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Forwarded from the New Paradigms Project [Not Necessarily Endorsed]:
From: Ian Goddard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Servile Media
Date: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 2:13 PM
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_rockwell/19991005_xclro_on_bended_.shtml
ON BENDED KNEE
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
(http://lewRockwell.com)
Unless you get your news from the
Internet, you might not have heard
about this astonishing example of
government intimidation of an
independent reporter. If Nixon or
Reagan had done it, it would leap out
of the history books. But because the
official press and the Clinton
administration enjoy a cozy mutual
admiration society, the incident has
received virtually no attention.
The story involves a White House press
picnic (isn't that sweet?) attended by
the usual suspects and one dissident: a
feisty reporter named Paul Sperry,
Washington bureau chief for Investors
Business Daily. As any unowned
reporter would do, he began to
question Clinton on a series of political
scandals that are swirling around the
White House but which establishment
media types are too polite to mention
in his presence.
Sperry cornered Clinton to ask him
when his next formal press conference
would be. Clinton refused to give a
clear answer. Sperry persisted, and
finally began to conduct one right there
on the spot. He brought up allegations
concerning illegal campaign
contributions from China, saying that
the American people had a lot of
questions about the issue. Clinton blew
up. "I've been all around this country,
and you are the first person to ask me
about it," he said. "Not one person has
brought that up. ... You want to know
the only person who has been linked to
money from China? Haley Barbour and
the RNC, that's who!"
Temper, temper. Now, to be sure, I
have no trouble believing that both
parties are guilty of every manner of
corruption. But the topic of China has
been a staple of Republican
fundraising, and with the
investigations heating up, you might
think that Clinton would welcome the
chance to respond to claims that he is
on the payroll of a foreign power.
But no. Instead, he blows up because a
reporter dared to ask a tough question
or two. Then Clinton hotly added, "The
FBI wants you to write about that
rather than write about Waco" -- a slip
showing that the subject is on his mind
and that he believes that he does not
bear responsibility for the cover-ups of
his own agencies.
Clearly, Clinton is not used to being
grilled. Like anyone in power, he works
to surround himself with sycophants.
The best thing to come out of the
Monica Lewinsky drama is that he was
put on the hot seat for an extended
period of time. The worst thing about
the drama is that he emerged from it
with an even more inflated sense of his
own personal infallibility and
invulnerability.
As for his claim that he has "been all
around this country," it's sheer
nonsense. He never goes anywhere
without a vast entourage of carefully
picked partisans throwing kisses at
him. If he really wants to know what
people say about him, he should put on
a big nose and glasses and amble
outside the beltway alone.
Press secretary Joe Lockhart called
Sperry to tell him he would never be
allowed inside a White House press
conference again. Ah, the fate of a man
who asks a tough question of the
president. It's the same fate of any man
who dares treat the president as a mere
mortal. But if Sperry gets permanently
uninvited from any future White
House function because he pestered the
president with uncomfortable
questions, what does that say about the
reporters who remain?
In 1988, Mark Hertsgaard wrote a great
book called, "On Bended Knee: The
Press and the Reagan Presidency,"
demonstrating the penchant of the
official media to worship power. Why
is this? On one hand, it's not new. From
time immemorial, government has
surrounded itself with court
intellectuals happy to put a humane
spin on the inhumanity of the state.
They are there to make government
officials feel good about what would be
called looting and murder in the
private sector and to convince the
masses that the state is actually good
for them. In return, these intellectuals
are granted privilege and prestige.
In the ancient world, when religion and
state were one, clerics portrayed the
head of the executive branch as a god
walking on earth. Opposition to taxes,
for example, was considered
blasphemy, while piety was equated
with worshipping the government. So
it is in our own time. The difference is
that the state's apologists aren't always
on the direct payroll; academic and
media darlings work to shore up state
power in return for vast prestige and
perks.
One key to government control of the
press is access. In the information
game, government holds most of the
cards, and information is the lifeblood
of the press. The Clinton administration
has mastered the art of controlling the
media by treating interviews and
information like fish dangled before
hungry, leaping dolphins. The net
effect is that the White House is able to
train reporters to behave just so.
But it's not just about fish and Clinton's
Pavlovian feeding techniques. Ideology
also comes into play. The mainline
media may complain about this or that
aspect of the Clinton administration's
policies, but the truth is that the White
House and the press that covers it have
rarely marched in such close ideological
lockstep.
The reporters and the president are
from the same generation, went to the
same schools, socialize with the same
people, and share the same
boomer-style, soft-socialist political
worldview. Ted Turner of CNN
recently admitted, "I'm a socialist at
heart." Hence, while it is true that the
press is controlled, it is also true that
this takes place without much protest.
The members of the mainline media see
themselves as actors in the same
politico-historical drama.
This goes a long way towards
explaining why it took new media to
reveal the truth about the crimes at
Waco. The reporters who should have
been exposing them were too busy
currying favor with the administration
to concern themselves with a mass
killing. Even now, the press is buying
into Clinton' s staged anger at allegedly
not having been told the whole truth
about his armed henchmen killing
Americans.
Or consider the ridiculous drama of the
vetoed revenue reduction the other
day. The press portrayed it as a
"massive tax cut" that Clinton was
vetoing because it was "too bloated."
The truth is that the tax cut was illusory
and Clinton vetoed it because he didn't
want the Republican Congress to gain
even an illusory victory. But you had to
read new media like WorldNetDaily to
discover that.
Is it any wonder that the mainstream
media are held in very low regard by
large majorities? Is it any wonder that
the lying networks and major daily
newspapers are losing large swaths of
their audiences by the day? Is it any
wonder that news through the Internet
entered a continuing boom phase just
as soon as it became technologically
feasible, and that it is continually
denigrated by the establishment press?
Sperry may never go back to the White
House, but at least we know a little bit
more about those who remain.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. is president
of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in
Auburn, Alabama.
------------------------------------------------------------
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