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On Thursday, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice swore to tell the truth, and proceeded to give her long-awaited testimony to the 9/11 Commission. The jury's still out as to how effective her defense of the Bush administration was. But one thing was certain - it made for pretty good court TV. It got us to thinking about those other Washington hearings that engrossed the nation three decades ago. Brooke speaks with Nixon White House counsel John Dean about Rice's performance.
It might have been kindled in the trenches of the Democratic presidential primaries, but the subject of President Bush's National Guard service is back on center stage in the media. On Tuesday, the White House released payroll records it said proved once and for all that Bush fulfilled his military obligations 30 years ago. But instead of making the story go away, it ignited a firestorm that left press secretary Scott McClellan nursing singed eyebrows. Bob talks to CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante about the gaggle's rare showing of unity.
There weren't many surprises in this year's State of the Union Address, at least as far as the camera angles were concerned. We saw the usual well-timed cuts from the President to audience members with an apparent connection to his speech. As always, there was the sense that the camera operators were operating with a copy of the speech, a seating chart and a game plan. Who makes that plan? This year, it was ABC producer Peter Doherty. He tells Brooke how it all works.
The Bush White House is hardly the first to regard the press with suspicion and complain about the attack dog media. But no administration has ever so successfully controlled the message coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or cared so little about cultivating a relationship with the press corps. Ken Auletta recently went inside "Fortress Bush" to explore the question of why reporters are so unwelcome there, and tells Bob what he found.
The Orange Alert rattled plenty of nerves over the holiday break, but only recently did we learn the nature of the threat - concern about a "dirty bomb" detonation in a major city. Sounds pretty scary, but most experts agree that loss of life and property from such a bombing would actually be quite limited. So why has the government done so little to educate the public about dirty bombs - or, for that matter, about any potential terrorist threat? And why hasn't the press challenged government officials on this lapse? OTM's John Solomon reports.
More than a week has passed since the President's surprise Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad, but the debate rages on as to whether the press, and the American people, were wrongly misled by the White House. Some see it as yet another taxpayer-subsidized P.R. stunt, and criticize the complicity of the reporters brought along. Others defend the jaunt as a demonstration of the President's true feelings of support for the troops. But NYU Journalism Chair Jay Rosen thinks both sides miss the point, and tells Brooke why.
For almost 25 years, C-Span has been bringing cable viewers the action from the Congressional floor. The network now has three stations of unedited public events, call-ins, and book talks, all offered by cable providers as a free public service. But competition for space on the digital bandwidth is tight, and some cable systems are now dropping one or all of the C-Span channels in favor of revenue-earning fare. Bob speaks with Paul Miller of Citizens for C-Span, the group fighting for your right to watch subcommittee hearings.
A remarkable shift appears to be underway in America's mainstream press. Since September 11th, news organizations have dutifully reported the pronouncements of the administration, while efforts to point out the inconsistencies therein were largely relegated to commentators and Op-Ed pages. But when President Bush declared this week that there was no evidence connecting Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks, the media responded with a collectively raised eyebrow. Brooke discusses talks to one of the most diligent presidential fact-checkers, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus.
