Surprised So Many Object to Hillary; News Chief Tried to Mute Drudge
1) Hillary Clinton may now
support moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, but only CNN's Bruce
Morton recalled her advocacy of a Palestinian state. CBS stressed how
"she is not flip-flopping."
2) Clueless in Manhattan. By
70 to 30 percent those answering an ABCNews.com poll opposed Hillary's
candidacy. "I am really surprised...by the size of that
majority," admitted GMA's Gibson.
3) Liberal New York columnist
Jimmy Breslin told CNN's Bernard Shaw that Hillary's "strength
comes from a lot of people on television or in newspapers that just write
drivel."
4) Filegate "might yet be
broken open with political implications for Hillary Rodham Clinton,"
Bob Novak reported in revealing evidence that a White House lawyer took
FBI files home to type into his laptop computer.
5) "FBI Records Outline
China's Attempt to Silence Chung," Jerry Seper revealed in The
Washington Times.
6) Katie Couric gushed:
"People have called Robert Rubin the best Treasury Secretary since
Alexander Hamilton."
7) Howard Kurtz revealed ABC
Radio is syndicating Matt Drudge's talk show "over the heated
objections of ABC News President David Westin." But having
Stephanopoulos host GMA is fine by him.
8) The director of Arlington
Road, a movie opening today, said "I don't disagree with a
lot" of the Unabomber's manifesto.
9) MSNBC's John Hockenberry
suggested that Hillary benefits from a "great expectations momentum
that Jesse Ventura seems to possess." Then saying goodbye he asked:
"How bad does cable TV suck?"
>>> On
Boston radio Friday. MRC Chairman L. Brent Bozell will appear Friday, July
9 from 4 to 4:20pm local time on Howie Carr's talk show on WRKO 680 AM.
Topic: Lack of network coverage of Chinagate. Carr's talk show is
simulcast on WNNZ 640 AM in Springfield as well as on stations in
Worcester, Mass. and Providence, Rhode Island. <<<
1
ABC, CBS and CNN all took time Thursday night to report Hillary
Clinton's view that the U.S. embassy in Israel should be moved to
Jerusalem, but only CNN's Bruce Morton reminded viewers that last year
she "famously came out for a Palestinian state."
Neither ABC or CBS
suggested that her view on Israel's capital might be in conflict with
her advocacy of a Palestinian state. CBS's Diana Olick marveled at how
"Mrs. Clinton is clearly defining her new role, that is she's
moving from First Lady to politician." Olick stressed how "her
spokesman said she is not flip-flopping on this issue and has always
believed exactly what she said in this letter."
NBC's Andrea
Mitchell, CNN's David Ensor and FNC's Gary Matsumoto all previewed a
dire report from a congressionally-appointed commission about how the
country is unprepared to deal with a chemical or biological attack, but
only Matsumoto, on the Fox Report, credited the Baltimore Sun with
breaking the story.
The networks
displayed different news priorities in their leads with NBC Nightly News
and CNN's The World Today starting with flooding in Las Vegas. ABC
opened with a report on Bill Clinton's trip to Watts while CBS went
first with the Air Force's emergency aid drop to a woman who may have
cancer but is stuck at the National Science Foundation's South Pole
station where it's 80 below and dark all day.
Energy Secretary
Bill Richardson's acceptance of the Republican idea of creating a
special agency to oversee the nuclear labs generated short items read by
the anchors of both CNN's The World Today and FNC's Fox Report, but
not a word on the broadcast networks.
Now back to
Hillary, the Palestinians and Israel. Anchor Peter Jennings read this
short item on ABC's World News Tonight:
"One item about U.S. politics today. It
didn't take Mrs. Clinton long in her campaign for the Senate to disagree
with her husband and the U.S. government. Mrs. Clinton has told an
Orthodox Jewish group she considers Jerusalem the eternal and indivisible
capital of Israel and that the U.S. embassy should be moved there. The
Jewish vote is very important in New York state."
Over on the CBS
Evening News Dan Rather intoned:
"Among other things today she spelled out
her opinion about a sensitive foreign policy issue. In a letter that
surfaced today Mrs. Clinton tells a New York-bases Orthodox Jewish
organization that she considers Jerusalem quote 'the eternal and
indivisible capital of Israel.' Now this appears at least to be at some
odds with the official policy of her husband's administration. Official
policy says Israel and the Palestinians should decide Jerusalem's
status."
From Utica Diana
Olick marveled: "Mrs. Clinton is clearly defining her new role, that
is she's moving from First Lady to politician..." Olick pointed out
the obvious: "She's sizing up New York, the state she wants to
represent, and she's tailoring her opinions to suit New Yorkers which is
important because Jews in New York traditionally vote Democratic and they
represent 12 percent of the statewide vote."
But, Olick passed
along, she's not pandering: "From Mrs. Clinton's camp her
spokesman said she is not flip-flopping on this issue and has always
believed exactly what she said in this letter."
How many people
who favor a Palestinian state, which Arafat wants to make Jerusalem the
capital of, also want the city to be the capital of Israel, a position
which Palestinians violently oppose?
In reality Hillary
Clinton has a long history of supporting the terrorist Palestinian side
against the only democracy in the region. In an e-mail on Thursday Evan
Gahr of the American Enterprise magazine reminded me that in a 1992 story
for Insight magazine he documented Hillary's role in funding the PLO. He
passed along a May 19, 1998 op-ed he wrote for the Washington Times a week
or so after she declared her support for a Palestinian state:
...She has often made common cause with
leftists who view America and Israel with equal contempt. Indeed, Mrs.
Clinton has even managed to help fund PLO front groups -- a dubious
endeavor for which she has never given an honest explanation.
In the late 1980s, Hillary Clinton served
as chairman of the New World Foundation. During her tenure, the New World
Foundation played Sugar Daddy to virtually every ultra-left organization
under the sun -- from the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El
Salvador (CISPES) to the National Lawyers Guild, long the legal arm of the
American Communist Party. Under Chairman Hillary, the New World Foundation
also donated $15,000 to the Boston-based Grassroots International, which
in turn funded two PLO-affiliated groups on the West Bank.
It's well to note that the grant came
before Yasser Arafat renounced terrorism and accepted Israel's right to
exist. Of course back in the late '80s, folks of Mrs. Clinton's ilk were
quite sympathetic with the PLO. Just as the United States and the Soviet
Union were deemed morally equivalent in left-wing circles, the Jewish
state was placed on much the same level as PLO terrorists.
Of course, such views didn't quite mesh
with the 1992 Clinton campaign's centrist posture. And when Mrs. Clinton's
PLO ties came to light in 1992, the campaign was long on lame explanations
and short on accountability. Mrs. Clinton's press secretary Lisa Caputo
told the Forward that Mrs. Clinton did not vote on the grant, and the
money was intended for Grassroots' anti-apartheid work in South Africa.
Picking up on that note, Mrs. Clinton subsequently said, "If the
money was diverted I knew nothing about it."
Not so fast. The Grassroots donation was a
general purpose grant; Grassroots didn't have to divert anything.
Moreover, the New World Foundation, according to Grassroots, knew full
well that the organization supported West Bank Palestinian groups....
END Excerpt.
2
"I am really surprised...by the size of that majority in that
poll," exclaimed Good Morning America co-host Charlie Gibson on
Thursday in announcing how an online ABCNews.com poll found those casting
a vote opposed Hillary's candidacy by more than two-to-one.
MRC analyst
Jessica Anderson caught this revealing exchange from a bit before 8am on
the July 8 show:
"We have just a minute here before we turn
away for local news, and we mentioned at this point in the program
yesterday, well, we talked in the first half hour yesterday and today
about Hillary Rodham Clinton running for the Senate from New York, we had
our little focus group this morning. Yesterday on ABCNews.com service, the
poll of the day involved Hillary Rodham Clinton, and again, this drives
my, my friends in the scientific polling community nuts, when you have
these unscientific polls because anybody who has a computer can vote. And
again, people from all over the country could vote in this, not just in
New York, but the results are interesting. I'll show you what they said.
'Hillary Rodham Clinton's decision to run for the U.S. Senate from New
York is,' and then we said, 'wrongheaded, she's a carpetbagger' or 'good
news, she'd make a great Senator,' and I guess I'm not surprised that,
what had the majority, but I'm surprised by the size of that vote.
Thirty-seven thousand one hundred and seventy-two people voted, 37,000
people voted."
An on-screen
graphic listed the vote as 69.3 percent answered "wrongheaded"
while 30.6 percent thought is was "good news."
Co-host Robin
Roberts tried to downplay the relevance: "But again, not only from
the state of New York, all around, across the country."
Gibson: "Yes, and not scientific. They do a
pretty good job of keeping people from voting twice. Once you've voted on
your computer, then the ABCNews.com thing just gives you the standings at
the moment. They don't let you vote again. But I suppose if you had two
computers or three, you could vote..." [trails off]
Roberts: "Were you surprised by the
numbers?"
Gibson: "Yes, I am. I really am surprised,
not by what got the majority, but by the size of that majority in that
poll."
Roberts: "Almost 70 percent."
Gibson: "But as I said, unscientific. So all
my friends, who really work for pollsters and whatever, please don't write
me, don't call me up."
Roberts: "And you know they are, they
are."
Gibson: "We just, we report it for what it
means, which is probably not a lot. We take a commercial break. We'll be
right back."
3
Veteran liberal New York columnist Jimmy Breslin, now with Newsday, told
CNN's Bernard Shaw that Hillary's "strength comes from a lot of
people on television or in newspapers that just write drivel."
In the midst of an
impassioned tirade against Hillary's candidacy by Breslin on
Wednesday's Inside Politics, MRC analyst Paul Smith noticed Shaw tried
to defend Hillary only to be scolded by Breslin:
Shaw: "Now
wait a minute now, this woman brings a lot of strength."
Breslin: "What strength?"
Bernard Shaw: "Don't you agree that she
brings a lot of strength to what she is trying to do?"
Jimmy Breslin: "No, I think that the
strength comes from a lot of people on television or in newspapers that
just write drivel."
Indeed, as
Gibson's reaction demonstrates, members of the media don't understand
why everyone isn't as excited as they are about her candidacy.
4
"Filegate Lives On" declared the headline over Robert Novak's
syndicated column in the Washington Post on Thursday about how the case
"might yet be broken open -- with political implications for Hillary
Rodham Clinton," but will the mainstream media allow it to become a
news topic again?
Novak reported
that a Judicial Watch filing with a federal judge requesting a deposition
states that the former wife of White House Associate Counsel William
Kennedy says he "'brought FBI files from his White House office to
their home in Alexandria, Va.' She observed him 'on several
occasions' working for hours, 'making entries from the files into a
database he maintained on his laptop computer.'"
Here's an
excerpt from Novak's illuminating column:
A filing petition to a federal judge last
week raised the possibility that the FBI files case, one of the capital's
great all-time mysteries, might yet be broken open -- with political
implications for Hillary Rodham Clinton. It requests the deposition of a
former Clinton White House aide's ex-wife, who claims she observed her
husband transferring FBI files into his laptop computer.
The June 29 filing by the conservative
Judicial Watch asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington to
authorize the sworn testimony of Leslie Gail Kennedy, who was married
until late 1994 to then White House Associate Counsel William H. Kennedy.
The request also quotes Mrs. Kennedy's opinion that Mrs. Clinton was
associated with the FBI files. The next day, Judicial Watch also asked
Lamberth for a deposition of the First Lady herself on grounds that
"she was involved in, if not responsible for, making key decisions
that bear on 'Filegate.'"
Most inscrutable of the Clinton scandals is
the appearance in the White House during President Clinton's first two
years in office of FBI personal files of prominent Republicans. Even
partisan Democrats suggested this was an inexcusable invasion of privacy.
Yet, after the White House shrugged it off as a "bureaucratic
snafu," Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr seemed to lose interest.
But not the dogged Larry Klayman, chairman
of Judicial Watch. His class-action suit against the White House, the FBI,
selected aides and Mrs. Clinton asks $90 million for personages whose
confidential files went astray....
Still, the case looked dead until Judicial
Watch employee Christopher Farrell interviewed Mrs. Kennedy at her Little
Rock home June 11. According to Farrell's court filing, she told him that
her then husband "brought FBI files from his White House office to
their home in Alexandria, Va." She observed him "on several
occasions" working for hours, "making entries from the files
into a database he maintained on his laptop computer."
Kennedy's wife, according to the filing,
asserted that the database "was intended to make FBI file information
accessible and useful to the Clinton administration." Asked whether
these were files of Reagan and Bush administration staffers, she replied
there would be no need to review files of Democrats "routinely
available" at the White House. Her statement tended to be confirmed
by the deposition in the case last December by Linda Tripp, swearing that
as a White House staffer she knew of Kennedy putting FBI files into his
database.
Farrell visited Mrs. Kennedy again June 16
to get a sworn affidavit, but she demurred. According to the filing, she
said she "could not be seen by people in this administration as being
out here volunteering information. If I get subpoenaed, that's a different
story. At least, I'll have some cover."....
Kennedy was no underling in the category of
file purveyors Craig Livingstone and Anthony Marceca. He was Mrs.
Clinton's colleague at the famous Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and is back
there now. It is improbable that he would carry on activities alleged by
his former wife without higher approval.
Mrs. Kennedy expressed personal views about
how high the scandal goes. Asked what use might be made of the files, the
court filing says, she "pointed out that Mrs. Clinton's first major
policy objective was 'health-care reform' and that Mrs. Clinton
anticipated resistance from many people in forwarding her
agenda."....
END Excerpt
Not a syllable
about this disclosure aired Thursday morning or evening on any of the
networks. They can hardly dismiss the story because it came from a
conservative columnist. He just relayed independently verifiable testimony
from Judicial Watch and, as the MRC's Tim Graham reminded me, a decade
ago a New York Times op-ed by Gary Sick launched a round of network
stories about the "October Surprise."
5
"FBI Records Outline China's Attempt to Silence Chung,"
announced the headline over a July 8 front page Washington Times story by
Jerry Seper filling in details about what wiretaps of Robert Luu revealed,
the basic content of which was first revealed by FNC's Carl Cameron back
in late May.
No other network
or major print outlet picked up on Cameron's exclusive May 23 and 24
pieces and none touched Seper's story on Thursday morning or evening. An
excerpt:
Chinese intelligence officers were more
significantly involved than previously suspected in efforts to monitor
Democratic fundraiser Johnny Chung's cooperation with the FBI's campaign
finance probe, relaying instructions to a middleman on a near-daily basis.
The Beijing-directed operation is described
in FBI transcripts of 20 telephone conversations and meetings, along with
22 intercepted fax messages, over four months in 1998 involving Chung and
Robert Luu, a Chinese-American who made subtle threats if Chung did not
keep silent and offered hush money for his defense if he did.
The transcripts, copies of which were
obtained by The Washington Times, show that Mr. Luu received instructions
concerning the probe from Chinese agents and relayed messages from them to
Chung. Those messages included a suggestion he not disclose information he
might have on two U.S. aerospace firms, Loral Space & Communications
Ltd. and Hughes Electronics, that provided China with technology used to
improve its satellites, missiles and warheads.
Mr. Luu also shared with Chung a secret
code, handwritten in Mandarin during a meeting at a Los Angeles-area
hotel, to schedule times and sites of future meetings, and told him
Chinese agents were aware of pending news stories about the FBI probe and
had advice on how he could respond.
Although Chung has told a similar tale of
Chinese intrigue and would-be threats before a House committee, the
documents more fully describe a shadowy network of ranking Chinese
intelligence officers eager to insulate Beijing from any ties to the
campaign finance scandal....
END Excerpt
Back on the May 23
Fox News Sunday Cameron relayed: "Fox News has obtained documents for
the first time that directly connect China's illegal campaign
contributions to President Clinton with specific cases of Beijing's
acquisition of U.S. military technology. China had an elaborate scheme to
obstruct U.S. Justice Department investigations into both." To read
more, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19990524.html#1
Cameron returned
the next night to FNC to elaborate. To learn more and watch a RealPlayer
clip of his story, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19990525.html#2
6
Greatest ever. Just as happened a few weeks ago when Robert Rubin
announced his impending resignation as Treasury Secretary, the
confirmation of Lawrence Summers to replace him generated excessive
accolades.
Here's how Katie
Couric ended her July 8 interview with Summers, as picked up by MRC
analyst Geoffrey Dickens:
"Alright well Treasury Secretary Lawrence
Summers. I know people have called Robert Rubin the best Treasury
Secretary since Alexander Hamilton so I know you have some big shoes to
fill. All the best to you."
7
ABC Radio this weekend is launching syndication of a weekly talk show
hosted by Matt Drudge. But the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz revealed
it is happening "over the heated objections of ABC News President
David Westin" who does, however, feel it's appropriate to have a
liberal political operative co-host his TV network's morning news show.
Kurtz reported in
the July 8 Post:
Matt Drudge is coming to Washington -- and
plenty of other cities -- over the heated objections of ABC News President
David Westin.
ABC Radio said yesterday that it has signed
the Internet gossip columnist to a syndication deal that will put him on
the network-owned stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Detroit, Atlanta and Washington, where Drudge will be heard on
WMAL-AM. Drudge, whose Sunday night show is already carried on New York's
WABC, is getting a bigger major-market rollout than Rush Limbaugh.
According to network sources, Westin
vociferously argued that Drudge should not be part of ABC's corporate
family. In meetings with Pat Fili-Krushel, the President of ABC
Television, and Lyn Andrews, the head of ABC Radio Networks, Westin
contended that Drudge was reckless and that the radio division would be
sorry if it hired him. Fili-Krushel, in turn, raised the matter with
Steven Bornstein, President of ABC Inc....
Drudge's signing was delayed more than a
week by Westin's lobbying campaign. But the radio unit, which operates
separately from the news division, prevailed.
Drudge brushed off the criticism by Westin,
who declined to be interviewed. "It doesn't bother me at all,"
he said from Los Angeles, where he will often do the show. "Hopefully
one day I can become an apple of his eye like George Stephanopoulos and
anchor the news." The former White House aide recently filled in as
co-host of ABC's "World News Now" overnight news show....
ABC has given Drudge a six-figure deal and
a share of future advertising revenues. While he'll debut Sundays on about
20 stations, Rich said he hopes to eventually air the program five days a
week. In the latest ratings period, Drudge boosted his New York audience
by 80 percent and beat everyone else on both AM and FM -- a feat that Rich
says is accomplished only by the likes of Limbaugh and Laura Schlessinger...."
END Excerpt
Update for Kurtz:
Stephanopoulos not only anchored the overnight World News Now, he has
co-hosted Good Morning America three times in the past six weeks,
including June 24 and 25. To learn about that and to see a RealPlayer clip
of him interviewing pollsters about the presidential campaign, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/cyberalert/1999/cyb19990625.html#3
To see him anchor
World News Now, go to the MRC's Media Bias Videos page and scroll down
to June 16: http://www.mediaresearch.org/news/biasvideo.html
Washington area
readers: Drudge's show will be carried Sunday from 10pm to 1am on WMAL.
That moves another conservative to a better time slot: ABC's syndicated
Mark Davis Show from WBAP in Ft. Worth will now run live from 1 to 4pm
bumping the Sunday Limbaugh re-run.
8
The director of Arlington Road, a movie opening today which stars Jeff
Bridges and Tim Robbins, agrees with much of he Unabomber's manifesto.
The movie is about an FBI agent whose wife is killed in a shootout and how
he comes to suspect that his neighbors in Reston, Virginia are terrorists.
MRC entertainment
analyst Tom Johnson alerted me to the comments from director Mark
Pellington as quoted an April 30 Entertainment Weekly preview of summer
movies (brackets and ellipses as in the magazine):
"'This may sound controversial, but...I
don't disagree with a lot of what [the Unabomber manifesto] had to
say,' says the director, though 'the means by which [extremists]
express their ideas may be completely horrible and cowardly.'"
9
One last liberal zing for a bitter Hockenberry. Opening a discussion
segment Wednesday night about Hillary Clinton MRC analyst Mark Drake
noticed that MSNBC's John Hockenberry outlined her virtues to U.S. News
owner Mort Zuckerman:
"It seems to me on some level, Mort, let me
begin with you, that Hillary benefits from a kind of breath of fresh air,
great expectations momentum that Jesse Ventura seems to possess now.
Hillary seems like something new, something different. Yet are the
expectations too high?"
MSNBC has canceled
his 10pm ET show after just seven months and Thursday night the network
aired the last edition. Ending his show on Wednesday night, July 7,
Hockenberry displayed how he's not too pleased:
"We want to invite you all here tomorrow
night to our last program on this network where we're considering some
'Bottom Line' questions [a list of questions normally posed to guests]
like how bad does cable TV suck? That could be our first question. But
we're still working on them, still working on them. We'll have it all
for you tomorrow. Join us tomorrow on MSNBC for the last Hockenberry."
Well, one less
liberal on a news network, though he'll have a bigger audience on
Dateline NBC. MSNBC will replace Hockenberry not with a news show but with
something called Headliners and Legends in which Matt Lauer narrates
biographies. Sounds like another low-budget Time & Again-type clip
show.
--
Brent Baker
3
>>>
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