APOLOGY (and challenge) to reporter Dick Stevenson from the NY TIMES

Included in that article attributed to Stevenson and Rutenberg was this: "Kelly Campbell, co-director of a non-partisan group called September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows....."

Unfortunately, the site used Stevenson's work and combined it with work from a WASHINGTON POST author named Paul Fahri. THE AGE, where the story was found, led us to believe it was the work Stevenson and Rutenberg. Stevenson did not write the sentence about Kelly Campbell.

Dick Stevenson is owed an apology and it is hereby given to him. His article was done with complete professionalism.

From an email I received from Stevenson: " to those who read your post and called me to leave abusive messages that impugned my professionalism and patriotism, please pass along this response: We take criticism very seriously. When we mess up, we try to acknowledge it and correct it. But calling and swearing at me, making ugly personal statements and jumping to conclusions on the basis of sketchy information -- which in this case turned out to be dead wrong -- is no way to engage me or my newspaper in a dialog. And I would point out that not one caller other than Doug had the guts to provide a name or a phone number."

Come on, FReepers, this is personally embarrassing. He didn't deserve that treatment. We are better than that. Let John Kerry use the F word in Rolling Stone. Let the political left shout down opponents, stifle free speech, do damage in the streets, and act like jerks while this nation is at war. Let the left have the Michael Moores. I don't want people like that on my side.

The initial hope was that Stevenson would want to correct the record. We don't get people to see our side if we scream and swear at them.

Here is what was in his article: "The criticism -- from a firefighters union, relatives of victims and allies of Senator John Kerry....." He acknowledge that allies of Kerry were part of the criticism.

Stevenson is being sent this thread. I asked and the Admin Moderator removed the first one. Don't be nasty to him here.

Dick, this is to you. I hope you accept the apology, and I am sorry it ruined your Sunday. But, I also want to challenge you. I hope you will write a follow-up story. "Relatives of victims" was technically accurate, but it was incomplete. Please check out September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Please investigate the source of a great deal of their funding. That is the next story that needs to be written. When that one is written, FReepers will send notes of congratulations to comments@nytimes.com

Finally, I encourage activism and contact with reporters. Please do it with civility. The anti-Bush extremists set up the press with this pre-emptive attack on the ads. We need to help reporters discover the rest of the story. Don't make them your enemy. Most of them are just trying to earn a living.

It's good that Doug is a standup guy.

But I would ask the people at Post-Newsweek to ask themselves, why are Republicans, fully a third of the consumers of news in the United States, so willing to believe that the press is a propaganda ministry for the Democratic Party?

Simple: for example, when the Ads story broke, it was peddled through the food chain with anecdotal sources, mostly people connected in one way or another with the Kerry campaign (the head of the Firefighters Union, the Tides outfit, and the Sept. 11th group), AS IF THERE WAS NO CONNEXION WITH THE KERRY CAMPAIGN.

They were depicted as the innocent victims of a hard-hearted Administration.

I saw a front page report, with photos below the fold, which had a half page continuation about seven pages into the front section, in the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. I know an agitprop campaign when I see one, and the alacrity and unity of these stories, as well as the apparent coaching of people who appeared on the morning talk shows, appeared to me to be something right out of Darkness at Noon.

This was a deliberate campaign of agitation and propaganda. Period. As was the AWOL meme, as was the Joe Wilson meme. Mr. Stevenson probably had no part in that campaign. The abuse he received was contemptible, and there is no excuse for it, so it is good that you apologized to him, Doug.

But ask yourself this: why did you, a consumer of news, believe that you were being lied to in the first place?

The answer is simple; because in large part, you have.

To a degree that most reporters are not willing to admit, the American news media is the most finely refined and exquisitely talented instrument of agitation and propaganda in the history of man. If you proceed from the assumption that you are being lied to from the getgo, you will be able to survive this campaign year, whether we win or lose.

The best summation is given by the press itself, from the now infamous expose from ABC News' "The Note":

Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.
They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are "conservative positions."
They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation's problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don't have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.
More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.
The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.
It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.
It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.
It believes President Bush is "walking a fine line" with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between "tolerance" and his "right-wing base."
It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush's base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him -- and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.
Of course, the swirling Joe Wilson and National Guard stories play right to the press's scandal bias -- not to mention the bias towards process stories (grand juries produce ENDLESS process!).
The worldview of the dominant media can be seen in every frame of video and every print word choice that is currently being produced about the presidential race.

Remember: ALWAYS assume that the press will find some way to carry water for the Kerry campaign. In large part, they despise George Bush. Bush and his wife are cultural light years removed from the galaxy of the chattering classes. Their feelings towards Bush gravitate between contempt and slight regard. Kerry is different. Kerry is the type of guy who they would gravitate to at the Ben Bradlee parties of years gone by, or at special invites as Hillary's place.

Kerry is their savior, their knight in shining armor. Many in the press will do anything to get him elected, up to and including lie through their teeth. That is why so many of us don't trust them.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

The press... does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.

It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.

Most Americans probably cannot remember the economic axioms of the pre-Reagan era.

It was accepted gospel, at that time, that the unemployment rate was in inverse fixed relation to the rate of inflation.

The level of unemployment was "targeted" at certain levels -- usually between 5-12% -- as the only then-understood method of slowing down the rate of inflation, which at that time routinely reached double-digit levels. And - we had interest rates as high as 21%.

That was during a period when government was under TOTAL democrat control.

Then Ronald Reagan came into office, and -- all of a sudden -- the fixed relation of unemployment to inflation disappeared. We had both high employment and low inflation -- and this was considered IMPOSSIBLE only a few years earlier.

And 5-6% unemployment was the 'promised land' of employment in those days.

So -- democrats are now counting on the economic and historical illiteracy of a majority of American voters, as the dems hope that the voters will not understand where we are today, how we got there, how we fared when the democrats ran the legislative and executive branches.

It's our job to make sure that the voters are properly educated.

We, of course, have the tougher job.

At 32, with a head of unruly, sun-tinged curls and a shy smile that can instantly grow wide as the surf, Breitweiser still appears very much the beach rat she was while growing up in the Shore town of Manasquan. Though her father, John L. Winterstella, got involved in local government when she was a toddler and has been the town's mayor since 1984, it would be a mistake to assume his daughter inherited his civic-mindedness; too many interrupted family events over the years had soured Kristen on politics and government. After graduating from Rutgers, she earned a B average and a law degree from Seton Hall Law School in 1996, with an eye toward doing criminal work. But she wound up getting sidetracked into family law, and just three days into her career at a firm specializing in divorce, she quit the profession, finding it corrosive to her psyche. She needed to find a new direction, and, fortunately, she could take her time finding it. The summer of her bar exam, she'd started dating Ron Breitweiser, a rising money manager from Rutherford, and five months later they eloped to a secluded Caribbean island. By the time Kristen quit her job, she and Ron had settled into a spacious house in a verdant corner of Monmouth County near Sandy Hook, where she tended a garden and indulged her sartorial preference for blue jeans and baggy sweaters. Her new mission in life arrived in the form of a strawberry blonde daughter, Caroline, now four years old. After that, being with Ron and Caroline, taking care of the house, and planning for holidays was all Kristen wanted in the way of worldly responsibilities.

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An era in Manasquan [New Jersey] ended yesterday when Republican Mayor Richard Dunne took office from Democrat John L. Winterstella, who had been mayor for 20 years. (1/20/2004)

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A Rutgers lawyer and a dead yellow dog Democrat. Imagine that.

Instead of organizing car pools and arranging play dates, this New Jersey housewife [Puh-leeese!] is lobbying congressmen on behalf of a group called the Sept. 11 Advocates. The group wants an independent commission to investigate the disaster.

“Our husbands were killed,” Kristen says. “They were murdered. We deserve to have answers.”[I've figured it out, Kristen - how come you haven't?]

Among the questions she seeks to have answered: Why weren’t last summer’s threats against airplanes publicized?[Uh, Kristen - your party is insisting on THIS VERY DAY that we're not in a war. Your party wants to apologize. Your party wants to issue a stern note to Osama, and call in the U.N., who've already bravely run away from Iraq.] Why did officials tell people in Tower Two to stay in their offices after the first plane hit? [We should prosecute them for not being telepathic] Why didn’t the American military respond? [Why didn't the American carriers near Hawaii attack and sink the Japanese fleet immediately after Pearl Harbor?]

This woman appears to be relentlessly and intentionally dense. Wonder if there's a paycheck (other than the big payday she's getting from us taxpayers) involved?

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