Bill Moyers Looked At Media and McClellan's Book

On Bill Moyers Journal, we got an honest assessment of Scott McClellan's book and heard a few journalists impressions. Here's just a little taste from Moyers Journal:

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Scott McClellan, formerly White House press secretary and one of President George W. Bush's closest advisors, has published a tell-all book with little new information about the propaganda campaign and the role of the press in selling the war. Bill Moyers talked to three prominent journalists to find out why the book is such big news and whether anything has changed.

Bill Moyers spoke with Greg Mitchell, editor of the influential magazine about the newspaper industry, EDITOR & PUBLISHER, and two members from McClatchy's Washington Bureau, one of the few news outlets to aggressively question the administration's case for invading Iraq: John Walcott, the bureau chief and John Landay, senior national security and intelligence correspondent.

So why is it such big news? John Walcott explains that it wasn't the information that made McClellan's book such a fire-starter, it was the source:

This is one of the first times, I think, that a member of the President's inner circle, one of the Texans who came to Washington with him and was regarded as being very close to him, has gone this far in denouncing what the administration did with respect to Iraq and has come right out and said that they deceived the American people.

In his book, besides implying that the administration misled Americans, McClellan takes the media to task for not being critical enough of the Bush Administration before the invasion of Iraq:

If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.[...]In this case, the "liberal media" didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

But the three media veterans, who were among those asking tough questions of McClellan and his sucessors, are less interested in McClellan's critique of the press than in the press's own reaction to it. Greg Mitchell continues to take to task the promininent journalists who he thinks haven't taken the time to assess their coverage:

There's been numerous opportunities, actually, just in the last few weeks for the media to do this self-assessment. [...] You remember the fifth anniversary of the start of the war. Almost no media self-assessment at that time. Pointing fingers at everybody but themselves. There was the 4,000 deaths in Iraq. There was the fifth anniversary of "mission accomplished." Another great opportunity for this. We had the scandal of the Pentagon media generals — as they call them, "message magnifiers" — we had that opportunity. Now we've had Scott McClellan. There's been at least six opportunities in the last two months for the media to do this long delayed and much needed self-assessment — self-criticism — to the American public, and it hasn't happened.