Barnes, NYT's Gordon assigned blame for failed strategy to generals, not Bush
New York Times chief military correspondent Michael Gordon asserted that "President Bush did listen to his generals over the past year and a half, and he did as -- implement the strategy that General [George W.] Casey [Jr.] advocated, and it didn't work." Fox News host Fred Barnes asserted that "the president is not doing what his commanders on the ground have urged, mainly because their policy has failed." But these assertions ignore reporting that Bush had been determining troop levels in Iraq and has "never left the decision to commanders." Read more
CNN's Quijano: "Democrats are seeking to cast a surge as an escalation"
During a January 8 segment on the Bush administration's possible plan to increase the number of U.S. forces in Iraq, CNN correspondent Elaine Quijano reported that "Democrats are seeking to cast a surge as an escalation of the unpopular Iraq war." But it is not only Democrats who are suggesting that the White House is contemplating more than just a "surge" -- which CNN's own Bill Schneider characterized as short-term in a January 5 report on CNN's The Situation Room. Some of the strongest advocates of sending more troops to Iraq -- including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident scholar Frederick W. Kagan -- are urging a sustained increase, perhaps one as long as 18 months, as Media Matters for America noted. Read more
Fox's Cavuto falsely claimed NY Times provided "no coverage" of Saddam Hussein's atrocities
Fox News host Neil Cavuto claimed, "You'd have a very tough time finding the [New York] Times devoting even a single day of front-page coverage to all of his [Saddam Hussein's] atrocities or murders or any of his thousands of victims over the years." He also falsely asserted that the Times has provided "[l]ots of coverage of his death. No coverage of the deaths that led to it." But the Times has given repeated front-page coverage to Saddam's brutality. Read more
Neither Sawyer nor Keane noted Keane's previous view that 20,000-troop increase not enough
On the January 8 edition of ABC's Good Morning America, retired Gen. Jack Keane, former Army vice chief of staff and ABC News contributor, appeared to support plans to send "[a]n additional 20,000 troops" to Iraq, despite having asserted, less than two weeks ago, that "at least 30,000 combat troops lasting 18 months or so" was the "only" option to "[b]ring security to Baghdad." Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer failed to question this apparent discrepancy. Read more
Media ignore McCain's inconsistency on Iraq troop increase
Likely 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has offered several widely varying and often vague estimates of how many additional troops are needed in Iraq, ranging from four to 10 brigades, and from fewer than 21,000 troops up to 35,000. The media, however, have failed to point out these discrepancies while distinguishing McCain's Iraq proposals from President Bush's reported intention of sending 20,000 additional troops to the region, and reporting that McCain views Bush's reported proposal as insufficient. Read more
More controversial McCain campaign hires -- will the media continue to ignore?
As Media Matters for America documented, the media largely overlooked Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) hiring of Republican operative Terry Nelson as a senior adviser to his political action committee, despite Nelson's association with several prominent GOP scandals. In addition to Nelson, other members of McCain's political team have also been touched by controversy and have thus far not gained significant media attention. Read more
WSJ editorial claimed that PAYGO did not contribute to declining deficits in '90s, but Greenspan seems to disagree
A Wall Street Journal editorial repeated the claim that the deficit-neutral "pay-as-you-go" (PAYGO) budget rules that House Democrats intend to reinstate did not contribute to the elimination of the budget deficits in the 1990s. But both former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director Dan L. Crippen have pointed to PAYGO as instrumental in establishing the fiscal discipline that gradually decreased the deficit during the 1990s and ultimately led to large surpluses. Read more
Alter: O'Reilly is "so inflated, it's coming out of his ears."
On the January 8 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter compared Fox News' Bill O'Reilly to a "blimp ... balloon in one of those parades," adding that O'Reilly is "so full of himself" and is "so inflated, it's coming out of his ears." Host Tucker Carlson had asked his guests what they thought "of the meltdown occurring in public of Bill O'Reilly," saying that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, host of Countdown, "has set out to drive Bill O'Reilly crazy, and apparently he's succeeded." Carlson also stated that he is "not a huge fan of the [Fox] network -- but some of [the people that work there] are decent, and some of them are -- actually are intelligent." Tucker's other guest, retired Col. Jack Jacobs, concluded of O'Reilly's flagging ratings that "there's a finite life to everything." Read more
ABC's Cokie Roberts: Dems' "fair trade" advocacy puts party "on the wrong side of history"
On the January 8 broadcast of National Public Radio's Morning Edition, ABC News Washington correspondent Cokie Roberts asserted that if Democrats pursue "fair trade" policies instead of "free trade" policies, they will be "essentially on the wrong side of history with globalization." Roberts made the assertion in response to host Steve Inskeep's request that she comment on his interview with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). Read more
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