Saturday, June 23, 2007

Media Matters for America, June 23, 2007

Politico's Allen gushed over Romney's PowerPoint slides, still can't find space for Giuliani ISG story

In the June 22 edition of his daily "Politico Playbook," Politico chief political correspondent Mike Allen praised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) June 21 speech on national security at the American Enterprise Institute's World Forum as "very ambitious and serious" and dubbed Romney "Multimedia Mitt," inviting readers to "[c]heck out the 31 Power Point slides former Gov. Romney used last night." Allen, however, offered no explanation as to why Romney's speech was, as he put it, "very ambitious and serious." Indeed, Allen acknowledged that he had not seen Romney's speech and hadn't read it in full -- he noted that the speech was
"closed to the press under AEI rules" and that the campaign released only "excerpts" of the speech. Moreover, Allen did not note, as the weblog Think Progress did, that the excerpts of
Romney's "serious" national security speech included no substantive remarks on the Iraq war.
Read more



Olbermann named Beck, Graham "Worst Persons" for Graham's "whack" the Clintons comment

On the June 21 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named radio talk show host Michael Graham and CNN's Glenn Beck the winners of his nightly "Worst Person in the World" award for Graham's remark that while watching the Clintons' video spoof of The Sopranos, he wanted to "see somebody come in here and just whack them both right there."
Read more



MSNBC's Robach compared pro-Obama 527 with discredited Swift Vets group

On the June 22 edition of MSNBC Live, anchor Amy Robach equated Vote Hope, a newly launched 527 organization formed to promote the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama
(D-IL), with the 527 group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now known as Swift Vets and POWs for Truth), which produced ads smearing and misrepresenting the Vietnam military record of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in the six months leading up to the 2004 presidential election. In introducing a discussion on the Vote Hope group with NBC News political director Chuck Todd, Robach said: "Three years after the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth slammed John Kerry in the harshest attack ads of the 2004 presidential race, the first similar group of this campaign ads have been formed." However, Vote Hope has not released any television advertisements at this time, and as Todd noted, there is no evidence that the organization will produce "similar" attack ads. Read more



Noonan: Hillary Clinton "has to prove she's a woman"

Peggy Noonan began her June 22 Wall Street Journal column by asserting that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) "doesn't have to prove she's a man. She has to prove she's a woman." Noonan went on to write that Clinton "has to prove she has normal human warmth, a normal amount of give, of good nature, that she is not, at bottom, grimly combative and rather dark." She also claimed that the Clintons' spoof of a scene from the series finale of HBO's The Sopranos "jokingly acknowledges what the Clintons well know: that a certain portion of the voting population sees them as ... well, as gangsterish." Read more



Hannity further distorted Inhofe's dubious allegation to claim Clinton, Boxer want to "bring down talk radio"

Citing audio highlighted by internet gossip Matt Drudge, co-host Sean Hannity claimed on the June 21 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes that Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) stated during an interview on Los Angeles radio station KFI 640 AM's The John Ziegler Show that he "overhear[d] a conversation" between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in which the two were "conspiring to bring down talk radio." In fact, when asked by Ziegler whether "Hillary and Boxer were conspiring to end talk radio," Inhofe stated: "No, not to end talk radio. They just want to influence it." Read more



Olbermann highlighted stories O'Reilly has "decided are more relevant to your life" than Iraq war

On the June 20 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann criticized Bill O'Reilly's defenses of Fox News' scant Iraq war reporting and aired O'Reilly's June 19 claim -- ocumented by Media Matters for America -- that NBC News was "jazzed" by a recent story involving a U.S. airstrike that killed seven Afghan children. As Media Matters noted, on the June 12 editions of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor and Westwood One's The Radio Factor, O'Reilly responded to a Project for Excellence in Journalism study, which found that Fox News spent less time covering the Iraq war than CNN and MSNBC in the first three months of 2007.

On his June 12 radio program, O'Reilly claimed that "Fox News creams CNN and MSNBC in the ratings, all day, every day. At 8 o'clock, The [O'Reilly] Factor beats every single -- not only MSNBC and CNN, but CNBC and Headline News combined. Because we bring you stuff that is new, that is relevant to your life." As the weblog Crooks and Liars documented, Olbermann noted this comment and went on to air a video montage contrasting O'Reilly's defenses of Fox News with "a brief sample" of stories from the past week that O'Reilly had "decided are more relevant to your life than the horrors and realities of war." Read more

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