The not-so-brave and not-so-honest-or-liberal New York Times still lacks the courage to call the Swift Boat Liars for Bush what they are. They are not and have never been Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This has been shown since the 2004 election when people who served with John Kerry on the swiftboat overcame their personal trauma to stand up and come forward in John Kerry defense.
Today, the NYT's has published Kerry's side with pictures.
The media: CNN, MSNBC, ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS and newspapers like the NYT's, WAPO, Washington Times, WSJ, ect. behaved like irresponsible journalists! They gave free airtime to the Swiftboat liars and they repeated an "alleged" video as if it were indeed genuinely newsworthy. The media is NOT SUPPOSE to REPEAT RUMORS even if they use the word "Alleged" first! There is suppose to be a a honorary and unspoken trust between those in the media and the public they serve. It's a trust that should never be betrayed.
They betrayed John Kerry and they betrayed us--the public!
So I say to those of you in the media:
On behalf of John Kerry and the world, I demand apology from all of you! You know who you are! You know full well that the Swifties were/are lieing party hacks and you know full well that YOU HAVE BROKEN A VITAL TRUST with all of us no matter what party we belong to. You are wrong to use your position and power to promote your own agenda and you are wrong to sell spin as truth. This is NOT a junior high school where you can smear your classmate and move on to the next attack. Furthermore, you can not claim to not know the Swifties were liars because even the words "To be Swiftboated" has become a part of our lexicon.
So I'm waiting corporate media for that apology and if it doesn't come quickly then you can bet you will be losing a whole generation of readers and viewers to other legitimate sources of news.
And isn't it amazing how you are willing to lend a soapbox to these liars but you wouldn't tell the voters of America about Bush's insider trading questions before the 2000 election? Or the NSA spying before the 2004 election? You people DO stand to gain from this mess, but is it really worth sacrificing the trust of the public?
wow you have your own thought. Good for you. you made me stop andthink
Right off, I apologize for the typo in my title.
Its LIARS!
Speed typing and speeding to work don't always go together; do they nolie?
It's haaard work to be a student and a blogger.
http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/swift_boat_veterans_for_truth Good rant, btw. The media in this country truly have deserted their responsibility.
YAY!
Another great article about this.
http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/2006/05/the_right_wing.html
Dick Bell worked as the former blogmaster of JK.com in 04. Here are some excerpts from the link above of some of his thoughts especially notable given his position in 04:
That will it take for a major news outlet like the New York Times to finally denounce the SBVT's role in the 2004 election, and show us the web of money and connections that linked its work to the Bush campaign? Or even easier, perhaps someone at the NSA could simply leak a few phone conversations as the arrangements were being made?
Part of the mystery is why the SBVT claims took hold in August, when they'd apppeared before. I first saw the SBVT claims as the blogmaster for the Kerry campaign in the fall of 2003, when they began to pop up on the blog, although they did not appear to be part of an organized campaign at the time. The bloggers responded quickly with the facts and the attacks ended rather quickly.
Then there was an organized effort in the spring of 2004, but it didn't gain any traction in the mainstream media. There was a lot more material out there on the Kerry blog and all the other blogs supporting the campaign about John's military record, but there was no major stir on the blogosphere either.
The Convention showcased John Kerry's military heroism. It may be that we thought the most challenging record we needed to be defending was John Kerry's outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War once he came back home, and that was the characterization that needed the most counterbalancing. Instead, the image of Kerry in navy whites, the salutes, the "reporting for duty" became the perfect opportunity to give the SBVT the spotlight and to take JK down a notch.
Something happened after the convention. Instead of ignoring or going lightly over the new SVBT allegations and moving on, all of a sudden there was wall-to-wall coverage, with the totally undocumented claims of the SBVT being treated as if they were on the same level of credibility as all of Kerry's military records. All of this clamor occurred without a single shred of documentary evidence to back up the SBVT's claims.
Would I have liked the campaign to have counter-attacked earlier? Yes. But we should not be under any illusions about whether such a counter-attack would have succeeded in the poisonous atmosphere that the media created.
As Bob Somerby has shown so clearly at The Daily Howler in his analysis of how the media croaked Al Gore in 2000, if the national media are collectively framing a candidate in an unquestioned negative way, it is very difficult for a campaign to overcome this negative frame.
Truth to Power, thats the ticket. Dick Bell has got it right. The O'Neil group tried in the spring of '04 and it flopped and Kerry responded quickly and forcefully. Of course even then the corporate media had Charlie Gibson spinning and attacking Kerry. I wrote an e-mail to Gibson and have never turned on GMA again. Now the truth needs to come out about O'Neal and his lies. and his being a stooge for Nixon. Great video attached to link. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4534274/
The media is our enemy. That's for sure!
We need to make sure we're getting active on that front and not just complaining on blogs. They know what they're doing but like the Sinclair protest showed them in 04, we are a power to reckon with!
Reagan's Navy Secretary Takes on Senate
Sunday May 28, 2006 5:16 PM
By BOB LEWIS
Associated Press Writer
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - Thirty-seven summers ago, in the swelter of An Hua Basin, Marine Lt. James H. Webb saw more bloodshed and death than most people see in a lifetime.
Since his decorated tenure in Vietnam, Webb has added hitches as President Reagan's Navy secretary, an Emmy-winning journalist and author of best-selling, military-suspense novels to his made-for-the-movies biography.
Why, then, suddenly run this year as a Democrat to unseat Sen. George Allen, a Republican former governor whom Webb endorsed just six years ago?
``When I look at where this administration has taken its own party, I cannot help but think about the pendulum of history,'' Webb said. ``The pendulum has swung, I think, as far as it can swing given the principles this party had once espoused.''
Webb says Allen is part of an arrogant Republican majority in Washington bent on repeating in Iraq the blunders that killed so many of his buddies in Vietnam a generation ago.
He accuses President Bush, whom he backed in 2000, of betraying conservative fiscal governance by pushing the federal debt toward $9 trillion. He claims the GOP, his former party, and Allen in particular are Bush's eager accomplices.
``We really need to get back to a time when the members of Congress will stand up to an administration that is abusing its constitutional privileges,'' Webb said.
Allen campaign spokesman Dick Wadhams dismissed Webb's criticism with a chuckle, a rhetorical question his only reply: ``So is Jim Webb still a Democrat today or did he switch back over to being a Republican?''
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5851320,00.html
Look up his editorial in USA Today on February 18, 2004.
He condemned John Kerry with words presaging much of what the Swift Liars would say,
I sure hope that Harris Miller wins the Dem nomination for VA Senate.
And I can't believe someone has the gall to shill for Webb on a post about the lies spewed against John Kerry.
Thanks for that information. I myself didn't realize that he presented the same arguements against Kerry that the Sweifties eventually used.
Isn't it ironic thought that he's running as a dem? Or is it a ploy because Republicans have a certain corrupt and incompetent stench now-a-days?
Technically, the progressiveu doesn't shill for any specific candidate but tries to present news and such. I'm sure that other poster didn't intend to shill.
They also didn't tell people in 2000 about Bush's drunk driving, cocaine habit, bankrupted businesses, schools in Texas doing WORSE than under Ann Richards, not even reading the last appeals of death row inmates, etc...
If your read anything this weekend, read this! (and nolie's blog of course!)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/28/12173/8001
A blockbuster look at the depth of the unfairness in reporting
The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.
The defining issue of our time is the media.
The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruthlessness or the tactical and strategic superiority of the Republicans, and it is not your favorite theory about what is wrong with the Democrats.
The dominant political force of our time is the media.
Maccabee's diary :: ::
From media Matters' Jamie Foser: http://mediamatters.org/...
The media's enabling of the Bushies is subtle. It is easily discerned when one compares a Clinton Scandal- say Whitewater which resulted in reams of nothingness- and Abu Ghraib which should have destroyed Bush but didn't get the attention of Monica's Dress.
Reporters who offer the excuse that they and their colleagues covered Clinton "scandals" so much because sex sells, and is easily explained and understood, are cherry-picking. They are ignoring the obsessive coverage they gave to Clinton "scandals" that had nothing to do with sex, and that were not widely understood.
They are ignoring, for example, years of coverage of Whitewater, an obscure land deal in which the Clintons lost money and that was investigated by multiple independent counsels, congressional committees, federal agencies, and every news organization in the country -- none of which found any wrongdoing by the Clintons. Whitewater had nothing to do with sex, and nobody understood it -- probably because there was nothing to understand. And that's not even going into Travelgate, Filegate, Vince Foster's suicide, or the myriad other "scandals" the media covered that did not involve sex.
Eric Boehlert, author of the excellent new book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (Free Press, May 2006), has offered one example of the obsessive coverage the media gave Whitewater:
In the 24 months between Jan. 1994 and Jan. 1996, long before Monica Lewinsky entered the picture and back when Whitewater was about an alleged crooked land deal, Nightline devoted 19 programs to the then-unfolding scandal and investigation, for which no Clinton White House official was ever indicted.
And that's how it was for eight years: obsessive media coverage and hype of made-up Clinton "scandals" that never went anywhere because they never existed anywhere other than the fevered imaginations of a few far-right Clinton-haters and the credulous news media that took them seriously.
How bad did it get? As we're fond of pointing out, the Washington Post editorial board called for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Whitewater "even though -- and this should be stressed -- there has been no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong." That's right: The Post called for an independent counsel to investigate "no credible charge."
Boehlert offered a comparison to the Bush era:
But during the 24 months between Sept. 2003 and Sept. 2005, Nightline set aside just three programs to the unfolding CIA leak investigation, for which Libby, an assistant to the president, was indicted. On the night of the Libby indictments, Nightline devoted just five percent of its program to that topic.
And that's pretty much how things have been for the past five years: Clear, conclusive evidence exists that Bush and his administration have committed countless transgressions far more serious than whatever it is reporters thought Bill Clinton might have done. And it has received far less coverage than Clinton's non-scandals.
To be clear, this isn't simply about the CIA leak investigation, or the Downing Street memos, or Tyler Drumheller, or any other individual matter. It's about a clear and consistent pattern of under-reporting stories that would be damaging to Bush -- a pattern that began before Bush even took office.
For example, there is the sale of Bush's Harkin stock that occured after he was informed that the company had a liquidity crisis and it was not in compliance with Federal Regulators.
Here's how they treated it:
In the months before the 2000 election, newly disclosed documents revealed that shortly before he dumped his Harken stock, George W. Bush had been told that the company faced a "liquidity crisis" and was "in a state of noncompliance" with lenders and that its plan to raise money was being abandoned. The documents revealed that the SEC -- which, at the time, was run by a close ally of Bush's father, then-President George H. W. Bush -- never bothered to interview Bush about his stock sale during its investigation of the matter.
And The New York Times completely ignored it. Completely. The Washington Post completely ignored it. USA Today completely ignored it. ABC, CBS and NBC? Ignored, ignored, ignored. CNN? CNN is an all-news channel; it has a whole day to fill with news every single day. Surely CNN managed to squeeze in a mention or two of new evidence that a major-party presidential candidate may have made a fortune in an insider-trading scheme that was covered up by cronies of his father the president? No, CNN didn't even mention it. Not a word.
And here come the excuses and the apologists and their appeals that hold no water when looked at fairly
Sure, they went overboard with Clinton, they say, but sex sells. But it wasn't just sex, and it wasn't just Clinton. Sure, they were a bit unfair to Al Gore, someone might concede, but he had it coming -- he was stiff and insincere. But it isn't just Al Gore. Sure, too many reporters may have been complicit in the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's smears of John Kerry, but he invited it by speaking openly and honestly about his service. Sure, Howard Dean's "scream" was overplayed, but he had it coming -- it was crazy! Sure, media elites fawn all over Bush, but he's just so likable! And John McCain, too. And Rudy Giuliani. They're all just so real and authentic.
Jamie Foser makes a rather long analysis of the comparison between something simple like Hillary Clinton's answer to what is on her iPod and W's answer. When Hillary answers it somehow becomes calculated focus group on what people like. When W answers it becomes just a regular guy's songlist.
Then of course, there is The New York Times. The paper of record. The protector of Judy Miller, the mentor of jayson Blair, the hider of Bushes spying secrets...the home of John Teirney
(more at link)
On the topic of media:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060528/NEWS08/605280346
Its a long story but well worth reading - showing how even a paper like the Blade can be compromised. Instead of firing, George Tanber should have gotten a promotion.
Other things Tanber revealed:
On May 17, 2005, the Monday after leaving The Blade to start his political consulting firm, Mr. Wenzel received the first of two $30,000 payments to handle media buys for the Cincinnati-area congressional campaign of Jean Schmidt.
While working at The Blade, Mr. Wenzel had an improperly close relationship with the Noes, and Mr. Noe offered to help Mr. Wenzel start his own consulting business.
George Tanber also alleged that Fritz Wenzel sat on the Noe Coingate story and the Blade didn't begin reporting it until after Fritz Wenzel left..
according to Noe's reporter friend Wentzel
"The letter claims the politics reporter met three times in 2004 with Joe Kidd, then director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, and was told by the GOP insider about a scheme by Mr. Noe, the Maumee coin dealer, to illegally launder money to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Mr. Kidd said that he met with Mr. Wenzel in January, February, and September, 2004, and says that at each meeting he told Mr. Wenzel about the scheme.
Mr. Wenzel says he does not remember being told of the money laundering until the meeting in September, 2004. He says he did not believe Mr. Kidd because the former election director failed to give him evidence to back up the claims and because Mr. Kidd had been fired by Bernadette Noe.
“These rumors that Noe was involved in funneling money to the Bush campaign would occasionally come up, but nobody could substantiate them in any way,” Mr. Wenzel said."
Some intellegent rebuttal by the Republican "Christians". Filled with hate? *eyes roll* not in the least. *sarcasm!*
insert name...my ass. You like the failed minority democrats are a complete lying fraud. The exact opposite of what you believe is in fact true. Why not look at what we in fact know to be true? You prefer the democrat perpetual fraud as apposed to in your face reality and truth in fact. It doesn't matter how many democrats repeat the same lie , it's still a lie . And the minority democrat party is greatest fraud known to man and becomes clearer with every day and every time a democrat opens their lying mouths. You just can't resist.
Posted by: Rob in LA Ca. at May 29, 2006 09:01 AM
Should people like the Swift Boat Liars for Bush be allowed to randomly smear their opponent"
There is no answer to this false statement just like their is no answer from the democrats when they are caught lying. They run and change the subject like you have because you are a fraud and a typical democrat cry baby. You think you could walk up and down the beach and sell sand. That is how dumb or damaged your brain is.
Your sexual deviant failed disbarred and impeached ex-president was not only a cowardly admitted draft dodger , the stupid hill billy didn't even know how to smoke pot correctly but he had his fun with many a coke whore.
"Frist, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc were too chicken to enlist when they were young men"
This is just more proof you have got your head so far up someone elses behind you don't jack sh*t.
Posted by: Rob in LA Ca. at May 29, 2006 09:18 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ha HA, I am hurting my case because I'm not making one. It's your feelings that are getting hurt and your case being proven for what it and you are , a complete fraud. Why would so arrogantly assume that I'm cusing others harm when it's is only you that are incapable of dealing with reality and you think your going to get me to sign off? Ya right , it is just like your incompetant party its braindead supporters to try and silence those who speek the truth and expose them and are brutally honest when they do it.
You must be the newest paid peon in the democrats "SAY ANYTHING" and "DO WHAT EVER IT TAKES TO REGAIN POWER" last chance campaigne to keep up your failing perpetual fraud. Guess what? Your failing BIG TIME!
Posted by: Rob in LA Ca. at May 29, 2006 10:01 AM
Posted by: Rob in LA Ca.
Response by the person Rob was attacking:
perpetual fraud....? Not by Dems!
Cunningham (Republican)
Delay (Republican)
Abramhoff (Republican)
Ney (Republican)
Noe (Republican)
Cheney (Republican)
Rove (Republican)
Novak (Republican)
Libby (Republican)
Harris (Republican)
Lay (Republican)
Just a partial list of current Republicans under prosecutorial investigation and/or indictments soon to be serving time in a stinky jail cell.
(Robs response...back to Clinton...as always. Good or bad...all roads in their responses only lead to Clinton. The man with an 80% approval rating who the far-right loves to hate.)
Rob:
The only list you didn't post was first White House Cheif of Staff, assistant to the Vice Prsident, and Assistant to the President under formal indictment.
USA v Scooter Libby
Other things you didn't list:
The ongoing investigation into the Treason that happened in the George Bush and Dick Cheney White House.
Rove
Libby
Cheney
Bush
All under investigation.
Sorry...treason overrides seman on a blue dress.
zz revolution
The choice is clear in the midterms folks: vile posts like Robs or rational honesty like zz revolutions. Wake up America!
Funny!
Yes, it's time to wake up!
More of the lies. The latest is given by Tom Lipscomb...just when you thought he was dead and gone – Tom Lipscomb is back…
This time Tom Lipscomb has the audacity to lie in the NYT's again in the article entitled: "The Truth, John Kerry, and The New York Times"
Come on Tom. How do you sleep at night knowing that instead of speaking the truth you abuse the trust the NYT's has given to you to publish your work. Start holding yourself to higher standards, Tom, and then you might find that you're so busy smearing Kerry with lies when you should be telling the truth about the Republican and Bush culture of slimey corruption!
In the movie Speed, the bad guy said, "Don't try to grow a brain..."
Well, this blogger is the good guy telling Tom to, "Grow a brain, man!!! Grow some intergrity when you grow your brain, Tom. Start using facts in your articles and stop the swiftboating of a patriot!"
Man Tom...just reread your piece! What a crock of b.s.!
Exactly mundo. The MSM media is aiding in lies by not stating the facts. I am so frustrated with MSM media. They act more like sheep than watchdogs. They happily allow themselves to be used by special interests to further their agendas instead of examining and scrutinizing those special interests' agendas. Grrrrr...
Citizen Press Revolution
We need to find a way to stand up to that lying media!
I remember hearing stories when I was in school about Pravda, the Russian's state run media, and here we have our own. They just 'pretend' they're fair and balanced because they put on one democrat and one republican. Then they manipulate spin, time, evidence and they let all lies stay out there without telling people the facts and showing the view that the person lied.
They don't have to say "you're a liar." Just show the video of what was said before and what was said now. Let people form their own conclusions.
Here's one protest against the NYT's for once againg, spin and lie, spin and lie.
http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/2006/06/write_to_the_ny.html