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U.S. News Media's 'War on Gore'
by Robert Parry (A Special Report)
When historians sort out what happened to the United States at the start of the 21st Century, one of the mysteries may be why the national press corps ganged up like school-yard bullies against a well-qualified Democratic presidential candidate while giving his dimwitted Republican opponent virtually a free pass.
How could major news organizations, like The New York Times and The
Washington Post, have behaved so irresponsibly as to spread falsehoods
and exaggerations to tear down then-Vice President Al Gore ironically
while the newspapers were berating him for supposedly lying and
exaggerating?
In a modern information age, these historians might ask, how could an
apocryphal quote like Gore claiming to have invented the Internet
been allowed to define a leading political figure much as the made-up
quote let them eat cake was exploited by French propagandists to
undermine Marie Antoinette two centuries earlier?
Why did the U.S. news media continue ridiculing Gore in 2002 when he
was one of the most prominent Americans to warn that George W. Bushs
radical policy of preemptive war was leading the nation into a disaster
in Iraq?
Arguably, those violations of journalistic principles at leading U.S.
news organizations, in applying double standards to Gore and Bush,
altered the course of American history and put the nation on a very
dangerous road.
Now, Gore has reemerged in Washington appealing to his former
colleagues in the House and Senate to act urgently on the threat from
global warming.
In the initial press coverage of Gores return to Capitol Hill, there
remains a touch of the old mocking tone, such as The New York Times
front-page article describing Gore as a heartbreak loser turned Oscar
boasting Nobel hopeful globe-trotting multimillionaire pop culture
eminence, but not nearly the level of open disdain shown in Campaign
2000.
In early 2000, we published a story about that hostility and how it
changed the dynamic of that crucial presidential race. We noted that
to read the major newspapers and to watch the TV pundit shows, one
cant avoid the impression that many in the national press have decided
that Vice President Al Gore is unfit to be elected the next President
of the United States.
The article, entitled Al Gore v. the Media, went on to say:
Across the board from The Washington Post to The Washington Times,
from The New York Times to the New York Post, from NBC's cable networks
to the traveling campaign press corps journalists don't even bother
to disguise their contempt for Gore anymore.
At one early Democratic debate, a gathering of about 300 reporters in a
nearby press room hissed and hooted at Gore's answers. Meanwhile, every
perceived Gore misstep, including his choice of clothing, is treated as
a new excuse to put him on a psychiatrist's couch and find him wanting.
Delusional
Journalists freely call him "delusional," "a liar" and "Zelig." Yet, to
back up these sweeping denunciations, the media has relied on a series
of distorted quotes and tendentious interpretations of his words, at
times following scripts written by the national Republican leadership.
In December 1999, for instance, the news media generated dozens of
stories about Gore's supposed claim that he discovered the Love Canal
toxic waste dump. "I was the one that started it all," he was quoted as
saying. This "gaffe" then was used to recycle other situations in which
Gore allegedly exaggerated his role or, as some writers put it, told
"bold-faced lies."
But behind these examples of Gore's "lies" was some very sloppy
journalism. The Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post and
The New York Times misquoted Gore on a key point and cropped out the
context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what
he meant.
The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified
endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times
grudgingly filed corrections.
Almost as remarkable, though, is how the two newspapers finally agreed
to run corrections. They were effectively shamed into doing so by high
school students in New Hampshire and by an Internet site called The
Daily Howler, edited by a stand-up comic named Bob Somerby.
The Love Canal quote controversy began on Nov. 30, 1999, when Gore was
speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. He was
exhorting the students to reject cynicism and to recognize that
individual citizens can effect important changes.
As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tenn., a town
that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue
to the attention of Gore's congressional office in the late 1970s.
"I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told
the students. "I looked around the country for other sites like that. I
found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the
first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tennessee that was the one
that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."
After the hearings, Gore said, "we passed a major national law to clean
up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices
that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work
to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one
high school student got involved."
Clear Context
The context of Gore's comment was clear. What sparked his interest in
the toxic-waste issue was the situation in Toone "that was the one
that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."
After learning about the Toone situation, Gore looked for other
examples and "found" a similar case at Love Canal. He was not claiming
to have been the first one to discover Love Canal, which already had
been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies for the hearings.
The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore's comments of their context and gave them a negative twist.
"Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize
the dangers of toxic waste," the Post reported. "'I found a little
place in upstate New York called Love Canal,' he said, referring to the
Niagara homes evacuated in August 1978 because of chemical
contamination. 'I had the first hearing on this issue.'
Gore said his
efforts made a lasting impact. 'I was the one that started it all,' he
said." [Washington Post, Dec. 1, 1999]
The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious story with the same false quote: "I was the one that started it all."
The Republican National Committee spotted Gore's alleged boast and was
quick to fax around its own take. "Al Gore is simply unbelievable in
the most literal sense of that term," declared Republican National
Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson. "It's a pattern of phoniness and it
would be funny if it weren't also a little scary."
The GOP release then doctored Gore's quote a bit more. After all, it
would be grammatically incorrect to have said, "I was the one that
started it all." So, the Republican handout fixed Gore's grammar to
say, "I was the one who started it all."
In just one day, the key quote had transformed from "that was the one
that started it all" to "I was the one that started it all" to "I was
the one who started it all."
Instead of taking the offensive against these misquotes, Gore tried to
head off the controversy by clarifying his meaning and apologizing if
anyone got the wrong impression. But the fun was just beginning.
Love Factor
The national pundit shows quickly picked up the story of Gore's new exaggeration.
"Let's talk about the 'love' factor here," chortled Chris Matthews of
CNBC's Hardball. "Here's the guy who said he was the character Ryan
O'Neal was based on in Love Story.
It seems to me
he's now the
guy who created the Love Canal [case]. I mean, isn't this getting
ridiculous?
Isn't it getting to be delusionary?"
Matthews turned to his baffled guest, Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal
resident who is widely credited with bringing the issue to public
attention. She sounded confused about why Gore would claim credit for
discovering Love Canal, but defended Gore's hard work on the issue.
"I actually think he's done a great job," Gibbs said. "I mean, he
really did work, when nobody else was working, on trying to define what
the hazards were in this country and how to clean it up and helping
with the Superfund and other legislation." [CNBC's Hardball, Dec. 1,
1999]
The next morning, Post political writer Ceci Connolly highlighted
Gore's boast and placed it in his alleged pattern of falsehoods. "Add
Love Canal to the list of verbal missteps by Vice President Gore," she
wrote. "The man who mistakenly claimed to have inspired the movie 'Love
Story' and to have invented the Internet says he didn't quite mean to
say he discovered a toxic waste site." [Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1999]
That night, CNBC's Hardball returned to Gore's Love Canal quote by
playing the actual clip but altering the context by starting Gore's
comments with the words, "I found a little town
"
"It reminds me of Snoopy thinking he's the Red Baron," laughed Chris
Matthews. "I mean how did he get this idea? Now you've seen Al Gore in
action. I know you didn't know that he was the prototype for Ryan
O'Neal's character in Love Story or that he invented the Internet. He
now is the guy who discovered Love Canal."
Matthews compared the Vice President to "Zelig," the Woody Allen
character whose face appeared at an unlikely procession of historic
events. "What is it, the Zelig guy who keeps saying, 'I was the main
character in Love Story. I invented the Internet. I invented Love
Canal."
The following day, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post elaborated on Gore's
pathology of deception. "Again, Al Gore has told a whopper," the Post
wrote. "Again, he's been caught red-handed and again, he has been left
sputtering and apologizing. This time, he falsely took credit for
breaking the Love Canal story.
Yep, another Al Gore bold-faced lie."
The editorial continued: "Al Gore appears to have as much difficulty
telling the truth as his boss, Bill Clinton. But Gore's lies are not
just false, they're outrageously, stupidly false. It's so easy to
determine that he's lying, you have to wonder if he wants to be found
out.
"Does he enjoy the embarrassment? Is he hell-bent on destroying his own
campaign?
Of course, if Al Gore is determined to turn himself into a
national laughingstock, who are we to stand in his way?"
Fantasyland
The Love Canal controversy soon moved beyond the Washington-New York power axis.
On Dec. 6, The Buffalo News ran an editorial entitled, "Al Gore in
Fantasyland," that echoed the words of RNC chief Nicholson. It stated,
"Never mind that he didn't invent the Internet, serve as the model for
'Love Story' or blow the whistle on Love Canal. All of this would be
funny if it weren't so disturbing."
The next day, the right-wing Washington Times judged Gore crazy. "The
real question is how to react to Mr. Gore's increasingly bizarre
utterings," the Times wrote. "Webster's New World Dictionary defines
'delusional' thusly: 'The apparent perception, in a nervous or mental
disorder, of some thing external that is actually not present
a
belief in something that is contrary to fact or reality, resulting from
deception, misconception, or a mental disorder.'"
The editorial denounced Gore as "a politician who not only manufactures
gross, obvious lies about himself and his achievements but appears to
actually believe these confabulations."
Yet, while the national media was excoriating Gore, the Concord
students were learning more than they had expected about how media and
politics work in modern America.
For days, the students pressed for a correction from The Washington
Post and The New York Times. But the prestige papers balked, insisting
that the error was insignificant.
"The part that bugs me is the way they nit pick," said Tara Baker, a
Concord High junior. "[But] they should at least get it right." [AP,
Dec. 14, 1999]
When the David Letterman show made Love Canal the jumping off point for
a joke list: "Top 10 Achievements Claimed by Al Gore," the students
responded with a press release entitled "Top 10 Reasons Why Many
Concord High Students Feel Betrayed by Some of the Media Coverage of Al
Gore's Visit to Their School." [Boston Globe, Dec. 26, 1999]
The Web site, The Daily Howler, also was hectoring what it termed a "grumbling editor" at the Post to correct the error.
Incorrect Correction
Finally, on Dec. 7, a week after Gore's comment, the Post published a
partial correction, tucked away as the last item in a corrections box.
But the Post still misled readers about what Gore actually said.
The Post correction read: "In fact, Gore said, 'That was the one that
started it all,' referring to the congressional hearings on the subject
that he called."
The revision fit with the Post's insistence that the two quotes meant
pretty much the same thing, but again, the newspaper was distorting
Gore's clear intent by attaching "that" to the wrong antecedent. From
the full quote, it's obvious the "that" refers to the Toone toxic waste
case, not to Gore's hearings.
Three days later, The New York Times followed suit with a correction of
its own, but again without fully explaining Gore's position. "They
fixed how they misquoted him, but they didn't tell the whole story,"
commented Lindsey Roy, another Concord High junior.
While the students voiced disillusionment, the two reporters involved
showed no remorse for their mistake. "I really do think that the whole
thing has been blown out of proportion," said Katharine Seelye of the
Times. "It was one word."
The Post's Ceci Connolly even defended her inaccurate rendition of
Gore's quote as something of a journalistic duty. "We have an
obligation to our readers to alert them [that] this [Gore's false
boasting] continues to be something of a habit," she said. [AP, Dec.
14, 1999]
The half-hearted corrections also did not stop newspapers around the country from continuing to use the bogus quote.
A Dec. 9 editorial in the Lancaster [Pa.] New Era even published the
polished misquote that the Republican National Committee had stuck in a
press release: "I was the one who started it all."
The New Era then went on to psychoanalyze Gore. "Maybe the lying is a
symptom of a more deeply-rooted problem: Al Gore doesn't know who he
is," the editorial stated. "The Vice President is a serial
prevaricator."
In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writer Michael Ruby concluded that
"the Gore of '99" was full of lies. He "suddenly discovers elastic
properties in the truth," Ruby declared. "He invents the Internet,
inspires the fictional hero of 'Love Story,' blows the whistle on Love
Canal. Except he didn't really do any of those things." [Dec. 12, 1999]
On Dec. 19, GOP chairman Nicholson was back on the offensive. Far from
apologizing for the RNC's misquotes, Nicholson was reprising the
allegations of Gore's falsehoods that had been repeated so often that
they had taken on the color of truth: "Remember, too, that this is the
same guy who says he invented the Internet, inspired Love Story and
discovered Love Canal."
Ripple Effect
More than two weeks after the Post correction, the bogus quote was
still spreading. The Providence Journal lashed out at Gore in an
editorial that reminded readers that Gore had said about Love Canal, "I
was the one that started it all." The editorial then turned to the
bigger picture:
"This is the third time in the last few months that Mr. Gore has made a
categorical assertion that is well, untrue.
There is an audacity
about Mr. Gore's howlers that is stunning.
Perhaps it is time to
wonder what it is that impels Vice President Gore to make such
preposterous claims, time and again." [Providence Journal, Dec. 23,
1999]
On New Year's Eve, a column in The Washington Times returned again to the theme of Gore's pathological lies.
Entitled "Liar, Liar; Gore's Pants on Fire," the column by Jackie Mason
and Raoul Felder concluded that "when Al Gore lies, it's without any
apparent reason. Mr. Gore had already established his credits on
environmental issues, for better or worse, and had even been anointed
'Mr. Ozone.' So why did he have to tell students in Concord, New
Hampshire, I found a little place in upstate New York called Love
Canal. I had the first hearing on the issue. I was the one that started
it all.'" [Washington Times, Dec. 31, 1999]
The characterization of Gore as a clumsy liar continued into the New
Year. Again in The Washington Times, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. put Gore's
falsehoods in the context of a sinister strategy:
"Deposit so many deceits and falsehoods on the public record that the
public and the press simply lose interest in the truth. This, the
Democrats thought, was the method behind Mr. Gore's many brilliantly
conceived little lies. Except that Mr. Gore's lies are not brilliantly
conceived. In fact, they are stupid. He gets caught every time
Just
last month, Mr. Gore got caught claiming
to have been the
whistle-blower for 'discovering Love Canal.'" [Washington Times, Jan.
7, 2000]
It was unclear where Tyrrell got the quote, "discovering Love Canal,"
since not even the false quotes had put those words in Gore's mouth.
But Tyrrell's description of what he perceived as Gore's strategy of
flooding the public debate with "deceits and falsehoods" might fit
better with what the news media and the Republicans had been doing to
Gore.
Beyond Love Canal, the other prime examples of Gore's "lies"
inspiring the male lead in Love Story and working to create the
Internet also stemmed from a quarrelsome reading of his words,
followed by exaggeration and ridicule rather than a fair assessment of
how his comments and the truth matched up.
The earliest of these Gore "lies," dating back to 1997, was Gore
mentioning a press report that indicated that he and his wife Tipper
had served as models for the lead characters in the sentimental
bestseller and movie, Love Story.
When the author, Erich Segal, was asked about this, he stated that the
preppy hockey-playing male lead, Oliver Barrett IV, indeed was modeled
after Gore as well as after Gore's Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee
Jones. But Segal said the female lead, Jenny, was not modeled after
Tipper Gore. [NYT, Dec. 14, 1997]
Indictment
Rather than treating this distinction as a minor point of legitimate
confusion, the news media concluded that Gore had willfully lied. The
media made the case an indictment against Gores honesty.
In doing so, however, the media repeatedly misstated the facts,
insisting that Segal had denied that Gore was the model for the lead
male character. In reality, Segal had confirmed that Gore was, at least
partly, the inspiration for the character, Barrett, played by Ryan
O'Neal in the movie.
Some journalists seemed to understand the nuance but still could not resist disparaging Gore's honesty.
For instance, in its attack on Gore over the Love Canal quote, the
Boston Herald conceded that Gore "did provide material" for Segal's
book, but the newspaper added that it was "for a minor character."
[Boston Herald, Dec. 5, 1999] That, of course, was untrue, since the
Barrett character was one of Love Story's two principal characters.
The media's treatment of the Internet comment followed a similar
course. Gore's statement may have been poorly phrased, but its intent
was clear: he was trying to say that he worked in Congress to help
develop the modern Internet. Gore wasnt claiming to have "invented"
the Internet, which carried the notion of a hands-on computer engineer.
Gore's actual comment, in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that
aired on March 9, 1999, was as follows: "During my service in the
United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Republicans quickly went to work on Gore's statement. In press
releases, they noted that the precursor of the Internet, called
ARPANET, existed in 1971, a half dozen years before Gore entered
Congress. But ARPANET was a tiny networking of about 30 universities, a
far cry from today's "information superhighway," a phrase widely
credited to Gore.
As the media clamor arose about Gore's supposed claim that he had
invented the Internet, Gore's spokesman Chris Lehane tried to explain.
He noted that Gore "was the leader in Congress on the connections
between data transmission and computing power, what we call information
technology. And those efforts helped to create the Internet that we
know today." [AP, March 11, 1999]
There was no disputing Lehane's description of Gore's lead
congressional role in developing today's Internet. But the media was
off and running.
Whatever imprecision may have existed in Gore's original comment, it
paled beside the distortions of what Gore clearly meant. While
excoriating Gore's phrasing as an exaggeration, the media engaged in
its own exaggeration.
Yet, faced with the national media putting a hostile cast on his
Internet statement that he was willfully lying Gore chose again to
express his regret at his choice of words.
Hostility
Now, with the Love Canal controversy, this media pattern of distortion
has returned with a vengeance. The national news media has put a false
quote into Gore's mouth and then extrapolated from it to the point of
questioning his sanity. Even after the quote was acknowledged to be
wrong, the words continued to be repeated, again becoming part of
Gore's record.
At times, the media jettisoned any pretext of objectivity. According to
various accounts of the first Democratic debate in Hanover, N.H.,
reporters openly mocked Gore as they sat in a nearby press room and
watched the debate on television.
Several journalists later described the incident, but without overt
criticism of their colleagues. As The Daily Howler observed, Time's
Eric Pooley cited the reporters' reaction only to underscore how Gore
was failing in his "frenzied attempt to connect."
"The ache was unmistakable and even touching but the 300 media
types watching in the press room at Dartmouth were, to use the
appropriate technical term, totally grossed out by it," Pooley wrote.
"Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective
jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless
nerd."
Hotline's Howard Mortman described the same behavior as the reporters "groaned, laughed and howled" at Gore's comments.
Later, during an appearance on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Salon's
Jake Tapper cited the Hanover incident, too. "I can tell you that the
only media bias I have detected in terms of a group media bias was, at
the first debate between Bill Bradley and Al Gore, there was hissing
for Gore in the media room up at Dartmouth College. The reporters were
hissing Gore, and that's the only time I've ever heard the press room
boo or hiss any candidate of any party at any event." [See The Daily
Howler, , Dec. 14, 1999]
Traditionally, journalists pride themselves in maintaining deadpan
expressions in such public settings, at most chuckling at a comment or
raising an eyebrow, but never displaying overt contempt. The anti-Gore
bias of the major news media continued on through Campaign 2000.
Preemptive War
In 2001, after Bush claimed the White House with the help of five
Republican allies on the U.S. Supreme Court, Gore withdrew from the
public spotlight. After the 9/11 attacks, he offered support to
President Bush, but Gore grew uneasy as Bush promulgated a global
strategy of preemptive war, reserving the right to attack any country
that might somehow threaten the United States sometime in the future.
On Sept. 23, 2002, Gore delivered a comprehensive critique of Bushs
radical departure from decades of American support for international
law. In his speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Gore laid
out a series of concerns and differences that he had with Bushs
preemption policy and specifically Bushs decision to refashion the
war on terror into an immediate war with Iraq.
Gore, who had supported the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, criticized
Bushs failure to enlist the international community as his father did.
Gore also warned about the negative impact that alienating other
nations was having on the broader war against terrorists.
I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently
embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously
damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our
ability to lead the world in this new century, Gore said. To put
first things first, I believe that we ought to be focusing our efforts
first and foremost against those who attacked us on Sept. 11.
Great
nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one
unfinished task to another. We should remain focused on the war against
terrorism.
Instead of keeping after al-Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan, Bush had
chosen to jump to a new war against Iraq as the first example of his
policy of preemption, Gore said.
He is telling us that our most urgent task right now is to shift our
focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam
Hussein, Gore said. And the President is proclaiming a new uniquely
American right to preemptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents
a potential future threat.
Gore also objected to the timing of the vote on war with Iraq.
President Bush is demanding, in this high political season, that
Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed
immediately against Iraq and, for that matter, under the language of
his resolution, against any other nation in the region regardless of
subsequent developments or emerging circumstances, Gore said.
The former Vice President staked out a position with subtle but
important differences from Bushs broad assertion that the United
States has the right to override international law on the Presidents
command. Gore argued that U.S. unilateral power should be used
sparingly, only in extreme situations.
Theres no international law that can prevent the United States from
taking action to protect our vital interests when it is manifestly
clear that theres a choice to be made between law and our survival,
Gore said. Indeed, international law itself recognizes that such
choices stay within the purview of all nations. I believe, however,
that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq.
Loss of Goodwill
Gore bemoaned, too, that Bushs actions have dissipated the
international good will that surrounded the United States after the
9/11 attacks.
That has been squandered in a years time and replaced with great
anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist
networks are going to do, but about what were going to do, Gore said.
Now, my point is not that theyre right to feel that way, but that
they do feel that way.
Gore also took aim at Bushs unilateral assertion of his right to
imprison American citizens without trial or legal representation simply
by labeling them enemy combatants.
The very idea that an American citizen can be imprisoned without
recourse to judicial process or remedy, and that this can be done on
the sole say-so of the President of the United States or those acting
in his name, is beyond the pale and un-American, and ought to be
stopped, Gore said.
Gore raised, too, practical concerns about the dangers that might
follow the overthrow of Hussein, if chaos in Iraq followed. Gore cited
the deteriorating political condition in Afghanistan where the new
central government exerted real control only in parts of Kabul while
ceding effective power to warlords in the countryside.
What if, in the aftermath of a war against Iraq, we faced a situation
like that, because weve washed our hands of it? Gore asked. What if
the al-Qaeda members infiltrated across the borders of Iraq the way
they are in Afghanistan?
Now, I just think that if we end the war in
Iraq the way we ended the war in Afghanistan, we could very well be
much worse off than we are today.
While it may have been understandable why Bushs supporters would be
upset over Gores address radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said he
was unable to get to sleep after listening to it their subsequent
reaction was more attuned to obscuring Gores arguments than addressing
what he actually said.
Rather than welcome a vigorous debate on the merits and shortcomings of
the so-called Bush Doctrine, right-wing and mainstream commentators
treated Gore as dishonest, unpatriotic and even unhinged.
Slapped Around
Gore was slapped around by Beltway political analysts, hit from all
angles, variously portrayed as seeking cheap political gain and
committing political suicide.
Helped by the fact that Gores speech received spotty television
coverage MSNBC carried excerpts live and C-SPAN replayed the speech
later that night pro-Bush commentators were free to distort Gores
words and then dismiss his arguments as lies largely because few
Americans actually heard what he had said.
Some epithets came directly from Bush partisans. Republican National
Committee spokesman Jim Dyke called Gore a political hack. An
administration source told The Washington Post that Gore was simply
irrelevant, a theme that would be repeated often in the days after
Gores speech. [Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2002]
Other barrages were fired off by artillery battalions of right-wing
opinion-makers from the strategic high ground of leading editorial
pages, on talk radio and on television chat shows.
Gores speech was one no decent politician could have delivered,
wrote Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly. It was dishonest,
cheap, low. It was hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of
constructive ideas, very nearly of facts bereft of anything other
than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was
breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in
tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to
mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible.
[Washington Post, Sept. 25, 2002]
A pudding with no theme but much poison, declared another Post
columnist, Charles Krauthammer. It was a disgrace a series of cheap
shots strung together without logic or coherence. [Washington Post,
Sept. 27, 2002]
At Salon.com, Andrew Sullivan entitled his piece about Gores speech The Opportunist and characterized Gore as bitter.
While some depicted Gores motivation as political opportunism,
columnist William Bennett mocked Gore for sealing his political doom
and banishing himself from the mainstream of public opinion.
In an Op-Ed piece for The Wall Street Journal, entitled Al Gores
Political Suicide, Bennett said Gore had made himself irrelevant by
his inconsistency and had engaged in an act of self-immolation by
daring to criticize Bushs policy. Now we have reason to be grateful
once again that Al Gore is not the man in the White House, and never
will be, Bennett wrote. [Wall Street Journal, Sept. 26, 2002]
When the conservative pundits addressed Gores actual speech, his words
were bizarrely parsed or selectively edited to allow reprising of the
news medias favorite Lyin Al canard from the presidential campaign.
Kelly, for instance, resumed his editorial harangue with the argument
that Gore was lying when the former Vice President said the vast
majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the
cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large,
still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and
neutralized.
To Kelly, this comment was reprehensible and a lie. Kelly
continued, The men who implemented the cold-blooded murder of more
than 3,000 Americans are dead; they died in the act of murder on Sept.
11. Gore can look this up. Kelly added that most of the rest were in
prison or on the run.
Yet, Kellys remarks were obtuse even by his standards. Gore clearly
was talking about the likes of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, who
indeed had not been located. [Kelly later died in a vehicle accident in
Iraq.]
Still, the underlying theme running through the attacks against Gore
and other critics of Bushs preemptive war policy was that a thorough
debate would not be tolerated. Rather than confront arguments on their
merits, Bushs supporters simply drummed Gore and fellow skeptics out
of Washingtons respectable political society.
More than four years later, with more than 3,200 U.S. soldiers dead and
possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead too, the consequence of
the news medias hostility toward Gore is more apparent.
The question remains, however, whether the major U.S. news media has
learned its lesson about the importance of journalistic professionalism
and about the harm that can befall even a great nation if the public
acts on facts that are not facts.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the
Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy &
Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be
ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com,
as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &
'Project Truth.'
source:
http://consortiumnews.com/2007/032107.html
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