Anti-Military Bias

On October 7, NewsBusters shared the astonishing statements of journalists from the Washington Post and CNN as to why good news from Iraq should not get reported.

Two weeks later, the Iraq Interior Ministry announced: "Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70 percent since the end of June, when U.S. forces completed their build-up of 30,000 extra troops to stabilize the war-torn country."

Such was reported by Reuters at 1:01 PM EST Monday. Not surprisingly, the major American media outlets ignored the good news.

Deliciously coincident, military blogger Michael Yon posted a piece at his website Monday appropriately titled "Resistance is futile: You will be (mis)informed" that should be must-reading for all Americans, especially elected officials (emphasis added throughout):

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Neal Gabler implied on FNC's "Fox News Watch" that he wanted the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol to go to Iraq and be killed so that he could attend the conservative writer's funeral.

On Monday, FNC's John Gibson took issue with Gabler's despicable comments during his radio program, calling Gabler a "lowlife," and "a coward" because "he will not come on the air to defend the things he says."

But that was just the beginning (audio available here courtesy our friend Johnny Dollar):

As reported by NewsBuster Richard Newcomb, an interesting clash between the anti-war group Code Pink and the pro-military Move America Forward occurred at a United States Marines recruitment center in Berkeley, California, on Wednesday.

Although one of the local newspapers did a fairly balanced report of the confrontation - including quite surprisingly beginning the piece "Flag-waving demonstrators far outnumbered a group of peace advocates" - the Bay Area's CBS-TV affiliate, KPIX, painted quite disparate pictures of the leaders of the organizations involved.

In particular, MAF's Melanie Morgan was depicted as an evil, intransigent warmonger after she was asked the following (video available here):

Americans on both sides of the aisle should be bitterly angry today.

A United States Congressman stood on the floor of the House of Representatives on Thursday and said that kids are being sent "to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president`s amusement."

As if that wasn't bad enough, the three evening news programs of America's top broadcast networks didn't feel this despicable act was important enough to share with the citizens of our nation.

Frankly, I'm not sure which should anger you more.

Here is a partial transcript of Rep. Pete Stark's (D-Cal.) abysmal statements made on the House floor on October 18, 2007, that America's leading news agencies didn't want you to see (video available here):

As NewsBusters previously documented, most of the mainstream media highlighted General Ricardo Sanchez’s criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War, but ignored his criticism of the media’s coverage. The one exception, of course, is Fox News.

Retired Colonel and Fox News Military Analyst David Hunt appeared on the October 17 edition of "Fox and Friends" to discuss Sanchez’s remarks. Although Hunt conceded Sanchez "is the wrong guy to be doing this" due to the Abu Ghraib scandal, he believes that "he’s right."

The October 16 edition of "Fox and Friends" featured conservative talk trailblazer Rush Limbaugh to discuss Harry Reid’s and 40 other Senate Democrats’ smear of Limbaugh. The radio talk show host called the letter "the smear of a private citizen...based on a total lie."

Video (4:21): Real (3.19) and Windows (2.66 MB), or MP3 audio (1.98).

In response, Rush is now auctioning the letter on E-Bay to raise money for the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which provides scholarships for children of Marines and federal law enforcement officials killed in the line of duty. Rush noted he will match the final bid to go to the same charity. He asked Reid and the other 40 Democrats to do the same. As of this morning, he has "not heard from them."

In another swipe at the U.S. Military, the website of the Isthmus, a weekly alternative paper from Madison, Wisconsin, published a short piece called, “Army Aims at Schoolkids,” in which the paper quotes an anti-military activist as saying that the ad banners for the U.S. Army posted in Madison’s High Schools is “extremely inappropriate.” Of course, we should expect one of these anti-military nuts to call out against the U.S. Army for advertising in our schools, but what we shouldn’t expect is the subtle bias from the paper that helps those who hate our troops attack the Army.

The hallmarks of an editorial board that is against the military is evident throughout this report.

It will be interesting to see the New York Times try to wiggle an excuse to get out of the consequences of this, if they even have the decency to try. It will be interesting to watch the backlash and the apologists. It is interesting, but sadly not shocking.

This doesn’t need much added to it:

Every major daily paper in New York took note of President Bush’s decision to bestow the first Medal of Honor of Operation Enduring Freedom on Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy - a Long Islander who gave his life for his country and his fellow SEALs.

Every paper but one, that is.

And it shouldn’t be particularly hard to guess which one.

On this day in the year 2000, the guided missile destroyer USS Cole was attacked by Islamic terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Quaeda group. Today is the seventh anniversary of that attack. Seventeen American sailors were killed and thirty-eight injured in the attack which severely damaged the ship. Yet not a single major media organ has reported this so far.

Attacking a warship has been long viewed as an act of war. The most recent example occured in 1968 when North Korea attacked the USS Pueblo. To our national shame, the Pueblo is still in the hands of that country. A rather more forceful response occurred in 1941, when Japan attacked the US Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor.

Despite much photographic evidence of defacement and criminal graffiti by far left, anti-war, group Code Pink at a U.S. Marine Recruitment Center, The Berkeley Daily Planet ran the headline, "Code Pink Protests Marine Recruitment Center." It was more than hanging up pink posters that said "RECRUITERS LIE, CHILDREN DIE" and chanting anti-war cheers. As is often the case with this radical leftist group, things went overboard into the criminal realm of property defacement and damage. Yet, even beyond the lacking headline tag, one would never know if reading the Berkely Daily Planet.

As CNN's Howard Kurtz accurately pointed out on Sunday's "Reliable Sources," few media outlets seemed at all interested in giving much attention to the great news out of Iraq last week regarding September's sharp decline in casualties.

To Kurtz's obvious frustration, his guests - Robin Wright of the Washington Post and Barbara Starr of CNN - both supported the press burying this extremely positive announcement.

I kid you not.

*****Update: Wright responds to reader e-mail message at end of post.

After introducing the subject, Kurtz asked, "Robin Wright, should that decline in Iraq casualties have gotten more media attention?"

This was Wright's amazing answer (video available here):

It's not enough that the media is waving the white flag of defeat in Iraq but now they're declaring yet another war lost. NBC's "Today" co-host Meredith Vieira seemed so convinced that the U.S. had lost the war in Afghanistan she was perplexed when Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai didn't share her assessment of failure. On the Monday "Today" show, in a taped interview, a bewildered Vieira responded to Karzai's statement of victory with: "What have you won?"

The following exchange occurred in the 7am half-hour of the September 24, NBC "Today" show:

After hearing the apologists defend the paper in countless ways, the New York Times puts them all in an awkward position and admits to giving a huge discount for Moveon.org.

The old gray lady has some explaining to do.
Officials at the New York Times have admitted a liberal activist group was permitted to pay half the rate it should have for a provocative ad condemning U.S. Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus.

The MoveOn ad, which cast Petraeus as “General Betray Us” and attacked his truthfulness, ran on the same day the commander made a highly anticipated appearance before Congress.

But since the liberal group paid the standby rate of $64,575 for the full-page ad, it should not have been guaranteed to run on Sept. 10, the day Petraeus warned Congress against a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Times personnel said.

According to the Manhattan Borough President and the New York Civil Liberties Union, "military recruiters are frequently given free reign in New York City public schools and allowed into classes in violation of the school system’s regulations." That's basically the first paragraph of the article. The next few read as follows:

The report, based on surveys of nearly 1,000 students at 45 high schools citywide last spring, said the city’s Department of Education exercised almost no oversight over how much access recruiters had to students at high schools.

Why does a small-budget movie like Brian De Palma's “Redacted” matter? Because of the ripple effects. The media have reported the film as "a ferocious argument against the engagement in Iraq for what it is doing to everyone involved.” Meaning the media are taking these deeply anti-war, anti-military storylines as De Palma intended, as a serious discussion of the day-to-day “realities” of Iraq.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban (shown right, image via Pat Dollard) financially backed “Redacted,” which debuted Friday in Italy at the Venice Film Festival (blogged here), and his studio Magnolia Pictures is distributing the movie (h/t NB'er Acumen).

Brian De Palma wants to stop the war, and he thinks his new movie about an Iraqi girl's rape can help, regardless of the consequences or the rights and privacy of Iraqis. In a Friday August 31 Reuters article, De Palma asserted “The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people. Sky News online picked up the thread that he hoped his film "Redacted" will alert people about “these horrible things things that are happening, this horrible war that I am financing as an American citizen.”

De Palma's comments were made Friday, at the Venice Film Festival, after showing the movie that is supposedly based on the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl from Mahmudiya who was then killed and her house set on fire. You know, every day stuff in the military.

“Redacted” is a do-over for De Palma, who made the same movie back in 1989 when it was called “Casualties of War” and starred Michael J. Fox. This is De Palma's second try at the “American military rapes indigenous girl and everyone laughs, but the sensitive guy feels sorry and tells; someone has nightmares, and the military is still bad” storyline. At least it wasn't “The Bonfire of the Vanities 2.”

National Public Radio provided publicity to the leftist website Salon.com on three shows Thursday for their release of previously unseen (if not notably different) pictures of American abuses at Abu Ghraib. Nowhere in their three dollops of publicity did NPR label Salon as liberal or left-wing, or explain that they oppose President Bush and the war in Iraq.