More media watchdog rebuttals on the wave of smears against
Clark and Dean...
Media watchdog group Campaigndesk
reports on how the Drudge smear of Clark's anti-war testimony
before the House Armed Services Committee was picked up by some
mainstream media outlets and the campaign of Joe Lieberman
without anyone bothering to check if it was even true. Dana Hull
and Drew Brown of Knight Ridder were the first to do a story
that refuted the Drudge smear. That was followed by pieces in the
Washington
Post, the New
York Times, and the Boston
Globe which pointed out that Clark was against the
war not for it. Josh Marshall also talks more on the smear
of Clark and takes
on Andrew Sullivan for continuing to misconstrue Clark's anti-war
position even after much of the mainstream media has
discredited the story that Drudge began.
Factcheck, the media watchdog group of the Annenburg Public
Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, refutes
the smear against Clark by other candidates who claim he was once
a Republican. Clark, who has been trailed by supporters of other
candidates wearing Ronald Reagan masks
who hand out flyers, has consistently maintained that he was non-partisan
and independent during his career in the military and
government service. Clark's position is the same as many millions
of members of the military and federal employees who were prohibited
by law from being involved in partisan political
activity because of the Hatch
Act and because of the tradition that the military and
federal employees serve both Democratic and Republican
administrations.
There’s no dispute about Clark ’s voter
registration: he was an independent. This by itself means little,
however, as nearly 96% of all Arkansas voters express no party
preference when registering. Party preference is “optional”
on Arkansas’ voter registration form, and only 2.6% of the
state’s residents were registered as Democrats at the end of
2001, according to the most recent statistics published by the
Arkansas Secretary of State. Only 1.4% registered as Republicans.
CampaignDesk also looks at the coverage
of the campaign of Howard Dean and describes how things have
gotten out of hand.
But this is getting out of hand. We already told you about
how the The New York Times and The Washington Post have been
parroting his opponents' Dean-in-trouble spin, and about how ABC
News ran a shameful anti-Dean smear piece with no news value
whatsoever. Now comes more evidence that the media have been
ganging up on the Governor:
Rob is the
founder and editor of the progressive news site robwire.com and is a
frequent contributor to rob.dailykos.com
