Lara Logan Targeted By The Right Wing Media

Remember how CBS Correspondent Lara Logan criticized the media and the lack of coverage on the major networks of the Iraq War? Well, this is pushback:

Tale of the love fight first broke on the freerepublic.com in December.

The scandal comes just as the former model's journalistic career is starting to skyrocket.

It's a stunning turn of events for the respected journalist, who once told The Washington Post that she "has no social life."

Yesterday, CBS announced, without a hint of irony, that she was given a new Washington assignment as chief foreign-affairs correspondent. She joined the network in 2002 and became a "60 Minutes" correspondent in 2006.

The network touted her as the only American reporter who was in Baghdad when the United States invaded in 2003.

That's their source? Free Republic dot freakin' com?

Logan's prestigious assignment as the chief foreign-affairs correspondent is going to be scrutinized and attacked--she covered the Iraq War as well as anyone else and never pulled any punches.

It's a wonder she's still alive, actually. She's been shot at more times than any of the people from the right wing coming after her. How sad is it that a woman born in South Africa who works for CBS news has more combat experience than the majority of Republican members of the House, the Senate, and the Bush Administration itself?

--WS

Pushback

When caught, the White House attempts to change the subject to what's wrong with the media, instead of what's wrong with their own analogy:

The White House on Monday called on NBC News to set the record straight on "deceitful" editing of an interview with President Bush, in which correspondent Richard Engel asks whether comments about the president of Iran were directed at Barack Obama.

Bush aides were angered by how the president's answer was portrayed when Engel questioned him about his condemnation of "the false comfort of appeasement" in an address last week to the Israeli Knesset. NBC stood by its treatment of the interview Monday.

Bush had mentioned the president of Iran in his speech, and said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along."

Obama's campaign considered that statement an attack on him, which the White House has denied.

Engel asked Bush if he was referring to Obama in his speech.

As it appeared on "Nightly News" Sunday and the "Today" show Monday, Bush's response was: "You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has ... And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously."

But the White House said NBC edited out these words that Bush said between those two sentences: "People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I said was that we need to take the words of people seriously."

Bush counsel Ed Gillespie, in a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, said that "this deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline is utterly misleading and irresponsible." He asked that the network air Bush's response in full on the two programs.

Apparently, no one in the White House has ever--ever--watched Fox News.

College drop-out Sean Hannity added global warming to the growing list of subjects on which he is a self-proclaimed expert Friday night (10/26/07) on Hannity & Colmes. As “proof” of his contention that global warming “by no means should be considered accepted science,” he presented an unbalanced segment that skewed public and scientific opinion and also conflated a CNN special with the climate-change issue, itself. Hannity is obsessed with global warming and seems willing to go to any lengths to discredit any such concerns – any length, that is, except having an honest and fair debate on the subject.

[SNIP]

UPDATE: After this post went up, News Hounds was contacted by two students from the panel discussion, each of whom felt he had been misrepresented by selective editing. It was also alleged that the general consensus of the panel was "neutral to positive" and had also been distorted by FOX News.

There are numerous examples--that is just one out of several dozen that could have been chosen to illustrate the ridiculous charge of "selective editing." The President and the Vice President do not regularly make themselves available for news conferences or live television appearances. On the President's most recent trip abroad, he left the press traveling with him out of the loop.

The White House has never liked seeing the "truth" about anything published anywhere. They will ruin the lives of covert spies if they think they can get away with it. It is laughable to think that their idea of pushback even matters. It's like the boy who cried wolf for the hundredth time--and there is still no wolf.

Gillespie brought up some other grievances, too, including NBC News coverage of the Iraq war and the nation's economic woes. The White House was not happy when NBC News decided to call the situation in Iraq a civil war and called attention to its decision.

And that wasn't all.

The White House didn't just send its letter of complaint to NBC. It blasted it out to every reporter who receives White House press releases and posted it prominently on the White House Web site.

At least they care to try to spin things nowadays. Is anyone paying attention anymore? Is there a single American, outside of the blind 26% or so who will never accept reality, who believes anything these people say?

Obama isn't flinching

I can live with this guy. He wasn't my first choice, but for crying out loud, look at the deep bench we had, and if I am anything, I am a reliable Democrat and gracious about finishing somewhere south of first. (But my first choice didn't get lambasted like the two still standing have been, and I decided to "support the Nominee" in January...so it is probably a lot easier for me to say that than it would be if I had been aboard either train early on.)

Anyway, If Obama is going to stand up to Der Shrubenfuhrer, Joe LIE-berman, and John $idney McSame - and say things like “They’re trying to fool you. They’re trying to scare you. And they’re not telling you the truth [because] they can’t win a foreign policy debate on the merits,” and then go on to call the Bush/McCain approach “naive and irresponsible,” I can say with certainty that I will have no reservations about canvassing and phone banking, and of course my vote is guaranteed.

Democrats don't appeased the enemy - unless you count the republican party as the enemy - then they are the only threat to the republic that Democrats have "appeased."

Those days are over. We are not appeasing you fuckers any more. You started this shit, and then when you get hit back, you whine like little bitches. Well suck it up, because you are about to reap what you did sow.

And the old schtick of screaming "Eeeekkkk! A terrist!" while grabbing your skirts and jumping up on the table grew tiresome a long fucking time ago. The writers strike has been over for months, so get some new material already.

Someone pass the popcorn. This is pretty damned close to a stemwinder, and if this is the kind of pushback we are going to get from Obama..."pass the popcorn" pretty much covers it.