Comments on: The White House Press Room Then and Now http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/07/12/the-white-house-press-room-then-and-now/ Rory O'Connor's blog Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:02:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.5 by: Robert M. Cerello http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/07/12/the-white-house-press-room-then-and-now/#comment-65172 Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:55:12 +0000 http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/07/12/the-white-house-press-room-then-and-now/#comment-65172 Helen Thomas says in this interesting article, "Yet another bureaucracy has sprung up, that of the White House press office". Lester Powell, Jimmy Carter's Press secretary added, "the problem with the press as an institution is that the penalty for being wrong doesn’t exist, at least to the extent that it should. If I attack a story, that’s immediately suspect, I’m attacking the First Amendment. But nobody really polices the press.” That in my considered judgment after forty years of studying it is The Problem: that non-fiction, like government, has becomne a tsarist=style monopoly held by de facto committers of crimes excused as "puiblic interest" privileges/duties unlawfully being enacted under a defective Constitution's failed safeguards. The claim is made here that "no one knows the entire picture". That I assert is true because of two factors: 1. Inadequate facts, failed fact gathering training and defective or missing sources of information, plus those times when not enough hours nor days have elapsed for the essential information to be obtained let alone sifted. 2. Failure of Congress to eanct and require scientific categorical-definition regulations upon non-fictional information. In essence, I am arguing that aaprt from genuine lack of a sufficient set of facts in any case--for whatever reason--what is missing is Constitutional regulation of non-information in all the various media. I claim as a scientist of such matters, that we need the following at a MINIMUM; and that the lack of this legality basis for non-fictional presentation is why every adminstration since 1902, but increasingly every administratiuon since 1964, has strayed along with the press and writers and publishers etc. farther and farther from doing their Constitutional and necsssary task. 1. A legal separation between attested facts and any other form of information. 2. A legal categorization separating categoricall-defined terms-- and standards-based definitions and evaluations, so that the value terms permitted to the man who supplies these, and mere opinionated attitude mongerings, to whose spokesman the words like, don't like, better, worse, feel (but not think), opine, sort of feel are permitted--are absolutely separated. 3. A legal categorization separating those who offer a form of scientific full proof and those who are stating mere discontexted beliefs, the former earning the term hyopthesis, attempted proof, mainstream accepted proof, etc. and the use of he words, "I think, I have tried to prove, I think I have proven, I hold it to be true that"--with all others comfined to belief words, opinion words, hope words, etc. Let me put the case into a single sentence: Without regulation of the form of speech in various media--including headlines, photo captions, election discourse, adcademic and texbooks discourse, films' categorical-accountings before the images, etc.--we can never have a nation where freedom of speech is respected, secured or not abused by public monopoly priveleged would-be "spin", "crime" and "fraud" purveyors. I have said the same thing to professors, media types, politicians and thousands of citizens; and uniformly the idea that "we can't and must not stop the content of legal free speech but therefore we must regulate the information-releasing sequence and form and terms it is presented within in all cases" is an idea they either have never considered or cannot even begin to grasp. As Helen Thomas said better than anyone else ever has, there is no news any more (by implication); what there is is decidedly something else other than the full information free men in a marketplace of lives would need in order to make intelligent decisions about their governmental representatives issues, ballot measures, etc. Here are herexact words in closing, excerpted from the story I've just critiqued: “This is the most managed news I’ve ever covered,” she states forthrightly. “The people are accessible, but the ontradiction is that the news is very tightly controlled. The reporters are always kept behind ropes. Carter himself is sometimes inaccessible during a breaking story. Everything is planned and calculated, and they’re becoming more secretive by the day. They’re swinging back now to the other extreme, trying to go back to the old way of doing things. Carter is a Johnny-come-lately who’s embracing secret diplomacy all of a sudden. “Eighty to ninety percent of what we are able to write is given to us by Powell at the briefings,” she informs me. “But the briefings have become a zoo now. They don’t want to tell you anything. “Guys like (Bob) Schieffer and (Sam) Donaldson can live in (Lester) Powell’s office, but they never get anything on the record,” she complains bitterly. “They do everything on 'deep background'. But the wires can’t make up the news for the government like that. These guys would give out the time of day on deep background. It’s very highly abused in this administration. We’re writing history too, you know." My closing evaluation is this: They're not writing history. They're not doing free press activites at all. And feeding nuanced attitudes to talking heads on public monopoly television networks dictating over TV airtime, to page-monopolists at publishing corporations or to anyone else acting as a de facto tsar of textbook, book, podium or microphone or film time is not going to substitute for regulations; for those requiring categorizing definitions and the regulations of the form of how one can say what he has earned the right to say or not, the right being grounded on the basis of categorizing concepts, their presence or absence as chosen by the purveyor. The right of the hearer of non-fictional information depends on the regulation of those ding the speech and press activities. That acitivty is either legal--regulation based as category of behavior--or it is decidedly something else. It;'s name is fraud, lying, dictatorship or brainwashing. Helen Thomas says in this interesting article, “Yet another bureaucracy has sprung up, that of the White House press office”. Lester Powell, Jimmy Carter’s Press secretary added, “the problem with the press as an institution is that the penalty for being wrong doesn’t exist, at least to the extent that it should. If I attack a story, that’s immediately suspect, I’m attacking the First Amendment. But nobody really polices the press.” That in my considered judgment after forty years of studying it is The Problem: that non-fiction, like government, has becomne a tsarist=style monopoly held by de facto committers of crimes excused as “puiblic interest” privileges/duties unlawfully being enacted under a defective Constitution’s failed safeguards.
The claim is made here that “no one knows the entire picture”. That I assert is true because of two factors: 1. Inadequate facts, failed fact gathering training and defective or missing sources of information, plus those times when not enough hours nor days have elapsed for the essential information to be obtained let alone sifted. 2. Failure of Congress to eanct and require scientific categorical-definition regulations upon non-fictional information.
In essence, I am arguing that aaprt from genuine lack of a sufficient set of facts in any case–for whatever reason–what is missing is Constitutional regulation of non-information in all the various media.
I claim as a scientist of such matters, that we need the following at a MINIMUM; and that the lack of this legality basis for non-fictional presentation is why every adminstration since 1902, but increasingly every administratiuon since 1964, has strayed along with the press and writers and publishers etc. farther and farther from doing their Constitutional and necsssary task.
1. A legal separation between attested facts and any other form of information.
2. A legal categorization separating categoricall-defined terms– and standards-based definitions and evaluations, so that the value terms permitted to the man who supplies these, and mere opinionated attitude mongerings, to whose spokesman the words like, don’t like, better, worse, feel (but not think), opine, sort of feel are permitted–are absolutely separated.
3. A legal categorization separating those who offer a form of scientific full proof and those who are stating mere discontexted beliefs, the former earning the term hyopthesis, attempted proof, mainstream accepted proof, etc. and the use of he words, “I think, I have tried to prove, I think I have proven, I hold it to be true that”–with all others comfined to belief words, opinion words, hope words, etc.
Let me put the case into a single sentence: Without regulation of the form of speech in various media–including headlines, photo captions, election discourse, adcademic and texbooks discourse, films’ categorical-accountings before the images, etc.–we can never have a nation where freedom of speech is respected, secured or not abused by public monopoly priveleged would-be “spin”, “crime” and “fraud” purveyors.
I have said the same thing to professors, media types, politicians and thousands of citizens; and uniformly the idea that “we can’t and must not stop the content of legal free speech but therefore we must regulate the information-releasing sequence and form and terms it is presented within in all cases” is an idea they either have never considered or cannot even begin to grasp.
As Helen Thomas said better than anyone else ever has, there is no news any more (by implication); what there is is
decidedly something else other than the full information free men in a marketplace of lives would need in order to make intelligent decisions about their governmental representatives issues, ballot measures, etc.
Here are herexact words in closing, excerpted from the story I’ve just critiqued:
“This is the most managed news I’ve ever covered,” she
states forthrightly. “The people are accessible, but the
ontradiction is that the news is very tightly controlled. The
reporters are always kept behind ropes. Carter himself is
sometimes inaccessible during a breaking story.
Everything is planned and calculated, and they’re
becoming more secretive by the day. They’re swinging
back now to the other extreme, trying to go back to the
old way of doing things. Carter is a Johnny-come-lately
who’s embracing secret diplomacy all of a sudden.

“Eighty to ninety percent of what we are able to write is
given to us by Powell at the briefings,” she informs me.
“But the briefings have become a zoo now. They don’t
want to tell you anything.

“Guys like (Bob) Schieffer and (Sam) Donaldson can live in
(Lester) Powell’s office, but they never get anything on the
record,” she complains bitterly. “They do everything on
‘deep background’. But the wires can’t make up the news
for the government like that. These guys would give out
the time of day on deep background. It’s very highly
abused in this administration. We’re writing history too,
you know.”

My closing evaluation is this: They’re not writing history. They’re not doing free press activites at all. And feeding nuanced attitudes to talking heads on public monopoly television networks dictating over TV airtime, to page-monopolists at publishing corporations or to anyone else acting as a de facto tsar of textbook, book, podium or microphone or film time is not going to substitute for regulations; for those requiring categorizing definitions and the regulations of the form of how one can say what he has earned the right to say or not, the right being grounded on the basis of categorizing concepts, their presence or absence as chosen by the purveyor.
The right of the hearer of non-fictional information depends on the regulation of those ding the speech and press activities. That acitivty is either legal–regulation based as category of behavior–or it is decidedly something else. It;’s name is fraud, lying, dictatorship or brainwashing.

]]> by: Driver http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/07/12/the-white-house-press-room-then-and-now/#comment-65170 Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:38:17 +0000 http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/07/12/the-white-house-press-room-then-and-now/#comment-65170 Might have been more effective--and enraging--if you'd included some transcripts from current press briefings with the aptly named Snow. As it is, it's just a valentine to Journalists of Old, with whom every New Journalist claims an innnate and unaffected spiritual oneness. "Woodstein, c'est moi." Feh. Might have been more effective–and enraging–if you’d included some transcripts from current press briefings with the aptly named Snow. As it is, it’s just a valentine to Journalists of Old, with whom every New Journalist claims an innnate and unaffected spiritual oneness.

“Woodstein, c’est moi.” Feh.

]]> by: Lynn Ziegler http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/07/12/the-white-house-press-room-then-and-now/#comment-65139 Thu, 12 Jul 2007 21:56:52 +0000 http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/2007/07/12/the-white-house-press-room-then-and-now/#comment-65139 Thanks for a time-machine experience, Rory....what a long, strange trip it's been. And still is. Thanks for a time-machine experience, Rory….what a long, strange trip it’s been. And still is.

]]>