NewsBusters Archive

Harry Smith, who has a habit of double standards when conducting interviews, hammered returning White House press secretary Tony Snow on April 30's edition of The Early Show. After discussing Snow’s cancer treatment, Smith said "let’s go to work." Snow stated what many believe, that incorporated timetables are a stunt. An astonished Harry Smith interrupted and harshly inquired: "So the White House regards this, their, their insistence on troop withdrawals as a stunt?"

Snow, who previously accused Harry Smith of sounding like a partisan, immediately backpedaled, but pointed out that the current bill is "something [the Democrats] knew was never going to get passed." After Snow mentioned that Democrats "exhausted nearly three months doing this," Smith retorted "with the support of the American people by the way." Although it is true that, according to CBS’s own poll, 64 percent of Americans do support a timetable for withdrawal, they also found when they asked if Congress should allow continued troop funding without a timetable if it comes to that, 56 percent said yes. Harry never mentioned that polling result.

For the fifth straight year, America's biggest newspapers (especially the left-leaning ones) have experienced big drops in circulation.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation released its annual numbers today. Among the findings: Two of the three national newspapers (USA Today and the Wall Street Journal) gained circ while the New York Times fell 2 percent on weekdays and nearly three-and-a-half percent on Sundays.

The biggest loser was the Dallas Morning News which was off 14 percent on weekdays and 13 percent on Sundays. The Miami Herald lost 10 percent on Sundays and 5.5 percent on weekdays.

Let's imagine for a moment now what types of stories we'd be hearing about these bad numbers if liberal journalists applied the same standards to themselves as they do to Republican presidents.

Now that you're done laughing, let me say that I don't think that liberal bias is the sole reason for these drops. It's also old thinking. The proof is that some papers like the New York Post and the Indianapolis Star have gained circulation. It can be done in an age of mass alienation from mass media. (h/t Stephen Spruiell)

BROKAW: In the opening passage you describe conversations in the Clinton administration between the Palestinians and the Israelis attempting to get some sort of a new peace arrangement. But the Israelis were demanding the release of Jonathan Pollard, a United States military intelligence analyst who had been selling them secrets, who's in jail for life. You said if you release Jonathan Pollard, I'll resign from the CIA. And yet when you were the head of the CIA, you had Condi Rice ignoring your warnings, Vice-President Cheney exaggerating the threats repeatedly, Don Rumsfeld in the Pentagon running what effectively was a rogue CIA, his own intelligence operation, and you didn't threaten to resign then.

Imagine a conservative congressperson doing something this unhinged and not getting raked over the coals in the press (Wall Street Journal link requires subscription):

Tuesday was Africa Malaria Day, and Michigan Representative John Conyers marked the event by inviting something called the Pesticide Action Network to Capitol Hill to denounce DDT as an unsafe malaria intervention. What was he thinking?

Malaria, which is spread through mosquito bites, kills about a million people annually, mostly children and pregnant women in Africa. We're not sure where the House Judiciary Chairman got his medical expertise, but he won't reduce that death toll by promoting disinformation about DDT and malaria prevention. And at taxpayers' expense, no less.

PAN and a shrinking band of other activist know-nothings insist that employing DDT against malaria is "especially dangerous for developing infants and children," but there is no scientific basis to the claim. Zip.

On Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” ex-CIA Director George Tenet told CBS’ Scott Pelley the Bush administration misrepresented his now famous “slam dunk” reference to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (video available here).

However, one of Tenet’s former employees, Michael Scheuer, published an op-ed (h/t Captain Ed) in the Washington Post Sunday cautioning that “the former director of central intelligence is out to absolve himself of the failings of 9/11 and Iraq.”

As a result, in Scheuer's view, “we shouldn't buy his attempts to let himself off the hook.”

The former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, who I interviewed last September, wasn’t shy with his criticisms of his former boss, who apparently has quite a history of blaming others for his own failures (emphasis added throughout):

For at least the second time this month, the Washington Post went after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) for meeting with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

For those that have forgotten, the Post was harshly critical of the Speaker’s trip at the time, calling it “foolish” and “ludicrous.”

On Friday, the Post editorial staff, in a piece entitled “No Results in Damascus,” chronicled what’s happened in Syria, and the rest of the region, since Pelosi returned.

As you might imagine, the news wasn’t good (h/t Glenn Reynolds and Gateway Pundit, emphasis added throughout):

In case you hadn’t heard, there was a huge protest in Turkey on Sunday as reported by the Associated Press (h/t NBer Gary Hall and LGF, emphasis added throughout):

At least 300,000 Turks waving the red national flag flooded central Istanbul on Sunday to demand the resignation of the government, saying the Islamic roots of Turkey's leaders threatened to destroy the country's modern foundations.

Given the American media’s predilection towards never wanting to write or say anything that could possibly offend Muslims, an interesting question is raised regarding how they will report this story.

Regardless of the answer, the article continued:

The reader is formally cautioned to prepare his or herself for an alternate reality. You have been warned.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked to find the New York Times asking the following question on a Sunday morning:

But is the carbon-neutral movement just a gimmick?

Is this possibly a sea change in media coverage on this issue, or just an olive branch cynically tossed to create the illusion of balance?

Regardless of the answer, although Andrew C. Revkin’s “Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?” fell short of exposing all the hypocrisies concerning this matter, it was nonetheless surprising to see a Times writer offer the following opinions about such a controversial and polarizing subject (emphasis added throughout, h/t Glenn Reynolds):

Frank Rich is from Venus; NewsBusters is from Mars.

NewsBusters documents the way that, day-in and day-out, the MSM slants its coverage against conservative principles in general and the Bush administration in particular.  Frank Rich looks at the same coverage and complains that the press is too Bush-friendly.

In his p.p.v. New York Times column of today, All the President’s Press, Rich takes the occasion of the recent White House correspondents dinner to complain "how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media."

Annotated excerpts:

The press has enabled stunts from the manufactured threat of imminent “mushroom clouds” to “Saving Private Lynch” to “Mission Accomplished,” whose fourth anniversary arrives on Tuesday.

No one in the Bush administration ever spoke of "imminent mushroom clouds." Rich flatly misstates the truth.  Lynch's criticism of the way the military presented her story was all over the MSM this week.  And how incalculably many times over the last few years has the MSM run mocking coverage of President Bush's "Mission Accomlished" moment?