“Gore Is a Liar” 8 Years Later: Where Are the Media Whores Now?

[McCamy Taylor]

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_gore

had 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/200708070010

You 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.shtml
http://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.shtml
http://www.dailyhowler.com/h051200_1.shtml
http://www.dailyhowler.com/h101000_1.shtml

I 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.

[tabasco]

1. Sorry, but Hillary actually lied. Many times.

Gore didn't.

If you can't tell the difference between telling lies and exposing liars, that's your problem.

Republicans lied about Gore. Hillary lied about her experience, tax records, and a number of other things.

This is not surprising because Hillary is more like a republican than a Democrat.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. And Gore is the same as Bush. Do not forget that one.

[tabasco]

8. Gore's not running, but when he did

he didn't resort to a filthy "kitchen sink" gutter campaign.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Yeah, I believe you.

The hipsters for Nader were saying the exact same words in 2000.

The exact. Same. Words.

If Hillary said it was going to rain and the sun came out, MSNBC, CNN, and the entire blogosphere whine that she was a liar, too.

--p!

[tabasco]

7. Hillary just met with Richard Mellon Scaife today.

Isn't that special?

[McCamy Taylor]

10. Oh hush or I will remind people that Obama called Hillary a dirty trickster in Iowa based on Novak's

word. As in Bob Novak the drunken traitor claimed that he knew that Hillary had dirt on Obama. So, instead of calling out Novak, Obama used it as an excuse to accuse Hillary of dirty tricks during the Iowa campaign---Iowa being a state where the accusation of dirty tricks is like nails in a Democratic candidate's coffin.

So, please hush with the kitchen sink crap. I did not start this thread for more tit for tat Democratic infighting, but I have studied the media's role in this campaign better better than you have and I can cite you more cases of documented Obama dirty tricks than you can undocumented Hillary dirty tricks.

It is just that I do not want to. I know that all politicians fight like cats and dogs to win. It is what they do. I do not blame either of them. But I do not believe that Democrats do their Party any good at all with this infighting.

If you really want a tit for tat war, go start a thread in GDP and I will join you and I will tell you a lot of things you do not want to read.

[tabasco]

11. You don't know a damn thing about me.

How do you know you've studied anything more than me?

:shrug:

A baseless claim. I see why you like Hillary.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Just a wild guess based upon what you have revealed so far....

[Dogmudgeon]

17. She's just "reaching across the aisle"

Don't you believe that we need to all be united in hope and optimism?

That there are no Liberals, no Conservatives, only Americans, Humans?

Shouldn't we try to bridge the gaps that separate us?

Or would you rather destroy Hillary Clinton?

--p!
Be the change you wish to see
(Phil McGraw. Or maybe Tug McGraw. One of them.)

[papau]

19. Obama lied about not hearing Wright - until he said he did hear it - link below

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/just-what-did-o.html

[McCamy Taylor]

22. No, no. This is a tit for tat free zone. I am bashing the press.

My motto is "The News Media Is a Big Fat Liar". And yeah, I know it is grammatically incorrect. It is supposed to be a funny.

[klyon]

30. Lie is a strong word as we just were reminded (if you read the article)

Lie means knowing you are not accurate or fabricating or exaggerating

Does anyone have proof of what Sen. Clinton was thinking at the time she spoke. Until someone comes forward with information that tell us she only made a mistake, got confused or mixed-up.
When someone tells us that they have firsthand information that she knowingly state an untruth, then the label will be true, until then I will have to think you misspoke since I don't know what was in your mind.

[McCamy Taylor]

31. This is a good point. The Watergate coverup was a lie. Iraq WMD's-lies.

But the press does not call out Nixon or W. Pat Buchanan lied to Congress when he said that there was no secret dirty tricks plan or group such as CREEP---and then the smoking memo was discovered.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stories/buchananmemo.htm

But the press protects its own, so Buchanan is a well loved and well respected journalist even though he lied to Congress and could have been charged with a crime for doing it.

[Rageneau]

48. Obama lies as much as Hillary -- about more important things.

Obama was asked how much Rezko contributed to his campaign. So he checked his records and checked with his staff and came back with a figure around $80,000. But that was just his FIRST answer.

Time goes by, and someone asks Obama the same question -- in light of new news about more Rezko involvement in Obama's life. Okay, he says, I was wrong. The real figure is more like $150,000.

Time goes by and more info comes out and Obama is asked the same question yet again. This time he sees he's caught and decides to tell the truth. The real figure (now) is closer to $250,000.

Fair is fair. If Hillary lied about being shot at in Bosnia, then Obama lied on several occasions about how much his favorite crook gave to his campaign. The only difference between the lies is that Hillary's shows a silly attempt at self-aggrandizment, while Obama's shows real dishonesty as a public servant.

[Jim Sagle]

3. Not quite the original link, but close:

http://graphics.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/Record_shows_Gore_long_embellishing_truth+.shtml

[McCamy Taylor]

9. Thanks. This is a must read. The story will sound familar to anyone who has watched TV these last

few days. They could have taken this article and changed the dates and names and used it for a different Democratic candidate. They even suggest that Gore never encountered any gunfire in Vietnam. Hell! We have all seen Full Metal Jacket (based on a real story) We know that the life of a military journalist isn't all press briefings and martini luncheons.

[prairierose]

5. Thanks for the detailed reminder of the...

enmity of the corporate press for reality and objective reporting. This is something that should be brought back regularly so that we can all remember why we should not listen to anything they have to say.

[elleng]

6. The 'media whores' remain where they were,

and we continue to be subject to their lies.

'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'

must be sarcastic.

[Vattel]

12. great stuff

And let us not forget the contributions of Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd and any number of other "liberal" journalists (and I use the term very loosely). Recall too that Bradley was quite willing to jump on the "Gore is a liar" bandwagon in his primary campaign against Gore. And keep in mind, Gore was unusually honest. Indeed, a little less honesty (e.g., sounding less anti-coal in West Virginia) would have put him in the Whitehouse. We can expect the liberal media to kiss McCain's buttocks in the GE and raise any number of "character issues" with respect to Obama or Clinton. I hope we're unified enough to fight hard. We need those Supreme Court nominees. We need to restore the Constitution. We need to stop torture. We need a lot of things that Obama and Clinton but not McCain will deliver.

[McCamy Taylor]

15. McCain's willingness to go to bed with the telecoms--literally--will probably make them biased for

him as they were towards Bush. He was on the Senate communications committee for years. He has made enemies of Time Warner and Disney but if Rove can broker a deal with them over their cable business, I see no reason that the corporate media whores can not service him the same way that they serviced Dumbya in 2008. Soon, they will be praising his quick wit and his sparkling....

Nop. Even the American press can not do that. They will be forced to media slime the Dem I am afraid and hope that everyone stays home except the Republican base.

[McCamy Taylor]

20. Ooopsies! Maybe Karl Rove hasn't brokered a deal between McCain and Time-Warner

This has nothing to do with this journal, is just an interesting fact to file away fyi.

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/03/20080325_a_main.asp

I noticed the guest from CNN in this special about McCain's free ride with the media. Maybe the Cable Wars are far from over and Time-Warner is still pissed at McCain. We will see.

[philly_bob]

13. Final episode of TV show "The Wire:" Lying newsman wins Pulitzer.

Templeton, an ambitious young reporter who started out faking quotes and endeed participating in a massive deception, is shown on stage with Baltimore Sun management accepting Pulitzer Prize.

Incidentally, IMO, the weakness of that fifth season of The Wire is that most viewers didn't understand the management structure of the newsroom. City Editor Gus Haynes, who suspected Templeton's deceit, didn't have the power to stop him if he was protected by management.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. Like shooting fish in a barrel. The Nation's "Assault on Reality" about media's recent

attack on Gore.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070716/alterman

And in a sentence that may rival Ferguson's for the Pulitzer Prize for Irresponsible Imagination in the Service of Personal Obsession--were one ever to be established--Dowd wrote that during his Diane Sawyer interview, Gore "almost seems to want to sigh and roll his eyes." Never mind, dear reader, that Al Gore neither sighed nor rolled as much as a single eyelash. To Dowd, writing in the newspaper of record, he "almost seemed to want to," and that's good enough.

So give George W. Bush credit. He may lie about counterproductive wars, destroy our reputation abroad, ignore Katrina victims, approve torture, blow up our balance of payments, ignore scientific evidence, undermine our Constitution and turn the Justice Department over to a collection of ideological hacks... At least he doesn't make Maureen Dowd think he wants to roll his eyes.

Thank god for good journalism.

[Triana]

18. Great analysis. Thanks. Reminds me of Al Gore's book "The Assault on Reason" (n/t)

[McCamy Taylor]

21. Look who else agrees with me about who controls the news media! Noam Chomsky!

I found this yesterday. Sometimes people call me paranoid. No one calls Chomsky paranoid.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html

Another structural relationship of importance is the media companies' dependence on and ties with government. The radio-TV companies and networks all require government licenses and franchises and are thus potentially subject to government control or harassment. This technical legal dependency has been used as a club to discipline the media, and media policies that stray too often from an establishment orientation could activate this threat. The media protect themselves from this contingency by lobbying and other political expenditures, the cultivation of political relationships, and care in policy. The political ties of the media have been impressive. ... fifteen of ninety-five outside directors of ten of the media giants are former government officials, and Peter Dreier gives a similar proportion in his study of large newspapers. In television, the revolving-door flow of personnel between regulators and the regulated firms was massive during the years when the oligopolistic structure of the media and networks was being established.
The great media also depend on the government for more general policy support. All business firms are interested in business taxes, interest rates, labor policies, and enforcement and nonenforcement of the antitrust laws. GE and Westinghouse depend on the government to subsidize their nuclear power and military research and development, and to create a favorable climate for their overseas sales. The Reader's Digest, Time, Newsweek, and movie- and television-syndication sellers also depend on diplomatic support for their rights to penetrate foreign cultures with U.S. commercial and value messages and interpretations of current affairs. The media giants, advertising agencies, and great multinational corporations have a joint and close interest in a favorable climate of investment in the Third World, and their interconnections and relationships with the government in these policies are symbiotic. In sum, the dominant media firms are quite large businesses; they are controlled by very wealthy people or by managers who are subject to sharp constraints by owners and other market-profit-oriented forces; and they are closely interlocked, and have important common interests, with other major corporations, banks, and government. This is the first powerful filter that will affect news choices.

So, when every reporter is acting like a jackass, claiming that "Gore is a liar" is "so much fun" and the "most important story of the 2000 election" when the American public knows for a fact that this is not true---and is probably switching the news channel to the Cooking Channel or the Belly Button Lint Channel to look for something more interesting---you can guess it is because there is $$$ on the line.

Now, here is a fun exercise. Keep a diary every day and see what moronic stories you do not really care about the press is pimping. Which ones do they talk about over and over again, when people have shown in polls that they want to hear about the economy or the war or other substantial issues? Chances are those stories stand to make the bosses of the journalists lots of $$$, too, either through an improved regulatory environment or change in taxes or law that gives them retro-active immunity.

Remember new show ratings are for sucks. It is all about The Big Lie. You do not need to sell advertising time to propagate the Big Lie. If revenue mattered, News Corp would not have paid subscribers to get Fox News when it was first added to Cable Lists.

[Patriot Abroad]

23. Chomsky? More paranoid than McCarthy.

:)

[susankh4]

24. Yes they are!

At it again, that is.

Lies, lies, lies... and I don't mean from Hillary or Barack, for that matter.

[DeeDeeNY]

25. Excellent compilation

Al Franken wrote about the media's ganging up on Gore in 2000 in his book "Lying Liars". It was an eye-opener. He documented how so many words Gore had spoken were changed when the media reported them, to make it seem as though he was lying or taking credit for the internet, etc., when he did no such thing.
The media was not much kinder to Kerry in 2004.
This is why we can't worry in advance which Democratic candidate would be more vulnerable to attacks. It really doesn't matter, because the Republicans will resort to slanderous exaggerations and swiftboat-type lying, and there will be no vigilant press to expose this.

[Jakes Progress]

28. A million new voters

sounds like a good thing. I'm glad they are now getting started, but they still listen to MSM as if it was telling them something. That is why so many of the "new" voters are caught up in the dream and the hope. Like a magician distracting you while he picks your pocket, the neocon press dazzles with the noble knight being attacked by the Wicked Witch of the west wing. And the new rubes gawk and take it in. Then when their pockets are empty, they blame anyone but themselves.


Rove and Co. have handed us two good but extremely moderate candidates. They selected them, not us. With no real difference between them, the media whips little ripples into giant waves. The newbies just surf them, calling for more. The republicans are the problem with the country; we are the problem with the solution.

[SammyWinstonJack]

52. !

:thumbsup:

[12AngryBorneoWildmen]

26. Thank You McCamy

Nice work. It IS us vs the press. Can not be stated too frequently or too fervently. It's like we humans have two fifths of a vote, and the media, the corporations and election fraud have the remaining 60%. ps. the Clinton campaign is doing the "1000 cuts" thing on Democratic hopes-both presidential and down ticket.

[Bluenorthwest]

27. You missed the whole point of the OP

Missed it. Try again.

[Jakes Progress]

29. If only our media

had half your desire for truth and a fourth of your willingness to share that truth.


Excellent post.

[txaslftist]

32. Good lord. Shoot them all.

Take them behind the barn and shoot them all.

[McCamy Taylor]

33. It would be a start. j/k Bust the telecoms. Independent news media outlets.

Then reporters would actually be able to compete based upon their journalistic talent rather than upon their ability to pucker up and kiss the nether regions of their corporate lords and masters.

Since journalists want to be respected as artists, they would all love this. Only the hacks who have made it to the big league by super aggressive ass kissing would miss the current system.

[Life Long Dem]

34. Is Gore running for President? Nice try.

[McCamy Taylor]

36. Do you think KO will apologize for agreeing that Gore said he invented the internet last night?

When Dana Milbank said that Gore said he invented the internet last night, KO just agreed with him.

Do you think that KO will correct the record? When Gore chastised the news media they tried to revive their lies from 2000, calling him a bore and a liar.

Gore is a fine man, and he deserves to be defended, even if he does dare to criticize the media whores.

[Life Long Dem]

35. Since your bringing down the democractic party.

You might as well bring down any competition in the future. All is fair.

And I'm not kicking Hillary out of the race. She should expect to be buried for any future run as well when we get done with her.

[McCamy Taylor]

38. The corporate media is attacking the Democrats. KO is a dupe.

He is helping them with his splitter/baiter crap. If he keeps attacking Hillary, she is just going to get sympathy votes from women who see KO as a great big bully. He thinks the recent polls reflect the Bosnia story so he is really working it now, but that is only two days old. The polls reflect the Wright story and the Judas story. The Bosnia story will show up next week. Hillary's polls will rise and we will never get a nominee. The man is good hearted but he needs to stop meddling in politics, He is way over his head.

Doesn't he remember what happened in New Hampshire when Edwards and Obama did the pile on?

And I am afraid that the Rove machine has a nasty surprise in store for Obama----like they are going to spring a "LIE" story on him----and he will not be able to dodge it because he and his supporters have spent so much time on this dipshit one about Hillary. Since she is not going to be the nominee and isn't even a character candidate it does not matter. But the RW has been trying since last year to find a way to portray Obama as a liar. This would put him in contrast with McCain the "straight talker".

This would be the typical way that the MSM would do it. Claim that Obama made lying an issue, not them, and then find him out in a lie. That way it would not be their fault, it would be Obama's for introducing veracity into the campaign as an issue.

[Jakes Progress]

51. Sucked In and Set Up

That's the way the Fall campaign is going to go. Everything that has been done to Hillary will be turned on Barack. He and his supporters seem to have a very difficult time handling criticism that is based on things he actually said and did. They are going to plotz when they have to deal with the things McCain is going to do to him. You can't run against the republican machine on righteous indignation and a sense of entitlement.

The best thing that has happened to Barack so far has been the Wright affair. Imagine if those videos had hit the airwaves for the first time three weeks before the election. They will appear everywhere like a Willie Horton ad all Summer, but at least they are a little blunted and the Senator should have had some practice in responding.

The problem is that the neocons have a host of similar things to throw up, some perhaps true, some with a touch of truth, some complete lies. So far it has been politics, but judging from McCain's track record, it is going to be nasty.

[Jakes Progress]

50. Who gets to say

who is bringing down the party? I'm a life long Democrat too. 40 years of voting straight ticket. What part of a democratic government don't you understand? Who gets to say who gets to vote and who doesn't? What about her post is bringing down the party? Or is this just a canned complaint against the OP because of her choice? Are you against a woman having a choice?

[McCamy Taylor]

37. OMG. Margaret Carlson is on Countdown criticizing Hillary's "lie".

Be sure to read what Carlson said about how much fun it was to fabricate lies about "Gore is a liar" in 2000! Never mind. Here it is again!

"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."

This is like a "Gore is a liar" reunion...

You know, KO swore for years that Dan Rather deserved to get fired by CBS. I wonder if he would have told "Gore is a liar" stories, too if he had had a forum in which to tell them at the time.

[Bozita]

42. Margaret was the last winner of MWO's "Media Whore of The Year" award.

It was either '01 or '02.

www.Mediawhoresonline.com introduced me to many liberal sites. I miss them.

[Canuckistanian]

39. I read Daily Howler while it was happening

And I was applled at the media pile-on.

The exaggerations, the made-up or fraudulently "paraphrased" quotes, the outright LIES.....

I still don't understand WHY ALL media sources turned against Gore and kept hammering at him DESPITE the almost daily debunking done by people like Bob Somerby and MANY others.

It disgusts me still.

[McCamy Taylor]

40. It's in my OP. Rove promised to roll back federal media ownership rules.

Viacom/CBS was already under a federal order as of 2000 to sell like 5-10% of its TV holdings in order to come into compliance with federal media ownership rules that limit how big a percentage of the market any company can own. NewsCorp was also over the limit or pretty damn close. Other companies wanted to acquire properties that the FCC would not have allowed because they would have given them monopolies.

Al Gore was on record as opposing the trend towards media consolidation.

The telecoms made the decision that was in their financial best interests in 2000 and 2004. In early 2005 they realized that they had been had and many of them turned on Bush. That is the reason we got the Democratic Congress.

ABC-Disney and Time/Warner-CNN are both mad at McCain because of his long history of interference in cable, esp. his stance about A La Carte cable. It is possible that they will form a firewall against McCain and for the Democratic nominee this fall because of this issue. The others will be for McCain.

[bamacrat]

41. Fuck the right wing, and everything it stands for.

Other KO, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert there are no decent journalists out there. Sad thing is the last two are comedians. This was a great post, but it made me more mad than I've been in a long time. What makes me even madder is the thought of how it might have been had the fucking pukes not stolen the election and laughed in our faces.

:mad::mad::smoke::mad::mad:

[RestoreGore]

43. Thanks for the reminder. How soon some forget

Seems many here hate Hillary Clinton more than they hate Bush, and they are then in turn supporting the very BS mnedia that has done it over and over again.

[Uncle Joe]

44. I know why Margaret Carlson thought it was easy and fun to "disprove" Al Gore

"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."

1.Because as you say, there was no good or bad press, it was just corporate, they were all in on it, with very few exceptions.

2.Because Al Gore did indeed empower the American People to seek their own information and discuss or analyze it for the whole world to see with out having to go through their corporate media filter first. As the Internet grew in power and influence thereby taking some of the corporate media's power influence and the money that went with it from them, they came to resent Al Gore for it as he was the most visible champion for the people. Every time he started to pull away from Bush in the polls, they came out with a fresh, brand new slander of the day. I call this the Prometheus Effect, because in the Information Age, information is the equivalent of fire and Zeus got pissed. I have no doubt had this not gone on, Al Gore would've won 2000 by a landslide with too large of a margin for the neocons to steal.

[McCamy Taylor]

45. Carlson has a little talent but imagine if she had to compete with people with lots of talent

In the world of real journalism there would be competition. It would be like "All About Eve". She would have to keep looking over her shoulder all the time to see who was coming up the ranks with a better style, fresher ideas, more relevant sources.

All the favorite corporate media pundits who have gotten where they are by kissing ass would be out on their asses---so they want to keep things the way they are.

How many of the so called pundits can really write? Pat Buchanan. That is the only one I can think of who is actually creative, who comes up with his own material and who is intelligent. And he is a right wing loon.

The other high quality journalists like Sy Hersch, Bill Moyers, Dan Rathers people like that break important stories---they are all off doing their own thing.

[McCamy Taylor]

46. Off to post Part III of "The News Media v. Obama" in GDP

[McCamy Taylor]

47. This link got sent to me. Read it if you need to be disillusioned about journalists

http://www.catholicsandsurvivors.net/RobinsonStories.htm

The story about how jealous journalists at the Boston Globe (particularly Robinson as in the math challenged guy from the Gore hit piece above) decided to do an expose on a college history professor and biographer who had just won a Pulitzer Prize because he was making up war stories to tell his class is just plain pathetic.

I realize that some people who wish that they had writing talent but who were not so blessed go into journalism, but for god sakes leave the real writers alone, would you? The last thing we need is for authors with talent to stop writing because no talent hack reporters do hatchet jobs like this.

They who can, write. Those who can't teach. Those who can't teach, help Karl Rove steal elections.

[DainBramaged]

49. What an amazing effort this was on your part. Thank you.

I have bookmarked it for future reference.

[Jennicut]

53. What amazes me is how little bitterness Gore has shown publically over this

I would be so pissed off and angry with the press if this happened to me. I would be shouting from the rooftops that the press is a bunch of idiots but Gore has pretty much kept quiet about it. He has a lot more discipline than I would have. As for Hillary, she has been caught in some legitimate lies such as the Bosnian and Irish peace process incidents but the press has shown bias towards both McCain and Obama like they did for Bush in 2000. I am an Obama supporter but up until the Wright incident they spoke mostly negatively towards Hillary and positively towards Obama. McCain is still getting a free pass unless you count Keith O. and Dan Abrams. Hillary also has used some questionable tactics towards Obama regarding race and the use of pledged delegates. But Gore got unfairly beaten up on for no reason except maybe he didn't smooze with the press enough. They need to get over their egos and on with the reporting of the news.

[Uncle Joe]

54. He's a far better man than I am in this regard.

However, I believe the primary motivation behind their open contempt of Al Gore for so long was precisely because he did champion opening up the Internet for the American People and the corporate media saw this as a growing threat against their monopoly on information, power, influence and money and as the Internet grew, they came to resent Al for it.

In my lifetime, I never seen any candidate which has done so much for the American People only to be trashed, slandered and libeled by so our so called "fourth estate guardian watchdogs for democracy" or whatever it is they like to call them selves, for so long, while the gave a free pass to corrupt ignorance.

I believe our nation has paid a heavy price for this betrayal against he American People's best interest, but I'm afraid the bill hasn't been paid in full yet.

[suffragette]

55. VIP

Very Important Post

Don't have time to read it all now, so posting to bookmark it and read completely this weekend.

This is an impressive compilation that shows the mechanics and people behind the smear campaign run against Gore and you make a great point that the same is now going on with our current contenders.

[libodem]

56. Very Important Post is right

The slight difference between create and invent is a thesaurus space apart. Hindsight makes it clear there was a concerted campaign to malign Gore, with a 'Gore is a liar', message developed and deployed by the RNC think tanks in Washington. And Then the haughty disclaimer of any sort of a long tentacled conspiracy. These people are malicious and destructive agents of Satan.

[Uncle Joe]

57. And even more than that, the pundit puppets and so called journalists dropped this part,

condensing the entire quote to "Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet."

“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.”

“During my service in the United States Congress, not a lab technician, not a computer scientist or whiz, a Congressman.

I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” to those pathetic excuses for journalists, this means leadership in bringing about through legislative means a new existence of the Internet, which is indeed what happened. And this is exactly what the American People needed vision and leadership.

Clearly that entire quote is referring to his legislative achievements, and the corporate media knew it. Therefore the only motivation I can think of for them to slander and libel him instead of giving credit where it was due for his vision, dedication and commitment to the American People is because he empowered the people with his actions and they didn't want the people to be empowered.