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Contributors
Cliff Kincaid- Contributor
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM)
Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and
The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated O'Reilly on global
warming, the death penalty,
and the homosexual agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire
(filling in for Pat Buchanan) in the 1980s, where he confronted
the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with evidence of Libyan
involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org), he has been
an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism
and has published reports and held conferences critical of the
United Nations. His articles have appeared in the Washington
Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events, Insight, and
other publications. He served on the staff of Human Events for
several years and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor
for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at
his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or
co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign
policy issues. Cliff is married and has three sons.[go to
Kincaid index]
 Memogate:
Part Two
The GOP Schiavo memo scandal…
[Cliff Kincaid] 3/29/05
When
Dan Rather used fake memos to smear President Bush, bloggers
blew the whistle and the rest of the media recognized a journalistic
scandal. But coverage
of the dubious “GOP Talking Points” memo on the Schiavo case has
been far different. Perhaps realizing that another phony document scandal could
totally sink the credibility of the so-called mainstream media, there is great
reluctance to admit that journalists from ABC News, the Washington Post, CBS
News and other news organizations were taken in again, and that the Democrats
played a dirty trick on the Republicans in a matter of life and death.
The significance
of the memo cannot be underestimated. It surfaced at a time
when Democrats were on the defensive about what to
do in the Schiavo case. Would they allow a federal review of
the case, as is routinely done for convicted killers facing the
death penalty? What better way was there to turn the table on
the Republicans than by charging that they really didn’t
care about Terri Schiavo but only wanted to fire up their conservative
pro-life base? The “GOP Talking Points” memo fit
the bill perfectly. It called the case “a great political
issue” for the Republicans.
However,
a week after it first surfaced in an ABC News report by Linda
Douglass,
there is no evidence that Republicans or their
leaders wrote or distributed it. In fact, the only direct evidence
suggests otherwise. The New York Times says that Democratic aides
had “passed out” the controversial memo “that
they said had been distributed to Senate Republicans.” So
Democrats were passing out a memo that “they said” had
been distributed by Republicans. How convenient.
In one of
the latest chapters in this saga, on March 25, Candy Crowley
on CNN claimed
the memo was “generated out of a
Republican office but rejected by the Republican leadership.” This
was a new formulation. It was certainly rejected by the Senate
Republican leadership when they found out about it from the press.
Of course, they had assumed that the press had gotten its hands
on an authentic memo from some Republican office. That was a
big assumption to make.
Fred Barnes
of The Weekly Standard noted that “Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist never saw it. Neither did the Senate
Republican whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The number three
Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, didn’t
get a copy. Nor did the senator with the closest relationship
with President Bush, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. And the senator
with the familiar Republican last name, Elizabeth Dole of North
Carolina, didn’t see it or read it. The same is true of
Senator Mel Martinez, the rookie Republican from Florida.”
So where
is the evidence that this memo was “generated
out of a Republican office,” as Crowley asserts?
As AIM noted
in a March 24 press release, it appears that three sentences
from
the memo were lifted from a March 8 press release
on the Schiavo case issued by the office of Senator Martinez.
But the Martinez release had none of the political points, and
Martinez aide Kerry Feehery said she didn’t know where
those controversial references came from. “It wasn’t
us,” she told AIM. “We have no association with it
whatsoever.”
The Martinez
March 8 release had been posted on the website of the Traditional
Values Coalition, where it could have been
easily copied and then altered. James Lafferty, a consultant
to the group, believes that a liberal political operative took
parts of the Martinez release, added the political references,
and then pawned it off to the media as an official GOP Senate
document. “I see it as a dirty trick,” Lafferty told
AIM.
In his article,
Barnes seemed to agree with our analysis, noting that “a few paragraphs” from the memo “were
of Republican origin” and “had been lifted, word
for word, from a Martinez press release outlining the provisions
of his legislative proposal.” He also noted that the offensive
political references that the media seized upon were not in the
Martinez release.
James Lafferty
said that he had access to all the memos on the Schiavo case
coming
from Republicans on Capitol Hill and that
the much-publicized “GOP Talking Points” memo that
the media seized upon never came to his attention. “We’ve
seen other talking points from other conservative groups as well
and none of them had any of this political stuff,” he said.
Lafferty
said, “Shame on the media,” for reporting
the dubious memo. He added, “Unless they’ve got another
source they haven’t told us about, what they’ve reported
is unquestioning acceptance of a piece of paper. As CBS learned
recently, you cannot trust a piece of paper without verifying
what’s on it.”
Meanwhile,
even media watchdogs like Howard Kurtz of the Washington
Post have decided
to help circle the wagons around their colleagues.
That may be because Kurtz’s colleague, reporter Mike Allen,
had claimed that the memo had been “distributed only to
Republican senators.” He forgot to mention that it had
been distributed by Democrats.
Questions
about the legitimacy of the memo were immediately raised when
Post Associate
Managing Editor Robert Kaiser was
asked during an on-line chat whether the paper would produce
the document for others to see. “Good question,” replied
Kaiser. He went on to say that he thought Allen had simply been
read the memo by “his sources” and that he had a “hunch” they “didn’t
give him a copy.” Kaiser added, “That happens quite
often these days.”
This was
a sad commentary on the state of journalism at the Post. Here
was an associate
managing editor of the Post saying
that he doubted whether one of his top reporters had even seen
a copy of a document he was reporting on. The apparent standard
at the Post is that it is acceptable to report on documents that
reporters haven’t even seen for themselves but have only
been told about. (The text of the “GOP Talking Points” memo
was subsequently posted by ABC News). At least CBS had the fake
documents in its possession. On the other hand, not having the
document means that Allen can always say that he wasn’t
able to verify or debunk it. He was just trusting and hiding
behind his “sources.”
If Allen
had seen the document before writing about it (Allen has failed
to respond
to our emails about this matter), he should
have smelled a rat. There was nothing on the document to indicate
its origin. It is unsigned and anonymous and has no letterhead.
Anybody could have typed it up and claimed it was something it
was not. Yet this is the type of document that was seized upon
by the Post and other media. The record shows that this is the
same paper that went through one journalism scandal when Post reporter Janet Cooke wrote a story about a child heroin addict
who didn’t exist.
Based on
Allen’s reporting, the Seattle Times ran a story
asserting that the memo had been distributed to Republican senators “by
party leaders.” This took the alleged scandal one step
further. Now, party leaders were implicated in the political
exploitation of the Schiavo matter. This story, which was run
on the website of the Seattle Times, carried the byline, “By
the Washington Post.” Its headline was, “GOP memo
says issue offers political rewards.” The story referred
to “a GOP memo intended to be seen only by senators.” Somehow,
the Post was now discerning the intentions of those behind the
memo.
Reluctant
to admit that his colleague Mike Allen may have been taken
in by a fraudulent
document and that Memogate II was threatening
to envelop his paper, Howard Kurtz persisted in his March 25 “Media
Notes” column in calling it the “Republican strategy
memo.” But where’s the evidence for that claim? There
is none at this point. It seems more likely that the source was
a Democratic staffer and that Mike Allen, Linda Douglass and
Wyatt Andrews of CBS News were used in a dirty tricks campaign
against the Republicans. Will the media have the honesty and
integrity to admit it?
Their obvious
problem in this case is that too many journalists fell for
it. If there
were just one or two offenders, it would
be relatively easy for the rest of the media to expose their
transgressions and throw them over the side. An additional problem
is that this controversy comes much too soon after the original
CBS Memogate scandal. If they admit that this document is fake,
it will mean that the major media didn’t learn any lessons
at all, and that the abysmal standards at CBS News are common
in the journalism business. tRO
copyright
2005 Accuracy in Media
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