tention to the idea
that the White House considered itself a power capable of making reality in its image, and to
some degree therefore outside the laws of nature and history. In Suskind’s subsequent
story, “Without a Doubt,” he writes:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community,"
which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious
study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore,"
he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again,
creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort
out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we
do."
Consistent with the aide’s view that the White House is not answerable to empirical reality,
it’s been revealed that the Bush administration also paid commentators Maggie Gallagher
and Armstrong Williams to promote government policies through their columns and TV
shows without acknowledging those contracts. In a still more fascinating case, it was also
disclosed that a former male escort turned journalist for Talon News, a conservative website,
joined the White House press pool for several years and while there regularly directed
“softball” questions to the President. The journalist, James Guckert, assumed a false n英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】ame,
“Jeff Gannon,” during this period. Furthermore, in late 2005, it was revealed that U.S. military sources were providing U.S. propaganda to Iraqi news media while representing this
as ordinary media coverage. This is evidence of Nesbitt-Larking’s claim that “in the
postmodern era, it has become easier for the state to shape reality through the media” (p.
149).
e. politicians and media professionals: or who said what to whom at the
National Press Club?
Few MPs or MLAs are very newsworthy. As Pierre Trudeau famously said, “MPs are
nobodies” once they’re off Parliament Hill. But political life is itself inherently productive of
news stories, offering dramatic moments and vital issues that are the stuff of great
reportage. Question Period is regularly a source of the conflict that sells newspapers. The
relationship between politicians and journalists is itself symbiotic—each needs the other—
and this relationship grows in sophistication as the media’s importance to the exercise of
power is itself enlarged. The political class has learned, especially since the 1974 Canadian
federal election (which Nesbitt-Larking represents as the point when U.S. style political
campaign techniques were first adopted in Canada), to make strategic use of the media and
its conventions where possible. Among these strategies are:
The use of “spin doctors” (to give a candidate or party’s view of an event just after it
has happened, thereby influencing public per
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