Wash. Post's Solomon -- whose "investigations" fuel right-wing attacks -- suggested Clinton nonprofit is somehow corrupt
A Washington Post article on Sen. Hillary Clinton's failure to disclose to the Senate her role in the Clinton Family Foundation -- co-written by John Solomon, a reporter with a history of sloppy and misleading reports on Democrats' financial dealings -- omitted key information, which, combined with the article's length and prominent front-page, above-the-fold placement, resulted in the baseless suggestion that there is something untoward about the foundation and the Clintons' motivations in establishing it.
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On Hardball, Chris Matthews let McCain presidential campaign CEO Rick Davis claim that
"John McCain doesn't attack other candidates" and "you never see him talking about people in a partisan fashion." In fact, McCain has made attacks on "people in a partisan fashion," including a
Hardball-hosted attack against Sen. Barack Obama regarding congressional efforts to enact lobbying reform.
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On the February 28 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, during a segment discussing the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, the church to which Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) belongs, co-host Sean Hannity stated that "many" call Trinity "separatist," adding that "in
some cases, even drawing comparisons to a cult." Guest Erik Rush, a columnist for the conservative website WorldNetDaily, said that the church's "scary doctrine" is "something that you'd see in more like a cult or an Aryan Brethren Church or something like that." Just the day before, Hannity -- referring to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) -- had claimed:
"We created a new religious litmus test. This is very troublesome to me, and no other candidate is getting that scrutiny."
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On the February 28 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, host John Gibson devoted two segments to a February 26 article in London's Daily Mail to claim that Sen. Barack Obama
(D-IL) presented a false picture of his father, Barack Obama Sr., in his memoir Dreams
From My Father (Crown, July 1995). According to Gibson, the article demonstrated that Obama falsely portrayed his father as "a ray of hope" and "a great man," and that Obama obscured the fact that his father was "a wife-beating alcoholic who didn't bother to get a divorce before marrying the next woman and having a few more kids." Gibson said the article "looks like it's been well researched," but offered no evidence to support the reliability of the tabloid newspaper's sources or the story itself.
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In his February 28 appearance on CBS' Late Show with David Letterman, during which he announced his intention to run for the Republican nomination for president in 2008, Sen.
John McCain (R-AZ) claimed that "Americans are very frustrated" with the situation in Iraq and that "they have every right to be." McCain then added: "We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure [in Iraq], which is American lives." The New YorkTimes, TheWashington Post and the
Los Angeles Times all published March 1 articles reporting McCain's announcement on the Late Show, with The New York Times and the Post directly quoting McCain from the program -- but none of these articles noted his claim that "we've wasted" American lives in Iraq. Yet when
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made similar comments in Iowa on February 11, the Post and the Los Angeles Times reported the remarks the following day. The New York Times, meanwhile, devoted a February 13 article to Obama's subsequent apology and clarification.
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In a March 1 op-ed published in the New York Post, syndicated columnist Linda Chavez, President Bush's former nominee for labor secretary, falsely claimed that, according to a Washington Post article, "despite Senate ethics rules requiring her to do so, [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] failed to disclose the amount of money she and Bill had sheltered from taxes
through a family charity they set up when they left the White House." Later in the column, Chavez referred to "revelations about her [Clinton's] failure to report the tax shelter."
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On the February 28 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, CNN contributor and conservative radio host Bill Bennett revived a smear from the 2000 presidential election perpetuated by such prominent media figures as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd: that feminist author Naomi Wolf advised former Vice President Al Gore on his wardrobe. Bennett said of a hypothetical Gore presidential run in 2008, "Maybe he could get some colors coordinated, different blends." Host Wolf Blitzer replied: "He can consult with Naomi Wolf."
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On the February 28 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named syndicated radio host Melanie Morgan the "winner" of his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment for, as Media Matters for America documented, advancing and embellishing the discredited claim that billionaire philanthropist and progressive financier George Soros collaborated with the Nazis as a 14-year-old boy in Hungary. On the February 8 edition of KSFO's Morning Show, co-host Lee Rodgers revived this false accusation, saying that, as a teenager, Soros "apparently very cheerfully and willingly went to work for the Nazis." Morgan added that Soros had done so "in order to further his own career."
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In a February 28 Editor & Publisher article, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz
"disputed" Media Matters for America senior fellow Eric Boehlert's February 26 column, in which Boehlert criticized "Kurtz and the Post in general for having a 'crush on right-wing bloggers.' " Boehlert was specifically addressing Kurtz's February 16 profile of right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin. According to the E&P article, Kurtz defended himself by citing his "long history of profiling commentators, columnists, and bloggers on both sides of the ideological divide," adding, "What a shock that an ideological liberal doesn't think a journalist should give a fair hearing to a conservative blogger." Yet, in asserting that Boehlert is "an ideological liberal" who "doesn't think a journalist should give a fair hearing to a conservative blogger," Kurtz ignored one of Boehlert's central criticisms: that Kurtz glossed over Malkin's history to, in the words of CJR Daily's Paul McLeary, "paint ... Malkin as the voice of reason."
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On the February 27 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh claimed,
"I do not recall anybody actively wishing, and I don't recall any movies, nor do I recall any books devoted to the subject of assassinating Bill Clinton, or Hillary, or the Vice President Al Gore." Earlier, Limbaugh -- while discussing comments posted on The Huffington Post weblog about a recent bombing attack on a military base in Afghanistan while Vice President Dick Cheney was there -- had stated that such hostility "is sick, and it resides exclusively on the left." Read more
In a March 1 Washington Post article, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research (TCPR) was referred to as "a Nashville-based think tank that advocates 'limited government through policy
solutions,' according to its Web site." But the TCPR's agenda apparently goes beyond limiting the size of government. Like other recent reports on the TCPR's attacks on former Vice President Al Gore's purported home energy use, the Post article did not note that TCPR has reportedly joined the "Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change," which claims to have "been established as a response to the many biased and alarmist claims about human-induced climate change, which are being used to justify calls for urgent action by governments."
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A February 28 Cybercast News Service (CNS) article uncritically repeated a two-week-old falsehood from the Republican National Committee (RNC) that the Democrats have called their approach to Iraq a "slow-bleed" strategy. The article quoted a February 15 letter written by RNC chairman Mike Duncan claiming that the phrase "slow-bleed" was used by Democrats to
describe the Iraq plan presented by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA). In fact, as Media Matters for America documented, the term was used in a February 14 Politico article by congressional bureau chief John Bresnahan. The RNC followed with its press release, and numerous media
then attributed the term to Democrats or quoted Republicans doing so without noting that it was not the creation of the Democrats.
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On the February 28 edition of his CNN Headline News program, Glenn Beck once again made sexually suggestive comments toward a woman when he hosted US Weekly's Dina Sansing to discuss racy photographs of American Idol contestant Antonella Barba. After Beck claimed that
"[y]ou can't take stupid photos and expect those to be ... locked away forever," Sansing responded that it was "possibly" true and that "it depends." As the weblog Crooks and Liars noted, Beck then asked: "Dina, I've got some time and a camera. Why don't you stop by?" Sansing did not respond and, after several seconds of silence, Beck stated: "No? OK." As Media Matters for America has noted (here, here, and here), in each of the first three episodes of his CNN Headline News show in May 2006, Beck made sexually suggestive comments to CNN Headline News anchor Erica Hill, who was then giving daily news updates on Beck's show. Hill no longer appears on Beck's program. Read more
Coverage by several media outlets of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research's (TCPR) criticism of former Vice President Al Gore's home energy bills omitted some or all of the steps that Gore has reportedly taken to reduce the effect of his home energy usage. These steps were reported by MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, CNN financial correspondent Ali Velshi, and a February 27 article in The Tennessean of Nashville. On the February 27 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Olbermann said that TCPR's criticism "omits" that Gore's
home includes "home offices for himself and his wife, as well as a guest house and special security measures," and that the Gores' use of "renewable sources" from the "Green Power Switch" program "actually costs more for the Gores." Olbermann further reported that, according to Green Power Switch, "some smaller homes consume energy in the same range of usage as does the one on the Gores' property." On the February 27 edition of CNN's American Morning, Velshi also noted that Gore's purchase of "green power" increased Gore's utility costs. Read more
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