The Disgruntled Employee

Isn't it interesting that when someone makes charges against an employer, the immediate reaction from said employer is the "disgruntled employee" excuse?

Following the blowback from Scott McClellan's new book, in which (surprise, surprise) he is critical of the Bush administration and George W. Bush, all we heard from the White House is how it was all "disgruntled employee" claptrap and "That's not the Scott I knew." You're right. The Scott McClellan you knew would lie his motherfuckin' ass off for the Bushies, so yes, maybe this Scott was unrecognizable to you as a man whose conscience ate away at him until he had to come out with something a little closer to the truth than the standard Bush White House fare. I still have a problem believing that he "unknowingly" lied, but that's up for debate.

But for all those who still think, and I wouldn't have the first clue why, that the media has an obvious "liberal bias" comes the newest Disgruntled Employee of the Day: Jessica Yellin.

CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin said Thursday she was referring to her time spent at MSNBC when she said she felt pressure not to report stories critical of the Bush administration during the time leading up to the Iraq war.

During her CNN appearance, Yellin said the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives to make sure the war was presented "in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings."

The higher Bush's approval ratings, the more pressure she felt from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, she said. Pushed by [CNN's Anderson] Cooper to explain, Yellin said her bosses would turn down critical stories about the administration and try to put on positive pieces.

MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines... didn't dispute Yellin's claim that she did some Washington and Pentagon reports while there.

"She had little to no contact with editorial decision makers, and certainly was not a part of the editorial process on a daily basis," Gaines said. "Given how her story has changed so dramatically since her appearance on CNN - her current employer - less than 24 hours ago, we find it hard to believe that anyone would take this disgruntled former employee's comments seriously."

And how did her story change? She specified that it was MSNBC she was working for when she felt the pressure to report the favorable stories as opposed to being critical. Why are these people still trying to defend what we already know to be true? The media ginned up the drumbeat for war as much as the Bushies did. We all know this. Even that "liberal rag" the New York Times had Judith Miller marching in lockstep with the White House and their WMD claims. But is "disgruntled employee" Yellin telling the truth?

I think we can all remember the cancelled Phil Donohue show on MSNBC, the same time slot that Countdown with Keith Olbermann now fills.

The charges against MSNBC aren't new, however. A prime-time show with Phil Donahue received consistent pressure to present panels tilted in favor of the war, said Jeff Cohen, that program's former senior producer. Donahue's show was on for less than a year before being cancelled less than a month before the war began.
He once witnessed a producer scolded for organizing a discussion with pro- and anti-war sentiments presented equally, said Cohen, a liberal activist who wrote a book about his experiences with TV networks.

...From the other side of the podium, McClellan offered criticism of the media's performance. He said reporters were "complicit enablers" by covering the preparations for war instead of more aggressively questioning the need for it.

Finally, and although it comes five years too late, it's a start... coincidentally just in time for a Democratic president to be in a position to take over the Oval Office January 20th, 2009.

But it is far from over. The mainstream media is still caught in a rut of propping up instead of examining independently and letting the cream rise to the top. A perfect example is how the McCainstream Media handles the Maverick with kid gloves even though we know that Mr. Straight Talk Reformer has sided with the current pResident 95%-100% of the time in the last 18 months.

That's some agent of change, huh?

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has more on Politico and their equating "critics" of the war to "left wing haters" but ties in the point of the push back on those claiming deferential treatment of the media towards the Bush Administration.

Politico reporter Mike Allen, formerly of The Washington Post and Time, appeared yesterday on the show of right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher. The two of them guffawed together at how absurd are Scott McCellan's claims that the media was "deferential" to the Bush administration and then Allen said this:

ALLEN: And indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left wing haters. Can you believe it in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration?

We only believe it because it's true, Mr. Allen.