The television talking heads should be permanently muted, what is the point of breathless and endless speculation about the damn Vice Presidential candidate? We as voters don’t even have a say…
Who *is* going to be the Vice President?
Tag: Corporate Media
Fake memes and Obama
Jamison Foser dissects some recent anti-Obama press, including a reporter named Amy Chozick’s ridiculous Wall Street Journal article about Obama being too skinny for anyone to vote for.
Chozick apparently had some trouble finding people to support the crackpot premise that Obama’s physical fitness might cause voters to question his fitness for office, so she turned to trolling Internet message boards in desperate search of someone — anyone — she could quote. As the blog Sadly, No! revealed, Chozick posted a Yahoo! Message Board thread on July 15, asking, “Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his ‘no excess body fat’? Please let me know. Thanks!”
About three-and-a-half hours later, Chozick got her first response — a post ridiculing her for her focus on “totally meaningless drivel.” Nearly an hour after that, Chozick finally got the response she was looking for. A user posting under the name “onlinebeerbellygirl” wrote, “Yes I think He [sic] is to [sic] skinny to be President. … I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.” Chozick quoted the post in her article — one of only two quotes agreeing with the premise of the article. She did not, however, disclose that the quote had come only after she started a thread encouraging people to make such comments. After she got caught, the Journal acknowledged: “The article should have disclosed that the reporter used the bulletin board to elicit the comment.”
There may be more to it than that. A post in a subsequent Yahoo! Message Board discussion thread devoted to Chozick’s article noted that “[n]either Chozick nor ‘onlinebeerbellygirl’ has made any other posts on Yahoo before or since, and both profiles appear to have been created on 7/15, the day Chozick started the topics. It certainly looks like Amy Chozick constructed the whole thing.”
Another post wondered: “Do WSJ reporters make up fake IDs and make up fake quotes?”
Chozick’s original thread has been deleted (a cached copy is available here). Even more curiously, a search of the Yahoo! message boards for “onlinebeerbellygirl” comes up empty. Whether “onlinebeerbellygirl” ever really existed at all or was a Chozick invention, running a 1,300-word article suggesting Obama is too skinny to be president, based upon a random Internet message board post, is insane. As Slate.com’s Tim Noah noted, “In the vastness of cyberspace, you can always find somebody who will say whatever you want.”
[From Media Matters – “Obama coverage finds dark lining around silver clouds”; by Jamison Foser]
No wonder newspaper circulation keeps dropping. Mr. Foser continues on to more serious, but equally insane fake memes, like that Obama is “too Presidential” to be President, or too well-educated. Ummm, yeah.
Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News
Glenn Greenwald recaps the anthrax scare, and lays the blame quite convincingly right at the breathless reporting of ABC News. Would we be mired in a never-ending war in Iraq without a government employee sending anthrax to public figures? Maybe, maybe not.
The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.
If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks
[From Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]
[snip]
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.”
ABC News’ claim — which they said came at first from “three well-placed but separate sources,” followed by “four well-placed and separate sources” — was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where — according to Brian Ross’ report on October 28, 2001 — these tests were conducted:
And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.
Lots more here. Corrupt bastards. For all we know, Bruce Ivins might just be a convenient fall guy, a sacrificial goat so that inconvenient questions can never be answered.
Liberal Bias Bogus
Of course, we already knew the claim of liberal bias in the media was bogus, but noted nonetheless
The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.
You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.
During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.
Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.
[From In study, evidence of liberal-bias bias – Los Angeles Times]
Odds are, though, that the claim of liberal bias will continue to be parroted by the McCain supporters in corporate media up until November.
Now, if we are discussing the new media (blogs, web-zines and related), there certainly is a bias. There are very few non-partisan blogs of note. Also, one could even plausibly argue that blogs rebalance the slant of corporate media (( at least, to the few brave souls who actually read blogs)) – blogs pick out the small stories that conform to the interest and bias of the site and its readers. For instance, glancing through B12’s archives, there are lots of negative McCain stories. What percentage of the day’s news are these stories? A small percentage, I’m sure, but they are nonetheless a large percentage of B12’s topics.
Is Obama punishing The New Yorker?
I doubted the allegation that Ryan Lizza was barred from the Obama plane as soon as I heard it breathlessly reported as fact. Steve Chapman did one better, and asked the Obama campaign directly.
As a longtime member of the press, I’m always sensitive to any sign a politician is punishing journalists for doing their jobs. So my ears pricked up at the story that Barack Obama’s campaign had retaliated against The New Yorker magazine for its Obama-as-terrorist cover by excluding reporter Ryan Lizza from the press plane on the senator’s Middle East trip.
So I emailed Obama’s media people to ask for a list of journalists who are accompanying him. It turns out almost all the reporters are from TV networks or newspapers–those who cover him week in and week out. Only three magazines were represented: Time, Newsweek and Ebony.
Of the 200 journalists who applied, the campaign says it could take only 40. Among those denied were The Economist, the Boston Globe and the Financial Times. Some of the publications that were included, the campaign says, didn’t get as many seats as they requested.
I would be surprised if Lizza were barred as payback. In my numerous dealings with the Obama press people, they have always been cordial and helpful–even after their previous efforts were rewarded with a piece criticizing their boss on some issue or another. My Sunday column slammed him for his opposition to school vouchers. Yet on Monday morning, they responded quickly and helpfully to my inquiry.
As Mr. Chapman points out, the Obama team let Maureen Dowd fly, and she has been one of the worst Obama snipers.
John McCain hates birth control
Katha Pollitt wonders (( rhetorically, for sure, since McCain’s gaffes are off the record by media dictate)) why John McCain’s strong anti-contraceptive views are not fodder for the 24 hour news to chew endlessly on.
But can’t the commentariat take a break from itself and let the world know how much John McCain opposes birth control? Vastly more people rely on contraception than read The New Yorker or know who Bernie Mac is from mac ‘n’ cheese.
In fact, vastly more people use birth control than believe Obama is a secret Muslim. They might like to know that when it comes to contraception, McCain is no maverick.
Here’s the story. Last week, Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard who has been helping McCain look bright-eyed and estrogen-friendly, told reporters that women wanted more choice in their health-care plans. For example, it bothered women when plans covered Viagra but not contraception.
Big mistake! McCain had voted against a bill that would have required plans to cover birth control if they covered prescription meds at all, like, um, Viagra. McCain’s non-response when queried about this by a reporter was astonishing. As you can still see on YouTube, he squirms and grins and smirks (Viagra! embarrassing!) and fumfers about evasively.
“I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer,” he manages to splutter, “because I don’t recall the vote. I’ve cast thousands of votes. . . . It’s something I’ve not thought much about.”
So, John McCain is so opposed to contraception he voted against requiring insurance plans to cover it like other drugs, and either so indifferent to women’s health and rights or just so out of it he doesn’t even remember how he voted. That’s the way to show American women you really care.
The YouTubery of the question:
Pollitt searched Nexis for discussion of this McCain position and found only 61 mentions in print and on TV, and most of those were indirect references, at best. I guess the fact that John McCain has a 20 year record of voting against contraception yet voting for insurance coverage of Viagra isn’t as important as fist bumping or magazine-cover satire.
Lewis Lapham on Russert
Lewis Lapham proves again why I’ve always wanted to have a drink or two with him, preferably in the dining car of a cross-country train.
Lewis Lapham isn’t happy with political journalism today. “There was a time in America when the press and the government were on opposite sides of the field,” he said at a premiere party for Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on June 25. “The press was supposed to speak on behalf of the people. The new tradition is that the press speaks on behalf of the government.” An example? “Tim Russert was a spokesman for power, wealth, and privilege,” Lapham said. “That’s why 1,000 people came to his memorial service. Because essentially he was a shill for the government. It didn’t matter whether it was Democratic or Republican. It was for the status quo.” What about Russert’s rep for catching pols in lies? “That was bullshit,” he said. “Thompson and Russert were two opposite poles.”
[From Lewis Lapham Unhappy With Political Journalism, Including Tim Russert — New York Magazine ]
Now that Russert is safely in the ground, I can say without guilt I always thought Russert was the worst kind of putz.
Ass Press for a reason
The Associated Press is known as the Ass Press for a reason (( well, besides the juvenile reason that saying the word ass celebrates George Carlin and his Seven Naughty Words bit ))
Yesterday we flagged the AP’s Jennifer Loven’s ‘analysis’ piece flogging the McCain/RNC spin on Obama’s run to the center. Well, as every crack communication operation knows, message repetition is the key to success. And so today we have another ‘analysis’ piece, this time by the AP’s Steven Hurst. And it’s practically the same piece. Hurst and Loven actually both use the identical quote from RNC spinmeister Alex Conant.
Says Conant: “There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience.”
The identical quote appears in both pieces. If the pieces weren’t bylined I think I might have assumed one was a rewrite of the other. But they actually appear to be two completely original articles, just mouthing the identical McCain/RNC line.
Really is disgusting how deeply the majority of the US news media is in the tank for John McCain. No wonder McSame hates bloggers (( I’m sure I’m too obscure to appear on McCain’s radar, but I’ll take the compliment nevertheless. )) .
Iran-Contra’s Lost Chapter
A little history lesson for us with short attention spans…
As historians ponder George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency, they may wonder how Republicans perfected a propaganda system that could fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to lapdogs.
To understand this extraordinary development, historians might want to look back at the 1980s and examine the Iran-Contra scandal’s “lost chapter,” a narrative describing how Ronald Reagan’s administration brought CIA tactics to bear domestically to reshape the way Americans perceived the world.
That chapter – which we are publishing here for the first time – was “lost” because Republicans on the congressional Iran-Contra investigation waged a rear-guard fight that traded elimination of the chapter’s key findings for the votes of three moderate GOP senators, giving the final report a patina of bipartisanship.
Under that compromise, a few segments of the draft chapter were inserted in the final report’s Executive Summary and in another section on White House private fundraising, but the chapter’s conclusions and its detailed account of how the “perception management” operation worked ended up on the editing room floor.
The American people thus were spared the chapter’s troubling finding: that the Reagan administration had built a domestic covert propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist working out of the National Security Council.
“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.
“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt – to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.”
However, with the chapter’s key findings deleted, the right-wing domestic propaganda operation not only survived the Iran-Contra fallout but thrived.
So did some of the administration’s collaborators, such as South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon and Australian press mogul Rupert Murdoch, two far-right media barons who poured billions of dollars into pro-Republican news outlets that continue to influence Washington’s political debates to this day.
[Click to read more of Iran-Contra’s Lost Chapter – The Consortiumnews.com]
Noticing what happens to one’s country is the first stage. As George Carlin said, more or less, we have the politicians we have because people voted for them. An informed electorate is a healthy electorate.
Shiny Happy Media
From the Department of Could Be Worse News…
BUCHAREST (AFP) – Upbeat news would have to make up half of all newscasts on all of Romania’s radio and television stations, under legislation adopted unanimously Wednesday in the senate.
“News programmes on TV and radio shall contain, in the same proportion, news with positive and negative themes,” states the legislation, which is going to President Traian Basescu for adoption.
[From Equal time for happy news on Romania TV, radio – Yahoo! News]
As Chuck Shepherd notes, the flip side of this bill is that the other half of the news is, by law, required to be negative.
Irony Alert
"The Revolution Starts…Now" (Steve Earle)
Irony Alert (( repost – testing if I turned off my twitter updater )) : Fox News was instrumental in placing George Bush and his faux-Christian moralism in power, and thus Republican Christian Taliban warriors were placed at the FCC. Now, the public scolds at the FCC have been set loose to bring shame upon the often sleazy Fox Network. Ha.
Fox Television said it won’t pay its part of a $91,000 indecency fine levied recently by the Federal Communications Commission for a 2003 episode of a reality TV show that featured strippers and whipped cream.
Fox said in a statement that it won’t pay the fine imposed against five of its stations because it believes the FCC’s decision that the show in question was indecent was “arbitrary and capricious, inconsistent with precedent, and patently unconstitutional.” The network said it will appeal the FCC’s decision and proposed fine on behalf of 13 stations — Fox’s own, several stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group and some owned by other smaller broadcasters — that were targeted by the agency for airing the show.
[snip]
Although the fine isn’t very large, Fox’s decision to oppose the agency suggests that the major broadcast networks including ABC and CBS aren’t backing down from their fight against the FCC’s indecency enforcement, which has been more aggressive since President Bush took office and resulted in more and larger fines. FCC officials have said the fines are appropriate and they’re responding to an increased number of complaints about coarseness on the airwaves.
“We believe in enforcing indecency standards, especially when children are watching,” said Mary Diamond, an FCC spokeswoman.
Fox’s decision to challenge the FCC’s fine comes just a week after the agency scored a victory when the Supreme Court announced it will take up a challenge of the agency’s indecency authority this fall. It’s the first time in 30 years that the nation’s highest court has waded into the contentious issue of broadcast indecency enforcement. In that case, Fox and other broadcasters argued that the FCC’s new policy on fining broadcasters for airing “fleeting expletives,” or the inadvertent or unscripted airing of a profanity, was inconsistent with previous decisions and violated free-speech principles.
Fox’s decision Monday to fight the FCC’s latest fine didn’t involve dirty words, but when and how it’s appropriate to show sexual activity.
Last month, the FCC decided to fine Fox for an April 2003 episode of the short-lived reality show “Married by America.” A pile of complaints have backed up at the agency, which often takes a few years to settle cases. The episode featured scenes of contestants licking whipped cream off strippers whose body parts had been digitally obscured. The FCC originally proposed fining every station that aired the show $7,000 — which would have amounted to a $1.1 million fine — but backed down and decided to fine only 13 stations that had actual complaints lodged against them. In the past, broadcasters believed that digitally obscuring parts of performers’ bodies or bleeping out dirty words would protect them from FCC fines.
[From Fox TV Refuses to Pay Indecency Fine by FCC – WSJ.com]
As much as it pains me, I hope Fox prevails. The FCC should update its policies to worry about the 21st Century, and leave Beaver Cleaver alone. His universe is long dead, let it rest.
(I’d add a Digg link, but Digg is giving errors.)
Huffington Post to expand into local news
Interesting. I wonder if there will be any real outreach to the already existing Chicago blogosphere? Sam Zell ought to pay attention, but sites like GapersBlock shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
The Huffington Post is planning to expand into local news across the US, founder Arianna Huffington said last night, beginning with a site edited for the community of Chicago.
Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in “dozens of US cities”. The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.
“We are aspiring to be a newspaper in that we want to covering all news, not just the political blogging the way we began,” said Huffington, speaking at Guardian News & Media’s internal Future of Journalism conference.
“[Huffington Post political editor] Tom Edsell has been mentoring a small team of young reporters who have done a great job breaking news through the election cycle. We are working on our third round of financing and a lot of money raised will go to expanding that reporting team,” she added.
[From Huffington Post to expand into local news across the US | Media | guardian.co.uk]
Huffington’s model doesn’t include paying for content, will that continue?
News Outlets Face Increasing Scrutiny
Obama and His Baby Mama (sic)-Clip of the video
The slattern’s racist slip even got some coverage in the Wall Street Journal.
For the second time this week, Fox News Channel was driven to respond to criticism over on-air statements about Barack Obama, in this case for screen text that described the Democratic presidential candidate’s wife as “Obama’s baby mama.” The term is often applied pejoratively to unwed mothers.
Television news organizations, facing unprecedented scrutiny, have often expressed contrition for poorly chosen words during this election season.
In a campaign that includes the first viable African-American presidential candidate, the lines of appropriate speech have become fuzzy. News organizations are under pressure from a broad network of self-appointed watchdogs, including organized groups like Media Matters and individuals. These watchdogs are likely to remain vigilant about gaffes, misstatements and potentially biased language through the November vote. Just this week, Gina McCauley, a well-known blogger in Austin, Texas, started michelleobamawatch.com to track the portrayal of Mrs. Obama in the news media.
[From News Outlets Face Increasing Scrutiny in Campaign – WSJ.com]
Things have changed since 1992, indeed. Now there is at least a smidgen of accountability since revealing slips like this one are given a wider audience, quickly.
In a statement Thursday, Fox News’s senior vice president of programming, Bill Shine, said, “A producer on the program exercised poor judgment” in choosing the screen text. The Obama campaign declined to comment.
“I was a little surprised about how quickly it got picked up and turned into a really big thing,” Mr. Koppelman said Thursday. “If it’s not already happening more than it has in previous cycles, I’m sure it will because of technology.”
The phrase baby mama or baby mother is Caribbean in origin, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines it as “the mother of a man’s child, who is not his wife nor (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner.” It has gained wider currency in recent years through use in hip-hop lyrics and celebrity magazines. A movie called “Baby Mama,” starring Tina Fey, has been in theaters since April. The movie is about a single executive who hires another woman to carry her baby.
Abramoff Down the Memory Hole
Just a little taste of how President Obama’s administration is going to be covered. Hint: it won’t be as soft as the coverage of the current Resident, not by a long shot. At least there is a stronger alternative media/blogosphere than existed in the 1990s.
George Zornick writes: Yesterday, a congressional report revealed that disgraced uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion, and remains at the center of one of the largest influence-peddling scandals in recent memory, met with the president of the United States at least six times and that there were over 150 verifiable contacts between Abramoff and White House officials, and probably many more — these contacts included White House officials who went to Abramoff “seeking tickets to sporting and entertainment events, as they did seeking input on personnel picks for plum jobs.” When asked about the report, White House spokesman Tony Fratto’s dismissive response was, “Give me a break.”
Luckily for Fratto, the press largely did. These revelations were not reported on any of the major networks broadcasts last night. Nor could the story be found on the front page of The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or The Washington Post today.
This is nothing new for coverage of the Abramoff scandal. Recall, back when the scandal broke in 2005, that the press largely refused to hold Republicans responsible for what was clearly a Republican scandal of epic proportions. (None other than the National Review’s Rich Lowry wrote that the Abramoff mess “is, in its essence, a Republican scandal, and any attempt to portray it otherwise is a misdirection.”)
But the press didn’t usually agree. For example:
Chris Matthews asked, while discussing the scandal in January 2006, “[D]on’t you have to be a real ideologue, a real partisan to believe that one party’s more crooked than the other?”
No Democrat ever took money from Abramoff directly. But that didn’t stop NPR’s Mara Liasson from saying it, nor Tim Russert, nor Katie Couric, nor Bill O’Reilly, nor the AP, nor The New York Times.The Washington Post uncritically reported Grover Norquist’s claim that Abramoff didn’t meet with President Bush in May 2001, even though there was a photo reported to show that Abramoff was there.
David Brooks baselessly claimed Abramoff only met with Bush twice, based on some incomplete Secret Service logs, and Brit Hume did the same, even though the White House itself acknowledged there were more visits not mentioned in those logs.
The press also repeatedly brushed off the scandal — The New York Times’ Anne Kornblut, only hours after the Associated Press reported that Abramoff told Vanity Fair magazine he had close ties with President Bush and White House senior adviser Karl Rove, cited what she called “good news” for the White House, which is that “no one’s talking about Jack Abramoff anymore.” Chris Matthews predicted in early 2006, “It’s not going to be part of a larger story of Washington this year, I think.”
When this same House panel released a preliminary report on the Abramoff/White House connections in 2006, revealing far more ties than previously acknowledged, CBS and NBC didn’t cover it at all. That same report led directly to the resignation of Susan Ralston, a senior adviser to Karl Rove. But the three major networks — on all shows, morning, evening, and weekend — completely ignored the resignation, fulfilling White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino’s prediction that “nothing more will come from the [congressional] report, no further fallout from the report.”
And then there’s the current “break” being given to the White House. Which all, of course, leads to this question: What if this had happened to a Democratic president, and Abramoff’s name was Jim McDougal?
(Here’s a clue: Yesterday on Fox News, the name “Rezko” was mentioned 19 times, and the name “Abramoff” zero times, according to Lexis).
Can we elect a new national corporate media in 2008 as well? Please?
Bill Moyers vs. Fox “News”
Fox News aka Faux News is journalism for those who despise journalism. I assume Bill O’Leilly will edit this footage to make it appear that Moyers won’t appear on Fox “News”.
I still wish Bill Moyers would run for President.
At the National Conference for Media Reform 2008. Fox personality Bill O’Reilly producer, Porter Barry ambushes PBS Bill Moyers to pepper him with questions regarding his political affiliations and his “refusal” to appear on O’Reily’s show. Moyers disputes Fox’s “facts.”
Uptake Political Correspondent Noah Kunin was nearby and obtained this raw video.
The refusal was actually that Bill Moyers said the condition would be that Bill O’Leilly would have to appear on Bill Moyers show first, for an one hour interview, and that somebody would have to ask Rupert Murdoch about the assertion that invading Iraq would lead to oil prices falling to $20/BBL.
BILL MOYERS: I want Bill O’Reilly to ask his boss [Rupert Murdoch] where is the $20 per barrel oil? … Rupert, you said one reason for going to war with Iraq was so we could get $20 per barrel oil. Oil is now $137 per barrel. It’s wrecking our economy… Is Rupert Murdoch responsible to the American People?