Thud, thud, thud

[billroper]

The press is busy distinguishing themselves this week:

1) First, the AP reported that Bush offered good wishes to President Clinton as he went into surgery, that the crowd booed, and that Bush didn't try to stop them. It apparently wasn't true, as the AP silently revised the story later. (I've heard an audio clip with applause that is supposedly from that event.) Of course, that didn't stop the false version of the story from being spread around. For lots of discussion of it, you could check out Power Line. Or if you're not willing to read a conservative weblog, try Editor and Publisher.

2) Then there was the AP's out-of-context quoting of Cheney's remarks in a question and answer session, the sloppy quoting implying that Cheney was saying that, if Kerry were elected, the U.S. would be hit with a new terrorist attack. Here's Patterico (who -- as you'll see if you click on the link -- has little use for the L.A. Times :) ) with a fairly comprehensive discussion of it, along with the complete quote (which I have seen on CNN's website as well, with an entirely misleading headline). Cheney didn't say we'd be hit again because Kerry was President (reading the full quote indicates that he said that terrorists will hit us in the future, regardless of who wins the election), but he did question whether Kerry would respond to an attack in an appropriate manner.

Note: the issue of what is and isn't appropriate is certainly debatable and you're more than welcome to disagree with Cheney on this. It's just that it would be good to disagree with what he actually said, not with what he's misquoted as saying.

3) Finally, there are the documents that CBS News uncovered and reported about on 60 Minutes II the other night. The problem is that there is substantial reason to believe that the documents might be forgeries of a relatively recent vintage, created using Microsoft Word, not a typewriter from the 1970s. While Dan Rather and CBS News are "standing by their story" and complaining that the people examining the documents via the PDFs available on the net are working with flawed, degraded copies, it doesn't actually appear that CBS has the original documents either. Certainly, they haven't been willing to post better scans for analysis.

The Boston Globe decides to weigh in on CBS's side of the dispute, but it appears that they misquoted the document expert that they interviewed who had earlier expressed skepticism about the documents in statements posted at various sites on the net.

Of course, one of the people mentioned in the memos as pressuring to sugar coat Bush's service had already retired by the time the memo was supposed to be written.

And apparently one of the people who CBS used to authenticate the memos was told they were handwritten, not typewritten, according to ABC News:

Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."

Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".

CBS responds: ""We believed Col. Hodges the first time we spoke with him. We believe the documents to be genuine. We stand by our story and will continue to report on it."

Well, so much for honest reporting for this week...

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I have a special place in my heart for gaffes of all sorts, especially from the diverse broadcast media. Of course, the more rabid talk-show folks went after the memo business in dramatic, this-is-more-important-than-even-the-OJ-trial sense:

You know what else someone found on the memo that proves it's a fraud?? Tomato sauce!!! Tomatoes weren't even invented until 1976. Now we really need to know WHO KNEW ABOUT THE TOMATO SAUCE AND WHEN DID JOHN KERRY KNOW IT??!!!

On the other foot, Terry McAuliffe immediately went into pit-bull mode when the story first broke. As a Democrat, I think he's one of the worst things that's happened to the party. He is the personification of the ugly side of Bill Clinton, and the Democratic Party hasn't had an angiogram yet.

[billroper]

I try to stick to the bloggers who are trying to uncover the facts, who print corrections when they're wrong, that sort of thing. You know, the ones who are trying to behave like journalists. :)

I find fascinating the video clip I saw of McAuliffe blaming the Bush campaign for the memos. Not that it would be absolutely impossible, but it doesn't sound like the simplest explanation by a longshot.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

On (1), I heard audio of Bush saying he wished President Clinton well, and the crowed reaction was positive. I couldn't help thinking they were all being a little bit hypocritical; they'd been fervently hoping for the guy to drop dead for 8 years ending a little under 4 years ago. But that nasty thought was entirely mine; there was nothing objectionable in the actual event as reported on NPR.

On (2), I distinctly heard Cheney say that a wrong vote in November would bring more terrorist attacks. In a campaign full of disgusting statements, it stood out as one of the worst I've heard. If Cheney didn't sat it, either NPR is making up audio clips or I need to adjust my tinfoil hat.

[billroper]

On (1), that's correct. I heard a similar audio clip. The AP story reported a falsehood. NPR, by your report, didn't.

On (2), you only heard half of the clip. If you cut the clip off halfway through, you will hear exactly what you remember hearing. Here's the whole statement:

We made decisions at the end of World War II, at the beginning of the Cold War, when we set up the Department of Defense, and the CIA, and we created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and undertook a bunch of major policy steps that then were in place for the next 40 years, that were key to our ultimate success in the Cold War, that were supported by Democrat and Republican alike -- Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerry Ford and a whole bunch of Presidents, from both parties, supported those policies over a long period of time. We're now at that point where we're making that kind of decision for the next 30 or 40 years, and it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

The bolded section is probably the quote you heard. If you let him finish the sentence, you see that he's discussing how the administration at that time might respond to a terrorist attack.

As Emily Litella might have said, "Oh, that's very different. Never mind."

(And as I said in my original post -- you're more than welcome to disagree with Cheney's opinion about the relative response of a Bush and a Kerry administration to such an attack. But it's better to discuss what he said, not what he didn't say.)

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Seeing the whole thing, it becomes ambiguous whether he is claiming that a "wrong" choice on Nov. 2 would cause us to be hit again or only that it would mean we would react the wrong way. You could read it your way, but without a crucial "IF we get hit again" (or "WHEN we get hit again" if he means that it is inevitable rather than a possibility, it is at least as logical to read it as blaming all three parts of the sentence after "the danger is" as being caused by the wrong choice.

If one accepts your reading of his whole remark, then it's not a despicable thing to say. It's an indefensible position that the Bush administration's response to 9/11 is better than the straw man position he ascribes to Kerry -- attacking a country that had no connection to 9/11 and was not credibly involved in terrorism is not a better response to terrorism than not attacking any countries at all -- but not despicable.

[billroper]

We could get into a discussion of Iraq's involvement in terrorism (although pretty certainly no direct involvement in 9/11), but that would take us far afield.

I've heard the full sound clip for Cheney's statement and it's fairly clear to me that he was rambling through a long answer in a question and answer session and the whole thing was a big qualifying clause. But you might disagree...

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I think both Presidential candidates have similar views on how to handle terrorism. I am not fond of either one's response and really dislike having my civil liberties taken away because of a bunch of jerks.

What I care about is on the home front. I don't care whether Iraq is a better place. I don't care about what these guys did during Vietnam; that was over 30 years ago.

I care whether the U. S. is a better place than it was four years ago.

• From the current President I don't want promises; I want to see action that benefits me.
• I have less disposable income than I had four years ago. I don't care if the very rich are paying less taxes if I can't be part of them.
• I can't take as much stuff on airplanes as I could four years ago. If Bush were to change that, I'd be impressed. If Kerry would promise to fix that, I'd be equally inclined in his direction.
• My ability to get an abortion, should I need one, is getting eroded by Bush. He could further eroded this by appointing ultra-right-wing SCotUS judges if he got a second term.
• My gay friends still aren't allowed to marry. Bush wants to legislate away any chance they have of marriage; Kerry doesn't approve of them getting married, either, but at least he wouldn't legislate their dreams into oblivion.
• As for the War on Terrorism, how did we lose sight of going after Osama Bin Laden?

As I saw all the anti-Bush paraphernalia at the con, even in the dealer's room, I kept thinking about you and how you must have felt. I also wonder how you justify your support of Bush/Cheney, given their anti-gay and anti-abortion stances (maybe you're anti-abortion and I don't know it).

[billroper]

Well, I have another post that discusses my feelings on President Bush floating around down below if you want to look for it. You'll even find some of the things that you bring up discussed there. Here, I'm actually more interested in discussing the interesting reporting that's been done by the press this week.

As far as abortion goes, I think that the only thing worse than allowing abortion would be to ban it. After that, the discussion starts to get very complex very quickly.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

I did read your pro-Bush post, which is why I thought of you every time I saw anti-Bush paraphernalia at Noreascon. Having you around is a reminder to me of why I prefer to remain politically neutral on stage (I'll attack all candidates equally :-) ).

I agree the press coverage has been skewed -- on all ends. IMHO Howard Dean got the worst of it when he was "yelling" at one conference. Turns out the PA system there was hosed and he was trying to be audible. One bad shot and it killed his campaign.

I see stuff that comes off the wire services when I'm working. Sometimes I will refuse to run a story because it's so poorly written I can't tell what's going on. I've seen press screw things up firsthand when fellow reporters decide their own bias is more important than getting the truth out (sigh). One of the unfortunate side-effects of press cutbacks and a sagging economy is more press outlets have to depend on less-than-reliable national feeds for our own sources. All we can say is "so and so said" and let people interpret it from there. I hate it when my colleagues take quotes out of context. It's tempting to do when you've got someone whose viewpoints repulse you, but it's icky.

I have been playing devil's advocate with you because I want to understand your POV. I am immersed in anti-Bush sentiment. I'm even on a largely pro-Republican e-mail list just to get a little balance. I thank you for whatever input you're willing to give.