New York magazine's Gabriel Sherman has a short piece trying to make this case. His first bit of evidence is that  Fox granted backstage access at its recent Republican debate to a New York Times reporter--as Sherman put it, "Fox's decision to allow Times scribe Jim Rutenberg into the building to confront the candidates in person." That sounds rather aggressive, and Sherman sees this as some sort of political shift:

That "sweating" session was a debate moderated by three Republican attorneys general, who are in some ways to the right of some of the candidates--particularly Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Given that the conservative base of the Republican party seems to have questions about the ideological commitment of these two--especially Romney--the fact that Fox convened a debate where the candidates had to field questions from the right doesn't really seem like playing to the "center."

Sherman argues:

In case you haven't heard, Palin is taking a bus tour up the East Coast, visiting various sites of historic interest. Which naturally means that every media outlet is forced to follow along, covering  this series of non-events as if they are of tremendous importance, asking the pertinent questions: Is she running for president? Has she launched a crafty non-campaign that appears much like a campaign, without really being a campaign?

On Sunday (5/29/11), CNN host Howard Kurtz wondered:

Is the press in danger of being bamboozled by somebody who, in the end, is probably not going to run?

To me, being bamboozled would imply that you're being tricked. Corporate media are doing something they've done plenty of times before: giving Sarah Palin far, far more attention than she deserves.

Salon's Justin Elliott had a great round-up of the faux-bewilderment of the press corps. He cites these anecdotes:

According to the AP:

By some counts, more than 200 journalists trooped alongside Palin in Philadelphia....

And from the Times:

The CNN Express bus, filled with producers, camera operators and on-air talent, sat in Gettysburg for hours Monday, not even sure she was coming.

Hopefully Palin will release the journalist/hostages soon, so that they can go out and do the sort of reporting they would prefer to do.

Of course, those details have been substantially altered by the White House, if not scrapped altogether. And thus we started to see headlines like this one in the New York Times: "Raid Account, Hastily Told, Proves Fluid." As that story put it:

a classic collision of a White House desire to promote a stunning national security triumph--and feed a ravenous media--while collecting facts from a chaotic military operation on the other side of the world.

If by "classic," the Times means to say that the government often misleads or lies about its accomplishments--well, no argument here. And demonstrating their sense of humor, the Times account included this:

"There has never been any intent to deceive or dramatize," a military official said Thursday, asking that he not be named because of ground rules imposed by the Department of Defense. "Everything we put out we really believed to be true at the time."

We never meant to mislead anyone--but don't quote me on that!

Judging by what some reporters are saying,  early accounts are often simply wrong.  On CNN's Reliable Sources (3/8/11), host Howard Kurtz and former CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McIntyre had this exchange:

KURTZ: And there was a conference call with White House officials, and you're trying to assemble as much as you can. You assume these people know what they're talking about.

MCINTYRE: But you know, Howard, this was an avoidable misstep, because anyone who has covered the military for any period of time, or anyone who is briefed on military operations, knows that initial details on an operation are almost always wrong. And if they had simply been cautious about caveating the fact that they didn't have all the details, or that they might change, and by the same token, if the reporters are careful to say in the past, we know that often these initial details are not right, it wouldn't have looked nearly as bad.

So reporters either "assume these people know what they're talking about," or just know that "initial details on an operation are almost always wrong." If it's the latter, it would seem to me that most reporters carry that knowledge around without sharing it with readers or viewers. In fact, a network correspondent once told me almost exactly the same thing that McIntyre is saying here. I remember being shocked, because the reporter's work betrayed no such skepticism towards official claims.

This was a well-planned assault, closely watched by elite planners at Washington. For reasons that are entirely  unclear, they delivered a highly misleading account to reporters and the public. They've made their corrections--or at least adjustments--but think about how often this might be happening, in Afghanistan or elsewhere. An airstrike reportedly kills civilians; the Pentagon issues a denial.  How often do reporters treat those denials with sufficient skepticism?

I decided to approach some top Washington lobbying firms myself, as a potential client, to see whether they would be willing to burnish the public image of a particularly reprehensible regime.

The first step was to select a suitably distasteful would-be client. Given that my first pick, North Korea, seemed too reviled to be credible, I settled on the only slightly less Stalinist regime of Turkmenistan.

As he reported, some of the lobbyists he approached were perfectly willing to plot out ways they could improve his client's image among D.C. powerbrokers. Silverstein's reporting was criticized by Guardians of the Media Establishment like Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, who was very uncomfortable with Silverstein's methods. As he wrote, "No matter how good the story, lying to get it raises as many questions about journalists as their subjects."

Today the New York Times (3/2/11) provides an update of a sort. Under the headline "Arab Unrest Puts Their Lobbyists in Uneasy Spot," Eric Lichtblau tells of "the elite band of former members of Congress, former diplomats and power brokers who have helped Middle Eastern nations navigate diplomatic waters here on delicate issues like arms deals, terrorism, oil and trade restrictions."

The news here is that these "Washington lobbyists for Arab nations find themselves in a precarious spot, as they try to stay a step ahead of the fast-changing events without being seen as aiding despots and dictators." Which is, of course, precisely what they do. Silverstein's work taught us that they have very little reluctance about working for torturing dictators--at least until those leaders' crimes become too difficult to ignore.

The Times story, with all its hedging and tip-toeing, is the kind of journalism that is acceptable in elite circles. As for Silverstein, he left Harper's, writing that "I frequently find myself numb to political news and, even worse, to the lifeless, conventional wisdom peddled by the Washington media."