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media and media people

Chuck Truth

Meet the cheating press. 

“I want you to listen to this Bill Barr answer to a question about what will history say about this,” Chuck Todd, host of Meet the Press, said to commentator Peggy Noonan last Sunday.

That last “this” referred to the Justice Department dropping charges against General Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former National Security Advisor. 

As the “tape” rolled, we witnessed CBS senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge ask, “When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?”

“Well, history’s written by the winners,” responded Attorney General Bill Barr. “So it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

“I was struck, Peggy, by the cynicism of the answer,” Chuck chimes in as the clip ends. “It’s a correct answer. But he’s the attorney general. He didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this is a political job.”

If only NBC retained a peacock feather’s worth of credibility, you might be surprised by the rest of the story: in the interview CBS News had broadcast, Barr’s answer was more extensive.

“But I think a fair history,” Barr went on, without pause after what NBC presented to viewers (above), “would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law.”*

After cutting Barr’s specific “rule of law” contention, Todd then claimed he made no such argument.

On its website, NBC has added an editor’s note to the Meet the Press transcript, clarifying that they “inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview with AG Barr.”** 

Without bothering to provide the full statement. 

From Mr. Todd? No comment.

From us — shock? 

No, merely well-​informed disgust.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* “It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice,” Barr continued, “and it undid what was an injustice.”

** “And there you go,” MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-​host Joe Scarborough charged last Friday, using the same dishonest editing of Barr’s remarks, “… that tells you all you need to know. Might makes right. The rule of law doesn’t matter.” Editors at The New York Times did likewise.

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

No. No. No. No.

“Look, I think one of the best things going in Donald Trump’s favor — we know this — is the mainstream media,” David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s White House correspondent, told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd yesterday. 

“I hate to say it. I know I’m sitting on a Meet the Press roundtable, but the truth of the matter is 62 percent think the media is biased,” added Brody. “So, in other words, if you look at the approval ratings of Donald Trump versus the approval rating of the media —” 

“The conservative echo chamber created that environment,” interjected Mr. Todd. “It’s not — no. No. No. No. It has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger Ailes created echo chamber.”

“So, let’s not pretend it’s not anything other than that,” Todd insisted. (So, it IS something other than that?)

“Well, hang on,” Brody responded. “Yes and no. Because remember, the independents are part of Donald Trump’s base.… [T]hose Independents also distrust media. This is not just Republicans. It is many Americans across —”

“Oh, no. No. No. I take your point,” Todd again interrupted. “I’m just saying it was a creation — it was a campaign tactic. It’s not based in much fact.”

Hmmm. Todd does not dispute Brody’s assertion that a supermajority of the country sees bias in the Fourth Estate. Nor does he deny that in a battle between Trump and the so-​called mainstream media, the approval-​rating-​challenged president bests the media most days.

Instead, the former Democratic Party campaign staffer-​turned-​journalist smugly maintains that one cable TV channel, talk radio and a spate of conservative websites have totally invented a fantasy of an anti-​conservative bias where absolutely none exists.

Meet the press bias.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 


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national politics & policies

Endless Fog of Endless War

Yesterday, NBC’s Chuck Todd opened a “Meet the Press” segment by calling U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq “wars now without an end.”

“The U.S. now seems to be in a semi-​permanent state of war,” added Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel.

“Right now, we’re just in damage control,” explained Lt. General Dan Bolger, Retired, the author of Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. “Our enemies, the Taliban and ISIS, are talking about winning.”

Mr. Todd asked, “Why do we have this incredible military that can’t win these wars?”

“The military can give you a quick victory over a conventional army. It cannot deliver a rebuilt country in the place you go,” replied the general. “That takes an effort of the entire U.S. population and government. And moreover, it takes the commitment of the American people for the long term.”

And then Baghdad and Kabul will look a lot like Chicago or Boston?

“At what point do we walk away?” Todd wanted to know. Never?

“It becomes difficult to walk away, because these situations are spinning quite badly out of control,” offered Sarah Chayes, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “And it’s spreading.”

Our decade-​plus in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost us greatly and accomplished little good, if any.

Even a century of Americans fighting and occupying and pacifying these countries will not succeed. The cost, not just in billions of tax dollars, but also in thousands of our countrymen dead and maimed, is unacceptable.

It’s time to really end the “endless” wars.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.