http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2007/04/bill_moyers_on_the_record.html

Bill Moyers: On the Record
April 27, 2007 01:53 PM

Since the Wednesday broadcast of our documentary Buying the War there has been an overwhelmingly positive response from the press and the public, some of it right here on this blog. But some in the White House press corps have expressed dissatisfaction over the way we portrayed the Presidential press conference of March 6, 2003. Bill Plante, a friend and former colleague, and April Ryan of the Urban Radio Networks have contacted me directly, and CBS’s Mark Knoller made comments that ran at CBSNews.com.

I invite you to watch what we ran in the documentary and read the transcript and judge for yourself. We posted the transcript on our site before the broadcast, by the way.

We began the documentary with that press conference because it crystallized how the Administration controlled the flow and content of information leading up to the war. Our particular focus was on how the press failed to challenge the President on the Administration’s assertion of links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. If you read the transcript from the program, you will see that I pointed out that

“at least a dozen times during this press conference he [the President] will invoke 9/11 and Al Qaeda to justify a preemptive attack on a country that has not attacked America. But the White House press corps will ask no hard questions tonight about those claims.”

There were questions about the war, but if you go to the actual record of the press conference, you will find the President wasn’t challenged on his assertion that Saddam was somehow in league with terrorists who brought us 9/11. I remember watching the press conference and the surreal way it played out.

It was also on this occasion that the President confessed publicly what the members of the press who were present already knew: the press conference was “scripted.” Bill Plante wrote me to say that it “was no more ‘scripted’ than any other” press conference he’d attended in recent years.

So? Isn’t it about time the public knew how the game is rigged? Especially on the eve of war? Wouldn’t it have been to the public’s benefit if at least one reporter shot up his or her hand and insisted the President throw his list away? Helen Thomas, where are you now that we need you? But Helen was banished . . .

- - by Bill Moyers Journal on April 27, 2007 01:53 PM