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To: abstract who wrote (60731)	2/9/2004 3:48:39 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

"Conversely I hear from members of the press (and others) how conservative the press is. I conject that it may be more a matter of the perceiver than the perceived." You do? I spend so much time reading/watching/listening to news reports from a wide variety of media outlets. I almost never see any claim that the media has a conservative bias. The few instances that I have seen are as inaccurate as the article below. They just don't hold water when compared to the facts. As I stated, liberal bias in most media outlets is very well documented. Some of the links I have provided to you clearly evidence this fact. Below is an article that exposes a serious problem that exists in the media today. Media outlets reported clear fiction as fact simply by running a story from another media outlet without any legitimate fact checking, including the author of the original article. This is no different than the hit pieces against the Bush Administration that get widespread global coverage. The NYT, the LA Times or another liberal media outlet intentionally misleads, distorts &/or tells outrageous lies & they spread like wildfire across the globe. They are repeated again & again. Rarely, if ever, is there a proper correction or retraction even after the lies are discredeted by hard facts. Before you know it, the lies become facts that are still being recycled again & again. <font size=4> How often do highly inaccurate articles about the Bush Admin get widespread positive global coverage when the article is explicitly favorable regarding the Bush Admin? How often do highly accurate articles like that get such treatment? You'd think that if there was a "real" conservative bias to the media, this would be commonplace. And the fact of the matter is the exact opposite is true. __________________________________________________________ "Palestinian Swimmer" story doesn't get off the blocks<font size=3> By Phillip Whitten February 6, 2004 Originally published by SwimInfo.com. Earlier this month I came across a heart-wrenching story in my local newspaper, The Arizona Republic. It seems that an aspiring young Palestinian swimmer, 17 year-old Raad Aweisat, who had been training at the West Jerusalem YMCA until "Palestinian-Israeli violence broke out more than three years ago," was now training for the Olympic Games in a chilly, hyper-chlorinated, makeshift pool in the backyard of some of his neighbors. Why? After the outbreak of the Intifada, the story goes, "the YMCA told Aweisat to either join the Israeli Swimming Federation, or find somewhere else to swim, according to his father." Nonetheless, young Raad was training (in secret because the pool did not have an Israeli building permit) for the Athens Olympics, where he "will be the first Palestinian swimmer to represent his people at the Olympics," writes the AP's Lara Sukhtian. The story goes on to explain: "The qualifying speed for the Olympic 100-meter butterfly event is 58 seconds. Aweisat, with limited financial resources, a primitive swimming pool and only three hours of training a day, finished the 100 in 58.95 seconds during the Palestinian national swimming competition in August... Nevertheless, Aweisat will be at the Olympics, said Ibrahim Tawil, head of the Palestinian Swimming Federation." It's a great story, with all the classic drama of David versus Goliath. You can't help but root for the kid, the underdog struggling against overwhelming might and bureaucratic red-tape. <font size=4> And, indeed, the story proved irresistible to news media around the world. It was picked up and either reprinted or elaborated upon in the Washington Post, London Times, New York Times, Guardian, Minnesota Star Tribune, Newsday and the Chicago Tribune, among many others. MSNBC picked it up, as did CNN and Reuters. It was reported in at least 60 countries in newspapers, radio, T.V. and on the Internet. At least half a dozen friends e-mailed the story to me from various points around the globe. Inevitably, Raad's plight and courageous fight were used to raise funds.<font size=3> The Palestine Monitor web site published an appeal by Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Maryland. "Help Raad, the Palestinian Olympic swimmer," the group wrote, and "you will receive a tax-deductible notice in 4-6 weeks." <font size=4> Even the Voice of America was taken in.<font size=3> In a story written by David Schickert and broadcast on January 21, announcer Dave Byrd says: "Aweisat was practicing at the YMCA near his neighborhood in Jerusalem when violence broke out in September 2000." Echoing Sukhtian's original story, he goes on to report: "The YMCA told Aweisat to either join the Israeli Swimming Federation, which as a Palestinian he did not want to do, or find somewhere else to swim. There was only a 17-meter pool in the area, located in the backyard of several connected homes. Aweisat's father gathered nearby villagers together to lengthen the pool by digging until it reached an acceptable 25 meters." <font size=4> It is undeniably a great story. It trots out the usual villains - the big, bad Israelis, this time aided by the bureaucratic Christians. And it casts Raad, with his pure, apolitical, Olympic dream as the spunky victim. The only trouble is: it's dead wrong. None of the reporters or news media bothered to check out the allegations or interview a single official from the YMCA or Israeli Swimming Federation. If they had, they would have learned that almost every aspect of the story is either false or a misrepresentation of the facts. We decided to redress that oversight. First, the easy stuff: <font size=3> The "B" qualifying standard in Raad's event, the 100 meter butterfly, is 56.16 seconds - not 58 seconds, as Mr. Tawil is quoted as saying. The "B" standard is used if a country sends only one swimmer per event. (The "A" standard, for countries sending two entrants, is a much faster 53.49 seconds.) Raad is credited with swimming 58.95 seconds at last summer's Palestinian national championships - far from the B qualifying standard, but not impossibly so. However, noting that Raad swam 1:02.96 at last year's World Championships in Barcelona -- fully four seconds slower - we checked out his performance at the Palestinian nationals held in Batir last September (not August). It turns out the meet was held in a "short course," 25-meter pool. The Olympics are held in a "long course," 50 meter pool, and qualifying standards for the Olympics must be achieved in a 50-meter pool. The reason: Short course times are faster because of the additional turns - two extra turns in a 100 meter event. So Raad's 1:02.96 puts him almost seven seconds off the B qualifying standard. Even the 58.95 second short course time which Raad is credited with swimming is suspect. According to a reliable Palestinian source who asked not to be identified: "Raad did not swim 58.9 or anywhere near it. One has to take into account his father is the national coach, his uncle is the referee, and the two of them are on the bureau of the Palestinian Swimming Federation." Corruption in sport? We don't know for certain, but it has been known to happen before. <font size=4> Now, for the major pillars of the story: first, Sukhtian's charge that the YMCA demanded that Raad join the Israeli Swimming Federation (ISF). <font size=3> Knowing how Y's operate - as independent organizations with no connection to any government -- I found that charge highly improbable. But, unlike Sukhtian and the news organizations that circulated her story, I asked Jerusalem International YMCA head coach Barri Avnerre to respond. Here is what he said: "Raad Aweisat joined the Jerusalem YMCA swimming team in the beginning of 1999 with a time of just under two minutes for 100 meters freestyle, and swam here until the end of 2001, when he did 1:03 for 100 meters butterfly." Noam Zvi, President of the ISF and Director of Swimming Programs at the high-powered Hapoel Jerusalem sports club, commented that on numerous occasions he tried to bring Raad and some other promising young Arab swimmers to Hapoel Jerusalem with no success. He said that he offered them free admission to the pool and free training. "They always said 'tomorrow,'" he said, "but they never showed up." He also said he invited the swimmers to take part for free in local and national Israeli competition. "They always said 'okay,' but they never showed up," Zvi said. "Everybody around here has made great efforts to help the Palestinian swimmers to no avail," commented Dr. Buky Chass, university professor, T.V. color commentator for swimming and former Israeli National Technical Director. "They (the Palestinians) are under political pressure not to cooperate with the Israelis." Despite the political pressure, until recently Raad put sport before ideology. "During his years at the Jerusalem YMCA Raad, along with other Arab swimmers, was an integral part of the Y swimming team, taking part in all activities, such as workouts, competitions, training camps, and trips abroad," said Coach Avnerre. In August 2001 - almost a year after the outbreak of the Initifada -- Raad traveled to Hungary as one member of an eight-swimmer team representing Jerusalem in a large international competition. <font size=4> What about the alleged choice Arab swimmers were told to make - either join the ISF or find somewhere else to swim? <font size=3> "Not true," said Coach Avnerre. "No one at the Jerusalem International YMCA demanded Raad - or any other swimmer -- join the Israeli Swimming Federation. We have swimmers here from the USA, Italy, Turkey and Palestine - all on the YMCA team, swimming alongside the Israeli swimmers. The Jerusalem Y swimming team accommodates all swimmers, regardless of race, religion or nationality. In fact, we had the daughter of a top Palestinian official, Mrs. Hannan Ashrawi, swimming on the team for years." <font size=4> So what, if anything, did the ISF ask the Palestinian swimmers to do? <font size=3> Coach Avnerre recounted that at the end of 2001, the Israeli Swimming Federation decided that swimmers could not represent both an Israeli club -- the YMCA - in national events and another nation in international events. "So our Arab swimmers were given two choices: To join the ISF and continue representing the YMCA team in national events; or to join the Palestine Swimming Federation and represent Palestine, both inside Israel and abroad." Avnerre explained that in either case, the Arab swimmers were more than welcome to remain as members of the YMCA and to continue training there with the other swimmers. "Some of the swimmers chose the first option, and a few of those have since become medalists in the Israeli national age group championships. Others, including Iad (Amos) Hushia who represented Palestine in three world championships, chose the second option. "Unfortunately, Raad's father, along with Mr. Tawil, decided to choose a third path, leaving the YMCA and trying to coach the children on their own. Thus, instead of training with some of the top Israeli swimmers and under professional coaches, Raad chose to work out under much inferior conditions. His improvement was slowed down considerably, as he swam just under 1:03 in Barcelona last July." <font size=4> CNN reporter John Vause added a chilling, avaricious element to the story in his broadcast on "CNN Sunday Morning" on January 11: "Three years ago before the start of the Intifada, Raad trained at the YMCA in West Jerusalem. But then, because he was Palestinian, he was given two choices. Either join the Israeli swim team or pay to use the pool." <font size=3> "That's not true either," said Avnerre. "Like others with financial problems, Raad Aweisat paid a reduced fee at the Y. No one is ever rejected here for financial reasons." <font size=4> So was there ever was a reason for Raad to leave the Y? <font size=3> "No," said Avnerre emphatically. "Over ten percent of our swimmers are Arab and there was never a legitimate reason for Raad to leave. In fact, as Raad was never expelled from the YMCA team, there would be no problem in his re-joining. However, he has other choices. There is a YMCA in (primarily Arab) east Jerusalem, with an indoor swimming pool, where he would also be welcome to train." Ironically, both Hussein Aweisat and Ibrahim Tawil took their first coaching course at the Jerusalem International YMCA, with Head Coach Avnerre as their mentor. <font size=4> Why, then, does Raad Aweisat train in his homemade pool and not the YMCA?<font size=3> The reason, apparently, is that his father, Hussein Aweisat, the coach of his team, got into a dispute with YMCA officials and pulled his team in protest. More than half of Raad's teammates decided not to follow Coach Aweisat and continue to swim at the Y. <font size=4>Raad, obviously, had no choice: he had to follow his father. There was, indeed, a sad story to emerge from the waters of Jerusalem's swimming pools, but it was not the story that made the newspapers and other media around the world. Rather, it was the story of how ideology and sloppy reporting can totally distort reality and muddy what should be the crystal-clear waters of international sport. <font size=3> Dr. Buky Chass contributed to this story. Phillip Whitten is the Editor-in-Chief of Sports Publications, Inc.. © 2001-2003 Koret Communications Ltd. All rights reserved. web.israelinsider.com.

To: abstract who wrote (60731)	2/9/2004 5:35:40 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

"So I'd really appreciate seeing the documentation you allude to." Here's one perfect example. I can provide much more if you wish..... The Wreck of the BBC From the February 16, 2004 issue: How the Mighty Have Fallen by Gerard Baker Weekly Standard <font size=4> FOR THE LAST WEEK, much of Britain has borne witness to an outpouring of grief the like of which has not been seen since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.<font size=3> When Baron Hutton of Bresagh, knight of the realm, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, a hitherto rather inconspicuous retired member of the British supreme court, delivered his much anticipated report at the end of January on the death of Dr. David Kelly, a British government weapons expert, a collective howl of anguish went up from the well-upholstered parts of the media establishment. <font size=4> Lord Hutton concluded that Tony Blair, the British prime minister, was not guilty of lying about the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction when he made the case for war more than a year ago. Nor had he or his government "sexed up," in the immortal phrase, intelligence information about the nature of the Iraq WMD threat. The prime minister had been accused of both in a notorious report by the British Broadcasting Corporation that aired in late May 2003. Nor, for good measure, declared Lord Hutton, had Blair improperly "outed" Dr. Kelly, the previously anonymous source for the report. Kelly's exposure led more or less directly to the scientist's suicide in July. By contrast, Hutton's report found the BBC profoundly guilty. The original story by its reporter, Andrew Gilligan, that the government had deliberately inserted a false claim into a published document concerning Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, was unfounded. Worse, the BBC had failed to ensure proper editorial procedures to prevent such an erroneous report from being broadcast. Then, without having properly checked the story, the BBC's management refused to back down from the report even though some of its own editorial staff were quietly expressing concern about its reliability. Within hours of the publication of the Hutton findings, which amounted to a forensic flagellation of the entire editorial processes of the world's largest news organization, the two top figures at the BBC, its chairman and director general, resigned--one falling honorably on his sword, the other forced out by the board of governors. Then, like a great keening at a funeral procession, the wailing began. Grand public figures rose up as one to decry the verdict. Media panjandrums took to the airwaves and the newspapers to express outrage and intone gravely that Lord Hutton's report marked the beginning of the end of the right of free expression in Britain. One claimed to have felt physically sick at what the report would do for press freedom. A prominent news anchor for another TV network said he could not remember feeling more depressed. "There but for the grace of God go all of us," he wept. <font size=3> Greg Dyke, the outgoing BBC director general, gone but anxious not to be forgotten, rounded on the judge and the government and said the judgment was a disgrace. BBC staff coughed up five pounds a head to take out a full page ad in a national newspaper, insisting (the courageous jut of their jaw almost discernible through the newsprint) that they would do their best not to be deterred from bringing the public the truth. The ranks of the stricken were not confined to the emoting British elite, at least if the BBC is to be believed. Its New York correspondent reported that he was overwhelmed at the outpouring of sympathy he had found on the streets of Manhattan. "'Good luck,' said a colleague from a friendly U.S. network, squeezing my arm with a look of pity and concern in her eyes." This lonely but brave reporter went on to add, with the pure objectivity and balance for which the BBC is so renowned: "Arch skeptics here see it as just another victory for the ideology that drives the war on terror." He presumably meant to insert a hyphen before the word "skeptics," though the omission perhaps gave the statement its truer meaning. <font size=4> The Hutton Report was, to read the British media, the Night of the Long Knives, the bonfire of the vanities, and the Cultural Revolution all rolled into one hideous assault on cherished press liberty. If you live in the fantasy world of self-adulation and preening pomposity of high-powered liberal journalists, I suppose the aftermath of the Hutton Report might seem like that. But for those who have to toil in the less sensational world of reality, the unassuming 72-year-old peer may just have done the world one of the greatest services in the history of journalism and public broadcasting. For Lord Hutton has exposed, from the pinnacle of independent judicial authority, the fatal flaws at the heart of the world's largest broadcaster. His report has confirmed what critics have argued for years: that the BBC, once one of the cultural treasures of the English- speaking world, has lost its way. EVEN AS IT PROJECTS its unrivaled resources further around the globe, including the United States, where its news programs are now seen in millions of homes, and its entertainment channel, BBC America, advances on cable networks, its reputation for quality public service broadcasting and objective and fair news is sinking rapidly. <font size=5> Its news is increasingly tinged by the corrosive liberal bias that permeates so much of the global media. Its reporters and editors share a worldview that would sit perfectly with the denizens of the New York Times, and they hold the same conviction that theirs alone is an objective account of the truth. <font size=3> Its vaunted public service ethos, the tradition that over the years produced original and creative drama, entertainment, and comedy, has been traduced and subordinated to commercial ambition. It uses the vast resources it receives from a compulsory tax on everyone in Britain who owns a TV set to muscle out privately financed competitors. And all the time, the BBC regards criticism or calls for accountability as acts of lèse majesté, a kind of high treason against a lovable old British institution ("Aunty," as the BBC is known) that merits the firm protection of the law. Critics are dismissed as promoting a political or financial agenda, of aiming to destroy the BBC so its commercial rivals might feed on its corpse. <font size=4> But the David Kelly affair provided that rare moment when this vast, bloated organization's faults are laid bare for all but the most willing of the BBC's collaborators. The details are these:<font size=3> Gilligan, an investigative reporter for the BBC, last May interviewed Dr. Kelly about the preparation of a document outlining Iraq's WMD capabilities produced by the British government in September 2002, as the Iraq debate was reaching its climax. Gilligan subsequently reported that a senior British official closely involved in the drafting of the WMD document had told him the intelligence services were unhappy at the way Downing Street had exploited their intelligence for political purposes. Most explosively, this official is said to have told the reporter that Blair's official spokesman had insisted on inserting--against the wishes of the intelligence services--a finding that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. <font size=4> We now know, however, thanks to Lord Hutton's inquiry, that (a) Kelly did not tell Gilligan the government deliberately conveyed false information about Iraq; (b) the intelligence service chiefs had themselves inserted the 45-minute claim, not Downing Street; (c) Kelly, though a genuine expert on Iraq's weapons, had no connection with the compiling of the WMD document; and (d) Kelly, far from being an opponent of the war, as was commonly inferred, was actually a fervent supporter of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. None of that, sadly, was known at the time Gilligan aired his explosive report on May 29. Within a matter of days, this misrepresented allegation from an unreliable witness had metamorphosed into the conventional wisdom about the prime minister. Tony Blair's reputation fell swiftly from that of co- liberator of the Iraqi people to liar and lackey of George Bush who could not persuade his country or his party to go to war against Iraq on honest grounds and so had resorted instead to a wicked distortion. Tens of thousands of British troops had been sent into battle on a falsehood. As Blair himself told the Hutton inquiry last August, the report amounted to an "extraordinarily serious allegation which, if it were true, would mean we had behaved in the most disgraceful way and I would have to resign as prime minister." Blair's approval rating plummeted. When Dr. Kelly committed suicide on July 17, the public verdict seemed to be that a man who had been valiantly trying to expose government wrongdoing and had been unmasked for his efforts had taken his own life. The BBC, meanwhile, despite some qualms about the story, stood by it. Without bothering to check in detail with the reporter on his source, and without demanding to see his notes, the BBC launched a vigorous defense of the allegations. Even as the Hutton inquiry began its work, the fighting went on. The BBC insisted its story was right, and the government's problems mounted. Only last month, as Hutton's report sparked the crisis, did the BBC apologize for its errors. Probably too late to repair the damage to Blair. Quite why this single story and its follow-ups had the capacity to inflict so much harm on the reputation of the prime minister might seem a puzzle to American readers. But the fact is that the BBC occupies a position in British public life quite unlike that of any media organization in the United States or, indeed, in the free world. It runs several TV channels, including two all-news services, and several all-news radio networks. It has two 24-hour global news networks. Its main news shows on TV and radio reach upwards of three-quarters of the British people every week. <font size=5> What is more, with Britain's print media being politically partisan, the BBC's past reputation for impartiality has made it much more widely trusted than any competitor. Imagine the influence of the main American TV networks, PBS, CNN, Fox News, National Public Radio, the New York Times, and the newsweekly magazines all rolled into one and you have some inkling of the reach of this giant. THE KELLY STORY was not an isolated incident. It was merely the most infamous example of a left-liberal bias that refracts all news coverage through the prism of the BBC's own distinctive worldview. <font size=4> The BBC's coverage of the Iraq war itself marked a new low point in the history of the self-loathing British prestige-media's capacity to side with the nation's enemies. Its Middle East coverage is notoriously one-sided. Its pro-Palestinian bias is so marked that recently the London bureau chief of the Jerusalem Post refused to take part in any more BBC news programs because he believed the corporation was actually fomenting anti-Semitism. If anti-Americanism is on the rise in the world, the BBC can take a fair share of the credit; much of its U.S. coverage depicts a cartoonish image of a nation of obese, Bible-wielding halfwits, blissfully dedicated to shooting or suing each other. Its suppositions are recognizable as those of self- appointed liberal elites everywhere: American power is bad; European multilateralism is good; organized religion is a weird vestige of unenlightened barbarism; atheism is rational man's highest intellectual achievement; Israel (especially Ariel Sharon) is evil; Palestinians (especially Yasser Arafat) are innocent victims; business is essentially corrupt, or at best simply boring; poverty is the result of government failure; economic success is the product of exploitation or crookedness. And so on. This will be familiar to consumers of news in much of the United States. Liberal media bias is by now, fortunately, increasingly widely recognized. But the difference is that BBC bias is so much more powerful and much more pernicious because the BBC is still seen by viewers and listeners, in Britain and around the world, as objective. And when the BBC conveys its slanted views of the world, there is very little means of checking and correcting it. I worked at the BBC for six years. I never saw a BBC journalist actively promote his own political agenda. Almost all were honest, hardworking men and women dedicated to reporting the truth as they saw it. The problem was that it was the truth as they saw it. The sheer scale of the BBC means that "the truth as seen by the BBC" is what gets believed. Aunty is simply too big and too powerful for the modern media era. <font size=3>The BBC is, in fact, a curious vestige of pre-Margaret Thatcher Britain: a massive public monopoly, a Soviet-like bureaucracy accountable to no one. If you own a TV, your almost $200 a year goes into the BBC's coffers--irrespective of whether you watch it--and, yes, the BBC will prosecute you if you fail to pay up. <font size=4> Who regulates this Leviathan among institutions, with a heft unrivaled in the world of journalism, entertainment, or anything else for that matter? You probably guessed. It regulates itself.<font size=3> Its board of governors, appointed by the government, does a good line in rubber-stamping virtually anything its management hands to it--the awful errors in the Kelly story being the most powerful example. <font size=3> The Kelly affair speaks to another aspect of the BBC's iniquitous and growing strength. The problem was not simply the liberal biases of its journalists. The Kelly affair was the awful culmination of an aggressive strategy in recent years to cement the BBC's domination. <font size=3> Greg Dyke, the director general forced out last month, a brilliant commercial TV executive before he joined the BBC, has dumbed down the news in pursuit of higher ratings. <font size=4>BBC News has become edgier, more sensational, more focused on making news rather than reporting it. The BBC has opened the doors and let the foul winds of British tabloid journalism waft through its stuffy halls. <font size=3> All this is part of a grander design to encroach further into the field of commercial TV--to abandon its raison d'être of producing quality programs that were unprofitable, and instead leverage its enormous power and financial resources to take on all comers--in Britain and around the world. <font size=4> The great virtue of Lord Hutton's devastating indictment is that it represented for the first time an independent verdict. The editorial failings it criticized, the tendentious reporting it identified, the massive bureaucracy it exposed, and the troubling strategic vision that underlay it all demand a radical change at the BBC, if the organization's reputation is to be restored. The BBC has long been one of the world's most highly valued outlets for quality broadcasting. In unfree countries, it remains a lifeline and the exemplar of independent media. But Lord Hutton has exposed an institution whose power and influence are now matched by its arrogance and self-righteousness. The learned judge, it is to be hoped, has opened the way to a long-delayed revolution. <font size=3> Gerard Baker is an associate editor at the Financial Times. © Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved. Ö¿Ö

To: abstract who wrote (60731)	2/9/2004 6:00:13 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

Here is an article to bolster your allegation, "Conversely I hear from members of the press (and others) how conservative the press is.". The problem is that articles like this are not widely picked up by the mainstream media & repeated again & again. If that was the case, you would have a legitimate point. Since the opposite is true, I submit your contention that a conservative bias exists now, or at any time in the last 20 years, is lacking clear evidence to support it. Another thing of note is that most of what is written in this article is factually accurate, unlike a typical hit piece slamming the Bush Admin that gets repeated widespread global coverage. But what would Kerry do? US News and World Report By Michael Barone Former weapons inspector David Kay's statements that he could find no stores of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that he believes none will be found there have provided emotional sustenance to the `BUSH LIED' crowd and present a political problem for the Bush-Cheney campaign. Yet Kay's comments fail to sustain the charges Bush's opponents make against him. Did he manipulate the intelligence? No. U.S. intelligence concluded that Iraq has had WMD since the 1990s, when Bush was governor of Texas. The major foreign intelligence services all agreed. Did Bush lie about it? No. He reported accurately what the agencies said. Did he base his case for war solely on WMD? No. He also argued that military action would oust a regime that supported terrorism and that a free Iraq would make the Middle East less dangerous. Nor is it clear that this is an intelligence failure that could have been prevented. Saddam Hussein acted as if he had WMD, violating United Nations resolutions seeking disclosure of his weapons. Kay now theorizes that Saddam's scientists may have deceived him by telling him they were working on WMD when they weren't. If so, how was U.S. intelligence to know that? And would it have been prudent to rely on such reports? The fear of Bush's opponents is that overestimates of an evil regime's capacity will lead to unnecessary wars. But the more characteristic failure of intelligence has been to underestimate evil regimes' progress toward WMD, as in the cases of Iran, North Korea, and Iraq itself in 1991. In the post-September 11 world, underestimates are surely more dangerous than overestimates. The strongest argument that the failure to find WMD in Iraq weakens the United States is that it will reduce American credibility in the future, when a president seeks support at home and abroad for a pre-emptive war. But this is not an argument likely to be made by Bush's opponents, since they tend to oppose pre-emptive war. Which leads to the question of how they--especially the Democratic front-runner, John Kerry--would conduct foreign policy differently from Bush. Kerry presumably would not have taken military action against Iraq without France's approval, but he supported Bill Clinton when he threatened to do so in 1998. He might well engage in bilateral negotiations with North Korea, instead of the multilateral negotiations Bush has been insisting on, and make a deal like the Agreed Framework of 1994--which the North Koreans have blithely admitted they violated. "Unpatriotic"? Kerry might make more efforts to negotiate with the so-called reformers in Iran, although the America-hating mullahs hold all power. He might, as he has on the campaign trail, make soothing noises about the Kyoto treaty to make friends with the Europeans (which means basically France and Germany, since most European nations supported us on Iraq). But he failed to vote against the 1997 resolution in which the Senate rejected the central premise of the Kyoto treaty by 95 to 0. There is a certain antique tone to Kerry's rhetoric. He denounces Bush's foreign policy as, among other things, the most "ideological" in history. "Ideological" was a Cold War term that soft-liners used to castigate hard- liners who opposed detente with the Soviet Union. But it hardly applies now. Bush came to favor pre-emptive war and military action in Iraq in response to post- September 11 circumstances, not on the basis of some pre-existing ideology. Similarly, Kerry and other Democrats are preoccupied by the notion that they are being or will be attacked for being "unpatriotic," as opponents of the Vietnam War sometimes were. But the only ones using the word "unpatriotic" are Democrats like Wesley Clark, who applies that label to Bush. Kerry complains that former Sen. Max Cleland was called "unpatriotic" in ads in 2002. But the ads simply said he was voting to block passage of the homeland security bill, as he arguably was. The Republicans have been careful to acknowledge Kerry's heroism in Vietnam. But in replaying the arguments of the Vietnam era, Kerry has not shown that he has a coherent foreign policy for the post-September 11 world.

To: abstract who wrote (60731)	2/9/2004 7:02:59 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

Bozell Issues $1 Million Challenge to Tom Brokaw and NBC January 8, 2004 ALEXANDRIA, Va. --- Media Research Center President Brent Bozell is issuing a $1 million challenge to NBC and NBC Nightly News Anchor Tom Brokaw, calling Brokaw on his comments made in a recent interview with Columbia Journalism Review. In the interview, Brokaw directly took on Bozell and the Media Research Center while denying the credibility of their evidence of liberal bias in the press. Among other things, Brokaw said: “What I get tired of is Brent Bozell trying to make these fine legal points everywhere every day. A lot of it just doesn’t hold up. So much of it is that bias — like beauty — is in the eye of the beholder.” Bozell responded: “I know our evidence does ‘hold up’ and we’ll prove it. I issue this challenge to NBC and its anchor: let’s assemble a mutually agreeable third-party panel and have them review a compilation of the Media Research Center’s 16 years of evidence of liberal media bias. If this panel agrees with Brokaw’s contention, the Media Research Center will donate $1 million to the anchor’s favorite charity. If the panel agrees with us, NBC and Brokaw will donate $1 million to the Media Research Center. “Oh, and to sweeten the pot we’ll do this: we’ll limit our evidence only to Tom Brokaw and NBC. Frankly, that’s all the evidence we need to prove the point.” mrc.org

To: abstract who wrote (60731)	2/9/2004 7:22:19 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

THE MEDIA’S RUSH TO DISTORT By Notra Trulock January 20, 2004 Accuracy in the Media -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The mainstream media continue to hammer away at the Bush administration for its supposed intelligence failures in Iraq. The New York Times, for example, recently editorialized that “nine months of fruitless searching” for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proves the administration’s case for war was “way off base.” The press is full of dire predictions about the consequences of this “intelligence failure” for our credibility on other international issues. Writing in the Washington Post, reporter Glenn Kessler warns that China now rejects our assessments of the North Korean nuclear program, although it’s not clear that China ever accepted those estimates in the first place. In terms reminiscent of Vietnam, congressional Democrats warn of a “credibility gap” that has “left our nation in a precarious position.” The media have seized on several recent reports by non-governmental sources to buttress their case against the administration. In particular, there has been extensive coverage of a report produced by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Its authors claim that theirs is the first “thorough review of intelligence threat assessments,” although no one in the media has thus far questioned how this could be done without access to classified information. Nor has the media paid much attention to the credentials of the authors. As noted by the Washington Times’ Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, however, all three have close ties to Democrats; two as congressional aides and one who worked in the Carter administration. None have prior experience in the U.S. intelligence community (IC). Ironically, only the BBC has identified Carnegie as a “liberal think tank; CNN’s reference to Carnegie as a “non-partisan, respected group” is more typical. One author told the UK Guardian that the IC’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD was “wildly off the mark.” The authors claim to have uncovered a “dramatic shift” in the IC’s assessments of Iraqi WMD, which they date to 2002 and attribute to “intense pressure” from key administration officials, especially Vice President Dick Cheney. By their account, intelligence analysts caved into this pressure and produced more “alarmist” estimates in 2002 that supported the administration’s case for war on Saddam Hussein. But intelligence officials have already rejected that allegation. The CIA’s Stuart Cohen recently told ABC Nightline’s Ted Koppel that such charges are “nonsense.” He told Koppel that he and others have already testified “under oath” that they were not subject to such pressures. Last summer, the New York Times was forced to correct a story implying just that. In its correction, the Times reported that all serving intelligence officials had answered “no” when asked about pressures from the White House to shade their assessments. Carnegie’s assertion that a “dramatic shift” in community assessments took place in 2002 is undercut by another critic of administration policy. Kenneth Pollack, who has worked at the CIA and also served in the Clinton administration, says that a “dramatic change” in the IC’s perception of the Iraqi WMD threat actually occurred during the Clinton administration. That is, long before the Bush administration took office. In an on-line interview with The Atlantic Monthly, he says that by the late 1990s the IC thought that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear program and that the “Iraqis were making much greater progress in acquiring a nuclear weapon than they had before.” That judgment was widely held; Pollack said he “couldn’t think of anyone who did not believe that the Iraqis had a WMD program. There was simply no one.” The CIA’s Cohen told Nightline that there were “no surprises, no sudden changes” in the October estimate. As for congressional criticisms, Cohen said the intelligence in that estimate had been briefed to “no less than” six different congressional committees over the years. Pollack does allege, without naming names, that certain high administration officials withheld the “whole truth” from the American public before the war. He echoes a charge made by the Carnegie report, although Carnegie’s is much more damning. Carnegie charges that the Bush administration “systematically misrepresented the threat” from Iraq’s WMD. Other critics, like the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman, disagree. Gellman has produced several investigative reports purporting to document the failure to uncover weapons stockpiles after the Iraq war. But Gellman told an on-line audience during a WashingtonPost.com chat, that the administration’s public statements on biological and chemical weapons and missiles “did not stray too far from the consensus among analysts.” Gellman sees more of a gap on the issue of nuclear weapons. But critics have yet to produce an example of the administration claiming that Saddam Hussein already possessed nuclear weapons. Notra Trulock is the Associate Editor at Accuracy in Media aim.org