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

Buchanan: Obama is "not what you would expect from a black guy from the South Side of Chicago"
On the October 29 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan asserted that "[i]t is quite apparent" Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) "is not a street fighter, and he doesn't have the eye of the tiger." Buchanan further said that Obama is "up there, sort of holding forth," adding, "I mean, he's not what you would expect from a black guy from the South Side of Chicago. He's something, as [NBC News political director] Chuck [Todd] says, you'd expect in a Harvard seminar for undergraduates or something like that." Host Chris Matthews responded, "Well, he's also an Ivy leaguer. ... He may have grown up in the ... to some extent, in the urban neighborhoods, but he certainly is a guy ... who's worked in those neighborhoods in terms of tough areas, but ... he is a refined personality, clearly." Buchanan replied: "Well, that's not a fighter." Read more

NY Times quotes 2005 blog post claiming Obama compared himself to Christ
An October 30 New York Times article by reporter Janny Scott on Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) "years in New York City" as a young man reported that "[s]ome say" Obama, in his memoir Dreams From My Father (Three Rivers Press, 1995) took "some literary license in the telling of his story." Scott quoted a July 9, 2005, blog post authored by Dan Armstrong, who, the Times article reported, "worked with Mr. Obama at Business International Corporation in New York in 1984 and has deconstructed Mr. Obama's account of the job." In the blog post the Times quoted, Armstrong wrote: "All of Barack's embellishment serves a larger narrative purpose: to retell the story of the Christ's temptation. The young, idealistic, would-be community organizer gets a nice suit, joins a consulting house, starts hanging out with investment bankers, and barely escapes moving into the big mansion with the white folks." Scott, however, offered no explanation of why Armstrong's analysis of Obama's "larger narrative purpose" should be considered creditable. Read more

Blitzer did not challenge Huckabee's claim that Saddam "said that he had" WMD
On CNN's Late Edition, Wolf Blitzer failed to challenge Mike Huckabee's claim that Saddam Hussein "said that he had" weapons of mass destruction. In fact, in December 2002, Iraq issued a declaration to United Nations weapons inspectors on its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs and its long-range missile programs, and CNN.com reported that "Iraqi officials say the report proves Baghdad has no weapons of mass destruction." Read more

MSNBC's Carlson falsely claimed he does not "touch" Bill Clinton's "sex life"
On the October 29 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson discussed the just-released book Write It When I'm Gone (Putnam Adult), by Thomas DeFrank, Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News, and noted that the book, which features off-the-record interviews with President Gerald Ford over a 16-year period, quotes Ford saying that President Bill Clinton "has a sexual addiction," and "needs to get help -- for his sake." Carlson stated that "President Bill Clinton's sex life" is "something we never talk about on this show 'cause we know the answer. It's still kind of interesting." He later added: "I don't touch this ... and Bill Clinton -- I mean, the idea of touching -- I mean, just the whole thing is cringe-making." But contrary to Carlson's assertion that "we never talk" about "Clinton's sex life," as Media Matters for America has noted, Carlson has discussed the topic on several occasions, referring to President Clinton's "philander[ing]" and "famous appetites" while making the argument that the Clintons' marriage is a legitimate issue in the 2008 presidential election. Read more

Sally Bedell Smith characterizes as "absolutely fair" Russert's suggestion that Hillary Clinton to blame for 40 million uninsured
On the October 27 edition of CNBC's The Tim Russert Show, during a discussion with Sally Bedell Smith, author of the just-released book, For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years (Random House), Russert asserted, "On health care, when you read the inside reporting in your book about it, it is so striking that there are significant people in the Clinton administration, the Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen; the economic adviser Robert Rubin -- I read somewhere that Donna Shalala, the Health and Human Services secretary, called the plan 'crazy'; Leon Panetta, the Office of Management and Budget; [then-Sen.] Pat Moynihan [D-NY], the chairman of the [Senate] Finance Committee; [then-Sen.] Bill Bradley [NJ], another Democrat; Republicans, all saying, 'We can do something, but this plan is too big, too much. Compromise and we can get a scaled measure through.' " Russert continued, "Ironically, the scaled measure they were all talking about is pretty close to the plan that [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] has now adopted in 2008, which means that from 1993 to 2008, 40 million people went without care because she was so wedded to getting that plan -- her original plan -- through. Fair?" Smith replied, "Absolutely fair," and went on to assert that "if Hillary's White House had yielded to Bill's White House, we would've had a decent health care plan that would've worked for so many people." Read more

Health Care

Matthews, Blitzer uncritically cited Giuliani ad without noting his use of "meaningless" stat, according to cancer expert
Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, and Chris Jansing each uncritically aired or reported on a Rudy Giuliani radio ad in which Giuliani claims that when he had prostate cancer, his "chance of surviving ... in the United States, 82 percent" but that his "chance of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44 percent under socialized medicine." However, a post on washingtonpost.com's Fact Checker blog noted that "the survivability figures tell us little about the differences in the quality of treatment received by prostate cancer patients in the United States and Britain" and that "the two countries are much closer" in terms of the "mortality rates from the disease." Neither Matthews nor Blitzer nor Jansing noted Giuliani's use of "meaningless" -- according to a cancer research expert -- statistics.
Read more

Taxes

Ex-Gov. du Pont claimed "[t]ax rate reductions increase tax revenues" -- several Bush administration economists disagree
In his OpinionJournal.com column, former Delaware Gov. Pete du Pont wrote that "[t]ax rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush's 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends." However, several former and current Bush administration economists have stated that tax cuts, including those passed under Bush, produce a net decrease in revenue.
Read more

Polling

Time's Halperin further distorts poll results mis-cited by Hannity, attributing to "the Democrats" the view that U.S. better off if Iraq war is lost
In an October 30 post to his Time.com blog, "The Page," Time political analyst Mark Halperin reprinted several excerpts from former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt and Ann Romney's interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that aired on the October 29 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, setting off segments of the interview with subheadlines he apparently wrote, including one that read, "ON THE DEMOCRATS [sic] VIEW THAT THE UNITED STATES WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THE WAR IN IRAQ IS LOST." Halperin's headline, which included the claim that "the Democrats" hold the view "that the United States would be better off if the war in Iraq is lost," highlighted the portion of the interview in which Hannity asked the Romneys, "What do we do? This country is divided to such a large extent right now. There was a Fox News-Opinion Dynamics poll that came out. It showed that one in five Democrats think the better -- the United States would be better off if we lost in Iraq." Hannity appeared to be referring to a September 25-26 poll of 900 registered voters that found that 19 percent, not a majority, of respondents who identified themselves as Democrats said they "personally think the world [as opposed to the U.S., as Hannity and Halperin asserted] would be better off if the United States loses the war in Iraq," compared with five percent of Republican respondents and seven percent of Independent respondents. Further, in attributing the "VIEW THAT THE UNITED STATES WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THE WAR IN IRAQ IS LOST" to "THE DEMOCRATS," Halperin further distorted the poll results, suggesting that they represented the opinion of the Democratic Party, rather than registered voters who identified themselves as Democratic when responding to the poll. Read more

Government Paid Propaganda

Media outlets uncritically reported White House claim that it does not "employ" fake reporting
News outlets including CNN, the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times uncritically quoted White House spokeswoman Dana Perino's response to a question about an October 23 Federal Emergency Management Agency press conference, in which the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. Perino said of the conference, "It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House and we certainly don't condone it." But these news outlets failed to note previous Bush administration scandals involving "fake" reporting. Read more

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