NBC's Katie Couric and Tim Russert managed on Friday morning to cover just about everything in the news -- except Democratic Senator Dick Durbin's incendiary comments equating Guantanamo with the Nazi regime and the Soviet gulags. Couric raised with Russert how the "House introduced a resolution that would require President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq beginning next year," how "according to the latest Gallup Poll, 56 percent of Americans say now the war was not worth it, almost 60 percent say the Pentagon should pull some or all of the troops out of Iraq," how "some senior Democrats on Capitol Hill are calling for a full investigation of the so-called Downing Street Memo," and she concluded with how "in a rare display of bipartisanship, we saw Bill Frist and Hillary Clinton appear on this program yesterday talking about some legislation that they're pushing in terms of health care." Ignored by Couric: Durbin's charge: "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others."

For more on broadcast network avoidance of Durbin's claims, see the June 17 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.or...

None of the Friday, Saturday or Sunday night broadcast network newscasts touched on Durbin, but the Sunday morning interview programs each raised the subject briefly with their guests.

On Friday, the MRC's Ken Shepherd noticed how Today managed to skip over the entire controversy when Couric interviewed Tim Russert, who appeared via satellite from Orlando:

Couric introduced the June 17 segment by highlighting the actions of a piddling four Congressmen: "Now to Iraq and a new movement on Capitol Hill to get U.S. troops home by late next year. Tim Russert is NBC's Washington Bureau Chief and moderator of Meet the Press. Hi, Tim, good morning. As you know on Thursday, two Republicans and two Democrats in the House introduced a resolution that would require President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq beginning next year. Is that a possibility or is it realistic, because many people say, including Pentagon spokespeople, that deadlines simply don't work."
Russert: "Katie, the only exit strategy we have is to be able to replace every American with an Iraqi who's willing to shed blood for the new country. We are a long way from that. If you talk to Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, the White House, the Pentagon, wherever, people will say it's going to be several years before we'll be able to have a total withdrawal in an optimum situation. And what's complicating that, Katie, is our recruitment, particularly for the army, for our volunteer army, is missing its goals by some 40 percent. So by the end of next year, we are really going to hit a wall in terms of how many troops we can commit to a place like Iraq."
Couric: "Well, how does the administration deal with that given that public opinion seems to be reflecting this move on Capitol Hill, Tim. According to the latest Gallup Poll, 56 percent of Americans say now the war was not worth it, almost 60 percent say the Pentagon should pull some or all of the troops out of Iraq. In addition to that, the latest New York Times poll out today, President Bush has one of his lowest approval ratings of his presidency with 42 percent. So, how does the Bush Administration deal with all these numbers?"
Russert: "It's a problem. Katie, the word in Washington is there is the Rose Garden optimism versus the pessimism on the ground in Baghdad. When you have a country which is saying that 60 percent say the war is going badly, it's a major hurdle for the President to keep the country engaged and focused and supportive. You can't just send an army to war, you have to take a country to war. And that's why the President now is going to embark on several speeches trying to reinforce the urgency of staying the course in Iraq. But it's going to be very, very challenging because as the death toll mounts, Americans get less and less and less supportive of the war."
Couric: "And Tim, then, adding to the President's problems, some senior Democrats on Capitol Hill are calling for a full investigation of the so-called Downing Street Memo, which appears to accuse President Bush of making a decision to go to war in Iraq and then manipulating the intelligence to support that decision. Here's what Prime Minister Tony Blair had to say about that when I interviewed him last week in Washington."
Tony Blair, British Prime Minister: "Do you know we've had about four different inquiries into this in the UK, and they've all come to the same conclusion: that the intelligence was used in good faith. After that was written, we went to the United Nations, we gave Iraq a last chance to comply with UN resolutions. So this idea that myself and President Bush somehow decided that we were going to do it and fixed the evidence around it, we knew there was a serious, post September 11th, we knew we had to take a different attitude to WMD."
Couric: "Tim, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said this is basically rehashing old material, but how significant is this, and how problematic might it be for the President?"
Russert: "What it does, Katie, is it reinforces the views of many who opposed the war, who suggested that it was inflated or, 'fixed,' is the British term. And so, it will not go away. The fact is, Katie, there was a colossal intelligence failure. Both sides must acknowledge that: there were not the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that our intelligence community had promised would be found. And it will continue to hover as an issue. The Administration will say it was decided in the election of 2004, and it may have been. But the fact is those kinds of memos, the Downing Street Memo, will only add to the fire of people who are trying to urge the United States to withdraw from Iraq."
Couric: "And finally, Tim, in a rare display of bipartisanship, we saw Bill Frist and Hillary Clinton appear on this program yesterday talking about some legislation that they're pushing in terms of health care. Was this an effort by both individuals to somehow soften their image to move a little toward the middle so they're not as polarizing as they look towards 2008?"
Russert: "Yes." [laughs]
Couric: "Okay, thanks!" [laughs]
Russert: "We have seen Senator Clinton with Bill Frist, with Newt Gingrich, with John McCain, and this is the public persona that they are trying to show the American people because they know the American people are fed up with the poisonous atmosphere in Washington. But at the same time, Katie, each of the people I mentioned running for President, or thinking about running for President, are sending out fundraising letters and preaching to their own base with very harsh rhetoric. So there's a good cop, bad cop at work as always in politics."

—Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center