Posted on 05/17/2005 4:34:22 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
With its Alice-in-Wonderland treatment of the Koran flushing story, the Today Show demonstrated this morning that it is capable of making a Bush-bashing silk purse out of a false MSM sow's ear of a story.
Given the universal attention that the false story and Newsweek's retraction have garnered, there was no way that Today, much as it might have liked to, could have ignored the story.
Forced to deal with it, they managed to put its own ugly spin on the matter. Again and again, Today floated the notion that Newsweek retracted the story due to pressure from the Bush administration, and went so far as to suggest the story might be true.
The focus was at least as much on possibly sinister motives at the "White House," as it was on any transgression by Newsweek.
Thus the story was introduced with this question: "Will Newsweek's retraction end the flurry of White House criticism?"
And again: "Did pressure from the White House impact Newsweek's decision to retract the story?"
Matt Lauer stuck to the marching orders in his interview of Dan Klaidman Newsweek DC Bureau Chief.
Lauer: "Did you get pressure from the White House?"
Klaidman flatly denied it: "The only pressure was our own sense of responsibility."
That wasn't good enough for Lauer. He was apparently more willing to believe the enemies of the US than he was the Bush administration or even Newsweek.
Lauer: "There is suspicion in the Muslim world. They say they've heard similar reports from released detainees. Why shouldn't we believe it and think that Newsweek retracted the story only because it was forced to do so by the White House to protect its image?" And just in case anyone missed the MSM message, Lauer sympathetically asked: "Is there piling on by the administration?"
Given that the propagation of a false story led to riots and deaths, you'd think the last thing Today would do would be to air other rumors. Yet incredibly, incredibly!, that's exactly what it devoted virtually the entirety of its next segment to.
NBC reporter Richard Engel reported from Baghdad, and his report consisted of retelling a variety of additional rumors:
1. "There are many rumors in Iraq and across Muslim world that this kind of thing happens regularly."
2. "There are rumors that US Marines while raiding a mosque abused a Koran and spray-painted it."
3. "Another one - during a search of woman, a search dog pulled a Koran out of the woman's handbag and Marines started laughing."
Engel claimed: "People believe this is not a war on terrorism but a war on Islam."
Lauer 'helpfully' filled in the blanks: "You're telling me people in that part of the world expect the worst from the US.?"
Engel somberly observed: "I'm not sure we're winning the battle for hearts and minds. There is still fallout from Abu Ghraib."
And just to pour the last measure of gasoline on the fire, Engel ended with this explosive allegation: "There are rumors women were raped at Abu Ghraib. One women claimed she was raped six times every night."
Just when you thought the MSM couldn't sink any lower . . .
Excellent analysis, IMO.
Have you heard any of the talking heads make this point? Guess they don't think we peons have enough sense to know this. The whole concept is laughable.
This may be the most pathetic example of viciously biased "reporting" I've heard yet. NBC and Today richly deserve to lose whatever little audience they have left.
The U.S. military should kick the NBC reporter who made that report right out of Iraq, it sounds like he's fomenting unrest. But NBC's screaming about censorship would be heard around the world, of course.
Did he actually ask the Newsweek guy this, or did he wait until the guy was gone so he couldn't be refuted?
Great post and right on!
I dub him Ma'hat bin-Lauerdin.
Ask Matt Liar how many times he and the TODAY show have been pressured by the White House to drop a story and how many times they dropped it.
Why would Liar think that Newsweek would fold to such WH pressure? Ask Matt why he just crucified Newsweek and called them cowards for folding to WH pressure.
"the NBC reporter who made that report right out of Iraq - sounds like he's fomenting unrest."
Absolutely.
Asked it to his face.
None of them thought about how ridiculous the statement was on its face, because they have no idea of the size differential, and they don't have the foggiest idea how a toilet works!!
The interrogation log describes "tear out page, wad, place in toilet, flush occasionally, repeat as necessary." At the end of the process, "The Koran" has been flushed.
Perhaps we can start a campaign.....FLUSH THE TODAY SHOW DOWN THE TOILET
Simple. They've completely lost their mainstream, middle-of-the-road viewers.
They now cater to the Democrat Underground barking-moonbat crowd.
If the story has been floating around for two years, as Crawford is saying, how can he say this administration might have made it up to set Newsweek up with?
and
The premise of Crawford's book is how politicians demonize the media, distracting people from the news itself. Imus is not buying what Craiggy poo is selling. And I don't either!!! Politicians didn't make up Jason Blair and Dan Rather, Imus says.
"Is anyone RELIEVED that the story is not true, or at the very, very least, unsubstantiated? Apparently not, in the MSM.
Imagine a US media outlet doing this during WWII."
I shudder to think...
After he had already said the White House didn't influence them?
Gen. Myers told reporters in Washington that Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the head of U.S. Southern Command, has "been in Guantanamo for the last couple of days digging into this issue to see if there was a time when the Koran was not respected.""They have looked through the logs, the interrogation logs, and they cannot confirm yet that there was ever the case of the toilet incident," Gen. Myers said.
He did note "a log entry, which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting them in a toilet to stop it up as a protest," he said. "But not where the U.S. did it."
Koran flushing not confirmed - Guy Taylor - Wash. Times - May 13, 2005
Mah'at bin-Lauerdin isn't interested in reporting.
Mah'at bin-Lauerdin is only interested in perpetuating a meme and causing another jihad.
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