. Yet another failure of the tame media, who are too afraid of losing their precious access to ask the obvious questions even now.” Cernig further quotes the London Guardian‘s Ian Williams finding it

surprising that so many reporters can be polite and deferential with someone who has turned the U.S. Federal Reserve into a giant Ponzi scheme and broken the world’s strongest economy. They defer humbly to someone who has contrived the deaths of 4,200 U.S. servicemen and -women in Iraq. It even failed to follow through on questions about the president’s murky military record with the Texas Air National Guard while his peers were dying in Vietnam. This intrepid press corps showed no compunction in following in minute detail Clinton’s screwing around, but kept silent as Bush screwed entire nations.

Williams reminds us that just “last week, a Senate report pointed the finger directly at Bush and his senior officials for authorizing–indeed, ordering–torture and abuse of detainees. But no one threw any shoes.”