It would be nice to think that the men and women of the press corp who participated in the dog pile that the
Rolling Stone tactfully dubbed “The Press v. Al Gore”
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gorehad come in for some well earned just desserts. Do not kid yourself. With the exception of one woman, Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post---in the U.S., a woman or a member of a minority group is always singled out as the scapegoat---the reporters who helped Karl Rove and the RNC spread the Big Lie that the man who would have been our greenest president was nothing but a big fat liar
have all profited from their yellow journalism. . They will tell you now that it was no big deal or they were doing it for fun, but do not be fooled. Their bosses, the CEOs of Viacom, GE and the rest encouraged it, because a Bush presidency promised big financial gains to telecoms through unlimited media acquisitions and mergers.
The stakes in a presidential election are high. When you are someone like Al Gore, a known intellectual who tells things like they are, warning the nation of the dangers of green house gases and media consolidation, accusations of
habitual lying can be the kiss of death.
Although the journalists I will mention below are not the only players in the five act drama,
The Rolling Stone article makes a convenient way to sample the media whores and allows us to see where they are now.
Bill Sammon Washington Times , changed the facts when water was released into a river where Al Gore was boating (as it would have been anyway) and pulled a figure of $7 million out of his ass to claim that tax payers were bilked tp pay for a photo op for Gore’s campaign.
The New York Times detailed the "mishap," the Washington Post ridiculed Gore's FOUR BILLION GALLONS FOR A PHOTO OP, Newsweek dubbed it the "photo op from hell," and CNN covered the "wave of criticism after floodgates are opened on a New Hampshire river to keep Al Gore afloat."
Where is
Bill Sammon now? He is the senior White House editor for the
Washington Examiner , a consultant for Fox News, has written several books including
At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election and has been caught in more lies and distortions by Media Matters as in this video from Fox where he distorts Bush and Obama’s positions on Pakistan to make the latter look inexperienced.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200708070010You will notice other whore veterans from “Gore is a Liar” are participating in the GOP attack on this year’s Democratic candidates.
The Boston Globe’s Walter Robinson and Michael Crowley did an “expo” in which they revealed that Gore had only done (gasp) five years of journalism work rather than seven. The problem was that he really did do seven—some of it was part time is all. They also mocked him for claiming that he “invented the internet” when in fact he said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." He was no doubt referring to his landmark "information superhighway" speeches, as well as his well-known support of high-tech research that stretched back into the 1980s.
It was Republicans who started the rumor that Gore claimed to have invented the internet.
Where is
Walter Robinson now? He is an assistant managing editor of the Globe.
Where is
Michael Crowley now? He is a senior editor and columnist at
The New Republic and also guest blogs at Talking Points Memo and contributes to the Slate.
If someone can find an actual link to the story “Record shows Gore long embellishing truth” by Walter Robinson and Michael Crowley,
The Boston Globe, 4/11/00 please post it. I can not find the original on a google search. The Boston Globe only has a list of Gore “fibs” on its site, but I can not find this article in its archives. Very odd. However, here is an in depth Daily Howler critique with lots of quotes:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/h050900_1.shtmlhttp://www.dailyhowler.com/h051000_1.shtml But so it's gone in the political press as the attack on Gore's character has proceeded. As we'll see in the weeks to come, this attack began in March of last year, with a set of utterly bogus claims sent out from the RNC. But reporters have shown a strong desire to torture Big Scandal from the simplest situations. Character attacks have been driven by bogus claims—on matters as easy as 2 + 5.
How many errors are in the Globe piece? The Globe piece is riddled with errors—with passages in which the simplest facts are tortured to produce Great Big Problems. And Robinson and Crowley show no awareness of the groaning flaw with the method they employ. They pore over Gore's past statements and ads in a way they devote to no one else.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/h051100_1.shtmlhttp://www.dailyhowler.com/h051200_1.shtmlhttp://www.dailyhowler.com/h101000_1.shtmlI will deviate a little from my original plan here, because a name caught my eye in that last link. Good old straight talking
Jonathan Alter.
He couldn’t have participated in “Gore is a liar” could he?
Oh, yes he could. Here from the Daily Howler is Jonathan Alter doing “Gore is a liar” for the Americans who pride themselves on thinking before they swallow a Big Lie.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh061307.shtml ALTER (continuing directly): The weird thing is that Gore clearly knew he was under extra scrutiny on this score. His rise in the polls stopped in September right around the time he was lambasted for claiming to have heard a union song as a lullaby that was actually written when he was in his 40s, and for making up a story about his mother-in-law and his dog to illustrate a point about prescription-drug prices. He realized that one of the ways he could lose the first debate was to reinforce the media cliches about "Love Story," Love Canal and inventing the Internet. As Mickey Kaus wrote last week on his Web site kausfiles.com: "The question isn't whether Gore is a liar and whether that's worse than Bush being dim; it's whether Gore's lying shows that, in some respects, he's dim, too."
This form of dimness may be hardwired into Gore's brain. His biographer, NEWSWEEK's Bill Turque, attributes it to the Washington culture of the 1950s and 1960s, when "public figures could frame their images more or less as they wanted." Gore's mother, for instance, has long claimed that she always cooked little Al's dinner and sat with him while he ate, when, in truth, she and Senator Gore Sr. were usually out.
The danger to Gore is that the fibbing will blossom into a full-blown credibility crisis, giving Bush an opening to cast doubt on everything Gore says. The way around that is simple: stop doing it. In the meantime, the press is right to bust him when he doesn't.
Holy shit! Alter whored himself out in 2000, too. And carried water for the suck up press. What did he get for his dual service?
Where is
Jonathan Alter now? He is a columnist and senior editor at
Newsweek and appears on CNBC, MSNBC, Al Franken and Air America.
Back to the
The Rolling Stone When Al Gore made a joke that his mother sang him to sleep at night with the “Look for the Union Label “ song,
Walter Shapiro of
made it another Gore Lie.
Where is Walter Shapiro now? He is Washington Bureau chief for Salon. Notice that participation in the “Gore is a Liar” Big Lie does not preclude a journalist from success in the progressive news media, which might make one wonder if the so called “liberal press” is really an alternative to the corporate media or if outlets like Salon and the Huffington Post exist in order to tailor the corporate propaganda so that it is more effective in influencing a less conservative target audience.
Next up, thank god the New York Times does not scrub its archives of its embarrassing old stories the way that some of the other journals mentioned above seem to do. Now that is reputable political propaganda.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1DF143CF935A35753C1A9669C8B63
THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: POLITICAL MEMO; Tendency to Embellish Fact Snags Gore
By RICHARD L. BERKE
Published: October 6, 2000
For years, his political opponents have groused that Vice President Al Gore has trouble with facts. They pounced on statements he made about his service in Vietnam, about his record in Congress and even about the price he has to pay for his dog's arthritis medicine.
On Tuesday, they got even more ammunition: Several of Mr. Gore's comments in his debate with Gov. George W. Bush set off a fresh outcry over what even some of his supporters acknowledge is a tendency to embellish anecdotes about his roles in events.
''It's a weird pattern that has emerged,'' Karl Rove, the chief strategist for Mr. Bush, said in an interview. ''We have these episodes in which Gore is playing Forrest Gump or Zelig.''
Mr. Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, issued a statement saying he was ''puzzled and saddened'' by Mr. Gore's misstatements, while the conservative New York Post trumpeted ''Liar! Liar!'' as its main headline today.
Where is Richard L. Berke now? Still at the New York Times. Maybe he needs to plead with them to scrub that incriminating article.
Here is what it says about Berke in the Rolling Stone piece by the way.
Like most reporters quizzed about their Gore coverage, Berke agrees that the vice president was the victim of some shoddy press but that he himself did not contribute to it.
Selective memory must be contagious. As anyone who has studied propaganda knows, the most important paragraphs of a newspaper story are the first and last few since these are all that many people read. The first four from Berke’s article are clearly inflammatory. Here are the last two.
But Chris Wetzel, a professor of psychology at Rhodes College in Memphis, said he was willing to give Mr. Gore the benefit of the doubt and did not believe he had sinister motives.
''Why would someone say something like this when it can be so blatantly discovered?'' asked Mr. Wetzel, who has taught a research course called Detecting Impostors and Con Artists. ''I think it's like the false memory syndrome when people end up believing that they were abducted by aliens.''
Oh my!
The Washington Post’s Ceci Connolly was the only reporter to ever get chastised for doctoring a story to support the RNC Big Lie “Gore is a Liar”. She reported that Gore had claimed that he found Love Canal.
Thanks to the high-profile misquote, though, the media's echo chamber erupted, with MSNBC's Chris Matthews mocking Gore for being delusional, while ABC's George Stephanopoulos lamented that the vice president had "revealed his Pinocchio problem."
Poor Ceci Connolly Tweety and George have their own shows but Cecil got demoted for her lies. If I remember rightly, the Post took her off the political beat and made her start reporting on medical news towards the end of the 2000 election. However, readers of the Huffington Post would not know if they read this bio:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ceci-connolly-
For much of her career, she has dedicated herself to clear, insightful coverage of U.S. politics and policy at the national, state and local levels. She spent 18 months on the campaign trail with Democrat Al Gore and was a major contributor to the book Deadlock: The Inside Story of America's Closest Election.
Be sure to read the parts of the Rolling Stone article that cover Ms. Connelly’s services above and beyond the call of duty in her efforts to promote the Big Lie “Gore is a Liar” Such dedication should never be forgotten.
Here is another link that I found while researching Ms. Connelly that covers some of the same information in more detail:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0004.parry.html
He's No Pinocchio How the press has exaggerated Al Gore's exaggerations. By Robert ParryApril 2000. Note the date. The Big Lie “Gore is a Liar” was being debunked constantly even as it was being spun. Newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post were forced to print retractions, but that did not keep their reporters from peddling the RNC’s favorite smear.
In retrospect, it is easy to guess why the corporate media was so eager to print and air this garbage. Even before the 2000 election the writing was on the wall. This is from a media watchdog group.
http://www.mediachannel.org/originals/candidates.shtml
The Wall Street Journal is a business publication that rarely seeks comment from citizen and consumer advocates, and this article is no exception. Earlier this year, the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy linked Bush's support for repealing FCC antitrust provisions to massive Republican Party donations by telecommunications firms.
And yes, indeed, the Bush administration FCC has tried every trick in the book to buy the favor of the corporate media with illegal federal media ownership rule relaxation as I have documented in my other journals. Their first FCC Chairman, Michael Powel issued an administrative decree changing federal law (something only Congress is allowed to do) two months after the nation’s news media lead the march to the war of choice in Iraq. This begs the question---were “Gore is a liar” and “Beating the Drums of War with Iraq” both favors rendered by companies like Viacom, News Corp and the others so that they could get their empires in compliance without selling off their holdings? And, after a federal court struck down Powell’s administrative decree, did the news media go along with Kerry is a Waffler, the Swiftboat Vets and the suppression of the Ohio exit polls in 2004, because Michael Powell had promised them a (successful ) Supreme Court appeal of that ruling? After Bush was sworn in by Congress in January 2005 and Powell told that press that the administration never intended to appeal the lower court ruling, did the press turn sour towards the Bush administration in 2005 and 2006 because they realized that they had been played like a two dollar whore?
From the Washington Monthly Story above
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?"
snip
"Gore, again, revealed his Pinocchio problem," declared former Clinton adviser
George Stephanopoulos. "Says he was the model for Love Story, created the Internet. And this time, he sort of discovered Love Canal."
A bemused
Cokie Roberts chimed in, "Isn't he saying that he really discovered Love Canal when he had hearings on it after people had been evacuated?"
"Yeah," added
Bill Kristol, editor of Murdoch's Weekly Standard. Kristol then read Gore's supposed quote: "I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I was the one that started it all."
Where are they now? Rupert Murdoch almost bought his own president, Rudi. He is still rich as sin and has recently added the Wall Street Journal to his empire. Bill Kristol is at the New York Times trying to make sure we have 100 more years of war to protect the progeny of Standard Oil’s investment in Iraq. Stephanopolous has a TV show at ABC. Cokie Roberts is a senior analyst for National Public Radio.
NPR! Yep. The RNC propagandists have thoroughly infiltrated the so called “liberal” press. That is because they know that we will not believe it if we hear it on FOX. But if we hear Dana Milibank say on Countdown ---like he did tonight---- that Gore claimed he invented the Internet, and we see Keith Olbermann nod his head sagely and hear him say something that sounded like “Well, at least that was closer to true”, then we will swallow it, because we are supposed to believe that there is a “good corporate media” and a “bad corporate media”.
For the record, Dana and Keith, Al Gore never said that he invented the Internet. He said he helped to get it started. As in promoting it. “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” Gore said to Wolf Blitzer. “I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.” Here is the testimony of a historian. A former history professor no less, who happens to be a Republican.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml
GINGRICH: In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got , we were both part of a “futures group”—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the ’80s began to actually happen.
I swear, members of the press are like a bunch of lawyers. They will close ranks and stick up for each other no matter how badly they behave rather than admit that a media atrocity has occurred. And then, they will go back and try using the same smear tactics all over again, as if they think that the American public did not catch on the first time.
Note that Charles Krauthammer laughs at the complaints of media bias against Gore:
KRAUTHAMMER: Crying for help, you know. (LAUGHTER) I’m a psychiatrist. I don’t usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there’s a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help.
No journal about veterans of the “Gore is a Liar” hall of fame would be complete without Charles Krauthammer. Where ever there is a Democratic candidate, he is there to slime, him of her. He has achieved a perfect trifecta this season, smearing Edwards, Obama and Hillary.
Where is Charles Krauthammer now? You can read him in the Washington Post, Weekly Standard, New Republic and see him on FOX News. There is a lot of demand for someone who can bash as many Democrats as Charles Krauthammer can.
Back to the Rolling Stone The press had a lot of fun ignoring Bush’s lies, misstatements and errors in the debates and trying to find anything at all that they could use to paint Gore as a liar.
Few journalists saw anything wrong with this double standard. In fact, some found it amusing.
"You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get in the weeds and get out your calculator, or you look at his record in Texas," Time magazine columnist Margaret Carlson told radio morning man Don Imus at the height of the campaign. "But it's really easy, and it's fun, to disprove Gore. As sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us."
You getting this? Margaret Carlson, self styled liberal columnist thought that torpedoing a Democratic candidate and helping a Republican candidate was fun?
Where is Margaret Carlson now? When she is not playing divide and conquer games with the Democratic Primary? She works for Bloomberg News.
According to the Rolling Stone
a review conducted by two nonpartisan groups, Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Research Center, found that a stunning seventy-six percent of the Gore campaign coverage in early 2000 centered around two negative themes: that he lies and exaggerates, and that he's tarred by scandal.
"I followed our coverage closely, and I thought it was excellent," says the Washington Post's Woodward. "It really was balanced."
Where is Bob Woodward now? Still with the Post, but he has written insider books about W. including one in which he spilled the beans about Kissinger’s involvement in the administration in order to sell copy. I guess they are calling him Judas. But hey, anything to redeem himself. You can tell from the way that the internet has been scrubbed and these people try to make excuses that no one is proud of the fact that they played “Gore is a liar” back in 1999-2000 in order to derail the presidential campaign of a man who would go on to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for telling the world such Inconvenient Truths as the fact that our addiction to carbon fuels is going to destroy us.
It is a good thing that we learned our lesson in 2000. I would hate to think that we would ever fall for that kind of gutter politics or media smear campaign in the middle of a presidential election again.