As if we hadn’t seen enough already, the latest manufactured-on-the-part-of-the-MSM ‘scandal’ will be given at least another week of scrutiny and coverage. Via Drudge [1]:
This just in… Both TIME and NEWSWEEK are planning high impact covers of Cheney for newsstands starting tomorrow, with each magazine rolling out top staff bylines and thousands of words on the hunting incident: TIME: With deep reporting by John Cloud, Mike Allen and Matthew Cooper/ Washington, Cathy Booth Thomas and Patricia Kilday Hart/ Austin, and Hilary Hylton. NEWSWEEK urgently brings in its big investigative guns: Evan Thomas, Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Richard Wolffe, Holly Bailey, Mark Hosenball and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Carol Rust in Texas.
NEWSWEEK’s Jonathan Alter essays that media budget cuts and shifting news priorities have contributed to the public being in the dark about Cheney’s ways and means.
TIME headlines a poll: DICK CHENEY APPROVAL RATING 29%
NEWSWEEK editor Mark Whitaker defends his decision to push for another week of Cheney-Shooting coverage: “The reason we ultimately decided to stick with a cover is not because of the hunting incident itself-although we did turn up some new details that you might not have read elsewhere-but because of what it says about the mysterious world of the most powerful vice president of recent times.”
MORE
On CNN’s RELIABLE SOURCES, WASHINGTON POST reporter Dana Milbank fretted that the White House is exploiting the public’s growing disdain for the mainstream media. “Of course they succeed” Milbank said of Bush aides. “The press always looks awful. They will once again make us look awful.”
CNN’s Candy Crowley added: “The perception is that we’re whining.”
Memo to Milbank and Crowley: “they” won’t have to “make” you look awful, nor is there any “perception” that you’re whining. You ARE, in fact, whining, and you make yourselves look awful all on your own [2] – you don’t need the administration’s help on that.
Gen. Honore’s “stuck on stupid” comment towards the media [3] seems very fitting here.
Read more commentary on the media’s over-the-top coverage of this story via Michelle Malkin [4], Will Collier at Vodkapundit [5] (who notes a story that SHOULD have been on the front pages – and often – recently but, of course, wasn’t), Brutally Honest [6] is on the same page as Collier regarding more important stories, Ed Driscoll [7], Macsmind [8], BizzyBlog [9], Anchoress [10], PunditGuy [11], QandO [12], Betsy Newmark [13], Blogs For Bush [14]
More: Mary Matalin, on Meet The Press this morning with NBC’s David Gregory [15] and the NYT’s Maureen ‘are men necessary?’ Dowd, accused the press of going “on a jihad” regarding this story. See the video here [16].
Update: Welcome, Newsweek readers [17].
Related Toldjah So posts:
- Milbank taken to woodshed for Cheney stunt [18]
- Cheney accepts responsibility for shooting accident [19]
- Moonbat mediots meltdown over Quailgate: a recap [2]
- How the media manufactures a scandal [20]
- Cheney shoots fellow hunter accidentally [21]
- WaPo’s Dana Milbank displays liberal bias once again [22]
- Smirkgate and Dana Milbank’s fervent wish [23]
- NRO pops Dana Milbank [24]
- Proof positive about the Wash Post’s Dana Milbank [25]