secret.

You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Can someone link me to the NewsBusters story expressing their outrage at the secret meetings Dick Cheney held between himself and the various energy companies as part of the NEPDG and Energy Task Force? Thanks.

sounds like a watered down version of what the bush white house did.. unless we have proof that these reporters took money to write stories, of course.

Let's ask Scooter Libby, shall we?

PLAME
FAIL

exick: Can someone link me to the NewsBusters story expressing their outrage at the secret meetings Dick Cheney held between himself and the various energy companies as part of the NEPDG and Energy Task Force? Thanks.

Oh, no, no, no, that's all right. Republicans are real Americans, they can do stuff like this.

"but.... but.... Bush!"

Well I mean if the GOP did it (and it was wrong then), then obviously it's cool that the Dems are doing it too. It's not wrong now because the GOP did it as well.

I mean, that's the same argument that lots of torture proponents use as well.

Good thing it wasn't wrong back then... as we were repeatedly assured.

KaponoFor3: I mean, that's the same argument that lots of torture proponents use as well.

ANYONE who advocates torture should not be listened to, with one exception. I advocate torture for people who do not believe it is torture, since by their own standards, I am not doing anything wrong, and I see no problem judging people by their own standards.

KaponoFor3: "but.... but.... Bush!"

Well I mean if the GOP did it (and it was wrong then), then obviously it's cool that the Dems are doing it too. It's not wrong now because the GOP did it as well.

I mean, that's the same argument that lots of torture proponents use as well.

i'm not going to sit here and listen to the right ride this soapbox when they said NOTHING as the bush white house paid off reporters, and outed a CIA agent, and held secret energy meetings, and any other of the plethora of past abuses. no way.

Politicians have been sharing off-the-record meals and drinks with reporters roughly forever. the article says it. the 'outrage' here is retarded. when money moves in-between or favors are blatantly paid or wars are started, call me.

ZOMG SO SUPER TOP SECRET THEY DO IT OUT IN THE OPEN!!1!!1 UNPRECEDENTED HUBRISS!11!!!

WTF is a "member of the White House"?

24 did it.

DoctorCal: WTF is a "member of the White House"?



Ask this guy

Newsbusters is such a professional site.

FTFA:

Carl Rove is mentioned, but one rather assumes he had long since left the Bush White Hose

Hey Carl, did you leave the hose?

KaponoFor3: "but.... but.... Bush!"

Well I mean if the GOP did it (and it was wrong then), then obviously it's cool that the Dems are doing it too. It's not wrong now because the GOP did it as well.

I mean, that's the same argument that lots of torture proponents use as well.

I don't think you know what you are talking about. Most of what Bush did was legitimately unethical, and sometimes treasonous. It's not the same as a couple of right-wingers screaming that "Obama is up to something" without any evidence, what so ever.

No Brit Hume, no George Will, not even a Charles Krauthammer?

Hell, if you aren't going to mention anyone you can pretend has a shred of journalistic integrity, you may as well whine about the absence of Bill Kristol, Cal Thomas, and Bob Tyrell.

bales: sounds like a watered down version of what the bush white house did.. unless we have proof that these reporters took money to write stories, of course.

If you keep using Bush as a benchmark for success, you're not going to look so good down the road.

DeadZone: Ask this guy

Ahhh Jeff Gannon. Did anyone actually figure out who he was f*cking in the Whitehouse...cause my money is on: Rove likes it in the pooper.

Was this anywhere on the site?

OHNOZE! Theirs a sekrit mesage bored two!

/maybe they should arrange for a subpoena of the backup tapes of all the messages.

glenlivid: Ahhh Jeff Gannon. Did anyone actually figure out who he was f*cking in the Whitehouse...cause my money is on: Rove likes it in the pooper.

well, his father was gay, so anything's possible.

No Brit Hume, no George Will, not even a Charles Krauthammer?

I just don't want to party with these sour-pusses. Sorry.

PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer,

Yeah, now you're talking. I can see where this is starting to be fun.

I cannot believe I'm reading this many posts from people who live in a reality where Bush had the media in his pocket....

This is insanity... At least in my reality.

The giddy relationship between the mainstream media and Obama is wrong... Regardless of any BS justifications you want to feed yourself... It's not good for the most powerful position in the world to have every slip-up and "mistake" played down by everyone one to everyone that will listen. I mean, it's to the point were you are chastised and drug the the dirt if you date QUESTION the current administration and the media is ready and willing to assist.

It's a MAD HOUSE A MAD HOOOOUUSE!!!!

Such notable dirty dirty leftists like Karl Rove and David Petraeus.


Maybe this guy should write another book debunking Bozell and his flunkies.

AndEhBus: I cannot believe I'm reading this many posts from people who live in a reality where Bush had the media in his pocket....

This is insanity... At least in my reality.





Laughs at your reality.

Not surprisingly, not a single name mentioned in the Kurtz report is conservative.

Among those in regular attendance are David Brooks and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gene Robinson and Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, NBC's David Gregory, ABC's George Stephanopoulos, PBS's Gwen Ifill, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum, former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson and staffers from Bradley's Atlantic and National Journal, including Ron Brownstein, Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch.

So no conservatives except the first person mentioned? Is that what we're getting at here? And Andrew Sullivan? I mean, he's not exactly conservative, but he's certainly no liberal.

I don't know what is more amusing, that the Republicans spent 8 years defending everything big and little and screaming it was just hatred by Democrats, who countered that if they were just realistic they'd be a lot better off or now the exact opposite is happening.

Wolf Blitzer is a Substitute Teacher: And Andrew Sullivan? I mean, he's not exactly conservative, but he's certainly no liberal.

You HAVE to be one or the other! You don't mean to tell me he is a Fark Independant™ do you?

I mean, people can't be "in the middle" here, you either accept what the administration tells you and praise and love it or you are full of wharbagrrrbl and listen to Rush. It's easy to find out, ant criticism of Obama automatically puts you in the latter.

/with us or against us!

I'm sure they are given the script of what to say and how to say it. Jeb Bush in 2012! Lets go for the hat trick!

they should invite Rush. Now that would be fun to hear about.

AndEhBus: I cannot believe I'm reading this many posts from people who live in a reality where Bush had the media in his pocket....

This is insanity... At least in my reality.

The giddy relationship between the mainstream media and Obama is wrong... Regardless of any BS justifications you want to feed yourself... It's not good for the most powerful position in the world to have every slip-up and "mistake" played down by everyone one to everyone that will listen. I mean, it's to the point were you are chastised and drug the the dirt if you date QUESTION the current administration and the media is ready and willing to assist.

It's a MAD HOUSE A MAD HOOOOUUSE!!!!

Your reality is f*cked.

For starters, Bush used the media to sell the Iraq war. To the point where the NY Times "sort of" apologized for their role...no one else even came close.

The Bush administration also used the media to out a CIA agent.

For all of their wrongdoing, and there was PLENTY, the press never did in depth investigations, or asked hard questions; they were beyond complicit. The hard questions and investigative journalism were instead left to the Daily Show and Rolling Stone Magazine.

I don't have time to give you all the examples of the media complicity with the activities of the Bush administration (there are HUNDREDS), so I gave you a couple of biggies. The Bush administration actually went after reporters and news agencies that they viewed as hostile to their plans (and now we'e finding out that various reporters had their email and phones monitored). The fact is, this is a far cry from Obama's "media honeymoon", and I think the press will have no problem investigating and asking hard questions of the current administration. Obama has promised transparency, and we'll all have to see if he lives up to it.

i'd love to sit down and say, "ok, NOW we can all agree both sides cuddle up to their side of the media, and this cuddling creates a conflict of interest that needs to be stopped."

but that's not how this goes. republicans will nail themselves to the cross, as if they weren't guilty of worse. 4, maybe 8 years later, democrats will do the same as if they weren't just as guilty. all the while we'll be yammerin' at each other just the same.

Wolf Blitzer is a Substitute Teacher: And Andrew Sullivan? I mean, he's not exactly conservative, but he's certainly no liberal.

Andrew Sullivan considers himself conservative. He talks about it all the time.

But of course, he couldn't be a conservative in the eyes of NewsBusters. After all, he's gay. And gays aren't Real Conservatives®.

I think Plamegate demonstrated what "secret, off the record meetings" are defined as. So secret and off the record that Judith Miller sat in jail to stay off the record.

GOP, Fanbois et al projecting again. Nothing to see here.

News Busters: Obama Staffers Attend Secret Dinners With Lefty Media . . .
. . .and we weren't invited, waaaaah! Wahhhh! Wharrgarbl!

OK Let's summarize.

1) It's a secret meeting. . . that is reported in the Washington Post.
2) The dinner meeting has had both Republican and Democratic guests. . . But it's a left wing plot.
3) Dinners with politicians and reporters have been going on "forever". . . But it's a left wing plot.

Wake me when NewsBusters does a story about Fox News.

Where's the news?
This shiat has been going on for decades. CNN even pulled the same shiat with Saddam FFS.
Welcome to 2009 where access trumps reliable coverage any day of the week.

If Obama wanted to remain above board in his media dealings, he should have hired Andy Card to catapult the propaganda in a fair and balanced way. He could even establish new offices in the Pentagon to assist in this, as catapults would seem to be the baliwick of the military,

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon office responsible for coordinating Defense Department information campaigns overseas has been abolished in an effort by the Obama administration to distance itself from past practices that some military officers called propaganda, senior officials said Wednesday.

Military and civilian critics said the office, the Defense Department office for support to public diplomacy, overstepped its mandate during the final years of the Bush administration by trying to organize information operations that violated Pentagon guidelines for accuracy and transparency.

Pentagon officials said the position of deputy assistant secretary of defense for support to public diplomacy had been eliminated, with the staff members reassigned and the office closed.

4-16-2009 (new window)

Why aren't Ann Coulter or Laura Ingrahm invited....they don't eat much.

Transparency, it's a good thing...

Glad we know now, that to rub elbows off the record with the establishment media (so everyone can 'get the message') is now out in the open.

next item...

SilentStrider: glenlivid: Ahhh Jeff Gannon. Did anyone actually figure out who he was f*cking in the Whitehouse...cause my money is on: Rove likes it in the pooper.

well, his father was gay, so anything's possible.

Gayness is genetic. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Burn98: Wake me when NewsBusters does a story about Fox News.

it'd still be a left wing plot.

Apik0r0s: If Obama wanted to remain above board in his media dealings, he should have hired Andy Card to catapult the propaganda in a fair and balanced way. He could even establish new offices in the Pentagon to assist in this, as catapults would seem to be the baliwick of the military

Not to mention the practice of soldiers getting one kind of talk radio: Reich Wing. That's right, if you wanted talk radio, you got Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly.

Politicians sucking up to the press, trying to control what the press writes about them, and secretly leaking stuff?

Sounds like business as usual since 1776 to me. It's all part of the game.

Don't get me started on Bush's tame media.

What is farking hillarious is that the story that really nails Obama's ass to the wall has the least amount of comments. Typical Farkers.

McCaintheUniter: What is farking hillarious is that the story that really nails Obama's ass to the wall has the least amount of comments. Typical Farkers.

Which story is that again?

McCaintheUniter: What is farking hillarious is that the story that really nails Obama's ass to the wall has the least amount of comments. Typical Farkers.


Hi!

Thanks for coming to unite us!

wtf

DoctorCal: WTF is a "member of the White House"?

"You can call me 'Deep Throat.'"