The media depicting GOP support for unpopular war as a political winner??

I Love Media Matters! There is a link to Blinky Bash's reoprt if you can stomach it.


http://mediamatters.org/items/200606210005

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CNN congressional correspondent Dana Bash's report from the Senate on the June 21 edition of CNN Live Today provided a case study in how the media are reinforcing the baseless narrative that the Republicans are winning the rhetorical battle over Iraq. In characterizing the debate, Bash emphasized that despite Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's recent efforts "to find consensus," the two Democratic camps have arrived at "very different views" about how to move forward in Iraq. She further reported that they have decided to debate "the one thing that actually does divide Democrats, which is whether or not U.S. troops should come home." But the disagreement between the two proposals being debated by Senate Democrats is not whether U.S. forces should be redeployed out of Iraq, as Bash reported, but rather how soon. The nonbinding amendment sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) calls for "the beginning of a phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year" and urges the administration to "submit to Congress its plan for continued redeployment beyond 2006." The measure put forth by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), meanwhile, sets a deadline of July 1, 2007, for the full redeployment of U.S. troops. By mischaracterizing the focus of the Democratic debate in this manner, Bash exaggerated the degree to which the party is actually divided and lent support to the Republicans' repeated claim that the Democrats are in disarray over the issue.

Not only did Bash mischaracterize the Democrats' debate, she also falsely suggested that it is the Democrats -- and not the party voting to continue indefinitely a costly, unpopular war -- that stand to lose politically. In fact, the position articulated by the backers of the two proposals in favor of troop redeployment is in line with public opinion -- a fact ignored by numerous other news outlets. A poll by CNN -- Bash's network -- conducted June 14-15 showed that 53 percent of respondents favored a timetable for withdrawal, while 41 percent opposed such a measure. Similarly, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted June 9-12 found that 57 percent of respondents supported reducing troop levels now, compared with 35 percent who favored maintaining the current deployment.

In light of these facts, it is unclear how exactly the Democrats' current emphasis on the need for withdrawal is politically perilous. Nonetheless, Bash went on to uncritically report that Republicans "are having nothing short of a field day with what they see going on with the Democratic Party and ... they believe that this fundamentally plays into their plans for this election year." Bash noted that some Democrats "are a little bit worried that Democrats are playing into Republicans' hands." Further, she reported that the Republicans intend to emphasize that "the Democrats want nothing more than to cut and run from Iraq" -- a phrase repeatedly highlighted at the bottom the screen throughout her report.

Just as Bash ignored the fact that a majority of Americans agree with the Democrats' position on Iraq, she failed to note that the war faithfully backed by so many congressional Republicans is deeply unpopular with the public. The CNN poll noted above showed that only 38 percent of respondents supported the war, while 54 percent opposed it. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll similarly found that only 40 percent of those surveyed believed the war was worth "worth the number of U.S. military casualties and the financial cost."

is remarkably resistant to media manipulation--much more so than I would have guessed. For example, think of 2000. Gore won the election despite a 95% bad press and a massive disinformation campaign waged against him for a year before the election.

And think of Kerry--again, despite the Swiftboats, the baseless flip-flop attacks and everything else the press did to him, he won the election and, as with Gore 4 years earlier, only outright vote theft backed up by a corrupt court system prevented him from claiming his victory.

The people are smarter than theRepublicans want them to be, and thank God for that.

Here again, the press is trying to declare a Dem loss and to create an illusion of support for the war, but the public ain't buyin'.

It is interesting and heartening to see they can not fool all of the folks all of the time.

they KNOW the American people actually side with the withdrawal, so they have to EXAGGERATE any other aspect of the debate, even if they have to INVENT it themselves.

The story should be about this withdrawal plan being EXACTLY what MOST Americans agree with. But, you won't get it from newsreaders being paid by war profiteers.

The War Machine wants what it wants.