Notice a big difference between the MSM coverage of Libby’s indictment and the Clinton cabinet indictments a few years back? Your not the only one: (Via Newsbusters)
As ABC, CBS, and NBC all dived into live coverage today to report the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s top aide Scooter Libby, this is not at all the way the networks covered indictments of cabinet officers in the Clinton years.
In September 1997, we reported in Media Watch that when former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy was indicted on 39 counts, the networks aired a single evening news story. Three of the four networks — ABC, CNN, and NBC — underlined that the Smaltz inquiry had so far cost $9 million. None of them noted civil penalties originating from targets of Smaltz’s inquiry amounted to more than $3.5 million. The next morning, CBS’s morning show, called CBS This Morning, didn’t even mention Espy’s indictment. Months later, I noted in a Media Reality Check that on December 11, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros was indicted on 18 counts for misleading the FBI about payoffs to a mistress, Linda Medlar. NBC Nightly News filed one story; ABC’s World News Tonight gave it 18 seconds. CBS Evening News didn’t arrive on the story until the next night, and gave it nine seconds, a fraction of the two minutes Dan Rather gave the nightly El Nino update, about the weather “giving a gentle lift to the monarch butterfly.” The morning shows were worse: NBC’s Today passed on two anchor briefs, and ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS This Morning ignored it.
Already today I have higlighted the obvious MSM bias when it comes to it’s reporting. Towards the Oil for Food scandel and now this one. It’s obvious that when it’s a Republican who might get in trouble then the MSM is all over it. A Democrat gets a few seconds.
Have you heard ANYTHING about this story?
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Rep. Cynthia McKinney must pay a $33,000 fine and reimburse as much as $72,000 to political donors after accepting excessive contributions in the 2002 election, the Federal Election Commission said Friday.
The fine was part of a conciliation agreement between the Georgia Democrat and the FEC. The amount will come out of her campaign coffers.
The allegations stem from McKinney?s 2002 re-election campaign, which she lost in the Democratic primary to Denise Majette. McKinney was out of Congress for two years before winning the seat back in 2004 when Majette left to run for Senate.
McKinney?s spokeswoman, Richard Searcy, said he hadn?t seen the report late Friday and had no immediate comment.
The eight-page agreement, signed by McKinney?s campaign treasurer, Joan Christian, says there were $106,425 in excessive contributions in 2002 ? $42,950 for the primary and $63,475 for the general.
Ok, deep breath. Anyways, Going along with the Libby story is Cliff Kincaid’s piece today on the whole Plame affair and what was really going on:
The media version of the CIA leak case is that the White House illegally revealed a CIA employee’s identity because her husband, Joseph Wilson, was an administration critic. But former prosecutor Joseph E. diGenova says the real story is that the CIA “launched a covert operation” against the President when it sent Wilson on the mission to Africa to investigate the Iraq-uranium link. DiGenova, a former Independent Counsel who prosecuted several high-profile cases and has extensive experience on Capitol Hill, including as counsel to several Senate committees, is optimistic that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will figure it all out.
[…]If the CIA is the real villain in the case, then almost everything we have been told about the scandal by the media is wrong. What’s more, it means that the CIA, perhaps the most powerful intelligence agency in the U.S. Government, was deliberately trying to undermine the Bush Administration’s Iraq War policy. The liberals who are anxious for indictments of Bush Administration officials in this case should start paying attention to this aspect of the scandal. They may be opposed to the Iraq War, but since when is the CIA allowed to run covert operations against an elected president of the U.S.?
[…]DiGenova raises serious questions about the CIA role not only in the Wilson mission but in the referral to the Justice Department that culminated in the appointment of a special prosecutor. At this point in the media feeding frenzy over the story, the issue of how the investigation started has almost been completely lost. The answer is that it came from the CIA. Acting independently and with great secrecy, the CIA contacted the Justice Department with “concern” about articles in the press that included the “disclosure” of “the identity of an employee operating under cover.” The CIA informed the Justice Department that the disclosure was “a possible violation of criminal law.” This started the chain of events that is the subject of speculative news articles almost every day.
[…]Goss’s CIA house-cleaning, of course, has come too late to save the administration from being victimized in the Wilson/Plame affair. Some officials could get indicted because of faulty or inconsistent memories. It is also obvious that liberal journalists are so excited over possible indictments of Bush officials that they are willing to overlook the agency’s manipulation of public policy and the press. But if the CIA has been out-of-control, subverting the democratic process and undermining the president, the American people have a right to know. If Fitzgerald doesn’t blow the whistle on this, the Congress should hold public hearings and do so.
Fitzgerald is a lackey and no way he will dig this stuff up, it will be up to the American people to make sure the rogue agents don’t get away with this.
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the bias is evident, but only to those who are willing to see it. It will be funny when the paperwork from the Cisneros investigation is opened to find out if it helps or hurts Hillary. My guess is it won’t get much coverage.