Fun with semantics…
Vice President Dick Cheney likes FOX News. And he told a gathering of Republicans during a conference call (from the Washington Post):
“It’s easy to complain about the press — I’ve been doing it for a good part of my career…It’s part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they’re more accurate in my experience, in those events that I’m personally involved in, than many of the other outlets.”
Am I shocked, SHOCKED to discover such pandering going on at the White House? Not really. This seems to be part of a larger propaganda effort to marginalize the press. The President has said that he doesn’t consider the press a representative of the people (and a lot of Americans agree). Further, Bush considers the press a “special interest.” While I’m uncomfortable with this tactic, the fact of the matter is it’s working.
I like the fact that Cheney defines his key adjective: accurate. He’s not using its standard denotation. He’s quite clear about equating accuracy with a portrayal of events that corresponds to his “experience” of events, not with “conforming exactly to fact,” which would be the journalistic ideal.
Mr. Cheyney’s remarks are, well, unremarkable. If you heard three reports of some complex event of which you had first-hand knowledge and one of them conformed to your experience while two did so to a lesser degree, I don’t doubt that you would judge the first to be “more accurate” than the other two.
Charles…exactly.