Bias in news and media
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Watergate Anniversary Doesn't Measure Up
Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Sunday , June 16, 2002 1:42 p.m. EDT
Watergate Anniversary Doesn't Measure Up
The media's celebration of the Watergate scandal's 30th
anniversary got a rousing kickoff on Sunday from the Washington
Post's Bob Woodward, who told NBC's "Meet the Press":
"[Nixon] was a criminal president - but not only was he a
criminal president, the investigations and the records showed
that he had criminal intent in the White House. He would say to
his aides ... [you should] lie to the grand jury, pay hush money
to the burglars, abuse the FBI and the IRS. ..."
Nixon-hating moldy-oldy Carl Bernstein, Woodward's partner in
their glory days, contended that the 37th president's behavior
was not only unprecedented - it had yet to be duplicated.
"His presidency really was unique in terms of his
criminality and in terms of a president willing to undermine the
Constitution of the United States in a basic fundamental way that
we've never seen before or since," he told MTP host Tim
Russert.
It's no accident that these two journalists sound like they spent
the 1990s sleeping in one of Osama bin Laden's caves, missing the
myriad of Clinton scandals that made Watergate look like child's
play.
But they're entirely typical of a mainstream press that still
views Bill Clinton as a lovable rogue. The facts, however,
suggest otherwise.
IRS abuse? Nixon's IRS commissioner told him to take a hike when
he demanded that his enemies be audited.
Not so Clinton IRS chief Margaret Milner Richardson, who
proceeded to audit so many witnesses against her boss that White
House press secretary Mike McCurry was actually reduced to
arguing that the Clintons would be "crazy" if the
audits were anything but a coincidence.
What about abusing the FBI?
To hear Woodward and Bernstein tell it, you'd think it was Nixon
who ordered up 1,100 confidential FBI files on his political
opponents. Unfortunately for the still-Watergate-obsessed media,
credit for that stunt goes to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
What about Woodward and Bernstein's charge that Nixon's efforts
to get others to lie to a grand jury were also unique. Well, they
may have a point there, since it was never proved that Clinton
suborned perjury [unless you count Gennifer Flowers' smoking-gun
tapes, where he can be heard expressly urging her to lie under
oath].
More recently, however, the "rogue" president wasted no
time with subordinates and instead decided to do the grand jury
lying himself.
Over the next 48 hours, Americans are sure to be bombarded with
scores of similar examples of media amnesia from those intent on
using Watergate's 30th anniversary to further obscure eight years
of wall-to-wall Clinton corruption.
As the media's Watergate wallowing continues, it may be worth
remembering a few scandal anniversaries reporters have managed to
overlook in recent years.
The Clinton Scandal Anniversary Calendar
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Goldberg: Why Aren't Media Talking About Rooney's
Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Goldberg: Why Aren't Media Talking About Rooney's Rather
Complaint?
When Andy Rooney appeared on the Larry King show last week, he
let drop a bombshell, asserting that his longtime "60
Minutes" colleague Dan Rather is "transparently
liberal."
But like the tree that falls in the woods when there's nobody
around to hear the thud, the sound of bombshell explosion was
ignored by the mainstream media, which have acted as if they
weren't around to hear it, says "Bias" author Bernard
Goldberg.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Goldberg noted that in
responding to King's question as to what he thought of Goldberg's
book, which exposed network TV's left-wing bias, Rooney said,
"I thought he made some very good points."
Noting that "such a big media star would acknowledge that I
was on to something in 'Bias' and that he would acknowledge it in
such a public arena is interesting, but this wasn't the
bulletin," Goldberg wrote, adding that the best was yet to
come.
"There is no question," Rooney said, "that I,
among others, have a liberal bias."
That's not the big news either, Goldberg said. "Andy
Rooney's not a reporter; he's a commentator. It doesn't matter
how liberal he is.
"But then he dropped the bombshell. 'I think Dan is
transparently liberal. Now he may not like to hear me say that. I
always agree with him, too. But I think he should be more
careful.'"
Goldbert explains that the "Dan" Rooney talked about is
Dan Rather, who he recalled "was all over me like a hound on
a hare, as he might put it, when I wrote in 1996 ... that 'The
old argument that the networks and other "media elites"
have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth
discussing anymore.'"
As a result of that article, Golberg says, he was taken off the
air for several months, there was talk he'd be fired by CBS, and
he was criticized by some of his CBS colleagues such as Bob
Schieffer, well known for his own left-wing views, who told the
Washington Post that "for me to say there was liberal bias
at the networks was 'a wacky charge.'" And CBS News
president Andrew Heyward, he notes, told the Post that he was a
"misguided missile."