Funny how the right wing smear machine wasn’t up in arms when Bill O’Reilly lied about Jane Fonda (saying she gave notes from Americans POWs to the North Vietnamese), when O’Reilly “admitted misquoting and mischaracterizing a Houston Chronicle edtorial" or when Sean Hannity “left viewers with the false impression that illegal immigrants cannot be prosecuted for murder, only deported.”

Yet, when right wingers see a chance to score political points by repeating the discredited liberal bias myth, they all fancy themselves as media critics extraordinaire.

Thus we have the latest Newsweek scandal.

MYTH: The infamous Newsweek story caused rioting and death overseas

No one can say as much for Newsweek's Guantanamo/Koran story, which as of May 16 had gotten at least 17 rioters killed here and there -- while damaging U.S. relations with the Islamic world in ways unknowable. (Bill Murchison, “Unaccountable … And Lethal,” Washington Times, 5/19/055)

Newsweek's retraction of its false Quran-down-the-toilet story still leaves at least 16 dead and at least that many unanswered questions. (Marvin Olasky, “Unanswered questions about Newsweek's false story,” Townhall.com/Creator’s Syndicate, 5/19/05).

[The Newsweek story] led to a week of violent anti-American demonstrations in Afghanistan in which at least 15 people were killed. (Bob Schieffer, CBS Evening News, May 16/2005 as quoted on MediaMatters.org)

REALITY

Unlike the right wing media, we here at Polianna.com are capable of seeing shades of gray. The Newsweek story probably didn’t help things. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine what exactly caused the outbreak of violence in Asia and the Middle East, and this story may have very well been a contributing factor. Yet, there is good evidence that the Newsweek story was not solely responsible for the tragic rioting.

Most significantly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said (at a White House press conference no less) that the rioting in his country -- attributed by many in both the right wing and mainstream media to having been caused by the Newsweek story – was "in reality not related to the Newsweek story" and was instead "more against the elections in Afghanistan.” Said Karzai: “they were more against the progress in Afghanistan, they were more against the strategic partnership with the United States."

Karzai is not alone. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers said in a news conference that the violence was "not at all tied to the article in the magazine." Here’s an exchange between General Myers and a reporter:

Q: Do either one of you have anything about the demonstrations in Afghanistan, which were apparently sparked by reports that there was a lack of respect by some interrogators at Guantanamo for the Koran. Do either one of you have anything to say about that?

GEN. MYERS: It's the -- it's a judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eikenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran -- and I'll get to that in just a minute -- but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his Cabinet is conducting in Afghanistan. So that's -- that was his judgment today in an after- action of that violence. He didn't -- he thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine. (United States Department of Defense, Official Transcript, DoD News Briefing, 5/12/05)

So in one corner we have the army’s commander in Afghanistan and in the other we have right wing fake “journalists.” Hmmm ….

Even conservative nut Paul Rodriguez, former managing editor of Insight Magazine writes that “The reality of the current wave of violence, of course, is far more deeply rooted than just the Newsweek story. It is the increasing feeding of anti-Americans by radical Islamists to many in the Muslim communities who feel as second-class citizens in Western eyes.”

MYTH: The Media have an “anti-military” bias

ABC News White House correspondent Terry Moran says there are - quote -- "some big fish in the White House press corps who hate President Bush." He named no names. And he told radio host Hugh Hewitt - quote -- "upwards of 70 percent," he guessed "of the White House correspondents voted for presidential candidate John Kerry in November." He wouldn’t get any more specific. He did say, though, there is a -- quote -- "deep anti-military bias in the media, one that begins from the premise that the military must be lying and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong" -- end quote. (Brit Hume, “Fox Special Report with Brit Hume,” Fox News, May 19, 2005)

The disdain that so many reporters have for the military (or for police, the FBI, conservative Christians, or right-to-lifers) frames the way that errors and bogus stories tend to occur. The antimilitary mentality makes atrocity stories easier to publish, even when they are untrue. (John Leo, “Disgraceful,” Townhall.com/Universal Press Syndicate, 5/23/05)

Too often since the "War on Terror" was declared, eager Bush-bashing journalists have forgot troops are real people who face real threats and real bloodshed from loose lips and keyboards. It's not just Newsweek that needs to learn that lesson. (Michelle Malkin, “Credibility chasm,” The Washington Times, 5/20/05)

And, since they asked, yes, it would be nice if just once, one of these brontosauruses would do a story on the greatness of America, the American military and democracy, including in the Middle East. They might emphasize the contrast between Saddam's (and the terrorists') brutality and the magnanimity of the current Iraqi regime. ( David Limbaugh, “Seminar in bias,” Washington Times, 5/23/05)

The "Vietnam-Watergate" press template is also involved. "Vietnam-Watergate" is a tired and phony game. For three decades it's been the spine of the New York- Washington- Los Angeles media axis. Its rules are simple and cynical. Presume the U.S. government is lying -- particularly when the president is a Republican. Presume the worst about the U.S. military -- even when the president is a Democrat. Add multicultural icing -- allegations by "Third World victims" get revered status, while U.S. statements are met with arrogant contempt. (Yes, it's the myth of the Noble Savage recast.) (Austin Bay, “Newsweek meets 21st century war,” Washington Times, 5/20/05)

Yet given the chance to undermine the foreign policy of a Republican president and sully the reputation of our nation's fighting forces, the Leftmedia throws all caution to the wind. (Mark Alexander, “America Supports You -- but Newsweek...” Townhall.com, The Federalist Patriot, 5/20/05)

REALITY

As we’ve noted before, non-partisan organizations like Human Rights Watch and the Red Cross have been trying to call attention to inhumane treatment in our military prisons for years. Does not the mainstream media have a journalistic obligation to look into this matter? Especially after the evidence surrounding the abuses at Abu Ghraib?

Yet, moving beyond the specific circumstances of Newsweek’s decision to run the Guantanamo/Koran story, the larger issue of whether the media have an anti-military bias is getting a lot of play in the media.

The notion is almost laughable.

If the mainstream media really had an anti-military bias, wouldn’t they have played up the so-called “Smoking Gun” memo? The memo is a “secret British document containing new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its plan to invade Iraq” that received much play in the British press.

According to a report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, “the Downing Street memo received no coverage from evening news shows on major cable TV outlets in the days after its publishing in Great Britain. But stories on runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks and the Michael Jackson trial were covered extensively.”

Meanwhile, the liberal media group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has identified several examples of print news outlets downplaying the story. While FAIR does have a political agenda, its concerns are worth noting. Were the media really operating with an anti-military bias, they most certainly would have grasped at these chances to undermine the war effort. Some of FAIR’s examples:

• The Los Angeles Times published a page 3 story on the memo on May 12, and the Washington Post ran a page 18 story the following day. More than two weeks after the story broke in the Sunday Times of London ( 5/1/05), it finally made the front page of a major U.S. newspaper, the Chicago Tribune ( 5/17/05).

• After referring to the memo ( 5/2/05) in a story on the British electoral campaign, the New York Times failed to report on the document's implications about the Bush administration until today ( 5/20/05); the one-column story didn't mention the manipulation of intelligence until the eighth paragraph. ( Times columnist Paul Krugman also discussed the memo on the paper's opinion page on May 16.)

• The Washington Post's ombudsman, Michael Getler, who the previous week (5/8/05) had mentioned reader complaints about the Post's lack of memo coverage without evaluating their substance, revisited the issue with a much more critical eye in his most recent column (5/15/05). (The ombud gave back-handed credit to FAIR and the group Media Matters for America—both "self-described media watchdog organizations"—for prompting him to delve into the story.) Getler wrote that Post editors initially told him they didn't pursue the story because they were "tied up with election coverage"—this despite the fact that the leaked memo became a major election story in Britain and likely contributed to Tony Blair's weak returns. When he questioned them again after the email campaign, Getler wrote, "editors agreed that this story should be covered and said they were going to go back and do that"; the Post's May 13 story followed. (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, “Action Report: Network Viewers Still in the Dark on "Smoking Gun Memo" Print media continue to downplay story,” FAIR.org, 5/20/05).

There are plenty of other examples of instances in which the mainstream media have passed over opportunities to be critical of the military in the war effort or been blatantly pro-military For example:

• CNN executive Eason Jordan admitted“that CNN had allowed U.S. military officials to help screen its on-air analysts: "I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance -- 'At CNN, here are the generals we're thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war' -- and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important."

• The American media barely reported it when US Iraq administrator Paul Bremer censored the Iraq media after promising Iraqi journalists: they were “free to criticize whoever, or whatever, you want.”

• In July 2004, the Independent of London listed several military setbacks in Iraq that went largely unreported. in the mainstream western media.

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• Katie Couric told a Navy Seal on the air:"thanks for talking with us at this very early hour out there. And I just want you to know, I think Navy SEALs rock." (As was famously reported in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11

Sound like the actions of a media machine that is out to get the military?

MYTH: The media elite are liberals.

Alas, America's reporting establishment, like its academic and cultural establishments, is hugely, overwhelmingly "blue state." It tends not to trust those who act in behalf of an administration -- George W. Bush's -- whose policies they fault almost across the board. ( Bill Murchison, “ Unaccountable… and lethal,” Washington Times, 5/19/05)

REALITY

The silly myth that most media elites are liberals (and therefore slant their reporting) seems to reappear every time conservatives read a story in the news they do not like. Recently, this myth has started to show it’s ugly head again as the Newsweek/Koran scandal has hit the right wing blogosphere and hate radio circuit.

The logic behind this notion is flawed for several reasons:

(1) Even if reporters are liberal, it does not necessarily affect their reporting.

Reporters are trained to be objective – and held to that standard by editors and publishers, who, as will be discussed momentarily, tend to be conservative. Even if a majority of reporters were liberals (not necessarily true, especially on economic issues), many if not most could favor other points of view in their reporting so as not to appear biased.

(2) Editors and publishers have more say than reporters over which content makes it into a newspaper or onto a news broadcast.

(3) Editors and publishers tend to be conservative.

According to a poll taken of newspaper editors in 2000 by Editor & Publisher magazine, newsroom editors favored George W. Bush over Al Gore by a 9 point margin of 33%-22%. How liberal of them. Meanwhile, newspaper publishers favored Bush by a whopping margin of 59% to 20%.

Then there is the matter of newspaper endorsements. Explains Eric Boehlert on Salon.com, in most elections the majority of endorsements go to the Republican presidential nominee:

Since 1940 when industry trade magazine Editor & Publisher began tracking newspapers during presidential elections, only two Democratic candidates -- Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1992 -- have ever won more endorsements than their Republican opponent. That's because newspaper publishers, who usually sign off on endorsements, tend to vote Republican (like lots of senior corporate executives), which means GOP candidates pick up more endorsements. A lot more. In 1984, President Reagan landed roughly twice as many endorsements as Democrat Walter Mondale in the president's easy reelection win. And in 1996, despite his weak showing at the polls, 179 daily newspapers endorsed Republican Bob Dole, which easily outpaced the Democrats' tally by nearly a 2-to-1 margin. (Eric Boehlert, “RNC pretends newspapers lean left,” Salon.com, October 26, 2004)

While a plurality of newspaper endorsements went to John Kerry in 2004, the margin was incredibly narrow, 213 to 205. By comparison, Bush endorsements outnumbered Kerry endorsements by a 2-1 margin in 2000.

MYTH: The liberal media is slanting news reports about John Bolton

The New York Times is being somewhat more forthcoming about acting as a house organ for Senate Democrats against John Bolton's nomination as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. With a vote on the nomination scheduled for May 12 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Times reporter Douglas Jehl's story acknowledged that some anti-Bolton information for his May 10 story was "provided by a Congressional Democrat opposed to Mr. Bolton's nomination." It must be nice to know that you can leak information to the New York Times and that the paper will rush to print it. (Cliff Kincaid, “The Media Campaign Against John Bolton,” Accuracy In Media, May 10, 2005)

REALITY

This Kincaid article deserves special attention because it suffers from two fallacies that are common in right wing critiques of the mainstream media. As Republicans continue to trump up their “liberal bias” charges during the weeks to come, those who care about journalistic truth should be on the lookout to see if right winger continue to pull similar stunts.

FALLACY #1: A source’s point of view automatically discounts the accuracy of what he/she has to say.

If a factory’s workers go on strike, it would make sense for any honest journalist to interview the union leader to gauge and report his/her point of view. Likewise, if a mega-corporation announces it is laying off thousands of workers, it is important to interview the CEO to gauge his/her point of view on why layoffs are necessary.

And, when one political party chooses to oppose the nomination of another party’s President, it is of news value to get the point of view of said party’s leadership.

As for the Bolton incident specifically, there is nothing wrong with the New York Times publishing a hearing transcript it received from a Democrat opposed to the Bolton nomination. It is not as if someone leaked a fake transcript! Does not the public have the right to know the serious objections raised by Democrats and Republicans alike about John Bolton? Of course. Could we realistically expect that someone in favor of Bolton would leak this testimony? Of course not. So long as the Times did not publish any false or irrelevant information, they cannot be said to have acted inappropriately. In fact, the Times went out of its way to publish the source of its leak, thus allowing readers to judge for themselves whether it is trustworthy.

Political campaigns and offices on both sides of the aisle frequently point the press toward stories and facts that support their arguments. It is part of the political process in this country and it burns both parties.

Take for instance the leak of damaging information to President Clinton in the form of his deposition in the Paula Jones case. The often-bashed Washington Post ran quotes from the leaked testimony.

It is also worth noting that in the Times’ case, the testimony in question may have been leaked by a Democratic staffer, but it was the testimony of a former aid to REPUBLICAN Colin Powell -- Robert L. Hutchings, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

So the Times published testimony delivered by a Republican and released by a Democrat. How partisan of them.

FALLACY #2: One quote or portion of an article reflects the tone of the entire article.

It is very easy to distort the content of a story by concentrating only on a lone quote or paragraph buried in the middle of an article.

The Kinkaid piece (of crap) relies on this fallacy by implying the New York Times article concentrates on the opposition to Bolton of a major Democratic opponent. However, the opening two paragraphs (the most important selection) focus on the point of view of a critical Republican:

A new portrayal of John R. Bolton describes him as having so angered senior State Department officials with his public comments that the deputy secretary of state, Richard L. Armitage, ordered two years ago that Mr. Bolton be blocked from delivering speeches and testimony unless they were personally approved by Mr. Armitage.

The detailed account was provided to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Lawrence S. Wilkerson, a longtime aide to former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Mr. Wilkerson said that Mr. Bolton, who was then an under secretary of state, had caused ''problems'' by speaking out on North Korea, the International Atomic Energy Agency and other delicate issues in remarks that had not been properly cleared. (Douglas Jehl, “No. 2 at State Dept. Was Said To Put Restrictions on Bolton,” New York Times, May 10, 2005)

Clearly, the point of view of the article is different than Kincaid’s distortion.