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

Wash. Post's Murray, Weisman echoed media suggestion that pro-war = "pro-military"
A July 8 Washington Post article by Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman on Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-ME) and Rep. Dan Boren's (D-OK) views on the Iraq war reported that President Bush "needs the support of pro-military lawmakers such as Boren." The Post's characterization of Boren fits into the media's common practice of labeling those who supported the Iraq invasion or oppose withdrawal of U.S. forces as "pro-military" or supportive of the troops. As Media Matters for America has noted (here, here, here, and here), such characterizations suggest that those who opposed the war or now support withdrawal are somehow "anti-military" or not supportive of the troops. Read more

In excerpt of forthcoming book, Novak offers yet another account of his Armitage conversation
On July 8, the Chicago Sun-Times published an excerpt of conservative columnist Robert D. Novak's forthcoming memoir, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum, July 2007), in which Novak offers an account of a July 8, 2003, meeting he had with then-deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Novak writes that, in that meeting, Armitage revealed the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame, contending that the exchange over Plame's identity "lasted no more than sixty seconds." Novak also writes that Armitage described the information as "real Evans and Novak," adding: "I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column." While Novak has previously claimed that Armitage believed that the revelation about Plame "fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column" and that this "impl[ied] to me it continued reporting Washington inside information," he has also at times characterized the Armitage disclosure of Plame's identity very differently, claiming that it was "offhand" or "inadvertent." Read more

Media echoed, uncritically repeated Snow's equating of Libby commutation with Clinton pardons
In the July 16 edition of Newsweek, investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff wrote that "Democrats' outrage" over President Bush's July 2 commutation of former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 30-month prison sentence "lost steam when [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] came forward to scold Bush for not respecting 'the rule of law.' " According to Isikoff: "White House aides were all too happy to remind the country about Bill Clinton's own questionable pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich." Isikoff was just one of several media figures and news outlets to echo the White House's claim that the Clintons displayed "chutzpah" in criticizing the Libby commutation, suggesting parity between Bush's decision and Clinton's presidential pardons. Moreover, several media figures themselves equated Bush's commutation with Clinton's pardons and, in some cases, asserted Clinton's actions were worse. But at no point did these members of the media note a key difference in the circumstances surrounding the Libby case and Clinton's pardons: Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence vastly reduced any leverage prosecutors would have to force Libby's cooperation in investigations of other members of the Bush administration. None of the recipients of Clinton's pardons were similarly situated. Read more

2008 Elections

Limbaugh's faulty memory: "I don't know who's accusing [Hillary Clinton] of murdering anybody"
On the July 9 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, host Rush Limbaugh read aloud the following passage from a Dallas Morning News op-ed by Melinda Henneberger: "The most appealing thing about Hillary Rodham Clinton has always been her enemies, who often seem not in their right mind, screaming that she is a murderer and calling her names like 'Her Thighness.' They make you want to like her." Limbaugh responded, "Have you ever heard of that? 'Her thighness'? I've never heard of that term for Hillary, and I don't know who's accusing her of murdering anybody." In fact, Limbaugh himself has suggested on several occasions that Sen. Clinton (D-NY) was responsible for the 1993 death of then-White House counsel Vincent Foster. Read more

Domestic spying

WSJ editorial claimed "Democratic subpoenas" issued over "al Qaeda wiretapping program"
In a July 7 editorial, The Wall Street Journal editorial board asserted that a "political calculus is driving Democratic subpoenas over the National Security Administration's al Qaeda wiretapping program." The editorial continued: "The goal is to further embarrass [Attorney General] Mr. [Alberto R.] Gonzales, or perhaps to dig up something about Vice President Dick Cheney's role in supporting the wiretaps." The editorial was referring to the subpoenas the Senate Judiciary Committee issued to the White House seeking documents relating to the authorization and legal justification for the Bush administration's warrantless domestic wiretapping program. In fact, notwithstanding the Journal's characterization of "Democratic" subpoenas, three committee Republicans joined the Democrats in authorizing the subpoenas. In addition, the editorial described the wiretapping program as an "al Qaeda wiretapping program," despite the impossibility -- as noted by Judges Alice Batchelder and Julia Smith Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in separate opinions -- of determining who is actually targeted by the program without the use of classified information the government refuses to release. News reports from 2006 also indicated that the operation has led to the surveillance of thousands of Americans with no clear links to terrorism. Read more

Global Warming

On CNN, Beck provided Taylor with forum to advance global warming misinformation
On the July 6 edition of his CNN Headline News show, Glenn Beck hosted James Taylor, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, who claimed that "virtually every significant assertion that [former Vice President] Al Gore makes in that movie [An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, May 2006)] has been refuted by sound science." Taylor went on to assert that there is an overall thickening of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland. In fact, in its 2007 Working Group I report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that "the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are very likely shrinking," and that "[t]hickening of high-altitude, cold regions of Greenland and East Antarctica, perhaps from increased snowfall, has been more than offset by thinning in coastal regions of Greenland and West Antarctica." Indeed, in the report's Summary for Policymakers, the IPCC asserted that recent data show "that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have very likely contributed to sea level rise over 1993 to 2003." Read more

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