RATHER: "Welcome, comrade Cauley..."
Posted on 05/19/2006 1:18:53 PM PDT by george76
Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who last week “broke” the news that three major U.S. telecommunications companies were assisting the National Security Agency in building a database to more easily track any communications by potential terrorists, is listed as a donor to former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt...
A search found a listing for "writer and journalist" Leslie Cauley, indicating she gave $2,000 to Gephardt on June 30, 2003, when Gephardt was running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
And that seems not to be her only tie to Democratic politics ...
Cauley's link to a Democratic campaign seems likely to further cloud the credibility of her story...
There have also been questions about the timing of the story, which was given huge play on USA Today’s front-pages shortly before the former head of the National Security Agency, General Michael Hayden, was due to face confirmation hearings to be the next CIA director...
With the phone companies demanding a retraction and her own Democratic connections now revealed, the “value” of her unnamed sources seems increasingly dubious.
Could Leslie Cauley may be on her way to becoming a print version of CBS’s disgraced Mary Mapes?
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
RATHER: "Welcome, comrade Cauley..."
Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before...
First, she's donated the maximum amount legally allowed ($2,000) to Dick Gephardt's campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination in the 2004 election cycle.
Second, she's on TV crowing about the her confidential, unnamed sources.
And finally, the USAToday is pushing the "they didn't object" angle as a confirmation of their story. We all remember how well that worked out for CBS's John Roberts.
http://wizbangblog.com/2006/05/19/stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one-before.php
Wow. I had forgotten all about Dick Gephardt.
No surprise. Just more lies by the liberal media. Let's see if they get away with this one. Haven't noticed much coverage in the MSM on USA TODAY's exposed lie; maybe if the MSM doesn't cover it, it didn't happen.
Here's how the editors at USAToday phrased it, "On the night before the story was published, the newspaper described the story in detail to BellSouth, and the company did not challenge the newspaper's account."
We'll that settles it; it must be true.
By: Kevin Aylward
"We make up the news other reporters won't report."
"We make up the news other reporters won't report."
Yeah, USAToday probably called Bellsouth Customer Service and was connected to some flunky in Bangalore.
Millions of people saw the USA Today headline on newstands all over the country. How many people will see NewsBusters?
That's the basic secret of how the MSM gets away it. They are gradually undermining their credibility, and their bottom lines are eroding, but it's a slow process. Meantime they still control the propaganda war.
"Millions of people saw the USA Today headline on newstands all over the country."
Which is precisely what the MSM counts on, they know their readers, the majority simply read a headline and take it as fact, they then feel informed and equipped to talk about it at the water cooler. Does anyone think that this is far more organized and intentional than just a few rogue reporters or journalists slanting the news?
This must in the job description...
"the world's biggest liars, the people with the least morals, and most evil, obnoxious human beings ..."
Hehehehe...
The MSM has had a free ride for the past 30, 40, 50 years. They've never had to fight and have grown fat, dumb and lazy over the years. They're sitting ducks to anyone that wants to f with 'em.
I thought it was only BellSouth? Are the others as well?
Me too, pretty much...but I do invoke his name everytime wifey gives me my haircuts and proceeds to trim the eyebrows. I always admonish her, "Don't Gephardt me, Sweetie!"
Did ANY telecommunications company give ANY information to the NSA ANYWHERE at ANYTIME?...............it seems that they didn't ...........
He knew what to do when his domestic political enemies threatened the union.
FDR knew what to do as well.
This President is clueless.
The enemy understands that W has screwed the pooch.
He has allowed leftists at home and abroad to win the propaganda war.
The administration hasn't even waged a credible domestic propaganda campaign to drum up support for the WOT.
It's basically incompetence.
The enemy has a strategy and a gameplan.
Our game plan depends on who is in the White House in 2008.
McInsane?
Shrillary?
Jon Queri?
Giuliani?
Be very afraid.
Quoting...
Leslie Cauley’s Democratic campaign contributions seem not to be her only tie to liberal politics.
Before Cauley joined USA Today, she teamed up with former AT&T and Global Crossing executive Leo Hindery to write a book on business deals, “Biggest Game of All.”
But Hindery is not just a businessman — he’s listed as a major donor to Democratic candidates and the Democratic Party, and was even mentioned by The Hill newspaper as a possible DNC chairman in late 2004.
So far...
AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth ...
There may be more soon.
Can anybody provide a link? It's not a matter of trust, mind you, but the BellSouth story has buried the others, and I'd like some ammo for my regular Friday argument at the bar.
It's hard enough just getting the phone service fixed, which is the primary purpose of those customer service "techs". Getting top-level information is way beyond their grasp and way beyond their level of responsibility. I don't doubt that USAToday called somebody well outside of those that might know about these things. Their answer was probably "we'll look into it and get back to you", which should have been enough to give USAToday pause, but they apparently wanted the "scoop" or wanted to drag somebody on the right through the mud.
It's too bad that the left owns the vast majority of the media news.
Surely it can't be by accident that nearly everyone that works in the MSM is so totally without principle or morals and is so evil?
All those characteristics are prerequisite to graduating with a Liberal Arts degree in Journalism. It's not an accident - it's by design.
Bump
AFter reading the phone company's statement, I can not understand how USA Today viewed it as "confirmation" of their story! REgardless, the company...WITH their NAMES attached... is saying it is untrue and demanding a retraction. Seems to me that anonymous sources who won't stand behind their own words are the likely liars...not the company.
Does USAToady still fill it's pages with all those colorful, bright and shiny pie charts and graphs? Idiots like colorful, bright and shiny things. Text is hard. Graphics are cool. Especially if you're a Liberal.
You can start here.
http://wizbangblog.com/2006/05/19/stop-me-if-youve-heard-this-one-before.php
Please let me know if you need more.
http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=NY&last=Cauley&first=Leslie
Friday’s USA Today carries BellSouth’s demand of a retraction on page 4A,
below a more prominent story headlined “Senators challenge Hayden on surveillance,” with partial transcripts of General Hayden being asked yesterday about the claimed NSA database program.
According to today’s USA Today:
“BellSouth asked USA Today on Thursday to ‘retract the false and unsubstantiated statements’ about the company that it contends were in a May 11 story about a database of domestic calling records maintained by the National Security Agency.
In a letter to the newspaper's publisher, Craig Moon, the company noted that the story said BellSouth is ‘working under contract with the NSA’ to provide ‘phone call records of tens of millions of Americans’ that have been incorporated into the database.
‘No such proof was offered by your newspaper because no such contracts exist,’ stated the letter, portions of which were read by spokesman Jeff Battcher. ‘You have offered no proof that BellSouth provided massive calling data to the NSA as part of a warrantless program because it simply did not happen.’
Steve Anderson, a USA Today spokesman, said ‘We did receive the letter this afternoon. We are reviewing it, and we will be responding.’...
http://newsbusters.org/node/5435
She should have used some of that money she gave to the dimorats and bought a hair brush! Ain't saying she's ugly, but I'll bet you she could gag a maggot off a gut truck. She seems to be a real charmer, got big bucks writing the book with the slimeball,then got "very close" to him, then when he sobered up and ran her off, she called him every name in the book. Real sweetheart here.
TIME magazine is just as bad. The new issue is blaring about "domestic spying" and how such evil eavesdroppers should not head CIA.
You and everybody else.
...awfully funny.
I all fairness, I'd say she probably had the number for Bell-South's PR representative who likely didn't even know what the NSA acronym stands for and absolutely no knowledge if the company had or had not turned over an information. The fact that they called "the night before the story was published" means they didn't give a damn if it were true or not. It was after regular business hours when the PR rep was probably at home with his/her feet up watching TV and with only hours to figure out who to call to either verify or deny the story. That "who to call" thing is the tough one. Corporate people are generally not sitting around waiting for off the wall press inquiries with pre-prepared say-nothing statements like government slumps. They have a life.
If it involved a security related issue any answer, affirmative or negative, would have to go through a team of lawyers to work out a statement. If Bell South had been working with the NSA, it would have been a tightly held secret and not something that was common knowledge. The PR rep might have been able to contact some of the execs who said "I never heard of it" but that does not mean it didn't happen and to issue a statement that might not be true is a capital offense in the PR world.
Imagine trying to find and craft an answer on the short deadline given them by the drive-by media.
Rule one of Corporate PR is to never lie. Rule 2 is that if you don't know the answer, don't guess. Ask for more time to find out or just don't say anything, which apparently is what Bell South did when put in an impossible situation. You never let a media deadline drive you into a serious mistake.
USA Today claimed they had worked on the story for months yet waited till the last possible moment when they knew damn well they were asking the impossible. Could they have held the story for one more day to give Bell South at least one business day to provide an answer? Yes, they could have but intentionally chose not to. That goes well beyond shoddy journalism. It shows that they don't give a damn if the story is true or not.
"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast." William Tecumseh Sherman
The old school media is really taking some lumps lately. [grin]
Cauley fits right into the noble tradition of Jayson Blair, Dan Blather, Mary Mapes, Jason Leopold, Jennifer Loven, Dana Priest, and friends...... all leftists with an agenda, facts be damned. They should all be driven straight out of journalism, but so far as I'm aware only Jayson Blair has met with any lasting obstacles (and he still manage to publish a book about his fraudlent life).
bttt
Quoting...
And for all of the hype, there may not even be much “news” here.
Last December 24, a few days after they spilled the beans about the NSA terrorist surveillance program, New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen disclosed how U.S. phone companies were helping the NSA by giving them “access to streams of domestic and international communications.”
http://newsbusters.org/node/5319
William Tecumseh Sherman got it right.
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