It made me ill.
I hope someone more enterprising will get a transcript and post it. Especially Daily Howler.
I didn't take notes and this isn't verbatim, but I want to share my perception of the horribly biased report I just saw:
I turn it on a couple of minutes in.
First they go to Jonathan Karl for his report on the Bush campaign.
He shows lots of clips of Bush talking tough about terror and Iraq. They actually play a clip of Bush saying something like, "we were all wrong about Hussein having WMDs, but don't forget he had the capability to make them and we wouldn't have wanted a madman like him to do that."
Hey Jonathan Fucking Karl: NO HE DID NOT HAVE THAT CAPABILITY.
And yet Karl just puts it on the air with no comment. No wonder people are so woefully ignorant. How can they see through shit like that?
But it gets worse:
At one point he talks about how Bush uses specifics about Iraq, as (paraphrase, but close to exact quote), "an example of Bush's decisive leadership."
Again, Jonathan Fucking Karl doesn't even bother to qualify it like saying "an example of what Bush wants people TO THINK is his decisive leadership."
Essentially he just verified the pre-scripted media point that Bush is a decisive leader.
No counter-discussion of Bush's indeciveness on every issue from getting Osama bin Laden to creating the Department of Homeland Security to his inability to explain why we are in Iraq.
But it gets worse...
Then they start talking about Bush's attacks on Kerry. He just tells us exactly how Bush is drawing the contrast. He repeats all the attacks on Kerry -- even shows the TV commercial with the $87 billion quote.
Again, no context, no other side. No attempt to put Bush on the defensive about anything or to provide any balance. It was just pure unadulterated spin.
But, again, it gets worse...
Then they went to the reporter covering Kerry. I forget who it was. I figure OK now we'll get the Kerry message unfiltered and how they are attacking Bush.
Nope.
Instead we get the reporter blasting Kerry left and right. He criticized Kerry for a lack of specific policy for Iraq, without mentioning Bush's lack of any coherent policy.
He played plenty of clips of Kerry saying things, most of which he rebutted (in obvious contrast to the Bush report where instead of rebutting them, they actually augmented them with Bush-framed contextual spin).
He actually opened the story by blaming Kerry for all of this because he made national security an issue at his convention (and that blame was from his own voice, not reported as what the Republicans say). And when he did that, he never bothered to say why Kerry wanted to make national security an issue (i.e. how the contrast could be framed for advantage to Kerry), but only focused on how Bush wants it to work against him.
Basically, the entire thing was a hatchet job on Kerry and how bad he is and how great Bush is.
It was fucking disgusting.
It's so obvious that the media has a script and they are sticking to it no matter what: Bush is strong and decisive and he can't be touched on Iraq or terror; Kerry is everything the Bush people say, and inept politically to boot.
Kerry has been on the attack for days and days. The print media has several stories in the last couple of days that could have Bush on the serious defensive, and more that have quote how strong Kerry is going after him.
And yet the TV folks just won't let him be on offense. Their story is Kerry on defense. No matter what he says. No matter what Bush says.
If Kerry makes a mistake, it's used as an example of why he's on the defensive. If Bush makes a mistake it's used as an example of how Bush can't be put on the defensive because Kerry is so bad.
Seriously, the great challenge of this election for the Kerry campaign is figuring out how to deal with the abomination that has become the television news media. Given how hard Kerry has attacked the last couple of days without them deviating one iota from the script, I don't really know the answer.
I still am very confident we'll win, but I am truly sad and angry about what our media is doing to our great country. And terrified.
At any rate, I apologize for the long rant with no exact quotes or text blocks.
I just needed to vent.
Please, someone, let me know that you read this thing so I'll know someone heard my venting.
Thanks.