Gannon Redux

Howard Kurtz poses an interesting question in his column today:

So: Are the Bushies at "war" with the Fourth Estate? Is there an insidious plot to weaken the media establishment, to carpet-bomb its credibility like the Saddam regime?

Kurtz goes the other way on this. What do I mean?

Some are of the mind that it is in fact a concerted effort by Republicans to dilute and diminish the influence of the press:

Recent headlines about paid-off pundits, video press releases disguised as news telecasts, and the remarkable press access granted to a right-wing pseudo-journalist working under a phony name, have led some to conclude that the White House is not simply aggressively managing the news, but is out to sabotage the press corps from within, to undermine the integrity and reputation of journalism itself.

"The White House and its media allies, echoing a deep-rooted conservative antagonism toward the so-called liberal media, say they are simply countering its bias. But critics charge that the White House, along with partners like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, organizations whose allegiance to the Republican Party outweighs their commitment to journalism, is actually trying to permanently weaken the press. Its motivation, they say, is twofold. Weakening the press weakens an institution that's structurally an adversary of the White House. And if the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate.

"Republicans have a clear, agreed-upon plan how to diminish the mainstream press,' says Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who was granted unique access inside the White House in 2002 to report on the administration's communication strategy. 'For them, essentially the way to handle the press is the same as how to handle the federal government; you starve the beast. When it's in a weakened and undernourished condition, then you're able to effect a variety of subtle partisan and political attacks. Armstrong Williams and others are examples of that."

"Sabotage." "Weaken." "Undermine." All things that require an outside actor (Bushitler in this instance). Kurtz points the finger back at those in the media.

Frankly, the President hasn't done anything to the media that the media wasn't already doing to itself:

Bush wasn't responsible for the fraud by Jayson Blair or Jack Kelley, or for Dan Rather's botched National Guard story (though I know some have theorized that the administration lured CBS into some kind of trap). Bush didn't force the media to go overboard on Kobe and Michael. He didn't force a CNN executive to make some ill-considered comments about the U.S. military targeting journalists. He didn't force various journalists to keep engaging in plagiarism. He didn't force Armstrong Williams to take $240,000 from the Education Department (though paying conservative pundits is one of the administration's innovations). He isn't responsible for declining newspaper circulation and network news ratings or the sinking poll numbers when it comes to trusting the media.

Focusing on things like Jeff Gannon so severely misses the point as to be laughable.