Covering Clarke

I just watched the first 45 minutes of the Clarke testimony. Granted, I have about 2.5 more hours to go, but my first instinct is that he comes across as really competent. He has good answers to the questions. He talks about what went right and what went wrong. He doesn't let the committee members get away with distortions (even small ones). So far, I'm impressed.

I think what's going to be important is how the mainsteam media plays it.

So far, the Washington Post is saying that Clarke was "cool under fire."

The New York Times focuses mainly on the hightened sense of partisanship on the panel. It does, however, feature a picture of 9/11 victim families appplauding Clarke. That's a powerful symbol.

CNN's website leads with Clarke's charges and the article online doesn't even mention the counter-attacks from the Bush team (although it does have a link to another article entitled Clarke told different story at 2002 briefing .

The point of all this is that Clarke's testimony won't mean much even if his performace was superb if the media choose to highlight the Bush team's attempts to discredit. If the lead-in is, "A former White House counterterrorism official apologized yesterday for government failures in the September 11 attacks, but his credibility was challenged...," as it is in the Washington Times, then the real importance of Clarke's accusations gets lost.

Most of the other news sources have Clarke's charges at the top (which is good). Fox and CNN both have the '02 Breifing close underneath. We shall see if the Bush spin gets equal billing with Clarke's testimony.