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.

2008 Elections

Will the media address Bernstein's charges of "misleading," "factually off-base" Clinton coverage?
In his upcoming book, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Knopf, June 2007), Carl Bernstein repeatedly criticizes the media's coverage of the Clinton presidency as, at various times, "overzealous," "misleading," "factually off-base," and a "free-for-all" that lacked "restraint." Given the widespread media coverage that Bernstein's book has, and will undoubtedly, receive, will the media address Bernstein's claims? Read more

O'Reilly on Romney: "He's got the jaw going on, the little gray thing in there. And I think that means a lot in America"
On the May 30 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said: "[Y]ou can't get more presidential-looking than [former Massachusetts Gov.] Mitt Romney [R]." O'Reilly continued: "[I]f you were to make up a guy, this would be the guy, you know, that looks presidential. He's got the jaw going on, the little gray thing in there." O'Reilly concluded that Romney's "presidential" looks bode well for his electoral prospects, saying, "I think that means a lot in America." Read more

Federal judge blasted Her Way co-author Van Natta for "fraudulent attribution" in 1999 Times article
In Her Way, Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. repeatedly cite former officials in the Office of Independent Counsel (OIC) to rehash allegations against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. This recalls Gerth's and Van Natta's controversial reporting on the OIC at The New York Times. In fact, a federal judge criticized Van Natta for "journalistic sleight of hand" and "fraudulent attribution" of key information in a 1999 article. In that article, Van Natta also allowed an OIC spokesman to falsely deny that he had been a source on internal OIC discussions. Read more

Gerth and Van Natta falsely claim Clinton did not speak about terror before 9-11
In their upcoming book, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Little, Brown & Co., June 2007), authors Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. claim that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) September 13, 2001, response to a question from then-CBS anchor Dan Rather, in which she referred to terrorism as "our number one homeland threat," was "an odd answer, considering her previous lack of public engagement on the topic." Gerth and Van Natta claim that Clinton's answer "mark[ed] the first time that she had spoken publicly as a senator about the terrorist threat to the United States," citing a Nexis search the authors had conducted for the precise phrase: "homeland threat." However, had Gerth and Van Natta expanded their search criteria to include more commonplace terms such as "terrorism" or "terrorist," they would have found that Sen. Clinton did, in fact, address the terrorist threat to the United States months before September 2001. Read more

Wash. Post reported that Thompson sees himself as "antidote to Washington politics," ignoring his history of playing politics
Washington Post staff writers Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz began their May 31 article on former Sen. Fred Thompson's (R-TN) potential candidacy for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination by noting that, according to "advisers," Thompson "will offer himself as a down-home antidote to Washington politics." Yet the article left out two elements of Thompson's record that undermine this characterization. The Post ignored Thompson's actions in 1997, when, as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs committee, Thompson suspended an investigation into campaign finance abuses -- reportedly after Republicans expressed concern that committee Democrats planned to investigate questionable and potentially embarrassing GOP fundraising practices, particularly those of two Republican members of the committee. Moreover, the article did not mention Thompson's 18-year career as a lobbyist, during which he reportedly represented deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and a company facing billions of dollars in asbestos claims. Read more

USA Today editorial advanced misleading attacks on Edwards, Obama
In an editorial, USA Today advanced misleading attacks against two Democratic presidential candidates -- former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama. The editorial asserted that Edwards "charged a public university $55,000 for giving a speech" and that Obama misspelled the word "flak" in a recent press release. Further, the editorial presented both as examples of "gaffes and unguarded moments that are frequently trivial but sometimes seem to reveal deeper truths or reinforce misgivings about the candidates." Read more

Cal Thomas, KSFO's Rodgers and Morgan left out part of Clinton speech that directly refutes their accusation of socialism
In his May 31 nationally syndicated column, "It Takes a Socialist Village," Cal Thomas selectively cited a May 29 speech by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) to claim that Clinton "prefers" a "socialist" society where "the only equality is that all are equally poor." He added that Clinton's vision of "a 'we're all in it together' society" is reminiscent of "the old and discredited ... Karl Marx saying: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Similarly, during the May 30 broadcast of KSFO's The Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan Program, co-host Melanie Morgan cropped Clinton's speech to assert that her idea "[s]ounds like communism to me" while colleague Lee Rodgers claimed that the "Hildabeast" agrees with Marx that socialism is "the ideal economic structure for this country." However, Thomas, Rodgers, and Morgan all omitted Clinton's statement during the speech that "there is no greater force for economic growth than free markets." Read more

Immigration

O'Reilly: Immigration bill supporters want to "change the complexion" of America
On the May 29 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, host Bill O'Reilly asserted that the proposed immigration reform bill is supported by "people who hate America, and they hate it because it's run primarily by white, Christian men. Let me repeat that. America is run primarily by white, Christian men, and there is a segment of our population who hates that, despises that power structure." He continued: "So they, under the guise of being compassionate, want to flood the country with foreign nationals, unlimited, unlimited, to change the complexion -- pardon the pun -- of America. Now, that's hatred, too." O'Reilly later asserted that The New York Times "want[s] to change the white, Christian male power structure" and later concluded: "So you've got racism on the anti-Latino front, and you have racism on the anti-Christian, white male front. Aha! Isn't that interesting?" Read more

Propaganda/Noise Machine

Starr's Way: Gerth, Van Natta cite Starr, OIC "sources" at least 33 times in new book

A Media Matters review of Her Way by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. identified at least 33 citations of conversations with officials in the former Office of Independent Counsel (OIC) that investigated Whitewater, at least seven of which refer to an interview with former independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Some of these notes refer to interviews with OIC officials in 1997 and 1998, recalling serious legal questions raised by alleged leaks from the OIC's office in the late 1990's. Given that three prosecutors decided against filing charges against Hillary Clinton, the high number of citations by Gerth and Van Natta of former OIC officials gives rise to questions about the authors' overreliance on sources who concluded they were unable to prove their allegations in a court of law. Read more

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