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You can call this site "The Mack Report" or "MackReport.com";
either way, its
purpose is to serve
as a point of reference and as a quick connection
to the truth. (What
is the MackReport and why is it online?) If
you
have questions, thoughts or ideas,
click on
Feedback and let me know. This
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Should you
receive an email with a story or information
that looks suspicious (usually ending in a plea to
"pass it on"), check it out on one of the
urban legend websites. Two of the best sites on the
internet are at Snopes.com
and at UrbanLegends.com.
You can also do some very interesting research by going to Google.com
and typing the descriptive phrase from any questionable email
in the "Search" box. |
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Exhaustive Review Finds No
Link Between Saddam and al Qaida
Warren P.
Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi
documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found
no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links
with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored
study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that
Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups,
particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy.
However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi
exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of
his regime.
The new study of the Iraqi
regime's archives found no documents indicating a "direct
operational link" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaida before
the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.
He and others spoke to
McClatchy on condition of anonymity because the study isn't due to
be shared with Congress and released before Wednesday.
President Bush and his
aides used Saddam's alleged relationship with al Qaida, along with
Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction, as arguments for
invading Iraq after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Then-Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld claimed in September 2002 that the United States
had "bulletproof" evidence of cooperation between the
radical Islamist terror group and Saddam's secular dictatorship.
Then-Secretary of State
Colin Powell cited multiple linkages between Saddam and al Qaida in
a watershed February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security
Council to build international support for the invasion. Almost
every one of the examples Powell cited turned out to be based on
bogus or misinterpreted intelligence.
As recently as last July,
Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq.
"The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a
crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and
children, many of whom are Muslims," he said.
The new study, entitled
"Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi
Documents", was essentially completed last year and has been
undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a
"painful" declassification review.
It was produced by a
federally-funded think tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses,
under contract to the Norfolk, Va.-based U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Spokesmen for the Joint
Forces Command declined to comment until the report is released. One
of the report's authors, Kevin Woods, also declined to comment.
The issue of al Qaida in
Iraq already has played a role in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Sen. John McCain, the
presumptive GOP nominee, mocked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill, recently
for saying that he'd keep some U.S. troops in Iraq if al Qaida
established a base there.
"I have some news. Al
Qaida is in Iraq," McCain told supporters. Obama retorted that,
"There was no such thing as al Qaida in Iraq until George Bush
and John McCain decided to invade." (In fact, al Qaida in Iraq
didn't emerge until 2004, a year after the invasion.)
The new study appears
destined to be used by both critics and supporters of Bush's
decision to invade Iraq to advance their own familiar arguments.
While the documents reveal
no Saddam-al Qaida links, they do show that Saddam and his
underlings were willing to use terrorism against enemies of the
regime and had ties to regional and global terrorist groups, the
officials said.
However, the U.S.
intelligence official, who's read the full report, played down the
prospect of any major new revelations, saying, "I don't think
there's any surprises there."
Saddam, whose regime was
relentlessly secular, was wary of Islamic extremist groups such as
al Qaida, although like many other Arab leaders, he gave some
financial support to Palestinian groups that sponsored terrorism
against Israel.
According to the State
Department's annual report on global terrorism for 2002 — the last
before the Iraq invasion — Saddam supported the militant Islamic
group Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a radical,
Syrian-based terrorist group.
Saddam also hosted
Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal, although the Abu Nidal Organization
was more active when he lived in Libya and he was murdered in
Baghdad in August 2002, possibly on Saddam's orders.
An earlier study based on
the captured Iraqi documents, released by the Joint Forces Command
in March 2006, found that a militia Saddam formed after the 1991
Persian Gulf war, the Fedayeen Saddam, planned assassinations and
bombings against his enemies. Those included Iraqi exiles and
opponents in Iraq's Kurdish and Shiite communities.
Other documents indicate
that the Fedayeen Saddam opened paramilitary training camps that,
starting in 1998, hosted "Arab volunteers" from outside of
Iraq. What happened to the non-Iraqi volunteers is unknown, however,
according to the earlier study.
The new Pentagon study
isn't the first to refute earlier administration contentions about
Saddam and al Qaida.
A September 2006 report by
the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Saddam was
"distrustful of al Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a
threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al Qaida to provide
material or operational support."
The Senate report, citing
an FBI debriefing of a senior Iraqi spy, Faruq Hijazi, said that
Saddam turned down a request for assistance by bin Laden which he
made at a 1995 meeting in Sudan with an Iraqi operative.
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Rove: "I Fully
Expect To Be Indicted By The End Of The Year"
Reader
contribution from thinkprogress.org
Karl Rove, former senior aide to President Bush, spoke to a hostile
crowd at the University of Iowa yesterday evening. Students and
local citizens protested his appearance at the university and “staged
a mock trial” for Rove inside the student union before the
speech.
During the lecture, Rove lashed out at hostile questioners, telling
one man his comment showed “a
simple, stupid mind” and chastised what he said were “stupid
statements” from the audience. Rove also said that former Amb.
Joseph Wilson “lied” about his 2002
trip to Niger and accused an audience member of “perpetuating
libel” on the U.S. military for asking about the real number
of deaths in the Iraq war:
After Rove said most
Western intelligence agencies agreed that Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction prior to the war, Durham said, “When
I had dinner with Joe Wilson, that’s not what he said.”
“With all do respect, Joe Wilson lied about his [intelligence
gathering] trip to Africa,” Rove responded, drawing more boos.
When an audience member asked him about the “true” body count
in Iraq, Rove accused the individual of “perpetuating libel on
the military of the United States by accusing them of killing
innocent Iraqis.”
Responding to a question
about CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s outing, Rove, seemingly
joking, added:
I haven’t been indicted
yet, but I fully expect to be by the end of the year.
The University paid
Rove $40,000 for the speech and had to agree to limit
“recording equipment and flash photography” to “the first five
minutes of the lecture.” At the end of the talk, an audience
member shouted at Rove: “Can we have our $40,000 back?” Rove
replied: “No,
you can’t.”
Perhaps Rove needs to keep the $40,000 in expectation of substantial
legal fees.
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When The Rich Pay No Taxes;
The Saga of the Other Bush
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Paul A. Moore
Miami-Dade County (FL) teacher
During his eight-year reign as governor of Florida, Jeb Bush
fashioned an economic time bomb. On his way out the door, he lit the
fuse. His handiwork will soon devastate this state and visit
unprecedented suffering on its people. It will be a nightmare, part
of which will imperil the public schools, the operation of local
governments, and the state retirement system.
The government of the State of Florida realizes most of its revenues
by way of sales and use taxes, intangible taxes, and corporate
income taxes. Sales and use taxes are the most regressive and hit
poor, working, and retired people the hardest. These taxes have done
nothing but increase and, when they are discussed in the halls of
government, it is always in the context of raising them.
Meanwhile, if he could have, Jeb Bush would have relieved Florida's
wealthy persons and corporate entities of their entire tax burden.
As it stands, he came very near his goal. Tax loopholes created
during his administration for corporate income now shelter between
$500 and $600 million that was counted as revenue before. $600
million more was lost to the state when Bush eliminated the tax on
intangible properties (stocks and bonds) in January 2007.
Jeb Bush tried to privatize all things profitable and make the
people assume all risk associated with investment. His program gave
a leg up to charter schools and turned elements of the state's water
supply, public roads, and social services over to wealthy investors.
The lynchpin of his healthcare agenda was to turn Medicaid into a
private managed health care system. That program was piloted in five
counties and has failed miserably. The Department of Children and
Families was turned into a massive private gamble that money could
be made off Florida's most vulnerable children.
When investments went bad, the working people of Florida ate the
loss. In 2002, the state's short-term investment and pension funds
lost $334 million as Enron collapsed, three times the loss of any
other fund in the nation. Jeb Bush's minions invested in Edison
charter schools when the stock was valued at $37 and got out when it
was worth 14 cents. Another $500 million of the public's money was
lost to enable other corporate adventures.
But the worst was yet to come! Because although term limits forced
Jeb Bush to give up his Tallahassee office in 2006, it did not
thwart his plan for turning the apparatus of state government into
his own personal cash cow. First he put one of his stooges, Coleman
Stipanovich, in charge of making decisions for the multi-billion
dollar Local Government Investment Pool and the Florida Retirement
System. Then he got himself a spot on the Board of Directors of
Lehman Brothers, the giant Wall Street financial services
corporation. This unholy alliance has borne bitter fruits.
The now resigned Stipanovich made $1.5 billion in bad investments,
$842 million of them purchased through Lehman Brothers. The pension
fund now holds $756 million in worthless paper related to the
housing market meltdown, almost 8% of its cash holdings. The state's
short-term investment fund is faced with similar losses. Jeb Bush
and Lehman Brothers won't be losing any sleep over it though because
the vulnerability has been dumped on Florida's 1.1 million current
and retired state workers, hundreds of school districts and local
governments, the state-created Citizens Property Insurance, and the
state treasury.
This fiscal year, the state treasury suffered the first waves of the
tsunami that is coming. The servile Florida State Legislature was
called back into special session barely six months after passing a
$71 billion budget to address a $1.1 billion revenue shortfall.
Among other things, these servants of the wealthy took $100 from
each of Florida's public school children to rebalance the budget.
The lights had not been turned out in the Capitol Building when the
Office of Policy and Budget projected an additional $2.5 billion
revenue shortfall over the next 18 months.
And Florida, now weakened by the greed and avarice of a few, faces a
growing crisis in its second largest industry after tourism. To get
a sense of the outlook for agriculture, consider these recent
statements and their sources:
-- "We're not in any old drought. We're in what I like to call
the biblical drought." -- Shannon Estenoz, member of the South
Florida Water Management District's (SFWMD) governing board.
-- "We are facing Armageddon. I think we are going to see
massive crop losses we have never seen before." -- Malcolm
Wade, member of the SFWMD and a Vice President of U.S. Sugar.
-- "We are beginning to see some of the initial signs of
collapse. If you're a farmer, you're going into the spring season
with a greater than 50 percent chance you're not going to have
enough water to make a crop." -- Nelson Mongiovi, director of
the division of marketing, Florida Department of Agriculture.
The crisis in agriculture threatens to shrink the state's revenues
by up to $8 billion more over the next five year.
Governor Charlie Crist is reportedly "torqued off" at the
insurance companies and wants property taxes to "drop like a
rock" but neither sentiment is more than public theatrics. The
Governor and State Legislature have no answers because the only
solution requires that they turn on their masters. In the property
tax amendment debate, Gov. Crist has been reduced to a carnival
barker for the Florida Association of Realtors, Florida Power &
Light, the Florida Medical Association, Wal-Mart, and private prison
builders The GEO Group. These corporate giants are driving this
campaign with millions in contributions to advance their own
interests.
Truth be told there is no salvation to be found in higher sales
taxes for working people, or slightly lower property taxes for the
average homeowner, or reduced funding for schools, fire, and police
protection, or shredding the social safety net, or higher rates of
unemployment, homelessness, crime, and violence. Florida's survival
now hinges on one question, "Can the people force Jeb Bush and
his corporate band of reverse-Robin Hood's to give up enough of
their ill-gotten wealth for the sake of everyone's survival?"
The men in charge in Florida have looked over the horizon and seen
the inferno that lies ahead. They fear only one force -- their many
victims united and mobilized in acts of resistance. Concessions
(such as reduced health care benefits for teachers) are a dead end!
One concession will beget another and another until we have nothing
to give up. We must fight!
They have already begun sowing seeds of division hoping to block any
uprising as human misery and deprivation spread across the state.
They don't expect their sham property tax proposals to result in
lower property tax bills. They expect the measure to pit desperate
homeowners against teachers, firefighters, police officers, and
other workers living paycheck to paycheck. In their campaign for
Amendment 1, as always, they will attempt to sharpen racial
divisions. In Miami-Dade, that has taken the form of a manufactured
uprising of the parents at Emerson Elementary School with the goal
of splitting the Black and Hispanic communities and advance certain
school board members' vendetta against the Superintendent. They will
point the finger at immigrant workers, local governments, and
district school boards. Any scapegoat will do to divert attention
from them as they execute the final phases of their plan to destroy
the public schools.
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
Paul A. Moore
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Wounded Soldier:
Military Wants Part Of Bonus Back
by
Marty Griffin, KDKA,
Channel 2 in Pittsburgh
The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service
personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve
out their commitments.
To get people to sign up,
the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.
Now men and women who have
lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being
ordered to pay some of that money back.
One of them is Jordan Fox,
a young soldier from the South Hills.
He finds solace in the
hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is
a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq.
It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.
Fox was seriously injured
when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked
unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right
eye.
A few months later Fox was
sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months
of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the
military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.
"I tried to do my best
and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now
they're telling me they want their money back," he explained.
It's a slap for Fox's
mother, Susan Wardezak, who met with President Bush in Pittsburgh
last May. He thanked her for starting Operation Pittsburgh Pride
which has sent approximately 4,000 care packages.
He then sent her a letter
expressing his concern over her son's injuries, so she cannot
understand the U.S. Government's apparent lack of concern over
injuries to countless U.S. Soldiers and demands that they return
their bonuses.
While he's unsure of his
future, Fox says he's unwavering in his commitment to his country.
"I'd do it all over
again... because I'm proud of the discipline that I learned.
I'm proud to have done something for my country," he said.
But Fox feels like he's
already given enough. He'll never be able to pursue his dream of
being a police officer because of his wounds and he can't believe
he's being asked to return part of his $10,000 signing bonus.
KDKA contacted Congressman
Jason Altmire on his behalf. He says he has proposed a bill that
would guarantee soldiers receive full benefit of bonuses.
(©
MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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McClellan implicates Bush,
Cheney in Plame lie
On Oct. 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan stood
before the cameras and proclaimed Karl Rove and Scooter Libby
innocent of any involvement in the outing of Valerie Plame.
"Those individuals -- I talked -- I spoke with those
individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they
were not involved in this. And that's where it stands."
And that's where it stood,
until -- well after George W. Bush was reelected --- it became clear
that both Libby and Rove were very much involved in outing Plame.
McClellan has since acknowledged, albeit implicitly, that Libby and
Rove had lied to him. Now he seems ready to go much further. In
"What Happened," a chronicle of his years in the White
House to be published this spring, McClellan will apparently
implicate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and former White House Chief
of Staff Andy Card in the false exoneration of Libby and Rove.
[ More
]
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Chiquita to plead guilty to
ties with terrorists
Federal authorities say the banana producer made transactions with
terrorist organizations.
WASHINGTON (CNN) --
Chiquita Brands International entered a plea agreement with federal
authorities on charges that it engaged in transactions with a
terrorist organization.
The company agreed to pay a
$25 million fine regarding the investigation of protection payments
made by the company's former banana-producing subsidiary in
Colombia.
The announcement came
moments after U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey
Taylor accused the Cincinnati-based banana producer with paying -
through its Colombia subsidiary Banadex - a right-wing paramilitary
group in Urabá and Santa Marta, two areas of Colombia where
Chiquita grew bananas.
"From in or about 1997
though on or about Feb. 4, 2004, defendant Chiquita made over 100
payments to the AUC [United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia]
totaling over $1.7 million," the 17-page information said.
[ ...there's
more... ]
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Two Brothers and Two Scandals
by David
Lindorff, Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 11/16/2007
The State Department's
top internal investigator, Inspector General Howard Krongard,
revealed in a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
hearing Tuesday, that his brother, Alvin B. Krongard, was a member
of the advisory board of Blackwater, the very private mercenary
company whose bloody, murderous behavior the IG office was supposed
to be investigating.
Unmentioned in reports on this tainted relationship was the fact
that Alvin Krongard, the former third-ranking leader of the CIA from
2001-2004, has also been the subject of some speculation regarding
possible foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks by some within the
intelligence establishment.
Alvin Krongard joined the CIA in 1998, leaving a post at Bankers
Trust, which, in 1997 acquired the venerable investment-banking
house of Alex Brown. Prior to the acquisition, Krongard had been CEO
and chairman of the board of Alex Brown. In the merged firm, he
became head of private banking for Bankers Trust, where he was
responsible for the bank's relations with extremely wealthy (and
extremely private) clients.
What makes this history of particular interest is that Alex Brown
was the investment bank that handled most of the suspicious
short-selling "puts" that were placed on the stocks of
four companies -- United Airlines, American Airlines, Morgan Stanley
Dean Witter, and Merrill Lynch -- that were pummeled by the 9-11
attacks.
As has been reported in Bloomberg Financial News Service reports and
in the San Francisco Chronicle, in the several days preceding
September 11, 2001, unidentified investors placed an unusual number
of "puts" on the stocks of the two airlines whose planes
were hijacked that day, as well as on the two investment banks, one
of which occupied 22 floors of one of the World Trade Center towers
and the other of which owned a building directly across the street
that was significantly damaged and forced to close down.
According to news reports, between Sept. 6 and Sept. 9, some 4,744
put orders were placed on United Airlines, compared to just 393
calls (bets that the stock would rise). On September 10, 4,516 puts
were placed for American Airlines stock vs. only 748 calls. These
orders were six times the normal volume of puts and calls on the
Chicago Board Options Exchange for those firms. Moreover, there were
no such puts placed on any other airlines, and there was no news
justifying such orders at the time. In the three days prior to 9/11,
2,151 puts were placed on Morgan Stanley shares, and 12,115 puts on
Merrill Lynch, companies that also were not at the time the subjects
of any negative news.
The stocks of those four companies, following the attacks and the
collapse of the Twin Towers, subsequently tanked, making the
combined puts worth about $16 million.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, no one collected the $2.5
million in profits from the puts placed on United Airlines. For that
matter, the identities of none of the investors in any of the put
orders for the companies has been disclosed by Alex Brown, and no
federal agency or committee in Congress has pushed this issue.
Incredibly, there was never any serious investigation of these
peculiar and suspicious investments, though they clearly suggest
that someone knew something was going to happen that would make
those four companies' stocks plunge in value.
The U.S. corporate news media has never pursued this story or in
many cases even reported it, nor was it seriously investigated by
the FBI or the 9-11 commission.
Could Krongard, in his role as executive director of the CIA, have
had inside information in the days ahead of the attacks, that an
attack on the World Trade Center, involving the hijacking of planes
operated by UAL and American Airlines, was imminent? Could he have
supplied that information to clients of Bankers Trust and its
subsidiary Alex Brown, so that the put investments could be made? If
so, who else in the federal government knew?
We can't know, because, amazingly, nobody has dragged Krongard or
officials of the bank before a Congressional panel and demanded
answers under oath.
So now we see that the Krongard brothers have a level of integrity
that is down in the sewer, with one working for a murderous
mercenary outfit that has been slaughtering innocent Iraqis in the
course of providing "protection" to State Department
officials in Iraq, and the other pretending to investigate the
activities of that private firm, never mentioning the grotesque
conflict of interest of having his brother working for the very firm
he's supposedly investigating.
Maybe given this sorry picture, House Oversight Committee Chair Rep.
Henry Waxman will finally see fit to call Alvin Krongard and other
witnesses in to question them under oath about whether he also had a
conflict of interest in serving as a top ranking CIA executive while
perhaps maintaining links with Alex Brown, and whether he had
anything to do with those peculiar puts.
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based
investigative reporter and columnist. His latest book, co-authored
by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St.
Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
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When
You're Down, Pick a Fight
September 10; People
for the America Way (Right Wing Watch)
Suppose you are the
President of the United States and you are nearing the end of your
time in office with dismal approval ratings and a history of
seeing a bunch of your controversial judicial nominees run into
opposition in the Senate for a variety of reasons, so much so that
you had even been forced to withdraw more than one nominee to the
Fourth Circuit because of such opposition.
Would you, in an attempt
to find nominees that could win widespread support, consider
listening to home state Senators when they make bipartisan
recommendations for filling vacancies to that circuit?
Not if you are George W.
Bush
Read More: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2007/09/when_youre_down.html
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Egad, America ...
Your "Liberal" Press Strikes Again!
"Good
Morning America" and "Special Report" aired nearly
identical, misleading reports on Plame lawsuit...
Both segments uncritically reported columnist Bob Novak's claim
that he "saw no such campaign" by White House officials
to discredit Joe Wilson, ignoring assertions by the special
counsel in the case of a "concerted action" by
"multiple people in the White House" to "discredit,
punish, or seek revenge against" Wilson, and ignoring a
reported statement by Novak himself suggesting that his sources'
disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity was deliberate. [ ...Read
More ]
Wilson-Plame
lawsuit ignored by ABC's World News Tonight and CBS Evening News...
While ignoring a lawsuit against the vice president of the United
States and two top White House aides in connection with a matter
that has been the subject of great media interest over the past
three years, CBS featured a segment on the sale of an original
printing of William Shakespeare's works, and both ABC and CBS
devoted a segment to Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro's worsening
health. [ ...Read
More ]
CNN's
King, Kagan echoed Republican falsehoods on Wilson's trip to Niger...
King falsely claimed that Wilson said "that the vice
president had sent him to Niger" to investigate reports that
Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from that country. Later, both
King and Kagan claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee
found that Plame "sent" Wilson on the trip to
Niger. [ ...Read
More ]
Media Pounce on "Screeching, Frothing [Liberal]
Bloggers" - While Waving on Conservatives Who Advocate...
Murder!
Liberal bloggers get dismissed as crazy and angry, often by
reporters who don't bother to offer a single example to back up
their sneering insults. Meanwhile, vitriol, hate, and even threats
of physical violence and musings of murder by conservatives draw
little attention. Many political reporters have bought into the
liberals-are-angry (and/or crazy) storyline -- and ignore or
downplay far angrier and crazier comments made regularly by Ann
Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and countless other
conservatives. [ ...Read
More ]
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MEDIA ADVISORY:
To
Many Liberals?
Olberman says MSNBC
Bosses Upset by Liberal Guests
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2707
October 27, 2005
MSNBC
host Keith Olbermann recently revealed that network bosses were
upset when he had two liberal guests too close together on his
show in September 2003.
Speaking on October 25 to comedian and talk show host Al Franken, Olbermann said the following:
"You
were good enough to come on this newscast with me late in the
summer of 2003. It was August or September. And by coincidence,
either the next day or the day before, Janeane Garofalo had been
a guest on the newscast. And I got called into a vice
president‘s office here and told, 'Hey, we don't mind you
interviewing these guys, but should you really have put liberals
on, on consecutive nights?'"
Olbermann added,
"Al, can you believe that the country was actually at that
point that recently?" Later he would answer his own
question, saying, "Thank goodness we have steered out of
that time."
Franken was interviewed on September 2, and Garofalo on
September 4. Apparently having them both on over three days—a
period of time in which Olbermann's show interviewed a total of
9 guests—was grounds for being called on the carpet at MSNBC.
This incident is consistent with the phobia MSNBC
executives have displayed about hosts featuring too many
left-of-center views. Phil Donahue's talkshow was cancelled in
February 2003—despite being the channel's highest-rated show at
the time—explicitly for his left-of-center political views. An
internal management memo worried that his program could become
"a home for the liberal antiwar agenda" (All
Your TV, 2/25/03).
As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen—who went on to be a senior producer
on MSNBC's Donahue
show—explained to the American
Journalism Review (12/04-1/05): "In the last
months of Donahue, we
were ordered to book more right-wing guests than left-wing, more
pro-war than antiwar to balance the liberalism of host Phil Donahue."
Cohen added that orders that Donahue's
guest list favor conservatives were stated repeatedly to the
show's staff.
Cohen also noted that such dictates for counterbalance did not
seem to apply to every MSNBC
show: "Joe Scarborough is a current MSNBC
right-wing host, and there are no orders from management
demanding that his guest list favor the left wing."
But has MSNBC truly
"steered out of that time," as Olbermann suggests? If MSNBC
management were genuinely worried about ideological balance,
then the fact that the channel currently has two one-hour
programs hosted by well-known conservatives (Tucker Carlson and
Joe Scarborough) and none hosted by liberals would be of
considerable concern. Or MSNBC
could fret over Hardball's
right-leaning panel discussion after a 2004 election debate
(FAIR Action Alert, 10/12/04),
or the Hardball "town
meeting" on the Iraq war that skewed heavily towards the
pro-war side (FAIR Action Alert, 6/29/05).
The group Media Matters for America (10/21/05) recently
documented that Hardball's
discussions of the Plame Wilson leak case frequently skewed to
the right, citing nine examples of panels that included only
conservatives, or conservatives "balanced" by
centrists; the group found only one case where a panel similarly
leaned to the left.
Having too many conservatives on, it seems, doesn't bother
anyone in power at MSNBC.
(Read the Olbermann transcript at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9827774/)
Feel
free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org
). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each
message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media
bias or censorship. And please send copies of your
correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, to fair@fair.org.
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