New background on the “shot heard round the world” yesterday – a question to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait, posed by a soldier in the audience about what is now being termed “hillbilly armor”. Today, Drudge is reporting that the question was planted by an imbedded reporter.

Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts is embedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, now in Kuwait preparing to enter Iraq, and is filing articles for his newspaper. Pitts claims in a purported email that he coached soldiers to ask Defense Secretary Rumsfeld questions!
When reached Thursday morning, various Chattanooga Times Free Press staffers offered ‘no comment’ on the development.

I’ve copied the email in the extended entry.
While it appears the soldiers have a legitimate complaint (though, apparently not a new or immediately solvable one), the media reporting on the incident would have us believe that the question was unexpected.
Why is the distinction between a legitimate spontanious question and a legitimate, but media planted question, important?
It’s this type of manipulation that chips away at the legitimacy of the profession of journalism – not because the question is false, but because it makes us pause, and wonder what other “spontanious” questions from “the audience” are planted by reporters looking to manufacture and/or enhance contraversy for the purpose of increasing the “sales” value – both literally and figuratively – of a story.
In the case of reporter Edward Lee Pitts, it was a story he’d already written and submitted.
(update – The media reports assume a premise of “more armour good, less armour bad”. A roundup of opinion and observation about the question is well covered by Instapundit. Go read it, before forming any opinions about the criticism.)

Continue reading →

I don’t know dick all about US Treasury Secretary John Snow.

New York Times, Dec. 6: President Bush has decided to replace John W. Snowas treasury secretary and has been looking closely at a number of possible replacements, including the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., Republicans with ties to the White House say…

But I think I know a rope-a-dope when I see one.

“What are you going to do? Shoot us all?”
“No, Ace – just you.”

(h/t)

Drudge breaking

ADDRESSES CBS NEWSROOM AT APPROXIMATELY 1:39PM EST [Partial transcript]: No matter what you hear elsewhere, this was a mutual decision. The timing has to do with (wanting to separate) this decision to leave the anchor chair… from the (investigation) of the 60 MINUTES report. The decision got made the way I described. There is nothing more important (to me) than how honored I am to work with the greatest news organization in the world. Thank you for coming. We’re not going to spend much time (on questions) because we have news to cover. (Offered to answer questions, but staff simply gave his signature ‘hip hip’ three cheers.) Let’s get back to work. Thanks everyone.

Well, there’s half a shoe dropped, I guess. But why, pray tell, is Rather being allowed to stay on at the scene of the crime?
Maybe there’s a hope at CBS that his “retirement” will diffuse criticism over Rathergate. I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Washington Post is coming to grips with a 10% drop off in circulation over the past 2 years, prompting a “self-examination” meeting on the issue. Apparently, newspaper reporters seem to labour under a misconception that readers can see them.

Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. met with hundreds of newsroom staffers yesterday to outline management’s latest attempts to combat declining circulation. However, the more intense discussion at the meeting involved diversity at the newspaper, as several minority staff members lamented that a white man recently was chosen over a woman and a black man as the paper’s new managing editor.
[…]
“We’re crushed,” said national reporter Darryl Fears at the meeting. Fears, who is black, organized two meetings of African American staffers in recent days in response to Bennett’s promotion. “A lot of our worst suspicions were confirmed about the ability of African Americans and other minorities to rise to the highest level of the best papers in the world,” he said.

(Note to Fears – if you can deal with the recognition that comes with promotion, check with the Bush administration.) *

In an effort to win new readers, Downie said Post reporters will be required to write shorter stories. The paper’s design and copy editors will be given more authority to make room for more photographs and graphics.
The paper will undergo a redesign to make it easier for readers to find stories. It is considering filling the left-hand column of the front page with keys to stories elsewhere in the paper and other information readers say they want from the paper, which they often consider “too often too dull,” Downie said.
“Newspapers should be fun and it should be fun to work at one,” Bennett said.

Ah yes, the intellectual mismatch dilemma. Those WaPo folks are just smarting themselves out of readership.

On Nov. 16th, I dashed off the following email to news@ctv.ca, after the airing of the National at 11 pm.

Subject: Film footage hypocrisy
Time : 11/16/04 11:32 pm
No tape of the aid worker’s execution. Too disturbing to show the audience the face of the enemy? Or too truthful?
Two plays of the Marine shooting of the wounded prisoner. (whose unit had lost a member the day before when a boobytrapped body exploded)
And you wonder what the mainstream media is struggling with credibility issues and falling audience share?
—
Kate
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com

I’ve probably sent about 6 complaint emails to CTV news over the past year – their coverage of the Iraq war and US politics has been abysmal – slanted, inaccurate, selectively incomplete…. in short, pretty typical. But for the first time, I recieved an actual reply from someone who claims to be a “news producer”, and it appears I hit a nerve. From which news producer, I can’t say – the email was unsigned. I reproduce it here, spelling and typos unaltered.

Ask Us askus@ctv.ca Re: film footage hypocricy Your arguement is specious. Video ot the aid worker being shot in the head was not available in North America. However it was reported on extensively. The marine shooting video — which on the surface appears in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention — was frozen before the bullets ripped into the body. I fail to see either a moral equivalency or a moral imbalance. If you think there are credibility issues … by all means … check out other forms of media. How many conspiracy theories can you really take. I find it amazing that you think we news producers disucss issues the way you seem to think we do: that masters attend our meetings telling us what and what not to put on air.j News value. It’s a concept.

Whew! …Looks like I’m in over my head…

James Adams exhibits “fair and balanced” reporting at the Globe and Mail.

Fox News, the Canada-baiting house organ of the U.S. right, will come to Canadian digital television next year, the federal broadcast regulator is expected to rule today.
[…]
News Corp. is controlled by the right-wing Australian media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch.
It claims to have more than 80 million subscribers in the United States alone, subscribers who have made it that country’s top- rated all-news channel and its commentators Sean Hannity, Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly full-fledged media personalities.
The abrasive Mr. O’Reilly, in particular, has developed an intense, albeit negative, interest in things Canadian in the past two years.
He used his much-watched The O’Reilly Factor program as a launching pad for feuds with The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle and Heather Mallick, and attacked, variously, Canadian teens (for being “ignorant”), the CRTC (for “banning” Fox), former prime minister Jean Chr�tien (for being “a bum”), The Globe and Mail (“a far-left newspaper”), Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell (for being soft on heroin users) and Canadian health care (“socialist”).

Woohooo! With endorsements like that, I think Fox can look forward to a healthy relationship with the unserved Canadian conservative news audience.

A Marine writes;

A young Marine and his cover man cautiously enter a room just recently filled with insurgents armed with Ak-47’s and RPG’s. There are three dead, another wailing in pain. The insurgent can be heard saying, “Mister, mister! Diktoor, diktoor(doctor)!” He is badly wounded, lying in a pool of his own blood. The Marine and his cover man slowly walk toward the injured man, scanning to make sure no enemies come from behind. In a split second, the pressure in the room greatly exceeds that of the outside, and the concussion seems to be felt before the blast is heard. Marines outside rush to the room, and look in horror as the dust gradually settles. The result is a room filled with the barely recognizable remains of the deceased, caused by an insurgent setting off several pounds of explosives.
The Marines’ remains are gathered by teary eyed comrades, brothers in arms, and shipped home in a box. The families can only mourn over a casket and a picture of their loved one, a life cut short by someone who hid behind a white flag.
But no one hears these stories, except those who have lived to carry remains of a friend, and the families who loved the dead. No one hears this, so no one cares.

It’s Deja Graihb, all over again.
This time the “shocking” pictures are of a Marine shooting a “wounded Iraqi”, replaying on every channel, stills on every front page – while Margaret Hussan plays the part of Arni Berg, the bullets to her head too “disturbing” to view, the details of her weeks of torture too graphic to describe. The technicolor evidence of the scene of the crime is nowhere to be found.
Blackhawk pilot “2Slick”;

Call this an official warning to the MSM- keep it fair, or the blogosphere will activate the Bat Signal.

It already has.

Good question.

A blogging Black Hawk pilot asks “are these reporters in the now-infamous MSM really that determined to see us fail in Iraq?”
His answer comes by way of an email from NBC “award winning” reporter, John Hockenberry.

With an attention to detail befitting his profession, Hockenberry had missed the letters CPT in front of his nick.
CPT 2Slick ;

I ask you- whose side are these people on? I’m on my second tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and I won’t even pretend to know the answer. But I don’t like what I’m seeing.

via Politburo Dictat
White Flag Update – Hockenberry extends an olive branch. And 2Slick marvels at the power of the blogosphere.

At the Toronto Star, Rosie Dimanno reveals something we already know.

The latitude routinely extended to columnists – who, let’s face it, deal largely in the realm of opinion – shrinks when the subject is Islam or Palestine. Editors huddle and debate the potential repercussions from all possible angles.
I can think of no other constituency that is more respectfully – or hyper-obsequiously – treated. And it doesn’t matter how carefully I qualify anything I say, or recount the kindnesses extended to me in Muslim countries (especially Afghanistan, my favourite place on earth) or how often I include all the deferential acknowledgments about Islam – a great religion of peace, its tenets hijacked in recent years by some extremists that commit barbarous acts in its name – it’s never enough to satisfy those who accuse others of promoting hatred while never examining the hostile bitterness in their own hearts. In this paper, commentators can bluntly equate President George W. Bush to Osama bin Laden, Israel be endlessly vilified as a terrorist state, the United States broadly demonized and caricaturized as a superpower gone nuts – and nobody bats an eye. That’s all free speech, which I defend without reservation. But the goalposts shift when the subject is Islamist terrorism or the conflict in the Middle East.

hat tip, Kevin Libin

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal.

Large media institutions, such as CBS or the New York Times, have been regarded as nothing if not authoritative. In the Information Age, authority is a priceless franchise. But it is this franchise that Big Media, incredibly, has just thrown away. It did so by choosing to go into overt opposition to one party’s candidate, a sitting president. It stooped to conquer.
The prominent case studies here are Dan Rather’s failed National Guard story on CBS and the front page the past year of the New York Times (a proxy for many large dailies). Add in as well Big Media’s handling of Abu Ghraib, a real story that got blown into a monthlong bonfire that obviously was intended to burn down the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. I think many people thought the over-the-top Abu Ghraib coverage, amid a war, was the media shouting fire in a crowded theater.

Heavily consolidated Canadian media outlets are just as professionally corrupt. With no Wall Street Journal or Foxnews to provide an balancing establishment lens against which to compare and critique, the left-liberal spin is not only rampant, it’s unbelievably clumsy. Case in point, last evening’s CTV National News included a segment by Kathy Tomlinson who seems to spend much of her time in Washington covering the Democratic Underground.
Heavily paraphrased, her report evolved in the following manner;

“Voters in the US recently indicated “moral values” were behind the re-election of President Bush, and now there is a climate of fear that airing the Spielberg movie Saving Private Ryan (which has bad words and violence that Spielberg won’t allow cut) could result in FCC fines (like they did for Janet Jackson’s tit) because Bush is sending soldiers to Iraq where there is real fighting and killing and he doesn’t want Americans to see what that looks like”

I kid you not.
Henninger has cautionary words for the likes of Ms. Tomlinson.

Authority can be a function of raw power, but among free people it is sustained by esteem and trust. Should esteem and trust falter, the public will start to contest an institution’s authority. It happens all the time to political figures. It happened here to the American Catholic Church and to the legal profession, thanks to plaintiff-bar abuse. And now the public is beginning to contest the decades-old authority of the mainstream media.
Two months ago, Gallup reported that public belief in the media’s ability to report news accurately and fairly had fallen to 44%–what Gallup called a significant drop from 54% just a year ago. The larger media outlets have been pushing the edge of the partisanship envelope for a long time. People have kvetched about “spin” for years but then largely internalized it. Not in 2004. Big Media chose precisely the wrong moment to give itself over to an apparent compulsion to overthrow the Bush presidency.

Left wing CBC TV has long suffered for their sins. Were it not for a billion dollars in federal funding, a 6% audience share would have closed the doors years ago. The scandal damaged BBC has announced dramatic staff cuts. Circulation figures for many major newspapers are falling. In contrast, more and more consumers state they are obtaining their news and opinion from internet sources.
Liberal friendly Candian media has had the luxury of a huge ideological cushion provided by the Liberal appointed CRTC – but as the influence of online news and opinion sources continues to grow, the blocking of sources like Foxnews will no longer protect them.
I sent an email last night to complain about the segment, something I rarely do anymore. For 20 years I was a nightly viewer of CTV National News. Today, I’d estimate I catch the broadcast only once every week or two. They’ve become “CBC light”, and with so many other games in town, I can’t be bothered.

Broadcasting & Cable

Players involved in the notorious 60 Minutes II story, reported by Dan Rather,�which employed dubious documents regarding President Bush�s National Guard service, may have been rooting for a John Kerry victory.
No, it wasn’t that old bugaboo liberal media bias as much as it was a bias toward saving their own skins. The report from an internal investigation into the documents mess was purposely being held until after the election.
Pre-election, the feeling in some quarters at CBS was that if Kerry triumphed, fallout from the investigation would be relatively minimal. The controversial piece�s producer, Mary Mapes, would likely be suspended or fired, but a long list of others up the chain of command – from 60 Minutes II executive producer Josh Howard, to Rather and all the way up to news division President Andrew Heyward – would escape more or less unscathed.
But now, faced with four more years of President Bush, executives at CBS parent Viacom could take a harder line on the executives involved.

(Via Drudge)
On a related topic, Eric Engbert a retired correspondant for CBS criticizes the “blogosphere” for publishing leaked exit polls.

“The public is now assaulted by news and pretend-news from many directions, thanks to the now infamous “information superhighway.” But the ability to transmit words, we learned during the Citizens Band radio fad of the 70’s, does not mean that any knowledge is being passed along. One of the verdicts rendered by election night 2004 is that, given their lack of expertise, standards and, yes, humility, the chances of the bloggers replacing mainstream journalism are about as good as the parasite replacing the dog it fastens on.”

Oh, enough already. CBS had their asses handed to them by the blogosphere (in other words- the audience) because certain “professional journalists” perpetrated an intentional, albeit pathetically clumsy, attempt to influence the election. Period.
Only the most obtuse observers of human nature would believe that “Rathergate” was an isolated incident. It is only after long history of success in not getting caught that professional liars become so sloppy. Add another period.
Bitching about the leaking of exit polls is so much irrelevant smoke by Mr Engbert, though it does make one wonder how he can argue that the MSM knows better than to release exit polls because they are known to be unreliable, and “responsible” journalists know better. If this is indeed the case, one should ask him to explain why they commission the polls in the first place. If exit polls require a full day of sampling to provide meaningful results, then why not just wait for the ballot counting to start?
Of course, we should give Mr. Engbert the benefit of the doubt. It could well be that he is basing his opinion on information recieved anonymously from a Kinkos in Texas that has been authenticated by experts contacted by CBS.
With several pithy observations about the fact-checking failures by Eric Engberg, James Joyner weighs in.
Paul, at Wizbang reviews events and calls ’em as he sees ’em. “The whole right side of the blogosphere knew the numbers were bogus long before CBS and the MSM knew”

CBC’s Ira Basen has an excellent summary on the role of blogging in correcting the crumbling standards of “old media”.

[…] this time, the agents of change are not high-priced media experts or expensive new technologies. No, this time the revolution is being brought to us by a large and mostly disorganized group of men and women who spend much of their days and nights pounding away at their keyboards. They are the people who produce political web logs. Some are read only by friends and relatives, others have numbers and influence that rival those of older, more established magazines. And in this campaign, the “bloggers,” as they call themselves, have been all the rage. And their presence really does seem destined to change the course of campaign reporting, just as much as the introduction of radio, TV and spin doctors did in the last century.
[…]
There is a greater need than ever before for Big Media outlets to be at the top of their game when it comes to breaking important stories, dissecting spin, and highlighting the issues that matter to voters. But it has been a long time since Big Media has been at the top of its game. It has been riding on its reputation for too long.
The most important development to come out of the coverage of this campaign is that bloggers, and others such as the intrepid “reporters” at The Daily Show, have pulled back the curtain and revealed Big Media to be a shrunken skeleton of its former self.
Now is the time to begin rebuilding. And the mainstream would be wise to see the blogosphere not as an enemy, but as an ally in the process.

Via Heart of Canada.
Well, this doesn’t happen often – The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan in agreement with the CBC….

Every time the big networks and big broadsheet national newspapers tried to pull off a bit of pro-liberal mischief–CBS and the fabricated Bush National Guard documents, the New York Times and bombgate, CBS’s “60 Minutes” the election–the yeomen of the blogosphere and AM radio and the Internet took them down. It was to me a great historical development in the history of politics in America. It was Agincourt. It was the yeomen of King Harry taking down the French aristocracy with new technology and rough guts. God bless the pajama-clad yeomen of America. Some day, when America is hit again, and lines go down, and media are hard to get, these bloggers and site runners and independent Internetters of all sorts will find a way to file, and get their word out, and it will be part of the saving of our country.

Both are good reads.
Jeff Jarvis has a useful observation.

Last night, blogs (other than this one) got bombarded with traffic (shutting down this host) for a simple reason: Bloggers were telling the public what they knew. Big media was not.
How absurd is that? When did journalists get into the business of not telling their public what they know?

Bingo.
Then, of course, there remain a few slow learners.

Media Research Center has The Ten Worst Media Distortions of Campaign 2004
Via Let It Bleed this is a must read roundup of the attempts made in the US major media to spin election coverage and commentary in Kerry’s favour. Relevant to a post from a couple of days ago, scroll down to check out the chart showing the ration of bad to good stories during the Clinton administration and coverage of the US economy today.
(Now – in the interest of balance – I’m sure there is a Top Ten of Kerry distortions somewhere out there, but something tells me that in 9 of them, a football will be involved.)

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times….

“When the world liked Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, America had more power in the world“

James Joyner is perplexed.

When exactly was it that the world liked Ronald Reagan? Certainly, not while he was in office. Remember all the protests about his plan to put Pershing II’s into Europe? The controversy over Star Wars? The business about him being a stupid cowboy?
Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was wildly popular in Europe. But how exactly did that translate into U.S. power? He was unable to secure UN backing for Kosovo and a myriad of other military operations, having instead to go it alone or with coalitions of the willing. The good will toward Clinton didn’t exactly translate into freedom from terrorism, either, as al Qaeda formed and perpetrated numerous attacks on American targets under his watch.

Ahistoricism isn’t just a symptom of Bush derangement syndrome – it’s a prerequisite. Much of the core criticism of Bush’s foreign policy absolutely hinges upon ignorance – or intentional misrepresentation – of past events. Indeed, it isn’t even that uncommon for critics to move events that occured in the Clinton administration through time to attribute them to Bush, if they think it will help their case.
Case in point: the current meme that unemployment rates under Bush are “high”, placed against a backdrop of Clinton prosperity and full employment. In fact, the unemployment rates in the US today are nearly identical to those under Clinton.
The same phenomenon occured under the dearly departed – and only recently beloved – Ronald Reagan. Under the heavily scorned “Reaganomics” plan, average income for the lowest one-fifth of Americans rose from $7,008 to $9431, inflation fell 48%, unemployment fell 45%, interest rates declined from 21% to under 6% . 21 million new jobs were created.
The only economic indicators that weren’t affected was press coverage. Negative stories on the economic performance of the Reagan adminstration outnumbered the postive by a ration of seven to one.*
[*source- L. Brent Bozell III, Media Research Center, in Imprimis Nov. 1994]

It turns out that the New York Times was let off easy on the Al Qaaqaa fiasco. CBS was trying to hold the Bush-damaging story in order to run it in the final hours of the campaign – when there would be insufficient time to present the facts – but the Times broke it. The initial explanation was journalistic “competitiveness”.
Except they weren’t competing with CBS. They too, had planned to hold it for Monday publication – until it began to leak into the blogosphere. According to the Washington Post, their hand was forced.

On Sunday night, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told Jeff Fager, executive producer of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” that the story they had been jointly pursuing on missing Iraqi ammunition was starting to leak on the Internet.
“You know what? We’re going to have to run it Monday,” Keller said.

Bill at INDC has the Russian angle covered (including possible connections to the “caught in the crossfire” incident involving Russian “diplomats), while Wizbang is providing updates and asking for assistance in exploring the discrepencies between the original IAEA inspections and their subsequent reports.

The information on which the Iraqi Science Ministry based an Oct. 10 memo in which it reported that 377 tons of RDX explosives were missing – presumably stolen due to a lack of security – was based on “declaration” from July 15, 2002. At that time, the Iraqis said there were 141 tons of RDX explosives at the facility.
But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency’s inspectors recorded that just over 3 tons of RDX was stored at the facility – a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.

More at Instapundit, while Powerline is covering the follow-up “reporting” by the Times and finds they are still working hard to salvage/spin this story.

Once again, the Times appears to be the only news organization in America that doesn’t know that the 101st Airborne merely passed through Al Qaqaa on the way to Baghdad without searching the site. It was the 3rd ID, which reached Al QaQaa six days earlier, that knew the site needed to be searched, and did, indeed, search it. Can the Times really be this inept? I don’t think so. I think it’s deliberate. No newspaper could be this bad accidentally.

ABC News President David Westin suffered a pang of professionalism in an address at the Harvard University’s Institute of Politics last night.
Harvard Crimson:

“The more time we express our opinions, the less time we have to talk about the facts,” Westin said. “Unfortunately, opinion is driving out facts too often in most of what we see on television today.”
[…]
“It can be very entertaining to have two very spirited people discussing heath care in this country, but I for one would be better benefited by someone coming on and telling me exactly what the state of health care is before we talk about what ought to be done and telling me what my real options are,” Westin said.
In addition to the danger of having too much opinion, news media face the danger of the blurring between fact and opinion, he said.
“If viewers see news people on different channels that look pretty much the same, on sets that look pretty much the same, and graphics that look pretty much the same, with some expressing opinion some of the time and some expressing facts, is it surprising that the audience believe that they’re all expressing facts?” Westin asked.

Via Drudge.

When this Herald-Palladium item by Anna Clark floated up on Drudge a couple of days ago, I wondered why it didn’t create a news frenzy. Perhaps others noticed, as I did, that the word “wrong” in Clark’s report had been wrestled down to a single word quote.
Tenet: CIA made errors

Tenet called the war on Iraq “wrong” in a speech Wednesday night to 2,000 members of The Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan at Lake Michigan College’s Mendel Center. He did not elaborate.

Today, the Herald-Palladium offers this “clarification”;

Former CIA Director George Tenet told the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan on Wednesday that the United States was wrong on its pre-war intelligence in Iraq, but an article in Thursday’s Herald-Palladium may have put the comment in an incorrect context.
The story said Tenet called the war in Iraq “wrong.” However, after reviewing the reporter’s notes (Tenet barred reporters from using tape recorders), the newspaper now believes Tenet used the word “wrong” in the context of U.S. intelligence, not on the direct question of whether the United States should be in Iraq.

To their credit, I don’t think the original story has been airbrushed (yet), but they should really add this disclaimer to the original online item.

Roger Simon reviews Stolen Honor.

The movie consists of interviews with now gray or graying men who were incarcerated and tortured in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. Their stories are juxtaposed with the testimony of John Kerry at the Winter Soldier hearings. Despite the quality of the filmmaking, and my poor viewing conditions, I was deeply disturbed while watching this. It is not a “filmic” experience in the traditional sense. While viewing this movie, I imagine most of my generation find themselves reviewing themselves and their actions at the time rather than the film. I am far from resolving my view of Vietnam, although I still tend to think it was the wrong war. But the behavior of some factions of the antiwar side, factions which I fully supported then, were clearly out of line and as reprehensible as the war they wished to protest and central among those was Winter Soldier.
Some reviewers, like the NYT’s Alessandra Stanley, made light of the testimony of John Kerry before those hearings as something we heave “heard before” and therefore of little importance, preferring to focus on the unresolved pain of the former prisoners. But the fact that we have heard at least some of Kerry’s testimony before is beside the point. The testimony has never been explained. Kerry lied about his fellow soldiers in a serious and, it seems evident, conscious manner, going so far as to say they cut off peoples’ ears, raped and pillaged like Genghis Khan. Even given the passions of the time, this defamation is hard to explain. No wonder the Democratic Party wants us to look away. I wanted to look away. It is hard to conceive someone of so little moral compass is going to lead us in a time of war. Still, I suppose I could forgive Kerry if he had apologized for this in full as the recklessness of youth. But until now he hasn’t. The Democratic Party knows this too. That’s why they also want us to look away. It is over thirty years ago and therefore, they wish us to believe, beyond the statute of electoral limitations. No it’s not.

Wall Street Journal has more on the extraordinary pressure placed on Sinclair to pull this documentary.