WASHINGTONIAN MAGAZINE is having fun watching the media. This is its recent unearthing: “We have found the Evil Empire, and it is us, in the view of Post military correspondent Thomas Ricks.
The Pentagon has a “Soviet-style definition of information,” says Ricks. Officials’ attitude is “Unless it comes from us, it is not legitimate. We will tell you what you need to know and when you need to know it.”
Ricks thinks the commissar of the evil empire is Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He may be a cover boy on newsweeklies, but to Ricks he’s undemocratic.
“He gives the appearance of being very candid,” says Ricks, “but he provides very little information.” Rumsfeld has “intimidated” the press, Ricks says, and played favorites.
“I think we’ve been singled out for punishment,” Ricks says of the Post. “Some people at the Pentagon have tried to punish us.”
According to the Washingtonian, the Pentagon might be punishing the newspaper as payback for having to handle the inane questions of Post and Newsweek columnist Lally Weymouth, sister of Post Company chief Don Graham.
Ricks has sparred with Rumsfeld in interviews. And during a press conference, Rumsfeld called a Ricks story “a world-class thumb sucker.”
To the contrary, Ricks says the Post has broken tough stories that have stung Rumsfeld to the point of taking retribution.
For proof, Ricks points to the Pentagon’s choice of reporters to accompany Special Forces in Afghanistan. The New York Times, USA Today, ABC, and three other news organizations were invited. The Post was not allowed on the trip.
Actually, the Post has been granted rare interviews with Rumsfeld, most news organizations join the Post in whining that the Pentagon is controlling the news.
Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman says Ricks is a “fine journalist” and scoffs at the payback theory: “I think that any claim would be unsupported by the facts.”
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No time for bickering
AMERICANS “sense they are in a war and recession simultaneously, but somehow feel better about the country than they did before the problems began,” Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald F. Seib writes.
“There’s no way to explain this anomaly except by crediting basic American resilience and the kind of resolve the nation shows in wartime. Politically speaking, that doesn’t mean this will be a year without partisan debates. It does suggest that politicians will have to be more attuned to the limits on the public’s appetite for bickering,” Seib said.
“Unfortunately for Democrats, it means that President Bush, like any president in such a spot, is the unifying figure who will have the easier time defining for voters the line between honest debate and partisan jockeying.”
Seib noted that 62 percent of respondents in the most recent Journal/NBC poll said the nation was on the right track, up 20 percent from June, and that the Consumer Confidence Index rose for a second straight month in January, meaning consumer expectations were at their highest levels in more than a year.
“The upshot is that the public’s resolve to move ahead may force Washington to get at least a few things done this year — on economic stimulus and, perhaps, on such topics as energy — despite the temptation toward gridlock.”
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Krugman’s prediction
PAUL KRUGMAN, the New York Times columnist and former Enron adviser, predicts that the collapse of Enron will come to overshadow the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
“One of the great clichés of the last few months was that Sept. 11 changed everything. I never believed that. An event changes everything only if it changes the way you see yourself. And the terrorist attack couldn’t do that, because we were victims rather than perpetrators. Sept. 11 told us a lot about Wahhabism, but not much about Americanism,” Krugman writes.
“The Enron scandal, on the other hand, clearly was about us. It told us things about ourselves that we probably should have known, but had managed not to see. I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in US society.”
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Talking about ‘former Enron advisers....’
ENRON-FUNDED pundits. That’s what columnist Andrew Sullivan, senior editor of the New Republic, has labeled those journalists who pocketed Enron cash before the company collapsed in bankruptcy. The list of scribes includes: Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard editor (paid $100,000 for serving on an Enron advisory board); Lawrence Kudlow, National Review contributing editor (got $50,000 from the Houston company); Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist (received $50,000 for serving on Enron’s advisory board); Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist (pocketed as much as $50,000 for helping prepare Enron’s annual report and one speech for former Enron CEO Kenneth L. Lay).
So, what’s a journalist with his or her hand stuck in a crumbling Enron cookie jar to do?
“Let’s say these Enron-funded pundits did nothing illegal or unethical,” writes Sullivan. “Let’s say they just took $50,000 minimum from this company for legit extracurricular work. ....What does the pundit do then? He can disclose, sure, as Krugman and Noonan have,” he observes. “But that doesn’t get rid of the problem, unless they actually return the money.”
No, there’s an even bigger problem. “Haven’t these pundits essentially undermined themselves as independent watchdogs of the culture?” Sullivan asks.
