What If No One's Watching?

David Petraeus began his testimony on Monday with the following admonition:

At the outset I would like to note that this is my testimony. Although I have briefed my assessment and recommendations to my chain of command, I wrote this testimony myself. It has not been cleared by nor shared with anyone in the Pentagon, the White House or the Congress until it was just handed out.

An important point to make, as Petraeus' testimony was greeted in advance with a certain amount of skepticism that the general would be mainly acting, as Fox News put it, "as a Bush lackey who will say whatever the administration wants." Yet for all the attendant doubt, it didn't seem like many media organs greeted Petraeus' opening salvo with much of a critical eye.

It fell then, to The Daily Show, to take up the question as to whether Petraeus' testimony was truly the product of an independent observer, and, as you'll see in the clip above, about two-thirds of the way in, the crack fact-finding team of a comedy show was able, at least in small measure, to do what major news organizations seemed unable to do: pinpoint moments of testimony that came cribbed from the administration playbook.

Also: Falco references. Surely our lives are richer for them.

The Daily Show's long news memory and their penchant for finding that oh-so-right piece of past footage to juxtapose with the day's news remains one of the show's most impressive features. You often hear it said that Americans in increasing numbers are getting their news from Jon Stewart. We're inclined to not beat that particular drum, but it's worth noting that yesterday's New York Times readers seemed largely interested in an entirely different parrot.

Comments

[swift goat pet for truth]

03:08 AM on 09/14/2007

Get real.
You put your efforts into the important stuff.
So what is important - Iraq or Britney?

[InofTouch]

05:49 PM on 09/12/2007

same arguement I'm hearing on the consertive blog but with a different twist...so really nothing speical.

[dadw5boys]

04:30 PM on 09/12/2007

If you watch the hearing close you can almost see the Republican Senators MOUTHING the Answers that the General was giving, looked to me like they were reading the answers from a paper while he was speaking the words. It seemed like all his answers had been rehearsed with the Senator who ask the question.

[Opus007]

06:31 PM on 09/14/2007

You're right. They all had big fluff in the beginning about his great service, and from most of the Republicans it was one softball question after another. There were some exceptions Hagel, Warner even Lindsay Grahan was quite pointed.

Besides the treasure trove of oil -being at war grants the president more powers. You know Bush and Cheney have a lot of skeletons to bury before January 2009. With Congress tied up with trying to get us out- it doesn't leave much time for investigations. Even better leave the next president buried in a quagmire,

The public has lowered the bar so much for this incompetent administration- expectations could not be any lower amd they still disappoint. When you look at where the country was in 2000 - the legacy Bush inherited from Clinton and where it is now -it is really sad. Pathetic.

[realitytrumpsbull]

02:42 PM on 09/12/2007

Frying this administration in their own Exxon oil...

[bmermaid]

12:03 PM on 09/12/2007

What does it say about today's new organizations when a fake news show does a better job of covering the facts than they do?

The problem is obviously motivation. Mainstream media is not sufficiently motivated to uncover the truth, which sometimes is in plain sight.

[CriminallySane]

12:51 PM on 09/12/2007

Mainstream/corporate media does what the viewership wants. Sad, but true.

Did you know that when it became possible to monitor when people switched away from newscasts the news directors learned that as soon as the foreign stuff started, the channel changed?

Ratings drive the stuff. On websites, it's page views. The viewers and "consumers" of media have to shoulder a large portion of the blame for this. Ratings and page views beget revenue, without which it's tough to run a newsroom or server farm.

As the late, great Walt Kelly said once, while besottedly draped over a Saigon bar (later to become copy for his Pogo strip) "We have met the enemy, and they is us!"*

* Story courtesy Jack Laurence's "The Cat From Hue".

[bmermaid]

01:36 PM on 09/12/2007

So more important than journalistic integrity is just the bottom line, money, at every turn? Tell the people what the lowest common denominator wants to hear.

They might as well just have happy talk all day everyday.

But then let's have a news station for just the people with an IQ of over 75. Of course, that rules out GWBush -not that he would want to watch when he can make Faux "News" say what his people tell them to say.

[Tommymac]

03:45 PM on 09/12/2007

MSM does what their Corporate Owners want - sad but true.

For example (picking on just one of the 6 Media Cartels who own the MSM) GE owns NBC -> GE is a major Defense Contractor, a charter member of the Militsary/Industrial Complex. -> War is good for GE -> any slant on events that will promote War is good for GE -> ... guess what their in-house MSM outlet is going to do....

Until the rules of the game change, and we once again have independent Media outlets, People will need to get the Truth from other sources.