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Lone defender of the press: Jake Tapper

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

The Administration in power, with party control of both houses of Congress and a newly-minted supreme court justice on the bench has taken aim at one of the most prominent news organizations charged with the so-called “fourth estate” watchdog function over government.

So obviously, the other news organizations, network, cable, radio and the newly-minted blogosphere have circled the wagons, cried “censorship!” and defended their Foxy brethren and Susteren.

No?

“A White House attempt to delegitimize Fox News – which in past times would have drawn howls of censorship from the press corps – has instead been greeted by a collective shrug, reports the non-partisan Politico.

“We’re doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible,” a White House official told POLITICO, noting how the recent ACORN scandal story started because Fox covered it “breathlessly for weeks on end.”

Not because a major nation-wide organization receiving hundreds of millions in tax dollars didn’t blink at supporting a purportedly depraved criminal enterprise bent on child prostitution and white slavery.

Politico continues with an analysis of Fox News’ legitimacy:

Fox denies its news coverage is slanted, and even White House aides say the network’s top correspondent there, Major Garrett, is a straight shooter. But in its non-news hours, Fox mixes in a steady diet of criticism of President Barack Obama by its prominent conservative commentators Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. It’s a formula that works for Fox, with the highest ratings in cable news.

Others say the attacks only strengthen Fox.

“This is an effort in effect to quarantine Fox News and to discourage other media outlets from picking up on stories that originate here,” Fox Washington Bureau Chief Brit Hume said on “The O’Reilly Factor.” “My guess is it won’t work….Look at Glenn Beck, he’s having a field day with this.”

At least one prominent Washington journalist publicly embraced the White House’s anti-Fox crusade, Politico reports.

“By appearing on Fox, reporters validate its propaganda values and help to undermine the role of legitimate news organizations,” former Slate editor Jacob Weisberg wrote in Newsweek. “Respectable journalists—I’m talking to you Mara Liasson—should stop appearing on its programs.”

Liasson, a National Public Radio reporter who is a regular on Fox News’s “Special Report,” did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

On the other hand, the lone voice fighting for the press seems to be ABC’s Jake Tapper.

“It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization,” Tapper confronted White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs. “Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one.”

MediaMatters.org reported that Tapper seemed “completely baffled and quite insulted” by the administration’s stance toward Fox in Jake Tapper can’t figure out how Fox News is different from ABC News?

Of course, Media Matters is more interested in tearing down Conservative outlets like Fox. But what Eric Boehlert seems not to notice is Tapper’s lone stand against the Administration is focused more on who gets to define who is and isn’t a news outlet - a fundamental 1st amendment issue:

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

And the Administration’s opinion is also that other organizations should shun and discredit Fox News because the Administration doesn’t agree with those opinions - as stated recently by senior advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

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Plenty of mud here in the trenches

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Since Richard Nixon, when has a U.S. Administration generated so much buzz talking about enemies?

Despite claims from the right that the so-called Mainstream Media (MSM) has been in bed with the administration from it’s early campaign days, Obama has run the white house more like Nixon than any other U.S. president - from staging press conferences to spotlighting Fox News as media enemy number one.

“They’re not really a news station,” Obama advisor David Axelrod told ABC’s This Week. “It’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming if you watch, it’s really not news … .The bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

“It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective,” Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on CNN’s State of the Union. “More importantly, is to not have the CNNs and the others in the world basically be led in following Fox, as if what they’re trying to do is a legitimate news organization.”

“The White House must be panicking at the thought that the “legitimate” media will only ignore these stories for so long before the lure of bigger, Foxier ratings finally proves too much,” Hot Air’s Allahpundit had to say about their opening salvos on the War on Fox. “So here he and Emanuel are, leaning on them not only to ignore Fox but to ignore stories that Fox covers, as if the underlying facts are somehow tainted by association (“Let’s make sure that we keep perspective on what are the most important stories”). Creepy.”

The People’s Cube writer Red Square turned to highly effective satire to frame the war in Obama’s War on Fox News Becomes a Quagmire.

While many observers still agree that the “War on Limbaugh” is a “just and necessary war,” even the former supporters of the war effort are now labeling the War on Fox an “unnecessary war of choice” and claim that the cable channel had nothing to do with Obama’s falling approval numbers.

But while the President drapes his unpopular policies with concern for the well-being of American journalism, more and more editors, reporters, and even unionized janitorial staff are beginning to oppose their commander-in-chief for trying to “win” an unwinnable war with their hands, instead of just using executive powers to ban all dissenting speech.

“I would gladly sacrifice any number of my fellow Americans to advance my agenda - but this is a dumb war and a rash war,” Keith Olbermann of MSNBC told The People’s Cube outside a congressional office he visited to demand a government crackdown on dissidents. “Why must we in the field put our reputations on the line when this Congress has the power to simply confiscate Rupert Murdoch’s assets and put Beck, Hannity, and Coulter in jail?”

Just One Minute put on an ironic smile and presented a “party” button for supporters of the president to show their loyalty.

I imagine this iconic image on buttons, posters, billboards - anywhere loyal journalists want to show their commitment to continuing the Good Fight for Hope and Change:

When we see Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper proudly wearing these buttons we will know that America’s opinion leaders are going to Stay The Course To Victory!

I feel safer already.

“How much you want to wager he’ll soon be announcing appearances on Fox News?” Jammie Wearing Fool asked after posting this poll graphic:

obamaindex10211

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The party of “no play” in national media coverage

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Thanks for the comment, but we’re really not asking.

That’s been the national media’s overriding treatment of opposition proposals to overhaul health care reform this year.

Republican’s have put out health care reform plans - some with the help of  Democrats in Congress.

But to listen to the news about health care reform, you would hardly know it.

More people hear the “Party of ‘no’” moniker Democrats have successfully stuck on the GOP like a “kick me” sticker.

Yesterday on CNN’s Final Word, John King played a clip of former Republican Arlen Specter, of Pennsylvania, using the “no, no, no” line against his one-time house.

“Well I suppose he has to  call us something now that he’s left the party,” guest Judd Gregg (R-NH) responded.

He pointed out that Republicans have put plans forward , including himself and jointly by Sens. Tom Coburn and Richard Burr, as well as a bipartisan bill by Sen’s Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Robert Bennett (R-UT).

“All of these are very positive proposals which would accomplish significant health care reform, which would moves us down the road in a very positive way toward getting everybody covered and bending the cost curve,” Gregg told King.

King asked no follow up questions about these  proposals.

If you search “party of no” in news pages posted in the last week, you get 250 hits on Google.

However if you search for these competing proposals from the center/right, you get a handful of news stories, including one from Cleveland.com pointing out that Republican proposals for reform get little attention.

Searching specifically for “Tom Coburn” and health care, you can find 3 stories in the last week highlighting his proposal. And one of those, The Tulsa World’s “Tomfoolery and stupid pet tricks” is a column by Julie DelCour ridiculing republican efforts to influence the process.

The Atlantic Wire’s Republican Ideas for Health Care Reform is just a wrap-up of links with no analysis or parsing of the opposition plans.

That leaves the aforementioned Cleveland.com article as the only serious news coverage of - and pointing out ironically that the news isn’t seriously covering - the opposition.

A search on Richard Burr yields only one letter to the editor this month in BlueRidgeNow.com.

Far more hits focused on Burr’s “obstructionism” or his support for the Lumbee Indian tribe.

Search on +Wyden +”Robert Bennett” health care … Nada.

The same for “Judd Gregg.”

In the same way our press corps failed to ask any serious questions or even take seriously questions posed in the runup to the second Iraq invasion, nobody is asking serious questions about health care reform, much less the opposition’s reasonable points or proposals.

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Blogging right reacts to Snowe ‘defection’

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Republican (or RINO) Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine) was the sole GOP vote for the ‘Baucus’ bill to pass committee Tuesday.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey points out the flaws in Snowe’s “history calls” parsing of her vote.

History?  Certainly, we don’t often see Congressional committees passing summaries instead of writing legislation, so that’s one for the history books.  We also don’t often see Congress passing trillion-dollar bills in a rush, although to be fair, they managed to do it earlier with Porkulus — a bill on which Snowe also helped make “history”.  Unfortunately, we see Snowe often crossing over on critical votes, so that’s neither history nor a surprise.

Wellsy’s World writes that “there are several major reasons why supporters shouldn’t be too overcome with elation, and why opponents shouldn’t despair:”

The Baucus bill does not exist in legislative language form. What passed today was the summary language translation of the Baucus plan. This is what the CBO scored, and when the legislative language is hammered out, it will most likely add costs and adversely affect the budgetary scoring, to say nothing of provisions in the legislative that may be overlooked in the summary form but have hidden consequences for the public.

Perhaps that’s why democratic leadership won’t allow the full text to be published.

“What this all means is that it’s unlikely the Baucus bill will survive in a significant manner under assaults from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and under spending and taxation concerns from conservatives,” Wellsy adds.

The Weekly Standard had this statement from Republican leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky:

The fact is, this proposal will never come before the Senate. But what we do know is that the bill written behind closed doors here in the Capitol will be another 1,000-page, trillion-dollar Washington takeover. We know it will slash a half-trillion dollars from seniors’ Medicare, add new taxes and raise premiums. That’s not reform.

Even Joe Lieberman had criticism for the Baucus bill - salient statements begin around 3:35.

Calls to action:

Gateway Pundit urged their readers to “contact these senators and insist that Americans get a chance to see the full text of the bill before any vote is taken on any so-called health care bill.

“Americans insist:

“Show us the bill!”

… and even provides contact information so readers can “melt the phones.”

RedState’s Erik Erikson goes a step further, asking readers to mail Snowe a bag of rock salt.

Olympia Snowe has sold out the country. Having been banished to our world after Aslan chased her out of Narnia, Snowe is intent on corrupting this place too.

So we should melt her.

What melts snow? Rock salt.

I’m going to ship this 5 pound bag of rock salt to her office in Maine. It’s only $3.00. You should join me.

It is a visible demonstration of our contempt for her. First she votes for the stimulus. Now this.

While Neo Neocon writes, “Snowe certainly gave the bill a nice push by giving Obama the cover he needs to claim a spurious bipartisanship. If there’s anything this bill is not, it’s bipartisan.”

But since Congressional leadership refuses to publish the text of the Baucus bill or require any bill be published before a vote, perhaps the media can publish these comments by liberal economist Robert Reich and pass it as the bill.

NewsBusters P.J. Gladnick reports on the Reich Speech as proof that the
Democrats’ health care plan is for you to “die quickly.”

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Snowe-melt predicted at top commerce perch

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Sen. Olympia Snowe may lose out on her shot at the top Republican seat on the Senate Commerce Committee if she votes for health care reform, committee members say.

The Hill is reporting that Republicans on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee are threatening to vote against Snowe’s bid for the seat, about to be vacated by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas).

Democrats on the committee made the claims - allegedly telling a Hill reporter to “Wake up” when asked if Republicans would retaliate.

President Barack Obama has struggled to show any conservative support of his bill in the last week. Former Sen. Bob Dole even had his sound-byte removed from an ad the Administration was planning to show support.

A tally by The Washington Post found Snowe voted with the GOP 58.4 percent of the time on 308 votes this year, including on the $787 billion stimulus bill. Only her compatriot Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) scored lower (58.1 percent).

MSNBC reports Snowe is the “cover the White House needs, NOT for bipartisanship, but for wooing Democrats like Ben Nelson and Tom Carper and Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh.”

They went on to point out that Baucus and the Democrats have given Snowe just about everything she asked for in wooing the centrist Republican from Maine.

George Stephanopoulos handicapped her vote here.

  • YES: 45% — “Voting yes keeps Snowe at the table and keeps Dems from moving immediately to reconciliation.”
  • NO: 40% — “Snowe is a Republican and she has to think about her base (Closed primaries in Maine).”
  • PASS: 15% — “The best way to keep your options open is to keep your options open.”

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Fear of health reform opposition: More on ridiculous reporter

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Ceci Connolly just can’t bring herself to call the opposition for a quote. That or they won’t return her phone calls.

We reported before on how she would repeatedly add canned statements from the national Republican Party and several GOP or anti-reform factions. Today’s front page Washington Post article New Bill Would Raise Rates, Says Insurance Group reinforces two assertions:

  • Ceci Connolly should never be allowed to play by herself on the front page of any newspaper.
  • Ceci Connolly only calls people if she agrees with them beforehand.

Reporting on an insurance industry report that reform will drive premiums up, Connolly fails to get a single live quote from America’s Health Insurance Plans - who funded the report.

There’s the White House insider’s view, quoted live:

“Those guys specialize in tax shelters,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform. “Clearly this is not their area of expertise.”

President Barack Obama, quoted from his weekly address.

Lots and lots of background, then:

“The report makes clear that several major provisions in the current legislative proposal will cause health care costs to increase far faster and higher than they would under the current system,” Karen Ignagni, AHIP’s president and chief executive, wrote to board members Sunday. “Between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system.”

Ignagni doesn’t appear to make herself inaccessible to the press and has been contacted in the past by many reporters on this issue.

She quotes the report, prepared by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, estimating an additional $20,700 per year tacked onto the cost for the average family insurance plan by 2019 under reform plans. But doesn’t contact them to speak with an analyst either.

Further, Connolly fails to get a single reform opponent on the record in her nearly 1,000-word article.

The Senate Finance Committee plans to pass their version of health care reform tomorrow, and the Post editors felt it was important enough to merit front page play, but punted to Connolly, practically insuring a mediocre job on news that could be detrimental to the reform cause.

Connolly, who has been called a “ridiculous reporter” even by left-wing bloggers, has multiple Web sites dedicated to her shallow brand of character assassination and sloppy reporting.

“It’s always fund talking to a reporter who has no idea what they are talking about,” OpenLeft’s Adam Green wrote in June.

Other outlets managed to find some conservative or health care opposition voice to temper their coverage of the PWC/AHIP report.

The Wall Street Journals Janet Adamy managed to get Republican Orrin Hatch on the record.

Even USA Today managed to get “Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and other Republicans” in a generalized summary of the opposition in their “Staff report.”

Fox News got a live quote from AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach, and wen on to get Republican John Barrasso of Wyoming before letting the Dems dismiss the report as a “hatchet job.”

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Get ready for $829 billion vote in Finance Committee

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the Finance Committee will vote on health care reform Tuesday.

Voice of America, the nation’s tax-funded news service, reports that this vote comes after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported the Senate bill would cost about $829 billion over the next decade.

“The CBO report says the bill would result in reductions to the deficit,” VOA reports.

You had to click over to the New York Times to learn the “budget office said 25 million people — about one-third of them illegal immigrants — would still be uninsured in 2019.”

The percentage of nonelderly Americans with insurance would rise over the next 10 years from 83 to 94 percent.

Republicans still skeptical

Republican minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, called the cost analysis “irrelevant.”

“The fact is, the bill it’s referring to will never see the light of day,” he said. “That’s because the real bill will soon be cobbled together in a secret conference room somewhere in the Capitol by a handful of Democrat senators and White House officials.”

If you read the Washington Post, you learned before any of this that Reid “blasted Republicans for opposing the Finance Committee’s measure, accusing GOP leaders of aiming to be ‘partisan protesters’ rather than ‘productive partners.’ “

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Washington Post’s department of Old News gets crusty

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Well, thank you Ceci Connolly for reporting the news from … 2006?

They did it again.  Front page.  You think they’d learn, but there she is in all her incredibly inept reporting glory.

Connolly really reals in the “ridiculous reporter” label with Tuesday’s front page story: U.S. Losing Ground on Preventable Deaths.

Apparently, she informs us, “lawmakers are grappling with a troubling question: Are Americans dying too soon? The answer is yes. When it comes to “preventable deaths” — an array of illnesses and injuries that should not kill at an early age — the United States trails other industrialized nations and has been falling further behind over the past decade.”

And Connolly’s basis for this assertion?

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) brought up, apparently repeatedly, a Commonwealth Fund study published in the journal Health Affairs titled  U.S. Health System Performance: A National Scorecard.

From September, 2006.

“Some lawmakers theorized that the rate could be related to trauma from guns and automobiles,” she volunteered. It’s easier than trying to dig up whether health care reform bills in Congress would do anything to address the underlying problem.

Unattributed gem:

But as many as 80 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, which means they have little access to a regular physician, checkups, preventive services, affordable prescription drugs, dental care or screening tests.

Connolly goes on to make the rounds of Profnet experts bemoaning the state of American health care without any connection to the debate now in Congress until the end.

Somehow it turns into an argument - however unsubstantiated - for a “government role” in universal coverage.

For Conrad, one of the key Senate health-care negotiators, the international comparisons suggest following the lead of nations such as Germany, France and Japan that achieve universal coverage through a blend of private employer-based insurance and nonprofit cooperatives, with a significant governmental role.

In tomorrow’s dead tree edition, she will be reporting with actual reporter Michael Shear (less opportunity to totally ham-fist it) on GOP support for reform.

Former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist; George W. Bush health and human services secretary Tommy Thompson and Medicare chief Mark McClellan; California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — a Republican turned independent — have all spoken favorably of overhauling the nation’s health-care system, if couched with plenty of caveats regarding the details.

And these Republican luminaries have, count them, zero votes on the bills in question.

Thanks Ceci, Maybe Obama will give you a white coat too.

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No YOU apologize first! Grayson goes lowbrow

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Much like Joe Wilson’s apparently not so unusual outburst during a presidential address, the furor over Florida Dem Alan Grayson’s remarks about Republican’s wanting sick people to “die quickly” aren’t exactly dying quickly.

In a bit of apparently unplanned comedy on Wolf Blitzer, Republican Strategist Alex Castellanos dismissed the debate, saying “There are fringes and nutjobs on both sides…”

Blitzer interrupted, “Hold on, he’s coming in right now,” as Grayson entered the studio.

Even the not-notoriously-conservative Wonkette had some choice words for Nancy Pelosi, after the House speaker defended Grayson.

“Nancy Pelosi wakes up every day and picks something to make worse,” Wonkette wrote in her post titled Nancy Pelosi Would Like To Drag The Alan Grayson Thing Out For Another Hot Sec, If That’s Cool With You.

It’s like, why should Alan Grayson apologize when other people—SUBTEXT: Republicans!—also have things to apologize for? How is that even democracy??

“If anybody’s going apologize, everybody should apologize,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference. “We are holding Democrats to a higher standard than their own members.”

Oh and the Democrats want to socialize apologies now too.

Michelle Malkin had this review of Grayson’s provocations:

You remember Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida. A month ago, he was taking refuge in a union hall to shill for Obamacare in a cowardly last-minute meeting with angry constituents.

As you know, he has now traveled down Demagoguery Road and accused Republicans of wanting sick Americans to “DIE QUICKLY.”

The diarrhea of the mouth continued yesterday with Grayson trashing his political opponents as “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.”

Michelle neglects his non-apology issued Wednesday:

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,” he said.

Right blogger Jules Crittenden has some fun with this obviously over the top congressman in Neanderthal Pride.

Look, I really don’t want to get into the anti-Neanderthalism, though I think it’s deplorable we can’t have a political discussion without people resorting to overt species-ist attacks.

But if being a Neanderthal is something that they want to disparage with partisan cheapshots, then homo sapiens though I may be, I will stand shoulder to shoulder with my theoretically extinct low-browed slope-shouldered fellow hominids.

I am a Neanderthal.

Say it loud, say it proud. I AM A NEANDERTHAL!

I’d also like to congratulate Grayson on all the free national publicity he’s getting. Not bad for a coconut-brained baboon from Disneyworld.

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The public option is dead - long live the public option

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Relentless optimism reigns in the left-blogosphere.

Despite headlines declaring that a public option can’t pass congress, many left-leaning “news” outlets are celebrating like they’re just around the corner from a successful, if watered-down, public option passing.

Washington Post Lib-blogger Ezra Klein led the pack, reporting on Schumer’s comment “We don’t have 60 votes” but pointing out that “we” only need 51.

There are two questions here. The first is “60 votes for what?” Do they not have 60 votes in favor of a health-care plan that includes a public option? Or do they not have 60 votes against a filibuster of a health-care plan that includes a public option? If it’s the former, that’s okay: You only need 51. If it’s the latter, that’s a bigger problem. But I’d be interested to hear which Democrats will publicly commit to filibustering Barack Obama’s health-care reform bill. If that’s such a popular position back home, why aren’t more Democrats voicing it loudly?

He argues that blue dogs should be tapped to kill the public option publicly. “If these moderates want to kill the measure, let them get full credit for doing so on the floor.”

Matthew Yglesias asks, “Is Blanche Lincoln so hostile to a public option that she would filibuster a massive health care package she otherwise likes just to avoid it?”

Huffpo’s D. Brad Wright said, “a bill with a public option should expect no more than 55 votes in the Senate.”

And Open Left’s Mike Lux tried to put a positive spin on it in his optimistically titled post Public Option Stays Very Much Alive. “So getting 10 votes on this is promising for those of us who believe a public option is essential.”

“I voted against the public option so I could save it.”
Then things get interesting. Dems are hoping Baucus’s vote against the public option in committee means he can bring it back into the bill later, perhaps on the floor.

“Sam” commented on MYglesias, “it’s pretty typical for a chairman to vote against something he or she supports if that measure will fail. This allows the chair to bring it up again, because only the winners of a vote can move to reconsider an issue.”

He got a chorus of amens on that.

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