Taliban Want Another Media Tour; Non-Fed Assumed Incompetent; Reuters’ "Holy War"; Russert Cautioned Colleagues; Westin Coverage

1) ABC’s Linda Douglass assumed federal bag screeners would be more competent than better-paid private screeners. After noting a proposed compromise which would have private companies perform screening at smaller airports, Douglass warned: "Many I’ve talked to here on Capitol Hill say then a terrorist could slip through that smaller airport, re-board at the big airport."

2) ABC’s Dan Harris admitted that the Taliban-directed tour "posed some serious journalistic challenges," but they didn’t impede him as he repeated the same stories he had told the week before about civilian deaths caused by the U.S. and how Taliban officials claim the bombing is making them stronger. "The Taliban were apparently satisfied with the results of their media tour." No wonder "there's already talk of more trips this week."

3) Reuters won’t allow its staff to use the terms "terrorist" or "terrorism" to describe the September 11 incidents, but the wire service has no problem referring to how Pakistanis were joining the Taliban to "wage holy war against the United States."

4) "Don't trust anything you see on TV and be weary of some of the things you read," a New York Times photographer advised from Pakistan. He asserted: "We covered a pro-Taliban demonstration last week attended by maybe 5,000 protestors. CNN stated there were 50,000."

5) NBC’s Tim Russert proclaim that while "we are journalists...we are also Americans." He advised his colleagues that "we must always reject any attempt to suggest a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists."

6) Geraldo Rivera explained that "I’m not the same guy I was before the maniacs tried to tear our hearts out." He’s leaving CNBC for FNC so he can "report all aspects of America’s do or die fight against terror."

7) The David Westin story, which the MRC put into play last week, continues to generate coverage. On Fox News Sunday Tony Snow highlighted Westin’s quote and retraction. This week’s just-published editions of The Weekly Standard and New Republic also cited Westin’s comment with the Weekly Standard giving full credit to the MRC, as did the New York Post, DrudgeReport.com, Rush Limbaugh, AP, New York Daily News and Baltimore Sun.

  1

INS staffers hardly put in a stellar performance when they allowed the terrorist hijackers legal access to the U.S. and then did nothing to remove them when they violated their visas, but the media seem obsessed with the idea that federal bag checkers at airports will make flying safer and that the private handling of such duties is unworkable.

     On Monday night, for instance, ABC’s Linda Douglass mentioned a proposed compromise which would have bag screening handled by federal agents at large airports and have private companies perform the duty at smaller airports. But she quickly assumed the private system would be incompetent, insisting: "Many I’ve talked to here on Capitol Hill say then a terrorist could slip through that smaller airport, re-board at the big airport."

     There’s no doubt that the current system of rent a cops from overseas is untenable, but that does not mean, as much of the media seem to assume, that they could not be replaced by better-trained and higher-paid private security personnel accountable to a set standard and reviewed by a federal agency.

     After a World News Tonight story on how O’Hare airport security personnel let a man get through with knives, anchor Peter Jennings turned to Douglass: "We want to go up to Capitol Hill at the moment because, in fact, in the Congress nothing has been done since the September 11th to improve aviation security. Linda Douglass, tell us why not."
     Douglass explained, as taken down by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: "Peter, there is simply an ideological standoff here. The Senate, led by the Democrats, passed a bill that would make all of the airport screeners federal law enforcement officers, but the House, led by Republicans, doesn’t want more federal workers, so they passed a bill that would give the President the discretion to make them private workers. They are very far apart on this, and they’re just starting to negotiate this week."
     Jennings asked: "So how do they break the impasse, do you think?"
     Douglass answered by assuming federal workers would be more competent: "Well, there is some talk of a compromise in which you’d have federal workers at the big airports, private workers at the smaller airports, but many I’ve talked to here on Capitol Hill say then a terrorist could slip through that smaller airport, re-board at the big airport. So there’s a lot to talk about here. They’re not close at all."
     Jennings: "But, in a phrase, will they get it resolved?"
     Douglass: "They have to get it resolved. The public cares about this one. There’s huge pressure on them. It’s not clear how they’re going to do it, but they have to do it."

2

Back in Pakistan from his Taliban tour, ABC’s Dan Harris admitted on Good Morning America that the Taliban-directed trip "posed some serious journalistic challenges" as "the 26 journalists on the tour knew exactly why we had been invited: The Taliban wanted us to tell the world about innocent people being killed by U.S. bombs."

     But even has he conceded that "getting at the truth" was "exceedingly difficult," and even now that he was safely out of their territory, Harris proceeded to fulfill the Taliban goals as he repeated the same stories he had told the week before about civilian deaths caused by the U.S. and how Taliban officials claim the bombing is making them stronger.

     Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson set up the November 5 segment caught by MRC analyst Jessica Anderson: "Foreign aid workers say U.S. carpet bombing has wounded up to 300 Taliban troops in the past week. The Taliban claims the number is much smaller. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Taliban isn't even a real government anymore, but it still controls most of the country. ABC's Dan Harris was invited, as you may know, into Afghanistan last week as a guest of the Taliban. It was really a dangerous journey, to some extent, behind enemy lines and as a guest of the enemy, a tricky assignment for a journalist to keep balance in all of that. Dan is joining us live this morning from Quetta, Pakistan. Dan, good morning."
     Harris: "Hi, Charlie. This trip provided a rare and extraordinary glimpse behind enemy lines, but as you acknowledge, it also posed some serious journalistic challenges. The 26 journalists on the tour knew exactly why we had been invited: The Taliban wanted us to tell the world about innocent people being killed by U.S. bombs. A pickup truck full of soldiers led our caravan around to site after site. At each location we saw piles of rubble and curious citizens eager to talk.
     "‘We're angry at America and Pakistan,' said this man. 'They're not eradicating the government, just hurting civilians.'
     "Getting at the truth, however, was exceedingly difficult. While it's clear some civilians have died, many of the reporters were suspicious that the Taliban were exaggerating the casualty figures and we had no way to confirm their numbers. Perhaps the most wrenching instance was the village of Chokar Karez, which we reached after a long drive in the desert. A U.S. attack had leveled it. Locals estimated 50 people were killed.
     "'Nobody was able to escape,' said this eyewitness, a local shepherd. 'They were all trapped.'
     "Amid the rubble, we found household items and farming equipment, but the Pentagon insisted this was a Taliban encampment.
     "While we were learning firsthand about how difficult it is to ascertain the truth during war, we were also learning some powerful cultural lessons, first and foremost that the Afghans don't hate us. Laughing and staring, they surrounded our car at this gas station and mobbed our camera downtown. Hospitality even to living, breathing representatives of the enemy is a major part of the Afghan philosophy....But this hospitality is a double-edged sword. Afghans also use it to justify harboring Osama bin Laden, a man who helped them fight the Russians, a man everyone we spoke with called a freedom fighter."
     Tayeb Agha, Taliban spokesman: "We have no treaty to hand over such a Muslim to foreigners, especially to Americans, who are presently killing our innocent people."
     Harris: "While traveling in the region over the weekend, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said four weeks of bombing had severely diminished the Taliban's ability to govern Afghanistan. The Taliban officials we spoke with said just the opposite.
     "'The air strikes have made us stronger,' said this military commander. 'Even those who were opposed to the Taliban before are now supporting us.' He said morale among his troops is high and he reminded the world that Taliban soldiers are different than most people: They would rather die for a cause than live.
     Harris concluded: "The Taliban were apparently satisfied with the results of their media tour. There's already talk of more trips this week to either Kabul or Kandahar."

     You’d think Harris might be concerned about why the enemy was so satisfied with his reporting.

3

Reuters won’t allow its staff to use the terms "terrorist" or "terrorism," outside of a quotation, to describe the September 11 incidents, but as James Taranto highlighted in his "Best of the Web" column for OpinionJournal.com, the wire service has no problem describing "the war against America as a ‘holy’ one."

     Taranto quoted from a Reuters dispatch by Sayed Salahuddin and Anton Ferreira, which carried a double byline of "Kabul/Washington." The second paragraph of the November 5 story:
     "With the campaign now in its fifth week, a hard-line Pakistani Islamic party said on Monday that thousands of pro-Taliban fighters had crossed into Afghanistan, armed with rocket launchers and swords, to wage holy war against the United States."

     To read the entire Reuters story, go to: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011105/ts/attack_dc_664.html

     To refresh your memory on the Reuters refusal to use the word "terrorism," refer back to the September 25 CyberAlert which reported: There were no "terrorist attacks" on September 11, just "attacks" according to Reuters since the wire service decided that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Following this decree, one Reuters story gave life to inanimate objects as a reporter asserted that "two hijacked planes attacked the twin towers." On Monday night FNC’s panel decried the values-neutral approach. Go to: http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20010925.asp#1

4

Don’t trust the media, at least not CNN. Says who? A new York Times photographer in Pakistan. Catching up with an item caught last week by Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews (http://www.poynter.org/medianews/), on a Web page for sports photographers Vincent Laforet advised: "Don't trust anything you see on TV and be weary of some of the things you read." (Probably meant "wary.) The Times photographer revealed: "We covered a pro-Taliban demonstration last week attended by maybe 5,000 protestors. CNN stated there were 50,000."

     In a lengthy recounting of his travails about photographing in Pakistan, Laforet wrote:
     "Speaking of the media, I have but one thing to tell you. Don't trust anything you see on TV and be weary of some of the things you read. I witnessed how sensationalistic the media can be during the Florida recount. It's even worse here. We covered a pro-Taliban demonstration last week attended by maybe 5,000 protestors. CNN stated there were 50,000. The BBC estimated 40,000. We're continually hearing of "violent clashes with police" when the TV stations report on non-violent demonstrations we covered ourselves."

     To read his dispatch in full, illustrated by some of his photos, go to this address and scroll down to the second story: http://www.manginphotography.com/sptshtr36.html

     Since he offered no date, it’s hard to correlate his statement with what CNN actually reported that day.

5

In the wake of ABC News President David Westin’s initial refusal to offer an opinion on whether the Pentagon was a "legitimate" terrorist target, it was reassuring to hear another network news executive, NBC’s Tim Russert, proclaim that while "we are journalists...we are also Americans" and so "we must always reject any attempt to suggest a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists."

     Russert’s comments, quoted on November 1 by USA Today "Inside TV" columnist Peter Johnson, were made back on October 26, three days after Westin spoke at Columbia University, but the night before Westin’s remarks were run by C-SPAN. In addition to serving as moderator of Meet the Press, Russert is Vice President of NBC News.

     Johnson relayed Russert’s advice to his journalistic colleagues: "‘In times of war, the media should lower our voices, modulate our tone. Yes, we are journalists, but we are also Americans,’ Russert said in a speech Friday to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Russert said that as the war on terrorism unfolds, the media and the government ‘will have serious disagreements over what is fair, timely or relevant -- or even what should be defined as a threat to national security. But we should not and will not report anything which puts our troops at risk, and we must always reject any attempt to suggest a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists.’
     "Russert cited a National Journal article last week that said that ‘for wartime journalists it's essential to avoid the blind patriotism that can grow from righteous indignation, and the blind distrust of government that's a natural reaction to the stepped-up secrecy and propaganda.’
     "‘We are at war, and all of us must come together as never before,’ Russert said. ‘Simply put: There are those who want to destroy us, our people -- men, women and children -- our institutions, our way of life, our freedom. This presents some interesting issues for the media.’"

     And Russert is handling them better than ABC’s Westin.

6

Things have changed so much that now even Geraldo Rivera seems reasonable. The Fox News Web site has posted Rivera’s explanation for why he decided to leave CNBC for FNC, as he outlined on last Thursday’s Rivera Live on CNBC. To read this online, go to: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,37942,00.html

     The transcript as posted (ellipses as they appear in the transcript, I’m not cutting anything out):
     "The events of September 11th changed America forever. I said that on September 12th, and everything that’s happened since then, over the long, last six weeks has only confirmed that melancholy truth. And by altering our state of mind, if not our way of life, the attacks have also changed us as individuals. I’m not the same guy I was before the maniacs tried to tear our hearts out. In some ways, the change has been uncomfortable; I’m more edgy now, more serious. But in most ways, I like what I’m feeling...I’m more aware of the limits of life, how short and precious it is. Spending time with my kids has never been as important...and I’m feeling more patriotic than at any time in my life, itching for justice, or maybe just revenge. And this catharsis I’ve gone through has caused me to reassess what I do for a living.
     "For more than seven years, it’s been my honor to host this show. I’m very proud of it, and of the fact that for most of that time, you’ve made this the highest rated program on the network. Now it’s time for me to leave. I’m a reporter, and this fight against terror is the biggest story of our times. And as much as I love this job, I can’t stay anchored to this desk any longer. So I’m leaving in two weeks, the 16th of November will be my last program and I’ll save my thank yous for then. After that, next time you’ll see me, I’ll be working as a correspondent for another network. In that capacity, I hope to be able to report all aspects of America’s do or die fight against terror. Hope to see you tomorrow. God Bless America."

7

The David Westin story, which the MRC put into play last week, continues to generate coverage. On Fox News Sunday Tony Snow highlighted Westin’s quote and retraction. This week’s just-published editions of The Weekly Standard and New Republic also cited Westin’s remark with the Weekly Standard giving full credit to the MRC, as did the New York Post, DrudgeReport.com, Rush Limbaugh, AP, New York Daily News and Baltimore Sun last week.

     Plus, over the weekend, Westin’s comment was raised on both FNC’s Fox Newswatch and CNN’s Reliable Sources.

     For a full rundown of how David Westin proclaimed he had "no opinion" on whether the Pentagon was a "legitimate" target, a statement caught by the MRC and first reported in the October 29 CyberAlert, which then led to a big controversy when highlighted in an October 31 New York Post editorial that led to a DrudgeReport.com story and a discussion by Rush Limbaugh, all of which caused Westin to concede "I was wrong," go to: http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2001/cyb20011031_extra.asp

     That CyberAlert Extra also features a RealPlayer excerpt of Westin’s original remarks.

     News coverage since the first day of controversy:

     -- AP’s David Bauder related in a piece distributed the afternoon of October 31: "The vice president of the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog organization, was watching C-SPAN Saturday and sent an e-mail to hundreds of contacts about Westin's remarks. ‘This is an example to us of somebody at a very high level of the news media following a policy of journalist first, American second,’ said Brent Baker, the Media Research Center official who saw Westin."

     (Those "hundreds of contacts" would be the thousands of CyberAlert subscribers.)

     For Bauder’s dispatch in full, go to: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011031/en/attacks_abc_1.html

     -- FNC’s Brit Hume on the October 31 Special Report with Brit Hume: "ABC News President David Westin, facing criticism for saying that he had no opinion on whether the Pentagon was a legitimate target for a terrorist attack, has now reversed himself. Westin made the original comments in an answer to a question at Columbia Journalism School last week. In an e-mail to the Media Research Center, which first noted his remarks, he said, ‘upon reflection, I realize that my answer did not address the specifics of September 11. Under any interpretation, the attack on the Pentagon was criminal and entirely without justification. I apologize for any harm that my misstatement may have caused.’"

     -- In a November 1 New York Daily News story on the controversy, reporter Richard Huff noted the MRC’s role: "Westin told the students it was fine to have an opinion on the issue in his private life, but that as a journalist, he felt strongly it was something he should not take a stand on. That led to the conservative Media Research Center, an organization that has focused on ABC's coverage since Sept. 11, slamming him for being a journalist first and an American second."

     For the complete story, go to:
http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-11-01/New_York_Now/Television/a-130503.asp

     -- Baltimore Sun television reporter David Folkenflik relayed in a November 2 story: "Late Wednesday, ABC News President David Westin apologized for earlier saying that he had ‘no position’ on whether the Pentagon was an appropriate target for hijackers. He made his remarks last month to a group of Columbia University graduate students. His comments were broadcast on C-SPAN, picked up by Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, and then given broader play by the New York Post and the Drudge Report."

     For this article in its entirety, go to:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bal-to.image02nov02.story?coll=bal-features-headlines

     -- Tony Snow announced on Fox News Sunday: "ABC News President David Westin argued this week that he couldn't say whether terrorists were within their legitimate rights to strike the Pentagon. Quote, ‘The way I conceive my job, running a news organization, and the way I would like all the journalists at ABC News to perceive it, is that our job is to determine what is, not what ought to be.’ Several days later he apologized and conceded that his journalistic standards do permit him to concede that mass murder is bad."

     -- The November 12 New Republic features the Westin quote in its "Idiocy Watch" feature within its up front "Notebook" section.

     -- The latest Weekly Standard has devoted its back page "Not a Parody" feature entirely to Westin with not one, but two, credit lines to the MRC. Under the headline "Media Leadership in Our Time," the November 12 edition of the magazine ran Westin’s initial remarks in full followed by the complete text of his retraction. To view an image of this page, go to: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/455xizuu.asp

     And speaking of the MRC in the news, as many of you may have seen, on Monday night’s Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC he reported the MRC’s new study on how ABC’s World News Tonight devoted more than twice as much time to civilian casualties in Afghanistan during October than did the CBS and NBC evening shows combined.

     To read the study by the MRC’s Rich Noyes, as published Monday in a Media Reality Check and distributed yesterday afternoon in a CyberAlert Special, go to the HTML version which also features matching RealPlayer video clips: http://archive.mrc.org/realitycheck/2001/Fax20011105.asp

     To access the Adobe Acrobat PDF version: http://www.mediaresearch.org/realitycheck/2001/pdf/fax1105.pdf