Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
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 Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 7:34 pm Post subject: Patterico: LA Times and the Swiftees - 2004 |
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From "Patterico's Pontifications", December 30, 2004, via Sherrie Gossett's "AIM Blog", a portion of Patterico's year end summary dealing with the LAT's "coverage" of the SVPT's campaign. As the URL links within this year-end roundup are prolific, I've not included them here and I would suggest a trip to "Patterico" for the full benefit of his work. I don't recall seeing this posted in the forum...if so, please advise.
| Quote: | THE SWIFT VETS CONTROVERSY
The height of the L.A. Times's pseudo-journalism was its "coverage" of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. No matter how you feel about the Swift Vets, it's undeniable that the paper's coverage of this organization was straight from the Kerry playbook. First, Times editors ignored the Swift Vets as long as possible. When that didn't work, the editors smeared the Vets with distortions, omissions, and outright falsehoods.
In May, the Swift Vet organization released a letter, signed by the majority of officers who served with Kerry in Coastal Division 11, which said to Kerry: "Your conduct is such as to raise substantive concerns as to your honesty and your ability to serve, as you currently seek, as Commander-in-Chief of the military services."
Such a serious accusation about a presidential contender should have made a splash -- especially when the candidate had based his campaign on his military service. Not at the Los Angeles Times. The Times buried its story about the letter on Pages A20 and A21 -- and never even alluded to the letter's central accusation: that John Kerry was dishonest and unfit to serve as President. At the same time, the paper gave front-page, sympathetic coverage to a letter critical of Bush, signed by 26 former diplomats, mostly partisan Democrats.
It soon became apparent why the paper was ignoring the Swift Vets story. Even though John Kerry had made his Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign, the L.A. Times editors told its readers that Kerry's military record was not "fair game." So it was no surprise that, when the Swift Vets' first advertisement came out, Times analyst Ron Brownstein declared it to be the political equivalent of a "snuff film." The paper also found space to point out that the ad had been funded by a wealthy Republican activist, and denounced by John McCain.
One of the Swift Vets' claims found early traction in the blogosphere. John Kerry had often repeated that he had spent "Christmas in Cambodia" listening to President Nixon denying that the U.S. had troops inside the Cambodian border. Kerry described this event as a turning point in his view of the Vietnam War. The only problem was that the story was a fabrication. I mentioned the controversy on my blog on August 8, and I was at least a couple of days behind others. The mainstream media did its best to ignore this controversy, and the L.A. Times was no exception.
The L.A. Times didn't even mention the "Christmas in Cambodia" controversy until August 17, in what purported to be an in-depth investigative piece on the Vets and their claims -- but was in reality a hit piece. The article was an exercise in slanted rhetoric. It told readers at the outset that the Swift Vets' allegations were staples of conservative talk shows and the internet, made in an ad funded by Republicans, and leveled by people who weren't even percipient witnesses, and couldn't keep their stories straight.
But the article didn't stop there. It falsely suggested that Kerry had released all of his military records. It also claimed: "None of the critics quoted in the ad actually served on the boats with Kerry." This was wildly deceptive, because they had served on boats right alongside Kerry.
By contrast, those who supported John Kerry were considered by Times editors to have served "with" Kerry -- even if they had only served on a nearby boat. When William Rood, who commanded a boat alongside Kerry, wrote an article supportive of Kerry, the L.A. Times put it on Page One under the headline Officer Recalls Boat Mission With Kerry. Not "Alongside" or "Near" or "Next to" -- but "With."
On August 20, three days after the August 17 hit piece, the L.A. Times printed another blatant falsehood about the Vets, in a story titled "Kerry Starts Firing Back at Critics of War Record." The story contained this howler:
None of the men in the Swift boat group behind the anti-Kerry ad, including [Larry] Thurlow, served on Kerry's patrol boat during the war.
Anyone even slightly familiar with the Swift Vets should have known this was not true. Steven Gardner was a member of the group, and served on a patrol boat with Kerry longer than any of the men supporting him. This mistake was inexcusable.
I wrote the Times's Readers' Representative that same day (August 20) to demand a correction. Six days later, after having heard nothing in response, I wrote the paper's managing editor. Also, Instapundit linked to my post discussing the long delay without a correction (or even a response). Lo and behold, a correction ran the next day.
Throughout the campaign, the L.A. Times pounded home the theme that the Swift Vets lacked documentary proof of their claims. But if Kerry supporters lacked documentary proof as to any of their claims -- like the "Christmas in Cambodia" story, for example -- that fact was not considered important. Kerry's word was good enough.
How obvious was this double standard? This obvious: on the very same segment of Fox News Sunday, a Kerry supporter and a Swift Boat Vet both admitted that they lacked documentary proof to support their claims. But the L.A. Times mentioned only the admission by the Swift Boat Vet.
Predictably, the paper ended up editorializing against the Vets, flatly calling them liars in the process. The editorial was titled: "These Charges Are False ..." But the editors never bothered to tell readers which charges they were talking about -- probably because they didn't have the slightest factual grasp of the actual charges, having concluded them to be smears before ever examining them. Which charges were false? The Vets' claim that Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" story was fiction? Their claim that Kerry used medals obtained for minor wounds to shave about 8 months off the expected length of his tour of duty? Readers were never told. Instead, they were subjected to a diatribe during which the editors mocked war hero Bob Dole. It was truly a shameful episode in the paper's history.
In September, Times media critic David Shaw beautifully summed up the paper's attitude towards the Swift Vets, with this jaw-dropping quote:
The officially unaffiliated position of the Swift Boat veterans notwithstanding, the unofficial assistance of those friendly to Bush was both undeniable and just about the only fact that made their efforts newsworthy.
Dozens of Vietnam veterans who served with Kerry -- including a majority of the officers who served with him, and his entire chain of command -- claimed that Kerry was dishonest and cowardly in his service, and that was not newsworthy??
That's the mindset of the people deciding what's news at the Los Angeles Times, folks. There's really nothing more to say.
And yet, there's so much more to say . . .
THE "BUSH WAS AWOL" STORY, THE CBS FORGED DOCUMENTS CONTROVERSY, AND THE "TEXANS FOR TRUTH"
The L.A. Times's biased coverage of the Swift Vets is all the more shocking when compared to the paper's extensive coverage of the "Bush was AWOL" story.
This story received prominent and sympathetic coverage from the Times all year long. On August 15, I did a survey comparing the Times's coverage of the Swift Vets' accusations -- such as it was -- to the extensive coverage the paper had given to the "Bush was AWOL" story. At that time, the L.A. Times had run seven stories mentioning the "Bush was AWOL" controversy, including two stories on the front page. The stories consistently emphasized the contrast between Bush's service in the National Guard, and Kerry's award-winning and allegedly heroic service in Vietnam. Possible partisan motivations behind the "Bush was AWOL" accusations were ignored. It was quite a contrast to the paper's portrayal of the Swift Vet controversy as partisan slime regarding an irrelevant topic.
When CBS's "60 Minutes" program relied on forged documents to support allegations that Bush had been AWOL, the Los Angeles Times ran another front-page story, trumpeting the existence and content of the documents. But when the Washington Post (taking its cue from the blogosphere) ran a Page A01 story reporting that the documents were probably fake, the L.A. Times buried the news on Page A18. That's right: when documents damaging to Bush appeared authentic, that was front-page material -- but genuine questions about their authenticity were buried in the back of the paper.
Worse still, the L.A. Times portrayed the controversy about the forged documents as a "partisan" issue, and quoted Col. Killian's daughter as saying that Killian's family knew nothing about the authenticity of the documents. This was false, as the paper's editors should have known. The Times didn't tell its readers that the previous day, Col. Killian's son and widow had both publicly questioned the documents' authenticity.
When the Times finally put this story on the front page, no variant of the word "forgery" appeared in the entire piece, and the front page didn't contain even a hint that the documents might not be authentic. All the information showing the documents were probably fake was carefully buried on the back pages, on Page A18 -- the Page of Choice for embarrassing revelations about the forged documents.
While the rest of the media slowly accepted the fact that CBS had relied on forged documents, the L.A. Times followed Dan Rather's lead, and kept looking for that partisan connection. The results were occasionally comical.
When CBS finally agreed to have an independent panel look into the network's handling of the forged documents issue, the L.A. Times encouraged conspiracy theorists by telling readers that panelist Dick Thornburgh "has a connection to Karl Rove, a longtime Bush strategist." The paper darkly noted that Rove had "worked on Thornburgh's unsuccessful campaign for a Pennsylvania Senate seat in 1991." Clearly, the fix was in: Thornburgh would trash CBS's reputation due to his "connection" with Karl Rove. Except that the L.A. Times neglected to tell its readers that, once Thornburgh's campaign was over, Rove had sued Thornburgh for failing to pay $170,000 in unpaid fees -- and won. Thornburgh was, in anything, biased against Rove -- but the L.A. Times pretended that the exact opposite was true.
The paper allowed a blatant falsehood about Bush's military service to be published in a letter to the editor, contrary to its policy. A letter writer wrote that "no one is disputing former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes' admission that he pulled strings to get the 'fortunate son' of then-Rep. George H.W. Bush (R-Texas) into the Guard." Not true. Plenty of people disputed that allegation. For example, George H.W. Bush had called such accusations a "total lie" -- and he wasn't alone.
A group called the "Texans for Truth" ran an advertisement featuring a man named Bob Mintz, who claimed that it was "impossible" that Bush was present for his required service. But, as Tom Maguire had pointed out, this claim was severely undercut by the fact Mintz had told CBS News: "I cannot say he was not there . . . Absolutely positively was not there. I cannot say that. I cannot say he didn't do his duty."
But the L.A. Times, which had eagerly sought any flimsy rationale to discredit the Swift Vets, never told its readers about Mintz's contradictory statements -- even though I had told the paper about them. The paper justified its continuing pursuit of the "Bush was AWOL" story by citing a "growing chorus" of critics -- never mentioning that one of the voices in the chorus, Bob Mintz, had sounded a discordant note.
When the paper's "Readers' Representative" finally got around to responding to my complaint, her excuse was pure sophistry. She claimed that the paper simply didn't have space to publish a whole story about Mintz's background. But, of course, the paper didn't need a whole story on Mintz to set the record straight. It could have done so in 20 words: "Mintz admits that he cannot definitively say that Bush was not there or that Bush did not do his duty." In the thousands upon thousands of words that the paper had printed about the "Bush was AWOL" controversy, Times editors could have found room for those 20 words -- that is, if they really wanted their readers to know all the relevant facts.
Patterico's Pontifications - cont'd |
Last edited by Me#1You#10 on Sun Oct 17, 2010 5:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
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