{"id":573,"date":"2003-03-16T10:29:23","date_gmt":"2003-03-16T14:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=573"},"modified":"2003-03-16T10:29:23","modified_gmt":"2003-03-16T14:29:23","slug":"spineless-american-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=573","title":{"rendered":"spineless American journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I wonder, in numbed astonishment, how anyone is supposed to believe the stuff that comes out of the Bush White House. It had never occurred to me that there was a practical answer to this questioon. Here is part of it. The White House press machine rewrites and approves even supposedly off-the-record briefings from people who work there; and, when a journalists baulks at this, accuses <em>him<\/em> of unethical conduct: here is a <em>Washington Post<\/em> reporter getting himself into trouble.<\/p>\n\n<blockquote><p>Recently, I was working on a profile of the now-departed chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, R. Glenn Hubbard. I dutifully went through the White House press office to talk to an administration economist about Hubbard&#8217;s tenure, and a press office aide helpfully got me in touch with just the person I wanted. The catch was this: The interview would be off the record. Any quotes I wanted to put into the newspaper would have to be e-mailed to the press office. If approved, the quotation could be attributed to a White House official. (This has become fairly standard practice.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.salon.com\/0000014\/\">Scott Rosenberg)<\/a><\/p>\n\n<p>Does even Microsoft try that amount of control?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I wonder, in numbed astonishment, how anyone is supposed to believe the stuff that comes out of the Bush White House. It had never occurred to me that there was a practical answer to this questioon. Here is part &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=573\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/?p=573\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewormbook.com\/hlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}