Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

After Bush's speech on Nov. 11, the Washington Post ran a piece pointing out inaccurate statements regarding the use of intelligence. The language used by Milbank and Pincus is so direct, it's almost jarring:

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

...Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers

But the only committee investigating the matter in Congress, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has not yet done its inquiry into whether officials mischaracterized intelligence

...Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers

...even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release

Even within the Bush administration, not everybody consistently viewed Iraq as what Hadley called "an enormous threat."

These are plainly stated assertions that are rarely delivered by the mainstream media. Certainly not since 9/11.

This is a far cry from the typical "he said, she said" journalism we usually get, where reporters take shortcuts from actually providing news analysis (or, all too often, shortcuts from simply noting the facts). Consider this CNN article from Feb., 2004, covering a Bush appearance on Meet The Press where he talked about the intel on Iraq:

"I went to Congress with the same intelligence Congress saw -- the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at, and they made an informed judgment based upon the information that I had," he said. "The same information, by the way, that my predecessor had. And all of us, you know, made this judgment that Saddam Hussein needed to be removed."

But Sunday, two of Bush's Democratic rivals for president took issue with that assertion.

Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Sen. John Edwards said Bush's statement that Congress saw the same intelligence information as the president was a "big leap."

"I'm not certain that's true," he said. "I know the president of the United States receives a different set of information than we receive on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and he receives more information, which he should."

Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry accused Bush on Sunday of backpedaling on the messages he gave Americans to justify going to war.

"George Bush needs to take responsibility for his actions and set the record straight. That's the very least that Americans should be able to expect," Kerry said.

CNN simply played the role of a bystander, no more than a secretary taking dictation.

Whether WaPo's willingness to provide this level of analysis represents a new trend or a nothing more than a glitch is to be seen. It should be noted that the WaPo piece got wide coverage, appearing also in the Seattle Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and on MSNBC's web site.

It is far to easy for the news media to fall back on their usual norms of behavior: finding conflict where there is none, substituting dictation for analysis, favoring imagery over content.

We can only hope this represents the press taking its role more seriously, finding a willingness to take apart the distortion and serve the public.

It's only, like, our democracy that's at stake.