PBS's Rose Admires Hillary's Emerging "New Independence" --6/16/2003

1. PBS's Rose Admires Hillary's Emerging "New Independence"
PBS's Charlie Rose, during his interview with Senator Hillary Clinton aired on Friday night, admired how life has "come ful circle" for her with a marriage, a daughter and now "the emergence to me of a new independence for you since you're on your own."

2. Time's Gibbs Pressed About Assuming VRWC Even "Bigger"
Don Imus pressed Time magazine's Nancy Gibbs about whether her question to Hillary Clinton -- "Is the 'vast, right-wing conspiracy' bigger than you thought when you brought that term into our vocabulary?" -- presumed that Time has decided "that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy." Gibbs went on and on, but never really answered Imus's question.

3. ABC's Rooney: "Ironic" GOP Pushing Recall Over a Deficit
ABC News reporter Brian Rooney delivered a bit of editorializing during a story on Saturday night about the recall effort in California against Democratic Governor Gray Davis. Rooney declared it "ironic" that Republicans would lead a recall effort spurred by a large budget deficit when "the Republican majority in Washington is running the biggest deficit in the history of government."

4. Jennings Rues How "Low Income Families" Must Wait for Tax Cut
Peter Jennings did his part on Thursday night to advance the liberal spin that conservative Republicans don't care about the poor. On the June 12 World News Tonight, without ever bothering to note that those in question don't pay any income tax, Jennings highlighted how "low-income families hoping to benefit from the latest congressional tax cuts will have to wait almost a year to get the child tax credit" but, Jennings stressed, the new House plan "does provide immediate relief to higher income earners." Though Jennings didn't say so, those would be people who actually pay income taxes.

5. Nets See "Cycle of Violence" in Israel with "Mutual Hatred"
Hamas targets civilians while Israel targets the terrorists, but to ABC, CBS and NBC both sides are equal morally. ABC's graphic read: "Cycle of Violence." CBS's Kimberly Dozier claimed "mutual hatred and shared grief are leading to an escalating war of words, weapons and firepower." NBC's Brian Williams asserted: "For every Israeli worried about the next bus bombing there is a Palestinian tonight worried about the next rocket attack from the air, from out of no where. Such is life in the current cycle of violence here in this region."

6. Rather Believes Iraq Had WMD, Holds Raines a "Great Journalist"
Put Dan Rather in the camp of those who believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "I still believe that they may be found," he told CNN's Larry King on Thursday night before suggesting that "if Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, you know, biological, nuclear or germ or otherwise," then "it seems to me that he would have at some point...said, listen, come in, bring as many Americans as you want, look around, look all over this place, instead of playing all of those sort of three-card monty games that he played with Professor Blix." Rather also declared his admiration for ousted New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines, whom he dubbed "a great American journalist."

7. Magazine Article About War Coverage Based on MRC Research
The July/August edition of The American Enterprise magazine is devoted to media bias and its lead story is based largely on material provided by the Media Research Center. "Doubt and Derision Over Baghdad" reads the headline over the six-page article. The subhead: "Karina Rollins and the staff of the Media Research Center describe how TV, newspapers, and magazines painted (and smeared) the war in Iraq."

8. Actor John Cusack Upset Nader Voters Allowed Bush to Win
Actor John Cusack is disappointed in Michael Moore for supporting Ralph Nader when Al Gore needed just a few more votes to win since "I knew there was a huge difference between" Democrats "and the Bush crowd." Cusack told the Sunday Times of London: "Don't tell me Al Gore would have handed out the contract to rebuild Iraq before he'd given the order to bomb it."

9. "Penn's Pugnacity of the Day," Osama's Agenda Being Advanced
The seventh installment of "Penn's Pugnacity of the Day," quotes drawn from actor Sean Penn's 4,000-plus word screed which filled a full page of the May 30 New York Times. In today's excerpt, Penn argues: "It seems Osama Bin Laden's agenda is being furthered by our fear, promoted by the invective language of media and a Congress that shamefully cowers from criticism, as we hack away at the arms, the legs, and the soul of our own civil liberties, our constitution, our principles, and our flag."

PBS's Rose Admires Hillary's Emerging
"New Independence"

PBS's Charlie Rose, during his interview with Senator Hillary Clinton aired on Friday night, admired how life has "come full circle" for her with a marriage, a daughter and now "the emergence to me of a new independence for you since you're on your own."

Like her previous interviews with Barbara Walters, Katie Couric and Larry King, Rose provided a comfortable hour for Clinton as he avoided topics which would upset her.

Near the end of the June 13 hour, Rose asked whether her new book represented a "rite of passage for you?" Rose followed up with his personal speculation about her life:
"You, as a young woman from Chicago, ended up at Yale, you met a young man there, fell madly in love with him, after many, many, many proposals you finally succumbed-"
Clinton: "Not that many! More than one anyway."
Rose: "-More than one anyway. And in more than one venue."
Clinton: "Yes, that's true."
Rose: "On his knees or not, we don't know. But you made a decision that because of your affection, love for him, to go to Arkansas where he wanted to pursue his dream. You gave up some independence because there was a higher value and a higher recognition, I assume-"
Clinton: "That's right."
Rose: "-and this is here [pointing to book]. And that's what I was asking about. Now, here in a sense it's come full circle for you. The marriage is there, the relationship's there, there's a daughter there which you speak about here [thumps book] as well. But it seems to be the emergence to me of a new independence for you since you're on your own, you're not, you are a partner in a traditional marriage sense. Is there anything to this or not?"

Clinton naturally agreed with the generous perspective on her selflessness.

Clinton is scheduled to appear Monday night on the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS.

Time's Gibbs Pressed About Assuming VRWC
Even "Bigger"

Don Imus pressed Time magazine's Nancy Gibbs about whether her question to Hillary Clinton -- "Is the 'vast, right-wing conspiracy' bigger than you thought when you brought that term into our vocabulary?" -- presumed that Time has decided "that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy." Gibbs went on and on, but never really answered Imus's question.

For more on the Time magazine interview with Hillary Clinton conducted by Nancy Gibbs, see the June 9 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org [1]

On Thursday's Imus in the Morning radio show simulcast on MSNBC, MRC analyst Jessica Anderson noticed that Imus asked Gibbs about her very leading question. In the 6:30am half hour of the June 12 show, Imus asked Gibbs on the phone:
"There's another kind of interesting question, 'is the vast' -- here's the way the question is written in Time magazine -- 'is the vast right-wing conspiracy bigger than you thought when you brought the term into our vocabulary?' So have you all at Time decided that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy?"
Gibbs' meandering reply: "Well, that's why it's in quotation marks, but before we were talking about that, she was answering a question that suggested that, about this, sort of the huge machinery that has been operating to try to bring down her husband, and then talking about, right now I was asking her about President Bush and his policies, and she talked about this effort to basically, as she said, dismantle the federal government, this very radical agenda, and that they're very, you know, open about it, and she seemed to be describing, once again, but in even broader terms, what she originally called the vast right-wing conspiracy, so I said, so what, you think it's even bigger than it was before? And she says, you know, yes, it's hard to imagine the scale, and of course she says it's not a conspiracy, it's all out in the open. That's it, that's not an artful choice of words, she says, but yeah, the notion that there's a very organized effort in parts of the media, and she quoted some statistic to me that on any given day, there are 229 conservative or right-wing radio outlets, she says, and about four that are from the other point of view. And so she starts running through these numbers about, just to document how broad the vast right-wing conspiracy is. This is still very much, in her universe, the way she sees the world. I think she still sees this as a very big orchestrated, well-funded, powerful entity that she's doing battle against. That was the impression I got as she talked about it, that it looms very large for her."

That ranting from Hillary, however, did not make it into the excerpts run in the June 16 Time.

Imus and Gibbs went on to discuss his opinion of why liberal talk radio hasn't taken off before Imus tried again on Time's assumption about the VRWC: "Well, when you ask the question 'is this vast right-wing conspiracy bigger than you thought?' -- well, it's in quotes, and when you write it out, but it's not, unless you do those little cocktail party quote things with your fingers or you phrased it somehow, I mean, it sounds as though you're suggesting that there is a right-wing conspiracy. I think that's a fair observation, don't you?"
Gibbs: "That that's what the question implies that we think?"
Imus: "Yeah."
Gibbs: "You know, it's meant to see what she thinks. I don't think, who cares what we think? I mean, they shouldn't care what we think, they should care what says, so -- I was curious about, you know, whether she had changed her view about how all of this works since becoming a, you know, public figure herself in her own right and seeing what she sees now. No, she still sees the world operating with these kinds of mechanisms and talked about how well-funded and well-organized they are."

ABC's Rooney: "Ironic" GOP Pushing Recall
Over a Deficit

ABC News reporter Brian Rooney delivered a bit of editorializing during a story on Saturday night about the recall effort in California against Democratic Governor Gray Davis. Rooney declared it "ironic" that Republicans would lead a recall effort spurred by a large budget deficit when "the Republican majority in Washington is running the biggest deficit in the history of government."

In the middle of Rooney's story on the June 14 World News Tonight/Saturday viewers heard Rooney argue:
"Davis's opponents say he won re-election while misleading voters about a looming $38 billion budget shortfall. That Republicans would spearhead a recall over a deficit is ironic, considering that nearly every state government is in trouble and the Republican majority in Washington is running the biggest deficit in the history of government."

Of course, those pushing for the recall are more upset about being misled about the deficit than its size which is surely bigger as a percent of the state budget than the federal one is of the federal budget, to say nothing of how the federal deficit is not the largest in history either in terms of inflation-adjusted dollars or as of percent of GDP.

But none of that should have to be pointed out since an ABC News reporter should not be making such blatant polemical points in a news story.

Jennings Rues How "Low Income Families"
Must Wait for Tax Cut

Peter Jennings did his part on Thursday night to advance the liberal spin that conservative Republicans don't care about the poor. On the June 12 World News Tonight, without ever bothering to note that those in question don't pay any income tax, Jennings highlighted how "low-income families hoping to benefit from the latest congressional tax cuts will have to wait almost a year to get the child tax credit" but, Jennings stressed, the new House plan "does provide immediate relief to higher income earners." Though Jennings didn't say so, those would be people who actually pay income taxes.

The item in full as read by Jennings: "From the national news today, low-income families hoping to benefit from the latest congressional tax cuts will have to wait almost a year to get the child tax credit. Under the House version passed today, the $82 billion cut does provide immediate relief to higher income earners and extends the credit until 2010."

Nets See "Cycle of Violence" in Israel
with "Mutual Hatred"

Hamas Palestinian terrorists, who in a Nazi-like view of the world want every Jew killed or driven into the sea, target the murder of innocent civilians in Israel while the Israeli government, which has allowed Palestinians to live beside them for decades and would accede to the creation of a Palestinian state, strikes back by targeting terrorist group leaders and operatives, though they sometimes miss and hit civilians, usually those in the same cars as the terrorists.

But the U.S. media put the story into a motif which treats both sides as equally culpable and morally responsible for the killing. Three quick examples from the broadcast networks:

-- ABC's on-screen graphic during stories on Thursday's and Friday's World News Tonight: "Cycle of Violence"

-- Kimberly Dozier concluded from Tel Aviv on the June 12 CBS Evening News: "Mutual hatred and shared grief are leading to an escalating war of words, weapons and firepower. And for the road map, a possible dead-end."

That's like saying "mutual hatred" of al-Qaeda for Americans and Americans for al-Qaeda is fueling a deadly war on terrorism.

-- On Friday's, June 13, NBC Nightly News Brian Williams showed how security checks confront an Israeli woman wherever she goes on her normal routine. He then opined from Tel Aviv about how civilians on both sides have just as much to fear:
"And this can't be emphasized enough: For every Israeli worried about the next bus bombing there is a Palestinian tonight worried about the next rocket attack from the air, from out of no where. Such is life in the current cycle of violence here in this region."

Of course, Israel wouldn't be launching missiles if Palestinian terrorists weren't setting off bombs in buses.

Rather Believes Iraq Had WMD, Holds Raines
a "Great Journalist"

Put Dan Rather in the camp of those who believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "I still believe that they may be found," he told CNN's Larry King on Thursday night before suggesting that "if Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, you know, biological, nuclear or germ or otherwise," then "it seems to me that he would have at some point, particularly right at the end when the American power was right at his throat, would have said, listen, come in, bring as many Americans as you want, look around, look all over this place, instead of playing all of those sort of three-card monty games that he played with Professor Blix."

Rather also declared his admiration four ousted New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines, whom he dubbed "a great American journalist."

MRC analyst Ken Shepherd checked the transcript against the tape and passed along these two excerpts from the June 12 Larry King Live on CNN on which Rather appeared on tape:

-- King: "Are you surprised that no weapons of mass destruction have been found?"
Rather: "I am, Larry. I still believe that they may be found. I certainly don't rule out the possibility. But am I surprised that they haven't been found already? Yes, I am. On the other hand, it's worth remembering that you could put all of the biological weapons to destroy a good many people in the world in a reasonably sized room, and if you hid that room in a place the size of California, it could be very, very hard to find. And so, you know, am I surprised they haven't found them? Yes. Do I think they might yet find them? Yes, I think they might."
King: "Do you think Mr. Blix then got a bad deal with all of the criticism of him for not finding them?"
Rather: "Well, do he get a bad deal? I don't know that he wasn't able to find them. I don't know that anybody in the U.S. government -- did anybody really high up criticize him? I suppose they did at times. And in that sense, I think the answer is probably yes. He probably did. One thing, Larry, that -- and I'm not on any soapbox about this -- but by -- again, by any reasonable analysis I think we have to take into consideration in considering these weapons of mass destruction, did they or did they not exist, do they, do they not exist, is this: That if Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, you know, biological, nuclear or germ or otherwise, then why wouldn't he? I mean, just think for a second, the Americans are going to come and he's going to either be dead or spend the rest of his life on the run living under some rocks and what have you, if he didn't have anything to hide, it seems to me that he would have at some point, particularly right at the end when the American power was right at his throat, would have said, listen, come in, bring as many Americans as you want, look around, look all over this place, instead of playing all of those sort of three-card monty games that he played with Professor Blix and others, who were trying to find the weapons. I just -- I can't get that out of my head that if he never had these weapons, why wouldn't he have just said, listen, bring anybody you want to come in here and look everywhere because I've got to tell you, I don't have them?"

-- King: "Let's touch some other bases. What do you make of the whole hullabaloo in the New York Times, the Great Gray Lady?"
Rather: Well, one thought that keeps occurring to me, Larry, is that old line from Hemingway, 'Weep not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,' which is to say this is something bad that's happened to American journalism, not just to the New York Times, partly because of what the Times represents. In many important ways, and I recognize that people may be giving me hell for saying this, but there is no question it's true. In many important ways, The New York Times is the best newspaper in the world. It's certainly one of the best newspapers in the world. It has among the highest standards in the world. We're very lucky in this country. We have a lot of newspapers with very high standards, The Wall Street Journal among them, the Washington Post. There's a long list of them. But what happened at the Times, I think it would be a mistake to say, well, you know, shame on them. They brought it on themselves. In many ways perhaps that's true. And they have enough self-reflection over all of this....
"But let me say this, Larry, and I appreciate you asking. Again, I know it's not popular to say so, and I didn't work at the New York Times. I didn't work under him, but Howell Raines is a great American journalist. He proved it over and over again, and he proved that he was a great editor of the New York Times. When the Times won seven Pulitzer Prizes in the wake of 9/11, it may not have told everything you needed to know about Howell Raines as an editor, but it told you a lot of what you needed to know -- you needed to know about him as a journalist and as an editor....
"Now, you know, when you lose and you lose big, as Howell has done, I recognize that the more popular thing is to say, well, shame on him. He wasn't right for the job and one thing or another. But I'm simply not going to do that, because I've known him too long. This is a great journalist, and I hope that he'll be back soon doing something in journalism, because we need him. Now, you know, when you make big mistakes, there are big prices to be paid, and I don't want anybody to think that I don't recognize, because I do recognize that Howell and Boyd and the others involved there, and they've acknowledged it. They made some big mistakes and when you make mistakes of that size, there's usually an outsized price to be paid and they're paying it."

Magazine Article About War Coverage Based
on MRC Research

The July/August edition of The American Enterprise magazine is devoted to media bias and its lead story is based largely on material provided by the Media Research Center. "Doubt and Derision Over Baghdad" reads the headline over the six-page article. The subhead: "Karina Rollins and the staff of the Media Research Center describe how TV, newspapers, and magazines painted (and smeared) the war in Iraq."

A tag line offers more credit: "Karina Rollins is a TAE senior editor. Special thanks to Brent Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Jones, and Clay Waters at the Media Research Center for providing archived material and analysis."

For the text of the article: www.taemag.com [2]

For the article the way it looks in the magazine, access the PDF: www.taemag.com [3]

Actor John Cusack Upset Nader Voters
Allowed Bush to Win

Actor John Cusack is disappointed in Michael Moore for supporting Ralph Nader when Al Gore needed just a few more votes to win since "I knew there was a huge difference between" Democrats "and the Bush crowd." Cusack told the Sunday Times of London: "Don't tell me Al Gore would have handed out the contract to rebuild Iraq before he'd given the order to bomb it."

The New York Post's "Page Six" column last week picked up on Cusack's comments published on London on June 8, the MRC's Liz Swasey alerted me.

I tracked down the June 8 Sunday Times of London article about Cusack, by reporter David Eimer, pegged to his new movie Identity.

The article can only be accessed via a complicated registration, but here are the three key paragraphs:

One other reason he shies away from the big-budget blockbusters that have come to define an actor's status in modern Hollywood might be his political views. His family are known for their support of radical causes -- his mother has been arrested a number of times at various demonstrations dating back to the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and 1970s -- and Cusack is at his most articulate and passionate when he's talking politics.

Unsurprisingly, he was no fan of the US and British invasion of Iraq, but he's also reluctant to align himself with the left in the States. He has some harsh words for Michael Moore, while broadly agreeing with the sentiments of Stupid White Men and Bowling for Columbine, after Moore campaigned for the US left's candidate, Ralph Nader, during the 2000 presidential election and so helped him take the votes from Al Gore that might have propelled the Democrats into the White House.

"He lost a lot of credibility when he went and campaigned for Ralph Nader because, in my opinion, he was dead wrong when it counted. I'm not a huge fan of the Democratic party, but I knew there was a huge difference between them and the Bush crowd," says Cusack. "Don't tell me Al Gore would have handed out the contract to rebuild Iraq before he'd given the order to bomb it."

END of Excerpt

For a photo of Cusack and a rundown of his acting roles, check his Internet Movie Database page: us.imdb.com [4]

"Penn's Pugnacity of the Day," Osama's
Agenda Being Advanced

Today, the seventh installment of "Penn's Pugnacity of the Day," quotes drawn from actor Sean Penn's 4,000-plus word ad which filled a full page of the May 30 New York Times.

As noted in the June 4 CyberAlert, it's impossible to sum up Penn's diatribe, so I'll defer to Tony Snow, who in his end of the show "Final Thoughts" on the June 1 Fox News Sunday, offered this apt description of the screed: "It throbs with loopy desperation, as if he were trying to persuade authorities that aliens from Alpha Centauri had instructed him to scale a TV tower, put on a hat made of foil and await lightning. You know the old theory that a chimp, given enough time in front of a typewriter, would pound out the Gettysburg Address? Well, this is a simian rough draft."

For more of Snow's take and for the first installment of "Penn's Pugnacity of the Day," culled from the first three paragraphs of his diatribe headlined "KILROY'S STILL HERE," see the June 4 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org [5]

For the second installment, taken from the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh paragraphs of the 30-paragraph opus: www.mediaresearch.org [6]

For the third installment, made up of the seventh, eighth and ninth paragraphs, see: www.mediaresearch.org [7]

For the fourth installment, lifted from the tenth, eleventh and twelve paragraphs: www.mediaresearch.org [8]

For the fifth installment, culled from the thirteenth and fourteenth paragraphs: www.mediaresearch.org [9]

For the sixth installment, taken from the lengthy fifteenth and sixteenth paragraphs: www.mediaresearch.org [10]

Today, the seventh installment of "Penn's Pugnacity of the Day," culled from the seventeenth and eighteenth paragraphs:

This is our money I speak of, not theirs. Ours. Our democracy. Our flag. (Lest we forget Enron) but, we see Exxon. We see Bechtel. We see Halliburton. We see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, Rice, Perle, Ashcroft, Murdoch, many. We see no WMDs. We see dead young Americans. We see no WMDs. We see dead Iraqi civilians. We see no WMDs. We see chaos in the Baghdad streets. But no WMDs. We see the disappearance of a murderous Iraqi dictator, who relented his struggle and ran without the use of WMDs.

Now I want to see one more thing. In Iraq, and in the United States, I want to see who's the boss. I want to see who's the people. I want to see who are the sheep. And I want to know the lions. I don't know what the future of the Iraqi people will be. I don't know what the future of our own people will be. I do know, that while we all watched the headlines, the drama, the indelible, the horrifying and forever unjustifiable violence that occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001, that it has diverted our eyes from the beauty of this country, and its foundation that act was intended to shake. It seems Osama Bin Laden's agenda is being furthered by our fear, promoted by the invective language of media and a Congress that shamefully cowers from criticism, as we hack away at the arms, the legs, and the soul of our own civil liberties, our constitution, our principles, and our flag.

END of Excerpt

For a PDF of the ad, go to Penn's Web site: www.seanpenn.com [11]

For picture of Penn and a rundown of his movie roles, check the Internet Movie Database's page on him: us.imdb.com [12]

# Reminder: Another Hillary Clinton book-promoting appearance scheduled for Monday night on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman.

-- Brent Baker [13]