Corporate media disagrees with McClellan - they claim they did their jobs on the Iraq invasion

Glenn Greenwald does a good job of pulling together many of the outpouring of insider statements condemning the way the corporate media acted as cheerleaders for Bush's invasion of Iraq.

...in terms of our establishment press, our media is anything but "free." Corporate executives continuously suppressed critical reporting of the Government and the war and forced their paid reporters to mimic the administration line. The evidence proving that comes not from media critics or shrill left-wing bloggers but from those who work at these news outlets, including some of their best-known and highest-paid journalists who are attesting to such facts from first-hand knowledge despite its being in their interests not to speak out about such things.

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Yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary day in our political culture because Scott McClellan's revelations forced the establishment media to defend themselves against long-standing accusations of their corruption and annexation by the government -- criticisms which, until yesterday, they literally just ignored, blacked-out, and suppressed. Bizarrely enough, it took a "tell-all" Washington book from Scott McClellan, of all people, to force these issues out into the open, and he seems -- unwittingly or otherwise -- to have opened a huge flood gate that has long been held tightly shut.

Then he goes on to describe the panicky counter-reaction from the highest-paid media personalities they can muster to claim that "they all did their jobs."

Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan's claims. One media star after the next -- Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer -- materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are "deferential, complicit enablers" in government propaganda. [Snip]

Gibson and Gregory both invoked the cliched excuse of the low-level bureaucrat using almost identical language: exposing government lies "is not our job."

Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and company are paid to play the role of TV reporters but, in reality, are mere television emcees -- far more akin to circus ringleaders than journalists.

So we have

• Jessica Yellin , who describes the pressures she got from management to report favorably on the assertions from the White House on the need for and likely success of the Invasion of Iraq.
• Katie Couric described the pressures she got from NBC management to refrain from aggressive questioning of administration officials.
• Ashleigh Banfield was fired by MSNBC for giving a speech at Kansas University in which she said the media coverage of the Iraq war "'wasn't journalism,' because 'there are horrors that were completely left out of this war.'"
• Phil Donahue who was fired by MSNBC because he was critical of the Iraq invasion, in spite of the fact that Donahue had MSNBC's highest rating show at the time. As Donahue told Bill Moyer, he was permitted to have administration war supporters on his show by themselves, but for every liberal opposing the war he was required to have two conservatives on.

Glenn continues:

Corporate executives continuously suppressed critical reporting of the Government and the war and forced their paid reporters to mimic the administration line. The evidence proving that comes not from media critics or shrill left-wing bloggers but from those who work at these news outlets, including some of their best-known and highest-paid journalists who are attesting to such facts from first-hand knowledge despite its being in their interests not to speak out about such things. [Snip]

This is the most vital point: this is not a matter of historical interest. This is not about how the media operated five years ago during an aberrational time in our history. This is about how they functioned then and how they function now. The same people who did all of this still run these media organizations and it's the same coddled, made-up personalities still playing the role of "journalist."

That's what makes the NYT "military analyst" story so significant, and it's why it's so revealing that the establishment media black-out of that story continues. Not just in 2003, but through 2008, the networks relied upon Pentagon-controlled propagandists to masquerade as their "independent analysts." Those analysts repeatedly spouted patently false government propaganda without challenge. The numerous financial incentives and ideological ties these analysts had were undisclosed and remain undisclosed. And these networks, now that this is all revealed, refuse to tell their viewers about any of it.

If the media can really claim to have done their jobs, then their jobs are entertainment, making money and placating the administration, but NOT investigating and presenting honest news. They really are nothing but propaganda outfits, shilling for money.

Joseph Goebbels would be proud of his progeny, including but not limited to the public faces of Tim Russert, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, and Wolf Blitzer. This does not include the universally disgraceful "faces" on FOX. Their behind-the-scene bosses are paying them big bucks for their malfeasance and the current defenses of their failure in the pretend job of journalists, and for that they give their loyalties to the bosses, not to America.