It shouldn't be a major surprise that the Major General of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists, Power Line, is to be found in a constant state of cheerleading for the Iraq War and defending its BFF George W. Bush. One of their favorite targets is "liberal media bias," the lie that will not die, a lie first created by disgraced President Nixon and the fiasco of Watergate. Remember this: anytime you see "liberal media bias" remember where it got its start, conservatives who were angry at Woodward and Bernstein for telling the entire nation the truth about Nixon.
Their outrage meter is currently peaking over this article, which details the story of how six Sunnis were burned alive, while Iraqi police watched, in a revenge killing by Shiite militias. Michelle Malkin and Power Line have been busy, since the publication of this story, by attempting to prove the story incorrect, so they latched on various circumstantial evidence in an attempt to muddy the waters. This is a common tactic by conservatives, they do not seek to prove something wrong or something right, but if they muddy the waters enough then it will forever cast doubt on the subject at hand (case in point see the conservative blogosphere's shoddy work on the Dan Rather controversy).
This holiday season, so far, Michelle Malkin seemed to be more concerned with her fervent desire for Fidel Castro to die and her joining with O'Reilly in defending Christmas from all evil secular progressives, but she still find time to help in muddying the waters.
Look at her "exhaustive" list of evidence of how the AP fabricated the story. Notice that she produces not one iota of evidence that the AP fabricated the story. She points to an article produced by CENTCOM which insinuates that the story is "unsubstantiated rumor" and the spokesperson for CENTCOM went on to say:
He went on to name several other false sources that have been used recently and appealed to the media to document their news before reporting. He went into some detail about the impact of the press carrying propaganda for the enemies of Iraq and thanked "the friends" who have brought this to their attention.
I especially like the statement "the press carrying propaganda for the enemies of Iraq." It shows a real love for the mainstream press. The military says it is "unsubstantiated rumor," and they wouldn't lie or cover anything up to promote a particular agenda, would they? Seriously. Malkin then trots out a constant litany of not enough eyewitnesses, not enough photos, why did this happen when this should have happened, and attacks on the character of the source of the material.
The AP has defended its story and reconfirmed its sources, the thing I find interesting is that the AP reporter conferred with the source, Jamil Hussein, in an Iraqi police station where he served as an Iraqi police officer. But, none of this is good enough for Power Line:
That's quite an accusation to level against the U.S. military, and is obviously unfair in light of the military's aggressive exposure of its own soldiers' misdeeds, not to mention those of Shia militiamen. But the AP evidently thinks it knows what way the wind is blowing, with the Democrats now in power in Congress and talk of defeat and withdrawal in the air.
Power Line then, in attempt to further discredit the AP, attempts to find a Zell Miller journalist, because what better way to discredit the opposition and complete Operation Muddy Waters than to find an individual associated with the opposition who shows true bravery and courage and independence and goes against to grain to criticize and point out the errors of his/her fellow colleagues. Is it news when Hillary Clinton criticizes the GOP or when Chuck Hagel criticizes them? And, their journalist saboteur is none other than Jules Crittenden who in an article for the Boston Herald criticizes the "shoddy work" of the AP:
The AP, of course, has been delivering unbalanced reports about U.S. national politics for some time, as when President Bush, whom AP reporters despise, is barely allowed to state his case on an issue before his critics are given twice as much space to pummel him. The AP, once a just-the-facts news delivery service, has lost its rudder. It has become a partisan, anti-American news agency that seeks to undercut a wartime president and American soldiers in the field. It is providing fraudulent, shoddy goods. It doesn’t even recognize it has a problem.
Power Line congratulates his bravery and his unbiased wisdom:
The oblivion has reached epidemic proportions. Some kind of congratulations are in order to Crittenden, who in this column plays the role of the little boy in the story of the naked emperor.
Even Michelle Malkin links to the new messiah. But, who is Jules Crittenden? Let us check his blog:
The first important news of the evenings was that Hillary is gearing up to run. The only thing better than this for 2008 would be another Kerry candidacy.
And:
Coddling the illegals, offering them the privileges and services of legal residency, will just draw more of them, to mow more lawns.
And, finally:
The pajama-clad ranks of conservative bloggers are officially here as effective media watchdogs, having forced Dan Rather's retirement; having forced Reuters and other news agencies to come to terms with the propaganda they were shilling for terrorists in Lebanon; and having now prompted action from both the United States military and the Iraqi Interior Ministry after evidence of fraudulent war crimes reports by the Associated Press.
It is a beautiful phenomenon to observe.
And with links to his "friends" like Atlas Shrugs, Blogs for Bush, and David Frum we see which side of the fence Crittenden resides. Jules Crittenden: GOP shill, neoconservative wingnut and Iraqi War apologist...the perfect journalist according to Power Line.
It's interesting that the only entity hated more by the American conservative, more so than Bill Clinton and the Supreme Court, is the Media. This hatred of the mainstream media by conservatives stems from a monumental crime perpetuated upon the American people...yeah, I'm talking about Nixon. Nixon found support for his belief in the liberal media bias in books such as Edith Efron's The News Twisters and radio shows like Phyllis Schlafly's America, Wake Up! The Nixon administration felt that the media was too harsh on the Vietnam policy and felt that it was payback for his stance against Communism in the 1950s. David Brock in The Republican Noise Machine states about Nixon and VP Agnew's concerted effort to tarnish the American media:
...their device was a speech attacking the East Coast media, drafted by [Pat] Buchanan, edited by Nixon, and delivered by Agnew on national television in November 1969.
In this speech Agnew stated:
The American who relies on television for his news might conclude that the majority of American students are embittered radicals, that the majority of black Americans feel non-regard for their country, that violence and lawlessness are the rule...In this search for excitement and controversy, has more than equal time gone to the minority of Americans hwo specialize in attacking the United States-its institutions and its citizens? As with other American institutions, perhaps it is time that the networks were made more responsive to the views of the nation and more responsible to the people they serve...
In other words, damn freedom of the press. Does this criticism sound familiar? Aren't we still hearing this today from the like of Ann Coulter and Tom Delay? Certainly. For thirty years the conservative movement, and major forces in the Republican Party, have waged an unrelenting war to completely discredit, weaken and control the American media. The war was, and is, fought against Dan Rather and the New York Times against David Gregory, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, and in recent years we have seen the emergence of the vanguard of the conservative machine, the conservative blogosphere. Constantly screaming liberal media bias, they make mountains out of molehills, take statements out of context, look for any pretext or inclination towards criticism of their heroes, but they don't hate the media. If they hated the media they wouldn't pull out Jules Crittenden as an example for the media to follow, they wouldn't support FauxNews and John Gibson, Brit Hume and Bill O'Reilly. They don't hate the media, they just hate when the media doesn't act as an echo chamber.
In a day when the judicial system has been rendered nearly impotent by partisanship and when the legislative branch for, at least a few years, was forced to submit to the authority of the executive branch acting only as a rubber stamp, it was the media that stood up to the faulty intelligence of WMDs in Iraq, it was the media that broke the story that the Bush administration were wiretapping American citizens without the necessary warrants, it was the media that took over for a submissive legislature and acted as a watchdog on the affairs of the executive. If the conservatives had their way they would force the media to submit and simply distribute propaganda heedless of the facts, see Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and FauxNews. In many ways the media are a fourth branch of the government, a fourth estate. Thomas Carlyle in On Heroes and Hero Worship states:
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,--very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures. the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: Democracy is virtually there. Add only, that whatsoever power exists will have itself, by and by, organized; working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, visible to all.
If you want to see the conservative war on the media and freedom of the press, then I would recommend this article by Paul Waldman:
They declared war on the idea that journalists have not just the right but the obligation to hold those in power accountable for their actions. They declared war on the idea that journalists, not the government and not a political party, get to decide what appears in the press. They declared war on the idea that the public has a right to know what the government is doing in our name.
This is a profound threat to our democracy, and we underestimate it at our peril.
Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, is a frequent target of the conservative war against the media, mostly for the Times courageous and timely expose on the illegality of the Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Unitd States government's monitoring of international banking records. He supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and he defended Paul Wolfowitz from his many critics, and they loved him for it, but as soon as he committed the awful sin of going against the hive, as soon as he showed the natural, independent streak that any good journalist has deep inside, they initiated a witch hunt against him. Congressman Peter King (R-NY) even called for the New York Times to be prosecuted for treason. Bill Keller in response wrote, perhaps, the best defense of the media that I have ever read:
It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.
And:
The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.
Without a strong, independent media there can be no democracy. Without a media that can act as a watchdog on the affairs of the government there can be no liberty. It is about who controls the information and who has the right of knowledge. If the government takes that right and takes that control then there is nothing stopping them. It is the first step towards a police state.
I don't know for sure if the AP story about the burning of the six Sunnis is true or not, as I always take anything with a grain of salt, but I can see that the AP story seems sound, their sources and eyewitnesses appear truthful. To say otherwise is to insinuate that the AP and its reporters are deliberately faking news and the conservatives like Power Line and Michelle Malkin are doing so without a shred of evidence. That is criminal and that is dangerous.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Some on the conservative blogosphere would do well to remember that.