Dick Cheney's Accident--Did The Press Manage To Tarnish His Image?

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing. --Henry B. Adams

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I really tried not to write about Dick Cheney's hunting accident. I really did.

But this morning I heard Mancow going on about how it is not human for him to have not taken a few minutes to just say to the press corps immediately, "I shot my friend. I need a little time. My heart goes out my friend and his family. I'll give you more later."

Again, it's the cultural chasm.

So now the President and the Vice President need to tell the press corps everything that happens in their personal lives immediately (!!) or they are no longer behaving in a human manner?

I don't disagree that the public has a right to know the facts of what happened.

But, I think that it did--within 18 - or 14 - hours via a story in a Corpus Christi newspaper, didn't it? And right away the wire services were able to pick up the story from the Corpus Christi paper, weren't they? And, then, of course, any other paper or news service that wanted to carry it was free to carry the story too--within less than 24 hours of the event's occurrence.

What I object to is the idea that certain media thinks there is a some kind of law granting them exclusive and immediate rights to all news - and scoops - first. I also object to the idea that the public now believes that one cannot have any personal event occur without validation by that same news media.

We, the country that apparently thinks we no longer have any need for etiquette--or common decency--in our lives, have invoked some kind of convoluted public relations etiquette about how news MUST be broken to "the people." Now, we have PR obligations to the public that trump the contacting of the authorities, the families involved, the injured party(ies), a person's right to privacy, or the right to choose the way to reveal a personal tragedy to the carnivorous public.

Let's get something straight. No one was in the dark here. The press corps just got their noses out of joint because they got scooped by the little Texas paper first, and then, again, by Brit Hume and Fox News.

Don't you see? If it's not on TV (via a NY Times story with built-in media bias) it doesn't exist (or it's not supposed to)--and it's not valid (or it's not supposed to be)--in some people's minds.

They actually believe their "rights" were somehow violated when the VEEP story came from somewhere else (what? competition? don't they know their place in Corpus Christi?) and they couldn't spin their "breaking news" their way in the nation's paper-of-record first. These same people who daily judge and balance the "right to information" with the "right of privacy" around the world have, I fear, outlived their usefulness. Today they look plain spoiled rotten--like little Eloises kicking and screaming around the Plaza Hotel because they didn't get their way. WAAAAAAAGH! Cute on Eloise, not cute on "so called" journalists.

Attention "malignant journalists!" You've been one-upped by the VEEP and you've been scooped by a small Texas paper, and you look like silly old poor sports throwing a hissy fit about it.

If I was the VP and had been attacked repeatedly by the media with dislike, anger, disdain, and my daughter's personal life choices, my absolute last inclination would be to need to feel validated by you in my lowest hour. If I had a difficult story to tell, let's see, maybe I'd tell it to someone more fair, and less rude, than people who drag me through the muck on a regular basis all the while insulting me--someone who would report truth with credibility, but give me a fair shake. Now if you had been a little kinder and gentler to the Administration..... You see, that's how it works, one hand washes the other. But it takes two hands to get the washing done.

This is the elephant in the middle of the room that no one in the Administration can really discuss because the flacks have laid down the rules. And PR Rule #1 is that you can't say you don't like the press corps or that it hasn't been fair to you--even if they grill your hide, make up stories about you, and embarrass your family daily. Because if you do, they'll get you for it.

You're still supposed to smile and voluntarily give them the upper hand in any situation where they want it. (Abdicate your obvious advantage and free will, give up, throw in the survival instinct towel.) (Sounds familiar...like a foreign policy I heard somewhere recently.)

This media has behaved in a rude and illegal manner by sensationalizing and making up stories about our country's leaders and our men and women in uniform during a time of war... in order to gain political advantage for their favorite political party, the one currently out of power. Make no mistake about that.

Well, I say, "Bravo to the VP!" He did this his way and, in America, you still can. I am inspired to see a person living by a code that includes courageously following the law first, and then letting the media find out however it may.

After all, Mr Whittington's hospital personnel is interviewed daily, Everyone who knows anything about the accident has been interviewed. The drawings of the area of the pellets on Mr Whittington's body have been widely diagrammed. WHAT is it that the public has yet to know?

Oh I see.... The Vice President needs to come before his haters and detractors to give them the opportunity to freely harangue him, verbally flogg him, second-guess him, and name-call him to his face for their own misplaced malignant glee... (gun lover! friend injurer! media hater! war monger! Halliburton boy!) and this, the second most powerful man in the world, must succumb to their demands in order to satisfy the malignant narcissistic left's hunger to vent anger for whatever past sins they believe have been perpetrated upon them. (There's that pesky losing the last two elections again, and the war they don't want, too.) Sorry guys. You lost. They won these rights.

On the other hand, what's the matter with the MSM having to scramble for a story? Isn't that part of the excitement that they love about newspaper work? Haven't they seen Front Page? You journalists are not supposed to pay people for stories, make them up, nor sit on your fat bumms in front of the White House and let the White House Staff come to spoon feed you the daily news.

You are supposed to go out and look for stories yourself. And sometimes get even get scooped. Or is that just too old fashioned for you? Do you instead rise through the reporter ranks to a place where you become the reigning royalty where you are Owed-Every-Big-Story-Byline just because you're you?

Here're the facts in a nutshell: VP Cheney's obligations were fulfilled. He contacted the proper legal authorities, got immediate medical attention for the injured, took care of his obligations to the injured friend's family, and his own family, and the owner of the property on which the accident occurred. If the New York Times wasn't able to get this story, maybe its not the great gray lady it once was. After all, the Corpus Christi paper was "the little paper that could."



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