Last Wednesday, the Times published a 4,624-word opus on American casualties of war in Iraq. “2,000 Dead: As Iraq Tours Stretch On, a Grim Mark,” read the headline. The macabre, Vietnam-evoking piece appeared prominently on page A2. Among those profiled were Marines from the First Battalion of the Fifth Marine Regiment, including Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr. Here’s the relevant passage:

Another member of the 1/5, Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, rejected a $24,000 bonus to re-enlist. Corporal Starr believed strongly in the war, his father said, but was tired of the harsh life and nearness of death in Iraq. So he enrolled at Everett Community College near his parents’ home in Snohomish, Wash., planning to study psychology after his enlistment ended in August.

But he died in a firefight in Ramadi on April 30 during his third tour in Iraq. He was 22.

Sifting through Corporal Starr’s laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the marine’s girlfriend. “I kind of predicted this,” Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. “A third time just seemed like I’m pushing my chances.”

The paper’s excerpt of Corporal Starr’s letter leaves the reader with the distinct impression that this young Marine was darkly resigned to a senseless death. The truth is exactly the opposite. Late last week, I received a letter from Corporal Starr’s uncle, Timothy Lickness. He wanted you to know the rest of the story -- and the parts of Corporal Starr’s letter that the Times failed to include:

“Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I’m writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I’m pushing my chances. I don’t regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it’s not to me. I’m here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark.”

Reader Michael Valois questioned the Times’ reporter, James Dao, about his selection bias and forwarded me the exchanges. A defensive Dao (who did not respond to my e-mail inquiry) argued “there is nothing ‘anti war’ in the way I portrayed Corporal Starr.” Dao then had the gall to berate the reader:

“Even the portion of his email that I used, the one that you seem so offended by, does not express anti-war sentiment. It does express the fatalism that many soldiers and marines seem to feel about multiple tours.

Have you been to Iraq, Michael? Or to any other war, for that matter? If you have, you should know the anxiety and fear parents, spouses, and troops themselves feel when they deploy to war. And if you haven’t, what right do you have to object when papers like the New York Times try to describe that anxiety and fear?”

Mr. Dao sounds a bit unhinged playing the far-left chickenhawk card. Only people who have traveled to Iraq can criticize a paper’s war-related coverage?

And Dao’s dead-wrong about Corporal Starr’s presumed “fatalism.” If you don’t believe Corporal Starr’s own words, which Dao chose to ignore, listen to Corporal Starr’s father, Brian. I asked him this week whether his son was fatalistic. “I don’t agree at all. Jeff had an awareness of death, but was very positive about coming home.”

Dao apologized to Valois for the tone of his snippy e-mail, but apparently feels no shame or sorrow for distorting a dead Marine’s thoughts and feelings about war, sacrifice and freedom.

Will the Times correct Dao’s grave sin of omission and apologize? Or will the paper just hope you shrug and look the other way?

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>>Obligatory New York Times Hypocrisy Item (Weekly Standard, 050316)

[Kwing Hung: true and direct hypocrisy!]

A January 1, 1995, Times editorial on proposals to restrict the use of Senate filibusters:

In the last session of Congress, the Republican minority invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the will of the majority. This relentless abuse of a time-honored Senate tradition so disgusted Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, that he is now willing to forgo easy retribution and drastically limit the filibuster. Hooray for him. . . . Once a rarely used tactic reserved for issues on which senators held passionate views, the filibuster has become the tool of the sore loser, . . . an archaic rule that frustrates democracy and serves no useful purpose.

A March 6, 2005, Times editorial on the same subject:

The Republicans are claiming that 51 votes should be enough to win confirmation of the White House’s judicial nominees. This flies in the face of Senate history. . . . To block the nominees, the Democrats’ weapon of choice has been the filibuster, a time-honored Senate procedure that prevents a bare majority of senators from running roughshod. . . . The Bush administration likes to call itself “conservative,” but there is nothing conservative about endangering one of the great institutions of American democracy, the United States Senate, for the sake of an ideological crusade.

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>>Liberal bias of the press (National Review, 010507)

So let me make the simple case. Journalists are liberal. Everyone knows this except for a few people on the extreme Left and journalists themselves. Indeed, according to one survey, 70% of self-defined liberals think the media has a liberal bias. Eighty-nine percent of journalists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. The network of conservative think tanks and publications that Harris identifies exists precisely because the media have blocked conservative viewpoints. Media bias is, as Casey Stengel used to say, “a true fact.”

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>>Distorted Media Reports of the Pro-Family Rally (Kwing Hung, 030823)

[a personal witness of media bias]

On August 22, 2003, after the pro-family rally and anti-same-sex marriage in front of the Supreme Court of Canada and on the Parliament Hill, various newspapers, websites and television stations (English and French) were monitored on their coverage of the event. At the event, there were almost 10,000 people with a small of about 30 pro-same-sex demonstrators. However, almost all of them interviewed someone from the pro-same-sex group and only half interviewed someone who participated the rally. In addition, the reporters also took a pro-same-sex stance and all (100%) of the reports ended the report with a pro-same-sex comment as the “last say.”

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>>How High Is the Murder Rate in Baghdad? (Foxnews, 031216)

Despite Saddam Hussein’s capture this weekend, many are still pessimistic about controlling the levels of violence in Iraq.

Yet, this pessimism largely depends on the numbers one relies on. Take what has become a surprisingly controversial number: Baghdad’s murder rate. Some assert that in October Baghdad had one of the highest murder rates in the world, while others point to numbers that it was below even the U.S.’s own murder rate.

The apparently low crime rate was all the more surprising because Saddam had let all of Iraq’s criminals out of jail before his government was removed. In addition, Iraq is still in turmoil: Iraqi police are new to their jobs and terrorist attacks stretch them thin.

On the other side, a New York Times op-ed by two liberal Brookings Institution researchers, Adriana Lins de Albuquerque and Michael O’Hanlon, claims that Baghdad’s murder rate is among the highest in the world. Supposedly Baghdad’s annualized murder rate from April to October this year ranged from an incredible 100 to 185 per 100,000 people -- a number, they pointed out, that averaged several times greater than the rate in Washington, D.C.

Yet, according to the Wall Street Journal Europe, the U.S. Army 1st Division in Baghdad reports that the numbers fell continually from a high of 19.5 per 100,000 in July to only 5 per 100,000 in October. The October rate is actually lower than the 5.6 U.S. murder rate in 2002. By contrast, the New York Times’ latest numbers for October claim to show a murder rate of 140 per 100,000 -- a difference of 28-fold!

Albuquerque and O’Hanlon not only imply that murders are rampant, but generally rising. By contrast, the Wall Street Journal Europe shows crime is under control and falling. So whom should we believe? The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal Europe?

I contacted the authors of both pieces. Albuquerque and O’Hanlon, who wrote the Times piece, provided two sources for their murder rate numbers: An article by Neil MacFarquhar in the New York Times (Sept. 16, 2003) and a piece by Lara Marlowe in the Irish Times (Oct. 11, 2003). Yet, both references clearly stated that much more than murder was included in the reports that they used from the Baghdad morgue. MacFarquhar notes that these deaths also included “automobile accidents” and cases where people “were shot dead by American soldiers,” cases that clearly did not involve murders. The Irish Times piece mentions that “up to a quarter of fatal shootings [in the morgue] are caused by U.S. troops.”

For some perspective, in D.C., murders account for fewer than 5 percent of all deaths. Even counting only the types of deaths explicitly mentioned in the stories citing the Baghdad morgue (accidental deaths, murders, suicides) and assuming that soldiers were engaged in the same type of fighting in D.C. as they are in Iraq, murders in D.C. would account for just a third of deaths. (The respective numbers for the U.S. as a whole are even lower: a half of one percent and 11 percent.) Obviously, counting these other deaths as “murders” in D.C. would imply that murders were three to 20 times more common than they actually were.

The Wall Street Journal Europe instead relied on the U.S. Army 1st Division stationed in Baghdad. A public affairs officer with that division, Jason Beck, confirmed for me that a large part of the Iraqi legal system is being overseen by the U.S. JAG officers, and they are using the same standards for murder rates as used in the U.S. and separating out murders from other deaths.

Numbers mean a lot. Perceptions that conditions in Iraq are deteriorating constantly gets play in evaluating whether President Bush deserves re-election. When a publication of record such as the New York Times gets Baghdad’s October murder rates wrong by up to a factor of 28 to 1 and no correction is issued, the consequences are significant. To equate accidental deaths and U.S. soldiers killing terrorists with murders is irresponsible.

John R. Lott, Jr., a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “The Bias Against Guns” (Regnery 2003).

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>>A Unified Theory of the Old Media Collapse (Weekly Standard, 041228)

Asymmetrical tolerance and the collapse of Big Media credibility: How 2004 brought doom to legacy media.

IF OLD MEDIA--the “legacy media” of the big papers and old networks plus the newsweeklies--was a city and not simply a set of gasping institutions, it would look like Stalingrad circa 1944. Parts of most of the virtual buildings are still standing, but the devastation is pretty complete.

And the pummeling just keeps coming. On Sunday last, Power Line’s John Hinderaker undressed the New York Times biggest big foot, Thomas Friedman, for all the blogosphere to see, The Belmont Club was scissoring the Associated Press’s credibility, and I was pointing out the many defects in a Washington Post front-page story on an “Intelligent Design” controversy--in the process discovering that reporter Michael Powell, who came from a background of tenants’ advocacy, had written extensively on tenants’ issues without disclosing to the reader his past background.

And that was just three posts on a single day of the new world of accountability for the old media.

In my new book, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World, I devote a chapter to how the old media went left into a deep ditch of agenda journalism, forfeiting the trust of a large portion of their audience and, in the process, opening the door to Rush Limbaugh, the second generation of radio talkers, Fox News, and, of course, the blogs.

But I didn’t speculate on the “why” of that disastrous and uncoordinated choice made by the old media. Here’s my first take on a theory. Call it the

Theory of Asymmetrical Tolerance and its effects. It goes like this:

For many generations, Big Media represented the interests of the dominant political and business elites. Men like Henry Luce and William Paley represented that tradition.

Some of those interests were repugnant, especially those behind segregation. With the arrival of the civil rights movement, journalism slowly began to reform itself and to work overtime to represent underrepresented political and social points of view. There developed a great tolerance for viewpoints and perspectives from ideological minorities, and a great hunger to represent those views not only in the media product but also in the media workforces. First opposition to the Vietnam war and then the hunting of Richard Nixon accelerated this trend, so that old media quickly evolved into a fortress of “oppositional” reporting and personnel.

The new recruits to big journalism and their mentors did not work overtime to assure that, in the elevation of tolerance of ideological minorities, there would remain representation of majoritarian points of view. In fact, majoritarian points of view became suspect, and the focus of pervasive hostile reporting and analysis. Crusading journalists seemed to be an ideological pack. By the time the new millennium arrived, legacy media was populated at its elite levels by as homogeneous a group of reporters / producers / commentators as could ever have been assembled from the newsrooms of the old Hearst operation. Big Media had hired itself into a rut--a self-replicating echo chamber of left and further-left scribblers and talkers and self-reinforcing head nodders who were overwhelmingly anti-Republican, anti-Christian, anti-military, anti-wealth, anti-business, and even anti-middle class. These new journalists had no tolerance for majoritarian points of view, and the gap between the producers of the news and the consumers of the news widened until the credibility gap between the two made Lyndon Johnson’s look modest by comparison.

MEANWHILE, the majority of consumers grew tired of the exclusion of its views from the media. When Rush Limbaugh arrived, he prospered because at last there was a voice reflecting majoritarian points of view. The same welcome greeted Fox News and the blogs of the center-right.

In legacy media there is now much dismay. Many of their biggest names appear not too understand that they are distrusted by more than half of America, and don’t even seem to recognize their own contempt for majoritarian positions.

On Monday on my blog, I suggested that reporters and producers employed by Big Media should make available their biographies and résumés on the web for easy viewing by the public, as well as answers to ten brief questions, including: “For whom did the reporter vote for president in the past five elections? Do they attend church regularly and if so, in which denomination? Do they believe that the late-term abortion procedure known as partial-birth abortion should be legal? Do they believe same sex marriage ought to be legal? Did they support the invasion of Iraq? Do they support drilling in ANWR?” The outrage in response to my suggested disclosures from some bloggers was intense and immediate. One even suggested that posing such questions was incipient McCarthyism.

The old media, too, will likely recoil from the idea that their employees ought to disclose their past employment and education, their politics, and their policy positions. But why? My guess is that everyone reading already knows the answer: The uniformity of views within legacy media’s legion of employees is nearly complete and very far left-of-center. And that is precisely why the old media has run aground so hard and so fast. Everyone knows it. The consumers of news now have choices. As a result, CNN’s ratings over a decade are in a freefall. As are those of CBS. And the circulation of the Los Angeles Times is hardly graphing out better than either of those outfits.

The blogosphere is intensely partisan--just as old media has been. But, unlike the old media, there is truth in advertising on the Internet. This is a significant advantage going forward in the competition for credibility and trust. If old media does not develop tolerance for the majoritarian points of view in the United States, it will continue to decline in reach and authority.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That is Changing Your World. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.

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**Absolutely Fabulist (Ann Coulter, 070808)

In their latest demonstration of how much they love the troops, liberals have produced yet another anti-war hoax.

The New Republic has been running “true war” stories from a brave, anonymous liberal penning dispatches from Iraq. The famed “Baghdad Diarist” described his comrades joyfully using Bradley fighting vehicles to crush stray dogs, mocking a female whose face had been blown off by an IED, and defacing Iraqi corpses by wearing skull parts on their own heads.

Various conservatives began questioning the plausibility of the anonymous diarist’s account — noting, for example, that Bradley vehicles don’t “swerve,” as the diarist claimed. The editor of The New Republic responded by attacking the skeptics’ motives, complaining that some conservatives make “a living denying any bad news that emanates from Iraq.”

But when that clever retort failed to quiet rumblings from the right wing, The New Republic finally revealed the “Baghdad Diarist” to be ... John Kerry! Actually it was Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, Democratic candidate for president circa 2028. (That gives him 20 years to learn to pronounce “Genghis.”)

In revealing himself two weeks ago, Beauchamp lashed out at “people who have never served in Iraq.” He said he was too busy fighting “an actual war” to participate in “an ideological battle that I never wanted to join.”

He had tried to stay out of ideological battles by writing made-up articles in a national magazine claiming soldiers in Iraq had become callous beasts because of George Bush’s war, killing to “secure the riches of the empire.” Alas, this proved an ineffective method of keeping his head low. Beauchamp’s next bid for privacy will be an attempt to host “The Price Is Right.”

In response to Beauchamp’s revelation that he was the “Baghdad Diarist,” the military opened an investigation into his allegations. There was no corroboration for his stories, and Beauchamp promptly signed an affidavit admitting that every single thing he wrote in The New Republic was a lie.

According to The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb — who has led the charge of those who “make a living denying any bad news that emanates from Iraq” — Maj. Steven F. Lamb, the deputy public affairs officer for Multi-National Division-Baghdad, said this of the Baghdad diarist:

“An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.”

In response, The New Republic went into full Dan Rather loon mode. This astonishing post showed up on The New Republic Web site on Tuesday afternoon:

“A STATEMENT ON SCOTT THOMAS BEAUCHAMP:

“We’ve talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Maj. Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, ‘I have no knowledge of that.’ He added, ‘If someone is speaking anonymously (to The Weekly Standard), they are on their own.’ When we pressed Lamb for details on the Army investigation, he told us, ‘We don’t go into the details of how we conduct our investigations.’ — The Editors”

It’s good to see Mary Mapes is working again.

What on earth is going on? Either the military investigation found that Beauchamp lied or it didn’t. Either military personnel corroborated stories of soldiers wearing skulls as crowns or they didn’t. Either Army spokesman Maj. Steven Lamb gave a statement to The Weekly Standard or he didn’t.

At the same time as The New Republic was posting the above statement, which completely contradicted The Weekly Standard’s update, renowned right-wing news outlet ABC News confirmed that the military has concluded that Beauchamp was writing “fiction.” ABC also quoted Goldfarb’s account and said that Maj. Lamb reiterated his statement that Beauchamp’s stories were false to ABC. The New York Times had the same story on Wednesday.

The New Republic has gone mad. Perhaps the magazine brought its former employee, fantasist Steven Glass, out of retirement. It’s long past time for The New Republic to file for intellectual Chapter 7. Arthur Andersen was implicated in fewer frauds.

And we wonder how Democratic congressmen can lie about a vote they lost on the floor of the House — captured on CSPAN for all the world to see — changing the vote so that they win.

America’s imminent victory in Iraq and safety from terrorist attacks at home is driving them all crazy.

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Media downplays abortion-breast cancer risk (Christian American, 970400)

Despite powerful evidence, many reporters flocked to pro-abortion criticism of latest study.

by Jeffrey M. Peyton

WHEN RESEARCHERS AT PENN State University announced they had discovered that abortion is to blame for about 5,000 cases of breast cancer each year, those who thought the media would finally sit up and take notice were once again disappointed.

Despite a media infatuation with behaviors or substances that might increase the risk of cancer (remember the Alar apple scare, power lines, pesticides?), most news outlets moved quickly to discount the latest study - even to question the motives of its researchers.

The latest study - an analysis of 23 studies - looked at research from around the world to examine the possible link between induced abortion and breast cancer. The research analyzed cases dated back to 1957 and included 25,967 women with breast cancer and 34,977 women without it. Researchers found that women who underwent induced abortion were 30-percent more likely to develop breast cancer. Women who miscarried their pregnancies were subjected to no increased breast cancer risk.

Many publications that reported on the study downplayed or questioned it directly in article headlines. “Bias in abortion study is charged,” read a Boston Globe headline. “New breast cancer report debated; study hints 30 percent higher risk after abortion,” read a Chicago Tribune headline. The New York Daily News weighed in with “Disputed study links abortion, cancer.”

Some newspapers crammed as many negatives into their headlines as possible: “Challenged study says abortion increases risk of breast cancer. Even a researcher opposed to abortion disputes study’s findings,” said the Des Moines Register in the headline to its article reporting on the Penn State study.

A few members of the media saw the problem. Seattle Times columnist Michelle Malkin wrote, “Dubious studies on negligible environmental risks trigger apocalyptic front-page headlines with numbing regularity...yet abortion-breast cancer research - over 40 individual studies - is largely shunned by the mainstream media.”

U.S. News and World Report also acknowledged the lack of fair play in its Oct. 21 edition. “Debating abortion and breast cancer,” the magazine’s headline began. “Science is only part of the discussion when two supercharged issues are on the table.”

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Catholic group cites ABC pattern of bias (Washington Times, 980504)

A talk-show host ridicules the pope. A commentator bashes Mother Teresa during the broadcast of her funeral. An investigative special on cults includes pictures of the Vatican. A situation comedy airing Easter Week features a boy obsessed with the bloodiness of the Crucifixion, while another boasts as its main character an avowed lesbian.

A heavily promoted dramatic series features a young priest questioning fundamental church teachings.

All ran on the same network --ABC --and all are part of a pattern of attacks on Catholics and their church by the Walt Disney Co.-owned network, says William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

At a press conference here on April 16, Mr. Donohue singled out an episode earlier that month of “That’s Life,” an ABC sitcom, as “viciously anti-Catholic” and “relentless in its bigotry.” The program was an “in-your-face attempt to stick it to the Catholic Church” by ridiculing key church tenets and rituals, including the Holy Eucharist, Mass, the sacrament of penance, prayer, and the use of holy water.

ABC said that the program had already been canceled when the last segment was broadcast. In a prepared statement, the network said: “It was never the intent of the network, the studio, or the production team to offend any religious denomination with the last episode.”

Robert Iger, president of ABC, Stuart Bloomberg, chairman of ABC Entertainment, and Jamie Tarses, president of ABC Entertainment, declined to comment.

It isn’t the first time Disney and its entertainment empire have fallen afoul of religious groups. In June, the Southern Baptist Convention joined other Christian groups in a boycott of the company’s movies, theme parks and other business ventures, with one Baptist leader condemning what he called Disney’s “Christian-bashing, family-bashing, pro-homosexual agenda.”

The plot of the “That’s Life” episode cited by Mr. Donohue concerned a 10-year-old boy whose uncle takes him to Mass on Easter because his mother, hostile to Catholicism, does not approve. Citing the church’s views on women, abortion and homosexuality, she says, “C’mon, the church is dying because anybody with a reasonable amount of intelligence has left.”

At dinner, the child holds up a piece of bread, remarking on how “cool” it would be if he were actually eating a body. He says he also likes the church’s big cross with Jesus hanging on it, bruised, bloody and gouged by thorns. “He’s nailed up there with these spikes. Blood comes spurting out. Whack, whack, whack, whack,” says the boy gleefully.

Other elements in the comedy show cited by the League included a reference to confession boxes as “spiritual toilets,” a suggestion that priests are pedophiles, and a remark that everyone attending Christmas midnight Mass is drunk.

Mr. Donohue said he has sent out 1,200 copies of the offending episode to League supporters, non-Catholic religious leaders, members of Congress and the media.

He’s not seeking an apology from the network but would like to discuss the program with Mr. Iger.

In an interview, Kevin Brockman, vice president in charge of media at ABC, said he would not comment on the League’s protest beyond the network’s statement, except to say there was no intention to offend anyone.

The League cited several instances of anti-Catholic bias at ABC over the years, including the recently canceled dramatic series “Nothing Sacred,” in which a priest takes stands on social issues, such as abortion, that contradict church teaching. The League campaigned against the show, and about 50 major companies, including Weight Watchers, Kmart, DuPont, Sears and Honda, withdrew their advertising.

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Fox News beats cable competition during prime time (Washington Times, 021129)

Fox News is the only cable news network with improved ratings in the past year. The network is in prime-time triumph.

With an average of 1.4 million nightly viewers this month, Fox has had a 17 percent increase in viewership compared with a year ago, according to Nielsen Media Research numbers released Wednesday.

CNN lost 31 percent of its prime-time viewers compared with last year’s numbers, with an audience of 921,000. MSNBC continues to languish in third place with a 43 percent drop and 528,000 viewers.

Fox’s win lends some irony to former Vice President Al Gore’s implication that the network is nothing more than a Republican mouthpiece.

Cable news is “a hybrid product now that’s news plus news-helper; whether it’s entertainment or attitude or news that’s marbled with opinion, it’s different,” Mr. Gore told the New York Observer this week.

Savvy broadcasters could attract a “hard-core following that appreciates the predictability of a right-wing point of view,” then veil their partisanship “to avoid offending the broader audience that mass advertisers want,” Mr. Gore said.

“Thus the Fox slogan, ‘We report, you decide,’ or whatever the current version of their ritual denial is,” he said.

Still, Fox News produces four of the five top-rated cable news shows.

“The O’Reilly Factor” rules the evening with 2.4 million viewers, “Hannity & Colmes” is second with 1.6 million viewers, followed by “The Fox Report” with Shepard Smith with 1.4 million viewers.

CNN’s “Larry King Live” holds on to the fourth spot with 1.4 million viewers, though Mr. King has lost 20 percent of his audience in the past year.

Fox’s “Special Report” with Brit Hume is in fifth place, with 1.2 million viewers, while its “On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren bested CNN’s “News Night” with Aaron Brown in the 10 p.m. slot, 1 million viewers to 808,000 viewers, respectively.

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God in the Newsroom: Evangelicals get slammed by the New York Times (NRO, 030307)

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof dropped a bombshell in a recent column: He wrote, “nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans.”

He’s talking about Evangelical Christians, who, in Kristof’s description, “are increasingly important in every aspect of American culture.” Kristof said he disagrees with Evangelicals on “almost everything,” but observed that “liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at Evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable.” He went on to say that “liberals sometimes show more intellectual curiosity about the religion of Afghanistan than that of Alabama.”

Now, you may be saying, “This is news?” Yes, actually, it is, because this column appeared on the op-ed page of the New York Times, the most highly prized piece of journalistic real estate in the nation, and the newspaper that, more than any other, sets the agenda in newsrooms across America.

“It’s the location, more than what he said,” says Terry Mattingly, a syndicated religion columnist and journalism professor. “It was in the Bible of those who put down all the people in the red states, going to their Evangelical megachurches. Reading this gave Evangelicals a tremendous sense of validation. They haven’t cheered this loud for anything in the Times’s pages since the days when Abe Rosenthal was writing about the persecution of Third World Christians.”

The Kristof column is a small but significant sign of progress toward what one hopes is a more fair and balanced approach to journalism in American newsrooms. Media-savvy religious conservatives tend to have favorite examples of the worst bias against our sort. Everybody remembers the astonishing paragraph from a news story of a decade ago in the Washington Post, in which a reporter remarked that religious conservatives were “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command” — a statement that was not only insulting, but factually untrue. Fewer are aware of a classic 1999 quote from a New York Times Magazine story about an anti-abortion fanatic, in which the writer observed, “It is a shared if unspoken premise of the world that most of us inhabit that absolutes do not exist and that people who claim to have found them are crazy.”

Got that? If those who report the news consider religious conservatives (who are usually, but not always, political conservatives) to be part of a lunatic fringe, there’s no reason to take them or their views seriously. In fact, the people this writer considered “most of us” are in fact a minority. But it says a great deal that this writer, and his editors, took this worldview as normative. That was only one writer in one newspaper, but in my professional experience, that viewpoint is common in newsrooms.

Two examples. When I was at the New York Post as a columnist, people thought of me as the “religion guy” because as far as anyone could tell, I was the only writer on this major daily who had an interest in religion. I penned a column once that had something to do with Evangelicals here in New York. It was shot down by a top editor, who told me, “New York is not a religious city.” Now, in this editor’s own neighborhood, there are at least three Catholic churches, two Episcopal churches, a synagogue, a congregation of Hispanic Baptists, and one of Hispanic Pentecostals. And a few blocks beyond his neighborhood, a rather famous mosque. But this editor didn’t know anyone who would attend these religious institutions; ergo, “most of us” don’t live in that world.

Before that, I worked for a fairly large paper that was particularly proud of its diversity program. I got into a peppery exchange with the newsroom executive in charge of running it. She said to me, “Don’t you think this newsroom should look like our city?” — by which she meant that it should more or less mirror the area’s race-gender-ethnicity demographic. I told her that it was more important that the newsroom represent the diversity of belief and experience in the city.

“How many conservatives do we have working here? How many Pentecostals?” I said. “You have people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds working here, you have gays, you have a lot of women — but everybody went to pretty much the same journalism schools, and as far as I can tell, everybody thinks more or less alike on most issues.”

She didn’t have an answer for that, but more to the point, I don’t think this had even occurred to her as a question worth asking. And media executives continue to wonder why they continue to lose reader confidence, and ultimately customers.

“Nicholas Kristof’s column is right on point,” says Aly Colon, diversity director at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “We need to be more knowledgeable about religion and faith and values so we can write about that not only accurately, but authentically.”

“It’s really what I call ‘complete journalism,’” he continues. “Too often we’re engaged in niche journalism, in which we think that covering areas of our personal interest are all that matters.”

There have been a number of studies and polls in recent years showing how dramatically different the opinions and lifestyles of the media class are from that of the people they ostensibly serve. Everybody knows that reporters at the Washington Post are very different from folks in Tulsa. But Peter Brown, an editor at the Orlando Sentinel, has done research showing that this phenomenon holds true even at the local level.

A decade ago, working with a polling firm and a market research outfit, Brown surveyed reporters in Dallas-Forth Worth, a major regional media market, and five middle-sized media markets around the country, and compared their views, values and lifestyle choices with those of their readership. “The data clearly show that journalists, although living geographically in the same markets as their readers, really do have a completely different mindset, and for the most part different values and behavior,” Brown says.

He also found that journalists were “much less likely” than people in their markets to pray daily, attend religious services regularly, or even to belong to a church or synagogue. Says Brown, “Many journalists will acknowledge that there’s a big demographic difference, but they say it doesn’t affect coverage. I don’t think that’s true.”

Brown and other critics say that bringing more Evangelicals into the newsroom not only makes journalistic sense, but business sense. “Evangelicals should make an outcry for diversity,” Mattingly says. “I’m not talking about affirmative action, but a call for bringing people with different life experiences into the newsroom.” Religious conservatives, he says, “have the information in their heads to see stories, valid journalistic stories, that need to be reported, that others will not see, stories that will help those newspapers to be more balanced, fair and competitive.”

But where are the Evangelical reporters? Mattingly, who has been teaching journalism in Evangelical colleges for years, says that there is a relative lack of interest in secular journalism among students who are also religious conservatives.

“Most of them have been raised in homes and in churches where the adults are so mad at newspapers that people don’t read them anymore. Many of them are brought up without a respect for the role that journalism is meant to play in our culture,” Mattingly says. “If you don’t have an appreciation for that, it’s hard to know what you can do about it. It’s hard to call a newsroom to accuracy and fairness if you basically hate journalism.”

When I speak to classes of Evangelical college journalists, I tell them that yes, they will face prejudice in newsrooms. But journalism is not a field for shrinking violets and people afraid to have their feelings hurt. But if you prove your mettle as a writer and reporter, you will win the respect of your peers, and open their minds. In my experience, the bias against religious conservatives in newsrooms is mostly a matter of ignorance, not outright malice.

The only interaction most journalists have with Evangelicals (and conservative Catholics too, for that matter) comes in nasty phone calls, e-mails, or letters denouncing the newspaper’s “bigotry” — often in terms that reinforce the negative stereotype newsrooms already have of religious conservatives. Rarely do editors and reporters hear from religious conservatives when they’ve done right by them.

Then again, MSNBC doesn’t seem to have learned much from a tsunami of phone calls it received from grateful Evangelicals several years back, when it was the only cable network to air live coverage of the massive Promise Keepers rally in Washington, D.C. Terry Mattingly was hired by MSNBC to do expert on-air analysis, and was present when the producers were told the switchboards were lighting up like Christmas trees with people calling to praise the coverage.

“During one of the breaks, [the host] said, ‘Aren’t there any people complaining about this? Where are our liberal callers?’” Mattingly remembers. “I leaned over and said to him, ‘You’ve just hit a big new demographic. They’re there, if you want them.”

They didn’t, apparently. Fast forward to the present day. MSNBC is in the ratings toilet. Fox, which is open to conservative voices and opinions, has them on the ropes. Lo, this past week, an unnamed MSNBC producer was quoted saying, “We don’t want people who just read the New York Times. We’ve got plenty of those types. We want people who read and understand National Review, the Drudge Report and Lucianne.com.”

Well, hallelujah. But don’t forget World, Christianity Today, and the Left Behind books too.

==============================

Fox News scores big in war ratings (jsonline, 030413)

The ratings news is nothing but good for Fox News Channel.

Nielsen Media Research numbers show that Fox News’ morning show, “Fox & Friends,” actually beat CBS’ “Early Show” during the most recent measured week, March 31-April 6. It was a slim win: 2.9 million viewers for Fox compared with 2.8 million for CBS.

This is a crucial victory for Fox News shows in head-to-head competition with network news programming. CBS’ morning news show traditionally has been the third-ranked among the network morning programs.

It’s also a sign of the tremendous growth cable news coverage has experienced during coverage of the invasion of Iraq. The combined average audience for Fox News, CNN and MSNBC has jumped from 2 million viewers before the war to 7.4 million.

Looking at the overall cable ratings, Fox News held an incredible 36 of the top 40 spots in the rankings of basic cable, ad-supported programs, including all the top dozen spots, for the week of March 31-April 6.

Overall, the cable channels rank this way: Fox News, CNN, TNT, Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and MSNBC. The average audience for Fox News is 3.4 million households, CNN’s is 2.7 million and MSNBC’s is 1.3.

Interestingly, the top-rated cable show for the week was an episode of “The Fox Report” with Shepard Smith, a show that doesn’t run in prime time. Smith’s show pops up three times in the top-40 list.

CNN’s top-rated show was the Aaron Brown-anchored news at 9 p.m. on April 3, which came in 13th place in the rankings.

The only non-news shows that made it into the top 40 were two installments of TNN’s WWE wrestling programming.

==============================

Survey: 93% of evangelicals distrust media (WorldNetDaily, 030429)

Shows ‘gulf of mutual suspicion’ separating them from society

Evangelical Christians in the United States regard the national media with profound distrust, according to a recent informal survey.

About 93 percent of the 37,000 respondents to a “Spiritual State of the Nation Survey” do not trust the media, according to Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The group said the findings are consistent with its past surveys and the recent admission of New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who wrote “one of the deepest divides in America today is the gulf of mutual suspicion that separates evangelicals from secular society.”

Evangelicals are a group with which the news media is “completely out of touch,” said Kristof.

Secularists, he wrote, regard these devout Americans with uninterest or suspicion.

D. James Kennedy, president of Coral Ridge Ministries, said, “Kristof’s candid column only echoes what many evangelicals, myself included, have long recognized.”

“There is a cultural divide between pro-family Americans on one side and media and political elites on the other,” Kennedy said. “Too often the two sides peer at each other across the chasm with misgivings and misunderstanding.”

Kennedy said while evangelicals number 46 percent of the American populace, according to Gallup, “they are barely a blip on the radar of America’s political and cultural elite.”

Coral Ridge Ministries said the survey, conducted for the past 14 years, is an attempt to help bridge that gap by bringing the views of its largely evangelical constituency to journalists and government officials.

The annual write-in poll, while not scientific, provides a snapshot of evangelical opinion on a wide range of sensitive social and cultural questions, Coral Ridge said.

The survey found 98 percent favor school prayer, 85 percent want creationism taught in schools, 99 percent support public display of the Ten Commandments, 98 percent oppose “special legal rights” for homosexuals and 96 percent support a ban on partial-birth abortion.

About 88 percent said they support President Bush in the war on terrorism, and 82 percent trust the president.

“It is my hope,” said Dr. Kennedy, “that journalists will examine this expression of opinion from concerned pro-family Americans who very much want their voices and concerns to be both understood and represented in government and the media.”

==============================

Results of Coral Ridge Ministries’ 14th Annual Spiritual State of the Nation Survey (Coral Ridge Ministries, 0304)

[Kwing Hung: opinion of evangelicals]

Religious Freedom Issues

1. Do you support efforts to uphold the rights of religious freedom and expression in public life? [98] Yes [0] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

2. Should pastors and others be allowed to publicly speak out against sexual sins, including homosexuality, without fear of being charged with a “hate-crime”?

[98] Yes [0] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

3. Do you support the protection of the public display of the Ten Commandments from the attacks of groups such as the ACLU?

[99] Yes [0] No [1] Undecided/No Answer

4. Should Coral Ridge Ministries continue to pray and support Chief Justice Roy Moore in his defense of the public display of the Ten Commandments?

[98] Yes [0] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

5. Should pastors be allowed to address political, moral, and social issues from their pulpits, without jeopardizing the tax-exempt status of their churches?

[98] Yes [0] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

6. Should students have the right to pray in public school classrooms?

[98] Yes [0] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

Government Issues

1. Do you agree with the President’s policies in the battle against terrorism?

[88] Yes [3] No [9] Undecided/No Answer

2. Do you agree with the ACLU’s attacks on Attorney General John Ashcroft, as his Justice Department helps protect us from terrorism?

[3] Yes [90] No [7] Undecided/No Answer

3. Should we back away from America’s traditional pro-Israel stance, in light of the hatred it engenders in the Islamic community?

[5] Yes [86] No [9] Undecided/No Answer

Media/Television Issues

1. Do you believe that the national media reports Christian, moral, and religious issues in an unbiased manner?

[4] Yes [91] No [5] Undecided/No Answer

2. Do you believe that some of the national media presents anti-Christian programming under the guise of “objectivity” and “journalism”?

[91] Yes [2] No [7] Undecided/No Answer

3. Do you support efforts to persuade advertisers and television networks to clean up “trash TV” and offer more family valued programming?

[91] Yes [0] No [1] Undecided/No Answer

Sexual Morality Issues

1. Do you support “special legal rights” for homosexuals?

[0] Yes [98] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

2. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of legalizing homosexual “marriages,” would you support a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage?

[91] Yes [3] No [6] Undecided/No Answer

Education Issues

1. Should schools promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle?

[0] Yes [98] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

2. Should schools be required to teach evolution as a theory rather than a fact?

[81] Yes [14] No [5] Undecided/No Answer

3. Should schools teach creationism?

[85] Yes [6] No [9] Undecided/No Answer

4. Should schools teach abortion as a woman’s right to choose?

[1] Yes [96] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

5. Should schools teach about contraceptive use?

[12] Yes [75] No [14] Undecided/No Answer

6. Should schools be required to teach traditional American history—including our religious and moral heritage?

[98] Yes [0] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

National Defense

1. Do you support restoring our military strength to the level it was during the Gulf War?

[88] Yes [1] No [11] Undecided/No Answer

Family Issues

1. Do you support a ban on partial-birth abortion?

[96] Yes [2] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

2. Should parents be allowed to raise, discipline, and educate their children, free from government interference?

[94] Yes [1] No [5] Undecided/No Answer

3. Should girls under 18 be allowed to obtain abortions without parental consent?

[1] Yes [97] No [2] Undecided/No Answer

Confidence Issues

Do you trust each of the following groups? Your pastors

[84] Yes [3] No [12] Undecided/No Answer

Your local government officials

[21] Yes [46] No [33] Undecided/No Answer

Your local public school officials

[20] Yes [47] No [33] Undecided/No Answer

Your congressional representatives

[25] Yes [37] No [38] Undecided/No Answer

The President

[82] Yes [6] No [12] Undecided/No Answer

The media

[0] Yes [93] No [7] Undecided/No Answer

*Results are tallied from a random sample selected from the nearly 37,000 responses to this annual informal survey. Results do not equal 100 percent in all instances because of rounding. © 2003 by D. James Kennedy and Coral Ridge Ministries. All Rights Reserved. www.coralridge.org

==============================

Study: Use of Profanity Increasing on TV (Foxnews, 030923)

LOS ANGELES — Television is cussing up an increasingly blue streak, according to a study of the major broadcast networks.

“During the 2002-2003 season, the broadcast networks attempted to rewrite the book on language standards for television,” the Parents Television Council, a watchdog group, said in a report released Monday.

The council said it studied all primetime entertainment series from a two-week period in 1998, 2000 and 2002 and found a jump in profanity on “virtually every network” and in every time slot.

The group called on the TV industry to “get serious about reducing the flood of vulgarity. ... Barring that, the FCC needs to get serious about enforcing broadcast decency laws,” the group said of the Federal Communications Commission.

The study examined ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, WB and UPN.

During the so-called “family hour,” from 8-9 p.m., foul language increased by 94.8 percent between 1998 and 2002, the study found. It rose by 109 percent during the 9 p.m. hour in the same period.

The smallest increase, 38.7 percent, occurred during the last hour of primetime, 10-11 p.m., when young children are least likely to be in the audience, the council said.

In a similar, earlier study, the PTC found that sexual content on TV was less frequent but more explicit.

==============================

20 Years of Bias From ABC’s Peter Jennings: Summary (Media Research Center, 030910)

After sharing the top job with Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson for five years, Peter Jennings became sole anchor of World News Tonight on September 5, 1983. During the last twenty years, Jennings’ liberal tilt has been obvious — the ABC anchorman has pushed for European-style welfare programs, denigrated tax cuts, castigated Republicans as intolerant, scoffed at suggestions that Soviet communism was a threat and pushed the arguments of left-wing anti-war activists during this year’s successful war to oust Saddam Hussein.

To commemorate his 20th anniversary, the MRC presents some of the anchorman’s worst bias; many more examples are available at www.mrc.org. All quotes are from World News Tonight unless otherwise noted.

• Investigating Democrats is a poor use of resources: “When we come back, two investigations of fundraising abuse, two of them on Capitol Hill. Is it a waste of time and money?” (April 10, 1997)

• Republicans are intolerant: “We begin tonight with what you could call zero tolerance....Today by the time Mr. Dole spoke by satellite to his party delegates, who were already gathered in San Diego, all notions of tolerance on the subject of abortion had disappeared from the party’s platform.” (August 6, 1996)

• Dukakis was robbed: “There are people in the country who think George Bush won not in a landslide, but a mudslide.” (ABC’s election night coverage, Nov. 8, 1988)

• The pro-Gore Florida Supreme Court was actually conservative: “We, by the way, tried to avoid labeling people this week, but here’s a quick take on the makeup of the Florida Supreme Court. There are seven justices. Six were appointed by Democratic governors. Our legal analyst in Florida tells us that only one of the judges is considered to be a liberal. The rest are regarded as moderate to conservative.” (November 17, 2000)

• Republicans want to destroy the planet: “Next week on ABC’s World News Tonight, a series of reports about our environment which will tell you precisely what the new Congress has in mind: the most frontal assault on the environment in 25 years. Is this what the country wants?” (Promo aired during ABC’s This Week, July 9, 1995)

• Let’s copy Sweden: “Tonight we have put the best child care system in the world on the American Agenda. That is to say, the system which is acknowledged to be the best outside the home. It’s in Sweden. The Swedish system is run and paid for by the Swedish government, something many Americans would like to see the U.S. government do as well.” (Nov. 22, 1989)

Jennings lavished praise on Sweden’s government-controlled child care system.

• Let’s copy France, too: “On the American Agenda tonight, France. One of the things we have found...is how often there are lessons to be learned from other societies. It is one thing for the United States to spend less on children than almost any other country in the industrialized world. It is another to see what those countries get in return for their dollar, or in this case, their franc.” (December 3, 1991)

• But don’t waste any money on defense: “We’re going to take ‘A Closer Look’ tonight at the plans for an anti-missile defense system. The one that has never been proven to work and may never work.” (June 12, 2000)

• Tax cuts deprive government: “Mr. Bush believes in a universal tax cut, which would mean a very large chunk of money not available for government programs.” (Oct. 4, 2000)

• ...And they cause those awful deficits: “He [Treasury Secretary-designate John Snow] is said to be in favor of further tax cuts but against deficits. Doesn’t one lead to the other?” (To George Stephanopoulos, December 9, 2002)

• America is so backwards: “The United States has this unfortunate distinction: It is one of only two countries in the industrialized world, the other is South Africa, that does not guarantee basic health care for all its children.” (April 5, 1994)

• Castro’s revolution really improved Cuban life: “Medical care was once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban and it is free. Some of Cuba’s health care is world class. In heart disease, for example, in brain surgery. Health and education are the revolution’s great success stories.” (April 3, 1989)

• China isn’t communist any more: “Various Chinese tell us today that the only people who think China is a communist country now live in Washington. Today in China, for many people, it is really about the pursuit of wealth.” (June 25, 1998)

• It was silly to fear the Soviet Union: “There are some of you, I’m sure, who remember the days when we in the West were afraid that the Soviet Union would outdo the West technologically. They had been first into space. The CIA was pretty impressed, remember? And then the Soviet Union fell apart and we discovered how far behind they really were....Ah, yes, we used to take the Soviet Union so seriously.” (Story about a failed Soviet attempt to develop jet boots, July 7, 2000)

• Blix would have fixed Iraq: “So many people don’t understand why you shouldn’t let the inspections continue if they are accomplishing anything....Most people think they’re doing a reasonably effective job at the moment.” (Interviewing Colin Powell, March 7, 2003)

• Marxism for dummies: “By the way, ‘No blood for oil,’ from many people who are opposed to the war is, is not complicated at all. They believe the United States wishes to occupy Iraq in the long term to have the oil. Just so we understand why they wear those little buttons, ‘No blood for oil.’” (March 20, 2003)

• Liberation bad for sculptors: “Saddam Hussein may have been, or may be, a vain man, but he has allowed himself to be sculpted heavy and thin, overweight and in shape, in every imaginable costume....The sculpting of Saddam Hussein, which has been a growth industry for 20 years, may well be a dying art.” (During live coverage of the fall of Baghdad, as a crowd of Iraqis toppled a Saddam statue, April 9, 2003)

• Another casualty of war: free speech: “When we come back this evening, being against the war and in show business — and the people who want to punish you for that.” (April 16, 2003)

• George Stephanopoulos is scrupulously nonpartisan: “If there’s ever been a guy who’s come out of an administration, who has made a cleaner break, and proved himself as a journalist than George Stephanopoulos, I don’t know who it is.” (Radio interview with Bill O’Reilly replayed on FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor, May 15, 2002)

• We have no axe to grind: “I think there is a mainstream media. CNN is mainstream media, and the main, ABC, CBS, NBC are mainstream media. And I think it’s just essentially to make the point that we are largely in the center without particular axes to grind, without ideologies which are represented in our daily coverage, at least certainly not on purpose.” (CNN’s Larry King Live, May 15, 2001)

• ...But being biased is glorious: “We may tell you all the time that our principal aim in life is to communicate and assist, inform....But if you see injustice and you can get people to do something about it, ahh, it’s just a glorious feeling....There’s nothing a reporter likes more than to have an effect on policy.” (On a CBS News special, Breaking the News, August 24, 2001)

==============================

World News Tonight With Peter Jennings: 20 Years of Liberal Bias (Media Research Center, 030910)

On September 5, 1983, Peter Jennings took the helm of ABC’s World News Tonight as its sole anchor. While based in ABC’s London bureau from 1978 to 1983, Jennings had shared anchor duties with Chicago-based Max Robinson and the Washington, D.C.-based Frank Reynolds, who was the newscast’s main anchorman until his death in July of 1983.

While his bias during the recent Iraq war was obvious, it is only the latest example of the ABC anchor’s bias. Jennings has been a reliable proponent of new European-style social welfare spending even while he has shown skepticism toward new defense spending and tax cuts. As Jennings framed it, communism was more a phantom menace than a serious threat, and he similarly whitewashed the despicable record of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, whose bombings killed more than 300 Americans in the 1980s. On the home front, he resented covering the Clinton scandals, portraying them as tedious sideshows. He billed Republicans as destructive and mean-spirited and used his newscast to tout the virtues of liberals such as Jimmy Carter, Robert Rubin, Marion Wright Edelman and Betty Friedan.

To mark his 20th anniversary at the helm of World News Tonight, we have assembled a package of Peter Jennings’ most biased episodes, including his denials that liberal bias exists.

Castigating Republicans — And the Voters Who Dare to Elect Them

The 1994 midterm elections gave Republicans a majority in both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s. Jennings reacted by demeaning the voters, casting the policies of the new Congress as destructive and mean-spirited, and commiserating with Bill Clinton about the public’s lack of regard for his liberal policies. He continued to rail against GOP policies, especially tax cuts, for years.

Spanking voters for electing conservatives: “Some thoughts on those angry voters. Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums: the stomping feet, the rolling eyes, the screaming. It’s clear that the anger controls the child and not the other way around. It’s the job of the parent to teach the child to control the anger and channel it in a positive way. Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper tantrum last week....Parenting and governing don’t have to be dirty words: the nation can’t be run by an angry two-year-old.”

— In his daily ABC Radio commentary, November 14, 1994, after Republicans won control of Congress.

Voters didn’t give Bill Clinton enough credit: “I’d like to start, if I may, with what I think you may think is a puzzlement. You’ve reduced the deficit. You’ve created jobs. Haiti hasn’t been an enormous problem. You’ve got a crime bill with your assault weapon ban in it. You got NAFTA, you got GATT, and 50 percent of the people don’t want you to run again. Where’s the disconnect there?”

“Here’s another one. In our poll today, the absolute critical items for Congress to address. Number one, cutting the deficit. Number two, health care reform. The two issues which were absolute priorities for two years, and you don’t get any credit for them?”

—Two questions to President Clinton, January 5, 1995 World News Tonight.

Only naive racists support welfare reform: “The welfare debate has been getting more intense, ever since President Reagan regularly vilified what he referred to as the ‘welfare queens.’ Attitudes about people on welfare are sometimes based more on myth than reality. Most welfare mothers have only one or two children. Most welfare mothers had their first child when they were adults, not teenagers. Most people on welfare are not black.”

— World News Tonight, January 12, 1995.

Republicans want to destroy the planet: “Next week on ABC’s World News Tonight, a series of reports about our environment which will tell you precisely what the new Congress has in mind: the most frontal assault on the environment in 25 years. Is this what the country wants?”

— Jennings in a promotion shown during This Week with David Brinkley, July 9, 1995.

“[Republicans] are engaged in the most dramatic overhaul — or assault, some would say — on environmental legislation in 25 years.”

— World News Tonight, July 12, 1995.

Much better to keep punishing success: “Well, it helps to know this about a flat tax. It’s a very radical notion, and it’s not nearly so simple as it sounds....It is supposed to encourage savings and investment because profits would be tax free. But will plumbers be hurt more than plutocrats?...Certainly the rich would do better than the middle class....No Western country has ever tried to make such a seismic shift. How big will a flat tax need to be to raise the money which the government needs to run the country?”

— World News Tonight, January 15, 1996, referring to Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes’ plan for a single income tax rate.

Those intolerant Republicans: “We begin tonight with what you could call zero tolerance....Today by the time Mr. Dole spoke by satellite to his party delegates, who were already gathered in San Diego, all notions of tolerance on the subject of abortion had disappeared from the party’s platform.”

— World News Tonight, August 6, 1996.

“The right to abortion has never been an overwhelming issue for women at election time. But this fight within the Republican Party has many women questioning how far this party will go to limit their rights.”

— World News Tonight, August 13, 1996.

Tax cuts deprive government: “Mr. Bush believes in a universal tax cut, which would mean a very large chunk of money not available for government programs.”

— World News Tonight, October 4, 2000.

Ridiculing tax relief: “The President’s tax cut is beginning to show up. Will three extra dollars stimulate the national economy?”

— World News Tonight, July 8, 2003, referring to the estimated increase in one law librarian’s weekly paycheck.

Peter’s European Agenda

World News Tonight promoted liberal policy ideas in an ongoing feature segment called “American Agenda,” which was introduced shortly after the November 1988 election and continued until August 1996. When it came to health, education, and welfare, Jennings often rued that the United States was “lagging behind” the rest of the “industrialized world” in creating a palette of cradle-to-grave social services and employer mandates. The answer to any social problem was usually more taxes, more spending, and tighter rules to keep evil businesses from ripping off the public.

Let’s copy Sweden: “Tonight we have put the best child care system in the world on the American Agenda. That is to say, the system which is acknowledged to be the best outside the home. It’s in Sweden. The Swedish system is run and paid for by the Swedish government, something many Americans would like to see the U.S. government do as well.”

— World News Tonight, November 22, 1989. Jennings lavished praise on Sweden’s government-controlled child care system.

Hungry kids vs. White House greed: “Twelve million American children who do not have enough to eat, who lack adequate health care, and who are behind in schools and being left behind in life. Much of our broadcast will be dedicated to that, which makes the major news in Washington today seem even more of a contrast. The President’s Chief of Staff, John Sununu, is at the center of attention again, having to do with his use of limousines and corporate jets.”

— World News Tonight, June 18, 1991.

Poverty is a national disaster: “When you get close to the poor, you recognize right away that very often the level of assistance which they get from government doesn’t lift them up to the legal poverty line, let alone above it, which seems to say your congressmen and your state legislators have failed to recognize that children and families in poverty are a national disaster. In your name, they often argue about other priorities and welfare cheats. Twelve million American children who cheat.”

— World News Tonight, June 20, 1991.

Let’s copy France: “On the American Agenda tonight, France. One of the things we have found with every subject we address on the Agenda...is how often there are lessons to be learned from other societies. It is one thing for the United States to spend less on children than almost any other country in the industrialized world. It is another to see what those countries get in return for their dollar, or in this case, their franc.”

— World News Tonight, December 3, 1991.

America is so backwards: “The United States has this unfortunate distinction: It is one of only two countries in the industrialized world, the other is South Africa, that does not guarantee basic health care for all its children. “

— World News Tonight, April 5, 1994.

Really, we have to be more like the Europeans: “Those who argue for universal coverage very often make the point that the U.S. is practically alone in the industrialized world without it. Thirty million people without health insurance in the U.S. — compare that to Europe and Japan....In the great debate over universal coverage, a good many Americans believe it comes down to choices between haves and have-nots.”

— World News Tonight, July 26, 1994.

Millions hate deregulation: “We begin tonight with something to think about later this evening. You’re at home or in the office or the car, and you go to make a phone call. What do you think the chances are that when you do, you’re going to be ripped off by the phone company? There are millions of complaints in this age of deregulation, millions. And it’s a big enough problem for Congress to take up tomorrow.”

— World News Tonight, April 23, 1998.

We’re the “least generous” in saddling employers with new mandates: “The U.S. is actually the least generous of the industrialized nations. In Sweden, a new mother gets 18 months of maternity and parental leave, and she gets 80 percent of her salary for the first year. Mother or father can take the parental leave any time until a child is eight. England gives 18 weeks maternity leave. For the first six weeks, a mother gets 90 percent of her salary from the government and $86 a week thereafter. German women get two months of fully paid leave after giving birth. The government and the company kick in, and either parent has the option of three full years in parental leave with some of their salary paid and their jobs protected.”

— World News Tonight, April 19, 2001.

Price controls for prescriptions, now: “The pharmaceutical industry’s products have saved and improved millions of lives, but overall, are we getting our money’s worth? We do not believe so....The rules by which this hugely profitable industry operates do not always serve consumers adequately, and nothing is going to happen – no matter how angry consumers get – unless the Congress and the President decide that the time has come. The country can do better.”

— Peter Jennings Reporting, “Bitter Medicine: Pills, Profit and the Public Health,” May 29, 2002.

Our Overfed Defense

Jennings’ generosity with other people’s money did not extend to the defense budget — especially in his analysis of the proposed national missile defense system.

Let’s reverse those budget totals: “And yet, Congresswoman Schneider, in 1989, fiscal 1989 as we say in America, the Environmental Protection Agency got 5.1 billion dollars and the Defense Department got 290 billion dollars. What’s that tell us about our priorities?”

— From ABC’s September 12, 1989 news special, Capital to Capital.

Don’t waste money on bombers: “But if America wanted to go back to the Moon, it would take three years to get ready again. It might cost $10 billion to send men to Mars, which by the way is what it cost to produce just four of the nine B-2 bombers that Congress wants and the Pentagon says it does not need.”

— World News Tonight, December 12, 1997.

Let’s not be optimists: “We’re going to take ‘A Closer Look’ tonight at the plans for an anti-missile defense system. The one that has never been proven to work and may never work.”

— World News Tonight, June 12, 2000.

There’s a fire in your e-mail: “There is a little skepticism in the air here today. Some cynicism, too. The government has an idea of how to spend $50 billion of your money. That’s BILLION. It will be spent on building a system to safeguard the national security – but by the government’s own assessment it will probably not be foolproof, it will unnerve America’s allies, and in the end it may cost considerably MORE than $50 billion. A more critical assessment is that this system can never be made to work, that it will torpedo the basis of all arms control arrangements, and that in any event, any terrorist or ‘rogue nation’ that means to wreak havoc on U.S. soil can do so in ways that this system will not prevent.”

— From the anchorman’s Jennings Journal e-mail to viewers, May 1, 2001.

A liberal disclaimer: “One other note. Critics often object to the animation in news reports because the animation usually has the systems working.”

— On World News Tonight, May 1, 2001, as ABC graphics showed how an anti-missile defense system would destroy incoming warheads.

Jennings’ Liberal Hero of the Week

From the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, World News Tonight celebrated heroes each Friday — political leaders, athletes, actors and anonymous do-gooders — by naming them the “Person of the Week.” The MRC documented the bias of this regular ABC News feature in 1992 and again in 1994.

Feminism helps us all (except maybe the unborn): “And, so we choose Betty Friedan because she had the ability and the sensitivity to articulate the needs of women, which means that she did us all a favor.”

— World News Tonight’s “Person of the Week,” February 19, 1988.

Carter “renewed respect” for America: “The person we have chosen this week has continued his life with distinction, considerable grace, and with a very strong commitment to peace and justice....In the public’s mind, the scales were never balanced. [Former President Jimmy] Carter’s success in foreign affairs — peace between Egypt and Israel, renewed respect for the United States in Latin America — have always been outweighed in the public mind by the hostage crisis.”

— World News Tonight’s “Person of the Week,” May 12, 1989.

Marian Wright Edelman loves children: “[She’s] always on Congress’s back for coming up with too little money....From her point of view, as you hear, it is a matter of the whole country’s future. The children are fortunate to have such an advocate.”

— Making the head of the Children’s Defense Fund the “Person of the Week,” World News Tonight, March 29, 1991.

Blessed are the federal regulators: “This week we have chosen a man who has appeared on our radar many times, for many reasons, a man who makes an enormous difference because he takes his public service so seriously...It is always the children for David Kessler. Dr. Kessler was trained as a pediatrician...All of this has made David Kessler something of a folk hero. Sometimes in Washington they call him ‘Eliot Nessler,’ after Eliot Ness, who fought the mob during the ‘30s...He conducts himself as the people’s guardian in matters of food and drugs with the utmost conviction.”

— Making the chairman of the Food and Drug Administration the “Person of the Week,” World News Tonight, June 24, 1994.

Still More of Jennings’s Liberal Heroes

Jennings did not confine his praise for liberals to Fridays, and his penchant for promoting liberal activists continued long after ABC cancelled its “Person of the Week” segment.

Courage to make you pay up: “When he entered the race nearly a year ago, he [Democratic presidential candidate Bruce Babbitt] had the courage to say that as President he would probably have to raise taxes. And he never recovered from his courage.”

— World News Tonight, February 18, 1988.

The fingers, the palms, even the thumb: “He’s become a little more disciplined, Bill Clinton, but you know he loves a crowd. And he has, don’t want to get carried away here, but he has the kind of hands that people respond to.”

— During ABC’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention, July 15, 1992.

Try to overlook Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and weirdness: “It would be astonishing if this public performance of Farrakhan were to end or even minimize the controversy which he inspires in the country as a whole, but it would be a terrible mistake not to recognize that here today, he inspired many people, and in a broader sense, as one participant after another has reaffirmed, this day, at this time and this place, really did mean unity over division.”

— Reporting on the so-called “Million Man March” for the October 16, 1995 World News Tonight.

Clinton surrounded himself with geniuses: “Good evening. The man who presided over the best economy in a generation is going back to private life. The Secretary of the Treasury, Bob Rubin, who said today that he really was resigning, has been described in such glowing terms that he’d begun to sound indispensable. All sorts of people today, including the President, have called him the best Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton, who was the first Secretary in 1789 and did an enormous amount to put the United States on firm financial footing.”

— World News Tonight, May 12, 1999.

Bill’s indispensable life partner: “He’s leaving the greatest thing in his life, and you are about to meet the challenge of the biggest thing, certainly, in your political life. What if he needs you?”

— To First Lady and New York Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Good Morning America, August 15, 2000.

Jimmy Carter’s greatness: “It was a great day for Jimmy Carter. The former President heard early this morning that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Carter was President from 1977 to 1981. He is the least popular President in the period after World War II. In the mid-1990s, on the other hand, he was occasionally introduced as the only man who has ever used the presidency as a stepping stone to greatness.”

— World News Tonight, October 11, 2002.

What Clinton Scandals?

Jennings routinely presented the many Clinton scandals as dastardly inconveniences that get in the way of American progress. He felt Bill Clinton’s pain when the joy of being President was ruined.

Dick Morris ruined Bill’s convention moment: “Here in Chicago, the President has been fine tuning, as they say, the speech he will be giving to this convention and to the country tonight, and he has a lot to be pleased about: A very upbeat convention, a very successful train trip here with rising poll numbers to accompany it, and a very important set of statistics about the economy today, which he will certainly point to as evidence that the country should re-elect him. And then along comes a nasty little scandal to take the edge off the good news, at least for one day.”

— On World News Tonight, August 29, 1996, referring to disclosure of the Clinton campaign adviser’s relationship with a prostitute.

Hearings into scandal aren’t a good use of resources: “When we come back, two investigations of fundraising abuse, two of them on Capitol Hill. Is it a waste of time and money?”

— World News Tonight, April 10, 1997.

The sooner they’re over, the better:

Linda Douglass: “It’s clear that many of the Senators now want to defuse the partisan warfare and get this whole messy issue behind them.”

Peter Jennings: “That will be a relief to the public.”

— World News Tonight, September 9, 1997.

Looking for an excuse to ignore Monicagate: “We know from just answering the phone around here that the amount of attention we are giving this story is, at the very least, debatable. We in the news [business]....are devoting major time and resources to these events, but have we been carried away, are we doing too much and are we not being fair?”

— On World News Tonight, January 23, 1998, just two days after the Monica Lewinsky story broke.

We’re the pro-Clinton clique: “Mandy, who do you think is now going to carry the water, briefly, for the anti-Clinton clique in the country or the anti-Clinton people in the country?”

— To Democratic consultant Mandy Grunwald on World News Tonight, April 1, 1998, after a judge dismissed Paula Jones’ sexual harassment suit against Clinton.

Clinton’s accuser is icky: “I certainly won’t go out of my way to say hi to her.”

— On Paula Jones’ presence at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, as quoted in the April 27, 1998 Washington Post.

Finding the heart of America: “Good evening. We begin tonight with the voice of the people heard from the Senate gallery today during yet another procedural vote at the President’s impeachment trial....’God almighty,’ the man said, ‘take the vote and get it over with.’ He was arrested, — that’s him in the beard, slightly balding, on the right. He may think it was worth it, speaking as he does for so many Americans, whether they believe the President should be convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice or not. The best that we can say tonight is they are getting there.”

— World News Tonight, February 4, 1999.

Another nightmare has ended:

Peter Jennings: “But just so that you don’t terrify people altogether, Jeffrey, this is going to be the last of the Senate impeachment trial this week, as far as we know.”

Jeffrey Toobin: “That’s right. This national nightmare is over. We’ll see if there’s another one.”

— ABC News live coverage of President Clinton’s impeachment trial, February 8, 1999.

Another Clinton moment ruined: “I gather that the Independent Counsel must have been hitting these people with a sledgehammer in the final days of the presidency....His critics will not be disappointed to see this happen, and his enemies too. Nonetheless, it’s a very sad, almost tragic way for the President to spend his last day in office.”

— During ABC’s live coverage of an announced deal between President Clinton and Independent Counsel Robert Ray, January 19, 2001.

Who’s Afraid of Communism?

Peter Jennings never seemed bothered by the threat to America from communism and Soviet expansionism. His philosophy seemed to match Strobe Talbott’s line in Time on January 1, 1990: “Gorbachev is helping the West by showing that the Soviet threat isn’t what it used to be — and what’s more, that it never was.” Instead, Jennings explained how communist countries could provide Americans with lessons in social advancement.

Castro’s communist success story: “Medical care was once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban and it is free. Some of Cuba’s health care is world class. In heart disease, for example, in brain surgery. Health and education are the revolution’s great success stories.”

— World News Tonight, April 3, 1989.

The KGB is more open than the CIA: “A brief report from the Soviet Union today to match the extraordinary times. Can you imagine five CIA agents answering the public’s questions during a live television show? Not likely. In the Soviet Union today, television viewers had the unheard of opportunity to ask questions of five KGB agents on a show broadcast live nationwide. Here’s one example. One listener asked, ‘Don’t we have too many secrets?’ ‘Yes,’ replied an agent, ‘and some stupid ones.’”

— World News Tonight, November 2, 1989.

The communists win again: “For the Bush administration and the Reagan administration before it, the [ABC News/Washington Post] poll hints at a simple truth: after years of trying to get rid of the Sandinistas, there is not much to show for their efforts.”

— World News Tonight, February 20, 1990, five days before the Sandinistas were voted out of power.

The Russian people really loved their dictator: “Suddenly, from about half the way across the square, I heard this, ‘Peter, Peter, come, I want you to meet some people.’ And he [Mikhail Gorbachev] plunged into this crowd and it was, again, impressionistic, right? But it was clear to me that in touching these people...it was clear that he wanted us to see that here were people who on a one-to-one basis really felt positively about him.”

— Nightline, July 29, 1991.

China isn’t communist anymore: “Various Chinese tell us today that the only people who think China is a communist country now live in Washington. Today in China, for many people, it is really about the pursuit of wealth.”

— World News Tonight, June 25, 1998.

Really, China isn’t communist: “Finally this evening, part history and part myth. It was 50 years ago this week that the People’s Republic of China came into being, Mao Tse-Tung its founding father. China’s going all out to celebrate the triumphs of the communist revolution and ignore its failures. And all the ceremony will also ignore the fact that China, today, is hardly a communist country.”

— World News Tonight, September 29, 1999.

Missing the old dictatorships: “It is probably hard for most Americans to imagine anyone feeling nostalgic about living behind the Wall. It may also be hard to imagine that anyone in the Western part of Germany would miss the Wall either. But miss it, some people do.”

— Introducing a Berlin Wall story on the November 9, 1999 World News Tonight.

The civilized solution is to send Elian back to Cuba: “Good evening. In Miami today, immigration officials met with the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez again, and once again the government has failed to get the kind of cooperation from the relatives that might allow the case of this young boy to end in a civilized manner that is best for him.”

— World News Tonight, March 28, 2000.

The “civilized” way to end the Elian Gonzalez stand-off, Jennings argued, was to send him back to the communists.

There’s no simple answer in choosing between the U.S. and Cuba: “Beyond the questions of custody, the Cuban-American community in Miami has always argued, almost every day in fact, that Elian Gonzalez would have a better life here in the United States than in Cuba. It’s been argued before, and there’s not a simple answer.”

— World News Tonight, April 12, 2000.

The Soviets were more silly than serious: “There are some of you, I’m sure, who remember the days when we in the West were afraid that the Soviet Union would outdo the West technologically. They had been first into space. The CIA was pretty impressed, remember? And then the Soviet Union fell apart and we discovered how far behind they really were — not that they weren’t trying....Ah, yes, we used to take the Soviet Union so seriously.”

— World News Tonight item about a failed Soviet plan to equip soldiers and police with jet-powered boots, July 7, 2000.

Mourning an American extremist: “We missed the death of a notable American this week, so we want to catch up. Gus Hall actually died on Friday. The son of a Minnesota miner became head of the U.S. Communist Party at the height of anti-communist McCarthyism in the late ‘40s and ‘50s. He spent eight years in prison and a lifetime in the political wilderness for his views here, but he was a dignitary in the Soviet Union. Even after his friends there abandoned the cause, Hall never wavered, and he was 90.”

— World News Tonight, October 17, 2000.

Jennings tribute to American communist radical Gus Hall, who “never wavered” in his beliefs.

Blame America First

After the September 11th terrorist attacks, all of the anchors gave viewers fair and even-handed coverage, but Jennings was the first to revert to liberal form: Adversarial coverage of U.S. actions and U.S. policies, and less judgmental coverage of tyrants and terrorists. During the war in Afghanistan, World News Tonight gave far more airtime than the other broadcast networks to Taliban claims of massive civilian casualties that Jennings and his team could not verify, and which ABC reporter Jim Wooten later commendably debunked as inflated enemy propaganda.

American food is just propaganda: “One other item about these food and medicine drops. They’re not popular with everyone. The international relief organization Doctors Without Borders, which won the Nobel Peace Prize for relief work, described it today as military propaganda designed to justify the bombing. The Bush administration points out it also has committed $300 million in other aid. It’s a question, ultimately, of getting it there.”

— World News Tonight, October 8, 2001.

Demanding immediate results: “The Secretary of Defense said today that those people who are questioning the effectiveness of the U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan are too impatient, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said much the same thing. The Pentagon is being pressed harder to be specific about what it has accomplished so far. The bombing campaign against the Taliban is now entering its fourth week, and the Taliban are still standing.”

— World News Tonight, October 29, 2001, two weeks before the Taliban fled the Afghan capital of Kabul.

“Insular” Americans need enlightening: “It isn’t just about campaigning against terrorism around the world. That’s just too simple. There are a lot of root causes for dissatisfaction around the world, and I think for the country to exercise real global leadership, when globalization in itself is kind of complicated, it’s not just American business or selling American culture around the world. I think it’s a very big challenge for a leader to get us all engaged in that because, you know, Americans are pretty insular people for the most part.”

— On CBS’s Late Show with David Letterman, December 21, 2001.

One Man’s Terrorist Is Another Man’s Freedom Fighter

Even as the U.S. fought a war against terrorism, Jennings went out of his way to hide the anti-American crimes of Hezbollah, a Palestinian independence group that killed more than 300 Americans in the 1980s with car bomb attacks against the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.

Touting a terrorist’s denials while concealing their crimes: “It is Hezbollah, which means ‘The Party of God,’ that gets credit for liberating Lebanon from the long Israeli occupation. Yesterday, I went to see its 38-year-old leader, Hassan Nasrallah. He is a popular member of the political establishment. The Bush administration says Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. ‘Hezbollah was proud to resist the Israeli occupation,’ he says. ‘We gave our lives. We are not terrorists.’”

— In a report from Beirut, Lebanon, for the March 27, 2002 World News Tonight.

Disguising Hezbollah’s guilt, Jennings said only “a man” attacked the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in 1983.

“Today [the site of the former American embassy in Lebanon] is an empty lot. This is where the U.S. experienced the first suicide bomber. In 1983 a man simply drove his truck to the front door and blew himself up. Sixty-three people died. Later that year, the Marine barracks here were destroyed in much the same way; 241 Marines died.”

— Later in the same report, failing to state that Hezbollah was responsible for both anti-American attacks.

Only the government’s opinion? “In North Carolina, two men went on trial for smuggling cigarettes to allegedly help the group Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the government calls a terrorist organization. Their lawyer says it will be extremely hard to find an impartial jury.”

— World News Tonight, May 20, 2002.

Opposition to Iraq

Jennings displayed an antagonistic attitude towards’ Bush’s Iraq policies for months prior to the actual start of the second Gulf War in March, 2003. Even after the rapid collapse of the Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, Jennings — more than any other news anchor — highlighted setbacks and scolded the military for its mistakes, leading to at least one embarrassing retraction.

Beating the war drums: “Wherever you live in the world today, the sound of war drums being beaten in Washington has become unmistakable. With the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks behind us...the administration’s preoccupation with Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction has rapidly become the number one issue in international affairs.”

— ABC’s live coverage of President Bush’s speech to the United Nations, September 12, 2002.

Unlike Republicans, Saddam funds the arts: “This week we were surprised to see several hundred artists and writers walking through the streets of Baghdad to say thank you to Saddam Hussein. He had just increased their monthly financial support. Cynical, you could argue with this particular time, but the state has always supported the arts, and some of the most creative people in the Arab world have always been Iraqis. And whatever they think about Saddam Hussein in the privacy of their homes, on this occasion they were praising his defense of the homeland in the face of American threats.”

— Reporting from Baghdad on World News Tonight, January 21, 2003.

Bush is spoiling for war: “The UN weapons inspectors go back to Baghdad this weekend. They have not been happy with Iraqi cooperation so far. We’ll see if the Iraqis do any better — and if that means anything to the Bush administration.”

— World News Tonight, February 7, 2003.

The U.N. can solve this: “So many people don’t understand why you shouldn’t let the inspections continue if they are accomplishing anything.”

“Most people think they’re doing a reasonably effective job at the moment.”

“Mr. Secretary, many people think that your dismissal again today of the inspection process is because your administration keeps moving the goal post, that it is not just about disarming Saddam Hussein. It is, as the President says, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein.”

— To Secretary of State Colin Powell in a World News Tonight interview, March 7, 2003.

Looking Forward to a Long War:

Pentagon reporter John McWethy: “As the U.S. begins to really squeeze Baghdad, U.S. intelligence sources are saying that some of Saddam Hussein’s toughest security forces are now apparently digging in, apparently willing to defend their city block by block. This could be, Peter, a long war.”

Peter Jennings: “As many people had anticipated.”

— World News Tonight, April 4, 2003.

A sad day for sculptors: “Saddam Hussein may have been, or may be, a vain man, but he has allowed himself to be sculpted heavy and thin, overweight and in shape, in every imaginable costume — both national, in historic terms, in Iraqi historic terms — in contemporary, in every imaginable uniform, on every noble horse. The sculpting of Saddam Hussein, which has been a growth industry for 20 years, may well be a dying art.”

— ABC’s live coverage of the fall of Baghdad, as a crowd of Iraqis toppled a Saddam statue, April 9, 2003.

Curious about Saddam’s sensitive side: “This is not, as you heard so many times today, the end of the war. But it is an occasion to wonder, as we sometimes do, did Saddam Hussein ever understand what people thought about him? Did he care? I’m Peter Jennings.”

— Concluding an ABC News special after the fall of Baghdad, April 9, 2003.

Oil-obsessed America neglected to save civilization: “The country has been a living archive of man’s earliest history, where real connections can be made between then and now, which is why the Pentagon is being so widely criticized for not protecting the history when it captured the capital city....The Pentagon has said, in reply, look, this is war, and stuff happens, the U.S. was fired on from the museum grounds. Not a satisfactory answer for people who say that if the U.S. managed to protect the Ministry of Oil, why not this repository of civilization? Why, they ask, is neglect forgivable?”

— World News Tonight, April 18, 2003.

On second thought: “The looting at the national museum may not have been as extensive as some people first reported. A Marine colonel who’s been investigating tells us today that hundreds of items have been recovered from smugglers, Iraqis have returned items they may have had for safekeeping, other pieces have been found in the rubble, and it turns out that many pieces were removed before the war. Twenty-seven so-called ‘significant pieces’ were stolen, some of them priceless, but those who said that more than 150,000 items were looted appear to be wrong.”

— World News Tonight, May 1, 2003.

Promoting anti-war protesters

When the far left would shout against U.S. military intervention — during both the first and second Gulf Wars — Jennings made sure anti-war protesters were presented as a credible, reasonable, patriotic opposition group, downplaying any extremism or anti-Americanism that emanated from them. Jennings portrayed those who dissented from the anti-war line as chilling opponents of free speech.

Pleading for understanding: “At every anti-war demonstration, they carry the flag high to make the point, they say, that American troops in the Gulf have their support. They object to the government policy that sent the troops there.”

— World News Tonight, February 7, 1991.

Won’t someone make the anti-war protesters’ case?

Peter Jennings: “I suppose it makes sense that the time for debating the war or the future of the campaign is completely over.”

Democratic Senator Joe Biden: “Completely over....”

Jennings: “Let me ask you this, then. There are still a large number of people in the country who are opposed to this, realize they cannot stand it, but look to members of the Democratic Party, particularly, to sort of be their port in a storm, their place to manifest their dissatisfaction. What happens to them at the moment?”

— Exchange during ABC’s live war coverage, March 20, 2003.

Marxism for dummies: “By the way, ‘No blood for oil,’ from many people who are opposed to the war is, is not complicated at all. They believe the United States wishes to occupy Iraq in the long term to have the oil. Just so we understand why they wear those little buttons, ‘No blood for oil.’”

— World News Tonight, March 20, 2003.

The right to free speech has been cancelled: “When we come back this evening, being against the war and in show business — and the people who want to punish you for that.”

— Previewing an upcoming segment on World News Tonight, April 16, 2003.

What Liberal Media Bias?

While Jennings has occasionally commented that conservatives have not received enough attention in the “objective” press, more often he has dismissed the claims of liberal media bias.

We have no axe to grind: “I think there is a mainstream media. CNN is mainstream media, and the main, ABC, CBS, NBC are mainstream media. And I think it’s just essentially to make the point that we are largely in the center without particular axes to grind, without ideologies which are represented in our daily coverage, at least certainly not on purpose.”

— On CNN’s Larry King Live, May 15, 2001.

We were very tough on Clinton: “We all have baggage, but one of the good things about journalists is that they recognize bias and work hard to keep it out of their coverage....You can have all sorts of people who voted for Bill Clinton, but the media gave Clinton one hell of a time. Now we hear a lot from people who complain that we don’t give George Bush as hard a time as we gave Bill Clinton.”

— As quoted in the Miami Herald, March 17, 2002.

George Stephanopoulos is scrupulously nonpartisan: “If there’s ever been a guy who’s come out of an administration, who has made a cleaner break, and proved himself as a journalist than George Stephanopoulos, I don’t know who it is.”

— Radio interview with Bill O’Reilly replayed on FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor, May 15, 2002.

==============================

20 Years On the CBS Evening News: Dan Rather’s Outrageous Liberal Bias (Media Research Center, 030910)

Dan Rather replaced Walter Cronkite as anchor of the then-top rated CBS Evening News on March 9, 1981. Since then, his on-air liberal bias has become the stuff of legend. For Rather’s 20th anniversary in 2001, the MRC compiled some of Rather’s most quotable bias, along with illustrations of his nearly-nonsensical “Ratherisms” and his equally-comical denials of liberal bias. As ABC’s Peter Jennings and NBC’s Tom Brokaw reached their 20th anniversaries in 2003, Rather was still on CBS each night, a longtime liberal advocate masquerading as a journalist.

30 Straight Years of NASA Cuts: “There’s certainly been talk that in recent years that Congress’s attitude and, for that matter, the attitude of a succession of Presidents beginning with President Nixon, running through Carter, Reagan, Bush first and President Clinton and now President George W. Bush, there’s been more cost cutting that has resulted in safety cutting.”

— CBS’s live coverage on February 4, 2003 of a memorial for Columbia’s crew. Moments later, CBS space expert Bill Harwood corrected Rather, pointing out that “after Challenger, the budgets really ramped up.”

Dan’s Distorted Poll Reporting: “The President calls the tax cut necessary. Democrats call it a campaign for the wealthy. So far, it’s a problematic sell for the President. In a CBS News/New York Times poll out tonight, less than half the respondents thought the Bush tax cut would actually help the economy.”

— May 13, 2003 CBS Evening News. Rather failed to report that the poll he cited showed twice as many said tax cuts would help the economy (41 percent) than said new tax cuts would hurt (19 percent).

Bush’s Partisan Stance on Global Warming: “President Bush has been criticized at home and abroad for pulling out of the international treaty to curb global warming, the Kyoto Treaty. Now, CBS’s John Roberts reports, conservationists, environmentalists and some others are taking the President to task for what they say was the cynical changing of a major report on global warming. They say it was altered to put hardball partisan politics over hard independent science.”

— CBS Evening News, June 19, 2003.

Campaigning Against Free Speech: “In tonight’s Eye on America, CBS gives you an in-depth look at the sudden revival of congressional interest in legislation that’s been killed more times than Dracula: Legislation for serious campaign finance reform. In the wake of the Enron fiasco, will Congress finally put its votes where its mouth is?”

— CBS Evening News, January 25, 2002.

“Honest” Bill Revisited: “I think the fact that someone has told a lie, even a big lie or maybe several big lies over a lifetime, does not mean that they’re an inherently dishonest person....I believe in redemption and that Bill Clinton – is he an honest person? I think he is an honest person. Did he lie? Yes, he lied, and on those occasions he was dishonest.”

— Appearing on the Feb. 7, 2002 Imus in the Morning radio show defending his comment from May 15, 2001 on FNC’s The O’Reilly Factor that Clinton was “an honest man” and that “you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.”

Cheering Anti-Free Speech Law: “On Capitol Hill, it took seven years, but the shame of Enron finally got Congress to pass a campaign finance reform bill today. The legislation bans soft money, the unregulated special interest donations to national political parties. But it doubles the allowable hard money with donations to individual candidates now to be capped at $2,000.”

— CBS Evening News, March 20, 2002.

Rather’s Rather Ridiculous Rant: “It’s an obscene comparison, and I’m not sure I like it, but there was a time, in South Africa, where people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks if they dissented. And in some ways, the fear is that you’ll be necklaced here, you’ll have the flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it’s that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often. And again, I’m humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.”

— Appearing on the BBC’s Newsnight program, May 16, 2002.

Ashcroft Saved Himself & Let Others Fly in Harm’s Way: “Increasingly, there are important questions that need to be asked...For example, the Attorney General of the United States before, just before September 11th, started inexplicably taking private aircraft to places where normally the Attorney General wouldn’t take private aircraft, you know, government planes. Well, that would indicate that somebody somewhere was getting pretty worried, but if you’re going to share that with the Attorney General, you know, why wasn’t it shared with the public at large?”

— On the Imus in the Morning radio program, simulcast on MSNBC, May 22, 2002.

Reality Check:

“There was a personal threat assessment done by security agencies at Justice, and it was determined that since John Ashcroft is such a polarizing figure, that the threat assessment against him would be high, and that shortly after he was sworn in, he started taking government planes all the time. It was recommended for his own security....It had nothing at all to do with any terrorist threat.”

— NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski later on the same program.

Pushing For More Spending: “Senior Americans who saw retirement savings evaporate in the Wall Street meltdown have another financial headache now. It turns out it was all talk and no action with the President and Congress again today on passing any version of Medicare prescription drug coverage.”

— CBS Evening News, July 23, 2002.

Bush’s Anti-Uniter Cabinet: “When you nominate someone to be Attorney General... who you know is going to raise questions, rightly or wrongly, justifiably or otherwise about race relations, quote ‘a hardline stance on a woman’s right to choose’ on abortion; when you appoint somebody, nominate someone, to be head of the Interior Department who says, ‘Listen, it’s alright for people who own private land to pollute,’ I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I am saying that a lot are going to say, ‘Wait a minute, this is not uniter-divider country.’”

— Jan. 15, 2001 Late Show with David Letterman.

Clinton and Bush Abortion Executive Order Contrasts: “This was President Bush’s first day at the office and he did something to quickly please the right flank in his party: He re-instituted an anti-abortion policy that had been in place during his father’s term and the Reagan presidency but was lifted during the Clinton years.”

— Jan. 22, 2001.

Versus: “On the anniversary of Roe versus Wade President Clinton fulfills a promise, supporting abortion rights....It was 20 years ago today, the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark abortion rights ruling, and the controversy hasn’t stopped since. Today, with the stroke of a pen, President Clinton delivered on his campaign promise to cancel several anti-abortion regulations of the Reagan-Bush years.”

— Jan. 22, 1993.

Treating Liberal Spin as Fact: “President Bush tonight outlines his cut-federal-programs-to-get-a-tax-cut plan to Congress and the nation. Democrats will then deliver their televised response, which basically says Mr. Bush’s ideas are risky business, endangering among other things, Social Security and Medicare.”

— February 27, 2001.

Choosing Cash Over Clean Air: “President Bush insisted today that he was not caving in to big money contributors, big-time lobbyists, and overall industry pressure when he broke a campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. But the air was thick today with accusations from people who believe that’s exactly what happened.”

— CBS Evening News, March 14, 2001.

Kids Sacrificed for Big Tax Cuts: “On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled House voted mostly along party lines tonight to pass President Bush’s federal budget blueprint. This includes his big tax cut plan, partly bankrolled, critics say, through cuts in many federal aid programs for children and education.”

— CBS Evening News, March 28, 2001.

Another Environmental Rollback: “President Bush is ordering another rollback, another reversal in U.S. environmental policy. This time it amounts to abandoning support for an international treaty designed to reduce emissions linked to global warming. CBS’s John Roberts has more about the heat this is generating, environmental and political.”

— CBS Evening News, March 28, 2001.

Rather: Clinton “An Honest Man”

Bill O’Reilly: “I want to ask you flat out, do you think President Clinton’s an honest man?”

Dan Rather: “Yes, I think he’s an honest man.”

O’Reilly: “Do you, really?”

Rather: “I do.”

O’Reilly: “Even though he lied to Jim Lehrer’s face about the Lewinsky case?”

Rather: “Who among us has not lied about something?”

O’Reilly: “Well, I didn’t lie to anybody’s face on national television. I don’t think you have, have you?”

Rather: “I don’t think I ever have. I hope I never have. But, look, it’s one thing – “

O’Reilly: “How can you say he’s an honest guy then?”

Rather: “Well, because I think he is. I think at core he’s an honest person. I know that you have a different view. I know that you consider it sort of astonishing anybody would say so, but I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.”

— Exchange on Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, May 15, 2001.

“Uncle Cheney” Really In Charge:

Rather: “I think by any reasonable analysis that George Bush is off to a pretty good start with his presidency.”

David Letterman: “You were pleased with how he handled the situation in China? You thought that went alright?”

Rather: “I’m pausing only because you said ‘the way he handled it.’ I’m not sure he handled it because, remember you have Uncle Cheney who runs an awful lot of things around there. No, I think that was handled very steadily. He pulled some good people around him. But now comes the difficult part: the stands he’s taken on the environment; his tax program, the details of which we do not yet know – all of these things have gotten him a reputation, justifiably or not, of running an administration that’s further to the right than most people expected.”

— Exchange on CBS’s Late Show, June 7, 2001.

CBS’s “Dumb-Ass” Anchorman: “Look, we’ve made mistakes in the past. Somebody wrote in the paper the other day that I was, quote, ‘boneheaded.’ Well, of course, it’s a matter of record I’m boneheaded, said, ‘well, this is bizarre.’ Well, of course I’m bizarre, you know, we’ve known that for a long time...Somebody, I don’t know if he put it exactly this way, but he said, ‘well, you know, it’s a dumb-ass thing he’s doing.’ Well, you know, I’ve been a dumb-ass all my life.”

— On the July 19, 2001 Imus in the Morning discussing his refusal to cover the scandal surrounding Democratic Congressman Gary Condit until his weekday CBS Evening News aired a single story on July 18.

I Can’t Figure This Out, So Go Buy a Paper: “Obviously, this is a very complicated subject. It’s the kind of subject that, frankly, radio and television have some difficulty with because it requires such depth into the complexities of it. So we can with, I think, impunity recommend that if you’re really interested in this you’ll want to read in detail one of the better newspapers tomorrow. This has been a CBS News Special Report.”

— Concluding CBS’s coverage of President Bush’s August 9, 2001 stem cell speech after only 53 seconds of analysis right before his network aired Big Brother 2.

Bush “Hard Right” Too: “Now to Bill Whitaker covering George W. Bush’s talking the right talk, as in Republican hard right, to try to take out Steve Forbes in Iowa and focus on eliminating John McCain in New Hampshire.”

— January 23, 2000.

Pushing Gun Control: “President Clinton met today with congressional leaders, pushing them for new gun control laws in response to more shocking gun violence. It’s been a week since a six-year-old Michigan girl was shot dead by another six-year-old. As CBS’s Diana Olick reports, the little girl’s death has many wondering what, if anything, more can be done and asking why Congress hasn’t done anything for months.”

— March 7, 2000.

Castro Cares about Cubans: “While Fidel Castro, and certainly justified on his record, is widely criticized for a lot of things, there is no question that Castro feels a very deep and abiding connection to those Cubans who are still in Cuba and, I recognize this might be controversial, but there’s little doubt in my mind that Fidel Castro was sincere when he said, ‘Listen, we really want this child back here.’”

— CBS News live coverage of the Elian raid, April 22, 2000.

Gee, Thanks Dan: “You may want to note that Cheney is referring to Clinton Gore, not Clinton and Gore, in effect making Clinton Al Gore’s first name: Clinton Gore.” — Dan Rather during Dick Cheney’s acceptance speech after Cheney said “We’re all a little weary of the Clinton-Gore routine...it is time for them to go,”

— August 2, 2000 CBS News Republican convention coverage.

Greeting Both Parties with Liberal Spin: “Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore officially introduced his history-making running mate today, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. History-making because Lieberman is of Jewish heritage and faith. The two started running right away. In their first joint appearance they gave a preview of the Gore-Lieberman fight-back, come-back strategy. Their message: They represent the future, not the past, and they are the ticket of high moral standards most in tune with real mainstream America.”

— August 8, 2000.

Versus:

“In the presidential campaign, the official announcement and first photo-op today of Republican George Bush and his running mate Richard Cheney. Democrats were quick to portray the ticket as quote ‘two Texas oilmen’ because Cheney was chief of a big Dallas-based oil supply conglomerate. They also blast Cheney’s voting record in Congress as again, quote, ‘outside the American mainstream’ because of Cheney’s votes against the Equal Rights for Women Amendment, against a woman’s right to choose abortion -- against abortion as Cheney prefers to put it -- and Cheney’s votes against gun control. Republicans see it all differently, most of them hailing Bush’s choice and Cheney’s experience.”

— July 25, 2000.

No Need for Proof Before Alleging GOP Dirty Tricks: “Al Gore must stand and deliver here tonight as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, and now Gore must do so against the backdrop of a potentially damaging, carefully orchestrated story leak about President Clinton. The story is that the Republican-backed special prosecutor, Robert Ray, Ken Starr’s successor, has a new grand jury looking into possible criminal charges against the President growing out of Mr. Clinton’s sex life.”

— August 17, 2000, the final day of the Democratic convention. (The next day, a Carter-appointed federal judge revealed he had inadvertently leaked the news.)

Mean and Nasty George W. Bush: “On one bit of campaign meanness and nastiness in particular, George Bush now says he’s sorry his gutter language and personal attack was picked up by a microphone at a campaign stop yesterday, but he refuses to apologize for the substance of his comment. Bush’s remark was about Adam Clymer, a New York Times reporter whose coverage he doesn’t like.”

— September 5, 2000.

Gore a victim: “You’ve been part of an administration that one can argue has presided over the greatest economic, sustained economic boom in the history of the country. But here you are in the last week of the presidential campaign, in which even by your own estimate you’re locked neck and neck with the other guy. Why is that?....But surely sometime at night the two of you talking, you must have said, maybe one to the other, ‘Why is this happening to us?’”

— To Al and Tipper Gore in taped interview shown November 1, 2000.

Florida Secretary of State Has No Legal Authority: “Florida’s Republican Secretary of State is about to announce the winner -- as she sees it and she decrees it -- of the state’s potentially decisive 25 electoral votes.”

“The believed certification -- as the Republican Secretary of State sees it.”

“She will certify -- as she sees it -- who gets Florida’s 25 electoral votes.”

“The certification -- as the Florida Secretary of State sees it and decrees it -- is being signed.”

— November 26, 2000.

George W. Bush Didn’t Really Win: “Good evening. Texas Governor George Bush tonight will assume the mantle and the honor of President-elect. This comes 24 hours after a sharply split and, some say, politically and ideologically motivated Supreme Court ended Vice President Gore’s contest of the Florida election and, in effect, handed the presidency to Bush.”

— December 13, 2000.

Impeachment is Coup D’Etat: “Is or is there not some concern of the public, concern in some quarters, not all of them Democratic, that this is, in fact, a kind of effort at a quote, ‘coup,’ that is you have a twice elected, popularly elected President of the United States and so those that you mention in the Republican Party who dislike him and what he stands for, have been unable to beat him at the polls, have found another way to get him out of office?”

— Interview with former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman, CBS coverage of the start of the impeachment trial, January 7, 1999.

Impeachment Too Distracting: “The Republican leadership has decided, and spoken....They want the calling of witnesses and the lengthening out of the process. This is where the matter now stands. Questions such as what to do about Social Security, improving the nation’s schools, and the drug menace among America’s youth basically are on hold. So is what to do about threats to health of the U.S. economy by what is happening in Asia and Brazil; the threats to U.S. security posed by Iraq, Iran, and North Korea; and the peril represented by a collapsing Russia and an emerging China -- all important parts of the people’s business -- all remain pretty much on hold, while the trial drags on.”

— January 25, 1999 “Dan Rather’s Notebook” radio commentary posted on the CBS News Web page.

Clinton Scandal vs. VP Bush Scandal: View a video comparison of how Dan Rather treated President Clinton in a March 31, 1999 interview in which Rather avoided the Chinese espionage and fundraising scandals and the Rather’s infamous interview of Vice President Bush on January 25, 1988 interview on Iran-Contra scandal in which Rather told the president, “You’ve made us hypocrites in the face of the world.” http://www.mrc.org/news/rathervideos.html#1

Hillary Clinton Fantastic: “Once a political lightning rod, today she is political lightning. A crowd pleaser and first-class fundraiser, a person under enormous pressure to step into the arena, this time on her own.”

— 60 Minutes II, May 26, 1999

Admiring the Kennedys: “We Americans, even those among us who have never liked the Kennedys’ politics, have long been fascinated by the Kennedy mystique. Or as some call it, the Kennedy myth. The dictionary defines mystique as ‘an aura of heightened meaning surrounding something to which special power or mystery is given.’ A myth is ‘a traditional story dealing with ancestors or heroes,’ a story that ‘shapes the world view of a people or delineates the customs or ideals of a society.’ By those definitions, like it or not, there is a Kennedy mystique and their history is mythic....

“What we do know is that some of the aching grief the family feels tonight we feel because the mystique and the myth are deep within us. That’s 48 Hours for tonight, an American Tragedy.”

— Concluding 48 Hours, July 19, 1999, after the death of John Kennedy, Jr.

Republicans Favor Sleazy Fundraising: “Republicans kill the bill to clean up sleazy political fundraising. The business of dirty campaign money will stay business as usual....Good evening. Legislation to reform shady big money campaign fundraising is dead in Congress. Republican opponents in the Senate killed it today.” — February 26, 1998.

“Republican” Ken Starr: “New indications in a CBS News poll out tonight of how the public perceives Republican special prosecutor Ken Starr’s investigation. Our poll suggests only 27 percent believe Starr is conducting an impartial probe. And 55 percent think it’s time for Starr to drop his investigation.”

— March 2, 1998.

Far-Right Republican Haters: “On another front, there could be trouble for the Ken Starr Whitewater investigation. Reports continue to surface that this key witness for the prosecution, David Hale, may have been secretly bankrolled by political activists widely regarded as Clinton opponents, people that Clinton supporters call Republican haters from the far right.”

— April 2 1998.

“Republican” Ken Starr Ruins Clinton’s Day: “Ken Starr drops another load on President Clinton....Good evening. Just as President Clinton was enjoying a day talking up the economy, officially announcing the first U.S. budget surplus in three decades, Ken Starr hit him again. The Republican independent counsel and special prosecutor decided late in the day to announce his decision to press his subpoena for samples of Monica Lewinsky’s handwriting, fingerprints and her voice.”

— May 26, 1998.

What Could Have Been If Not for Lewinsky: “It began with so much promise. Bill Clinton became the first Democratic President since Franklin Roosevelt to be reelected to a second term. This was the term he’d make his mark on history and determine how he’d be remembered. CBS’s Wyatt Andrews looks tonight at the state of the Clinton legacy.”

— August 18, 1998.

Just about Sex: “On Capitol Hill, the Republican-dominated House now plans to vote Thursday to approve an official impeachment investigation into President Clinton, his sex life, and lies he told to hide it.”

— October 6, 1998.

Hillary Clinton For President: “I would not be astonished to see Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee in 2000....Hillary Clinton is the Person of the Year in that, you talk about a comeback kid -- she makes her husband look like Ned in kneepants in terms of comeback from where she was early in the Clinton administration. You know, you add it all up, and you can make the case that Hillary Clinton might, might -- mark the word -- be the strongest candidate for the Democrats.”

— Interview with CNN’s Larry King, December 3, 1998.

Conservatives Can’t Use Word “Conservative:” “The head of the Republican political lobbying group that calls itself, quote, ‘the Christian Coalition’ said today he’s leaving to start a political consulting business. Ralph Reed’s group took a beating on some of its hard-right agenda in the last election.”

— April 23, 1997.

Ending Affirmative Action like Spreading Syphilis: “Earlier tonight, we reported the President’s apology for medical experiments that allowed black Americans to die of syphilis. The President noted how badly this hurt public trust in government, especially among minorities. The same criticism is being made today on another score. As CBS News correspondent John Blackstone reports, it’s the fallout from California’s voter-approved ban on state affirmative action programs.”

— Introducing a story on drop in minority admissions, May 16, 1997.

No Religious Persecution in China: “An editor’s note: When your reporter was in China recently, a very high ranking Chinese government official was repeatedly asked questions about religious persecution. He told me, and I quote directly, ‘These stories are untrue.. We do, as you do, have some trouble with cults and we, like you, deal with them accordingly but that’s all.’ End quote.

— July 22, 1997.

Republican Ken Starr: “The Republican Whitewater offensive is taking an unprecedented turn: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton has been subpoenaed and now must testify before a Whitewater federal grand jury. That grand jury is led by a Republican prosecutor, Kenneth Starr.”

— January 22, 1996.

Republicans Radical and Extreme: “Some of your staff members, not by name, have been saying, ‘Yes, the President thinks Bob Dole is a nice person and has been a pretty good leader in some ways but,’ they say, ‘he’s been captured by extremists in the Republican Party, the radical part of the Republican Party, including Newt Gingrich. Is that what you think?”

— 60 Minutes interview with Bill Clinton, Aug. 18, 1996.

Democrats Uncaring If Back Conservative Policies: “You said this morning that the party’s message will focus on the needs and cares of the people. Now, how do you reconcile that with a President who has just signed a, quote, ‘welfare reform bill’ which by general agreement is going to put a lot of poor children on the street?”

— To Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, August 25, 1996.

“Hard Right” Clinton: “Bill Clinton’s been running pretty hard to the right, so far that some Democrats now call him a ‘Republicrat.’ Do you go that far?”

— To Jesse Jackson, August 26, 1996 CBS convention coverage.

CBS News Competitors Morally Inferior: “It is not just Congress that is taking a sharp turn to the right. The surge to the right on Capitol Hill is making waves all over the country on openly politically partisan, and sometimes racist, radio.”

— January 4, 1995.

GOP Threaten Human Survival: “There was no doubt Republicans in the House had enough votes tonight to pass another key item in their agenda to rip up or rewrite government programs going back to the Franklin Roosevelt era. It is a bill making it harder, much harder, to protect health, safety, and the environment. For example: the benefit of any new regulation would be required to outweigh the financial cost.”

— February 28, 1995.

Republicans Kill Kids and Poor: “The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor.”

— March 16, 1995

Prelude to a Clinton Kiss: “President Clinton will outline his version of a plan he says will balance the federal budget in ten years without what Mr. Clinton sees as a radical and extremist Republican plan to gut programs that help the old, the young, and the poor in order to bankroll tax giveaways to the rich. Republicans, of course, see it a different way.”

— Before CBS News coverage of President Clinton’s budget address, June 13, 1995

Carpet Bombing Health and Safety: “This is just for starters on a tough week ahead for President Clinton and his agenda. From another offensive wave on Whitewater to a sweeping rollback of federal regulations on health, safety, and the environment, it’s a political carpet-bombing attack, wall to wall, House to Senate.”

— July 17, 1995.

Criticizing Gays as Bad as Fighting Communism: “Gays and lesbians are beaten to death in the streets with increasing frequency — in part due to irrational fear of AIDS but also because hatemongers, from comedians to the worst of the Christian right, send the message that homosexuals have no value in our society....In the post-cold-war era, gays have been drafted to replace communists as the new menace to the American Way: We’re told gays corrupt youth and commandeer art and entertainment to win converts.”

— Writing in The Nation, April 11, 1994.

“Republican” Ken Starr: “There is growing controversy tonight, about whether the newly named independent counsel in the Whitewater case is independent or a Republican partisan allied with a get-Clinton movement. Among the questions about Kenneth Starr are these: the involvement of anti-Clinton activists in pushing for Starr’s appointment to replace Robert Fiske. Also, Starr’s public stand actively supporting a woman’s current lawsuit against the President. This is a potentially important and explosive story, correspondent Rita Braver has the latest.”

— August 8, 1994.

Poor Threatened by Republican Takeover of Congress: “Soup kitchens around the country are reporting demand for their services is up this Thanksgiving -- unfortunately, donations are down. And now with the coming shift of power and agendas in Washington, many charitable groups are worried about how they -- and the people they help -- can make it.”

— November 23, 1994.

Bill’s the Best: “[Clinton] pointed out the Andrew Jackson magnolia tree. He’s a very good historian. Harry, I think if you had been in the room, any viewer-listener who had been in that room, would have been impressed with the breadth of his knowledge. I mean he talked about the Oscars. He talked very knowingly about Clint Eastwood and his new movie Unforgiven, Jack Nicholson’s role in A Few Good Men, and then switched very quickly to a knowledgeable analysis of Arkansas’s chances against North Carolina in the big basketball game tomorrow night.”

— To CBS This Morning’s Harry Smith, after March 25, 1993 Clinton interview.

The Clintons are Terrific: “If we could be one-hundredth as great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House, we’d take it right now and walk away winners....Tell Mrs. Clinton we respect her and we’re pulling for her.”

— To President Clinton, via satellite, at a CBS affiliates meeting, referencing new co-anchor Connie Chung to the Evening News, May 27, 1993

Hillary Clinton, Genius: “I hear you talking and, as I have before on this subject, I don’t know of anybody, friend or foe, who isn’t impressed by your grasp of the details of this [health care] plan. I’m not surprised, because you have been working on it so long and listened to so many people.”

— Interview with Hillary Clinton, 48 Hours, September 22, 1993

Dan the Welfare Expert: “Take an election year, add a budget crunch, and one sure result is an assault on the welfare system, help for the poor. Still, most of the people who attack welfare have little or no contact with the people who depend on it.”

— February 5, 1992.

Greedy ‘80s: “And, Eye On America -- a town fighting back against greed, corporate raiders, and the hangover of the go-go ‘80s.”

— March 19, 1992.

Centrist Clinton-Gore Ticket, I: “Delegates approved the Clinton-Gore center-of-the-road Democratic Party platform, trying to move the party closer to voters around the malls in America’s suburbs.”

— First convention update during the All-Star Game, July 14, 1992.

Centrist Clinton-Gore Ticket, II: “Assembled delegates here approved a center-of-the-road Democratic Party platform to help the Clinton-Gore ticket go shopping for votes in the fall in America’s malls and suburbs.”

— Second convention update, July 14, 1992.

Centrist Clinton-Gore Ticket, III: “Earlier, the Democratic Party approved the Clinton-Gore middle-of-the-road platform calling for law and order, work for welfare recipients, and a strong U.S. military.”

— Third convention update, July 14, 1992.

Reagan Years Unfair: “Everyone knows the rich got richer in the 1980s. Now, a new study shows how dramatic the change was.”

— Reporting on a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a group founded by Dukakis and Clinton advisors, October 29, 1992.

Keeping Soldiers Safe: “Allied military units are on the move. Their positions, movements, and plans must be carefully safeguarded. We must assume that the enemy is confused about what is happening on the battlefield and it is absolutely essential that we not do anything inadvertently ourselves to clarify the picture for him.”

— Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in a press conference at the start of the Gulf War ground operation, February 23, 1991.

Versus:

“As part of our CBS News live coverage of the beginning of the ground war offensive, we’re talking to Bob McKeown, a CBS News reporter who’s one mile from the Kuwaiti border. Bob, any indication of how far up you the think the Allies are now?”

— Dan Rather, 21 minutes later.

Non-Liberal Blacks “Reactionaries”: “Black conservatives or reactionaries are getting a lot of attention since the Thomas nomination...It has been a common misconception that Americans who happen to be black also happen to be liberal or progressive. True, perhaps most are, but as Bruce Morton reports in tonight’s Eye On America, the terms black or African-American and conservative or reactionary are not mutually exclusive.”

— July 12, 1991.

Justice Souter, Right-Wing Woman-Hater: “Senator Simon, is there any doubt in your mind that [Souter’s] views pretty well parallel those of John Sununu’s, which means he’s anti-abortion or anti-women’s rights, whichever way you want to put it?”

— To Democratic Sen. Paul Simon, July 23, 1990.

Rather Classics

Soviet Citizens Liked Communism: “Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.”

— June 17, 1987.

Clinton Scandal vs. VP Bush Scandal: View a video comparison of how Dan Rather treated President Clinton in a March 31, 1999 interview in which Rather avoided the Chinese espionage and fundraising scandals (on right) and Rather’s infamous interview of Vice President Bush on January 25, 1988 interview on Iran-Contra scandal in which Rather told the president, “You’ve made us hypocrites in the face of the world.” Watch the videos below.

20 Years On the CBS Evening News: Dan’s Daffy “Ratherisms”

“We could be in for a long night with the Senate battle as tight as a Botox smile.”

“Polls closed one-half hour ago in Arkansas. We can tell you that race is crackling like a hickory fire.”

“A big win for the Republicans, and they’ll be breaking out the longnecks in Republican headquarters in Texas and elsewhere, not to mention the White House itself, although Lesley [Stahl] says they pop the caps only on Dr. Pepper ten, two and four there.”

— CBS’s election coverage, November 5, 2002.

“Now Florida, that race, that race, the heat from it is hot enough to peel house paint.”

“I can hear some people at home saying, ‘Whoa! If the electoral vote count is now what Dan Rather and CBS News says it is, 121 for Bush, 119 for Gore, it seems to me just a few minutes ago Bush had a long lead.’ His lead has evaporated and been melted faster than ice cream in a microwave, what’s happening here?”

“Now remember Florida is the state where Jeb Bush, the brother of George Bush is the Governor, and you can bet that Governor Bush will be madder than a rained on rooster that his brother the Governor wasn’t able to carry this state for him.”

“Bush has had a lead since the very start, but his lead is now shakier than cafeteria Jell-O.”

“Then in Tennessee, now Al Gore may be as cross as a snapping turtle about this Tennessee situation because it’s his home state.”

“Bush is sweeping through the South like a tornado through a trailer park.”

“Pennsylvania drops for Gore, 23 electoral votes, and for the first time tonight, mark it, if you’re in the kitchen, Mabel, come back in the front room, 145 for Gore, 130 for Bush, 270 needed win.”

“His [Gore’s] chances are slim right now, and if he doesn’t carry Florida, slim will have left town.”

“The presidential race still hotter than a Laredo parking lot.”

“I have to say, though, and I don’t mean to be flip about it, that I think you are more likely to see a hippopotamus coming running through this room than you are to see Governor Bush appoint Nader to the Cabinet.”

“Sip it, savor it, cup it, photostat it, underline it in red, put it in the album, hang it on the wall, George Bush is the next President of the United States.”

— During CBS News coverage of election night 2000.

“Ken Starr and his people have been working for three to four years, spent more than $30 million, they’ve used dozens if not a hundred or so FBI agents. They may have turned this up, whether you had the Paula Jones case or not. But again maybe not, but again that’s like if a frog had side pockets he’d probably wear a handgun. It didn’t happen that way.”

— On February 5, 1998 Late Show with David Letterman.

“Democrats and Republicans are nervous as pigs in a packing plant over these returns because the polls have closed and we don’t know the results....Now, if you’re in those states where the polls are open, let me encourage you to vote. And of course, if you’re in a state where the polls are closed, let me encourage you not to vote. It’s illegal.”

— November 3, 1998.

“Charles Schumer is one of the stunners of the night. This race was as hot and squalid as a New York elevator in August.”

“The call is just in for the South Carolina Senate race. This was one of the cardiac arrest time races. This thing was nasty enough to gag a buzzard. But it turns out that Fritz Hollings, the veteran Democratic Senator, has held on to win.”

— During CBS News’s election night 1998 coverage.

“I think you’re more likely to see the Pope ride through this room on a giraffe.”

— On the possibility of a CBS News cable channel, to Philadelphia Inquirer TV writer Gail Shister, February 18, 1997.

“In New Hampshire, closest Senate race in the country, this race between Dick Swett and Bob Smith is hot and tight as a too small bathing suit on a too long car ride back from the beach.”

— During CBS News 1996 election night coverage.

“Well, in Texas they have a saying: ‘That’s a good way for Momma to drive a Cadillac,’ which is a way of saying that if you play with one of these things, particularly if you are in a low-water area. I would say, Harry, this morning there must be lot of people who are in that let’s-have-another-cup-of-coffee-and-not-worry-about-it stage. And I agree with that. That’s the stage to be in.”

— On CBS This Morning co-host “Double T trouble. T is for Thelma, T is for Tennessee, and T is for big trouble tonight.”

“A lot of tight Senate races out there. Let’s hit those chips with another dash of salsa, Ed Bradley.”

— During CBS News 1994 election night coverage.

Rather Gettin’ Down:

Rather: “Some days I say ‘Why is he [Clinton] doing that?’ or ‘Gosh, can he do it a little better?’ But it may be time to, sort of as you say, chill. We know when it comes to politics and governing, whatever you think of this President, whether you voted for him or not, he can hang -- which is to say he can do it-”

Arsenio Hall: “See! See! Dan is deep, ain’t he? Dan in the Hood!....I thank you for being here. You’re a special guy. And I hope whatever you have is contagious.”

— Exchange on The Arsenio Hall Show, January 28, 1993.

“Mr. Clinton was about as relaxed as a pound of liver.”

— Referring to his earlier interview with Clinton, January 20, 1993 CBS This Morning.

“If an American inauguration can’t bring a lump to your throat and a tear to your eye, if you don’t feel as corny as Kansas in August, maybe you need a jump-start and some vitamins.”

— During inauguration coverage, January 20, 1993.

“It will be so exciting as to make the wax pop out of your ears.”

“There’s material here that will make their fingernails sweat.”

“Texas...another of the so-called big enchiladas, or if not an enchilada, at least a huge taco.”

“This woman has gotten a very bad rap, Hillary Clinton. It is true that she’s smart. She didn’t go to school just to eat her lunch.”

“While the Clinton-Gore campaign was as unstoppable as say, a Beethoven symphony...”

— During 1992 election night coverage.

“I’d like to leave you with the words of that popular, secular, patriotic hymn: ‘Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light.’”

— Approaching tears at 2am EST on election night 1992.

“Now, walking down the red-carpeted staircase, President Bush, President Gorbachev, with Gorbachev’s interpreter in between. You can just see at the top of your picture that huge chandelier, almost 4,000 pounds. It’s the older sister of all chandeliers.”

— Dan Rather before START treaty signing ceremony, July 31, 1991.

“Stay with CBS now for more news, including: Is there a pall over the mall as holiday shoppers think small?”

— December 2, 1991.

Gorbachev’s Great Eyes: “He has, as many great leaders have, impressive eyes...There’s a kind of laser-beam stare, a forced quality, you get from Gorbachev that does not come across as something peaceful within himself. It’s the look of a kind of human volcano, or he’d probably like to describe it as a human nuclear energy plant.”

— Quoted in the May 10, 1990 Seattle Times.

“I wouldn’t touch that line with a 12-foot pole, which as you know is a pole I reserve for those things that I certainly wouldn’t touch with an 11-foot pole.”

— Response to whether he had a favorite candidate for President, election night 1990.

“Let’s go down to Texas and let me show you actual votes in and tabulated. This was a race considered so nasty it would gag a buzzard....This race is so close that everybody’s having a 4,000-calorie attack down there.”

— CBS News election night coverage, November 6, 1990.

Denials in Bias

Dan Rather has denied having a liberal bias almost as long as he’s been a news anchor. Highlights:

“I’m all news, all the time. Full power, tall tower. I want to break in when news breaks out. That’s my agenda. Now, respectfully, when you start talking about a liberal agenda and all the, quote, ‘liberal bias’ in the media, I quite frankly, and I say this respectfully but candidly to you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

— To Denver KOA’s Mike Rosen, Nov. 28, 1995.

“I do believe in what’s become an archaic word for journalists, objectivity. You know my job is to be accurate, be fair, and in so far as it’s humanly possible, to keep my feelings out of every story...I do agree that one test of a reporter is how often he or she is able to keep their emotions out of what they are doing and keep their own biases and agendas out of it.” — On CNBC’s Tim Russert, Sep. 20, 1997.

“Well, my answer to that is basically a good Texas phrase, which is bullfeathers.... I think the fact that if someone survives for four or five years at or near the top in network television, you can just about bet they are pretty good at keeping independence in their reporting. What happens is a lot of people don’t want independence. They want the news reported the way they want it for their own special political agendas or ideological reasons.” — On CNN’s Larry King Live, Mar. 11, 1996.

“The test is not the names people call you or accusations by political activists inside or outside your own organization. The test is what goes up on the screen and what comes out of the speaker. I think the public understands that those people are trying to create such a perception because they’re trying to force you to report the news the way they want you to report it. I am not going to do it. I will put up billboard space on 42nd Street. I will wear a sandwich board. I will do whatever is necessary to say I am not going to be cowed by anybody’s special political agenda, inside, outside, upside, downside.”

— to CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg’s charge that the networks have a liberal bias, Mar. 6, 1996 New York Post.

CNN Crossfire Co-host Bill Press: “Why is it that you are the epitome of the left-wing liberal media in the mind of every conservative I’ve ever talked to? What did you do to get that reputation?”

Rather: “I remained an independent reporter who would not report the news the way they wanted it or -- from the left or the right. I’m a lifetime reporter. All I ever dreamed of was being a journalist, and the definition of journalist to me was the guy who’s an honest broker of information. ...I do subscribe to the idea of: ‘Play no favorites and pull no punches.’”

— Exchange on CNN’s Crossfire, Jun. 24, 1999.

“I think the tag, you know, somehow or another, ‘he’s a bomb-throwing Bolshevik from the left side’ that’s attached to me, is put there by people who, they subscribe to the idea either you report the news the way we want you to report it, or we’re gonna tag some, what we think negative sign on you. There are people in the world that way, that, you know, part of growing up is to recognize not everybody is going to love you, and believe me, I recognize that.”

— Part of Rather’s response to Geraldo Rivera’s question “What I can’t figure out is why you rub the right so wrong. What is it about you that generates such ferocious criticism from one side of the American political spectrum?” on CNBC’s Rivera Live, May 21, 2001.

Don Imus: “Bernard Goldberg, your former colleague, in The Wall Street Journal the other day said that you possess a liberal bias that you’re even unaware of. What did you think of that? Well, first of all, do you? And second of all, what do you think of his comment?”

Dan Rather: “Do I what?”

Imus: “Possess a liberal bias.”

Rather: “No, I don’t think so, but other people have to judge that and, you know, he’s entitled to his opinion, and that’s, you know, I’m in favor of strong defense, tight money, and clean water. I don’t know what that makes me. Whatever that makes me, that’s what I am. But people are going to take those shots. When you’re on television every night, people are going to take those shots.”

— Exchange on the July 19, 2001 Imus in the Morning radio program simulcast on MSNBC.

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NBC Anchor Boasted “We’ve Worked Hard to Drain the Bias” but Viewers Still Swimming in Liberalism (Media Research Center, 030910)

Marking Tom Brokaw’s Twenty Years of Tilt

On Labor Day, 1983, Tom Brokaw stepped away from co-anchor Roger Mudd and began 20 years as sole anchor of NBC Nightly News. One reason for his longevity, he claimed in 1996, is “we’ve worked very hard to drain the bias out of what we do.”

Not quite. While his advocacy is not as outrageous as either Dan Rather or Peter Jennings, Brokaw has celebrated the welfare state, lobbied for liberal campaign finance reform, praised an ex-Soviet dictator, and exhibited a partisan double standard on scandals.

On his 20th anniversary, we offer a replay of Brokaw’s greatest episodes of liberal advocacy, on Nightly News unless otherwise noted.

THE REAGAN DISASTER

• “I thought from the outset that his supply-side theory was just a disaster. I knew of no one who felt it was going to work.” (Mother Jones interview, April 1983 issue)

• “We wanted everything but the pain of paying for it....In a decade [the] deficit more than tripled. How? Ronald Reagan ran for President promising Americans more while asking for less: the Reagan Revolution.” (October 5, 1990)

• “Reagan, as commander-in-chief, was the military’s best friend. He gave the Pentagon almost everything it wanted. That spending, combined with a broad tax cut, contributed to a trillion-dollar deficit....Social programs? They suffered under Reagan. But he refused to see the cause and effect.” (Over video of homeless people on December 27, 1989 NBC News special The Eighties)

A “COURAGEOUS” AND “FUN” DICTATOR

• “I think Gorbachev is a great man in the 20th century because he forced his country to look at the hypocrisy and the fraudulence of communism and to begin slowly to make a turn away from it....He can still light up any room that he walks into. The eyes are flashy, you know, and the great command of the language and the feel that he has, the very physical presence of him. It’s still fun to be around him.” (Interview on PBS’s Charlie Rose, May 2, 1996)

Brokaw gushed over the former Soviet dictator: “It’s still fun to be around him.”

• “From the perspective of the West, the former President of the Soviet Union of course was a courageous, far-seeing prophet whose reforms set in motion the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship and the end of the Cold War....We know that you’ve devoted your life to peace and to changing your country and those of us who have gotten to know you count ourselves among the privileged.” (Opening and closing of MSNBC interview with Gorbachev, October 29, 1996)

THOSE SCARY REPUBLICANS

• “You’re opposed to abortion in any form. You also have opposed the E.R.A., and you’re opposed to increasing the minimum wage, which is important to a lot of women out there. Aren’t you going to have a hard time selling Dan Quayle to the women of this country?” (To Quayle, August 17, 1988 convention coverage)

• “A lot of people said, ‘Just too much red meat there [in the speech].’ You gave the impression that if you’re not a white, heterosexual, Christian, anti-abortion, anti-environment, you’re somehow not welcome in the Republican Party.” (To Pat Buchanan, August 18, 1992 convention coverage)

• “There are many people in the Republican Party who believe that the Republican National Convention in Houston, at which you were a prominent part, was simply too extreme, too strident in its positions, and they cite your speech and Pat Buchanan’s speech as well.” (To Pat Robertson on election night, November 4, 1992)

• “Is the Republican Party held hostage, in your judgment, Christie Whitman, by its views on abortion? So that people like you, who believe that there ought to be some choice, can never be considered for Vice President?” (To Whitman during MSNBC’s convention coverage, August 2, 2000)

• “Colin Powell, the most influential African-American in the Republican Party, will be talking to these delegates, reminding them that they have to think about minorities every day, not just every four years.” (Convention coverage July 31, 2000)

THE WELFARE STATE IS A “GODSEND”

• “When NBC Nightly News continues: in Washington, if they cut food stamps, who doesn’t eat?” (March 22, 1995)

• “Medicare, the health care program that has been a godsend to the elderly in this country, even with all its financial difficulties. Tonight, the President wants to dramatically expand its coverage to millions more.” (January 6, 1998)

EVEN BILL CLINTON WASN’T LIBERAL ENOUGH

• “I wanted to follow up just for a moment on welfare if I can. If in fact you sign the Republican bill that’s likely to come down from the Hill, all the projections show that that will push, at least short term, more than a million youngsters in this country below the poverty line. That’s a high risk for youngsters in this country who are already in peril.” (To Bill Clinton on MSNBC, July 15, 1996)

APPALLED BY REPUBLICAN SCANDALS...

• “And when the public phase of those hearings ended today with the testimony of Secretary Weinberger, we were left with an astonishing record of deceit, ignorance, naivete, good or bad intentions, failed policies, and discredited public servants, and this story is not yet complete.” (On Iran-Contra hearings, August 3, 1987)

...AND THOSE WHO INVESTIGATE DEMOCRATS

• “Still ahead tonight. Investigating the President. A growing backlash against independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Is he out of bounds or just tone deaf?” (February 16, 1998)

SEXUAL HARASSMENT: A GOP TERRORIST...

• “We begin tonight with U.S. Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon, a man who championed women’s rights on the floor of the Senate and sexually terrorized members of his own staff.” (September 7, 1995)

...BUT AN “ANCILLARY ISSUE” FOR CLINTON

• “Do you think the press has been too fascinated with other ancillary issues...like Whitewater and Paula Jones?” (To Tim Russert after a Clinton press conference, November 9, 1994)

ON “REFORM,” HE’S AS OBJECTIVE AS JOHN MCCAIN

• “Beyond the tedium of the day to day campaigning, there’s another much more alarming development this year — money. Huge amounts of money pouring into both parties, raising very serious questions about influence and conflict of interest.” (October 29, 1996)

• “For all the rhetoric and the outrage about what happened in the ‘96 campaign, a bill that would overhaul the system was all but killed off today in a partisan battle.” (October 7, 1997)

• “The Republicans were outraged by the fundraising practices of the President and the Democratic National Committee — but not so outraged that they felt the need for campaign finance reform.” (In a New York Times column, February 7, 1998)

POPE & HELMS VETOED A GREAT VP CANDIDATE

• “You put Tom Ridge out there for example, the governor of Pennsylvania, big and important state, a guy with a great record, pro-choice, immediately the Catholic Church and Jesse Helms said no way.” (To George W. Bush, July 24, 2000)

Brokaw suggested the Pope and Jesse Helms controlled the Republican Party

REPORTERS ARE NOT BIASED...

• “Now to your larger question about, ‘Are reporters biased?’ No, I really don’t think that they are. I think that most of us are registered, as I am, which is [to] decline to, or [register] as independents. I never have revealed who I’ve ever voted for. But I can tell, it crosses back and forth between party lines. And I think most people feel that way who are reporters.” (CNN’s Larry King Live, Mar. 6, 2000)

...UNLESS THEY WEAR THE AMERICAN FLAG

• Tom Brokaw: “I wear a flag in my heart, but I think if you wear a flag, it’s a suggestion somehow that you’re endorsing what the administration is doing at the time. And I don’t think journalists ought to be wearing flags.”

Phil Donahue: “And I say hear, hear, hear.” (On MSNBC’s Donahue, July 25, 2002)

Phil Donahue applauded Brokaw’s refusal to wear an American flag pin.

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20 Years of Bias: Network anchors are captains whose ships list left (Media Research Center, 030910)

Op-ed by L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Media Research Center, as printed in the September 10, 2003 edition of the Wall Street Journal

Both ABC’s Peter Jennings and NBC’s Tom Brokaw celebrated their 20th anniversaries as their networks’ top news anchors Friday, a milestone CBS’s Dan Rather passed 2½ years ago. Such longevity is extraordinary both in television and in politics, and these three wield considerable clout in both arenas.

As “managing editor” (Messrs. Brokaw and Rather) or “senior editor” (Mr. Jennings), these men rule their broadcasts. And while the Internet and 24-hour cable TV may keep a couple of million news junkies well supplied, the majority of Americans still rely on the information that makes the three anchors’ final cut. While 750,000 people are watching Fox News at any given time, 25 million watch the Big Three’s evening newscasts.

The network anchors are not equally biased, of course. If there were a Richter scale of liberal bias, Mr. Brokaw would rank about a 4 or a 5 and Mr. Rather a strong 8, while Mr. Jennings would be off the charts. But their consistently liberal approach has made network news an inhospitable environment for conservative ideas (never mind politicians) for the past several decades.

Remember when conservatives were trying to slow the growth of government in early ‘95 with the Contract With America? Dan Rather characterized that as a “legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor.” When George W. Bush was certified the winner in Florida, Mr. Rather repeatedly insisted the result was only as “Florida’s Republican Secretary of State . . . sees it and decrees it.”

These anchors love to advance liberal causes. ABC used to have a regular segment called “The American Agenda,” which spent a lot of time explaining how government bureaucrats could fix your life -- with things like socialized medicine -- if only they had the power. Introducing one such piece, Mr. Jennings said “the best child care system in the world . . . [i]s in Sweden. The Swedish system is run and paid for by the Swedish government, something many Americans would like to see the U.S. government do as well.”

The anchormen scorned Ronald Reagan’s priorities. “He gave the Pentagon almost everything it wanted,” Mr. Brokaw recalled during a 1989 NBC News special on the ‘80s. Then, as viewers saw pictures of homeless men in the streets, Mr. Brokaw condemned the conservative president: “Social programs? They suffered under Reagan. But he refused to see the cause and effect.” As the anchors tell the story, big-spenders are good and budget-cutters lack compassion. “If they cut food stamps, who doesn’t eat?” Mr. Brokaw wondered in 1995 of the Gingrich-led Congress.

These men have tilted our national debate for so long, it’s hard to contemplate a world without their bias. Imagine news anchors who matched every story reflecting a liberal premise with one framed around a conservative question: Are taxes too high? Are we spending enough on our national defense? Is the pro-abortion movement too intolerant? Is the environmental movement too radical?

Imagine if the anchors had been just as outraged by President Clinton’s ethical conduct as they were by President Nixon’s in the 1970s. But when Congress held hearings into Mr. Clinton’s 1996 fund-raising excesses, Mr. Jennings sniffed, “Is it a waste of time and money?” Three weeks after the Monica Lewinsky story broke in 1998, Mr. Brokaw would refer only to “the alleged White House scandal.”

And yet these anchors stubbornly, and foolishly, continue to deny their biases. “The idea that we would set out, consciously or unconsciously, to put some kind of an ideological framework over what we’re doing is nonsense,” Mr. Brokaw once told a C-SPAN audience.

In a 2001 interview, Mr. Jennings was a bit more candid about journalists’ willingness to be advocates. “If you see injustice and you can get people to do something about it, ahh, it’s just a glorious feeling,” he told producers from the Museum of Television and Radio. “There’s nothing a reporter likes more than to have an effect on policy.” But ask him if he’s biased, and you get the usual boilerplate: “ABC, CBS, NBC are mainstream media,” he told CNN’s Larry King. “We are largely in the center without particular axes to grind, without ideologies which are represented in our daily coverage, at least not on purpose.”

During the past 20 years, these three anchors have used their privileged positions to pull the public, and our politics, to the left. But in so doing, they’ve created a stampede: Reportedly half their audiences have fled since 1994. Now that Messrs. Brokaw and Jennings have joined Mr. Rather in the 20th-anniversary club, they’d be well-advised to ponder why.

Mr. Bozell is president of the Media Research Center.

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CBS Won’t Air ‘Reagans’ Miniseries (Foxnews, 031104)

NEW YORK — CBS announced Tuesday that it won’t run the controversial miniseries “The Reagans” later this month.

The network said it was licensing the completed film to Showtime, a pay-cable network owned by CBS parent Viacom.

“Although the miniseries features impressive production values and acting performances, and although the producers have sources to verify each scene in the script, we believe it does not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans for CBS and its audience,” the network said in a statement.

A broadcast network has different standards than a pay cable network, CBS said.

CBS insisted it was not bowing to pressure about portions of the script, but that the decision was made after seeing the finished film.

The flap over the $9 million miniseries, which was set to air on Nov. 16 and 18, began late last month with a story published in The New York Times revealing portions of the script that were unflattering to President Ronald Reagan and former first lady, Nancy.

That led to a firestorm by Republican-based political groups and Reagan supporters, some of whom threatened to boycott CBS and the products advertised during the program.

The Media Research Center asked major advertisers to review the script and consider not buying commercial time on the show.

In an unusual move, CBS officials said last week that portions of the movie were unfair and the film was being re-edited.

It is rare for a network to substantially rework a completed film just weeks before it is scheduled to be shown.

As soon as CBS made the decision to cut portions of the film, director Robert Allan Ackerman opted out of the editing process and lead actors James Brolin and Judy Davis — who were to play President and Mrs. Reagan — refused to do any publicity interviews for the miniseries, according to a report in Newsweek magazine.

That left the editing process in the hands of CBS executives, Newsweek reported.

Though no one who protested the miniseries has seen it, it was condemned by the former president’s friends and supporters as unfair and inaccurate.

Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, told CBS President Leslie Moonves in a letter that historians should review the miniseries for historical accuracy, or the network should run a disclaimer that the program is fiction.

Gillespie said the miniseries might have omissions, distortions and exaggerations that could cause Americans to “come away with a misunderstanding of the Reagans and the Reagan administration.”

Some questioned airing any dramatization of the 92-year-old’s life while he struggles with Alzheimer’s disease.

Gillespie said he hasn’t seen the full miniseries but was uneasy because of news reports and brief clips that have been made public.

He said he resents particularly how the miniseries reportedly depicted the Reagans’ unsympathetic attitude toward AIDS victims and how it was said to portray Nancy Reagan.

CBS lawyers had reviewed the miniseries and given it the go-ahead, but Moonves ordered lawyers to give it another look and for CBS to cut out certain portions.

Among the parts that were snipped, according to Newsweek, were the inflammatory line “They that live in sin shall die in sin,” which is Reagan’s reply to Nancy when she asks him to do more for AIDS victims in the miniseries.

Those involved with the project admitted having no proof that Reagan ever made such a statement.

Newsweek reported that footage of Ronald Reagan Jr. doing ballet was also cut.

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15 4 the Gipper: Fighting for The Reagans (NRO, 031104)

On the evening of Monday, October 20, I was doing what many news junkies do when we sit at our computers — I was reading the Drudge Report. It was breaking word of a New York Times piece scheduled for the following day that exposed some of the lies in the upcoming CBS smear of the Reagans. I was furious. Like millions of Americans, I deeply admire the Reagans. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Enough said.

But while I had spent a decade in the political/government world — my claim to fame is a short time working at Ari Fleischer’s knee, learning the craft — for the past few years I’ve been an “at home” dad who just does a bit of government-affairs consulting during nappy time. What could I do other than seethe?

So I spent $8.95 buying a web address called www.boycottCBS.com. That might have been the end of it, but I found myself as the weekend arrived still angry about the lies contained in the Reagan series. So using a web tool that permits rudimentary website building by dummies, I punched out an essay calling for a boycott of the CBS series and its advertisers. I then wrote a press release — conjuring my best Ari mojo — and sent it to a few media outlets Monday morning. The tagline: “Don’t let the Hollywood Left smear the Reagans and the Reagan Legacy.”

Monday was fun. A couple hundred people signed up, especially after I appeared on a radio show hosted by Geoff Metcalf. It was a bit bothersome — the e-mails kept coming as I tried to do work, and I was literally adding the e-mail addresses manually to an Excel spreadsheet. One of the e-mails late Monday night happened to be from someone who had a “signature line” that mentioned her work with computer databases. At 2 A.M. Tuesday morning, I sent this complete stranger, Stacey Feldman, a desperate e-mail, requesting her help. The P.S. will give you a taste for my state of mind: “P.S. 16 MORE HAVE SIGNED UP SINCE I STARTED THIS EMAIL — -THIS MOVEMENT IS DOOMED WITHOUT YOUR HELP!!!!”

At 1 A.M. Tuesday morning, there was an Internet article up about the boycott site. My 15 minutes of fame had begun.

I woke up Tuesday with several hundred e-mails in my inbox. Someone on Fox had mentioned the site and so the e-mails were rolling in 6, 8, 10 each minute. Radio shows were lining up, too. I was doing live radio interviews with my young son in the next room, capable of making loud noises at any moment.

I commandeered his computer and turned that into a repository for boycott e-mails. By the time Stacey had a database system up and running later that day, my computer had several thousand pro-boycott e-mails on it and my son’s computer had more than 15,000.

People love the Reagans.

Wednesday brought even greater chaos. I did Bill O’Reilly’s radio show and then his Fox News Channel TV show that night. Two hours before show time, I realized I had no clean dress shirts. (I’m an at home dad, after all.) So on the #1-rated cable-news program in America, I wore a shirt that had been sitting in a pile for the dry cleaner.

Shortly after the O’Reilly segment began, our servers crashed. They were fixed an hour later, and the next morning, Wednesday, I was back at the studio to tape Fox & Friends (wearing the same shirt). Shortly after that segment ended, hits to the site peaked at 100 per minute before the site crashed again. This time, it was serious. The site would not go live again for more than 48 hours — tens of thousands of visitors would find only an error message in the interim — but when it did, it was on the “ReaganServer.”

The ReaganServer is the brains of Thomas Marshall, another guy I have never met. Thomas left me a voicemail after the second crash offering to host my site with his company at no charge. I was skeptical, paranoid that I am, but when he said he had named his son Reagan, I knew I had my man. The site is now invincible.

You can burn a lot of hours reading 75,000 e-mails. So many people revere Ronald Reagan, and so many want to protect Nancy Reagan like they would protect their own mother — it’s an emotional experience to read their messages. Of course, you get a few hate e-mails, too. A few liberals have told me they wish me and my family would die. (For them, I guess, it’s Saddam’s rape rooms: O.K. A guy who opposes a TV show: Evil.) But my favorite hate e-mails are from the Lefties who have mocked me for being an at home dad.

CBS is now backpedaling. With the show just two weeks away, the most-egregious lies are evidently being edited out and the network is reportedly handing the movie over to its cable relative, Showtime (guaranteeing a much smaller audience).

Last weekend I heard that Merv Griffin told a national TV audience on Scarborough Country that Nancy Reagan is gratified by the “boycott” effort. I never got to thank Ronald Reagan for all he did for our country and the world, but it’s nice to know that Nancy Reagan now knows how much we appreciate them.

Now excuse me while I return to potty training and playgrounds. My 15 minutes are about up.

— Michael Paranzino is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

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The Death of Spin: Everywhere you look this fall the left’s spinning is coming undone (Weekly Standard, 031106)

THE VERY BEST ASPECT of the decision by CBS to cancel its network showing of the Reagan miniseries was the first paragraph of CBS’s statement explaining its decision:

CBS will not broadcast “The Reagans” on November 16 and 18. This decision is based solely on our reaction to the final film, not the controversy that erupted around a draft of the script.

Sure. And New Coke really did taste great. And Michael Dukakis is glad he rode in that tank. You can hear Jon Lovitz in the background going, “Yeah, yeah. That’s the ticket. Nothing at all to do with the controversy.”

The New York Times dutifully reported Barbra Streisand’s angst--”today marks a sad day for artistic freedom”--and managed to find the nearly invisible Bill Maher, who intoned, “It looks so bad.” The Times then solemnly editorialized that “CBS was wrong to yield to conservative pressure and yank it.”

Everyone on the left seems to know that CBS crumbled under pressure, but CBS boldly asserts that it didn’t. This stubborn refusal to cop to the facts is more significant than the movie itself. A network that just trotted out Uncle Walter to help celebrate its 75th birthday should be more circumspect in its lying.

There is a pervasive dishonesty running throughout elite media. CNN admitted its cover-up for Saddam earlier this year. The Los Angeles Times is still reeling from the fallout from its recall bias which it swears didn’t exist. Maureen Dowd got caught slicing quotes to fit her needs, and now CBS is standing by its story on why it is not standing by its movie.

Truth is taking a beating on the left this fall. It turns out the entire “get real” Democratic debate on Tuesday night--with its turtle-necked general, its open-collared Senators, and its shirt-sleeved rolled, feisty stars-and-bars Vermonter--was contrived. CNN selected the audience, screened the questions, and even decided to which candidates those questions would be directed. “Rock the Vote” was as authentic as Velveeta. Al Sharpton dominated the debate. Al Sharpton!

None of this trifling with the truth is playing well because America is at war, and war demands seriousness. The elites continue to rage about talk radio and the blogosphere, but it doesn’t look like anyone is buying their spin. Voters in Kentucky and Mississippi continued Terry McAuliffe’s streak and the president keeps moving forward in a serious purposeful fashion.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard. His new book, In, But Not Of, has just been published by Thomas Nelson.

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New Hoover Study Finds Labeling Disparity by NY Times, Washington Post (Media Research Council, 031113)

A study by two scholars at the Hoover Institution has proven that, during the 1990s, the New York Times and Washington Post labeled conservative Senators two to four times more frequently than liberal Senators, though both went untagged most of the time.

In a Wednesday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Hoover Senior Fellow David Brady, who is also a professor of political science at Stanford University, and economics student Jonathan Ma, outlined their findings after tracking labeling for ten liberal and ten conservative Senators from 1990 to 2002. In addition to the numerical disparity in the labeling rate -- which found liberals tagged between 2 and 5 percent of the time compared to a labeling rate for conservatives of 6 to 12 percent of the time -- the two central Californians discovered that “Times reporters often inject comments that present liberals in a more favorable light than conservatives.”

The duo also relayed: “We have detected a pattern of editorialized commentary throughout the decade. Liberal senators were granted near-immunity from any disparaging remarks regarding their ideological position.”

An excerpt of their November 12 op-ed, “Spot the Differences,” in the Wall Street Journal:

....We examined every Times and Post article that contained references to a senator. Specifically, we set out to reveal the treatment of the 10 most liberal and 10 most conservative senators from each congressional session....

Using a reliable news database, we deployed a constant search term to uncover when news writers labeled senators conservative or liberal. For five successive congressional sessions during this time period, we documented when Times and Post reporters directly labeled Republican loyalists “conservatives” and Democratic loyalists “liberals” in their news stories. (We excluded editorials.)

The first finding of our study is consistent with the results found for media stories on institutions such as corporations, Congress or universities, namely, that most of the time the story is straightforward -- as in “senators X, Y, and Z visited the European Union Parliament.” However, when there were policy issues at stake we found that conservative senators earn “conservative” labels from Times reporters more often than liberal senators receive “liberal” labels.

For instance, during the 102nd Congress, the Times labeled liberal senators as “liberal” in 3.87% of the stories in which they were mentioned. In contrast, the 10 most conservative senators were identified as “conservative” in 9.03% of the stories in which they were mentioned, nearly three times the rate for liberal senators. Over the course of six congressional sessions, the labeling of conservative senators in the Washington Post and New York Times occurred at a rate of two, three, four and even five times as often as that of liberal senators (see chart nearby). It appears clear that the news media assumes that conservative ideology needs to be identified more often than liberal ideology does.

The disparity in reporting was not limited to numbers. Times reporters often inject comments that present liberals in a more favorable light than conservatives. For instance, during the 102nd Congress, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa was described in Times stories as “a kindred liberal Democrat from Iowa,” a “respected Midwestern liberal,” and “a good old-fashioned liberal.” Fellow Democrat Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts received neutral, if not benign, identification: “a liberal spokesman,” and “the party’s old-school liberal.” In contrast, Times reporters presented conservative senators as belligerent and extreme. During the 102nd Congress, Sen. Jesse Helms was labeled as “the most unyielding conservative,” “the unyielding conservative Republican,” “the contentious conservative,” and “the Republican arch-conservative.” During this time period, Times reporters made a point to specifically identify Sen. Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming and Sen. Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire as “very conservative,” and Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma as “one of the most conservative elected officials in America.”

We have detected a pattern of editorialized commentary throughout the decade. Liberal senators were granted near-immunity from any disparaging remarks regarding their ideological position: Sen. Harkin is “a liberal intellectual”; Sen. Barbara Boxer of California is “a reliably outspoken liberal”; Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois is “a respected Midwestern liberal”; Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York is “difficult to categorize politically”; Sen. Kennedy is “a liberal icon” and “liberal abortion rights stalwart”; and Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey is a man whose “politics are liberal to moderate.”

While references to liberal senators in the Times evoke a brave defense of the liberal platform (key words: icon and stalwart), the newspaper portrays conservatives as cantankerous lawmakers seeking to push their agenda down America’s throat. Descriptions of conservative senators include “unyielding,” “hard-line” and “firebrand.” A taste of Times quotes on conservatives during the period of 1990-2000: Sen. Nickles is “a fierce conservative” and “a rock-ribbed conservative”; Sen. Helms is “perhaps the most tenacious and quarrelsome conservative in the Senate, and with his “right-wing isolationist ideology” he is the “best-known mischief maker.” Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona is “a Republican hard-liner”; Sen. Robert C. Smith is “a granite-hard Republican conservative”; Sen. Gramm takes “aggressively conservative stands” and has “touched on many red-meat conservative topics”....and Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho is “an arch-conservative.”

This labeling pattern was not limited to the Times. Liberal and conservative senators also received different treatment from the Washington Post. Distinctly liberal senators were described as bipartisan lawmakers and iconic leaders of a noble cause. In the 107th Congress, Sen. Paul Sarbanes of Maryland was described as “one of the more liberal senators but [with] a record of working with Republicans.” Sen. Harkin was bathed in bipartisan light: “a prairie populist with a generally liberal record, although he’s made a few detours to more conservative positions demanded by his Iowa constituents.” Of Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, the Post said: “Though a liberal at heart, she is more pragmatic than ideological.” Other liberals were lionized or cast in soft focus: “Sen. Kennedy is a hero to liberals and a major irritant to conservatives, plus an old-style liberal appeal to conscience”...

In contrast, the Post portrayed conservative senators unflatteringly. Republican loyalists were often labeled as hostile and out of the mainstream....Republicans were characterized as antagonists: Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma is “a hard-line GOP conservative”; Sen. Kyl is “a combative conservative”; Sen. Helms is “a cantankerous, deeply conservative chairman,” “a Clinton-bashing conservative,” “the crusty senator from North Carolina,” “the longtime keeper of the conservative flame,” and “a conservative curmudgeon.”...

END of Excerpt

For the piece in full, with a table showing the labeling percentages, go to: online.wsj.com

The findings of Brady and Ma match an MRC study last year which documented how the broadcast networks use the conservative label more often than they apply a liberal one. “Burying the Liberal Label on Network News,” read the headline over the June, 2002 study conducted by the MRC’s Rich Noyes. The subhead summarized the finding: “On Evening News Broadcasts, Conservative Tag Used Four Times More than Liberal Label.”

Major findings of the Media Reality Check study of the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over five years, from 1997 through 2001:

-- On ABC, conservatives received 79 percent of the liberal or conservative labels; on NBC, 80 percent. On the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, 82 percent of the 353 ideological labels assigned by CBS’s reporters were given to conservatives.

-- Only eight House Members were identified as liberals, compared with 34 who were called conservatives.

-- Only one reporter, NBC’s Lisa Myers, used “liberal” to describe Democratic candidate Bill Bradley (Sept. 25, 1999), and no network reporter labeled Vice President Al Gore as liberal during the entire 1999-2000 election cycle. In contrast, then-Governor George W. Bush was called a conservative 19 times.

-- The table with the key findings of the study:

Labels on Broadcast Network News

	“Liberal”	“Conservative”
ABC	96 labels (21%)	365 labels (79%)
CBS	64 labels (18%)	289 labels (82%)
NBC	87 labels (20%)	338 labels (80%)
Total:	247 (20%)	992 (80%)

For the Media Reality Check study with the full rundown of all the findings and several illustrative examples: www.mrc.org

==============================

Arnot Sees Iraqis Angry at TV Coverage, Who “Love” Bush (Media Research Center, 031114)

U.S. TV network news about Iraq as distorted as al-Jazeera? Checking in from Iraq on Wednesday’s Hardball with Chris Matthews as part of that show’s look this week at “Iraq: The Real Story,” Bob Arnot highlighted a Muslim ayatollah in Iraq who “is furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi station, have mis-portrayed the great success that is Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.”

Arnot, MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens noticed, documented how “Iraqis themselves are angrier than the American administration about the barrage of negative stories coming out of Iraq” on Arab television.

The night before, on Tuesday’s Hardball, Arnot contrasted the negative TV news image of widespread destruction and disgust for Americans with the reality he sees of Iraqis who “love the Americans and their President for cleaning up their streets, providing clean water, opening the schools.” Arnot explained:

“The conventional picture you see out here in Iraq is of angry Iraqis jeering at Americans. But we went to a town right in the heart of the Sunni Triangle which easily could have gone just as bad where they love Americans. Helicopters shot from the sky, military vehicles destroyed by roadside bombs, midnight raids on suspected terrorists. For many Americans watching from home, this is the American military’s fate in Iraq. But there is another reality.”

(On Monday’s Hardball, the November 12 CyberAlert recounted, Arnot contradicted the image of chaos in Iraq hyped by the media. Launching Hardball’s week-long series, “Iraq: The Real Story,” Arnot recounted the challenges faced by troops in hostile areas, but countered the negative image of the Iraqi situation he knows Americans get from TV news. Arnot argued: “The fact is in 85 percent of the country, it’s calm, it’s stable, it’s moving forward.” Touring a shopping area, Arnot relayed how, “from what you see on TV from Baghdad you’d think that, with the mortars and rockets, that this was a city under siege.” In fact, he contended, “nothing could be further from the truth in many neighborhoods.” www.mediaresearch.org )

On the November 12 Hardball, Arnot provided a glimpse into how Iraqis view the anti-U.S. bias of Arab TV news:

“This is one of the most beautiful mosques anywhere in the world. It’s the main mosque in the holy city of Khadamiya, third most religious city in Iraq. We’ve been invited here by the ayatollah. Why? He is furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi station, have misportrayed the great success that is Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The people of Khadamiya tell us that the picture painted by Al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite stations is a bleak one of daily death and destruction.

“Khadamiya’s leaders are so eager to show Iraq’s real story that the ayatollah himself sends his top lieutenant with us, Haji Ali [sp]. He acts as our guide, showing us a city of thriving outdoor markets, mosques and schools. In Khadamiya’s main shopping district, business is booming, from sidewalk vendors and vegetable stands, to gold merchants. On the streets, the U.S. Army patrols side by side with Iraqi soldiers, dismounted and at ease. At Khadamiya’s central mosque, pilgrims come from all over Iraq, Iran, even Afghanistan, eager to enjoy the religious freedom they were denied for decades. Khadamiya’s schools are in session, filled with happy children.

“15-year-old Daham [sp] says TV news reports he watches don’t tell the truth.”

Daham: “A lot happens good in Iraq when Saddam gone.”

Arnot: “So a lot happens good in Iraq.”

Daham: “The smile come back in Iraqi kids.”

Arnot: “After school, we visit a new radio and TV station run by Shia, an unheard-of freedom under the old regime. At the station, everyone we talked to agrees the Arab media is not telling the truth about what’s happening here. And Al-Jazeera tops the list. What do you think of Al-Jazeera?”

[Unidentified Iraqi man starts speaking in Arabic]

Arnot: “In English. In English.”

Unidentified man: “I hate them!”

Arnot: “Iraq’s new minister of industry and minerals had this theory about Al-Jazeera.”

Minister: “Well, I don’t know. Probably, they have something against the Americans.”

Arnot concluded: “As we’ve seen, Iraqis themselves are angrier than the American administration about the barrage of negative stories coming out of Iraq, so angry that the ayatollah himself broke the rules and allowed to us come into this, one of the holiest sites in all of Shia Islam, right during the height of Ramadan. Chris, back to you.”

The night before, on the November 11 Hardball, Arnot passed along what he saw in Tachi and Horia in the Sunni triangle where he found improvements made my Americans and an appreciation for it by the local Iraqis:

“Children used to drink filthy water from this ditch. Many sick, some dying of dysentery. Now a new pipeline, built by the Americans, brings the village clean water. But it’s not all waving children and happy smiles. Colonel Slate lives in one of the most dangerous parts of Iraq. Nearly every night he’s attacked, his base hit by mortars. Criminals, Iraqi themselves will soon be tracking down. Better security, clean water, education, more jobs part of a formula Colonel Slate hopes will win the toughest fight of his life.”

In a second segment, Arnot found Iraqis who “love” Americans: “Chris, you know, the conventional picture you see out here in Iraq is of angry Iraqis jeering at Americans. But we went to a town right in the heart of the Sunni Triangle which easily could have gone just as bad where they love Americans. Helicopters shot from the sky, military vehicles destroyed by roadside bombs, midnight raids on suspected terrorists. For many Americans watching from home, this is the American military’s fate in Iraq. But there is another reality.”

“American G.I.s swarmed by friendly children, who want to speak English and love the Americans and their President for cleaning up their streets, providing clean water, opening the schools. They meet with cooperative village leaders, keeping the banks up and running, and get regular leads on who the bad guys are.

“Meet Captain Gabe Barton, 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, on patrol in Horia [sp], a village just outside Baghdad. His day begins at the local school, where his soldiers are protecting schoolchildren threatened by terrorists, side by side with enthusiastic Iraqi soldiers of the new civil defense corps. At the police station, heavily defended against suicide bombers, he confers with a cordial chief of police, a police force patrolling Horia by themselves, using the U.S. military only as a backup. Next the bank, which his men help Iraqis keep safe enough, that locals deposit their money willingly and where there’s never been a run on the bank.”

Arnot, over vide of Capt. Gabe Barton having discussion with an Iraqi soldier: “That cooperation between American soldiers and Iraqi police has kept Horia’s economy up and running.”

Barton: “People need to have confidence that, if they deposit their money here, they’re gonna be able to come back and get it out.”

Arnot: “Back on the streets, these Iraqi army officers are standing post for the first time, a development welcomed by Gabe.”

Capt. Barton: “It shows the Iraqi people that we are not here for ourselves. We are not here for other reasons, we are here to help them create a better place to live.”

Arnot acknowledged not all is perfect: “Horia is a spectacular success, but there are also bad towns, Abu Ghraib among the worst, called, ‘Little Mogadishu,’ by G.I.s. Here, 3rd Brigade conducted the largest military operation since the war, with over a dozen Kiowa gunships, M1-A1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, airborne and infantry companies side by side. Hours later, they conduct this nighttime raid in search of a man financing attacks on coalition soldiers. This is more a money guy, is it?”

Barton: “He is involved in the financing and support of the cell that he operates, yes.”

Arnot: “So this is who you might call the head of the snake?”

Barton: “Yes.”

Arnot: “The combined operations yield a treasure trove of weapons and cash used to finance terrorism. That combination of targeted strikes and community development has turned over 85 percent of this country into an under-reported success. Money is what allows these commanders to basically win hearts and minds. Now, the key source of that, Chris, was something called the Commanders Emergency Relief Fund. Those funds have virtually dried up, leaving commanders without the most important weapon they have in terms of winning hearts and minds and winning this war here in Iraq, Chris.”

==============================

Networks Stress Anti-Bush Protests in Britain Over Pro-Bush Poll (Media Research Center, 031120)

Silencing the silent majority in Britain. A poll published in the left-wing Guardian newspaper in London on Tuesday, the eve of President Bush’s arrival in Britain for a three-day visit, discovered that 62 percent believe “that the U.S. is ‘generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world’” as “only 15 percent of British voters agree with the idea that America is the ‘evil empire’ in the world.” In addition, “more people -- 43 percent -- say they welcome George Bush’s arrival in Britain than the 36 percent who say they would prefer he did not come.”

A sarcastic Aaron Brown on CNN’s Newsnight Tuesday evening, after noting how a Guardian headline read “Majority Backs Bush Visit,” mused: “A cynic might say yes, all the better to protest.” John King ignored the Guardian numbers but made time for how “a Daily Mirror poll found only 27 percent of Britons believe the partnership is good for their country.”

Like Brown, the other networks on Tuesday night stressed protest and anger at Bush in Britain over the more cordial poll numbers.

ABC’s Peter Jennings asserted that “a very large segment of the British public is opposed to Mr. Bush for one reason or another.” On the CBS Evening News, John Roberts highlighted a Member of Parliament who rued how the British had to be “subject to the dumb and dumber show across London when the situation in Iraq is seemingly getting worse by the day.” Roberts only vaguely alluded to the poll numbers: “But not all Britons are against his visit. In fact, there is strong support for it and an overwhelming sense here that America is a force for good.”

“President Bush is the target of massive protests,” announced NBC’s Tom Brokaw before Dawna Friesen in London echoed how “anti-Bush and anti-war feelings run deep among many here. Only after focusing on protesters did Friesen acknowledge the poll, though again without citing any numbers or source: “But tonight, as the President sleeps in the place, he and his officials are taking heart from a new poll that shows more people welcome his visit than prefer he’d stayed home.”

Pro-Americanism, as might be expected, is strongest among Tory voters with 71% saying the US is a force for good. But it is nearly matched by the 66% of Labour voters who say the US is a force for good. Anti-Americanism is strongest among Liberal Democrat voters but is still only shared by 24% of them and the majority see the US as the “good guys”...

==============================

NBC Sees “Extreme” & “Hardline” Gay Marriage View Only on Right (Media Research Center, 031121)

By nearly two-to-one, 59 percent to 32 percent, Americans oppose gay marriage, with the opposition crossing racial and geographic boundaries, but on Wednesday night NBC’s Jim Avila portrayed Republicans and conservatives as the ones who could turn off voters on the issue. He saw the “extreme” and “hardline” position on as the right against gay marriage, not on the left for it. “Swing voters,” Avila warned, “are often turned off by extreme rhetoric. Florida’s David and Laura Mead are independents who normally lean right, but reject single-issue, hardline rhetoric.” [Kwing Hung: this is the argument used by liberals.]

Avila, who avoided the term “liberal” but twice tagged “conservatives,” cautioned that “this year’s trap for the Bush campaign, say political consultants, could be pushing too hard. The constitutional amendment against gay marriage, legislation the President has avoided, but House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is ready to push.”

While a just-released poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center for The People and The Press and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, did find little support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, Avila didn’t cite that finding as he relayed how Pew determined “Republican voters overwhelmingly against gay marriage -- nearly 80 percent oppose -- while Democrats are split down the middle: 48 percent opposed, 46 percent favor.”

In a story on Tuesday night, Avila had noted the 59 to 32 percent overall opposition to gay marriage. But on both nights, Avila failed to note a finding which undermined his premise as far more of those opposed than for it are passionate in their position. Pew reported: “Strong opposition to the idea of gay marriage is the plurality position. Among those who oppose the idea, nearly six-in-ten say they feel strongly about it (35 percent of the total population express this view.) Among those who favor gay marriage, fewer than three-in-ten say they strongly support the proposal (9 percent of the total.)”

While opposition is highest in those living in rural areas (against by 69 to 22 percent), the majority of those in suburbs (54 to 38 percent against) and urban area (52 to 36 percent against) also oppose gay marriage. And “there is little racial divide over gay marriage. Both whites and blacks oppose gay marriage by roughly two-to-one -- most Hispanics also oppose the idea, but by a smaller margin (51 percent to 36 percent).”

Pew also discovered that “granting some legal rights to gay couples is somewhat more acceptable than gay marriage, though most Americans (51 percent) oppose that idea.”

For Pew’s findings in their October poll: people-press.org

From Miami, Avila opened his November 19 NBC Nightly News story by blaming conservatives for stirring up the issue, not liberal activists who pushed a court case:

“Gay marriage, America’s new cultural divide, fueling backlash from conservative groups like Focus on the Family, already fundraising to stop the quote, ‘devastating and potentially fatal blow to the traditional family.’ Concerned Women for America, e-mailing talking points.”

Avila: “New poll numbers show Republican voters overwhelmingly against gay marriage -- nearly 80 percent oppose -- while Democrats are split down the middle: 48 percent opposed, 46 percent favor.

Avila concluded, over video of what appeared to be gays and lesbians cheering inside a church: “The cultural issue of the year -- divisive, passionate and filled with pitfalls for both political parties.”

But Avila expended a lot more energy on the pitfalls for conservatives and Republicans.

CNN’s Cooper Contends Mass. Justices Not “Radically Leftist”

Cooper’s contention came during a November 18 interview segment on Anderson Cooper 360 with Court TV’s Lisa Bloom, a supporter of that court’s ruling on same sex marriage, and talk show host and CNN contributor Michael Smerconish, an opponent of the ruling.

Smerconish dismissed Cooper’s analysis: “Well, Anderson, it is Massachusetts. I mean, we’re talking about the only state in the country to go for McGovern. We’re talking about the place that returns Ted Kennedy to the United States Senate every six years. I don’t put anything past, you know, the folks of Massachusetts. I don’t think this would have happened in any other state in the United States. And we’re coming close, but it’s still not.”

==============================

MSNBC’s Arnot Balances Dismal Iraq News (Media Research Center, 031114)

The major problem during Vietnam, you’ll hear journalists say, is that public debate about the war was skewed by the Johnson administration’s erroneous happy talk. When reporters like CBS anchor Walter Cronkite began giving sour reports about the state of the war effort, the public’s support inevitably evaporated.

This time, the coverage suggests that reporters are bending over backwards to give the public a pessimistic portrait of the current U.S. mission in Iraq. Less than a week after the war started, on CBS’s 48 Hours, Lesley Stahl raised the specter of the only war America lost: “You fought in Vietnam,” she reminded Navy Secretary James Webb back on March 25. “Any feelings of deja vu?” Eight months later, CBS News is still pushing the public to see Iraq as another Vietnam. (See box.)

As in any war, there has been a lot of terrible, painful news coming out of Iraq this year. But MSNBC’s Hardball last week featured five days of in-depth reporting from Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Bob Arnot that went beyond the knee-jerk negativity of everyday network news:

• November 10: Arnot took his cameras to a Baghdad shopping district which bore no resemblance to a war zone: “Look at this,” he instructed host Chris Matthews as he stood in the center of a wide boulevard. “They’ve even painted the flower and tree boxes by the side of the street.” Arnot began exploring the stores: “Look at the quality of the shops. Now, gold you can get here for a very reasonable price. This is 21-karat gold. And they have beautiful necklaces, bracelets, rings here, high quality. Security is good enough that they can leave this window open.”

• November 11: Arnot visited a town in the Sunni triangle, the region which has been most dangerous for American forces, and showed how the Army works with local leaders to enact improvements: “Colonel [Nate] Slate and his men have refurbished a water pump station, irrigation ditches and schools....Children used to drink filthy water from this ditch, many sick, some dying of dysentery. Now a new pipeline built by the Americans brings the village clean water.”

• November 12: Arnot traveled to a religious city west of Baghdad and heard complaints about the media’s negative coverage. “The people of Kazimayah tell us that the picture painted by al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite stations is a bleak one of daily death and destruction. Kazimayah’s leaders are so eager to show Iraq’s real story that the ayatollah himself sends his top lieutenant.” The city tour shows a thriving marketplace and U.S. soldiers at ease with Iraqis.

• November 13: Iraq’s industrial production won’t reach pre-war levels until 2004, but the economic story isn’t as bad as reported elsewhere, Arnot tells us: “People have money to spend because government salaries have gone up and Iraq’s unemployment number is significantly lower than expected. It’s not the 70 percent you’ve heard of; it could be lower than 20 percent.” That 70 percent figure was cited repeatedly by ABC News the previous week.

• November 14: “There’s certainly a lethal insurgency trying to derail the birth of the new Iraq, running up the body count for the evening news,” Arnot explained in his wrap-up piece. “But the new Iraq is being born nonetheless....The U.S. military, America’s civil administrators and Iraq’s peaceful majority are in the fight of their lives, a hot war that is far from decided. But it is not a lost war, nor a hopeless one. And that is the real story.”

==============================

MSNBC Producer: Reporters “Feel Vindicated” By Setbacks in Iraq (Media Research Center, 031210)

A month ago MSNBC producer Noah Oppenheim traveled to Iraq to “find out if things had really gone as horribly wrong as the evening newscasts and major print dailies reported.” In the latest Weekly Standard, he recounted how found that “the mounting body count is heartbreaking, but the failure of American journalism is tragic.” Oppenheim discovered that “America has brought to Iraq the notorious Red State-Blue State divide. Most journalists are Blue State people in outlook, and most of those administering the occupation are Red.” Since “most journalists did not support this war to begin with,” Oppenheim observed, they “feel vindicated whenever the effort stumbles.”

Oppenheim seems to have been the producer for a series on MSNBC’s Hardball in mid-November, “Iraq: The Real Story,” in which Bob Arnot provided a look at trouble spots as well as where things are going well in Iraq. Two CyberAlert items recited highlights from the series:

-- Bob Arnot appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews to contradict the image of chaos in Iraq hyped by the media. Launching Hardball’s week-long series, “Iraq: The Real Story,” Arnot recounted the challenges faced by troops in hostile areas, but countered the negative image of the Iraqi situation he knows Americans get from TV news. Arnot argued: “The fact is in 85 percent of the country, it’s calm, it’s stable, it’s moving forward.” Touring a shopping area, Arnot relayed how, “from what you see on TV from Baghdad you’d think that, with the mortars and rockets, that this was a city under siege.” In fact, he contended, “nothing could be further from the truth in many neighborhoods.” www.mediaresearch.org

-- U.S. TV network news about Iraq as distorted as al-Jazeera? Checking in from Iraq on Wednesday’s Hardball, Bob Arnot highlighted a Muslim ayatollah in Iraq who “is furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi station, have mis-portrayed the great success that is Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.” The night before, Arnot contrasted the negative TV news image of widespread destruction and disgust for Americans with the reality he sees of Iraqis who “love the Americans and their President for cleaning up their streets, providing clean water, opening the schools.” See: www.mediaresearch.org

An excerpt from Oppenheim’s story, “Flacks and Hacks in Baghdad: What it’s like to report from Iraq,” in the December 15 edition of the Weekly Standard:

....Four weeks ago, MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” asked me to go to Baghdad in search of the story most of the mainstream media were missing. The network’s vice president knew I was a supporter of the war, and suggested I find out if things had really gone as horribly wrong as the evening newscasts and major print dailies reported. What I found is that, in Iraq, the mounting body count is heartbreaking, but the failure of American journalism is tragic.

First, some popular illusions that need to be dispelled: Most correspondents for newscasts do very little, if any, actual reporting. They assemble the visual elements of a jigsaw puzzle whose shape is dictated by an unholy deity -- “the wires.” Every day, the Associated Press and Reuters offer an account of the major events in Iraq. If a bomb has exploded or an American soldier has been killed, that is the day’s major event. Barring that, an alarming comment from an American official, like Ambassador Paul Bremer or General Ricardo Sanchez, will suffice.

Once the wires have dictated the day’s headline, television correspondents sometimes venture into the field. However, the purpose of leaving their fortress hotels is rarely to collect information. True, sometimes they’ll elicit a soundbite that fits their preconceived notion of the day’s narrative. More often than not, they simply need a scenic backdrop in front of which to recite their lines. Even this is optional. I have watched correspondents “report” stories having never actually left the bureau.

Which is not to suggest these correspondents are lazy. This is simply the way it’s done. The wire services now all have television divisions that provide video, in addition to copy, to all subscribers. Why send a correspondent and crew to a dangerous place if the pictures have already been recorded and the facts already written down?

The consequence of this system is that, on television, the story in Iraq is no more than the sum of basic facts, like casualties, crashes, and official pronouncements. Such things are important and should be reported. Unfortunately, when you add to the mix time constraints and the herd instinct -- the general reluctance to depart from the story line common to all the major media on a given day -- little else makes it on the air.

Beyond this structural failure, there is a problem of attitude. Along with freedom, America has brought to Iraq the notorious Red State-Blue State divide. Most journalists are Blue State people in outlook, and most of those administering the occupation are Red. Many of those who work for the Coalition, including civilians, carry guns. This either amuses journalists or makes them uncomfortable. Most of those who work for the Coalition are deeply invested, emotionally, in the success of America’s enterprise in Iraq. (How else to explain why someone leaves an apartment in Arlington to live in a trailer in Baghdad and endure mortar attacks?) Most journalists did not support this war to begin with, and feel vindicated whenever the effort stumbles....

Characters are the backbone of any good story, and the Americans working in Iraq are the finest I have ever met. People like Col. Nate Slate, a man trained his entire life to fire artillery, now doing a miraculous job rebuilding the town of Taji. People like Tom Foley, a multimillionaire financier, now walking the lines at Iraqi shoe factories, helping get an economy off the ground. People like Col. Joe Anderson, who despite the price on his head, patrols Mosul on foot so he can personally reassure shopkeepers and community leaders that America won’t cut and run.

The story of America’s presence in Iraq is the story of ordinary people, with the best of intentions, working ungodly hours, in unpleasant places, with no public acclaim. Their quiet work will never make AP headlines -- indeed, it too seldom makes the wires at all -- yet they are winning victories nonetheless.

The best metaphor I’ve heard about Iraq is that the country is like a child, and the American press is its parent. When you’re around a child every day, you don’t notice how dramatically he’s growing and maturing. But a more distant relative who sees the child only once a year is astounded by how much taller he keeps getting. Iraq is getting taller and healthier every day, but those responsible for documenting the growth are not noticing -- or if they are, they’re not telling the people back home.

==============================

CBS Insists Dean No McGovern, “Had a Moderate Record” in Vermont (Media Research Center, 031210)

Rest easy, America. Howard Dean may have opposed Iraq’s liberation, called partial-birth abortion a “phony” issue, and voiced his support for gay civil unions and a large tax increase, but none of that makes him a liberal. So insisted CBS reporter Byron Pitts, who claimed the former Vermont governor is a moderate on domestic issues.

Do you remember any CBS News stories in 1999 which countered liberal attacks on George W. Bush as a hardline conservative by emphasizing his moderate record as Governor of Texas? But on Tuesday night, CBS came to Howard Dean’s defense against charges he’s any kind of a liberal. Instead of looking at the left-wing policies Dean is now advocating, such as a massive tax hike, Byron Pitts insisted: “This five-term former Governor had a moderate record during his ten years in the Vermont state house. He was a fiscal conservative, well known for being frugal from budget cuts to his own bargain-basement wardrobe.”

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Study Finds Networks Overwhelmingly Negative Toward Bush on Iraq (Media Research Center, 031218)

In picking up on the CyberAlert item about how ABC News has avoided reporting its poll finding of a jump in Bush’s approval rating following the capture of Saddam Hussein, FNC’s Brit Hume also noted a new study from another media analysis group which found that negative evaluations of President Bush in Iraq stories on the broadcast network evening newscasts have soared since May.

Hume reported in his “Grapevine” segment on the December 17 Special Report with Brit Hume on FNC:

“A new study indicates that positive evaluations of President Bush on the network evening news have dropped from 56 percent, during the Iraq war, to 32 percent after the end to major operations was announced. The study, conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, shows that CBS News was the toughest on President Bush after major operations ended, with 77 percent negative evaluations, followed by ABC with 67 percent negative evaluations.

“This, as another group, the Media Research Center, is accusing ABC of burying one of its polls -- which as we told you earlier this week -- showed President Bush’s job approval on Iraq rose ten percentage points after Saddam’s capture. ABC News, the center says, only referenced the poll for a few brief seconds with a small graphic Monday morning and that was it.”

Indeed, the December 17 CyberAlert relayed:

ABC’s World News Tonight still hasn’t reported how, in the wake of the capture of Saddam Hussein, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that President Bush’s approval level overall rose four points with a ten point jump in approval for how he’s handling the situation in Iraq, but on Tuesday night Dan Rather found a few seconds to relay how a new CBS News/New York Times poll discovered a six point hike in Bush’s approval level....

As the December 16 CyberAlert noted, NBC showcased on Monday’s NBC Nightly News its survey finding that after Hussein’s capture Bush’s approval rating jumped by six points while his margin over Howard Dean expanded from 12 to 21 points.

But though Monday’s Washington Post featured the results of the ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted on Sunday afternoon and evening, Peter Jennings didn’t utter a word about it on Monday night and he didn’t catch up on Tuesday.

The only hint as to the good news for Bush in the ABC poll came in a small graphic on screen for a few seconds on Monday’s Good Morning America as Claire Shipman tried to diminish the impact of catching Hussein. She highlighted how “ABC News has a new poll out today that shows most Americans don’t believe Saddam’s capture means the job is done there” as she warned that if “if the situation isn’t stabilized,” the capture of Hussein “is not going to seem decisive for this administration.”

As she was saying that, GMA put up a picture of a bearded Hussein which filled three-fourths the screen with the left-hand fourth showing a graphic citing a single poll number from an “ABC News/Washington Post poll” on “President Bush’s Approval Rating,” listing it at 58 percent after Saddam’s capture compared with 48 percent in mid-November. In fact, the numbers were for approval of how Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Evaluations of President Bush on the network evening news shows dropped from 56 percent positive during the Iraq war to only 32 percent positive during the six months that followed the end of formal military activity (2-to-1 negative ratio), according to a new study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA). Coverage of Bush administration policies nose-dived from 49 percent positive to only 26 percent positive, a 3-to-1 negative ratio, during the same period.

These findings come from CMPA’s study of 1,876 stories (54 hours, 36 minutes) on the Bush administration on ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news broadcasts from May 1st through October 31st.

Despite having given the most favorable coverage to the war, CBS was toughest on President Bush in its aftermath with 77 percent negative evaluations, followed by ABC with 67 percent negative and NBC with 62 percent negative comments.

==============================

Christians Complain About Media Treatment (FN, 031224)

SEATTLE — From the big screen to the little screen and from sitcoms to the news, Christians say they can’t get a fair shake in the media.

Christians complain that the media portrays them as either bigots or buffoons, with such characters as Ned Flanders of “The Simpsons.” They point out that even Christmas symbols like Santa are ridiculed, as in the new film “Bad Santa.”

They also refer to Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie “The Passion.” The film, which closely follows the gospels in the New Testament, had difficulty getting financial backing and is being criticized as anti-Semitic.

“Christians seem to be the one religion that gets no respect from all the others. They’re the ones that can be kicked around and not tolerated as we’re being asked to do about everything under the sun,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.

However, other media observers disagree, citing the prevalence of shows about spirituality, including “Touched by an Angel,” “7th Heaven,” and “Joan of Arcadia.”

Tim Appelo, senior arts writer for the Seattle Weekly, said Christians are “winning and they still can’t see it, because they’ve spent so long in the desert. And so they’re back, they’re mad and they’re not going to take it again.”

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A Hole Into Which Liberals Can Pour Money (Free Congress Foundation, 031209)

Tom Athans, with something called Democracy Radio, is again trying to set up a liberal radio network. He thinks previous attempts have failed because they were too preachy. He wants hosts, such as Al Franken, who supposedly are funny. He is confident he will have enough stations in big cities where liberal shows can be run non-stop. Then various other stations can cherry pick individual shows.

Well, as someone who - ten years ago this month - launched a conservative television network, let me offer some unsolicited advice. Give it up. It won’t work.

The reason that conservative talk radio works is because there is an audience for it. Look at any survey that measures ideology. Self-professed conservatives comprise about 40% to 45% of the electorate. Self-professed liberals are only 15 to 20% of the electorate. So the core audience for the network is less than half of that for conservatives. Second, a quarter to a third of those who listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are liberals. They obviously are masochistic. I doubt very much that conservatives will listen to Al Franken (or any of the other personalities they have lined up). That’s because our folks can learn the liberal viewpoint by watching ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN. And as far as radio is concerned there is our taxpayer-subsidized network, NPR. And thanks to the heiress of the McDonald fortune, NPR has a robust endowment that will enable them to increase their coverage. Politics aside, it will be hard for any new liberal radio network to outdo the professionalism of NPR.

Athans complains that of all the political talk shows, only 40 are liberal. Guess why? These are local shows. Local stations have to be able to hold an audience. For example, stations that carry Limbaugh and Hannity often follow them with a local conservative talk show host. Here in Washington, following back-to-back network programming by Limbaugh and Hannity, WMAL features the very able Chris Core for three hours. Core is a moderate who takes many conservative positions. And even when he doesn’t, he treats conservatives very fairly. Core is one of the better minds in talk radio so WMAL holds much of the audience who are loyal to Hannity. WMAL had one out and out liberal talk show host, Charlie Warren who followed Core. He has just been replaced by a network talk show featuring both a conservative and a liberal.

Conservative talk radio works because there are lots of conservatives who are convinced that they are not getting the whole story from the regular media. So along with several very popular Internet sites, talk radio has served as alternative media that gives listeners information that they otherwise would not hear. What is it that liberal talk radio can offer to its potential audience? Liberal politicians, experts, critics, authors, clergy and so on all get exposure in the so-called “mainstream” media. What is it that liberals aren’t hearing from radio? About all they are missing is wild conspiracy theories which thoughtful people, even liberals, won’t take seriously.

Advertisers are very wary of ideological media. Despite being able to demonstrate a very large audience, major advertisers at first wouldn’t touch Limbaugh. But after he single- handedly put Snapple products on the map, mainstream advertisers came on board. A liberal network will only survive if it can attract and motivate a lot of people. In all probability, in liberal areas where a network is buying stations, there are already liberal talk shows because places such as San Francisco and Seattle have liberal majorities.

The Fox News cable channel is doing very well because there is a market for what Fox News has to offer. A decade ago we began to cultivate this same audience with National Empowerment Television (NET). We did very well in every market where we were carried. Fox strives for balance so they give a lot of exposure to liberals. The difference between Fox and the other stations that are out there is that conservative views are taken seriously.

If a liberal News channel were launched it would fall flat on its face. There is no market for it. I’m sure my advice to Athans will not be followed. That’s fine with me. If liberals want to send tens of millions of dollars down the drain, I have no problem with that. If they make it, I’ll publicly apologize. I don’t expect to have to do so however.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

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Bozell Issues $1 Million Challenge to Tom Brokaw and NBC (MRC, 040108)

ALEXANDRIA, Va. --- Media Research Center President Brent Bozell is issuing a $1 million challenge to NBC and NBC Nightly News Anchor Tom Brokaw, calling Brokaw on his comments made in a recent interview with Columbia Journalism Review. In the interview, Brokaw directly took on Bozell and the Media Research Center while denying the credibility of their evidence of liberal bias in the press. Among other things, Brokaw said:

“What I get tired of is Brent Bozell trying to make these fine legal points everywhere every day. A lot of it just doesn’t hold up. So much of it is that bias — like beauty — is in the eye of the beholder.”

Bozell responded: “I know our evidence does ‘hold up’ and we’ll prove it. I issue this challenge to NBC and its anchor: let’s assemble a mutually agreeable third-party panel and have them review a compilation of the Media Research Center’s 16 years of evidence of liberal media bias. If this panel agrees with Brokaw’s contention, the Media Research Center will donate $1 million to the anchor’s favorite charity. If the panel agrees with us, NBC and Brokaw will donate $1 million to the Media Research Center.

“Oh, and to sweeten the pot we’ll do this: we’ll limit our evidence only to Tom Brokaw and NBC. Frankly, that’s all the evidence we need to prove the point.”

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Morning Donations to Democratic Dreams (MRC, 040107)

Every four years, ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s Early Show and NBC’s Today open their doors to those who would be President. In theory, that’s a good thing: While the evening newscasts offer only brief soundbites from the campaign trail, the weekday morning shows give millions of casual news watchers a chance to assess the candidates as they answer reporters’ questions.

But do these programs give liberal candidates an advantage? As the 2004 primary season begins, Media Research Center analysts reviewed all 44 of the Democratic candidates’ appearances on the ABC, CBS and NBC weekday morning news shows during the last six months of 2003, along with those of the Republican candidates for the same period in 1999.

The study found that Democrats got nearly twice as much airtime last year as the Republicans had in 1999. The questions posed by network interviewers in 2003 reflected a pro-liberal, anti-Bush agenda, but four years earlier the GOP candidates were rarely indulged with pro-conservative, anti-Clinton questions from their network hosts.

100 EXTRA MINUTES FOR THE DEMOCRATS

The ten Democrats running to unseat George W. Bush have collectively received 100 more minutes of airtime than the field of eight GOP candidates received four years ago. (See box.) Republicans were brought aboard the morning shows 20 times in the latter half of 1999. Those interviews totaled 2 hours, 16 minutes. Campaign regulation advocate John McCain received the lion’s share of airtime — nearly 64 minutes in ten interviews, seven of which were on ABC. Front-runner Bush was interviewed four times (37 minutes), but not once on ABC during the study period.

Since July, CBS’s Early Show has hosted 16 interviews with the Democrats, including co-host Harry Smith’s visit to Iowa for a profile of John Kerry that included an extensive Q&A. NBC’s Today offered 15 interviews, but they lasted longer — more than 111 minutes, compared with 64 minutes on CBS. Good Morning America’s 13 interviews gave the Democrats an additional 65½ minutes of broadcast airtime. Altogether, the Democrats were granted 4 hours of network morning airtime, or almost 10 minutes per week.

Most of that airtime went to just two candidates. Howard Dean has received nearly 70 minutes of network airtime in 13 appearances, slightly behind Wesley Clark, whose 13 interviews totaled 71 minutes.

Among the leading candidates, Dick Gephardt has been practically shut out, with only one appearance in the last six months (on The Early Show, November 10). That puts the former House Minority Leader on par with Carol Moseley Braun, Al Sharpton and Bob Graham, who has since dropped out of the race. Far-left, anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich has yet to appear on any of the weekday morning shows.

INVITING THE CANDIDATES TO BASH BUSH

The morning hosts posed 319 questions to the Democratic candidates, nearly one-fifth of which (58) were designed to get them to reiterate or amplify their condemnations of President Bush. The morning hosts often asked the candidates to repeat charges they had leveled elsewhere. Four years before, only 4 out of 179 questions similarly invited the GOP candidates to differ with Bill Clinton or Al Gore.

CBS’s Rene Syler served up this softball to John Kerry on December 4: “You called President Bush’s foreign policy arrogant, inept and reckless. Give us some specifics.”

On September 8, the morning after a Bush speech, NBC’s Matt Lauer opened the door for Howard Dean: “You called his speech nothing short of outrageous and said the President was, quote, ‘beginning to remind me of what was happening with Lyndon Johnson and Dick Nixon during the Vietnam War.’ Explain that to me.”

On September 24, ABC’s Charles Gibson asked Dean to repeat one of his smarmiest claims: “You said the extreme right wing has shown nothing but a contempt for democracy. Do you think the extreme right wing is in control of this administration, and do you think it shows contempt for democracy?”

While it may seem natural to ask challengers to criticize the current administration or the other party’s front-runner, that did not happen four years ago. Then, network reporters rarely asked Republicans candidates about either Clinton or Gore. A rare quote: “I know you’ve been critical of the Clinton presidency and what it’s done to the office,” Katie Couric prompted Dan Quayle on July 16, 1999.

Instead, reporters’ questions highlighted GOP schisms: “Is the leadership of your party in Congress out of touch with the American public, and is the party too much a captive of the right?” Gibson asked McCain on October 12, 1999.

BOTH PARTIES FACED LIBERAL QUESTIONING

In 2003, reporters posed 54 questions that could be categorized as reflecting either a liberal or a conservative view. Nearly all of these questions (47) were based on a liberal premise, compared with seven that reflected a conservative agenda. But that’s not just because the Democratic contest pits liberals against each other; reporters also posed far more liberal than conservative questions to Republicans four years ago. (See box.)

On November 16, 1999, Matt Lauer challenged Bush’s proposal for a missile defense system by citing the standard liberal objections that it might not work, would violate the ABM treaty and could “only jump-start a nuclear arms war.” ABC’s Diane Sawyer reflected the liberal view on September 27, 1999 when she saluted McCain: “However brave a stand campaign finance reform may be, members of your own party have rejected it. What’s the matter with them? Why don’t they get it?”

But instead of asking this year’s Democrats to respond to conservative arguments, the networks kept up their liberal approach. Unlike Dean, John Kerry would leave the middle class tax cuts intact, which earned him this rebuke from ABC’s Sawyer on Sept. 2: “If you only repeal those above $200,000, we calculate that it comes to some $40 billion against a potential $470 billion deficit. What does it gain?”

On October 1, Katie Couric demanded that Dean explain reports he once supported capping the growth of Medicare. She followed up with another question that doubted Dean’s liberalism: “Are you sorry that...you described Medicare as one of the worst things that ever happened and a bureaucratic disaster?”

As for those rare conservative-oriented questions, Couric on December 16 asked the anti-war Clark whether “an Iraq with Saddam in charge is preferable to an Iraq with Saddam in custody.” And on November 25, in an otherwise soft interview about the candidate’s new book, ABC’s Gibson challenged trial lawyer John Edwards: “So many people feel that it’s a system run amok, that there are frivolous lawsuits, that the litigiousness of our society has driven up the cost of everything.”

TOUGH ON LOSERS, NOT ON LIBERALISM

While they hardly ever challenged the candidates’ liberal beliefs, reporters did confront the Democrats with tough questions. On September 16, Diane Sawyer told Edwards he had little support in New Hampshire polls. “What are you doing wrong?” she demanded. CBS’s Rene Syler point blank asked Kerry on December 4: “Is your campaign foundering?”

Plainly, the networks aren’t shielding liberal politicians from all aggressive questions. But their performance over the last six months shows how rarely reporters question liberalism itself.

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FNC’s Hume & Columnist Cal Thomas Pick Up on CyberAlert Findings (MRC, 040112)

You read it here first. Last Thursday, FNC’s Brit Hume highlighted a CyberAlert report about how when Halliburton was being accused of wrongdoing, the CBS Evening News reminded viewers of Vice President Cheney’s tie to the company, but when the firm was cleared this month, the CBS show ignored the development. Plus, in a column at the start of the year, Cal Thomas expanded upon a CyberAlert article about how CBS’s Bob Schieffer described George Bush as “a polarizing politician,” but hailed how Howard Dean has “begun to bring people together” while ABC’s Terry Moran labeled Bush as “divisive.”

-- On the January 8 Special Report with Brit Hume, during the “Grapevine” segment, Hume reported: “Last night we noted how some print media suddenly stopped mentioning in their leads that Vice President Dick Cheney used to run Halliburton Inc, once the company was, in effect, cleared of accusations that it overcharged for services in Iraq. According to the Media Research Center, the CBS Evening News referred twice to Cheney’s past connection to Halliburton. But, the center says, now that Halliburton has been cleared, CBS Evening News hasn’t mentioned that development at all.”

Indeed, the January 7 CyberAlert noted: Back in mid-December, the CBS Evening News twice led with stories about “war-profiteering” by Halliburton for the price of gas it sold inside Iraq, with Vice President Cheney’s name linked prominently. But three weeks later, when a January 6 front page Wall Street Journal story revealed that the Army Corps of Engineers had cleared Halliburton of any wrongdoing in its pricing, the CBS Evening News, which had earlier touted a concern of “Pentagon auditors,” ignored the development. But Tuesday’s CBS newscast had time for a full story on how, as anchor John Roberts put it, the Howard Dean campaign “offers America new love.” That was a piece on how young people are using Dean’s “meet-ups” as an opportunity to find a mate. See: www.mediaresearch.org

And the CBS Evening News didn’t find any time for the Haliburton development on any subsequent night last week.

The night before his MRC item, Hume related how some print publications had suddenly buried Cheney’s tie to Halliburton. Hume relayed on January 7: “Last month -- while Halliburton Inc. was being accused of overcharging for fuel shipped to Iraq from Kuwait -- the Associated Press began its report by saying: ‘A Pentagon audit has found Vice President Dick Cheney’s former company may have overcharged the Army.’ Reuters began its story in a similar way, describing Halliburton as, quote, ‘the oil services firm once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.’ And the BBC began its story by saying President Bush ‘expects an oil company once run by his Vice President to return money if it has overcharged for services in Iraq.’ But when Halliburton was, in effect, cleared of any wrongdoing earlier this week, the references to Cheney suddenly dropped out of the lead of stories from the same news outlets.”

-- The January 3 nationally syndicated column by Cal Thomas, “When the media meet the candidates,” picked up some quotes first recited in the December 29 CyberAlert. An excerpt from Thomas’ column:

....The early media line was unveiled on ABC last Sunday, when correspondent Terry Moran, sitting in on “This Week” for former Clinton administration operative George Stephanopoulos (no ideological difference there) noted that in the 2000 race, George W. Bush campaigned as “a uniter, not a divider.” Moran concluded that he had failed and that he has become a “divisive president” and a “divisive figure.” To liberals like Moran, one is a divider when one doesn’t buy into the liberal line and offends their governmental, economic and cultural sensibilities. It does not matter to most of the media when conservatives are offended and thus “divided” and excluded from consideration by their leaders. To them, one can only unite (even though one divides conservatives) by reflecting a liberal worldview.

On CBS, Bob Schieffer echoed the Moran view, calling the president “a polarizing politician.” While acknowledging that Bush, as governor of Texas, did seem to bring people together, now, according to Schieffer, he “seems to have become someone that you either love or hate.” Liberal Democrats did not find that a problem with President Clinton. While agreeing that people either loved or hated Clinton, much of the media didn’t think that made Clinton “divisive.” They treated negatively people who hated Clinton, while they frequently treat Bush haters as noble and virtuous, wanting only the best for all of us.

Back on ABC, Moran was doing his best to set the tone and agenda for the media’s campaign approach. In a question to former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, Moran observed: “For many Americans, this is a divisive president. Is he vulnerable in the manner in which he seems to polarize people’s opinions?” Panetta answered, “I think that is the case.” (Surprise!) No self-respecting media liberal would ask such a question of, say, Sen. Hillary Clinton, about any of the Democratic presidential candidates and why they fail to draw conservative support. Apparently, division is a one-way street.

On CBS, Schieffer claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is bringing people together. His source? A New York Times writer who believes the evidence comes from Dean’s success as an Internet fund-raiser....

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ABC Still Won’t Report Hike in Bush Approval Level, But CBS Does (MRC, 031217)

Rather reported, over matching graphics listing the numbers: “The capture of Saddam has also changed U.S. public opinion about Iraq and President Bush. In a CBS News/New York Times poll out tonight, 65 percent of Americans say U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq are going well -- 47 percent thought so before Saddam’s capture. You may want to note, though, that only one in four Americans believes there will be fewer attacks on U.S. troops now. As for President Bush, his job approval rating has gone up six points since the capture of Saddam. It now stands at 58 percent in our poll.”

For CBS’s rundown of the poll results: www.cbsnews.com

The December 16 CyberAlert also noted that “as of late Monday night, I could not find any story on the ABC News Web site” about the poll. At some point on Tuesday, the Web site corrected that with a piece by Gary Langer, “A Sober Response: After Saddam’s Capture, Most Say Difficult Challenges Remain,” which carries a December 15 date.

Langer, the in-house polling expert for ABC News, wasn’t too impressed with the bump up for Bush, which may explain why the result never made it onto the air:

“Bush’s approval rating on handling Iraq remains below its levels last spring and early summer. And his overall job approval rating didn’t show a significant gain -- it’s 57 percent in this poll, compared with 53 percent in an ABC/Post poll Dec. 7.”

But Langer acknowledged: “Still, the number who ‘strongly’ approve of Bush’s work, 37 percent, is now its highest since August, up seven points from its post-Sept. 11, 2001 low in late October.”

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Poll: Alternative News Gaining Influence (Mercury News, 040112)

WASHINGTON - People are shifting from traditional news sources such as newspapers and nightly network news for information about the presidential campaign, a poll found.

Led by young adults’ changing habits, the public is finding more of its information from such alternative sources as the Internet and even television shows like “The Daily Show” and “Saturday Night Live.”

Young adults were leading the shift, with one-fifth considering the Internet a top source of campaign news for them, said the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, released Sunday. About the same number said they regularly learn about the campaign from TV satires.

News-only cable networks are second only to local TV news when people are asked to say where they regularly learn something about the campaign. More than four in 10, 42 percent, said they regularly learn something from local TV, while 38 percent chose cable news channels, a slight increase from four years ago.

Nightly network news was named as a regular source of campaign news by 35 percent, down from 45 percent four years ago; and newspapers by 31 percent, down from 40 percent.

“Cable news and the Internet are looming larger as sources of campaign information as fewer people say they’re getting news from traditional sources such as newspapers and broadcast television,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

Four in five respondents said they were most likely to get campaign news from television. Those who cited TV as a top source of campaign news most often mentioned CNN (22 percent) and Fox News (20 percent) as the leading source of information.

[Pew also discovered a partisan split in what outlets Republicans and Democrats favor, with Republicans more likely to watch FNC and Democrats more likely to watch ABC, CBS or NBC: “Fully twice as many Republicans as Democrats say they get most of their election news from Fox News (29% vs. 14%). Significantly more Democrats than Republicans get most of their election news from one of the three major networks (40% vs. 24%).]

The public is increasingly concerned about bias in campaign coverage by the media generally. About the same number, 39 percent, say there is bias in campaign coverage as the number that says there is no bias, 38 percent.

The number who feel coverage is biased has grown steadily since 1988, when 62 percent said coverage was not biased. That percentage has steadily declined to 53% in 1996, 48% in 2000, and 38% today.

Compared with 2000 a much larger number of Democrats believe that coverage of the campaign is tilted in favor of the Republicans (29% now, 19% in 2000). But Republicans continue to see more bias in campaign coverage than do Democrats. More than four-in-ten Republicans (42%) see news coverage of the campaign as biased in favor of Democrats; that compares with 37% in 2000. Among independents there also has been a significant decline in the percentage who say election news is free of bias (43% now, 51% then), though independents remain divided over whether the coverage favors Democrats or Republicans.

The 13 percent of people who called the Internet a top source of campaign news doubled that of four years ago. The number of people who say they regularly or sometimes get campaign news from the Internet increased to 33 percent from 24 percent.

Four years ago, young people were far more likely to have said they learned about the campaign from nightly network news, 39 percent, than the Internet or comedy shows. Now, all three are cited about equally as sources of campaign news.

The poll of 1,506 adults was taken Dec. 19-Jan. 4 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, larger for subgroups.

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Today’s Media Coverage compared to 4 years ago (Media Research Center, 040120)

Pre-Caucus GOP Guests in 2000 Greeted with Ideological Hostility

Bias Flashback, first of three. On Monday morning, Dick Gephardt, John Kerry, Howard Dean and John Edwards all appeared on the ABC and NBC morning shows with Kerry popping up on CBS, but were not presented with anything approaching the hostility to their political agenda as GOP guests and Steve Forbes got from Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Bryant Gumbel on the day of the 2000 Iowa Caucus.

This year, Couric was off and ABC staffers other than Sawyer handled the interviews, and they stuck to the horse race (see item #3 above). That contrasts with Monday, January 24, 2000, when NBC’s Couric griped about how “Forbes has forced George W. Bush to...turn right...on taxes and abortion.” When Forbes said that his policies have “broad-based” appeal, Bryant Gumbel scoffed on CBS: “Do you really expect to win moderate votes in this country?”

An excerpt from the January 25, 2000 CyberAlert:

....-- NBC’s Today talked to The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol about the upcoming Iowa caucus. MRC intern Ken Shepherd observed that after questions about how the caucus system works, what a big Gore win would mean for Bradley and whether Bush should be concerned about complacency, Katie Couric hit him with this ideologically-loaded statement in the form of a question: “Forbes has forced George W. Bush to, to turn right if you will, on taxes and abortion. Is that going to, are those positions that he’s had to take, in the face of a challenge by Forbes, will they be difficult to defend in a general election?”

-- Over on ABC’s Good Morning America Diane Sawyer hit William Bennett with the same argument, MRC analyst Jessica Anderson noted. Previewing the caucus with Bennett and former Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, Sawyer pressed Bennett: “Well Bill, what about George W. Bush -- you mentioned abortion -- having to go fairly far now in being explicit about his pro-life stance, when 66 percent of Republican soccer moms nationwide are pro-choice. Gonna get him in trouble later on?”

-- Bryant Gumbel sure doesn’t find any appeal in the Steve Forbes platform. Interviewing the GOP candidate on The Early Show, MRC analyst Brian Boyd noticed that Gumbel vehemently countered the idea that Forbes may have “broad-based” appeal.

Responding to Gumbel’s doubts about his ability to win over the wider electorate, Forbes asserted that many of his positions have “broad-based” appeal. Gumbel shot back: “You say it’s broad-based, but you oppose Roe v Wade, you oppose gays in the military, you oppose the teaching of evolution, you oppose the ban on school prayer, you oppose a waiting period on gun purchases. Do you really expect to win moderate votes in this country?”

Forbes replied that people want to keep more of what they earn, which is a position he offers. Gumbel quickly jumped in and talked over him, declaring: “But on a social agenda, you can’t win without moderates.”

In 2000, NBC Reporters Warned that Bush Moved Too Far Right

Bias Flashback, second of three. On Monday night the MRC staff did not see any instances of cable network reporters or analysts griping about how any Democratic candidate may have hurt himself by being too liberal, but four years ago, on the night of the 2000 Republican Caucus in Iowa, NBC’s star reporters contended that to win George Bush moved right, which would hurt with the wider electorate. “Bush had to run with Jesus Christ,” remarked Brian Williams. Consorting with religious types and conservatives, Tim Russert warned, “could hurt” Republicans “with a mainstream electorate in a general election.” Russert also expressed concern about how Forbes pushed Bush into a big tax cut.

Another excerpt from the Tuesday, January 25, 2000 CyberAlert:

.... -- Brian Williams to Tim Russert during MSNBC’s 8pm EST special, an hour early edition of The News With Brian Williams: “Tim, in order to do as well as he [Bush] did tonight, and the following is meant with no disrespect and in capital letters, George Bush had to run with Jesus Christ. George Bush invoked Christ’s name during a debate, labeled him as a philosopher in so doing. He posed in front of a mural of Jesus Christ and talked about the topic of abortion in order to appeal to the group, the demographic you were just talking about. Absent that tonight may not have been such pretty a result for him.”

Russert: “I agree completely. The fact is George Bush held his own amongst conservative Christians. And I think it is important to note that George Bush is convincing in his belief in faith and it is part of his political leadership and he’s not afraid to say that. Is it a political asset in the state of Iowa? Absolutely. We also asked our people coming out of the voting booth what was the big issue tonight. And this is really interesting to me. Far and away the most important issue were moral values. 35 percent, followed by taxes 23 percent. Social security, Medicare 10, abortion just 10 percent. Education just 4 percent.”

-- At the top of MSNBC’s 10pm EST “Decision 2000” special, host Tom Brokaw asked John McCain via satellite in New Hampshire: “Senator McCain, one of the things that happened here in Iowa as a result of the presence of Steve Forbes, who was well organized, well financed and Ambassador Keyes, who is very articulate on these issues, is that it did become a contest for the social conservative vote. It was driven slightly to the right from where it might have begun. Do you think that’s going happen now in New Hampshire?”

-- Near the end of the 10pm EST hour, Tim Russert told Brokaw how Bush had been pushed to the right and out of the mainstream: “There is a local TV station in Manchester which calls part of its news building the Steve Forbes Wing because of the amount of money he spent in 1996 but Tom, I think his role is more important in looking at a general election. Right now George W. Bush had to put forward a tax cut plan of over a trillion dollars over a ten-year period. He had to agree with Steve Forbes on the language in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban all abortions. President Clinton seized on that yesterday, saying if George W. Bush is elected, you’re gonna see Roe v Wade overturned. The Democrats in Congress seized on the Bush tax cut plan, saying it’s Gingrich II and George W. Bush did not want to have to stake out those kind of strong conservative positions in a primary campaign that could hurt them with a mainstream electorate in a general election.”...

-- NBC’s Today talked to The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol about the upcoming Iowa caucus. MRC intern Ken Shepherd observed that after questions about how the caucus system works, what a big Gore win would mean for Bradley and whether Bush should be concerned about complacency, Katie Couric hit him with this ideologically-loaded statement in the form of a question: “Forbes has forced George W. Bush to, to turn right if you will, on taxes and abortion. Is that going to, are those positions that he’s had to take, in the face of a challenge by Forbes, will they be difficult to defend in a general election?”

Few Liberal Labels, Four Years Ago CBS Issued 20 Right-Wing Tags

Bias Flashback, third of three. Liberal ideological labeling is rare on television news, and while an occasional story in Howard Dean’s heyday noted how some are concerned he’s too liberal to win a general election, there’s been hardly any labeling during the Iowa Caucus coverage this year and no labeling this campaign season approaches the onslaught of conservative tags that CBS News delivered over the weekend before the 2000 Iowa Caucuses.

Back then, in just three nights, the CBS Evening News used the labels “conservative,” “right” or “hard-right” an incredible 20 times, but did not once issue a liberal label. CBS tagged not only Bush and other Republicans, but the Supreme Court.

An excerpt from the Monday, January 24, 2000 CyberAlert:

Number of times the CBS Evening News over three nights, from Friday January 21 through Sunday January 23, used the terms “liberal,” “left” or “hard-left”: Zero. Number of times the CBS Evening News, over the same three nights, employed the labels “conservative,” “right” or “hard-right”: 19 times. That’s an average of 6.33 times a night. And that’s just in stories on the Republican presidential contest so it doesn’t even count Dan Rather’s bizarre assertion that the Supreme Court’s “new majority” may be showing a “shift to the right.”

Amongst the 20 ideological tags assigned by CBS in a mere three newscasts: Dan Rather claimed “George W. Bush’s talking the right talk, as in Republican hard-right.” Rather also highlighted “Bush’s sudden rush to the right.” Reporter Bill Whitaker warned, “Political observers say Iowa is a treacherous road for candidates to veer to the right without losing the middle.” Another night Whitaker asserted: “George W. Bush today ratcheted up the rhetoric on a tried and true right-wing issue: abortion.”

Bush’s comments about abortion fueled most of the CBS labels as the network portrayed conservatives as a ruinous force driving the campaign, but CBS’s own Bob Schieffer reported that Bush had not changed his position. While Dan Rather exclaimed on Friday that “George W. Bush punched to the right with more anti-abortion talk,” the next night Schieffer told viewers: “Bush says he will not use abortion as a litmus test in appointing federal judges. He hasn’t backed down from that so I think he has not changed his position a bit on all of this.”

CBS didn’t find anything about the Gore or Bradley campaign worth labeling, and neither did ABC or NBC over the weekend. But ABC was at least consistent in not labeling either party’s candidates. NBC’s David Bloom couldn’t refrain from applying two conservative tags on Republicans....

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Jennings Notes Public Trust in Democrats, Skips Trust in Bush (Media Research Center, 040120)

[a good example of bias by omission]

ABC’s Peter Jennings on Monday night highlighted how a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found that “50 percent or more of Americans trust Democrats in Congress,” over President Bush, “to deal with the economy, health insurance and the federal budget deficit.” But Jennings failed to note the issues on which voters trust Bush over Democrats or subjects on which Bush has a positive approval rating.

On the January 19 World News Tonight, following several stories on the about-to-commence Iowa caucuses, Jennings read this short item about a new poll:

“There is a new ABC News/Washington Post poll on President Bush who was, incidentally, rehearsing his State of the Union address today. It’s tomorrow. The poll finds that 48 percent of voters would choose Mr. Bush if the presidential elections were held today. It also finds that 50 percent or more of Americans trust Democrats in Congress to deal with the economy, health insurance and the federal budget deficit.”

The on-screen graphic showed Bush with 48 percent compared to 46 percent for a “Democratic nominee.” Under “trust Democrats to do a better job handling,” ABC listed the economy at 50 percent, health insurance at 52 percent and the deficit at the same 52 percent.

But the rundown on the ABC News Web site reveals that in three headings more trust Bush than Democrats: “Nation’s Main Problems,” by 45 to 44 percent, “War on Terrorism by 60 to 31 percent and “Situation in Iraq” by 56 to 36 percent. Plus, Bush’s overall job approval is now at 58 percent with 40 percent disapproval. The public approves of Bush on education by 55 to 37 percent and on the economy by 51 to 47 percent.

ABC News polling expert Gary Langer noted in his ABCNews.com story that Bush’s approval rating is “darn good.” Langer recalled: “Looking back nearly a half century, only one previous President has had a higher approval rating in January of a re-election year -- Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.”

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Media Bias on Spanking Law (040131)

Kwing Hung: media bias again! In the CBC report on the decision by the Supreme Court on spanking, three quarters of those interviewed were against physical discipline (thus in fact presenting many reasons against the ruling), also their coverage time is longer; and again the interviewees and the reporter had the final say.

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CBS Evening News Ignores Own Poll Finding on Bush Leading Kerry (MRC, 040316)

When a CBS News poll found John Kerry leading George W. Bush by 48 to 43 percent amongst registered voters, Dan Rather reported it on the February 16 CBS Evening News, and when another CBS News poll two weeks ago put Kerry up by a mere one point over Bush, by 47 to 46 percent with registered voters, the February 28 CBS Evening News highlighted the finding. But on Monday, while the CBSNews.com home page, for much of the afternoon and into the evening featured the results of a new CBS News/New York Times poll, with a headline which declared, “Bush Moves Ahead of Kerry,” the CBS Evening News didn’t utter a word about the new numbers which put Bush up over Kerry by 46 to 43 percent with registered voters.

Two weeks ago, the CBS Evening News emphasized how Bush’s approval rating had fallen below 50 percent, but the new poll found his approval rating back above 50 percent -- but that too went unmentioned Monday night.

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Times Never Changes: The Los Angeles Times, still biased (NRO, 040401)

The longstanding leftist orthodoxy of the Los Angeles Times has improved noticeably under editor-in-chief John Carroll, a respected newsman who moved here from the Baltimore Sun four years ago. Carroll has made a real effort to rein in the paper’s liberal bias, at least in straight news stories. Earlier this year, Carroll wrote a famous (in media circles) in-house memo scolding a reporter for a story about a Texas abortion law; the piece had implied anyone against abortion is obviously nuts.

I should note though, that this improvement at the Times was underway even before Carroll’s arrival, with the departure of former editor Shelby Coffey III in 1997. Like ex-New York Times editor-in-chief Howell Raines, whose upcoming 21,000-word non mea culpa in the May Atlantic has returned white male guilt to the media spotlight, Coffey grew up rich and liberal in the pre-civil-rights south, and expected his staff to atone for his privileged background. When a paper’s top editor is a self-styled Atticus Finch, watch out.

Who can forget (O.K., where’ talking the same media circles again, I suppose) the infamous Times style guidelines of the mid-’90s, which made the L.A. Times under Coffey a national laughingstock, with their risible combination of earnestly p.c. taboos combined with bloated middle management. My favorite guideline: “Pendejo... translates literally as pubic hair, but it is a vulgar term that means fool...should be used only in quotes approved by the editor, managing editor, associate editor or the senior editor.” (I remember thinking at the time: If you have to go through all that, why bother?)

Still, my favorite newspaper gave me a couple of déjà vu moments last week. The first, in the wake of the Spanish terror bombings, was Ariel Dorfman’s Mar. 21 Sunday opinion-section ode to the Chilean poet and leftist hero Pablo Neruda. The headline: “Words That Pulse Among Madrid’s Dead: Neruda’s Verses Howl Against Terror Today and Yesterday...”

Dorfman chided anyone who thinks that the result of the Spanish elections mean Spain has capitulated to terror — “Just because a sovereign nation decides to reject and oppose an unnecessary, unjust and deceitful war does not mean the people of that nation are not willing to defend themselves” — and quoted some lyrical verses Neruda wrote about Madrid’s barrios and clock-tower bells during the Spanish civil war.

But you would have no idea reading Dorfman’s piece that Neruda was such a hard-line true believer that he was awarded the International Stalin Prize and the Lenin Peace Prize. Nor that his poetry includes these lines written in 1953, upon the death of Stalin:

We must learn from Stalin His sincere intensity His concrete clarity... Stalin is the moon, the maturity of man and the peoples.

“Even by the standards of 1953 it’s repulsive,” said Roman Genn, my friend and National Review contributor, when he called up to complain about the Dorfman piece and send me the Stalin eulogy. “Neruda was not even a sympathizer — he was an active agent. We have no idea how much blood is on his hands in Spain, and I don’t mean just fascist blood we don’t care for.”

Roman is an artist who grew up in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Los Angeles in 1991 at age 19, when he began drawing caricatures for the Times op-ed pages. He values that gig. But he was so irritated by the clueless nature of the Neruda piece that he called some Times editors to complain.

“They told me, ‘Well, we all remember history differently,’” Roman recalled. “I said, ‘You don’t run favorable stories about Nazis.’”

My other déjà vu Times moment last week was the paper’s Mar. 23 editorial condemning Israel’s assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin. The “murder” was wrong in the Times’s eyes because, for one thing, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw disapproved of it in strong terms. Unlike Condoleezza Rice, who “unfortunately said only that Hamas was a terrorist organization and Hamas one of its planners.” Also, Yassin was “a 67-year-old wheelchair-bound quadriplegic.” And therefore, you know, pitiful and weak.

What explains much of all this is journalists’ need to pat themselves on the back as friends of the oppressed. As I said, the Times is getting more hardheaded. But it’s about time that it does — and you don’t have to be an extreme Ariel Sharon supporter to see bias in its Mideast coverage.

I still remember an astonishingly sob-sistery front-page Christmas Day, 2001 story by correspondent Tracy Wilkinson. The headline: “Arafat Forced to Miss Mass in Bethlehem.” The opening sentence: “In a centuries-old tradition, worshipers congregated here Monday where Jesus is believed to have been born and ushered in a joyless Christmas made all the more somber by Israel’s refusal to permit the participation of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat....”

Did the Times actually mean that a Christian holiday was “joyless” because a Muslim terrorist wasn’t there to help celebrate? Apparently so. I imagined the L.A. Times version of Little Women for Palestinians:

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without President Arafat,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

“It’s so dreadful to be Palestinian!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old chador.

“I don’t think it’s fair for the Israelis to have plenty of pretty things, and then they restrict our movements just because we like to make pretty explosions,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff.

“We’ve still got Hamas and Hezbollah and each other,” said Beth contentedly, from her corner.

Really, as last week reminded me, you could still fill a whole book with parodies of L.A. Times stories. But I’ll leave it to someone else to come up with that particular anthology — unless you’re making an offer.

— Catherine Seipp is a writer in California who publishes the weblog Cathy’s World. She is an NRO contributor.

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The Other Lame “Times” (Ann Coulter, 040519)

If liberals won’t move on from the prison abuse photos calculated to incite hatred toward the very troops liberals loudly claim to “support,” I’m not moving on from the fact that the editor of the Los Angeles Times, John Carroll, is instructing journalists on ethics. The editor of the Los Angeles Times telling reporters how to behave ethically is a complete contradiction, like ... oh, I don’t know ... giving Yasser Arafat a Nobel Peace Prize or something. You know, just patently silly.

This is the same L.A. Times that engaged in desperate, 11th-hour attempts to sabotage Arnold Schwarzenegger during the California recall election with lurid sex stories from anonymous assistant crudite girls who worked the craft services tables on Arnold’s movies from the 1980s and were still trying to break into show biz 20 years later.

Books

This is the same L.A. Times where reporters had to be told in an internal memo (from Carroll himself) to stop injecting opinion in news stories, specifically the practice of prefacing the term “pro-life” with the term “so-called.”

This is the same L.A. Times that in recent years instituted racial and gender quotas for sources on “so-called” news – oops, I mean, news stories – which puts reporters in the position of having to round up a black expert on nuclear fusion, a Native American expert on cubism, and a female expert on great moments in football.

This is the same L.A. Times that responded to the largest number of canceled subscriptions in the paper’s history from readers enraged by the paper’s liberal bias by putting Michael Kinsley, one of America’s leading leftists, in charge of the editorial page.

And this is the same L.A. Times that pays unrepentant Castro fan and former North Korea defender Robert Scheer for his hysterical anti-American rants every Tuesday, after hiring him mostly because his wife was on the editorial board.

The title of Carroll’s speech was “The Wolf in Reporter’s Clothing: The Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America.” One has to admit: If you wanted an expert on the practice of partisan pseudo-journalism, you could do a lot worse than the editor of the Los Angeles Times.

Alas, Carroll’s speech wasn’t the “how-to” lecture dozens of would-be yellow journalists were expecting when they showed up for his presentation. Like the “ombudsman” at the New York Times, Carroll chastised his own newspaper for some small, irrelevant infraction no one would ever complain about while ignoring the paper’s consistent Soviet-style reporting that has led thousands of readers to cancel their subscriptions.

Instead, Carroll’s speech was an attack on Fox News Channel. If conservatives complained about CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Reader’s Digest, NPR, etc. etc. half as much as liberals scream about Fox News, even I would say conservatives were getting to be a bore on the subject.

Carroll’s case-in-chief of Fox News’ “pseudo-journalism” is “The O’Reilly Factor.” (Only liberals could force conservatives into defending Bill O’Reilly.) Carroll lyingly says of O’Reilly: “Where, he asked, was the L.A. Times on the so-called Troopergate story?”

In fact, O’Reilly never mentioned “Troopergate.” He didn’t mention the Arkansas State Troopers. And he certainly didn’t mention “so-called Troopergate.” He compared the L.A. Times coverage of Schwarzenegger’s alleged inappropriate behavior decades earlier with that paper’s coverage of the scandals of various Democrats – among them the stunning, contemporaneous sexual assaults by Bill Clinton on identifiable women.

I suppose it’s easy to confuse sex scandals involving Bill Clinton – I keep a “Women Bill Clinton Has Raped or Groped at a Glance” file on my Blackberry, just as a time-saver – but O’Reilly was referring not to the 1993 allegations from Arkansas State Troopers, but to the 1998 Clinton sex scandals involving allegations from specific women, such as Kathleen Willey. We know this because while the word “trooper” never passed O’Reilly’s lips, he did expressly refer to “Kathleen Willey.”

When it came to these Clinton sex assaults, how did the L.A. Times do? Reporter Richard A. Serrano described Willey as “embittered” and said her accusations were “fraught with contradiction” – unlike the truth-tellers who waited 20 years to make anonymous accusations against Schwarzenegger. The Times angrily editorialized that Clinton’s impeachment was “grounded not in what is right for the country but what best helps House managers save face.” (How anyone can use the expression “save face” in defense of Bill Clinton is beyond my understanding.)

You don’t have to enter the “No Spin Zone” to see the “disconnect,” as liberals love to say, between the L.A. Times’ frantic, wild-eyed search for a woman – any woman, even anonymously – to accuse Schwarzenegger of groping her at some point during the previous quarter century, and the Times’ equally determined efforts to discount the many credible accounts of women, all named, who plausibly accused Bill Clinton of raping, groping or otherwise sexually assaulting them.

But Carroll dearly wishes O’Reilly had said “Troopergate” because apparently that’s the last time Carroll can remember the L.A. Times going after a Democrat the way the Times goes after Republicans as a matter of policy. The Times’ Troopergate story came out in December 1993. But Carroll is still citing that one time over a decade ago when the L.A. Times engaged in nonpartisan reporting, bragging: “At one point, it had nine reporters in Little Rock.” OK, but there were 24 reporters on the Schwarzenegger story.

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Liberal Media Evidence (WS, 040528)

A new poll by the Pew Center proves that the media is as liberal as ever. When will “diversity” mean more conservatives?

THE ARGUMENT over whether the national press is dominated by liberals is over. Since 1962, there have been 11 surveys of the media that sought the political views of hundreds of journalists. In 1971, they were 53 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In a 1976 survey of the Washington press corps, it was 59 percent liberal, 18 percent conservative. A 1985 poll of 3,200 reporters found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative. In 1996, another survey of Washington journalists pegged the breakdown as 61 percent liberal, 9 percent conservative. Now, the new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found the national media to be 34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative.

Over 40-plus years, the only thing that’s changed in the media’s politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven’t changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.

Does this affect coverage? Is there really liberal bias? The answers are, of course, yes and yes. It couldn’t be any other way. Think for a moment if the numbers were reversed and conservatives had outnumbered liberals in the media for the past four decades. Would President Bush be getting kinder coverage? For sure,

and I’ll bet any liberal would agree with that. Would President Reagan have been treated with less hostility if the national press was conservative-dominated? Yes, again. And I could go on.

The Pew poll also found that 55 percent of national journalists believe that Bush should be treated more critically by the press than he has been. They think he’s gotten off too easy, despite empirical evidence of media Bush bashing. The Center for Media and Public Affairs has examined the coverage of Bush by the broadcast network evening news shows and found only two periods of favorable coverage: in the weeks after September 11 and during the actual war in Iraq. This year, roughly 75 percent of the stories about the Democratic presidential candidates were positive. For Bush, they’ve been 60-plus percent negative.

With the evidence of liberal dominance so overwhelming, a leading press critic is now calling for more ideological diversity in the media. Tom Rosenstiel, who helped design the Pew poll and who runs the Project for Excellence in Journalism, says it’s necessary not to think just of diversity that makes newsrooms “look like America,” but to create a press corps that “thinks like America.”

In truth, the effort to hire more minorities and women has had the effect of making the media more liberal. Both these groups tend to have liberal politics, and this is accentuated by the fact that many of the women recruited into journalism are young and single, precisely those with the most liberal views. “By diversifying the profession in one way,” Rosenstiel says, “they were making it more homogenous in another.”

Rosenstiel insists it would be quite possible for news organizations to find journalists with conservative views to hire. “There are ways to change the culture of the newsroom,” he says. Media recruiters can turn to different colleges than the ones where they’ve traditionally recruited. They can look to different parts of the country. And they can seek assistance from organizations that already train young conservatives for careers in journalism.

Those who still doubt the press needs fresh, preferably conservative, blood, should consider these numbers: In 1999, 12 percent of journalists said fairness and balance were a big problem for the media. Now, in the Pew survey, only 5 percent say so--this, after further proof of liberal dominance and noisy debates about liberal bias. And in 1999, 11 percent said ethics and standards were a major concern. But after high-visibility scandals involving fabricated stories and controversies about plagiarism, only 5 percent agree today. The case for ideological realignment of the media is closed.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

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‘Outfoxed’ Attempts to Show FOX News’ Bias (FN, 040713)

NEW YORK — A new documentary backed by liberal political groups aims to document that the FOX News Channel is anything but “fair and balanced,” despite the cable-news network’s motto.

The film, “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” draws on clips compiled during weeks of round-the-clock taping of the network to demonstrate what the filmmakers believe is a pattern of right-wing bias and support for the Republican agenda.

“What we found is not that FOX is a conservative network, but that it’s a network that follows the party line of the Bush administration,” said “Outfoxed” filmmaker Robert Greenwald, a Hollywood producer-director whose credits include the 2003 documentary “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War” and such TV films as “The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth about Enron” and “Blonde,” a biopic of Marilyn Monroe.

Greenwald said he decided to make the film after hearing numerous journalists refer to the “Foxification” of the news. That approach, he says, has served the 8-year-old FOX News Channel well, and “put pressure on many of the other networks to move in the same direction: cheap news, ranting and raving, pseudo-patriotism.”

Greenwald’s 75-minute film includes complaints from several FOX News staffers about the workplace climate at the outlet of the global Murdoch media empire. They say their bosses promote a conservative slant.

“We weren’t necessarily, as it was told to us, a newsgathering organization so much as we were a proponent of a point of view,” says Jon Du Pre, a former FOX News correspondent.

The film also quotes internal memos from a top network executive that seem to call for pro-Bush coverage.

“Ribbons or medals? Which did John Kerry throw away after he returned from Vietnam?” wrote senior vice president for news John Moody in an April memo to the staff. “His perceived disrespect for the military could be more damaging to the [Democratic presidential] candidate than questions about his actions in uniform.”

In a statement Monday, the network dismissed the whistleblowers as “former low-level FOX employees” who are “hardly worth addressing.” It challenged other media organizations to make public their own employee memos, whereupon “FOX News Channel will publish 100 percent of our editorial directions and memos, and let the public decide who is fair.”

The film also draws on a study commissioned by Fairness & Accuracy in Media, a national media watchdog group. The study found conservatives accounted for nearly three-fourths of ideological guests on the network’s marquee news program, “Special Report With Brit Hume,” between June and December 2003, and that Republicans outnumbered Democrats five to one.

“Outfoxed” was compiled during the past seven months in association with liberal political organizations Center for American Progress and MoveOn.Org, as well as the citizens’ lobbying group Common Cause.

Budgeted at $300,000, the “guerrilla” documentary will premiere Tuesday at the New School University in Manhattan, then initially be distributed through private “house party” screenings and DVD sales.

At a news conference to introduce the film Monday, Greenwald called FOX News Channel “an opinion station, not a news station.”

When former White House terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke testified before the 9/11 commission, he apologized to the American people for the government’s failure to protect them.

The film displays a flurry of FOX pundits blasting Clarke, often in similar terms. “It was almost like FOX News was working off of the playbook coming out of the White House, that he had to be torn down,” FAIR co-founder Jeff Cohen says in the film.

FOX host Bill O’Reilly is seen on his show insisting he has told a guest to shut up “only once in six years,” after which he is seen in clips telling one person after another with whom he disagrees to “shut up.”

The documentary also includes a rapid-fire succession of clips of more than a dozen FOX hosts using the phrase “some people say” — which the filmmakers say is a way to insinuate opinion disguised as reporting into on-air discussions.

“There’s no smoking gun,” Greenwald admitted in explaining what his film set out to reveal — “just a pattern.”

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FOX News Channel Statement on ‘Outfoxed’ (FN, 040713)

Any news organization that thinks this story is legitimate is opening itself to having its copyrighted material taken out of context for partisan reasons. The illegal copyright infringement actions of Moveon.org in cooperation with the New York Times, including “cutting a deal” not to give FOX News Channel adequate time to react, is unprecedented. The New York Times corrupts the journalistic process by taking orders from a George Soros-funded web site – Soros is a left-wing billionaire currency speculator who funds many liberal efforts. This is the real story. If any news organizations decide to make this an anti-FOX News story, then all of their material becomes fodder immediately for possible out of context and biased documentaries.

The former low-level FOX employees are hardly worth addressing. Some of the “sources” for this documentary never worked for FOX News Channel. Some left because of incompetence, and none expressed concern about editorial policy while employees. They represent fewer than 10 employees out of 2,000 over 8 years. Any news organization that believes this story is big and FOX News Channel is a problem will be challenged by FOX News Channel in the following manner:

If they will put out 100 percent of their editorial directions and internal memos, FOX News Channel will publish 100 percent of our editorial directions and internal memos, and let the public decide who is fair. This includes any legitimate cable news network, broadcast network, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.

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Details About Employees Featured in ‘Outfoxed’ (FN, 040713)

In the film “Outfoxed,” four people are identified as former employees of FOX News. FOX News officials, saying their employment history was misrepresented, issued the following clarification:

• Alexander Kippen is referred to as a “former FOX News producer” when in fact he was never employed by FOX News Channel. He was an employee of WTTG-TV, a FOX affiliate** in Washington, DC.

• Frank O’Donnell is referred to as a “FOX News producer” in film materials, which is factually incorrect. O’Donnell worked for FOX affiliate WTTG** from 1984 — 1991 and was never a FOX News Channel employee.

• Jon Du Pre was hired in 1999 as a reporter for FNC’s Los Angeles bureau, not an anchor as the film material states. His contract was not renewed in 2002 because, as his personnel file states, he was considered to be a weak field correspondent and could not do live shots. At the time his contract was not renewed, Du Pre was applying for an anchor position on FOX News Channel.

• Clara Frenk was a pool booker, not a “producer” in the FOX News Channel Washington, D.C., bureau. She worked at FNC from February 1998 until March 1999 and expressed no concern about the editorial process while she was employed here.

**FOX affiliates are run independently and overseen by FOX Television Stations Inc. FOX affiliates are separate entities from FOX News Channel. FOX News has no editorial oversight of any FOX affiliate.

Two stories that appeared in The Washington Post pointed out additional parts of the movie that are distorted and factually incorrect:

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The Case of Reuters: A news agency that will not call a terrorist a terrorist (NRO, 040713)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following appeared in the July 26, 2004, issue of National Review, a special issue made possible by the Media Research Center.

Many people still think of Reuters as the Rolls-Royce of news agencies. Just as the House of Morgan was once synonymous with good banking, Reuters has long been synonymous with good news-gathering. In 1940, there was even a Hollywood film about Paul Julius Reuter, the German-Jewish immigrant to London who as early as 1851 began transmitting stock-market quotes between London and Paris via the new Calais-Dover cable.

His agency quickly established a reputation in Europe for being the first to report scoops from abroad, such as of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Today, almost every major news outlet in the world subscribes. Operating in 200 cities in 94 countries, Reuters produces text in 19 languages, as well as photos and television footage from around the world.

Though it may report in a largely neutral way on many issues, Reuters’s coverage of the Middle East is deeply flawed. It is symptomatic, for instance, that Reuters’s global head of news, Stephen Jukes, banned the use of the word “terrorist” to describe the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks. Even so, such is the aura still surrounding Reuters that news editors from Los Angeles to Auckland automatically assume that text, photos, and film footage provided by Reuters will be fair and objective. Reuters and Associated Press copy is simply inserted into many correspondents’ reports — even in the New York Times and Washington Post — without, it often seems, so much as a second thought given to its accuracy.

This has led to some misleading reporting from Iraq, and still worse coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The newswires are much more influential in setting the news (and hence diplomatic) agenda of that struggle than most people realize.

One veteran American newspaper correspondent in Jerusalem, eager to maintain anonymity so as not to jeopardize relations with his anti-Israel colleagues, points out that “whereas foreign correspondents still write features, they rarely cover the actual breaking news that dominates the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In terms of written copy on the conflict, I would estimate that 50 percent of all reporting, and 90 percent of the attitude, is formed by these news agencies. The important thing about Reuters is that it sets the tone, and here spin is everything.”

In a study last year, the media watchdog HonestReporting found that in “100 percent of headlines” when Reuters wrote about Israeli acts of violence, Israel was emphasized as the first word; also, an active voice was used, often without explaining that the “victim” may have been a gunman. A typical headline was: “Israeli Troops Shoot Dead Palestinian in W. Bank” (July 3, 2003). By contrast, when Palestinians attacked Israelis (almost always civilians), Reuters usually avoided naming the perpetrator. For example: “New West Bank Shooting Mars Truce” (July 1, 2003). In many cases, the headline was couched in a passive voice.

Often it is a question of emphasis: Important and relevant information is actually contained in Reuters text, but buried deep down in the story. Many newspaper readers, however, never get beyond the headlines, and for space reasons many papers carry only the first few paragraphs of a report — often inserted into their own correspondents’ stories. When the TV networks run only brief headlines, or Reuters news ribbon at the foot of the screen, the full text is never shown.

Sometimes, Reuters presents unreliable information as though it were undoubtedly true. Most people are unlikely to notice this. For example, Reuters will note that “a doctor at the hospital said the injured Palestinian was unarmed” — when in fact the doctor couldn’t possibly have known this, since he wasn’t present at the gunfight. But because he is a doctor, Reuters is suggesting to readers that his word is necessarily authoritative. Unfortunately, Reuters headlines and text are used unchanged by newspaper editors because they assume it is professional, balanced copy, which doesn’t need any further editing.

Reporters of course can’t be everywhere at once. The increased speed of the Internet and the demand for instant, 24-hour TV news coverage means that the world’s news outlets rely heavily on Reuters and the AP, which in turn rely on a network of local Palestinian “stringers.” Virtually all breaking news (and much of the non-breaking news) on CNN, the BBC, Fox, and other networks comes from these stringers.

Such stringers are hired for speed, to save money (there is no need to pay drivers and translators), and for their local knowledge. But in many cases, in hiring them, their connections to Arafat’s regime and Hamas count for more than their journalistic abilities. All too often the information they provide, and the supposed eyewitnesses they interview, are undependable. Yet, because of Reuters’s prestige, American and international news outlets simply take their copy as fact. Thus non-massacres become massacres; death tolls are exaggerated; and gunmen are written about as if they were civilians.

As Ehud Ya’ari, Israeli television’s foremost expert on Palestinian affairs, put it: “The vast majority of information of every type coming out of the area is being filtered through Palestinian eyes. Cameras are angled to show a tainted view of the Israeli army’s actions and never focus on Palestinian gunmen. Written reports focus on the Palestinian version of events. And even those Palestinians who don’t support the intifada dare not show or describe anything embarrassing to the Palestinian Authority, for fear they may provoke the wrath of Arafat’s security forces.”

One Palestinian journalist told me that “the worst the Israelis can do is take away our press cards. But if we irritate Arafat, or Hamas, you don’t know who might be waiting in your kitchen when you come home at night.”

Some of Reuters’s Palestinian stringers are honest and courageous. But, according to several ex-Reuters staffers, they feel the intimidating presence of Wafa Amr, Reuters’s “Senior Palestinian Correspondent.” Amr — who is a cousin of former Palestinian minister Nabil Amr, and whose father is said to be close to Arafat — had this title specially created for her (there is no “Senior Israeli Correspondent,” or the equivalent in any other Arab country) so that her close ties to the Palestinian Authority could be exploited.

As one former Reuters journalist put it: “She occupies this position in spite of lacking a basic command of English grammar. The information passed through her is controlled, orchestrated. Reuters would never allow Israeli government propaganda to be fed into its reports in this way. Indeed, stories exposing Israeli misdeeds are a favorite of Reuters. Amr has never had an exposé on Arafat, or his Al-Aqsa Brigades terror group.”

But things may well be improving. Lately, with a new Jerusalem bureau chief, Reuters has taken some steps to ensure greater balance. For example, it no longer claims Hamas’s goal is merely “to set up an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza” (which it is not), but instead writes that Hamas is “sworn to Israel’s destruction” (which it is).

Reuters no longer carries the highly misleading “death tolls” at the end of each story that lumped together Palestinian civilians, gunmen, and suicide bombers. (Agence France-Presse continues to do this.) And, apparently, there are plans to relocate Wafa Amr by next year. Is it too much to hope that one day soon Reuters might actually call terrorism terrorism?

— Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph of London.

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Incredible Media Bias During Federal Election (Christian Coalition International, 040630)

Two of the most notable slogans by media guru Marshall McLuhan were “the medium is the message” and “all news is fake.” Given the recent Canadian federal election campaign, one can verily say that truer words were never spoken.

“Mainstream” media outlets and their reporters exhibited a shocking degree of selective, slanted and outright biased coverage throughout the campaign, but never more so than when it came to the so-called hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality. In fact, if one took the coverage at face value, it would be difficult to discern that these were even contentious and controversial issues at all. Instead, one might easily have thought that the whole country was pro-abortion and pro-homosexual, and that anyone thinking outside that little box was an extremist wingnut of the first order.

The ball started rolling when media pundits jumped on Conservative Rob Merrifield’s rather tame remark early in the campaign that women may benefit from receiving third-party counselling prior to undergoing abortions. That was the red blanket that the pro-abortion bulls, and their allies in the media, needed to swing into action.

“The Conservative party’s health critic is advocating a dramatic shift in abortion regulations,” claimed the Globe and Mail’s Jill Mahoney in a June 1 article. Mahoney went on to quote extensively from outraged remarks by the usual suspects, including Henry Morgentaler, the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada and the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League.

Opposing these three pro-abortion voices was just one pro-life voice – Campaign Life Coalition’s Jim Hughes – but the reporter did not contact any of the post-abortive women suggested as sources to her who could have added a unique and often ignored perspective on the issue. Nor did the media report on the press releases issued by groups such as CLC and the Canadian Physicians for Life. The Canadian Press claimed Conservative leader Stephen Harper was “on the defensive” over the issue.

In a follow-up Globe article the next day, Mahoney and Brian Laghi characterized Merrifield – who ultimately was re-elected – as “beleaguered.” Even National Post commentator John Ivison characterized Merrifield’s remarks as “a gaffe.” The Toronto Star, that bastion of liberalism and leftist thinking, came up with an editorial suggesting “Harper’s position on abortion (is) unclear” – even though he unequivocally stated his prospective government would not be introducing abortion-related legislation in the next Parliament.

Globe columnist Margaret Wente opined that Merrifield’s observations immediately lost the urban Ontario female vote. The Hamilton Spectator, in a June 4 front-page piece, printed an all-capital headline that only lacked an exclamation point at the end: “HARPER WOULD ALLOW FREE VOTE ON ABORTION” – as if that was a hideously undemocratic thing to do.

Anne Dawson of CanWest News Service, in a June 5 article, suggested that “demons of the past … dangerous and uncomfortable moral issues” (read: abortion, same-sex marriage and capital punishment) had come back to “haunt” the Conservative party.

Mainstream reporters then obsequiously filed into a pro-abortion press conference June 4 to hear and report on outrageous comments by Morgentaler (again), June Callwood, Doris Anderson (curiously, chair of the Ontario Press Council), Shirley Douglas and Norma Scarborough. Toronto Star reporter Caroline Mallon, in a generously long article on the non-event, amazingly could find no space for rebutting comments from pro-life representatives.

One Columnist Honestly Asks, “On abortion, who’s the extremist?”

A little bit of sanity was provided by National Post columnist Andrew Coyne – a journalist who is not pro-life - who, quite appropriately, asked the question, Coyne accused reporters of fabricating a “self-generated story … reporting about reporting.” He said, “The media manage to make themselves a part of every campaign, but it’s rare to see them openly acknowledge this role.”

Toronto Sun columnist Linda Williamson, meanwhile, observed that there is a “commandment” in Canadian politics that reads: “You must not raise abortion as an issue – not in your first term, or ever. You must not allow anyone else to put forward a private member’s bill on it, either, or allow a free vote on it – even though that’s what parliamentary procedure dictates. Better to shut down all debate on this one, regardless of your professed devotion to democracy, MPs’ rights or ‘fixing the democratic deficit.’”

Around the same time, results of a survey in the U.S. revealed that only seven per cent of national news journalists there considered themselves conservative. Eighty-eight per cent, on the other hand, believed society should accept homosexuality. One suspects the situation is not any better – and is likely worse – in Canada.

When the Liberal party dredged up a video of Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant at this year’s March for Life, comparing abortion to the beheading of civilians in Iraq, the mainstream press jumped on that bandwagon. CTV News suggested that Gallant “has already caused her party leader trouble this election campaign.”

The ambush didn’t hurt Gallant’s re-election bid, however, as she won handily in her Renfrew-Nippissing-Pembroke, Ont. riding.

Media also went into a tizzy when Catholic Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary publicly pointed out Prime Minister Paul Martin’s “moral incoherence” for claiming to be a devout Catholic while supporting unrestricted abortion rights. One Calgary newspaper ran a poll on whether people approved of Henry’s statements, yet it would have been hard to imagine a media outlet doing the same over, say, Henry Morgentaler’s wading into the abortion-politics fray.

In a June 7 editorial, the Globe and Mail predictably – but erroneously – echoed Jean Chretien’s old line that “social peace on the status quo” on abortion is prevailing. Then, Globe columnist John Ibbitson, in a June 8 piece, suggested discussions on abortion were obscuring “more important issues” – like money. The same day, CTV News, in a blatantly untrue statement, reported that, “Polls have found that a large majority of Canadians are satisfied with the status quo (on abortion).” In fact, polls consistently show Canadians do not want unrestricted abortion-on-demand.

Tories Benefited From Emphasis on Abortion

What effect was all this negative media coverage having on the Tories? None at all. In fact, it may have even been aiding their electoral efforts. A June 11 poll revealed that women’s support for the Tories was rising, from 26 to 28 per cent.

As the abortion issue faded in intensity during the campaign, the media bias quotient similarly diminished. However, until the end, the Liberal party kept playing up its charges of an alleged Conservative threat to a woman’s “right to choose” (whatever that means) and mainstream media outlets continued to paint the Conservatives as out-of-sync with alleged “Canadian values” (whatever those are) on other issues such as the Charter of Rights, use of the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution, Supreme Court appointments, hate-crime revisions and the like.

But as Globe Media Watch columnist Hugh Windsor put it so well in a June 8 piece, mainstream media have been engaging in, and have often prompted, hyperbole. He chastized them for going along with it and openly questioned whether they had unwittingly become partners in Liberal election strategies.

Whatever the answer, one must conclude that the mainstream media were, as a whole (with the possible exceptions of the National Post and the Sun Media chain) hopelessly biased, if not negligent and incompetent, in their coverage of social issues during the recent election campaign.

Given McLuhan’s dictum that the medium is the message, Canadians need to – with apologies for stealing the Conservative campaign slogan – “demand better” from their news media. The era when reporters acted as lackeys for abortionists, homosexual activists, feminists, liberals and other assorted narrow interests should be long past. That it still isn’t is a troubling situation that needs to be dealt with immediately, before another election campaign comes upon us.

Write letters, send e-mails, support alternative media, yell, scream, jump up and down and do whatever you have to do to demand better and fairer coverage from our well-paid and monopolizing mainstream media. The future of our country – not to mention generations of unborn Canadians and families – depends on it.

Tony Gosgnach is the assistant editor of The Interim Newspaper

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The Liberal Media (Media Research Centre, 040630)

Every Poll Shows Journalists Are More Liberal than the American Public — And the Public Knows It

By Rich Noyes

Director of Research

Executive Summary

Over the next four months, the media establishment will play a central role in informing the public about the candidates and the issues. As the countdown to Election Day begins, it is important to remember the journalists who will help establish the campaign agenda are not an all-American mix of Democrats, Republicans and independents, but an elite group whose views veer sharply to the left.

Surveys over the past 25 years have consistently found that journalists are more liberal than rest of America. This MRC Special Report summarizes the relevant data on journalist attitudes, as well as polling showing how the American public’s recognition of the media’s liberal bias has grown over the years:

Journalists Vote for Liberals: Between 1964 and 1992, Republicans won the White House five times compared with three Democratic victories. But if only journalists’ ballots were counted, the Democrats would have won every time.

Journalists Say They Are Liberal: Surveys from 1978 to 2004 show that journalists are far more likely to say they are liberal than conservative, and are far more liberal than the public at large.

Journalists Reject Conservative Positions: None of the surveys have found that news organizations are populated by independent thinkers who mix liberal and conservative positions. Most journalists offer reflexively liberal answers to practically every question a pollster can imagine.

The Public Recognizes the Bias: Since 1985, the percentage of Americans who perceive a liberal bias has doubled from 22 percent to 45 percent, nearly half the adult population. Even a plurality of Democrats now say the press is liberal.

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Bright Light in a Big City: A high-spirited paper encourages a real marketplace of ideas (NRO, 040719)

Think of last Thursday as a tale of two front pages. Splashed across the top of Paper A was the headline, “BRITISH ASSESSMENT CLEARS BUSH ON URANIUM.” Paper B buried the Butler Report story on page six; similarly buried, on page seven, was coverage of the Philippines’s capitulation to terrorism. This was front-page material for Paper A, which, just under the Butler headline, proclaimed, “FILIPINO RETREAT CALLED A CAVE-IN IN FACE OF THREAT.” What was deserving of front-page coverage for Paper B? A triumphant “SENATORS BLOCK INITIATIVE TO BAN SAME-SEX UNIONS; Amendment, Endorsed by Bush, Fails After Days of Debate.” Paper A, to its credit, also put this story on its front page, but with the less hysterical “Vote on Gay Vows Leaves Issue Alive; Marriage Amendment Halted in Senate.”

Until recently, if eight million-plus people wanted to take in a broadsheet with their morning’s coffee, Paper B — the New York Times — was their only option. In 2002, this monopoly was broken by Paper A: the New York Sun.

This was not the first time the Sun had saved New York from media imbalance. In 1868, when journalist Charles Dana returned to New York — after covering the Civil War at Abraham Lincoln’s behest — he arrived in a city that, prior to the war, had been a cesspool of pro-slavery sentiment. It had also lacked an outspokenly abolitionist voice among its news offerings; Dana did not want the same tepidity to afflict the Reconstruction era. He wanted a newspaper that would argue in favor of limited, honest government, free enterprise, and equality before the law. So Dana acquired the New York Sun, which he transformed into a standard-bearer for these values, and a vehicle for high-quality, literary journalism.

One hundred thirty-four years later, when Seth Lipsky sought to establish a new daily newspaper in New York, he wanted to accomplish much the same thing. Inspired by Dana’s example, he settled on reviving the Sun — which has challenged the liberal domination of New York’s media since.

A MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS

Taking up challenges seems to be Lipsky’s specialty. Prior to reestablishing the Sun, he and Sun founding partner Ira Stoll had tried to take the weekly Jewish Forward daily. “We failed at that,” says Stoll (who had been the Forward’s managing editor), with a grin. “So we decided it would be easier to take on the New York Times.”

Lipsky and Stoll both have very flattering things to say about the Times. So does Roger Hertog, one of the Sun’s “financial angels”: “The New York Times is a great paper; it’s a well-written paper. Its journalists are among the most talented in the world.”

“But on many issues,” Hertog adds, “they have a worldview that I don’t quite agree with. And so if you believe in free markets and free minds, then competition in the world of news makes some sense.”

This is not to say that the Sun exists only to challenge the Times. “You don’t have to hate the Times to love the Sun,” Lipsky assures. In fact, the Sun responds to several New York publications: “The New York Post — which we love — is a tabloid,” says Stoll. “And the Wall Street Journal is a national business paper. So we saw an opening in the market here for an upscale, right-of-center broadsheet.”

Upscale and right-of-center it is. Across its 20-plus pages, the Sun reflects the intellectual sophistication, stylistic flair, and high-spirited energy of the city that hosts and shapes it. And fittingly so: The paper started out with a “New York on Page One” slogan (to combat the Times’s shift away from local coverage). When the Times met this challenge by moving Metro stories to the front page, the Sun settled into being its own entity, making sure that all of its coverage — local, national, international — embraced the paper’s values and priorities.

WINNING THE CULTURE(D) WARS

Those values and priorities are rare among metropolitan dailies. Take, for example, the Sun’s culture coverage, which has made an impact on the city’s arts criticism, accruing rave reviews in the process. This accomplishment belongs largely to deputy managing editor Robert Messenger, who, as culture editor in the paper’s first year, effectively built that section from scratch. Prior to joining the Sun, Messenger had been an associate editor at The New Criterion, and brought many of its values to his new publication.

Messenger attributes much of the culture section’s success to its critics: “We want writers who have strong opinions,” he explains — writers who are enthusiastic about their respective arts. But the section is also distinguished by its traditional perspective on art criticism. “It’s the idea that there’s one set of standards, which doesn’t recognize whether you’re black or white, male or female,” says Messenger. One is unlikely to find this viewpoint in many newspaper arts sections, insofar as they exist at all. (Messenger notes ruefully that the Washington Post — which he considers one of the nation’s finest papers — has only a “Style” section.)

The Sun’s priorities are also on display in its opinion pages, which are a source of special pride for Lipsky: “We’re starting to build a great lineup of columnists: Bill Buckley, William Hammond, Michael Barone, Daniel Pipes.... And I think our editorials have been well received.”

Perhaps this is because they take positions unpopular among the “media elite,” and argue them daringly, and well. The Sun is passionately in favor of lower taxes, school choice, and tort reform. It has been highly supportive of the war in Iraq, and has tried to bring balance to coverage of the conflict there. It is also a strong proponent of Israel’s right to defend itself. Explains Stoll: “There are people who think Bush should pressure Israel to make more concessions to terrorists. But we think he should support [Israel] in fighting the terrorists. I don’t get why, in a city attacked by terrorists, and with a large Jewish population, people would think otherwise.”

But people do — like the people shaping editorial opinion at the Times, and, indeed, in most of the rest of the world media. The Sun’s position is a relatively lonely one, requiring a brave attitude to embrace it, and a bold voice to argue it.

A MAN AND HIS DREAM

This courage and passion are the paper’s defining qualities, and can, in large part, be traced to Lipsky — and his love of journalism.

“I’ve been pretty much set on a newspaper life since I became conscious,” says the journalism romantic. “I also knew that I would eventually try to organize my own paper in New York — probably since I was about five.” This lifelong dream would eventually come to fruition, but not by the most direct path: Lipsky spent 18 years at the Wall Street Journal, where one of his assignments was to help set up the Asian Wall Street Journal. “For someone with my entrepreneurial bent, it was just a fabulous experience.” So was working under Robert Bartley, whom Lipsky describes as “one of the great influences in my life — not just intellectually, in the battle for ideas, but also just as a great newspaperman and scoop artist.”

Lipsky’s Dow Jones adventures took him to Brussels, to be editorial-page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe. “If one wants to talk about the romance of newspapering, it just doesn’t get more romantic than to be in league with Amity [Shlaes, Lipsky’s wife] in Europe during the climactic years of the Cold War.” As proof, Lipsky recounts a climactic Cold War event: Returning from a business trip, Lipsky landed in Brussels — where he and Amity were living — “on the morning of November 10, and found a note on my desk saying she was staying in Berlin owing to events.” So Lipsky caught a flight to Berlin, where “people were in the streets. We went to the East, and came back through Checkpoint Charlie. People were swarming over the Wall; people handed us rock-climbing hammers; and we set to chipping away at the wall with a hundred thousand people.”

After that experience, Lipsky figured it was “a good time to go back to New York, and on to the next story.”

TEACHING BY EXAMPLE

This spirit of journalistic adventure infuses the Sun — and spills over to the rest of the 90-person staff. “A newspaper startup kind of attracts an adventurous, high-spirited group,” Lipsky observes. Small wonder: A startup comes with no small amount of risk, as the Sun’s (re)founders know all too well. Explains Hertog: “Great projects are never started by the faint of heart. You have to take some risks, and you have to really believe in something. And you have to have people who really believe in something.”

Those affiliated with the Sun definitely believe in their paper, which is why they are so excited about the steps it has already taken, and the strides it has yet to make. And deservedly so: In bringing greater ideological balance to — and, through competition, improving the quality of — the city’s media, the Sun is an invaluable addition to New York journalism. Its benefits, however, are not confined to the city: First, those outside the Sun’s print-distribution range may read the very well-formatted online version. Next, there’s the fact that it has been picked up by other news outlets, and has begun to influence debates nationwide. And then there’s the power of its example. Says Stoll, “If we’re successful here, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in other cities where there are liberal-monopoly newspapers, people might think about mounting challenges.”

Readers in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Baltimore, Chicago...take note. And readers in New York?

Be grateful.

— Meghan Clyne is an NR associate editor.

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Worse than Tom and Dan? Peter, we mean (NR, 040726)

RACHEL ZABARKES FRIEDMAN

“My mother...was pretty anti-American. And so I was, in some respects, raised with anti-Americanism in my blood, or in my mother’s milk at least.”

That’s Canadian-born reporter Peter Jennings, appearing on Letterman, in September 2002. Jennings — who’s been the sole anchor on ABC’s World News Tonight since 1983 — became a dual U.S. citizen just last year. As anchor, Jennings is elegant, urbane, and a touch condescending: He speaks slowly, like a teacher to his pupils, nodding seriously and often. But for all Jennings’s apparent desire to educate viewers, some media-watchers consider him the worst — the most ideologically liberal and consistently biased — of the network news anchors. And given that he attracts, on average, between 8 and 9 million viewers each night, that charge isn’t something to take lightly.

Studies of Iraq-war coverage by the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that World News Tonight had “the most anti-war coverage” of the nightly newscasts on the three major networks in both 1991 and 2003. The 2003 study found that Jennings’s show aired the most criticism of the Bush administration and featured the most opposition to the war. (For example, Jennings found plenty of time for anti-war rallies, but said not a word about a pro-troops rally in New York City that drew 15,000 people.) Even before the release of the study, Jennings said: “We have been criticized...by people who think I was not enough pro-war. That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public.”

And question he has, at least when it comes to the Bush administration. Like many others, Jennings pounced on the 9/11 commission report on Iraq–al-Qaeda ties as an opportunity to question Bush’s reasons for going to war. Introducing an otherwise fair June 16 segment, he said, “One of the Bush administration’s most controversial assertions in its argument for war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda. Today, the 9/11 commission said unequivocally, not so.”

But the commission did not say “unequivocally, not so”: It did describe possible links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, though it didn’t find conclusive evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks. But that qualification clearly would have taken the wind out of Jennings’s “Bush lied” sails.

Jennings’s professed skepticism of government stops where his socialist leanings begin: He’s repeatedly praised European social-welfare policies (compared with America the Greedy) and described tax cuts as money sucked from government programs. In 1994, when voters elected a Republican majority in both houses of Congress — expressing their own skepticism of government — Jennings retorted on his daily ABC radio commentary: “Imagine a nation full of uncontrolled two-year-old rage. The voters had a temper tantrum last week. . . . ‘Parenting’ and ‘governing’ don’t have to be dirty words.”

Jennings has also been known to put in a plug or two for Communist regimes. Take a 1989 report about Cuba: “Medical care was once for the privileged few. Today it is available to every Cuban and it is free. Some of Cuba’s health care is world class....Health and education are the Revolution’s greatest success stories.” Jennings then quoted a Cuban saying, “They are the most important, the two most important things that a people can expect from a government, and we have the both of them.” (Popular though Castroite propaganda may be, quality of life in Cuba has hardly been something to celebrate since 1959, as Mark Falcoff, for instance, shows in his recent Cuba: The Morning After.)

And then there’s the Middle East. Jennings — who dated former Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi when she was a graduate student in Lebanon — has a reputation for anti-Israel bias that goes back at least to the 1972 Munich Olympics. It is remembered that he refused to use the word “terrorists,” and called the killers “guerrillas” or “commandos” instead.

Alex Safian, associate director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), calls Jennings “by far the most anti-Israel of the major network anchors and reporters” and “the most apologetic when it comes to Palestinian terrorism.” Consider as an example — just one of many — Jennings’s 2000 introduction to a story about the killing of two Israeli reservists who had made a wrong turn and ended up in Ramallah:

It has been another terrible day of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. There was a particularly ugly incident in the Palestinian city of Ramallah. Forty-thousand people live there. This week they’re all angry at the Israelis. There was about to be another funeral....At least two Israeli army reservists were clearly in the wrong place. They were stopped and taken into a police station. That was not enough for their protection.

Jennings said not a word about the Israeli victims, or the fact that their brutalized bodies were put on public display. His implicit message: “Don’t forget, Palestinians are the victims here.” (The following report, by another journalist, did broadcast images of the scene, but described the event in only a few sentences before declaring, “There was little doubt that Israel would retaliate.”)

The late journalist (and pianist) David Bar-Illan once wrote that “in turning a massacre of Israelis into pro-Palestinian propaganda, no one is a greater virtuoso than...Peter Jennings.”

ABC’s Paul Slavin, senior vice president of worldwide newsgathering and former executive producer of World News Tonight, says, “Peter has very strongly held personal opinions,” but he’s “good at recognizing when those opinions are seeping into his reporting.” Slavin insists Jennings is “fiercely objective.”

Of course, it’s difficult to prove bias. Studies rely on criteria some will find subjective. Isolated statements aren’t enough to make a home-run case; the key lies in patterns that emerge over time, including which stories are chosen and which are rejected, and how certain topics are repeatedly presented.

The pattern that emerges from the dogged work of a CAMERA or a Media Research Center — both of which have followed Jennings closely for some time, and from which most of the examples in this piece are drawn — suggests he isn’t as good at filtering out his own opinions as he thinks, or suggests. So do the testimonies of some former ABC reporters who have spoken out about Jennings’s bias.

Robert Zelnick, head of Boston University’s journalism department, covered Moscow, Israel, and the Pentagon for World News Tonight for twelve years. He says, “There was always the ‘Peter factor’ to deal with” in filing a news story for Jennings.

Zelnick recounts one instance from his time in Tel Aviv, when an Israeli tank fired at and hit an unauthorized vehicle carrying two CBS crew members on its way to a blockaded Lebanese village; both crewmen were killed. News executives immediately condemned what they claimed was the Israelis’ deliberate killing of the newsmen. But Zelnick wasn’t convinced. Seeing the site, he says, “it was clear to me that the Israelis might have acted arbitrarily, and cruelly, but there was no proof that they acted intentionally to kill a Western newsman.”

So he filed a report to World News Tonight that stopped short of accusing the Israelis of intentionally killing the crewmen. He soon heard back from Jennings and a producer saying he should take into account the executives’ allegations. Zelnick rewrote the piece to address those claims, but declined to conclude that the Israelis had killed intentionally. When, after a second call from Jennings, Zelnick still refused to make the claim himself, the piece was dropped for that night. It ran only the following evening, after articles in the New York Times and Washington Post had come out corroborating Zelnick’s take on the story.

Another former ABC reporter says, “Scripts I wrote were often subject to pressure.” In a report on the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, Jennings asked the reporter to add more positive statements about the Sandinistas’ accomplishments. “Well,” the reporter says, “there weren’t any.” Eventually a positive statement was inserted, but the words Communist and Marxist were not: “I was only able to get the word Communist into my copy a few times,” he recalls. ABC responded to the reporter’s claims by questioning the quality of his journalism.

Zelnick says that in his experience, when a reporter held his ground about a story, Jennings would relent. “I found him to be an excellent newsman and to have great integrity,” Zelnick says. But he also explains, “The anchorman is a very powerful figure at ABC and other networks.” Even if not confronted directly, many junior reporters may feel pressure to report what their superiors — Jennings most of all — want to hear.

But that may be changing. World News Tonight does air even-handed reports, and it is possible that on some issues the slant has lessened in recent years — thanks to the existence of watchdog groups, competition from other media, and a younger generation of journalists responding to those pressures. Slavin admits that debate on staff helps make for better news and says there are more Republican-leaning reporters at ABC now than in the past. And as viewers become increasingly aware of network bias and the younger among them move to cable or the Internet — getting their news from a variety of sources rather than through the filter of one all-knowing anchor — the incentive for the networks to straighten out is likely to increase.

But that’s no reason to stop monitoring Jennings. Knowledge and competition are the best weapons we have against the “Peter factor” and other such distortions.

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A Week in the Life . . . of the Big Bad Nets (NR, 040726)

On the subject of media fairness, people who aren’t remote-tossing conservatives often ask, “What do you mean, liberal bias?”

In a nutshell, bias is all about selective storytelling. Which stories do you tell, and which do you bury in a drawer somewhere? As a story is assembled, whom do you build up as the hero, and whom do you paint as the villain — and how do you describe them? Do you tell a story to inspire, or to amuse? To inform, or to scare? As a program is assembled, in what order do you put the stories? Which are novels of epic proportions, and which are the length of a classified ad?

At the top TV-news outlets, these decisions are shaped daily by a crusading liberal impulse, whereby journalists think that pursuing objectivity and balance on controversial issues is a cowardly means of evading tough choices: between justice and injustice, or between the good guys and the bad guys. A look at a typical week’s programming — seeing how the nightly news unfolded for ABC, CBS, and NBC viewers — will make clear how the bias works.

Monday, June 21. The Supreme Court decides 9-0 that HMOs cannot be sued in state courts, and network coverage follows a predictable story line. All three networks feature good-guy plaintiffs with sad stories of malpractice or lost loved ones owing to bad-guy HMO accountants. Each includes a soundbite from HMO industry spokeswoman Karen Ignagni. But ABC and NBC describe her opponents from liberal groups like the AARP and Families USA favorably — and without identifying the groups’ ideological leanings — as merely “patients’-rights advocates.” Neither story notes that these groups were major backers of the Clintons’ health plan in 1993, which would have put most of America’s patients in these dastardly managed-care programs.

Dan Rather follows up on his interview of Bill Clinton with previously unseen footage of Clinton defending his foreign-policy record. Dan sits calmly and listens as the former president talks about his bold dealings with North Korea, which Clinton weirdly calls “the last great Communist outpost.” CBS will compound the weirdness on Wednesday with a report on how the Bush administration has “finally put a deal on the table” for an arms agreement with North Korea — making no mention of the fact that North Korea blatantly violated the last such agreement.

Tuesday, June 22. The big story is that a federal judge has allowed a whopping class-action sex-discrimination suit against Wal-Mart. It looks a little like a repeat from Monday night, with female HMO victims replaced by female CEO victims. CBS has no Wal-Mart spokesman, just upset female employees and attorneys. NBC at least features a Wal-Mart voice while noting, “Wal-Mart is already reeling from accusations of employing illegal immigrants and shaving hours off time cards.” ABC includes Wal-Mart’s CEO, and highlights immediate pressure to settle: “Lawyers for the women workers told ABC News that if they win the case at trial, a jury award could approach a billion dollars, but money isn’t everything.” The networks express no concern that Wal-Mart’s litigation problems might result in layoffs or higher prices.

Tom Brokaw promises: “Coming up later on NBC Nightly News: Former President Clinton kicks off his book tour in a frenzy that would make Elvis proud.” Andrea Mitchell’s story is soft-soap: “From coast to coast...the selling of Bill Clinton. His fans have been lining up since noon yesterday...midnight in Washington....Dawn in New York, rain or shine...it is the Bill Clinton book club.” At least she mentions that Clinton had a $10 million advance to try to earn back for his publisher. CBS’s Jim Axelrod does a story lamenting that the book’s buzz carries too much focus on Monicagate. Unasked question: Whose decision was that?

Wednesday, June 23. The big-impact story tonight on all three networks is an anonymous CIA officer we’re told has been one of our government’s top Osama bin Laden trackers. Shadowed in black, he sounds amazingly like John Kerry, saying that we are losing the War on Terror because we waged an unnecessary war in Iraq that only delighted Osama. He also sees nothing but disaster in Afghanistan. He makes grand and scary predictions that al-Qaeda is still capable of plotting an attack on American soil even more lethal than 9/11. He has an “anonymous” book coming out in three weeks titled Imperial Hubris. We never learn anything about this man, or his possible personal or political affiliations.

Is this fair? Haven’t the networks already promoted a parade of anti-Bush books this year — Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson? (Wait, correction: Wilson’s book was crowded out by Abu Ghraib.) Here’s one way to think about it: If this CIA officer had written an anonymous book in the Clinton era with the message that President Clinton’s anti-terrorism policy was poor and could lead to a lethal attack on American soil, would he have received major publicity on the national TV news without any knowledge of his personal background? Answer: Try to find an author of a non-anonymous book questioning Clinton’s defense policies who was a sensation on all three network news programs. Good luck.

Thursday, June 24. All three play up dramatic incidents of violence against Iraqis, in which more than 100 were killed in systematic attacks. The daily soundtrack out of Iraq builds anxiety at home, helping to fuel negative views about Bush’s waging of the terror war, and casting doubt as to whether the war in Iraq was “worth it.” This is not to say, of course, that attacks in Iraq are not newsworthy — but equally newsworthy are our successes there, which certainly do not receive equal airtime.

The two political stories of the day are the president’s Oval Office testimony in the Valerie Plame leak case and the Supreme Court ruling supporting Dick Cheney’s position against releasing internal energy-task-force documents. Strangely, the anchors highlight how rare it is for presidents to testify in federal criminal proceedings without mentioning that the last president certainly did — for the Kenneth Starr investigation.

Cheney’s presumably good-guy, anti-secrecy adversaries from the liberal Sierra Club and the conservatives-turned-mugwumps at Judicial Watch are blandly identified as “opponents” (ABC), “environmentalists” (CBS), and “interest groups” (NBC). In the Clinton era, Judicial Watch was routinely labeled “conservative” — when it was mentioned at all, that is. Peter Jennings wouldn’t even say the words “Judicial Watch” on the air before the group sued Cheney in 2002. In all the coverage, secrecy is underlined, as in this introduction from Dan Rather: “The Bush administration would like to keep the workings of Vice President Cheney’s energy-policy task force secret. Environmentalists and others want to know what’s been going on and who’s been doing it behind closed doors.” No reference is made to Hillary Clinton’s health-care task force.

Friday, June 25. Liberal bias is not unremitting; occasionally, the networks relent. After airing several televised segments with far greater promotional value, ABC and NBC both offer “truth squad” pieces rebutting claims in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. CBS and NBC both ignore the New York Times article finding contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, a link they both disparaged nine evenings before while mischaracterizing the 9/11 commission’s finding of no “collaborative relationship” between the two. (ABC, which used the stronger words “no connection” on June 16, reports on the Times story.)

One story suggests a regular spin to look out for over the next few months. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell touts John Kerry’s move to the center: “At every stop...on a range of issues, Kerry tries to line up in the center, hoping to reach beyond his own Democratic base...Kerry as corporate friendly....Eager to tap fiscal restraint...and national defense.” The whole piece lays out the thinking of “senior aides,” who are “feeling no pressure from the far left.” (Now, there are two words rare on television!) They say Kerry is “working off a successful Clinton centrist model,” not the Gore populist model. Kerry’s shifting rhetoric is, again, newsworthy — but so too is the fact that, prior to Kerry’s presidential bid, the senator had long enjoyed a reputation for being a fervent “Massachusetts liberal.” This network coverage, then, would be greatly improved by a laugh track — and mention of Kerry’s lifetime American Conservative Union score of 5 out of 100.

Mr. Tim Graham is director of media analysis for the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va.

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Newsweeklies, Not So Newsy (NR, 040726)

Time and Newsweek serve up a lot of opinion — from guess which quarter?

RAMESH PONNURU

U.S. News & World Report, the major newsweekly with the lowest circulation, is also the one that gives conservatives the fewest fits. It is, however, capable of raising our eyebrows. The June 28/July 5 issue carries a long series of articles on “Defining America.” One of the things that define America is “dissent,” and Thomas Hayden has written an article on it. It contains nothing terribly provocative, or interesting, until the end, when Hayden suggests that America post-9/11 has silenced dissent. “[A]s shown by the current spate of media self-examination over an obvious lack of questioning of the government before the Iraq war, sometimes non-dissent can be just as harmful to the state.”

Let’s leave aside the equation of questioning and dissent, which in Hayden’s formulation seems to give the media some quasi-governmental role and a duty to “dissent” from whatever administration is in power. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the media should have questioned widespread assumptions about Iraq’s WMD program. But it is simply untrue that the media failed to dissent from the Bush administration, or to cover its opponents, about the war itself. Hayden need not examine how Howell Raines or Peter Jennings handled the pre-war debate to see this. He could just look at the newsweeklies.

In the August 12, 2002, issue of Time, for example, Michael Duffy saw an administration split into two camps: “one pragmatic, the other jihadist.” He labeled Secretary Rumsfeld and his colleagues “the hotheads” and “the war party.” They were “guys in ties” (not uniforms). Paul Wolfowitz was “fiercely gung-ho.” Duffy told us twice, in the same article, that Bush had an “obsession” with Iraq. It would take a fairly dim reader not to see which side he was supposed to be on.

Duffy is still at Time. In the June 14, 2004, issue, he has an article on James Bamford’s book A Pretext for War. There isn’t a word of criticism of the book in the article. Duffy treads gingerly when describing Bamford’s thesis: “Bamford comes very close to stating that the hard-liners were wittingly or unwittingly acting as agents of Israel’s hard-line Likud Party, which believed Israel should operate with impunity in the region and dictate terms to its neighbors. . . . Bamford . . . suggests that Washington mistook Israel’s interests for its own when it pre-emptively invaded Iraq last year.” Duffy is careful not to endorse that crackpot thesis — and equally careful not to question it.

Over at Newsweek, there is some good coverage of the war, including the July 5 cover story on Lt. Gen. David Petraeus’s efforts to build Iraq’s security forces. Yet the editors cannot resist using the line “Mission Impossible” — three times. It’s in the cover text, the table of contents, and the subheadline. The editors also let Michael Isikoff write a short article debunking Michael Moore’s movie, with a follow-up in the online edition. Isikoff’s piece accompanies a longer one that is essentially pro-Moore. David Gates writes that Moore’s “reading of recent history is hardly a seditious salvo from the extremist fringe. Last week alone, two mainstream bipartisan groups — the 9-11 commission and a delegation of retired diplomats and generals calling for ‘regime change’ in Washington — made some of the same points Moore does, though without the entertainment value.” (The worst thing Time could think to say of Moore in its cover story was that he is as bad as Rush Limbaugh.)

I shouldn’t give the impression that the newsweeklies offer unrelieved liberal bias in every story. For one thing, each of them carries conservative columnists. George Will is in every other issue of Newsweek, John Leo and Michael Barone run regularly in U.S. News, and Time often carries Andrew Sullivan or Charles Krauthammer on its back page. (Social-conservative columnists are, however, beyond the pale.) They may not get cover stories, the way liberal columnists such as Joe Klein and Jonathan Alter do, but it’s something.

Other non-liberal copy can be found in the magazines. Robert Samuelson has a center-right economics column in Newsweek; Kenneth Woodward covers the religion beat for it with insight and without condescension. The July 5 Time had a balanced and thoughtful article by Daren Fonda and Barbara Kiviat on the controversy over the marketing of medicines for unapproved uses. It’s much better than the hyperbolic demagoguery that Donald Barlett and James Steele, two Time writers who clearly think of themselves as populist crusaders, serve up on pharmaceutical issues and, come to think of it, all other issues. (They can’t be trusted even when they’re right, as they are about corporate welfare.)

What you will not find is copy that is reliably non-liberal, or even intelligent. On June 7, Time ran a cover package on America’s obesity “epidemic.” Page after page was devoted to advocacy for wide-ranging government intervention to alter Americans’ eating habits, with a mere 350-word dissent by libertarian blogger Radley Balko. On June 28, David van Biema wrote about the travails of female preachers; all their difficulties at breaking “the stained-glass ceiling” are chalked up to “patriarchy.” Only the absence of Samuel Johnson’s quote about women preaching kept the article from being a complete cliché. Newsweek’s “conventional wisdom” watch is, notoriously, the most compressed expression of the liberal attitudes of the moment: an expression of conventional wisdom rather than a skewering of it, and an insufferably smug expression of it at that. The July 5 edition gives Bush, Cheney, and Wolfowitz down arrows; Michael Moore gets an up arrow.

Time’s New Democrat columnist Joe Klein used to be, at least, interesting. He is increasingly conclusory and decreasingly novel. In 2003, he wrote that the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of racial preferences at universities was “a reassertion of sanity” that troubled only the GOP’s “florid assortment of wing nuts.” Everyone in the “vast sensible center of American politics” knows that racial preferences are obligatory. (Klein’s center apparently excludes a majority of the voters of California. Must all be wing nuts.) His take on Bill Clinton, whom he interviewed as part of the publicity campaign for the former president’s book, was all too predictable. “In retrospect, it is clear that there was no substance to the Whitewater allegations and the other White House scandalettes. . . . It seems clear that Starr conducted an unseemly and irresponsible investigation. . . . And it also seems clear that the press was way too credulous about Starr’s allegations and didn’t pay nearly enough attention to his methods.” Q.E.D. Klein adds that it’s too bad that Clinton was and is so “in thrall” to “his demons.”

Liberal attitudinizing about current affairs affects even the newsweekly’s coverage of the events of 200 years ago. The July 5 Time has a cover package on “the radical mind of Thomas Jefferson.” In an introductory essay, novelist Walter Kirn notes Jefferson’s opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts and adds, “To the extent that certain elements of the current Patriot Act smack of oppression, Jefferson might find it alarming too.” A later article concerns the Alien and Sedition Acts exclusively. Its headline? “The Patriot Act of the 18th Century.”

The essays get Jefferson wrong in their zeal to make him out as a civil libertarian: It’s a matter of record that Jefferson supported state-level sedition acts that punished his opponents, and his objection to the federal acts was at least as much a federalist objection as a civil-libertarian one. More to the point, the comparison to the Patriot Act is absurd to the point of libel. The Sedition Act threatened imprisonment for “false, scandalous and malicious” writings against the government. The Patriot Act’s controversial provisions involve, among other things, letting investigators in terrorism cases, upon approval from federal judges, search suspects’ homes without telling them until later. It’s not reasonable to call this oppressive, and it’s not even arguable that it suppresses free speech.

Time’s understanding of history is seriously distorted by its current political preoccupations. “It’s a subject worth lingering over: Jefferson and Iraq,” writes Kirn, just before proving that it isn’t. The actual details of Jefferson’s views are skipped over in the course of making a polemical point — and in a way that suggests real contempt for readers. Amid the Iraqiana we get this: “One controversy that led to his great split with Hamilton . . . boiled down to the financing of the Federal Government.” And that’s it. He won’t worry our pretty little heads with that! Onward to the precious now. “It isn’t difficult to imagine where he would stand on current debates about prayer in public schools, say, or faith-based funding for social projects.” I imagine he would have opposed the social spending altogether — if I were inclined to indulge the preposterous set-up in the first place.

The newsweeklies still break stories, and drive much of the agenda of the Sunday talk shows. I’ll bet that Time or Newsweek will have the best tick-tock on how John Kerry picked John Edwards. But there are enough other media out there now, and the market has fragmented enough, that these magazines are must-reading only for a very small number of people. Most of us, even Washington journalists, get along fine without reading them closely. Good thing, too.

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Things We Like (NR, 040726)

I’ve always found Dennis Miller an odd and rather queer fish. His inflammable down-home populism, pragmatism, and patriotism, combined with a slick showbiz persona, make him one of Dr. Moreau’s more intriguing media experiments. As I discovered when I chatted with him, he’s also quite pleasant on the phone.

And on TV as well. The former Saturday Night Live news anchor, HBO comic, and all-round ranting man has a new(ish) show, on CNBC, eponymously titled, which transmits Monday to Friday at 9 p.m.

Not merely an excuse to crack wise (à la Bill Maher on HBO), nor an exercise in corporate plugging (Letterman, Leno, et al.), Dennis Miller has its share of japes (good) and shilling (bad — a segment with the repulsive Larry Flynt, who’s “written” a new book, was unpleasantly obsequious), but it also allows a surprisingly broad range of amusing, and sometimes intelligent, non-celebs and celebs to make their points. Miller — refreshingly for a talk-show host — lets his guests talk (even Dennis Rodman sounded fairly literate), then makes a joke to change the subject or to draw in those hitherto quiescent. I think he’s found a fair balance between politics and comedy, and, compared with the inanities inflicted upon us by the 24-hour news cycle, the “Varsity Panel” part on Dennis Miller can be like attending high table at All Souls with Izzy Berlin.

Miller is socially libertarian and fiscally conservative (at anything above a “50 percent taxation rate, I’m tempted to dress up like an Indian and go to Boston Harbor”). He’s not hugely enamored of John Kerry (“looks like an Easter Island statue in a power tie”), nor of the New York Times, which “has the reliability of Auto Trader but calls itself the paper of record” — a slander, I thought: Auto Trader’s employees don’t invent datelines or rely on “intelligence” provided by dubious Levantines.

September 11 galvanized Miller. He’s since become a big-time, national-security, shoot-first hawk, the same man who compared Newt Gingrich to Hitler in the ‘90s today berating Marxoids for likening Bush to Hitler. Though comedians are not known, and rightly so, for their political consistency, Miller’s revision of his opinions in the light of recent events seems genuine.

All in all, right now he’s the ant’s pants, the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas of politico-comedic talk-show ringmasters. And better yet, he’s a National Review subscriber, which means we love him long long time.

— ALEXANDER ROSE

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Green Grow the Pressies: How the media get the environment wrong (NR, 040726)

In 1995 they told us that Yucca Mountain was going to explode in a nuclear firestorm. It won’t. In 1998 they told us that nuclear-weapons installations were making people sick. They weren’t. In 2000 they weren’t concerned with arsenic in the water. In 2001 they were. This year they have claimed that the Pentagon is worried about global warming and that phosphate mines are harming Floridians. “They” are journalists, and the issue is the environment. What makes this particular issue so susceptible to bad journalism?

At least part of the answer has to be politics. If you followed the controversy over arsenic in drinking water in 2001, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Bush administration was plotting to poison the reservoirs. Yet in fact the Environmental Protection Agency had simply chosen to revert to standards that were changed only in the last few days of the Clinton administration. The press had gone almost eight years without noticing that Carol Browner and the Clinton EPA were happy to allow these “dangerous” standards of arsenic in the water.

In other areas too, the press deliberately changed its tune. In 1987, the Washington Post had editorialized in favor of oil exploration in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, saying, “That part of the Arctic coast is one of the bleakest, most remote places on this continent, and there is hardly any other where drilling would have less impact on the surrounding life.” By 2000, when George W. Bush had made drilling in ANWR part of his proposed energy policy, the Post became concerned about whether “the oil to be gained is worth the potential damage to this unique, wild and biologically vital ecosystem.” The New York Times similarly reversed its position on the issue between 1989 and 2001.

As strong environmentalism is one of the defining characteristics of the modern liberal, it should come as no surprise that the media lean toward environmentalism in their coverage of key issues.

Hence the pivotal role of Britain’s leftist bible, the Guardian, in so many recent stories. Now that the Internet has made it possible to read other English-language papers daily, the Guardian has become a regular stop for those who find the New York Times too conservative. Given the highly politicized nature of most British papers, it is hardly surprising that its combative style has won many admirers on the American left (just as a whole new audience of American conservatives has come to appreciate the stance of the Daily Telegraph).

So when Fortune magazine ran a story in January about the Pentagon’s investigation of the potential security impacts of global warming, no major American newspaper picked it up. On February 22, however, nearly a month after the Fortune story, the Observer — the Sunday sister paper of the Guardian — ran with the preposterous headline “Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us.” The sub-heads ranted, “Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war”; “Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years”; “Threat to the world is greater than terrorism.”

This is appalling journalism. The Pentagon had judged that the $100,000 report did not “meet its needs” and so rejected it. In any case, the report was not secret and was by no means “suppressed by U.S. defense chiefs and obtained by the Observer” — presumably by the furtive and dangerous method of asking the Pentagon for it. The report’s only mention of Britain relates to its being a nuclear power; and the comparison to terrorism is actually made not by the Pentagon but by British scientists on their own crusade to terrify America into adopting the Kyoto Protocol. Far from concluding that global warming “will destroy us,” the report actually concludes that such a dramatic event as the sudden onset of an ice age would present “new challenges” for the United States.

It was only after the Observer’s scaremongering that environmental groups over here noticed the story. After they made a fuss about it, it entered the journalistic lexicon to the extent that it seemed every other review of the silly disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow contained a reference to it. The Guardian has gone on to break other environmental scare stories later picked up by the American media, such as allegations against the effectiveness of genetically modified rice in preventing blindness in the Third World.

Yet politics cannot be the whole answer. Sensationalism and ignorance are also to the fore. In 1995, for instance, New York Times science writer William Broad publicized speculation by two Los Alamos physicists, Charles Bowman and Francesco Venneri, that nuclear-waste materials stored beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada might explode. Their view was dismissed by other researchers as fanciful, and in any event would not occur for thousands of years. The front-page treatment by the Times was clearly inappropriate. Why did they do it?

One important insight comes from the admirable environment correspondent of the Times, Andrew Revkin. He says “environmental issues — at least the most profound ones — are generally the antithesis of news. They are subtle, slow-moving, complicated shifts that often hide in plain sight.” To get the news value out of the issue, sensationalism is always a tempting option.

Just as egregious was a series of investigative reports in the Tennessean in 1998 that alleged “mystery illnesses” were plaguing people who lived near, or worked at, nuclear-weapons plants. Yet the evidence provided was a self-selected, self-reported sample. Just this year, as the Statistical Assessment Service has pointed out, the Tampa Tribune has been doing something similar in no fewer than 119 articles about Coronet Industries, owners of a phosphate plant in Plant City, Fla. The paper’s claims of elevated health hazards associated with the plant have not been borne out by the state’s independent scientific review. The Tribune’s response was illuminating: Its campaign had been “an exercise in journalism, not science. We wanted to know what ailed people, not what caused it.”

When journalists are happy enough to junk the well-established scientific tools that help us separate truth from fiction in favor of their own methods, there’s a problem. Whether they are motivated by politics, sensationalism, or a strange mixture of ignorance and arrogance, journalists the world over are painting a misleading picture of the environment. Small wonder that the issue is of little importance to Americans. In a Gallup poll for “Earth Day” this year, they ranked it second-last in importance from a list of no fewer than twelve major political issues.

Mr. Iain Murray is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

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The Case of Reuters: A news agency that will not call a terrorist a terrorist (NR, 040726)

This has led to some misleading reporting from Iraq, and still worse coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The newswires are much more influential in setting the news (and hence diplomatic) agenda of that struggle than most people realize.

One veteran American newspaper correspondent in Jerusalem, eager to maintain anonymity so as not to jeopardize relations with his anti-Israel colleagues, points out that “whereas foreign correspondents still write features, they rarely cover the actual breaking news that dominates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In terms of written copy on the conflict, I would estimate that 50 percent of all reporting, and 90 percent of the attitude, is formed by these news agencies. The important thing about Reuters is that it sets the tone, and here spin is everything.”

Mr. Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph of London.

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A Sad Falling Off: The New York Times’s cultural coverage is . . . well, not what it used to be (NR, 040726)

In 1891, Henry James meditated on some of the difficulties newspapers and magazines faced in attempting to publish intelligent cultural criticism. Perhaps the chief difficulty revolved around the exigency of the deadline. “Periodical literature,” James wrote,

is a huge, open mouth which has to be fed — a vessel of immense capacity which has to be filled. It is like a regular train which starts at an advertised hour, but which is free to start only if every seat be occupied. The seats are many, the train is ponderously long, and hence the manufacture of dummies for the seasons when there are not passengers enough. A stuffed mannikin is thrust into the empty seat, where it makes a creditable figure till the end of the journey. It looks sufficiently like a passenger, and you know it is not one only when you perceive that it neither says anything nor gets out.

I try to remind myself of this extenuating passage whenever I am forced to ponder the cultural coverage at the New York Times. Imagine having to fill all those pages, day in and day out. No wonder a squadron of dummies is kept in reserve!

I should say at the outset that I more or less gave up reading the Times in any regular way at the conclusion of Lent a few years ago. Why continue the penance? I asked myself. I quickly found I was missing . . . nothing. Oh, sure, there is the odd outrage on the op-ed page, and a publicist on the arts page touting some particularly horrible specimen of artistic nullity. But all that could be garnered in two minutes on the Internet without besmirching one’s hands or compromising one’s pocketbook.

As Jay Nordlinger pointed out in these pages a few months ago (“Going Timesless,” March 22), the phenomenon of Times-quitting is gaining steam across the country. Everywhere, it seems, people are waking up and testifying to having broken the habit. Many stout souls go cold turkey. Others, less stalwart, continue to sneak the odd peek when safely out of sight of their friends (there is, after all, the matter of the crossword puzzle . . .).

Why? Politics is part of the story. The Times was always a left-liberal paper, but there was a time when one could distinguish between its editorial position and its reporting. In recent years, that has been less and less the case. There is also the issue of the Times’s coverage of culture. This is not, as it happens, wholly separate from politics. The politicization of culture has been one of the chief cultural facts of the last 25 years, and the Times has been an active abettor of that unlovely development.

Still, cultural coverage is distinct from political coverage, and about the Times’s cultural coverage three separate areas of deterioration may be observed. In the first place, its cultural coverage has become markedly less intelligent. Second, it has become notably concerned with maintaining the politically correct line about the subject at hand. And, as a corollary to both these things, it has become increasingly parochial: What the Times omits to notice these days could fill a newspaper.

Compare the range of reference, the diction, the level of seriousness in a typical article from the 1970s with one from today. The difference is startling. Here, for example, is Hilton Kramer writing in 1976 about the departure of Thomas Hoving as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kramer acknowledged that Hoving had mounted some excellent exhibitions, acquired many important works, and greatly — enormously — expanded the museum. Nevertheless, Kramer continued,

he has also helped to create a large blur . . . where there formerly existed a clearly perceived distinction: in the area where the experience of high art is distinguished from vulgar imitations and commercial substitutes. In everything from the creation of overglamorized installations to the actual manufacture of reproductions, the Metropolitan in the Hoving era has led the way in erasing a precious distinction — the distinction, after all, that is the museum’s very reason for being — between the authentic and the inauthentic in art. This is what Mr. Hoving has taken away: our confidence that the museum can be completely trusted to defend the interests of high art.

Fast-forward to 1997, when Herbert Muschamp — until a few weeks ago, the Times’s chief architecture critic — offers a love letter to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Muschamp, readers of the Times will recall, was the man who had earlier compared a Calvin Klein advertisement for men’s underwear in Times Square to Michelangelo’s David. What words can he find to praise Gehry’s twisted mass of titanium-clad steel plopped incongruously in the Basque foothills? Well, “masterpiece” was one word, along with “miracle” and “a Lourdes for a crippled culture.” Reaching for his most exalted terms of praise, Muschamp concluded that the building is “the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.” (One recalls Susan Sontag’s observation that “camp is the triumph of the epicene style.”) The really great thing about Gehry’s building, Muschamp explained, is that it severed architecture’s chains to the past: “An art form that has long depended upon appeals to external authority — history, science, context, tradition, religion, philosophy or style — has at last come to the realization that nobody cares about that sort of thing anymore. Architecture has stepped off her pedestal. She’s waiting for her date outside a bar on a rainy early evening in Bilbao, Spain.”

That’s quite a list: history, science, context, tradition, religion, philosophy, style. “Nobody cares about that sort of thing anymore.” Nobody at the Times, anyway.

When it comes to writing about culture, Muschamp is the model, not the exception, at today’s Times. Pick a trendy artist or movement; the Times is there to celebrate it in the most extravagant terms. Many readers of National Review, having led exemplary lives, will be unacquainted with the work of Matthew Barney. He made a name for himself with video works like the five-part film cycle Cremaster, which was named for the muscle that raises and lowers the testicles, and Field Dressing (Orifill), in which he is filmed “naked climbing up a pole and cables and applying dollops of Vaseline to his orifices.”

That description comes from Michael Kimmelman, the Times’s chief art critic, who went on to describe Barney as “the most important American artist of his generation.”

In the Times for Sunday, July 4, readers were treated to two inane interviews, one with the former Beach Boy Brian Wilson, one with the German Dada artist Gerhard Richter. Sample exchange from the former: “Is summer your favorite season?” “No, I like fall.” The interview with Richter is about War Cut, a collage about the war in Iraq in which bits of 216 newspaper articles are counterpoised with images from the artist’s 1987 abstract painting No. 648-2. Richter’s October 18, 1977, his suite of 15 paintings commemorating the suicide of several members of the Baader-Meinhof gang, was just the sort of thing to guarantee Richter’s status as a “transgressive” cultural icon. Sure enough, here is the Times in a note accompanying the interview assuring readers that Richter is “perhaps the most influential painter in the world.”

The lead story in the arts section of the Times on July 4 dealt with the lavish salaries paid to conductors (and some musicians) at prominent orchestras. The writer radiated disapproval of the orchestra’s largess, but the story-behind-the-story was the fact that such well-paid, white-tie-wearing maestros “reinforce classical music’s image as an elitist, exclusionary world that is increasingly out of touch with its listeners.”

Actually, classical music, like all high art, is inherently elitist, but only in a restricted sense of that word: It requires discipline, talent, and specialized knowledge to practice or appreciate effectively. In principle it is open to all, but in fact it is open only to those possessing the talent and the capacity for spiritual exertion that serious music demands. It is just this that the Times cannot abide. A friend reported a comment someone made about the Times’s coverage of music: “The attitude of the paper can be summed up in one sentence: ‘Contemporary good, traditional bad.’”

That gets at half of the problem. It is true that the Times gives preferential treatment to the new in all realms of cultural endeavor. But it does so only when the new is certifiably trendy. Let there be an artist of more traditional aspiration, and you can be sure that the Times won’t have time for him or her. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Times made a concerted effort to cover most new gallery openings. Now it finds space only for the trendiest and most ephemeral.

It’s the same with its books coverage. Many, many important books never make it to the Times’s review columns, but they always have space on the front page of their book review for a new biography of the pop singer Neil Young or the latest thriller from Stephen King.

What a sad spectacle; what a falling off. Dumber, more PC, more blinkered. It reminds me of that passage in George Gissing’s New Grub Street, where a new paper for “the quarter educated” — people “who can just read, but are incapable of sustained attention” — is founded. It’s a great success, of course, but then P. T. Barnum did pretty well for himself, too.

Mr. Roger Kimball is managing editor of The New Criterion. His latest book is The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art (Encounter).

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Almost all political cartoons are on the left. Why should this be? (NR, 040726)

When editorial cartoonist Wayne Stayskal retired from the Tampa Tribune last December, he left as one of his profession’s most admired craftsmen. (He still draws for a syndicate.) For four decades, Stayskal’s distinctive, loose style and razor-sharp wit have thrilled his admirers, enraged his political targets, and explored the frontiers of political satire. In short, Stayskal embodies those qualities that make a great newspaper cartoonist: He draws both blood and laughs.

And yet Wayne Stayskal has never won the newspaper industry’s top honor: the Pulitzer Prize. For Stayskal made one crucial career mistake.

He is an unapologetic conservative.

As Stayskal’s experience shows, “diversity” — today’s media mantra — applies exclusively to race and gender. At a time when news organizations have aggressively diversified their newsrooms by hiring more minorities and women, they have also become much less politically diverse. This monolithically liberal press — and the intolerance it has bred — are affecting one of the most outspoken, dynamic art forms: the political cartoon.

In the last ten years, not a single conservative editorial cartoonist has won a Pulitzer. In fact, of 30 nominations for the prize during this time (three are sent to the Pulitzer board every year), only five have been of conservatives. And it’s not because the judges eschew strong opinions. In fact, the Pulitzer trend (echoed in other industry contests) has been to reward the most provocatively left-wing cartoonists in the business. In the last five years, Joel Pett, Ann Telnaes, Clay Bennett, David Horsey, and Matt Davies — Stayskal’s sharp-penned peers on the far left — have all won the award.

The Pulitzer establishment’s bias has become so predictable that many conservative cartoonists simply refuse to submit for the prize. Award submissions, after all, require preparation and thought (and cost $50). Why waste one’s time and money if the result is predetermined? Stayskal himself admits that he has not bothered to submit in recent years because of this prejudice.

Glenn McCoy of the Belleville (Mo.) News-Democrat, Stayskal’s heir apparent as perhaps our funniest conservative cartoonist, also has stopped submitting. Explains McCoy: “Because of their obvious bias, I believe the Pulitzer is a totally illegitimate judge on the art of cartooning.”

This current leftist dominance betrays a tradition of American cartooning that has historically been rich and varied in its political opinion. During the 20th century, for every Paul Conrad or Herb Block on the left, there was a Bruce Russell or Rube Goldberg on the right. Two- and three-newspaper cities fed readers’ thirst for a variety of political views, and by the 1960s American editorial cartooning had matured into the best in the world. The creative fires were further stoked by Australian Pat Oliphant, who created a splash when he came to the U.S. in 1964 and treated Americans to comic scenes punctuated with biting, hilarious cutlines.

While Watergate unleashed a new generation of liberal activism in America’s newsrooms, cartoonists — both conservative (Jeff MacNelly, Stayskal) and liberal (Mike Peters, Don Wright, Jim Borgman) — were creating funny, hard-hitting, visually playful cartoons in metro dailies across the land. This diverse stable of talent coincided with the presidencies of Nixon, Carter, and Reagan, and produced some of the best political art ever seen. Oliphant’s Nixon, MacNelly’s Carter, and Borgman’s Reagan were sophisticated satires that visually defined their presidential targets.

In the 1990s, the increasingly partisan liberal press rallied behind an embattled Bill Clinton. Faced with “the Democrat’s Nixon,” newsrooms demonized Kenneth Starr, and, incredibly, gave Clinton more favorable press coverage than the prosecutor investigating him, according to the (non-partisan) Center for Media and Public Affairs. Cartoonists, less inclined to embrace the herd instinct than their newsroom peers, bucked the trend. Regardless of their politics, they smelled a snake-oil salesman — and Clinton proved to be a rich source of cartoon material.

But the emergence of a uniformly liberal press — accelerated by the 1990s consolidation of the industry into one-newspaper cities — was closing off opportunities for conservative satirists. The zesty menu of political cartoonists was being reduced to just one entrée: liberal.

And that’s a pity, because American politics has changed, and satire needs new blood.

Unlike their colleagues in America’s newsrooms (Dan Rather: “When you start talking about a liberal agenda and all the ‘liberal bias’ in the media, I don’t know what you’re talking about”), editorial cartoonists are actually quite refreshing on the point of leftist bias. They, at least, admit it. And they wear it as a badge of honor. Liberalism is necessary, these cartoonists say, because a good cartoonist is anti-establishment; he is suspicious of power and authority. It’s no wonder, they say, that the anti-establishment ‘60s bred such a fine generation of cartoonists.

But “the establishment” is a moving target. The notion that liberalism is anti-establishment is a nice illusion, but it’s 30 years out of date. Today, the hypocritical, self-satisfied protectors of the status quo are on the left.

The welfare state has failed, with its liberal champions denying their legacy of fatherless, unemployable children and tattered inner cities. The civil-rights movement has become desperate quackery, abandoning Martin Luther King’s ideal of “the content of their character” for a permanent racial spoils system. “Green” pols park their SUVs at the curb and then bloviate about America’s wasteful consumption. And fantastically rich trial lawyers claim to represent the “little guy” while looting 50 percent of their clients’ winnings.

Imagine the possibilities! This grotesque menagerie is as worthy of satire as the fat cats of Tammany Hall or the railroad barons of yore. But this kind of commentary requires a conservative’s eye, and today’s liberal press is blind to it.

There are simply too few opportunities for conservative cartoonists in today’s newspapers. Where metropolitan areas once offered readers at least two newspapers and at least two editorial opinions, most of today’s metro papers enjoy monopolistic control over their markets — and are predominantly liberal.

St. Louis, Memphis, Des Moines, Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Louisville are typical examples of conservative, middle-American cities that have only one cartoonist: a liberal one. Even in metropolitan areas where two newspapers do exist — Philadelphia and Denver, for example — both newspapers boast just a liberal cartoonist. And in Chicago, the Tribune — which was once home to generations of America’s finest conservative cartoonists, such as Joseph Parrish, Vaughn Shoemaker, MacNelly, and Stayskal — no longer even employs an editorial cartoonist.

In this parched landscape, the weeds of political correctness threaten to strangle cartoonists not only on the right, but also on the left. These left-wing newspaper monopolies are increasingly sensitive to special interests representing minorities, women, unions, and civil-liberties groups, and they see conservative cartoonists as a liability — as politically incorrect rabble-rousers who provoke letter-writing campaigns and canceled subscriptions. Liberal cartoonists have been largely free of these concerns, continuing to attack conservative special interests — the religious Right, gun-makers, industrial manufacturers — with impunity. But the left-wingers are looking over their shoulders, wondering how long it will be before publishers feel compelled to avoid all controversy.

Liberal Ann Telnaes — one of only three nationally syndicated female cartoonists in the nation, and a Pulitzer Prize winner — strongly believes that a woman’s point of view brings a different perspective to editorial cartoons, and is outspoken about the need for more women in cartooning. But if gender diversity makes editorial cartoons stronger, why not political diversity? A commitment to politically provocative and ideologically diverse cartoons would invigorate newspapers and ensure that editorial cartooning remains at the forefront of satirical invention.

If the newspaper industry wants to take that commitment seriously, it can get off to a relatively easy start: by recognizing Wayne Stayskal’s brilliant career with the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. Won’t someone nominate him?

Mr. Hnery Payne is the editorial cartoonist for the Detroit News and a freelance writer.

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More of the Same: Watching Robert Greenwald’s “Outfoxed” with a MoveOn.org crowd at the Peace House (WS, 040719)

ON SUNDAY NIGHT, liberal activist group MoveOn.org organized more than two thousand screenings across the nation for op-ed filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s assault on Fox News Channel, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism. The DC Metro area played host to 16 screenings, with some 800 registered attendees.

With the end of the Sopranos season, my Sundays have been devoid of mob mentality, so I signed up to join the festivities. Unable to resist the masochistic temptation, I registered for a screening at an indigenous cooperative proclaiming itself the “Peace House.”

Arriving on the scene, I was greeted by a large German Shepherd sleeping next to a Beware of Dog sign in the dwelling’s open doorway. Above the door’s mantle, the words “Peace House” were painted in green and yellow block letters. Behind me followed a married couple, slightly passed middle age, dressed in matching khaki shorts and white t-shirts, with Kerry/Edwards buttons fastened in bold display.

Approximately 20 of us had gathered for the show. Over the following 90 minutes I was educated on the insidious tactics employed by Fox News. Did you know, for example, that Bill O’Reilly often shouts? Perhaps more shocking, was the discovery that some former employees of the Fox empire were disgruntled when they left their jobs. However, worst of all was the revelation that conservative pundits are given airtime to match that of liberal pontificators on the nation’s most watched cable news network. Something must be done.

Former Fox News producer Clara Frank explained to us the “most outrageous” moment

in the network’s history came in 1999 when Special Report anchor Brit Hume openly advocated for NBC News to air its interview with Juanita Broderick. Granted, Frank admits much-respected NBC veterans Lisa Myers and Tim Russert also advocated release of the video. But as Frank told it, “To even have an anchor going on the air wearing an American flag pin can be a problem.”

Vermont’s congressman, Bernie Sanders, seethed as he lamented Fox’s success. But refusing to succumb to despair, he notes, “Thankfully, in the past year or so, progressives have been making their own strides in getting on talk radio and cable news. We don’t yet have our own political plan in place, but much progress has been made.” MoveOn.org is surely part of that progress--the group provided most of the funding for Outfoxed’s $300,000 budget.

Also onscreen were Eric Alterman, David Brock, and Al Franken, who appear in succession attesting to the wicked nature of conservative media. Socialist media advocate and Free Press co-founder Robert McChesney goes a bit further saying, “This is precisely the prescription for what a press system should do according to Goebbels in the Third Reich.”

In recent days, Outfoxed has received its share of criticism. Director Robert Greenwald admits that he used all of the Fox News footage without the network’s consent. After the New York Times ran a glowing, in-depth profile of Greenwald, FNC spokeswoman Irena Briganti accused Times editor James Ryerson of limiting her network’s response time to under 24 hours, “He said it was part of the deal we made with the subject that we would hold off on contacting you.” Ryerson responded, “I can’t remember what exact conversation we had. We certainly contacted Fox News and gave them plenty of time. She may have misunderstood something.”

Outfoxed relies heavily on memos circulated by Fox News VP John Moody that Greenwald claims show an editorial bias in dictating the day’s coverage of events. However, USA Today revealed that Greenwald intentionally excluded a number of Moody memos instructing reporters to give equal time and credence to speeches given by John Kerry and “not overdoing” credibility given to Kerry critics.

After the movie finished, I made my way across town to Visions Cinema, which also hosted a showing of the film, where Greenwald and Al Franken were conducting a video conference beamed to several of the screening locations. I expected to find a ravenous crowd of hissing twentysomethings. Instead, the loudest sound coming from the theater lobby was a collective order to hush.

Most of the audience had stuffed itself into the bar area, where six smaller televisions and one giant projection screen had been switched to a National Geographic Explorer documentary entitled Girl Power, examining the sexual prowess of female fish, primates, and birds.

Eric Pfeiffer is a Senior Writer for National Journal’s Hotline.

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Kerry’s Troopers : Déjà vu anyone? (NRO, 040811)

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