Al-Ahram Weekly | Features | Meeting the president

		26 Sept. - 2 October 2002 Issue No. 605 Features	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Meeting the president
Danny Scechter* experiences an encounter of the unexpected kind

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Making news: the president with the press on 19 September in Nebraska (photo: Eric Draper)
Usually, the news I get to dissect originates in secondary sources -- newspapers, magazines, TV watching and radio listening. I pore through as many sources as I can. Usually, I am focused on the news that is reported, not so much on newspapers.
Yesterday was different.
On Friday, I came face to face with -- believe it or not -- the big guy himself, our commander in chief, the man called POTUS -- which stands for President of the United States.
Me and Bush: I was 10 feet away, staring into eyes that always look blank, like those of a deer caught in the headlights. I watched him utter the words that spawned the lead story in The New York Times, the one headlined "BUSH IS DOUBTFUL IRAQ WILL COMPLY WITH UN DEMANDS".
On page one, David Sanger's article in The Times does not tell you where this pronouncement that inches us closer to war was made. In fact, the set and setting does not appear anywhere in the article, even when you "jump" inside the paper.
So, let me tell you about it. I was there.
Watching the charade: His remarks were uttered in the Starlight room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in a meeting convened by "The President" (that's all his name tag said,) with Secretary of State Powell to his right, my left.
Around the table were 10 presidents of Central African countries, one of the bloodiest and under-reported war zones in the world. All were flanked by cameramen, there to record their presence in his presence.
He thanks them for coming, and hints at a discussion of their common interests in fighting terrorism and achieving prosperity. The African journalists are hoping to get in a question. After all, how often does the leader of the free world speak with the press from some of the poorest and most ravaged lands in the world? (Like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda.) These are people who know what war is and how destructive it can be. They had a lot to say -- but no one in the press cared to ask them to say it. While the African presidents sat like plants, listening through headphones and interpreters, Bush invited three questions from the American press, picking only a reporter from the Associated Press. By name. To get them started. It felt like a set up to me.
Of course, there was no interest in the millions dead through war or genocide in Central Africa. There was only one issue on the press agenda, Iraq. As in the past, when foreign leaders had to wait while POTUS Clinton dealt, or didn't deal, with Monica and the media.
Yak about Iraq: They asked about Iraq and only about Iraq, with leading questions: Can you trust them? What about the Democrats who want to wait for the UN to act? Bush was predictably contemptuous of Hussein's trustworthiness and the Democrats, who The Times tells us in a story below its lead: "DEMOCRATS, WARY OF WAR IN IRAQ, ALSO WORRY ABOUT BATTLING BUSH."
Bush's battle-ready sound bytes soon led the news. They were fed to all the networks by the White House pool, which had two cameras at the meeting. None of the African leaders who heard his comments were asked for theirs. In many ways, their presence was part of a studio set, just another orchestrated meeting, as Colin Powell methodically tried to line up support for US policy towards Iraq.
The press is part of the orchestration. Photojournalists are allowed in for a few minutes to take pictures with a few reporters selected to ask one question. And then they are escorted out. It is staged.
At the UN later, I watched Powell in action at a "bilateral meeting" with China. "You will be able to shoot them shaking hands," the press corps was told, as they were routinely ushered into the Security Council's antechamber while a "private" session, closed to the press, droned on.
On cue, Powell waltzed into the room, smiling when he saw his counterpart, China's Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan. They shook hands in a prefab pose for the press. The cameras snapped. Neither said a word as Powell disappeared behind closed doors. The media, myself included, were ushered out of the room. The picture is on page A8 of The New York Times, and I am sure it's also in the People's Daily in Beijing.
Why was I there?: What was I doing there? I was actually there with a TV crew shooting for one of the African states. For me, it was a chance to watch, up close and personal, Bush jr in action (yuk) and how the official press is organised and granted access by government press secretaries, herded from location to location on a short timetable, and searched, or as the Secret Service prefers to say, "swept" in all the locations.
Most of the men in black carried loose- leaf books detailing the minute-by-minute activities of "The president's Trip to New York, September 12 and 13, 2002" with every logistical detail pre-planned. Spontaneity is not valued in this White House, which tries to run its ship like a modern corporation.
I also learned the president has his own videographer, who trails after him with a DV camera as he steers the SS LEVIATHAN, our ship of state.
I wish it was more exciting to observe the mostly boring bureaucratic routines of coverage by a media industry where reporters function more like stenographers than they do analytical journalists. (The Times, to its credit, did note that "Mr Bush seemed to be operating with a timetable" in mind, keyed to getting the UN Security Council to do what Washington wants.)
But, sadly, this is the way things work and the way news is generated. When you are part of it, there is usually no time to reflect on how what you do acts as a megaphone for the people in power. There's even less time to do what you are there to do. I managed to tag along with some photographers who literally had 20 seconds to get in some shots and get out. No wonder that the reporters' conversations I overheard were mainly about their weekend plans.
You definitely had a sense that you were watching a runaway train with no one around who'd have the guts to try to stop or derail it.
Oh, and by the way, POTUS, of course, didn't see me. And I would like to think I saw right through him.
* The writer is the executive editor of Mediachannel.org

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