Guilty without a trail?? The democraps are VERY good at that, merely get the medium to do their thing..attack Bush!
weeklystandard.com
Despite how eagerly the mainstream media enlisted in advancing
the Kerry campaign's agenda to discredit a Bush TV ad, on the
March 14 Fox News Sunday, NPR analyst Juan Williams contended, in
the midst of a discussion of Kerry charging the Bush White House
with being "crooked":
"I think that what you've got here is the start of a media
war. And the media war is this: I was talking to Mary Beth Cahill,
who's Kerry's campaign manager, this week, and she was saying, you
know, the right wing, she believes, and the supporters of
President Bush, have the ability to start a rumor on the Internet.
It gets then into the right-wing radio and to Rush Limbaugh and
the like. And then it suddenly gets repeated all over the TV
discussions shows, and suddenly, then it's taken as legitimate by
mainstream media, mainstream press.
"And she said the left wing doesn't have that capacity. So
what you get is, on everything from weapons of mass destruction to
all the other problems that might afflict the president, nothing
-- everything, though, that's critical about the Democrats. And so
here you have Kerry saying they're a lying, crooked bunch, and
he's going after them."
Host Chris Wallace, reacting to off-camera chortling from Brit
Hume: "All right, Brit, get in here."
Hume: "Well, I have to say, I, too, feel tremendous sense of
pity and compassion for the poor Democrats, because they really
are, they only have the three major networks, the leading
newspapers, NPR, everything on PBS. They only have sympathy from
the overwhelmingly largest news organizations in the country,
which will give Kerry, as the season progresses, more and more
forgiving coverage. You can count on that. And the idea that the
areas where the right has talk radio and elsewhere, where the
right has some edge, somehow overcomes all of that is absurd."
Williams: "Well, wait a minute. Don't forget the President has
the bully pulpit. He's up there making claims that John Kerry
doesn't support spending on intelligence and defense, and making
these -- and, of course, that gets picked up and it gets relayed,
not only in terms of right-wing media, but it gets all over. And
when you say NPR, come on, NPR now is left wing?"
What a crazy notion!
The March 22 Weekly Standard story cited above outlined how
the Kerry campaign has the mainstream media in its corner. An
excerpt from the article by Matthew Continetti:
....What people ended up talking about after the Bush ads were
unveiled was whether the president's campaign had "exploited" the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by using a couple of seconds
of footage from that day in two of its three advertisements.
That's because the news coverage of the official launch of George
W. Bush's reelection campaign focused on the reactions to the ads
of firefighters and 9/11 victims' families. These people,
presented as a random assortment of individuals, were angry at the
president for using the attacks supposedly as a political prop....
[M]uch of the controversy can be traced directly to a press
release issued by the Institute for Public Accuracy, or IPA, at a
little after 2:00 P.M. on March 4.
The IPA is a five-person media clearinghouse located in the
National Press Building. According to GuideStar, a website that
tracks nonprofits, the group "promotes the inclusion of outlooks
that usually get short shrift." It does this by issuing press
releases. It has been issuing press releases since April 8, 1998.
These go out to about 7,000 journalists and television producers.
They promote speakers and experts whose outlooks are generally of
a far-left bent. When I asked Sam Husseini, the IPA's
communications director, whether the outfit was left-liberal, he
told me, "I'm so far beyond labels, just give me the facts." But
the IPA's facts are often questionable (mass starvation in
Afghanistan, a massacre at the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002,
and so on), and their opinions are always hard-left. After the
Clinton administration began its bombing of Kosovo in March 1999,
the IPA promoted the antiwar punditry of Howard Zinn, the radical
historian, who claimed Clinton had "deceived" the United States
into war against Slobodan Milosevic. And when the Bush
administration invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, the IPA turned
reporters onto similar radical ideologues who opposed the war.
Ditto with the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
The IPA release on March 4 was brief -- under 500 words -- and
little more than a list. It highlighted three potential stories
and sources for journalists. One was the upcoming trip to
Afghanistan of a mother whose firefighter son was killed in the
September 11 attacks. Another was an Afghan women's rights
activist's comments on International Women's Day, which took place
on March 8.
But the lead item was the Bush ads story, featured in the subject
line of the email: "Firefighters and 9/11 Families on Bush Ads."
Journalists were pointed in two directions. First, they were
alerted that Harold Schaitberger, the general president of the
International Association of Fire Fighters, was outraged at the
Bush ads. As is typically the case with such press releases, a
helpful quote from Schaitberger was included. "I'm disappointed
but not surprised that the President would try to trade on the
heroism of those firefighters in the September 11 attacks. The
uses of 9/11 images are hypocrisy at its worst." Two email
addresses were listed, as well as two contact numbers for
Schaitberger, both in Washington, D.C., where the IAFF has its
headquarters.
Second, the IPA press release directed reporters interested in the
Bush campaign ads to Adele Welty, David Potorti, and Colleen
Kelly, members of a group called September 11 Families for
Peaceful Tomorrows. All three had lost relatives in the September
11 attacks. All were promoting Adele's upcoming peace mission to
Afghanistan. And all were also "available to comment on the Bush
advertising campaign," with their phone numbers provided.
And comment they did. Sifting through the news coverage of the
controversy over Bush's ads, one finds the same individuals --
Schaitberger, Potorti, and Kelly -- quoted again and again.
Schaitberger and Kelly are both quoted in a Boston Globe story
that ran on March 5. Schaitberger and Kelly Campbell, a
spokeswoman for September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, were
the sources for the Washington Post's account. Kelly, Potorti, and
Jeff Zack, a spokesman for the International Association of Fire
Fighters, are quoted in the AP dispatch on the Bush ads. Potorti
is quoted in USA Today's story.
In fact, members of Peaceful Tomorrows are often quoted without
any mention of their group affiliation. In what looks like an
egregious case of lazy reporting, multiple news outlets treated
members of Peaceful Tomorrows as if they were nonaffiliated
people-on-the-street in order to make the controversy over the
Bush ads seem widespread.
For example, in the March 5 Boston Globe story, Colleen Kelly is
identified as the "New York area coordinator for Peaceful
Tomorrows, an advocacy group formed by relatives of those killed
on Sept. 11." But David Potorti, who is the group's co-director,
is identified only as someone "whose brother was killed in the
attacks on New York."
The same thing happens in the Associated Press's account, in which
Potorti is identified as a political "independent from Cary, N.C."
In fact, of all the major news outlets that quoted Potorti as a
9/11 family member upset at the Bush ad campaign, only USA Today
identified him as a member of Peaceful Tomorrows.
The same rule applied to other members of Peaceful Tomorrows. Here
is an excerpt from Paul Farhi's Washington Post story on March 5,
which ran under the headline "Bush Ads Using 9/11 Images Stir
Anger":
"The idea that President Bush would rally support around his
campaign by using our loved ones in a way that is so shameful is
hard for me to believe," said Rita Lasar, a New York resident
whose brother, Abe Zelmanowitz, died in the North Tower of the
World Trade Center. "It's so hard for us to believe it's not
obvious to everyone that Ground Zero shouldn't be used as a
backdrop for a political campaign. We are incensed and hurt by
what he is doing."
Kelly Campbell, co-director of a nonpartisan group called Sept.
11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, acknowledged that some
victims' relatives found the ads appropriate. "There's no
consensus around this, but for the most part 9/11 families are
very sensitive to someone using images of our loved one's death
for their own ends," she said.
Notice that, while Campbell is identified as the codirector of
Peaceful Tomorrows, Rita Lasar is quoted as if she'd been selected
at random from a list of people who had lost relatives in the
terror attacks. But two days later, in a CNN.com report on a press
conference in New York City held by Peaceful Tomorrows and
organized by the anti-Bush group MoveOn.org, Rita Lasar shows up
again...this time, as one of the group's spokeswomen. "It's a deep
hurt and sorrow that any politician, Democrat or Republican, would
seek to gain advantage by using that site," she told CNN.
It is worth noting that Harold Schaitberger and other members of
the International Association of Fire Fighters never said their
criticism transcended partisan politics. This makes sense. Last
fall, the union was one of the first to endorse John Kerry's
presidential bid. But most news outlets that talked to
Schaitberger mentioned the fact that he is a partisan Democrat
only several paragraphs below the catchy headline (usually a
variation on "Firefighters Angry at New Bush Ads") if at all. And
no story mentioned that Schaitberger is one of eight national
cochairs of John Kerry's campaign.
By contrast, the members of Peaceful Tomorrows did say that their
outrage was bipartisan. "It's an insult to use the place where my
brother died in an ad," David Potorti told the AP. "I would be
just as outraged if any politician did this." Would he? Certainly
NPR, which reported that Peaceful Tomorrows was an "officially
nonpartisan" organization, thought so. As did the Washington Post,
which also called Peaceful Tomorrows "nonpartisan." This was an
exceedingly unhelpful and incomplete description. It's true that
the group does not officially support Democrats or Republicans.
But obviously relevant to its political identity is that it
opposed any military response to the September 11 attacks, whether
in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. And one question about the
9/11 survivor-critics of the Bush ads that reporters failed to
investigate was: Who are these people?...
On September 11, 2001, the day Jim Potorti died inside the World
Trade Center, his brother David was living in Cary, North
Carolina. David had moved there from California in order to pursue
a master's degree in folklore. He was devastated by his brother's
death. But what also disturbed him was the way in which the United
States responded to the terrorist attacks. "While the humanity of
the 9/11 victims -- their names, faces, and stories -- became
better known," he wrote last year in an op-ed for New York
Newsday, "our society seemed to care less and less about the
traditions, histories, and humanity of other innocent victims."
America was seized by "anger and intolerance" -- the "very things
that had led to my brother's murder."...
Potorti was no stranger to activism. In 1997, living in Santa
Monica, California, he joined The Oaks Project, a progressive
organization devoted to organizing "people who feel
disenfranchised by the two-party, big-money system." The Oaks
Project was a creation of Ralph Nader, the consumer activist and
presidential candidate. Potorti spent time gathering signatures
for legislation nullifying parts of a utility deregulation bill.
In his pre-9/11 days, Potorti was a frequent writer of letters to
the editor. In one, he inveighed against "righteous
conservatives." In another, he accused Republicans of ignoring the
homeless and the unemployed.
As Potorti marched north as part of the "Walk for Healing and
Peace," he got to know Amber Amundson, whose husband Craig had
died on September 11, and Craig's brothers, Ryan and Barry. He
also met Kelly Campbell, Craig Amundson's sister-in-law, who
worked at a nonprofit in San Francisco. They all had backgrounds
in progressive activism. And their status as relatives of those
killed on 9/11 gave them special cachet among peace activists....
Funding was not a problem. Potorti says that the group's funding
is "confidential." But a quick visit to several nonprofit websites
shows that Peaceful Tomorrows receives money and support from a
bevy of left-wing foundations. Among them is the Tides Center,
which is a project of the Tides Foundation, which is a recipient
of generous grants from the Heinz family endowments, one of which,
at least, is chaired by Teresa Heinz, the wife of Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry. (Spokesmen for the Heinz
endowments are quick to say that the money they provide to the
Tides Foundation and Center is directed solely towards
environmental projects in western Pennsylvania.) Peaceful
Tomorrows is only one of many Tides Center projects. Others
include the Ruckus Society, a radical antiglobalization group, and
the Iraq Peace Fund, which provides support to such anti-Bush
groups as MoveOn.org and Democracy Now....
The members of the group also wrote letters to the editor. The New
York Times published one from David Potorti on April 28, 2003:
Since the worst terrorist attack in American history, which took
the life of my brother, occurred in New York on Sept. 11, it seems
appropriate that President Bush will be making his re-election bid
from that city at that time in 2004.
Perhaps the millions of unemployed Americans, veterans whose
benefits have been threatened, families of dead civilians in
Afghanistan and Iraq, working people who lost their pensions to
corporate fraud, and 41 million Americans without health insurance
can come to town and join him in celebrating the other
achievements of his first term.
Nonpartisan?
Indeed, Peaceful Tomorrows never pretended to shrink from
involvement in politics. On September 25, 2002, group members held
a joint press conference with congressman -- and future Democratic
presidential candidate -- Dennis Kucinich. The conference was
called to protest a potential invasion of Iraq. "I believe the
best way to honor the dead is by seeking justice through
nonviolent means, not by starting new wars," said Andrew Rice, a
member of Peaceful Tomorrows whose brother died at the World Trade
Center....
It's a safe bet that there are thousands like [Bush supporting New
York City firefighter Jimmy] Boyle, relatives of people murdered
on 9/11 who supported the president during the wars against the
Taliban and Saddam Hussein. And it's a safe bet, further, that any
one of those people, or any of the numerous 9/11 families groups,
would have happily gone on record as having no objection to the
Bush campaign's reelection ads. Indeed, reading the news coverage
of the ads controversy, one finds, scattered among the quotes from
Harold Schaitberger and the members of Peaceful Tomorrows,
individuals who support Bush's campaign ads....
Or Ernest Strada, who told the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, at
the Nassau County unveiling on March 11, "It's important that
everybody in the country, led by the president, continue to
remember what happened two and a half years ago." Milbank, in
fact, found near unanimity among the people he interviewed at the
unveiling. "Virtually all," he wrote, "said [Bush] was welcome
here and welcome to use the attacks in his campaign."
So what went wrong here? Why the fuss over Bush's ads? How is it
that so many journalists were willing to be led by the nose to
write blatantly misleading stories, when the truth was so easy to
ascertain? The simple answer is, well, they were being lazy and
partisan. Plus, the straight story -- "Peace Activists, Kerry
Co-chair Criticize Bush Ads" -- is a yawner.... |
