When you see this TV ad, I think you'll agree it is hilarious, and drives home the "no laughing matter" point that John Kerry's waffling on key policy issues could be devastating to our country. In the ad, as a bomb squad tries to defuse a bomb, the narrator delivers the key message: "THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH A LITTLE INDECISION AS LONG AS YOUR JOB DOESN'T INVOLVE ANY RESPONSIBILITY. " If adequately funded, this ad could make a real difference. I think it'll be looked back upon as one of the most decisive TV ads ever run. You may have seen me on the various TV talkshows or otherwise heard of the Club for Growth. The Club for Growth is one of the largest and most effective political organizations in the country. The Club for Growth serves as sort of a political mutual fund which recommends to committed, generous economic conservatives which races and candidates to back to get the maximum bang for the buck. The Club's members have been phenomenally effective in supporting candidates who don't just talk the talk, but walk the walk when it comes to cutting wasteful government spending, enacting tax relief for struggling taxpayers and businesses, fighting lawsuit abuse and repealing costly government redtape. We agree with Ronald Reagan that our government is "too big and spends too much". The ClubforGrowth.net is an affiliated unincorporated association that exists to engage in issue advocacy. The ClubforGrowth.net wants to run $3 million worth of these ads in key states around the country such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa. We've already secured nearly $1 million in "matching grant" commitments from a number of generous donors. But I need your help to raise the additional $2 million. Every dollar you contribute to run the "Kerry FlipFlop" ad will be matched more than 2 to 1 by our Matching Grant Fund. If you want to make sure we get the message out to the American people that John Kerry's policies are bad for our country, please contribute whatever you can afford TODAY to help us run this ad, please: Mail a check made payable to: "Club for Growth.Net" The Kerry Flipflop Ad 1776 K Street, N.W. Suite 399 Washington, D.C. 20006 Best regards, Steve Moore PRESIDENT ClubforGrowth.net P.S. If you agree that Kerry's indecisiveness on key issues and policies is dangerous and want to help spread the word, please forward this email to any of your likeminded friends - or (even better) your whole address book!
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The 1,853rd CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 10:20am EST, Tuesday November 2, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 216) 1. Bush Aides in Kerry-Mocking Halloween Costumes Not Amusing to CNN "The Bush campaign team had a little fun at Halloween," ABC's Charlie Gibson noted Monday morning over video of top Bush aides dressed for Halloween in hunting outfits which matched what John Kerry donned when he had his goose-hunting phot-op. But CNN anchor Carol Lin was not amused. On CNN Sunday Night, she demanded of a Bush campaign spokesman: "Was this a cheap shot at the Kerry campaign?" She then lectured him that if "you're a technologist who has seen your job outsourced to India, or you're a father or a mother with a son or daughter in Iraq and you see the lead characters, Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, no less, coming out in these outfits to make fun of John Kerry, how do you think those undecided voters are going, going to read these pictures?" MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, on Monday night, sarcastically opined: "No truth to rumors that they found these outfits at the same costume shop where they found President Bush's flight suit for the big 'Mission Accomplished' landing." 2. Most in Military Back Bush, But ABC and CBS Avoid that Reality Though it's illegal to poll the military about their voting choices, a National Annenberg Election Survey found that when those in the active duty military were "asked whom they would trust more to handle the responsibility of commander-in-chief, 69 percent...preferred Bush to 24 percent for Kerry." But on Monday night, CBS and ABC managed to avoid conveying that presidential preference in stories on Marines in Iraq preparing for an assault on Fallujah. CBS's Kimberly Dozier asserted that "most" of the Marines "didn't even know Election Day was almost here." A Lance Corporal declared: "I really don't have any favorites right now. They both got their pluses and their minuses." ABC's Jim Sciutto, however, found the Marines very aware of the election with "many" having "voted three weeks ago" by absentee ballot. Sciutto featured a Marine who echoed Ralph Nader: "I hope that the people try to make the decision on who to vote for take into consideration that this conflict needs to end. And it needs to end now." 3. CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll Presumes 90% of Undecideds Go to Kerry Nine out of ten "undecided" voters will go for John Kerry over George W. Bush? That's the assumption which allowed Gallup to alter its final pre-election poll, from a 49 to 47 percent lead for Bush amongst "likely voters," to a 49-49 tie. "Democrat ties Bush nationally," declared the subhead under a Monday USA Today front page story, about the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, in which reporter Susan Page's lead touted how "Kerry has erased President Bush's modest lead." She explained that "Gallup's formula assumes that 9 of 10 of those [undecided] voters would support Kerry, based on analyses of previous presidential races involving an incumbent." In fact, that level of an extreme split has not occurred in any modern election and, in calculating its final poll tally, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press estimated that the "undecided vote may break only slightly in Kerry's favor." 4. Ex-NBC Reporter Recounts Weekend Campaigning with John Kerry Former NBC News reporter Star Jones proudly recounted on Monday's The View, the ABC daytime show created by Barbara Walters, how she spent the weekend campaigning in Florida for John Kerry. As viewers saw video of her at a podium and a picture of her with Kerry, she recounted which cities she campaigned in and then complained: "People don't realize just how much poverty is in our own country. And there are people with no jobs, there are people with no health care, people who can't afford to buy their drugs." 5. Letterman's "Top Ten Punch Lines to Dirty Election Jokes" Letterman's "Top Ten Punch Lines to Dirty Election Jokes." The 1,852nd CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 11:10am EST, Monday November 1, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 215) 1. 60 Minutes: Bush Tax Cuts Culpable for Lack of Armor on Humvees The New York Times last Monday beat 60 Minutes to the "missing" explosives story, so CBS couldn't air that last-minute hit on President Bush 36 hours before the election. On Sunday it replaced that planned story with another, "In Harm's Way," about problems in Iraq: Deaths and injuries caused to servicemen by the lack of armor on Humvees, as well as issues such as the lack of radios for troops. The story was not explicitly pegged to deriding Bush's conduct of the war, but Steve Kroft blamed the lack of armor on how "Pentagon war planners didn't anticipate a long, bloody insurgency." Kroft then brought up the media's favorite Bush-bashing lodestone: "But 18 months after President Bush declared an end of major combat, the Pentagon is still struggling to provide equipment needed to fight the war." Kroft blamed the equipment inadequacies on pork barrel spending and John McCain tied that back to a Bush policy: "I don't think that this war has truly come home to the Congress of the United States. This is the first time in history we've cut taxes during a war." 2. Clift, Carlson and Hunt All Predict a Kerry Victory For those participating in office pools on the election outcome, a rundown of the predictions made over the weekend by the pundits on the McLaughlin Group, Beltway Boys and Capital Gang. All the journalists for mainstream media outlets -- Eleanor Clift, Al Hunt and Margaret Carlson -- forecast a Kerry victory on Tuesday and offered the most optimistic, from the Democratic perspective, predictions about the House and Senate. 3. Public Sees Media Favoring Kerry, CNN Watchers Prefer Kerry Two polls released last week found that more people perceive the media tilting coverage in favor of Democrat John Kerry than in favor of Republican President George W. Bush. Gallup determined that 35 percent think coverage has tilted toward Kerry compared to just 16 percent who said it favored Bush. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press discovered that "half of voters (50 percent) say most newspaper and TV reporters would prefer to see John Kerry win the election, compared with just 22 percent who think that most journalists are pulling for George Bush." While 27 percent described Kerry coverage as "unfair," 37 percent labeled Bush coverage as "unfair." Pew also learned that "voters who get most of their election news from CNN favor Kerry over Bush, by 67 percent-26 percent." The 1,849th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 10am EDT, Friday October 29, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 212) 1. Fresh CBS Hit on Bush, Imply "Criminal Probe" of White House CBS on Thursday night launched another effort to torpedo President Bush's re-election as their reporters gloated over how their earlier hit on "missing explosives," combined with their lead story about the FBI probing one person's claim about a no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton, had meant "a bad week for Mr. Bush has gotten only worse" while John Kerry is "on a roll" now that he's "buoyed by the momentum that the weapons controversy has given him." The other networks noted the Halliburton development, but only CBS made it the lead story as Dan Rather breathlessly hyped how "the FBI will now include a criminal investigation of how the Bush administration awarded Halliburton those no-bid contracts in the first place and whether there was any insider favoritism." To give the Pentagon-centered story a Watergate-level connection to Bush's Oval Office, CBS teased the topic with an on-screen graphic of a picture of the White House with "Criminal Probe" beneath and the "Department of Justice" lettering of that department's logo above. 2. ABC and CNN Tout Video of Powder in One Bunker as Vindication While FNC's Bret Baier on Thursday night revealed that a January 2003 International Atomic Energy Agency report listed the "total tonnage of high explosives, HMX and RDX" as "219 tons, not 377 tons," in a story soon adopted by other outlets, ABC's Martha Raddatz touted video from an ABC affiliate which showed soldiers at al Qaqaa opening barrels and boxes of a powder. She called it "the strongest evidence to date that the explosives disappeared after the U.S. had taken control of Iraq." CNN's Aaron Brown pounced on the April 2003 video as proof the media had been vindicated and the Pentagon discredited, as did the New York Times. In three separate NewsNight segments Brown contended that "it seems to me that the argument is over" and it's "game, set and match." A headline on the front page of Friday's New York Times trumpeted: "Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache." 3. Nets Promote Claim, Tied to Election, 100,000 Killed in Iraq CBS and NBC on Thursday night promoted a survey which claimed 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war, a number six times higher than previous estimates. But even Human Rights Watch questioned the high number and the lead researcher conceded to the AP that he timed the study to be released just before the election, two factors neither CBS or NBC considered. 4. Couric Sees Parallels Between Nazi Sympathizer and Bush-Cheney Five days before the election, NBC's Today decided to feature a taped interview with novelist Philip Roth who recently denigrated President Bush as "a man unfit to run a hardware store, let alone a nation like this one." Katie Couric pushed him to draw parallels between the fearful times in his new novel, The Plot Against America, which imagines that the Nazi-sympathizing Charles Lindbergh won the presidency in 1940 and entered an alliance with Hitler, and today's Bush presidency. Couric told him that much of the commentary in his book "seems to be applicable to the current situation." Roth wondered what she meant and she suggested: "Well, Lindbergh when he appears at the Republican National Convention in his flight suit sounds eerily similar to George Bush putting a flight suit on and going on the aircraft carrier with 'Mission Accomplished.' Cheney's statement that it's unpatriotic after September 11th to be critical of the administration. The politics of fear..." 5. Interviewing Kerry, Brokaw Informs Him Bush "Has a Higher IQ" Kudos to Tom Brokaw for a solid interview of John Kerry in which he played devil's advocate to him on a range of subjects. In the edited interview which consumed four minutes of Thursday's NBC Nightly News, Brokaw told Kerry "the fact is, Senator, we still don't know what happened to those explosives," pointed out to him "that if you had been President, Saddam Hussein would still be in power," wondered if he's "proud to be a liberal?" (Kerry claimed he's a "fiscal conservative"), inquired if he regrets "invoking Mary Cheney in your debate with President Bush?" and, in a disclosure which took Kerry by surprise, Brokaw informed him: "Someone has analyzed the President's military aptitude tests and yours, and concluded that he has a higher IQ than you do." 6. Curt Schilling's Admonition to "Vote Bush" Jolts GMA Crew The Good Morning America crew was taken aback Thursday morning when Curt Schilling, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox team which won the World Series the night before, snuck in one last comment at the end of an interview with Charles Gibson: "Make sure you tell everybody to vote, and vote Bush next week." From Gibson and others at ABC's Manhattan studios "ohs" could be heard as an uncomfortable Gibson exclaimed "whoa" and haltingly tried to find words: "Alright. Well, something else that divides the nation." News reader Robin Roberts then demurred: "Sure, now you come to me! Thanks a lot, Charlie." The 1,848th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 12:35pm EDT, Thursday October 28, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 211) 1. All But CBS Relay Info Which Casts Doubt Explosives Lost by U.S. ABC, NBC, FNC and CNN, but not CBS, on Wednesday night provided new details, about what is known to have happened at the al-Qaqaa compound in January to May of 2003, such as how satellite imagery shows trucks at the facility, which cast more doubts upon the charge that the 377 tons of explosives disappeared after U.S. troops arrived. Jim Axelrod noted on the CBS Evenings News that "the President today finally broke his silence over the missing explosives in Iraq," but it was CBS which remained silent over the revelations which conflicted with their original anti-Bush administration spin. Axelrod gloated over the negative impact on the Bush campaign: "Mr. Bush had to say something. The timing of the story couldn't be worse for him" since "the missing explosives are the kind of development that could push undecideds the other way." ABC's Dean Reynolds ruled that Bush's "counterattack, that Kerry basically doesn't know what he's talking about" on what happened to the explosives, "does not address the fundamental problem that the Senator posed" about how unguarded ammunition has left troops "at greater risk." CNN's Jamie McIntyre picked up on a Pentagon point that "the lost stockpile amounted to less than one-tenth of one percent of the 400,000 tons of total munitions the U.S. has found in Iraq." 2. Gibson & Couric Presume Credibility of Explosives Allegation ABC's Charles Gibson and NBC's Katie Couric on Wednesday morning both presumed the basic credibility of the allegation about how U.S. Army malfeasance and incompetent direction by the Bush administration led to the loss of 377 tons of explosives from the al Qaqaa compound in Iraq. On Good Morning America, Gibson asked about the "possibility that hundreds of tons of weapons in Iraq have disappeared because of poor oversight or security by American troops. Number one, does this resonate at this point?" On Today, Couric demanded: "Reports that nearly 380 tons of conventional explosives that could be used in missile warheads or to detonate nuclear weapons have raised many concerns about why U.S. forces did not go and secure these weapons if in fact they knew about them. What happened?" Couric at least also raised doubts about the charge. 3. ABC & CBS Take Shots at Bush on Global Warming, Proof Suppressed Some last minute shots at the Bush administration over global warming. ABC's Peter Jennings on Wednesday night highlighted how Russia's parliament had voted to sign the Kyoto Protocol and so "126 nations support the treaty. The United States does not." Before a CBS Evening News "What Does it Mean to You" piece about where Bush and Kerry stand on global warming, a story in which Jerry Bowen ominously warning that "computer climate models predict the warming will trigger a range of calamities -- more intense hurricane seasons to droughts" and how "Britain's chief science advisor says it's a greater threat than terrorism," Dan Rather asserted: "A top government scientist is accusing President Bush of suppressing evidence that human activities contribute to dangerous global warming." 4. NBC's Today on Embryonic Stem Cells: Brad Pitt and Two Advocates Four days after ABC and NBC handed the widow of Christopher Reeve several unedited minutes to make her case for the election of John Kerry, NBC's Today returned Tuesday morning to the topic of embryo-destroying stem-cell research with another movie star in the mix: actor Brad Pitt who appeared along with another proponent of a California ballot initiative asking California citizens to subsidize embryonic stem cell research, Dr. Fran Kaufman. For "balance," NBC found the head of the California Nurses Association, who also supports embryonic research, but thinks the ballot initiative's approach is too conservative since "it's giving money to private corporations and the biotech industry and the pharmaceutical industry." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Correction: Item #5 in the October 27 CyberAlert quoted actor Brad Whitford of NBC West Wing as taking this shot which contrasted President Bush with John Kerry: "How many times do you have to get shot in the ass in a rice patty before you're more rough and tumble than a cheerleader from Andover?" "Patty" should have read "paddy." The 1,847th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 11:25am EDT, Wednesday October 27, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 210) 1. Like with Forged Memos, CBS Plows Forward with Explosives Story Following the same strategy employed when CBS News came under fire for the forged memos, on Tuesday night, while other news outlet backtracked from their initial Monday night reporting on how 377 tons of explosives went missing in Iraq under the watch of the U.S. Army, CBS plowed forward. With "Where Are They?" on screen, Dan Rather teased: "Senator Kerry blasts the President over those tons of missing explosives. And where are they?" Later, Rather declared: "Those missing explosives in Iraq are much more than a headline or a political wedge issue. They are very real, very powerful, and possibly in the hands of anti-American guerrillas or terrorists." CBS acknowledged the political damage the Monday hyping had done to the Bush campaign, though the network also revealed that the IAEA had blocked destruction of the very stockpile. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski provided a through rundown on the possibilities of what happened to the explosives while Tom Brokaw was on the defensive about what NBC reported Monday night, claiming the Bush campaign mischaracterized their story. CNN's Jamie McIntyre picked up on the proposition Hussein moved the explosives before the war. FNC's Brit Hume talked to Dana Lewis, who was embedded with the first troops on the scene. 2. CBS vs. CBS: Use of Missing Explosives in Attacks on Troops? Assuming facts not in evidence. Tuesday morning on CBS's Early Show, Harry Smith argued that the explosives missing in Iraq have "been made into bombs that have targeted U.S. troops." But later, on the CBS Evening News, David Martin would only go as far as to relay, over video of an explosion, how "David Kay, who once headed the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, says after this bombing outside a mosque in Najaf, investigators found traces of the same kind of explosives." 3. ABC Applies Negative Descriptions of How Bush Court Would Rule Putting the conservative position in a derogatory light. In a Tuesday Good Morning America look, in the wake of news that Chief Justice William Rehnquist has cancer, at what a Bush or Kerry victory would mean for Supreme Court rulings, ABC's Claire Shipman employed unfavorable descriptions of conservative positions. She warned that a Bush win would lead to appointments in which "abortion rights could be further curtailed" while those named by Kerry "would likely try to ease abortion restrictions." Bush's nominees would also lead to "upending affirmative action totally." 4. GMA Pounds Bush from Left on Gays and God, Kerry Let Off Easy In another installment of his interview with President and Mrs. Bush, taped over the weekend at the Crawford ranch, Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson on Tuesday displayed an aggressive liberal agenda. He pressed the President to disagree with the Republican platform on gay issues. Using the flu-shot controversy, he suggested the Food and Drug Administration is "too close to the drug companies." He even asked about the liberal Internet conspiracy theory about the bump in the back of Bush's suit jacket in the first debate, showed pictures, and asked: "What the hell was that on your back in the first debate?" But the oddest questions were about whether Bush thinks he's an instrument of God: "You said, 'freedom is a gift of the Almighty....And if you're the agent of freedom, or consider yourself so, in this, does that indicate in your mind that the Almighty is on our side in some way?" In her interviews with John Kerry on September 29 and 30, however, Diane Sawyer never asked Kerry about social issues, the Democratic platform, anything about Kerry's struggles with the Catholic bishops over his pro-abortion voting record, or conservative conspiracy theories rolling around the Internet. 5. West Wing Actor Takes Shot at Bush as "Cheerleader from Andover" A couple of cheap shots at President Bush last week from actor Bradley Whitford, who plays Josh Lyman on NBC's The West Wing, another episode of which will run tonight on NBC. On HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday night, Whitford denounced Bush as "the most disastrous environmental President in history" and, to hearty audience applause, asked: "How many times do you have to get shot in the ass in a rice paddy before you're more rough and tumble than a cheerleader from Andover?" ------------------------------ Correction: Item #5 in the October 26 CyberAlert referred to how Eleanor Clift "failed to realize that unlike anecdotes for small pox and anthrax, the flu vaccine..." She provided anecdotal evidence of media bias, but "anecdotes" should have read "antidotes." The 1,846th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 12:50pm EDT, Tuesday October 26, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 209) 1. Nets Follow NY Times and Kerry, Hype Missing Explosives Cache Prompted by a top of the front page New York Times story on Monday headlined, "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished from Site in Iraq," the three broadcast network evening newscasts, as well as CNN's NewsNight, led by hyping the story picked up by John Kerry on the campaign trail, but only NBC Nightly News revealed the missing cache wasn't there when U.S. troops arrived and suggested a political motivation in the timing of the disclosure about something which occurred at least 18 months ago. Dan Rather trumpeted at the top of the CBS Evening News: "Eight days to go til America elects a President, and disturbing news from Iraq is again dominating the campaign. The White House acknowledged today that a huge stockpile of ultra-high explosives is inexplicably missing from an Iraqi weapons site. Senator John Kerry called this a quote, 'great blunder' by President Bush and his administration." CBS's 60 Minutes had been working on the story which CBS intended to air as a last-minute hit on Bush two days before the election. 2. ABC Sees 30,000 at Clinton's Philly Event, CBS Touts 100,000 Byron Pitts, as usual, the most enthusiastic for the Democratic ticket and its events. While ABC's Peter Jennings pegged the crowd, for Bill Clinton's Philadelphia appearance with John Kerry, at "as many as thirty thousand [30,000] people," CBS's Byron Pitts on Monday night touted "an estimated crowd of some one hundred thousand [100,000] supporters." Pitts relayed how Clinton's mission was to "remind supporters of the good old days when employment was up, the deficit was down and a Democrat was in the White House." Pitts failed to remind viewers that when Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, the unemployment rate stood at 5.2 percent, just two-tenths lower than today's rate. 3. ABC's Gibson and Stephanopoulos Aghast at Charges Against Kerry ABC News stars aghast by the charges from George W. Bush and Dick Cheney against John Kerry. Charles Gibson challenged President Bush, in an excerpt from a Sunday interview played back on Monday's World News Tonight: "Do you honestly believe that this country's in more danger if John Kerry gets elected?" Sunday on This Week, George Stephanopoulos recited how Cheney argued that if John Kerry's policies had been followed, Saddam Hussein would be "in charge in the Persian Gulf with nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union still in business," a dismayed Stephanopoulos pressed Senator John McCain: "I can't believe you'd be friends with Senator Kerry if all that were true. Are these charges by Vice President Cheney fair?" 4. Jennings Rebukes Ohio's Blackwell, But Silent on Vindication Ohio's Blackwell vindicated, but Jennings silent. Last Wednesday, ABC's Peter Jennings focused on how "Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a leading black conservative," has "made a number of decisions regarding election law which have made other black leaders angry." Amongst them, that provisional ballots must be submitted at the voter's proper polling location. "A federal judge overruled him" on that, Jennings stressed, adding: "Democrats say it's Republican trickery." Jennings followed up with a soundbite from a liberal Democratic Congresswoman denouncing Blackwell for appealing the ruling. Well, on a Saturday, a federal appeals court judge sided with Blackwell. But not a syllable about that aired on Sunday's World News Tonight or when Jennings returned to the air to anchor Monday's World News Tonight, even though ABC devoted half of its Monday night newscast to campaign news. 5. Clift: Bush Can't Keep Us Safe from the Flu or from Small Pox Flu vaccine shortage is Bush's fault. On Fox News Sunday, Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly contended that "I think that the Democrats do have a legitimate policy case to make here" against the Bush administration. On the McLaughlin Group over the weekend, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift denounced Bush for how "he outsources our public health needs." Clift charged: "If he can't keep us safe from the flu how does he keep us safe from anthrax or small pox?" Clift failed to realize that unlike antidotes for small pox and anthrax, the flu vaccine must be created anew every year, as she claimed that "if there were a small pox attack the President, the President's staff, members of Congress and the well-connected would get their vaccine but the rest of us would not." >>>The 1,845th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996 4:30pm EDT, Saturday October 23, 2004 (Vol. Nine; No. 208) 1. "Brazen Attack Ad," Using Wolves, "Approved by the President" Bush's scary new "wolves" attack ad. With "Attack Ad" on screen below a shot of President Bush, delivering a campaign speech, and an elephant graphic representative of the GOP, ABC anchor Peter Jennings on Friday night made it seem as if he'd caught Bush committing a misdeed: "The Republican television ad, approved by the President, that uses the wolves to attack the Democrats." Jennings soon maintained that "the presidential campaign out there got positively primal today." ABC reporter Terry Moran noted that "some advertising experts were impressed" with the ad and he asserted that "while it's true Kerry proposed intelligence cuts in the 1990s," as the ad claimed, "senior congressional Republicans did, too." But Moran, to his credit, pointed out that "Kerry's proposed cuts were larger and across-the-board." NBC's David Gregory called the Bush campaign's ad "its most brazen attack ad yet." 2. CBS: "Most Americans Are Worse Off" After Fours Years of Bush CBS News: Most Americans "worse off" (by $30.00!) after nearly four years of the Bush presidency. President Bush, Dan Rather relayed Friday night, "insists the economy is good and getting better." But while reporter Anthony Mason's "Reality Check" allowed that the jobs picture is improving, he echoed John Kerry in treating as most relevant that "one-quarter of the tax cuts in effect this year go to the richest one percent, those with incomes over $290,000." Mason then asked: "So is the average American better off now than he or she was four years ago? Well, this is where it gets a bit tricky. On average, Americans have more money. But most Americans are, in fact, worse off." Mason's proof: "Median household income, the number smack in the middle of all Americans, is now $41,550, $30 lower than it was four years ago." What's tricky is how CBS News obtained 2004 data when just in late August the Census Bureau released the 2003 numbers. 3. Rather: Cheney Doesn't Think It's Fair, But I'll Do it Anyway Dan Rather: Dick Cheney doesn't think it's fair, but I'll do it anyway. In a short CBS Evening News item Friday night about how Halliburton will be allowed to keep disputed payments for services in Iraq, Rather found it necessary to tell viewers that "Vice President Dick Cheney is the former chief executive to Halliburton and still gets a pension and other benefits." Rather then acknowledged: "Republicans generally believe that it's unfair to point that out in the present context." 4. GMA & Today Trumpet Dana Reeve's "Star Power" Kerry Endorsement ABC and NBC on Friday morning championed Dana Reeve's endorsement of John Kerry by playing lengthy excerpts from her tribute to him and her late husband, Chris. With "Star Power" on screen under a shot of Kerry with Reeve, ABC's Diane Sawyer trumpeted at the top of Good Morning America: "This morning, a new voice. Christopher Reeve's wife speaking out for the first time since her husband's death and coming out strong for John Kerry." Over on Today, NBC's Katie Couric asserted that "Kerry has picked up a key endorsement from Dana Reeve" who told "the nation it needs a President who supports embryonic stem cell research." NBC featured Reeve's concluding words at the Thursday event in Ohio: "Today is the right moment to transform our grief into hope. Chris is the beacon guiding me. So I am here today to honor my husband as I proudly introduce our friend and declare my vote for the next President of the United states, John Kerry." 5. Kerry Copies CBS and Describes Bush as Beholden to "Far-Right" CBS News serving as John Kerry's speechwriter? On Monday's CBS Evening News, though John Kerry did not use the phrase "far-right," CBS reporter Jim Axelrod maintained from Florida that "Kerry's strategy for the next two weeks is to raise the specter of a second Bush term driven by far-right ideology in which regular folks lose." Three days later, however, Kerry picked up on the verbiage suggested by CBS and asserted at his Thursday event in Ohio with Dana Reeve: "George Bush is so beholden to the far-right ideologues that he has blocked the true promise of stem cell research." 6. Kurtz Calls Sinclair Program Slanted, But NY Times Saw Balance As one of the 76 percent of Americans without access to a Sinclair Broadcast Group television station, I did not see their Friday night special which generated so much sudden concern for media bias, "A P.O.W. Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media." But I can provide a round-up of how some reporters assessed it in Saturday newspapers. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz found it quite slanted against John Kerry as he complained that "the opening minutes made Kerry out to be a traitor, and the way the issues were framed -- with only a few minutes devoted to President Bush's military service -- put the Kerry side squarely on the defensive." But in the New York Times, Bill Carter and Scott Shane saw a "measured" presentation in which "Sinclair's producers seemed to go out of their way to create a balanced political collage." In Sinclair's hometown Baltimore Sun, David Zurawik wondered what all the fuss was about since "there was nothing in the program as aired last night worth all the pyrotechnics that proceeded it the last two weeks." >>> 1. CBS's Pitts Paints Breitweiser as Random Voter Swayed by Kerry Kristen Breitweiser has been an active, publicity-seeking Bush-bashing 9/11 widow who has spent time on the campaign trail for Kerry-Edwards and is featured in a new Kerry-Edwards TV ad in which she declared that since "I want to look in my daughter's eyes and know that she is safe...I am voting for John Kerry." But on Thursday's Early Show, CBS News reporter Byron Pitts mentioned none of that as he portrayed her as some sort of random Bush voter who was so impressed by a Kerry speech line making fun of President Bush that she now plans to vote for Kerry. Pitts played a clip of Kerry, during an Ohio campaign appearance: "A President of the United States has to do more than one thing at the same time and I believe that this President has failed, failed to make our country as safe and secure as we ought to be." Pitts asserted: "That struck a chord with supporters here, especially one." Breitweiser proclaimed: "My favorite part of the speech is when he said that we should expect our President to do more than one thing at a time." Pitts then painted her as a randomly persuaded voter: "Kristen Breitweiser lost her husband on 9/11. One of the leading advocates for the 9/11 commission, she voted for President Bush four years ago, not this time." >>> 2. NBC Picks Up on Guantanamo Detainees' Return to Terrorism The NBC Nightly News on Thursday picked up on how a detainee released from Guantanamo Bay has returned to a life of terrorism in Pakistan. And in a front page story on Friday, the Washington Post reported that "at least 10 detainees released from the Guantanamo Bay prison after U.S. officials concluded they posed little threat have been recaptured or killed fighting U.S. or coalition forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to Pentagon officials." Will either story convince ABC's Peter Jennings to balance the several stories he's featured this year fretting about the plight of detainees at Guantanamo Bay with how many of those released have gone back into terrorism? So far he hasn't, despite earlier Newsweek and New York Times stories about how several of those released have returned to a life of terrorism. >>> 3. Koppel Hits Edwards on Liberalism, Desirability of Outsourcing A contrarian approach from ABC's Ted Koppel, at least contrarian for how most mainstream journalists treat the Democratic ticket. For Wednesday's Nightline, Koppel spent a day on the campaign trail in Ohio with vice presidential candidate John Edwards. As the two talked on a bus, Koppel asked if he's a liberal and when Edwards denied it, Koppel noted how "people run from that label as though there were something dirty about it." He wondered: "You think admitting to any liberal tendencies whatsoever would be harmful?" Koppel also challenged the Kerry-Edwards mantra about outsourcing, proposing to Edwards that he knows "damn well" that even if he and Kerry win, "there will continue to be a huge amount of outsourcing. You can't live without it these days." >>> 1. Jennings Focuses on "Black Leaders Angry" at Ohio's Blackwell ABC's Peter Jennings on Wednesday night focused on how "Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a leading black conservative," has "made a number of decisions regarding election law which have made other black leaders angry." Viewers then heard this shot from Jesse Jackson: "This is a national pattern of voter suppression." While Jennings gave Blackwell one soundbite to respond, Jennings ran four soundbites from those denouncing Blackwell and, in relaying how a federal judge had overruled Blackwell's decision to have those casting provisional ballots do so only at the proper precinct, Jennings noted how "Democrats say" Blackwell's procedure symbolized "Republican trickery." But Jennings failed to address either how Blackwell was just trying to prevent voter fraud or how, at the very least, allowing anyone to show up anywhere to vote will lead to more problems. >>> 2. Olbermann Denounces Bush Themes, Appeal to "Our Lizard Brains" MSNBC's Keith Olbermann devoted much of his Countdown show on Wednesday to denouncing Bush-Cheney campaign strategy. Olbermann latched on to how "the Kerry camp has latched on to what seems like a serious faux pas by the Bush administration," that "if the Vice President is out there on the campaign trail talking about the prospect of nuclear attacks," why "is the National Security Advisor also out there on the campaign trail rather than doing her job?" Olbermann moved on to how "six of Mr. Bush's second cousins have launched a Web site called BushRelativesForKerry.com." Arianna Huffington soon came aboard to discuss her column, "Appealing to Our Lizard Brains: Why Bush is Still Standing," in which she contended that irrational fear inspired by the Bush campaign has overwhelmed reason which would lead to support for Kerry. Olbermann wanted to know why, when Bush accused Kerry of having a "September 10 mind-set," Kerry "did not detonate at that point and say the September 10 mind-set, Mr. Bush, was yours?" Huffington suggested that in contrast to Bush and Cheney, "John Kerry is being logical. He's being reasonable." >>> 3. NPR Highlights Supposed Fearmongering by Cheney, but Not Edwards On Wednesday's broadcast of National Public Radio's Morning Edition, NPR correspondent Don Gonyea detailed how "both [presidential] campaigns seem to have come to the conclusion that the way to the winner's circle is to [persuade voters to] imagine the worst about their opponent." Gonyea's description of his story would have been more accurate if he'd said not "both campaigns" but rather "a campaign and a half," for while he explored the supposedly fear-inducing rhetoric of John Kerry, George W. Bush, and (at greatest length) Dick Cheney, he didn't mention Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, even though on Tuesday Edwards suggested that Bush's handling of the flu-vaccine shortage indicated that the President would be helpless in the face of a biological or chemical terror attack. NAW! THEY AIN'T BIASED????? ARE THEY? ARTICLES FOR THE LAST FEW DAYS TAKEN FROM THE MRC, MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER (The Media Watchdog) ~ I can't say how blessed we are to have the Media Research Center, 325 S. Patrick Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. Brent Bozell You can also learn what has been posted each day on the MRC’s Web site by subscribing to the “MRC Web Site News” distributed every weekday afternoon. To subscribe, go to: http://www.mrc.org/cybersub.asp#webnews

~Media Research Center


TVC Publishes Voter Scorecard