Mainstream Media Still Treating Bush With Kid Gloves
by Ed Garvey
The New York Times ran a front-page apology Sunday for a reporter who filed deceptive stories. It is unusual for a news source to admit a mistake and the Times is to be commended.
But read the opening paragraph and ask if it should be applied to a much broader group of journalists: "A staff reporter for the New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation by Times journalists has found."
Wouldn't it be refreshing if Fox News, CNBC, CBS and others were to make the same apology for the what can only be described as "journalistic fraud" as they slant the news to favor President Bush and his factually unsupportable justification of the invasion of another country?
Substitute Bill Clinton for Bush over the past six months and you will see my point. What would TV talking heads be saying today? William Kristol, Sean Hannity and the others would be demanding Clinton's impeachment. They would be screaming that there were no weapons of mass destruction and Clinton knew it. He lied to the U.N., to the American people, and he deliberately and unnecessarily placed American troops in harm's way.
And if that was insufficient to start an impeachment proceeding, they would be screaming that he did all of this without a congressional declaration of war. This would be "Wag the Dog" all over again. A war to divert attention from a flagging economy. And, to top it off, Clinton did not secure the Iraqi nuclear sites to prevent looting, did not protect the national museum, did not capture Saddam or his sons. He led people to believe that the invasion of Iraq was about Sept. 11, not oil.
They would save the best until last. Do you remember the famous haircut on Air Force One? Clinton supposedly had his hair cut while planes were diverted around Los Angeles International Airport. It didn't happen, but Clinton was condemned on right-wing talk shows throughout America for this alleged waste of funds.
Imagine if Bill Clinton had slowed down an aircraft carrier and had landed on the deck in a jet for photo ops for his campaign. Oh, my goodness! The folks at Fox would be in cardiac arrest. Rush would froth at the mouth.
And suppose the White House of Bill Clinton had lied to the media by explaining that Clinton had to fly by jet because the ship was too far out to sea for a helicopter, and then admitted that the story wasn't true when reporters could see San Diego from the deck.
Suppose Clinton had given no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars to Democrats who contributed to his campaign. These would be high crimes and misdemeanors, and most of us would agree. Bill Clinton would be impeached and found guilty. No speech by Dale Bumpers could save him.
So how have the media treated Bush? Magazines extol him for flying the jet, appearing in uniform, acting like he knew what he would have known had he not skipped out on the real war - Vietnam, or his Air National Guard duties. No condemnation for wasted tax dollars or using the Navy for political ends.
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Oh well, mistakes are for this world, and perfection is for the next. The double standard is breathtaking.
Ed Garvey, a Madison lawyer who was the Wisconsin Democratic nominee for governor in 1998, is editor of the www.FightingBob.com Web magazine.
Published on Tuesday, May 13, 2003 by the Madison Capital Times |
