Saturday, November 22, 2008

"The Bush Legacy: War on the Press"

Eric Alterman and George Zornick have posted the first of a promised series of columns detailing the myriad of ways that the Bush Administration has shut down the flow of information.

You probably already have a general sense of this problem. -- I'm sure the phrases "missing White House emails," "secure undisclosed," "man-sized safe," and "redacted" have by this point become taglines in your jokes. Alterman and Zornick's piece lays out a number of the specific problem areas.

I'll try to note when the next pieces come out. [update: see here and here] You can do this, too, by tracking Altercation, Eric Alterman's blog.

On a related note, via Altercation, check out Eric Boehlert's column forecasting how the press will treat the Obama Administration. He compares the MSM's treatment of the Clinton and Bush administrations, and guess what his prediction is? Hint: think about how much screaming the rightwing noise machine has already been doing about the media being "in the tank for Obama."

[Added] On a related related note: see this quick bit from John Cole on Mark Halperin.

[Added] More on Halperin from Bob Cesca.

Another nugget picked up from Altercation: (most of) one of Alterman's books, Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America appears to be available for viewing online.

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