Mark Knoller Can't Handle Being Told The Truth

CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller continued to belittle his critics even after explicitly soliciting their opinions. After complaining about Bill Moyers' depiction of the Washington press corps in "Buying The War" Mr. Knoller proceeded to express shock and surprise when he received replies to his complaints that supported Mr. Moyers. Mr. Knoller followed up on his disingenuous and factually flawed complaints by issuing a hollow challenge to his critics. He then dismissed all criticisms against himself and the main stream media at large as angry partisan attacks. A brief perusal of the comments offered to Mr. Knoller would show that he is lying as to the nature of the criticisms as a whole.

Just as the Washington press corps has repeated President Bush's sound bites of fear and intimidation as the truth, Mr. Knoller cherrypicks bits and pieces of his critics' responses to portray them as poorly as possible. At the same time Mr. Knoller completely ignores the many well reasoned comments that did not revert to the "name calling" that he complains of.

Here, for example, is my own comment to Mr. Knoller:

Mr. Knoller,
To begin with your challenge is disingenuous at best. To suggest that anyone was called on during the March 6th press conference who was not already on Mr. Bush's scripted list flies in the face of the truth.

Putting aside the fact that no one would be called upon to ask a question for which the President was not already prepared, the questions that were asked that night were not the actual problem with the press corps coverage of the lead-up to the invasion. They were but a symptom of the disease that has crippled the national media.

As Mr. Moyers pointed out real questions were being asked, primarily by the Knight-Ridder Washington bureau. Unfortunately these questions were not asked by the media at large, and certainly never directly posed to Mr. Bush, nor would they have been allowed as such.

All of that aside I would have asked:

Mr. Bush why do you continue to allege a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda when there is no factual basis to support your allegation? All independent experts in the field agree that such a connection is ludicrous. Why do you choose to lie to the American public?

As a journalist I could then have presented Mr. Bush's refusal to answer my question with the facts that support it. An error that was committed by nearly all Washington reporters.

Mr. Knoller's final response makes it even more clear that he and his colleagues in the Washington media believe not only that they have done nothing wrong, but that they are above reproach. As such, Mr. Knoller dismisses his critics out of hand as mean and personal partisan attackers. While some respondents may have described Mr. Knoller and his colleagues in unflattering terms, the simple truth is that Mr. Knoller does not deserve to be flattered.

Mr. Knoller offered as examples of "positive" dialog the following:

“Hats off to Knoller for his willingness to participate in a dialogue.”

“Hey Knoller. Let me give you a bit of advice. Do not try to reason with this crowd. They have turned on you now. Your only way out is to grovel and say how wrong you and the entire media were. You can’t reason with them.”

“Those who are most angry at you, Mark, are the people who believe that the media’s job is to advance the agenda of the Liberal Democratic Party.”

Mr. Knoller is only receptive to those commenters who blindly support him as he has supported Mr. Bush by questioning the motivation of his detractors and blatantly distorting and falsifying the arguments of his critics.

Mr. Knoller continues to make it clear that he has completely missed the point. He is offended by the complaints as to his lack of journalistic integrity and in response he lashes out blindly at those who see his reporting for what it is; investigation free regurgitation of the Administration's talking points.

Mr. Knoller ends his posting by saying that "if the day comes when reporters substitute what they believe for what they know, we’ll all be poorer for it." Unfortunately the day has already come where reporters, Mr. Knoller among them, have substituted what the Administration tells them for the truth, and we are most assuredly the poorer for it.