{"id":5972,"date":"2005-12-01T16:05:22","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T21:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5972"},"modified":"2005-12-01T16:05:22","modified_gmt":"2005-12-01T21:05:22","slug":"it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-independent-media-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-independent-media-is\/","title":{"rendered":"It depends on what the meaning of ‘independent media’ is"},"content":{"rendered":"

At today’s White House press briefing<\/a>, there were a number of questions about recent reports<\/a> on the U.S. military secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish “articles” written by Americans to bolster our image and convince Iraqis that the war and occupation are worthwhile. <\/p>\n

McClellan referred most of the questions to the Pentagon — though he acknowledged that the White House is “very concerned about the reports that we have seen” — but there was one exchange that stood out.<\/p>\n

Q: At a time when the President talks about trying to build institutions, free institutions in Iraq, does even the level of reporting on this so far undercut that message?<\/p>\n

McClellan: Well, the United States is a leader when it comes to promoting and advocating a free and independent media around the world, and we will continue to do so. We’ve made our views very clear when it comes to freedom of press.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I couldn’t agree more; the Bush White House has made its views “very clear when it comes to freedom of press.” In fact, they’ve made it abundantly clear what Bush thinks of a “free and independent media” when it comes to the American media<\/a>, the WH press corps<\/a>, the Iraqi media<\/a>, Public Broadcasting<\/a>, and American media overseas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bush gang has made their views clear, but to describe this administration as “a leader” in promoting a free and independent media would be comical if it weren’t so sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At today’s White House press briefing, there were a number of questions about recent reports on the U.S. military secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish “articles” written by Americans to bolster our image and convince Iraqis that the war and occupation are worthwhile. McClellan referred most of the questions to the Pentagon — though he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}