De-certifying the Press Corps

The brillant (and pants-wearing) Jay Rosen has another in his series of posts examining the Bush administration’s attack on the credibility of the media:

De-certification, as I have called it, has these two faces. One is about putting journalists in a diminished place, as in: Don’t answer their questions, it only encourages the askers to think they’re legitimate interlocutors, proxies for the public. And they’re not, in the White House view. (That’s what the briefing room struggle is all about. Getting that “not” across.)

But there’s the other side of it: what the Bush Administration does to “inform the public” is described as purely factual, a noble service, while the traditional press is dismissed as inherently biased, unrepresentative, unable to serve the general interest Americans have in informing themselves. These rising and falling motions are deeply connected. Discrediting traditional journalism helps in accrediting government as a more reliable news provider.

Read the rest and cogitate.

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