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1. Hume and Douglass Scold ABC for Overplaying "Bad" Hastert Story On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume, a veteran of ABC News, chided his former employer: "ABC News came out with this [Hastert] story, worded the way it was. 'Included in the investigation,' 'in the mix of the investigation,' has an unmistakable implication, and that is the guy's under investigation. We have now had an absolutely unequivocal denial of that, not only from the Justice Department at one level, but....Paul McNulty, the U.S. Attorney, came out and denied that as well. This looks like a bad story. They led their newscast with it. The implication was unmistakable. They ought to back off this story, and the sooner the better." CNN's Howard Kurtz, on Sunday morning's Reliable Sources, raised the accuracy of the story with Linda Douglass who covered Capitol Hill for ABC News until the end of 2005. Douglass was reluctant to lambast her ex-colleagues, but her disagreement with their news judgment was clear: "Well, I think leading with it was a controversial decision, is what I would say. And I think that saying he was part of the investigation, if in fact his name just came up, was, was a phrase you might want to revisit." 2. Clift: Media "Regret" How "Gore was Mocked and Ridiculed in 2000" Confirming what's obvious to anyone watching or reading the gushing praise for Al Gore and his hysterical movie about global warming, on the Memorial Day weekend's McLaughlin Group, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift asserted: "There's some regret, even among the media, that Al Gore was mocked and ridiculed in 2000, and he didn't deserve it. And we're ready for a serious politician." 3. Nets Marvel at Bush's "Unusual Burst of Candor" in Noting Errors The Friday morning and evening broadcast networks shows pounced on how when asked, at the joint Thursday night Bush/Blair press conference, whether he had any regrets about the conduct of the war in Iraq, President Bush cited saying "bring it on" and "wanted dead or alive." CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer suggested Bush isn't always so honest as he described it as "an unusual burst of candor from President Bush." Schieffer soon called it an "extraordinary statement" and reporter Jim Axelrod agreed it was "startling." NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams found Bush's answer so important that he played a stand-alone clip of the "most interesting moment" and brought aboard Tim Russert who saw a "remarkable, remarkable admission." On her last night as anchor of World News Tonight, ABC's Elizabeth Vargas asserted that "some of the bold talk we once heard from them is gone. Now they are voicing regrets and admitting mistakes." Jake Tapper framed a story around how Bush and Blair "came together to project confidence in the new Iraqi government, but perhaps what came across strongest was regret." NBC's Today opened with "Admitting Mistakes" on screen. 4. Memorial Day: Perfect Day to Celebrate An "Anti-War" Activist? Since it was Memorial Day, the day on which America honors its war dead, it was natural that the Washington Post saw this as the perfect day for...a big profile of a hard-left "anti-war" activist, Stacy Bannerman of Military Families Speak Out. Reporter David Montgomery chronicled her marriage to a National Guard soldier, "the warrior and the anti-warrior," and she won. The husband, back from Iraq, asked: "Soldiers are dying for what reason again?" 5. NY Times Publisher Apologizes for Failure to Enact Liberalism C-SPAN on Saturday night (May 27) aired the Sunday, May 21 commencement remarks, by New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he was honored with a Doctorate of Humane Letters. Sulzberger delivered a left wing rant in which he presumed liberal policy goals are more noble than conservative ones as he offered an "apology" for the nation his generation has left to the next generation: "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life; or the rights of gays to marry; or the rights of women to choose. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain." Hume and Douglass Scold ABC for Overplaying "Bad" Hastert Story On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume, a veteran of ABC News, chided his former employer: "ABC News came out with this [Hastert] story, worded the way it was. 'Included in the investigation,' 'in the mix of the investigation,' has an unmistakable implication, and that is the guy's under investigation. We have now had an absolutely unequivocal denial of that, not only from the Justice Department at one level, but when this business about what well, what about being 'in the mix' came along, Paul McNulty, the U.S. Attorney, came out and denied that as well. This looks like a bad story. They led their newscast with it. The implication was unmistakable. They ought to back off this story, and the sooner the better." CNN's Howard Kurtz, on Sunday morning's Reliable Sources, raised the accuracy of the story with Linda Douglass who covered Capitol Hill for ABC News until the end of 2005: "Did ABC overplay that story?" Douglass was reluctant to lambast her ex-colleagues, but her disagreement with their news judgment was clear: "Well, I think leading with it was a controversial decision, is what I would say. And I think that saying he was part of the investigation, if in fact his name just came up, was, was a phrase you might want to revisit." [This item was posted late Sunday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]
For video of how ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas hyperbolically led Wednesday "with a major development in a Washington bribery scandal" in "a story with potentially major political implications" and Brian Ross asserted that "federal officials tell us the congressional bribery investigation now includes the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert," see the Friday CyberAlert for an item which also detailed how on Thursday Ross stood by his story. World News Tonight hasn't mentioned the topic since. In his original Wednesday story, Ross had maintained that Hastert is "very much in the mix of the corruption investigation." Go to: www.mediaresearch.org
During the first panel segment, host Chris Wallace brought up how "ABC News reported that Speaker Hastert, who was raising such a fuss about this FBI raid, was, in fact, the subject of a criminal -- or involved in a criminal investigation."
Sitting next to Linda Douglass at CNN's Los Angeles studios, Howard Kurtz asked fo her reaction to "a story by ABC's Brian Ross, your former colleague, reporting that federal investigators in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal are looking at House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert says that's not true. The Justice Department says that's not true. Do you think that story was overplayed or over-hyped?"
Clift: Media "Regret" How "Gore was Mocked and Ridiculed in 2000" Confirming what's obvious to anyone watching or reading the gushing praise for Al Gore and his hysterical movie about global warming, on the Memorial Day weekend's McLaughlin Group, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift asserted: "There's some regret, even among the media, that Al Gore was mocked and ridiculed in 2000, and he didn't deserve it. And we're ready for a serious politician." Clift, who in her end of the show prediction, anticipated that "a year from now, there will be an Al Gore presidential exploratory committee," earlier in the program laid out how he can follow the "Nixonian play book" in "a very good way." Clift pined: "He's campaigning to awaken the political leadership to the threat of global warming, but it's a campaign that can easily turn into a campaign for himself if he sees an opening. And he's following the Nixonian play book, the Nixonian in a very good way. Just as Richard Nixon was edged out of the presidency very narrowly in 1960 and then came back after eight years to win." [This item was posted Saturday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Of course, it's not so clear to those who don't lament George W. Bush's 2000 victory how much compared to Bush Gore was "mocked and ridiculed" by the news media.
Nets Marvel at Bush's "Unusual Burst of Candor" in Noting Errors The Friday morning and evening broadcast networks shows pounced on how when asked, at the joint Thursday night Bush/Blair press conference, whether he had any regrets about the conduct of the war in Iraq, President Bush responded: "Saying, 'bring it on.' Kind of tough talk you know that sent the wrong signal to people" and "some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner. You know, 'wanted dead or alive.'" CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer suggested Bush isn't always so honest as he described it as "an unusual burst of candor from President Bush." Schieffer soon called it an "extraordinary statement" and reporter Jim Axelrod agreed it was "startling." NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams found Bush's answer so important that he played a stand-alone clip of the "most interesting moment" and brought aboard Tim Russert who saw a "remarkable, remarkable admission." On her last night as anchor of World News Tonight, ABC's Elizabeth Vargas asserted that "some of the bold talk we once heard from them is gone. Now they are voicing regrets and admitting mistakes." Jake Tapper framed a story around how Bush and Blair "came together to project confidence in the new Iraqi government, but perhaps what came across strongest was regret."
With "Admitting Mistakes" on screen over video of Bush and Blair at their 7:30pm EDT joint Thursday press conference, Katie Couric opened Friday's Today show by trumpeting: In her full story, reporter Norah O'Donnell maintained that the Thursday press conference showed Bush's previous "bravado replaced by a rare public admission of error when asked what missteps he's made." O'Donnell recalled: "In recent months the President acknowledged setbacks, but this was a high-profile setting for introspection. Much different from during election year 2004 when he would not offer the same candor."
Over on ABC's Good Morning America, news reader Kate Snow introduced a story:
And on CBS's The Early Show, Bill Plante pointed out: [This item was posted Friday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ] Transcripts of the May 26 ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts: # ABC's World News Tonight. Anchor Elizabeth Vargas: "President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have wrapped up two days of talks in Washington, mostly about Iraq. The political toll the war has taken on both men was clear. Some of the bold talk we once heard from them is gone. Now they are voicing regrets and admitting mistakes. ABC's Jake Tapper is at the White House."
Tapper over video of Bush and Blair outside the West Wing: "One last walk for President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on this visit. They came together to project confidence in the new Iraqi government, but perhaps what came across strongest was regret."
Jim Axelrod, after running through some other comments at the press conference: "The most memorable moment of Mr. Blair's visit had nothing to do with U.S. troop movements. It came last night when President Bush was asked if he had any regrets about the war in Iraq." President Bush at Thursday night press conference with Prime Minister Blair: "Saying 'bring it on.' Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner."
A few seconds later, Schieffer asked: "Jim, I want to go back to this extraordinary statement that the President made last night where he said he had set the wrong tone for fighting the war on terrorism. I've been watching this President a long time, I've never heard anything quite like that."
Memorial Day: Perfect Day to Celebrate An "Anti-War" Activist? Since it was Memorial Day, the day on which America honors its war dead, it was natural that the Washington Post saw this as the perfect day for...a big profile of a hard-left "anti-war" activist, Stacy Bannerman of Military Families Speak Out. Reporter David Montgomery chronicled her marriage to a National Guard soldier, "the warrior and the anti-warrior," and she won. The husband, back from Iraq, asked: "Soldiers are dying for what reason again?" The annual Memorial Day concert event on the mall (nationally televised by PBS) topped the left corner of Monday's Style section, but much of the front Style page was devoted to Montgomery's story, with a huge Post photographer's shot of Bannerman marching for "peace" in jeans and a T-shirt, complete with the www.mfso.org web address. The headline: "Choose Your Battle: She's a Pacifist. He's A Warrior. But Even In the Shadow of Iraq, Their Love Soldiers On."
For the May 29 Washington Post article: www.washingtonpost.com
To demonstrate that this story is just a profile in the can, and there's not a lot new in it, Montgomery, the protester's best friend, began with Bannerman's husband being called up to serve in Iraq -- in the fall of 2003, and the "professional pace and justice activist" wasn't happy:
Montgomery never described Bannerman as "liberal" or "leftist" or "progressive" (despite her new book being hailed by far-left stars like Howard Zinn), preferring the stale and positive "antiwar" label to describe her overall politics: If Montgomery weren't so interested in making Bannerman sympathetic, he would ask her about Perle's position for toppling Saddam. Does she believe that being a "justice" activist means leaving Saddam in power was the better answer for Iraq? And that Saddam's clear rejection of a United Nations process against the creation of weapons of mass destruction was no threat at all? She isn't forced to think for this profile, merely emote.
The story had a happy ending, at least for the Post and its reporters. The "antiwar" side is winning, what Montgomery described as an almost scientific process: "As the death count rises, public support for the war plummets, two black lines on a neat, precise graph." Bannerman is so persuasive that her National Guard husband is going soft and Code Pink-ish, and that, to Montgomery, can be described as patriotic:
PS: For a stronger sense of the harshness of Bannerman's rhetoric, consult her House testimony as captured on the MFSO website: That's online at: www.mfso.org
NY Times Publisher Apologizes for Failure to Enact Liberalism C-SPAN on Saturday night (May 27) aired the Sunday, May 21 commencement remarks, by New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., at the State University of New York at New Paltz where he was honored with a Doctorate of Humane Letters. Sulzberger delivered a left wing rant in which he presumed liberal policy goals are more noble than conservative ones as he offered an "apology" for the nation his generation has left to the next generation: "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life; or the rights of gays to marry; or the rights of women to choose. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain." Sulzberger's remarks were reported last Monday by the MRC's Clay Waters in picking up local Hudson Valley newspaper accounts. For Clay's May 22 posting on the MRC's TimesWatch site: www.timeswatch.org
For the May 23 CyberAlert item: www.mediaresearch.org The video is of this portion of Sulzberger's address (I corrected the posted text against what he actually said): I'll start with an apology. When I graduated from college in 1974, my fellow students and I had just ended the war in Vietnam and ousted President Nixon [light cheering]. Okay, okay, that's not quite true. I mean yes, the war did end and yes, President Nixon did resign in disgrace but maybe there were larger forces at play. Either way, we entered the real world committed to making it a better, safer, cleaner, more equal place. We were determined not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. We had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government. Our children, we vowed, would never know that. So, well, sorry [pause and applause]. It wasn't supposed to be this way. You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land [louder applause]. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life; or the rights of gays to marry; or the rights of women to choose [applause]. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain. You weren't. But you are. And for that I'm sorry. END of Excerpt
# SUNY at New Paltz has recently added a 15-minute streaming RealPlayer video link to the posted text of the commencement remarks. The volume level, however, is fairly low: www.newpaltz.edu
# Sometime early this week C-SPAN will also add streaming RealPlayer video of Sulzberger to its page of "American Perspectives" videos: www.c-span.org
-- Brent Baker
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