Anti-Bush, anti-US agenda???

Put down yer crack pipe and stop sipping the Kool-Aid. The criminals Bush and Cheney are the most incompetent and corrupt Administration in US history. They lied the country into the present Iraq quagmire, created a billion new enemies around the globe, destroyed the armed forces readiness and fitness, failed to respond to Katrina, populated the Justice Department with Regent Law School retards and career yes-men, outed covert CIA agents in unlawful retaliation for a citizen's criticism, gave $27,000,000,000 in no bid contracts to fraudulent defense contractor Halliburton, and in general have screwed up the country in every way possible, and you blame the press for it's "anti-Bush agenda".

Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

Re: robert lewis' reply.

And BINGO was it's name O.

Hmmm... missed your Bush=Hitler comparison, but other than that, you hit most of the Salon.com talking points.

These attacks on the NYT, WaPo, and AP are truly a case of shooting the messenger. Ignore the message (as articulately listed by Robert Lewis) all you want, folks, but reality has a way of biting back.

George W. Bush was elected to the office of "President," not "America." It is possible to be in favor of America while still being opposed to George W. Bush. For some of us, it is not only possible, but it is a moral imperative.

I voted for him in 2000. I served under him from 2000-2003. And I recruited over 200 more people to do the same. Every day he makes a liar out of me to those 200 people.

What is the press guilty of THIS time in respect to Iraq? Not reporting the good news? They can't even beyond the green zone safely (except in Kurdistan, oops, northern Iraq) to see all the "good news" out there in the paradise of Iraq without a real risk of death, injury and/or dismemberment.

This war is a FIASCO up down left right and sideways. Not only was it unnecessary, but it was flubbed horribly at every point there was an opportunity to turn it around. The press could pack up and NEVER report again on Iraq, and it would still be a disaster. And as for being too liberal, I would castigate the press for not showing the real face of this war. I can't recall the last time I saw a news report with the sight of actual human blood, especially on US soldiers, and yet we continue to produce 4-5 dead American soldiers or contractors and 100-200 dead Iraqis every day, day in and day out, like a metronome, and other than raw statistics, you never actually get a sense for what a screaming disaster it is. Even the stats are horrifyig enough, which is why most sensible people have given up after four long years on this conflict. And, to top it off, we hear from the government itself that Al Qaeda is stronger than ever.

So what exactly is the strategy here? Can these guys possibly blow it any further?

And the press is guilty how in all of this? By reporting that it sucks over there?

CY is just doing his part to prepare the "stabbed in the back" meme that will explain every failure in Iraq. It's not that an incompetent circle of idiots mismanaged the occupation of Iraq, it's the journalist anti-war left cabal that irrationally wants to destroy their own country. The Dolchstosslegende lives on...

robert forgot to add the part about conspiring to hide the truth about 9/11 and presiding over the worst economy in 50 years as well.

But given the "reporting" from the MSM outlets like the AP and NYT, opinions like his aren't surprising.

Hmmm... missed your Bush=Hitler comparison, but other than that, you hit most of the Salon.com talking points.

Bob,

This is beneath you. You may not agree with everything robert lewis said, but blithely dismissing them with the Bush=Hitler irrelevancy is a dodge.

The truth is, we are at a place in Iraq where every solution we have is terrible. The blame for being in this place can be placed directly at George Bush's door.

They've screwed the pooch at almost every turn, and let politics trump all other concerns, attempting to cut combat pay, cut money for post schools, and if you think the AS Attorney DOJ flap is a nothing story, as so many on the right believe, I have two Asst. US Attorneys who served under this and the previous administration who tell a much different story.

Both served in NYC putting away some of the baddest of the bad, showing more guts than a lot of those who are defending these firings.

In my 57 years, I have yet to see an administration as venal and incompetent as this one and I wonder just what they'll have to do to shake the faith of you remaining 28%.

And if you think the WaPo is liberal, you don't know Fred Hiatt.

The only thing that would shake the faith of the remaining 28% would be GWB switching political parties. Most of these right-wing blogs aren't really pro anything, they're simply anti- anti-liberal, anti-free inquiry, anti-social change, etc. Like many fringe groups, they define themselves, and maintain cohesion by their opposition to an enemy. You will search in vain for any coherent ideology, any consistent set of principles. All one can see is a bunker mentality, a stubborn opposition to The Enemy.

This is from today's editorial in the liberal Washington Post:

Advocates of withdrawal would like to believe that Afghanistan is now a central front in the war on terror but that Iraq is not; believing that doesn't make it so. They would like to minimize the chances of disaster following a U.S. withdrawal: of full-blown civil war, conflicts spreading beyond Iraq's borders, or genocide. They would have us believe that someone or something will ride to the rescue: the United Nations, an Islamic peacekeeping force, an invigorated diplomatic process. They like to say that by withdrawing U.S. troops, they will "end the war."

Conditions in Iraq today are terrible, but they could become "way, way worse," as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, a career Foreign Service officer, recently told the New York Times. If American men and women were dying in July in a clearly futile cause, it would indeed be immoral to wait until September to order their retreat. But given the risks of withdrawal, the calculus cannot be so simple. The generals who have devised a new strategy believe they are making fitful progress in calming Baghdad, training the Iraqi army and encouraging anti-al-Qaeda coalitions. Before Congress begins managing rotation schedules and ordering withdrawals, it should at least give those generals the months they asked for to see whether their strategy can offer some new hope.

Oh, those crazy moonbats of the Washington Post. And I'm not even counting the kooky commie columnists they feature like Charles Krauthammer and Johah Goldberg! When will those wacky lefties learn?

/snark

it's one thing to make wild a** claims about an anti-bush/anti-america agenda in the press. it's another to explain realities like judith miller and bob woodward. i spent fifteen years as an award winning journalist before making a career change. it is based on that experience that i say if the press was doing it's job, and not just acting as administration stenographers, we would most likely not be in iraq, al queda would probably not be back to full strength, and the cheney administration would have never been elected to office in 2004. perhaps you are confusing editorial pages with journalism. journalists ask hard questions. it seems that in the last six years the only real journalists have been working for the mclatchy papers.

I can hear the heavy breathing of the BDS crowd, triumphant in their "dispair" at the Bush Administrations initiation and handling, of the war.

My only question is, who will this war's John Kerry be,and will he be able to pronounce Ghengis properly?

Let's re-read Mr. Klebeck's statement, shall we?

"...not just acting as administration stenographers...journalists ask hard questions."

He is decidedly not in favor of agenda-driven advocacy. He is asking for journalism. A journalist does not take any source at their word, no matter who they are. A journalist does his/her own research, and reports the facts.

I don't see anything here disputing any reporting on the basis of the facts. You are objecting because you don't like what is being reported. Party affiliation doesn't matter when reporters are too star-struck, and too comfortable with their position in the royal court to ask hard questions or even try to get corroboration of administration claims. Like dear Judy Miller, but she wasn't the only one by far.

Are you saying that reporters should just act as stenographers for the administration? Read Michael Gordon's typing for WaPo and you'll get your wish.

first of all i would appreciate it if you struck my full name from this thread. thank you.
second the last thing in the world i want is for journalists to become activists. the job of a journalist is to do their own research and to ask tough questions...the ultimate goal of these things is to reach the truth. the truth has no agenda. you may think it does if it doesn't match your agenda, but that is bias everyone brings to the table. my point, which you totally misread, is that if the journalists had asked hard questions and done their research then they would have found the truth about what we now know was cherry-picked intelligence in the run-up to the invasion and occupation of iraq. the perfect example of this is scooter libby feeding judith miller info, which she in turn wrote in the nytimes without question, and then cheney going on meet the press and saying "...see, it's right there in the ny times..." and tim russert not questioning him about it. they also would have reported the truth about a resurgent al-queda instead of simply miming the administrations repeated claims of having them on the run, and they would have reported what they knew about the leaking of a covert cia operative's identity before the 2004 election.
thank you again for striking my full name from the thread.

I served under him from 2000-2003

Ummm, Clinton was president through all of 2000, and a bit of 2001.

What the ideologues of all stripes fail to realize is that the media does not skew to one side or the other. The media skews to median voter. Case in point, the median voter is currently disaffected with the Iraq war, so the media is disaffected by the Iraq war. Back in 2003, the media was all for the Iraq war because the vast majority of the country was. So there you go. The political blogosphere is distinctly non-median voters, so each side perceives the media as on the other.

Also, jay k, as much as you or I would like the media to report objectively, it is a clear minority position. Most people, whether they acknowledge it or not, want the media to reinforce their own prejudices. Case in point, last week, our gracious host informed us that a picture of some Palistineans hanging around a wall, was in fact, a human shield made of children. Why? Because it reinforces the notion that Palistineans are violent scumbags. Oh, and by the way, the media was biased for not reaching the same conclusion.

See what I mean?

CY:

I do not visit your site often. I do not know which way you lean. However it is clear that most of the posters on this entry are living in moonbat heaven.

Anyone who denies the problems of the media bias are just plain silly. It is not a matter of political sides. We should all want the truth.

The AP is a good example. An organization owned by 5,000 US news organizations with major media exectutives on its board. The purpose of the AP is to provide its members with the news, not a version of the news, but the most unbiased staight forward news possible. Why? because the 5000 outlets, and countless outlets around the world, rely on the AP for most news outside their geographical area.

What do the 5000 members get for their money.

See the post below for evidence of sloppy reporting "Laws, Sausages and Journalism."

While Laws, Sausages and Journalism shows up the stringers and the Baghdad office up as sloppy the Baghdad office and its stingers have forwarded, and the AP has accepted clearly eronious reprts more than once. The latest they were caught out on 20 beheaded bodies found

Contrast the above unverifiable attrocities with the following on site reporing by Michael Yon, complete with video, photographs. Bless the Beasts and Children. Even though Michael offered the news free to any outlet willing to publish, there were no takers.

It always cracks me up to read a bunch of 20 somethings commenting from their mothers basements trying to convince others that they are/were journalists. They can't even construct a grammatically correct sentence.

second the last thing in the world i want is for journalists to become activists. the job of a journalist is to do their own research and to ask tough questions

You're missing the point of this blog. It's agenda is to promote the common right-wing meme that the war is being lost because of the so-called MSM and some nefarious fifth column of left-wing irrational actors who want to bring down the country for unstated reasons (which is why it's always painted as some kind of dimentia). It's never EVER because the administration miscalculated, or because the whole adventure was a bad idea from the start. This is how agitprop, right-wing-style, works. Do a little research into the rhetorical strategies employed by the right-wing in Weimar Germany and you'll see the same dynamic at work. Nutty nationalists are the same the world over.

"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."

"It always cracks me up to read a bunch of 20 somethings commenting from their mothers basements trying to convince others that they are/were journalists. They can't even construct a grammatically correct sentence."

I believe you meant "mother's" rather than "mothers".

It would be "mother's" if one mother had several basements. I think he meant "mothers'" instead.

The original point is well taken, though. I quit the newspaper business more than a decade ago, and I can't believe that anyone with a keyboard thinks they do what journalists do. Of course, journalists have had a hard time lately doing what journalists are supposed to do, too.

Everyone knows what Miller did wrong in the run-up to the war, right? It has nothing to do with ideology, and everything to do with bad reporting.

PunditGuy,

If the right wants to complain about crappy reporting, I'm standing here in my choir robes. And I'll target the NY Times and the Wasington Post because I expect better reporting from them than I do the Washington Times or the Weekly Standard.

But when I hear that tired old canard about the liberal media, that's when I call BS. Fred Hiatt turned the Post rightward years ago and employ reporters with a distinct conservative bias like Susan Schmidt.

The Times hired a consumer reporter from Newsday (I've forgotten her name) who had built her reputation on consumer protection stories. Once at the Times they expected puff pieces like where to find the best selection of Prada and other consumer, as in consume, "news."

And the AP, one of Bob's favorite whipping boys, also hired Nedra Pickler, another wretched reporter with a rightward bias.

Look at cable news and you'll find some real crap. CNN is so awful I can't watch it, and that has nothing to do with any percieved bias. It's just bad. And MSNBC? Aside from Olbermann, all of their talking heads lean right. Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson? C'mon.

The media was probably liberal in the 70's. And with so few media outlets, conservatives had a right to angry. But today? Please. This dog is so old and tired, it won't hunt. It's time to put this thing to sleep.

The media doesn't lean left? Their checkbooks say different.

And citing individual conservative journalists in organizations containing hundreds of journalists doesn't disprove my point at all. They still break 9-to-1 Democrat overall, always have, and in some organizations, are closer to 100%.

Ah, but the devil is in the details: "MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission."

143 TOTAL. Out of more than 100,000. Not only that, but "Many of the donating journalists cover topics far from politics: food, fashion, sports."

So the left has 125 (out of the 143) who donated money. 0.125% of the total. The right has the majority of the (corporate) owners of the MSM, the folks who actually get to decide what you see, hear and read.

As Liebling said, "Freedom of the press belongs to him who owns one."

I'd happily trade you......

>>he right has the majority of the (corporate) owners of the MSM, the folks who actually get to decide what you see, hear and read.>>

You mean like Ted Turner? So tell me about all the right wing bias coming from MSNBC and Olbermann? How's Dan Rather doing? You remember Dan, the guy who let a fabricated story be passed off as new because it hurt Bush? How many newspaper editorial pages endorsed Bush?

Disney won't release the Path to 911 TV series on DVD because it makes Clinton look bad. Anyone know where I can get a copy of Fahrenheit 911 on DVD?

are you serious?

You do know that Ted Turner hasn't had anything to do with CNN for several years, right? That's Time-Warner now.

And Dan Rather lost his job.

Just like several columnists who criticized Bush after 9/11. They got fired because we can't have people criticizing le petit dauphin, can we? So they got canned.

And Michael Moore had to find a new distributor for F 9/11 when Disney backed out of its contract because of heat from the right even before anyone had seen the movie.

And Rick Kaplan turned CNN to the right and then moved on to MSNBC where he hired liberals like Joe Scarborough, Tucker Carlson, and Michael Savage.

General Electric, a major defense contractor owns NBC. Westinghouse, another major defense contractor, owns CBS. And who's head of their holding company's board of drectors? Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group. Disney, who gave $640K to W's 2000 campaign, owns ABC. Who owns Fox? Rupert Murdoch, hardly a lefty.

I've already mentioned the head of the Washington Post's editorial page, Fred Hiatt. He's no liberal. Even the right's biggest boogeyman, the NY Times has David Brooks, Stanley Fish (whose current column sides with Clarence Thomas), and Tom Friedman who supported the Iraq war from jump street.

Now tell me about the liberal voices heard at the Washington Times (owned by Sun Myung Moon or, as he likes to be called, the Messiah) or the left-leaning columnists at the WSJ. There are none.

The myth of the liberal media is a favorite one among the right because it allows them to conveniently dismiss any news that does not conform to their preconceived notions, much like our president.

I applaud Bob for setting specific stories right, as he's done a few time with the AP. But when he tries to paint the entire MSM as leaning left, I don't buy it. I read a lot, I watch the news, and I don't see it.

But boy, I see Ann Coulter on TV a lot. And Bill Kristol. And Pat Buchanan. And Bay Buchanan.

Well, you get the idea.

David, are you actually going to argue that the men who are CEOs and chairmen of the board of vast multi-national corporations, that own other vast multi-national corporations, that own media companies, impose their individual will over each newsroom and editorial board, reporter, photographer, and videographer every time a company is bought, sold or merged?

To do so, they would presumably start by firing senior management and editorial staff early--right of the bat--and then put in place their own management and editorial teams, who would then direct wholesale purges of journalists, editors, photographers, videographers, anchors, producers, etc. This has never happened.

As for your individual examples, you seem quite good at pointing out the handful of right-leaning columnists at some news organizations, but you utterly miss the point; this isn't about the columnists, but the newsrooms.

Most journalists in today's market come up through the collegiate ranks (universities being a bastion of liberal/Marxist/Socialist thought), and liberal arts programs, with English and journalism/communications schools being among the most liberal of already liberal university environments. I spent six years in these classes earning two degrees and a minor in these areas; I know of what I speak from direct experience, just as my personal knowledge and relationships within several east coast newsrooms show the exact same thing, to the point I know of one New York newsroom where I personally saw posters dedicated to Chinese Communist Mao.

Liberal bias is inherent in most major media also because of the environment in which they reside.

From Manhattan (2004: Kerry 82%, Bush 17%), to Chicago (2004: Kerry 70%, Bush 29%), to Atlanta-DeKalb Co (2004 Kerry 73%, Bush 26%), to Los Angeles (2004: Kerry 63%, Bush 36%), to San Francisco (2004: Kerry 83%, Bush 15%) to Washington, DC (2004 Kerry 90%, Bush 9%), the cities where the most influential journalists live, work, and spend most of their time is overwhelmingly left-leaning [Source: heh... CNN].

Journalists go through left-leaning universities in one of the most liberal of liberal arts programs, and are hired and promoted by others that came through that same system before them.

Those who are most successful end up living in cities that are very liberal, working with people who are liberal, and interacting 24/7 with others in liberal enclaves, and you you expect them to maintain objectivity?

I'm not saying that they set out with the intention of being liberal any more than universities intended to be dominated by liberals/progressives, but that is reality, like it, or not.

Bob,

As a joke, it's always been my contention that if you spend your life covering politics, the sheer venality and hypocrisy of the right would turn you liberal if you weren't already.

But our liberal politicians have proven themselves to be just as repellant as the conservatives, ruining my joke.

Yes, reporters are more liberal than tax attorneys. No question. Just as there are more homosexuals in theater, more writers in bar rooms and more Republicans playing the links at Augusta.

But most reporters try to stay objective. Are they human? Of course. And the way they turn a sentence may lean more to the left than the right. I won't argue that point.

But reporters cover stories they're assigned. Editors assign stories. If editors are told that their news division has to turn a profit, then staff is cut and suddenly, events get covered instead of ideas. It's cheaper. Investigative journalism is expensive. Much more expensive than covering Paris Hilton or having two talking heads on TV "debating" an issue by yelling at one another.

And who turns the news divisions into profit centers? Boards. And who dominates the boards? Republicans.

Are you going to tell me that when the chairman of GE gets a call from Dick Cheney, he puts the VP on hold? Not on your life. Especially if he played golf with him the day before.

Cheney says he's unhappy with all the negative stories about the environment. The chairman of GE calls a guy and says, check into this. That guy calls a guy, then that guy calls a guy and suddenly, a story gets spiked and Katie Couric runs a piece on the "positive side of global warming" (and no, unfortunately, I'm not making that up.)

No one applies the thumb to the newsroom, not directly. But as Phil Donahue said recently, he was told that if he had a liberal on, he had to have two conservatives to balance it out. That's pressure from above.

They canceled Phil from MSNBC, even though he had the highest ratings of the network. But Tucker Carlson? He's had two or three shows, all ratings flops, and yet he still gets a slot.

Come on, Bob. The days of liberal control of the media are over. Money buys media and liberals are notoriously broke. Even SCOTUS has said that money is speech. Those who have money get more air time. Those paying for more air time get more access.

An anecdote: When Supersize Me came out, Paula Zahn of CNN had Morgan Spurling, the director, on her show. She gave him about 10 minues, all the while undercutting the message of his movie by saying things like McDonald's isn't the worst offender, surely, and don't all restaurants do this, etc.

Then she followed that segment with a puff piece with a McDonald's spokesperson who had 20 minutes to talk about the healthful additions to McDonald's menu.

At the time I wondered how much advertising McDonald's buys on CNN every year. Of course, we were never told that.

Bob, I believe you believe that liberals control the media, but I'm asking you to consider that maybe this old conservative canard is a ruse. Because liberals don't control the media. Conservatives don't control the media. Corporations control the media.

Here's an exercise you can do for yourself. In the next week, count how many business reports you hear on TV, radio, even NPR. Then count how many labor reports we hear. The answer will be zero.

One of the reasons I spend so much time writing comments on this and other blogs is to ask all of you to lift your heads above this false dichotomy of left and right. We're all being played for suckers.

Take a look around. Once you strip away the ideology, I think you'll see a very different world.

The pronounced and epidemic liberal bias of the mainstream media is the primary reason the right wing has come out in rampant support of the return of the Fairness Doctrine.

It's the only way they will get their lonely voices to be heard.

Heheheh.

The truth is, we are at a place in Iraq where every solution we have is terrible.

Really? The prospect of having to invade mainland Japan during WWII was "terrible" considering the loses we took in the Okinawa invasion. Over 12,000 dead in under 3 months.

Iraq isn't even remotely close to that level of "terrible" yet. IMO, some proper perspective is in order here.

Iraq isn't even remotely close to that level of "terrible" yet. IMO, some proper perspective is in order here.

WWII is just such an inappropriate analogy, I don't even know where to start. We were fighting industrialized nations and fielded armies, not insurgents; something like 16 million served in the US armed forces; wounds were much more fatal in the 1940's...the list just goes on and on.

Tell me, PA, what's the 'magic number' of dead/wounded US soldiers that will make you give a damn about their losses?

Tell me, PA, what's the 'magic number' of dead/wounded US soldiers that will make you give a damn about their losses?

Tell me what's at stake and I'll tell you what I'm willing to tolerate to beat it.

Well, it looks like what's at stake is several trillion dollars of oil revenues guarunteed to US and Brithish oil companies as part of the oil sharing agreement. As it stands, if the aggreement is passed as part of the benchmarks for withdrawal, it will divvy up about 80% of the oil to American a British oil companies, with no conditions attached. No wonder Bush is planning to keep 50,000 troops there indefinately. How many dead are worth all that money? Your call.

1) The "liberal media" chased Whitewater for 8 years. They dismissed the Downing Street Memos in less than 24 hours.

2) They point out the hypocrisy of Edwards saying he cares about the poor, yet he gets $400 haircuts.
Still haven't seen or heard them mention Cheney's distaste for taxes, while the majority of Halliburton revenues comes from Gov't contracts (paid with dirty tax money).

If a "liberal" reporter wants to keep his job, he better toe the company line.

BTW, Phil Donahue lost his job despite having his station's highest rated show.
He also questioned the legitimacy of going to war with Iraq.
Why? Because his employer had a monetary interest in making sure we went to war.

Are we talking about Michael Yon and eating Iraqi babies here?