In a just published book by former Washinton Times reporter Bill Sammon, the president has finally gotten around to showing some appreciation for bin Laden’s contribution to Bush’s campaign.

The president has steadfastly rejected any allegations that he has ever sought to politicize the War on Terror. This despite the constant and false association that he and his administration make between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. In the book, Strategery : How George W. Bush Is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats, and Confounding the Mainstream Media, Bush comes clean and reveals that there was “enormous amounts of discussion…” about the bin Laden video released in the final days of the campaign. Says Bush:

“I thought it was going to help. I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

The president, and his minions in the media, then set about to disburse bin Laden’s comments throughout the mediasphere knowing full well that it was a political strategy that they were employing. So much for not politicizing the War on Terror.

The hardworking journalists at Fox News managed to snag one of this year’s most eagerly anticipated exclusive interviews. After four days of silence, Vice President Dick Cheney stepped up to Birt Hume to make his first public comments about having shot a man in the face.

How Fox secured this editorial coup is beyond me. Maybe they know people in the White House. Or maybe Cheney just felt confident that he could stand up to to the notoriously withering brand of hardball journalism as practiced by the feared Mr. Hume.

Either way it further boggles the mind that, after winning this interview, the Fox editors decided to censor it. Media Matters has documented the deed:

In airing Brit Hume’s interview with Vice President Dick Cheney, Fox News omitted Cheney’s comments about drinking a beer the day he shot his hunting companion. Fox News even excluded the comments from what it said was the “full interview” posted on its website.

Why would Fox do such a thing? With their reputation for being fair and balanced you would think they would jump at the chance to showcase a public servant who was fairly stewed and unable to keep his balance.

There are few, if any, non-military professions that expose its practitioners to the measure of risk that journalism does. Yet some independent journalists answer the call with the hopes of providing a vital public service in a dangerous world.

Too frequently these reporters are targeted by combatants and pay a heavy price for their service. There is presently a journalist being held in Iraq whose fate is unknown and dire. This reporter’s captors are determined and are known for acts of brutality. The reporter’s family is being kept in the dark and the government is helpless.

I am not referring to Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent that is being held by a group of Iraqi insurgents. Her abduction has been reported widely by the media in the U.S. and throughout the world. There is another reporter in detention about whom less is known and whose story is not being told. Abdel Amir Yunes Hussein is a journalist who was working for CBS on April 8, 2005, when he was wounded by U.S. soldiers and taken in to custody. They have been holding him ever since on the vague charge that there is “probable cause to believe that (the detainee) poses an imperative threat to coalition forces.”

The U.S. has produced no evidence that Hussein posed any threat, a charge that Hussein denies. But they continue to keep him incarcerated at Abu Ghraib without formal charges or access to an attorney.

And that’s not all. Sami Al-Hajj was working as a camerman for Al-Jazeera in Afghanistan when he was arrested as part of the “war on terror.” He had been shuttled around several prisons and now resides at Guantanamo Bay. He also has baseless charges hanging over his head, but he has been held with no legal rights for over 4 years. Hajj reports that he has undergone torture and that his captors have been trying to coerce him into testifying that there is a link between Al-Jazeera and Al-Qaeda.

The U.S. military has a history of violence against Al-Jazeera. In 2001 they bombed their offices in Kabul, Afghanistan. In 2003 their office in Baghdad was bombed, killing a cameraman. The Pentagon described both incidents as mistakes. And then there is the notorious conversation wherein British Prime Minister Tony Blair had to talk President Bush out of bombing Al-Jazeera offices in Qatar. [As an aside, the British government has charged the reporter who disclosed this conversation, with violating the Official Secrets Act, despite the government’s contention that the conversation never took place].

Reporters Without Borders has released a report on these acts of overt hostility to journalists trying to cover the war on terror. It includes additional examples of reporters who were arrested and released with no charges being brought. It also reveals an antagonistic pattern of behavior on the part of the U.S. toward the press. This report, and the others cited above, suggest that the U.S. is not providing a particularly good role model for the emerging democracy they claim to be building in Iraq.

For those who care enough to have noticed…..Yes, I have not posted in a little while. I am preparing for an exhibition in early February and this has dominated every spare moment I have. But New Corpse marches on because there is an enemy that lurks (the media). In the meantime, here are some juicy tidbits to keep you irritated.

Bush is now putting the squeeze on leakers and journalists
With the vice president’s former top aide Lewis Libby under indictment and Karl Rove still in the special counsel’s sights, the Bush administration is eager to go on the offensive about classified leaks.

Debunking the Myth of a Liberal Media
A new right wing-funded ‘study’ employs comically unsound criteria to rate the media.

Reporters Ejected from Gov. Jeb Bush Speech in Florida
Five hotel security staffers and a sheriff’s deputy led reporters away from where they could hear the governor in the middle of a speech.

UPN and WB to Combine to Form New Network
Because more consolidation is exactly what broadcast media needs.

Paper Shutters Blog After Ombudsman Post
In her Sunday column, ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff “had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties,” prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog.

CNN Headline News adds talk radio’s Beck to lineup
Beck’s selection has alarmed some liberal media watchdog groups, who view his new show as a sign that the CNN network is embracing the kind of opinionated conservative talk shows that helped make Fox News the top-ranked cable news channel.

White House Follows NewsMax’s Lead
[T]he administration does not want the public to think President Bush authorized “an illegal and unnecessary intrusion into the privacy of all Americans,” they are pushing back with a new name for the program.

NewsBusters is a new project of the Media Research Center (MRC), the official public relations arm of the right-wing propaganda machine. A co-production of the MRC’s Brent Bozell and the team behind RatherBiased, NewsBusters describes their mission as providing, “…immediate exposure of liberal media bias, insightful analysis, constructive criticism and timely corrections to news media reporting.”

With a pedigree like that, you would be right to expect a frothing puddle of drool staining the blognoleum. Their current front page contains six alleged examples of liberal media bias that are actually the work of opinion columnists not reporters. Columnists, of course, are paid to be biased, and they share space/time with their conservative counterparts. One post that does address bona fide news content condemns the liberal slant because the reporter, Terry Moran, asks General Peter Pace, Chaiman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if he is concerned about the possibility of civil war in Iraq. How dare Moran ask such a reasonable question?

But the slimiest strand of spittle hanging from the NewsBuster’s lip is the article where they catch Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek, explaining to Tim Russert that a new generation of news consumers may be less than impressed by the Bush administration’s accomplishments in 2005. NewsBusters says:

Meacham zeroes in on Bush as he bemoaned how Bush’s conduct “has raised a lot of questions about fundamental competence of the government, both abroad and at home, whether it’s in Baghdad or in New Orleans.” A conservative might see that as an unintended positive development.

Thank you, Buster Brent Baker, for admitting that conservatives view the tragedies in Iraq and New Orleans as positive because of their ability to paint government as incompetent. Now we know that the true agenda of BushCo all along was to fail so badly that America’s youth would learn to despise its government. Submission Accomplished.

Much has been written recently about the latest abuses of power by the Bush administration. While these stories are important and necessary, there is a larger concern that seems to be getting less attention than it deserves.

The newsrooms of America are already run by corporations that have a vested interest in many of the people and institutions they cover, including other corporations whose advertising keeps their profits growing, and politicians whose legislating keeps their empires growing.

For a story to be cleared, it has to run the gamut of fact-checkers, editors, lawyers, and publishers. Now there is another checkpoint that must be cleared before a story gets out to the people. That checkpoint is the White House. The president recently summoned the editors of the Washington Post and the New York Times to pressure them not to release stories that were critical of the administration. Both papers published the stories anyway, though the Times waited for a year to do so.

In each case, the articles covered matters of grave importance to the public. The Post’s story was about CIA prisons that were secretly established in Eastern Europe to interrogate terror suspects with methods that would be considered unlawful torture were they to be used in the U.S. The Times reported on the National Security Agency’s illegal practice of wiretapping the phone conversations of American citizens without a warrant.

The fact that the stories were ultimately printed is irrelevant, even if the Times had not sat on it for a year. The problem is that the White House should not be another step in the editorial chain. The thought of the president clapping his imperial hands and demanding an audience with supposedly independent journalists is antithetical to the notion of a free press. The very act is expressly intimidating.

The president far over-reached the boundaries of his office and should have his imperial hands slapped. But this is, sadly, not unexpected from this administration. The president’s behavior was not very far removed from what might be expected of a leader that fabricated evidence in order to engage in America’s first war of aggression; that paid columnists to write articles praising it’s agenda; that planted biased stories in Iraqi newspapers; that produced fake video news releases that ran on commercial television without disclaimers. It’s getting to be a little difficult to blame the administration for being dishonest and immoral when we already know enough to expect that from them.

The real villains here are the editors of the Times and the Post. The media’s behavior in all of this was that of an obedient child that comes when daddy calls. They should never have attended those meetings. But once there, they should have promptly departed and reported what had taken place. [Update: Journalists Say ‘Times’ And ‘Post’ Should Have Disclosed Meeting with Bush]

If the media expects the American people to put any faith in what they produce, they have to start demonstrating some independence and integrity. They have to understand that their mission is to serve the people – not their advertisers; not their colleagues; and most certainly not the government. Acquiescing to this kind of government pressure produces a wave of suspicion that can grow into a tsunami. Were there other meetings that they still have not disclosed? Were there meetings with other news outlets that have not come forward? Were agreements made to withhold or alter reports that they are presently honoring? We don’t know. And we won’t know even if they tell us because, at this point, how can we believe them?

While the abuses detailed in the reporting above are serious, we must start to recognize that what is most serious is the lack of a trustworthy media. With a truly free and independent press, these kinds of abuses would be impossible to engage in. People need to start expressing outrage at the abuse in the media at least as strongly as they do toward political affairs. Honesty in media begets honesty in politics. It is, in fact, the only path to honest politics.

Thomas Jefferson said that he would rather have a free press and no government, than a government but no free press. This is a perfect demonstration of what he meant.

The media has been falling all over itself for a few days now, lambasting DNC Chairman Howard Dean for saying that the war cannot be won. But I have yet to hear any of them criticize Bush for saying the exact same thing:

Mr. Bush was asked if the United States could win the war against terrorism…

“I don’t think you can win it,” Mr. Bush replied. “But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.”

Hypocrisy in the press? Ya think?