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From the 'Heads I Win, Tails You Lose' School of Journalism...
By Brad Friedman on 4/29/2007 12:28am PT  

One of the newspapers often attacked by Bill O'Reilly as an example of the "liberal" media is the Los Angeles Times, currently owned by the Rightwing Chicago Tribune.

On Saturday, LA Times ran a story by Chris Kraul on the reaction of Iraqi citizens to the Iraq War spending bill battle. But no need to click on the link. Here's the summary of the "fair and balanced" story as kindly provided on the inside page of the paper edition:

Iraqis uneasy over funding battle

With Congress passing spending bills with timelines for U.S. troop withdrawal, some Iraqis fear further chaos if American soldiers leave Iraq. Others hope President Bush, who has threatened a veto, will prevail and the U.S. will stay, if only for its own strategic interests. Page A5

So...if the bill is signed into law, some Iraqis fear it will make things worse. While on the other hand, some of them hope Bush vetoes it so US troops will stay.

That would be the "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" school of journalism, I guess.

Those quoted in the story were among the "20 Iraqis interviewed Friday in several cities after both houses of Congress passed measures that set timelines for a withdrawal of U.S. troops as a condition of funding for the war effort."

Kraul failed to quote any Iraqis who are in favor of withdrawal of U.S. troops, despite polls of Iraqis in 2004, 2005 and 2006 all showing a majority of Iraqis want the U.S. to leave. That last one found "70% of Iraqis favor setting a timeline for the withdrawal of US forces."

On the other hand, a story on George Tenet's new criticism of the Administration for ignoring pre-9/11 terrorism warnings and failing to plan for postwar Iraq is featured...on Page 18.

Darn those America/Bush hating "liberals" at the Los Angeles Times!

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UPI/Washington Times Headline Blames Abramoff for Misreported Cost of Feeney's Trip...
By Brad Friedman on 4/25/2007 8:11pm PT  

Given this morning's Fox "News"/AP switcheroo, here's a bit of headline bait-and-switch that's at least as nifty from UPI and Washington Times tonight (both owned by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church):

The same headline/article is currently on UPI's website as well.

What next, Mark Foley as a "Democrat"? Oh, wait, never mind...Been there, done that.

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AP Reporter: 'I didn't write anything remotely like that.'
By Brad Friedman on 4/25/2007 1:38pm PT  

This one is just incredible. Fox "News'" Rightwing owner/idealogue Rupert Murdoch's NY Post may have hit an all-time nadir for corporate mainstream media "reporting" in this remarkable historical period. Greg Sargent has the scoop...

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By Brad Friedman on 4/21/2007 1:48pm PT  

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Issues reported by BRAD BLOG for last three years hit mainstream, are advanced several steps by NYTimes, McClatchy...
By Brad Friedman on 4/20/2007 9:35am PT  

The most valuable takeaway from the entire U.S. Attorney Purge scandal will likely prove to have been the exposure of the long-perpetuated GOP "voter fraud" scam. The scheme has been been so pervasive for so long, but the coverage of it has been largely contained to blogs like ours.

In the interim, the MSM coverage of the issue had been given over to the well-funded Republican propaganda machine which had detailed the phony claims of "voter fraud" as if they were legitimate.

The result, as designed, were calls for restrictive Voter ID legislation at the polling place, an effort that was successful in a number of states. After all, as the Republican snakeoil salesmen oft-repeated, "you need an ID to get on a plane, to cash a check, why not to vote?"

It was a difficult line to refute on its face, but it was built on lies, disinformation, and attempts by this White House and this Republican party to wage an unprecedented effort to keep any portion of the 10 to 30 million Americans (mostly Dem-leaning) without photo ID's (many even without birth certificates!) from being able to cast a vote.

The U.S. Attorney Purge scandal has helped to reveal the insidious scheme, opening it up for everyone to see by helping to expose the slimy, well-funded campaign for what it really is: little more than a broadly-waged, party-funded, voter suppression ploy.

Scores of MSM articles and columns over the past week or two have finally helped expose this scam to the public, and the likes of vote-suppression operative Thor Hearne's well-financed, systematic, White House-run "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) has, for now, slithered back underground.

Much of the MSM coverage to date has repeated what BRAD BLOG readers already know since we've been covering it for so long. But there are a couple of notable must-read exceptions recently which move many of these inter-related stories forward several moves...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Has the Former DoD War Architect Ever Met Condi Rice or Colin Powell?
Just Asking...
By Brad Friedman on 4/19/2007 11:42pm PT  

NPR's Morning Edition reported yesterday that Douglas Feith, the Bush Administration's former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, has a new job since leaving the Pentagon. Apparently he's busy rewriting history as a professor at Georgetown University.

In apparent and extreme denial, one of the main Neocon architects for Bush's failed war had the following extraordinary exchange with host Steve Inskeep (who, unfortunately, didn't correct the record, so we guess we'll have to) concerning the rationale for going to War in Iraq. Feith turned downright indignant when Inskeep suggested that there were analysts who didn't see Saddam Hussein as a threat before the war...

NPR: Feith insists that many accounts misstate the reasons the U.S. chose war against Saddam Hussein.

DOUGLAS FEITH: He had demonstrated that he was interested in WMD and the danger was that he could take action in the future that would get him in a major fight with us. At which point he might use the WMD capabilities and connections to terrorists to hurt us.

NPR: Is there any point in that that you ended up assuming too much?

FEITH: I think that...I think that was a reasonable assumption under the circumstances...

NPR: Still...

FEITH: ...Do you not?

NPR: It sounds reasonable the way that you put it.

FEITH: Well that's what we were worried about (laughs)...I don't think that there's anything unreasonable in in...

NPR: ...But of course there were analysts making an entirely different...

FEITH: No, there weren't. No, there weren't....I mean that's just false. I, I, I hope you can do something to clarify this point. I mean, this notion that there were analysts who were saying that Saddam Hussein was not a threat?! There was nobody saying that.

"Nobody saying that"?! Really? Here's just two of them for a start. Names that Mr. Feith might be familiar with:

"[F]rankly, [the sanctions on Iraq] have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
- Colin Powell, February 24, 2001

"But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."
- Condoleeza Rice, July 29, 2001

What planet do these Bush dead-enders live on, anyway?! Amazing.

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American Media Stays Fixated on VTech Killings; George W. Bush Still Not in Jail...
By Brad Friedman on 4/18/2007 2:38pm PT  

Killed or Found Dead (So Far) This Week in Iraq...
Sunday: 65
Monday: 51
Tuesday: 85
Wednesday: 233

Look, I hate to keep banging this same drum, but someone needs to.

While the American media continue their infatuation with the horrible shootings at VTech on Monday where 33 students were killed, the carnage continues, several times over, every single day in Iraq. Never mind all that "signs say that the surge is working" bullshit you've been hearing from wingnuts and repeated in the Mainstream Media. It doesn't seem to be doing anything of the kind.

233 were killed or found dead across Iraq today (Wednesday) in a country of 27.5 million.

183 of them were killed in a single car combing incident in the exact same marketplace where 137 were killed at once in a February bombing the month before last.

That follows 85 killed or found dead on Tuesday, 51 killed on Monday, and 65 killed on Sunday (when 20 police officers were also taken captive).

None of that takes away from the tragedy of the 33 killed on Monday at Virginia Tech. But in the United States, a country of more than 300 million, where such mass killings are exceedingly rare --- versus horrifically daily occurrences, year after year after bloody year on end in a country less than one-tenth the size of the U.S. --- one might think the American Mainstream Media would finally pause to take a serious review of the way in which they cover news events.

In case you feel, as one emailer suggested to me, that Americans seem to view the lives of non-American citizens as somewhat less valuable than those of American citizens, I'll also remind you that the killings in Iraq --- though you wouldn't necessarily know it based on American news coverage --- also result in dead Americans.

Some 3,312 American troops have now been killed in Iraq.

3,312.

To date, George W. Bush has failed to attend even one funeral, or ordered flags lowered to half-staff for a single one of them.

Leading me to ask again...At what point does the entire debacle become a criminal action? I suspect that point occurs just as soon as the Mainstream Media realizes that it is, and begins to regard the murders of U.S. Troops and Iraqi Civilians in the same light they view the VTech murders.

Perhaps Nancy Grace can make an honorable woman of herself yet. But I seriously doubt she will.

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'Now Do You Understand?' Asks Larry Johnson...
By Brad Friedman on 4/17/2007 1:21pm PT  

Larry Johnson put the whole thing in perspective rather quickly and to the point yesterday when the body count in the VTech shooting was still at 22.

Even with the latest numbers of those murdered in Monday's shooting now at 33, it's dwarfed by Sunday's numbers in Iraq, where 65 lives were lost and 20 policemen were taken hostage.

And yet, that has been happening virtually every day for years now in Iraq, where jerks like Cheney and McCain and Bush continue to tell us that "things are getting better" and it's the media who are failing to report the "good news."

Take a look at the wall-to-wall media coverage ever since the 33 tragic fatalities on Monday in America, and imagine what would be going on here if a VTech-sized tragedy or two or three happened every single day in this country for years on end. Imagine if it happened just two or three days in a row! (Not to mention the population of Iraq is less than 10% the size of the United States.)

Would we blame the media for not reporting the "good news" each day? Or would we demand that something be done --- now --- to stop the carnage?

As usual, Johnson's take, documented with AP's reports on killings in Iraq on Sunday, is worth reading and noting.

In a follow-up today, Johnson notes the failures of the cable news channels, in their continuous, wall-to-wall coverage, to point out the following:

  • "Bush is going to attend services for the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting today. When was the last time Bush did that for the troops? Oh, right, never!," writes Leslie below.
  • Bush has ordered the nation's flags flown at half-staff until Sunday. Did Bush order flags lowered after Katrina's devastation and the deaths of hundreds of people?
  • It was astonishing to watch news reporters rabidly attack Virginia Tech's president and chief of police. Why don't news reporters regularly attack Bush and Cheney like that?

Lest we be criticized for not taking the VTech shootings seriously, make no mistake, they are an indescribable tragedy. But so are the number of human beings killed every single day in Iraq, day after day after nightmarish day, since the United States needlessly invaded their country.

And yet, the number one story reported by the media last week was Don Imus, followed by Anna Nicole, followed by the number one under-reported story: the death of our national conscience...

UPDATE 9:21pm PT: 85 killed or found dead in Iraq on Tuesday...
UPDATE 4/18/07: 233 killed of found dead in Iraq on Wednesday...

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By Brad Friedman on 4/16/2007 12:15pm PT  

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Eric Boehlert Documents the Consistenly Irresponsible Rightwing Warbloggers and the MSM's Failure to Report It...
By Brad Friedman on 4/13/2007 10:35am PT  

Blogged by Brad on the road...

Imagine if the reporting at The BRAD BLOG was as wrong as often and consistently as the entire swath of the Rightwing Blogosphere. We'd be marginalized and completely ignored by every legitimate mainstream media outlet...even more than we are now. And we're almost never wrong. But in those rare occassions where we are, we're eager to admit it. Prominently.

We're not talking about the small potatoes on the wingnut side, either. We're talking about the most prominent of them, from DRUDGE to Malkin to Power Line to the entire plethora of echo monkeys in the wrong after wrong after wrong wingnut 'sphere.

And yet, despite their consistent record of getting the story wrong, time after time after time, they continue to be referenced as "news" sources by the MSM --- that supposed "liberal media" --- nonetheless.

"In the last month National Public Radio, MSNBC, Bloomberg Radio, Fox News, CNN, and CNBC have all (foolishly) cited the Drudge Report as a source or an on-air reference to support a particular story," Eric Boehlert reported at Media Matters on Tuesday. "Yet all of them turned away last week when Drudge smeared a well-known journalist with a lie. And here's 10 bucks that says those very same news outlets in coming weeks will go back to citing Drudge items," he predicts, in what would be a sucker's bet for anyone to take.

Boehlert's latest report is long overdue. Not that any of it will get the attention that the now-discredited wingnut reports did, as he details, following last week's monkey-echoed (and completely wrong) debacle, claiming that a CNN reporter had "heckled" John McCain at a Baghdad press conference.

I guarantee that if Huffington Post, or Daily Kos, or any other very high-profile progressive online site had billboarded an "exclusive" accusing a public figure of outlandish, unprofessional public behavior, and liberal bloggers coast-to-coast linked to the story, and then it quickly became apparent that the report was a complete fraud, The Washington Post, for instance, would have covered that event as news, highlighting, no doubt, the "angry" tone of the loose-lipped liberal bloggers.

But when Drudge made up a story about a CNN reporter, the Post played dumb.

Boehlert is dead right, of course. And while his report details one instance after another of high-profile wingnuts making absolute asses of themselves, and failing to correct in most cases or apologize in all cases, it's the corporate mainstream "liberal" media who continue to help perpetuate this sort of bullshit by both reporting it as "news" and failing to expose it as garbage when it's found to be wrong. As it usually is.

Meanwhile, the same MSM fail to cover even a fraction of the news reported from the Progressive 'sphere, despite the fact that it's consistently correct.

As Boehlert details:

[D]espite being wrong about the war for four years running, warbloggers still retain an unfortunate amount of media influence, thanks in part to the fact that the mainstream press refuses to detail the warbloggers' blatant failings.

And as the Ware attack illustrated, left to their own woefully inadequate ethical standards, warbloggers have almost no interest in acknowledging their sloppy errors or expressing regret for the harm those errors cause.

Read his report and be appalled.

Beyond that, let us know if you have any ideas on how we could get away with being so wrong, so often, and still become so popular. It would save us a helluva lot of time. And we could use the money.

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Attacks Utterly Irrelevent Malik Shabazz in Utterly Pointless, Embarrassing Exchange
(Following Incredibly Gratuitous, Imus Segments...During War Time...)
By Alan Breslauer on 4/13/2007 2:04am PT  

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

It really doesn't get any worse than this Michelle Malkin (filling in for Bill O'Reilly) interview of Malik Shabazz Thursday night on Fox "News". There is so much wrong with the exchange that no analysis can do it justice. The clip picks up about halfway through a discussion on the Duke lacrosse case. Here is a taste:

Shabazz: Will you apologize for being a political prostitute for Bill O'Reilly, a white-male-chauvinist-racist, as a woman of color?

Malkin: You want to call me a whore on national TV?

Shabazz: Yes.

Malkin: There is only one whore on this split-screen and it's you Mr. Shabazz.

Shabazz: As a woman of color, you should be ashamed of yourself...

Only on Fox "News" and immediately after back to back to back Don Imus segments!

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Three Years Late, Long After the Flawed Senate Intelligence Committee Report, WaPo Finally Fills in a Very Few Blanks on Bush's Infamous '16 Words' Which Led to War
PLUS: A Quick Follow-up on Last Week's 'Bush Admin/WaPo Swift-Boating of Fitzgerald' Story...
By Margie Burns on 4/5/2007 1:32pm PT  

*** Blogged by BRAD BLOG D.C. Correspondent Margie Burns

On Tuesday, April 3, 2007 the Washington Post finally got around to publishing a front-page article, “How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War,” on the bogus Niger/uranium/Iraq story underlying those infamous “16 words” in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech.

The Post subtitle is “Intelligence Failures Surrounded Inquiry on Iraq-Niger Uranium Claim.” A more accurate subtitle would have read, “Intelligence Community Caved to Bush-Cheney Pressure.”

{Ed Note: We might suggest "Mainstream Media Failure to do Job, Scrutinize Admin's Iraq-Niger Claim, Led to Endless War" - BF}

I, among others, am familiar with the chronology because I wrote about it almost a full three years ago...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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In Attempted Ambush Interview, Twisted 'News Man' Spins Her Comments into Accusations of 'Hating Her Country,' 'Blaming America' for Iran/UK Soldier Capture, Cuts Off Her Mic...
Why is This Guy Still on Television?
By Brad Friedman on 4/2/2007 9:35pm PT  

In one of his most shamefully transparent swiftboat attacks yet, Bill O'Reilly twisted and perverted the comments of 29-year U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright last Friday, for having the temerity to explain that when Americans parade their own prisoners of war before the cameras, it's difficult to have the "moral high ground" in making the case that Iran has violated the Geneva Convention by doing similarly with their captured British troops.

For the record, Wright spent years educating troops on the Geneva Convention at Fort Bragg and understands it cold (unlikely, O'Reilly). She also spent 16 years in the diplomatic corps before resigning in protest as the Iraq War began. I interviewed her on the illegalities of the war while at Camp Casey in Crawford, TX, in August of 2005. Her explanation was exceedingly enlightening. (MP3 here, appx. 22 mins, as part of the collection of highlights from our 50+ hours of special BRAD SHOW "Operation Noble Cause" live broadcasts.)

Crooks & Liars' coverage of the interview, includes a transcript from the wrap-up of the attempted O'Reilly hit piece (in which he only seems to have hit himself):

WRIGHT: "I want to make sure the United States treats people properly.."

O'REILLY: "Sure you do. Sure you do."

WRIGHT: "I surely do. That's what I spent 29 years of my life trying to do."

O'REILLY: "Sorry. No you didn't. You know what happened to you…somewhere along the line you started to dislike your own country…."

WRIGHT: "I served 29 years. How many did you serve? Where did you teach the Geneva Conventions?"

O'REILLY: "Cut her mic."

Watch the video. It's absolutely shameful.

(Hat-tip for the video to Chrish at the indispensable NewsHounds.us for "watching FOX so [we] don't have to.")

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The Vermont Senator Says We Are Otherwise On Track to Send a Full Trillion with No Oversight Adequate to Control Waste, Fraud and Abuse...
By Margie Burns on 3/20/2007 1:07pm PT  

Guest Blogged by BRAD BLOG's D.C. correspondent Margie Burns

"We don't have a law that would make war profiteering specifically a federal crime," Sen. Leahy (D-VT) said in this morning's efficient hearing conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee, so he is introducing one.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is busy these days --- what with the scandal over White House manipulations of the prosecutorial function of the Department of Justice, the continuing scandals of war profiteering in the "war on terror," and other oversight matters, the Committee is in jeopardy of being overstretched. In fact, it already is overstretched.

The room was full for this morning's hearing, which I attended, on "Combating War Profiteering," but, as with last week's House Oversight Comittee hearings with Valerie Plame et al, this one was also scantly attended by GOP'ers. Of Republicans, only the co-chair of the committee Arlen Specter (R-PA) and --- to do him justice --- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) graced the hearing with their presence. The co-chair could do no less, and indeed did little, though I noticed that both he and Leahy alluded to their past jobs as prosecutors, from which it can safely be inferred that they too think the current manipulations of US Attorneys --- prosecutors --- by the DOJ look very bad...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Robert Bennett, Ohio's GOP Chair and President of the Board of Elections in Ohio's Most Democratic County, Vows to Stay On
Growing Battle Underscores a Host of Other Myths, Disinfo Campaigns Concerning Buckeye State Election Administration...
By Brad Friedman on 3/19/2007 12:21pm PT  

Just out from AP...

CLEVELAND (AP) - All four election board members for Cuyahoga County, troubled by recount rigging charges and voting machine problems, have been told to resign or face being fired, a state official said Monday.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said she called the four board members of Ohio's most populous county late Sunday, asking them to leave by close of business Wednesday.
...
Brunner, a Democrat, said new leadership is needed in the county before the 2008 presidential election. She said that if the board members don't resign by her deadline, they would face public hearings and removal.

The board's chairman, Robert Bennett, is also chairman of the state GOP in Ohio. His term on the board ends in 2010. The other board members are two Democrats and one Republican.
...
Bennett said Monday he plans to finish his term.

"We are making progress on our major goal, which is to restore voter confidence in Cuyahoga County elections," he said at a news conference

The issue comes in the wake of two Cuyahoga County Election Officials recently found guilty of rigging the 2004 Presidential Election recount and subsequently sentenced to the maximum 18 months in prison after they refused to cooperate with the state's special prosecutor, Kevin Baxter.

Both Baxter and the district court judge, Peter J. Corrigan, indicated they believed the conspiracy to game the recount was part of a larger, higher-reaching conspiracy. "It seems unlikely that your superiors wouldn't know what you were doing," Corrigan declared during the sentencing.

Brunner told the Plain-Dealer this morning that the convictions were "so serious that I don't think I had any alternative" but to request the resignations of the entire board. "It has to do with public confidence and perception," she said.

In a news conference this morning, Bennett vowed to fight Brunner in court rather than leave on his own accord.

Cuyahoga County's then-Election Director, Michael Vu, who was not charged in the incident but has since resigned, had previously admitted that sealed ballot boxes were opened and secretly counted prior to the state-mandated recount in order to assure the recount would not reveal any inconsistencies with the officially reported results. He has since recanted his original story.

After the recent sentencing, Bennett, who was ultimately responsible for overseeing the convicted elections officials --- supposedly one Republican and one Democrat --- who rigged a presidential election recount in his county said, incredibly enough, "the convictions are a travesty of justice."

The issue also underscores an important point we've been trying to make for years: Despite the claims by disgraced former Buckeye State SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell and his operatives (including Bennett) for the travesty that occurred in 2004, which suggest that Ohio's supposedly "bi-partisan" structure of county elections boards --- theoretically all comprised of two Republicans and two Democrats each --- prevents any partisan malfeasance, those boards and the officials who work under them have always served ultimately at the pleasure of the state SoS. That power and pressure were wielded frequently by Blackwell during his tenure, resulting in a host of not-so-bipartisan decisions and oversight from Ohio elections officials in 2004 and beyond.

UPDATE: We heartily recommend "OhioRebel's" superb citizen journalist coverage at ePluribus Media, with many useful additional details. Would that the non-citizen journalists were as thorough!

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