06-24-2009, 05:18 AM | #1 (permalink) | |
People in masks cannot be trusted
Location: NYC
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White house and free press?
Obama press conference had a staged question yesterday.
Article Quote:
Then you have his 2 hour potential infomercial on ABC. ABC has as of now has not invited any major republican to offer a dissenting opinion they also declined to even allow dissenting paid commercials. I will be interested to see it just to see if ABC due to pressure from outside now will make the interview much more hard pressing on the major issues with the health plan. The sad thing is even if ABC does do that it is hard to say that was the initial plan. |
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06-24-2009, 05:53 AM | #2 (permalink) |
Getting it.
Super Moderator
Location: Lion City
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There is nothing about what happened there that was not free. The press are allowed to write what they would like to write about. The fact that there is an article about the fact that it was staged should tell you right there that there is a free press. If it wasn't you wouldn't be reading about it.
The truth is that press conferences have been staged events for years. You should read Daniel Boorstin's The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, it was written in 1962 and talks at length about this phenomena. The real issue is that journalists don't do their job nearly well enough.
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06-24-2009, 06:00 AM | #3 (permalink) |
Darth Papa
Location: Yonder
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But... In the last couple paragraphs, the article says that the QUESTION wasn't planted, just the fact that HuffPo was there and had a question submitted directly from Iran. And then some action was taken to include the international press--again, with no planting of the question, just selective promotion of the questioner.
What's the problem here? This is a nice editorial that riles up those who are itching to be riled up, but there's no meat on them bones. |
06-24-2009, 06:01 AM | #4 (permalink) |
Asshole
Administrator
Location: Chicago
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How is this an example of the press not being free? The President found out the reporter had some interesting correspondence from an Iranian and wanted to make sure it got time.
I guess I just don't get it. I think I'll ask my reporter buddy. If he has anything interesting to say, I'll post it.
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo |
06-24-2009, 06:06 AM | #5 (permalink) |
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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the staged press conference--complete with pre-submitted questions--was instituted systematically under reagan, but didn't constitute exactly a break with what already was in place. more an extension of it, taking it to another level. the gipper, for all this "Great Communicator" horseshit you read in hagiographies, wasn't real great extemporizing...
there are problems with this sort of practice, but they don't surface so much as such until the media environment, driven by budget decisions and the pressure for footage that 24/7 infotainment bring, start relying on prepackaged situations/information because it saves production time and money. this because any state apparatus (it seems) will stage itself as Powerful and its actions as Coherent and so Justified no matter the media context---so long as there's some reasonable expectation (on a infotainment consumer level i guess) that the press is independently checking information, operating in a critical manner etc and is not simply a relay system for this Packaged Stuff, then you can say the environment is more or less democratic---but once that critical dimension starts to fade away, the line between relay system for ideology and free press starts to erase itself. personally, i think we're well into an ideological relay system that talks about itself as if it were a free press (in the sense of providing the kinds of information required for coherent judgments on the part of a democratic polity)--particularly on television. but i think it was far more problematically the case under the bush administration, particularly during the marketing of the war in iraq...which seems the low point of the "war on terror" in retrospect. but it's good to remind yourself that this is the case---that information comes prepackaged, particularly from state sources---all the more if you find yourself in general political agreement with the administration in power. part of the reason it seemed so apparent to me anyway during the bush period was a function of the fact that i saw them as repellent. the apparatus did not go away once obama came to power---it just tends to disappear as such a little beneath the basic agreement with this or that argument/action.
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06-24-2009, 07:27 AM | #6 (permalink) | |
Delicious
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umm.. Tilted Politics that way please.------->
I don't see what's the big deal. Do you really think there is a relevant question out there that the president hasn't been prepared for? There was a unique situation where the Huffington post had asked Iranians for questions to ask the president. If you don't actually know what the question was, because this article didn't say, here's the quote. Quote:
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06-24-2009, 02:16 PM | #7 (permalink) |
immoral minority
Location: Back in Ohio
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He did take a question from Fox News on Iran as well.
And how else is someone from Iran protesting the election going to be heard by the President of the US? He can't call them directly, but if a reporter asks an Iranian protester what would they ask the President, and then the reporter asks that, it is ok. While it may not be perfect and staged a little, it was meant to give hope to the Iranian protesters who were watching. (And annoy the current Iranian administration) At least he has press conferences... |
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free, house, press, white |
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