reporters in tow. are we falling for yet another presidential tease? what to make of dick chain nay's media blitz? are the anchors holding him accountable? hurricane irene, i say television was swept away with breathless coverage. we'll ask two critics whether i'm all wet. as the media gear up for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, a look at how that tragic day changed the news business at least for a while. slate lays off one of the country's most provocative media critics. jack schaeffer will speak his mind. i'm howard kurtz and this is "reliable sources." the headlines were instantaneous. politico's lead story for sarah palin "the game is still on." "the new york times" said palin sounded more like a candidate than in any other speech this year. "the washington post," palin blasts crony capitalism, all because the former alaskan governor decided to show up yesterday in iowa. >> former alaskan governor sarah palin delivered a series of sharp attacks against president barack obama and her presidential rivals here at a tea party rally in iowa on saturday. while she didn't declare a presidential bid and not expected to until the end of december, she did draw a sharp line in the sand against republican front-runner, texas governor rick perry. why exactly was the speech big news? is palin faking out the media mop once again? >> joining us, lynn sweet, washington bureau columnist for "chicago sun times." and jim geraghty, contributing editor at national review. it's september. journalists seem to be falling for this palin tease although she was hasn't lifted a finger to form any kind of presidential organization. what's going on, i ask you, eleanor clift? >> if you start with the cynicism in the first paragraph, i think that works. i think if you took every one of those reporters and asked what they think, they'd be more skeptical and be angry that they're being led into this game she's playing. >> you're saying they're covering their back side in case she runs? >> that's right, that's right. >> the fact is, jim geraghty, palin is down in the polls, most republicans don't want her to run. she's been eclipsed by rick perry and michele bachmann. >> this is somebody who shook up the race in 2008, very unpredictable. very few people saw the resignation coming. there's only two more months of that. the effective deadline for declaring presidential campaign is november 1st. so cover it now because by november 1st, one way or another, the story ends. either she's running or not running. >> it doesn't trouble you that we might be being taken for a ride here. >> we are taken for rides all the time. >> and we happily hitch those rides. is it possible for a news organization, lynn sweet, to say we don't care that palin was in iowa yesterday, we don't care if she's going to new hampshire on monday. there are a lot of real candidates we need to be covering, we're just going to blow it off? >> in the real world it's not possible. if this was a test tube, yeah. here is why i want to defend the coverage of sarah palin. she is a legitimate american political phenomenon andality some point we'll know if she'll run or not. in the meantime her messages do have an impact on the republican field. >> let's say she announced last week that while she wants to play an important role in the debate, she's not running for president, she goes to iowa and gives the same speech. i don't think there would be correspondence on tv live talking about her. >> years ago i was at a reporters breakfast with newt gingrich and he was flirting with running for president. somebody said you really aren't doing the things to be president, you really aren't talking about it. he said that's what gets you guys to listen. let's say you're right, she gets less -- >> a brilliant strategy on palin's part. >> for now, yeah. >> rudy giuliani is talking about maybe running. then people listen to you. >> the moment we actually hear a decision from her one way or the other. let's say it's no, that begins the automatic speculation, will she endorse? will she give can't dalts praise or criticism? >> don't forget 2016. let me move to the dick cheney book. the former vice president was inescapable, did a lot of interviews for "in my time." let's take a look at solve off the record those. >> you know if you were to conduct a poll in this country and ask people is waterboarding torture? a vast majority would say it is. >> i would argue, matt, it's important for us not to get caught up in the notion that you can only have popular methods of interrogation if you want to run an effective counterterrorism program. the fact is it worked. >> secret presence, wiretapping? >> with the right approval. >> no apologies. >> no apologies. >> everything was president bush and dick chain nay's fault according to president obama. obviously he didn't give you any of the credit for the intelligence that led to the location of bin laden. irritating? >> we're used to it. >> mildly irritating. >> mildly. >> eleanor, did journalists succeed in those and other interviews on pinning down dick chain nay on iraq and torture or did we settle for canned sound booilts. >> of course we didn't throw him down. he throws out red meat for the press. we go after it and presumably this helps book sales. but there was thoughtful coverage, bob keiser in "the washington post," the reviewer in "the new york times" went over all the discrepancies between cheney's account on these issues and counts of president bush and others. so i think he doesn't get away with it, but he gets his little audition tape here on television for his book. >> i'll take this moment to say, and this is the difference between television and print. in "time" magazine there was a good piece by bart gelman on the cheney book where he pointed out that bush officials went to ashcroft while in intensive care to try to get him to sign off on something. when you look at the chatter, jim geraghty, would liberal pundits be satisfied with anyone other than cheney confessing to war crimes? >> i'm skeptical. i notice you call it an audition tape. >> he's auditions for number one on the bestseller list. >> i have my doubts that a tv interview would make a difference. it's dick chain nay's book. >> if he comes on as vice president it would be a very confrontational interview. is there a different standard when a former officials comes on and talks about his memoir and does the question get a little more informal and a little softer? >> i think, yes, howie, the edge is off these interviews since it's a media show you know are brokered to certain outlets, reporters, book tour in advance. >> deals are made? >> i'm not suggesting deals are first. everyone wants the first. >> "today show" got it. >> what's interesting is to tell the book, he went to outlets that he never probably would have appeared on. >> msnbc. >> "morning joe," lavishing the attention on nbc which to their credit helps sell books. jamie geng gel did a terrific job of asking the questions. what you have, because they're not a newsmaker in the current office, i suppose you don't have a sense of urgency in asking the questions and there's years of stuff to go over. i think people try to put him through his paces. >> interesting, colin powell and condi rice both took issue with things in the book, they were cheap shots. condi disputed she once tearfully apologized about a bush state of the union speech. >> when you're being booked for an hour on date line and two hours on hannity, you get the lion's share of the coverage and your critics get maybe one argue. >> that's how it worked. colin powell had a best selling book, part had to do with the expectation he was going to run for president. condi rice had her books out. this is how it works. i think president bush actually comes out looking the worst in cheney's account because cheney is quite aggressive about adding to the narrative that all the press wrote during the bush years that he was really pulling the strings, and i don't think that helps president bush's image. >> i'm stunned that every auto biography out of the bush administration makes the writer sound like genius, the one who knew what was going on the whole time. >> if only everyone else would have listened to me. >> what's interesting, the media coverage of this, it focuses on the personalities because that's what the media like to do. i haven't heard -- if it was about some heretofore unknown episode, there's no scoop people are talking about, oh, my god, mr. cheney, you revealed this or that that never happened. >> cheney said heads are going to explode in washington. i haven't seen that. so many controversies, the scooter libby pardon. then you have to deal with iraq and water building, that gets reduced to an interview because of television time constraints. >> it's clear he doesn't forgive president bush for his refusal to pardon scooter libby. >> maybe we can put up video of the former vice president giving one of these interviews. he's 70 years old, he's had a lot of heart problems. his heart is not pumping on its own. he looked frail. he looked old. do journalists go a tad easier on him perhaps? >> no, i don't think so. i think he looked pretty good considering. he always has a quiet way of talking, howie. i think given the wealth of materials and questions to ask, i don't think he got a break because of his age or his condition. >> fair enough. let me get a break and when we come back, the president tries to step on that nbc politico debate and gets stomped on by the republicans. the white house says that's a nonstory. is anyone buying that? no, it was good because you told us so. the chevy model year wrap up. get in on our greatest model year yet. just announced -- celebrate labor day with an additional $500 bonus cash. with all other offers, including the all-star edition discount, that's a total value of $6,500. ♪ our greatest model year yet is wrapping up. 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[ male announcer ] they'll see you...before you see them. cops are cracking down on drinking and riding. drive sober, or get pulled over. as the media begin gearing up to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, this is a moment to recall how much has changed in the news business since that dark day. >> today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. >> there was a lot of talk about a new seriousness, abandonment of silliness and superficiality. i spoke earlier with two television vet ransz. joining us, jamie mcintyre who is now an adjunct professor of journalism at university of maryland, and kelly marina from sam houston state university. kelly n the after math of 9/11, what changed for you as a reporter? >> everything. it was all terror all the time. i was the justice correspondent and part of thabeet includes fbi and fbi was the lead awe enforcement agency to investigate terror attacks. i was on the air every half hour. >> cnn couldn't get enough, the media couldn't get enough. >> that's true. every bump and turn. of course, the nation had just gone through this catastrophic event. so there was a genuine interest clearly and news as the story developed and as we found out more and more, it was legitimate coverage. >> there was a lot of soul searching about the media's priorities and new beats were created, homeland security, a phrase we didn't have before. >> and new phrases were added to old beats, cnn added an add-correspondent and producer. one of the perversities is you would think when you devote more resources and time to a particular subject -- and in this case it was the aftermath of september 11th, that you would get better coverage. one of the perverse phenomenon that goes on is when network and news organizations get consumed with a particular narrative, it's very hard to get counternarratives on the air because there comes this pressure to have all the stories conform to the conventional wisdom. >> did you fight against that? >> you try to fight against it. it's very difficult because, you know, the perversity is when the focus is off you, you can think for yourself, do your own reporting and you have much more control over the scorery. once the story becomes the obsession of everybody, it's much more difficult -- >> as time went on, kelly, the memories of the attacks started to fade, and actually the story shifted to the two wars. was it then more difficult to get terror-related stories on the air? did that appetite that you described begin to wane? >> that took about five years or so. after 9/11 you had the anthrax attacks, the sniper which people thought might be terrorism related. there was a steady appetite for about five years. >> and then what? >> and then it was don't pitch a story unless there's something exploding. terrorism and intelligence is more of an art than it is a science. some of those stories are very nuanced, and in the world of cable television, everything needs to be black and white. >> so is that frustrating for you, if there was no arrest, if there was no capture of explosives, that it was harder to get on stories that were important, but not visual or dramatic. >> yes. as you know, there was a big uptick in the coverage of foreign news right after september 11th. that's where our emphasis went. but again, people get this fatigue that comes with that. >> for all the talk about how the need yeah would get more serious, and i think that happened for a while. eventually we're back to paris hilton celebrity shows. >> don't forget the evolution of news coverage didn't just happen, it was unto just the september 11th attacks and the