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

The State (SC) joins other media in misreporting Clyburn comments
An August 3 article in the South Carolina newspaper The State began by declaring that "U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., has been sharply criticized this week by Republicans for saying that a positive progress report from the war in Iraq could divide congressional Democrats on a timetable for withdrawal." In fact, Clyburn was responding to a question from Washington Post reporter Dan Balz about how congressional Democrats would react if Gen. David Petraeus recommends against withdrawing U.S. forces in his September report -- not simply to a "positive progress report from the war in Iraq." The article, by Aaron Gould Sheinin, also omitted a key part of Clyburn's original comments in which he said that "[n]one of us want to see a bad result in Iraq." The article suggested that Clyburn said that only in response to Republicans' criticisms. In fact, Clyburn said that Democrats want to see progress in Iraq both in his original comments and reportedly when asked to respond to the Republican criticism. Read more

NY Times quoted Crocker on benchmarks as inadequate indicies of progress, but didn't note Bush endorsed them
In an August 2 article headlined "Iraq Snapshots Give 2 Views," The New York Times quoted U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker saying of the 18 military, economic, and political benchmarks mandated by Congress for the Iraqi government: "The longer I'm here, the more I'm persuaded that Iraq cannot be analyzed by these kind of discrete benchmarks." However, the article did not mention that President Bush originally called for the Iraqis to meet certain benchmarks as a part of his "surge" strategy and that he has since endorsed the benchmarks laid out by Congress in a Republican-sponsored amendment to the supplemental war funding bill that passed on May 24 with a majority of congressional Republican support. Read more

York column compounded Wash. Post reporters' misrepresentation of their own interview
An August 3 column in The Hill by Byron York cited a Washington Post article in which reporters Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza misrepresented their own interview with Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) by claiming Clyburn told them that a "generally positive" report on the Iraq war from Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, would be "a real big problem" for Democrats. York cited the article to support his contention that Democratic leaders in Congress are "invested in U.S. failure" in Iraq. Read more

Conservatives continue to distort Clyburn's remarks to attack Democrats for being "invested in defeat in Iraq"
Following House Majority Whip James Clyburn's (D-SC) July 30 remarks to Washington Post reporters that if Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, issued a report stating that the military effort in Iraq "is working very, very well at this point; we would be foolish to back away from it," then it would cause "those 47 Blue Dogs ... to want to stay the course, and if the Republicans were to remain united, as they have been, then it would be a problem for us," conservative pundits have seized on and distorted Clyburn's remarks to accuse Democrats of, among other things, being "invested in defeat in Iraq," and "want[ing] the United States to lose" in Iraq. Read more

2008 Elections

MSNBC's Carlson claimed Obama "sounds so much like Bush" that "they appear identical"
Commenting on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) August 1 foreign policy speech -- in which Obama stated that "[i]f we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and [Pakistani] President [Pervez] Musharraf won't act, we will" -- MSNBC host Tucker Carlson labeled Obama "the former peace candidate" and claimed that Obama "sounds so much like Bush ... on a philosophical level they appear identical." In fact, Obama's policy toward Pakistan differs significantly from that of President Bush, who has -- within a span of five days -- said both that he would and that he would not go after Al Qaeda in Pakistan without the permission of the Pakistani government. Read more

Domestic spying

Ingraham falsely asserted NY Times said "we should not update [FISA] to meet current advances in technology"
During the August 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, discussing the debate over proposed changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), nationally syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham falsely asserted that "[w]e have major editorial pages in the United States -- The New York Times, etc. -- saying that we should not update this surveillance law to meet current advances in technology." She added, "[W]e are now in a blackout with some of this intelligence ... because of what The New York Times and what the Democrats have done." In fact, in an August 3 editorial, the Times wrote that Congress should address the "anachronism" that currently "requires that the government seek such an individualized warrant for purely foreign communications that, nevertheless, move through American data networks." The Times went on to say that instead of addressing that anachronism, the White House "proposed giving the attorney general carte blanche to order eavesdropping on any international telephone calls or e-mail messages if he decided on his own that there was a 'reasonable belief' that the target of the surveillance was outside the United States." Read more

Terrorism

O'Reilly named "Worst Person" for claiming Americans don't want Mexicans "clustering in neighborhoods"
On the August 2 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named Fox News host Bill O'Reilly the "winner" of his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment for comments he made about Mexican immigrants during the July 30 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, which Media Matters for America documented. Olbermann quoted O'Reilly, saying: "Most Americans don't want to hurt any poor Mexican people. They want to know who they are. They want to know where they are, what they're doing. They don't want them clustering in neighborhoods and changing the whole tempo of the neighborhood." Olbermann added: "You know, the same way the anti-immigrant bigots didn't want my immigrant German ancestors changing the tempo of the whole neighborhood in 1900. The same way the anti-immigrant bigots didn't want Bill's immigrant Irish ancestors changing the whole tempo of the neighborhood in 1850." Read more

National Security/Foreign Policy

On Hardball, Cillizza asserted Democrats "need to prove" they can keep Americans "as safe as Republicans can"
On the August 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, discussing an August 1 speech in which Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) proposed a comprehensive strategy to fight global terrorism, WashingtonPost.com staff writer Chris Cillizza said: "Democrats still know they need to prove to the American public that they can keep them just as safe as Republicans can." However, several recent polls indicate that Democrats don't need to "prove to the American public that they can keep them just as safe as Republicans can." Moreover, as The New York Times reported, the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) "concludes that the United States is losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda, and describes the terrorist organization as having significantly strengthened over the past two years." The Times also reported that "President Bush's top counterterrorism advisers acknowledged today [July 17, the release of the NIE] that the strategy for fighting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan had failed." Read more

In interview about Daily Kos, O'Reilly called Dodd a "propagandist," declared, "I don't have any respect for you"
In an August 1 interview with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Chris Dodd (CT), which aired on his August 2 radio and cable television shows, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, called Dodd a "propagandist" in response to Dodd's defense of the website Daily Kos and stated, "I don't have any respect for you," and, also during the interview: 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