‘On Wednesday night, CNN’s Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan’s tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters “dropped the ball” during the run-up to war,’ the Politico reports. According to Yellin, the network she worked for at the time – or CNN, there is some debate about this matter, or both – even went so far as to “kill” stories that were critical of Bush at the time.

“The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings,” Yellin said.

“And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time….”

Interestingly enough her remarks seem to have been applicable to CNN and to MSNBC; the network she was working for back then. Shortly after her remarks caused a controversy earlier today, however, word came out that she will clarify what she meant in a blogpost. The clarification will, of course, mean that she was not talking about CNN, but about MSNBC… or ABC (she moved to ABC in July 2003, and to CNN in July 2007).

She can back peddle all she wants, but one gets the distinct impression that she wasn’t (just) talking about MSNBC or ABC; she points out that she “was not at this network at the time” but that the system seems to be the same everywhere; the higher the president’s approval ratings are, the more positive and less critical the reporting.

It goes without saying that, whether one supports and still supports the war or not, the media have forsaken their duty five years ago. They don’t report what’s necessary, what the public has to know, they all too often report what they think the public wants to hear.

DDay comments:

 I hold very few hopes for Yellin’s future at CNN. Bravo to her for telling the truth.

I’m sure that this is a one-day story, and the press will consider the matter concluded, in their favor, and move on. But people know this in their bones. The coverage did nothing to enlighten and only to heighten the frenzy over invasion. This was William Randolph Hearst getting his Spanish-American War all over again, and these blowhards can’t come to terms with it because their whole world would come crashing down. They were puppets, enthusiastic puppets for an imperialist agenda. And they have to live with that forever.

Armed Liberal:

 I don’t doubt that the press was relatively uncritical around issues of war and terrorism at that time – in no small part because the President was so popular and they were afraid of the public reaction.

And I equally don’t doubt that the press is wildly overcritical now, as Bush’s numbers have declined and the groupthink makes him toxic.

I do support the notion that workers in the media trend to liberal, urban highly-educated elites, and that they frame stories whenever they can according to the biases of their class. But I do also believe that they are less populist-liberal than establishmentarian (think E.U.) and less ideological than fearful of rejection from the group or by their audience.