Text 3437, 241 rader
Skriven 2007-01-26 16:09:00 av ROSS SAUER
Ärende: Murtha smear
====================
This is a classic case, of smearing a Bush critic.

No facts to back up the wild-ass claims, just accusations.

Heck. I could do that too!

"Sources" have told me that Bush, Cheney and Rove plan to fake a 
terrorist attack, then they will declare martial law, and Bush becomes 
President For Life.

In the real world, at best this is just a wild rumor.

But using CNS's methodology, it's all true!
Because I said so!

BK>Murtha did get a purple heart or two.

BK>I just looked it up. Apparently there are military records
BK>indicating he was wounded in action, twice, which qualifies him
BK>for the purple heart, twice.

TR>I said I'd post a reply to this:

TR>Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question

TR>By Marc Morano and Randy Hall

TR>CNSNews.com Staff

TR>January 13, 2006

A Textbook Example of Conservative Journalism
CNSNews.com follows the blueprint by raising dubious allegations from 
the dead and disgruntled that Rep. Jack Murtha didn't earn his Vietnam 
War medals.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 1/18/2006

Call it conservative journalism at its finest.

On Jan. 13, CNSNews.com published a two-pronged attack on Rep. John 
Murtha, who has gained recent attention by criticizing the Iraq war and 
calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq -- a stance that 
has made him reviled by conservatives.

The lead attack piece was a article by Marc Morano and Randy Hall 
suggesting that Murtha did not earn the two Purple Hearts he received 
during his Vietnam War service. Of the four main sources quoted in the 
article, one is dead (former Rep. John Saylor), a second is 
incapacitated and contributed no fresh quotes to the article (Harry M. 
Fox), and two (Don Bailey, who is CNS' main source on this article, and 
William Choby) have apparent axes to grind, having lost elections to 
Murtha (Fox also lost an election to Murtha).

Wait -- wasn't this kind of sourcing forwarded by conservatives to 
attack the veracity of the CBS memos on President Bush's National Guard 
service? Yup. A September 20, 2004, CNS article quotes its leader, Media 
Research Center president Brent Bozell, describing the CBS report this 
way: "Their sources were dubious at best - so much so that their primary 
source was never cited publicly - and they were certainly partisan with 
a political agenda against the President." Sounds a lot like Bill 
Burkett -- provider of the questionable memos to CBS, whom CNS accused 
of having a "grudge" against Bush and whom a CNS columnist called 
"unstable" -- and Don Bailey have something in common.

The story is almost all accusation; of the article's 52 paragraphs, only 
five are devoted to letting Murtha defend himself, and two of them are 
pulled from a 1994 newspaper article.

CNS joined this article with another by Morano and Hall recounting 
Murtha's relatively minor role in the Abscam bribery scandal of the late 
1970s -- he was named an unindicted co-conspirator and testified against 
other colleagues in the House. Bailey, who lost a Democratic runoff to 
Murtha in 1982, is again quoted in this article, this time suggesting 
that Murtha lied about his Abscam role. This article, like the other 
one, is mostly accusation; CNS limited Murtha's defense to the three 
paragraphs he issued reacting to the other CNS article.

As even CNS itself admits, its attack on Murtha's war record is 
reminiscent of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on presidential 
candidate John Kerry's Vietnam record. As ConWebWatch has documented, 
CNS was a early promoter of the Swift Boat Veterans' allegations -- and 
also ignored or downplayed inconsistencies in their stories.

The defense of these Murtha-bashing articles by CNS and its parent, the 
Media Research Center, has been alternately petty and snide. In a Jan. 
14 NewsBusters post expressing pleasure that the Washington Post 
repeated the CNS article on Murtha's war record, the MRC's Tim Graham 
still managed to find something to complain about: the Post's noting of 
the fact that CNS "averages 110,000 readers, mainly conservative, and 
provides material for other Web sites such as GOPUSA" (whose now-defunct 
sister site, Talon News, was the home of Jeff Gannon; interestingly, as 
ConWebWatch has noted, CNS editor in chief David Thibault ran as far as 
he could from Gannon, declaring that he was "no conservative"). Wrote 
Graham: "Would Kurtz say the Post 'averages a million readers, mainly 
liberals'?"

The problem with that analogy is that Graham has no evidence, other than 
the presumption of liberal media bias that fuels the entire MRC 
organization, that the Post's readership is "mainly liberals." But since 
CNS self-identifies as conservative by being a division of a 
conservative organization, it was necessary for the Post to note this in 
the article since the name "Cybercast News Service" offers no hint to 
the site's leanings.

That was the petty part. The snide part comes from Thibault in a Jan. 16 
commentary. He complained that CNS, Morano and Hall are "being pounded 
so viciously on your liberal blogs," characterizing these as "the Left's 
paranoid rants." Thibault then praised his "tiny news organization" for 
"uncovering elements that Murtha, his Democratic colleagues in Congress, 
their cronies on the political Left and the establishment media wanted 
buried. Oops." He offered no evidence that Democratic "cronies" and the 
"establishment media" wanted this story "buried"; maybe they just 
recognized that CNS' sources are dead, incapacitated or disgruntled.

Thibault also insisted that "I've never met, spoken on the telephone or 
exchanged emails with [White House senior adviser] Karl Rove." But it's 
quite interesting that CNS' Murtha articles came just a day after a 
report surfaced of a Bush administration effort to urged U.S. military 
leaders to denounce Murtha.

Finally, Thibault pretends that CNS isn't conservative:

As for the oft-repeated criticism of CNSNews.com, that we are merely a 
forum for the Bush White House and wealthy Republican donors, consider 
these headlines of stories that we have also published. 
Bush, GOP Labeled 'Thieves' Who 'Need to Be Locked Up' - Aug. 8, 2005
Has Bush Committed an 'Impeachable Offense,' Senator Asks - Dec. 20, 
2005
Howard Dean: 'This Is a Republican Scandal' - Jan. 9, 2006

That's right -- of the dozens of original news articles that CNS 
produced between August and January, Thibault could apparently come up 
with only three that appear to be non-conservative-friendly. Most people 
would call that window-dressing -- token articles to provide the 
illusion that CNS isn't monolithically conservative. And ConWebBlog has 
noted that the Jan. 9 article he cites contains the misleading 
statement, regurgitated from the National Republican Senatorial 
Committee, that Senate Democrats took money from "Jack Abramoff, his 
associates, and Indian tribe clients." In fact, while Abramoff may have 
directed money through "associates and Indian tribe clients" to 
Democrats, all money donated under Abramoff's name went to Republicans; 
none went to Democrats.

A more accurate way to assess CNS' conservatism than Thibault's cherry-
picked articles is to look at how it treated Murtha's original Nov. 17 
statement on withdrawing from Iraq. Its first original article on 
Murtha's statement came Nov. 18, in an article by Susan Jones headlined 
"Republicans Question Timing of Dems' Call for 'Surrender,'" which led 
not with Murtha's position but with statements from Republican National 
Committee chairman Ken Mehlman criticizing Murtha. Three days later, on 
Nov. 21, Jones again featured a Republican response to Murtha, this time 
from Vice President Dick Cheney.

That same day, CNS ran a column by Rich Galen making the following 
claim:

There was outrage on the floor of the House over the whole thing [the 
House of Representatives vote to immediately withdraw troops from Iraq] 
which was, again, characterized as calling Mr. Murtha a coward which I 
do not believe any Member of Congress did.
In fact, Republican Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt made the following statement 
during debate over what Republicans claimed was an approximation of 
Murtha's withdrawal plan (it called for immediate withdrawal, while 
Murtha's didn't):

A few minutes ago, I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio 
representative from the 88th District in the House of Representatives. 
He asked me to send Congress a message: Stay the course. He also asked 
me to send Congressman Murtha a message: that cowards cut and run, 
Marines never do.
That sure sounds a heck of a lot like a member of Congress was calling 
Murtha a coward.

And if CNS is the bipartisan news organization that Thibault claims it 
is, you should be able to find plenty of coverage there about juicy 
scandals involving Republicans, right?

Uh, no. Take, for example, the case of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the 
Republican congressman who resigned in disgrace after admitting to 
taking millions of dollars in bribes. CNS has written exactly zero 
original news articles on Cunningham's corruption. It did, however, find 
the time to tout Cunningham's support of issues near and dear to 
conservatives, such as an anti-flag-burning amendment and an effort to 
preserve a large cross on public land.

And the first mention of scandal-plagued, Republican-tied lobbyist Jack 
Abamoff on CNS is an April 2005 article painting Democrats as the "'get 
DeLay' crowd" for linking former House majority leader Tom DeLay in a 
roundabout way to Abramoff.

Bozell himself touted CNS' work in a Jan. 17 column, and he gets as 
snide as Thibault, claiming that "the media" has "thrown around the 
words 'war hero' [for Murtha] like clowns throwing candy at a parade." 
But even as he proudly proclaimed that "it fell to the Cybercast News 
Service ... to look into the Murtha military record," he attacked the 
"so-called nonpartisan, objective, 'mainstream' media" for daring to 
look into the background of John O'Neill and Swift Boat Veterans for 
Truth. But as noted above, CNS had no interest in doing that. Bozell, 
meanwhile, was so consumed with promoting their claims that he attacked 
anyone who did tell the truth about them, as ConWebWatch also noted.

What CNS has done in its Murtha hit job is a prime example of 
conservative journalism at work. It differs from regular journalism in 
one crucial aspect: Being conservative comes before being journalists. 
Where regular journalism is ideally concerned with presenting the facts 
without fear or favor -- and despite the MRC's continual carping about 
journalists being notoriously liberal, the vast majority of them strive 
for that ideal -- conservative journalism is concerned first and 
foremost with advancing the cause of conservatism. Facts are a little 
more malleable than in regular journalism; they can be distorted or 
hidden to make whatever point needs to be made -- making conservatives 
look good and/or making liberals (like Murtha) look bad. And in the 
conservative journalism model, working for a political party or partisan 
group is no hindrance to making a career as a journalist; and their CNS 
bios indicate, Thibault worked for the Republican National Committee 
before joining CNS, while Morano worked for Rush Limbaugh's mid-90s TV 
show.

Thibault admitted as much in the Washington Post article -- that Murtha 
became a conservative target because of his statements critical of the 
war. He didn't specifically say that, of course; he put it much nicer by 
saying that the Purple Heart issue is relevant "because the congressman 
has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement. .. He 
has been placed by the Democratic Party and antiwar activists as a 
spokesman against the war above reproach." So, apparently, it's Murtha's 
fault that CNS is rooting around into his past and channeling dead 
people to smear him.

This is not a story CNS would cover if Murtha was a Republican; it would 
be the same kind of non-story as the Duke Cunningham scandal. In putting 
only the most negative information about Murtha up front, CNS has 
followed the conservative journalism template to a T. It should stop 
pretending otherwise.
   
This site © Copyright 2000-06 Terry Krepel

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