at-Largely

Day After "Appeasement" Remark, Ghost of Prescott Bush Hovers Over WH (satire)

Posted by Brad Jacobson

One day after President Bush likened presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama to those who appeased Adolph Hitler, the ghost of the president's grandfather, Prescott Bush - in an SS uniform, muttering German and gesticulating angrily - has been hovering high above the White House since dawn.

An anonymous Bush administration staffer said the White House initially believed MoveOn.org, which many administration officials have compared to Hamas, had orchestrated the specter of Bush's grandfather. (Prescott Bush, a true American hero, helped fund Hitler's war machine and, as the BBC revealed last year, co-conspired to overthrow President Roosevelt to create a Nazi-style government in America.) But MoveOn.org spokesman Adam Green denied his organization's involvement, saying, "Dude, if we could do that, we would've done it a long, long time ago. We would've saved a lot of money."

Prescott's ghost has attracted crowds of onlookers who might otherwise have taken the usual long-distance gaze at the White House before moving on to the Capitol's heavily trafficked monuments. One dumbstruck eyewitness, Stanley Huffle, a history professor at American University, said, 'It's as if history and karma have merged."

Around noon, the National Guard attempted to shoot down Prescott's ghost or at least disperse him to a less visible area. But the bullets merely sailed through his shadowy form, only seeming to further inflame his rhetoric. A passing German tourist quoted him as saying, "Our failure to please the fuhrer has led directly to this point in history, where a schwartze might be president, homosexuals can marry in California, and bagels are more commonplace than f***ing Wonder Bread!"

Following yesterday's heated Hardball confrontation between host Chris Matthews and right-wing radio personality Kevin James, James returned to discuss Prescott's ghost with Matthews.

"You see, Chris, like I said yesterday, Obama is an appeaser," began James. "Fine. Whatever," replied Matthews. "Just tell me whose ghost is floating above the White House right now."

"Look, Chris, an appeaser appeases those who make use of appeasement, which leaves us vulnerable to another 9/11-style attack." Matthews repeated, "I've asked you a simple question. Who is hovering sixty feet above our White House, sir?"

"But that's not the point, Chris. Appeasement--" "Listen, you mutant, just answer the question. You don't know. Do you? Do you?" "Of course I do, Chris. It's the, the...ghost of appeasement's past or something."

"Wow. Wow. You really just lucked into that, didn't you? Just stepped right in it."

"If luck means appeasement, then yes."

"You're an idiot. Thanks for coming on."

"Thank you, Chris."

During an impromptu White House press conference, press secretary Dana Perino told reporters, "First, let me start by saying that though some candidates think the afterworld revolves around them, the appearance of Prescott's ghost over the White House has nothing to do with President Bush's speech in the Knesset yesterday."

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas replied, "Sure. Pay no attention to the man behind the cloud."

Cross-posted from MediaBloodhound.

Brian Williams' "Truthiness" in Advertising

Posted by Brad Jacobson

For some time now, MSNBC has been running commercials touting their election coverage team's commitment to providing information that better enables Americans to make informed choices at the voting booth. But in context of the unfolding Pentagon TV war analysts scandal, one of these promos (which I believe is new) stood out for its particular hypocrisy.

To a melodramatic background score that's one part patriotic sentimentality (scene in Mel Gibson movie after character's army triumphs), one part childhood wonder (kids riding bikes in the sky to silhouette of the moon in E.T.), and one part lovers reuniting after a long separation (archetypal open-armed sprint across verdant meadow), this is the TV promo's content:

TEXT GRAPHIC: Decision 2008

TEXT GRAPHIC: Why Do People Care About Politics?

IMAGE: "VOTE HERE" sign with people standing in line behind it.

BRIAN WILLIAMS VOICEOVER: This is a participatory democracy.

TEXT GRAPHIC: Know

IMAGE: Black and white shot of people voting in the foreground; full-color American flag hanging prominently in the background.

BRIAN WILLIAMS VOICEOVER: I think you owe it to your democracy to know as much as you can about what's going on.

IMAGE: Old man (again in black and white), holding an American flag (again in full color) and seated on a bench, is gazing out toward the New York harbor.

TEXT GRAPHIC: That's Why You Care

TEXT GRAPHIC: That's Why We Cover It

IMAGE: Brian Williams' face, then the major faces of MSNBC election coverage.

TEXT GRAPHIC: MSNBC Decision 2008

TEXT GRAPHIC: MSNBC The Place for Politics

To this day, however, Brian Williams and MSNBC, along with CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC, have failed to respond to a PBS NewsHour request for an interview about The New York Times exposé, which revealed ex-generals-turned-TV war analysts, shilling directly for the Pentagon, appeared regularly on their programs. (Yesterday, Media Matters published a study that found "since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in the Times article -- many identified as having ties to the defense industry -- collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR.")

Williams, who in that MSNBC promo says, "This is a participatory democracy" in which "you owe it to your democracy to know as much as you can about what's going on," has, along with his network colleagues, prevented millions of people from knowing what's gone on in the run-up to the war in Iraq and over the course of the occupation. Williams champions our participatory democracy in MSNBC's ad yet fails to share with his viewers any information about what President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, presciently predicted would be the single greatest threat to our democracy - the "military-industrial complex."

On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower - a Republican president, former lifetime military man and war hero - explicitly cautioned: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Yet here's Williams only acknowledgment of his network's involvement with these Pentagon-shilling TV war generals - not from behind his anchor desk but on his NBC Nightly News blog The Daily Nightly (April 29, 2008):

CNN's John King Calls Off Wedding, Moves In with Map (satire)

Posted by Brad Jacobson

John King, chief national correspondent for CNN, broke off his engagement to colleague Dana Bash Thursday after revealing a months-long affair with his interactive election map.

Wolf Blitzer, lead anchor for the network's 2008 election coverage, said he'd grown increasingly uncomfortable with King's infatuation over his touchscreen sidekick. But Blitzer claimed he didn't know until the Pennsylvania primary that King and his "magic map" were counting more than votes.

"We were all very excited about Pennsylvania. Another big night for the best political team on television. But the truth is," explained Blitzer, "viewers only saw John with his map on-camera. Off-camera, he didn't leave her side. John didn't step away for refreshments the entire evening. Not even for a Skittle." Blitzer, suddenly visibly upset, composed himself before adding, "Later that night, long after Pennsylvania had been called for Clinton and most of us had already gone home, one of our producers brought a Krispy Kreme over to John. She found him with his pants around his ankles and his hand on Florida. I won't get into what was resting on New Jersey."

Little is known about the coquettish wall map. Her interface is called Perceptive Pixel Multi-Touch Screen. King and the "magic wall," another one of her nicknames, only began working together on January 8, the day of the New Hampshire primary. But their chemistry blossomed with each successive night of primary and caucus coverage, each passionate wave of King's hand, each poke and tap into one of our nation's voting precincts.

Still, most friends and family were shocked. Mr. King and Ms. Bash, whom he also met on the job at CNN, seemed very much in love and looking forward to their future together. A Catholic, King even converted to Judaism for his now former fiancée. In a February interview with The Forward, he compared the excruciating pain of his adult circumcision to sitting through the 2005 Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, starring Rosie O'Donnell and Harvey Fierstein.

Leading Newspapers Perpetuated Obama-Muslim Myth on Day of IN Primary

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Media Matters posted a piece yesterday afternoon about how the right-wing Washington Times earlier in the day "quoted [an] Indiana man saying Obama is 'a Muslim' without noting the assertion is false."

A fine catch.

Media Matters also smartly showed how a responsible journalist reports such incidents:

By contrast, after quoting the same man in its own article, the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that "Obama has never been a Muslim, but bogus e-mails accuse him of being a Muslim who put his hand on a copy of the Quran to be sworn into the U.S. Senate and refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance."

An additional search, however, reveals the decidedly more credible Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Baltimore Sun also reported the same scene without pointing out the man's claim was false. Except they published their reports on May 6, the day of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. Specifically, the failure of these newspapers - two of which, along with The New York Times, are considered our nation's papers of record - to clarify the man's misstatement was potentially directly damaging to Obama's chances in Indiana. Whereas yesterday's Washington Times piece, published in a disreputable rag the day after the Indiana primary, might impact voters' opinions for the general election and, possibly, still undecided superdelegates.

Here's the breakdown:

Indiana Polls Protected from Dangerous Decrepit Nuns

(updated below)

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Today in Indiana, a roaming pack of octogenarian and nonagenarian hooligans attempted to exercise their right to vote. Apparently, they didn't realize this was America:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

Take a walk, grannies! Oh...you can't walk. Well, just move it along, then. Nothing to see here, sisters!

Just another segment of our citizenry unconstitutionally penalized by last week's Supreme Court ruling. According to the Associated Press, thanks to this brilliant piece of legislation, more than twenty percent of blacks also won't be able to vote today in Indiana.

Did I mention that Indiana has never recorded "a single alleged case of in-person voter fraud in the state's history"? Ah yes, the preemptive doctrine applied to our own elections. It's not enough the government has privatized our electoral process, granting voting machine companies the right to proprietary secrets that directly impede our ability to verify the vote. Now, if you're not already purged from the voter rolls before you show up or some "accidental" and unverifiable glitch counts your vote for the candidate you voted against, you might be shooed away like the 98-year-old nun if you don't have the right ID.

To paraphrase Larisa, welcome to Soviet America!

Well, at least our mainstream media gave this anti-democratic Supreme Court decision the attention it deserved.

UPDATE: Brad Friedman, a truly impressive voting integrity watchdog, has much more.

Bob Schieffer, Company Man

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Bob Schieffer's coverage during the George W. Bush years, weighed against his hushed compromising relationship with the president, belies the CBS newsman's projected image as an unimpeachably principled journalist and typifies the way our media class operates.

In a Sunday post on Crooks and Liars, under the headline "Schieffer Wakes Up to Life in the Bush Administration," Nicole Belle wrote: "I don’t know where Bob Schieffer’s been these last seven years, but he thinks that the White House might have an credibility problem." She was reacting to Schieffer's Face the Nation commentary on the Lurita Doan scandal:

SCHIEFFER: I saw a story in the Washington Post the other day, where a reporter granted a government official anonymity in order as the newspaper put it, ‘for the government official to speak more candidly.’ Well, that made me wonder. Do we no longer expect government officials to tell the whole story if they must take responsibility for what they say? Even worse, do we believe that is acceptable?

For sure, the White House won no prize for candor last week; it gave the outgoing head of the General Services Administration, Lurita Doan, a big send off by thanking her for making government buildings more energy-efficient or some such, when in truth, she was forced out. She was the object of multiple investigations, suspicious dealings on government contracts, and asking government employees what they could do to help political candidates, which is, of course, against the law. Even the government’s watchdog agency recommended she be disciplined to the fullest extent. Yet the White House spokesman declined to say if her resignation had anything to do with any of that. From the White House came only thanks and confirmation she was gone. The government saw no obligation to say why, which leads me to this: have decades of secrecy, spin and stonewalling conditioned us to accept less than the whole story from the government? Is telling the whole truth no longer a given? Frankly, I’m not sure. What I do know is more and more people seem skeptical of everything the government says and does. What we saw last week may be one reason why.

Belle then pointed out the underlying absurdity:

The Lurita Doan scandal is such a minor one relative to all the other lies, spin, incompetence and outright negligence of the Bush administration that it’s tragically laughable that this is the one that Schieffer thinks exemplifies why the American people are skeptical to what comes out of the White House.

This also epitomizes Schieffer's reporting on the administration, which has treaded between muted criticism and outright fawning. It's no wonder after Dan Rather's departure from CBS Evening News, President Bush gladly granted Schieffer an exclusive interview. Something he never afforded Rather.

In a March 2003 interview, Schieffer was asked "if the Pentagon's decision to allow reporters to embed with troops" will "make it difficult for journalists to remain objective?" His answer was telling:

BOB SCHIEFFER: No, I don't think so at all. I think it was a very good decision. I must tell you on this one, I'm sort of like Ronald Reagan who used to say of the Soviet Union, "Trust but verify." I take them at their word at the Pentagon, if they're going to let these reporters go along and give us a view of this war if it does come. But I'm going to wait until the shooting starts until I give a final opinion. So far, they are saying all the right things. I give them the benefit of the doubt. I think they're going to try to do the right thing. But we'll see once the shooting starts if they follow up. If they do what they say they're going to do, it would be a very good thing. I also think it's not just good for the American people to have independent observers along, I think it's also good for the military. Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn't have happened.

The truth is, however, in covering the Bush administration, Schieffer has been overly willing to trust and, whenever discrepancies between administration claims and the facts are verified, ever reluctant to hold anyone accountable. The ideal company man. Affable and avuncular yet trusted and above the fray. Walter Cronkite without that pesky willingness to speak truth to power. In the end, Schieffer might as well replace "trust but verify" with "ask but don't follow up."

Throughout his January 2006 interview with Bush, Schieffer responded "Um-hmm" and "Okay" and jarringly changed topics when the president's absurd answers demanded further inquiry. His misplaced deference lent credence to Bush's specious, unconstitutional explanations on everything from wiretaps, speaking with our enemies, the state of Iraq, Katrina, healthcare and energy independence. Moreover, Schieffer's final three questions were embarrassing softballs: "Has the presidency changed you, Mr. President?"; "What has been the worst part?"; and "What has been the impact on your family?"

If Only He Were Yankin' Our Cheney

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Unfortunately, he's not (h/t Raw Story):

The world is a better place because of George W. Bush's presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney assured Oklahoma Republicans on Friday evening.

"When the history is written, it will be said this is a safer country and more hopeful world because George Bush was president," Cheney said.

I won't state the obvious and run through the litany of death, destruction and misery these two despotic war criminals have unleashed during their watch. But, surprisingly, the shameless mendacity of these two thugs still shocks at this late date.

Here's our freedom-loving president discussing his own future:

"I'm interested in promoting ... the whole philosophy behind the freedom agenda. I think it's going to be very important to be kept in the forefront of American philosophical thought. And I'm going to build a presidential library at SMU — it's where Laura went to university, there in Dallas. And I'd like to have a think tank. This isn't a political precinct, this will be a place where we get the thinkers from around the world to come and write about and articulate the transformative power of freedom, abroad and at home."

Paging Dr. Orwell. Dr. Orwell, please pick up:

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'" - George Orwell, 1984

"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." - George Orwell, 1984

So who's future will it be? Who's past? Who's present?

Dr. Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." A comforting thought. But our leaders today and many members of our media, acting as their mouthpieces, have worked to obliterate the idea of a moral universe.

Consider this: we have a media that expresses outrage over a teen star showing too much skin in a photo shoot, but universally yawns and fails to report studies that estimate over 1 million Iraqi citizens have died because of the 2003 US invasion.

If the US continues on this path, who's to say Cheney won't be right about how President Bush's legacy is viewed ten, twenty, thirty years down the road?

Miley Cyrus Trumps Voter ID Ruling on NBC Nightly News; On Same Day, NBC Anchor Slammed NYT's Fluff

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Last night, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams allotted eighty seconds to yesterday's momentous Supreme Court ruling that there's nothing unconstitutional with Indiana's law requiring a photo ID to vote. Meanwhile, during the same broadcast, it spent over two minutes on the concern caused by photos of teen star Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair.

That would be embarrassing enough for a news organization purporting to be credible.

But earlier in the day on the Nightly News blog The Daily Nightly, anchor and managing editor Brian Williams (in a post titled "What Times Is It?") actually took The New York Times to task for publishing puff pieces. Now, Williams won't get an argument from me on The Times' penchant for such reporting in between serious news items, which can bump a crucial story to the back pages (that's why "NYT Front|Back" is an ongoing series here). But Williams is either in bunker-mentality denial or gallingly disingenuous to suggest he and his newscast - not to mention his network news colleagues and the mainstream media at large - don't regularly focus attention on the same kind of tripe at the expense of substantive news.

Talk about your glass houses.

How big has Williams' bubble grown? Did it not cross his mind that people might read his post, then watch his newscast and call him out on his hypocritical, cognitive dissonant analysis? Does he realize that even though he might wish to remain in his Big Media bubble, that it's precisely this kind of intellectual dishonesty and brain-dead hackery that drove, and continues to drive, millions of formerly trusting viewers to seek their news elsewhere?

What's more, Williams and NBC poorly handled those eighty whole seconds they allocated to the Supreme Court ruling on voter IDs. They not only failed to present one dissenting viewpoint - whether from a Supreme Court Justice, legal scholar, civil rights lawyer or voters in Indiana - but also to point out how this ruling will impact the upcoming primary in Indiana, where, as the Associated Press reported yesterday, "more than 20 percent of black voters do not have access to a valid photo ID."

Instead, ignoring substantive context, dissenting views and serious implications on the constitutional right to vote, Brian Williams framed the issue for NBC justice correspondent Pete Williams (former longtime aide to Dick Cheney) through a Fox News-like lens:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Pete, let's come at this a little differently. In a nation where in the post-9/11 era, we need a photo ID to fly, why was it a big story today, this court ruling that we need it to vote?

Yeah, what's all the fuss about, Pete? I mean, sure, we're only spending eighty seconds on this story, but let's take it from the angle of questioning why we should cover it at all.

Of course, Brian turned to the right correspondent to take a complex issue involving civil liberties and the Constitution and, for all intents and purposes, reduce it down to corporate media stenography and Bush administration talking points. A skilled piece of journalistic hackery in short form:

PETE WILLIAMS: Well, showing a photo ID at the airport has been upheld because of the need for security. Now the Supreme Court said that states can require voter ID at the polls to prevent voter fraud. Georgia, Florida and Michigan have laws like Indiana's and seventeen other states were waiting for today's decision before considering laws of their own to make voting another part of American life requiring a photo ID, just like flying. Today's vote was six-to-three, with one of the most liberal justices, John Paul Stevens, in the majority. He said most people do already have a photo ID and that for those who don't, who are poor, elderly or handicapped, this may add to their burden. But he said it was not enough to overcome the state's interest in discouraging fraud, Brian.

Our curious anchor's follow-up?

BRIAN WILLIAMS: All right. Pete Williams in Washington for us. Pete, thanks.

Adding insult to injury, this clip is not currently available on its own on MSNBC's Nightly News website (it's only accessible through watching a video of the full broadcast). But fear not, Brian's two-minute-plus Miley Cyrus (aka, Hannah Montana) report, covered by NBC correspondent Rehema Ellis, is there in all its gratuitously vapid glory.

Never mind how the Supreme Court's decision will directly affect the Indiana Democratic primary, the presidential election in November, and, potentially, voting rights of US citizens for years to come. NBC Nightly News and Brian Williams provided their viewers with a much more valuable piece of information: the "ruckus" over teen sensation Miley Cyrus' photo spread in Vanity Fair and an answer to the question that's keeping most Americans awake at night:

REHEMA ELLIS, NBC CORRESPONDENT: How could this affect the pop star's career?

Cross-posted from MediaBloodhound.

Networks Win Pennsylvania in Landslide!

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Have you ever been dreaming, entertaining whatever loopy narrative your unconscious mind is unleashing, and then suddenly you recognize it's only a dream and you wake up?

Well, during MSNBC's election coverage last night, in between all the manufactured melodrama of the network's ensemble cast, Chris Matthews seemed to experience such a moment when, as if delivering an on-stage soliloquy sans the dimming lights, he said:

"But I really do think it’s a strange time because we’re all watching to see who won, but as Nora pointed out, 4 out of 5, or so, of the Hillary voters today believe she’s still in the running. That this is still up in the air and I think that was probably a mistake of the media. I think in the effort of the media, to try to keep this game going, we’ve created the delusion that somehow this race is still open. I don’t think it is open. I think if you look at the numbers Barack has to really blow it in the weeks ahead to lose."

Credible political analysts, such as #1 MSNBC number cruncher and political director Chuck Todd, have been quietly noting this for weeks. Of course, Todd's checks are also cut by the same network with a huge stake in stoking the "delusion" that this race is still neck and neck. (Just as this unreality benefits all the networks and the mainstream media at large.) So these waking moments supplied by Todd - conveniently, the most soft-spoken figure on network news - are fleeting. Rare glimpses of light before we're plunged back into the ratings-generating, Iago-like gaming of Tim Russert, Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan and, yes, Chris Matthews.

Todd reminded us again of this reality last night. Only now, Clinton's chances, ironically, are bleaker than they were before her Pennsylvania victory. Breaking down the numbers, Todd noted that "the pledged delegate count is basically over" and "it now appears like it's going to be impossible for Obama to lose his lead." And it's clear why Todd hedges ever so slightly, softening this dash of sobriety with the words "basically" and "appears": MSNBC desires thousands of miles more out of this nearly broken-down vehicle.

Today on Morning Joe, Matthews, along with Joe Scarborough and the rest of the panel, hailed Clinton's victory and, like Groundhog Day, picked up their ever-extended Thrilla in Manila narrative where they left off. To give him mild credit, Matthews did provide a seconds-long allusion to the reality of Chuck Todd's stark numbers, before he leaped back into the chorus and saddled up for another day at the horse track.

So if you're rooting for Clinton and you're still flush from this latest victory, or your candidate is Obama and you're still licking your wounds, remember this: the biggest winner last night was once again the networks and their ratings, with John McCain and the GOP right behind them.

Buckle up, Democrats, and proceed with caution. Right now, more than any one entity, the indiscriminate knife twisters in the mainstream media have the strongest hand on the wheel and they are driving this nomination process toward a cliff. Keep playing this game of chicken, keep operating within their craven frame of a never-ending steel-cage death match, and the only viable candidate standing - viable as in capable of winning in November - might soon be John McCain.

To corporate media chiefs, along with their friends in the GOP and their advertising sponsor pals in the defense, energy and pharmaceutical industries, this ongoing cutthroat nomination process and its very possible outcome (say hello to President McCain!) would be a tremendous win-win. And a classic demonstration of the Democratic Party's uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Especially when you consider President Bush just received the highest job disapproval rating in Gallup Poll's history (69%) and over 80% of Americans think this country's on the wrong track.

Of course, the more tattered the Democratic nominee is by the end, the closer the presidential race - and thus the higher the ratings - will be in the fall.

Make no mistake, the networks are also looking ahead to November. And their Lord of the Flies mentality has them salivating.

Cross-posted from MediaBloodhound.

NYT Iraq War Timeline Whitewashes History (Part III: Burying News of Iraqi Dead)

Posted by Brad Jacobson

To mark the recent fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, The New York Times published an interactive timeline. This is the third in a series of posts exploring the most misleading statements and glaring omissions from its Iraq War history. (If you missed either of the first two parts, you can read them here and here).

Timeline Entry: W.H.O.'s Iraqi Civilian Death Toll

This entry reads in full: "January 9, 2008, W.H.O. Estimates Deaths: The World Health Organization publishes a study estimating the number of Iraqi civilian deaths from the start of the war through June 2006 as between 104,000 and 223,000. It estimated that the actual total was 151,000."

In the accompanying article filed on Jan. 10, 2008 (linked under the timeline), The Times does note the John Hopkins study, which estimated "about 600,000 [Iraqi civilian] dead between the war’s start, in March 2003, and July 2006." So why, then, isn't this acknowledged in the timeline? Moreover, nine paragraphs into that same companion article, The Times mentions in passing:

In any case, the study [W.H.O.'s] ended four months after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra helped set off a wave of killings throughout Baghdad and other mixed Sunni-Shiite areas. So because of its timing, the study missed the period of what is believed to be the worst sectarian killings, during the latter half of 2006 and the first eight months of 2007.

FACT: This not only undercuts W.H.O.'s count but, considering the John Hopkins study only covered through the following month (July 2006), it also illuminates the shockingly high number of Iraqi civilian deaths by John Hopkin's estimate, which was counted before the "worst sectarian killings, during the latter half of 2006 and the first eight months of 2007."

The Times' omission of the John Hopkin's study is not surprising, considering it's framed in the accompanying article as having "come under criticism for its methodology." In reality, its methodology was almost solely criticized by the White House (President Bush falsely claimed that "the methodology has been pretty well discredited"), the Pentagon, and partisan pro-war supporters in the media.