Howard Kurtz Live Chat

Not too much exciting going on. Some admirable comments from Kurtz about waiting for actual indictments from Patrick Fitzgerald before spinning out Rove/Libby frogwalk scenarios, and a defense of Judy Miller to the extent that she's not the only reporter in the world whose sources misled her (in response to a question about why she wasn't immediately fired when her WMD reporting didn't pan out). The media view about the "coaching" of soldiers' answers in that telecon with President Bush hardens quickly, though, doesn't it? From the chat:

Boston, Mass.: I know I'm a little late with this, but I missed last week's chat (bummer). A week ago last Friday, almost every network newscast covered the inadvertent feed of US soldiers in Iraq being prepped for a Q&A with the president. Do you think that story would have received anywhere near the same coverage 2-3 years ago when the administration was successfully bullying all dissenters? I thought it was a prime example of the herd mentality of the media.

Howard Kurtz: The coaching was so blatant, and so perfectly captured on videotape, that I think it would have gotten a lot of play whenever it happened.

From what I understand, coaching is pretty common inside electronic media (ever wonder why some of those supposedly spontaneous exchanges between anchors and field reporters seem a little rehearsed?), so I guess it's another one of those practices reserved exclusively to journalists, like free speech right before an election, courtesty of McCain-Feingold, and deciding whose bodies should be counted in a war. But as this Media Research Center summary shows, the Bush exercise was much ado about nothing:

Thursday's NBC Nightly News led, yes led, with how, as anchor Brian Williams put it, President Bush had that morning conducted "a staged event" via satellite with ten U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi soldier in Iraq. "Today's encounter was billed as spontaneous," Williams intoned. "Instead, it appeared to follow a script." Andrea Mitchell warned that "the troops were coached on how to answer the Commander-in-Chief" and, indeed, not until two minutes into her three-minute story -- after showing clips of how a DOD official had told the soldiers the questions Bush would ask -- did Mitchell note how "the White House and at least one of the soldiers says the troops weren't told what to say, just what the President would ask." So, the answers were not staged. The soldiers, naturally nervous about appearing on live TV with the President of the United States, were simply told who should answer which question and to "take a breath" before answering. Scandalous!...