In contrast with Gregory, former NBC colleagues Couric and Yellin affirmed McClellan's criticism of media

Responding to reported claims in former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book -- What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception (Public Affairs, May 2008) -- about the media's role in the lead-up to the Iraq war, NBC chief White House correspondent and host of MSNBC's Race for the White House David Gregory has, in the past two days, repeatedly challenged McClellan's claims and defended the performance of the press. By stark contrast, at least two of Gregory's former colleagues at NBC News -- Katie Couric and Jessica Yellin -- have given a very different view of the media's conduct in the lead-up to the war. Couric, former co-host of NBC's Today, said, "I do think we were remiss in not asking some of the right questions." And Yellin, a former MSNBC correspondent, stated that "the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning" and cited corporate pressure "to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings."

Discussing McClellan's book on the May 28 edition of MSNBC Live, Gregory asserted:

GREGORY: [H]e also writes in the book that he think that the so-called liberal media got it wrong and was not hard enough on the administration about the war. You know, I don't know where he gets that idea. I don't know where other people get that idea. We can -- that's a serious debate for another time. But this is a shocker. I mean, this really is -- in Bush world, this is a shot heard 'round the world.

On the May 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Gregory assessed McClellan's reported claim that "[i]f anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq":

GREGORY: I think he's wrong. He makes the same kind of argument a lot of people on the left have made. I tried not to be defensive about it. I thought a lot about this over a number of years, and I disagree with that assessment. I think the questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the president. I think not only those of us in the White House press corps did that, but others in the rest of the landscape of the media did that.

Earlier, while discussing McClellan's reported claim that "[t]he worst aspect of the whole story was the failure of the press to see through to the real horror of the Iraq war and the CIA leak case," Gregory said:

GREGORY: I need to say a couple points. I mean, this notion that somehow we were too easy on him or in the run-up to the war -- I mean, it just doesn't jibe with the kinds of things he was saying at the time. ... It's the idea that he, you know, was on a completely different plane during that whole time, when you got -- you got no sense of it. I think that's a separate discussion, but I don't think that's a credible charge.

By contrast, during the May 28 edition of NBC's Today, as Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald noted in a May 28 post, CBS Evening News anchor Couric said: "I do think we were remiss in not asking some of the right questions." Later, co-host Matt Lauer said that McClellan "says that we didn't do our job, and we didn't ask the tough questions, and we let the administration get away with what they were trying to do." Couric responded:

COURIC: Well, we have different points of view, and I'll start by saying I think he's fairly accurate. Matt, I know when we were covering it -- and granted, the spirit of 9-11, people were unified and upset and angry and frustrated -- but I do think we were remiss in not asking some of the right questions. There was a lot pressure from the Bush White House. I remember doing an interview and the press secretary called our executive producer and said, "We didn't like the tone of that interview." And we said, "Well, tough. We had to ask some of these questions." They said, "Well, if you keep it up, we're going to block access to you during the war." I mean, those kind of strong-arm tactics were ... really inappropriate.

Regarding the "pressure" exerted by the administration, Lauer stated: "[W]e didn't give in to it." Couric responded: "No, we didn't give in to it, but I think there was insidious pressure that I do think actually affected some of the coverage from some of the media outlets." Co-host Meredith Vieira then asked, "Did the press withhold information during that period?" Couric replied: "No. I just think they ... weren't aggressive enough." Describing other forces affecting the media, Couric asserted: "[T]here was such a significant march to war and people who questioned it at ... very early on and really as the war progressed were considered unpatriotic. And I think that it did affect ... the way, you know, the level of aggressiveness that was exercised by the media. I really do."

In addition, as Greenwald noted in a May 29 post, during the May 28 edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Capitol Hill correspondent Yellin asserted:

YELLIN: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

Host Anderson Cooper then asked: "Really, you had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?" Yellin responded: "Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience." According to the blog TVNewser, "Yellin worked for MSNBC during the run-up to the Iraq war. She joined ABC News in July 2003."

In a May 29 post on the Anderson Cooper 360 blog, Yellin wrote:

I find myself in an interesting position. Today the blogs lit up with comments I made last night on AC360° and suddenly I'm being reported on.

It's not the most comfortable position for a reporter.

So let me clarify what I said and what I experienced.

First, this involved my time on MSNBC where I worked during the lead up to war. I worked as a segment producer, overnight anchor, field reporter, and briefly covered the White House, the Pentagon, and general Washington stories.

Also, let me say: Senior corporate leadership never asked me to take out a line in a script or re-write an anchor intro. I did not mean to leave the impression that corporate executives were interfering in my daily work; my interaction was with senior producers. What was clear to me is that many people running the broadcasts wanted coverage that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the country at the time. It was clear to me they wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.

As Media Matters for America noted, during the October 28, 2004, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, former MSNBC host Phil Donahue remarked on being fired from MSNBC in February 2003, saying: "Well, we were the only antiwar voice that had a show, and that, I think, made them very nervous. I mean, from the top down, they were just terrified." As The New York Times reported at the time, when Donahue's MSNBC show, Donahue, was canceled, "he was actually attracting more viewers than any other show on MSNBC."

From the 1 p.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live on May 28:

ANDREA MITCHELL (anchor): David Gregory is NBC News' chief White House correspondent and the host of Race for the White House at 6, who clashed with McClellan at many White House briefings. And NBC political director Chuck Todd joins us as well.

David, first to you. I mean, talk about being vindicated. This is -- I'm talking now, your colleague, your friend. I mean, all those years, you were going one-on-one with Scott McClellan; there were others in the press corps joining in. And frequently there was criticism, you know, on all sides. That's a very highly exposed --

GREGORY: Right.

MITCHELL: -- position to be in. How do you feel today in reading what he is now writing?

GREGORY: Well, I don't actually feel any vindication. I mean, he also writes in the book that he think that the so-called liberal media got it wrong and was not hard enough on the administration about the war. You know, I don't know where he gets that idea. I don't know where other people get that idea. We can -- that's a serious debate for another time. But this is a shocker. I mean, this really is -- in Bush world, this is a shot heard 'round the world.

From the May 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

CHRIS MATTHEWS (host): McClellan writes: "The worst aspect of the whole story was the failure of the press to see through to the real horror of the Iraq war and the CIA leak case." So, that's the real horror exposed by Scott McClellan in the new book today -- that an American aversion to foreign entanglements passed down from George Washington himself was so easily and tragically overturned by George W. Bush.

[...]

MATTHEWS: Let me go to Mike on the question of the cover-up, the whole question of how they dealt with attacking -- the fact that this book on three different occasions said the vice president of the United States was leading the charge in terms of discrediting Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Wilson in the CIA, in order to destroy their credibility. What do you make of that charge? From the inside.

MIKE ALLEN (Politico chief political correspondent): Right, Chris. And that's a classic example of why I have an alternative title for this book, which is, Now They Tell Us.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

ALLEN: And Scott McClellan says in here that he was, at best, misled by both Karl Rove and the vice president's chief of staff, Scooter Libby. Now, he largely leaves it to you to fill in what happened at worst, but he makes it clear that he knew -- had it in the back of his mind from the very beginning -- that he was not getting the full story. He talks about how he chose his words carefully in an effort -- unsuccessful, he admits -- to protect himself and his credibility when out there. And he paints this picture of these very awkward meetings, where he's still out there taking the bullets for them and defending them when it's becoming more clear, day by day from the news coverage, that what they told him was just not right.

And, you know, David talks about the source of the information here being powerful. The other great power of this book is that it validates, as David said, these criticisms that have come from the liberal and left-wing bloggers --

MATTHEWS: Right.

ALLEN: -- most especially, his point that the White House press corps was too deferential to this administration. David and I have fought back about those charges over the years largely because of the work of people like David Gregory. It just isn't true. But now the left can say, "Even Scott McClellan says you guys were too easy on the Bushies."

MATTHEWS: Well, let's go right now --

GREGORY: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but you know --

MATTHEWS: Go ahead, David.

GREGORY: I'm sorry. I need to say a couple points. I mean, this notion that somehow we were too easy on him or in the run-up to the war -- I mean, it just doesn't jibe with the kinds of things he was saying at the time, or you know --

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

GREGORY: -- it's the idea that he, you know, was on a completely different plane during that whole time, when you got -- you got no sense of it. I think that's a separate discussion, but I don't think that's a credible charge.

MATTHEWS: Hold on, fellas. Hold on, David. Hold on, Mike.

[...]

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to Hardball. We're back with NBC's David Gregory, who covers the Bush White House, in addition to hosting MSNBC's Race for the White House, which will be on right after this program, at 6 o'clock tonight; Politico's Mike Allen, who broke the McClellan book itself.

Let's take a look at what McClellan had to say here about the media. Here he is, faulting the press. He wrote, quote, "If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The collapse of the administration's rationales for war ... should never have come as such a surprise. ... In this case, the, quote -- 'liberal media' -- close quote, didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

David?

GREGORY: I think he's wrong. He makes the same kind of argument a lot of people on the left have made. I tried not to be defensive about it. I thought a lot about this over a number of years, and I disagree with that assessment. I think the questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the president. I think not only those of us in the White House press corps did that, but others in the rest of the landscape of the media did that.

If there wasn't a debate in this country, then maybe the American people should think about, why not? Where was Congress? Where was the House? Where was the Senate? Where was public opinion about the war? What did the former president believe about the prewar intelligence? He agreed that -- in fact, Bill Clinton agreed that Saddam had WMD.

The right questions were asked. I think there's a lot of critics -- and I guess we can count Scott McClellan as one -- who thinks that, if we did not debate the president, debate the policy in our role as journalists, if we did not stand up and say, "This is bogus," and "You're a liar," and "Why are you doing this?" that we didn't do our job. And I respectfully disagree. It's not our role.

From the May 28 edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360:

COOPER: Jessica, McClellan took the press to task for not upholding their reputation. He writes: "The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. ... The 'liberal media' -- in quotes -- didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

Dan Bartlett, former Bush adviser, called the allegation "total crap." What's your take? Did the press corps drop the ball?

YELLIN: I wouldn't go that far. I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president. I think, over time, as President Bush's --

COOPER: Really, you had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.

From the May 28 edition of NBC's Today:

LAUER: We've got you here on kind of a busy news day, as you know --

VIEIRA: Yeah.

LAUER: -- and so we want to bring up a couple of other things. One thing in particular, and you're all aware of the Scott McClellan book that has now been talked about. It's really a scathing -- and from an insider's point of view -- it's a mixed bag. He talks about things that went right with the administration during his time there, but also the things he feels that went wrong. And it's a scathing kind of look at the buildup to the war in Iraq. And we can -- you two -- you three can hash that out and we can on future broadcasts. But it's also a scathing look and commentary on the press --

VIEIRA: The media, yeah.

LAUER: -- and the media's role. And he says that we didn't do our job, and we didn't ask the tough questions, and we let the administration get away with what they were trying to do. And I just am curious for your take on this.

COURIC: Well, we have different points of view, and I'll start by saying I think he's fairly accurate. Matt, I know when we were covering it -- and granted, the spirit of 9-11, people were unified and upset and angry and frustrated -- but I do think we were remiss in not asking some of the right questions. There was a lot pressure from the Bush White House. I remember doing an interview and the press secretary called our executive producer and said, "We didn't like the tone of that interview." And we said, "Well, tough. We had to ask some of these questions." They said, "Well, if you keep it up, we're going to block access to you during the war." I mean, those kind of strong-arm tactics were --

[crosstalk]

LAUER: But we didn't --

COURIC: -- really inappropriate.

LAUER: -- but we kept it -- we didn't --

COURIC: We did.

LAUER: -- give into it.

COURIC: No, we didn't give in to it, but I think there was insidious pressure that I do think actually affected some of the coverage from some of the media outlets.

VIEIRA: Did the press withhold information during that period?

COURIC: No. I just think they --

BRIAN WILLIAMS (anchor of NBC's Nightly News): No, only --

COURIC: -- weren't aggressive enough.

WILLIAMS: -- only war-planning that was -- that would have endangered Americans. I've always put it this way. In Katrina, the evidence was right next to us. Sadly, we saw fellow Americans, in some cases, floating past face-down. We knew what had just happened. We weren't allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors. I was in Kuwait for the buildup of the war. And yes, we heard from the Pentagon on my cell phone the minute they heard us report something that they didn't like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary.

LAUER: Charlie, we do our job or did we -- were we remiss?

CHARLES GIBSON (anchor of ABC's World News): I think the questions were asked. I respectfully disagree with the gentle lady from the Columbia Broadcasting System. I think the questions were asked. There was a very strong -- you know, you go back to the Powell speech. There was a lot of skepticism raised about that. I can remember getting in trouble with administration officials because asking questions that they didn't feel comfortable with. I think the questions were asked. There was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. And it is not our job to debate them; it is our job to ask the questions.

LAUER: And is it perhaps a case of hindsight being 20/20? At the time, we thought we were asking the right questions, yet, in hindsight, knowing what we know now, we wish we could have asked different questions or maybe even tougher questions?

GIBSON: I'm not sure we would have asked anything differently. I don't know.

WILLIAMS: There may be some of that. I think it's tough to go back, put ourselves in the mind-set. It was still post 9-11 America. It's been theorized the president was handed a massive blank check to spend in terms of public approval and outpouring that was finite, and we've learned now not infinite. But this book will clearly be part of how the president is viewed in these last remaining months.

COURIC: But you remember, there was such a significant march to war and people who questioned it at --

WILLIAMS: Absolutely.

COURIC: -- very early on and really as the war progressed were considered unpatriotic. And I think that it did affect --

VIEIRA: Right.

COURIC: -- the way, you know, the level of aggressiveness that was exercised by the media. I really do.