Link

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Clock Is Ticking

Hillary Clinton says that when her husband left office — Social Security was projected to be solvent until the year 2055. She contends that now — solvency is predicted to end in 2041 — a loss of 14 years — because of what she calls “fiscal irresponsibility” by the Bush administration.

But the Social Security Administration says that its official statistics at the end of 2000 put the solvency year at 2037 — not 2055. It says that the current figure is — as Mrs. Clinton states — 2041. But instead of it being a 14 year loss — it is actually a four year gain.

FOX News asked the Clinton campaign repeatedly Monday and today to provide the source for that claim that the projection was 2055 when Bill Clinton left office — but so far we have received no response.

Media Matters

The news media focus on presidential horse race stories over actual issues by about a seven-to-one margin. It’s a complaint heard every four years — and backed up again this year in a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Harvard University.

It also reports some interesting results about bias in TV reporting. It says Democrats received more total coverage than Republicans — and more positive coverage. Republicans got more negative coverage.

The survey found that stories on the FOX News Channel which tilted positive or negative favored Republicans over Democrats — but that most FOX stories were neutral — favoring neither party. It concludes — “any sense here that (FOX) was uniformly positive about Republicans or negative about Democrats is not manifest in the data.”

Linky

a quite good analysis of Madame Clinton’s experience from a good blog writer.

————-

You may have noticed that Hillary Clinton likes to repeat herself:

“I have a unique perspective being on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue” (Sept. 18); “My experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue…gives me special insight into what we must do” (Sept. 26); “My eight years of experience on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue…” (Oct. 10, 2002, when she voted to authorize the Iraq war option).

And with respect to that experience at the White House end of Pennsylvania Avenue, we also have this long-recurring theme:

“I talk to my husband about everything. We talk constantly (about policy), and, you know, he tells me sometimes why what I think won’t work, or thinks it’s a good idea and he’ll look into it, but sometimes I talk to other people in the administration as well (May 28, 1996); “I worked alongside my husband…” (Jan. 24, 2005); “We have influenced each other so much over these, goodness, 36 years now…there’s a bit of a challenge to say ‘here’s where he stops and I start’” (Essence magazine, Nov ‘07).

But if a scholar or journalist or voter tries to find out the exact nature of the Bill-Hillary collaboration, to indeed determine where he stops and she starts, the inquiring citizen will be stonewalled. Because all her ’90s White House papers are locked away at the federally-financed William J. Clinton Presidential Library, and virtually none of them are expected to see the light of day prior to the ‘08 election.

Here’s the deal, apparently: She gets to tout her First Lady stint as proof of her governmental experience, but we on the receiving end don’t get to find out exactly what she did. She gets to travel America extolling the successes of the Bill Clinton administration, and she gets to tell us how much she influenced his thinking, but we don’t get the chance to learn exactly what she influenced (much less how and why).

To verify her experience claims, to understand the nature of her advice, and to determine whether her advice helped or hurt her husband’s performance, we would need to have access to a number of things: her policy memos, her notes from strategy meetings, her appointment calendars, and a lot more. But there is no such access – as the respected biographer Sally Bedell Smith discovered recently when she visited the library. When she requested material on Hillary’s advice to Bill about welfare reform, she was told that “policy” matters were off limits; when she requested material on Bill’s advice to Hillary during her 2000 Senate campaign, she was told that “political” matters were off limits.

Much of this is Bill’s doing; as Newsweek determined, after reviewing documents obtained from the National Archives under a Freedom of Information request, Bill decreed in a 2002 letter that there should be no speedy release of “sensitive policy, personal, or political” material. He was also very interested in slowing the release of “communications directly between the President and First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature.” Apparently he was casting a wide net, because neither of his immediate predecessors, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, has reportedly placed any controls on the papers of their respective spouses.

Democratic strategists and pro-Clinton archivists have been arguing for months that Bill and Hillary are rightly concerned about the pitfalls of disclosure, that Clinton critics would merely cherry-pick the most negative material. Yes, they would do that. It’s just too bad that the voters won’t have the chance to decide for themselves whether to believe the critics, or, more importantly, to decide whether the archives confirm Hillary’s claims about the breadth of her experience.

The bottom line is that this issue demonstrates why the Clinton collaboration is so unique – and potentially troublesome.

As Hillary keeps telling us, she and Bill have been talking policy since the day they were married; it’s part of what bonds them as a couple. But now that she’s running for president herself, and people want to understandably find out more about the nature of their policy talk (since, after all, their policy talk affected the nation in the ’90s and may well do so again), they’re invoking an expansive zone of privacy. Witness Bill’s abiding interest in safeguarding “communications between the President and First Lady.” Witness Hillary’s remark, during a Sept. 26 debate, that “I don’t talk about my private conversations with my husband.”

So the deal, for the ‘08 campaign, is that when Hillary touts her close collaboration with Bill, as part of what she calls her “35 years of experience,” she expects the voter to simply take it on faith and not sweat the details. Because those details are under lock and key.

Link to NYTimes article on Rudy’s visit to Davenport on 10/24/07

Rudy had some delays flying out of New York which made him over an hour late but I don’t think anyone left.

We counted at least 300 ppl (no matter what the media says) it was a very good talk and more good questions. A lady who ID’d herself as the President of a group against all torchure – I don’t know why that issue was questioned in two back to back Iowa Town Halls… But Rudy’s answer was good. (noted in detail in the link above)

WE are glad to see him back in Iowa – We had asked the field director to help organize a group pic of our Muscatine group with Rudy but since were missing two we told her to forget it for now, but she told me Rudy was coming back very soon, so we’ll try to do that then.

One of our Rudy group was on KWQC-TV live on the 6pm news, I’m trying to get a DVD of that and post it.

Check back for pictures soon – when I get them…

more media reports of the event below (note how the QCA reports 200 and the DM Register reports 300 – I’m saying over 300…)

Quad City Times report

Des Moines Register report

(and Rudy is back in Iowa on WEDNESDAY – in Davenport)

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/21/State/Gi…s_up_GOP_.shtml

Giuliani Peps Up GOP Rally

ORLANDO – The leading Republican presidential contenders lavished attention on Florida Saturday, a sharp contrast to their Democratic counterparts bypassing the state’s presidential primary.

“In 2000, you saved us from Al Gore. We’re going to need you in 2008 to save us from Hillary Clinton,” Rudy Giuliani said to roars from thousands of Republican activists gathered in Orlando. “And unlike the Democratic candidates, I’m not going to boycott Florida.”

The opening day of the Florida GOP’s “Presidency IV” weekend, which tonight features a Fox News debate, underscored some truths of this unusual election cycle:

-Nothing fires up Republican crowds this year better than uttering the words “Hillary Clinton.”

-America’s biggest battleground state plays a central role in the path to the GOP nomination.

-And it’s no fluke that Giuliani is the Florida front-runner. Even with moderate-to-liberal positions on hot-button social issues, the former New York mayor will be tough to topple.

Giuliani on Saturday was by far the most energetic speaker, revving up the crowd. Even skeptics left the Rosen Shingle Creek ballroom buzzing about Giuliani – that, and Fred Thompson’s anemic speech of less than five minutes.

“As Republicans we’ve been spoiled in the past by having candidates that we agreed with almost 100 percent of the time,” said Janice Torgersen, an undecided Republican from Tampa who acknowledged Giuliani’s past support for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control made her uneasy.

“But I want a candidate who can win. I want a candidate who has the fire in the belly. Rudy Giuliani showed that,” said Torgersen, president of the Tampa Republican Club.

Saturday offered a vivid reminder of the crosscurrents in this wide-open presidential primary.

In Washington, Republicans finished up a two-day effort to court religious conservatives at a “values voters” conference organized by the Family Research Council. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney narrowly beat former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in a nonbinding straw poll conducted there Saturday.

From there, some candidates descended on Orlando, where Republican Gov. Charlie Crist has emerged as one of the brightest lights in the national GOP, downplaying social issues and touting his “live and let live” philosophy.

Crist, already mentioned as a vice presidential prospect and uncommitted in the primary, told party regulars, “If we are able to put our problem solving over partisan politics, we will be more successful in our coming campaigns and the elections in the future.”

Florida’s Republican-led legislature moved the presidential primary from March to Jan. 29 to boost Florida’s influence in the nominating process, despite rules in both national parties barring states from setting elections earlier than Feb. 5.

The leading Democrats are boycotting Florida for all campaign activity except fundraising, and the national party has stripped the state of all its delegates to the national convention.

The Republican National Committee is threatening to cut Florida’s 114 delegates to the convention in half, but that has done nothing to diminish the attention its candidates are giving Florida.

“The general election is going to be decided right here. The nomination is going to be decided by Floridians,” said Romney, as people in the audience waved foam “Mitts.”

“And by the way, I think I’m the only person running for president on our side that has said if I’m the nominee, I will make sure all 114 Florida delegates get seated at that convention,” Romney said.

Only candidates who paid the Florida Republican Party $100,000 – Romney, Giuliani, Thompson and John McCain – were allowed to address the crowd Saturday. The others are expected in Orlando today for the nationally televised debate that starts at 8 p.m. on the Fox News Channel.

Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson are aggressively organizing in Florida, while McCain and the other underdogs concentrate their scarce resources on the earliest contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and, probably, Michigan.

“Florida becomes a momentum state where you lock in the nomination,” said Rick Davis, McCain’s national campaign manager. “The competition here is Rudy, and he has to show he can win something early before Florida, and I don’t know where he’s going to do that.”

Arizona Sen. McCain, peppering his remarks with jokes but showing little energy, told the crowd Republicans had lost their way in Washington.

“We lost the election in 2006 nationally because we let government get out of control,” McCain said. “We came to power in ‘94 to change government, and government changed us.”

Thompson has drawn considerable enthusiasm from Republicans looking for a strong, consistent conservative in the race, but he left many activists shaking their heads Saturday after speaking less than five minutes before halting suddenly.

“I was absolutely amazed at how short it was,” said Christine Smith of Tampa, another undecided Republican who scratched Thompson off her list Saturday. “As a candidate, you’d think you’d want to express your positions, and he didn’t even do that.”

Stephanie Slade, a 20-year-old University of Florida senior from Valrico, said she’s undecided but leaning away from Giuliani because she’s looking for a candidate whose demeanor is “more presidential.” Slade said that a candidate’s electability is very important. While she’s a “Charlie Crist” moderate, she said she understands that the nominee must play well to the more conservative side of the party.

“I think Romney, in particular, could do well in both the primary and the general, because while he’s playing the conservative now, I think, in his heart, he’s a moderate Republican,” Slade said.

Link to Powerlineblog and video of Rudy’s talk

National Review blog (not posted below)

The Hill – Link (not posted below)

The Politico – Link
(Below)

Giuliani says GOP must value inclusiveness
By: Mike Allen
October 20, 2007 10:22 AM EST

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, walking into a political lion’s den, told the year’s largest gathering of social conservatives that he is “not always the best example of faith” but that their similarities are much greater than their differences.

“Isn’t it better that I tell you what I really believe instead of changing all my positions?” Giuliani told an audience of 2,000 at the Family Research Council’s Values Voters Summit at a Washington hotel. “I believe trust is more important than 100 percent agreement.”

The audience, generally hostile to Giuliani, recognized the shot at former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and laughter and a few cheers spread across the room.

Giuliani pointed out that as New York mayor, he reduced murder, drugs, prostitution and other vices. “I don’t believe in inevitable decline,” he said, adding he shares President Ronald Reagan’s belief in optimism.

“You put Republican ideas into action … . We got results. Humbly, I would say, the best results anyone in that time got in government.”

“We drove pornography out of Times Square and other public spaces,” he said, drawing hearty applause. “The pornographers lost and they were driven out of Times Square.”

Instead of pandering to the group, Giuliani held his ground.

“We’ve got to find a way to be more inclusive,” Giuliani said. “Christianity is all about inclusiveness. It’s built around the most profound act of love in human history, isn’t it? … I’m running for president of the United States because I believe I can bring us together. Strong leadership can help us find common solutions to our problems.”

Giuliani drew laughter by saying he spends as little time in Washington as possible: “I’m afraid there’s something in the air here.”

“I’m not going to pretend that I can be all things to all people,” he declared. “I’m just not like that.”

But he added, in another dig at Romney, “ I’ll always be honest with you. …. You will always know where I stand.”

“You have absolutely nothing to fear from me,” Giuliani went on, adding that he was puzzled by those who make him out to be some kind of liberal activist: “Just read any New York Times editorial when I was mayor of New York City.” That got a big laugh.

Giuliani was speaking to one of the most conservative audiences in American politics. During a Christian worship service from the podium an hour before Giuliani spoke, leader Ron Freeman interspersed the praise hymn “Blessed be the name” with the hopeful wish:

“We’ve got the right Senate and the Congress!” The prayer included: “We’ve tried hard to make your agenda, our agenda.”

The former mayor, who left the stage grinning amid applause after his 40-minute speech, went for an authenticity contrast with Romney, substituting his law-and-order credentials for the family-values emphasis of Romney, a long-married father of five.

Giuliani paid obeisance to the group’s concerns by speaking at length about his support for school choice, home schooling, conservative judges and Israel. All drew earnest – even enthusiastic – applause. He also gave a detailed plan for reducing abortions and increasing adoptions, the meatiest policy element of his speech. It was the “everything but” approach – he could agree with the audience on almost everything except whether a woman should be able to choose an abortion, which he supports.

“You and I know I’m not a perfect person,” he said. “I pray for forgiveness, I pray for strength. … I feel my faith deeply, although perhaps more privately than others, because of the way I was brought up.” He said he had prayed to God at the toughest parts of his life.

“During our lives, at some time, all of us need forgiveness,” he added. “If we expect perfection from our political leaders, we’re just asking for disappointment … . We lose trust when they’re not honest with us. … I don’t always agree with myself! [Laughter] … You’ll always know where I stand … . I will continue to extend my hand to you. I hope you’ll take it.”

Giuliani showed humor, noting that he almost entered seminary: “I know that’s hard to believe.” Noting that he attended Catholic school, and said the first school he attended where a prayer wasn’t said at the beginning of the day was New York University School of Law. He said that on the first day, out of confusion, he made the sign of the cross. “I looked around an realized people were staring at me,” he joked.

update on issue #1

update on issue #2

LINK

October 19, 2007

The Media’s Dilemma

By Thomas Lifson

Rush Limbaugh’s political jiu-jitsu masterstroke comes to a climax at 1 PM, EDT today, when the ebay auction for the letter sent by 41 Senate Democrats to the CEO of his syndicator Clear Channel ends. With four hours left, the bid has already toppped two million dollars, with the purchase price to be donated to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, benefitting the education of children of deceased Marines and federal law enforcement personnel. Because Rush Limbaugh has offered to match the purchase price, the total donation will possibly exceed four million dollars.

The Mainstream Media have so far virtually* blacked out the story, but when the auction is over and a highly impressive sum is paid, will they continue to ignore it? After all, the auction of a grilled cheese sandwich claimed to display the image of the Virgin Mary fetched only $28,000 and received widespread publicity in the US and overseas. Someone paying a million bucks or more for a contemporary letter is pretty big news, even without the charity angle. And this is no food product bearing a resemblance to sacred art, this is a historic document signed by 80% of the majority caucus of what is commonly alleged to be the world’s greatest deliberative body.

Rush Limbaugh has outsmarted the Democratic Leadership of the Senate and cornered the media. If the media do not cover the auction results, they will look ridiculous. The letter is easy enough to explain that it will inevitably be discussed at water coolers, sports events, churches, parties, and other get-togethers. But if the media do cover it, they must include some explanation for the high price, and that will make Reid and the Democrats look silly or worse. Capitalizing on their rhetoric, the letter is to be delivered in an attaché case made by a company carrying the name Halliburton.*

In case your media diet does not include talk radio and the conservative commentariat, the backstory is fairly simple, which makes the auction all the harder to ignore.

The blowback from the “General Betray Us” MoveOn.org left the Democrats and their Soros-funded allies smarting, and they were anxious to demonstrate to their own supporters that conservatives behave reprehensively. Accordingly Media Matters (which Hillary bragged she “helped start” took out of context a phrase Rush Limbaugh spoke, “phony soldiers” and alleged he had smeared good patriotic American soldiers and veterans who disagree with him.

In an effort to promote the fabricated media storm and perhaps force change on Rush, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got 40 other Senate Democrats to sign a letter to Mark P. Mays, CEO of the syndicator of Rush’s show, calling on him to publicly repudiate Rush and to ask Mr. Limbaugh to apologize.

Instead of cowering, Mr. Mays turned the letter over to Rush, who came up with the brilliant plan to make the Democrats regret their hasty attempt to intimidate a private citizen who is their critic. Invoking the majesty of the United States Senate to intimidate a private citizen demonstrates a remarkable degree of self-absorption. A simple thought experiment:

What if Newt Gingrich, while he was Speaker, had enlisted 80% of the House majority as signatories of a letter to the CEO of General Electric asking Jack Welch to apologize for a sin of NBC News? Do you think Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman would have ignored it? How about CBS and ABC? There was no Media Matters back then, but fax machines were in widespread use. How long would it take for everyone to be pointing out that broadcasting is a regulated industry, and that the evil politicians were muzzling the free press?

Reid & Company never for a moment imagined that anyone would characterize their act as bullying a free press and possibly even raising First Amendment issues. Because Clear Channel hold many radio licenses from the federal government, it is very vulnerable to pressure from the government, and the words “chilling effect” do not seem outrageously out of place in evaluating the intended consequence of the Senate Majority Leader’s letter. Interviewed on Hannity & Colmes Thursday evening, Rush called the letter “neo-Stalinist.”

The letter is, in fact, an important historical document, representing an attempt to silence the single most prominent private citizen critic of the Democratic Party, written on official stationery of the Majority Leader of the United States Senate and bearing the signatures of the vast majority of his caucus, including the front-runner and other candidates for the Party’s presidential nomination. Should the purchaser be so-minded, it may someday be donated to the Smithsonian Institution, National Archives or some other nonprofit library or archive.

The mainstream media have taken a beating in viewership and readership and in credibility the past two decades that Rush Limbaugh has been on the air, and the Democrats are perpetually outraged that he dominates the entire medium of talk radio, while no liberal host has ever been able to mount a halfway comparable performance on the public airwaves.

Arrogance combined with the emotion of hate leads to dangerous mistakes. Reid and the media which gave initial credence to the Media Matters-generated smear of Rush have stepped in something whose smell may linger in the history of American politics.

Thomas Lifson is the editor and publisher of American Thinker.

LINK

An unlikely treasure-trove of donors for Clinton

The candidate’s unparalleled fundraising success relies largely on the least-affluent residents of New York’s Chinatown — some of whom can’t be tracked down.

By Peter Nicholas and Tom Hamburger
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 19, 2007

NEW YORK — Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door.

And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan bridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes.

All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate — Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton’s campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.

At this point in the presidential campaign cycle, Clinton has raised more money than any candidate in history. Those dishwashers, waiters and street stall hawkers are part of the reason. And Clinton’s success in gathering money from Chinatown’s least-affluent residents stems from a two-pronged strategy: mutually beneficial alliances with powerful groups, and appeals to the hopes and dreams of people now consigned to the margins.

Clinton has enlisted the aid of Chinese neighborhood associations, especially those representing recent immigrants from Fujian province. The organizations, at least one of which is a descendant of Chinatown criminal enterprises that engaged in gambling and human trafficking, exert enormous influence over immigrants. The associations help them with everything from protection against crime to obtaining green cards.

Many of Clinton’s Chinatown donors said they had contributed because leaders in neighborhood associations told them to. In some cases, donors said they felt pressure to give.

The other piece of the strategy involves holding out hope that, if Clinton becomes president, she will move quickly to reunite families and help illegal residents move toward citizenship. As New York’s junior senator, Clinton has expressed support for immigrants and greater family reunification. She is also benefiting from Chinese donors’ naive notions of what she could do in the White House.

Campaign concerns

As with other campaigns looking for dollars in unpromising places, the Clinton operation also has accepted what it later conceded were improper donations. At least one reported donor denies making a contribution. Another admitted to lacking the legal-resident status required for giving campaign money.

Clinton aides said they were concerned about some of the Chinatown contributions. “We have hundreds of thousands of donors. We are proud to have support from across New York and the country from many different communities,” campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said. “In this instance, our own compliance process flagged a number of questionable donations and took the appropriate steps to be sure they were legally given. In cases where we couldn’t confirm that, the money was returned.”

The Times examined the cases of more than 150 donors who provided checks to Clinton after fundraising events geared to the Chinese community. One-third of those donors could not be found using property, telephone or business records. Most have not registered to vote, according to public records.

And several dozen were described in financial reports as holding jobs — including dishwasher, server or chef — that would normally make it difficult to donate amounts ranging from $500 to the legal maximum of $2,300 per election.

Of 74 residents of New York’s Chinatown, Flushing, the Bronx or Brooklyn that The Times called or visited, only 24 could be reached for comment. Many said they gave to Clinton because they were instructed to do so by local association leaders. Some said they wanted help on immigration concerns. And several spoke of the pride they felt by being associated with a powerful figure such as Clinton.

New take, old game

Beyond what it reveals about present-day campaign fundraising, Chinatown’s newfound role in the 2008 election cycle marks another chapter in the centuries-old American saga of marginalized ethnic groups and newly arrived immigrants turning to politics to improve their lot.

In earlier times, New York politicians from William “Boss” Tweed to Fiorello LaGuardia gained power with the support of immigrants. So did politicians in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago and other big cities.

Like many who traveled this path, most of the Chinese reported as contributing to Clinton’s campaign have never voted. Many speak little or no English. Some seem to lead such ephemeral lives that neighbors say they’ve never heard of them.  

“This is a new game,” said Peter Kwong, a professor at Hunter College in New York who studies Chinatown communities across the country. Historically, Kwong said, “voting in Chinatown is so weak” that politicians did not go out of their way to court residents. “Today it is all about money,” he said.

The effort is especially pronounced among groups in the Fujianese community. More than a decade ago, Fujianese cultural associations ran gambling operations and, more ominously, at least one was home to a gang that trafficked in illegal Fujian native immigrants. The human-smuggling problem came to a head in 1993, when a cargo ship, the Golden Venture, ran aground off New York City.

As shocked police and immigration officials looked on, hundreds of Fujian natives who had spent weeks below deck struggled to make it to shore. Several died in the attempt.

A crackdown by the FBI’s organized-crime task force led to the indictment of more than 20 Fujian native traffickers. Today, the problem has substantially dissipated, says Konrad Motyka of the FBI’s New York field office, who participated in the investigation of the Golden Venture.

Although Motyka is wary of the havoc wreaked in the past by Fujianese organized crime, he said: “I welcome signs that the community is participating in politics.”

High hopes

At his tiny restaurant in the south Bronx, which has one table and a takeout counter, Chang Jian Lin displays a prized memento: a photo of himself and Clinton. The picture was taken at a fundraising banquet in Chinatown this spring.

Lin and his wife, who also works in the restaurant, said through an interpreter that they believe Clinton, if elected president, will reunite their family. The Lins’ two teenage children remain in Fujian, a mountainous coastal province in southeastern China opposite Taiwan.

“If she gets to be the president, we want our children to come home,” Chang Jian Lin said. Campaign officials point out that Clinton has sponsored legislation aimed at family reunification; the proposals failed. And immigration measures being discussed in Congress would assign a lower priority to family reunification, which tends to bring in poor people, and give preference to immigrants with more-lucrative job skills.

Moreover, the Lins appeared to have an exaggerated impression of a president’s ability to change such things as immigration laws single-handedly.

Kwong thinks Clinton may be “exploiting the vulnerabilities of recent immigrants.” Nonetheless, Lin is planning to attend another Clinton fundraiser, a birthday bash next week. He said his support rested on more than his hope for reuniting his family. “Besides the immigration issue with my kids, the overall standard of living will improve for the Chinese people” living in the U.S., he said.

He has never before supported a U.S. politician and, not yet a citizen, he is barred from voting. But when Fujianese community leaders asked him to donate to Clinton, he said, he eagerly contributed $1,000. Immigrants who have permanent resident status can legally make campaign contributions.

Coming up with the money was hard, Lin acknowledged, adding: “The restaurant is really small.”

Missing persons

The tenement at 44 Henry St. was listed in Clinton’s campaign reports as the home of Shu Fang Li, who reportedly gave $1,000.

In a recent visit, a man, apparently drunk, was asleep near the entrance to the neighboring beauty parlor, the Nice Hair Salon.

A tenant living in the apartment listed as Li’s address said through a translator that she had not heard of him, although she had lived there for the last 10 years. A man named Liang Zheng was listed as having contributed $1,000. The address given was a large apartment building on East 194th Street in the Bronx, but no one by that name could be located there.

Census figures for 2000 show the median family income for the area was less than $21,000. About 45% of the population was living below the poverty line, more than double the city average.

In the busy heart of East Broadway, beneath the Manhattan Bridge, is a building that is listed as the home of Sang Cheung Lee, also reported to have given $1,000. Trash was piled in the dimly lighted entrance hall. Neighbors said they knew of no one with Lee’s name there; they knocked on one another’s doors in a futile effort to find him. Salespeople at a store on Canal Street were similarly baffled when asked about Shih Kan Chang, listed as working there and having given $1,000. The store sells purses, jewelry and novelty Buddha statues. Employees said they had not heard of Chang.

Another listed donor, Yi Min Liu, said he did not make the $1,000 contribution in April that was reported in his name. He said he attended a banquet for Clinton but did not give her money.

Clinton “has done a lot for the Chinese community,” he said.

One New York man who said he enthusiastically donated $2,500 to Clinton doesn’t appear to be eligible to do so under federal election law. He said he came to the United States from China about two years ago and didn’t have a green card.

Out of the periphery

A key figure helping to secure Asian support for Clinton is a woman named Chung Seto, who came to this country as a child from Canton province and has supported Bill and Hillary Clinton since the 1990s. She called Fujian natives’ support for Hillary Clinton the beginning of civic engagement for an immigrant group that had long been on the periphery. She said she stationed translators at the entrance of one event to try to screen out improper contributions.

Qun Wu, a 37-year-old waiter at a Chinese restaurant in Flushing, saw a reference to a Clinton fundraiser in a Chinese-language newspaper. He took a day off from work to go. Though he only makes $500 a week, he considers his $1,000 donation to be money well-spent. He got his picture taken with Clinton, hung it prominently in his house, then had color reprints made and sent to family in China. “Every day I go home and see it,” he said. “I see my picture with Hillary, and I feel encouraged. It’s a great honor.”

Many, on the other hand, said they gave for reasons having more to do with the Chinese community than with Clinton. He Duan Zheng, who gave $1,000, said of the Fujianese community: “They informed us to go, so I went.

“Everybody was making a donation, so I did too,” he said. “Otherwise I would lose face.”

Rudy was in Muscatine today – we got what we asked for and what we needed. We can relax again, we did our job – for now. The event was on, then off, then on again – we just learned The Mayor’s arrival time late Sunday so we could actively start promoting the event – we had three days.We turned out 200 people on a rainy day to hear his message – in our opinion a roaring success.

Rudy spent mid-day in Des Moines, with Governor Perry of Texas, who just announced his support for Rudy. That was exciting and a big deal for the campaign. For a few minutes we thought Governor Perry was on the plane with Rudy to appear here but he headed back to Texas. Tommy Thompson’s support for Rudy will also be good for Iowa – I want to try to get Tommy to Muscatine in November, maybe early December.

At our event, about 100 people RSVP’d and another 100 were walk ins – it was standing room only which was our goal.

Rudy started his talk fairly slowly, in my opinion, tentatively. It was crowded, it was 5pm, rainy, and he just got off a plane 30 minutes ago driving into who knows what… Muscatine is a typical Iowa town whose active Republican base is Conservative. I am a moderate; with that, Rudy and I are a fit politically. Rudy is also the kind of President we need in these tough times.

Those who support Rudy need to continue to create momentum for this candidate, the only Republican that can win in 2008. Conservatives will not be disappointed in this man if he reaches the White House. I feel like our numbers are growing and our voices are attracting more attention.

Now we need to pull in other previously disenfranchised Republicans and Independents to join us.

The biggest applause he got related to discussions on the WOT and Immigration.

I’m not sure how important it is to write here about what he said, am hoping to post some video links and pictures as soon my friend emails them to me. And the news reports. That will be interesting. I think I will report on the reports, that will be more interesting.

I just watched the evening news, showing Mitt in Davenport and Rudy in Muscatine. (Mitt was 35 miles up the river)

The news report represented Muscatine well with Rudy, then an interview by our County Republican Women’s Group President adding a well positioned statement about the change in caucus dates. The Quad Cities area is more than 10 times larger in population than Muscatine and Rudy pulled the same number here as Mitt did in Davenport with two week’s notice and a postcard direct mail! Yes!

I will talk about the questions Rudy fielded – they were good.

A young “reporter” (maybe 8 years old) asked Rudy if he had any advantages over the other candidates and if he did would he explain them. (cute) Of course Rudy noted his experience running the 17th largest economy in the world – where Hillary, Barack, or John have not run a city, state or even a business – made a payroll – or truly understand they need to find revenue to pay for what they are talking about spending.

Another question was from an independent voter who some in our group thought was divisive, or a plant. I thought his question was fair, and was based on what we’re fed by the Main stream media. He asked, as an independent, why would he support either party when Republicans don’t think they’ve done anything wrong in Iraq and Democrats think we should pull out. He also wanted Rudy to relate the importance of finding Osama Bin Laden versus the fight in Iraq. Rudy spent a lot of time on this question, taking us through where we would be today if we had not deposed Saddam Hussein. Two very strong ME countries in IRAQ and IRAN – a very bad situation. He also quickly said, even the President has said mistakes have been made. No war is perfect. “I don’t think any Republican has said there have been no mistakes made in Iraq – but we did the right thing removing Saddam.”

The final question was on the CIA and torture. Would he ban it. Rudy had some great points on that issue 1) He couldn’t really speak to the issue today, because what goes on is top secret 2) We need a strong CIA and President Clinton gutted not only the military but the CIA during his administration 3) generally speaking he didn’t feel from the limited amount he’s read on the issue – what we do to protect ourselves and getting answers could be considered torchure… “The CIA is filled with honorable and patriotic citizens who are working to keep us safe.” But he wisely deflected the issue, as he has no real way of knowing what’s going on at this point and he should not know. We should not know.

We got some time with Rudy before the press, and one of our group told Rudy to tell Judith she did great on the interview and she really admires what she’s done with her life and that is from one single mother to another. Rudy stopped writing and told her, “thank you very much I will be certain to tell her that” with a look that almost made us think he was reaching for his phone…

The questions were good. The answers were better. Now back to work, building our base for the caucus and beyond.

Addition #1

The number of converts are building by the day… A comment from a member of our County Rudy Group indicated she loved Rudy’s statement about the changes in Texas, capping some damages on law suits. (Maybe this is something Gov. Perry talked about – sounds to me like it deserves a blog post of it’s own).

Rudy started by telling us many women have told him across the country they have to drive quite a bit to get see an OB/GYN.

What Rudy said was that the effect of this change was a 7% increase of Doctors practicing in Texas the first year. The Second year, there was a 30% increase in Doctors practicing in Texas. “At that rate, we’ll all be going to Texas for medical care!” Rudy concluded. I’ll get the details on that this weekend and post more.

Stay tuned for the full story – call if you want to attend.

Rudy and Judith on Hannity on 10/16 8PM CT Fox News.

a good Rudy article link and cartoons below:

National Review

Gen Sanches assails Bush
Bush Administration imcompetent
Ex Iraq forces commander rips US Leadership.

HMMMMMM….. read below.

not leading or talking much about these comments in the same speech eh?
can you define “cherry pick”?

LT. GEN. SANCHEZ: For some it seems that as long as you get a front-page story, there is little or no regard for the collateral damage that will be caused. Personal reputations sometimes have no value. They report with total impunity, and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct. Given the near instantaneous ability to report actions on the ground, the responsibility to accurately and truthfully report takes on an unprecedented importance. The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media, appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry.

LT. GEN. SANCHEZ: Once reported, your assessments become conventional wisdom and nearly impossible to change. Your unwillingness to accurately and prominently correct your mistakes and your agenda-driven biases sometimes contribute to this corrosive environment. All these challenges combined create a media environment that does a tremendous disservice to America, in some instances. Over the course of this war, tactically insignificant events have become strategic defeats for our country because of the tremendous power and impact of the media — and by extension, you individually, the journalists.

LT. GEN. SANCHEZ: What is clear to me is that you’re perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war, in some cases.

LT. GEN. SANCHEZ: My assessment is that your profession, to some extent, has strayed from these worthy ethical standards and have allowed external agendas to manipulate what the American public sees on TV, what they read in our newspapers, and what they see and read on the Web. For some of you, just like some of our politicians, the truth is of little to no value if it does not fit your own preconceived notions, biases, or agendas.

WASHINGTON – Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani will pick up the endorsement Friday of former GOP rival Tommy Thompson, a one-time Midwestern state governor.

“Rudy Giuliani has shown that he is a true leader. He can and will win the nomination and the presidency. He is America’s mayor, and during a period of time of great stress for this country he showed tremendous leadership,” Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor, said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.

The former New York mayor is to accept the endorsement in South Carolina later Friday.

Thompson is the first former 2008 Republican presidential candidate to endorse in the race, and officials familiar with details of the political courting involved said Giuliani’s top rivals also sought his support. But Thompson recently told Giuliani he’d get the nod after several weeks of conversations.

Thompson, the Health and Human Services secretary in President Bush’s first term, entered the crowded GOP presidential field early this year only to spend several months struggling to raise money and gain traction in early voting Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere. He was overshadowed by another, unrelated Thompson who was not even in the race at the time, but who was polling far stronger than the ex-governor, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson.

The lesser-known Thompson dropped out of the race in August after finishing sixth in an Iowa test vote measuring organization and popularity in the state that holds the leadoff caucuses.

Unclear is the impact of Thompson’s support for Giuliani. On one hand, Giuliani could use the endorsement to try to mollify skeptical Iowans and other Midwesterners who are concerned about his moderate-to-liberal stances on social issues, pointing out that a prominent Republican from their backyards is supporting him.

On the other hand, Thompson left the race because voters weren’t gravitating toward him and he doesn’t bring with him much support in early voting Iowa and elsewhere. He languished in single digits in polls there, and barely registered in national surveys while in the race.

LINKY

October 11, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Calvin Coolidge Redux

By GAIL COLLINS

Fred Thompson did great in that debate! He stayed upright the whole time! And he knew the name of the prime minister of Canada! No question, this man is ready to lead.

There the Republican presidential candidates were, debating in Michigan, the state with the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Its government is foundering in a sinkhole of disappearing revenues. Detroit is a shell of a once-great city. The good union jobs keep disappearing. The sense of betrayal, of loss and sadness, is everywhere.

And there was Fred Thompson, first up to the plate, offering hope to these particularly beleaguered Americans:

“I think there certainly are those in Michigan that are having difficulty. I think you always find that in a vibrant, dynamic economy. I think that not enough has been done to tell what some call the greatest story never told, and that is that we are enjoying a period of growth right now, and we should acknowledge what got us there and continue those same policies on into the future.”

Thank you so much for coming to Michigan, Senator Thompson. Loved you in “The Hunt for Red October.”

When you watch a bunch of presidential candidates on a stage, you are almost invariably looking at a bunch of very rich people. Some of them were born into privilege, like Mitt Romney and John McCain. Some had privilege thrust upon them, like Rudy Giuliani, who parlayed his 9/11 moment into an extraordinarily lucrative public speaking career and consulting business. Thompson rose from humble roots thanks to friends and one well-connected ex-wife.

Voters tend to admire wealth, and they certainly know that nobody gets to be a serious presidential candidate by picking a good mutual fund in a 401(k). They just want to be shown that despite all those chauffeurs, private planes, secretaries, housekeepers, nannies and personal assistants, you still understand what regular folks’ lives are like. Fail, and you wind up John Kerry.

But at least the Democrats who nominated Kerry did not imagine that they were choosing him for his down-home personality. What exactly is the point of Fred Thompson? He once got elected to the Senate by driving around Tennessee in a red truck (which, critics carped, he ditched as soon as he was out of sight of the last voter).

He persuaded people that his opponent was wrong when he claimed Thompson was nothing but a “Gucci-wearing, Lincoln-driving, Perrier-drinking, Grey Poupon-spreading millionaire Washington special interest lobbyist.” Of course, that was some time ago, and things have changed. Thompson is now a Gucci-wearing, Lincoln-driving, Perrier-drinking, Grey Poupon-spreading millionaire Washington special interest lobbyist and actor.

This week’s debate was Thompson’s first, and he had to share the stage with eight other guys, some of whom have barely bothered to drop in on New Hampshire or Iowa and have no support outside their immediate families. The next time you see a nine-way presidential debate, people, tell yourself: This is being broadcast by lily-livered poltroons who are afraid of offending Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter. If the networks cut out the people who have no supporters, no campaign donations and who spend less time on the road than the average Mister Softee vendor, they could finish in an hour with far less viewer slippage.

The main action in the Republican race is currently the squabbling between Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. At the debate, Romney tried to brand Giuliani as an enemy of the line-item veto. This is, of course, fatal in a party in which everybody quails in fear of the powerful right-to-veto lobby. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a good line-item veto fight. Not as exciting as the moment when John McCain laced into the Smoot-Hawley tariff, but quite the dust-up.

Standing next to the towering Thompson and Giuliani, who always looks a little strange and skeletal, Romney resembled the handsome prince in “Shrek.” Not exactly the most reliable character in the kingdom, but a truly great head of hair.

So there we are. Thanks to two hours of Republicans talking, Americans can now rest assured that Fred Thompson A) has all his marbles and B) is a terrible candidate. All actors, it seems, are not Ronald Reagan. Thompson not only isn’t charismatic, he doesn’t even seem pleasant. If Fred is a man of the people, I am Jennifer Lopez.

“People who play by the rules and work hard can expect to live the American dream,” he said sternly. “If they need help in this country, they get help. And those who can help themselves are expected to do so.”

I hope that’s clear. All you losers out there have obviously failed to play by the rules and work hard. Everybody who doesn’t own a house didn’t try hard enough to buy one. Stick to the program and you will have all the Guccis and Grey Poupon you need.

You’ve got to say this about Fred Thompson. He’s one hell of a tall candidate.

Link to article

Does the Media understand we are at WAR???

Qaeda Goes Dark After a U.S. Slip
Enemy Vanishes From Its Web Sites

BY ELI LAKE – Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 9, 2007

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/64163

WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda’s Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden’s September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy’s system.

The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden’s first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.

But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda’s internal security division that the organization’s Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda’s production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.

While intranets are usually based on servers in a discrete physical location, Obelisk is a series of sites all over the Web, often with fake names, in some cases sites that are not even known by their proprietors to have been hacked by Al Qaeda.

One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America’s Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda’s internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America’s intelligence community saw. “We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak,” the official said. “We lost an important keyhole into the enemy.”

By Friday evening, one of the key sets of sites in the Obelisk network, the Ekhlaas forum, was back on line. The Ekhlaas forum is a password-protected message board used by Qaeda for recruitment, propaganda dissemination, and as one of the entrance ways into Obelisk for those operatives whose user names are granted permission. Many of the other Obelisk sites are now offline and presumably moved to new secret locations on the World Wide Web.

The founder of a Web site known as clandestineradio.com, Nick Grace, tracked the shutdown of Qaeda’s Obelisk system in real time. “It was both unprecedented and chilling from the perspective of a Web techie. The discipline and coordination to take the entire system down involving multiple Web servers, hundreds of user names and passwords, is an astounding feat, especially that it was done within minutes,” Mr. Grace said yesterday.

The head of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors Jihadi Web sites and provides information to subscribers, Rita Katz, said she personally provided the video on September 7 to the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter.

Ms. Katz yesterday said, “We shared a copy of the transcript and the video with the U.S. government, to Michael Leiter, with the request specifically that it was important to keep the subject secret. Then the video was leaked out. An investigation into who downloaded the video from our server indicated that several computers with IP addresses were registered to government agencies.”

Yesterday a spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center, Carl Kropf, denied the accusation that it was responsible for the leak. “That’s just absolutely wrong. The allegation and the accusation that we did that is unfounded,” he said. The spokesman for the director of national intelligence, Ross Feinstein, yesterday also denied the leak allegation. “The intelligence community and the ODNI senior leadership did not leak this video to the media,” he said.

Ms. Katz said, “The government leak damaged our investigation into Al Qaeda’s network. Techniques and sources that took years to develop became ineffective. As a result of the leak Al Qaeda changed their methods.” Ms. Katz said she also lost potential revenue.

A former counterterrorism official, Roger Cressey, said, “If any of this was leaked for any reasons, especially political, that is just unconscionable.” Mr. Cressey added that the work that was lost by burrowing into Qaeda’s Internet system was far more valuable than any benefit that was gained by short-circuiting Osama bin Laden’s video to the public.

While Al Qaeda still uses human couriers to move its most important messages between senior leaders and what is known as a Hawala network of lenders throughout the world to move interest-free money, more and more of the organization’s communication happens in cyber space.

“While the traditional courier based networks can offer security and anonymity, the same can be had on the Internet. It is clear in recent years if you look at their information operations and explosion of Al Qaeda related Web sites and Web activities, the Internet has taken a primary role in their communications both externally and internally,” Mr. Grace said.

Don’t believe what you read or hear, just because you are told you should trust the source. Below is only a partial list of writers found to print incorrect or plagiarized information. Many of the names on this on this report should be familiar to you.

A good portion of these “errors” are simply sloppy writing or bad fact checking. But remember, reporting the truth is the job they are paid to do – their profession. They get caught and they’re famous? oh well, next story. pf

By Randall Hoven

Link to full story here

We are being fed false and misleading information, in matters big and small. It has come from trusted sources such as established newspapers, experienced journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners and Nobel Peace Prize winners. It has been going on for a long time, sometimes by carelessness and sometimes by deliberate lying. I have compiled a list of 101 such incidents.The Dishonest 101

• 1. ABC, Food Lion story (1992). Fraudulent techniques and probable fabrication. Two ABC producers lied on their resumes to get jobs at Food Lion. They each wore a wig hiding a tiny lipstick-sized camera, and each carried a concealed microphone. It’s possible they shot footage of mishandled food by doing the mishandling themselves. Food Lion sued ABC and a jury awarded it $5.5 million.
• 2. ABC 20/20, “Exploding Fords” story (1978). Staged footage. Similar to the later NBC “exploding” GM trucks episode, ABC aired “grossly misleading crash videos and simulations, withheld the same sorts of material facts about the tests, and relied on the same dubious experts with the same ties to the plaintiffs bar… viewers were shown a crash fire and explosion without being told it had been started by an incendiary device.”
• 3. ABC 20/20, “Buckwheat” (of the Little Rascals) story. (1990). Fell for hoax. “In 1990 the ABC program 20/20 was hoaxed into believing that Billy “Buckwheat” Thomas was alive and working as a grocery bagger in Tempe, Arizona. (Thomas actually died in 1980.) A segment broadcast October 5 with narrator Hugh Downs featured an impostor.”
• 4. AFP/Yahoo News, (2007). Fell for hoax/lie. Ran a picture with the caption “An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.” But the picture was of unfired cartridges, which could only have “hit her house” if they were thrown at it.
• 5. Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press (2005). Lying/fabricating. In his sports column, he described alumni players at a basketball game who were not even there.
• 6. Stephen Ambrose, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. He was almost a book “factory”, writing eight books in five years. But that apparently came easier when parts were copied from other books, without attribution.
• 7. Pham Xuan An, Time (1960’s). Communist spy reporter. Pham Xuan An was a “Viet Cong colonel who worked as a reporter for U.S. news organizations during the Vietnam War while also spying for the communists… He was the first Vietnamese to be a full-time staff correspondent for a major U.S. publication, working primarily for Time magazine… his job as a spy was to uncover and report the plans of the South Vietnamese and U.S. military… he was considered the best Vietnamese reporter in the press corps.” He died in Viet Nam in 2006, where he had been “promoted to major general and was named a Hero of the People’s Armed Forces, with four military-exploit medals.”
• 8. Peter Arnett, CNN, NBC, National Geographic (1999-2003). Lying, bias, treasonous behavior. CNN fired him in 1999 for his reporting the Operation Tailwind story (see below). NBC and National Geographic fired him in March 2003 for being interviewed on Iraqi TV during war, in which he stated that the U.S. war plan had failed. “It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war,” said NBC.
• 9. Associated Press, (AP) (2005). Fell for hoax and phony photo. The AP ran a story, with a photo, about a soldier held hostage in Iraq. The photo turned out to be that of an action figure doll; there was no such soldier.
• 10. Doug Bandow, columnist (2005). Failure to disclose potential conflict of interest. “The Copley News Service revealed it had suspended syndicated columnist Doug Bandow for allegedly accepting payments from Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write positive stories about Abramoff’s clients.” Bandow said, “It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it.”
• 11. Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe (1998). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. Totally made up stories, including one about a black kid and a white kid with cancer. Also used quotes from George Carlin as his own. Fired from the Boston Globe.
• 12. BBC, and many others in the looted National Museum of Iraq story (2003). False reporting. The BBC stated on April 12, 2003, that “The museum’s deputy director said looters had taken or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years. ‘They were worth billions of dollars… The Americans were supposed to protect the museum.’“ By May, the Telegraph (UK) was reporting “They now believe that the number of items taken was in the low thousands, and possibly hundreds.“
• 13. Scott Beauchamp, The New Republic (2007). Lying. TNR hired this U.S. Army private and husband of one of its own staff to write first-hand accounts from Iraq. One of his accounts, supposedly demonstrating the dehumanizing effects of the Iraq war on him and fellow soldiers, occurred in Kuwait before Beauchamp even entered Iraq. Other parts of his writing are likely false, and if not, constitute military crimes on his part. In fact, his anonymous writing from a war zone is likely against military rules. This story is currently unfolding.
• 14. Nada Behziz, The Bakersfield Californian (2005). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. Writing mostly on health issues, she plagiarized from the New York Times and AP, made up sources, and got basic facts wrong. An investigation counted 29 fabricated or plagiarized articles. She also lied on her resume. She was fired.
• 15. Michael Bellesiles, professor of history, author of Arming America and recipient of Columbia University’s Bancroft Prize. Lying/fabricating. He made “myth shattering” claims about the history of guns in America that were based on fabricated historical records. He resigned from Emory University.
• 16. Jayson Blair, The New York Times (2003). Lying/fabricating. He fabricated parts or all of at least 36 stories. He, along with his bosses Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, resigned from the NYT.
• 17. Doris Bloodsworth, Orlando Sentinel (2004). Lying, or reporting with no substantiation. “The Orlando Sentinel has run a lengthy correction for articles in 2002 and 2003 saying federal authorities had confirmed that a jailed Jordanian had advance knowledge of the World Trade Center attack. The actual source was a lawyer for the Jordanian, and even he says the information was unconfirmed. The Sentinel declined to name the reporter. It was Doris Bloodsworth, who resigned earlier this year after botching a story about an OxyContin patient who turned out to have had a cocaine conviction.” The Sentinel also ran a lengthy correction to Bloodworth’s OxyContin story.
• 18. Ron Borges, Boston Globe sports writer (2007). Plagiarism. The Globe suspended him for two months “after allegations that he had plagiarized a portion of a football column from another sportswriter.” He retired from the Globe when his suspension ended.
• 19. The Boston Globe, (2004). Fake photos, fake story. The Boston Globe published pictures alleging U.S. troops raped Iraqi women. The pictures turned out to be commercially available pornography.
• 20. Paul Bradley, Richmond Times-Dispatch (2006). Lying/fabricating. Made up his story on reactions to President Bush’s speech on immigration. He fabricated interviews. He reported on an event in the first person, yet he was not even in the same town. He was fired.
• 21. Rick Bragg, The New York Times (2003). “Drive-by” reporting. “Bragg’s defense — that it is common for Times correspondents to slip in and out of cities to ‘get the dateline’ while relying on the work of stringers, researchers, interns and clerks — has sparked more passionate disagreement than the clear-cut fraud and plagiarism committed by Blair. The issue, put starkly, is whether readers are being misled about how and where a story was reported.” He resigned.
• 22. Fox Butterfield, New York Times (2000). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. In 2003, a federal jury ruled that “the New York Times and one of its reporters libeled an Ohio Supreme Court justice” in an article published April 13, 2000. The jury found that the article was “not substantially true”. He also “had lifted material from a story in The Boston Globe while reporting, ironically, on plagiarism by a Boston University dean”.
• 23. Thom Calandra, Marketwatch.com (2005). Conflict of interest. He profited by selling stocks shortly after giving them positive write-ups in his newsletter. The SEC brought suit against him, which was settled.
• 24. Jimmy Carter, former U.S. President, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. Lying, plagiarism, bias. His book was so full of errors, including doctored maps, that his chief collaborator, Kenneth Stein of Emory University, resigned his position with the Carter Center. Carter’s book was condemned by Alan Dershowitz and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others.
• 25. CBS 60 Minutes, the “Runaway Audi” (1989). Fake footage/manufactured evidence. “… drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn’t see the drill or the pump — just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket. The story starred a mother who had run over her six-year-old son. On the air, she insisted that she had had her foot on the brake the whole time. When her $48 million claim came to court in Akron, Ohio, in June 1988 the investigating police officer and witnesses at the scene testified that after the accident the distraught mother had admitted that her foot had slipped off the brake. The jury found no defect in the car.”
• 26. CBS 60 Minutes, Illinois Power story (1979). Erroneous reporting. “The next day, the company’s stock fell in the busiest trading day of its history. Illinois Power replied quickly to the story, however, producing a 44-minute videotape that served as a rebuttal to the show. The company sent it to customers, shareholders and investors, corporate executives and other journalists. It was a point-by-point reply to all of the assertions made on the show. In January 1980, CBS admitted to inaccuracies in the story.”
• 27. CBS 60 Minutes, another phony Vietnam vet story (1995). Fell for hoax/lie. Largely because of this 60 Minutes piece that painted Joe Yandle as a troubled Viet Nam combat veteran, his prison sentence was commuted. In a follow-up story, Mike Wallace interviewed Yandle who admitted he had never served in Vietnam. A host of other phony combat veterans are uncovered here
• 28. CBS, Dan Rather, The Wall Within (1988). Fell for hoax, liars. This documentary had Dan Rather interviewing six Viet Nam veterans who told stories of slaughter, cruelty and the horrors of war. “You’re telling me that you went into the village, killed people, burned part of the village, then made it appear that the other side had done this?” Rather asked. “Yeah. It was kill VC, and I was good at what I did.” It turned out that five of the six were never in the service at all, and the sixth, who claimed to be a Navy SEAL, was an equipment repairman and never near combat.
• 29. CBS, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, (2004). Fell for fake documents. CBS used forged documents from a non-credible source in claiming George W. Bush received favored treatment in the Air National Guard.
• 30. Chris Cecil, Cartersville Daily News (2005). Plagiarism. “The associate managing editor of a small Georgia newspaper was fired for plagiarizing articles by a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald, including copying a passage about his mother’s battle with cancer. Chris Cecil, 28, was fired from The Daily Tribune News of Cartersville on Thursday after the Herald pointed out six to eight columns written since March that contained portions from work by Leonard Pitts Jr.”
• 31. Philip Chien, Wired News (2006). Lying/fabricating. He made up sources and quotes in at least three articles. Wired withdrew the stories.
• 32. Ward Churchill, Chairman of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. Lying and plagiarism. He lied about his credentials and ethnic background to get a job in the first place. His “research” was laden with fabricated evidence, plagiarism and referencing his own previous writings under pseudonyms. He is worthy of Mary McCarthy’s quote about Lillian Hellman: “Every word (s)he writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” He was fired.
• 33. CNN, Operation Tailwind, CNN NewsStand (1998). Lying/fabricating. The televised special claimed that the U.S. military used nerve gas in a mission to kill American defectors in Laos during the Vietnam War, but the story had no factual support. CNN later retracted the story.
• 34. CNN and Eason Jordan,(2003). Admitted bias, slanting the news. Eason Jordan, CNN’s news chief, admitted that CNN withheld reporting on Saddam Hussein’s atrocities so as to continue getting favored treatment from Saddam.
• 35. Consumer Reports, Suzuki Samurai rollover story. (1988) False reporting. After CR reported that the Samurai “easily rolls over in turns”, Samurai sales plummeted. Suzuki sued Consumers Union, parent of Consumer Reports, and the suit was settled in 1999, with CU admitting that “Samurai’s real world rollover accident performance was within a range with other utility vehicles” and that “National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and others have criticized the CU tests.”
• 36. Janet Cooke, Washington Post (1980-1981), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying/fabricating. Her series on “Jimmy’s World” about an 8-year-old heroin addict was totally made up.
• 37. Katie Couric, “Katie Couric’s Notebook,” CBSNews.com (2007). Plagiarism. In the first place, her blog is largely written by someone else. That someone else copied material from The Wall Street Journal, without attribution.
• 38. The Daily Egyptian, (2005). Fell for hoax. This student newspaper wrote a series about the family of a soldier in Iraq who subsequently died, except that the whole thing was made up.
• 39. Alexis Debat, ABC and Politique Internationale (2007). Lied. “Since 2002, [ABC] has employed Debat as a counterterrorism consultant and sometimes reporter.” He “had faked an interview with Sen. Barack Obama that he published under his name in a French journal, Politique International [and] had published other alleged interviews in the same journal with Sen. Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. It turns out, ABC itself later reported, the interviews were apparently fabricated.”
• 40. Allan Detrich, The Toledo Blade (2007). Doctored photos. He submitted 79 photographs that were altered. “The changes Mr. Detrich made included erasing people, tree limbs, utility poles, electrical wires, electrical outlets, and other background elements from photographs. In other cases, he added elements such as tree branches and shrubbery.” He resigned.
• 41. Maureen Dowd, New York Times (2003). Serious misquoting. She cut words out of one of President Bush’s statements, using quotation marks, to imply he said al-Qaida is no longer a problem. He was really referring only to those who were dead or captured.
• 42. Stephen Dunphy, Seattle Times associate editor and business columnist (2004). Plagiarism. He used significant quotes (e.g., seven paragraphs at a time) from other sources on multiple occasions. He resigned.
• 43. Walter Duranty, The New York Times (1930s), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying. This man visited Stalin’s Russia and wrote that nothing untoward was happening there — no famine, etc. In fact, up to 10 million people died in the Ukraine famine. His writings matched Russian propaganda almost exactly. His Pulitzer Prize still stands.
• 44. Joseph Ellis, professor at Mount Holyoke College and historian/author (2001), Pulitzer Prize winner. Lying. He falsely claimed military service in Vietnam and incorporated his war “experiences” into his college courses on “The Vietnam War and American Culture”. Mount Holyoke censured him and suspended him without pay for one year.
• 45. Diana Griego Erwin, Sacramento Bee (2005). Lying/fabricating. The Bee was “unable to verify the existence of 43 people she named in her columns”. She resigned.
• 46. Hassan Fattah, New York Times (2006). Fell for a hoax. Did a front page story about the man in one of the famous Abu Ghraib photos. But it turned out that the man who claimed to be the one in the picture, who provided details for the story, was not the one in the picture at all.
• 47. James Forlong, Sky News (2003). Fake story, fake footage. He presented footage from a missile test as actual combat in Iraq. He subsequently committed suicide.
• 48. Jay Forman, Slate (2001). Fake story. He wrote an article describing the fictitious sport of Monkey Fishing as real. Slate later published an apology and admitted details were fictitious.
• 49. James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, Oprah Book Club. Lying. Virtually the entire “nonfiction memoir” of his vomit-caked years as an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal was fabricated.
• 50. Michael Fumento, syndicated columnist and author (2006). Failure to disclose potential conflict of interest. He failed to disclose that Monsanto gave money to the Hudson Institute, where Fumento was a fellow, when he wrote articles mentioning Monsanto. Scripps-Howard News Service severed ties with him.
• 51. Michael Gallagher, The Cincinnati Enquirer (1998). Information theft. “Mike Gallagher had illegally tapped into Chiquita’s voice mail system and used information he obtained as a result in stories questioning Chiquita’s business practices in Latin America.” The paper agreed to pay Chiquita Brands International over $10 million and run an apology on the front page three times.
• 52. Andrew Gilligan, BBC (2004). False/unsubstantiated reporting. He reported that the UK government had exaggerated the threat by Saddam to justify going to war. His report was largely based on an interview with weapons expert David Kelly. His story was found to be “defective” and his claims “unfounded” by Lord Hutton’s investigation. Gilligan resigned and Kelly committed suicide.
• 53. Stephen Glass, The New Republic (1998). Lying. “Glass, a 25-year-old rising star at The New Republic, wrote dozens of high-profile articles for a number of national publications in which he made things up… he made up people, places and events. He made up organizations and quotations. Sometimes, he made up entire articles. And to back it all up, he created fake notes, fake voicemails, fake faxes, even a fake Web site – whatever it took to deceive his editors, not to mention hundreds of thousands of readers.” He was fired.
• 54. Jacqueline Gonzalez, San Antonio Express News (2007). Plagiarism. She admitted “she used, without attribution, information from a Web site for a Christmas Day column. Later research uncovered further examples of plagiarism in two other columns.”
• 55. Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian/author (2002). Plagiarism. Large portions of her book, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, were lifted from multiple other sources without attribution. She took a leave of absence from PBS.
• 56. Linda Gorov, The Boston Globe Super Bowl spouse abuse story (1993). Lying or falling for hoax. Gorov reported that wife abuse increases dramatically during the Super Bowl, following a narrative started by a coalition of women’s groups. The Washington Post can be credited with investigating, and found that the sources for the original story evaporated under scrutiny, and that reports from women’s shelters showed no increase in cases during Super Bowl, in direct contradiction of Gorov’s story.
• 57. Adnan Hajj, Reuters (2006). Doctored photos. He doctored dozens of pictures of the 2006 Lebanon-Israel conflict. Reuters later withdrew all 920 of his photos from sale. (See more on middle east “fauxtography”, including blog-famous “Wailing Woman” or “Flat Fatima”, “Islamic Rage Boy”, “Green Helmet Guy”, “Mickey Mouse” rubble, Israeli “missile” hole in ambulance, dead guy walking, etc., here
• 58. Alex Haley, (1977) , Pulitzer Prize winning author of Roots. Plagiarism. He settled a lawsuit for $650,000, admitting that large passages of Roots were copied from the book The African by Harold Courlander.
• 59. Mark Halperin, ABC News (2004). Admitted bias. He wrote a memo to news staff telling them to hold George Bush to a stricter standard than John Kerry: “Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and makes] mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win. We have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable to the public interest, but that doesn’t mean we reflexively and artificially hold both sides ‘equally’ accountable when the facts don’t warrant that.”
• 60. Jack Hitt, New York Times (2006). Lying, or at least really sloppy research. He wrote a story about a woman in El Salvador who was sentenced to prison for having an abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant. It turned out that “her child was carried to term, was born alive and died in its first minutes of life.” In short, her crime was infanticide, not abortion.
• 61. Houston Chronicle, Light Rail Controversy (2002). Admitted bias. An internal memo outlined how the paper would promote the light rail project in Houston and do research into Tom Delay and other light rail opponents. That would be creating the news rather than reporting it.
• 62. Michael Isikoff, Newsweek (2005). False/unsubstantiated reporting. The Newsweek article claimed that a U.S. interrogator at a Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet (2005). “Anti-U.S. fanatics seized on the report to stir up riots that have left more than a dozen people dead in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” There is no evidence such a thing ever happened, and most of us wonder how it would even be possible.
• 63. Eason Jordan, CNN (2005). False accusations. He accused U.S. forces in Iraq of deliberately targeting and killing journalists. He apologized and resigned.
• 64. Jack Kelley , USA Today (2004). Lying. USA Today concluded of “the star” of its news staff: “Jack Kelley’s dishonest reporting dates back at least as far as 1991.”
• 65. Martin Luther King, Doctor of Theology, Nobel Peace Prize winner (1950’s). Plagiarism. Parts of his PhD thesis were plagiarized. A Boston University committee found that he was “responsible for knowingly misappropriating the borrowed materials that he failed to cite or to cite adequately… that is a straightforward breach of academic norms and that constitutes plagiarism as commonly understood.” The committee chairman added, “under no circumstances would the atmosphere under which he did his work condone what Dr. King did. It’s incredible. He was not unaware of the correct procedure. This wasn’t just done out of ignorance.” His degree was not revoked, but the university did attach a letter to his dissertation explaining the plagiarism.
• 66. Lewis Lapham, Harper’s (2004). Lying. Reported on the Republican National Convention before it happened, then justified himself. He was caught “describing events from this year’s Republican National Convention before it convened.” When caught, Lapham “both apologized for the fictionalizing, calling it a ‘mistake … a serious one” and a ‘mix up,’ and defended it as ‘rhetorical invention’ and ‘poetic license.’”
• 67. Jason Leopold, Salon, Dow Jones, Truthout.org (2002-2006). Lying. Leopold “was caught making stuff up in a 2002 Salon.com article, self-admittedly ‘getting it completely wrong’ in pieces for Dow Jones, and had his own memoir canceled because of concerns over the accuracy of quotations.” In 2006 he reported that Karl Rove was indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald, when he wasn’t. He was fired from multiple organizations.
• 68. Dennis Love, Sacramento Bee (2001). Fabrication and plagiarism. “The Sacramento Bee fired Love for plagiarizing and fabricating material in his stories on the presidential campaign.”
• 69. Jesse MacBeth, anti-war star (2006). Lying/fabricating. “Jesse MacBeth stoked opposition to the Iraq war in 2006 when he spoke out about atrocities he committed as a U.S. Army Ranger serving as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. MacBeth, 23, of Tacoma, claimed to have killed more than 200 people, many at close range, some as they prayed in a mosque. He spoke at an anti-war rally in Tacoma and appeared in a 20-minute anti-war video that circulated widely on the Internet. Trouble is, none of MacBeth’s claims was true.”
• 70. Herbert L. Matthews , New York Times (1957-60’s). Liar or fool; the Walter Duranty of Castro’s Cuba. “Matthews’ flat declaration that Castro was an anti-communist would, of course, come back to haunt him. And though that was the most extreme example of the extraordinary credulousness with which Matthews treated Castro’s claims, it is by no means the only one. Bluntly put, virtually everything in Matthews’ story is a lie.“
• 71. Rigoberta Menchu, author of I, Rigoberta (1983), Nobel Peace Prize winner (1992). Lying/fabricating. She claimed her autobiographical book “is the story of all poor Guatemalans. My personal experience is the reality of a whole people.” However, “Menchú augmented her own story with that of the Indians of Guatemala generally, reporting experiences she either did not have or could not have witnessed and misrepresenting the violent history of her area of Guatemala to support her own cause as a Guatemalan guerrilla organizer.”
• 72. Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher (2006). Lying. He admitted to fabricating a story in his younger reporting days.
• 73. Bob Morris, Orlando Sentinel (1993). Plagiarism. “The Sentinel discovered that Morris had written a column for the paper in October 1993 that was essentially the same as one published eleven years earlier by Mike Harden… Punishment was moot since Morris was no longer on the Sentinel staff. But the paper published an apology to its readers and made a cash settlement to Harden.”
• 74. National Geographic, and paleontologists, (1999). Fell for hoax. Philip J. Currie and other paleontologists “announced the discovery of Archaeoraptor at a press conference in Washington, D.C., at the National Geographic Society” in October 1999 (SN: 11/20/99, p. 328). “At the time, they called it a missing link between birds and dinosaurs.” Later, “red-faced and downhearted, paleontologists are growing convinced that they have been snookered by a bit of fossil fakery from China. The ‘feathered dinosaur’ specimen that they recently unveiled to much fanfare apparently combines the tail of a dinosaur with the body of a bird, they say.”
• 75. NBC, Waiting to Explode segment on Dateline NBC (1992). Faking evidence and footage. NBC demonstrated the explosive danger of GM trucks’ gas tanks by showing one actually explode in what appeared to be normal circumstances. “NBC said the truck’s gas tank had ruptured, yet an X ray showed it hadn’t; NBC consultants set off explosive miniature rockets beneath the truck split seconds before the crash — yet no one told the viewers.”
• 76. New Orleans Times-Picayune, and many other newspapers reported rumors, hoaxes and lies related to hurricane Katrina. The NOTP came clean and critiqued itself and others who “… described inflated body counts, unverified ‘rapes’, and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of ‘scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans’ top officials’.” Also see Popular Mechanics for a refutation of Katrina myths.
• 77. Christopher Newton, Associated Press (2002). Lying. “The Associated Press accused Washington bureau reporter Christopher Newton of journalistic fraud last month and sacked him. The AP alleges that in at least 40 of the many hundred stories Newton wrote for the wire service between Jan. 13, 2000, and Sept. 8, 2002, Newton quoted sources who appear not to exist.”
• 78. NPR, CNN, and others on the “Jenin massacre” (2002). Lying. CNN reported: “There’s almost a massacre now taking place in Jenin. Helicopter gun ships are throwing missiles at one square kilometer packed with almost 15,000 people in a refugee camp . . . This is a war crime, clear war crime.” However, the actual “death toll was 56 Palestinians, the majority of them combatants, and 23 Israeli soldiers.”
• 79. Michael Olesker, Baltimore Sun (2006). Plagiarism. “Veteran Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker, who has been in a high-profile feud with Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, was dismissed yesterday over several instances in which he used, without attribution, wording similar to that employed by other journalists.”
• 80. Ken Powers, sportswriter for The Telegram & Gazette (2005). Plagiarism. Powers “was fired on Thursday after an investigation determined that he had not only plagiarized parts of a recent column from a Sports Illustrated writer, but had borrowed from other writers in the past without proper attribution.”
• 81. Reuters, Lebanon coverage (2006). Fake/staged photos.A burning tire dump as the scene of an Israeli bombing, Photoshopped bomb smoke, etc. during the Lebanon-Israel conflict.
• 82. Reuters, Russia’s North Pole coverage (2007). More fake photos/footage. “Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic.” The mistake was caught by a 13-year-old Finnish boy.
• 83. Bart Ripp, Tacoma News Tribune (2004). Lying food critic. “Ripp took food for free and made up fake interviews… The Tacoma News Tribune admits its restaurant critic messed up. They believe Ripp lied and that he made up at least 25 sources he quoted in his articles.” Ripp quit when confronted.
• 84. Tim Ryan, Honolulu Star-Bulletin (2006). Plagiarism. This entertainment reporter wrote multiple articles with words lifted from other sources without attribution. He was fired.
• 85. Mirthala Salinas, anchor for Emmy Award winning newscast on KVEA-TV in Los Angeles (2007). Conflict of interest. She was having an affair with LA’s mayor while reporting on him. “Telemundo and Mirtha Salinas have mutually agreed to end our employment relationship effective October 1,” station spokesman Victor M. Franco said.
• 86. Uli Schmetzer, Chicago Tribune (2004). Lying. “The Chicago Tribune said Wednesday it fired a freelance writer and former longtime foreign correspondent for the newspaper after he admitted fabricating the name of a source he quoted making disparaging remarks about Aborigines in a recent story from Australia.”
• 87. Ruth Shalit, The New Republic (1995). Lying/fabricating and plagiarism. She was fired.
• 88. Gail Sheehy author (1976). Plagiarism. “Manhattan Journalist Gail Sheehy, in preparing her 1976 bestseller Passages, borrowed enough from [UCLA Psychiatrist Roger] Gould’s unpublished research that the psychiatrist sued for plagiarism. The suit was settled out of court, with Gould receiving $10,000 and 10% of Sheehy’s royalties.”
• 89. Eric Slater, Los Angeles Times (2005). Inaccuracy and plagiarism. “The LA Times ran a lengthy Editor’s Note that outlines the inaccuracies, ‘substandard’ reporting methods and unverifiable quotes in two stories by reporter Eric Slater.” He was fired.
• 90. Patricia Smith, Boston Globe (1998), Pulitzer Prize finalist. Lying/fabricating “An award-winning metro columnist for The Boston Globe resigned Thursday after being asked to leave by the paper’s editor, who said she admitted to fabricating people and quotes in four columns this year.” attributed quotes to people who didn’t exist.”
• 91. Barbara Stewart, Boston Globe (2005). Lying/fabricating. “The Boston Globe acknowledged yesterday publishing a partially fabricated story by a freelance reporter about a Canadian seal hunt that had not taken place.”
• 92. Evan Thomas, Newsweek (2004). Admitted bias. Thomas said, “Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. … They’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and there’s going to be this glow about them … that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.”
• 93. Nina Totenberg, The National Observer (1972). Plagiarism. She was fired by The National Observer for plagiarism. “Totenberg had allegedly lifted several paragraphs from a Washington Post story and dropped them into a piece she was writing about former House Speaker Tip O’Neill for the now-defunct National Observer.” She is currently legal correspondent for NPR.
• 94. Jim Van Vliet, Sacramento Bee (2005). Misrepresentation and plagiarism. “The reporter watched the game on television at a location away from the stadium. He filed his story without telling editors at The Bee his true location, leaving the impression he covered the game from the ballpark. In addition, it was discovered later that the story included quotes from other media outlets that were unattributed and old, made to reporters on a previous occasion before the day of the game.” He no longer works there.
• 95. Brian Walski, The Los Angeles Times (2003). Doctored photos. The LA Times admitted that it “published a front-page photograph that had been altered in violation of Times policy.”
• 96. Washington Post (and others), “Plastic Turkey” story (2003). Lying or false reporting. The Post and a host of other media, including the New York Times, reported that President Bush was photographed with a plastic turkey rather than a real one when he visited troops in Iraq on Thanksgiving. The story was used to paint the White House as a public relations spin machine, with policy just as fake as the turkey. But in fact, the turkey was real. Multiple newspapers issued corrections.
• 97. Gary Webb, Pulitzer Prize winner, San Jose Mercury News (1996). Lying. He wrote the series of articles saying the CIA under President Reagan brought crack cocaine to Los Angeles. “Major parts of Webb’s reporting were later discredited by other newspaper investigations. An investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department found no evidence of a connection between the CIA and the drug traffickers. In 1997, then-Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos backed away from the series, saying ‘we fell short at every step of our process.’ Webb was transferred to one of the paper’s suburban bureaus.” He committed suicide in 2004, but remains a hero to many conspiracy theorists.
• 98. Armstrong Williams, TV show host and columnist (2004). Pay for play. He was paid by the Bush administration to promote Bush policies on his TV show and in his columns. He did so without disclosure. Unlike Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, he was paid directly for the content of his show and columns, not government brochures. Plus, his pay was much more significant: $241,000. He also settled a lawsuit with the government for failure to fulfill a contract.
• 99. Duff Wilson and Jonathan D. Glater, New York Times Duke Lacrosse reporting (2006). Flawed reporting. The NYT stories generally painted the prosecution as strong and the defense weak. As it turned out, the charges were dropped, the defendants completely vindicated and apologized to, and prosecutor Nifong was himself put in jail. The NYT’s own “public editor”, Byron Calame, stated “the article last August had left me concerned that Times journalists were not sufficiently skeptical in relying so heavily on the [prosecution investigator] Gottlieb notes.” Calame does assure us, however, that “most flaws flowed from journalistic lapses rather than ideological bias.”
• 100. Bob Wisehart, Sacramento Bee (1994). Plagiarism. “Sacramento Bee editor Gregory Favre fired TV columnist Bob Wisehart the second time he plagiarized. For the first offense, Wisehart got a five-month suspension even though his plagiarism involved hundreds of words taken from Stephen King’s book Danse Macabre for a television column about horror shows.”
• 101. Micah Wright., Author and anti-war activist (2003). Lying. Claimed to be a former U.S. Ranger and combat veteran. His book, You Back the Attack! We’ll Bomb Who We Want!, was endorsed by novelist Kurt Vonnegut and historian Howard Zinn. He was never in the military.

I’m posting this from a private board that I can’t link you to. It was a reply to a question I asked: why Giuliani and D’Amato don’t get along, and most especially why the Mayor endorsed Democrat Mario Cuomo for Governor in 1994 against the D’Amato friend Republican George Pataki. The answer was – NY Politics is crazy. Rudy thinks Senator D’Amato has an ethics problem. Here are the facts with supporting sources.

D’Amato made $37,000 in one day — a 200% return on his investment — on a 1993 stock trade.

This initial public offering was handled by Stratton Oakmont, a company whose principals were accused of manipulating stock prices in 1992 by the SEC, and whose founder, Jordan Belfort, is currently barred from the securities business by the SEC.

Stratton Oakmont executives contributed $13,000 in 1991 and 1992 to D’Amato’s campaign ($8,000 of which his campaign returned) and Belfort gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 1992 after the fraud case was filed against the company.

As the then-ranking Republican on (and now Chairman of) the Banking Committee, D’Amato oversees the securities industry and the SEC.

D’Amato claimed that he had a discretionary account at the firm but it was later revealed that the firm did not have discretionary accounts and that a D’Amato Senate staffer approved all trades.

Recently, Stratton Oakmont legally challenged the release of an SEC-appointed independent counsel’s report that dealt in part with D’Amato’s IPO — the report has yet to be released by the SEC. Source: Roll Call, 5/16/94; 5/23/94; 6/16/94; Newsday, 6/17/94; Washington Post, 12/9/94

D’Amato Orchestrated Bid-rigging HUD homes for family and political pals in Island Park, NY. In May 1995, Federal Judge Leo Glasser ruled that D’Amato’s hometown village of Island Park, NY, was guilty of bid-rigging and nepotism in awarding HUD-subsidized housing during the early 1980’s.

According to witnesses in the case, D’Amato (who was Hempstead Town Supervisor and a county supervisor at the time) orchestrated the awarding of housing to his cousin and long-time neighbor as well to other politically connected residents.

Judge Glasser noted that despite several attacks on witness Harold Scully’s credibility, no one had offered any supporting evidence to undercut the testimony (Scully had served as an Island Park village clerk and had worked as a D’Amato ally since the 1960’s when D’Amato was Island Park village attorney).

Recently, federal prosecutors asked the judge to reinstate close D’Amato ally and former HUD regional director, Geraldine McGann in the case. Source: New York Times, 5/19/95; Newsday, 2/26/95; 8/24/95

D’Amato’s HUD Scandal in Puerto Rico.

D’Amato consistently directed HUD grants to his campaign backers, including contributors in Puerto Rico, which D’Amato does not even represent. These backers included Eduardo Lopez Ballori (now under indictment for faking the source of his campaign gifts to D’Amato in order to avoid campaign gift limits) and Cleofe Rubi (who, along with his associates, contributed $18,000 to D’Amato one day in February 1987). Source: Newsday, 10/6/92; 9/17/89

D’Amato used senior officials he had personally placed inside HUD (Joe Monticciolo) to award grants to Long Island contractor JOBCO, whose executives have contributed at least $7,600 to his campaigns and whose legal counsel is Armand D’Amato. Grants D’Amato helped JOBCO receive include:

–$6 million in HUD grants to build luxury apartments in Sackets Harbor.
Source: NY. Newsday, 10/6/92; 9/17/89

–more than $4.6 million from White Plains to redevelop public housing. JOBCO’s bid for the project was initially rejected as too high, but the HUD official who owed his job to D’Amato began pressuring White Plains to accept JOBCO as the contractor. White Plains finally reversed its decision and accepted Jobco’s $600,000 bid. In five years following the contract award, the job went $4 million over cost and was more than three years late.
Source: Newsday, 7/29/89

–Island Park Pool. In 1988, D’Amato negotiated a deal with then HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce to provide $1 million to Island Park for a swimming pool. The justification for this deal was that the ocean pollution threatened the Island Park beach and would thus lead to a depression in property values. However, property values in Island Park were (and continue to be) very high, and residents had access to a public beach less than a mile away. After continued controversy, Island Park canceled the pool contract. Source: New York Times, 7/1/89

D’Amato Received Illegal Contributions from Mob Associate/Sweet ‘N Low Lobbyist.
Al D’Amato received $58,000 in illegal contribution from reputed mob associate and chief lobbyist for Sweet ‘N Low producer Cumberland Packing Corp., Joseph Asaro. In April 1995, Asaro pleaded guilty to 3 federal felony counts for making a total of $200,000 in illegal contributions and tampering with witnesses.

D’Amato has called Asaro “a friend”, “mentor”, and “benefactor.” Asaro illegally reimbursed friends’ contributions with fraudulent invoices by Cumberland. D’Amato was a key supporter of legislation which would prevent a ban on the carcinogenic saccharin (Sweet ‘N Low’s main ingredient). D’Amato sponsored legislation in 1987 proposing a 5-year moratorium, which in 1991 was extended through 1997. Source: Newsday, 4/13/95; NY Daily News, 4/13/95; NY Times, 4/13/95; AP 4/13/95; ABC’s “World News Tonight”, 4/12/95

D’Amato Was Accused of Illegal Fund Raising Methods.

Time magazine recently reported that Senator Al D’Amato’s staff solicited contributions from two lobbyists this year during conversations about pending legislation. One of the lobbyists said “It’s raw; it’s distasteful. Al’s guys reach through the phone and say we’re helping you, and you have to help us.” According to Time, lobbyists have charged for years that D’Amato and his staff use crude and even threatening fund-raising tactics, drawing explicit links between contributions and pending legislation in a way that’s prohibited by federal law. Source: Time, 9/11/95

Knight-Ridder reported lobbyists’ complaints about D’Amato’s use of illegal methods for soliciting contributions.

Two examples given include:

When a lobbyist told a D’Amato aide that his client’s business hadn’t been concluded, the aide told that lobbyist, “Well we haven’t seen a contribution from them.” After the lobbyist’s client sent D’Amato a $5,000 contribution, the business was favorably resolved.
After D’Amato met with a lobbyist in his Senate office, he took the lobbyist next door and introduced him to a fund raiser and left. According to the lobbyist, “He wanted me to help out on some fund-raising events Al was involved with.” Federal law prohibits members of Congress from promising a benefit made possible by an act of Congress as a reward for political support. They are also not allowed to solicit or receive contributions in a federal building. Source: Albany Times Union, 5/28/95

D’Amato Conducted Business “In an Improper and Inappropriate Manner” in Unisys Scandal. In 1986, Sperry (which later became Unisys) paid D’Amato’s brother, Armand, $120,500 to gain Senator D’Amato’s support in obtaining defense contracts for the company.

D’Amato’s Senate staff let Armand use the senator’s name and stationery to lobby successfully for more than $100 million worth of defense contracts. Unisys successfully won contracts to manufacture missile guidance systems that the Navy had already deemed obsolete and over-priced. Also, the Senator received illegal campaign contributions from Unisys, which federal prosecutors made him return in 1991.

The Senate Ethics Committee found that D’Amato “conducted the business of his office in an improper and inappropriate manner.” Armand D’Amato was convicted of fraud, although the conviction was later overturned. Source: Washington Post, 8/3/91; New York Times, 11/6/93; Newsday, 10/6/92

D’Amato Helped Wedtech Get Government Contracts After Illegal Contributions.

In the mid-1980’s, D’Amato accepted $30,000 in illegal campaign contributions from defense contractor Wedtech Corporation Vice President Mario Moreno while helping Wedtech win lucrative military contracts – including a $55 million contract for artificial harbors.

D’Amato also supported Wedtech Corporation in a dispute it had with the Army and loaned Moreno three staffers to help Wedtech’s cause. Moreno admitted the purpose of the illegal contributions was to get favors from D’Amato and his staff.
Source: New York Times, 5/11/88

Steamco Staff/Contribution Connections. Steamco was an engineering company hired by Wedtech for a $55 million subcontract for a navy pontoon project. This was the same Wedtech project for which the Senator had been lobbying the government. Steamco President James Johnson was a D’Amato contributor and hired former D’Amato Chief of Staff (1981-83) John Zagame as a consultant.

Zagame also got a $5,000 retainer from Wedtech to lobby the government, but said he returned the retainer when the procurement scandal broke.

Steamco only collected $1.5 million of the contract from Wedtech before going bankrupt.
Source: New York Daily News, 5/28/89

From 1981 – 1986, during the time D’Amato had direct oversight over the nation’s brokerage houses and investment-banking firms, he raised at least $500,000 from partners, executives and PACs of Wall Street firms. Source: Wall Street Journal, 9/25/86

In September 1985, D’Amato began sounding out Drexel and other companies on a draft bill to tighten regulation on corporate takeovers — including a provision that would have limited S&L’s purchases of junk bonds which Drexel strongly opposed.

When D’Amato introduced the bill on December 6, 1985, the provision was missing. Five days later, Drexel CEO Joseph and 35 other New York Drexel executives donated $500 each to D’Amato. D’Amato called the contributions “coincidental” because they came at a major New York fundraiser that raised over $1 million. Source: Wall Street Journal 9/25/86

In 1983, Al D’Amato was the only character witness at the trial of Philip Basile, who was eventually convicted of conspiring with the Luchese crime family to defraud the government by offering a no-show job to confessed Mafia underling Henry Hill. D’Amato called Basile a “honest, truthful, hardworking man, a man of integrity.”

D’Amato and members of his family have long ties to Basile — D’Amato had a victory party at one of Basile’s bars in 1980 and D’Amato’s brother, Armand, was Basile’s lawyer in 1980. D’Amato’s 1986 campaign accepted contributions from Basile and later returned them. Source: Newsday, 7/10/92; New York Times, 10/27/91; UPI, 2/16/84; UPI, 3/26/81

In 1991, Alphonso D’Arco — the former head of the Luchese crime family testified to the FBI and federal prosecutors that D’Amato had “contact” with a number of crime figures including: Colombo boss, Victor Orena, Luchese operatives Danny Cutaia, Frank Manzo, Philip Basile and Peter Vario, the son of the late Luchese captain, Paul Vario. Source: Newsday, 7/10/92

A convicted figure in the FBI’s Abscam Congressional bribery sting operation said in a taped conversation that D’Amato was “on the take.” In the March 1979 taped conversation, Alfred Carpentier told FBI agents posing as Arabs how to develop Mitchell Field, an abandoned Air Force base the government sold to Nassau County in 1961. Carpentier asserted that he could get to then Hempstead Supervisor D’Amato.

“The guy is on the take. If you want to give him something, we’ll weigh that when the time comes. You make your analysis based on what he’s giving us… [D'Amato] said you can develop the that whole goddamn thing. That whole thing comes to, like, a $240 million development. You can have any part of it or the best pieces, whatever you want.” No action was taken against D’Amato. Source: New York Times, 11/28/81

D’Amato pushed a $196 million courthouse for Central Islip, Long Island, through Congress. It will be the second-costliest new federal court in the nation. D’Amato handpicked the site.

The architect is a D’Amato fundraiser. Its construction will be overseen by a D’Amato appointee. Yet, another new courthouse is under construction just 40 miles to the west in Brooklyn. In early 1993 Vice President Gore’s reinventing government initiative placed the project on hold, but D’Amato and Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY) termed it “essential.”
Source: New York Daily News, 10/17/94

As Hempstead Town Supervisor, D’Amato deposited large sums of local tax monies, perhaps as much as $8 million, in a local bank account that earned no interest. The same bank later gave D’Amato an $80,000 campaign loan at 8 points below the prime lending rate. Source: The Village Voice , 10/8-14/90

D’Amato helped fundraiser’s company get government money. D’Amato used his position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to get a company to run his fundraiser for almost $80 million in government funding.

D’Amato fundraiser Harry Apkarian’s Mechanical Technology, Inc (MTI) had been receiving government funds to commercially develop the experimental Stirling engine designed to improve energy efficiency and save fuel since the early 1970’s. After OMB recommended dropping the program in 1982, MTI appealed to D’Amato, who helped the company continue to receive funding until 1989.
Source: Daily News 4/8/86

A late 1970’s grand jury implicated Al D’Amato and indicted his mentor, Nassau County Republican Chairman Joseph Margiotta, in a $678,000 insurance commission extortion scheme. Margiotta implied to Nassau County and Hempstead Town insurance agent Richard A Williams that he would lose his business if he did not pay the commissions. D’Amato approved the insurance brokers appointments by Margiotta. After two trials, Margiotta was convicted by federal prosecutor Edward Korman in 1981. Source: The Village Voice, 10/8-14/80; New York Times, 12/14/81

During the 1970’s, Hempstead Town Supervisor Al D’Amato approved government funding for a $78 million experimental incinerator ($135 million was ultimately paid). In 1980, Carl Landegger, the owner of the company that built the plant, handed D’Amato a blank check in the presence of witnesses and told him to fill in whatever amount his campaign needed. The plant emitted foul odors and high levels of dioxin, provoking complaints from the townspeople and forcing a shutdown in 1980. A new plant using more conventional technology was opened in 1986, boosting the total cost to $360 million. Source: Business Week, 7/17/78; LA Times, 2/31/91

Openness? Why hasn’t D’Amato released Ethics Committee testimony — nor had open hearings?

Although D’Amato has insisted on full disclosure in the Whitewater case, he has refused to make public his own 900-page testimony, sworn before the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991. Similarly, when the Senate Ethics Committee launched a 21-month investigation into allegations of influence-peddling by D’Amato, the hearings were closed.

In 1991, D’Amato five times evaded an interviewer’s question on whether the hearings should be public by saying it was “up to the committee.” When he was later asked to make his testimony public, D’Amato’s lawyer said that he didn’t have a copy of the transcript.

When asked in 1994 if he would release the Ethics Committee records, D’Amato said, “They have released a 17-page report…There are standard procedures….”

According to Ethics Committee rules, senators and witnesses may request permission from the committee to obtain their testimony and may also request permission to release it publicly. Following the investigation, the committee ruled D’Amato “had conducted the business of his office in an improper and inappropriate manner”. Source: Washington Post, 8/5/91; Roll Call, 4/25/94; ABC’s “PrimeTime Live”,5/2/91; Newsday, 10/11/92; NBC’s “Meet The Press”, 3/13/94

D’Amato also had regular meetings with John Gotti.

He also told Bush to drop Dick Cheney, and abandoned Bob Dole in his campaign for the presidency.

This is precious.   pf

Link

Brother, can you spare a CHIP? [Mark Steyn]

This would seem to be a fairly typical media trajectory. The Democrats sign up a sick kid to read their Saturday morning radio address. As Paul Krugman has observed, Bill Kristol, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of us heartless bastards on the right were no doubt too busy laughing to pay attention. But the respectable media were very taken by it:

President Bush, are you smarter than a seventh-grader?

Apparently not. Graeme Frost of Baltimore is 12 years old, a seventh-grader at the Park School, and he understands why children need health care and their parents need help paying for it. He explained it during a rebuttal to the president’s Saturday radio address. Yes, we know, Senate staffers wrote the speech for Graeme. That doesn’t take away from the message. Does anyone really think President Bush writes his own material?

Of course not. And nor does The Baltimore Sun, which did a nice fluffy soft-focus story typing out the Dems’ press release and not querying a word:

Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work.

If it ever occurred to Matthew Hay Brown, the Sun’s “reporter”, to look into just what kind of “woodworking” Mr Frost did, he managed to suppress the urge.

“icwhatudo” at Free Republic, however, showed rather more curiosity than the professional reporter paid to investigate the story and did a bit of Googling. Mr Frost, the “woodworker”, owns his own design company and the commercial property it operates from, part of which space he also rents out; they have a 3,000-sq-ft home on a street where a 2,000-sq-ft home recently sold for half a million dollars; he was able to afford to send two children simultaneously to a $20,000-a-year private school; his father and grandfather were successful New York designers and architects; etc. This is apparently the new definition of “working families”:

Had it not been for a federal health insurance program tailored for working families such as hers – ones lacking the income to purchase private health insurance – Frost is certain that she and her husband would be buried under a mound of unpaid medical bills… She and her husband have priced private health insurance, but they say it would cost them more per month than their mortgage – about $1,200 a month. Neither parent has health insurance through work.

Insureblog, also demonstrating more journalistic initiative than Mr Hay Brown, checked out that last bit:

A check of a quote engine for zip code 21250 (Baltimore) finds a plan for $641 with a $0 deductible and $20 doc copays.

Adding a deductible of $750 (does not apply to doc visits) drops the premium to $452. That’s almost a third of the price quoted in the article. Doesn’t anyone bother to check the facts?

But who needs facts when you’ve got the human-interest angle sewn up?

Bonnie Frost still can’t drive down the road where the accident occurred…

Bad things happen to good people, and they cause financial problems and tough choices. But, if this is the face of the “needy” in America, then no-one is not needy. And, if everyone needs assistance from the federal government, so be it. But I don’t think I want to drive down the road where Bonnie Frost wants to take us – because at the end of it there are no free-born citizens, just a nation where everyone is a ward of the state.

Below, find a fitting “end” summary of the Duke assult case that ended up with no case, a jailed prosecutor and yet unknown civil suits.  I’ve wandered to the conclusion over time and periods of severe paranoia, that many who spew media bias don’t even know they are doing it.  I don’t know yet how to parse or affect a reversal in this process other than to keep doing what I’m doing here – attempting to expose it for what it is – confusion, lack of cognative thought, or just plain sloppy journalism. 

These guys @ powerlineblog have fun friends and write good stuff, spend some time there.   pf

Link to story @ powerlineblog.com

October 2, 2007

William Katz remembers: Media mutters

William Katz has had a long and varied career, as an assistant to a U.S. senator; an officer in the CIA; an assistant to Herman Kahn, the nuclear war theorist; an editor at the New York Times Magazine; and a talent coordinator at The Tonight Show. He is the author of ten books, translated into 15 languages. He admits to degrees from the University of Chicago and Columbia. When I asked him if he’d ever written about his various careers, he said that he hadn’t but that he would be happy to do so. His reflections on his work for the Tonight Show are here and here. He took a look at the film industry in the posts “Hollywood, hurray for?” and “Hollywood, hurray for? The sequel.” His most recent post is “A tale of two speeches.” Today he writes:

The following is a secret transcript of a meeting held in the publisher’s office of a major newspaper. I can’t reveal which one. Let’s call it The New Amsterdam Chimes, whose motto is, “All our views that fit, we print.” The publisher is deep in thought with one of his top editors.

EDITOR: Sir, I need your okay on something.

PUBLISHER: Tell me.

EDITOR: You know the Duchess University case?

PUBLISHER: Of course. Three croquet players harassed the head of the Womyn’s Center at a tofu party.

EDITOR: That’s it.

PUBLISHER: The scum. Croquet always attracted that kind – rich white boys swingin’ their hammers. I loved the way Duchess went after them, those 88 professors who signed that statement…

EDITOR: Uh, sir, there’s been a reverse. The case collapsed. The boys didn’t do it.

PUBLISHER: Oh, come on. They’re jocks, they’re male, their parents love Bush, they did it.

EDITOR: Sir, I hate to break it to you, but they’ve been cleared. The D.A. faked the case. We want to correct our stories.

PUBLISHER: Why? So we can be pummeled to the pavement by the pontificating Power Line police?

EDITOR: Sir, it’s the right thing to do. We are The Chimes, the newspaper of record.

PUBLISHER: Not a chance. Look, okay, maybe we missed some details. Guilty, innocent, you can get them mixed up. But we ripped bare the croquet establishment. I’m very proud. I’m talking Pulitzer Prize.

EDITOR: But we were wrong.

PUBLISHER: There is no wrong. There’s only cultural difference.

Now, that meeting never took place. Let me rephrase that: I don’t think it took place. Let me rephrase it again: Hey, you never know.

And that’s the point. While the scene above is fiction, there are millions who think that something like it, with that point of view, could happen, and probably does. Sadly, the media provide ample fuel for their fears. Never, in my time, has trust in journalism been lower. More important, the kind of trust that’s dying is something new, and dangerous for democracy.

A few days ago Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University, finally apologized for Duke’s behavior in the rape/lacrosse case. The North Carolina bar has also acted, vigorously so, in punishing the behavior of the district attorney who brought the case, Michael B. Nifong.

That leaves one institution that remains silent over its sins in the Duke affair – the American media. In a recent Power Line post, Paul Mirengoff cited the fine new book, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, by Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson. The authors are especially critical of The New York Times, which replaced its original writer on the story with one allegedly more in tune with the politically correct line. That line convicted the three players without any real evidence.

All of us grew up with the cliché, “Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.” We knew the term, “yellow journalism,” which was not a valentine to accuracy. When I studied at the University of Chicago, the Chicago Tribune billed itself as “the world’s greatest newspaper.” Many dissented. And I recall when Newsweek, reacting to charges that Time was slanted, boasted that it “separates fact from opinion.” Cynics added, “…and they print the opinion.” We’ve always had sharp criticism of the media, and a loss of trust in specific publications or broadcasters.

The difference today, and it is stark, is a loss of trust in the calling of journalism itself. It is a belief – you read about it, you hear it at dinner tables — that the media no longer give us the news, but see its mission as changing us, influencing us in news pages, rebuilding the nation in its own image. I’ve written before in this space about the divergence of media and public that began in the sixties, a gulf widened by the influence of higher education on journalists. Add to that something called “the new journalism,” which also emerged in the sixties. Part of that doctrine argued that there was a “higher truth,” more vital than facts, that should govern the reporter’s work, and that this truth had to be spoken to power. Of course, not many advocates bothered asking why journalists were more adept than others at finding this truth, and why people in power were assumed to be bad.

I once interviewed Charles Kuralt, who did the CBS “On the Road” series. Kuralt traveled the country speaking to Americans, ordinary and not. I asked him to tell me the single greatest impression he’d gotten from his years of travel. Without hesitation he replied, “I’ve always been impressed at how well informed Americans are.” Kuralt was right. Yes, I know, there are these surveys that show Americans are short on calling up details, like the name of the chief justice. These surveys give aid and comfort to elitists who spend their lives being elite. But under the polls there’s a wisdom, an understanding, that journalists demean. The proof: Kuralt’s comments have more weight than any numbers, but note tracking polls during political campaigns. As soon as anything important happens, the polls move. Americans are watching. The great political scientist, V.O. Key, said it best: “Voters are not fools.” And the non-fools today sense that something is wrong in media that must be corrected.

In future posts, I’ll look back decades and try to define the things journalism must do to restore trust, to make sure that another Duke fiasco never occurs. In the meantime, let me recall a scene from the Rodgers and Hart musical, “Pal Joey,” circa 1940. An exotic dancer — ah, that term brings back the Duke saga — is performing her routine, and sings, “Zip — Walter Lippmann wasn’t brilliant today.” No, even the great columnist Lippmann wasn’t brilliant every day. And maybe journalists now should paste that dancer’s line over their desks, and say to themselves, as they begin work each morning, “I may not be brilliant today, and I may not be as brilliant as the readers I serve.” It’s not everything, but it’s a start. 

(not)

take this link and watch the video of the embarrassing Tom Harkin (D, IA)

or this or this

TOMMY!  look in the mirror before you cry about someone misrepresenting military service.

time for bed – ta!