There are several items online today about Bush and other administration officials intentionally avoiding the news — and being proud of it.
This is not an entirely new story, of course. We’ve known for some time that the president revels in the fact that he doesn’t follow the mainstream press.
“I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves…. [T]he best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”
This fact is getting renewed attention because the Washington Times’ Bill Sammon has written the latest pro-Bush book called, “Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters” in which he broaches the subject.
“I don’t watch the nightly newscasts on TV, nor do I watch the endless hours of people giving their opinion about things,” the president said. “I don’t read the editorial pages; I don’t read the columnists.”
Yet Mr. Bush regularly monitors the news pages of a select few daily publications.
“I get the newspapers — the New York Times, The Washington Times, The Washington Post and USA Today — those are the four papers delivered,” he said. “I can scan a front page, and if there is a particular story of interest, I’ll skim it.”
The president prides himself on his ability to detect bias in ostensibly objective news stories.
“My antennae are finely attuned,” he said. “I can figure out what so-called ‘news’ pieces are going to be full of opinion, as opposed to news. So I’m keenly aware of what’s in the papers, kind of the issue du jour. But I’m also aware of the facts.”
As Josh Marshall explained very well yesterday, this is not a positive development.
[C]ertainly no one is perfect when it comes to subjecting and then resubjecting their viewpoints to fresh facts or challenging their assumptions with intelligently stated contrary views. I can’t claim to be. But it’s one thing to fall short of the mark and another to work out a system of self-rationalization and denial to ensure you come nowhere near the mark. And this is it in spades.
He doesn’t even need the yes-men who “extract” the “facts” from the news articles. He’s his own built-in yes-man.
How could we have ignored so many warnings, so much expert advice, so many facts staring us in the face? The president just gave you the answer.
And so has Donald Rumsfeld.
At his surprise visit to Baghdad yesterday, Rumsfeld said, “I’ve stopped reading the newspapers. You’ve got to keep your sanity somehow.” It was, unfortunately, a line that drew hearty applause.
National Journal’s William Powers noted it was an odd admission coming from Rumsfeld.
Just a few weeks ago, Rumsfeld told a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors that America’s leaders must be “challenged, internally through the complex constitutional system of checks and balances, and externally by a free and energetic press.” He also said our political system “needs information to be self-correcting.”
But that was before all this horrible news starting breaking, and reading the paper became so, well, unpleasant.
Exactly. A “free and energetic press” is terrific, so long as they’re telling the White House exactly what it wants to hear. Once the papers starting printing more odious facts, it’s time to boast of one’s anti-intellectual ignorance.
Tarek at The Liquid List also notes that USA Today’s Walter Shapiro doesn’t care much for the trend towards intentional unawareness.
Rumsfeld’s remark, assuming he was at least partly serious, has the makings of a trend. Pretty soon the Bush administration may need to arrange 12-step programs in newspaper avoidance to help top officials maintain psychological equilibrium in troubling times.
With any luck, they’ll particularly want to avoid the papers on the morning of Wednesday, November 3.