Book Review: Readings

Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush

by Eric Boehlert

Simon & Schuster, 352 pp., $25

The most damning passages in Lapdogs, Eric Boehlert's indictment of the media's deference to the Bush administration, don't spring from the author. Instead, they're the storylines and sham debates he cites, manufactured by Republican operatives and regurgitated by a kowtowed media as "conventional wisdom": that America was "divided" over the Terry Schiavo case; that the Downing Street Memo's revelations of fixing the facts for war weren't important; that Bush is a popular president, a decisive straight-shooter.

Dogged by the right's allegations of bias, Lapdogs maintains the mainstream media (or MSM) effectively lay down. Hence, when John Kerry was hounded by demonstrably false claims about Vietnam, the media gave his attackers credence under the rubric of "balance." It's why Ann Coulter's given an adulatory cover story in Time; why, despite several prominent reporters personally knowing otherwise, Karl Rove's protestations of innocence in the Valerie Plame affair went unchallenged until subpoenas were issued. The fact that Bush's press-hostile administration rewards fawning reporters with continued access perpetuates the trend; a recounting of a 2003 Beltway Christmas soiree, excerpted from Andrea Mitchell's memoirs, is particularly nightmarish: "At the Rumsfelds', everyone seemed especially jolly ... Tim Russert told the CIA director he's dreamt Saddam had been captured."

With work for Salon and the Huffington Post, Boehlert's prose has a breathless, bloggy urgency. But, like an unedited post, Boehlert bloviates, both cavalierly dismissing all media as "MSM" and wrapping his thoughts around long-winded sentences. His reliance on impossible "what-ifs" ("If between 100,000 and 200,000 pro-war demonstrators had assembled in the nation's capital ... would the MSM have given them just cursory coverage?") also proves distracting. Lapdogs may lag for dedicated bloghounds, but for casual news consumers, Boehlert crafts a convincing case.