CyberAlertOctober 22, 2007
MRC Alert: Couric Portrays Plame as Heroic Victim of White House 'Smear'
1. Couric Portrays Plame as Heroic Victim of White House 'Smear'
Katie Couric's Sunday 60 Minutes interview, to promote Valerie Plame's new book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, framed the story just as the media have all along -- Painting Plame as a heroic victim of an orchestrated "smear" with little consideration to who actually gave her name to Bob Novak or the responsibility and motivation of her husband who picked a high-profile political fight with the White House.
Couric went so far as to suggest President Bush's personal involvement in the "smear" effort: "When all is said and sone, the top aides to the President and Vice President leaked your name to reporters, do you think President Bush was in on this?"
In a preview on Friday's Early Show, Harry Smith asserted Plame's "life story reads like a spy novel," gushing that "she is beautiful, smart, a covert agent."
In a preview on Friday's Early Show, Couric told Smith that Plame is "very charming, incredibly intelligent and eloquent and really mad about what happened to her, angry and resentful of being outed, if you will, having her career end this way."
On Friday's Evening News, Couric reported that "when senior administration officials leaked her name to reporters, they may have exposed other spies and damaged operations targeting Iran."
2. ABC's Stossel Takes on Gore Movie, Talks to Dissenting Scientists On Friday's 20/20, ABC's John Stossel presented the views of scientists who dissent from the Al Gore view of global warming, including two former members of the IPCC -- the committee which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Gore. These scientists disagreed with the selection process of the committee's members and some of its conclusions. The ABC host disputed some of the claims in An Inconvenient Truth, and even presented the view that increased carbon dioxide levels are the result of global warming, rather than the cause, as he took on Gore's famous graph from the movie: "But the real inconvenient truth is that carbon increases came after temperature rose -- usually hundreds of years later. Temperature went up first. I wanted to ask Mr. Gore about that and other things, but he wouldn't agree to talk about this."
3. CNN's O'Brien Talks to Gore Critic, Hints Doubters 'In the Dark' On Friday night, CNN viewers were treated to the special "Keeping Them Honest: The Truth About Global Warming," which took time to examine nine "alleged inconsistencies or exaggerations" in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, as enumerated in a ruling by a British judge. Host Miles O'Brien also interviewed a member of the IPCC, the group which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Gore, in the form of a scientist who has challenged Gore's views on global warming. O'Brien, who a week earlier had tagged dissenters with such labels as "dead-enders" and "a very small fringe," on this show suggested that people who are "skeptical" about global warming are "in the dark," and presented what he called "surprising" polling data showing a substantial number of Americans have doubts about global warming theory. Notably, beginning at 1:00 p.m. earlier in the day, CNN started displaying its logo in green, and, for a while, used a clock counting down how long it will be until the upcoming series "Planet in Peril" begins on Tuesday.
4. 11-Year-Old Kid on CBS Reality Show: Bush 'Not Smart at All' No where on CBS is a safe zone from some gratuitous Bush-bashing, not even the Kid Nation reality show, the MRC's Kristine Lawrence noticed. For last Wednesday's episode of the show premised on kids establishing and running a community at a New Mexico ghost town, dubbed "Bonanza City," four sets of kids had to assemble in chronological order photographs of seven U.S. Presidents. The yellow team won, mainly because of team member Zach, ten-year-old. His fellow teammate, 11-year-old-Kelsey from Pennsylvania, seemed to resent his success as the program featured this comment from her: "We won with the help of Zach, but just because he knows his Presidents doesn't mean he's the best leader. I mean, look at George W. Bush. He's not smart at all but he won the U.S. President two times in a row."
5. Late Show Contest's 'Top Ten Cool Things About Global Warming' Late Show's "Top Ten Contest" winning entries for the "Top Ten Cool Things About Global Warming."
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The 2,513th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996
9:45am EDT, Monday October 22, 2007 (Vol. Twelve; No. 186)
