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

Russert ignored White House pledge to fire anyone involved in leaking Plame's identity
Discussing the CIA leak investigation on the July 15 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert ignored the White House's original pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press. According to Russert, President Bush "said early on in this [investigation] that if anyone broke the law, that he would deal with it." But as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters on September 29, 2003, that the president would fire anyone who leaked Plame's identity, not just those who were found to have "broke[n] the law": "The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the leaking of Plame's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." Read more

Russert said Murtha proposal was "described as a 'slow bleed,' " asked Webb if he had same "intent"
On the July 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, discussing Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) proposal that would require that U.S. troops spend the same amount of time at home as they spent overseas absent a presidential waiver "to meet an operational emergency posing a threat to vital national security interests of the United States," host Tim Russert asked: "When Congressman [John] Murtha [D] of Pennsylvania introduced similar legislation in the House, it was described as a 'slow bleed,' an attempt, in effect, to micromanage the war and bring the war to an end by limiting the number of troops that were available. Was that your intent?" As Media Matters for America has noted repeatedly (here, here, here, and here), Republicans seized on the phrase "slow bleed" to attack Democrats after it appeared in a February 14 Politico article, by congressional bureau chief John Bresnahan, about Murtha and other Democrats' Iraq strategy, but the phrase was not used by Murtha or other Democrats to describe Murtha's proposal. In fact, Politico Editor-in-Chief John Harris "confess[ed]" that Murtha "had nothing to do with" the phrase "slow bleed" and that Harris was "the author of the Democratic Party's 'slow-bleed strategy' for ending the war in Iraq." Read more

2008 Elections

NPR's Liasson claimed there is a "kind of candor and honesty that people come to expect from John McCain"
On the July 15 broadcast of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson claimed that during a July 14 New Hampshire town hall meeting, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) "took questions for an hour and a half and answered them all, you know, with the same kind of candor and honesty that people come to expect from John McCain." Later in the program, Liasson claimed that McCain "is a candidate who always says, you know, he puts principle above politics." However, Media Matters for America has documented instances in which McCain -- whom the media have routinely described as "honest" and "authentic" -- has made contradictory statements or otherwise equivocated on a variety of issues, such as the Iraq war, Christian conservatives, ethanol, tax cuts for the wealthy, the Confederate flag, and abortion rights (see here, here, here, and here). Read more

Race/Affirmative Action

During all-white-male Meet the Press panel, Novak claimed "woman or an African-American" Dem nominee would give GOP "hope"
During a panel discussion of the 2008 presidential election on the July 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, syndicated columnist Robert Novak asserted: "Republicans are very pessimistic about 2008. When you talk to them off the record, they don't see how they can win this thing. And then they think for a minute, and only the Democratic Party, with everything in their favor, would say that, 'OK, this is the year either to have a woman or an African-American to break precedent, to do things the country has never done before.' And it gives the Republicans hope." Neither host Tim Russert nor any of Novak's fellow panelists, Bloomberg News Washington managing editor Al Hunt, Republican strategist Mike Murphy, and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum -- all of whom are, like Novak, white men -- commented on or challenged Novak's assertion. As Media Matters for America documented, the four Sunday-morning talk programs on the broadcast networks, Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. Read more

Propaganda/Noise Machine

Washingpost.com discussion tease asserted as fact the "remarkable -- and often ignored -- successes of the Bush administration"
In teasing a July 16 washingtonpost.com online discussion in which Weekly Standard editor William Kristol will discuss his July 15 Washington Post op-ed, headlined "Why Bush Will be a Winner," the Post's website asserted as fact that the Bush administration has had "remarkable -- and often ignored successes." The tease stated in full that "Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol will chart the remarkable -- and often ignored -- successes of the Bush administration." This language does not appear in Kristol's op-ed; he did not claim that the Bush administration's "successes" have been ignored, nor did he describe these "successes" as "remarkable." Read more

This mail was sent by Media Matters for America to 'news@energy-net.org'. Please visit us at http://mediamatters.org

You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.

To change your email subscription preferences, visit http://mediamatters.org/users/prefs.html

If you'd like to unsubscribe from all Media Matters for America emails, you can just click on http://mediamatters.org/users/unsub/_TFiSm6WIkiaci7iLu6ZtH8gu6JaPh8t_vLvpt4dfhY.

To contact us directly, reply to this mail or visit http://mediamatters.org/contact_us