OK, I just saw Dan Abrams from MSNBC's Abrams Report interviewing Les Moonves, star of "More With Les" on The Late Show With David Letterman and the chairperson of CBS. What's the story?
It's all over the news today. Focus of MSNBC's "Question Of The Day." Top story on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, NY Times, you name it -- they're all talking about it, so I don't even need to give you this link. They're talking about the fact that four CBS employees were fired because of their work on a story involving President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard.
If you remember, the story came out during the presidential election campaign, and it went something like this. Bush's critics have long contended that Bush failed to live up to his obligations in the cushy Texas Air National Guard (TANG). First of all, his father got him a spot in TANG so that Bush wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. Then, Bush basically quit TANG without permission and got away scot-free, again, thanks to his dad's influence.
CBS ran a story on 60 Minutes II, a segment reported by Dan Rather, in which they claimed to have documents written by Bush's supervisor in TANG saying critical things about Bush -- including the fact that he disobeyed an order to appear, and that he basically was a slacker. Bush's supervisor's secretary went on TV saying that she didn't remember that particular memo, but that the gist of the story was right -- Bush's supervisor thought that Bush sucked.
Right after the story came out, conservatives pounced. And today 4 people were rightly fired for putting faulty documents into their report. This is an important news story, and I'm glad it's getting attention. Lots of people are taking this as evidence that there's a massive liberal bias in the media -- these CBS employees were clearly trying to push a liberal agenda by attacking Bush, right?
Oh yeah? Well, here's a related story that's getting almost no attention at all. I just saw MSNBC's 1 minute report on it -- it was on at 12:27PM at the bottom of the news rotation. (The story about CBS was a 10 minute top story from 12:00-12:10.)
The related story would be at the top of the news if we had a liberally biased media. The story is about the fact that conservative commentator Armstrong Williams took a $240,000 bribe from the US Department of Education (!) to talk up Bush's "No Child Left Behind" act in his column and as often as possible.
WHAT?!
Yes. Your government, the Bush Administration, has paid a member of the news media to tell you that what they're doing is good. Is this America or the Soviet Union?
And, the best thing about it is that this story is getting almost ZERO attention. It's not anywhere on CNN's homepage right now.
This story is HUGE. Is it an isolated incident, or is the Bush Administration paying commentators regularly to talk up their proposals and policies? Who else is on the payroll?
We'll just have to hope that the media polices itself. OR -- we'll have to hope that crazy liberal blogs, like this Most Important Blog... Ever stays on the case.
Correction: this post originally erred in saying that the initial offending broadcast was on CBS's Nightly News With Dan Rather. It actually first aired on 60 Minutes II. We regret the error.
It's all over the news today. Focus of MSNBC's "Question Of The Day." Top story on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, NY Times, you name it -- they're all talking about it, so I don't even need to give you this link. They're talking about the fact that four CBS employees were fired because of their work on a story involving President Bush's time in the Texas Air National Guard.
If you remember, the story came out during the presidential election campaign, and it went something like this. Bush's critics have long contended that Bush failed to live up to his obligations in the cushy Texas Air National Guard (TANG). First of all, his father got him a spot in TANG so that Bush wouldn't have to go to Vietnam. Then, Bush basically quit TANG without permission and got away scot-free, again, thanks to his dad's influence.
CBS ran a story on 60 Minutes II, a segment reported by Dan Rather, in which they claimed to have documents written by Bush's supervisor in TANG saying critical things about Bush -- including the fact that he disobeyed an order to appear, and that he basically was a slacker. Bush's supervisor's secretary went on TV saying that she didn't remember that particular memo, but that the gist of the story was right -- Bush's supervisor thought that Bush sucked.
Right after the story came out, conservatives pounced. And today 4 people were rightly fired for putting faulty documents into their report. This is an important news story, and I'm glad it's getting attention. Lots of people are taking this as evidence that there's a massive liberal bias in the media -- these CBS employees were clearly trying to push a liberal agenda by attacking Bush, right?
Oh yeah? Well, here's a related story that's getting almost no attention at all. I just saw MSNBC's 1 minute report on it -- it was on at 12:27PM at the bottom of the news rotation. (The story about CBS was a 10 minute top story from 12:00-12:10.)
The related story would be at the top of the news if we had a liberally biased media. The story is about the fact that conservative commentator Armstrong Williams took a $240,000 bribe from the US Department of Education (!) to talk up Bush's "No Child Left Behind" act in his column and as often as possible.
WHAT?!
Yes. Your government, the Bush Administration, has paid a member of the news media to tell you that what they're doing is good. Is this America or the Soviet Union?
And, the best thing about it is that this story is getting almost ZERO attention. It's not anywhere on CNN's homepage right now.
This story is HUGE. Is it an isolated incident, or is the Bush Administration paying commentators regularly to talk up their proposals and policies? Who else is on the payroll?
We'll just have to hope that the media polices itself. OR -- we'll have to hope that crazy liberal blogs, like this Most Important Blog... Ever stays on the case.
Correction: this post originally erred in saying that the initial offending broadcast was on CBS's Nightly News With Dan Rather. It actually first aired on 60 Minutes II. We regret the error.
The Amrstrong thing was just on The Daily Show, the best news show on TV. Maybe if you tuned in to quality television, you wouldn't be whining.
-Dave
Actually, there's a bit of a difference here in that:
1. The CBS Producer worked on the story for 5 years and the Kerry campaign outed her as someone who was calling them up daily looking for something to kill Bush's momentum in the election.
and
2. Armstrong is a conservative commentator, not a hard news analyst or producer.
Armstrong's views are conservative anyway. Bush's people just said "Here, talk about this... and here's some incentive." No major harm done. Now, if he paid Tom Brokaw to present a story full of FALSE information so that "No Child Left Behind" looks better than it really is, then you have a story.
Paying for an analyst to alter their existing opinion (or be more vocal about their existing opinion) is completely different than a TV Network presenting fabricated news as fact.
The president is entitled to spend money on advertising to promote his programs just like any other business. In a sense, Armstrong is like a celebrity endorser. A conservative being given money to endorse conservative politics is not a story. If Al Franken caved to Bush and started promoting "No Child Left Behind," THEN you have a story.
Ian