Media Matters for America, July 15, 2007

Russert ignored White House pledge to fire anyone involved in leaking Plame's identity

Discussing the CIA leak investigation on the July 15 broadcast of NBC's Meet the Press, host Tim Russert ignored the White House's original pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press. According to Russert, President Bush "said early on in this [investigation] that if anyone broke the law, that he would deal with it." But as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters on September 29, 2003, that the president would fire anyone who leaked Plame's identity, not just those who were found to have "broke[n] the law":

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it [the leaking of Plame's identity], they would no longer be in this administration." Read more

Russert said Murtha proposal was "described as a 'slow bleed,' " asked Webb if he had same "intent"

On the July 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, discussing Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) proposal that would require that U.S. troops spend the same amount of time at home as they spent overseas absent a presidential waiver "to meet an operational emergency posing a threat to vital national security interests of the United States," host Tim Russert asked: "When Congressman [John] Murtha [D] of Pennsylvania introduced similar legislation in the House, it was described as a 'slow bleed,' an attempt, in effect, to micromanage the war and bring the war to an end by limiting the number of troops that were available.

Was that your intent?" As Media Matters for America has noted repeatedly (here, here, here, and here), Republicans seized on the phrase "slow bleed" to attack Democrats after it appeared in a February 14 Politico article, by congressional bureau chief John Bresnahan, about Murtha and other Democrats' Iraq strategy, 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

Washingpost.com discussion tease asserted as fact the "remarkable -- and often ignored -- successes of the Bush administration"

In teasing a July 16 washingtonpost.com online discussion in which Weekly Standard editor William Kristol will discuss his July 15 Washington Post op-ed, headlined "Why Bush Will be a Winner," the Post's website asserted as fact that the Bush administration has had "remarkable -- and often ignored successes."

The tease stated in full that "Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol will chart the remarkable -- and often ignored -- successes of the Bush administration." This language does not appear in Kristol's op-ed; he did not claim that the Bush administration's "successes" have been ignored, nor did he describe these "successes" as "remarkable."
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