All Governments Lie, And They Don't Start Telling the Truth because you "Ask the Question."

David Gregory's response to McClellan's mild observation that the Press were not aggressive with the White House makes clear how little the modern Press corps grasps what a free press means. It doesn't mean that you are free to ask questions of politicians and political figures and also free to accept their lies. It means you ought to be free, and ought to pursue as a policy, the struggle to expose their lies by going around them and doing your own research. What happened to that old journalists saw: "when your mother says she loves you--Check it out!"? If there is any object at all in those press gaggles it is the one Helen Thomas attempts which is to get those guys on the record with contradictions. And that's only the start of the job. Gregory's take is this:
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NBC's David Gregory, for example, said McClellan "also writes in the book that he think that the so-called liberal media got it wrong and was not hard enough on the administration about the war. You know, I don't know where he gets that idea. I don't know where other people get that idea." Later, Gregory said: "I think he's wrong. He makes the same kind of argument a lot of people on the left have made. I tried not to be defensive about it. I thought a lot about this over a number of years, and I disagree with that assessment. I think the questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the president. I think not only those of us in the White House press corps did that, but others in the rest of the landscape of the media did that."

Who cares, Gregory, I mean really, who cares? You challenged the president? That wasn't your job. Your job was to get the truth and publish it, over and over again, until the president and his tools couldn't stand up and lie in our faces any more. Like the president or despise him, what's the difference? Just ignore him and ask the question of someone who actually knew something. The job isn't "stand up there, ask a question, and sit down again" its get the g-dmn story.


aimai