NIGHTLINE WHITEWASHES VIETNAM ISSUES: KERRY A HERO, BUSH A DESERTER, END OF STORY

Anyone who saw Nightline tonight saw the power of the liberal media to completely hide facts and spoon feed a message to the American people straight from the DNC. Tonight's Nightline was a 30 minute John Kerry campaign commercial.

It was mentioned that John Kerry became a "peace activist" after the war, and we heard Karen Hughes in a 5 second clip saying that Kerry accused his fellow soldiers of horrendous acts. We were never shown what Kerry said about the soldiers.

We were told there was some controversy about John Kerry throwing medals, but not told what the controversy was. Instead, we heard only John Kerry responding to questions that I believe were raised by ABC, stating "this is done by a Republican campaign that can't even account for whether George Bush showed up in duty in Georgia." No explanation that Kerry misled people about throwing his medals away for decades, or that the George Bush National Guard issue was eliminated by a total release of all Bush records, or that Kerry didn't answer the questions about his own actions and instead stooped to the worst of the Dem campaign tactics - insinuating that the president was a deserter. No, Kerry's false accusation was presented as the end all answer to questions that we never heard.

Almost all of the show was heart wrenching testimonials by the Kerry swift boat crew. Zero mention that he uses in his campaign a photo of veterans who overwhelmingly oppose him and say he is unfit.

We were told quickly that Kerry's 3 purple hearts "meant that he could be sent home." Zero about the fact he immediately requested to come home to a cushy job in an Admiral's office.

Ted Koppel was shocked that the Republicans were making Vietnam an issue in light of Bush's questionable record. This was to the live guest, a NYT reporter who agreed.

There was nothing about what Kerry did to undermine the U.S. after the war. Zero. The entire program pretended that crazy republicans were somehow criticizing Kerry's heroic war service. Even though the real issues have been almost totally about his anti-war behavior.

We saw the footage of Kerry walking through a village with his rifle. No mention that he was the kind of man who staged the scene with his own photographer for political use.

In summary, the message was : Bush and Cheney are shirkers or worse, Kerry is an incredible war hero, and that was the end of that. After watching the show - no, after the first five minutes - you could not doubt that Koppel and the producers of this "news" show had to know exactly what they were doing. Had to know they were burying the real issues about John Kerry, that they were presenting a one sided love song to the most left wing, anti-military, anti- Cold War member of the U.S. Senate.

It was despicable, but then it was Nightline. Oh, and they topped it off with the latest casualties in Iraq, in case you missed the already overt message that we need a war veteran in the White House to clean up this mess.

http://www.patriotsforbush.com/archives/000163.html

NEW YORK, March 11, 2004 - Mainstream news organizations may "filter" the news, as President George W. Bush claimed late last year, but not to omit good stories from their Iraq coverage, but to broadcast more negative news about the president himself, according to a report released today by MediaChannel.org and Media Tenor.

The report reveals a strong negative cast to ABC, CBS and NBC news coverage of the president thus far in 2004. Meanwhile, Senator John Kerry, Bush's certain opponent for November, has received more positive coverage by the same three networks.

According to data compiled for MediaChannel.org by international media monitoring firm Media Tenor, network news broadcasts in January and February contained on average nearly three times more negative news statements about President Bush than about Senator John Kerry.

During these two months the networks devoted the bulk of their reporting on Kerry to the candidate's string of victories in early primaries and caucuses. Network coverage of President Bush during this period tended to focus on questions about his WMD intelligence in the run-up to the war with Iraq, his military service record during the Vietnam War, analysis of his performance during the State of the Union address, and comparisons of his re-election campaign with the hotly contested race involving Democratic candidates.
Of the 2,895 statements made about Bush during the nightly half-hour network broadcasts, Media Tenor analysts counted 834 (or 28.8 percent) of statements as negative. Only 10.4 percent of the 1191 network statements about Senator Kerry were negative.

Over the same period, the networks shone a more benevolent light on Kerry. In the first two months of the year, more than 35 percent (or 422 of 1191 statements) of network coverage of Kerry was counted as positive. Bush's positive coverage rating amounted to only 11.9 percent of the total statements made about the president during the half-hour network broadcasts.

CBS Evening News with Dan Rather leads the networks in negative coverage of the president and positive coverage of Kerry. More than 35 percent of the Bush-related statements made during CBS' nightly broadcast portrayed the president in a negative way. Only 8.9 percent of Bush coverage on CBS was counted as positive.
By comparison, ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings was more neutral towards the president. Media Tenor rated ABC's Bush coverage as 22.7 percent negative, 12 percent positive and 65 percent neutral.

CBS shone more brightly than the other networks when covering Senator Kerry. Media Tenor classified more than 38 percent of their coverage of the Democratic candidate as positive, ABC and NBC's news programs were positive on Kerry 33.4 and 35.9 percent of the time, respectively.

"Bush continues not to be able to leave a convincing impression on TV news," said Roland Schatz, president of Media Tenor. "While the president received the largest share of media coverage against the field of Democratic candidates, the focus was on negative, not positive, stories about Bush."

Media Tenor analysts pore over transcripts and watch the half hour-broadcasts to classify news statements as negative, positive or neutral. Their data for the first two months of 2004 show that more than 55 percent of all statements about the candidates were neutral -- or neither negative nor positive towards the candidate. When considering the remainder of statements, President Bush received far fewer high marks than his likely opponent for November.

MediaChannel earlier this week shared the data via fax with the anchors and executives at NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight and CBS Evening News. They have yet to reply to requests for comment.

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