Recently on the Public Radio program Open Source, Christopher Lydon did a show on Iraqi Kurdistan, or, as it’s PR campaign calls it, “the other Iraq”. You can listen to the show and read the show notes here on Radio Open Source. He interviewed Qubad Talabani, Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Representative to the United States and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, KRG Representative to the United Kingdom, and Peter Galbraith, former (and first) Ambassador to Croatia under Clinton, Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control, and Non-Proliferation Advisor to the KRG.

For some, it may be an eye-opening program. From the discussion of how Americans were indeed greeted as liberators, to the economic prosperity, to the lack of sectarian violence among the Sunni, Shia and Christian Kurds, this program should give pause to those saying we should get out of Iraq ASAP. In fact, both the Kurdish guests warned against a withdrawal too early. (Ambassador Galbraith, predictably, disagreed. More on that in a moment.)

The program was quite a departure from Lydon’s show’s usual fare. As is typical for public radio, the slate of guests is often slanted liberal, and many time 100% so. Lydon calls his show a “conversation”, but it usually is a monologue from the Left. To have a program extolling the good things that have come from the war (even if the host can’t bring himself to agree, insinuating that some of the responses sounded like “fantasy”) is equal time that has been sorely missing from the media at large. Kudos to Lydon and the PRI folks for finally, if really belatedly, bringing the news.

The cognitive dissonance was deafening when Peter Galbraith did disagree at the end of the show with the idea of staying in Iraq. Here were the very people he’s working to help asking for our continued help, and all he can do is shill for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid (by name) and say that, as she does, we need to get out of there because the Iraqi experiment has failed.

I’d ask him, and anyone else who said that the war in Iraq was and is a failure; what do you say to the Kurds? Were they and all other Iraqis not worth the effort to get rid of Hussein and his terror supporting and practicing regime? Just because some may not be handling freedom as well as we’d hoped, should we have left them all to the designs of the Ba’athists? If you blame the US for the violence in the south, are you prepared to credit the US for the peace and prosperity in the north?

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Kurdistan, Radio Open Source, Christopher Lydon, Qubad Talabani, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Peter Galbraith

In my hotel room watching the cable news morning shows (FNC’s “Fox & Friends” and CNN’s “American Morning”), I noticed that both were covering many of the same stories.

• The war in Iraq, specifically the new insurgent tactic of reducing suspicion by having kids in cars intended to be a car bomb.
• The issues surrounding the firing of the 8 US attorneys. Both networks had Democrats featured voicing their objections (Fox showed Chuck Shumer, CNN had Rahm Emmanuel).
• The recovery of the lost Boy Scout.

But as much as I looked for it (and I left CNN on longer to see if they would cover it), “American Morning” wouldn’t touch, as far as I could see, the upcoming testimony of Al Gore in front of Congress on global warming, specifically the unprecedented considerations and concessions being made for him and how he’s abusing them. I kept CNN on long enough to start hearing them repeat the same stories (how to eat healthy at Chinese restaurants), so they had plenty of time to deal with it.

If it’s legitimate to cover Democrats questioning why the President will only allow administration officials to testify without being under oath (and it is a legitimate question and a legitimate story), why ignore this other major story about a former Vice President testifying to Congress? Could it be because it doesn’t look good for Democrats or global warming alarmists when Gore ask for more time for his opening remarks than anyone else, and that he requested to submit the written version of those remarks 24 hours ahead of time instead of the customary 48, and that he hadn’t submitted them as of the morning of his appearance? (An update on the website linked notes that Gore finally submitted them just a minute before his testimony in the House and a few hours before his Senate appearance. Not in time to do any research on what he’ll be saying.)

Those, too, are legitimate questions about a legitimate story, but CNN, if they gave it any time, gave it the shortest of shrift at best. And while Fox is covering stories that look bad for both Democrats and Republicans, CNN isn’t. So who’s a shill for whom?

Technorati Tags: Fox News Channel, CNN, Al Gore, media bias

While the contest is on, I’ve added a graphic on the side that links to the Public Radio Talent Quest. The contest doesn’t start until April 16th, but I just found out about it from Podcasting News and I think I’m going to give it a shot. So might as well help promote it.

It’s open to anyone, so there’s nothing special about me. I have done some radio, back in college, and I’ve always enjoyed the radio entertainer. Not just the DJ who give you title and artist during the song’s intro, but someone who can really entertain you. I’ve always enjoyed Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story” feature, and growing up, when we’d be taking long trips in the car, we’d listen to the (last shot) revival of old time radio programs, the CBS Radio Mystery Theater hosted by E. G. Marshall. I imagine I come by it naturally. My dad, before becoming a minister in The Salvation Army, was a radio DJ in New Jersey during the 40s and has quite the announcer’s voice. I’ve been told over the years that I, too, have a voice for radio. Well, if I do, it’s partly due to the luck of the gene pool, and partly from listening to some of the best. (Thank you, Jack Bogut, for the couple years I spent in Pittsburgh listening to you on KDKA.)

Anyway, if anything comes of my entry, I’ll mention it here. (Which means this may be my only post on the subject. >grin<)

Technorati Tags: public radio, Paul Harvey, E. G. Marshall, Jack Bogut, CBS Radio Mystery Theater

At least if you watch the Fox News Channel. John Edwards will simply not tolerate any group that will not tow the liberal line.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards won’t participate in a debate co-hosted by Fox News and the Nevada Democratic Party, his campaign said, as party officials tried to settle a dustup over their partnership with the cable network.

Edwards’ campaign said the involvement of Fox News, which is often accused by liberals of having a conservative bias, was part of the decision to pass on the Aug. 14 debate in Reno.

“There were a number of factors and Fox was one of those.”

Far-left blogs have been pushing for this,and Edwards has caved. The Left has set yet another lower standard. Unless you can name a Republican that has ever skipped a major debate based solely on the slant of the network carrying it. That may be difficult, even considering, for example, CBS’s “myopic zeal” against Republicans. Edwards will take his ball and go home unless you’re slanted his way.

This says as much about the media as it does about Edwards. He knows the networks who are in bed with him, and you don’t get access if you aren’t. Oh, that liberal media.

Technorati Tags: John Edwards, Fox News, Nevada, presidential election

“Scooter” Libby was found guilty on 4 of 5 counts of lying to investigators, and the fallout is landing on Dick Cheney.

In legal terms, the jury has spoken in the Libby case.

In political terms, Vice President Dick Cheney is still awaiting a judgment.

For many weeks, Washington watched, transfixed, as the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. cast Cheney, his former boss, in the role of puppeteer, pulling the strings in a covert public relations campaign to defend the administration’s case for war in Iraq and discredit a critic.

“There is a cloud over the vice president,” the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, told the jury in summing up the case last month.

Cheney was not charged in the case, cooperated with the investigation and expressed a willingness to testify if called, though he never was. Yet he was a central figure throughout, aggressively fighting back against suggestions that he and President George W. Bush had taken the country to war on the basis of flawed intelligence, showing himself to be keenly sensitive to how he was portrayed in the press, and backing Libby to the end.

The jury considered Libby the “fall guy”, and the prosecutor and Joe Wilson have a lower opinion of Cheney. Yet no one has been charged with the actual leak in this case. I guess, in a similar manner to OJ Simpson looking for “the real killer”, pundits and talking heads will continue the hunt “the real leaker”. In yet another eerie similarity to the Simpson situation, Wilson has filed a civil suit against Cheney.

There is one major difference, though, between this situation and OJ’s. The real leaker has admitted to it. The problem is, the Left doesn’t want to focus on Richard Armitage because he was an Iraq war skeptic in the State Department. No neo-con, he. And going after someone who, if not a Democrat, at least had views that the anti-war crowd appreciated, would not fit the narrative that they have written for this whole kerfuffle. “It was a neo-con revenge hit!” “Karl Rove should be frog-marched!” “The stifling of dissent!”

And in the article detailing who lost face in this whole matter, how many times is Armitage’s name mentioned: 0. He’s not a neo-con, he’s not a White House official, and he was, in fact, a voice of dissent. Doesn’t fit the narrative, so the Left and the Media stop paying attention to him.

If there was any intellectual honesty left in those pounding on Cheney, we’d see Armitage’s name a whole lot more. Instead, it’s not about the truth or the policy or whatever high hobby-horse they’re riding. It’s all about the politics.

Technorati Tags: Lewis Libby, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Richard Armitage

First James Cameron trotted out bones to the Discovery Channel and made claims about them–that they were the bones of the biblical Jesus–that not even the man who discovered them claimed. Now ABC highlights a nut in Houston, giving him a platform to be legitimized, who claims to be Jesus. And the Anti-Christ. And who grew up stealing to pay for his heroin addiction. The headline reads, “Jesus Might Be Alive and Well in Houston”, giving the story a “hey, it could be true” air.

(Hat tip to WorldViews.)

Amazing how the ever-sensitive media that blushed and turned away when the Danish cartoons of Muhammad came calling have no problem with airing the flimsiest story that calls Christianity into question. The gatekeepers have a very selective gate. As one commenter to the WorldView post said, “Do you think ABC would do a similar story about some character claiming to be Mohammed, Martin Luther King, Abraham etc?”

Yeah, me neither

Technorati Tags: James Cameron, Jesus, Christianity, religion

Now that James Cameron is making a new documentary suggesting he’s found the bones of Jesus, will Andy Rooney now castigate him for making money off of Jesus? He certainly took Mel Gibson to task for this. Think he’ll do the same for Cameron?

Yeah, me neither.

Technorati Tags: Jesus tomb, James Cameron, Andy Rooney, Mel Gibson, Christianity

Take two protests, both in our nation’s capitol, both heavily attended, both on current hot topics. Should the coverage of the two by the “balanced” media be comparable? You’d think so. You’d be wrong.

Within one week, the liberal bias of the Washington Post has been made perfectly obvious. On Monday, tens of thousands of protesters emerged on Washington for the March for Life, but the hometown paper put the story on the bottom of page A-10 Tuesday morning. On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters emerged on Washington for a rally against President Bush and the war in Iraq. The Post blasted that story across the front page on Sunday, complete with a large color picture taking a wide shot of hundreds of marchers and their signs and banners. Tuesday’s story on abortion protests matched carried no wide shot of hundreds. It showed four pro-life marchers, and matched them with another picture of five feminists counter-protesting. There were no photos of conservative counter-protesters in the Sunday paper.

[This item, by Tim Graham, was posted Sunday on the MRC’s blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

The Post not only let the anti-Iraq rally dominate the front page, but devoted an entire page (A-8) to more photos and a story on student protesters. The front-page story carried over to most of page A-9. Jane Fonda’s appearance at the march drew another story, placed on the front page of the Style section.

Newspaper coverage of events such as these pose a challenge for appearing fair, no doubt about it. A journalist writing a letter to the editor of his town’s big paper, and an attendee of the March for Life, acknowledged this problem. However, he also believes that fear of appearing unbiased is keeping the coverage to a bare minimum.

What they [the local kids he travelled with] weren’t prepared for was calling home to find that their parents missed the minute-long coverage the event merited on the evening news. They weren’t prepared to arrive home on Tuesday afternoon and pick up the paper to find that there was no coverage whatsoever. It was almost as if the whole thing had been an illusion — that it hadn’t really been that big a deal.

As a member of the press, I have a respect for editors and the decisions they have to make about coverage. I know that the coverage of controversial issues and events presents special difficulty for editors, since a fair and unbiased newspaper covers multiple viewpoints. Most often, the press ends up being attacked by both sides for its attempt at what can only be described as a thankless task. The Tribune has covered local pro-life events and issues in the past.

But abortion in general and the March for Life in particular have always presented special difficulties for a newspaper that sets out to present unbiased coverage. How does one present unbiased coverage of an event like the march, which is overwhelmingly one-sided? The solution in past years has been a careful weaving together of this pro-life event and the various counter-protests that have surrounded it.

But recent marches have made this difficult, since the number of counter-protesters has dwindled over the years. It seems that the media has found it difficult to maintain unbiased coverage simply because there are no pro-choice protesters to be found. Following what seems to be a justified editorial philosophy, coverage of the March has likewise dwindled even as the annual event grows in size.

Thus it seems that pro-choice protesters have found their absence more valuable than their presence.

As applied to the Washington Post, however, the sentiment is likely misplaced. The Post didn’t seem to have any problem ignoring dissenting opinions. When you show one picture for and one against, you leave the impression that the representations of the two points were similar. The did this with the March for Life, but definitely not for the anti-war protest.

For some newspapers, it may be a tough call. For the Washington Post, the bias has already made the decision.

Technorati Tags: abortiom, media, Washington Post, March for Life, bias

Tom Maguire at Just One Minute has been pulling out the details from the Libby trial and the Plame kerfuffle for quite some time. As much as they have covered it, if you get your news from the TV or the paper, you may not have heard much about some of these nuggets. Example from yesterday

Ted Wells drops the news that David Gregory of NBC received a leak about Plame from Ari Fleischer on July 11:

Now shows Ari dislcoses [sic] to David Gregory on July 11 that Ambassador Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. Fleischer tells that before Libby was ever indicted. “I told David Gregory.” Talks about time difference, says Ari leaked to Gregory first.

Now let’s flash back to October 29, 2005, just after the Libby indictment. Russert has gathered the Washington Bureau to discuss the case on CNBC’s “Tim Russert Show”. At the time, I excerpted the transcript and suggested they were rehearsing their cover story. So let’s cut to David Gregory:

GREGORY: And it is interesting–it’s also interesting, I should just point out, that nobody called me at any point, which is unfortunately…
WILLIAMS: Apparently not.
GREGORY: …not the point.
RUSSERT: Does anybody ever?
GREGORY: But I just wanted to note that.
RUSSERT: I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.

Basically, given this and other discrepancies, it looks like the journalists haven’t been completely upfront with what they knew and when they knew it. And Libby is the fall guy. Joe Wilson wanted to see Karl Rove frog-marched for what Joe thought was Karl’s role in the leak (a leak that, still, no one has been indicted for), but perhaps we should be marching some reporters.

(Keep up with Just One Minute. Tons of good information on the Libby trial and the misinformation coming out of it.)

Meanwhile, there’s been little to no coverage on the Sandy Berger story. If you have to ask, “Sandy who?”, you’re forgiven. Libby is being tried for an alleged lie to investigators in a case of the “leaking” of the name of a CIA employee who worked at CIA headquarters every day. Berger didn’t do much, really, which explains the lack of interest by the media. All he really did is steal classified documents from the National Archives, hide them in his pants, destroy them, and keep potentially damaging information about President Clinton from reaching the 9/11 Commission. No big deal, right? Especially for those reporters for whom this really goes against the narrative.

Now Sandy reached a plea deal that kept him out of prison, but there’s still the matter of knowing what he took. Part of that plea deal included a lie detector test to find out what he took, as a number of those documents were originals that had no copies. The Justice Department is dragging its feet, but some Representatives are trying to get this moving again.

Eighteen House Republicans have urged the Justice Department to proceed with a polygraph test for Samuel R. Berger, the former national security adviser who agreed to take the test as part of a plea of guilty of stealing documents from the National Archives.

“This may be the only way for anyone to know whether Mr. Berger denied the 9/11 commission and the public the complete account of the Clinton administration’s actions or inactions during the lead-up to the terrorist attacks on the United States,” the congressmen said in their letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The congressmen — led by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia — said a prompt lie-detector test is needed to determine the extent of Mr. Berger’s thievery, especially because the former Clinton administration adviser reviewed original documents for which there were no copies or inventory.
…
Mr. Davis, former chairman and now ranking Republican on the House Government Reform Committee, released a report by his staff on Jan. 9, saying a Justice Department investigation of Mr. Berger’s admitted document theft was “remarkably incurious.”

The report said the theft compromised national security “much more than originally disclosed” and resulted in “incomplete and misleading” information to the September 11 commission. It said Mr. Berger was willing to go to “extraordinary lengths to compromise national security, apparently for his own convenience.”

In October, Mr. Davis led an effort to hold hearings to determine whether any documents were “destroyed, removed or were missing” after visits by Mr. Berger to the Archives. He said the full extent of Mr. Berger’s document removal “can never be known” and the Justice Department could not assure the September 11 commission that it received all the documents to which Mr. Berger had access.

In an attempt to get some more attention to the Berger situation, Bill Bennett asked listeners to his radio show, “Morning in America”, to come up with songs about it. (You can hear some excerpts of the entries and the well-done winner here.) This just hasn’t garnered a lot of press, but with all the talk about implementing all most of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, wouldn’t everyone want to make sure that the commission had all the facts? And therefore wouldn’t getting full disclosure be a top priority of those wanting to implement them? Then why is it that only Republicans are pushing to get the whole story?

And why isn’t more being reported on this? (OK, that question’s rhetorical.)

Technorati Tags: Scooter Libby, Sandy Berger, media, Tom Maguire, David Gregory

Yeah, this is a hat tip to a 2-day-old Instapundit post, which is eons in blog time, but I thought it worth highlighting. In this story about how the tiny country of the United Arab Emirates beats the United States per capita in putting “demand on the global ecosystem”, this line is mentioned about the second place US.

The United States is no longer bound by Kyoto, which the Bush administration rejected after taking office in 2001.

But as Glenn notes, based on a passage from what he calls “the not especially Bush-friendly Wikipedia”, that is simply not true. You can chalk it up to “mere” incompetence or “simple” laziness, but it seems that almost always when the mainstream media get incompetent or lazy, conservatives and/or Republicans suffer (and liberals and/or Democrats look better). Honestly, when’s the last time any news source (or your friendly, neighborhood liberal buddy) correctly noted that Clinton never submitted it to the Senate for ratification? If your going to insist that Bush”rejected” it, you must say the same thing about Clinton & Gore (notwithstanding Gore’s “symbolic” signing of it; liberal good intentions don’t count if they don’t produce results).

Somehow, the fact that 80-90% of journalists vote Democrat just doesn’t seem to register with folks like Eric Alterman who insist that the media lean conservative. That Bush “rejected” Kyoto is such a Known Fact(tm) in those circles does make its way into reporting, and it ain’t the only thing that does.

Technorati Tags: Associated Press, liberal media, Kyoto, global warming