At Last: A Remark the Times Finds Offensive
Hillary Clinton beat reporter Raymond Hernandez follows the senator to a press conference, where she and other liberal senators denounced Karl Rove for comments he made at a Conservative Party fundraiser in Manhattan. Among Rove's red-meat: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
Hernandez begins Friday's "Democrats Demand Rove Apologize for 9/11 Remarks" with liberal (make that "Democrat") fury: "Leading Democrats reacted furiously on Thursday to remarks by Karl Rove that liberals had responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by wanting to 'offer therapy and understanding for our attackers,' with some Democrats calling for him to apologize or resign as a White House adviser. The remarks also rippled through New York political circles, putting two top Republicans, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. George E. Pataki, on the defensive in the state that bore the brunt of the terror attacks in 2001." Accompanying the story is a prominent photo of liberal Senators Frank Lautenberg, Jon Corzine and Clinton.
Gov. Pataki does get the "angry" last word of the story: "I think it's a little hypocritical for Senator Clinton to call on me to repudiate a political figure's comments when she never asked Senator Durbin to repudiate his comments" likening U.S. troops to Nazis and Communists.
Indeed, one could apply Pataki's crack to the Times' Durbin coverage, as Hoystory.com explains [1]: "The No. 2 ranking Democrat leader in the U.S. Senate compared American troops to the guards of the Soviet gulags and the murderers of the Nazi regime who sent millions of men, women and children to their deaths - and the New York Times gives it a thimbleful of ink and relies heavily on wire copy. Just days later, Rove calls liberals - not Democrats specifically, though the two definitely overlap - soft on terrorism and the Times produces a staff-written report. The next day, Democrats come out in force to assail Rove, and we get another staff-written report with a photo."
To read the rest of Hernandez' story, click here: [2]
The Times "Raises Concern" Over New Republican PBS President
Anne Kornblut and Stephen Labaton file Friday's "Public Broadcasting Chief Is Named, Raising Concerns." Liberal concerns, it turns out, though the Times never makes that plain.
They play the concern (the new chief of public broadcasting is a high-level Republican) up high: "The Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Thursday appointed Patricia S. Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, to be its next president and chief executive. In acting, the corporation board brushed aside concerns from many public television and radio stations and Democratic lawmakers that choosing Ms. Harrison threatened to inject partisanship into an organization that is supposed to shield public broadcasting from political pressures."
The story continues: "The selection of Ms. Harrison comes at a time of political strife over the direction of public broadcasting. The corporation's chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has taken steps to correct what he and conservative critics see as liberal bias. Television and radio executives have responded by accusing Mr. Tomlinson of threatening their editorial independence."
As if public broadcasting has ever been non-political. [3]
To read Kornblut and Labaton in full, click here: [4]
"Contradicting" Cheney
David Cloud and Eric Schmitt report on Friday's front page on yesterday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Iraq, "U.S. General Sees No Ebb In Fight."
A three-week-old comment from Vice President Cheney makes the lead: "The top American commander for the Middle East said Thursday that the insurgency in Iraq had not diminished, seeming to contradict statements by Vice President Dick Cheney in recent days that the insurgents were in their 'last throes.'"
The story's jump headline plays up the "contradiction": "U.S. General Sees No Ebb So Far in Iraq Rebels' Fight - Seems to Contradict Cheney."
There's a disparaging echo of "armchair generals" in another sentence, where the Times appears to disparage positive appraisals made by "civilian officials": "[Commander Abizaid's] more pessimistic assessment, made during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, reflected a difference of emphasis between military officers, who battle the intractable insurgency every day, and civilian officials intent on accentuating what they say is unacknowledged progress in Iraq."
Professor Cori Dauber notes that Fox News has a more complete [5] account of the day's hearing, noting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the top commander in Iraq disputed Sen. Ted Kennedy's description of an Iraqi "quagmire": "Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, called Kennedy's description of the situation as a quagmire a 'misrepresentation of the facts' and suggested it was an insult to the Iraqi people. 'You have an insurgency with no base of support, and Iraqi security forces are fighting and dying for their country every day. That is not a quagmire,' Casey said."
For more from Cloud and Schmitt on the hearing on Iraq, click here: [6]
