Saturday, March 25, 2006

Howard Kurtz gives the game away

... I think.
/When President Bush finished his news conference yesterday, most of the TV pundits were using words like "confident," "combative," "passionate" and, as Bob Schieffer put it, "George Bush sort of unleashed."

But some people I chatted with afterward thought it was painfully obvious that the president had done badly--even though he made about as strong as case for the war as he's ever made.



It's generally an interesting article, and I commend it to your attention, but let's just think for a moment ... who would be the people who Kurtz chatted with afterwards?

Given his employment at CNN and the Post, and his obvious interest in what other journalists are saying and doing, I'd guess --- and it's just a guess, but not a completely unreasonable one, I think --- that the people he chatted with are members of the Washington DC press.

If the folks Howard Kurtz talks with look at a presser that was pretty generally well-received, and see it as Bush having "done badly," whose perception should we question?

7 comments:

Unknown said...

What would they consider doing well? Bush falling on his sword in some sort of ritual suicide?

Syl said...

Neil Gabler on NewsWatch caused me to turn off the tv (not hard to do these days) by stating that the 'why Bush went to war' question is THE question Americans want answered...thus the old bag's (sorry) question to Bush was the perfect one.

All I have to say to that is that Bush HAS answered that question--several times. People like Neil and the rest of the DC press corps, the Koskids, etc., DON'T LIKE THE ANSWER.

I guess they think if they keep asking the same question over and over the answer will change. Sounds insane to me.

vnjagvet said...

Seneca's headline says it all.

And Syl's comment is dead on.

Doing badly in the Presses' eyes is standing up to what they think is their great cross examination techniques.

Probing questions like, "you are a liar aren't you, Mr. BushChimP?" or "when are you going to stop killing our boys" are what they think is great journalistic technique.

This is what passes for "reporting" by the WH press corps.

BTW, "yfoxig" is my word verification question. Seems prophetic, doesn't it?

Rick Ballard said...

How much longer will the gibbering among the press corps be worth the effort to write about? As centrist Syl follows centrist Terrye in simply pushing the OFF button the importance of what no one is listening to diminishes. Kurtz isn't a fool and he realizes that the he is on the losing side in a war without end or truce.

It's a cheering thought that he will spend the rest of his career watching the the ship whose deck he is standing upon settle ever lower in the water. With a bit of luck it will sink before his retirement.

cf said...

Neil Gabler is an idiot. The Burns' show gets worse every month.If he wanted to make it lively and worthwhile, he should replace Gabler with a blogger. The show purports to examine the press, but it generally misses the worst of it and papers over the rest. (Jane Hall isn't much better than Neil. Watching here, you can see why journalism schools churn out such ninnies.)

Rick Ballard said...

FA,

You're right about the sports analogy but you have to look at is as if the team mascot or head of the cheerleaders was writing the report of the game. Kurtz and his ilk are just cheerleaders for the Washington Generals.

Charlie Martin said...

Pauline Kael lives, that's for sure.

Yeah, I thought of her myself.