4. Issues and Bias

4.6 Accountability

If publishing or broadcasting dubious reports about a major Republican [think 60 Minutes and Bush TX-ANG "memos"] is an example of "liberal bias" (which it was not, as I showed here) and a firing offense (or requires resignation) then, clearly, publishing or broadcasting unending amounts of completely fraudulent or fabricated stories against prominent individuals on the Left (especially Democratic leaders) is an example of conservative bias and should be an automatic firing offense? One would think so, but it seems that accountability is a word that is largely unknown to the big shots in the media when the targets of the smear or fabrication happen to be on the Left.

I previously presented a limited list of the media malpractice against John Kerry in 2004 and against Al Gore in Campaign 2000. In this post, I am extending the targets of malpractice to cover more Democrats to show that the malpractice is not limited to specific individuals on the Left. To make my point, I present here a very small set (25) of more general examples illustrating cases of blatant fabrication or lying by mainstream media reporters/columnists against many prominent people on the Left. Let me repeat: this is just a small subset of columnists/reporters and incidents - a mere drop in the ocean of mendacity about Democrats (and liberals/progressives) that has pervaded the U.S. media for a long time now. When such behavior is rampant (a week spent reading the Daily Howler, Media Matters, Eric Alterman, Joe Conason and Gene Lyons - to name just a few references - will start to give you a better idea of how rampant it is; why, even conservatives occasionally, weakly acknowledge it) and it is met with an almost complete lack of accountability, it clearly demonstrates that on the issue of accountability for media malpractice there is clearly NO "liberal bias". Moreover, when journalists/columnists report or express personal views (factual or otherwise) against prominent targets on the Right in a negative way, this is usually met with stricter punishment (see Sec. 4.7), that tells you that the ICM is in fact conservatively biased when it comes to accountability and punishment.

EXAMPLES

4.6.1 William Safire (New York Times, now retd.) on Bill Clinton and the Wen Ho Lee affair

4.6.2 Richard Cohen (Washington Post) on Joe Lieberman

4.6.3 Sean Hannity (Fox News) on Al Gore and Ted Kennedy

4.6.4 Lisa Myers (NBC/MSNBC) on Hillary Clinton

4.6.5 Tim Russert (MSNBC) on Al Gore and John Kerry

4.6.6 Kellyanne Conway (C-SPAN Washington Journal) and Tucker Carlson (CNN) on Democrats

4.6.7 Joe Klein (Time) and Democrats

4.6.8 Numerous major media outlets in the U.S. and Howard Dean

4.6.9 Katharine Seelye (New York Times) and Al Gore

4.6.10 Maureen Dowd and Sheryl Gay Stolberg (New York Times) and John Kerry

4.6.11 David Brooks (New York Times) and Hillary Clinton

4.6.12 George Will (Washington Post) on Al Gore/Democrats

4.6.13 Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post) - on Howard Dean:

4.6.14 Ceci Connolly (Washington Post) and Al Gore

4.6.15 Carl Cameron (Fox News) and John Kerry

4.6.16 Brit Hume (Fox News) and John Kerry

4.6.17 Bill O'Reilly (Fox News) on Florida 2000/Paul Krugman and other topics

4.6.18 Chris Matthews (MSNBC) and Bill/Hillary Clinton

4.6.19 John Fund (Wall Street Journal) on Florida 2000/Gore/Democrats

4.6.20 Wolf Blitzer (CNN) on Richard Clarke/Paul Krugman

4.6.21 Robert "The-Traitor" Novak (CNN) on Howard Dean

4.6.22 Margaret Carlson (Time) on Bill/Hillary Clinton

4.6.23 Gloria Borger (CNBC) on Hillary Clinton

4.6.24 Rush Limbaugh on a variety of topics [included since he dominates talk radio]

4.6.25 Adam Nagourney (New York Times) and Wesley Clark

4.6.1 William Safire (New York Times, now retd.) on Bill Clinton and the Wen Ho Lee affair

Daily Howler:

Kondracke didn’t seem to know these things, but perhaps it isn’t all that surprising, given the way William Safire bungled the story back on April 29. Risen and Gerth had revealed the alleged downloading on page one of the Times the previous day, and Safire rushed into print on the subject. His column remains the most frequently cited writing on the Wen Ho Lee downloaded files.

Unfortunately, the column was grossly bungled. In paragraph 3, Safire said this:

SAFIRE: We are now informed by The New York Times’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative team that the codes--“legacy codes,” as they are known at Los Alamos--were allegedly downloaded by Wan [sic] Ho Lee in 1994. Our nuclear genie is out of the bottle. [Our emphasis]

What did he mean by that last remark? Safire immediately quoted Rep. Cox, whose committee had done no investigation of the alleged downloading:

SAFIRE: “The People’s Republic of China is the number one proliferator,” said Representative Chris Cox, chairman of the select committee on Chinagate. “Now the secrets are out there in the stream of commerce, and probably on to Iran and North Korea and Libya.”

We don’t know if Safire quoted Cox correctly, but he soon made the claim in his own words:

SAFIRE: [Former senator Warren] Rudman has hired nine new investigators and may come up with recommendations about locking the barn door now that the secrets of almost every nuclear test we have undertaken are on their way to Baghdad or Pyongyang via Beijing. [Our emphasis]

Indeed, Safire’s opening paragraph had made his claim:

SAFIRE: During President Clinton’s watch, America’s most vital nuclear secrets--guarded intensely for five decades--have been allowed to spill out all over the world.

Clearly, Safire’s readers were being told that the PRC had accessed Lee’s downloaded data. They also were told that the downloaded data had been passed on to several rogue states.

Unfortunately, this is not what Risen and Gerth had reported, right on page one of the Times. If Safire had read what the prize-winners wrote, in paragraph seven he would have read this:

RISEN AND GERTH (paragraph seven): The investigation is continuing, and officials do not know whether the data transferred by Mr. Lee was obtained by another country. [Our emphasis]

Later on, he would have read this:

RISEN AND GERTH: [A]n Energy Department official said that because it remained unclear whether China actually obtained the data, the case at this point “is serious but not of the scope of the W-88.” [Our emphasis]

Nothing in the Risen/Gerth article asserted that China had obtained the data. Safire stated no authority for this new claim, other than the words he attributed to Cox. (Again, the Cox Committee had not investigated the alleged downloading by Lee.)

Soon, excited talkers like Chris Matthews were telling viewers that Lee had “just given away the entire nuclear capacity of the United States” (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/27/99). It had just been a week since the talker’s false accusations against a journalist had led to a gun incident in the journalist’s garage.

In the weeks since Safire wrote his column, it has been reported, again and again, that no one knows if China obtained the downloaded data. It has been frequently reported that Lee’s reasons for the downloading are still not clear.

Kondracke should have known these facts when he questioned Richardson on FNS. But Safire’s bungling still takes the cake--and pointed the way for the bungling that would come.

Smile-a-while: We chuckled over Safire’s early construction (from above):

SAFIRE: We are now informed...that the codes...were allegedly downloaded by Wan [sic] Ho Lee.

We have been “informed”--of an allegation. In paragraph 3, Safire admits he doesn’t know if the downloading even occurred. A few paragraphs later, the crafty scribe has the data all over the world.

So we see the laughable intellectual standards of the world’s most important public discourse.

Does Safire have editors at the New York Times? Do they read the paper’s page one stories?

4.6.2 Richard Cohen (Washington Post) on Joe Lieberman

Daily Howler:

Gore nominated Joe Lieberman to be his VP—and Cohen trashed Lieberman up and down for “talking the language of religion.” Cohen luuvvs religion talk now. But here’s how he launched one giant attack, just two months before the election:

COHEN (9/6/00): My own continuing crisis of faith is beside the point. But the marriage of religion to politics is another matter. I thought it was in bad taste for Lieberman to go on and on about religion. But I thought it downright smug of him to suggest that God somehow favors America above all nations. The United States is a fortunate and exceptional nation, which I love dearly, but it is no more divine than any other.

"Our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world," Lieberman told the annual convention of B'nai B'rith late last month.

Cohen went on and on (and on), trashing Lieberman for his vile statement. “Lieberman's statement is preposterously false and lacks humility,” the thundering columnist brilliantly said. Indeed, by the end of his piece, he was telling the world that Lieberman’s statement had been “downright repugnant.”

So, what made this column especially stupid? Stupid even by Cohen’s standards? Uh-oh! In fact, the statement made at the B’nai B’rith convention hadn’t been “repugnant” at all. In fact, Cohen had quoted quite selectively; given the norms of American politics, the fuller statement had been quite ordinary. But what made Cohen’s column especially stupid? Here we go: The offending statement wasn’t made by Joe Lieberman at all! In fact, it was George W. Bush, not Joseph Lieberman, who had gone before the B’nai B’rith convention and made the deeply-troubling remark. Incredibly, Cohen had spent an entire column trashing Lieberman for something Bush had said! (Again: There was nothing wrong with Bush’s statement.) But so it went as an addled press corps made a joke of your previous election. A small correction, sans explanation, graced the end of Cohen’s next column.

Today, Cohen luuvvs Gore’s old-fashioned religion—but he trashed Gore’s running-mate for it back then. He even trashed Gore for religious statements that came out of George Bush’s mouth! From what planet does this man type? He types from the far planet Washington Post—a planet whose exotic race of scribes continued to laugh hard, right in your face, as Cohen typed yesterday’s nonsense.

4.6.3 Sean Hannity (Fox News) on Al Gore and Ted Kennedy

Media Matters:

In an attempt to defend the Republican Party against a charge of race-baiting, FOX News Channel host Sean Hannity falsely claimed that former Vice President "Al Gore brought Willie Horton to the American people." Hannity's comment came on the November 9 edition of Hannity & Colmes, after a guest, Princeton University professor Cornel West, named Horton, who is black, as an example of the GOP's political exploitation of race.

In 1987, Horton assaulted a man and raped his fiancée after escaping a furlough from prison in Massachusetts. In 1988, then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush invoked Horton on the campaign trail to portray then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis as soft on crime. The Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee also used Horton in an anti-Dukakis attack ad that drew particular attention to Horton's race. The ad was produced by Larry McCarthy, a former employee of then-Bush campaign media consultant and current FOX News Channel President Roger Ailes.

Hannity's claim that it was Gore, and not the Bush-Quayle '88 campaign, who engaged in race-baiting by using the Horton case against Dukakis is false. During a 1988 Democratic primary debate, Gore did ask Dukakis about "weekend passes for convicted criminals." But as Slate "Chatterbox" columnist Timothy Noah noted on November 1, 1999, "Gore never mentioned that Horton was black; indeed, he never mentioned Horton by name."

Moreover, as Daily Howler editor Bob Somerby noted (in documenting a prior instance of Hannity making the same erroneous Horton claim on November 1, 2002), in questioning Dukakis's tacit support of the Massachusetts furlough program, Gore never mentioned Horton's crime. Instead, Gore specifically mentioned two criminals who committed murder after escaping from their prison furlough. Somerby also noted that besides never mentioning Horton, his race, or his crime, Gore also differed from the Bush-Quayle '88 campaign in that he "never ran any TV ads on the topic; and never used any visuals."

More Sean Hannity (Fox News) on Ted Kennedy:

Following Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA)'s September 27 speech criticizing President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq for "not ma[king] America safer," conservative pundits almost immediately began to distort the Massachusetts senator's words and smear him.

On the September 27 edition of FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity labeled Kennedy's speech "insane." He falsely claimed that Kennedy "call[ed] the soldiers failures" and said the senator placed himself amongst "those of us who would like to cut and run [in Iraq]." Earlier that day, on ABC Radio Networks' The Sean Hannity Show, Hannity said Kennedy's speech worked to "undermine the war effort, undermine our soldiers on the battlefield"; he also erroneously claimed that Kennedy "believes the U.S. military is an impediment to world peace."

Here is what Kennedy actually said at The George Washington University:

KENNEDY: No issue is more important today. The battle against terrorism is a battle we must win. Even those who opposed the war in Iraq understand that we cannot cut and run, that this is an American issue. But to remain silent in the face of mounting failures by this president and this White House is to weaken our security even further, and we cannot let that happen.

[...]

KENNEDY: Our soldiers were not adequately trained for the missions thrust upon them. Month after month, our courageous troops could not get even enough armored vests of their own or enough armor for their humvees to protect themselves on patrol.

Hannity was not the only pundit to smear Kennedy on the day of his George Washington University speech.

Michael Savage, on his nationally syndicated radio show, Savage Nation, declared: "Kennedy may as well be Osama bin Laden's p.r. [public relations] man." He later said: "[I]t's one thing to disagree with Bush; it's one thing to disagree with the war; it's one thing to say we shouldn't be there, but to go to the other side, as Kennedy has done, is astonishing."

Tucker Carlson, co-hosting CNN's Crossfire, dismissed Kennedy as "discredited" and a "screamer."

4.6.4 Lisa Myers (NBC/MSNBC) on Hillary Clinton

Daily Howler:

At issue is the phone call where the Hubbells are discussing whether Mrs. Clinton would be “vulnerable” to a probe of over-billing. Here is the transcript of one part of the call, with one statement set out in bold:

MRS. HUBBELL: You didn’t actually do that, did you, mark up time for the client?

HUBBELL: Yes, I did. So does every lawyer in the country.

MRS. HUBBELL: That would be one thing that you would look into the firm for [in a countersuit].

HUBBELL: Suzy, you are getting ahead.

MRS. HUBBELL: No, I am just thinking out loud. That’s an area where Hillary would be vulnerable. Not unless she overbilled by time, right?

HUBBELL: No, you are talking and not listening. We are on a recorded phone. So I am trying to explain...

It’s not clear what Hubbell objects to in his wife’s characterization, or why she still doesn’t know even basic facts about why her husband is sitting in prison. But it is quite clear, in the segment printed in bold, that Mrs. Hubbell is not accusing Mrs. Clinton of over-billing. She states first that she is “just thinking out loud;” and it is clear to any listener, when she closes out with her question, that she doesn’t know whether or not Hillary has engaged in this conduct. (Hubbell tells her at length, later in the call, that Hillary has not over-billed.)

But that’s not the way NBC viewers heard the response on The Today Show on Friday, May 1, by the time Spin Doctor Lisa Myers got out her scissors and did a little surgical work on the tapes. Incredibly, this is the conversation that Myers’ viewers heard--a conversation in which Mrs. Hubbell makes a very different presentation altogether:

MYERS: At another point, Mrs. Hubbell talks about over-billing clients.

MRS. HUBBELL (on tape): That’s an area where Hillary would be vulnerable.

HUBBELL (on tape): No, you are talking and not listening. We are on a recorded phone.

And that is precisely the way the transcript was presented on the screen to NBC viewers as the tape rolls--with no ellipsis whatever to let viewers know that material has been left out. Not that this would have been an appropriate deletion even if an ellipsis had been used. Myers’ cut in the tape completely changes the meaning of the presentation by Mrs. Hubbell--changing it from a question about whether Mrs. Clinton would be vulnerable, to an assertion that she would be. The charade was even worse by that evening; in a tape played on MSNBC’s May 1 InterNight program (apparently taken from that evening’s NBC News), Myers doctors the conversation in a more egregious fashion:

MYERS: The Hubbells seem worried that Mrs. Clinton could be vulnerable on an issue that sent Hubbell to prison in the first place--overbilling clients.

MRS. HUBBELL: You didn’t actually do that, did you? Mark up time for the client? Did you?

HUBBELL: Yes, I did. So does every lawyer in the country.

MRS. HUBBELL: That’s an area that Hillary would be vulnerable.

HUBBELL: Suzy, you’re talking and you’re not listening. We are on a recorded phone, OK?

Again, there was absolutely no indication of any kind that the viewer was hearing an edited phone call. Viewer had every reason to think they were hearing the phone call just as it happened. And by the way, Myers’ opening statement is completely inaccurate, if you listen through to the end of this phone call. Hubbell makes it very clear, later on in this call, that Mrs. Clinton would not be vulnerable to charges of over-billing clients.

This is truly egregious, disgraceful misconduct--a grotesque deception of NBC viewers.

And yes, we’re especially amused because this is exactly what David Bossie bragged this week that even the Burton Committee didn’t do; Bossie stated on This Week, in his defense, that at least the Burton Committee never altered the tapes. As it turns out, the committee never had to make these deletions--they had enterprising journalists like Myers for that! NBC viewers heard badly doctored tapes, in which a question was changed into accusation. But the doctoring wasn’t done by GOP spinners--it was done by Dr. Myers herself!

4.6.5 Tim Russert (MSNBC) on Al Gore and John Kerry

Daily Howler:

We refer to Russert’s Meet the Press session with Gore on July 16, 2000, in which he performed one of the most awful turns in recent press corps history. As Russert neared the end of the session, he had already conducted an interview for which he’d be hailed as “prosecutorial.” But at the start of the show’s final segment, Russert unloaded the following attack—a presentation he ought to explain even now, some four years later:

RUSSERT (7/16/00): Mr. Vice President, when we talk to voters all across the country, they say they are looking for trustworthiness and a strong leader. A lot of comments made about your role in 1996 fund raising. And I'll give you a chance to talk about them. April 29, 1996, fund raiser at the temple, Hsi Lai—we can see it there on our screen—and following right behind you is one of your principal fund raisers, Maria Hsia, who was convicted of five felony counts. The essence of the debate or discussion seems to be that director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, and three other ranking Justice Department officials believe there should be an independent counsel, special counsel, to look into this matter, because they think you may have broken the law or lied under oath. And they point specifically to your denial that you knew that event was a fund raiser.

Yikes! According to Russert, the FBI chief and three other honchos thought Gore “may have broken the law or lied under oath.” And Russert was dropping this bomb on Gore just four months before a White House election, and just one month before he would go to L.A. to accept his party’s presidential nomination. But as of July 16, 2000, establishment Washington had already spent sixteen months dropping bombs on Candidate Gore, and most of their bombs, like Russert’s this day, were bombs they had simply invented. But no matter—Russert soon dropped his A-bomb again. “This is beating a dead horse,” Gore said, responding to Russert’s endless (and selective) charges. “No, no, it’s an open investigation,” Russert said. “When the director of the FBI and three Justice officials say it should be looked into, that’s why I’m asking. You deserve a chance to talk about it,” Gore’s host magnanimously said.

Russert’s overall performance this day was among the worst in Sunday talk history. We’ve discussed his outing in detail before (links below), but it’s hard to avoid recalling this session when reading his current self-impressed book—a memoir which tries to help readers see how balanced and fair Russert is.

What was so strange about Russert’s performance? According to Russert, four Justice officials—including the head of the FBI—thought Gore “may have broken the law or lied under oath” in connection with the Buddhist temple incident. They were “pointing specifically” to Gore’s denial that he knew the event was a fund-raiser. It’s hard to imagine a more serious charge, offered in the heat of a White House campaign. And excited scribes echoed the charge for weeks. Not much later, Bush took the White House after one of the closest elections in history.

But there was one major problem with Russert’s charge—a charge which produced so much heat. Did those officials actually think that Gore may have committed a crime? In fact, two of the four had repeatedly said something totally different. (The other two hadn’t discussed the matter.) On June 11, 2000, for example, one of the four, Robert Litt, had appeared on ABC’s This Week. “You have to remember that this is not a question really of whether the vice president committed a crime,” Litt said. “Nobody really thought that was the case.” Nobody thought that, he told Sam and Cokie! Appearing with Litt was Charles LaBella, another of the Justice officials to whom Russert would refer five weeks later. LaBella seemed to agree with Litt, and from April through June, he made similar statements on a string of major programs. On June 27, 2000, for example, he was asked about Gore and the Buddhist temple on Hannity & Colmes. “I have never said anything other than I thought an investigation was warranted,” he replied. “I also said I thought, at the end of the day, the investigation would wash out the allegations.” And LaBella specifically told Sean and Alan that Gore was unaware of Hsia’s illegal activities—the crimes which Russert suggestively cited. “The fact is, when I was there, there was no evidence that I was aware of that Vice President Gore was aware of any of the [illegal] contributions that went on at the temple,” the gumshoe debunkingly said.

Yikes! On show after show, LaBella said that he favored appointment of an independent counsel only as a “process matter;” he wanted the public to know that the charges had been investigated outside the Clinton Justice Department. Meanwhile, Litt had said the very same thing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It is important to remember that no one really thought that the Vice President ought to be prosecuted,” he told the committee on June 21. “The question was only whether the technical provisions of the Independent Counsel Act required that an independent counsel be appointed to make that decision.” In the weeks before Gore did Meet the Press, Litt and LaBella repeatedly made these statements in high-profile forums.

Yes, Labella and Litt repeatedly said it: “You have to remember that this is not a question really of whether the vice president committed a crime. Nobody really thought that was the case.” But here’s the most surprising part: Despite Russert’s damaging charge on July 16, LaBella had made similar statements to Russert himself, right on the April 2 Meet the Press! “We’ve got to put it in context for the American people because I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he told the squire of Nantucket that day. “What we were saying was there should be an investigation…[We were] not suggesting in any way, shape, or form that charges were going to be brought, or that charges were even appropriate.” But alas! When Gore did Meet the Press three months later, Russert said that four officials—including LaBella and Litt—thought he “may have committed a crime.” In fact, LaBella had said something totally different. He had said it right to Russert’s face, right there on Russert’s own program.

If fairness plays any role in press culture, Russert’s performance this day was appalling.

Daily Howler:

When Russert says it, we swing into action, assuming that it’s most likely wrong. And on Sunday’s Meet the Press, it happened again! Russert hit Dem spokesman Bob Kerrey with a familiar charge from the late campaign. After the bin Laden tape appeared last Friday, John Kerry had criticized Bush again, saying he had allowed bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora. But was Kerry playing fair? Or was he just talkin’ smack? At the outset of his Meet the Press session with Bob Kerrey, Russert tossed his grenade:

RUSSERT (10/31/04): In December of '01, Senator, John Kerry was on CNN after Tora Bora. He was being asked about this [bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora]. He said, “I think our guys are doing a superb job. I think they've been smart. I think the administration leadership has done it well. We're on the right track.” Why the change? Politics?

Russert’s insinuation was obvious. John Kerry had appeared on CNN “after Tora Bora”—and he had praised the way the operation was run! Bob Kerrey gave a weak, evasive reply (text below). So Russert jumped him again:

RUSSERT: But it was after Tora Bora and he seemed to be praising them back then and now he’s—

Bob Kerrey interrupted and evaded again. Viewers had heard Russert say it two times: Even after Tora Bora, John Kerry had praised the operation—but now he was saying something different. And two separate times, they had seen Kerry’s spokesman interrupt, hem and haw, and evade.

But Russert was wrong on his facts, as usual—and as usual, Kerry’s spokesman showed no sign of knowing it. This incident offers Dems one way (out of many ways) to examine the 2004 race.

Is it true, this claim we heard again and again in the campaign’s closing weeks? Did John Kerry go on Larry King “after Tora Bora” and praise the way the campaign there had been conducted? Actually, no—Kerry did no such thing; Russert’s statement on Sunday was plainly inaccurate. John Kerry’s Larry King appearance was on December 14, 2001. But guess what? This was not “after Tora Bora”—the operation there was still underway. Indeed, on the front page of that morning’s New York Times, John Kifner discussed the ongoing manhunt. His story ran beneath a hopeful headline: ALLIED FORCES SAY THEY'VE CORNERED OSAMA BIN LADEN:

KIFNER (12/14/04): American-backed forces believe that they have surrounded Osama bin Laden and the last of his hard-core fighters in a complex of caves between two valleys just south of here, a senior American military official said tonight.

While American officials say they still do not know Mr. bin Laden's exact location and acknowledge that he could still slip out of the country, commanders are increasingly confident that a growing number of American, British and anti-Taliban Afghan ground forces have hemmed in the leader of Al Qaeda...

That was the Times front-page report on December 14. That night, Kerry made his appearance on Larry King, where he offered general statements in response to general questions about events in Afghanistan (text below). The following morning, Kifner continued his page-one reporting about the Tora Bora campaign:

KIFNER (12/15/01): American and British commandos, operating behind a screen of local Afghan fighters, had the last remnants of Osama bin Laden's followers—and perhaps the terrorist mastermind himself—cornered here this morning in a narrow stretch of a ridge line, canyons and caves high in the White Mountains.

"Al Qaeda is finished," Cmdr. Hazarat Ali, the ranking Afghan tribal military leader, proclaimed triumphantly this afternoon, referring to Mr. bin Laden's terrorist network. "They are surrounded."

In Washington, the regional commander of American forces, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, said 300 to 1,000 enemy fighters were caught between the hammer of Commander Ali's forces and the anvil of Pakistani border patrols.

Was bin Laden among the surrounded forces? Tommy Franks wasn’t sure, but was hopeful:

KIFNER (12/15/01): General Franks said the fierceness of the battle near Tora Bora provided one indication that Al Qaeda forces might be shielding Mr. bin Laden.

But General Franks cautioned Friday that the Pentagon has received clashing information from surveillance aircraft, opposition sources and Americans forces that had made it difficult to pinpoint Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts. He also declined to rule out the possibility that Mr. bin Laden had escaped into Pakistan.

“You see all sorts of conflicting information,” General Franks said. "So it's probably not a good idea to say with some certainty where he is. But we know where our current fight is, and that's in the Tora Bora area.”

That was the Times front page the morning after Kerry’s appearance. “American officials have gleaned other snippets of intelligence suggesting that Mr. bin Laden remains holed up in a steadily shrinking region south of Tora Bora,” Eric Schmitt wrote in a separate article that day. After listing three signs that bin Laden was present, Schmitt quoted a “senior military officer” about the likelihood that bin Laden was cornered. “No single one of these things would be enough, but put all three together and you pay close attention,” the unnamed honcho said.

So Russert was wrong on his facts, as usual, when he lectured Bob Kerrey this Sunday. Indeed, on December 16, 2001—two days after John Kerry’s appearance on Larry King—the New York Times continued reporting indications that bin Laden had been surrounded.

...

Readers may remember Big Russ & Me, Russert’s best-selling testimonial to his own remarkable character. In it, the Nantucket Squire was careful to note that—just like any Boy Scout from Buffalo—he is always prepared:

RUSSERT (page 147): [T]he key to success is preparation. In journalism, it’s absolutely critical. Like everyone else, I have days when things go well, and days when they don’t. But one mistake I have never made is to show up unprepared for an interview.

Huh! So Russert must have known the time-line of Kerry’s remarks. He simply pretended that he didn’t!

4.6.6 Kellyanne Conway (C-SPAN Washington Journal) and Tucker Carlson (CNN) on Democrats

Daily Howler:

But back in Washington, it didn’t take long for the lying to start about Tuesday night’s event. On Wednesday morning’s Washington Journal, for example, Kellyanne Conway (formerly Fitzpatrick)—one of our most disingenuous pundits—made the following ludicrous statement. Try to believe that she said it:

CONWAY: I would commend the viewers’ attention to this morning’s Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which I thought did a bang-up job of reporting on this memorial service. Among the excerpts, Steve and Celinda, you’ll note that the Star-Tribune covers the fact that the people who were in attendance were told by screen when to cheer and when to jeer, and they were told to cheer when the Clintons and Ted Kennedy were displayed and they were told to jeer when Trent Lott and Rod Grams, former senator of Minnesota who lost in 2000, were displayed.

Amazing, isn’t it? Who on earth could really believe that attendees were “told by screen” when to jeer? The Star-Tribune, of course, had said no such thing; we provide the paper’s report below. But that didn’t keep the hatchet-heart Conway from lying to her host, Steve Scully. Nor was she kept from her favorite pastime—lying in the faces of viewers.

And Conway was hardly alone in her conduct. On Crossfire, Tucker Carlson quickly engaged in some pleasing embellishment. He offered this gonzo misstatement:

CARLSON: Walter Mondale. The political world is still reeling tonight from yesterday’s nauseating display in Minnesota, where a memorial service for the late Senator Paul Wellstone was hijacked by partisan zealots and turned into a political rally. Republican friends of Senator Wellstone were booed and shouted down as they tried to speak.

Clearly, Carlson knows a few things about “nauseating displays.” But were Republicans “booed and shouted down as they tried to speak?” To state the obvious, no, they were not. Maybe Carlson just didn’t know. Or maybe he was—yes—simply lying.

...

Steve and Celinda, “you’ll note” that nothing in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune said that attendees were directed, “by screen,” to engage in such conduct. That was just the latest example of Conway’s repetitive, gonzo dissembling. What does it mean when nonsense like this is larded all through our great discourse?

For the record, Conway went on to imply what many have said—that Lott left early because he was jeered. That turns out to be untrue too (and it wasn’t reported in the Star-Tribune). In today’s Star-Trib, Rochelle Olson reports:

OLSON: Daschle dismissed reports that Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., left because the memorial turned political. “It had nothing to do with it,” said Daschle. “He made a point of emphasizing that to me before he left.”

Daschle said Lott had a flight to catch, which was confirmed by a Lott aide Wednesday.

Final question: To what extent were Lott and Grams jeered? At THE HOWLER, we don’t have a clue. We watched almost all of Tuesday’s event, but we missed the very earliest segments, when the conduct would have occurred. But the Star-Tribune described the conduct on October 30, before it became a cause celebre. Lead writer: Chuck Haga:

HAGA: The biggest cheer was for Walter Mondale, the former senator and vice president who is expected to announce today that he will seek to take Wellstone’s place on the ticket. Moments later, scattered boos greeted Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., as he entered the arena. Lott smiled and waved.

In a crowd of 20,000, the Star-Tribune reported “scattered boos.” But don’t worry. Twenty-four hours later, Carlson had Republican speakers “shouted down” as CNN’s viewers were deceived once again. But this is how our discourse now works. Our question: Why are people who dissemble so freely hired to go on our air?

4.6.7 Joe Klein (Time) and Democrats

Thomas Lang at CJR Daily:

Already this week, Time's Joe Klein offers up a dubious revision (subscription required) of very recent history in his column about the Democrats and Social Security.

Klein writes:

Finally, there was the boorish and possibly unprecedented hooting of the President by Democrats during the [State of the Union] speech.

"No! No! No!" they shouted, inaccurately, when Bush asserted that the Social Security trust fund would, in a decade or so, start paying out more money than it takes in. If nothing is done, it surely will.

Beyond the fact that such "hooting" was far from unprecedented [eRiposte: Indeed, Republicans in Congress did it quite a lot against Clinton - evidence here], Klein's short-term memory must be playing tricks on him. Democrats did not start crying out "No! No! No!" when the president asserted that the trust fund would soon start paying out more money than it takes in. Rather, the Democrats accurately started calling out "No! No! No!" when the president inaccurately asserted that "By the year 2042, the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt." You can hear for yourself on the White House video of the address (Real Media or Windows Media) -- the moment in question is about 15 minutes into the speech.

As we have pointed out (along with several other reporters and watchdog organizations), the Social Security system cannot go "bankrupt" in the legal sense of the word. What Social Security's trustees predict will happen in the year 2042 is that the program's trust fund will be empty. Nonetheless, the system will still take in enough money to pay out 73 percent of benefits due to recipients under current law. That is neither "exhausted" nor "bankrupt," to use the president's words. A more legitimate description would be a comparison with an individual who fritters away all his savings, and finds that he has only $73 of income for every $100 of bills coming due.

Unfortunately, inaccurate columns like Klein's are often catalysts for an echo chamber of misguided history. Fortunately, audio speaks louder than print.

As Bob Somerby says:

The biggest problems with Klein’s Time column remain the ones we cited last week. He trashed those “boorish” Dems for an innocuous statement by Ron Reagan—a TV pundit who isn’t a Democrat. He called Harry Reid a “demagogue” for daring to make an obvious observation about the outlines of Bush’s plan. Worst of all, he baldly misstated the part of Bush’s speech which provoked derision from congressional Dems, pretending that Dems had tried to reject a perfectly accurate statement by Bush. But will the real Joe Klein stand up? On The Daily Show, he trashed Bush’s “amazing” plan, calling it Even-Worse-Than-Hillary! Four days later, his column appeared. Assignment: Read the transcript, then read the column. Then try to stitch them together.

Oh yes—one last point. Note Klein’s statement to Stewart: “Well, they’re going to lower our benefits...and the president said he would last night.” Four days later, he called Reid a “demagogue” for making this same observation.

As he also says:

How easy is to disinform voters? With fallen life-forms like Klein on call, it’s amazingly easy to do so. What’s the state of our current discourse? It isn’t just that mainstream journalists fail to challenge Bush’s misstatements. No, it’s now much worse than that—when Bush deliberately misleads the public, men like Klein simply pretend that he said something else! How easy is it to disinform voters? Many voters will read Klein this week, and for their trouble, he’ll lie in their face about what his Dear Leader said. (To read Thomas Lang’s superb treatment of Klein’s piece, you know what to do—just click here.)

Of course, no one should be surprised to see Klein misbehave so inexcusably. Here at THE HOWLER, we’ve chronicled Klein’s descent from journalist to pundit plutocrat over the course of the past five years, and because Klein is a powerful “mainstream journalist,” it’s been fairly lonely duty. But Klein just presents an especially advanced form of the “mainstream” press corps’ moral squalor. How easy is it for Bush to disinform voters? Here’s the way Nicholas Kristof began his column in last Saturday’s New York Times:

KRISTOF (2/5/05): Liberals are making a historic mistake by lining up so adamantly against Social Security reform.

It's impolite to say so in a blue state, but President Bush has a point: there is a genuine problem with paying for Social Security, even if it isn't as dire as Mr. Bush suggests.

Only Kristof can work so much nonsense into a two-sentence opening. Liberals are “lining up adamantly against Social Security reform,” he says, an opening claim he never quite explains, and he includes an idiot jibe about “blue states” in the process. But just how easy is it for Bush? For the previous week, the president had been parading about, making a series of bald misstatements about the nature of his “reform” and about the actual problem itself. Kristof’s response is to criticize Democrats, while appending a mild disclaimer. The problem “isn’t as dire as Mr. Bush suggests,” he says, in a column whose headline screams—as Klein’s headline does—that the “liberals” are mainly at fault. George Bush can disinform you as much as he likes with pious tools like Nick Kristof around.

Klein exhibits moral squalor; Kristof is simply a serial coward, a man who always finds a way to say that it’s mainly the Democrats’ fault. But all around the Washington press corps, his approach has prevailed in the past few weeks. How easy is it to disinform voters? Just try to find the big-time pundit complaining about Bush’s relentless deceptions! More likely, you’ll find the outright misstatements of a Joe Klein, or the slacker, Dem-bashing standards of Kristof. More likely, you’ll find the slacker moral values of a recent Washington Post editorial:

WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (2/1/05): [A] bit of hyperbole in the cause of generating responsible action on Social Security isn't the worst sin that is apt to be committed in the course of the coming debate.

After noting Bush’s misstatements, that was the editors’ closing judgment. A bit of hyperbole isn’t that bad! Post to Bush: Just keep on misleading.

Today, nine days later, the Post and the Times both pen editorials about Bush’s endless dissembling. And what a surprise! The Post, on page one, prints a long piece about the way the voters are misinformed about Social Security! Tomorrow, we’ll offer more thoughts about the press corps’ recent conduct. But how easy is it for Bush to mislead you? George Stephanopoulos sings McCain’s praise when the famous straight-talker lies right in his face—and Joe Klein, plutocrat, is there to lie too. It’s amazingly easy to mislead the rubes with men of this type all around.

4.6.8 Numerous major media outlets in the U.S. and Howard Dean

Let's start this section off with a simple example of the mainstream media's egregious journalistic malpractice on the topic of Howard Dean:

Murder by media: The Dean Scream 

BY EDWARD WASSERMAN

...

Still, it's never clear why some media wrongs are made into a big deal while others slip by. Take the CBS 60 Minutes report on Bush's military non-service: The story itself was old, the dubious evidence was of dubious importance, and the broadcast had no discernible effect. It became a major scandal anyway.

On the other end of the scale is an instance of clear-cut media wrongdoing that involved unquestionably fraudulent evidence and had dramatic consequences. This one, however, has gone largely unremarked. It is the famous incident involving Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean that is known as The Dean Scream.

And with Dean's recent appointment as Democratic Party chairman it's being hauled out as constituting the ceiling on whatever political ambitions he might still have, proof that he's shaky, unstable, unfit to serve -- Howard Dean's Chappaquiddick.

You've seen the clip. After Janet Jackson's ''wardrobe malfunction'' at the Super Bowl, it's the most famous news video of 2004. Dean is addressing campaign supporters after he lost the Iowa party caucuses in January. He's screaming for no apparent reason, practically shrieking, ticking off the states where he's vowing to continue the race. His face is red, his voice breaking. He looks deranged. It's a portrait of a man out of control. It's documentary evidence that Dean lacks the temperament for high office.

In fact the Dean Scream was a fraud, probably the clearest instance of media assassination in recent U.S. political history.

Last year, a young cable news producer attended one of our twice-yearly Ethics Institutes at Washington and Lee University, in which students and journalists gather to discuss newsroom wrongdoing. He brought two clips.

• The first was the familiar pool footage of Dean in Iowa. The candidate filled the screen, no supporters were visible. Crowd noise was silenced by the microphone he held, which deadened ambient sounds. You saw only him and heard only his inexplicable screaming.

• The second clip was the same speech taped by a supporter on the floor of the hall. The difference was stunning. The place was packed. The noise was deafening. Dean was on the podium, but you couldn't hear him. The roar from his supporters was drowning him out.

Dean was no longer scary, unhinged, volcanic, over the top. He was like the coach of a would-be championship NCAA football team at a pre-game rally, trying to be heard over a gym full of determined, wildly enthusiastic fans. I saw energy, not lunacy.

The difference was context. As psychiatrist R.D. Laing once wrote: We see a woman on her knees, eyes closed, muttering to someone who isn't there. Of course, she's praying. But if we deny her that context, we naturally conclude she's insane.

The Dean Scream footage that was repeatedly aired rests on a similar falsehood. It takes a man who in context was acting reasonably, and by stripping away that context transforms him into a lunatic.

But that clip was aired an estimated 700 times on various cable and broadcast channels in the week after the Iowa caucus. The people who showed that clip are far more technically sophisticated than I and had to understand how tight visual framing and noise-suppression hardware can distort reality.

True, some network news executives commented afterward that perhaps the footage was overplayed and offered the bureaucrat's favorite bromide, that hindsight is 20/20. But the media establishment has never acknowledged this as a burning matter of ethical harm.

4.6.9 Katharine Seelye (New York Times) and Al Gore

Daily Howler:

Gore plainly had not said "I was the one that started it all" at the forum where he mentioned Love Canal. On Wednesday evening, a tabloid talker had said so, straight out, on his normally inventive cable program. He was discussing Wednesday morning's piece in the New York Times which had started the chain of misquoting:

MATTHEWS (12/1): But of course the Times—of course, this always happens—the Times went further than they should have and they misquoted him [Gore], this is the paper of record, misquoted him, said, quote, "But I was the one that started it all" when in fact he said "That was the one that started it all." [Talker's emphasis]

Indeed, the talker had played tape of Gore at the forum, and Gore quite plainly had not said "I was the one who started it all." But there was Connolly the next morning—even Matthews had corrected it!—still highlighting the baldly false quote, and telling her readers it was just like other things Gore has said in the past. Just for the record, here is the passage from the Wednesday morning Times which started this idiocy off:

SEELYE (12/1): Later in the day, Mr. Gore, who suffered some embarrassment this year when he took credit for the development of the Internet, said he was the one who had first drawn attention to the toxic contamination of Love Canal. [Seelye's paraphrase is highly tendentious.] He was telling a school audience that each person can make a difference in the world [the hapless Seelye is surely proving that] and he recalled a child writing to him when he was in Congress about a hazardous-waste site in Tennessee.

He then added [only after material which Seelye has edited], "I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I had the first issue on that issue and Toone, Tenn.," he said. [Seelye does more editing here.] "But I was the one that started it all. [More material is deleted without indication.] And it all happened because one high school student got involved."

...Oh yes—one other thing, just for the record. How did the two papers handle the corrections? You know—how did the Timesand the Post tell their readers that what they had written was false? To use a word from Michiko Kakutani's review, the answer to that question is predictable. There has been no correction, in either paper, of the baldly false quote they put into print.

...One other point—even when Seelye seems to quote, she does so in a spirit of license. At one point, she "quotes" Gore's statement as follows:

SEELYE: "But I was the one that started it all. And it all happened because one high school student got involved."

In Gore's actual statement, four sentences separate the two Seelye uses (one of which she rewrites, of course). But she uses no ellipsis to alert her readers that material from Gore has been left out. (The use of the ellipsis was invented, of course, to protect us from writers like Seelye.) Simply put, a high school senior can't pass in work like this. Welcome to the New York Times, a talker's sad "paper of record."

4.6.10 Maureen Dowd and Sheryl Gay Stolberg (New York Times) and John Kerry

This is about the quote "“Who among us doesn't like Nascar?" that Dowd attributed to Kerry.

Daily Howler:

We finally have the full information. Yes, Maureen Dowd invented that fake NASCAR quote—the comical “quote” from pretentious old Kerry (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/21/04). And once Dowd invented the phony quotation, it spread through the great New York Times. It was repeated by Tierney; repeated by Stolberg; repeated by Egan; repeated by Rich—and Kerry was mocked for his pompous (fake) statement every single time that they did it. Five separate times in the past several months, Kerry was mocked in the Times for his comment. And oh yes, let’s repeat this—the “quotation” in question was phony. Kerry never made the statement in question. Maureen Dowd simply made the “quote” up.

We discussed this matter on September 21, and last week, we finally got the full facts. Did pretentious Kerry really say, “Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR?” According to Dowd, when Kerry made this laughable statement, it made him “come across like Mr. Collins, Elizabeth Bennet's pretentious cousin in ‘Pride and Prejudice.’” But wouldn’t you know it? Kerry never made the laughable statement! Writing in Slate, NPR’s Mike Pesca finally laid out the basic facts:

PESCA (9/28/04): Dowd wasn't at the event where Kerry supposedly said "Who among us ... " She learned about it in a casual conversation with Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who said Kerry said it on Feb. 17 at a union rally in Milwaukee.

What Kerry actually said at that rally was "There isn't one of us here who doesn't like NASCAR and who isn't a fan." Because of the roundabout way in which the quote got into print, it didn't get the normal vetting, i.e., playing back the tape. Stolberg now says it's possible that she made a mistake and that Kerry never said “who among us.”

Indeed, Pesca even provides a link to the tape of Kerry’s actual comment (you can still play it). Here’s the fuller transcript of what Kerry said at that union event:

KERRY (2/17/04): This president went to Florida just the other day to start the NASCAR races. There isn’t one of us here who doesn’t like NASCAR and who isn’t a fan, but I’ll tell you what—instead of just saying, “Gentlemen, start your engines” and during the race listening and looking at a race while 350 manufacturing jobs were lost and $171 million was—

Yes, that’s where Pesca’s tape shuts off. Fairly typically of the press corps, Pesca doesn’t even let us hear the end of Kerry’s substantive point. But one thing is perfectly clear from that tape. Kerry’s NASCAR reference was a trivial aside on his way to a larger point. And oh yes, one other thing. Kerry didn’t make the statement which made him seem like pretentious Mr. Collins. He didn’t make the statement Dowd put into quotes. As usual, Maureen Dowd made it up.

But oh, we’re sorry—Dowd didn’t make it up. No, let’s use pandering Pesca’s polite constructions, the constructions we see in the passage above, the constructions he employs as he fawns to authority. Actually, Dowd “leaned about” Kerry’s statement from Stolberg, “who said Kerry said it on Feb. 17 at a union rally in Milwaukee.” And you know what happened next! “Because of the roundabout way in which the quote got into print, it didn't get the normal vetting, i.e., playing back the tape.” Let’s put that into simple English. Dowd didn’t bother to check the quote—a “quote” which was simply too luscious to check. She simply put the “quote” into print, mocking Kerry for having said it, and four of her colleagues then followed suit. From July 25 through September 5, pompous Kerry was mocked four more times for having made this laughable statement. And you know how those Timesmen are! By August 22, the fake quote wasn’t funny enough any more, so Timothy Egan jacked it up just a tad. “Who among us doesn’t love NASCAR,” Kerry was now alleged to have said. Frank Rich also used the embellished version of the original fake in his September 5 column. The fake quote didn’t seem fake enough any more. The fake quote now needed improvement.

No, this latest fake quote didn’t have the effect of past Dowd-Rich inventions. One past and potent example: In December 1997, the highly inventive pair of scribes created the damaging Love Story incident; when Gore began his White House campaign in March 1999, the nonsensical story was widely adopted, and the press corps used it for the next twenty months as it waged its war against Clinton’s successor. But for some reason, the wider press corps showed restraint about the Times’ fake NASCAR quote. Although it ran five times in the Times, almost no one else picked the quote up. It never appeared in the Washington Post. The AP never ran the fake quote; neither did the Washington Times. In this case, as in so many others, our greatest paper was also our fakest. And by the way—just how fake are the stars at the Times? Drink in the irony—it’s just delish—as Stolberg, the person who attended the original event, recycled the fake, phony quote:

STOLBERG (7/30/04): To anyone who has listened to Mr. Kerry extemporize at length—who among us can forget his ''Who among us doesn't like Nascar?'' remark? —the thought of the Brahmin from Boston disdaining speechwriters and trying humor seemed odd, shall we say, for the most important address of his career.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Darlings, it was simply delish! “Who among us can forget Kerry’s remark,” Stolberg asked—the remark which Kerry never made! Indeed, Stolberg had been there to hear him not make it! Now, the phony reporter chose to pretend that she couldn’t get it out of her head. And yes—this is the way the fakes and the frauds work at the fake New York Times.

Question: Why do these people still work at the Times? More specifically, why isn’t someone like Maureen Dowd fired? Dowd has a long history of this kind of fakery—please don’t make us run through it here—but she just keeps making a joke of your lives with fake, phony stories about your leaders. And by the way—the Times has now known, for a good chunk of time, that Kerry never uttered this much-maligned “quote.” But so what? No correction has appeared. If you read these five articles on time, you’d still think that John Kerry said it. (Maybe that’s why the Hartford Courant ran a syndicated column by Steve Chapman mocking Kerry for the comment. When did the column run? Yesterday!)

...

And so, as he continues from the passage above, Pesca presents the eternal explanation. Dowd invented a quote about Kerry. But it’s OK. John Kerry asked for it!

PESCA (continuing directly): The Kerry campaign, though, can hardly cry foul, having helped create the intense competition over the "First Fan" title. Once you get the full context, Kerry seems to know more about sports than the Football Fans for Truth would have you believe, but less than a seasoned candidate should. For instance, Kerry's full NASCAR line might not have included "who among us," but it wasn't nearly as sharp as the president's cheesehead barb.

For entertainment purposes, you can read the rest of Pesca’s piece, as he explains that Kerry doesn’t speak quite as crisply as Bush does.

But just drink in that highlighted sentence. The Kerry campaign can hardly cry foul! Amazing, isn’t it? Dowd and her colleagues make up a fake quote. They’ve run the fake quote five times in their paper. Each and every time they run it, they mock Kerry for his pretentious, Brahmin-like ways. And yes—this is the way our White House hopefuls can lose in close elections. But get this—although Kerry never uttered the quote, the Kerry campaign can hardly cry foul! They can hardly complain about what the Times did!

4.6.11 David Brooks (New York Times) and Hillary Clinton

Daily Howler:

How reflexively fake is your Washington “press corps?” Let David Brooks of the NewsHour show you. Last Friday night, Jim Lehrer asked co-pundits Brooks and Mark Shields what they thought of Living History. The book had been in the stores all week. After some vague remarks by Shields, Brooks voiced a sad assessment:

BROOKS (6/13/03): The frustrating thing about the book to me is that like many politicians, including Ronald Reagan, she is incapable of having an interesting insight or an original thought. All these people who have these positions where they could really see something and say something interesting are just incapable of thinking in that way and the person who has the high power and also can write interestingly like a Winston Churchill or Teddy Roosevelt is so rare. So the book is kind of frustrating because it is frankly a little dull.

Sadly, Brooks announced that the book was dull. But then, we think we’ve mentioned the Hard Pundit Law—pundits must say that this book is no good. Every pundit knows what to say. Mrs. Clinton is lying. Or the book is quite dull. Or she just blames all the mess on her enemies.

But now, Lehrer turned back to Shields, and the crafty host had a trick question. Of course, as Hard Pundit Law requires, he received a Belittling Group Reply:

LEHRER (continuing directly): Have you read it?

SHIELDS: I haven’t, Jim.

LEHRER: Are you going to?

SHIELDS: It’s right behind the—

BROOKS: The Spanish-English dictionary.

SHIELDS: The Spanish-English dictionary or “The Franco I Knew.” No, I don’t. Jim, I really don’t. I don’t plan to.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Left and right mean nothing here; Shields and Brooks amused the rubes with their witty putdown. But now a thought occurred to Lehrer. The host turned back to David Brooks. And he asked Brooks if he’d read the book:

LEHRER (continuing directly): Have you read it? You talk like you you’ve read it.

“You talk like you’ve read it,” Lehrer said. But guess what? David Brooks had been faking:

LEHRER: Have you read it? You talk like you you’ve read it.

BROOKS: I read parts. I stood in the bookstore for about an hour looking at it; I did not buy it.

LEHRER: You went into the bookstore and picked it up and, what, skimmed it?

BROOKS: Simon & Schuster is now canceling my book contract but I have to tell the truth.

“I have to tell the truth,” Brooks said, moments after delivering his phony review—a review which, like all pundit reviews, voiced the press corps’ Key Approved Scripts. Meanwhile, can we ask the obvious question? Does anyone believe, for even a minute, that David Brooks “stood in the bookstore for about an hour” thumbing through the new Clinton book? Let’s face it. When you bend the truth the way this gang does, pretty soon every word from your mouth is a slick confabulation. We sometimes wonder why a man like Lehrer lets these Jayson Blair types on his show.

But then, all over the “press corps” we saw the same thing; we saw fake, phony pundits smashing a book which they hadn’t quite managed to read. No, they hadn’t read the book—but they knew the corps’ talking-points. They told us how dull this tiring book was—so dull that they hadn’t yet read it.

4.6.12 George Will (Washington Post) on Al Gore/Democrats

Daily Howler:

When the going gets tough, George Will starts dissembling. On Sunday, his column complained about "the mendacity of Al Gore's pre-election campaign." It also slammed Gore's "serial mendacity." And it mentioned Gore's "corrupting hunger for power;" "he is, strictly speaking, unbelievable," Will said. He is also a "dangerous man," for whom aides "do their reckless work." That is remarkably overwrought rhetoric. But then the columnist tried to support it. Here was his sad first example:

WILL (paragraph 3): [Gore] staggered Bill Bradley in an Iowa debate by asking why Bradley voted against flood relief for Iowa. Bradley voted for $4.8 billion of relief, and opposed—as did the Clinton-Gore administration—only an amendment to add $900 million.

Slick, oh so slick. Unfortunately for Will's position, the Clinton administration did support the supplemental bill in the end, and Bradley did vote against the bill. As we have noted before, Gore's question to Bradley in the January Iowa debate explicitly referenced the second vote, on the $900 million. And Bradley had voted against it. But back in January, when the debate occurred, pundits began reciting the Bradley camp's spin. They said that Gore had somehow misled with his question, and that Bradley had merely forgotten how he voted on flood relief. In fact, Bradley did vote against the $900 million, and the premise of Gore's question was explicit and accurate. But spinners still distort this point, including, alas, the shameless Bradley, appearing on This Week last month (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/2/00).

Will was spinning about the flood relief query. But if you want to be spun in various ways, just read his entire column. Get spun on Palm Beach, for example:

WILL (6): The Democratic Party dotes on victims, but what, exactly, victimized those 19,000 Palm Beach County voters who, as almost 15,000 in the county did in 1996, botched their ballots by punching two candidates for president? It is absurd to say it is "unfair" to do what the law requires—disallow improperly marked ballots. And it is sinister when Democratic voters, after leaving polling places where they could have asked for guidance or fresh ballots, suddenly "remember" that they might have misread their "butterfly" ballots.

Start first with Will's numbers of spoiled ballots (15,000 in 1996 vs. 19,000 this year). It has been reported, again and again, that the 15,000 spoiled ballots in 1996 included ballots where two candidates were punched and ballots rejected for no punch at all. The corresponding number in this election is 29,000 spoiled ballots, not 19,000. The change in numbers make no real difference, but that doesn't seem to bother Will. Frankly, we're not sure he even knows who he is; he seems to embroider, embellish and exaggerate even where the real facts would be just as good! Meanwhile, he suggests that the Palm Beach problem was dreamed up after the fact; that is, of course, a complete affront to the well-established record. It has been widely documented—over and over—that confusion about the Palm Beach ballot was reported throughout Election Day. The fact that voters reported confusion doesn't mean they should get a revote. But Will's column misstates basic facts. This occurs, of course, in a furious piece asserting that Gore is a serial liar!

We don't have the time to hit all Will's misstatements. But here's one more worth noting:

WILL (8): The Palm Beach ballots were designed by a Democrat and approved by a process that included Democrats, and sample ballots were published in newspapers and mailed to voters—all without eliciting pre-election complaints.

It makes a wonderful story. Unfortunately, if you've seen the sample ballot from the Palm Beach Post, it looked nothing like the actual ballot. The presidential candidates were listed in one column, eliminating the source of the ballot confusion. But writers like Will "keep spin alive," telling readers the stories they like.

4.6.13 Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post) [who is perhaps the most pathological liar in the Washington Post payroll] - on Howard Dean:

Daily Howler:

When will the Washington Post fire its dissembling columnist, Charles Krauthammer? And one other question obtains: What are the paper’s obligations to its misled readers?

THE POST’S LATEST LYING LIAR: Charles Krauthammer is deeply dishonest. In fact, the Washington Post should fire him, now. In a fire-breathing column in this morning’s Post, Krauthammer tells the world what a crackpot that Howard Dean is. To promote his point, Krauthammer presents a “transcript” from Monday’s night’s Hardball—a “transcript” he has artfully doctored. Here’s how the scribe presents one Q-and-A from Monday night’s Hardball program:

KRAUTHAMMER:
Chris Matthews: “Would you break up Fox?”
Howard Dean: “On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but….I don’t want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not….What I’m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.”

Wow! “On ideological grounds,” Howard Dean wants to break up Fox! According to Krauthammer, this exchange shows that Dean “is now exhibiting symptoms of a related illness, Murdoch Derangement Syndrome (MDS), in which otherwise normal people believe that their minds are being controlled by a single, very clever Australian.”

Of course, Krauthammer was playing Post readers for fools. Because we’ve dealt with people like Krauthammer for years, our reaction to this “transcript” was virtually preordained; our eyes were drawn to those suspicious ellipses which broke up Krauthammer’s pleasing text. And so we did what we’ve done for years—we checked the official transcript. And yes, we found what we frequently do; Krauthammer was playing Post readers for fools. The key words in the transcript are [LAUGHTER], which Krauthammer deftly removed:

OFFICIAL MSNBC TRANSCRIPT:

MATTHEWS: Rupert Murdoch has the Weekly Standard. It has got a lot of other interests. It has got the New York Post. Would you break it up?

DEAN: On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but—

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?

DEAN: I don’t want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not, because, obviously—

MATTHEWS: Well, how about large media enterprises?

DEAN: Let me—yes, let me get—

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: The answer to that is yes. I would say that there is too much penetration by single corporations in media markets all over this country. We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP.

MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You’re going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?

DEAN: What I’m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.

So you see what Krauthammer’s ellipses removed—and you see how men like Krauthammer subvert your democracy. As anyone watching this program would know, Dean was joking when he made his statement about wanting to break up Fox. But then, anyone who read the transcript would know that too—the transcript records audience laughter two times, and shows Matthews asking Dean to “be serious.” But men like Krauthammer hate your democracy; they want to reduce you to the status of rubes. So the creative man began cutting-and-pasting, making you think that Dean had been serious. The Washington Post should do the right thing. They should fire Charles Krauthammer—now.

Of course, there’s little chance that the Post will do so. The Post established its very low standards back in March 1999, when Michael Kelly dissembled so hard about Al Gore and those troubling farm chores. As we pointed out at the time, it was clear that the Kelly had deliberately misled Post readers. But the mighty Post kept their man on the job. Why should they do different now?

How completely fraudulent is Krauthammer? If the media really was liberally biased and if there was any respect media outlets had for journalism, people like him would not exist on payroll. See some letters that Bob Somerby published about the vile column above.

Dallas Morning News, 12/14/03
Former psychiatrist, former Mondale speechwriter and current right-wing hawk Charles Krauthammer “diagnoses” a mental disorder in Howard Dean based on Dr. Dean’s speculation that the president may be hiding something by refusing to cooperate with the 9-11 investigation committee. In a puzzling tangent, he then claims Barbra Streisand wrote a memo linking the logging industry to “Iraq a country that is two-thirds desert.” You may see this memo at www.drudgereport.com/strei1.htm and note that Mr. Krauthammer is untruthful as to the authorship of the memo and the silly claim that it stated a logging interest in Iraq. Dr. K proceeds to identify Dr. Dean as having “no detectable sense of humor,” then alters a transcript of MSNBC Hardball by deleting “laughter” annotations, so that he can claim that humorous banter initiated by Chris Matthews was a serious comment on breaking up a news network. The public is clearly safer with Dr. Krauthammer as a right-wing columnist, but I would suggest to him that he dig out a copy of DSM-IV and read up on “narcissistic personality disorder.” This may be a case of psychiatrist, diagnose yourself.
Joe Budd, Big Spring

The Raleigh News & Observer, 12/14/04
A clear sign of a morally bankrupt political position is when its defenders stoop to “diagnosing” its critics with mental illness, as did Charles Krauthammer in his Dec. 5 column, “Shrink-rapping Dean.” This is an especially egregious approach by someone trained as a psychiatrist, as Krauthammer is.
On the one hand, under the guise of humor, he is nonetheless attempting to “medicalize” political criticism, which as he should very well know, is the same tactic used in Stalin-era Russia to imprison political dissidents in mental hospitals. On the other hand, he is doing a grave disservice to people with real mental illness, a physiologically based medical condition that causes great suffering and hardship. This trivializes a serious, and too often stigmatized health condition, again, as he should know as a former psychiatrist….
Janet R. Nelson, Raleigh

Newport News Daily Press, 12/12/03
As a columnist, Charles Krauthammer has the right to interpret events in whatever way he chooses. However, his Dec. 8 column (“The delusions of front-runner Howard Dean”) is an exercise in selective reporting, revealed by the ellipses he used to truncate Howard Dean's response to a question from MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.
Looking at the transcript from the Dean interview, available at msnbc.com, it is plain that Dean’s initial response was a joke, as indicated by the laughter of the audience, the interviewer and Dean himself. Further, those ellipses erase several minutes of give and take in which Dean lays out his thoughtful position on concentrated media ownership.
This tactic reminds me of the promoters of dud movies, who can pull any complimentary adjective from a review and trumpet it in their ads, regardless of the overall negative review. By stringing elliptical phrases together and by placing them out of context, anyone can prove anything. And who among us has the time and resources to track down every original quote?
This is precisely the kind of abuse and manipulation that passes for national journalism these days. If the Daily Press continues to accept Krauthammer’s column knowing his practices, it casts doubt on the newspaper’s own standards for reporting.
Andrew Smith, Williamsburg

4.6.14 Ceci Connolly (Washington Post) and Al Gore

Daily Howler:

But this week, incredibly, Ceci Connolly (and the Post) and Katharine Seelye (and the Times) have managed to achieve that distinction. In the process, they've successfully ginned up the latest "scandal"—one the talker is blabbing all over the air. Here was Connolly, telling a story she likes, in the Washington Post Thursday morning:

CONNOLLY (12/2) (paragraph 1): Add Love Canal to the list of verbal missteps by Vice President Gore.

(2) The man who mistakenly claimed to have inspired the movie "Love Story" and to have invented the Internet says he didn't quite mean to say that he discovered a toxic waste site when he said at a high school forum Tuesday in New Hampshire: "I found a little place in New York called Love Canal."

(3) Gore went on to brag about holding the "first hearing on that issue" and said "I was the one that started it all."

That short dispatch spills over with errors, as we will detail anon. But here's the newest one: Gore plainly had not said "I was the one that started it all" at the forum where he mentioned Love Canal. On Wednesday evening, a tabloid talker had said so, straight out, on his normally inventive cable program. He was discussing Wednesday morning's piece in the New York Times which had started the chain of misquoting:

MATTHEWS (12/1): But of course the Times—of course, this always happens—the Times went further than they should have and they misquoted him [Gore], this is the paper of record, misquoted him, said, quote, "But I was the one that started it all" when in fact he said "That was the one that started it all." [Talker's emphasis]

...

So that was Seelye, on Wednesday morning. Wednesday night, Matthews corrected the highlighted statement, playing tape that showed what Gore plainly said. But the next morning, Connolly continued to tell the story she liked, building a story around the bogus quote, and mixing it in with statements about Love Story that are baldly, demonstrably false.

Despite a talker's correction of the plain mi