News media deaf to Bush lies ? Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:40:29 -0600 (CST) http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/02/25/if-935-falsehoods-fall-from-the-white-house-do-the-news-media-hear-them/ If 935 falsehoods fall from the White House, do the news media hear them? By Nieman Watchdog. **Morton Mintz (Nieman `64) is a senior adviser to the Nieman Watchdog project. --- E-mail: mintzm@earthlink.net Morton Mintz asks: If the president and top aides who made nearly 1,000 false statements to take us into war had been Democrats, would two national papers, the TV networks, the news magazines, and every newspaper in 33 states have ignored it? When irrefutable evidence shows that a president has persistently and systematically abused his powers under the Constitution, or that he and his top officials have made nearly a thousand false statements to take us into, and justify, a catastrophic war, in my book it is a hugely important story. And, I also believe, a news organization's response-giving the story the attention it deserves, or burying or ignoring it-puts a spotlight on its priorities and values, certainly as of that moment. Nearly two years ago, the Boston Globe broke one of those hugely important stories. Charlie Savage wrote: "President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution." My translation: In rejecting legislation with signing statements rather than with the veto power the Constitution provides, Bush was effectively saying, "I am the law." Just a few weeks ago, two related journalism nonprofits released another jaw-dropper, Iraq / The War Card / Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War. The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the Fund for Independence in Journalism open their report with stunning facts "fully searchable" in a "massive" database: President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses. On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war. I'll recall the treatment newspapers gave the Globe article on presidential signing statements briefly, having described it elsewhere. Then I'll review how all categories of media-print newspapers, radio and TV, news magazines, Web sites and blogs-treated the report on the 935 false statements. "Some leading newspapers took prominent notice of the Globe's report in commentaries, print as well as on-line, while taking no notice in their news columns," I wrote in the New York Review of Books in June 2006. Continuing the excerpt: At washingtonpost.com, Dan Froomkin wrote in his "White House Briefing" column that...Savage had weighed in "with the most authoritative-and most alarming-story yet on Bush's proclivity for signing statements." On the Post's Op-Ed page, Michael Kinsley also found the disclosure "alarming." The Times, in a top-of-the-page editorial, expressed deep concern. Yet the very disclosure that greatly disturbed Froomkin, Kinsley, and the Times editorial board went unreported in the news pages of the Post and Times and other newspapers.... For real news to appear first, or only, in commentary is not uncommon....What is uncommon is for a newspaper executive to acknowledge the phenomenon. Kenneth F. Bunting, associate publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, did that on June 9 [2006], when he wrote in the P-I about "bad news judgment." One of his examples was "the infamous Downing Street memo," the London Times story that the US mainstream media initially greeted with a collective yawn....The P-I's editorial pages," he pointed out, "noted the secret British memo in columns before news of it was finally published on the news pages of ours and most other US newspapers." What the new report says ------- Now to the false-statements report, co-authored by Charles Lewis, founding executive director of the CPI and founding president of the Fund, and Fund staffer Mark Reading-Smith. I'll begin with more of their summary to underscore what I see as the report's inarguable newsworthiness: It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it. In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric. President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14). The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews. SOME GOOD COVERAGE, AND SOME NON-COVERAGE The CPI/Fund report, released on Jan. 23, drew impressive straightforward coverage and much favorable comment-along with striking cases of notable inattention or insufficient attention, and a smear by a right-wing columnist whose Web site is sponsored by a national newspaper (more on the last in Part Two). Within 48 hours after the report's release, Steve Carpinelli, CPI's Media Relations Manager, told me, the project had "sparked renewed debate and called into question the need for more accountability and review of the decisions that led us into conflict.... "So far, there have been four newspaper editorials that mentioned the project and call for greater scrutiny," Carpinelli said. Co-authors Lewis and Reading-Smith had done "more than two-dozen radio and TV interviews," he continued. "All the major wire services (AFP, AP, Reuters, Xinhua) have written full-length stories about the project and we have even been mentioned at recent White House press conference held by Press Secretary Dana Perino. Other media outlets that so far mentioned the project include...National Public Radio, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, BBC, C-SPAN, Fox's Hannity & Colmes and [MSNBC's] Keith Olbermann." NPR interviewed Lewis and C-SPAN interviewed CPI Executive Director Bill Buzenberg. AFP's Headline was, "Top US Officials declared war on truth when it came to Iraq: report". On the night of Jan. 25, Bill Moyers Journal opened with a lengthy segment on the report. Olbermann said the administration had "lied" rather than having made false statements 935 times. He would not be alone on television in translating false statements into lies. On the Daily Show's Feb. 5 edition, Jon Stewart asked Fox Anchor Chris Wallace about Fox News finding a place for Karl Rove. Did Stewart have a message he'd like to have delivered to Rove? Wallace inquired. "Does lying feel bad?" Stewart proposed. "Just ask him. Just say, when he's talking . . .. just lean in every now and then and say: `Lying. Does a little piece of you die inside when you do it?'. . . Or wouldn't you want say, `Hey, remember when that study came out and said you guys lied like 935 times about Iraq?'" THE ELITE PRESS'S HANDLING OF THE REPORT Withal, the coverage and noncoverage of the report within the first two days after its release merit a close look, starting with four newspapers with national and even international reach. The New York Times had a 406-word piece on page 12 and at its Web site. The report turned up "no startling new information," John H. Cushman Jr. wrote. "But," he said, "the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war"; and it also allows "simple searches for specific phrases, such as `mushroom cloud' or `yellowcake uranium,' in transcripts and documents totaling some 380,000 words..." The article gave the CPI's URL. USA TODAY printed the AP story and posted it at its Web Site, where as of Feb 16, an impressive number of readers (962) had posted comments and 70 had recommended it. The Financial Times carried five paragraphs in print and at its Web site. Neither paper linked to the report. The Los Angeles Times printed all of four sentences in its "Nation in Brief" column on page 12 and at its Web site. The item did include the URL for the report. The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal gave no ink at all to Iraq / The War Card. The Post's black-out was thus more extreme than in the case of the signing-statements story. While the Boston Globe's scoop didn't rate a word in its news columns, it did from a Post op-ed columnist, as noted earlier. OVERSEAS COVERAGE Abroad, by contrast, newspapers in Australia, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Qatar. and Scotland carried articles on the report. By Carpinelli's count, and excluding one student publication, the U.S. papers that carried stories on the report were: In Texas and New York, 3 each; in Colorado and Pennsylvania, 2 each, and in Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Tennessee, Vermont, and West Virginia, 1 each. In 33 of the 50 states, in other words, no local newspaper deemed worth a line a report that makes instantly available documentation of more than 900 false administration statements about the war in Iraq. And the L.A. Times item was the only one printed by a paper in a state that accounts for better than 12 percent of the total U.S. population. In some states, the story was published by papers with a degree of broad or state-wide reach. In addition to the L.A. Times, they were: the Democrat-Gazette in Arkansas, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in Georgia, the Chicago Tribune in Illinois, the Courier-Journal in Kentucky, the Kansas City Star in Missouri, the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in Pennsylvania, the Memphis Commercial-Appeal in Tennessee, and the Houston Chronicle in Texas. If the overall performance of U.S. print newspapers leaves a lot to be desired, consider this: And then there are the TV networks The three leading national television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC didn't mention Iraq / The War Card. Newsweek, TIME, and U.S. News and World Report didn't mention the report either in print or at their Web sites. Question: If the president and top administration officials who had been shown in a report to have made nearly a thousand false statements to take us into, and justify, a catastrophic war had been Democrats, would two national papers, every newspaper in 33 states, the TV networks, and the news magazines have ignored it? ########### http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/02/27/newspaper-websites-and-white-house-disinformation/ The Wall Street Journal print edition didn't mention a recent report that cited more than 935 false statements by top Administration officials. The Journal's Web site, however, not only mentioned the report--it attacked it. (Second of two parts. Part I available here.) By Morton Mintz mintzm@earthlink.net More than 3,000 Web sites and blogs, including those sponsored by AlterNet, CNN, FoxNews. Salon, Wonkette, and Yahoo, carried pieces on the recent report by two related nonprofit journalism groups on the more than 900 false statements made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials about the claimed threat from Saddam Hussein that led to the disastrous war in Iraq. My focus here is on Web sites sponsored by the two leading national newspapers that didn't print a story or even an item on Iraq / The War Card / Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, the report prepared by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the Fund for Independence in Journalism. At the Washington Post site, Dan Froomkin (who is also deputy editor of this Web site, for which I am a Senior Advisor), began his White House Watch column: "A nonprofit group pursuing old-fashioned accountability journalism is out with a new report and database documenting 935 false statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001." At the Wall Street Journal site, James Taranto, editor of the Journal's online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com, began by quoting four summary sentences from the Associated Press story. Then, in a sharp right-turn, he took shots at the messenger; threw mud at the CPI, the Fund, and George Soros, and concluded by expressing doubt that the report was - are you ready? - even newsworthy: Nowhere in the entire dispatch does the AP tell us anything more about the two groups than that they are `nonprofit journalism' organizations. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany. The Fund for Independence in Journalism seems to be but a spinoff; its Web site says its "primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support" for the center. Certainly if the AP is going to report on this "study," it ought to disclose the political leanings of the groups that sponsored it. Though come to think of it, given those political leanings, it's hard to see why this is even newsworthy. Had Soros likened "contemporary America to Nazi Germany," as Taranto would have his readers infer? No, he had not. You can read what Soros actually said, in context, and how Taranto twisted it, here, Steve Carpinelli, the CPI's Media Relations Manager, initiated an email exchange with Taranto two weeks after the report was released. Minus greetings and sign-offs, it appears in full below, for this important reason: It enables the reader to make his/her own judgment about whether the report is "even newsworthy" and whether to trust the investigative journalism of the Center or the slash-and-burn punditry of Taranto. CARPINELLI TO TARANTO, FEB. 8: First and foremost, the Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on significant issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around the world. The Center does not and has never endorsed any legislation, political candidate, party or organization. The Center has strict guidelines on revenue sources, for example, we do not accept contributions from governments, corporations, labor unions, anonymous donors and no advertising. The bulk of our financial support comes from independent foundations and individual contributors. The Center has not received funds from Soros' Open Society Institute since 2004, and there [were] absolutely no Soros foundation funds used in the creation of our Iraq War Card project. The Center accepts support from many different sources, but regardless of the source, all of the Center's projects are editorially independent and strictly managed by in-house journalists and staff. The WSJ [Wall Street Journal] has recently published two front-page articles that featured the Center's work. "Big Pharma Faces Grim Prognosis" by Barbara Martinez and Jacob Goldstein and "Interest Groups Gain in Election Cash Quest" by Brody Mullins. In addition, WSJ Managing Editor Paul Steiger...has visited the Center to consult with our executive director, Bill Buzenberg, and our staff of in-house journalists and researchers, to learn more about nonprofit investigative journalism as he moves forward with ProPublica. We have a good working relationship with the WSJ and I have personally talked to several reporters, assisting them with their stories. Journalists from across the country and around the world use our databases and investigative stories to assist their own reporting and do so knowing that we are not a "liberal-left group." Also, we fully disclose on our website our foundation and significant individual donors and make it clear that we have no "political leanings." Regarding the "newsworthy" content of our Iraq War Card project, it has so far been reported on by more than 80 newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution, five major newswire services, international coverage featured in 10 countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting. That's just in the last two weeks. TARANTO TO CARPINELLI, LATER THE SAME DAY: I am more than happy to correct or extend the record if I have erred, but I must tell you that nothing you have written here convinces me that I am mistaken to hold the opinion that the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group. Formal nonpartisanship is no guarantee of fairness or detachment, and merely stating that you have no political leanings does not make it so. Can you give me some examples of work your group has done that runs against type - i.e., that someone who does have a liberal-left agenda might find objectionable? CARPINELLI TO TARANTO, FEB. 11 Unlike newspapers, including the WSJ, NYT, etc., the Center does not and has never endorsed or supported any political candidate, party or organization - proof of nonpartisanship. Our funders, primarily from foundations and individuals, have absolutely no input in the direction, content or creation of any Center project, so it is incorrect to say that we received money from Soros, when he did not personally give money to the Center and the foundation that did, the Open Society Institute, did so back in 2004, again, with no editorial direction on their behalf at all. When a foundation or individual contributes to the Center it is because they share an interest in our mission and investigative journalism. The Center was the first journalism organization to uncover the Clinton White House "selling" of the Lincoln bedroom to big-time contributors in a series of Center stories titled "Fat Cat Hotel," which also included stories on Vice President Gore's office refusal to divulge public information on guests to the official residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. The Center investigated many topics involving the Clinton/Gore administration, all searchable on our website. The analysis of public information has been a hallmark of the Center's fact-based investigative journalism since its founding. The Center's mission is to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. That's not a liberal-left agenda, that's a legacy of good investigative reporting that is not swayed by advertisers, corporations, governments, labor unions, contributors or for profit motives that may interfere with independent reporting. The Center is unique in that aspect, sadly as many newspapers across the country have dramatically cut their investigative news divisions. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who has a lifetime rating of 91.9 from the American Conservative Union, and known for leading the GOP effort to have french fries renamed "freedom fries" in House cafeteria menus as a protest against French opposition to the invasion of Iraq, is a Center supporter. He has personally called me to express his interest in the Center's mission. You questioned the newsworthiness of our latest project, which I think should be corrected, because clearly it was newsworthy. Your observation that it was not newsworthy was not based on fact or background research. As I pointed out before, so far our Iraq War Card project was reported on by more than 82 newspapers, including the New York Times [.com], Washington Post [.com], Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5 major newswire services, international coverage featured in ten countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting. As of the posting of this article, Taranto had yet to respond to Carpinellii's Feb. 11 message. Unlike the CPI and the Fund, many Washington think-tanks-nonprofits-take millions of dollars annually from the oil, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other industries; from right-wing foundations, and from extremely wealthy, right-leaning individuals, Richard Mellon Scaife being an example. These think-tanks also issue streams of purportedly scholarly reports and statements that espouse the views of their funders, and that the mainstream press picks up, usually without reference to the think-tanks' financing or political leanings (see, e.g., this article of mine in Nieman Reports and this, from Sourcewatch). The key sentence in Taranto's posting at OpinionJournal.com-"In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany."-bears repeating. Setting aside the viciously false innuendo about Soros, Taranto was saying, or certainly leading his readers to infer, that the 935 false statements made by President Bush and his top officials about the war in Iraq don't matter because the organization that documented them is, in the pundit's phrase, "left-liberal." This suggested a few questions, which I emailed to Taranto on February 19th: ** Would you please explain why the political leaning you impute to the organization that issued Iraq / the War Card renders inconsequential the documentation of 935 administration war-related falsehoods, none of which you challenged? ** If the identical report had been released by a conservative-right group, would you have rated the documentation of those 935 falsehoods unimportant? ** If the CPI were to issue a report citing 935 scientific studies establishing that night follows day, would you dismiss it because the CPI is "a liberal-left group"? ** Having expressed doubt that the CPI report is "even newsworthy" because the Center is liberal-left, would you please specify any reports you may have dismissed in your column as of doubtful newsworthiness because issued by conservative-right corporate-financed think tanks? ** Would you please also specify any shots you may have fired in your column at the AP or any other other news organization-including the sponsor of your Web site, the Wall Street Journal-because it did not "tell us anything more" about the sources of funding and political leanings of these same think-tanks? An hour and a quarter later, I got this response: "Dear Mr. Mintz--My writings on this subject speak for themselves. Judging by your questions, you obviously have your own opinions on the matter. Feel free to express them. Cheers, James"