Media Matters for America, October 14, 2007

Wash. Post article on earmarks quoted Stevens but not prior Post report that Stevens' earmarks are being investigated


An October 12 Washington Post article by staff writers John Solomon and Matthew Mosk headlined, "Earmarks Put Candidates On the Spot," reported that "Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) co-sponsored a little-noticed proposal to require the Pentagon to spend $2 million on brain trauma research for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan." Solomon and Mosk reported that "[t]he earmark faced stiff opposition on the Senate floor last year," and noted that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) "said directing the funds to the University of Chicago would circumvent the normal process by which the National Institutes of Health hands out research funds."

But the article did not mention that, according to an August 1 Post article by staff writers Paul Kane and Dan Eggen headlined "FBI Probes Stevens's Earmark": "The FBI is investigating whether Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) used a $1.6 million congressional appropriation to help an Alaska marine center purchase property from a business partner of the senator's son, said sources familiar with the probe." The August 1 Post article added: "The FBI and the Interior Department's inspector general are also jointly examining a series of budgetary earmarks endorsed by Stevens in recent years for the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward." Read more

George Will: GOP voters "have learned" that Giuliani "doesn't flip-flop"

On ABC's This Week, The Washington Post's George Will asserted "What they [Republican primary voters] have learned about Giuliani is that he doesn't flip-flop. ... [H]e's taken exactly the un-Romney approach to his problem, which was to say, 'Look, this is me. Take it or leave it.' " But as NPR senior news analyst Cokie Roberts said, "[H]e equivocated on guns. He equivocated on abortion." Read more

CNN's Collins did not challenge CEI fellow's distortion of Gore's sea level claim


During an interview with the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Marlo Lewis, CNN's Heidi Collins did not challenge Lewis' assertion that, in An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore claimed that global warming would cause sea levels to rise "20 feet ... in this century." Lewis added: "That is science fiction, but Gore presented it as fact. It's scaremongering." In fact, Gore was addressing what could happen if the West Antarctic ice shelf or the Greenland ice dome "broke up and slipped into the sea" at an indefinite point in the future, not "in this century."Read more

Reliable Sources panel questioned why Coulter keeps getting invited on television

On the October 14 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, while discussing Ann Coulter's recent comment that "we" Christians "just want Jews to be perfected, as they say," as documented by Media Matters for America, host Howard Kurtz noted, "[S]he can say whatever she wants, but there's no constitutional right to appear on a television show." Kurtz made that statement in response to TVNewser columnist Gail Shister's question: "Is this a chicken-and-egg thing? because does she get a lot of media attention because we give it to her or does she say things so she'll get the media attention? At some point, why don't shows just not book her?" Read more