Media Matters for America , July 14, 2007

Echoing GOP attack, Economist falsely attributed "slow-bleed" rhetoric to Murtha


A report in the July 14 issue of The Economist about Democratic efforts to end the Iraq war asserted that after congressional Democrats first proposed limiting the number of U.S. troops available for the conflict -- in part by giving troops more time off between tours of duty -- one of the authors of the Democrats' approach, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), "admitted that it was a slow-bleed strategy to end the war."

As Media Matters for America has noted repeatedly (here, here, and here), Republicans seized on the phrase "slow bleed" to attack Democrats after it first appeared in a February 14 Politico article by John Bresnahan, but the phrase was not used by Murtha or other Democrats to describe Murtha's proposal. In fact, Politico editor-in-chief John Harris "confess[ed]" that Murtha "had nothing to do with" the phrase "slow-bleed" and that Harris was "the author of the Democratic Party's 'slow-bleed strategy' for ending the war in Iraq." Read more

CNN's Malveaux uncritically aired Bush claim that Iraq terrorists "attacked us ... on September the 11th"

On the July 12 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, during a report on President Bush's press conference about the administration's just-released Initial Benchmark Assessment Report, CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux stated that according to Bush, U.S. troops "must now stay in Iraq to fight Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that was largely absent there before the U.S. invaded." Malveaux then aired a clip of Bush asserting: "The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th."

Malveaux reported Bush's assertion without challenge despite numerous recent news reports that have cited intelligence officials and other experts disputing the notion that the Sunni insurgent group "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is linked to the group led by Osama bin Laden, which was responsible for the 9-11 attacks. Indeed, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, several members of the media have documented the Bush administration's efforts to conflate the two in order to misleadingly claim that the war in Iraq is now against bin Laden's Al Qaeda.
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Reporting on Reid exchange, ABC's Tapper suggested without evidence that Sen. Graham wants "a new direction in Iraq"

On the July 12 broadcast of ABC News' World News with Charles Gibson, ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper aired a clip of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) attacking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and then asserted, "Republicans on the Hill ... are looking for a new direction in Iraq, but say Democrats are not reaching out to them to forge a consensus for a responsible way forward" -- an assertion for which Tapper provided no support. In fact, Graham has argued in support of the current military strategy in Iraq, and on July 11 issued a press release in which he expressed support for President Bush's "belief that we must give General [David] Petraeus [commander of U.S. forces in Iraq] and our troops time to carry out the new strategy." Read more

On KSFO, NewsMax's Kessler repeated Buchanan false claim about Clinton family's 9-11 accounts

On the July 13 broadcast of San Francisco radio station KSFO's The Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan Program, NewsMax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler accused Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) of "pathological lying" and, as evidence, falsely claimed that Sen. Clinton "made up this story that Chelsea [Clinton] was actually at the World Trade Center when the bombs -- the planes hit [on September 11, 2001]. She's going to Starbucks, she was jogging around, she heard the crash, she saw the smoke, oh my God, isn't that scary." Kessler went on to assert that Chelsea Clinton later contradicted her mother's account by writing in Talk magazine that on that day she "was sleeping over at a friend's house on the East Side of New York. She watched it all on TV." Read more

Still more Carlson on Obama: "[W]hy has Barack Obama suddenly turned into Oprah?"

On the July 12 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson teased an upcoming segment on the New Hampshire book clubs Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) presidential campaign recently established by saying: "Well, everybody knows that a book club is no place for a man. So why has Barack Obama suddenly turned into Oprah?

[Producer] Willie Geist rounds up the girls, brings the chardonnay, and heads to the Oprah book club -- or the Obama book club -- when we come back." Carlson's suggestion that Obama's book clubs are "no place for a man" is merely the latest manifestation of Carlson's apparent fixation on Obama, this time with an explicit reference to Obama's masculinity. As Media Matters for America documented, Carlson recently referred to Obama's "rhetoric" as "kind of wimpy" and said that Obama "seems like kind of a wuss." Carlson also said that Obama "sounds like a pothead." Read more