For months I had been bitching that MSNBC was misleading the public in several ways. Theyt nwere on board with Romeny and Huckabee and then with Clinton and now this story has come out about the reporting to assist in patriotic fervor.
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.
Yellin’s initial comments, made during a discussion with Anderson Cooper on CNN Wednesday, shifted attention to the news media’s performance following release of a critical assessment of the Bush administration by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. He wrote that Bush’s strategy for selling the war was less than candid and honest.
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 Cooper to explain, Yellin said her bosses would turn down critical stories about the administration and try to put on positive pieces.
She said she didn’t mean to leave the impression that corporate leadership edited her work; she was referring to senior producers who “wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.” She didn’t identify any of the producers or give a specific example about how things were changed because of this.
MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said Yellin was a “freelance overnight news reader at MSNBC for one year who was not renewed.” But he didn’t dispute Yellin’s claim that she did some Washington and Pentagon reports while there.
Back in the 1920’s Italian political theorist, Gramsci predicted that the mass media would become the leader in the formation of political thought of the people. He was so accurate.