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MEDIA - LIARS/SPINNERS INC.
This section will explore bias, incompetence, lying and malpractice in the media. There are many journalists I like (even in the mainstream media outlets/newspapers I criticize here) but it is important to note when the media goes down the wrong path. 

8/11/04 <link>
Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth" v. The Truth
I'm not entirely confident that the mainstream media will do a good job of showing the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" for the con artists they are. So, for the most comprehensive coverage yet detailing the lies, fabrications and distortions by the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush (er, for the "Truth"), - about John Kerry - check out my coverage here. Would you be surprised to know that a key operative who was behind the ads that falsely smeared John McCain when he ran against Bush in 2000, is also behind this smear attack against Kerry? That's Merrie Spaeth - and among other things, she was also a coach of sorts to Kenneth Starr during the Clinton impeachment hearings. Another key character behind this egregious attack is John O'Neill, a Nixon protégé and patsy, a long-time Kerry nemesis, and a partisan right-wing Republican who once clerked for William Rehnquist, the current Chief Justice of the United States. Read more, here.

5/31/04 <link>
The U.S Media and the Selling of the Iraq War - Part I: The New York Times 
Click on the link above to read my detailed coverage on how the New York Times sold the Iraq war and what the future holds for journalistic standards at the Times.

5/15/04 <link> (UPDATED 8/11/04)
Mainstream media "confessions" - too little, too late
With some notable exceptions, it is obvious today that the mainstream media in the United States largely aided and abetted the Bush administration in the fraud that led to the Iraq war, with their extraordinary stenography, passed off as "journalism" (kudos to Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post on calling for more research and less stenography in journalism). Given that, some "confessions" have started to appear among these stenographers after seeing the continued, appalling incompetence of the administration and how America's name has been besmirched by them, not to mention how the recent Abu Ghraib scandal and the administration's mishandling of it has given aid and comfort to America's enemies. Not unexpectedly, at least some of the "confessions" borrow the tact of Bush himself, in trying to blame someone else.

The Daily Howler recently highlighted one such egregious "confession" from the Washington Post's David Ignatius:  

IGNATIUS EXPLAINS: Then, of course, there’s David Ignatius, whose column today rues the press corps’ failure to foresee current breakdowns in Iraq. “The uniformed military privately had serious questions about the Iraq mission,” he writes, “but these only occasionally made their way into print.” Why did the press corps fail to serve? Try to believe—just try to believe—that a paper like the Post would print this absurd explanation:

IGNATIUS: In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn’t create a debate on our own.

On what planet are these people found? According to Ignatius, because neither party was blast-faxing warnings, “journalistic rules” meant that scribes couldn’t raise concerns by themselves! (His claim that “policy analysts” weren’t voicing concern is so absurd that, as a courtesy, we’ll avert our gaze from the remark.) And by the way, can this astonishing “explanation” really appear in the Washington Post? We wonder if Woodward and Bernstein had heard of these rules—if they knew that journalists can’t report facts until the two parties have sent them a leaflet? Ignatius’ comment defies comprehension—except as a description of the repulsive, dinner-party “journalism” that has made a sick joke of our lives.
Yes, mainstream journalists occasionally make their Millionaire Pundit Values quite clear. Last Wednesday, President Bush addressed 1,500 newspaper editors and publishers at their annual convention in Washington. According to Elisabeth Bumiller, the titans were moved to applause one time:

BUMILLER: Mr. Bush spoke for 44 minutes to the editors in off-the-cuff remarks that drew on familiar phrases from his speeches of the last two and a half years…Mr. Bush’s substantive remarks were interrupted only once with applause, when he called for the end of the “death tax,” or the estate tax.

Gaze on the soul of your millionaire press corps! They’re moved to cheer for only one thing—the repeal of Teddy Roosevelt’s tax on multimillion-dollar estates. Meanwhile, their “professionalism” keeps them from raising concerns until the two parties permit them to speak! Why did they bungle the run-up to Iraq? We were just too professional, Ignatius says! Has history ever rewarded a nation which allows such fops to serve in high places? Disaster awaits if these people aren’t countered. That’s why decent people like E. J. Dionne must stand on their hind legs—and fight.

The Daily Howler also brings to our attention the more honest excuse for stenography offered by the New York Times' Elisabeth "Is God on America's Side" Bumiller:

Kafka could never have dreamed this crew up! In recent weeks, the New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller has published a string of bizarre “White House letters,” praising the president’s fine bedtime habits and rhapsodizing about his warm, “comfy” bed. Snoopy should have gotten a by-line. The scribe also made a fool of herself at a Democratic presidential debate.
Now, the Spotless Mind takes us behind the scenes at that famous pre-Iraq White House press conference. The conference was held on March 6, 2003; assembled reporters lobbed softballs at Bush, bringing themselves widespread ridicule (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 3/11/03). Finally, Bumiller explains the corps’ behavior. Kafka couldn’t have dreamed up a White House correspondent who was willing to say this in public:

BUMILLER: I think we were very deferential because…it’s live, it’s very intense, it’s frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you’re standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country’s about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.

It’s frightening to stand up there, Bumiller says. It’s frightening to ask the president a question! At the time, Bush hadn’t met with the press in four months; dozens of questions were begging for answers. But according to Bumiller, it was too scary. Why did the “press” lob softballs that day? No one wanted to get in an argument, the spotless Times journalist says.
It’s amazing that Bumiller felt this way. It’s much more amazing that she’d say this in public. You sometimes think we’re being hyperbolic when we say that our “press corps” can’t be from this planet. But remember: The words we quote were recently spoken by the New York Times White House correspondent! We’ve told you for years: You don’t have a press corps! First by her “letters,” then by this statement, Bumiller makes our point clear.

Nick Confessore at TAPPED highlights how the New York Times' steep drop in journalistic standards is traceable back to the publisher Arthur Sulzberger, who defends Judith "WMD" Miller - one of the all-stars of the fraud-squad:

NOT OFF THE HOOK YET. Speaking of Judith Miller, Editor & Publisher reports here on remarks New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. gave to the National College Media Convention. Among other things, he defended Judith Miller's now widely-discredited reporting on the search for WMDs in Iraq thusly:

At one point, a college reporter asked Sulzberger a pointed question about one of his newspaper's star writers, Judith Miller, who has been widely criticized for misleading coverage of alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq last year. The publisher defended Miller, saying he had known her "for decades," adding that she "has fabulous sources."
Then he added: "Were her sources wrong? Absolutely. Her sources were wrong. And you know something? The administration was wrong. And when you're covering it from the inside like that you're going to get things wrong sometimes. So I don't blame Judy Miller for the lack of finding weapons of mass destruction." This produced a few laughs from audience members. "I blame the administration for believing its own story line," he continued, "to such a point that they weren't prepared to question the authenticity of what they were told."

Not to be glib, but isn't it Miller's job to question the authenticity of what she was being told? To avoid being a conveyor belt for misinformation that even at the time was widely called into question? To not allow herself to be duped by her sources simply because she was close to them?
As Jack Shafer pointed out, the problem was not that Miller was getting at information that nobody else could get, and that information sadly turned out to be wrong. It's that she never challenged the veracity of claims by her high-level, anonymous, ideologically motivated sources by collecting information from the lower-level analysts who turned out to be correct, as did (among others) the fine reporters in Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau.
That her sources got things wrong is no excuse. Sources try to spin reporters all the time -- it's what they do. Miller's responsibility was to avoid getting herself spun, and it's a responsibility she failed to uphold.

When the publisher of the nation's "newspaper of record" (or whatever it is) believes it is not the job of his newspaper's staff to try and establish the veracity of the "facts" but merely report what is told to them in stenographic form, I think I can safely rest my case on what the U.S. mainstream media has become.

Note that the media, regardless of their confessions, are not particularly doing the greatest job of dispelling some of the myths and fraud perpetrated by the Bush administration and them prior to the Iraq war. PIPA/KN did a follow-up poll after their original poll which we reported on earlier and found that substantial numbers of people still have wrong impressions of the what the facts really are - regarding Saddam and Al Qaeda, regarding worldwide support for the Iraq war (or lack thereof), WMDs possessed by Saddam, etc. That data is here. 

11/8/03 <link>
Fox Faux News: Lies and the Lying Liars that Tell Them
Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" is a must-read for those who want to know more about Faux News' propaganda and fakery machine. Additionally, a couple of recent articles/reports have come up showing what Faux really is (not to mention how uncritical and White House friendly the rest of the media was on the topic of Iraq).

PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll/Study (a must-read)

The fakery of Fox Faux News (and the overall media's role in uncritically propagating myths spread by the Bush administration) is readily exposed by a poll done by PIPA and Knowledge Networks. The PIPA/KN report on that poll is here. PIPA/KN examined Americans' beliefs regarding the myths perpetrated by this administration directly or subliminally (in a way that they could conveniently deny later if needed) that:
(a) Saddam Hussein/Iraq had a connection with 9/11 and/or Al Qaeda and that evidence for this connection has been found since the invasion of Iraq
(b) Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) have been found in Iraq since the invasion
(c) World public opinion before/after the invasion supported the U.S./British invasion of Iraq

Before I review the PIPA/KN results, let me note for those readers who may think that statements (a), (b) and/or (c) are true - they are not. 
Why? Well, here is the systematic evidence debunking the above statements:
(a) Review my summary/analysis of the Bush administration statements on the Iraq-9/11-Al Qaeda connection at my sister site Compassiongate.
(b) On this issue, as well, I've done a multi-pronged analysis at Compassiongate. I've looked at the case presented by the administration before the invasion and the statements made by them after the invasion. The results - showing the serial lying and misleading compassionate conservatism - are here. 
(My own thinking before the invasion was that Saddam probably possessed some WMDs but nothing that posed a significant threat to the U.S. - certainly nothing that justified invading Iraq. Of course, no WMDs have been found so far in Iraq).
(c) World public opinion before the invasion, was decidedly against it. I showed that here. This has not changed substantially as far as I can tell, since the invasion. 

Back to the PIPA/KN report. Two key conclusions first (red font is my emphasis).

"...Misperceptions Related to the Iraq War
In the run-up to the war with Iraq and in the postwar period, a significant portion of the American public has held a number of misperceptions that have played a key role in generating and maintaining approval for the decision to go to war. Significant portions of the public have believed that Iraq was directly involved in the September 11 attacks and that evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found, that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the war and that Iraq actually used weapons of mass destruction during the war, and that world public opinion has approved of the US going to war with Iraq. While, in most cases only a minority has any particular misperception, a large majority has at least one key misperception...

Variations in Misperceptions According to Source of News
The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience..."

To make it easier for the reader to see what PIPA/KN found, I am providing a snapshot of the PIPA/KN charts here. 

I. First, let's take a look at the % of Americans who had opinions that were not supported by the actual facts and how that influenced their support for the Iraq invasion. 

You can click on the charts to enlarge them.

II. Now, let's look at which media outlets contributed the most to the misperceptions.

III. Finally, it is also instructive to look at misperceptions as a function of the support the individual expressed for President Bush or the GOP, and how that mixes in with the impact of the media outlet they use for their news.

Should I say more? Not really. But there is more to say.

Charlie Reina who used to work for Faux News, recently wrote about how Faux News is run by political/ideological dictat top-down. This is covered in this article/interview by Salon.com's Tim Grieve. A quote (bold text is my emphasis):
"..."The fact is," Reina wrote, "daily life at FNC is all about management politics." Reina said that Fox's daily news coverage -- and its daily news bias -- is driven by an "editorial note" sent to the newsroom every morning by John Moody, a Fox senior vice president. The editorial note -- a memo posted on Fox's computer system -- tells the staff which correspondents are working on which stories. But frequently, Reina says, it also contains hints, suggestions and directives on how to slant the day's news -- invariably, he says, in a way that's consistent with the politics and desires of the Bush administration..."

UPDATE 2/16/04: 

The issue does not end with Faux. Here's Michael Massing in a must-read piece for the New York Review of Books taking the media in the U.S. to task, especially the New York Times, for their appallingly slanted pro-Bush coverage before the war. A few paragraphs:

In recent months, US news organizations have rushed to expose the Bush administration's pre-war failings on Iraq. "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper," declared a recent headline in The Washington Post. "Pressure Rises for Probe of Prewar-Intelligence," said The Wall Street Journal. "So, What Went Wrong?" asked Time. In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh described how the Pentagon set up its own intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, to sift for data to support the administration's claims about Iraq. And on "Truth, War and Consequences," a Frontline documentary that aired last October, a procession of intelligence analysts testified to the administration's use of what one of them called "faith-based intelligence."
Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change—when, in short, it might have made a difference? Some maintain that the many analysts who've spoken out since the end of the war were mute before it. But that's not true. Beginning in the summer of 2002, the "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it.
Before the war, for instance, there was a loud debate among intelligence analysts over the information provided to the Pentagon by Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi and defectors linked to him. Yet little of this seeped into the press. Not until September 29, 2003, for instance, did The New York Times get around to informing readers about the controversy over Chalabi and the defectors associated with him. In a front-page article headlined "Agency Belittles Information Given by Iraqi Defectors," Douglas Jehl reported that a study by the Defense Intelligence Agency had found that most of the information provided by defectors connected to Ahmed Chalabi "was of little or no value." Several defectors introduced to US intelligence by the Iraqi National Congress, Jehl wrote, "invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program."
...
This points to a larger problem. In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out. Reflecting this, the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction— the heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it. As journalists rush to chronicle the administration's failings on Iraq, they should pay some attention to their own.

Jack Shafer specifically focuses on the New York Times' Judith Miller in this Slate piece - commenting on her appalling incompetence and pro-Bush-administration tilt. It is egregious that she still has her job at the New York Times.

With respect to the Washington Post, its ombudsman Michael Getler also wrote recently about how the Press by and large failed in its job to be sufficiently critical in its reporting. Some snippets:

...But whatever one's politics, it is hard to think of an issue more basic to a democracy. And it is hard to think of issues more fundamental to national security than intelligence that seems to have been far off-base and that contributed to a decision to go to war, or the possible misuse of that intelligence through a false but assertive sense of certainty by an administration, if that turns out to be the case.
The pursuit of this story by the press -- as opposed to government and government-appointed groups -- may be one of the few avenues that we as citizens have to get as close to the truth as possible.
One event came on Jan. 29, when David Kay, the retiring chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, dropped his own weapon of mass destruction. "It turns out," Kay told Congress, "we were all wrong, probably, in my judgment. And that is most disturbing." It is, indeed, disturbing. But a review of stories over the past year or so suggests that not everybody was wrong before the war.
We now know, for example, that the Defense Intelligence Agency reported in September 2002 that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." We know that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research reported that it "considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment" that Iraq was pursuing "an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons," and that Energy Department experts did not agree that controversial aluminum tubes were part of a nuclear program. We now know that the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center disputed the notion that Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, were being designed as attack weapons.
The reporting continues. Last Saturday, Post staff writers Walter Pincus and Dana Priest reported on how the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that helped fuel the case for war contained several other caveats that were ignored. That story appeared on Page A17 and many readers wanted it on Page One, a complaint frequently offered by those following this closely.
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported on Feb. 10 that a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that President Bush was "poorly served by a speechwriter" when he said, in his State of the Union address in 2002, that U.S. forces in Afghanistan, in routing al Qaeda guerrillas, had found plans for U.S. nuclear power plants. He said no one could confirm that such plans were found. The Times also reported on Feb. 7 that the Defense Intelligence Agency put out a "fabrication notification" in May 2002 about an Iraqi military defector who was providing some information that went into U.S. intelligence estimates. These stories were also well inside those newspapers.
Editors cannot, of course, put every story on this subject on the front page. But the topic is a source of frustration for many readers, and for me, because there is no easy way to stay on top of this crucial story. Page one tells readers what news editors think is important, and the press is about the only way to find out more than what the government chooses to tell us. ..

6/14/03 <link>
Sean Wilentz: The Media gets impeachment wrong again
We highly recommend this article by Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz, talking about Sidney Blumenthal's book "The Clinton Wars". Here are some extracts (with bold text being our emphasis):
"...Five years ago, I testified before Congress that history would harshly judge the unconstitutional impeachment drive against President Clinton. My position was fairly mainstream among American historians. By the time I testified, nearly 500 had signed a letter I helped to write with the distinguished scholars Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and C. Vann Woodward, deploring the impeachment on historical and constitutional grounds. Soon thereafter, a group of more than 400 leading legal scholars, including Cass Sunstein and Laurence Tribe, issued a similar statement. 
Not surprisingly, Republicans lambasted both the historians' letter and my testimony, as did journalists and pundits playing amateur historians inside the right-wing media echo chamber. A group of 90 writers -- only three of them historians, but with a heavy contingent from the right-wing think tanks plus partisan ideologues from the Reagan and first Bush administrations, such as C. Boyden Gray -- composed a counter-statement attacking the historians. But a wide range of editorial writers and columnists in the so-called "liberal media" also denounced the historians for being "gratuitous" "condescending" and "partisan."
The historians' verdict was clear: The impeachment drive against President Clinton lacked constitutional and political legitimacy. The journalists' opinion was equally clear: The impeachment was legitimate, and the historians were really a fusty collection of liberal elitists who had no business sticking their noses into public affairs.
Now an extraordinary thing has happened. Journalists from across the political spectrum are finally acknowledging that impeachment was mostly a partisan crusade on trumped-up charges to bring down a popular president. "From the viewpoint of history," the conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote recently in the New York Observer, "it's going to seem deranged." They have conceded that numerous allegations noisily leveled against Clinton and repeated endlessly in the news media of which they are a part have turned out to be bogus. 

...Even as journalists admit that Blumenthal has the goods to prove what a right-wing circus impeachment really was, they dismiss his revelations as score-settling, and worse -- as "history." The spectacle of the media, having gotten the story wrong in the first place, dismissing the book that gets it right is stunning, even to someone who lived through the actual impeachment.
Meanwhile, the most respectful reviews have come from historians -- Robert Dallek in the New York Times Book Review and David Greenberg in the Washington Monthly. Though not uncritical, both warmly praised the book's reconstruction of the historical record and called it the place to start in order to understand the Clinton presidency. Once again, the historians get the story right.
Journalists have attacked Blumenthal, a controversial figure in Washington press circles, for writing a memoir they deem a courtier's brief -- too one-sided, partisan and uncritical of Clinton. History is of less interest to these journalists than Blumenthal's personality, his devotion to the Clintons, and various trivial matters of great import to the news media, like whether "Hardball" host and Clinton-hater Chris Matthews really did lobby for the job as Clinton's press secretary. 
Yet in working up their ad hominem cases against Blumenthal, even his journalist critics concede that the book's exposure of the partisan campaign against Clinton that culminated in the impeachment is accurate and persuasive.
A sampling:
Andrew Sullivan in the New York Observer: "The real value of this book is in its portrait of Mr. Clinton's foes ... .[T]he account Mr. Blumenthal gives of the haplessness and priggishness of Kenneth Starr is riveting stuff. The testimony of Sam Dash, Mr. Starr's ethics advisor, is particularly damning. The insane attempt to actually bring down a President over perjury in a civil suit has not yet been more vividly evoked."
Janet Maslin in the New York Times: "Certainly "The Clinton Wars" can point to baseless, breathless news coverage as a catalyst to the Kafkaesque."
Lev Grossman in Time: "Blumenthal's abiding theme is that Clinton's presidency was the victim of a right-wing political cabal that manipulated the media and the legal system to make mountains out of dunghills, and he makes a surprisingly convincing case by doggedly following countless news stories and allegations to their origins in tainted, planted, unfounded, retracted, distorted, misleading and plain nonexistent evidence."
Bill Bell in the New York Daily News: "No question, the Clintons were dogged by some extremely malignant, ignorant and hypocritical extremists, funded by a few rich conservatives ... .Beyond the settling of grudges and slights, though, is a bigger, dramatic story -- of the impeachment itself -- and Blumenthal's riveting account is sharp, spare and focused. It pulses with the energy of clashing ideologies and strategies and is propelled by the force of the legal, political and reputational stakes involved. It sets the standard for subsequent reports, including the one his Oval Office boss is writing."
Joseph Lelyveld in the New York Review of Books: "Blumenthal holds your attention when he pieces together the various components of what Mrs. Clinton called a "vast right-wing conspiracy," from Little Rock enemies and haters to the lawyers of the Federalist Society who worked their connections to the Office of the Independent Counsel to shift its focus from real estate to sex ... .Disgraceful things did happen. On more than one occasion, an Internet gossip columnist did set the agenda for mainstream news organizations. Stories without sources did gain instant currency. Some were fabricated."

...the more disturbing point is this: Impeachment isn't just "history." Some of the key "right-wing fanatics" who peddled "tainted, planted, unfounded, retracted, distorted, misleading and plain nonexistent evidence" that led to a "Kafkaesque" political "show trial" have more power than ever in politics and the media -- and have, it seems, actually benefited, personally and politically, from their attacks on the Constitution...
Four examples: 
One of the chief members of the "cabal of right-wing fanatics" was Theodore Olson, who, as counsel to the rabidly right-wing American Spectator, oversaw the notorious Arkansas Project that spread some of the most vicious lies about Clinton. (Olson was also one of the supposedly impartial "experts" who signed the petition attacking the historians in 1998.) In testimony before the Senate, Olson denied any involvement in the Project -- but that testimony was later fully documented as false. Yet Olson is now solicitor general of the United States, appointed by President Bush and approved by the Senate during the confusion that accompanied Sen. Jim Jeffords' defection to the Democrats in 2001. Among Olson's current tasks is selecting hard-right nominees for the federal judiciary, with whom the Bush administration is now trying to pack the courts. Many of those nominees are, like Olson, closely connected with the radical activist circles within the Federalist Society, the right-wing lawyers' group that also produced several of the so-called "elves" who plotted Clinton's downfall.
Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas did more than any House Republican to coerce his colleagues into supporting impeachment. DeLay privately threatened moderate Republicans who would not go along, using right-wing fundraisers and 60 designated whips to do his dirty work for him. "Coming out of the election," Republican congressman Peter King later said, "I didn't hear anyone discuss impeachment. It was over. Then DeLay took over." One by one, the moderates caved in to what DeLay and his minions were calling "the Campaign." At the time, DeLay was the House majority whip. Since then he has been promoted for his "deranged" attack on the Constitution by being named House majority leader.
In 1998, Bret Kavanaugh was a conservative lawyer on the staff of Kenneth W. Starr's Office of Independent Counsel. He coauthored the salacious so-called Starr Report that became the basis for the illegitimate articles of impeachment -- and the basis for Starr's aggressive testimony to Congress, in violation of the Constitution, that led the office's chief ethics advisor, Samuel Dash, to quit in protest. Today, Bret Kavanaugh is deputy legal counsel at the Bush White House.
In 1995, Michael Chertoff was chief counsel for Sen. Alphonse D'Amato's Senate Whitewater Committee that churned endless baseless allegations against the Clintons. Since then, he has served as Attorney General John Ashcroft's assistant atop the Department of Justice's criminal division (and a leading force behind the authorship of the so-called PATRIOT Act) and been nominated by George W. Bush to the federal bench...
Slowly but surely, most recently with the publication of "The Clinton Wars," historical facts have changed the prevailing wisdom of the chattering classes about the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Historical research, now recognized as accurate, has made the journalists' original accounts look tendentious and often false. In the battle begun in 1998 between historians and journalists over the facts of the case and the legitimacy of impeachment, the historians have won..."

5/28/03 <link>
Josh Marshall on Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars"
There has been a lot of buzz in the internet on Sidney Blumenthal's opus (shall I say) "The Clinton Wars" and folks like Atrios have been covering this quite well. Today, somewhat unexpectedly, Josh Marshall makes some, shall I say, interesting comments. I suggest to the reader that you read Marshall's comments in entirety. However, I'd like to quote a small piece of his commentary here.

3/31/03 <link>
The "Faux" News Channel, the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh, other right-wing media 
The "We Report, You Decide" Fox "News" Channel has been under the radar recently due to an interesting revelation from Bob Woodward's recent book on Pres. Bush. Mike Allen reported this in the Washington Post:
"...The president is shown to be preoccupied by public perceptions of the war, looking at polling data from Rove, now his senior adviser, even after pretending to have no interest. Roger E. Ailes, a media coach for Bush's father and now chairman of the Fox News Channel, sent a confidential communication to the White House in the weeks after the terrorist attacks. Rove took the Ailes communication to the president. 'His back-channel message: The American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible,' Woodward wrote. He added that Ailes, who has angrily challenged reports that his news channel has a conservative bias, added a warning: 'Support would dissipate if the public did not see Bush acting harshly.'..."
Joe Conason has a further take on the "no-opinion-poll" myth spun by the WH in Salon. "...How remarkable to be told so bluntly about this Bush obsession -- after hearing so many blabbermouths on cable TV and in opinion columns insist that this president, unlike his predecessor, "doesn't care about polls." The difference between Clinton and Bush isn't that one doesn't care about polls and the other did. The difference is that Clinton never pretended that polling data wasn't part of his political work, and didn't expect anyone on his staff to lie about such trivia. (This matrix of deception is likewise exposed in Woodward's scoop about the back-channel advice on public opinion provided to the White House by Fox News chief Roger Ailes. An old Bush family employee, Ailes runs a network that frequently promotes the false but uplifting notion that Bush has no interest in polls.)..."

More on the above from the Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times. FAIR.org has a detailed report showing how right-biased the Faux News Channel really is.

Separately, Al Gore takes the battle to the Washington Times and the Faux News Channel, as reported in this  Observer interview: "...'The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party' said Mr. Gore in an interview with The Observer. 'Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.'..." It is amazing that it took this long for a leading politician to speak the truth about the right-wing media. 

Former President Clinton also takes on the right-wing media in this talk at the DLC: "...Republicans will always have more powerful interest groups and the fervor of right wing emotions, as we saw with the Confederate flag issue in Georgia and South Carolina in this recent election. They have an increasingly right wing and bellicose conservative press, with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal emboldened by the last election, to urge that what we should really be doing is raising taxes on lower income working people so they will come to hate the government just as much as the editors of the Wall Street Journal do. And we have an increasingly docile establishment press, to be fair, partly because of the enormous trauma of September 11th and its aftermath...And we have to be tough and disciplined. We cannot wilt in the face of higher negative ratings for our leaders. They have a destruction machine, we don't. Somebody has got to lead the Democrats in the House, in the Senate and in running for president, and the rest of us have got to stand up for them and stand with them when they're subject to these attacks. They cannot be avoided. That's what the other party and their allies are organized to do and they get rewarded for it if we wilt. So we abandon our leaders at our peril. Now, most Americans don't care about what politicians say about each other and don't care about what happens to politicians unless it affects them, their children or their future. But they do have their ears and eyes open at election time. So we have to be firm and clear and strong and positive and prepared to defend our positions and those who are brave enough to stick their necks out to take them..."

Paul Krugman addresses the death of truthful media in this long overdue op-ed. E. J. Dionne debunks the myth of liberal media and points out how today's media is indeed right-wing tilted. 

Interestingly, as reported by a different Roger Ailes (not the Faux News Channel guy), guess who the real America haters are? Well, start with Sun Myung Moon, the owner of the Washington Times, who has said a lot of highly offensive things including this: "...'America is the kingdom of extreme individualism, the kingdom of free sex,' he said during a May 1, 1998, speech in New York. 'The country that represents Satan’s harvest is America. America doesn’t have anywhere to go now.'..." As the article cited by Ailes notes:
"...Moon teaches that he is the new Messiah, sent by God to complete the failed mission of Jesus...In Las Vegas, for example, the more than 600 people who gathered at a church April 11 to hear the Korean evangelist may have gotten a little more than they bargained for. Moon’s discussion of "faith" turned out to be a claim that he is the rebirth of Jesus Christ backed by assertions that only people who have received his blessing can enter Heaven..."
"...Moon went off on an explicit tangent about "love organs," comparing male genitalia to rattlesnakes and telling the crowd, "If you misuse your love organ, you destroy your life, your nation, your world." He added that most divorces can be blamed on women who don’t understand that their love organs belong to their husbands, not themselves..."
"...During his remarks in Washington, Moon attacked gay men, lesbians and 'those who go after free sex,' labeling them 'less than animals.'..."
"...Moon also blasted married couples who don’t have children. According to Moon, failure to reproduce can have dire consequences. 'I encourage all of you, please have more children,' he said. 'That is the contribution and service you can do the world and God. If you stay away from having children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. You are bound to go to somewhere else – you can call it Hell.'...In Winston-Salem, N.C., he admonished women to have lots of children, saying, 'Why do you think God gave you such broad, cushion-like hips – for your own sake, to sit any place comfortably? No, for your children.'..."

Incidentally, this lunatic parading as a Messiah also has links to the who's who of this country's rightwing GOPers as reported here. Now, go and read the Washington Times that Mr. Moon owns (whom, by the way, we do cite in our webpage sometimes, because they do occasionally display objectivity). In the meantime, Howard Kurtz (updated 12/1) looks at some recent false reporting by the Washington Times.

Another "colorful" character who is in the Washington Times is assistant national editor Robert Stacy McCain. Here is some background on this "person" - a quote:
"...'[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion. The white person who does not mind transacting business with a black bank clerk may yet be averse to accepting the clerk as his sister-in-law, and THIS IS NOT RACISM, no matter what Madison Avenue, Hollywood and Washington tell us.'..." And this is what, as Atrios points out, the founder of the League of the South (which Robert Stacy McCain is a member of) said on the Lott fiasco.

Atrios has been covering Robert Stacy McCain much more extensively and an appropriate summary is in order from his recent post (on 3/9/03) - quoted directly below:

Blogger Scoobie Davis has been trying without success to keep Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh honest. Another caller though succeeds in revealing Limbaugh's true, disgusting, colors (because he falsely slanders and demeans patriotic leaders who served for this country). Here is a snapshot of Limbaugh from WMO:
"...
-- On his way up the hate-radio ladder, Rush took no prisoners. In the 1970s, Limbaugh told one black caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back." His career as a right-wing radio jock flourished.
-- After becoming nationally syndicated, Rush cleaned up his act, right?  Wrong. Regarding one national civil rights leader, Limbaugh mused: "Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?"
-- Rush Limbaugh on the nation's oldest existing civil rights organization, with a ninety-year commitment to non-violence: "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."
-- It's not that Rush denies there is racism in America.  There is, he says -"fueled primarily by the rantings and ravings" of blacks."  If only those people would keep their mouths shut and behave nice and... Sound familiar??
-- Rush has an eye for local stories too.  When the city of St. Louis announced it was building a rail line to East St. Louis, Limbaugh was contemptuous: Why build a rail line to a place "where nobody goes?" East St. Louis is home to 40,000 persons, 98% of them black.
-- Not that Rush doesn't have a head for figures.  One caller had the temerity to say on Rush's air that black voices needed to be heard in American politics.  Rush: "They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?"
-- And how could anyone have forgotten, after the Trent Lott embarrassment, Rush's exuberant praise for the 1948 Dixiecrat candidate:  'He's not encumbered by being politically correct... If you want to know what America used to be--and a lot of people wish it still were--then you listen to Strom Thurmond.'..."