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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 misquote, this incident has
become a new pseudo-scandal; last night, for example, the talker
came back to Love Story/Love Canal at least three
separate times on his show. You will almost surely hear this
incident characterized and spun repeatedly in coming weeks. As such,
the sequence of events that unfolded this week are a perfect anatomy
of a press pseudo-scandal, in which quotes are edited, spun, and
invented to let journalists tell stories they like. The five
paragraphs we've quoted from Seelye and Connolly are simply full of
demonstrable error—plain, flat-out deceptions of readers that the
hapless scribes happily recite.
More
on Connolly and Al Gore:
The
talker cited Love Story throughout his show. Two minutes
after this comment, for example, he asked a guest: "What is it,
this Zelig guy who keeps saying I was the main character in Love
Story," and he mockingly asked, "[W]ho played Al Gore
in the Love Canal story? We know Ryan O'Neal played him in Love
Story [laughter]." Just past the halfway point of the show,
he promo-ed the fact that he would soon ask two more guests about
Love Canal and Love Story; sure enough, speaking with the
guests about ten minutes later, he brought up Love Story
again. In the discussion, Gore was accused of "delusion"
and was said to be living in "fantasy land." On his
program the night before, Matthews had said that, in the future,
"We will have to talk about the psychological tendencies
involved" in Gore's alleged conduct concerning Love Story
and Love Canal. Clearly, serious conclusions are being drawn about
Gore's alleged comments on Love Story. One might almost
imagine that a serious press corps would feel obliged to get basic
facts right.
But that
is the lingering problem. Pundits have shown an undying love for Love
Story—they have brought it up time and again, for two years.
But there's one big problem with the Love Story tale—what
has been repeatedly alleged is just false. In the Post, Connolly had
described Gore as "[t]he man who mistakenly claimed to have
inspired the movie 'Love Story.'" But the two claims lodged in
this statement are both false. For all the press corps' love for
this story, the story has been simply wrong for two years. It
represents one of the longest-running misstatements of fact in the
sad gong show we now call our "public discourse."
The Love
Story nonsense began in late 1997—invented by a Maureen Dowd
column—and in the aftermath of that piece, Melinda Henneberger
wrote a lengthy story on the topic for the Sunday New York Times
(12/14/97). No one has ever disputed the facts she reported; pundits
have simply preferred to ignore them. But what Henneberger reported,
two years ago, contradicts both the things Connolly still says.
First
question: Did Gore "inspire Love Story?" As part of
her research, Henneberger interviewed Erich Segal, who had known
Gore at Harvard while writing Love Story. And sorry, folks,
we hate to upset you, but here's Henneberger, on what Segal said:
HENNEBERGER:
The character of the preppy Harvard hockey player Oliver Barrett
4th was modeled on both Mr. Gore and his college roommate, the
actor Tommy Lee Jones.
According
to Segal, Jones had been the model for the "macho athlete with
the heart of a poet" part of the character, and Gore had been
the model for the young college student with a highly accomplished
father to live up to.
So Gore had
been a "model" for the part. Parsing pundits will
doubtless note: none of this means that Gore "inspired" Love
Story. But it also became clear in Henneberger's piece that Gore
had made no such claim. Gore's meaningless remarks about Love
Story had been made on a long, late-night plane ride, in a
conversation with two respected reporters—Rick Berke of the New
York Times, and Karen Tumulty of Time. Henneberger
interviewed both reporters. Sorry, folks, we hate to disappoint you,
but here's Tumulty's account of what Gore said:
HENNEBERGER:
"[Gore] said Segal had told some reporters in Tennessee that
it was based on him and Tipper," Ms. Tumulty said. "He
said all I know is that's what he told reporters in
Tennessee."
Berke
agreed that Gore attributed the story to reporters in Tennessee. And
sure enough, Segal confirmed that there had been such a story, in
the Nashville Tennessean. Segal told Henneberger that the reporter
"just exaggerated" a bit, playing "the local-hero
angle;" for example, Segal said the reporter added Tipper Gore
into the mix, though she had not been the model for Love Story's
other lead character in the tale, Jenny Cavilleri.
Incredible,
isn't it, that this sort of nonsense inspires our press two years
later? That on the basis of absolute idiocy like this, a major
public figure is called "delusional" on TV, and a reporter
who can't even get simple quotes right calls his character into
question? Two years later! Welcome to the riot of nonsense
and spin we laughingly call our public discourse—and welcome to
the world of Ceci Connolly, whose grisly work for the Washington
Post has been on this level all year.
But the
facts of this story, as reported two years ago, are, sad to
say, all too simple. Gore told reporters that he had seen a
newspaper story saying he and Tipper were the models for Love
Story. That's "all I know," Gore had said. And
everyone agrees such a story did exist. In a rational world, that
would end the silly tale, but for the record, Segal said that Gore
and Jones were the two models for the Ryan O'Neal part. Now
read again what Connolly wrote—two years later—and raise
a cup to our great public discourse:
CONNOLLY:
[Gore] mistakenly claimed to have inspired the movie "Love
Story."
Say
hello to our brilliant celebrity press corps, 1999 style.
Those
are the facts about this story, a story the press corps has pimped
around for two years. Again this week, Connolly misstates the basic
facts, and unlicensed psychiatrists examine Gore's psyche. The facts
of this story are simple to state—although they're embarrassing
facts for the Washington press corps. But isn't it time that the
press corps corrected its errors? Shouldn't these simple facts
finally be told?
4.6.15
Carl Cameron (Fox News) and John Kerry
eRiposte
(citing Josh Marshall):
It started
here.
If you go to the front
page of the Fox News site, there's a link right there up front to
"Trail
Tales: What's that Face" [eRiposte note: this has since
been removed - but read on].
Link
through and you find this ...
Rallying
supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in
Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed the
Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.
"Didn't
my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!"
Kerry said Friday.
With
the foreign-policy debate in the history books, Kerry hopes to
keep the pressure on and the sense of traction going.
Aides
say he will step up attacks on the president in the next few
days, and pivot somewhat to the domestic agenda, with a focus on
women and abortion rights.
"It's
about the Supreme Court. Women should like me! I do
manicures," Kerry said.
Kerry
still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his
performance was strong enough to rally his base and further
appeal to voters ready for a change.
"I'm
metrosexual — he's a cowboy," the Democratic candidate
said of himself and his opponent.
A
"metrosexual" is defined as an urbane male with a
strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money
on his appearance and lifestyle.
Did
Kerry really say that stuff? Stuff that sounds like classic winger
parody? I looked around on google and no other reporters seem to
have gotten those choice quotes from Senator Kerry. A source on
the Kerry campaign told me Kerry certainly didn't say anything
remotely like that.
So
what's the story from Fox? Are these quotes real? Made up?
Unidentified parody? Straight-up fabrications?
Josh did
some checking and found that the quotes mysteriously
disappeared later.
Now
Fox has pulled the article from the front page without
explanation. And on the article
itself the passages I quoted in the post
below have all been removed -- again, without explanation.
Then he confirmed
that the quotes were
fabrications:
Late
this afternoon I spoke to Fox spokesman Paul Schur who told me the
following ...
“Carl
[Cameron] made a stupid mistake which he regrets. And he has been
reprimanded for his lapse in judgment. It was a poor attempt at
humor.”
So the
Fox reporter covering the Kerry campaign puts together this
Kerry-bashing parody right out of the RNC playbook with phony
quotes intended to peg him as girlish fool and somehow it found
its way on the Fox website as a news item.
Imagine
that.
Then Faux
published
a retraction:
Fox
News has now posted a retraction
and apology for the piece with the fabricated
Kerry quotes ...
Earlier
Friday, FOXNews.com posted an item purporting to contain
quotations from Kerry. The item was based on a reporter’s
partial script that had been written in jest and should not have
been posted or broadcast. We regret the error, which occurred
because of fatigue and bad judgment, not malice.
The
only retraction doesn't name the reporter in question, Carl
Cameron, which was noted in the statement
Fox News gave TPM this afternoon.
Josh
then pointed
out something more about Carl Cameron and his coverage of Kerry
in the past:
On
Monday Kurtz discussed a study by the Center for Media and Public
Affairs that showed that Fox News coverage of Kerry was
overwhelmingly negative.
Kurtz
got these quotes from Cameron's boss Brit Hume ...
Brit
Hume, Fox's Washington managing editor, whose "Special
Report" was examined by the study, says he's surprised by
the anti-Kerry findings. "Our day-in, day-out coverage by
Carl Cameron has been extremely fair to Kerry, and the Kerry
campaign has recognized this," he says.
"We
did a lot on the Swift Boat Veterans. We thought it was a
totally legitimate story and found it an appalling lapse by many
of our competitive news organizations that were treating that
story like it was cancerous." But even there, Hume says,
"we were abundantly fair to John Kerry's side."
"Extremely
fair" to Kerry? "Abundantly fair" about the Swift
Boat stuff?
The
same reporter who made up these 'Kerry
quotes'?
"Women
should like me! I do manicures."
"Didn't
my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!"
"I'm
metrosexual — [Bush's] a cowboy."
Kurtz
could do us all a favor and get Hume on the horn to see if he's
still willing to call Cameron "extremely fair to Kerry."
And what
happened to Cameron afterwards?
On President George W. Bush's second Inauguration Day, FOX News
managing editor and chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume
announced that FOX News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes had promoted
Carl Cameron from chief political correspondent to chief White House
correspondent and Jim Angle from senior White House correspondent to
chief Washington correspondent. Media Matters for America has
documented numerous instances of inaccurate, incomplete, and
distorted reporting by both Cameron and Angle. For example:
Carl Cameron has:
- fabricated
statements from Senator John Kerry during the 2004 presidential
race as part of a "parody" of the Democratic
candidate; he included them in an October 1 "Trail
Tales" report on the FOX News website. The article was
removed soon afterwards, but an archived version is available here;
- reported
that Democrats favor a "stonewall strategy" on Social
Security and applied various inaccurate labels to the candidates
vying for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairmanship;
- inaccurately reported
that Bush never said "mission accomplished";
- falsely claimed
that in a September 20, 2004, speech, Kerry referred to Bush as
a "warmonger who wants a perpetual state of war around the
world"; and
- misstated
facts about Democratic campaign rallies.
4.6.16
Brit Hume (Fox News) and John Kerry
Let's start by pointing
out that Hume continued
to pimp the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, despite
incontrovertible proof that they were an out-and-out
fraud operation comprising of a group of pathological liars.
[Imagine what would have happened if Dan Rather had done the same
thing to George Bush.]
Let's offer another
example about this paragon of fraud at Fox News.
Media
Matters:
MSNBC
host Keith Olbermann and former Social Security associate
commissioner James Roosevelt Jr. examined how FOX News Washington
managing editor Brit Hume and other pundits distorted a quote by
Roosevelt Jr.'s grandfather, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in order to
claim that the former president would have supported privatizing
Social Security.
During
their discussion, Olbermann referenced the distortions by Hume,
nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan administration
official William J. Bennett, and Wall Street Journal
columnist John Fund -- which Media Matters for America has documented.
Roosevelt Jr. echoed
Air America Radio host Al Franken's call for Hume to resign, saying
that "he rearranged those sentences in an outrageous
distortion, one that really calls for a retraction, an apology,
maybe even a resignation."
From the
February 15 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:
OLBERMANN:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, at minimum, midwife to
the Social Security system, would have endorsed President Bush's
plan to partially privatize it. Our third story on the Countdown
-- that is the claim, anyway, of at least three conservative
commentators and several Republican congressmen. But it turns out
those guys pretty much just made it up. In a moment, FDR's
grandson, himself a former associate commissioner for Social
Security, joins us to discuss the fraud.
First,
the background. It began on television with Brit Hume of FOX News,
taking quotes from the three principles of security for our old
people that FDR expressed to Congress on January 17, 1935. Not all
the quotes, mind you, just some of them, and out of context. I'm
reading from the transcript
on the FOX website of Mr. Hume's newscast of February 3rd.
"It turns out," Hume said, "that FDR himself
planned to include private investment accounts in the Social
Security program when he proposed it. In a written statement to
Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plan
should include, 'Voluntary contributory annuities, by which
individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in
old age,' adding that government funding, 'ought to ultimately be
supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.'"
As
promised, I'm joined now by James Roosevelt Jr., now senior vice
president of Tufts Health Plan, formerly associate commissioner
for Social Security, and, of course, grandson of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Great -- thanks for your time tonight, sir.
ROOSEVELT:
Nice to be with you, Keith.
OLBERMANN:
The argument is that Mr. Hume more or less twisted this entirely
around. Can you explain it in layman's terms?
ROOSEVELT:
I think I can. And it's really quite an amazing distortion. What
they did was that they took a very simple statement that my
grandfather made, which said that Social Security, when it was
enacted almost 70 years ago, ought to first of all have a part
that took care of people who didn't have time to build up a Social
Security account. And the government should fund that out of
general revenues.
Secondly,
Social Security should have a self-sustaining portion that was
funded by contributions from both employers and employees. That's
what we know and have known for 70 successful years as Social
Security.
And
thirdly, those who wanted and who needed to, as many -- almost
everybody -- did, to have a higher income and retirement, should
have accounts where they could pay in voluntarily, in addition to
the guaranteed Social Security benefit.
And
then my grandfather said that eventually, the self-sustaining
portion of the guaranteed insurance would phase out the
government-paid portion. That's because we would have a fully
functioning Social Security system as we do today.
What
Brit Hume and others have done is take portions of that paragraph
and rearrange it so that it says something entirely different from
what he intended.
OLBERMANN:
At the risk of doing a little too much reading, just to put it on
the historical record, let me read the entire quote from which
those quotes were pulled. The ones Mr. Hume pulled, only that he
wanted to pull:
"In
the important field of security for our old people, it seems
necessary to adopt three principles: First, noncontributory
old-age pensions for those who are now to old build up their own
insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps 30 years to
come fund will have to be provided by the states and the federal
government to meet these pensions.
"Second,
compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a
self-supporting system for those now young and for future
generations.
"Third,
voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative
can increase the annual amounts received in old age." That's
one of the Hume quotes there. "It is proposed that the
federal government assume one-half of the cost of the old pension
plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting
annuity plans."
So,
where he raised the prospect of self-supporting annuity plans --
that was not to replace Social Security, it was to replace the
money the government was contributing to Social Security for the
people born in, say, 1870 and earlier. Is that about it?
ROOSEVELT:
That is exactly it. And he rearranged those sentences in an
outrageous distortion, one that really calls for a retraction, an
apology, maybe even a resignation.
OLBERMANN:
He may have been the only news reporter who did that. The other
people who have made the comment on it were people like William
Bennett, also in one of the live circus programs that they have
over on FOX, and John Fund from The Wall Street Journal
online political commentary Web site. Of course, the president
referenced this vaguely in the State of the Union. What do you
make, generally speaking, of what we might fairly call revisionist
history?
4.6.17
Bill O'Reilly (Fox News) on Florida 2000/Paul Krugman and other topics
Media
Matters:
After a
familiar diatribe against The New York Times for alleged
liberal bias and deception on the July 20 edition of FOX News
Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill
O'Reilly threw down the gauntlet: "[E]nough's enough, and I
am issuing this challenge directly to The New York Times. I
will debate any Times editor or columnist on the Charlie
Rose PBS program. ... So I'm calling these sleazy guys out.
We'll let you know what happens. Do you think they'll show up? Yeah,
sure." But despite his initial skepticism, O'Reilly announced
on August 5 that "far-left columnist Paul Krugman" of The
New York Times had accepted the challenge. The O'Reilly-Krugman
debate aired on the August 7 edition of CNBC's Tim Russert.
During
the show, O'Reilly repeated several lies and distortions familiar
from his radio and FOX News Channel programs and added some new
ones. The complete broadcast of the debate -- which was recorded
earlier in the week -- also revealed that O'Reilly, on his August 4
radio show, mischaracterized the debate when he claimed, "[H]e's
[Krugman] not strong enough to stand up to me. And I didn't take any
mercy on him, I have to say."
Lie
#1: "[H]e predicted the Bush tax cuts would lead to a deeper
recession"
...
Lie
#2: States are overwhelmed with federal education dollars
...
Lie
#3: Bush won Florida "no matter what"
...
Lie
#4: "We put more liberal voices on the air than
conservatives"
...
Bonus
Radio Factor Lie: "He's just -- he's not strong enough to
stand up to me"
[eRiposte
note: Click on the URL to see the details]
4.6.18
Chris Matthews (MSNBC) and Bill/Hillary Clinton
Daily
Howler:
The
Daily Howler
January 28, 1999
Chris
Matthews
Hardball
Dear
Chris:
I’m
writing to ask that you correct certain statements you made on the
January 7 Hardball.
On that
program, Elizabeth Holtzman made the following statement, referring
to Julie Hiatt Steele’s ongoing conflict with Kathleen Willey:
HOLTZMAN:
Let me just make a point to you. Remember, Linda Tripp also
contradicts Kathleen Willey.
Holtzman
went on to address another point. But you broke in, saying this
about her comment on Tripp:
MATTHEWS:
Linda Tripp, by the way, before it sinks in any deeper with the
viewing audience, Linda Tripp did not contradict the testimony of
Kathleen Willey. She said she came from the president with her shirt
half off--
HOLTZMAN:
She sure did. She sure did. She said if you remember the
conversation with Monica Lewinsky, she said Kathleen Willey was
lying. So she did.
You and
Bill Sammon went on to challenge what Holtzman had said about Tripp:
SAMMON:
There was a contradiction, but it was more of a, what kind of an
attitude did Kathleen Willey have when she came out of the office--
MATTHEWS:
It was a subjective assessment of what Kathleen Willey’s
subjective reaction was to the president’s, whatever he did to her
that left her shirt half off. And you know that, that was the
distinction. She was not impeaching her testimony. She was saying
she may not have been as angry about it as she seemed to be later.
In
closing the segment, you and Holtzman skirmished further about her
statement on Tripp:
HOLTZMAN:
...I’m paraphrasing, but in essence [Tripp] said that if Kathleen
Willey is saying this wasn’t voluntary, she wasn’t telling the
truth. That’s the best of my memory about it.
MATTHEWS:
That’s not good memory. That’s not good enough memory. Because I
remember it clearly.
HOLTZMAN:
Well, your memory isn’t necessarily better than anyone else’s,
is it?
MATTHEWS:
Well in this case, I’m an expert.
But the
truth is, Elizabeth Holtzman was absolutely correct in what she said
about Tripp. Holtzman referred to one of the taped telephone calls
between Lewinsky and Tripp. But before the Starr grand jury, in
detailed, sworn testimony, Tripp severely contradicted Kathleen
Willey’s account of her Oval Office encounter with President
Clinton. Tripp testified that Willey had pursued a flirtation with
Clinton since the time she arrived at the White House. Tripp said
that Willey had speculated about a house where she and Clinton could
be alone without Secret Service interference. She said that Willey
deliberately attended events where she would encounter Clinton,
dressing in an appealing manner; she said that Willey had set up the
Oval Office meeting in large part to see if her flirtation with
Clinton could advance. And she told the grand jury that, by
pre-arrangement, Willey came to Tripp’s office directly after the
encounter, to tell Tripp what had occurred, and she said that Willey
“smiled from ear to ear the entire time” in describing
Clinton’s advances.
In
short, Tripp’s detailed, sworn testimony severely contradicted
Kathleen Willey’s Sixty Minutes presentation. If Linda
Tripp’s account is accurate, then Willey almost surely was not
being candid in her televised statements last March.
Tripp’s
grand jury testimony was released to the public in Ken Starr’s
“document dump” on October 2, and Tripp’s striking account of
Willey’s conduct was reported in the Washington Post the next day.
But the Post was alone, among major papers, in calling attention to
Tripp’s account, and over the course of the past four months,
Tripp’s testimony has been largely ignored by the mainstream
press.
The
press corps’ decision to ignore Tripp’s account is extremely
difficult to justify. After all, Willey’s original charges against
President Clinton received massive news coverage in March. And, in
the weeks following her Sixty Minutes appearance, a phalanx
of pundits rushed into print, saying they believed every word Willey
said.
But when
Tripp’s detailed testimony contradicted Willey’s charges, the
press corps, almost uniformly, chose not to report it. In my view,
this is merely the latest reflection of a troubling press culture,
in which serious charges get widely reported, and contradictions of
same get suppressed.
But on
January 7, you didn’t just refuse to report the Tripp
account; you actively misreported what Tripp had said. You
and Sammon gave viewers an account that is plainly, demonstrably false.
It seems to me that Hardball viewers have a right to be told
when such errors have occurred. This is especially true in the
Willey matter, since several issues concerning Willey linger on in
the public debate. You yourself have continued to discuss Willey in
recent programs, as is completely appropriate.
With
that in mind, I’m writing to suggest that you correct the record
on some upcoming program. Hardball viewers have been flatly
misinformed about a matter of substantial importance. I’m hoping
you’ll set the record straight for Hardball’s regular
audience.
Daily
Howler:
On last Thursday’s Hardball, he asked John Fund and
Margaret Carlson to help him sort things out:
BARNICLE: I mean, John, help me out here. And Margaret, help me
out here. I realize I’m stupid, but I’m not dumb. I just
don’t get this whole thing about conservative media hammering
liberals and liberals have no place to vent or no place to go.
What’s the deal?
Barnicle said he just didn’t get the complaints about conservative
punditry. And then, he did the thing he does best. He engaged in a
numbingly stupid discussion—with all three pundits taking turns
mocking slow-talkin’ Gore (see THE
DAILY HOWLER, 6/20/03).
Fakers like Barnicle will always pretend they don’t understand
what they’re doing. But if Barnicle wants to see what the fuss is
about, he should review an
embarrassing Charlie Rose program from only a few nights
before. On Monday evening, June 9, the “liberal” Rose
invited two “liberal” pundits to discuss Hillary’s Clinton’s
new book, Living History. The mockery of Clinton was long and
loud. Indeed, it showed the prevailing contours of America’s
deeply dysfunctional—and thoroughly store-bought—gang of
celebrity pundits.
For reasons best known to him and his
staff, Rose asked two loud Clinton-bashers to help him discuss the
new book. Quickly, the talk started:
ROSE: Chris [Matthews], tell me what you think of the book.
MATTHEWS: Well, I think the book is evidence of why the police
always want to interview the suspects as quickly as possible. You
don’t want to leave them a lot of time to rehearse their
answers…
On the tape, Rose chuckles audibly as his guest compares Senator
Clinton to a police suspect. But let’s face it. When you book
like Matthews onto your show, you pretty much get what you paid
for:
MATTHEWS (continuing directly): …and in this case,
you’re dealing with the Menendez Brothers of American politics,
Bill and Hillary Clinton, and although each is in separate cells,
politically speaking, they do communicate, obviously.
On the tape, Rose can be heard laughing hard as Matthews compares
the Clintons to murderers. Trust us. If you want to lose every last
shred of respect for Rose, we suggest that you check out this
program.
As you listen, all three pundits
make a standard admission—they haven’t read Clinton’s book.
Perhaps that explains something else that you’ll hear—a wide
range of misstatements about that volume [eRiposte
emphasis]. (Warning: Don’t believe a thing
you hear if you review this tape.) Raucous laughter greets mocking
misstatements as Rose and his guests play the fool for the rubes.
And of course, Standard Press Spin-Points are deftly delivered. The
dumbness reaches its high-water mark when Margaret Carlson recites
this key script:
CARLSON: Hillary has long been a victim. She always says she
doesn’t want to be, and she’s very proud. But remember, she
was a victim of the tabloid press during Gennifer Flowers. She was
a victim of the New York Times during Whitewater. She was a victim
of a governor who only made $35,000 a year so she had to engage in
cattle futures. There’s just this sense that people, you know,
are always unfairly characterizing the Clintons and then they’re
having to fight back against their politically-motivated accusers
without ever a sense that some of it they brought on themselves.
Don’t forget: This assessment is
offered by a pundit who makes it clear, early on in the session,
that she has only “knifed through” the book “for the good
parts.” But why should total, complete, screaming ignorance stop
Carlson from reciting Prime Spin? In this bite, Carlson expresses a
Standard Press Spin-Point: Hillary blames it all on her enemies.
But in the seventeen minutes they spend with Rose, Carlson and
Matthews make no attempt to evaluate Clinton’s actual
charges. For example, here’s something she says about Whitewater:
CLINTON (page 194): Whitewater never seemed real because it
wasn’t.
Wow! Could that be true? “The name Whitewater came to represent a
limitless investigation of our lives that cost the taxpayers over
$70 million for the Independent Counsel investigation alone and
never turned up any wrongdoing on our part,” Clinton writes.
“The purpose of the investigations was to discredit the President
and the Administration and slow down its momentum. It didn’t
matter what the investigations were about; it only mattered that
there were investigations.” On Charlie Rose, Carlson
complains that Clinton won’t acknowledge that “in a sense they
brought [Whitewater] on themselves.” But how exactly did the
Clintons do that? Carlson forgets to tell us. And by the way, could
it be true? Did the New York Times bungle Whitewater? Having
raised the point, Carlson makes no attempt to address that matter,
either. In fact, Hillary Clinton was “a victim of the New
York Times during Whitewater” (although those are Carlson’s
words, not Clinton’s). But a servant to power like Margaret
Carlson will never say something like that on the air.
Carlson enjoys a well-paid career. She has no plan to attack press
corps power.
The rancid program comes to an end with
more open mockery by Matthews. The pundits enjoy a few last laughs
as Hardball’s harlequin caps his performance:
MATTHEWS: Don’t you get the feeling that sooner or later
they’re going to be doing Love Letters on Broadway? Hume
Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Now, on
their final tour of America, you know, they’ll be doing the
Triple-A cities in, say, the year 2040. The last tour of the
Clintons!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Rose—his program now a
joke—laughs and laughs at his guest’s lively wit. Meanwhile,
Barnicle has no earthly idea what all the fuss could be about.
“Help me out here,” he says to his guests. “I just don’t get
this whole thing about conservative media hammering liberals.”
4.6.19
John Fund (Wall Street Journal) on Florida 2000/Gore/Democrats
Media
Matters:
John
Fund's book on voter fraud is a fraud
In his
recent book Stealing
Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Democracy (Encounter
Books, September 2004), Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist
and author John
Fund uses distortions and half-truths to impugn Democrats who,
he states in his introduction, "figure prominently in the vast
majority of examples of election fraud described in this [Fund's]
book."
Fund has
made numerous media appearances to promote his book. In October
alone, he appeared on FOX News Channel's Special Report with Brit
Hume, CNN Daybreak, twice on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight,
twice on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and on
National Public Radio's The Tavis Smiley Show.
Numerous conservative columnists have promoted the book, including George
F. Will, Michelle
Malkin, Jonah
Goldberg, and R.
Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
Following
are some of the false or unfounded claims in their order of
appearance in Stealing Elections.
CLAIM:
"[E]very single recount of the votes in Florida determined that
George W. Bush had won the state's twenty-five electoral votes and
therefore the presidency." (p. 28)
FACT:
A post-election study revealed several plausible scenarios in which
then-Vice President Al Gore would have won Florida.
As Media
Matters for America has repeatedly noted (here,
here,
and here),
the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC)
studied Florida's disputed ballots and concluded that Gore emerged
the winner in at least four recount scenarios. The NORC study was
sponsored by news organizations including The Associated Press, The
New York Times, and CNN, as well as The Wall Street Journal,
The Washington Post Co., and Tribune Publishing (which owns the Chicago
Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, and the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel). According to a November 12, 2001, Washington
Post article on the NORC's findings: "[I]f Gore had found a
way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if
the courts had required it, the result likely would have been
different. An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida
found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest
of margins."
CLAIM:
The Palm Beach Post found "no more than 108
'law-abiding' citizens of all races who 'were purged from the voter
rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the
election." (p. 32)
FACT:
The Palm Bach Post reported that "at least 1,100
eligible voters [were] wrongly purged from the rolls before last
year's election."
In
making this claim, Fund selectively quoted from a May 27, 2001, article
in the Palm Beach Post. While the article did state that
"[a]t least 108 law-abiding people were purged from the voter
rolls as suspected criminals, only to be cleared after the
election," it also stated that an additional 996 people who had
been convicted of crimes in other states but were now eligible to
vote were also cut from the rolls.
Fund
then compared what he called the "trivial number" of 108
voters with the 1,420 military ballots that were rejected
statewide, ignoring the other 996 who were eligible but were
denied the right to vote.
...
CLAIM:
Overvotes were fraudulent and helped Gore: "It appears that as
many as 15,000 votes may have been altered and subtracted from the
Bush total in Palm Beach County." (p. 35)
FACT:
Overvotes hurt Gore more than Bush.
Fund
claimed that "overvotes should concern us more than undervotes"
and some overvotes "may have a less benign explanation."
Citing "two former law enforcement officers and a poll worker
[who told him] that they believe ballot tampering affected some Bush
ballots," Fund made the otherwise unsupported charge that
"using a nail, pencil, or other sharp device, they [Gore
favoring precinct officials] would take a ballot and punch out Al
Gore's name for president... Every Bush ballot would have been
double-punched with Gore votes too, and possibly even
straight-Republican ballots would have been punched with straight-
Democratic holes too." Fund echoed the unfounded claims
advanced at the right-wing online forum Free
Republic that "[t]he news media is focused on the
Democratic Party spin that voters were 'confused' in Palm Beach
County. They are ignoring the 15,000 BUSH and 3,400 Buchanan votes
[sic] were stolen by fraud in these 19,000 ballots."
But,
according to a January 27, 2001, Washington Post report,
it was Gore who had far more ballots invalidated because of
overvoting. The Washington Post report stated: "[T]he
biggest problem for Gore was in 'overvotes,' ballots invalidated
because voters indicated multiple choices for president. ... Gore
was by far most likely to be selected on invalid overvoted ballots,
with his name punched as one of the choices on 46,000 of them. Bush,
by comparison, was punched on 17,000." The St. Petersburg
Times agreed in a November 12, 2001, report:
Badly
designed ballots, such as the now notorious "butterfly"
in Palm Beach County, cost thousands of Floridians their votes.
On
about 66,000 ballots, in areas where voters complained about being
confused, voters cast votes for two candidates. Who did they mean
to choose? It's impossible to say. But consider: about 40,000 of
the double votes included a mark for Gore; about 15,000 included a
mark for Bush.
The
St. Petersburg Times review included a computer analysis of five
other recount scenarios using a statewide standard for counting
votes. Bush wins every time a strict standard for counting votes
is employed; Gore wins whenever overvotes also are included.
CLAIM:
Democratic campaign workers in Wisconsin were caught on film in 2002
"handing out food and small sums of money to residents of a
home for the mentally ill in Kenosha, after which the patients were
shepherded into a separate room and given absentee ballots."
(p. 47)
FACT:
News reports directly contradict Fund's account.
As MMFA
has documented,
Fund's only citation for this example of voter fraud was "Wall
Street Journal, October 25, 2002." The article Fund cited,
titled "Chicago, Wisconsin," was a Journal
editorial published while Fund was a member of the Journal's
editorial board. MMFA could not verify Fund's and the
Journal's description of the television broadcast, but several
news articles contradict their account.
From an article
in the November 1, 2002, edition of the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel:
[Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Jim] Doyle volunteer Frank Santapoalo
provided kringle to [Dayton Residential Care Facility] residents
and a maximum of three quarters to the bingo winners. The
television report also shows the facility's activity director
reminding the residents that there were absentee ballots available
"upstairs" if they wished to vote.
[...]
Kenosha
City Clerk Jean Morgan said Thursday that about half the 33
ballots delivered to the facility had been returned to her office.
Morgan said the ballots are not dated, making it impossible to
figure out from the form whether any residents filled out the
ballots the day of the party.
Other Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel articles in 2002, on October
24, October
25, October
30, and November
2, also address the issue.
CLAIM:
Democrats engaged in fraudulent activities in South Dakota during
the 2002 election that led to Democrat Tim Johnson's win. (Chapter
6, pp. 77-94)
FACT:
South Dakota's Republican attorney general dismissed the
allegations, called affidavits supporting Republican charges
"flat false."
Fund
accused Democrats of a long list of wrongful activities during the
2002 election in South Dakota in which Democratic Senate incumbent
Tim Johnson narrowly defeated Republican challenger Representative
John Thune, including: fraudulent voter registration, keeping
polling places open late, "improper counting of ballots,"
"interference with the election process" by
"distributing campaign literature and organizing voter-hauling
efforts in the polling places," and "inducements to
vote" of cash and merchandise.
...
But as blogger and journalist Joshua Micah Marshall pointed
out in his Talking Points Memo weblog on December 16, 2002,
South Dakota's Republican attorney general, Mark Barnett, stated in
a December 10, 2002, article
in the Rapid City Journal that "[m]any of the things
alleged [in the affidavits collected by Republicans in South Dakota]
simply are not crimes. ...Those affidavits simply do not give me
cause to think there was an election rip-off." Barnett went on
to say, "A fair number [of the allegations] could be read as
complaints about how effective the Democratic get-out-the-vote
effort was." As for the charge that Democrats' misconduct
altered the election's outcome in favor of Johnson, Barnett stated,
"None of the allegations in the affidavits would change the
election outcome." Barnett did state that he would open
investigations into "two or three affidavits out of 50,"
including allegations of vote buying. After the investigations,
according to a December 13 Associated Press report, Barnett
"dismissed allegations in three affidavits" and called
them "perjury or forgery ... just flat false."
...
Since the release of Fund's book, The Rapid City Journal noted
on October 10 of this year that "then-Attorney General Mark
Barnett, a Republican, dismissed the majority of election
irregularity complaints from his fellow Republicans as sour
grapes." The paper also pointed out: "In his 2004 book, Stealing
Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, Wall
Street Journal editorial page writer John Fund devotes an entire
chapter to South Dakota's 2002 Senate race. Fund recounts a
series of improprieties -- many of which Barnett dismissed."
4.6.20
Wolf Blitzer (CNN) on Richard Clarke/Paul Krugman
Daily
Howler:
DOWN
IN THE MIRE:
Wolf Blitzer has offered an explanation for his comment about
Clarke’s personal life (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/30/04). He spoke
on yesterday’s Blitzer Reports. As he did, he misled
viewers about Paul Krugman:
BLITZER
(3/30/04): Last Wednesday, while I was debriefing our senior White
House correspondent, John King, I asked him if White House
officials were suggesting there were some weird aspects to Richard
Clarke’s life. Clarke, of course, is the former
counter-terrorism adviser who has sharply criticized the
president’s handling of the war on terror. I was not referring
to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials
as alleged today by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. I was
simply seeking to flesh out what Bush National Security Council
spokesman Jim Wilkinson had said on this program two days earlier.
WILKINSON
(videotape): Let me also point something. If you look in
this book, you find interesting things such as reported in the
Washington Post this morning. He’s talking about how he sits
back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden and how bin Laden has
some sort of mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of
X-Files stuff. And what I’d say is, this is a man who was in
charge of terrorism, Wolf, who was supposed to be focused on that.
And he was focused on meetings.
BLITZER:
Other than that, John Kerry [sic] reported White House officials
were not talking about Clarke’s personal life in any way. Lou
Dobbs Tonight starts right now.
Presumably,
Blitzer meant to say “John King,” not “John Kerry.” But when
it comes to Wolf Blitzer, who knows?
Was
Blitzer referring to Wilkinson in last week’s comment? Here at THE
HOWLER, we don’t really know (more below). For the record,
Wilkinson’s comments were a stupid, fake account of what Clarke
actually says in his book—the kind of fakery men like Wilkinson
know they can offer to Blitzer. Simply put, Wilkinson lied, right in
Blitzer’s face. But was that what Blitzer had in mind when
he spoke to King last week? Here, again, is what he said when he
posed his question:
BLITZER
(question to King, Wednesday, 3/24/04): What administration
officials have been saying since the weekend, basically
that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled
former government official, angry because he didn’t get a
certain promotion. He’s got a hot new book out now that he wants
to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own
personal life, they’re also suggesting that there are
some weird aspects in his life as well, that they don’t know
what made this guy come forward and make these accusations against
the president. Is that the sense that you’re getting, speaking
to a wide range of officials?
Let’s
state the obvious. Blitzer did refer to unnamed
“administration officials,” the claim he mocked on yesterday’s
program. If you watched him yesterday, you would have thought that
Krugman invented the part about “unnamed officials.” CNN’s
viewers were baldly misled. Sadly, they were misled by Blitzer.
So
Blitzer dissembled about Paul Krugman. Beyond that, it’s
conceivable that Blitzer was referring to Wilkinson in his
question to King. In truth, it seems like a bit of a stretch. But
yes, it’s always conceivable.
4.6.21
Robert "The-Traitor" Novak (CNN) on Howard Dean
Media
Matters:
From the
February 26 edition of CNN's The Capital Gang:
NOVAK:
The Democratic line that this isn't a problem -- Howard Dean gave
a speech at Cornell on Thursday of this week in which he said that
80 percent -- over the years, 80 percent of the Social Security
benefits will be lost. There is a problem. So, Howard sometimes
tells the truth. He doesn't get the exact line.
In fact,
Dean did not say "80 percent of the Social Security benefits
will be lost," as Novak claimed, but rather that "if
Social Security were left alone for 30 years, benefits would be
reduced to 80 percent of what it is now," as The Cornell
Daily Sun reported
in its coverage of Dean's February 23 speech at the university. The
article further noted that Dean "would not endorse"
privatizing of Social Security, adding that "[h]e acknowledged
that while there were indeed problems with the program, turning to
Wall Street was not the answer."
More on Novak from Atrios:
Nofacts
So,
Bob Novak totally lied about what Howard Dean said. And, to
prove he didn't just misspeak, he lied
about it again today.
-
NOVAK:
Since he was elected Democratic national chairman, he has been
-- they've been keeping him out of the national spotlight. No
major television interviews on national networks are scheduled
for the next couple weeks, I'm told, and maybe the reason is
that they've got to really get Howard under control.
He spoke at Cornell University last week, and the only paper
that covered this was "The Cornell Daily" student
paper, and he said, yes, Social Security has a big problem. Over
the years it's going to lose about 80 percent of the benefits.
That, Judy, is not the Democratic line. The Democratic line is
there is no problem.
So Howard Dean says what he thinks is the truth. Often it is the
truth. He's going to be a lot of fun as national chairman.
Shouldn't
we, you know, have a conference on journalistic ethics or something?
[This happens to be one of
those extremely rare instances where the pathological Novak
actually apologized for his lie after a few days under considerable
pressure from Media Matters and left-leaning blogs - see here
and here.]
4.6.22
Margaret Carlson (Time) on Bill/Hillary Clinton
Daily
Howler:
Carlson’s new volume—Anyone Can Grow Up—is
really a collection of columns from Time, stitched together
with a few short original chapters.
...
But as we’ll see in the next few days, her book’s
Clinton/Gore-bashing is truly clown-like—and there are other
occasions when well-known facts give way to create pleasing tales.
For example, is President Clinton a Great Big Liar? Carlson is eager
to say that he is. So eager, in fact, that she plays Jayson Blair,
doctoring a thoroughly well-known quote from the start of the Monica
Madness:
CARLSON (page 153): During this period, [President Clinton]
was alone in his lie, unless you count Dick Morris, who had some
inkling that the worst was true. Clinton asked him to poll the
public on how they would feel if it turned out that he had indeed
had an affair. When Morris told Clinton that he would be run out
of town, Clinton, according to Morris, said, “Well, we’ll
just have to lie then.”
“And lie he did,” Carlson triumphantly adds. The story creates
perfect Bill Clinton Spin; unfortunately, the story is simply
untrue. Here at THE HOWLER, we have no idea what Clinton said to
Morris. But according to Morris’ famous account, Clinton actually
said this: “Well, we just have to win, then.” The quote
has been reprinted a thousand times; it’s right there in the Starr
Report. But Carlson’s memory played a few tricks. She
“Jaysoned” the quote—serving spin.
But then, Carlson displays a rare
ability to rearrange well-known facts. In one of the ugliest parts
of her reprehensible “book,” she struggles and strains to help
us see how disgraceful those Clintons really are:
CARLSON (page 157): With the Clintons, transactions trump
relationships. Forget that and you end up in prison (Hillary’s
law partner and deputy attorney general, Webster Hubbell, whom the
two never called once he went off to jail), [or] dead (Hillary law
partner Vince Foster, who committed suicide because he couldn’t
play the “blood sport” of the White House)…
It’s hard find words for such ugly,
evil writing. Did the Clintons ever call Webster Hubbell? We don’t
know, but it was hardly their fault that he wound up in jail. As you
know—as Carlson’s readers don’t—Hubbell pleaded guilty to
defrauding the Rose Law Firm of at least $390,000. Since Mrs.
Clinton was a partner at the firm, some of that money belonged to
the Clintons! Carlson leaves that out of her piece; instead, she
makes it sound like it was the Clintons’ fault that Hubbell landed
in jail. Then they cruelly abandoned him. Regarding the Foster
matter, no words can suffice. Foster didn’t use the term “blood
sport;” that is another of Carlson’s embellishments. And he
hardly attributed the ugly conduct described in his suicide note to
Bill and Hillary Clinton. With apologies for revisiting this
tragedy—and with apologies to anyone wrongly accused in his
note—here’s what this despairing man actually wrote in
the note Carlson viciously toys with:
No one in the White House, to my knowledge, violated any law or
standard of conduct, including any action in the travel office.
There was no intent to benefit any individual or specific group
The FBI lied in their report to the AG
The press is covering up the illegal benefits they received
from the travel staff
The GOP has lied and misrepresented its knowledge and role and
covered up a prior investigation
The Ushers Office plotted to have excessive costs incurred,
taking advantage of Kaki and HRC
The public will never believe the innocence of the Clintons and
their loyal staff
The WSJ editors lie without consequence
I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in
Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.
“Here, ruining people is considered sport,” Foster wrote. Ten
years later, Carlson shows what he meant. And, as we’ll help you
see in the next four days, we think that Carlson’s ugly book
traces back to a key decision. We’ll give it a name:
“Margaret’s choice.”
4.6.23
Gloria Borger (CNBC) on Hillary Clinton
Daily
Howler:
To all appearances, Gloria Borger
hadn’t read the book either. Last Tuesday, she hosted Howard
Fineman and (who else?) Margaret Carlson on her CNBC spinfest, Capital
Report. During the discussion, descriptions of the Clinton book
were almost pathologically inaccurate. But at one point, Borger
wandered so far afield that even Carlson and Fineman spoke up.
Carlson had already voiced a key point: Hillary blames it all on
her enemies:
CARLSON (6/10/03): Hillary Clinton still doesn’t accept
responsibility for many of the things that happened during the
Clinton administration in which she played a part—cattle
futures, billing records, Whitewater and on and on—because it
was always due to her political enemies. And the same thing with
her husband and the accusations against him. It’s always someone
else’s fault.
Amazing, isn’t it? For example, the Clintons were exonerated
of wrongdoing in the Whitewater hoax. But to Carlson, Hillary still
shouldn’t say it. She should go ahead and “accept
responsibility” for things she hasn’t done. Where on earth
do they find human beings prepared to recite such strange
statements? (Oh, that’s right. We forgot. At Kay Graham’s.)
But so it goes when fake, phony pundits
repeat their Official Approved Points. Hillary blames it all on
her enemies is a message all pundits must deliver. But later in
the segment, Borger went a howler too far. Let’s watch as she bends
it like Borger:
BORGER: Margaret, what about health-care reform, for example? This
was a great disaster for Hillary Clinton and she still couldn’t
admit that it was a terrible, terrible mistake. I mean, she—
At this point, Carlson interrupted.
Crafty pundits will step in when others take the hate speech
too far. Clinton “still couldn’t admit that it was a terrible
mistake?” In fact, Clinton does discuss her mistakes in the
health care fight, and laments the fact that her miscalculations
played a role in losing the Congress. Indeed, she describes a
meeting with members of her staff after those disastrous 1994
midterms:
CLINTON (page 261): The women were already seated around a
large square table when I walked in. Until that moment, I had been
able to conceal my distress and discouragement from everyone on my
staff except Maggie [Williams], who seemed to know exactly how I
felt, whether I showed it or not. Now it all came out. Fighting
back tears, my voice cracking, I poured out my apologies. I was
sorry if I had let everyone down and contributed to our losses.
But alas! Clinton didn’t rend her garments or emit keening wails.
So to Borger, this just doesn’t count.
Indeed, Borger’s statement was so absurdly false that even
Carlson and Fineman stepped in.
4.6.24
Rush Limbaugh on a variety of topics
Media
Matters:
On
February 15, the same day that FOX News host Bill O'Reilly claimed
that "[n]o lies have been told about anyone" on his show,
nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh boasted: "We
don't retract anything we do here because we never lie and make
things up on this program." Limbaugh also defended the accuracy
of FOX News, stating: "You know, at FOX News, I have to tell
you this, they haven't had to retract one story, major story that I
can recall since they've been on the air."
Media
Matters for America has documented
frequent instances of smears, falsehoods and distortions from FOX
News' "hard news" reporters and commentators.
And here
are some examples of misstatements, lies, and distortions from The
Rush Limbaugh Show:
[eRiposte
note: It is no surprise that neither he nor Fox News ever
"retract anything". That is one of the points this page is
making and I'm glad he indirectly acknowledges that they are both
enterprises that make their millions through systematic fraud.]
4.6.25
Adam Nagourney (New York Times) and Wesley Clark
Daily
Howler:
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF READING,
PART 2: How lightweight is today’s press elite? Adam
Nagourney floats through the air—and lies in your face—in
this morning’s Times:
NAGOURNEY: At several points, General Clark appeared to
struggle as he explained his views on the war in response to a
challenge from a questioner.
The questioner, Carl Cameron of Fox News, asked, “Are we to
understand that what you’re saying now is that those things you
have said that were positive about the war was not what you
meant?”
Mr. Clark responded: “No, I always—I’m a fair person. And
when this administration’s done something right, well, if they
were Russians doing something right, Chinese doing something
right, French doing something right or even Republicans doing
something right, I’m going to praise them.
“Right after 9/11, this administration determined to do bait
and switch on the American public,” he said. “President Bush
said he was going to get Osama bin Laden, dead or alive. Instead,
he went after Saddam Hussein. He doesn’t have either one of them
today.”
But why did Clark “appear to
struggle?” Because Nagourney baldly misstated what he actually
said. Here is the actual Federal Document Clearing House
transcript of what was actually said:
CAMERON: General, there is a long litany of comments from you,
both in your time as a former television analyst and then over the
course of the last several months. Are we to understand that what
you’re saying now is that those things you have said that were
positive about the war was not what you meant?
CLARK: No, I always—I’m a fair person, Carl. And when this
administration's done something right, well, if they were Russians
doing something right, Chinese doing something right, French doing
something right or even Republicans doing something right—
(LAUGHTER)
I’m going to praise them.
Now, this country was attacked on 9/11, and it was right that
this administration went into Afghanistan. And I supported that
war; so did 90 percent of the American people. That Taliban
government should have been taken out.
But the failure of this administration was not to put the
troops in to finish the job against Osama bin Laden. And you know
why they didn’t do it? They didn’t do it because, all along,
their plan was to save those troops to go after Saddam Hussein.
So I support them for what they did right, and I condemn them
for what they did wrong.
IFILL: Thank you, General.
(APPLAUSE)
You’d never know it from reading Nagourney’s report, but
that’s what was actually said. In fact, Clark
“struggled” so hard to convey his meaning that it was greeted
with laughter and applause! But it isn’t hard to make out
Nagourney’s meaning. He meant to spread a scripted message—Wesley
Clark is a big, f****** mess [edited by
eRiposte]. And how did Nagourney create this
impression? By baldly misstating what Clark really said! Instead of
presenting Clark’s actual statement, Nagourney spliced in
something Clark said to another question, earlier in the
debate. And he said the resulting pseudo-reply was an example of
Clark’s hopeless bungling!
Amazing, isn’t it? But then, Americans put up with this type of
fraud all through Campaign 2000. No high school kid could offer such
work. Why in the world is Nagourney still working? And how long do
we, as American citizens, plan to put up with this conduct?
I
could go on and on and on with a lot more names. But I don't have the
time.
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