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

Politico's Allen gushed over Romney's PowerPoint slides, still can't find space for Giuliani ISG story
In the June 22 edition of his daily "Politico Playbook," Politico chief political correspondent Mike Allen praised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) June 21 speech on national security at the American Enterprise Institute's World Forum as "very ambitious and serious" and dubbed Romney "Multimedia Mitt," inviting readers to "[c]heck out the 31 Power Point slides former Gov. Romney used last night." Allen, however, offered no explanation as to why Romney's speech was, as he put it, "very ambitious and serious." Indeed, Allen acknowledged that he had not seen Romney's speech and hadn't read it in full -- he noted that the speech was "closed to the press under AEI rules" and that the campaign released only "excerpts" of the speech. Moreover, Allen did not note, as the weblog Think Progress did, that the excerpts of Romney's "serious" national security speech included no substantive remarks on the Iraq war. Read more

Olbermann named Beck, Graham "Worst Persons" for Graham's "whack" the Clintons comment
On the June 21 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named radio talk show host Michael Graham and CNN's Glenn Beck the winners of his nightly "Worst Person in the World" award for Graham's remark that while watching the Clintons' video spoof of The Sopranos, he wanted to "see somebody come in here and just whack them both right there." Read more

MSNBC's Robach compared pro-Obama 527 with discredited Swift Vets group
On the June 22 edition of MSNBC Live, anchor Amy Robach equated Vote Hope, a newly launched 527 organization formed to promote the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), with the 527 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now known as Swift Vets and POWs for Truth), which produced ads smearing and misrepresenting the Vietnam military record of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in the six months leading up to the 2004 presidential election. In introducing a discussion on the Vote Hope group with NBC News political director Chuck Todd, Robach said: "Three years after the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth slammed John Kerry in the harshest attack ads of the 2004 presidential race, the first similar group of this campaign ads have been formed." However, Vote Hope has not released any television advertisements at this time, and as Todd noted, there is no evidence that the organization will produce "similar" attack ads. Read more

Noonan: Hillary Clinton "has to prove she's a woman"
Peggy Noonan began her June 22 Wall Street Journal column by asserting that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) "doesn't have to prove she's a man. She has to prove she's a woman." Noonan went on to write that Clinton "has to prove she has normal human warmth, a normal amount of give, of good nature, that she is not, at bottom, grimly combative and rather dark." She also claimed that the Clintons' spoof of a scene from the series finale of HBO's The Sopranos "jokingly acknowledges what the Clintons well know: that a certain portion of the voting population sees them as ... well, as gangsterish." Read more

Propaganda/Noise Machine

Beck on suicide bomber graduation: "Maybe Jimmy Carter was booked and that's why he didn't speak"
On the June 21 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, while discussing an alleged Al Qaeda/Taliban training camp "graduation ceremony" shown on a tape obtained by ABCNews.com, Glenn Beck said: "I was surprised, because I really thought speaking at a suicide bomber graduation ceremony, I would just -- I -- maybe Jimmy Carter was booked and that's why he didn't speak at the commencement ceremony." Read more

Hannity further distorted Inhofe's dubious allegation to claim Clinton, Boxer want to "bring down talk radio"
Citing audio highlighted by internet gossip Matt Drudge, co-host Sean Hannity claimed on the June 21 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes that Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) stated during an interview on Los Angeles radio station KFI 640 AM's The John Ziegler Show that he "overhear[d] a conversation" between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in which the two were "conspiring to bring down talk radio." In fact, when asked by Ziegler whether "Hillary and Boxer were conspiring to end talk radio," Inhofe stated: "No, not to end talk radio. They just want to influence it." Read more

Olbermann highlighted stories O'Reilly has "decided are more relevant to your life" than Iraq war
On the June 20 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann criticized Bill O'Reilly's defenses of Fox News' scant Iraq war reporting and aired O'Reilly's June 19 claim -- documented by Media Matters for America -- that NBC News was "jazzed" by a recent story involving a U.S. airstrike that killed seven Afghan children. As Media Matters noted, on the June 12 editions of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor and Westwood One's The Radio Factor, O'Reilly responded to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study, which found that Fox News spent less time covering the Iraq war than CNN and MSNBC in the first three months of 2007. On his June 12 radio program, O'Reilly claimed that "Fox News creams CNN and MSNBC in the ratings, all day, every day. At 8 o'clock, The [O'Reilly] Factor beats every single -- not only MSNBC and CNN, but CNBC and Headline News combined. Because we bring you stuff that is new, that is relevant to your life." As the weblog Crooks and Liars documented, Olbermann noted this comment and went on to air a video montage contrasting O'Reilly's defenses of Fox News with "a brief sample" of stories from the past week that O'Reilly had "decided are more relevant to your life than the horrors and realities of war." Read more

Immigration

Boortz on illegal immigrants: "Give 'em all a little nuclear waste and let 'em take it on down there to Mexico"
During the June 21 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Neal Boortz offered a suggestion he said he got from a listener's email: "When we defeat this illegal alien amnesty bill, and when we yank out the welcome mat, and they all start going back to Mexico, as a going away gift let's all give them a box of nuclear waste." Boortz continued: "Give 'em all a little nuclear waste and let 'em take it on down there to Mexico. Tell 'em it can -- it'll heat tortillas." Read more

Books

Another Van Natta falsehood -- claimed Clinton did not explain '02 vote against Levin amendment
In a June 19 appearance on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes to promote his book, Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Little, Brown & Co., June 2007), co-authored with Jeff Gerth, Don Van Natta Jr. asserted that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) provided no explanation for her vote against an amendment to the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq that would have required President Bush to obtain approval from the United Nations Security Council before launching a military attack. The amendment (S.A. 4862), offered by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), also provided that if Bush was unable to secure the support of the United Nations, an additional congressional vote would be required before military action could be taken. In fact, the same day Clinton voted on Levin's amendment, she gave a floor speech that, while not mentioning the Levin amendment by name, included her reason for opposing a resolution that would have required the approval of the United Nations before launching a military attack. Read more

National Security/Foreign Policy

Hammering the P.C. "tyranny" in the U.S., Beck guest Thor advocated installing Noriega in Iraq
Discussing possible "solution[s]" to the war in Iraq with his guests, author Brad Thor and radio host Dave Glover, on the June 21 edition of his CNN Headline News' program, Glenn Beck asserted, "I don't know if you actually can win anymore with the P.C. bullcrap that we've got going on," and went on to ask Thor, "[C]an you win with this P.C. culture?" Glover suggested the United States should "fight it World War II style," while Thor lamented the "tyranny of political correctness we have in this country" and said: "You have to let loose the dogs of war, let these guys do what they need to do to get the job done. The fact is that after we did Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and I'm not saying that's what we ought to do now, but everybody respected us. Nobody messed with us." Beck agreed with Thor's atomic analogy: "I'm not saying we use nukes. I'm just saying, it was the same strategy with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Drop it, you will save more Japanese lives." Read more

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