AP devotes 52 times as much manpower looking for Sarah Palin faults as to health care [Tom Gross]
Now this is what they call “accountability journalism”.
An Associated Press dispatch, written by Erica Werner and Richard Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate Obama health-care bills. James Taranto compares this to the AP’s dispatch earlier this week that “fact checked” Sarah Palin’s new book:
Number of AP reporters assigned to story: • ObamaCare bills: 2 • Palin book: 11
Number of pages in document being covered: • ObamaCare bills: 4,064 • Palin book: 432
Number of pages per AP reporter: • ObamaCare bill: 2,032 • Palin book: 39.3
So on a per-page basis, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the memoir of a former Republican governor as to a piece of legislation that will cost trillions of dollars and affect tens or hundreds of millions of lives.
Yesterday, ABC News tried — and largely failed — to put a dent in the news cycle by breathlessly reporting afour-year-old scoop about secret CIA facilities in Eastern Europe. In short: After 9/11, the CIA converted an old Lithuanian horseback-riding academy into a so-called "black site" prison where high-value terrorists were detained and interrogated. The Lithuanian government reportedly agreed to the facility after a 2002 visit from President Bush, during which he pledged American support for Lithuania's inclusion in NATO. (Hey, a mutually beneficial, meaningful accord achieved by an American president on an overseas trip. Go figure.)
When the existence of a network of similar covert facilities became public in 2005, the Lithuanian prison was shut down. ABC played a significant role in breaking the story at the time, exposing three US allies that had agreed to host the CIA prisons: Lithuania, Romania, and Poland. Despite the fact that the controversial sites have been shuttered for years, ABC can't stop flogging the smoldering remains of the story. They're apparently determined to share every last, classified detail of the abandoned program. The CIA has called ABC's pursuit of the story "irresponsible." One might add "gratuitous" in describing yesterday's report.
Setting aside ABC's questionable news judgment (does their "new" information actually constitute news?), its biased selection and placement of quotes further taints the final product. In the online version of the story, correspondents Matthew Cole and Brian Ross quote 'human rights activist' John Sifton in the third paragraph—representing the very first quote of the entire piece. Sifton indignantly expresses outrageous outrage that a US intelligence service was, at one time, treating terrorists rudely. He laments the sleep deprivation and "forced standing" techniques that the hardened jihadists were forced to endure. And just in case Sifton's position was remotely unclear, Cole and Ross quote him again at the end of the story, giving him the last, agitated word:
"It obviously took a lot of effort to keep [the prison] secret," said John Sifton, whose firm One World Research investigates human rights abuses. "There's a reason this stuff gets kept secret."
"It's an embarrassment, and a crime."
Much to the reporters' disappointment, I doubt the story will elicit much more than shrugs from average Americans. Most citizens understand that keeping the country safe isn't always a pretty business, and a majority is willing to tolerate occasional unpleasantness if it means protecting American lives.
ABC's investigative unit sometimes does solid work, reporting stories that are ignored by other MSM outlets. Yesterday, however, they missed the mark.
The mayor says it was the flap over the show's season opener on Michigan Avenue in September that may have helped set Oprah's travel plans in stone. There was criticism about shutting down the Magnificent Mile for days for the taping. She reimbursed the city for costs related to the closure.
"That became a big rhubarb in the Chicago press — beat up Oprah," Daley told reporters. "So you keep kicking people, people will leave, simple as that."
Pressed about whether the media really caused Oprah to flee, Daley added: "I'm just saying that when someone's doing something like that, most cities would love it. … It's just amazing. I don't know why it became so controversial."
Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper joked on todays CBS 2 Morning News: "I think he's officially lost his mind. I think Richie has gone over the deep end."
At the top of my Google News today was this confusing headline from the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Health-care historian: GOP opposing ideas it long espoused." What? If Republicans "long espoused" government-run health care, Ted Kennedy would have nationalized medicine a long, long time ago. The "historian" of the headline was Princeton professor Paul Starr, a co-founder of the liberal magazine The American Prospect. Stacey Burling's story began:
In the past, most opposition to changing health care came from health-care interest groups: doctors, insurance companies, drug companies.
This time, it's different. There has been considerable grumbling from the medical establishment, but the approach Democrats are taking "doesn't really threaten any of those groups," said Paul Starr, a Princeton University professor who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book on the history of health care: The Social Transformation of American Medicine. He later was involved in the creation of the Clinton health plan.
That's the only indiction the Inquirer gives that perhaps Starr isn't the best expert on Republican history. As usual, the liberals are nostalgic for the high tides of intellectual dominance for ultraliberalism, and we're taken back to Truman and Nixon:
There was a time when many of the changes included in the House and Senate health bills would have been considered Republican or at least bipartisan ideas, Starr said. In the days of Harry S. Truman, he said, Democrats favored a single-payer system. The current approach is closer to what President Nixon proposed before Watergate sidelined his plans. He called for universal coverage through a combination of government and employer-based insurance.
An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar's manufacturing plant, but no arrests.
I see a rock-n-roll advertising campaign in the works: Outlaw Play Gibsons.
This does not surprise me; consider the very personal vituperation directed at, say, Sarah Palin. Williamson's Political Axiom No. 1: Liberalism is a license to hate.
KSM 'Entitled' to Exploit Trial to Slam America? [Tim Graham]
During the Bush years, government officials who wanted to prosecute and/or kill terrorists were portrayed as ideological radicals. During the Obama years, government officials (and the journalists who support them) want to give the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11 his "shot," and he's "entitled" to put on a circus and put the U.S. government on trial. No one seems to ask: and that will improve our reputation in the eyes of "the world"? These exchanges on Sunday's This Week with Rahm Emanuel's Phone Buddy should stand out:
David Brooks: We do know something about his character. There have been front-page stories in the "Washington Post" and "The New York Times" the last two days describing a narcissistic personality, who likes to make a big show of himself and who wants the big show, whose written long memos expressing himself and the message he wants to say to the world....
David Corn: But Moussaoui did the same thing at his trial. It was a circus-like atmosphere. He gave speeches. He was his own attorney then he wasn't his own attorney. I don't see why their considerations should come into our considerations. We should make decisions based on what we think is right and best. And if they want to try to exploit that, well give them the shot but at the end of the day, it's about our values, not about his values....
Bob Woodward: But the symbolism could be very important by saying, look we let the narcissistic personalities get justice in the country. And I think there's a good chance he will really get justice and let's not be concerned that he's going to exploit it for his purposes, people on trial, are entitled to do that.
We need 30-second ads for bigfoot journalists, so one can end (add announcer voice here): "Bob Woodward said the mastermind of 9/11 was 'entitled' to exploit the judicial system and put the U.S. government on trial just blocks from the crater that was the World Trade Center."
Commander-In-Chief to Troops: 'You Guys Make A Pretty Good Photo-Op' [Guy Benson]
Yes, he actually said it. The president capped off his grand photo opportunity by issuing some "applause lines" about military pay increases. Then he was spirited away — off to conduct presidential business. Oh, but not to rush into any Afghanistan troop level decisions, as the headline of the Post story makes clear.
Liberal media start to criticize Obama’s "kowtowing" to dictators [Tom Gross]
It seems that the liberal press really are — finally — beginning to take note that Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama cares much less about human rights and press freedoms than George W. Bush did as president.
The New York Times begins its news report today on the president trip’s to China:
Whether by White House design or Chinese insistence, President Obama has steered clear of public meetings with Chinese liberals, free press advocates and even average Chinese during his first visit to China, showing a deference to the Chinese leadership’s aversions to such interactions that is unusual for a visiting American president.
Mr. Obama held a “town hall” meeting with students on Monday. But the students were carefully vetted and prepped for the event by the government, participants said. And the Chinese authorities, wielding a practiced mix of censorship and diplomatic pressure, succeeded in limiting Mr. Obama’s exposure to a point where a third of some 40 Beijing university students interviewed Tuesday were unaware that he had just met in Shanghai with their peers.
Some students who were aware cast him in terms rarely applied to American leaders, like “rather humble” and “bland.”
And on the other side of the Atlantic, the left-liberal Independent (of London) begins its news report this morning:
America used to take pride in speaking softly and carrying a big stick, but in China Barack Obama has had to speak softly and keep any stick he might feel like flourishing well out of sight.
Boxed in by ceremony, with any hint of controversy airbrushed out of his remarks by the regime’s censors, with press conference questions banned and his interlocutors ruthlessly screened, he has struggled to get his message across.
And yesterday the British paper The Financial Times, which has been as strongly supportive of Obama in recent years as it has been derisory about President Bush, also criticized Obama:
It is right and proper that the US acknowledge the rising significance of China. Mr Obama’s assurances that China’s rise need not be a threat were spot on. But by the same token, US accommodation can be taken too far. Contrary to common perception, China’s huge holdings of US treasuries are not a sign of great strength. They are evidence of how dependent Chinese growth has been on the US consumer.
Equally, any idea that China, with an economy less than a third the size of the US and a GDP per capita roughly the same as Angola’s, can somehow save the world is ludicrous. Mr Obama is right to show respect to China. He need not – and must not – kowtow.”
