Christopher Ruddy
Friday, June 14, 2002

On Wednesday night MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, heir to Tom Brokaw’s anchor job at NBC, started off his nightly broadcast bashing the administration for manipulating the news.

Citing the New York Times and other conspiracy-minded media critics of the Bush administration, Williams said that the Bush administration was essentially creating news to divert the media from stories critical of the administration.

One example cited was President Bush's announcement that he was creating a new Department of Homeland Security on the very same day Coleen Rowley was testifying about a cover-up at the FBI.

Based on a handful of other press announcements, the major media have woven a full-blown conspiracy on the part of the administration to manipulate the media.

Maybe the administration is indeed engaging in media manipulation.

But so far the evidence is very scant. In my mind, a much clearer pattern of events would have to develop to prove this – and to make such a serious accusation against the president and White House in time of war.

But the Williams report, the New York Times story and other media criticism on this point suggest that the media are desperate to hammer Bush and the Republicans – all in an effort to bring their poll numbers down.

One thing we know is that for the most part the major media in this country are an adjunct to the Democratic Party.

It's been that way for decades. I recall journalist Teddy White candidly revealing how the big press wanted Kennedy to win in 1960 so much, reporters actually wrote his speeches on the campaign plane.

In the '90s a Roper study found that 89 percent of the Washington press corps voted for Bill Clinton. And these folks have the gall to call themselves "mainstream."

In fact, the media apparatchiks in this country get their marching orders right out of the DNC and the editorial room of the left-wing New York Times.

With congressional elections fast approaching and Bush's poll numbers still above 70 percent, the Democrats are getting desperate. Expect just about anything.

The irony of all of this is that in eight years of Clinton I never heard the major press make an issue of the Clinton spinroom in the basement of the White House.

Bill Clinton epitomized the concept of "wag the dog."

The Clintons played each scandal like a volleyball, deflecting one scandal after another by contrived news events and even wars.

Bill Clinton's 1999 war over Kosovo was perhaps the most egregious use of presidential power to divert the public's attention and save a presidency.

Remember, when Clinton began the war he had just come out of the Lewinsky scandal, impeachment and near removal from office.

And yet the scandal was still top news on the TV shows. Worse, Kathleen Willey had come forward to say that Clinton made crude sexual advances toward her, right in the Oval Office.

Then in early 1999, still another woman, Juanita Broaddrick, also a one-time campaign supporter, claimed Clinton had raped her. Only days after her story aired on NBC, NATO's first war began against Serbia. Coincidence?

At the time, there was a lot of media hocus-pocus about Serbian war crimes in Kosovo, practically none of which turned out to be true, but it was enough to save Bill Clinton – again.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Clinton Scandals
Media Bias
Sen. Hillary Clinton

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