Replies to post #72635 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Bacchus_II]

Great post and one of the most explicit demonstration of the peril for democracy brought by media concentrations I've read lately..

[nspolar]

I posted your comments on The Woodshed with this addition, since we were discussing same.

http://dev.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=20624844

(I think the media left or right are a little like a bunch of whores at times. Trying to throw the best trick for the quickest buck or rating. Zeev's last paragraph puts it less succintly. Morton Downey, Russ Limbaugh, Olie North included .... who would want their children to emulated those anti-leftists).)

In fact I think the media loaded to the right, and they have shit in their own nest with too much smelly blab. So I for one don't feel too sorry for the right here, or Bush, because of left leaning media.

Too much Chutzpah.

[wstera2]

Sorry Zeev, the mainstream media (MSM) is liberally biased. The evidence supporting this is overwhelming. Lately, they barely pretend to be "objective". I'm sorry, but again your bias is showing.

The anecdotal examples you offered are actually good examples of liberal MSM bias. The MSM's initial reluctance to cover the allegations in the examples you cited, then later, when the MSM began to cover them, their distorted slant are all well documented (with Clinton, sex sells. When they finally ran with it big time, the MSM still slanted it hard).

Here's one prime example - You couldn't be more wrong about the Swift Boat coverage.

Bottom line, if you switch the allegations against the candidates (Imagine that Kerry was alleged to be "AWOL" in the National Guard (NG). Imagine Bush fighting Swift Boat Vet allegations.); I guarantee that the MSM would have dominated the news from day one citing the Swifties clear unequivocal evidence against Bush. Detailed interviews with John O'Neill & the Swift Vets would have been all over the airwaves & in the headlines slamming Bush with the facts. At the same time, you would have seen the MSM ignore, dismiss & openly denounce the "AWOL" allegations about Kerry's NG service. The MSM would triumphantly proclaim their "journalistic standards" would not allow them to report on the smear job against Kerry because no credible evidence exists to support the allegations made by the Vast Right Wing Smear Machine.

Instead, in the real world, on almost no evidence the MSM ran thousands of negative stories about Bush in the NG. Their main sources of info came from an unbalanced, rabid, Bush hating liberal (and known liar), Michael Moore, the DNC & "fake but accurate" documents. The MSM actively searched for witnesses & documentation that would harm Bush. Simultaneously, the MSM intentionally ignored credible witnesses & documentation that clearly established Bush served honorably. They misled & distorted facts with impunity to portray Bush as negatively as possible. And Dan Rather's forged documents debacle was absolute proof of how over the top MSM's liberal bias has become.

Meanwhile, the Swifties presented irrefutable, factual evidence to support their allegations. The MSM virtually ignored the Swift Boat Vets from May (Press Conference) until two weeks after their TV ads were killing Kerry in September. When the MSM did cover the Swifties, they have slandered & smeared the Swifties maliciously. Almost every story openly ridicules them & the MSM blatantly distorts the truth in almost every report.

Kerry's "Christmas in Cambodia" is now irrefutably documented as a huge lie that Kerry used for political purposes time & time again (50 times on the record). Team Kerry even admitted he was not there then. And the Swifties used Kerry's own words to prove irrefutably Kerry had repeatedly perpetrated this horrific lie purely for political gain. Why has the MSM covered up this earth shattering story?

The Swifties proved that two of three Purple Hearts were not justified. They used Kerry's own words, sworn testimony & documentary evidence, to establish factually those medals were not legitimately earned.

The Swifties let the public know that Kerry met with Communist leaders from North Vietnam twice while we were at war with them. Again Kerry's own words added to the clear evidence that this is true.

They documented that Kerry's lies about war crimes before the Senate were used by the Communists against POW's to threaten & terrorize them.

Don't tell me Kerry didn't give aid & comfort to the enemy or that Kerry's war crimes lies did not cause our POW's to suffer more.

The Swifties brought attention to Kerry's involvement in a plot to assassinate US Senators, something that the MSM is loathe to ever mention objectively. Despite repeated Kerry denials, he only admitted he was present when FBI documents proved Kerry was lying.

Why has the MSM covered up, distorted or downplayed all of these earth shattering stories from the Swift Boat Vets? It's not for lack of credible evidence. That's a fact.

There's so much more. I defy anyone to google news reports on the Swifties. Here's what you will find. You won't see the stories I mentioned above objectively covered. The few articles where the MSM actually mentions them, you will see the Swifties slandered & smeared consistently. The accurate allegations mentioned above are either completely ignored, blatantly distorted or dismissed out of hand. And the MSM fails to provide any credible evidence to support their baseless assertions that the Swifties have been discredited.

[wstera2]

A challenge to those who claim that the SwiftVets' allegations have been "debunked" or are "unsubstantiated"

Beldar blog
Saturday, September 25, 2004

My lawyer readers will immediately recognize this as an invitation to Kerry supporters to make a motion for partial summary judgment on the SwiftVets' claims.

This short paragraph from a New York Times article perfectly illustrates the liberal media's widespread characterization of the results to date of the SwiftVets' campaign (boldface added):

<<<<Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which drew national attention with advertisements making unsubstantiated attacks against Mr. Kerry's military service, has less money and uses several strategies to stretch its dollars, said one of its leaders, John O'Neill.>>>>

To find a similar example from the blogosphere, one need look no farther than Andrew Sullivan's passing dismissal of the SwiftVets' campaign (boldface added):

<<<<As word spread, anti-Kerry forces sent in more money to the Swift Boat Veterans for truth website, allowing them to ramp up their ad efforts. And within a few days, the old media was forced to cover the claims extensively — even if much of their coverage amounted to a debunking.>>>>

As someone who's followed the SwiftVets' campaign closely — someone who's read Brinkley's Tour of Duty, O'Neill's Unfit for Command, and Kranish et al.'s John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography cover to cover, plus all of the mainstream media reports I could find on the internet and a goodly portion of what's appeared from both political sides of the blogosphere — I'm simply stunned to read these sorts of statements.

I can think of one major SwiftVets allegation on which they've arguably failed to offer more than circumstantial evidence — that Kerry "gamed the system" to get his medals. Kerry's stonewall — his refusal to sign Standard Form 180 and thereby release the documentation that should, if it exists, reveal still-hidden details like how he came to get his first Purple Heart — has been effective in keeping the SwiftVets from nailing down that point with direct evidence.

Yet the circumstantial case is powerful — Kerry's commanding officer at the time, Skip Hibbard, says he refused to approve that Purple Heart in December 1968, yet Kerry showed up with the medal anyway in March 1969 in some as-yet-unexplained fashion.

I can think of other SwiftVets allegations on which there is directly competing evidence that requires the public to draw conclusions. For example, does one credit Adm. Bill Schachte's account of his first-hand knowledge of how Kerry received the trivial wound that led to his first Purple Heart, or does one credit Zaldonis' and Runyan's claims that Schachte wasn't aboard the skimmer? Which of the eyewitnesses does one choose to find credible on the question of whether Kerry was or wasn't under enemy fire when he plucked Rassmann from the Bay Hap River?

Other allegations require an exercise of subjective judgment. For example, was Kerry's pursuit and dispatching of a single VC soldier sufficiently valorous to merit his Silver Star?

But on none of these issues I've just listed have the SwiftVets' allegations been "debunked" or proven "unsubstantiated." Andrew Sullivan or the NYT repeating over and over that they have been simply don't make them so. To employ the legal jargon of summary judgment proceedings, a rational factfinder could conclude from the evidence that the SwiftVets have produced on each of these allegations that, indeed, they're true. A trial judge who dismissed these allegations outright, without letting the factfinder (typically a jury) consider them, would certainly be reversed on appeal and told to let the jury do its work. They haven't, in lay terms, been "debunked" — but rather, they're fiercely disputed by competent evidence (some of it eyewitness, some of it circumstantial, some of it documentary).

Hence my challenge for the weekend to my readers — you're probably a minority, as these things go, but I know from my comments pages that you're out there — who may agree with the NYT or Mr. Sullivan:

Can you identify even one specific and material SwiftVets allegation that you believe to have been fully "debunked" or fully proven to be "unsubstantiated"?

Some ground rules for this challenge that I think are not unreasonable:

By "specific," I mean to exclude sweeping conclusions like "John Kerry wasn't as big a hero as he's made out." By material, I mean to exclude trivia like "the VC soldier John Kerry shot was in a uniform instead of in a loincloth." And I ask that if you're to make an honest effort to meet my challenge, you provide quotes and links, both to the SwiftVets' allegations and to the evidence that you offer to show debunking or lack of substantiation.

If you rely on documents — for example, Larry Thurlow's Bronze Star citation as support for the proposition that he and Kerry were under enemy fire after PCF 3 was struck by a mine — then to reach "debunked" status, you ought to show that there are no contrary eyewitness accounts to those documents, nor other contrary documents. Otherwise, you've merely established that a dispute exists — what lawyers would call a "genuine issue of fact" that must be resolved by a judgment call as to which side has the greater weight of the credible evidence.

Saying your side has the greater weight of the evidence isn't "debunking" or showing that something is "unsubstantiated," it's saying that your side ought to ultimately prevail on the factual dispute, and that's a very different kettle of fish. To use a converse example by way of illustration: I would argue that the "Christmas in Cambodia" story repeatedly told by Sen. Kerry has indeed been thoroughly debunked and proved unsubstantiated — that is, there simply is no credible evidence from which any rational factfinder could conclude that Kerry's claim to have spent Christmas 1968 several miles inside Cambodia, under friendly fire and on a secret mission, was truthful.

I of course reserve the right to offer a rebuttal, as will, I'm sure, my like-minded readers. But I'm genuinely curious about this, and will try to summarize the results of this challenge fairly in a new post sometime early next week.

Posted by Beldar

http://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2004/09/a_challenge_to_.html