tp228.xml
Title
tp228.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-03-10
TomPaine Story: Story
September 11th, 2001 marked the end of national media attention to Election 2000: there was a sense, in the dog-days of August 2001 that the 'official' line of 'just get over it' was crumbling and that the greatest political crisis in the U.S. since Watergate was about to make a resurgence into the headlines. The September 17th issue of Newsweek contained articles critical of the election 2000 decision, and Rolling Stone was preparing a story on the Washington Press Corps' slanted coverage of Al Gore's 2000 campaign. The NORC recount was gathering steam and spooking the administration; GOP representatives had begun to show up at Recount locations to scrutinize the methods employed and criticize the inclusion of ballots they considered tainted.
The attacks in New York and Washington changed all that, and Election 2000 disappeared down the memory hole. The national media immediately adopted all the trappings of a full-blown war-time reporting service, replete with flags and ribbons. Self-censorship, blind devotion to the every utterance of the Administration, and the suppression of criticism became the core attributes of the national media, particularly the Big Three networks and the cable news outlets. Newsweek published on September 17th as planned, but the attitude of the national media transformed from one mildly skeptical of the Bush administration to one of slavish admiration. Questions about the disputed election of 2000 were relegated to the scrap heap of history: they were 'so September 10th.'
This posture of abasement at the feet of the Executive Branch seemed to suit the national media to a 'T'. Where media outlets had been slow to attack the administration on the support it gave 'bourgeois rioters' in Miami, and had frozen out journalists such as Bob Parry and Greg Palast before September 11th, now they condemned questions about Election 2002 as 'unpatriotic,' even 'treasonous.' Relieved of the responsibility of acting as a 'national watchdog' by the broad support the Bush administration enjoyed post 9/11, the major media outlets became what they seemed to have wanted to be all along: unthinking cheerleaders for a Cheerleader Presidency
The attacks in New York and Washington changed all that, and Election 2000 disappeared down the memory hole. The national media immediately adopted all the trappings of a full-blown war-time reporting service, replete with flags and ribbons. Self-censorship, blind devotion to the every utterance of the Administration, and the suppression of criticism became the core attributes of the national media, particularly the Big Three networks and the cable news outlets. Newsweek published on September 17th as planned, but the attitude of the national media transformed from one mildly skeptical of the Bush administration to one of slavish admiration. Questions about the disputed election of 2000 were relegated to the scrap heap of history: they were 'so September 10th.'
This posture of abasement at the feet of the Executive Branch seemed to suit the national media to a 'T'. Where media outlets had been slow to attack the administration on the support it gave 'bourgeois rioters' in Miami, and had frozen out journalists such as Bob Parry and Greg Palast before September 11th, now they condemned questions about Election 2002 as 'unpatriotic,' even 'treasonous.' Relieved of the responsibility of acting as a 'national watchdog' by the broad support the Bush administration enjoyed post 9/11, the major media outlets became what they seemed to have wanted to be all along: unthinking cheerleaders for a Cheerleader Presidency
Collection
Citation
“tp228.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 23, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/653.