Touting Defenders, Hiding Critics - Tell the Truth! 2004 - The Weekly Worst -- Media Research Center

The Weekly Worst

Touting Defenders, Hiding Critics;
NBC: "The Poor Live With Less"

Tuesday, August 31, 2004

The so-called mainstream media never admit their liberal tilt, so the news analysts at the Media Research Center tirelessly document the media's bias and expose their left-wing agenda. The "awards" for last week's lowlights:

» Touting Kerry's Defenders, Hiding His Critics. When CBS got word that the Sunday, August 22 Chicago Tribune would publish a story by one of its editors, former swift boat commander William Rood, defending John Kerry's account of how he won the Silver Star, the network raced to report it. "Breaking the silence," anchor Sharyl Attkisson trumpeted on the August 21 CBS Evening News, "A swift boat commander who fought with John Kerry speaks out for the first time." CBS found it a story worth repeating — three days later, CBS's Harry Smith confronted John O'Neill with Rood's account, portraying it as evidence that he and other Kerry critics were wrong.

But CBS News paid no attention six days later when a retired admiral, William Schachte, challenged a crucial element of Kerry's record, his first Purple Heart. Schachte said he was on the same boat when Kerry suffered a minor wound, which Schachte said resulted from Kerry's own grenade going off, not enemy fire. The Chicago Sun-Times broke the story on Friday, August 27, and NBC followed up with its own interview with Schachte that night, but CBS remained silent all weekend.

NBC's Lisa Myers & Retired Admiral William Schachte

NBC reported what CBS would not: a retired admiral's first-person testimony that John Kerry did not deserve his first Purple Heart.

For more, see the August 24 and August 30 CyberAlerts.

» NBC: "The Poor Live with Less." The poverty rate in Ohio is well below the national average and did not change in 2003 according to Census Bureau statistics released on Thursday. Nonetheless, the NBC Nightly News went to the election battleground state of Ohio to highlight food lines, "heavy job losses," and workers who are "struggling to pay the bills." While the Census Bureau found "real median income for the nation remained unchanged between 2002 and 2003 for all types of family and non-family households," NBC's Ron Allen charged that in Coolville, Ohio, "like an increasing number of Americans, the poor live with less."

For more, see the August 27 CyberAlert.