Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Monday, November 27, 2006

We Lie When George W. Bush Wants Us To--Dana Priest

Yep. That's what Washington Post reporter Dana Priest tells Chris Matthews she and the other writers for the Washington Post do. When George W. Bush's flunkies--"our elected government"--want them to avoid calling a spade a space, they call it a bouquet of flowers.

You see, Dana Priest thinks Iraq is in a "civil war." But she won't call it that in her prose for the Washington Post. Why not?

Hardball:

MATTHEWS: It seems to me the President's afraid that people will begin to think it is a civil war and not the way he wants to define it, which is we gotta fight them there before they fight us here.

PRIEST: Well, I think one of the reasons the President resists that label is because it equates almost with a failure of U.S. policy. I will say for the Washington Post, we have not labeled it a civil war. I have asked around to see why not or see what's the thinking on that and really our reporters have not filed that. We try to avoid the labels, particularly when the elected government itself does not call its situation a civil war. I certainly -- and I would agree with General McCaffrey on this -- absolutely the level of violence equals a civil war.

Journamalism. Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

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