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2. Flustered How Miers' "Consensus-Building" Considered "Epithets"
3. Old Budget Bias: Is House GOP Really Planning "Cuts" in Programs?
Over on CNN's American Morning, co-host Miles O'Brien insisted to Major General Rick Lynch in Iraq that the participating soldiers were "coached." Though Lynch repeatedly denied the soldiers were told what to say, O'Brien stuck to his claim they were "coached," citing how the Pentagon official told them, "here's what he's going to say, here's what you might want to say in response, right?" Lynch maintained that "those soldiers yesterday were giving their opinion." To which an oblivious O'Brien replied: "Well, I guess it's too bad, if that's true, that people would have another impression this morning, because of the way they were coached." But the best O'Brien could come up with was how the Pentagon's Allison Barber suggested how to segue to another soldier for an answer and that "a few smiles wouldn't hurt back here on the TV." When news reader Carol Costello wondered: "Is anything spontaneous in politics, really? I don't think so," O'Brien heralded a left-winger: "Jeez. Dennis Kucinich, maybe?" O'Brien also had the gall to contend that "truth be told, if they were not coached, they would have said things that the administration would have liked to hear, I'm convinced. Because they are, you know, these troops are gung ho about their mission. And so it's a shame that they have cast this cloud." That's chutzpah given it was O'Brien and the media which cast the "cloud." This weekend's Inside Washington, a weekly political talk show featuring national media figures produced by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate and carried on Friday night on DC's PBS station, WETA-TV, led with the teleconference. Host Gordon Peterson charged: "The President's teleconference with American troops in Iraq, for example, designed to highlight this weekend's vote on a new Iraqi constitution has now backfired into a public relations nightmare." [This item was posted Saturday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org. To share your thoughts, go to: newsbusters.org [1] ] (This article is a follow-up to a Friday CyberAlert item: Thursday's NBC Nightly News led, yes led, with how, as anchor Brian Williams put it, President Bush had that morning conducted "a staged event" via satellite with ten U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi soldier in Iraq. "Today's encounter was billed as spontaneous," Williams intoned. "Instead, it appeared to follow a script." Andrea Mitchell warned that "the troops were coached on how to answer the Commander-in-Chief" and, indeed, not until two minutes into her three-minute story -- after showing clips of how a DOD official had told the soldiers the questions Bush would ask -- did Mitchell note how "the White House and at least one of the soldiers says the troops weren't told what to say, just what the President would ask." So, the answers were not staged. The soldiers, naturally nervous about appearing on live TV with the President of the United States, were simply told who should answer which question and to "take a breath" before answering. Scandalous! ABC's World News Tonight also devoted a full story as did the CBS Evening News on which Lara Logan uniquely showcased a soldier who denied any phoniness. CNN's Situation Room dedicated a full story to the "highly rehearsed" event. See: www.mediaresearch.org [2] ) Transcripts of the above-quoted October 14 coverage: # ABC's Good Morning America, as provided by the MRC's Brian Boyd: Charles Gibson just after 7am: "We're going to start this morning, though, with very low poll ratings for President Bush. President Bush in trouble and the record numbers, record low numbers in those polls; an embarrassing, staged photo-op, also, with troops in Iraq; and his top advisor in legal hot water. So, can the White House turn it around? We're going to get into that this morning." Diane Sawyer set up the subsequent story: "We're going to turn now to the White House and President Bush's plans to try to turn the tide on his sinking approval rating, now at an all-time low. And this morning, the new embarrassment. The White House scrambling after a photo-opportunity with troops in Iraq didn't go quite as planned. ABC's senior national correspondent Claire Shipman is in Washington with all of this, Claire."
# NBC's Today: Katie Couric, at desk with Matt Lauer, just after opening theme music: "Many White House photo-ops are staged events, but did the most recent one go too far? President Bush held a video conference on Thursday with U.S. troops in Iraq. But some eyebrows were raised by what came over the satellite beforehand: A Pentagon aide rehearsing the soldiers' answers. We'll have more on that just ahead." Couric introduced the subsequent story: "On Close-Up this morning, is the Bush administration using staged events to sell the war in Iraq? President Bush spoke with soldiers in Iraq on Thursday through a video conference, but it's the video from before that meeting ever began that's raising some questions. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell is at the White House with more on the story. Kelly, good morning."
On screen during most of O'Donnell's report:
O'Donnell began: "Good morning, Katie. Now in advance of tomorrow's referendum vote in Iraq, the White House held this event and described it as a way to highlight that milestone and to thank the troops. Now in addition to the President talking about U.S. policy there, they handed the microphone to soldiers and that's the part that got interesting. A question-and-answer session via satellite."
Akeel Shaker Nassir of Iraqi Army: "Good morning, Mr. President, thank you for anything." A media-made "distraction."
At about 8:19am EDT, during interview with Army Major General Rick Lynch, in Iraq, about the Iraq constitution referendum:
Miles O'Brien: "You know, a lot of people don't know it, but we get here at four in the morning and do the entire show in rehearsal just to get it right, right?"
Gwen Ifill is the usual host of the show. [This item was posted Sunday morning on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org. To offer your comment, go to: newsbusters.org [3] ] The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed captioning against the video for this bit of the October 14 edition of the weekly PBS program:
Michael Fletcher, Washington Post: "Week two and things seem to be getting worse. I mean, I think the right is more divided than ever over Harriet Miers. And it's kind of, the criticism is really in two places. One is concern about her lack of experience of constitutional law among some, and others worry about what kind of conservative issues, is she really a committed conservative? The little bit we know about her record indicates kind of a, you know, bridge-builder, moderate. She was like that in the Dallas city council. She was like that at the Texas Bar Association. So there's deep concern among conservatives, some of whom have called for her to withdraw."
This is the oldest media bias kvetch in the book. But Jonathan Weisman in Monday's Washington Post began a front-page story: "House Republican leaders have moved from balking at big cuts in Medicaid and other programs to embracing them..." But what is lacking in Weisman's story is the actual Medicaid budget numbers so we can understand whether actual "cuts" are being proposed, as opposed to the usual cuts in the projected growth of spending, otherwise known in the world of mathematical fact as "limited increases." [This item was posted Monday morning, by Tim Graham, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org. To post a comment: newsbusters.org [4] ] Now don't get me wrong. Weisman offered conservatives plenty of room to speak in this story, and what he is describing is good news to conservatives, that the House leadership is bowing to calls for a tighter leash -- or hey, a leash, period -- on federal spending. But reporters often describe "cuts" that are just cuts in somebody's wild increase plans. Weisman does have some numbers, and they don't sound like "cuts" have been a dominant emphasis: "Since President Bush came to office, federal spending has grown by a third, to $2.47 trillion from $1.86 trillion, while record budget surpluses turned to record deficits." (He doesn't mention that President Bush hasn't vetoed a single spending bill.)
Weisman noted the current plan: "Cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicaid, food stamps and farm supports would be raised from $35 billion to $50 billion in the massive budget bill that will be compiled in November." Here's one reason to be skeptical of the "cut" talk. Here's Heritage Foundation budget expert Brian Riedl with his conservative goal on Medicaid spending, which doesn't get close to an actual cut, just a cut in growth: For the Heritage report: www.heritage.org [5]
For the October 17 front page Washington Post story: www.washingtonpost.com [6]
-- Brent Baker
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The network obsession, with the ordinary preparation for a presidential event involving nervous participants, continued on Friday morning. Plugging upcoming stories at the top of Good Morning America, ABC's Charles Gibson referred to "an embarrassing, staged photo-op." Diane Sawyer soon cited the Thursday video event with President Bush and troops in Iraq as a "new embarrassment" for the administration and reporter Claire Shipman asserted that "an embarrassing White House blunder lifted the veil on the Bush administration's meticulously managed photo-ops." NBC's Today made the incident its story of the day as Katie Couric announced: "On Close-Up this morning, is the Bush administration using staged events to sell the war in Iraq?" 
Claire Shipman checked in from DC: "Diane, good morning. The President's woes are all the buzz in Washington and it's a big day today. His chief strategist and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove is expected to testify for the fourth time before a grand jury in that criminal leak investigation over a CIA agent's identity. That scandal and a lot of other problems are giving the White House a major case of the nerves, including yesterday's slip-up, staging a photo-op with U.S. troops and letting our cameras see it all. It was meant to look like an informal talk with some troops in Iraq." 
Miles O'Brien: "I've got to ask you about this teleconference with the President yesterday, if you don't mind. As we know now, before the President ever had this discussion, whatever you want to call it, with the troops via teleconference, they were coached, at the very least, by members of the public affairs in the administration. I'm curious, though, what is the concern, what concern do you have, as a public affairs officer, as to what those troops might say if they weren't coached?" 
On Friday's Washington Week on PBS, Washington Post reporter Michael Fletcher informed the panel that "the little bit we know about" the "record" of Harriet Miers "indicates kind of a, you know, bridge-builder, moderate" and "so there's deep concern among conservatives, some of whom have called for her to withdraw." That prompted befuddled fill-in host Michel Martin, of ABC News, to seemingly presume moderation and consensus-building should be higher values than conservative ideology: "Is that a dirty word, 'bridge-builder,' 'moderate,' consensus builder? I'm sorry. I wasn't aware that those were epithets." 