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

Blitzer injected Bay Buchanan quote into segment on some feminists' criticism of Clinton
On the June 18 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer concluded a segment on criticism of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) by some feminists, such as Susan Douglas and Nora Ephron, by injecting a quote in which Republican strategist Bay Buchanan called Clinton a "radical feminist." Blitzer gave no explanation for bringing up Buchanan and her book The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton (Regnery Publishing, May 2007) in the context of a debate between Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post website, and former Clinton press aide Lisa Caputo. Nor did he give Huffington or Caputo a chance to respond. Also, Blitzer did not tell viewers that Buchanan is a senior adviser to Republican presidential hopeful Rep. Tom Tancredo (CO). Read more

Olbermann named Hannity "Worst Person" for saying Dem debaters were not questioned on "partial-birth" abortion, NIE
On the June 18 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named Sean Hannity the "winner" in his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment for claiming to be "frustrated" by purported differences between the Democratic and Republican presidential debates: "The Democrats don't get the questions on partial-birth abortion or asked if they've read the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE]. It seems like the Republicans are getting more scrutiny." However, as Media Matters for America noted, two Democratic candidates were asked during an April 26 debate about the abortion procedure that critics call partial-birth abortion, and at a June 3 debate, two Democratic candidates were asked whether they regretted not reading the September 2002 NIE on the threat posed by Iraq. Read more

Dobbs falsely claimed Sun-Times report said Obama received "at least $168,000" from indicted businessman
On the June 18 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, host Lou Dobbs falsely claimed that the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (IL) "received at least $168,000 from" indicted businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko. But the Sun-Times did not report that Obama received $168,000 from Rezko, nor could he have; it reported in a June 18 article that "Obama has collected at least $168,308 from Rezko and his circle" -- an assertion that, the article reported, is itself disputed by the Obama campaign. Read more

Newsweek touted Thompson's "willing[ness] to buck his party" in committee investigation, but not his later reported capitulation
A Newsweek article cited former Sen. Fred Thompson's leadership of a 1997 investigation into Republican campaign finance irregularities as evidence that he "was willing to buck his party." However, Thompson shut down the investigation before Democrats could introduce evidence linking GOP lawmakers to a fundraising group they claimed had skirted campaign finance laws. Read more

War in Iraq

CNN's Roberts, Wash. Post's Cohen said Libby was "not" the leaker of Plame's CIA identity
On the June 18 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) asserted that former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was "not the source of the leak" of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, to which CNN correspondent John Roberts replied, "Right." Similarly, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen asserted in his June 19 column that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald "wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby," who was "convicted in the end of lying," as Cohen wrote. But while Armitage leaked Plame's identity to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who revealed that information in a July 14, 2003, column, evidence and testimony at Libby's trial on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and false statements showed that Libby was a source of the information about Plame's CIA employment for at least two other journalists. Read more

Wash. Times' Pruden: Plame "little more than a clerk assigned to clip and paste newspaper and magazine articles"
In a June 19 column advocating a presidential pardon for former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Washington Times Editor-in-Chief Wesley Pruden claimed that "[a]s it turns out, [former CIA operative Valerie Plame] was not a secret agent at all, but little more than a clerk assigned to clip and paste newspaper and magazine articles." Pruden added that Plame was "[n]o Mata Hari or Antonia Ford" and that a colleague of Plame's called her "[t]he princess of the pastepot." Pruden concluded that "[s]ince she was not a secret agent, under the law there was no harm, no foul." In fact, in a recent court filing, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald explicitly stated that Plame "qualified" as covert under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Moreover, Fitzgerald attached to a separate filing a summary of Plame's CIA employment, which asserted that, at the time her identity was disclosed in the media, Plame was chief of a component in the agency's Counterproliferation Division "with responsibility for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq." The summary further described Plame as having traveled overseas in a covert capacity "at least seven times to more than ten times" since January 2002. Read more

Propaganda/Noise Machine

Dobbs again falsely asserted he "set the record straight" on leprosy
On Lou Dobbs Tonight, Lou Dobbs again tried to downplay his program's airing and affirming of a falsehood about the number of leprosy cases in the United States. Dobbs also claimed again that his airing of a May 16 report by CNN correspondent Bill Tucker "set the record straight" on the leprosy issue, but the report did not note the uncritical citation of the false statistic or Dobbs' repeated defense of it.
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