20070731 Cyber Alert

CyberAlert

9:05 am EDT, Tuesday July 31, 2007 (Vol. Twelve; No. 129

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1. NBC Skips More Upbeat Iraq Judgment ABC and CBS Find Newsworthy NBC Nightly News on Monday ignored a development both ABC and CBS found newsworthy, that after eight days in Iraq, two Brookings Institution scholars who describe themselves has "harshly" critical of Bush's Iraq policy, determined the situation in Iraq is better than they assumed and so the "surge" should continue into next year.

Instead of reporting the fresh assessment from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, NBC anchor Brian Williams, citing "a draft U.S. report," aired a full story on how "there are disturbing new details about corruption at the very top of the Iraqi government." But the NBC Nightly News has hardly been reticent before about running soundbites from O'Hanlon with dire warnings about Iraq. ABC anchor Charles Gibson declared "the column was the talk of Washington today." From Iraq, Terry McCarthy related that "the report tracks fairly closely with what we're seeing." On CBS, David Martin noted how "with one day left in the month, American casualties in July are the lowest since the troop surge began in February." Martin aired soundbites from Pollack and O'Hanlon as he described "just enough progress so that a critic like Michael O'Hanlon, who used to think the surge was too little too late, now believes it should be continued."

2. ABC's Harris: New British PM 'Potentially No More Poodle' to Bush ABC's World News Sunday featured a report about the Monday meeting between President Bush and recently chosen British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which included speculation about how Bush's relationship with Brown will compare to that with Tony Blair.

Between anchor Dan Harris and correspondent John Cochran, the derogatory charge by Blair critics that he was Bush's "poodle" was mentioned three times.

While Cochran described the label as "perhaps unfair," when the report concluded, Harris, after having already mentioned the "poodle" insult once as he introduced the story, followed up by remarking, "Potentially no more poodle."

3. CNN Promotes 'Generation Chicken Hawk' Attack on College Repubs Five hours apart on Sunday night, CNN aired lengthy segments on a left-winger's Web video attack on College Republicans, "Generation Chicken Hawk," for supporting the Iraq war while they fail to serve in the armed forces. But CNN refused to properly label Max Blumenthal's ideology or far-left credentials.

Anchor Rick Sanchez set up the story: "A writer, opposed to the Iraq war, goes to a national meeting of College Republicans, and creates a video that's fueling a hot political debate over the Web. He says that he's exposing the quote, 'hypocrisy of a group of young people who are behind the war, but won't put their own lives on the line when it comes to the war.'" In the second airing, Sanchez made clear he agreed with the left-winger: "As you watch these guys -- and I think most people at home would agree -- there seems to be a certain hypocritical nature to this. I mean, they're so boastful when they talk about supporting the war, and yet sheepish when it comes to actually doing something about it." Sanchez also saw something even more nefarious: "They're young upstarts. But is there a sense that this is the kind of organization that makes the Karl Roves of the world?"

4. CBS Uses Child to Paint Bush as Heartless Over Spending on Cops Another example of how journalists equate federal spending with caring, on Saturday's Early Show, CBS news reader Jeff Glor used a seven-year-old's letter to portray President Bush as criminally uncaring for planning to veto a bill to spend more federal money to pay for local police officers.

5. Reporters on Tom Snyder's Shows Denied Bias, Made Liberal Points NBC, CNBC and CBS talk show veteran Tom Snyder, who passed away Sunday at age 71, frequently had media figures as guests on his shows and the journalists inevitably denied any liberal bias or otherwise made liberal political points.

Then-NBC White House reporter Brian Williams gushed over President Clinton in 1995: "I've also said that if Americans were paying Presidents by the thought, we're getting a bargain in this guy because, my God, he's just always moving, his brain's moving, he hardly sleeps."

Earlier that year, Dan Rather denied any media bias as he insisted "most reporters, when you get to know them, would fall in the general category of kind of common-sense moderates." A couple of years later, in 1997, actor Richard Belzer denounced former President Reagan for how "he did some unconscionable things," charging that Reagan "traded guns for cocaine to free hostages."

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9:05am EDT, Tuesday July 31, 2007 (Vol. Twelve; No. 129)

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