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visit my web site at http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon My ICQ# is 79071904 for a precise list of the powers of the Federal Government linkto: http://www.voicenet.com/~wbacon/Enumerated.html ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 07:35:31 -0700 From: Media Research Center <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: MRC Alert: 'Daily Drumbeat of Media Questions' Aiding Democratic Candidates ***Media Research Center CyberAlert*** 10:35am EDT, Monday July 14, 2003 (Vol. Eight; No. 130) The 1,537th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 > "Daily Drumbeat of Media Questions" Aiding Democratic Candidates > Clift Puts Bush Team's Credibility Gap at 9 on 1 to 10 Scale > Couric Provides Benevolent, Non-Ideological Tag for MoveOn.org > By 2-to-1, Public Sees Liberal Over Conservative Bias > Vermont Media Have Never, Ever Labeled Howard Dean as Liberal > Gumbel Launches Name-Calling, Rebukes MRC's Bozell as "Bozo" #### Distributed to more than 14,000 subscribers by the Media Research Center, bringing political balance to the news media since 1987. The MRC is the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias. Visit the MRC on the Web: http://www.mediaresearch.org. CyberAlerts from this year are at: http://www.mediaresearch.org/archive/cyber/welcome.asp For 2002: http://www.mediaresearch.org/archive/cyber/archive02.asp Subscribe/unsubscribe information, as well as a link to the MRC donations page, are at the end of this message. When posted, this CyberAlert will be readable at: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030714.asp #### 1) Democratic presidential candidates may be attacking President Bush's credibility over the single sentence in his State of the Union address, but they are being aided by the media which are turning it into a summer scandal. CBS anchor John Roberts referred to the "swirl of controversy," but in a self-fulfilling statement, he argued that "the issue refuses to go away." Yet as ABC News Political Director Mark Helperin suggested, the media are enabling the Democratic presidential candidates: "Why are the Democrats now directly going after Mr. Bush in the very area where he has been so strong?" Over a shot of the cover of Time magazine with "Untruth & Consequences" over photo of Bush, Halperin answered: "For one thing, there's the daily drumbeat of media questions." 2) Newsweek's Eleanor Clift put the Bush administration's "credibility gap" at a very high "eight or a nine," she asserted on the McLaughlin Group over the weekend. 3) Katie Couric on Friday morning benevolently referred to MoveOn.org, the far-left anti-war group, simply as an organization "started by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs frustrated by the political process." 4) "Most Americans (53%) believe that news organizations are politically biased, while just 29% say they are careful to remove bias from their reports. When it comes to describing the press, twice as many say news organizations are 'liberal' (51%) than 'conservative,'" a just-released Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey discovered. Even a plurality of Democrats see a liberal slant over a conservative one. 5) CNN's Judy Woodruff stumbled upon an insight that doesn't do much to instill trust in the Vermont media's credibility. A veteran Vermont reporter and columnist told Woodruff, in a story run on Friday's Inside Politics, that in Howard Dean's entire career as a legislator, Lieutenant Governor and Governor, "there was never a sentence in any newspaper in the state of Vermont that contained the word 'liberal' and 'Howard Dean.'" 6) The very mention of Brent Bozell, President of the MRC, causes Bryant Gumbel to get angry. As both the Washington Post and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on Saturday, during an appearance to plug his new PBS show, at the very mention of Bozell's name Gumbel turned angry, denigrated Bozell as a "bozo," and refused to address the complaint of his liberal bias. Clarification: CyberAlert was unwittingly swayed by skewed media coverage and in the July 9 edition mis-reported that in his State of the Union address President Bush had "cited how Iraq had received uranium from Niger." In fact, Bush only said that Saddam Hussein had "sought" uranium. The sentence in Bush's speech which is fueling the media eruption: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Technically, an accurate statement, conveying what a British report stated. > 1) Democratic presidential candidates may be attacking President Bush's credibility over the single sentence in his State of the Union address, but they are aided by the media which are becoming obsessed as a summer scandal with how Bush "misled" the public and "deliberately exaggerated the case for war." Multiple stories on the "controversy" have led the evening newscasts since the middle of last week with the morning shows devoting a top of the show interview segment to it. On Saturday night, ABC anchor Claire Shipman declared: "The firestorm over false intelligence that President Bush used to help justify war in Iraq is intensifying." Over on CBS on Sunday night, anchor John Roberts referred to the "swirl of controversy over whether" the Bush administration "knowingly put dubious intelligence into this year's State of the Union address." In a self-fulfilling statement, Roberts argued that "the issue refuses to go away." But as ABC News Political Director Mark Helperin suggested on World News Tonight/Sunday, the media are enabling the Democratic presidential candidates: "Why are the Democrats now directly going after Mr. Bush in the very area where he has been so strong?" Over a shot of the cover of Time magazine with "Untruth & Consequences" over photo of Bush delivering State of the Union address, Halperin answered: "For one thing, there's the daily drumbeat of media questions." Halperin had noted how "the Democrats hope to break the presidential monopoly on national security and credibility, to return the Bush image to one some Americans held of candidate Bush after this famous campaign pop quiz:" Reporter in 2000: "The Prime Minister of India?" Bush: "The new Prime Minister of India is ah, ah, no." Halperin: "And after a shaky start on September 11th." A hesitant Bush: "We will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans." For a flavor of the media's hyperbolic focus, some intros to the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts on Friday and Sunday: -- ABC's World News Tonight on Friday. Peter Jennings teased: "On World News Tonight, an ABC News poll that will not please the President: Half the public thinks he deliberately exaggerated the case for war. The Democrats are demanding a public investigation." Jennings then opened the program: "Good evening everyone. It has happened to other Presidents. They go off on a trip to some part of the world and as much as they would like the news to be about them and where they are, sometimes they cannot avoid the news at home or from somewhere else. President Bush's trip to Africa -- and it's an important trip -- had been overshadowed for several days by the war in Iraq. An ABC News/Washington Post poll which has just been finished, finds that 52 percent of Americans, a majority for the first time, find the level of U.S. casualties in Iraq unacceptable. And 50 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration in arguing for the war intentionally exaggerated the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction." -- NBC Nightly News on Friday. Brian Williams began: "It was just one sentence in a long State of the Union speech that the President delivered in January. But it was a major accusation, one part of the President's case for possible war with Iraq. The facts have turned out differently. The accusation was wrong. And now, with 148,000 Americans on the ground there, with over 200 dead and over a thousand wounded, the questions for this White House are heating up. We begin tonight with NBC's David Gregory traveling with the President in Nigeria." -- ABC's World News Tonight/Sunday. Anchor Dean Reynolds: "On World News Tonight this Sunday, new details on just who approved that controversial passage in the President's State of the Union address as the White House continues to deflect questions. Did the President mislead the nation on the road to war with Iraq? Democratic rivals sense an opportunity." -- CBS Evening News on Sunday. Anchor John Roberts announced: "The White House tried to lay to rest today the swirl of controversy over whether it knowingly put dubious intelligence into this year's State of the Union address. Top administration officials said again today that the claim Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa should not have been in the speech, but they denied any attempt to deceive the American people or hype the evidence against Iraq. But as Joie Chen reports, the issue refuses to go away." The media certainly won't let it. > 2) Newsweek's Eleanor Clift put the Bush administration's "credibility gap" at a very high "eight or a nine," she asserted on the McLaughlin Group over the weekend. In the wake of the controversy over the State of the Union address and the lack of any weapons of mass destruction being found, John McLaughlin asked the group to rate the administration's "credibility gap" with zero representing no gap and ten representing a "metaphysical gap." Clift replied: "With all of that, and also throw in the fact that they're stonewalling the 9-11 commission, making it hard for them to do their work, it's up to an eight or a nine." I'd put Clift's liberal advocacy at 11. > 3) Katie Couric on Friday morning benevolently referred to MoveOn.org, the far-left anti-war group, simply as an organization "started by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs frustrated by the political process." During a segment on the uranium from Africa controversy, Couric asked Tim Russert, as transcribed by MRC analyst Ken Shepherd: "As we look at background video, Tim, of an ad that's being put out by a group called MoveOn. It was started by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs frustrated by the political process. This drumbeat will be heard more and more loudly, don't you think, in the weeks to come?" Russert: "Well, we're involved in a presidential campaign. There's no doubt about it..." > 4) "Most Americans (53%) believe that news organizations are politically biased, while just 29% say they are careful to remove bias from their reports. When it comes to describing the press, twice as many say news organizations are 'liberal' (51%) than 'conservative,'" a just-released Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey discovered. In fact, not only do a majority of Republicans (by three-to- one) and independents (by two-to-one) see the news media as reflecting a politically liberal tilt, but so do Democrats of whom 41 percent perceive a media slant to the liberal side versus 33 percent of Democrats who see a skew in the conservative direction. The poll also discovered that most "see it as a good thing when news organizations take a 'strong pro-American point of view,'" but "many more people believe some news organizations are becoming too critical of America (46%) than say they are becoming too pro-American (25%)." The survey was conducted for Pew by "Princeton Survey Research Associates among a nationwide sample of 1,201 adults, 18 years of age or older, during the period June 19-July 2, 2003." Pew headlined the summary of the survey results released on July 13, "Strong Opposition to Media Cross-Ownership Emerges: Public Wants Neutrality and Pro-American Point of View." An excerpt: ....[N]otable is the public's receptivity to the idea that news organizations embrace a decidedly "pro-American" viewpoint, which coexists with continuing support for neutrality in news coverage. Seven-in-ten Americans see it as a good thing when news organizations take a "strong pro-American point of view." However, when asked specifically if it is better for coverage of the war on terrorism to be neutral or pro-American, fully 64% favor neutral coverage. And these views are largely unrelated. Even most of those who see a pro-American point of view as a good thing favor neutral war coverage (62%). The survey shows that the public has nuanced views about patriotism and the press. A narrow majority of Americans (51%) believe that news organizations generally "stand up for America." At the same time, however, many more people believe some news organizations are becoming too critical of America (46%) than say they are becoming too pro-American (25%). The growing audience for the Fox News Channel, nearly half of whom identify themselves as conservatives, has more consistently negative views of media, especially regarding its patriotism. Nearly two-thirds of Fox News viewers (65%) believe some news outlets are becoming too critical of America, compared with fewer than half of CNN and network news viewers (48%, 45% respectively). (Note: Respondents are asked "How have you been getting most of your news about national and international events?" Multiple answers are allowed.)... Public cynicism about press values and performance runs deeper than perceived inaccuracies. Most Americans (53%) believe that news organizations are politically biased, while just 29% say they are careful to remove bias from their reports. When it comes to describing the press, twice as many say news organizations are "liberal" (51%) than "conservative" (26%) while 14% say neither phrase applies. This was also the case in surveys conducted in the mid- to-late 1980s and, not surprisingly, there is a significant partisan cast to these perceptions. Republicans see the press as more liberal than conservative by nearly three-to-one (65%- 22%). Among independents, the margin is two-to-one (50%-25%). And while a third of Democrats say there is a conservative tilt to the American press, a slight plurality (41%) says the press is more liberal than anything else. But an ideological slant is not the only form of bias the public perceives. Two-thirds say news organizations pay too much attention to bad news -- just a quarter say the press reports the kind of stories they should be covering. Just 2% say too much attention is given to good news. Over the past two decades, public concern about press bias has been gradually increasing. Today, two-thirds (66%) say the press tends to favor one side when presenting the news, and seven-in-ten say news outlets are often influenced by powerful people and organizations. In 1985, barely half (53% each) expressed such negative opinions about media independence.... The public is largely satisfied with the amount of attention the media has given to developments in Iraq (60% right amount) and the Middle East (59%). But most Americans (55%) say that the press is devoting too much coverage to the publication of Hillary Clinton's memoir, and a sizable minority (39%) says the same about coverage of the Laci Peterson murder. More than two-thirds of Republicans (68%) and nearly as many independents (61%) say the press has over covered Clinton's book. Democrats are less likely to express that opinion; still, a plurality of Democrats (40%) thinks the book has gotten too much media attention.... END of Excerpt For the full rundown of the findings: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=188 > 5) CNN's Judy Woodruff stumbled upon an insight that doesn't do much to instill trust in the Vermont media's credibility. A veteran Vermont reporter and columnist told Woodruff, in a story run on Friday's Inside Politics, that in Howard Dean's entire career as a legislator, Lieutenant Governor and Governor, "there was never a sentence in any newspaper in the state of Vermont that contained the word 'liberal' and 'Howard Dean.'" Maybe that's the problem with the national media: Hiring too many Vermont reporters who can't recognize a liberal or liberal policies. The boast/admission came in a taped piece Woodruff put together after a visit to the Green Mountain state to learn about how Vermonters view Dean. Woodruff noted in her July 11 piece: "But the rap on Dean is that the Burlington Birkenstock crowd, people who put Dean signs in bars called the Red Square, can't take their man to the White House, that he's just too far left." Peter Freyne of the alternative Seven Days newspaper revealed: "His entire time in Vermont politics, going back to his days in the legislature then as Lieutenant Governor and then as Governor in the '90s, there was never a sentence in any newspaper in the state of Vermont that contained the word 'liberal' and 'Howard Dean.'" Amazing. I suppose that compared to the socialist Bernie Sanders, Dean looks downright right-wing, especially to Vermonters who think Sanders is too conservative. The Web site for Freyne's newspaper: http://www.sevendaysvt.com/ > 6) The very mention of Brent Bozell, President of the MRC, causes Bryant Gumbel to get angry. As both the Washington Post and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on Saturday, during an appearance to plug his new PBS show, at the very mention of Bozell's name a pleasant Gumbel turned angry, denigrated Bozell as a "bozo," and refused to address the complaint of his liberal bias. The July 12 Washington Post story by Lisa de Moraes about PBS's day at the "Summer Press Tour" in Los Angeles for TV critics, during which the networks promote their new fall shows, related this incident: "The only time the formerly and famously short-fused Gumbel seemed a little bit worked up was when some critic played the Brent Bozell card. There is no love lost between Gumbel and the arch-conservative self-appointed TV watchdog. "'The bozos of the world are always going to be there,' Gumbel responded. 'I don't think anybody takes them seriously.' He declined to continue that conversation, to the chagrin of the critic." For de Moraes' filing in full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46054-2003Jul11.html Starting Tuesday night, Gumbel will co-host with Gwen Ifill a new quarterly PBS program, Flashpoints USA. In Saturday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rob Owen reported from Los Angeles: "Given the presence of Gumbel, known for his liberal views (he called conservative watchdog Brent Bozell 'bozo' during yesterday's press conference) and the debatable reputation of PBS as a bastion of liberalism, will Flashpoints be truly balanced? Ifill says yes. 'It's extremely even-handed,' she said. 'You need to guard against media profiling us to assume that because it has two black co-anchors it's going to be a liberal show. We're doing journalism.'" No, I'm profiling it as liberal because it's anchored by two liberals, one of whom has shown little or no respect toward conservatives during his career. For Owen's article: http://www.post-gazette.com/tv/20030712owen0712p3.asp Here's how the PBS Web site describes the new program: "Flashpoints USA with Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill is an innovative new public affairs series from PBS that brings together both compelling examinations of critical issues and a dynamic pairing of two of the most respected names in journalism. "The series premieres July 15 at 9pm ET (check local listings) with an exploration of the balance between homeland security and the protection of civil liberties. Taped on location at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport the episode will examine issues such as the ramifications of the USA Patriot Act, the use of ethic profiling in law enforcement and the state of the nation's airport security." Can't imagine how anyone could fear such a show topic might favor liberal views. The Web page for Flashpoints USA: http://www.pbs.org/flashpointsusa/ Owen reported that the next edition of Flashpoints USA, set to air in September, "will look at the relationship between Americans and the media and whether they believe what they hear, see and read on TV and in newspapers." What are the chances Gumbel will highlight how, by two-to-one, the public see a liberal bias? (See item #4 above.) For photos of Gumbel and Ifill at the Television Critics Association's "Summer Press Tour," see these posted by Yahoo: http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?ei=UTF-8&p=gumbel&c=news_photos For more Gumbel quotes than anyone can stand, culled from his years at NBC and CBS, see an MRC Web page with a very long rundown and video clips of his most egregious slams at conservatives and instances of liberal advocacy: http://www.mediaresearch.org/mrcspotlight/gumbelwelcome.asp > A heads-up for the week: Ari Fleischer is scheduled to appear Thursday night on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman. -- Brent Baker >>> Support the MRC, an educational foundation dependent upon contributions which make CyberAlert possible, by providing a tax- deductible donation. Be sure to fill in "CyberAlert" in the field which asks: "What led you to become a member or donate today?" 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