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Friday, July 23, 2004

Media Bias

The just-released 9/11 Commission Report is, among other things, further evidence of "big media's" longing for a Bush re-election defeat. Byron York nails the New York Times and Washington Post for their ludicrous headlines when the draft report came out a few weeks ago, (respectively) "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie" and "Al Qaeda-Hussein Link is Dismissed." The 9/11 Report details the contact between the two - that we're aware of - and the potential for future contact. In fact, Hussein had offered Bin Laden safe haven in Iraq. York goes on,

With that background in mind, the reasoning employed by American policymakers in early 2002 as they planned the next step in the war on terrorism, comes into clearer focus. The U.S. had toppled the Taliban but had not caught bin Laden and some of his top aides. Without a friendly regime in Afghanistan to protect al Qaeda, where might bin Laden and his band of terrorists go next? One possibility — a quite reasonable possibility — would be a place that had offered them haven in the past: Iraq.

Will there be apologies or corrections from the Post or the Times? You can guess.

My pal Rich Lowry has a comment in his review of the Report from one of the Commission members:

Republican commission member John Lehman blames Clarke's partisan testimony before the commission for the poisonous atmosphere of much of its public work. "We were mugged by Viacom," Lehman says of the company that owns the publisher of Clarke's book and CBS News, which gave Clarke's tome a huge send-off. "They edited his book to make it into an anti-Bush jihad."

As an aside, I happened to hear these words out of Dan Rather's mouth on Tuesday's evening news, "Republican Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan ..." Good grief.

There's no doubt in my mind that the print and television media giants have a horse in this race. I just wonder what impact they'll have when the candidates' advertising is silenced by campaign finance reform and the only voice we'll hear in the month before the election is the voice of big media.

posted by Gary at 13:17 | [Permalink] (0) comments

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