Faux Noooz was the only TV news crew permitted to fly with Bush
:puke:
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The consequence of the Bush White House's cutting a secret deal with cherry picked reporters in the White House press pool was predictable. By cutting out editors and bureau chiefs from the reporting process, one of the first news reports about President Bush's secret trip to Baghdad, by Mike Allen of The Washington Post, one of the few reporters invited to fly on board Air Force One and with the strict provision he could not tell his editor or bureau chief in Washington, muddied the waters for people anxious for details about the trip. Allen's report, titled, "Flight to Baghdad: Untold Story," stated, "A little after 5 am Baghdad time, about 10 hours after takeoff from Andrews, the cabin lights were turned off and all the shades were down. Twenty minutes later, we touched down in Baghdad." The story was run in the Friday, November 29 print edition of the Post, on the Post's web site, and by the Los Angeles Times/Washington Post wire service. Soon, the 5 am arrival time was being carried in print editions and on the web around the world and the United States in such papers as the Buffalo News, Tacoma News Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age, and The Telegraph of Calcutta. The "Untold Story" that the plane landed at 5:20 am and not pm, as now seems to be the case, was the first record of events hundreds of thousands of Americans and those abroad would initially read.
Preliminary details from Air Force concerning the trip were spotty at best, with no mention made on Thanksgiving Day about various takeoff and landing times. All we knew was that Bush quickly snuck in and out of Baghdad for a meal with the troops without being detected by Iraqi insurgents armed with portable surface-to-air missiles. Allen's report was the first to give any details about the itinerary but he gave the false impression that Air Force One touched down in Baghdad at o'dark thirty in the morning, an hour and a half before sunrise in the Iraqi capital. Allen later told CNN that none of the on-board pool reporters were able to file their stories until Air Force One got above 10,000 feet. In the same interview, he stated that the reporters were not permitted to file until Air Force One had cleared "airspace." If he meant Iraqi airspace, it is doubtful that the aircraft would have been flying in Iraqi airspace at 10,000 feet and then ascended over Syria or Turkey. More inconsistencies in a story so full of holes it could pass for a piece of Swiss cheese.
In an age of instantaneous news from the Internet and cable TV, the public and the media are more reliant on first hand accounts of events. The fact that the Post's editors were cut out from the secret trip to Baghdad practically guaranteed that an erroneous 5:20 am Baghdad time account would have crept into the Post's early morning edition. A number of people who read the Post print edition Friday morning were also given the impression that there was an early morning landing and that Bush was serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops in the morning. And they would stay confused. Outrageously, by Sunday, November 30, the Post still had not corrected its error.
The only correction it published in its Sunday, November 30 edition was the following less-than-critical one: "The headline "Carving the Bird" was inadvertently omitted from the crossword puzzle in the Nov. 23 Magazine." But the bird carving that the Post first indicated took place in the wee hours of the morning at the Bob Hope Dining Facility at Baghdad airport went uncorrected.
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen12012003.html
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