Friday, July 04, 2008

Media Matters

Every week Media Matter's Jamison Foser summarizes the last week's media atrocities. This week was a dozey:

In short: John McCain turned to a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group whose false and despicable attacks on John Kerry's war record McCain once denounced, to attack Wesley Clark for comments in which Clark did not criticize McCain's war record -- and in which he, in fact, called McCain a hero. And the media went along with it.

But -- because the only limit to how absurd the media's pro-McCain coverage will become is time -- it gets even worse.

While defending the Swift Boat Vets' lies about John Kerry and attacking Wes Clark for something he didn't say, Bud Day said of Clark: "General Clark spent a month in Vietnam, got badly wounded, evacuated, and that was his Vietnam experience. I'd say let's hold the two of them up and see who's most qualified to talk about their experience as a combat officer."

That happens to be false. Clark served at least six months in Vietnam, not "a month." Day's comments about Clark constituted an actual falsehood about a distinguished veteran's military record, made on an official McCain campaign conference call by a hand-picked surrogate. Surely, after days of freaking out over something Wes Clark didn't say, the media quickly gave as much attention to SBVT member Bud Day's false claims about Clark's own war record?

Of course not. Remember: the rules are different for John McCain.

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