LAT Trumpets Disputed Maliki Report As Fact, Props Up Obama Again

The relentless and fervent pro-Obama bias at the Los Angeles Times is nothing new. (For starters, we've reported on it here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) But a front-page article in today's Times (Sun. July 20, 2008) is simply dishonest. The headline reads, "Iraqi president embraces Obama withdrawal plan."

The brute dishonesty is that the Times makes no mention of the fact that a spokesman for the prime minister immediately disputed the story and said comments from Nouri Maliki in a controversial interview in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately." (See CNN's "Iraqi PM disputes report on withdrawal plan," posted yesterday afternoon (7/19/08). HotAir also reports how Der Spiegel changed a key quote in the interview.)

Yet the Times uncritically claimed that Maliki "praised the Democratic presidential candidate's plan for withdrawing U.S. troops over a 16-month period" and published an article that essentially amounts to Obama campaign literature.

Is the Times in the tank for Obama? Absolutely. Imagine a report that Maliki had praised John McCain's withdrawal plan, but then the report was immediately disputed. Do you think the Times would have uncritically run a front-page story the next day with the title, "Iraqi president embraces McCain withdrawal plan"? No ... bleeping ... way.