William K. Wolfrum Chronicles

While many in the elite Washington media continue to angrily deny that the Bush Administration has used them as puppets the last six years, it’s nice to see Frank Rich and the New York Times come to the realization that being best friends with politicians is a self-hating practice. Rich wrote that the Times will no longer take part in the happy grab-ass fest that is the White House Correspondents Association dinner:

“After last weekend’s correspondents’ dinner, The Times decided to end its participation in such events. But even were the dinner to vanish altogether, it remains but a yearly televised snapshot of the overall syndrome,” wrote Rich. “The current White House, weakened as it is, can still establish story lines as fake as ‘Mission Accomplished’ and get a free pass.”

Admitting a problem exists - it’s a start. Of course, there are plenty of top journalists who still fervently believe that journalism and stenography are the same thing. But when the Times does things, other papers and media organizations tend to follow. So while it may not be much that the Times is backing out of the WHCA dinner, hopefully it’s the start to a slow death to the buddy-buddy system currently in place for our nation’s top politicians and journalists.

–WKW

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 4:56 am and is filed under Politics, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.