The Finger-Pointing Game

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 20, 2006 12:10 PM

Is it time to stop blaming the media on Iraq?

Have we reached the point where the reality--the objective, unvarnished reality, as best we can discern it--is universally recognized as pretty bad? Can 70 percent of the country really have turned against the war because of the nattering nabobs of negative journalism?

After all, a new Pentagon report says anti-American fighters have achieved a "strategic success" by unleashing waves of sectarian violence that have reached a record high of 959 attacks per week--"an unbelievably rapid pace," says Joint Chiefs official John F. Sattler. That's not some liberal columnist talking, he's a Marine lieutenant general.

I thought I had detected a recent drop-off in administration officials sniping at the war coverage. But then Laura Bush told MSNBC last week: "I do know that there are a lot of good things that are happening that aren't covered, and I think the drumbeat in the country from the media, from the only way people know what's happening, unless they happen to have a loved one deployed there, is discouraging."

Maybe this was just a wife's frustration with the toll that the war is taking on her husband's presidency, rather than some new strategy. But here's the telling part: I no longer see most conservatives making this argument.

Which is why this piece by National Review Editor Rich Lowry is very much worth noting:

"First Lady Laura Bush spoke for many conservatives when she excoriated the media's coverage of Iraq the other day. She complained that . . . 'there are a lot of good things happening that aren't covered.'

"What are those things, one wonders? One can only imagine how Mrs. Bush can figure that they outweigh the horrors in Iraq. The U.N.'s High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country, about 7 percent of the population. But that means that an overwhelming 93 percent haven't left. Why doesn't the liberal media ever report that? About 120 Iraqis are killed per day, nearly 4,000 a month. But most are still living. Couldn't one of the morning shows do a soft feature on this heartwarming fact? . . .

"The mainstream media is biased, arrogant, prone to stultifying group-think and much more fallible than its exalted self-image allows it to admit. It also, however, can be right, and this is most confounding to conservatives. In Iraq, the media's biases happen to fit the circumstances. Being primed to consider any military conflict a quagmire and another Vietnam is a drawback when covering a successful U.S. military intervention, but not necessarily in Iraq. Most of the pessimistic warnings from the mainstream media have turned out to be right -- that the initial invasion would be the easy part, that seeming turning points (the capture of Saddam, the elections, the killing of Zarqawi) were illusory, that the country was dissolving into a civil war.

"Partly because he felt it necessary to counteract the pessimism of the media, President Bush accentuated the positive for far too long. Bush allowed himself to be cornered by his media critics. They wanted him to admit mistakes, so for the longest time, he would admit none. They wanted him to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, so for too long he kept him on. They wanted him to abandon 'stay the course,' so he stuck to it. In so doing, he eroded his own credibility and delayed making the major strategic readjustment he needed to try to check the downward slide in Iraq. The 'good news' that conservatives have accused the media of not reporting has generally been pretty weak. The Iraqi elections were indeed major accomplishments. But the opening of schools and hospitals is not particularly newsworthy, at least not compared with American casualties and with sectarian attacks meant to bring Iraq down around everyone's heads in a full-scale civil war.

"An old conservative chestnut has it that only four of Iraq's 18 provinces are beset by violence. True, but those provinces include 40 percent of the population, as well as the capital city, where the battle over the country's future is being waged. In their distrust of the mainstream media, their defensiveness over President Bush and the war, and their understandable urge to buck up the nation's will, many conservatives lost touch with reality on Iraq."

Very sharp words, and not coming from a left-winger.

On "Meet the Press," Tim Russert played Laura Bush's remarks and got this reaction from NYT conservative columnist David Brooks:

"Get off of it. I mean, we've got a hero in our newspaper, John Burns. Another hero, Dexter Filkins, there's a whole series of heroes over there. They're not biased about this. They want the best for the Iraqi people, they want democracy. Listen to what they're reporting, they're reporting chaos. You have 100--I don't know what it is, 1.6 million people leaving Iraq. You've got 9,000 Iraqis every week who are moving to their Shia homeland, or to their Sunni homeland. This is a country--it's not civil war, it's just disintegration.

"So the idea that this is some media concoction, you--I said that a year ago, two years ago. But at some point, face reality."

Verrry interesting that Bush chose to grant a longstanding Washington Post request for an interview yesterday, and wanted to get out this message:

"President Bush said today that he plans to expand the size of the U.S. military to meet the challenges of a long-term global war against terrorists, a response to warnings that sustained deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the armed forces to near the breaking point."

The president clearly wanted to respond to the stories that the Joint Chiefs were opposing his "surge" plan for Iraq with American forces stretched so thin.

It was also a reflection of the digital age that The Post gave away the biggest part of its scoop online--even made the audio available, which the network newscasts snatched up--rather than hoarding it for the next day's paper.

The paper did save another telling comment by Bush:

"President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the 'stressed' U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists."

Not winning? Maybe he's been consuming too much media. Laura ought to talk to him.

Boy, they're really starting to bail:

"Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, has submitted plans to retire and will leave his post in March -- a step likely to make way for a change in military strategy at a time the Bush administration is seeking a new plan for Iraq," says the L.A. Times."Abizaid has been the primary architect of U.S. military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan since becoming head of the U.S. Central Command more than three years ago. He has strenuously resisted calls to increase troop levels to quell rising violence in Baghdad, arguing it would increase Iraqi dependence on Americans."

Sean Penn slaps the media from a different direction:

"Sean Penn, the actor and occasional foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, hit the media and called for impeachment of the president in receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition Monday night in New York City.

"After listing a dozen or more serous issues facing the country, Penn said, 'We depend largely for information on these issues from media industries, driven by the bottom line to such an extent that the public interest becomes uninteresting.'

"Turning to his views of President Bush, Penn said, 'Now, there's been a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about how impeachment should be 'off the table.' We're told that it's time to look ahead -- not back . . . Can you imagine how far that argument would go for the defense at an arraignment on charges of grand larceny, or large-scale distribution of methamphetamines? How about the arranging of a contract killing on a pregnant mother? 'Indictment should be off the table.' Or 'Let's look forward, not backward.' Or 'We can't afford another failed defendant.' "

Penn also slams Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity et al. in rather crude terms. Gee, I wonder if his political views affect his disgust with the media?

How did Hillary Clinton suddenly jump ahead in these ridiculously early and meaningless 2008-matchup polls? The Nation's Ari Berman has a theory:

"Hillary's lead over McCain is interesting because of what it says about him. In previous polls the Senator from Arizona has handily defeated his Democratic opponents. But in recent months his numbers have begun to fall. Among independent voters, he's slipped 15 points since March.

"Even McCain admits that only 15 to 18 percent of Americans support his plan to escalate the war in Iraq by sending more troops. Once more Americans learn about his dogged support for the war--and busy courtship of the religious right--they may form a different opinion of the so-called maverick."

Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse mocks the New York senator for saying that she "wouldn't have voted that way" on the war if she knew everything she knows now. (Hey, I would have bought Starbucks stock if I knew everything I know now.) The headline: "Why Hillary Will Never Be President."

"From the 'Now She Tells Us' Department, Hillary Clinton has disowned her vote to authorize force in Iraq. She wants a do-over, a mulligan as they say in golf. She wants us to forget that she and most of the Democratic party were so knock kneed with fright over the possibility that they would be branded 'cowards' or 'traitors' by Republicans in the 2002 mid terms, that they swallowed their well documented pacifism in the face of the killers and thugs of the world just to secure their own political hides:

"Talk about a woman with her finger in the air sampling the political winds . . . Of course, she learned at the feet of the master of tacking with the political gales. Bill Clinton never met an issue he couldn't straddle until he was sure that he came down on the right side of it with the public. And Hillary is proving equally adept at the practice -- a sure sign that a Hillary campaign would be geared to the general election from the start. This is a high risk strategy considering who usually votes in Democratic primaries and caucuses."

The conservative blogs seem conflicted about 2008. Erick Erickson, who runs RedState, delivers a non-endorsement:

"Let me be perfectly clear and blunt: consider me in the anybody but McCain camp. Read on.

"Lots of my friends have jumped on the McCain bandwagon. These friends usually begin their conversations with 'Yes [you're right on X], but . . .,' which is inevitably followed by him being right on spending, North Korea, Iraq, abortion, or some other single issue of importance.

"Notwithstanding all of that, John McCain is wrong on the fundamentals. However pretty the veneer is, a rotten foundation will cause his structure to crumble. And we have seen that happen repeatedly. All John McCain needs is a CNN camera crew and he stands ready to shove conservatives under the bus if he's guaranteed prime time and Anderson Cooper crying tears of joy while Chris Matthews stands by blowing kisses."

McCain, playing to the media? Is that what he's doing by pushing more troops for Iraq? I don't think so.

Bush is at 36 percent, and his handling of Iraq approved by only 28 percent, according to this CNN poll.

In the Judith Regan smackdown, HuffPoster Jeff Norman takes a contrarian stance:

"In a previous post, I argued that censorship is an aspect of the story that deserves more attention than it has received. To their great discredit, media professionals who earn substantial salaries selling sleazy infotainment, and who generally claim to favor open debate, called successfully for the censorship of If I Did It, the book in which Simpson reportedly muses about how [he] might have twice committed murder, although we don't know if the book really contains such ruminations, because we have been prevented from reading it by a subculture of self-appointed decency czars."

Sorry, but censorship means when the government bars you from publishing something. Rupe and Judith were perfectly free, under the laws of capitalism, to publish their sleazy book and air their pathetic TV special. Murdoch chose not to because his customers revolted and he realized that his PR black eye would be accompanied by a financial bath.

Betsy's Page blows the whistle on Joy Behar (and I'm surprised this hasn't kicked up more of a fuss):

"I just don't get The View. These are supposed to be women sitting around talking just like you might do with your friends if you were a celebrity and not bound by any facts or history. I don't think I'd want these women in my living room in person so why should I want their TV faces there?

"But, apparently, millions of viewers enjoy the show so there they are. And Joy Behar, who used to do somewhat funny standup comedy can sit there and say that Donald Rumsfeld is Hitlerlike and seem to be unaware how terribly insulting that is to all the victims of Hitler and World War Two. Whatever you think of Donald Rumsfeld or anyone in this administration, they're not Hitlerlike. The comparison shouldn't even pop into your mind. If it does, then perhaps you need to spend your holidays reading a bit about what went on during the Holocaust."

Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times sees a lack of color in network news:

"Ask Russ Mitchell whether his appointment as news anchor at CBS's Early Show signals that the network is concerned about diversity, and his reply is blunt.

"I've been doing this for 25 years, and there comes a point in your career where you hope your credentials speak for themselves," said Mitchell, who was named news anchor last week, three days after CBS announced the departure of Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler, who is also black. "I'm not some 25-year-old kid fresh from school . . . And I didn't get this job because I'm some black guy."

"Still, the names rumored as possible replacements for Syler --Weekend Today co-host Campbell Brown and Saturday Early Show co-host Tracy Smith, for instance -- wouldn't have brought CBS what it sorely needs now: on-air diversity.

"Consider this: Besides costing TV one of its best journalists, the death of news legend Ed Bradley in November also means that 60 Minutes will not feature a regular correspondent of color for the first time in 25 years."

Deggans faults all the networks for a paucity of black anchors.

By the way, Blog P.I. nailed it weeks ago, predicting that Time would name "You" as its Person of the Year. I like the blog's proposed cover design better than the real one.

Salon: "Apparently no longer able to withstand the barrage of criticism that came his way, Senator Sam Brownback says he will stop blocking the nomination of Janet Neff to the Federal District Court. Brownback, who has been positioning himself as the presidential candidate for conservative Christians, blocked Neff because she attended the same-sex marriage of her neighbor's daughter in 2002."

Finally, Harvard's sex magazine is in trouble. You'd think it would have a built-in audience.