1. ABC Sees "Harsh" Attack from Bush While Kerry is "Hitting Back"
A "harsh" Bush and Cheney versus the Kerry-Edwards team which is simply "hitting back." ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas warned on Wednesday night that "the Bush campaign unleashed its harshest attacks yet on Senator Kerry" as "Vice President Cheney accused Kerry of exhibiting, quote, 'a lot of hesitancy and uncertainty'" while President Bush also "went on the attack." ABC's Jonathan Karl argued that "the fervor of the attacks suggests Republicans are worried Kerry is gaining ground." In the very next story, ABC painted Kerry as the set upon victim fighting back on a winning issue. Vargas trumpeted how "Kerry was hitting back today, but on an issue that President Bush once hoped would be an advantage for him -- the drug prescription bill." Reporter Dan Harris touted how "the Kerry campaign clearly thinks it's found a winning issue with seniors." Harris proceeded to relay "grumbling" from Nevada seniors dissatisfied with Bush's plan. Plus, ABC corrected claims from Bush, but not from Kerry, while FNC corrected Kerry.
2. On Kerry's Cambodia Backtrack Only FNC Cares, Sawyer All Tease
The Kerry campaign on Wednesday backtracked from John Kerry's oft-repeated claim that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, in what would have been a violation of international law by the U.S., but only FNC cared and ran a full story on the admission prompted by John O'Neill's book, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. On Wednesday's Good Morning America, ABC's Diane Sawyer teased an interview with John McCain by noting how the presidential race is "heating up with attacks on John Kerry's war record," but though she promised "to talk about it all in an exclusive interview with Senator John McCain," she failed to raise the topic with him and instead fretted about whether President Bush is inappropriately "using September 11th as a political issue?"
3. Media Treatment of Kerry Vietnam Record Echoes Jones & Troopers
"Kerry's Troopers: Déjà vu anyone?" In a piece for National Review Online posted on Wednesday, the MRC's Tim Graham drew on recent CyberAlert articles to recount the media's studious refusal to pursue questions about Kerry's Vietnam record, as they instead preferred to "expose the cynical conspiracies of the partisan plotters against the Democrat," and Graham compared current treatment of the Kerry story to how the major media handled the allegations against Bill Clinton from Paula Jones and the troopers.
4. Rundown of
CyberAlert Items on Coverage of Kerry in Vietnam
A rundown of summaries of many CyberAlert articles this year which recounted media coverage, or lack thereof, for the anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans while the networks touted Kerry's "band of brothers" and bashed Bush over questions about his National Guard service.
ABC Sees "Harsh" Attack from Bush While
Kerry is "Hitting Back"
A "harsh" Bush and Cheney versus the Kerry-Edwards team which is simply "hitting back." ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas warned on Wednesday night that "the Bush campaign unleashed its harshest attacks yet on Senator Kerry" as "Vice President Cheney accused Kerry of exhibiting, quote, 'a lot of hesitancy and uncertainty'" while President Bush also "went on the attack." ABC's Jonathan Karl argued that "the fervor of the attacks suggests Republicans are worried Kerry is gaining ground." But in the very next story, ABC painted Kerry as the set upon victim fighting back on a winning issue. Vargas trumpeted how "Kerry was hitting back today, but on an issue that President Bush once hoped would be an advantage for him -- the drug prescription bill." Reporter Dan Harris touted how "the Kerry campaign clearly thinks it's found a winning issue with seniors." Harris proceeded to relay "grumbling" from Nevada seniors dissatisfied with Bush's plan.
ABC corrected Bush but not Kerry. In the story on Bush's attacks on Kerry, Karl ran a clip of Bush claiming that "Senator Kerry now agrees with me that knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power." Karl countered: "Not exactly. What Senator Kerry said is that he would still have voted to give the President the authority to go to war, but that he would have used that authority differently." Karl then played a soundbite of Kerry maintaining that "I've been consistent all along."
But in the piece on Kerry attacking Bush over prescription drug coverage in Medicare, Dan Harris failed to correct Kerry's claims that Bush opposes importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada and that he voted against the Bush plan which was enacted into law. FNC's Carl Cameron, however, caught both misstatements. On Special Report with Brit Hume, Cameron noted: "Angry Bush aides fired back, saying Kerry knows full well that the President has already authorized the Secretary of Health and Human Services to import drugs from overseas once the FDA concludes they're safe." And Cameron observed: "In fact, when the final vote occurred, Kerry skipped it."
Plus, while ABC's Harris focused on seniors who find the current options inadequate, FNC's Cameron pointed out that the prescription plan signed by Bush last year represented "the biggest ever expansion of Medicare passed into law."
Wednesday's CBS Evening News didn't air a campaign story and the NBC Nightly News, with Tom Brokaw anchoring from Greece, held its coverage to a timeless piece on the Hispanic vote.
(On Tuesday night's Hardball on MSNBC, the MRC's Geoff Dickens noticed, NBC News reporter Norah O'Donnell certainly carried Kerry's water: "And something to point out, too, about the President's joke today about Senator Kerry. He said Senator Kerry would have voted to go to war. Senator Kerry did not vote to go to war. Senator Kerry voted to authorize to give the President the authority to go to war if he needed to. And that's a distinction that's worth pointing out and certainly one that the Democrats would point out in this case. And the point that, that Senator Kerry has made while campaigning is, he would have voted to authorize, but he would have done going to war if needed to and certainly carrying it out in a much different way.")
A full rundown of the ABC and FNC stories from Wednesday night, August 11:
-- ABC. Vargas teased the World News Tonight take on the campaign: "The Bush campaign's toughest attack yet -- questioning Senator Kerry's qualifications to be commander-in-chief."
Vargas introduced the subsequent story: "The war in Iraq and the issue of leadership were front and center in the presidential race today. The Bush campaign unleashed its harshest attacks yet on Senator Kerry. Vice President Cheney accused Kerry of exhibiting, quote, 'a lot of hesitancy and uncertainty.' He said that is not acceptable behavior for someone who wants to be Commander-in-Chief. Then, President Bush went on the attack. With the Bush campaign, here's ABC's Jonathan Karl."
Karl began, as taken down by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth, who corrected the closed-captioning file: "In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the President attacked John Kerry for being unclear about what he'd do in Iraq."
George W. Bush at a rally: "I know what I'm doing when it comes to winning this war. And I'm not going to be sending mixed signals."
Karl: "On this five-day, nine-state campaign swing, the Bush/Cheney campaign is clearly playing the Commander-in-Chief card."
George W. Bush: "Senator Kerry now agrees with me that knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Karl corrected Bush: "Not exactly. What Senator Kerry said is that he would still have voted to give the President the authority to go to war, but that he would have used that authority differently."
John Kerry, on Tuesday: "I've been consistent all along, ladies and gentlemen. I thought the United States needed to stand up to Saddam Hussein, and I voted to stand up to Saddam Hussein. But I thought we ought to do it right."
Karl: "For the Bush campaign, the race comes down to a battle to define what kind of a commander-in-chief John Kerry would be. A battle-tested leader? Or a weakened indecisive one? The fervor of the attacks suggests Republicans are worried Kerry is gaining ground."
Stuart Rothenberg, Rothenberg Political Report: "The Republicans know they're in for a fight for their life. This reflects the Republican understanding that they've got to do something to win this election."
Karl: "That's one reason why the President has also enlisted his one-time nemesis, Senator John McCain, in this fight."
John McCain at Tuesday rally: "He has not wavered. He has not flinched from the hard choices."
Karl concluded: "National security has been the President's strongest issue. To keep it that way, he'll almost certainly try to keep raising doubts about John Kerry. Jonathan Karl, ABC News, with the President in Albuquerque, New Mexico."
Vargas segued to the next piece, but with a very different tone: "John Kerry was hitting back today, but on an issue that President Bush once hoped would be an advantage for him -- the drug prescription bill. This is an important issue to nearly 25 million senior citizens in this country and they have the highest voter turnout of any age group. ABC's Dan Harris is traveling with the Kerry campaign and joins us now from Henderson, Nevada. Dan?"
Harris began: "Elizabeth, the Kerry campaign clearly thinks it's found a winning issue with seniors, one Senator Kerry was hitting hard here in Nevada today. That issue, as you mentioned, is the President's plan to provide prescription drug coverage for people on Medicare."
John Kerry at a rally: "Dr. Kerry is here to cure y'all. Here it is, folks."
Harris: "Today, surrounded by seniors, John Kerry took dead aim at the President's Medicare prescription drug benefit."
Kerry: "I proudly, and I think rightly, voted against this prescription drug bill that the President has put in place that hurts seniors in this country."
Harris: "Bush signed the benefit into law in December. By 2006, the White House says it will provide prescription drug insurance to millions of Medicare recipients, cutting drug costs by more than half. Republicans thought the law would be a political boon. But Mr. Bush doesn't mention it in his TV ads and he didn't even mention it on the stump in New Mexico today. At the Henderson, Nevada, senior center, over games of bridge and scrabble, there was grumbling today about the President's plan."
Elderly man #1: "It's complicated, hard to understand, and I don't understand it."
Elderly man #2: "I don't believe it's going to help us worth a damn."
Harris, referring to a 47 to 26 percent split found in a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, as displayed on screen: "A new poll shows that, by a margin of nearly two to one, Medicare recipients have an unfavorable view of the program. The poll also shows most Medicare recipients want to legalize the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada, which Mr. Bush opposes."
Kerry: "This isn't fair competition. It's a monopoly. And it's been put in place by George Bush and his friends, and it's costing you a whole bunch of extra money, and it's wrong."
Harris: "The Bush campaign says Kerry is misleading seniors. First, they argue there's no guarantee that drugs imported from Canada are safe. Second, they say the Medicare drug benefit has been the victim of a Democratic misinformation campaign."
Terry Holt, Bush campaign spokesman: "At the end of the day, John Kerry is playing politics with the lives of seniors."
Harris concluded: "More than four million people are already taking advantage of this plan. And the Bush campaign says the more people get to know and understand the plan, the more they'll like it. The problem for the President, Elizabeth, is that with fewer than three months left before the election, he doesn't have much time left to sell the plan."
-- FNC. Brit Hume, on his 6pm EDT show, set up his lead story: "Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry took his health care reform plans to a new audience today on the western campaign trail. Kerry attacked the President and courted older voters with promises of less expensive medicine if he is elected. Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron reports."
Cameron started with a clip of Kerry: "Dr. Kerry is here to cure y'all."
Cameron: "Courting seniors seldom gets more obvious than that. In the battle ground state of Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accused President Bush of siding with big drug makers instead of the elderly for allegedly blocking the importation of inexpensive drugs from overseas."
Kerry at a rally: "George Bush stood in the way of that. George Bush stood right there and said, nope, we're not going to help people to have lower cost drugs in America. We're going to help the big drug companies get a great big windfall."
Cameron: "Angry Bush aides fired back, saying Kerry knows full well that the President has already authorized the Secretary of Health and Human Services to import drugs from overseas once the FDA concludes they're safe. Kerry, nonetheless, issued a challenge to the President that perhaps left voters with the impression that no such steps have been taken."
Kerry: "I call on the President to get out of the way of Americans being able to import drugs from Canada at a lower price.
Cameron: "Republicans accused Kerry of distorting the facts and trying to scare and mislead seniors, who are expected to make up a quarter of the vote on election day. President Bush got the biggest ever expansion of Medicare passed into law last year with a prescription drug benefit available to as many as 40 million Americans. Kerry opposed the measure, and not content to merely call it inadequate, he suggests that the new benefits actually do harm."
Kerry: "I proudly and I think rightly voted against this prescription drug bill that the President has put in place that hurts seniors in this country."
Cameron corrected him: "But, in fact, when the final vote occurred, Kerry skipped it. Since then, he has repeatedly pledged to undo much of the measure in order to start all over from scratch. He accused the GOP, in turn, of misrepresenting his plan."
Kerry: "You know, I keep hearing the distortions of the other side are just stunning. You know, they say I want to repeal it. No, I don't want to repeal it. I want to fix it."
Cameron pointed out: "But the truth is he did promise to repeal it."
Kerry, January 21 in New Hampshire: "If I am President, I pledge to you we will repeal that phony bill."
Cameron: "In the 2000 election President Bush narrowly lost the seniors vote to Al Gore by a 50 to 47 percent margin. Current polls suggest that a number of Medicare recipients are unimpressed and even unsatisfied by the prescription drug benefit. And while the overall race between Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry is essentially a dead heat, the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll shows that when it comes to seniors, Mr. Bush now trails Senator Kerry by 16 percentage points."
On Kerry's Cambodia Backtrack Only FNC
Cares, Sawyer All Tease
The Kerry campaign on Wednesday backtracked from John Kerry's oft-repeated claim that he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, in what would have been a violation of international law by the U.S., but only FNC cared and ran a full story on the admission prompted by John O'Neill's book, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. On Wednesday's Good Morning America, ABC's Diane Sawyer teased an interview with John McCain by noting how the presidential race is "heating up with attacks on John Kerry's war record," but though she promised "to talk about it all in an exclusive interview with Senator John McCain," she failed to raise the topic with him and instead fretted about whether President Bush is inappropriately "using September 11th as a political issue?"
CNN's NewsNight with Aaron Brown has studiously avoided O'Neill and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but the network got to O'Neill on Wednesday afternoon, pairing him with retired Admiral William Crowe, a Kerry backer, on the 5pm EDT Wolf Blitzer Reports. Though O'Neill mentioned the Cambodia matter, Blitzer did not pursue it and CNN reporter Brian Todd did not mention it in a pre-interview set up story. For the transcript of the August 11 Wolf Blitzer Reports, which devoted about 15 minutes, minus an ad break, between 5:15 and 5:30pm EDT to charges by O'Neill and other swift boat commanders that Kerry did not earn all his medals and has exaggerated his heroism, and Crowe's retorts: www.cnn.com
O'Neill popped up Wednesday morning on FNC's Fox & Friends for an interview session, during which, the MRC's Megan McCormack noticed, Brian Kilmeade presumed others were reporting on the Cambodia angle: "Something else getting a lot of traction is the Cambodia story, where he says its indelible, it's etched in his mind, his Christmas he spent in Cambodia, a place that Richard Nixon said no American troops were in. Well, he was there being shot at from three different sides. What have you found out about that?" O'Neill replied: "It's a total and complete lie. It's a total fabrication. He was never in Cambodia on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He said that more than 50 times and yet, even in his new book Tour of Duty, he's not in Cambodia anymore. He is at a base in Vietnam dreaming of sugar plums, that's literally what he says in the book Tour of Duty."
In an October 14, 1979 review for the Boston Herald of the movie Apocalypse Now, Kerry asserted: "I remember spending Christmas Eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodia border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas...The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real." He repeated the same claim on the Senate floor in 1986.
One problem with his Nixon as the villain tale: On December 24, 1968 Lyndon Johnson was the President. And it's not as if Kerry was in-country on Christmas Eve 1969. He couldn't have been since he was only in Vietnam for a little over four months.
(As noted in the August 11 CyberAlert Special, O'Neill launched his book tour Tuesday night on FNC's Hannity & Colmes which, an hour before Pat Buchanan interviewed him on MSNBC's Scarborough Country (where Buchanan filled in for Scarborough), touted the interview, in an on-screen graphic, as a "Fox News Exclusive.")
None of the broadcast network morning shows, which are focused on the Scott Peterson murder trial and Kobe Bryant case, have yet featured O'Neill -- and I wouldn't hold my breath.
A full rundown of the August 11 GMA and Special Report with Brit Hume stories:
-- ABC's Good Morning America. Diane Sawyer plugged up top: "The presidential race, as we know, heating up with attacks on John Kerry's war record and a firestorm over President Bush's choice for a new CIA director, and new terrorism warnings, and we're going to talk about it all in an exclusive interview with Senator John McCain, just ahead."
A few minutes later, McCain appeared via satellite from a very dark Crawford Texas. Sawyer, the MRC's Jessica Anderson noticed, never raised "attacks" on "Kerry's war record," never mind a dispassionate look at it. Instead, she posed these questions:
# "Let me turn to the news we just had from Robin Roberts, which is there is a report this morning that Osama bin Laden has said that he wants the first attack to be against some high-ranking government officials. Have you and other members of Congress been told to do anything differently, and are you?"
# "Well, at this exceedingly sensitive time, probably no more sensitive position than the head of the CIA. The new nominee, as we know, is Porter Goss, Congressman, Republican, and he is already on the record saying that he views John Kerry's national security views as, quote, 'unrealistic and dangerously naive.' What about having a partisan head of the CIA?"
# "But one of the questions raised about the CIA and the embarrassment before was that perhaps the CIA was telling the White House what it wanted to hear. Do you increase this danger?"
# "As we said, you're out there with the President. There's a new ad unveiled and this whole issue of what is fair and not fair about September 11th has arisen again. I'm going play an excerpt from this new ad. Here it is."
President Bush, in ad with Laura Bush by his side: "I can't imagine the great agony of a mom or a dad having to make the decision about which child to pick up first on September 11th."
Sawyer: "Is the President using September 11th as a political issue?"
# "In recent days, John Kerry has said that in his first six months in office, he will bring troops home. Haven't heard you comment on that because you had once called for more troops, not less....So he's wrong to promise that?"
Last Thursday, GMA ran a story focused on McCain's condemnation of the ad produced by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. See the August 6 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org
-- FNC's 6pm EDT/9pm PDT Special Report with Brit Hume on Wednesday, for the second day this week, pursued Kerry's Vietnam record, a subject not addressed so far this week by CNN's Inside Politics. Hume announced: "A new book about John Kerry has prompted a debate unlike any seen in modern presidential history: Whether a decorated war veteran really is a hero. The Kerry campaign has dismissed the book as a political smear, but now the Kerry camp is making adjustments in key parts of a story Kerry has told about fighting in Cambodia. Fox News correspondent Major Garrett reports."
Garrett began: "John Kerry's campaign doesn't want you to read this book, 'Unfit for Command,' co-authored by a Vietnam veteran who served alongside Kerry."
John Hurley, Veterans for Kerry: "This book is based on lies and distortion. This is not a representation of fact. This is a distortion for political purposes."
Garrett: "But the book's attracted a following and is now the number one seller on the Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com Web sites."
John O'Neill, author of Unfit for Command: "Eventually John Kerry will have to deal with the truth of the book."
Garrett: "In part, that process is beginning. The Kerry campaign has been forced to admit errors in statements Kerry made in a 1979 Boston Herald article and in a 1986 Senate speech shown here in the Congressional Record about vivid memories of his leading a swift boat deep into Cambodia and taking enemy fire on Christmas Eve 1968."
Hurley: "I don't know that anyone can actually say whether or not they were in Cambodia."
Garrett: "Kerry's camp now says that on Christmas Eve, Kerry's swift boat was at or near the Cambodian border, not five miles inside as Kerry has said repeatedly."
Hurley: "Very watery area. It is, there's no sign that says welcome to Cambodia. It is obviously dusk and getting darker, and so they were in those waters."
Garrett: "The Kerry campaign also says Kerry was in Cambodia on a different mission with Navy Seals but can provide no date for that mission."
Hurley: "He was five miles into Cambodia, but what's happened is these two stories have gotten confused."
Garrett: "In the past, Kerry has written that the Cambodian incursion on Christmas Eve was, quote, 'seared into his memory.'"
Hurley: "I think the experience is seared into his memory. I think that he knows that he was under fire in Cambodia. I think the date is what's inaccurate, that it was just not Christmas Eve Day."
Garrett: "Kerry's critics consider this concession a victory."
O'Neill: "I understand that he is beginning, at least, to admit that he was never in Cambodia, for example, at Christmas time, which was a complete lie that he told over and over and over again."
Garrett: "The Kerry campaign says discrepancies about the Cambodia story are trivial. The real issue, they say, is Kerry's combat record."
Hurley: "The United States Navy, not John Kerry, decided that he deserved a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and three purple hearts."
Garrett concluded: "Kerry has used the Cambodia story to illustrate the anxiety he said he felt taking part in an illegal war in Cambodia and also to underscore what he described as the folly of leaders who failed to tell the country the full story about the dimensions of the war in Vietnam. But Kerry's Vietnam critics accuse him of distorting parts of his war experience, and at least in this Cambodia episode, appear to have touched a nerve."
For a review of the August 9 Special Report with Brit Hume story, see the August 10 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org
For the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's Web section with the group's documentation for its claims: swift1.he.net
I noticed that they've posted a transcript of O'Neill's debate with Kerry on ABC's Dick Cavett Show back on June 30, 1971, a program C-SPAN re-ran a few months ago on its Sunday night Road to the White House program: swift1.he.net
Media Treatment of Kerry Vietnam Record
Echoes Jones & Troopers
"Kerry's Troopers: Déjà vu anyone?" In a piece for National Review Online posted on Wednesday, the MRC's Tim Graham drew on recent CyberAlert articles to recount the media's studious refusal to pursue questions about Kerry's Vietnam record, as they instead preferred to "expose the cynical conspiracies of the partisan plotters against the Democrat." Graham compared current treatment of the Kerry story to how the major media handled the allegations against Bill Clinton from Paula Jones and the troopers.
The NRO article by Graham, the MRC's Director of Media Analysis, is posted online at: www.nationalreview.com
A reprint of the August 11 piece:
It all seems so familiar now. In their overt desire to reject a second term for a President Bush, the liberal media elite allows the Democratic candidate to create a legend around himself and his past. Whatever inconvenient holes or weaknesses there are in his personal history are whitewashed out. When the Democrat's critics challenge these legends, only then is it time to travel beyond the mythology and launch into investigative journalism — but only to expose the cynical conspiracies of the partisan plotters against the Democrat.
This entire cycle, which recalls 1992 and then repeats in every other year of the Clinton era, is now coming around again with the ad and book campaign of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In Clinton-era terms, it could echo the Paula Jones case. Like Jones, the vets held a press conference (at the National Press Club in early May) that most national media outlets strenuously ignored. So months later, they created another splash to draw the media out, only to be sharply criticized.
But the better Clinton-era comparison for the swift-boat veterans are the Arkansas state troopers. Obviously, Vietnam was no walk through a Little Rock nightclub. But these men know Kerry, as the troopers knew Clinton. They say they are eyewitnesses to some moments that do not match the much-seen flattering filmstrips of his wartime experiences. It is the very possibility of their persuasive power that causes Democratic-media apparatchiks to decide they must be discredited. Their motives for lying were the primary focus, and reporters rarely sought to confirm the negative stories, preferring to leave them unsubstantiated and uncirculated.
Why would the media approach the swift-boat vets opposing Kerry by completely changing the subject instead of engaging the battle on the turf of Kerry's record? If they're so confident Kerry is unassailable and the vets are politically daft, why not demand Kerry's records to shut it down? Here again you can see the Clinton parallels. Behind the pro-Democrat bravado is a real lack of confidence in what a careful evaluation of the public record will show. They change the subject to motivations and personal attacks because merely raising the subject, the question of whether Kerry served or protested honorably and without great political calculation is a loser for Democrats. If the portrait of Kerry tips even a bit from jut-jawed hero to unreliable ally in a crisis, a self-promoter with presidential ambitions in the most trying situations, Kerry's chances with veterans and military families may be quite hampered.
If conservatives were slow to see Clinton parallels, the media liberals were not. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann noted that the new swift-boat veterans book comes "from Regnery Press, which is supported in some way by Richard Mellon Scaife of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, and you now bring in the whole mystical right-wing conspiracy jazz." Keith doesn't feel he has to have any proof of Scaife-prints on Regnery or the veterans, just a vague but vivid belief in harmonic conservative convergence.
Wall Street Journal pundit Al Hunt denounced the effort in the classic Washington way: When you don't want to assess whether an attack is true or false, just say that asking the question is crappy politics. "Suppose in the 1992 presidential election, after an unconfirmed rumor surfaced about an alleged affair then President Bush had years earlier, Clinton supporters decided to make marital fidelity a central issue. That would be almost as crazy as the current effort by some Bush backers to focus attention on John Kerry's Vietnam War record and subsequent protests." For Hunt and others, the calculus is easy: Bush ducked, Kerry fought. What Kerry did while fighting or protesting is "beyond the pale" of public discussion.
Conservatives and liberals can debate whether the veterans charging Kerry is "Unfit for Command" are a boon or a bane to Bush. But the news media is supposed to operate on a different plane with a different formula. What is the true and full biography of a man who wants to be president? They're supposed to investigate, and then report if the substance of the charges is true or false. Instead, the media act with extreme political calculation at the risk of their own reputation for fair play — just as they did in the Clinton years.
On NBC, the swift-boat-vet ad isn't a new frontier for investigative journalism, but an undesirable outbreak of free speech that should have been prevented by law. Tom Brokaw asked Friday night: "Up next, NBC News 'In Depth' tonight: The latest campaign ad from an independent political group. Harsh attacks. Are these ads totally out of control?" Could he telegraph any more blatantly that he wished this ad did not exist, or that he would have liked to control it right into the dumpster?
He later explained: "NBC's Andrea Mitchell tells us tonight, the campaign-finance law supposed to fix the system left this very big loophole." The network stars have discovered that "527" groups, which the Democrats have built willy-nilly to defeat President Bush, have suddenly become undesirable. So we should ask: Is Tom Brokaw out of control? Aren't he and his fellow reporters one giant "loophole" in our campaign speech system?
The mere fact that we're at this embryonic stage of Kerry's biography in August shows the lack of media vigilance about Kerry's resume. If anyone would question the timing of the current Swift Boat vets campaign, they are correct. They could have started in May at the National Press Club. They could have started in February, when Terry McAuliffe and the Democrats drew two weeks of meticulous network pounding of George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. (For example, take CBS's John Roberts on February 12: "Officials hoped the release of Mr. Bush's dental records would end the matter, but the dentist who treated him has no specific recollection of seeing the future president.")
But they should have been exploring this story on their own in January, when Kerry broke out of the Democratic pack through powerful and repeated war heroism stories. Since Sen. Kerry began putting his Vietnam experience into biographical overdrive before the Iowa caucuses, it might have seemed like an obvious task for reporters to assess Kerry's service in greater detail. But they did not. They are more interested in electing Kerry than telling us about him.
END Reprint of article posted on National Review Online.
See the link above to the posted version for the links embedded in the article.
Rundown of
CyberAlert Items on Coverage
of Kerry in Vietnam
A rundown of summaries of many CyberAlert articles this year which recounted media coverage, or lack thereof, for the anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans while the networks touted Kerry's "band of brothers" and bashed Bush over questions about his National Guard service.
From the most recent (except numbers 1 and 2 above) to the oldest:
-- August 10 CyberAlert. FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume on Monday night picked up on how John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi assert in their new book, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, that contrary to John Kerry's claims that he was in Cambodia in 1968 when President Nixon insisted no U.S. armed forces were in that nation, an allegation he raised in railing in 1986 against President Reagan's efforts to help the Nicaraguan freedom fighters, he was not in Cambodia. The other networks, however, ignored that. The ABC and NBC evening newscasts instead focused their campaign stories on Kerry's agenda, an attack on the Bush stem cell research policy. ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas portrayed a broad range of potential cures being blocked by Bush: "Many believe such research could hold a cure for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's." Reporter John Cochran re-played again a May clip of Nancy Reagan advocating federal funding for embryonic stem cell research followed by a soundbite from Ron Reagan at the Democratic convention before Cochran brought up John McCain's name. See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- August 10 CyberAlert. Al Hunt went apoplectic on Saturday night's Capital Gang on CNN, launching personal insults against John O'Neill, the Chairman of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. Hunt, Executive Washington Editor of the Wall Street Journal, declared of the group's TV ad: "I think this is some of the sleaziest lies I've ever seen in politics. John O'Neill, one of the principal authors, has been a Republican functionary for over 30 years" who is "a liar" and "was a pawn of Chuck Colson." www.mediaresearch.org
-- August 7 CyberAlert. NBC Nightly News and MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Friday night denounced the ad from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, treating the group's expression of free speech as a "loophole" in campaign finance law that must be plugged. Unencumbered by any restrictions on their free speech, NBC's Tom Brokaw and Andrea Mitchell and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann launched their own independent attack on the Vietnam vets who are detractors of John Kerry in order to discredit those with a viewpoint NBC/MSNBC apparently wants to keep hidden from the American people. "They may get away with it," Mitchell fretted. Approaching lunacy, Olbermann warned that an upcoming book from a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth leader is "from Regnery Press, which is supported in some way by Richard Mellon Scaife of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, and you now bring in the whole mystical right-wing conspiracy jazz." See: www.mediaresearch.org
For a RealPlayer video clip of part of Mitchell's story, see the August 10 edition of the Worst of the Week: www.mediaresearch.org
-- August 6 CyberAlert. CBS, CNN and MSNBC on Thursday night decried a new anti-Kerry TV ad produced by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. CBS anchor John Roberts stressed criticism of it: "A harsh new television ad that attacks John Kerry is being denounced as quote, 'dishonest and dishonorable' by a Bush supporter, Republican Senator John McCain." (Just last week on the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather trumpeted "John Kerry's band of brothers from Vietnam on one last mission.") CNN's NewsNight didn't inform viewers of the views of the veterans in the ad, just as the show on May 4 ignored, along with ABC and NBC, the press conference held by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. But NewsNight, and ABC, had time on Thursday night for how John Kerry mocked President Bush for the seven minutes in the Florida classroom highlighted by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann repeatedly mis-identified the group as "Swift Boat Veterans for Bush." See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- August 6 CyberAlert. Friday morning newspapers and TV treated Senator John McCain's condemnation of the anti-Kerry ad from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as more newsworthy than the substance of the charges the network morning shows have ignored until now. "McCain Criticizes Ad Attacking Kerry on Vietnam War Record," declared a front page Washington Post headline over a story that in nearly 1,200 words didn't quote a word from the ad. "It's getting ugly out there," Today co-host Campbell Brown fretted before she asked Tim Russert: "Republican Senator John McCain, a Vietnam vet, has come out and said that, that ad is quote, 'dishonest and dishonorable.' Should the White House be doing the same thing or the Bush campaign, rather, be doing the same thing?" ABC and CBS also stressed McCain's condemnation. See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- July 30 AM convention edition. Despite the airing Thursday night by all the cable networks of the John Kerry biography film narrated by actor Morgan Freeman, only CNN gave any time to Kerry's swift boat colleagues who oppose his candidacy, though they got only a fraction of the air time of the Kerry backers and reporter Kelly Wallace then allowed a Kerry supporter to denounce his critics. Earlier, on the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather trumpeted "John Kerry's band of brothers from Vietnam on one last mission." Rather made only a fleeting reference to Kerry's incendiary 1971 remarks accusing his fellow soldiers of war crimes: "Today John Kerry says he regrets some of his words but not his choices." ABC's World News Tonight featured an interview of Kerry by Peter Jennings about Kerry's Vietnam experience, but Jennings acknowledged that "there are a few who served with him who dispute his record and question his leadership" and promised that "we'll hear from them in the weeks ahead." www.mediaresearch.org
-- July 29 PM convention edition. In a glowing profile, Byron Pitts showed Kerry as an anti-Vietnam war protester in 1971 dramatically asking Senators, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake," but he gave no hint how Kerry alienated a great many Vietnam veterans by making unfounded charges of war crimes. CBS's entirely positive review of Kerry's life ended with some of the Kerry campaign's preferred "Band of Brothers" imagery:
"The day before his speech, Kerry crossed Boston Harbor with some of his crew mates from Vietnam. His band of brothers. They have one battle left. But tonight the loner will stand alone here in his hometown one more time and look to do what John F. Kerry has nearly always done -- find a way to win." See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- July 23 CyberAlert. On July 22 Dan Rather prompted John Kerry to expound on how he's angry at President Bush for criticizing his Vietnam service while Bush avoided the war. Rather asked Kerry: "Have you ever had any anger about President Bush, who spent his time during the Vietnam War in the National Guard, running, in effect, a campaign that does its best to diminish your service in Vietnam?" Kerry replied, "Yup, I have been," and went on to confirm it "grates a little bit" and is "irritating." See: www.mrc.org
-- June 2 CyberAlert. CNN on Monday night aired a four-minute info-mercial for John Kerry, but the Kerry campaign didn't have to pay a cent for it since it was aired in the guise of a news story by Aaron Brown, tied to Memorial Day, on NewsNight. Without uttering a syllable about questions raised about whether Kerry had really earned the first of three Purple Hearts, which allowed him to leave Vietnam early, or how his Swift boat commanders and colleagues have questioned his fitness to lead and motivations in Vietnam, Brown delivered a panegyrical, event-by-event tribute to Kerry's heroic Vietnam service. See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- May 5 CyberAlert. CBS on Tuesday night tried to discredit some Vietnam veterans critical of John Kerry by impugning them as partisan activists tied to the Bush campaign, though the only link seems to be a public relations firm involved in the 2000 campaign, and tarring all of them with the supposed dirty work for Richard Nixon of one. Very McCarthyistic. FNC's Carl Cameron, however, managed to avoid innuendo as he undermined the credibility of specific vets by showing how in the past they had praised Kerry. CBS's Byron Pitts went back to 1971 as he recalled how John O'Neill, who debated Kerry about Vietnam on ABC's Dick Cavett Show, "was handpicked by the Nixon administration to discredit Kerry." Pitts added, without any explanation, that "the press conference was set up by the same people who," in 2000, "tried to discredit John McCain's reputation in Vietnam service." Then Pitts connected the anti-Kerry veterans to a presumed nefarious "strategy" they had nothing to do with implementing: "It's the same strategy used to go after Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam." See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- April 27 CyberAlert. John Kerry appeared on Monday's Good Morning America on ABC to respond to evidence he's contradicted himself on throwing away his war medals, but instead of making Kerry's credibility the focus of the day's news, ABC and the other networks painted Kerry's post-Vietnam War actions as an unfair burden and/or Kerry as a victim of unfair attacks from pro-Bush political operatives. Peter Jennings framed the story around Kerry's "dilemma: After brave and honorable service in Vietnam, a post-war record that dogs him." CBS's Dan Rather portrayed the Bush team as the aggressor: "The Bush-Cheney re-election campaign launched another attack today on Democratic challenger..." NBC's Kelly O'Donnell ignored ABC's role as she blamed "political digging" and claimed questions about the "credibility" of both candidates had been "renewed." CNN anchor Aaron Brown framed the news through a prism hostile to Bush as he recited a litany of supposed Bush-Cheney failures as he implied disgust at how they still had the chutzpah to criticize Kerry. See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- April 23 CyberAlert: CBS on Thursday night caught up with the Kerry campaign's release of his Vietnam military service records, but reporter Jim Stewart avoided the very allegation from Kerry's former commander -- that he really didn't suffer a combat wound for which he was awarded his first Purple Heart -- the charge that fueled the document release. Instead, anchor Dan Rather stressed how the records "show glowing evaluations of him during combat in the Vietnam War." Stewart reminded viewers of Kerry's Senate testimony 30 years ago and noted how "a lot of veterans got mad at Kerry," but avoided citing Kerry's most incendiary claims which so angered his comrades, that Americans regularly committed atrocities in Vietnam, as he asserted that Kerry is "still trying to explain the path that led him from war hero to anti-war activist." Stewart even painted Kerry as a victim, recalling how "Kerry suspected there would be a price" to pay for his anti-war activism. See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- April 23 CyberAlert: The broadcast network morning shows on
Thursday each aired a single story on Kerry's military records, each featuring a unique interview with Kerry, but none of them included a
single Republican soundbite, though ABC featured one old soundbite from a 1971 debate opponent. Unlike the Bush National Guard controversy,
there were no story-underlining interviews with journalists or political pundits. ABC's Dan Harris let Kerry suggest there was no Republican
pressure for the release, but then insisted "some veterans and conservatives have begun something of a cottage industry criticizing
Kerry's anti-war activism." CBS's Jim Stewart could only ask why Kerry delayed the records release, and Kerry denied there was any delay. NBC's
Carl Quintanilla made no reference to Kerry's Vietnam records, changing the subject from his 1971 Senate testimony to present-day Iraq. See:
www.mediaresearch.org
-- April 22 CyberAlert: A lot more skeptical of Bush than Kerry on Vietnam-era service. Back on February 10 when the White House released George W. Bush's National Guard records, the networks stressed how they only "raise more questions." But with Kerry, the networks ignored for a week questions raised last week in the Boston Globe about whether he deserved one of his Purple Hearts, and then prompted by Kerry's release of his records finally got to the story on Wednesday, but were satisfied with the records despite the lack of documentation for his first Purple Heart. "We'll take 'A Closer Look' tonight at John Kerry's distinguished war record," ABC anchor Charles Gibson promised Wednesday night in stating as fact a claim that is in dispute. Gibson then shifted the burden to Kerry's critics: "His opponents are trying hard to use it against him." CBS didn't even consider Kerry newsworthy, but NBC and CNN ran stories. See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- February 6 CyberAlert. As leading Democrats hurl unsubstantiated charges that George W. Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard 30 years ago, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Thursday night dismissed any notion of hypocrisy since leading Democratic presidential contender John Kerry took to the Senate floor in 1992 to denounce the relevance of Bill Clinton's avoidance of military service. "One thing about comments like that from 1992 about military service," Olbermann asserted, "as somebody points out frequently, the whole world changed on 9/11." www.mediaresearch.org
-- February 6 CyberAlert. For CNN's Judy Woodruff, George W. Bush is guilty until proven innocent. On Wednesday she didn't demand that DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe provide any proof for his allegation that George W. Bush was AWOL from the Air National Guard, assured him that "I don't want to dwell on this," and she failed to raise Democratic hypocrisy since John Kerry in 1992 defended Bill Clinton's avoidance of military service. But on Thursday, she pounded away at Bush/Cheney spokesman Terry Holt, demanding that Bush come up with proof of his service. Woodruff: "Is it a problem, though, for President Bush, as a candidate up for re-election this year, that there are no records that prove that he showed up for service for approximately a year?" www.mediaresearch.org
-- February 5 CyberAlert. "New questions have arisen about President Bush's military service record," Dan Rather declared on Wednesday's CBS Evening News, although the "questions" are not "new" since they were raised and dismissed in 1999 and 2000. CBS and NBC on Wednesday night picked up on DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe's unsubstantiated "AWOL" charge, and how the John Kerry campaign is fueling the allegations, but ignored how in 1992 Kerry himself took to the Senate floor to denounce those critical of Bill Clinton's efforts to avoid military service during the Vietnam era. Matching a theme of many cable news channel segments this week, both networks portrayed the attacks on Bush's personal military record of 30 years ago as a legitimate retort to questions about Kerry's professional policy positions on national security issues. See: www.mediaresearch.org
-- February 2 CyberAlert. CNN's Bruce Morton ridiculously argued on Friday, as if policy stands are irrelevant, that since Vietnam veterans support John Kerry, and since he is one himself, "if the Republicans had any hope of casting Kerry as some Michael Dukakis-style effete Eastern liberal, that's over. The band of brothers stands in his way." See: www.mediaresearch.org
You'd think with all that focus on Kerry's heroics in Vietnam they'd have a few minutes for a contrary view.
-- Brent Baker
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