Wednesday, May 31 2006.

He Reports, He Decides.

In Tuesday's Grapevine Jim Angle, Brit Hume's understudy, makes a rather odd interpretative claim:

White House Interference?

A British newspaper has accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of significantly changing his language on Iran in a policy address in Washington last week under pressure from the White House.

The London Telegraph reports that Blair planned to say, "change should not be imposed " on Iran. What he said instead was — "I am not saying we should impose change" on Iran.

Though the two versions are virtually indistinguishable, a source insisted to the paper that the White House asked for the different wording so as to keep the military option "on the table."

A British official calls the story, "categorically untrue."

But is the statement "change should not be imposed [on Iran]" really "virtually indistinguishable" from "I am not saying we should impose change on Iran"? Well, maybe if you're virtually illiterate. Consider the following analogous statements:

(1) The daquiri is not poisoned.
(2) I am not saying that the Margarita is poisoned.

So, would you feel more comfortable drinking the daquiri or the Margarita?

(1) The poodle does not have rabies.
(2) I'm not saying that the shitzu has rabies.

Which dog would you rather pet?

(1) The Honda Civic is not a flaming deathtrap.
(2) I'm not saying that the Pinto is a flaming deahtrap.

Which car would you rather drive?

Wednesday, May 24. 2006

Slamming the Dixie Chicks

In today's Grapevine, Brit Hume takes a swing at the Dixie Chicks whose new album "Taking The Long Way" resurrects the group's well publicized feud with President Bush:

No Apologies

Country Music's Dixie Chicks say they're taking back their take-back of a famous -- and costly -- slam on President Bush. Singer Natalie Maines told a concert audience in 2003 that the group was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Maines apologized for "disrespecting the office of the president" after album sales plummeted, but now tells Time Magazine, "I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever."

The group's new album isn't getting much play on country radio either. One Miami station tells Billboard Magazine it pulled the single, "Not Ready to Make Nice," which references the scandal, due to listener complaints after only one week.

Hume did not feel it worth noting, on the other hand, that "Taking The Long Way" is currently ranked at #1 in Amazon.com's album sales charts. Some Country radio station execs. may have banned the album, but that hasn't stopped Americans from linning up to buy it.

Tuesday, May 23. 2006

The One Republican In The World That Hillary Would Beat!

From today's Grapevine:

Gaining Ground

New York Senator Hillary Clinton, considered the Democratic frontrunner for the 2008 presidential nomination, would still lose in a head-to-head match up with Republicans John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, but she's gaining on them in the latest FOX News poll. McCain's lead is down from 11 points in March to just 4 and Giuliani's margin has dropped from 12 points to 9.

The one Republican Clinton would beat is Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who has not suggested he would run. Just 28 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of the Florida governor and 22 percent said he would make a good president.

Gosh... is Jeb Bush really the only Republican in the whole wide world that Hillary Clinton would beat? I'll chalk this one up to poor editing on the part of whomever it is that writes Brit Hume's material, but the comment is nonetheless revealing.

Monday, May 22 2006

A Semi-correction

One of Brit Hume's favorite (and ridiculously petty) passtimes is scanning the "corrections" sections of major newspapers presumably to show just how "biased" they are to have made the acknowledged mistake in the first place. Take for instance, this report from the May 10th Grapevine:

Naming Names

The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dana Priest reports that "Army Lieutenant General Lee Blalack, a legendary special operations officer who now holds the title of deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and warfighting support," is the driving force behind a campaign to expand the Pentagon's role in intelligence operations. Unfortunately, no such person exists.

The man Priest describes is actually Lieutenant General William Boykin, while Lee Blalack is, in fact, a Washington attorney who serves as disgraced California Republican Duke Cunningham's defense lawyer. The Washington Post has since issued a correction on its Web site.

On Wednesday's Grapevine, however, it was Brit Hume's turn to issue a correction.

Grapevine Correction

Last Thursday we reported that the USA Today story on the NSA's data mining of domestic phone calls waited until page five to mention that customers' names, addresses and other personal information are not collected as part of the program. In fact, that information appeared on the front page in the 11th paragraph. We regret the error.

Now, I've got to say that it's rather puzzling how Hume or Hume's staff could have made such an elementary mistake, unless they hadn't actually read the paper edition of USA Today itself. In that case, however, one wonders how it was that they concluded that the information in question did not appear 'till page 5. Hmmmmm. Puzzling indeed.

Nonetheless, it's worth noting that Hume's "correction" is really more of a pseudo-correction. For as brithumewatch noted earlier, the biggest problem with Hume's report is that it was tremendously misleading in suggesting that the information gathered by the NSA could not be matched to specific individuals, and that USA Today, for some reason was trying to hide that fact. Indeed, the opposite is true, and Brit Hume has offered no correction in this regard.

(Update: MediaMatters.org has been following this story, too and has some more interesting information to add. The "page 5" error, for insatance, resulted from the fact that USA Today printed the information in question on Page A1 and Page 5... absurd, isn't it?)

Friday, May 12 2006

Selectively Quoting

Brit Hume is fond of selective quotations. They make the process of distorting the arguments of an administration critic mcuh easier. Today's Grapevine is a prime example of that tactic. Commenting on a USA today story about an NSA program that tracks the telephone traffic of tens of millions of Americans, and which has cause quite an uporoar, Hume makes the following claim:

Overreaching at the NSA?

Today's front page USA Today story on the National Security Agency's database of information on domestic phone calls reports that the agency "reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans."

Not until page five, however, does the paper report the following: "Phone customers' names, addresses and other personal information are not being collected as part of this program."

By the way, despite USA Today's excitement over the story, The New York Times first reported the NSA data-mining operation in December.

Kinda makes is seem like the program is really no big deal, right? And that Liberal reporters for USA have deliberately tried to exaggerate privacy fears by "burying" this important piece of information on Page 5. Well, let's see what the USA Today piece really says:

With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

So once again we see how Brit Hume, a partisan hack disguised as a journalist, distorts the true picture by selectively quotin his sources. The fact that the NSA does not gather names and addresses is irrelevant. Once you've got the phone number, all you need is a reverse phonebook to get that information.

Shame on you, brit Hume.

Tuesday, May 2

Brit Hume: Caught In Another Lie

On today's Grapevine we see just one more example of how Hume's first allegiance is to Republican party partisan spin, with truth coming in a distant second.

Hume's claim:

Remember Michael Scheuer?

Speaking of Zarqawi: Remember former CIA official Michael Scheuer? He's the one who wrote the book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," which called the war in Iraq "unprovoked."

Well, he now says U.S. forces had Zarqawi in their sights "almost every day for a year before the invasion" of Iraq, but were told not to kill him because, he tells Australian TV, "the president and the National Security Council decided it was more important not to give the Europeans the impression we were gunslingers."

Scheuer, by the way, once insisted Usama Bin Ladin was not a terrorist but a "resistance fighter," and once described the Al Qaeda leader as a "brilliant man."

But a quick look at the transcript of the interview that Hume is referencing (without attribution, of course) reveals that Scheuer did not, in fact, insist that Bin Ladin was not a terrorist, nor did Scheuer describe Bin Ladin as a resistance fighter as Hume implies. In fact, what Scheduer said to Tim Russert was the following:

MR. RUSSERT: Do you see him [Usama Bin Ladin] as a very formidable enemy?

MR. SCHEUER: Tremendously formidable enemy, sir, an admirable man. If he was on our side, he would be dining at the White House. He would be a freedom fighter, a resistance fighter. It's--and again, that's not to praise him, but it is to say that until we take the measure of the man and the power of his words, we're very much going to be on the short end of the stick.

Clearly Scheuer does not, contra Hume, "insist" that Bin Ladin is not a terrorist. Furthermore, Scheuer is also not saying that Bin Lain is a resistance fighter, no matter how hard Hume tries to spin things. What he says, instead, is that Bin Ladin is a formidable enemy, and if he were on our side, we'd be calling him a resistance fighter. And let's face it, we certainly were calling Bin Ladin a resistance fighter when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. So Scheuer has a point, to a certain extent.

Monday, May 1 2006

Margin of what?

Trying to prove... I'm not exactly sure what, in today's Grapevine, Jim Angle (Brit Hume's Friday understudy) makes a pretty stunning claim:

For New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton the chances of becoming president could be influenced by what name she uses, according to a new USA Today poll.

When Republicans were asked about Hillary Rodham Clinton, they gave her a 23 percent approval rating, but the other half of the Republicans in the poll were asked what they thought about Hillary Clinton, without her maiden name and they only gave her a 16 percent approval rating.

And among Independents the inclusion of her maiden name produced a 48 percent rating compared to a 42 percent rating without it.

Democrats, however, were swayed in the opposite direction with the maiden name inspiring a 1 percent decrease in her approval rating from 77 to 76 percent.

As I said before, I'm not sure exactly what Angle was suggesting with that last point (love of the Clinton name among Democrats? A "traditional marriage" streak among leftists?) but it's simply ridiculous to come to the conclusion that Angle draws based on a 1% variation in a poll with a margin of error of 3-5%. The only intellectually honest conclusion to be drawn from the numbers is that unlike Republicans or independents, Democrats don't care what name Clinton uses.