The Ten Worst Media Distortions of Campaign 2004
Table of Contents:
- The Ten Worst Media Distortions of Campaign 2004
- Dan Rather's Forgery Fiasco
- Ignoring, then Attacking the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth
- Pounding the Bush National Guard Story
- Spinning a Good Economy into Bad News
- The Networks Outrageous Convention Double Standard
- Swooning Over Edwards' Image, Ignoring His Liberalism
- CBS's Byron Pitts Promotional Kerry Coverage
- CBS Promotes Fears of a New Military Draft
- Misrepresenting the 9/11 Commission on Iraq/al Qaeda links
- Equating New Terrorism Warning to LBJ's "Gulf of Tonkin"
Equating New Terrorism Warning to LBJ's "Gulf of Tonkin"
On his August 2 MSNBC program Countdown, Keith
Olbermann devoted an entire segment to speculation that Bush
re-election politics lay behind a terror threat warning that the
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge issued the day before.
Apparently angry that the warning was publicized in the days following
the Democratic National Convention, Olbermann revealed his paranoid
mindset: “History tells us Presidents have exaggerated threats
to the public safety to gain political advantage or simplify complex
needs of strategy. Ask Lyndon Johnson. Ask William McKinley. Do we need
to ask George W. Bush?”
Olbermann soon added Joe McCarthy to the pantheon President Bush is supposedly following, “from Joe McCarthy to Lyndon Johnson’s manipulation of the Gulf of Tonkin, our politics have been filled with politicians who have created a kind of evil twin to FDR’s famous phrase, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ All of that seems particularly relevant when the Secretary of Homeland Security changes the threat level three days after his boss’s challenger accepts the nomination of the rival party.”
Two days later, Olbermann lashed out at an editorial “in a thing called the Investor’s Business Daily,” to denounce it for supposedly doubting his patriotism when he questioned if politics were behind Sunday’s terror warning: “I got ripped. Anybody who said anything other than, ‘Yes, sir, Homeland Security, thank you for the information, we’ll do what you say,’ was viewed as unpatriotic and inspiring lack of confidence and aiding the terrorists, good Lord, there’s everything but accused us of keeping, you know, a phone line open to bin Laden.”
Investor’s Business Daily, which had picked up on the MRC’s quotation of Olbermann’s earlier rant, did not call Olbermann “unpatriotic” in its editorial, although Olbermann had done a bit more than just raise the possibility of political influence; he had brought up the name Joe McCarthy. The editorial correctly noted: “In the current, highly charged political atmosphere, if the White House didn’t warn us of an impending attack and one happened, there would be political hell to pay.”
That would surely include a condemnatory lecture from the cocksure Keith Olbermann.
