What did I tell you?
I watched CTV National News last night – Clarke’s testimony was presented in surgical out-takes, as though the commission members had remained silent and awe stricken as he spoke. No coverage of the Lehman challenges, no mention of the contradictions between his book, the testimony and his previous statements.
From their website:
Meanwhile, the White House has been fighting back against Clarke, even saying he was angling for a job should Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry win the Nov. 2 election.
“I will not accept any position in a Kerry administration should there be one. On the record, under oath,” was Clarke’s responses.
Problem is, that wasn’t the question to which he responded. And he wasn’t answering to the White House, but to the 911 Commission. The question:
“Until I started reading those press reports, and I said this can’t be the same Dick Clarke that testified before us, because all of the promotional material and all of the spin in the networks was that this is a rounding, devastating attack — this book — on President Bush.
That’s not what I heard in the interviews. And I hope you’re going to tell me, as you apologized to the families for all of us who were involved in national security, that this tremendous difference — and not just in nuance, but in the stories you choose to tell — is really the result of your editors and your promoters, rather than your studied judgment, because it is so different from the whole thrust of your testimony to us.
And similarly, when you add to it the inconsistency between what your promoters are putting out and what you yourself said as late as August ’05, you’ve got a real credibility problem.
And because of my real genuine long-term admiration for you, I hope you’ll resolve that credibility problem, because I’d hate to see you become totally shoved to one side during a presidential campaign as an active partisan selling a book.”
I guess I’m not surprised – CTV’s war coverage and Alan Fryer’s Washington reporting have been abysmal for the past year – error ridden, one sided and poorly researched.
Early in the invasion of Iraq, there were priceless moments when news anchor Sandy Reynaldo would report with sober face that American forces were “bogged down” and suffering immense difficulties… only to turn the cameras over to Ret.Gen. MacKenzie who, complete with maps and pointers, would cheerfully explain how the US military was making military history with the success and speed of the campaign.
Belgravia Dispatch sees the same spin in the US media.
