http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/73900/?page=2

...but I found it interesting. Apropos of the whole journamilism thing.

'Bop - glad the NSA didn't confiscate me missive. Cheers!

John King has a speech impediment. And really bad skin. I could never figure out why he was on the teevee. Seriously. Somebody who looks and talks like this should be confined to print media.

He's not a brilliant, brave reporter. What's the secret?

That's what struck me. Just imagine.

You pick up the phone. You call CNN and ask to speak to John King about a blog post you're working on. First off, he's not gonna take your call.

And then, what are you supposed to ask him? "Why are you a mindless shill?" "Did you ask the candidate stuff that was really compelling and important?" "Why did you run drivel?"

Journalism is apparently calling people up on the phone, and then reporting that the people aren't available for comment.

Official White House transcript of a "press conference" just before starting a war:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
March 6, 2003
President George Bush Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference
The East Room
8:02 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. I'm pleased to take your questions tonight, and to discuss with the American people the serious matters facing our country and the world. This has been an important week on two fronts on our war against terror. First, thanks to the hard work of American and Pakistani officials, we captured the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks against our nation. [...] Second, we have arrived at an important moment in confronting the threat posed to our nation and to peace by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of terror.

[...]

THE PRESIDENT: [...] We'll be there in a minute. King, John King. This is a scripted -- (laughter.)

Matt Taibbi:

http://nypress.com/16/11/news&columns/cage.cfm

Bush gets a free pass from the White House press corps.
By Matt Taibbi

[...] The Bush press conference to me was like a mini-Alamo for American journalism, a final announcement that the press no longer performs anything akin to a real function. Particularly revolting was the spectacle of the cream of the national press corps submitting politely to the indignity of obviously pre-approved questions, with Bush not even bothering to conceal that the affair was scripted.

Abandoning the time-honored pretense of spontaneity, Bush chose the order of questioners not by scanning the room and picking out raised hands, but by looking down and reading from a predetermined list.

[...] Even Bush couldn’t ignore the absurdity of it all. In a remarkable exchange that somehow managed to avoid being commented upon in news accounts the next day, Bush chided CNN political correspondent John King when the latter overacted his part, too enthusiastically waving his hand when it apparently was, according to the script, his turn anyway.

A ripple of nervous laughter shot through the East Room. Moments later, the camera angle of the conference shifted to a side shot, revealing a ring of potted plants around the presidential podium. It would be hard to imagine an image that more perfectly describes American political journalism today: George Bush, surrounded by a row of potted plants, in turn surrounded by the White House press corps.

Newspapers the next day ignored the scripted-question issue completely. (King himself, incidentally, left it out of his CNN.com report.) Of the major news services and dailies, only one–the Washington Post–even parenthetically addressed the issue. Far down in Dana Millbank and Mike Allen’s conference summary, the paper euphemistically commented:

"The president followed a script of names in choosing which reporters could ask him a question, and he received generally friendly questioning."

"Generally friendly questioning" is an understatement if there ever was one. Take this offering by April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Networks:

"Mr. President, as the nation is at odds over war, with many organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus pushing for continued diplomacy through the UN, how is your faith guiding you?"

[...] Newspapers across North America scrambled to roll the highlight tape of Bush knocking Ryan’s question out of the park. The Boston Globe: "As Bush stood calmly at the presidential lectern, tears welled in his eyes when he was asked how his faith was guiding him…" The Globe and Mail: "With tears welling in his eyes, Mr. Bush said he prayed daily that war can be averted…"

[...] As I watched the conference, I was sure I was witnessing, live, an historic political catastrophe. In his best moments Bush was deranged and uncommunicative, and in his worst moments, which were most of the press conference, he was swaying side to side like a punch-drunk fighter, at times slurring his words and seemingly clinging for dear life to the verbal oases of phrases like "total disarmament," "regime change," and "mass destruction."

[...] Yet the closest thing to a negative characterization of Bush’s performance in the major outlets was in David Sanger and Felicity Barringer’s New York Times report, which called Bush "sedate": "Mr. Bush, sounding sedate at a rare prime-time news conference, portrayed himself as the protector of the country..."

Apparently even this absurdly oblique description, which ran on the Times website hours after the press conference, was too much for the paper’s editors. Here is how that passage read by the time the papers hit the streets the next morning:

"Mr. Bush, at a rare prime-time press conference, portrayed himself as the protector of the country…"

Meanwhile, those aspects of Bush’s performance that the White House was clearly anxious to call attention to were reported enthusiastically. It was obvious that Bush had been coached to dispense with two of his favorite public speaking tricks–his perma-smirk and his finger-waving cowboy one-liners. Bush’s somber new "war is hell" act was much commented upon, without irony, in the post-mortems.

Appearing on Hardball after the press conference, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman (one of the worst monsters of the business) gushed when asked if the Bush we’d just seen was really a "cowboy":

"If he’s a cowboy he’s the reluctant warrior, he’s Shane… because he has to, to protect his family."

Newsweek thinks Bush is Shane?

This was just Bush’s eighth press conference since taking office, and each one of them has been a travesty. In his first presser, on Feb. 22, 2001, a month after his controversial inauguration, he was not asked a single question about the election, Al Gore or the Supreme Court. On the other hand, he was asked five questions about Bill Clinton’s pardons.

Reporters argue that they have no choice. They’ll say they can’t protest or boycott the staged format, because they risk being stripped of their seat in the press pool. [...]

- - Matt Taibi