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		<title>{ISSUES &gt; BIAS AND BALANCE} - Despite available audiotape, O'Reilly asserted, "[T]he Hagee thing isn't going to take off because there's no tape on Hagee"  </title>
		<link>http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/despite-available-audiotape-o-reilly-asserted-20080643513.htm</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:46:48 GMT</pubDate>
		<description>During
the May 30 edition of Fox News' The
O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly discussed
controversial supporters of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama and claimed that
"the [Pastor John] Hagee thing isn't going to take off because there's no
tape on Hagee." Hagee withdrew his
endorsement of McCain after McCain rejected it following
the revelation of comments Hagee made in the late 1990s about
Adolf Hitler. Contrary to O'Reilly's claim, there is audiotape of
several of Hagee's comments. In a May 21 post on The Huffington Post,
reporter Sam Stein linked to the
audio of Hagee asserting that God allowed Hitler to happen "[b]ecause God
said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel." Further,
audio is available of Hagee's appearance on the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public
Radio's Fresh Air, during which
Hagee asserted
of Hurricane Katrina: "I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that
was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God
for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not
carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday
that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to
reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay
Pride parades." He later added: "Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the
judgment of God against the city of New
  Orleans." Also during that broadcast, when asked
by host Terry Gross whether he believed that "all Muslims have a mandate
to kill Christians and Jews," Hagee replied: "Well, the Quran teaches
that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly."

Moreover, while O'Reilly discussed
Hagee on the May 30 edition of The
O'Reilly Factor and asked McCain about Hagee during their
interview on the May 8 edition of the program, Hagee had been mentioned on only
one previous show since his endorsement
of McCain on February 27. During that broadcast, on March 14, it was Fox News
anchor Geraldo Rivera -- not O'Reilly -- who brought up Hagee. Discussing
Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rivera stated of Obama,
"[H]e's not the first candidate, in fairness ... to be burned by a
religious endorsement, like Hagee." O'Reilly
did not respond to Rivera's mention of Hagee.

A Nexis search* of O'Reilly Factor transcripts between
February 27 and June 2 produced only three broadcasts on which Hagee was
mentioned. A similar search for Pastor Rod Parsley** yielded zero results.
Parsley, a senior pastor of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio -- whose
endorsement McCain accepted on February 26, but
then rejected on May 22 -- has
been widely criticized for
comments about Islam. Indeed, audio is available of Parsley
saying about Islam:





I do not believe
our nation can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our
historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but
I'm not shrinking back from its implications. The fact is that America was founded -- I'm gonna stagger you
right now -- America
was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion
destroyed. And I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms
that we can no longer ignore. 

Moreover, ABC aired video footage of Parsley on the May 22 edition of Good Morning America.

By contrast, using a Nexis search*** of broadcasts of The O'Reilly Factor between February 27 and June 2, Media Matters for America found that Wright
was prominently discussed and/or mentioned in the context of Obama's
presidential campaign on at least 37 editions of the program, often during
multiple segments of the same edition.

Likewise, a search covering the same period for mentions of
Father Michael Pfleger**** -- who made controversial remarks during a sermon at
Obama's former church on May 25 -- found that Pfleger was prominently
discussed on at least three
editions of O'Reilly's program and once in multiple segments. 

From
the May 30 edition of Fox News' The
O'Reilly Factor: 





O'REILLY: OK, Tanya, I mean,
I don't know what to say here. I think this is a huge issue and is going to be
one up until the vote in November. And what say you?

TANYA ACKER (Democratic strategist): A couple of
things. You know, I'd like to jump back to Geraldine Ferraro's point, because
she said something that I thought was really insightful about the responses
that she's getting from white people who feel that their voices aren't being
heard and they can't discuss these issues honestly.

I think that there are probably a lot of people in
that congregation, you know, the people who she referenced who are standing up
and clapping when a lot of these statements were made. I think that they may
feel the same way. I think that there is an issue of racism in America and anger around race in America that
people are just not confronting openly. And I wish we could have that
conversation divorced from all of the incendiary sermons that are coming from
different pulpits -- not just Reverend Wright's, but also John Hagee's. I don't
think that -- just like I don't think that Wright speaks for Hagee or Pfleger,
or -- I'm sorry, Wright speaks for Obama or Pfleger speaks for Obama, I don't
think that Hagee speaks for McCain.

But I think that they're -- we're raising
important conversations now. I just wish we could have the conversation --

O'REILLY: OK. I don't disagree with you that --

ACKER: -- in a more dispassionate way.

O'REILLY: -- that both black and white Americans,
some of them, feel that they can't say what's on their mind. I don't disagree
with that.

But the key in this discussion is that Barack Obama
thought he had finally gotten this Reverend Wright thing at least in the
background. And now you have another nut, Pfleger, come up, associated with the
Obama campaign, because Pfleger is involved or was involved -- I think they
might have fired him recently. But very close to Obama. And now Americans are
going, look, how many more of these people are going to come out of the
woodwork? You see what I'm talking about, Tanya?

ACKER: No, I do. And I think that it's not an invalid
question. I would simply say that, you know, it's not really fair to ascribe
that to Obama, because I do think that if we start parsing through and scouring
relationships that any of us have, that any politician or public figure has,
there are going to be people close to that person who have written --

O'REILLY: Not at this level.

ACKER: -- things or said things.

O'REILLY: Not -- look, when you go --

ACKER: I don't know about that, Bill.

O'REILLY: -- when you go Bill Ayers, when you go
Bernadette Dohrn, when you go Reverend Wright, when you go Father Pfleger --
not at that level. You're just not going to have it.

And the Hagee thing isn't going to take off because
there's no tape on Hagee. And it's just -- it's basically a convenience thing
that McCain went down, and he regrets doing it. And then I gave him hell for
doing it when I interviewed him. How do you see it, Andrea?

ANDREA TANTAROS (Republican strategist): Well, I see
it as this is how Obama handles dealing with nuts. I mean, he hasn't quit this
church. Why? 

From the May 8
edition of The O'Reilly Factor:





O'REILLY: OK. John Hagee is a guy --

McCAIN: Yep.

O'REILLY: -- that you
sought his endorsement in San Antonio,
 Texas. He said bad things about
Catholics, and gays, and other things like that. And your opponents are saying,
"Hey, you know, McCain hangs around with Hagee.
Obama hangs around with Wright. No difference."

McCAIN: I do not embrace a view that
he stated about the Catholic Church. I steadfastly reject it and repudiate it.
I've never been in Pastor Hagee's church. I know him,
and -- but the fact is that I accept his endorsement --

O'REILLY: Yeah, but
you courted him. 

McCAIN: -- which means he supported
-- 

O'REILLY: You went down there
--

McCAIN: When you
say --

O'REILLY: -- had
breakfast with him, you know?

McCAIN: Well, I had breakfast with
him and I've met with him. I don't embrace all of his views. He endorsed
me.

O'REILLY: OK. You ready for
the viciousness of this campaign? We understand The New York Times has -- you know, a squad of reporters
looking to dig up any dirt they can on you. You know that, right?


From
the March 14 edition of The O'Reilly Factor:





O'REILLY:
Tonight, four hot topics: the Obama conundrum, did Eliot
Spitzer use campaign money to pay prostitutes, and the men who murdered that University of North Carolina student body president.
Also, there's been a verdict in the John Ritter medical malpractice case. Here
is Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera.

All right, let's knock them down one
by one.

RIVERA: Well, I
want to take to you a radical synagogue first, after you get out of church.

O'REILLY: Listen, I'm a man who is
very curious about things. And I would love to attend --

RIVERA: I know a firebrand rabbi that
really is gonna --

O'REILLY: Well, I mean, you know,
the ladies were nice to come on here, and they believe what they're saying. But
I don't think they see the big picture here, Geraldo.

RIVERA: The big picture is that
Obama's candidacy brink -- is on the brink of disaster and
--

O'REILLY: Yeah, it is.

RIVERA: -- ruin
right now. 

O'REILLY: Right.

RIVERA: He released a statement that
was very good, just out an hour or so.

O'REILLY: Right.

RIVERA: Let me just read you the
part that is the most important part. "The statements that Reverend Wright
made that were the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally
heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in
private conversation." So now, Barack Obama has set up
a factual straw man here. If, indeed, it can be proven that he was in the
church when statements like this were uttered --

O'REILLY:
Well, I think he's toast.

RIVERA: -- then
he's in real trouble.

[...]

O'REILLY: He's not there every week.
He might not have heard those statements, but he knew about them.

RIVERA: I hope -- I hope he didn't.
Because he really had -- he had to strongly condemn it. And in tactical terms,
you're right: He should have done it before this --

O'REILLY: Himself.

RIVERA: -- rather than his campaign.

O'REILLY: Right. And because he knew
it was coming down the road.

RIVERA: But he's not the first
candidate, in fairness --

O'REILLY: No, but you -- if you
couple it --

RIVERA: -- to be burned by a
religious endorsement like Hagee.

O'REILLY: -- if you couple it -- if
you couple it with Michelle Obama's comments from a few
weeks ago -- which I defended; I defended her. Again, I want to give the
candidates the benefit of the doubt. If you couple that with this and you're
running on judgment, man, it's tough. 

*Search
terms: "Show (O'Reilly) and (Hagee)"

**Search terms:
"Show (O'Reilly) and (Parsley or Parsely or Parsly)"

***Search
terms: "Show (O'Reilly) and ((Jeremiah pre/2 Wright) or Rev!
Wright)"

****Search terms:
"Show (O'Reilly) and (Pfleger)"</description>
		<source url="http://mediamatters.org/items/200806030007">Mediamatters.Org</source>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[
<table cellspacing="4" cellpadding="0" border="0" style="margin:9px;">
<tr><td colspan="2" style="font:bold 12pt Arial;vertical-align:top;"><a href="http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/despite-available-audiotape-o-reilly-asserted-20080643513.htm"><b>Despite available audiotape, O'Reilly asserted, "[T]he Hagee thing isn't going to take off because there's no tape on Hagee"  </b></a> <sup style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;">{<a href="http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/despite-available-audiotape-o-reilly-asserted-20080643513.htm" target="_blank">new window</a>}</sup></td></tr>
<tr>
<td style="font:6pt Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;text-align:center;vertical-align:top;">&nbsp;</td>
<td width="100%" style="font:9pt Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;font-variant:small-caps;">Mediamatters.Org</span> - During
the May 30 edition of Fox News' The
O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly discussed
controversial supporters of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama and claimed that
"the [Pastor John] Hagee thing isn't going to take off because there's no
tape on Hagee." Hagee withdrew his
endorsement of McCain after McCain rejected it following
the revelation of comments Hagee made in the late 1990s about
Adolf Hitler. Contrary to O'Reilly's claim, there is audiotape of
several of Hagee's comments. In a May 21 post on The Huffington Post,
reporter Sam Stein linked to the
audio of Hagee asserting that God allowed Hitler to happen "[b]ecause God
said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel." Further,
audio is available of Hagee's appearance on the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public
Radio's Fresh Air, during which
Hagee asserted
of Hurricane Katrina: "I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that
was offensive to God, and they are -- were recipients of the judgment of God
for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not
carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday
that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to
reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay
Pride parades." He later added: "Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the
judgment of God against the city of New
  Orleans." Also during that broadcast, when asked
by host Terry Gross whether he believed that "all Muslims have a mandate
to kill Christians and Jews," Hagee replied: "Well, the Quran teaches
that. Yes, it teaches that very clearly."

Moreover, while O'Reilly discussed
Hagee on the May 30 edition of The
O'Reilly Factor and asked McCain about Hagee during their
interview on the May 8 edition of the program, Hagee had been mentioned on only
one previous show since his endorsement
of McCain on February 27. During that broadcast, on March 14, it was Fox News
anchor Geraldo Rivera -- not O'Reilly -- who brought up Hagee. Discussing
Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rivera stated of Obama,
"[H]e's not the first candidate, in fairness ... to be burned by a
religious endorsement, like Hagee." O'Reilly
did not respond to Rivera's mention of Hagee.

A Nexis search* of O'Reilly Factor transcripts between
February 27 and June 2 produced only three broadcasts on which Hagee was
mentioned. A similar search for Pastor Rod Parsley** yielded zero results.
Parsley, a senior pastor of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio -- whose
endorsement McCain accepted on February 26, but
then rejected on May 22 -- has
been widely criticized for
comments about Islam. Indeed, audio is available of Parsley
saying about Islam:





I do not believe
our nation can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our
historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but
I'm not shrinking back from its implications. The fact is that America was founded -- I'm gonna stagger you
right now -- America
was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion
destroyed. And I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms
that we can no longer ignore. 

Moreover, ABC aired video footage of Parsley on the May 22 edition of Good Morning America.

By contrast, using a Nexis search*** of broadcasts of The O'Reilly Factor between February 27 and June 2, Media Matters for America found that Wright
was prominently discussed and/or mentioned in the context of Obama's
presidential campaign on at least 37 editions of the program, often during
multiple segments of the same edition.

Likewise, a search covering the same period for mentions of
Father Michael Pfleger**** -- who made controversial remarks during a sermon at
Obama's former church on May 25 -- found that Pfleger was prominently
discussed on at least three
editions of O'Reilly's program and once in multiple segments. 

From
the May 30 edition of Fox News' The
O'Reilly Factor: 





O'REILLY: OK, Tanya, I mean,
I don't know what to say here. I think this is a huge issue and is going to be
one up until the vote in November. And what say you?

TANYA ACKER (Democratic strategist): A couple of
things. You know, I'd like to jump back to Geraldine Ferraro's point, because
she said something that I thought was really insightful about the responses
that she's getting from white people who feel that their voices aren't being
heard and they can't discuss these issues honestly.

I think that there are probably a lot of people in
that congregation, you know, the people who she referenced who are standing up
and clapping when a lot of these statements were made. I think that they may
feel the same way. I think that there is an issue of racism in America and anger around race in America that
people are just not confronting openly. And I wish we could have that
conversation divorced from all of the incendiary sermons that are coming from
different pulpits -- not just Reverend Wright's, but also John Hagee's. I don't
think that -- just like I don't think that Wright speaks for Hagee or Pfleger,
or -- I'm sorry, Wright speaks for Obama or Pfleger speaks for Obama, I don't
think that Hagee speaks for McCain.

But I think that they're -- we're raising
important conversations now. I just wish we could have the conversation --

O'REILLY: OK. I don't disagree with you that --

ACKER: -- in a more dispassionate way.

O'REILLY: -- that both black and white Americans,
some of them, feel that they can't say what's on their mind. I don't disagree
with that.

But the key in this discussion is that Barack Obama
thought he had finally gotten this Reverend Wright thing at least in the
background. And now you have another nut, Pfleger, come up, associated with the
Obama campaign, because Pfleger is involved or was involved -- I think they
might have fired him recently. But very close to Obama. And now Americans are
going, look, how many more of these people are going to come out of the
woodwork? You see what I'm talking about, Tanya?

ACKER: No, I do. And I think that it's not an invalid
question. I would simply say that, you know, it's not really fair to ascribe
that to Obama, because I do think that if we start parsing through and scouring
relationships that any of us have, that any politician or public figure has,
there are going to be people close to that person who have written --

O'REILLY: Not at this level.

ACKER: -- things or said things.

O'REILLY: Not -- look, when you go --

ACKER: I don't know about that, Bill.

O'REILLY: -- when you go Bill Ayers, when you go
Bernadette Dohrn, when you go Reverend Wright, when you go Father Pfleger --
not at that level. You're just not going to have it.

And the Hagee thing isn't going to take off because
there's no tape on Hagee. And it's just -- it's basically a convenience thing
that McCain went down, and he regrets doing it. And then I gave him hell for
doing it when I interviewed him. How do you see it, Andrea?

ANDREA TANTAROS (Republican strategist): Well, I see
it as this is how Obama handles dealing with nuts. I mean, he hasn't quit this
church. Why? 

From the May 8
edition of The O'Reilly Factor:





O'REILLY: OK. John Hagee is a guy --

McCAIN: Yep.

O'REILLY: -- that you
sought his endorsement in San Antonio,
 Texas. He said bad things about
Catholics, and gays, and other things like that. And your opponents are saying,
"Hey, you know, McCain hangs around with Hagee.
Obama hangs around with Wright. No difference."

McCAIN: I do not embrace a view that
he stated about the Catholic Church. I steadfastly reject it and repudiate it.
I've never been in Pastor Hagee's church. I know him,
and -- but the fact is that I accept his endorsement --

O'REILLY: Yeah, but
you courted him. 

McCAIN: -- which means he supported
-- 

O'REILLY: You went down there
--

McCAIN: When you
say --

O'REILLY: -- had
breakfast with him, you know?

McCAIN: Well, I had breakfast with
him and I've met with him. I don't embrace all of his views. He endorsed
me.

O'REILLY: OK. You ready for
the viciousness of this campaign? We understand The New York Times has -- you know, a squad of reporters
looking to dig up any dirt they can on you. You know that, right?


From
the March 14 edition of The O'Reilly Factor:





O'REILLY:
Tonight, four hot topics: the Obama conundrum, did Eliot
Spitzer use campaign money to pay prostitutes, and the men who murdered that University of North Carolina student body president.
Also, there's been a verdict in the John Ritter medical malpractice case. Here
is Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera.

All right, let's knock them down one
by one.

RIVERA: Well, I
want to take to you a radical synagogue first, after you get out of church.

O'REILLY: Listen, I'm a man who is
very curious about things. And I would love to attend --

RIVERA: I know a firebrand rabbi that
really is gonna --

O'REILLY: Well, I mean, you know,
the ladies were nice to come on here, and they believe what they're saying. But
I don't think they see the big picture here, Geraldo.

RIVERA: The big picture is that
Obama's candidacy brink -- is on the brink of disaster and
--

O'REILLY: Yeah, it is.

RIVERA: -- ruin
right now. 

O'REILLY: Right.

RIVERA: He released a statement that
was very good, just out an hour or so.

O'REILLY: Right.

RIVERA: Let me just read you the
part that is the most important part. "The statements that Reverend Wright
made that were the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally
heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in
private conversation." So now, Barack Obama has set up
a factual straw man here. If, indeed, it can be proven that he was in the
church when statements like this were uttered --

O'REILLY:
Well, I think he's toast.

RIVERA: -- then
he's in real trouble.

[...]

O'REILLY: He's not there every week.
He might not have heard those statements, but he knew about them.

RIVERA: I hope -- I hope he didn't.
Because he really had -- he had to strongly condemn it. And in tactical terms,
you're right: He should have done it before this --

O'REILLY: Himself.

RIVERA: -- rather than his campaign.

O'REILLY: Right. And because he knew
it was coming down the road.

RIVERA: But he's not the first
candidate, in fairness --

O'REILLY: No, but you -- if you
couple it --

RIVERA: -- to be burned by a
religious endorsement like Hagee.

O'REILLY: -- if you couple it -- if
you couple it with Michelle Obama's comments from a few
weeks ago -- which I defended; I defended her. Again, I want to give the
candidates the benefit of the doubt. If you couple that with this and you're
running on judgment, man, it's tough. 

*Search
terms: "Show (O'Reilly) and (Hagee)"

**Search terms:
"Show (O'Reilly) and (Parsley or Parsely or Parsly)"

***Search
terms: "Show (O'Reilly) and ((Jeremiah pre/2 Wright) or Rev!
Wright)"

****Search terms:
"Show (O'Reilly) and (Pfleger)"<blockquote style="background:#FAFAFA;border:1px dotted #E6E6E6;font:italic 10pt Times New Roman;padding:9px;">Media Matters - Despite available audiotape, O&#39;Reilly asserted, "[T]he Hagee thing isn&#39;t going to take off because there&#39;s no tape on Hagee"   {...} Discussing supporters of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, Bill O&#39;Reilly said of Rev. John Hagee&#39;s controversial comments, "[T]he Hagee thing isn&#39;t going to take off because there&#39;s no tape on Hagee." In fact, there is audiotape of several of Hagee&#39;s comments about Jews, Islam, and Hurricane Katrina.     {...}</blockquote><div style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;">Published:</span> June 4, 2008, 2:46 am - <span style="color:#808080;">Indexed:</span> June 4, 2008, 9:14 am - <span style="color:#808080;">Page Size:</span>&nbsp;31KB</div><div style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;">Category:</span> <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/">Society</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/">Issues</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/">Business</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/">Media</a> &gt;  <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/"><b>Bias and Balance</b></a></div></td></tr></table>
<br/>
]]></content:encoded>
		<category>Society > Issues > Business > Media > Bias and Balance</category>
	</item>
	<item>
		<title>{ISSUES &gt; BIAS AND BALANCE} - Boehlert: Me and Scott McClellan, brothers in arms  </title>
		<link>http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/boehlert-me-and-scott-mcclellan-brothers-in-arms-2008065634.htm</link>
		<guid>http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/boehlert-me-and-scott-mcclellan-brothers-in-arms-2008065634.htm</guid>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:56:41 GMT</pubDate>
		<description>"Some
Bush defenders, including former press secretary Ari Fleischer, [suggested]
that McClellan may have had a ghostwriter or undergone heavy-handed
editing." Washington Post, May 30

"McCellan's
publisher, Peter Osnos, denies that a ghostwriter worked over McClellan's
draft." Slate,
May 28

Now that
Scott McClellan has come clean in his book
about the real nature of the Bush White House, I'll confess my own
secret: Scott McClellan was a ghostwriter for my 2006 book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.


No,
really. 

But
let's be honest, prior to McClellan's new turncoat book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and
Washington's Culture of Deception, where the
formerly loyal aide confirms so many liberal critiques of the White House, as
well as chastises the complacent media for rolling over for Bush, how many people
would have even believed my unlikely tale of collaboration? Talk about a
possible career-killer for McClellan. 

And trust
me, he understood the risk of colluding with a liberal media critic, especially
while he was on the White House clock. I remember back when he was secretly
helping me with the book, I'd say, Mac (that's what I called him),
are you crazy? What would Republicans say if they found out you were being
disloyal to Bush, as well as aiding to puncture the long-running myth about the
"liberal media"? I warned him that party elders like Bob Dole would
open a can of whupass on him if they
found out. 

But
McClellan was committed to my project and insisted on helping me craft my
critique of how the press adopted a flagrant double standard when covering the
Bush administration. He was especially angry about the media's lapdog
performance during the run-up to the Iraq war. 

That's
why I wasn't surprised by the revelations in his new book last week. In
fact, they sounded a little bit too much like Lapdogs, if you know what
I mean. (But Mac and I are buds, so it's all
good.)

This
passage from his new book certainly had a Lapdogs ring to it: 





And
through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary
focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than
aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it.
... [T]he media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth
and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. [Page
125]

So did
this blast: 





If
anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the
White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision
facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go
to war in Iraq. ... In this case, the "liberal media" didn't
live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better
served. [Pages 156-157]

And, man,
did the press act shocked last week, or what? Tim Russert on NBC was stunned
that McClellan was using "MoveOn.org" language to describe the Bush
White House, and the Politico's Mike
Allen likened it to rhetoric
used by the "left-wing haters." (C'mon, Mike, don't be
a hater hata.) 

Me? I knew
years ago that McClellan was privately fuming over the press' lapdog
performance. Oh sure, he stood stoically at the press briefing podium day after
day robotically repeating administration talking points and amplifying the
White House's contempt for the press. But inside, he was actually eager
for the press to challenge the administration. To show some backbone. 

I must say
McClellan was indefatigable in his Lapdog research, ducking
out of White House meetings to call me and emailing at all hours of the night
with new media outrages, examples of the
press' complicity in leading the nation to war. (One annoying point: Mac kept badgering me
to call the book Complicit Enablers, but my
publisher thought Lapdogs packed more of a
punch.) 

Lapdogs just wouldn't
have been the same -- wouldn't have been as complete -- if it
weren't for the sharp media critique eye of my pal Scott McClellan. And
maybe NBC's David Gregory and his Beltway pals should give it another
close read if they really think they did nothing
wrong with their war coverage, that they
asked all the right questions and refrained from cheerleading. 

Mac and I
disagree with Gregory on that one. 

After all,
it was McClellan who fired up the White House Nexis account and tallied up the
number of times the "liberal" Washington Post
editorialized in favor of the war from September 2002 to February 2003: 26. 

He smartly
tipped me off to a study conducted by the McCormick Tribune Foundation that
found a majority of Americans thought the news media could have done a better
job informing the public about Iraq
and the stakes involved in going to war. 

He flagged
a study
by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting that focused on the first two weeks of
February 2003, when the debate about the war should have been raging on the
public airwaves, and found that of 393 people interviewed on camera
for network news reports about the war, just 6 percent were people who
expressed skepticism about the looming invasion. 

And yes,
it was McClellan who turned me onto research compiled by analyst Andrew
Tyndall, who found that almost all the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC,
and CBS from September 2002 until February 2003 could be traced back to sources
from the White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department. Only 34 stories,
or just 8 percent, were of independent origin.

Mac was
livid when he discovered that an ABC
affiliate in Utah owned by Clear Channel Communications informed backers of an anti-war ad
that it was an "inappropriate
commercial advertisement for Salt Lake
  City." And Mac couldn't believe it when a
CBS affiliate in Boise, Idaho, also refused to
air the ad, insisting its claim that Bush lied about Iraq's WMDs was not provable. 

In 2004,
when Seth Mnookin's book Hard News was published,
Mac immediately told me to dog-ear the page where The New York Times'
former investigative editor, Doug Frantz, recalled how Times editor "Howell
Raines was eager to have articles that supported the
war-mongering out of Washington."
And how Raines "discouraged pieces that were at odds with the
administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of
mass destruction and alleged links to Al Qaeda." 

McClellan
just shook his head in 2005 when he read
Newsweek's
Baghdad bureau chief Rod Nordland admit that when he arrived in Iraq two years
earlier he had been "an unabashed believer in toppling Saddam
Hussein." Can you imagine, I remember McClellan asking me, Newsweek in 2003 assigning
as Baghdad
bureau chief somebody who was an "unabashed" opponent of the war? We
both scoffed at the notion.

Mac and I
are no longer in touch (that was a prerequisite of our strict ghostwriting
pact), but I'm sure he was fuming last week when CNN's Wolf
Blitzer, responding to Mac's allegation that the press was too timid
prior to the war, noted how often CNN had hosted war skeptic and former weapons
inspector Scott Ritter to discuss the war. 

Scott
Ritter! Oh, that was rich. See, it was McClellan who dug up this quote (via
the Daily Howler) from Ritter when he
appeared on a C-SPAN call-in show in January 2004. Mac insisted that
Ritter's response to a question about why he was rarely seen on television
anymore discussing the war perfectly captured the media's
complicity and he urged me to include Ritter's quote in Lapdogs in full, which I
did: 





Unfortunately,
I don't believe the mainstream media acted responsibly in regard to Iraq.
Back in the fall of 2002, I was belittled, I was called a traitor, I was called
crazy -- Paula Zahn of CNN accused me of drinking Saddam Hussein's
Kool-Aid for making accurate statements in response to aluminum tubes and
uranium allegedly coming from Niger.
I think we have a problem here in that the media is culpable for the misleading
of the American public. They bought into the Bush administration's
rhetoric and war fervor, they sold the war to the American public, and now they
have to deal with the fact that they're the ones that were out there
beating the war drums and you have this guy, Scott Ritter, who was saying
something different and -- maybe they just don't know how to deal with
me. [Page 273] 

With What Happened, McClellan has become a big media
star and revealed himself as a left-leaning media critic. His ghostwriting days
are over. 

But at
least Mac can blurb my next book. </description>
		<source url="http://mediamatters.org/columns/200806030001">Mediamatters.Org</source>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[
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<tr><td colspan="2" style="font:bold 12pt Arial;vertical-align:top;"><a href="http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/boehlert-me-and-scott-mcclellan-brothers-in-arms-2008065634.htm"><b>Boehlert: Me and Scott McClellan, brothers in arms  </b></a> <sup style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;">{<a href="http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/boehlert-me-and-scott-mcclellan-brothers-in-arms-2008065634.htm" target="_blank">new window</a>}</sup></td></tr>
<tr>
<td style="font:6pt Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;text-align:center;vertical-align:top;">&nbsp;</td>
<td width="100%" style="font:9pt Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;font-variant:small-caps;">Mediamatters.Org</span> - "Some
Bush defenders, including former press secretary Ari Fleischer, [suggested]
that McClellan may have had a ghostwriter or undergone heavy-handed
editing." Washington Post, May 30

"McCellan's
publisher, Peter Osnos, denies that a ghostwriter worked over McClellan's
draft." Slate,
May 28

Now that
Scott McClellan has come clean in his book
about the real nature of the Bush White House, I'll confess my own
secret: Scott McClellan was a ghostwriter for my 2006 book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.


No,
really. 

But
let's be honest, prior to McClellan's new turncoat book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and
Washington's Culture of Deception, where the
formerly loyal aide confirms so many liberal critiques of the White House, as
well as chastises the complacent media for rolling over for Bush, how many people
would have even believed my unlikely tale of collaboration? Talk about a
possible career-killer for McClellan. 

And trust
me, he understood the risk of colluding with a liberal media critic, especially
while he was on the White House clock. I remember back when he was secretly
helping me with the book, I'd say, Mac (that's what I called him),
are you crazy? What would Republicans say if they found out you were being
disloyal to Bush, as well as aiding to puncture the long-running myth about the
"liberal media"? I warned him that party elders like Bob Dole would
open a can of whupass on him if they
found out. 

But
McClellan was committed to my project and insisted on helping me craft my
critique of how the press adopted a flagrant double standard when covering the
Bush administration. He was especially angry about the media's lapdog
performance during the run-up to the Iraq war. 

That's
why I wasn't surprised by the revelations in his new book last week. In
fact, they sounded a little bit too much like Lapdogs, if you know what
I mean. (But Mac and I are buds, so it's all
good.)

This
passage from his new book certainly had a Lapdogs ring to it: 





And
through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary
focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than
aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it.
... [T]he media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth
and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. [Page
125]

So did
this blast: 





If
anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the
White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision
facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go
to war in Iraq. ... In this case, the "liberal media" didn't
live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better
served. [Pages 156-157]

And, man,
did the press act shocked last week, or what? Tim Russert on NBC was stunned
that McClellan was using "MoveOn.org" language to describe the Bush
White House, and the Politico's Mike
Allen likened it to rhetoric
used by the "left-wing haters." (C'mon, Mike, don't be
a hater hata.) 

Me? I knew
years ago that McClellan was privately fuming over the press' lapdog
performance. Oh sure, he stood stoically at the press briefing podium day after
day robotically repeating administration talking points and amplifying the
White House's contempt for the press. But inside, he was actually eager
for the press to challenge the administration. To show some backbone. 

I must say
McClellan was indefatigable in his Lapdog research, ducking
out of White House meetings to call me and emailing at all hours of the night
with new media outrages, examples of the
press' complicity in leading the nation to war. (One annoying point: Mac kept badgering me
to call the book Complicit Enablers, but my
publisher thought Lapdogs packed more of a
punch.) 

Lapdogs just wouldn't
have been the same -- wouldn't have been as complete -- if it
weren't for the sharp media critique eye of my pal Scott McClellan. And
maybe NBC's David Gregory and his Beltway pals should give it another
close read if they really think they did nothing
wrong with their war coverage, that they
asked all the right questions and refrained from cheerleading. 

Mac and I
disagree with Gregory on that one. 

After all,
it was McClellan who fired up the White House Nexis account and tallied up the
number of times the "liberal" Washington Post
editorialized in favor of the war from September 2002 to February 2003: 26. 

He smartly
tipped me off to a study conducted by the McCormick Tribune Foundation that
found a majority of Americans thought the news media could have done a better
job informing the public about Iraq
and the stakes involved in going to war. 

He flagged
a study
by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting that focused on the first two weeks of
February 2003, when the debate about the war should have been raging on the
public airwaves, and found that of 393 people interviewed on camera
for network news reports about the war, just 6 percent were people who
expressed skepticism about the looming invasion. 

And yes,
it was McClellan who turned me onto research compiled by analyst Andrew
Tyndall, who found that almost all the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC,
and CBS from September 2002 until February 2003 could be traced back to sources
from the White House, the Pentagon, or the State Department. Only 34 stories,
or just 8 percent, were of independent origin.

Mac was
livid when he discovered that an ABC
affiliate in Utah owned by Clear Channel Communications informed backers of an anti-war ad
that it was an "inappropriate
commercial advertisement for Salt Lake
  City." And Mac couldn't believe it when a
CBS affiliate in Boise, Idaho, also refused to
air the ad, insisting its claim that Bush lied about Iraq's WMDs was not provable. 

In 2004,
when Seth Mnookin's book Hard News was published,
Mac immediately told me to dog-ear the page where The New York Times'
former investigative editor, Doug Frantz, recalled how Times editor "Howell
Raines was eager to have articles that supported the
war-mongering out of Washington."
And how Raines "discouraged pieces that were at odds with the
administration's position on Iraq's supposed weapons of
mass destruction and alleged links to Al Qaeda." 

McClellan
just shook his head in 2005 when he read
Newsweek's
Baghdad bureau chief Rod Nordland admit that when he arrived in Iraq two years
earlier he had been "an unabashed believer in toppling Saddam
Hussein." Can you imagine, I remember McClellan asking me, Newsweek in 2003 assigning
as Baghdad
bureau chief somebody who was an "unabashed" opponent of the war? We
both scoffed at the notion.

Mac and I
are no longer in touch (that was a prerequisite of our strict ghostwriting
pact), but I'm sure he was fuming last week when CNN's Wolf
Blitzer, responding to Mac's allegation that the press was too timid
prior to the war, noted how often CNN had hosted war skeptic and former weapons
inspector Scott Ritter to discuss the war. 

Scott
Ritter! Oh, that was rich. See, it was McClellan who dug up this quote (via
the Daily Howler) from Ritter when he
appeared on a C-SPAN call-in show in January 2004. Mac insisted that
Ritter's response to a question about why he was rarely seen on television
anymore discussing the war perfectly captured the media's
complicity and he urged me to include Ritter's quote in Lapdogs in full, which I
did: 





Unfortunately,
I don't believe the mainstream media acted responsibly in regard to Iraq.
Back in the fall of 2002, I was belittled, I was called a traitor, I was called
crazy -- Paula Zahn of CNN accused me of drinking Saddam Hussein's
Kool-Aid for making accurate statements in response to aluminum tubes and
uranium allegedly coming from Niger.
I think we have a problem here in that the media is culpable for the misleading
of the American public. They bought into the Bush administration's
rhetoric and war fervor, they sold the war to the American public, and now they
have to deal with the fact that they're the ones that were out there
beating the war drums and you have this guy, Scott Ritter, who was saying
something different and -- maybe they just don't know how to deal with
me. [Page 273] 

With What Happened, McClellan has become a big media
star and revealed himself as a left-leaning media critic. His ghostwriting days
are over. 

But at
least Mac can blurb my next book. <blockquote style="background:#FAFAFA;border:1px dotted #E6E6E6;font:italic 10pt Times New Roman;padding:9px;">Media Matters - Me and Scott McClellan, brothers in arms   {...} </blockquote><div style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;">Published:</span> June 3, 2008, 5:56 pm - <span style="color:#808080;">Indexed:</span> June 3, 2008, 6:36 pm - <span style="color:#808080;">Page Size:</span>&nbsp;22KB</div><div style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;">Category:</span> <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/">Society</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/">Issues</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/">Business</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/">Media</a> &gt;  <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/"><b>Bias and Balance</b></a></div></td></tr></table>
<br/>
]]></content:encoded>
		<category>Society > Issues > Business > Media > Bias and Balance</category>
	</item>
	<item>
		<title>{ISSUES &gt; BIAS AND BALANCE} - While Mike Allen equated critics of White House press corps' war coverage with "left-wing haters," ex-colleague Dobbs wrote, "We failed you"  </title>
		<link>http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/while-mike-allen-equated-critics-of-white-house-20080544420.htm</link>
		<guid>http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/while-mike-allen-equated-critics-of-white-house-20080544420.htm</guid>
		<pubDate>Sat, 31 May 2008 01:30:44 GMT</pubDate>
		<description>On the May 27 edition of Mike Gallagher's nationally
syndicated radio show, Politico
chief political correspondent Mike Allen responded to criticisms of the media's
role in the lead-up to the Iraq war that former White House press secretary
Scott McClellan makes in his new book, What
Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
(Public Affairs, May 2008), as the blog Think Progress first noted. Allen, a Washington Post staff writer during the
prewar period, asserted on Gallagher's show: "Scott does adopt the
vocabulary, rhetoric of the left-wing
haters. Can you believe it in here he says that the White House press corps was
too deferential to the administration ... in the run-up to the war? Now, I don't think
Scott felt that way when he was up at the podium like a punching bag, but
that's what he said." By contrast, two of Allen's former Post colleagues -- reporter Michael Dobbs
and media critic Howard Kurtz -- echoed the media criticism of Allen's
so-called "left-wing haters." Dobbs, who writes the
washingtonpost.com blog The
Fact Checker, awarded McClellan's statement about the press a Gepetto checkmark
for providing "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth" and asserted
that "on the question of whether the American press did its job properly
during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is difficult to argue with his
conclusions. We failed you." Similarly, Kurtz stated that print coverage
during the run-up to the war was "flawed," adding: "It was
only when violence surged in Iraq and public opinion began turning against the
war that ABC, CBS, NBC, and the rest of the media turned more skeptical."

In a May 29 blog post, Dobbs
wrote: 

As a reporter who was part of The
Washington Post's foreign policy team during the period 2002-2003, I have
thought about this question a lot over the past five years. Many of my colleagues
have dismissed McClellan's criticisms, insisting that they asked "all the
right questions" during the run-up to the war, and it was hardly our fault
if the administration failed to answer them honestly. I disagree. I think the American media -- and that includes me,
personally -- failed to do its job properly during the run-up to the war.

[...]

None of this absolves the media of
its share of the blame for uncritically relaying the administration's case for
war, as articulated by the likes of Scott McClellan. As I look back on my own
reporting during the runup to the war, there are articles to which I can point
with pride and others I would prefer to forget. But the bottom line is that we spent too much time, as McClellan says,
"covering the march to war" rather than "the necessity of
war." We devoted a lot of attention to the small questions --
the counting of votes in Congress and the United Nations, the procedural
disputes over weapons inspectors, the selling of the war -- without addressing
the big questions. Was the war necessary? Would it make us Americans, and the
rest of the world, safer? How would it upset the balance of power in the Middle East between Shia and Sunni (terms that were
unfamiliar to most Americans)?

As I saw it here at
The Post, the media's failure went from top to bottom. Editors were reluctant
to give front-page prominence to stories that challenged the administration's
rationale for war, including one by Walter Pincus questioning the evidence
about weapons of mass destruction that ended up on
page A17. But reporters (including myself) often failed to display
sufficient skepticism about the administration's claims. We should have pressed
our editors harder to find a way of addressing the most important questions,
even if it was very difficult to find dissenters within the administration.

I should make clear that I am not
singling out The Post for special criticism. With a very few exceptions (the Washington bureau of
Knight-Ridder comes to mind), the entire American media failed to
aggressively challenge the administration's narrative. 

Discussing McClellan's comments on the May 28 edition of
CNN's The
Situation Room, Kurtz asserted, "Print coverage,
meanwhile, was also flawed. The New York
Times, which published Judith Miller's erroneous stories about
Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and The Washington Post, including Bob Woodward, have expressed
regret for not being more aggressive in questioning the march to war." He
continued: "It was only when violence surged in Iraq and public opinion began
turning against the war that ABC, CBS, NBC, and the rest of the media turned
more skeptical." Kurtz also asserted, "One of my problems is that
anti-war voices had limited access, it seemed, to the airwaves, while
administration officials, of course, were on every day pounding home that
message." In an August 12, 2004, Post
article examining
the paper's coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war, Kurtz reported:


An examination of the paper's
coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters
involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the
White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for
greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence
complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were
unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes
of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.


From the May 27 edition of Salem Radio Network's The Mike Gallagher Show:


ALLEN: What's interesting
about this is that Scott --
as you suggested in your lineup --
has really lost some friends over this. There's one thing the president does not like. It's people who profit at his expense.
And when the publisher of this book last November, you'll remember -- they put out that little
snippet where Scott --

GALLAGHER: Right, the little blurb.

ALLEN: Yeah, where Scott suggested
that the president was
complicit in deceiving him about the Valerie Plame matter. That was clearly not
true, everybody knew that. The book now makes it clear that that wasn't
true. The president
heard about it, was furious.
People inside
don't like it. And, indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary,
rhetoric of the left-wing
haters. Can you believe it in here he says that the White House press corps was
too deferential to the administration in the --

GALLAGHER: Deferential?

ALLEN: -- in the run-up
to the war? Now, I don't think Scott felt that way when he was up at the
podium like a punching bag, but that's what he said.

GALLAGHER: Like a deer in the
headlights. 

From the May 28 edition of CNN's The Situation Room: 

WOLF BLITZER (host): Now to one of the most
provocative allegations in Scott McClellan's new book about his days in the
Bush White House. The target: those of us in the news media who cover the
president. The anchors of the three broadcast networks are speaking out about
that very subject, reacting to McClellan's charges today.

Let's go right to CNN's Howard
Kurtz, the host of CNN's Reliable Sources,
also the -- from The Washington Post. 

[...]





KURTZ: [CBS Evening News anchor Katie] Couric has
told me that while she was at NBC, where she co-hosted the Today show, she got what she described as
complaints from network executives when she challenged the Bush administration.

Print coverage,
meanwhile, was also flawed. The New York
Times, which published Judith Miller's erroneous stories about
Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and The Washington Post, including Bob Woodward, have expressed
regret for not being more aggressive in questioning the march to war.


[end video clip]

KURTZ: It was only when violence surged in Iraq and public opinion began turning
against the war that ABC, CBS, NBC, and the rest of the media turned more
skeptical. These days, war coverage seems to have dramatically
dwindled as the network anchors and most of their colleagues focus more on
politics here at home.

And, Wolf, a question for you: With
the benefit of hindsight, how do you assess CNN's coverage during the run-up to
the Iraq
conflict?

BLITZER: I think we were pretty
strong. But certainly, with hindsight, we could have done an even better job.
There were a lot of things missing in our coverage that, obviously, you know ex
post facto, after the fact. But certainly we raised the important questions.

I can't tell you how many times we
had Scott Ritter and Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, from the International
Atomic Energy Agency, on my shows and a lot of the other shows on CNN, where
they suggested, you know what, they don't see the evidence about the weapons of
mass destruction. They're not convinced. 

But could we have done a better job?
Sure. Remember, we are a first draft of history, journalism, and we can always
go back and look back and say, you know, "We could have done this, we
could have done that." On the whole, though, I think we asked the tough
questions, but we could have done better.

KURTZ: One of my problems is that anti-war voices had limited access, it seemed,
to the airwaves, while administration officials, of course, were on every day
pounding home that message.

BLITZER: But you know what? We had a
reporter whose sole job -- Maria Hinojosa -- was to cover the anti-war
activists. And we did a lot of the protests. We did a lot of that almost on a
daily basis going into this war. So we didn't ignore those anti-war protests.

KURTZ: It's always easier in
hindsight.



BLITZER: Yup, you're absolutely
right. Howie Kurtz, thanks very much for joining us. </description>
		<source url="http://mediamatters.org/items/200805300008">Mediamatters.Org</source>
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<tr><td colspan="2" style="font:bold 12pt Arial;vertical-align:top;"><a href="http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/while-mike-allen-equated-critics-of-white-house-20080544420.htm"><b>While Mike Allen equated critics of White House press corps' war coverage with "left-wing haters," ex-colleague Dobbs wrote, "We failed you"  </b></a> <sup style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;">{<a href="http://articles.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/while-mike-allen-equated-critics-of-white-house-20080544420.htm" target="_blank">new window</a>}</sup></td></tr>
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<td width="100%" style="font:9pt Verdana,Arial,Sans-serif;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;font-variant:small-caps;">Mediamatters.Org</span> - On the May 27 edition of Mike Gallagher's nationally
syndicated radio show, Politico
chief political correspondent Mike Allen responded to criticisms of the media's
role in the lead-up to the Iraq war that former White House press secretary
Scott McClellan makes in his new book, What
Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
(Public Affairs, May 2008), as the blog Think Progress first noted. Allen, a Washington Post staff writer during the
prewar period, asserted on Gallagher's show: "Scott does adopt the
vocabulary, rhetoric of the left-wing
haters. Can you believe it in here he says that the White House press corps was
too deferential to the administration ... in the run-up to the war? Now, I don't think
Scott felt that way when he was up at the podium like a punching bag, but
that's what he said." By contrast, two of Allen's former Post colleagues -- reporter Michael Dobbs
and media critic Howard Kurtz -- echoed the media criticism of Allen's
so-called "left-wing haters." Dobbs, who writes the
washingtonpost.com blog The
Fact Checker, awarded McClellan's statement about the press a Gepetto checkmark
for providing "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth" and asserted
that "on the question of whether the American press did its job properly
during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is difficult to argue with his
conclusions. We failed you." Similarly, Kurtz stated that print coverage
during the run-up to the war was "flawed," adding: "It was
only when violence surged in Iraq and public opinion began turning against the
war that ABC, CBS, NBC, and the rest of the media turned more skeptical."

In a May 29 blog post, Dobbs
wrote: 

As a reporter who was part of The
Washington Post's foreign policy team during the period 2002-2003, I have
thought about this question a lot over the past five years. Many of my colleagues
have dismissed McClellan's criticisms, insisting that they asked "all the
right questions" during the run-up to the war, and it was hardly our fault
if the administration failed to answer them honestly. I disagree. I think the American media -- and that includes me,
personally -- failed to do its job properly during the run-up to the war.

[...]

None of this absolves the media of
its share of the blame for uncritically relaying the administration's case for
war, as articulated by the likes of Scott McClellan. As I look back on my own
reporting during the runup to the war, there are articles to which I can point
with pride and others I would prefer to forget. But the bottom line is that we spent too much time, as McClellan says,
"covering the march to war" rather than "the necessity of
war." We devoted a lot of attention to the small questions --
the counting of votes in Congress and the United Nations, the procedural
disputes over weapons inspectors, the selling of the war -- without addressing
the big questions. Was the war necessary? Would it make us Americans, and the
rest of the world, safer? How would it upset the balance of power in the Middle East between Shia and Sunni (terms that were
unfamiliar to most Americans)?

As I saw it here at
The Post, the media's failure went from top to bottom. Editors were reluctant
to give front-page prominence to stories that challenged the administration's
rationale for war, including one by Walter Pincus questioning the evidence
about weapons of mass destruction that ended up on
page A17. But reporters (including myself) often failed to display
sufficient skepticism about the administration's claims. We should have pressed
our editors harder to find a way of addressing the most important questions,
even if it was very difficult to find dissenters within the administration.

I should make clear that I am not
singling out The Post for special criticism. With a very few exceptions (the Washington bureau of
Knight-Ridder comes to mind), the entire American media failed to
aggressively challenge the administration's narrative. 

Discussing McClellan's comments on the May 28 edition of
CNN's The
Situation Room, Kurtz asserted, "Print coverage,
meanwhile, was also flawed. The New York
Times, which published Judith Miller's erroneous stories about
Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and The Washington Post, including Bob Woodward, have expressed
regret for not being more aggressive in questioning the march to war." He
continued: "It was only when violence surged in Iraq and public opinion began
turning against the war that ABC, CBS, NBC, and the rest of the media turned
more skeptical." Kurtz also asserted, "One of my problems is that
anti-war voices had limited access, it seemed, to the airwaves, while
administration officials, of course, were on every day pounding home that
message." In an August 12, 2004, Post
article examining
the paper's coverage in the run-up to the Iraq war, Kurtz reported:


An examination of the paper's
coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters
involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the
White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for
greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence
complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were
unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes
of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.


From the May 27 edition of Salem Radio Network's The Mike Gallagher Show:


ALLEN: What's interesting
about this is that Scott --
as you suggested in your lineup --
has really lost some friends over this. There's one thing the president does not like. It's people who profit at his expense.
And when the publisher of this book last November, you'll remember -- they put out that little
snippet where Scott --

GALLAGHER: Right, the little blurb.

ALLEN: Yeah, where Scott suggested
that the president was
complicit in deceiving him about the Valerie Plame matter. That was clearly not
true, everybody knew that. The book now makes it clear that that wasn't
true. The president
heard about it, was furious.
People inside
don't like it. And, indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary,
rhetoric of the left-wing
haters. Can you believe it in here he says that the White House press corps was
too deferential to the administration in the --

GALLAGHER: Deferential?

ALLEN: -- in the run-up
to the war? Now, I don't think Scott felt that way when he was up at the
podium like a punching bag, but that's what he said.

GALLAGHER: Like a deer in the
headlights. 

From the May 28 edition of CNN's The Situation Room: 

WOLF BLITZER (host): Now to one of the most
provocative allegations in Scott McClellan's new book about his days in the
Bush White House. The target: those of us in the news media who cover the
president. The anchors of the three broadcast networks are speaking out about
that very subject, reacting to McClellan's charges today.

Let's go right to CNN's Howard
Kurtz, the host of CNN's Reliable Sources,
also the -- from The Washington Post. 

[...]





KURTZ: [CBS Evening News anchor Katie] Couric has
told me that while she was at NBC, where she co-hosted the Today show, she got what she described as
complaints from network executives when she challenged the Bush administration.

Print coverage,
meanwhile, was also flawed. The New York
Times, which published Judith Miller's erroneous stories about
Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and The Washington Post, including Bob Woodward, have expressed
regret for not being more aggressive in questioning the march to war.


[end video clip]

KURTZ: It was only when violence surged in Iraq and public opinion began turning
against the war that ABC, CBS, NBC, and the rest of the media turned more
skeptical. These days, war coverage seems to have dramatically
dwindled as the network anchors and most of their colleagues focus more on
politics here at home.

And, Wolf, a question for you: With
the benefit of hindsight, how do you assess CNN's coverage during the run-up to
the Iraq
conflict?

BLITZER: I think we were pretty
strong. But certainly, with hindsight, we could have done an even better job.
There were a lot of things missing in our coverage that, obviously, you know ex
post facto, after the fact. But certainly we raised the important questions.

I can't tell you how many times we
had Scott Ritter and Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, from the International
Atomic Energy Agency, on my shows and a lot of the other shows on CNN, where
they suggested, you know what, they don't see the evidence about the weapons of
mass destruction. They're not convinced. 

But could we have done a better job?
Sure. Remember, we are a first draft of history, journalism, and we can always
go back and look back and say, you know, "We could have done this, we
could have done that." On the whole, though, I think we asked the tough
questions, but we could have done better.

KURTZ: One of my problems is that anti-war voices had limited access, it seemed,
to the airwaves, while administration officials, of course, were on every day
pounding home that message.

BLITZER: But you know what? We had a
reporter whose sole job -- Maria Hinojosa -- was to cover the anti-war
activists. And we did a lot of the protests. We did a lot of that almost on a
daily basis going into this war. So we didn't ignore those anti-war protests.

KURTZ: It's always easier in
hindsight.



BLITZER: Yup, you're absolutely
right. Howie Kurtz, thanks very much for joining us. <blockquote style="background:#FAFAFA;border:1px dotted #E6E6E6;font:italic 10pt Times New Roman;padding:9px;">Media Matters - While Mike Allen equated critics of White House press corps&#39; war coverage with "left-wing haters," ex-colleague Dobbs wrote, "We failed you"   {...} On Mike Gallagher&#39;s radio show, Mike Allen said of Scott McClellan&#39;s new book: "Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left-wing haters. Can you believe it in here he says that the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration ... in the run-up to the war?" By contrast, two of Allen&#39;s former colleagues echoed the media criticism of Allen&#39;s so-called "left-wing haters." Michael Dobbs asserted that "on the question of whether the American press did its job properly during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is difficult to argue with his conclusions. We failed you." Similarly, Howard Kurtz stated that print coverage during the run-up to the war was "flawed," adding: "It was only when violence surged in Iraq and public opinion began turning against the war that ABC, CBS, NBC, and the rest of the media turned more skeptical."   {...}</blockquote><div style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;">Published:</span> May 31, 2008, 1:30 am - <span style="color:#808080;">Indexed:</span> May 31, 2008, 11:08 am - <span style="color:#808080;">Page Size:</span>&nbsp;29KB</div><div style="font:8pt Verdana,Arial;vertical-align:top;"><span style="color:#808080;">Category:</span> <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/">Society</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/">Issues</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/">Business</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/">Media</a> &gt;  <a href="http://www.world-of-newave.info/society/issues/business/media/bias-and-balance/"><b>Bias and Balance</b></a></div></td></tr></table>
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