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

Morning Joe failed to note Bill Clinton's statement against March 2003 invasion of Iraq
The November 28 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe featured a discussion of former President Bill Clinton's November 27 comment that he "opposed [the war in] Iraq from the beginning," which contributor Willie Geist called "revisionist history." Similarly, in a November 28 "On Deadline" column discussing Clinton's comments, Associated Press writer Ron Fournier asserted: "In truth, Clinton did not oppose the Iraq war from the start -- at least not publicly." Fournier continued: "If the former president secretly opposed the war but did not want to speak against a sitting president (as some of his aides now claim), what moral authority does he have now?" But absent from either the Morning Joe discussion or Fournier's column was any mention of Clinton's comments on March 14, 2003, just days prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- which the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) posted on its website the evening of November 27 -- opposing war at that time. In those remarks, he said "let's give him [Saddam Hussein] a certain date in which, in this time, he has to destroy the missiles, reconcile the discrepancies in what we believe is the truth on chemical weapons, reconcile the discrepancies on biological weapons, reconcile the issue of the Drones, and offer up 150 scientists who can travel outside of Iraq with their families for interviews. If you do that, then we'll say this is really good-faith disarmament, and we'll go on without a conflict." Read more

Citing "Clintonian answer," Carlson found another reason to call Obama "a wuss"
MSNBC's Tucker Carlson called Sen. Barack Obama a "wuss" and a "BS artist," citing Obama's response to the question, "What does the word 'Clintonian' mean to you?" during a recent ABC News interview. Carlson asserted that "[h]e should just [have] come out and sa[id], 'Yeah, [Sen. Hillary Clinton is] Clintonian.' ... 'That's why they call it Clintonian.' " He later claimed that people "who plan to vote for her know that she is Clintonian in her answers. I mean, that's seen as a good thing a lot of the time. Why doesn't Barack Obama have the gumption, the moxie, the toughness?"
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MSNBC's O'Donnell aired Thompson ad without challenging its claim that Thompson helped "expose the truth during Watergate"
MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell aired a clip of a television ad by the Fred Thompson campaign, in which Thompson is described as a "courageous reformer, fighting corruption in both parties" who "[h]elp[ed] to expose the truth during Watergate." But rather than address the content of Thompson's ad -- contrary to the ad's claims, Thompson leaked key information to the office of then-President Richard Nixon about the Watergate investigation and reportedly canceled his 1997 Senate hearings on allegations of improper campaign fundraising before Democrats were able to present evidence of Republican wrongdoing -- O'Donnell went on to ask Thompson supporter Liz Cheney, "How well does Fred Thompson have to do in Iowa?"
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Matthews cited Zogby Interactive poll without noting criticism of methodology
On Hardball, citing "a new Zogby poll," Chris Matthews stated: "Tonight, our Big Number is the number five. That's the number of Republican presidential candidates that [Sen.] Hillary Clinton trails in the November matchups." However, Matthews did not note that the poll was an online Zogby Interactive poll in which participants were chosen from a database of volunteers. Matthews omitted this fact despite statements by the American Association for Public Opinion Research and Democratic pollster Mark Blumenthal -- who appeared earlier in the day on MSNBC -- that such polls are unreliable. Read more

Boortz: "[M]aybe the reason" Obama doesn't wear flag pin is "the flag of this country irritates a lot of Democrat [sic] voters"
During the November 26 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Neal Boortz stated that "maybe the reason [Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)] doesn't wear a U.S. flag on his lapel is because the U.S. flag -- regardless of what he thinks -- the flag of this country irritates a lot of Democrat [sic] voters." Boortz was referring to Obama's statement that he had decided to stop wearing a U.S. flag lapel pin during the run-up to the Iraq war because it "became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism." In that October 3 interview with ABC-affiliate KCRG-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Obama explained: "I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and, hopefully, that will be a testimony to my patriotism." As Media Matters for America documented, Obama's comments led conservative media figures to question whether he "believe[s] in America," to describe him as a "domestic insurgent," and to suggest that he has "patriotism problems." Read more

NPR's Liasson cropped quote to suggest Pres. Clinton accused Democrats of "Republican-style, Swift-boat attack" on Hillary
On the November 28 edition of National Public Radio's Morning Edition, during a report on former President Bill Clinton campaigning on behalf of his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY), national political correspondent Mara Liasson asserted that "other Democratic candidates were furious that [Bill] Clinton seemed to be accusing them of a Republican-style, Swift-boat attack on Hillary" during the October 30 Democratic presidential debate, moderated by NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert. To support her assertion, Liasson played an excerpt of President Clinton's November 5 speech to the American Postal Workers Union. But Liasson cut out the part of Clinton's statement in which he indicates whom he was accusing -- Republicans and the media, not the "other Democratic candidates." Read more

National Security/Foreign Policy

On Glenn Beck, Buchanan repeated his claim that allowing immigrants from "the whole world in" the U.S. will lead to "a tangle of squabbling nationalities"
Promoting his new book on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News show, Pat Buchanan claimed that Americans are "addicted to this myth" of the United States as a "melting pot," adding: "[T]here's no doubt that the American melting pot worked wonders with the folks that came from Europe from 1890 to 1920. But we had a 40-year time-out, and we had clashes in that period and it finally worked." Buchanan then claimed that "we're going to end up with what [former President] Teddy Roosevelt warned against: a tangle of squabbling nationalities." But while Buchanan has previously asserted that the United States must keep "Americans of European descent" from becoming a "minority," the targets of Roosevelt's ire in a 1915 speech were European immigrants.
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War in Iraq

NY Times' Herbert claimed few congressional Dems opposed Iraq war resolution; in fact, most voted against it
On the November 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert said: "The truth is that hardly anyone who was -- the Democrats in Congress, you didn't have a lot of opposition to that [Iraq] war resolution." In fact, a majority of congressional Democrats voted against the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq in October 2002. Of the 258 Democrats in Congress at the time, 147 voted against the resolution, while 110 voted for it. One Democrat did not vote. Read more

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