Friday, May 30, 2008

Thursday talk show update

Scott McClellan's new book dominated Bill O'Reilly's radio show and barely registered on Sean Hannity, who apparently has changed his mind and decided he can ride Jeremiah Wright (and possibly Michael Pfleger) all the way to November.

An interesting sidelight is McClellan's criticism of media coverage of the run-up to the war in Iraq. O'Reilly defended his own performance, of course, pointing out that reporters couldn't very well go to Iraq to check out administration claims about WMDs for themselves. On the web, this seems to be a typical response.

That's OK by me, but anybody who's going to criticize media coverage of the beating of the war drums ought to at least give credit to Knight Ridder, which was well ahead of the game. It should also be noted that Knight Ridder, which for many years was among the distinguished names in the news business, is no longer around.

Getting it right and making it pay aren't necessarily the same thing.

UPDATE: The Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) team gives its own response to McClellan's book.

2 comments:

Chuck Rightmire said...

David: What I don't understand is why anyone reading KR and other mainstream media didn't realize that the Administration didn't prove its case. I knew out here in Montana that there were no WMDs, just from reading the media and looking at what evidence the Administration provided (none).

Anonymous said...

Knight Ridder was bought, and is now known as McClatchy, and the excellent reportage lives on.

They've even got !