Pressuring the Press, Just in Case

It was my first full day at the beach, and while I can't say I did much of anything significant, I didn't spend a heck of a lot of time online. I did spend enough time, though, to read Frank Rich's latest column. Entitled "All the News That's Fit to Bully By," Rich takes a look at the right-wing complaints over The New York Times's printing its story on the Bush adminstration's tracking of terrorists' financial transactions. He notes the calls for Times editors to be executed for treason but explains why this hasn't happened yet and is exceedingly unlikey to happen in the future. No one in official Washington has any interest in such a spectacle, but any chance they've got of turning the whole thing into another round of "intimidate the press" they'll jump on. If the press becomes too concerned about its repuation to follow up on legitimate exposes of the Bushies, that's one more threat neutralized. Rich uses the example of Ari Fleisher's warning shortly after 9/11 that we watch what we say, but I think we can actually go back a few decades to when the incessent drumbeat of the "liberal media" began. The press has been trying to live the down ever since, to the point that they now seem to embrace conservative talking points. The press hardly needs to be cowed any further, but the right-wingers never seem to tire of pressing their point further.

I'm on my Blackberry at the moment, and I don't know whether it's possible to copy and paste from a Website, so you'll just have to click the link to read it for yourself. And today's links is again graciously provided by donky o.d.