{"id":208,"date":"2006-11-10T23:10:04","date_gmt":"2006-11-11T04:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/10\/lying-politicians-a-conundrum-for-the-washington-post\/"},"modified":"2006-11-11T08:27:28","modified_gmt":"2006-11-11T13:27:28","slug":"lying-politicians-a-conundrum-for-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/10\/lying-politicians-a-conundrum-for-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Lying Politicians: A Conundrum for the Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does the Washington press corps\u00a0do when a president brazenly lies?<\/p>\n

Nothing, usually.<\/p>\n

But every now and then, the lie cannot be ignored – especially if a president confesses during a national press conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Washington Post, in its initial article on the day after the press conference, noted that Bush\u00a0“appeared to acknowledge having misled reporters.” <\/strong>But that was a momentary admission.\u00a0 The Post revised this article and deleted any reference to Bush acknowledging having misled reporters. (Glenn Greenwald has the full details and an excellent analysis here.<\/strong><\/a>)<\/p>\n

So today, Howard Kurtz – the Post’s pious media critic –\u00a0 blathers along in a page 4 piece<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Did the president of the United States make a rare admission on national television that he had told an untruth?<\/em>Or had he merely engaged in a dodge of the sort that is common in politics?<\/em>Journalists by nature shy from pinning the “liar” label on any political leader,<\/strong> but President Bush’s acknowledgments that he had not been forthcoming about his plans to dump Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have kicked up a fuss at the White House and sparked a debate about the limits of presidential evasion.<\/p>\n

I have never understood the journalism profession. Why in Hades would\u00a0journalists “shy from pinning the “liar” label on any political leader”?<\/p>\n

<\/em>I have never understood the journalism profession. Why in Hades would\u00a0journalists “shy from pinning the “liar” label on any political leader”?If politicians are lying, and you pretend they’re not lying, you are an accomplice to their deceit.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Deference to the government is now the trademark of the American media\u2014at least at times when the truth could have the greatest impact. The media was grossly negligent in failing to question or examine Bush\u2019s claims on the road to war. When journalists dig up the truth, editors sometimes ignore or bury their reports. Washington Post<\/em> Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained that, in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, \u201cThere was an attitude among editors: \u2018Look, we\u2019re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?\u2019\u201d New York Times<\/em> White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller explained the press\u2019s conduct at a Bush press conference just before he invaded Iraq: \u201cI think we were very deferential because… nobody wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.”\u00a0 After the war started\u2014and after Bush\u2019s claims turned out to be false\u2014 it was often treated as a one-day story, buried in the back of the front section or on the editorial page.<\/p>\n

Of course, the real mystery is why the media has as much credibility with the American public as used car dealers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does the Washington press corps\u00a0do when a president brazenly lies? Nothing, usually. But every now and then, the lie cannot be ignored – especially if a president confesses during a national press conference.\u00a0 The Washington Post, in its initial article on the day after the press conference, noted that Bush\u00a0“appeared to acknowledge having misled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[659,22,6,662],"class_list":{"0":"post-208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"tag-attention-deficit-democracy","8":"tag-bovard","9":"tag-lying"},"yoast_head":"\nLying Politicians: A Conundrum for the Washington Post - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/10\/lying-politicians-a-conundrum-for-the-washington-post\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lying Politicians: A Conundrum for the Washington Post - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What does the Washington press corps\u00a0do when a president brazenly lies? 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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