Eleanor Clift (Newsweek): Political Theater

The GOP's media bashing is a response to journalists' attempts to hold the administration accountable—a job Congress won't do.

By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 1:10 p.m. ET June 30, 2006

June 30, 2006 - You have to go back to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s to find Congress so outrageously trying to stifle dissent. Signed by President John Adams to quash newspapers aligned with rival Thomas Jefferson, some 25 people were arrested and 10 editors and publishers convicted under these laws. This time around, at least, the resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday condemning news organizations for publishing classified information has no force of law. It’s pure political theater.

Warring with the mainstream media is standard Republican foolery. The first President Bush encouraged his supporters to heckle the press. ANNOY THE MEDIA—RE-ELECT BUSH was a popular bumper sticker in 1992—Bush backers even charged through the media center at the Republican National Convention shouting the slogan. Bush was lionized by the right for taking on CBS's Dan Rather in a heated exchange over his role in the Iran-contra scandal. But the media bashing wasn’t enough to salvage the race for Bush, who lost the presidency because he had lost the confidence of conservatives.

The current President Bush has raised the stakes, threatening prosecution and jail time for reporters and editors who broke the story about a program to track the financial records of those with suspected terror ties. Most of the administration's ire has been focused on The New York Times, the paper they view as exhibit A of the liberal media elite. The Times did break the story, but others were close behind, including The Wall Street Journal, an administration favorite. Considering what many see as the Times’s role in promoting phony stories about WMD in Iraq, lending its imprimatur to bad intelligence and smoothing the way to war, it’s hard to think of the newspaper as a liberal crusader. Still, 17 Democrats joined the GOP to inoculate themselves against a 30-second television spot labeling them soft on terrorism. “They might as well vote for it,” says Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow with the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference. “It’s meaningless anyway and will soon be forgotten.” Fair-minded people can disagree on whether the Times made the right call on the need to publish. These editorial decisions are not made lightly, but whichever side you take in the debate, this is not treason. The administration doth protest too much.

The larger point is that journalists have taken up the task of holding this administration accountable. Congress has done nothing. A new book, “The Broken Branch,” by congressional scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, makes the point that the Republicans who vaulted into the majority in 1994 are either crusaders, for whom the institution is incidental, or opportunists, getting rich at the expense of the institution. Ornstein has been around a long time and has a strong stomach. He’s seen all manner of financial and sexual escapades over the years, “but now it’s not just illegal stuff, it’s the stuff that’s legal,” he says, pointing to the 10-fold increase in “earmarks” since the Republicans took power. These are pet projects that benefit individual members tucked into legislation without scrutiny at the last minute. “There are members making killings in earmark transactions,” says Ornstein. Among them is House Speaker Dennis Hastert who bought a piece of rural property in his Illinois district and then worked hard to earmark $207 million in federal money for a major highway nearby. He sold the property for a $2 million profit. When news of his windfall made the front pages, Hastert blamed the “unrelenting Democratic media.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13635156/site/newsweek/

yes INDEED :(