Brian Williams Corrects Laura Bush on Media Coverage of Iraq --12/15/2006

1. Brian Williams Corrects Laura Bush on Media Coverage of Iraq
On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams highlighted how, earlier in the day, First Lady Laura Bush "placed the blame squarely on the news media" for why so few support the President on Iraq. But instead of addressing her contention about how "there are a lot of good things that are happening that aren't covered and I think the drumbeat in the country from the media...is discouraging" as she hoped for "more balanced coverage" in the future, Williams applied a non sequitur to dismiss her assessment of the news media. He noted how "the recent report from the Iraq Study Group, however, specifically found that there has been significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq." But that's about the accuracy of U.S. military data collection and categorization, not the accuracy of news media coverage of the situation in Iraq.

2. NBC's Meredith Vieira Bemoans 'Same Old President Bush'
The longer President Bush refuses to completely accept the Iraq Study Group's recommendations the more irked NBC's Tim Russert and Meredith Vieira seem to get. On Thursday's Today show Vieira and Russert seemed dumbfounded that the President has yet to wave the white flag in Iraq as they ran down the results of the latest NBC News poll. Vieira declared to Russert: "As polls go it is as bad as it gets for the President." After running a clip of Bush expressing how "I've heard some ideas that would lead to defeat and I reject those ideas," she cynically pondered: "It sounds like the same old President Bush to me. How much do you think he has taken from this listening tour?" Russert, pivoting off the negative poll results quipped: "Real pessimism. When the Iraq Study Group came out and said the situation was 'grave and deteriorating,' that resonated with the American people. I think the President's political condition as we sit here this morning is 'grave and deteriorating.'"

3. Matthews Wonders If Anti-War Liberals Are Afraid of News Media?
On Wednesday's Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews depicted Bush as a proverbial Nero, fiddling as Iraq burned and claimed Bush was led into war by "jugheaded neo-conservatives." Matthews also absurdly questioned Dennis Kucinich on whether Democrats weren't pushing harder for troop withdrawals because "they're afraid the media will jump on them if they say, 'let's get out of that country now?'" Which begs the question: Does Matthews even watch his own network?

4. Joy Behar Suggests GOP Caused Senator Tim Johnson's Illness
On Thursday's The View, Joy Behar seriously suggested Senator Tim Johnson was the victim of a deliberate act to cause his brain disorder that led to emergency surgery and has left him in critical condition: "Is there such a thing as a man-made stroke? In other words, did someone do this to him?" An astounded Elisabeth Hasselbeck wondered: "Why is everything coming from the liberal perspective a conspiracy?" Behar contended, on the ABC daytime show, that the Republican Party is capable of such a nefarious deed: "I know what this, that party is capable of." AUDIO&VIDEO

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Brian Williams Corrects Laura Bush on
Media Coverage of Iraq

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams highlighted how, earlier in the day, First Lady Laura Bush "placed the blame squarely on the news media" for why so few support the President on Iraq. But instead of addressing her contention about how "there are a lot of good things that are happening that aren't covered and I think the drumbeat in the country from the media...is discouraging" as she hoped for "more balanced coverage" in the future, Williams applied a non sequitur to dismiss her assessment of the news media. He noted how "the recent report from the Iraq Study Group, however, specifically found that there has been significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq." But that's about the accuracy of U.S. military data collection and categorization, not the accuracy of news media coverage of the situation in Iraq.

[This item was posted Thursday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

From the December 14 NBC Nightly News:

Brian Williams: "First Lady Laura Bush had something to say about Iraq today. It was during an appearance on MSNBC. Mrs. Bush was asked by Norah O'Donnell why she thinks only two out of ten Americans, in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, said they approved of the President's handing in the war in Iraq. Mrs. Bush placed the blame squarely on the news media."
First Lady Laura Bush, at the White House, on MSNBC: "I do know that there are a lot of good things that are happening that aren't covered and I think the drumbeat in the country from the media, from the only way people know what's happening unless they happen to have a loved one deployed there, is discouraging."
Williams: "Mrs. Bush went on to say she hopes for what she called 'more balanced coverage' in the future. The recent report from the Iraq Study Group, however, specifically found that there has been significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq."

NBC's Meredith Vieira Bemoans 'Same Old
President Bush'

The longer President Bush refuses to completely accept the Iraq Study Group's recommendations the more irked NBC's Tim Russert and Meredith Vieira seem to get. On Thursday's Today show Vieira and Russert seemed dumbfounded that the President has yet to wave the white flag in Iraq as they ran down the results of the latest NBC News poll. Vieira declared to Russert: "As polls go it is as bad as it gets for the President." After running a clip of Bush expressing how "I've heard some ideas that would lead to defeat and I reject those ideas," she cynically pondered: "It sounds like the same old President Bush to me. How much do you think he has taken from this listening tour?" Russert, pivoting off the negative poll results quipped: "Real pessimism. When the Iraq Study Group came out and said the situation was 'grave and deteriorating,' that resonated with the American people. I think the President's political condition as we sit here this morning is 'grave and deteriorating.'"

[This item, by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Thursday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

After briefly running down the political implications of Senator Tim Johnson's condition, Vieira and Russert broke down the poll results in the following conversation that occured in the 7am half hour of the December 14 Today:

Meredith Vieira: "I want to get to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. It was taken right after the President announced he was going on this listening tour to discuss policy in Iraq and about a month after the midterm elections. As polls go it is as bad as it gets for the President. His approval rating, job approval rating now stands at about 34 percent. That's the lowest that it has ever been and what's driving this seems to be just one issue."
Russert: "Iraq. It is overwhelmingly Iraq and look at the numbers for Iraq. 71 percent of the American people now disapprove of George Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq. That's 80 percent of independents, 96 percent of Democrats. One out of three Republicans saying no to his handling of Iraq."
Vieira: "And not only do they disapprove but 69 percent say they are less confident that we could win in Iraq. They don't believe we can do it."
Russert: "Real pessimism. When the Iraq Study Group came out and said the situation was 'grave and deteriorating,' that resonated with the American people. I think the President's political condition as we sit here this morning is 'grave and deteriorating.' He has lost support for this war. He's now gonna try to retool and address the country one more time. But it's very difficult to keep an army at war when the American people have not shown support as they are showing today."
Vieira: "Well yesterday he finished this so-called listening tour by talking to people at the Pentagon. I want to show you what he had to say and then we'll talk on the other end of this."
George W. Bush: "I've heard some ideas that would lead to defeat and I reject those ideas. Ideas such as leaving before the job is done. Ideas such as not helping this government take the necessary and hard steps to be able to do its job."
Vieira: "It sounds like the same old President Bush to me. How much do you think he has taken from this listening tour?"
Russert: "Well he's clearly determined for victory but he has to define victory. There seems to be he's leaning towards a surge of more troops into Baghdad to try to retake Baghdad and secure that area. The difficulties we are confronting as a nation are the Iraqis. Are they willing to spill their own blood for their government or are they more loyal to their tribe or to their Sunni or Shiite sect? One ranking American commander on the ground, Meredith, said, 'This is the problem. Do we want it more than they do?' And that's the challenge the President confronts."
Vieira: "Plus you have the public, when asked if we have an obligation to remain in Iraq, 53 percent said, 'no, we have an obligation [to] no one including our own troops to stay there.' So it seems the President is saying that he wants to, to win this, this war, that, that's his goal while the people are saying, 'get out!'"
Russert: "That was a very interesting question. Is an obligation, doesn't an obligation exist because of the number of American soldiers who have been killed or injured and the American people still said, 'no, we don't have to honor them in that way.' The country has turned very hard on the issue of Iraq right now and the President's gonna have to do a yeoman's job in trying to communicate, connect with the country to say, 'we have to take, adopt this new policy.' It's gonna be fascinating to watch to how he deals with that in the coming weeks."
Vieira: "I was gonna say how can he possibly sustain a war policy if the public is not behind him?"
Russert: "That's the difficulty. We witnessed it in early Vietnam when President Johnson was so tormented by the lack of popular support for a war and this President understands that, we all do, from history. Our military commanders, first and foremost particularly if the President decides he's gonna send more troops. That's something that only about 20 percent of the American people support right now."
Vieira: "Tim Russert, thank you."
Russert: "Thanks Meredith."

Matthews Wonders If Anti-War Liberals
Are Afraid of News Media?

On Wednesday's Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews depicted Bush as a proverbial Nero, fiddling as Iraq burned and claimed Bush was led into war by "jugheaded neo-conservatives." Matthews also absurdly questioned Dennis Kucinich on whether Democrats weren't pushing harder for troop withdrawals because "they're afraid the media will jump on them if they say, 'let's get out of that country now?'" Which begs the question: Does Matthews even watch his own network?

[This item, by Geoffrey Dickens, was posted Thursday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

First up Matthews greeted viewers with this opening salvo:
"Tonight, the President fiddles while Iraq burns. He said he will not be rushed into changing policy. Meanwhile, a new poll shows most Americans now think we're actually losing in Iraq. And we can't do more to stop the civil war. Let's talk a Republican senator who says its criminal to keep on this way. Let's play Hardball."

After an interview with Republican Senator Gordon Smith criticizing Bush's Iraq policy, Matthews brought on WashintonPost.com's Chris Cizzilla and The Politico's Roger Simon to further discuss Bush's empty-headedness:
"Here we are with a President, who most people who are honest about it would say came to the office pretty much unprepared to deal with the third world. He, he listened to a bunch of jughead neo-conservatives who talked him into a war that doesn't quite make sense now."

Then, before the show closed, Matthews brought aboard the staunchly anti-war Kucinich and wondered why more Democrats weren't like him: "Do you think everyone else in the Democratic Party is being too political on this? That they're afraid to say what they believe because they want to keep their contributors happy, their more conservative voters happy? And they're afraid the media will jump on them if they say, 'let's get out of that country now?' Is it fear or is it thinking that keeps them from joining you?"

Joy Behar Suggests GOP Caused Senator
Tim Johnson's Illness

[This item is adopted from a posting, by Megan McCormack, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

If Johnson were to leave the Senate, the Governor of South Dakota, a Republican, would name his replacement and thus potentially keep the Senate in GOP control.

A transcript of the December 14 discussion:

Rosie O'Donnell: "His name is Senator Tim Johnson. He's a Democrat, and sadly he, he was ill, and he's had brain surgery. They think he may have had a stroke."
Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "Yes."
Guest host Dari Alexander of Fox News: "And the thing that is quite interesting about this, I think, is that it started this whole political brouhaha because, as you know, the Democrats took over in November by a 51-49 majority, and now if he has to resign, it will make things 50-50, because the governor of that state, who is a Republican, is in, in, he's in charge of basically putting an interim person in there for, for Senate, and-"
Joy Behar: "Is there such a thing as a man-made stroke? In other words, did someone do this to him?"
Alexander: "Maybe they gave him polonium."
O'Donnell, laughing: "Oh no, no."
Elisabeth Hasselbeck: "Let me ask you something. Why is everything coming from the liberal perspective a conspiracy? You think this is a conspiracy?"
Behar: "I know what this, that party is capable of."
Hasselbeck: "Help us."
Alexander: "So, in any case, it started this whole political brouhaha, and you know, I think the thing that's really sad about this is that it takes a political angle when this guy is really critically ill."
Behar: "Yeah, we're very sad that he's critically ill, but there are millions and millions of people who depend upon this Congress. People in the world and people in this country. So it's really, his illness is, is sad, but it's not as important in the overall scheme."
Alexander: "Well, that's definitely true, but-"
Hasselbeck: "I guess it depends on what scheme you're thinking of."
Behar: "Well, I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of human beings lives. That's what I'm thinking of."

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