A Ridiculous Rant on Bush's "Outright Assault" on the Press -- October 20, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for October 20, 2004

A Ridiculous Rant on Bush's "Outright Assault"
on the Press

In "Will We Need a New 'All the President's Men'?", Arts section editor/columnist Frank Rich argues the Bush administration is engaging in a scary, Nixonian type campaign of press intimidation, and gives ten examples -- none of which hold up under the barest hint of objective scrutiny.

He vents: "But if our current presidency is now showing symptoms of a precancerous Watergate syndrome -- as it is, daily -- we have not yet reached that denouement immortalized by Hollywood, in which our scrappy heroes finally bring Nixon to heel in his second term. No, we're back instead in the earlier reels of his first term, before the criminality of the Watergate break-in, when no one had heard of Woodward and Bernstein. Back then an arrogant and secretive White House, furious at the bad press fueled by an unpopular and mismanaged war, was still flying high as it kneecapped with impunity any reporter or news organization that challenged its tightly enforced message of victory at hand."

You know where Rich is going, and he doesn't disappoint: "Today it's John Ashcroft's Justice Department, also invoking 'national security,' that hopes to seize the phone records of Judith Miller and Philip Shenon of The Times, claiming that what amounts to a virtual wiretap is warranted by articles about Islamic charities and terrorism published nearly three years ago. 'The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before,' wrote William Safire last month. When an alumnus of the Nixon White House says our free press is being attacked as 'never before,' you listen. What alarms him now are the efforts of Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame-Robert Novak affair, to threaten reporters at The Times and Time magazine with jail if they don't reveal their sources. Given that the Times reporter in question (Judith Miller again) didn't even write an article on the subject under investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald overreaches so far that he's created a sci-fi plot twist out of Steven Spielberg's 'Minority Report.'"

Taking Rich at face value: If Bush's Justice Department was really out to harass unfriendly journalists, why would they pick on Judith Miller, who the left accuses of being too friendly to Bush's pro-war propaganda?

More from Rich: "It's all the scarier for being only one piece in a pattern of media intimidation that's been building for months now."

Then Rich insists Viacom's chairman has been so rattled by Bush's FCC that he's cowering and voting Bush (never mind that Viacom president Tom Freston has given money to Kerry, as has Redstone himself): "The current White House has been practicing pre-emptive media intimidation to match its policy of pre-emptive war. Its F.C.C. chairman, using Janet Jackson's breast and Howard Stern's mouth as pretexts, has sufficiently rattled Viacom, which broadcast both of these entertainers' infractions against 'decency,' that its chairman, the self-described "liberal Democrat" Sumner Redstone, abruptly announced his support for the re-election of George W. Bush last month. 'I vote for what's good for Viacom,' he explained, and he meant it. He took this loyalty oath just days after the '60 Minutes' fiasco prompted a full-fledged political witch hunt on Viacom's CBS News, another Republican target since the Nixon years. Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, has threatened to seek Congressional 'safeguards' regulating TV news content and, depending what happens Nov. 2, he may well have the political means to do it."

That Rich can dismiss the entire Rathergate scandal (in which liberal CBS anchorman Dan Rather used forged documents to try and bring down Bush before an election) as a "political witch hunt" tells us all we need about Rich's political leanings.

He doesn't even bother to show evidence that fear of Bush is behind various corporate decisions, but simply takes it as given: "Viacom is hardly the only media giant cowed by the prospect that this White House might threaten its corporate interests if it gets out of line. Disney's refusal to release Michael Moore's partisan 'Fahrenheit 9/11' in an election year would smell less if the company applied the same principle to its ABC radio stations, where the equally partisan polemics of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are heard every day. Even a low-profile film project in conflict with Bush dogma has spooked the world's largest media company, Time Warner, proprietor of CNN. Its Warner Brothers, about to release a special DVD of 'Three Kings,' David O. Russell's 1999 movie criticizing the first gulf war, suddenly canceled a planned extra feature, a new Russell documentary criticizing the current war. Whether any of these increasingly craven media combines will stand up to the Bush administration in a constitutional pinch, as Katharine Graham and her Post Company bravely did to the Nixon administration during Watergate, is a proposition that hasn't been remotely tested yet."

Is Russell really being squelched? The Philadelphia Daily News says Russell thinks "the studio, to its credit, did not sit on the documentary. They encouraged Russell to find another distributor, and he has -- Cinema Libre, which has made 'Soldier's Pay' available on DVD (and is also distributing Robert Greenwald's 'The Truth About the Iraq War)." Evidence of Bush intimidation: Zero.

After chasing Fox News around for a few sentences, Rich says: "But Fox is just the tip of the Rupert Murdoch empire. When The New York Post covered the release of the report by the C.I.A.'s chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, it played the story on page 8 and didn't get to the clause 'while no stockpiles of W.M.D. were found in Iraq' until the 16th paragraph. This would be an Onion parody were it not deadly serious."

If that's the best bias-hunting Rich can do, then the New York Post is clearly the most balanced paper ever.

But there are things even worse than Murdoch, believe it or not: "It's hard to imagine an operation more insidious than Mr. Murdoch's, but the Sinclair Broadcast Group may be it….It has ordered all its stations, whose most powerful reach is in swing states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania, to broadcast a 'news' special featuring a film, 'Stolen Honor,' that trashes Mr. Kerry along the lines of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads….Democrats are screaming, but don't expect the Bush apparatchiks at federal agencies to pursue their complaints as if they were as serious as a 'wardrobe malfunction.' A more likely outcome is that Sinclair, which already reaches 24 percent of American viewers, will reap the regulatory favors it is seeking to expand that audience in a second Bush term."

Indeed, Congressional Democrats want an investigation into Sinclair. Yet Rich, who finds Republican Rep. Joe Barton alarming for calling for "safeguards" after Rathergate, finds nothing amiss about Democrats trying to pull a show they disapprove of off the air.

Rich fires off four distorted anecdotes to further his case: "The path of the Bush White House as it has moved from Agnew-style press baiting to outright assault has also followed its antecedent….Though 9/11 prompted Ari Fleischer's first effort to warn the media to 'watch what they say,' it's failure in Iraq that has pushed the Bush administration over the edge."

Fleischer wasn't out to squelch the press. Here's part of the former White House spokesman's March letter to the Times, responding to similar charges from Rich's fellow Bush-bashing columnist Paul Krugman: "At that briefing two weeks after Sept. 11, I was asked about a racist comment made by a Republican congressman from Louisiana who said that if he saw a Sikh-American with a towel wrapped around his head, he would tell the Sikh to get out of his state….Moments later, I was asked about Bill Maher's statement that the members of our armed forces who fire missiles are cowards while terrorists who crashed planes into buildings are not cowards. I answered: 'It's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate. And that's why -- there was an earlier question about has the president said anything to people in his own party -- they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.'"

Rich continues: "It was when Operation Iraqi Freedom was bogged down early on that it spun the fictional saga of Jessica Lynch." Initial reports from the Washington Post may have overblown details of Lynch's rescue, but that doesn't make her rescue "fictional."

Next up: "It's when the percentage of Americans who felt it was worth going to war in Iraq fell to 50 percent in the Sept. 2003 Gallup poll, down from 73 that April, that identically worded letters 'signed' by different soldiers mysteriously materialized in 11 American newspapers, testifying that security for Iraq's citizens had been 'largely restored.' (As David Greenberg writes in his invaluable 'Nixon's Shadow,' phony letters to news outlets were also a favorite Nixon tactic.)"

Rich bizarrely pins this on Bush, but as USA Today reports:
"An Army battalion commander has taken responsibility for a public-relations campaign that sent hundreds of identical letters to hometown newspapers promoting his soldiers' rebuilding efforts in Iraq. Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo said he wanted to highlight his unit's work and 'share that pride with people back home.'"

Rich's next accusation is so vague as to be useless: "The legal harassment of the press, like the Republican party's Web-driven efforts to discredit specific journalists even at non-CBS networks, has escalated in direct ratio to the war's decline in support."

He concludes: "What 'they' can do is try to intimidate, harass, discredit and prosecute news organizations that report stories like this. If history is any guide, and the hubris of re-election is tossed into the mix, that harrowing drama can go on for a long time before we get to the feel-good final act of 'All the President's Men.'"

For Rich's rant in full, click here.

"Inattentive, Arrogant" Americans

London-based Sarah Lyall reports on an American backlash to a controversial election-year ploy by a British newspaper: "The idea, as the left-leaning newspaper The Guardian here conceived it, was to allow 'non-Americans' feeling alarmed or incensed by the state of affairs in the United States to do something about it. Last week the newspaper began matching Guardian readers with independent voters in Clark County, Ohio, a key spot in a key swing state, urging them to 'write a personal letter, citizen to citizen, explaining why this election matters to you.' As an incentive, the paper printed sample letters from three prominent Britons -- Lady Antonia Fraser, John le Carré and Richard Dawkins -- arguing for the defeat of President Bush on Nov. 2."

After relaying some, shall we say, vigorously negative responses from Americans, Lyall concludes with this gratuitous slam: "Some of the letters from the States seemed to bolster the widespread European view that Americans, whether because of inattention or arrogance, do not care much about the world beyond their own borders. Speaking of the entreaty from Mr. le Carré, the best-selling writer of thrillers, one American correspondent wrote: "People will read these letters and say, 'John le Who? Never heard of him, but who is he to tell me who to vote for?'"

For the rest of Lyall on the Guardian's anti-Bush letter-writing campaign, click here.

Bush's "Privatization Plan" for Social Security

Wednesday's story by David Sanger and Gardiner Harris is headlined "Flu Vaccine Policy Becomes Issue for Bush." But first, the Times places a liberally loaded description on top of Bush's Social Security reform plan: "The Kerry campaign immediately e-mailed to reporters excerpts from the 2004 'Economic Report of the President,' showing that depending on which Social Security plan was adopted, the federal deficit could increase by up to $2 trillion over 10 years. Mr. Bush rarely if ever discusses the costs of his privatization plan."

William Safire argues in his Wednesday column notes that the word "privatization" connotes liberal spin: "The fearmongers' pitch is that President Bush is plotting to snatch your Social Security check. Bush's sound idea of setting aside a small portion of your payroll tax as a personal nest egg for your retirement is twisted by the fearmongers into the dread word 'privatization.'"

Sanger and Harris then take on the vaccine shortage: "Many experts say the shortage will lead to a greater number of flu-related deaths. Mr. Thompson said that more had been done to fight the flu by this administration than by any previous one. Echoing comments made in recent days by Vice President Dick Cheney, he said that tort reforms proposed by the administration were needed to help vaccine manufacturers even more. But Congress in 1986 passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that largely shields vaccine manufacturers from serious legal liability. Congress voted this year to add flu vaccines to the program, a bill that only awaits President Bush's signature, according to a spokesman for the program."

William Tucker in The Weekly Standard argues that trial lawyers are mainly responsible for the problem because the threat of litigation served to drive American manufacturers out of the business. He adds: "Congress tried to stave off liability problems with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986. The program functions almost as an ideal 'medical court,' with panels of scientists, virologists, and statisticians reviewing each complaint and rewarding those that seem legitimate. Unfortunately, the program allows plaintiffs to opt out of the system. Trial lawyers continually bypass it and elect to go to trial -- particularly for cases where the review looks unpromising."

For the rest of Sanger and Harris, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Flu Vaccine | Gardiner Harris | David Sanger

Anti-Kerry Film Accusations "Far Beyond Reality"

After much press hyperventilation, someone finally looks at the anti-Kerry documentary "Stolen Honor" that Sinclair Broadcast Group is to air Friday night.

Jim Rutenberg and Kate Zernike file "Accusations And Flaws, All Serious" and give the documentary a harsh thumbs-down in their Wednesday report: "The documentary that Sinclair Broadcast Group has instructed 40 of its television stations to feature in a broadcast on Friday night makes some of the most serious accusations against Senator John Kerry of the campaign. The accusations include that he single-handedly prolonged the Vietnam War, worsened the torture of prisoners of war and ultimately caused countless, needless deaths with his antiwar activism 30 years ago. The film is rife with out-of-context and incomplete quotations from Mr. Kerry and other antiwar veterans. Several historians said many accusations in it were not provable or stretched far beyond reality."

After that unsympathetic summation, Rutenberg and Zernike explore the actual charges of the film: "Throughout, the film shows wrenching images of torture as ex-prisoners of war recount the deep sense of betrayal they felt after hearing about Mr. Kerry's Senate testimony in 1971 in which he recounted atrocities by American troops. Mr. Kerry's backers acknowledge many veterans' frustration over Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements then. The supporters have not actively challenged assertions from former prisoners of war who are anti-Kerry that their Vietcong captors referred to his testimony during torture. Historians not connected to the Kerry campaign dispute the central assertion of the film, that Mr. Kerry was responsible for prolonging the war and the prisoners' torture. In the film, several veterans estimate that the war dragged out for an extra two years because of Mr. Kerry's statements in 1971."

They conclude: "Several historians said yesterday that Mr. Kerry's testimony could be legitimately criticized for greatly exaggerating the frequency of atrocities but that atrocities did occur."

For the rest of Rutenberg and Zernike on "Stolen Honor," click here.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org