Category: Media Watch

When a newspaper breaks a major story, the editors and the reporters usually make a media blitz to promote it. The New York Times has apparently decided to go into the bunker instead. Patrick Hynes hosts a weekly radio show called Meet the New Press (and also works for the McCain campaign), and he invited Jim Rutenberg to appear to debate their slimy attack on John McCain. Rutenberg said no, and don’t bother to ask anyone else either:

At 6:51 AM this morning, I e-mailed Jim Rutenberg– whom I know and have interacted with in the past–to invite him onto my radio program “Meet the New Press” on Saturday morning to discuss the sourcing of his New York Times hit piece on my client John McCain.
At 7:24 AM Rutenberg declined my invitation in an e-mail and indicated—without my even asking—that no one else at the Times was likely to come on, either.
It seems very odd to me that after having “broken” (broken, indeed) a big story about a major national figure, a story that is capable of impacting the 2008 presidential election, no one at the Times has any interest in discussing the story any further, especially considering so many have expressed such deep skepticism about its sourcing and the value of its content.

Patrick keeps the invitation open for them at his blog. I’ll go Patrick one better. I am on the air today three times — at 10 am ET with Rockin’ Politics (call in number: 646-478-4556), 1 pm ET at the AOL Hot Seat show (call-in number: 347-205-9555), and on Heading Right Radio (call-in number: 646-652-4889). I’ll also be on the air tomorrow with Heading Right Radio at the same time, and at 1 pm CT on Saturday afternoon in the Twin Cities at AM1280 The Patriot (call-in number: 651-289-4488). I’ll be happy to talk to any of the named “journalists” on the McCain article on any of those shows.
Will they appear? Absolutely not. Smear artists go to ground once their masterpieces get published. I don’t expect these to be any different.
UPDATE: The McCain campaign released a statement that outlines the facts that they gave the New York Times, but somehow failed to appear in their story:

No representative of Glencairn or Alcalde and Fay, met with Senator McCain in 1998 to discuss the issue of local marketing agreements (LMAs). On July 20, 1999, Senator McCain met with Eddie Edwards, the head of Glencairn, regarding LMAs and minority media ownership issues. This meeting was several months after Senator McCain had weighed in at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding its expected December 1998 decision on media ownership rules. There were no other meetings in 1999 between any representative of Alcalde and Fay and Senator McCain regarding the issue of LMAs.
Senator McCain’s Commerce Committee staff recalls meeting at least once with representatives of Alcalde and Fay concerning the issue of LMAs. The staff also recalls meeting with many other representatives of media companies, as well as groups advocating for consumer and public interests, regarding the issue of LMAs during the time the FCC was considering the issue.
As to the December 1998 letters and the February 1999 letter, those letters were not written in support of any one party or in favor of a particular interest. Those letters were simply written by Senator McCain as the Chairman of the committee that oversees the FCC to express his opinion that the agency should not act in a manner contradictory to Congressional intent. In both his December 1, 1998 letter and his December 7, 1998 letter, Senator McCain makes clear that Section 202(h) of the 1996 Telecommunications Act unambiguously directs the FCC to review its media ownership rules every two years with an “eye to lessening them, not increasing them.” Additionally, the letters quote from the 1996 Telecommunications Act and its report language, as well as language from the 1997 Budget Reconciliation Act. The letters do not express an opinion on the merits of LMAs, but strongly encourages the FCC to recognize the “clear language” in the statute.

There’s lots more at Politico. One might have supposed that they would check dates on meetings and letters before implying some kind of malfeasance, but that of course would constitute real journalism.

UPDATE: I posted about this earlier, but Eyeblast has the video clip. Eyeblast is a new contender in the viral-video sweepstakes and is definitely worth a close look for right-of-center videobloggers. Here’s the clip:

And so with that final “Screw you!” from Matthews, the original post follows ….
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Chris Matthews has spent the primary cycle alternately opining and apologizing for his remarks about Hillary Clinton. It looks like he may have either tired of the cycle, or wants another round of YouTubed capitulation to make the blogospheric rounds. Sam Stein at the Huffington Post notes that Matthews erupted on Joe Scarborough’s morning show at MS-NBC, calling Hillary’s media-response team “knee-cappers”:

Chris Matthews fired a salvo at the Clinton campaign this morning after both he and his MSNBC colleague were privately rebuked for recent comments deemed misogynistic or inappropriate.
Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Hardball host went off on the Clinton press shop, calling them “knee cappers” who were “lousy” and delve in the business of “intimidation.”
“What she has to do is get rid of the kneecapers that work for her, these press people whose main job seems to be punishing Obama or going after the press, to building a positive case for her,” said Matthews. “Her campaign slogan right now is don’t get your hopes up. That won’t work in America. You can’t diminish Obama and hope that you will rise from the ashes.”

Chris Matthews just now noticed that the Clintons play, er, “Hardball”? It seems somewhat ironic that the man who hosts a show by that name complains that the Clintons throw elbows when pushing for power. The late realization also paints him as more than a little clueless.
Question for CapQ readers: how long before we see Matthews’ inevitable apology for his implications that the Clintons use loan-shark collection techniques against their political opponents? And will he blame the lack of universal health care again for his “frustrations” and criticism? Here’s Matthews’ last apology, for those who have forgotten it:

Yesterday morning, I watched with some disbelief as Fox News Sunday managed to get John McCain and Hillary Clinton together for a brief three-way chat with Chris Wallace. Nothing much occurred, but I wondered what would have made either candidate agree to a cheery bit of Senatorial comity 48 hours before the Super Tuesday primaries. According to Howard Kurtz, they didn’t:

Advisers to Hillary Clinton and John McCain felt misled yesterday when “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace prodded the candidates into talking to each other after they had agreed to be interviewed separately.
While McCain was being interviewed in Washington, Clinton aides grew suspicious when producers asked her to remain in the interview chair in St. Louis for 15 minutes–ostensibly so she could hear his comments–and refused to turn off her mike so she could have a private conversation. That enabled Wallace to tell McCain he was about to interview the former first lady and “well, actually, she’s right there right now. Senators, do you want to say anything to each other?”
No harm was done–both candidates said they looked forward to a “respectful debate” if they face off in November–but the McCain side was particularly unhappy.

I’ll bet they were. Part of the conservative complaint against McCain is his deference to Democrats while treating conservatives much more harshly. That got put on full display yesterday, as the two exchanged not just pleasantries but assurances that a general-election contest between the two would be “respectful”. Republicans may want someone less inclined to put the gloves on against Hillary than taking them off against fellow Republicans.
Both candidates got taken by surprise, but Hillary hasn’t got Democrats wondering if the Clintons can fight hard enough against Republicans.
Fox and Wallace owe both candidates an apology.

She did for me last year at CPAC, of course, when she derided John Edwards as a “faggot”. At the time, a number of conservative bloggers wrote that she had embarrassed the movement and owed Edwards an apology, which she refused to offer. This year, the ACU has opted not to have her as a featured speaker, although I understand she will appear at an ancillary event at CPAC.
Of course, she can then explain why she will campaign for Hillary Clinton if John McCain wins the Republican nomination:

So let’s walk through the logic here. John McCain gets castigated by Coulter because he aligns himself too often with the Democrats. Her solution to that is — to campaign for the Democrats? Maybe someone can explain the thought process to me, but it sounds like a hysterical demand for extortion rather than a considered and thoughtful political position.
I’m supporting Mitt Romney because I think he is the better option. If Mitt doesn’t win the nomination, I plan to support John McCain. He will have won the support of more of the party, and that would make him the man to carry the banner. I will still oppose some of his policy stands and acknowledge his apparent animus at times to the party base, but he will still be a much better choice for the nation than Hillary Clinton.
It appears Coulter hates McCain more than she cares about conservative values. She has acquired McCain Derangement Syndrome, and is rather obviously unbalanced by it. Sean Hannity was clearly embarrassed to listen to this tirade, and Coulter should have been embarrassed to have indulged in it.
UPDATE: Thanks to Real Clear Politics for the link.
Some in the comments argue that Coulter didn’t actually call Edwards a faggot. Here’s the quote: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.” It’s complete intellectual dishonesty to claim that this isn’t the same thing as publicly calling him that name. Any argument otherwise is a fraud. Don’t even pull that weak trash out here.

The Politico’s Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn attempt the first major media post-mortem of the Rudy Giuliani campaign, and wind up revealing more about the media than the campaign. They claim the loss demonstrates the end of 9/11 politics, but that analysis misses a lot about what went right in the Giuliani campaign. It misses because the media never bothered to report anything beyond the superficial for more than a year:

Rudy Giuliani’s distant third-place finish in Florida may put an end to his bid for president, and it seems also to mark the beginning of the end of a period in Republican politics that began on Sept. 11, 2001.
Giuliani’s national celebrity was based on his steady, comforting appearance in Americans’ living rooms amid the terrorist attacks, and his campaign for president never found a message beyond that moment.
The emotional connection he forged that day, it seems, has proved politically worthless. After months of wonder that the former mayor seemed to have no ceiling to his support, he turned out to have no floor, trading fourth-place finishes with Ron Paul, a little-known Texas congressman.
“There’s a paradox for Rudy,” said former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission. “One of the things he did very well on 9/11 was say, ‘We’ve got to get back to normal.’ And that’s what’s happened. We’ve gotten back to normal.”

Those of us who have followed the campaign know the reasons behind the failure had nothing to do with 9/11 — because the campaign itself mostly avoided referencing it. The campaign lost its footing when the press began hyperventilating about a “scandal” from six years ago that even the New York Times later admitted was old news and represented no illegal conduct. It followed that with a poor decision to stop competing in the early states and allow the media to focus so much on his rivals that Giuliani became the Forgotten Man.
Only one televised ad featured 9/11, and then in the context of how Giuliani saw the city respond, not himself. Otherwise, outside of the glaring strategic error, Giuliani put together one of the most impressive teams of advisers ever seen in a presidential campaign. He had an administration ready to go on the Wednesday after the general election, a staff led by such notables as Charles Hill, Steve Forbes, Ted Olson, and many others.
Did the media report on this? No. They preferred to focus on the police-escort story from almost a decade ago, and to tie Rudy to 9/11 long after it became clear that his campaign wanted to minimize it as a theme.
Rudy has only himself to blame for losing the media’s focus over the last several weeks. However, the media has some introspection to do as well for having missed the positives of the Giuliani campaign, especially in its collection of poweful, talented thinkers.

After last week’s release by Judicial Watch of internal documents of Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force, many of us waited to see the national news media cover their disturbing contents. No surprisingly, none of them did so. Despite the proposals to use smears against critics of the government and to turn the DNC into a domestic espionage unit for the White House against its opponents, the mainstream news media has shown little interest in even noting the fact that this evidence appeared in a microscopic sample of the three million documents that have been blocked from public scrutiny.
Let’s recall what the media has ignored. The following comes from my earlier posts on the subject.
Senator Jay Rockefeller proposed that the federal government conduct smear campaigns against the opponents of the plan:

A “Confidential” May 26, 1993 Memorandum from Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to Hillary Clinton entitled, “Health Care Reform Communications,” which criticizes the Task Force as a “secret cabal of Washington policy ‘wonks’” that has engaged in “choking off information” from the public regarding health care reform. The memorandum suggests that Hillary Clinton “use classic opposition research” to attack those who were excluded by the Clinton Administration from Task Force deliberations and to “expose lifestyles, tactics and motives of lobbyists” in order to deflect criticism.

Rockefeller had allies in mind for this effort:

Senator Rockefeller also suggested news organizations “are anxious and willing to receive guidance [from the Clinton Administration] on how to time and shape their [news] coverage.”

Rockefeller also offers a little intellectually honest advice at least twice. When discussing abortion, he gets very terse (emphasis mine):

Response concepts: … Full Reproductive Services. Do not engage on this topic.

And remember, this isn’t a political action commitee or an electoral office campaign. This was the elected government of the United States discussing how it would steamroller opposition to nationalizing an entire industry by smearing them and by avoiding discussion of the policy itself.
The HCTF anticipated a tough debate over its proposal to nationalize American health care, and it proposed some specific remedies — including using the DNC to conduct intelligence operations.
A February 1993 memo to Hillary Clinton from Alexis Herman and Mike Lux proposes that the HCTF — a White House policy group — enlist the DNC for several purposes, discussed on page 5:

C. The DNC Role
The DNC clearly has a critically important role to play in the campaign. I would suggest the following roles …
3. The DNC can be instrumental for us in intelligence gathering and opposition research. Their staff will hear talk about things that may never reach us inside these walls.

All of that falls into the category of “politicizing” the White House, and much more than having Karl Rove as deputy chief of staff. But this goes beyond mere politicization. The HCTF foresaw using the DNC to “gather intelligence” on political opposition — a way to gain information to intimidate or extort their critics. It’s bad enough when electoral campaigns do this, but having the White House use the DNC for these purposes doesn’t border on abuse of power but invades it with a vengeance.
And this memo came to Hillary Clinton a mere two weeks after her husband’s inauguration. The impetus for this kind of political warfare existed within the Clinton administration within the first hours of its birth.
Where are the media organizations that style themselves as the bulwark against governmental abuses of power? Why haven’t they reported on these memos, which clearly delineate a type of attack on government opposition that hasn’t been this baldly proposed since the Nixon administration? Given Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency — one on which she relies on her experience in her husband’s administration for her qualifications — isn’t all of this terribly relevant to the question of how she will run the White House, and what kind of treatment her critics can expect to receive?
The silence from the Fourth Estate is deafening. It screams either cowardice or collaboration.