So, how is the Media Doing?

We read the news today, oh God


Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story.


War in Iraq

MSNBC's Culhane left out fact of later speech in reporting White House claim about "Mission Accomplished"Patty Culhane reported the White House's claim that in President Bush's speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush "never said the words 'mission accomplished.' " However, slightly more than a month later, Bush told U.S. troops in Qatar that "America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished." Read more


NY Times reported on Hadley's "war czar" search, not on retired generals declining the positionA New York Times article on the Bush administration's attempt to hire a "war czar" reported that national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley "is interviewing candidates, including military generals," for the "new high-profile job," but not that several retired generals have reportedly turned the administration down. At least three retired four-star generals have reportedly declined to be considered for the position, and The Washington Post has reported that one of the generals declined because those in the Bush administration currently in charge of the Iraq war's conduct "don't know where the hell they're going." Read more


Matthews suggested Bush merely "went along" with the ideologues in attacking Iraq

During a discussion of former CIA director George Tenet's newly released book on the April 30 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews stated: "I wish somebody would write a book and tell me when President Bush, who's not an ideologue, why he went along with this war, with the neocons, with Tenet, with all the rest of them. I've never heard that really good account." But contrary to Matthews' suggestion that Bush simply "went along" with the neoconservatives' push to invade Iraq, reporter Daniel Eisenberg wrote in a May 5, 2002, Time magazine article: "From the moment he took office, Bush has made noises about finishing the job his father started. Sept. 11 may have diverted his attention, but Iraq has never been far from his mind." Read more


CNN's McIntyre: Bush "can't sign" war funding bill Congress sent him

On the April 30 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, reporting on how the standoff over Iraq war funding could possibly delay the purchase of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicles, CNN senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre said: "And so, while the Democrats send the president a bill he can't sign, and the president holds out for one with no timelines, the Army and the Marines have to get by with the 1,000 vehicles they have now, not the 6,000 more they're still waiting for." McIntyre's construction -- that President Bush "can't sign" the war funding bill -- echoes the White House's position on the bill. Congress passed a bill that provides $124 billion in funding and requires that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq begin by October 2007. Bush could sign the bill and fund the war, including the supply of MRAP vehicles, but instead he has vowed to veto it. Read more


2008 Elections

ABC's Raddatz baselessly claimed that national security seems "a bit of a foreign language" for Democrats

On the April 29 edition of ABC's This Week, during a roundtable discussion about the April 26 Democratic presidential candidates debate, ABC News chief White House correspondent Martha Raddatz asserted: "I think when you listen to [Sen. Barack] Obama [D-IL] on national security and when you listen to some other Democrats, as well, it does seem a bit of a foreign language. There is a learning curve there that they all have to get used to." Raddatz echoed the myth, frequently repeated by the media, that Democrats are weaker and less experienced on issues pertaining to national security and foreign policy than Republicans, despite polling showing that the public does not share that view. Read more


Tucker Carlson: If Clinton and Giuliani both "had absolute power ... who would kill more?"Discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) on the May 1 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson asked columnist Bruce Bartlett: "If both of them had absolute power ... who would kill more?" Tucker's question came after Bartlett asserted, "I think Giuliani seems like he has an authoritarian personality." Tucker then asked: "And Hillary Clinton doesn't? You're saying he has a more authoritarian personality than Hillary Clinton?" Read more


ABC's Tapper misrepresented Clinton's vote for Iraq resolution and her explanation

In an April 27 weblog post, ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper wrote that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) said at an April 26 debate "that if she'd been president she wouldn't have led the country to war in Iraq," to which Tapper added, "a war, you may recall, that she voted for." In fact, the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq for which Clinton and a majority of her congressional colleagues voted gave the president the authority to go to war in Iraq; it was not, as Tapper suggests, a congressional declaration of war or a directive to the president to launch an invasion. Although acknowledging that the vote for the resolution could "lead to war," Clinton has noted herself that a vote for the resolution was not a "vote[] for" the war. Before her vote, Clinton said that she expected the White House to push for "complete, unlimited inspections" and that she did not view her support for the measure as "a vote for any new doctrine of pre-emption or for unilateralism." Read more


Race/Affirmative Action

Olbermann named McGuirk "Worst Person" runner-up for Nazi comparison
On the April 30 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named Bernard McGuirk, former producer of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, runner-up in his "Worst Person in the World" segment for "compar[ing] the end of his show to the roundup of the communists, then the liberals, then the Catholics, then the Jews in Nazi Germany." Olbermann added, "He even misquoted the famous lament of Pastor Martin Niemoller, 'First they came.' " Olbermann said, "Yeah, you and [former host Don] Imus and those sent to the concentration camps, Bernie." Read more


Immigration


Buchanan blamed VA Tech murders on immigrant "invasion," claimed immigrants "are going berserk here"In a May 1 syndicated column, conservative pundit and MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan blamed the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech on lax U.S. immigration policies, stating that gunman Cho Seung-Hui "was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people." In the column -- titled "The Dark Side of Diversity" -- Buchanan claimed: "Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would [be] heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation." He added: "What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what's been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores." Read more


Global Warming

Beck said Gore using "same tactic" in fight against global warming as Hitler did against JewsOn his radio program, Glenn Beck stated that Al Gore is using "the same tactic" in his efforts to fight global warming that Adolf Hitler used to vilify Jews in Nazi Germany, but Beck said that Gore's "goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal." Read more

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....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free