Bush & Media: Normalizing the Abnormal

By Robert Parry
September 21, 2005

What’s been so surprising about the U.S. news media’s coverage of George W. Bush’s Katrina debacle is that leading journalists finally have broken with a five-year pattern of protecting both Bush and his presidency.

Until Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans – highlighting Bush’s weakness as a crisis manager, his skewed budget priorities and cronyism at key federal agencies – the national press corps had been held in sway by a mix of White House spinning and the bullying of the occasional critic.

From Election 2000 to the 9/11 terror attacks to the invasion of Iraq, the press corps often acted as if its principal duty to the nation was to normalize Bush’s often abnormal behavior, like the enabling family of a drug addict insisting nothing is wrong. While traditionally journalists play up the unusual, in Bush’s case, the media did the opposite.