Posted on 03/01/2008 9:10:45 AM PST by jdm
I'm a latecomer to the controversy over the 60 Minutes story on the supposed machinations of Karl Rove to take down former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. CBS has posted the story here.
On its face, the segment is a remarkably thin piece of work from which to lob serious accusations implicating the integrity of prominent officials including Rove. Rove himself has responded to the story by asking the question that occurred to me after watching the segment: "Seeing where I was working at the time, a reasonable person could ask why I would even take an interest in that case."
The 60 Minutes story quotes two sources at length, Jill Dana Simpson and former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. Jim Hoft has covered the issues concerning Simpson's contribution to the story here and here.
Reading about the underlying controversy, I found the name of Eddie Curran. Curran is the Mobile Press-Register reporter whose stories played a role in initiating the investigation of Siegelman. Curran is on leave from the Press-Register writing a book on Siegelman's "administration, the trial, and the aftermath, including the 60 Minutes show on Siegelman." Curran has now written a letter to 60 Minutes.
Watch or read the 60 Minutes story and then read Curran's letter in its entirety. It is of great interest. Here, for example, is Curran on Woods, the second of the 60 Minutes segment's two principal sources:
Ten years ago, on a non-investigative story about the tobacco wars, I quoted Grant Woods saying he’d spent much time working with Siegelman. Woods, like Siegelman, supported those lawsuits. At least three times as governor, Siegelman used state funds to pay for him and his wife to fly and stay at resorts for the annual conferences of the Western Attorney General Association.(Emphasis in original.) CBS has not to my knowledge responded to the questions raised about its Siegelman segment. Has 60 Minutes been duped again? As Bob Owens notes, it's hard to believe that 60 Minutes "would risk running this story without having vetted Simpson to the best of their ability." But where is the evidence that supports her tales of derring-do as Karl Rove's gumshoe?Did you ask Woods if he and Siegelman are old friends? Did you at all wonder why a former Arizona attorney general had taken such an interest in this case? Do you suppose Siegelman might have asked him to help, such as by putting together that petition signed by 52 former attorney generals? And would you suppose they are more familiar with Don Siegelman as a friend, or the facts and testimony put on at trial?
If you knew they were old friends and didn’t disclose this to viewers, why not? Were you afraid it might dilute the power of what he was saying?
Did you ask Woods specific questions about the evidence at the trial that he did not, to my knowledge, attend for one day? It is my guess that he couldn’t answer basic questions about the evidence. What you have is an old pal of the governor’s speaking in bold generalities about a case I doubt he knows much about.
Also, Woods asserts the following: “I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of.”A reasonable follow-up question by Pelley might have been: But hadn’t he been defeated, “fair and square,” in the 2002 election?
In 2005, when he was indicted, Democrat Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley was all but the anointed party choice for the 2006 nomination, but you present Siegelman as if he was some vital force who Riley and the Republicans feared, and I dare you to locate a single political science professor in the state who would say as much. It’s not true, but for you, it was necessary. Without it, there would be no “motive basis” for the claim you assert with your opening sentence, which is more statement that question: “Is Don Siegelman in prison because he’s a criminal or because he belonged to the wrong political party in Alabama?”
I assert that you made up your mind as to the answer to this question even before your reporters/producers began their investigation into the Siegelman prosecution. However, I welcome your comments to the contrary.
Did 60 Minutes miss the real Rove scandal? The real scandal -- Rove's insidious power to induce prominent journalists to disgrace themselves -- may prove to be the one scandal that 60 Minutes is uniquely qualified to blow the lid off.
bump
“Is Don Siegelman in prison because he’s a criminal or because he belonged to the wrong political party in Alabama?”
Because he’s a crook...
Surely you deceive us! The SeeBS Smooze Mission Statement states "Thou shalt not vet"! 'Tswhy Rather joined SeeBS in the first place!
Isn’t Rove a private citizen? Theres plenty of corruption by elected officials they can cover.
Karl Rove is a personal friend of Bush, the Evil One, and was a trusted adviser and confidant to the same as well as a highly competent political strategist.
That’s more than enough to make him a target.
Don Siegleman is paranoid. Everyone is out to get him because he is entitled to be governor of Alabama. That is what he believes. Governor Riley, who beat the then incumbent Siegleman in 2002, was so afraid of Siegleman and his lottery that he conspired with president Bush and Karl Rove to take him out. This conspiracy theory was actually part of his defense in the trial. Never mind that he had been under investigation for years because of a wide range of thinly covered up criminal activities. He would have gone down years earlier had a political hack democrat appointed Federal Judge in Birmingham not gutted the Fed’s case right after the trial began. Siegleman’s rants have only become more insane over the years. For instance, President Bush fired those US Attorneys as part of the plot to get him. Now we have the Drive By media believing it. Just remember, Siegleman put a historic marker up in front of the house he lived in before being elected Governor proclaiming that he lived there, and was the first person in Alabama history to be elected to almost every imaginable office in the state.
I am also puzzled that the author from Powerline, probably John or Scott, would be suprised at anything CBS or 60 Minutes would broadcast. It is truly staggering, the dishonesty and naked partisanship of, much of the so called “mainstream media”. CBS is the worst as far as the networks go. I despise CBS so much I can barely contain my anger when discussing them or the news. And I am joined by lots of people that I come into occasional contact with who communicate the same anger to me. They have noticed what I have. CBS News is partisan, rabidly anti-conservtive, and takes every opportunity on every issue to slant the news to favor the left.
Did you know that more Americans have been murdered in the state of New York than have been killed on the battlefield since we invaded Iraq? As the media spouts the lastest Democrat talking points about the “quagmire” and “failure” that is Iraq, the fact that over 280,000 Americans have been murdered or killed in auto accidents on America’s streets during the same period is not news. For a media that dutifully reports every single negative aspect of the Iraq conflict and each night tells us the total number of soldiers killed in Iraq, it seems quite incredible that there is so little interest in the fact that nearly 80,000 American have been murdered in our own cities during the same period. Nobody should be surprised as advancing murder and automobile accident death statistics is not nearly as beneficial to the Democrat party as depicting the Iraq war as an abject failure.
The example above is a lesson on how “context” can be used to add perspective to an issue. While the traditional media usually does not make up facts out of whole cloth, they are perpetual liars just the same. Factual omissions, the reporting of selected facts, and the absence of context are the tools the liberals at ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN use to advance their own beliefs and their own agenda. Watching CBS then researching the “facts” they present is by itself and object lesson on media partisanship
Watch any “60 Minutes” Bush-bashing program on CBS and then research the facts and people they presented to make their broadcast. You will find purposeful reporting of only selected facts, manipulation of the context to favor one position, opinion treated as material fact, old news re-packaged as new “revelations”, all presented by people with an axe to grind, of whom CBS often neglects to identify their interests, political affiliations, or historical bias.
The problem with “journalism” today, and its a huge problem, is the lack of basic fairness in the traditional broadcast and print media. It is simply indisputable that the alphabet networks and the largest major daily newspapers have become so leftward partisan that many Americans simply do not believe them nor trust them to report fairly anymore.
Knowing that so many of us feel this way, the fact that CBS would replace the disgraced Rather with Couric, whose own left-wing partisanship was on display almost daily, is mind-boggling. Can they not find a single person who is not openly partisan to read the headlines of the day? It points to a much larger problem at CBS, one shared by all the big-city liberal news organizations, a failure to understandwho most Americans are, what they believe, and why they believe it. This is why so many of us have stopped watching all network news and have stopped buying newspapers. We simply refuse to sponsor or patronize organizations that work against our interests and our chosen leaders.
Partisanship in the media is not just bad for Republicans and conservatives, it is bad for America. When there are no universally-accepted honest arbitors of news and fact, then people will gravitate to the news source that most closely parallels their own worldview. This has already happened to a large degree.as evidenced by the rise of the new media and the decline of the old. The peril inherent in the subsequent balkanization of public opinion is the inability to solve any major problem as long as it can be exploited for maximum political advantage by one side or the other. The most dangerous manifestation of the “Us versus Them” media construct is the general cynicism and distrust it spawns in the hearts and minds of the public. How can a Republic govern itself well when their are no longer some absolutes truths to which we can all agree.
As far as today’a media is concerned, where truth meets dogma, so far, dogma is winning.
PresidentFelon
I understand the media being leftist, but when the MSM makes crap up to appease their democrat masters you have to wonder where their heads are. Eventually, no one will believe them even if they were to be honest. ,p>
BTW, I’ve never understood why there is no “conservative 60 minutes”. There are so many juicy stories on liberals that are ACHING to be told.
The problem with "journalism" today can be traced to the replacement of the teaching, and use of actual factual journalism both in the university, and the field, with something called "advocacy journalism".
*This* is nothing more than a nice shiny new wrapping for something that heretofore had been called "Propaganda"...
the infowarrior
An excellet, truth-telling, post.
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