The Real Skinny on Public TV News Desks

Early this morning (December 13), I got this comment on this post:

NPR, PBS audience holds most accurate views of Iraq war, says new study.

http://www.current.org/news/news0319study.shtml

Public Broadcasting Services consistently deliver news with better accuracy than any other mainstream broadcast media. Yet you want to "destroy" public broadcasting. Are "Christian conservatives" afraid of truth? Or is it just you who is afraid?

All right, friend, let's examine each of your assertions in detail. Let's begin with the date of that study you mentioned: October 20, 2003. That's hardly recent.

Then, let's consider the source. Current.org is a site by and for friends of public broadcasting--hardly an objective source. But that in itself would be all right, if you could trust their study. So let's examine it in detail.

They state that viewers of PBS and listeners to NPR are least likely to have what they say are three key misconceptions about the War Against Terror:

1. Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or proven to be supporting al-Qaeda.
2. Weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.
3. International popular opinion favored the U.S. war against Iraq.

Well, guess what, sportsfans: Those aren't misconceptions. They represent the truth.

Let's examine them one at a time:

1. Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or proven to be supporting al-Qaeda. Now Iraq has not been shown to have had a direct operational link to the September 11 attacks. But they absolutely have a logistical link, in that:
   1. Saddam Hussein provided safe haven to members, and even entire cells, of Al-Qaeda, or "The Base" in Arabic. He even allowed them to establish a training camp in his country. We found that training camp, and it had a fuselage of a Boeing 737 in it.
   2. Saddam Hussein bribed most of the Security Council in the Oil-for-Food program, the full particulars of which are only now coming to light, with more damaging revelations every single day.
   3. Documents obtained from the Iraqi Ministry of Intelligence make clear reference to an Al-Qaeda planning meeting in Prague, Czechoslovakia, with Iraqi intelligence agents in attendance.
   4. Iraqi intelligence was demonstrably involved in furnishing explosives to Timothy McVeigh for use in blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
   5. Saddam Hussein paid cash bounties to the families of homicide bombers in Israel. That might not seem to constitute logistical support for Al-Qaeda, until you recognize that all Muslim terrorism is oriented to one over-riding objective: converting or destroying the entire civilized world.
   So don't say that I misperceive Saddam Hussein's links to Muslim terror.
2. Weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. That is absolutely true. We have found mobile laboratories, base stocks, and--in the recent sack of Fallujah--recipes for producing weaponized anthrax and other chemical and biological toxins.
3. International popular opinion favored the U.S. war against Iraq. Here it's largely a matter of whom you talk to. If you mean Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, then of course they didn't favor the US war in Iraq, because they were taking bribes from Saddam Hussein. But if you talk to Iraqis themselves, they'll tell you they're glad for the US presence. And furthermore, if you were to peruse the various releases of the Middle East Media Research Institute, you'll find that many Arab columnists have spoken and written in favor of the entire US anti-terror war effort. These are the reformist voices in the Arab world--but the MSM doesn't want you to hear those voices. Then, too, consider the popular demonstrations in Iran, also in favor of our actions.

So I don't know what this commentator is smoking, but I'd say that PBS and NPR are no better than the rest of the MSM--and probably worse. If you want the truth of the War Against Terror, or even of what it means to be an American, don't bother with NPR or PBS. Go to Fox News Channel, or to any of a number of conservative blogs--including the ones who took down the Killian Memoranda.

I'm not afraid of the truth. But the MSM clearly are. They have a consistent problem telling it. I am ninety-five-percent confident that Bill Moyers' only regrets over the Killian Memoranda are

1. that he didn't think of it first, and
2. that Dan Rather got caught, and the forgeries did not stand.

And Bill Moyers is only the most prominent offender. How about David Kestenbaum calling the Traditional Values Coalition and asking her where she had been contacted by the FBI yet? Yet?? What is this "yet"? He went on, basically, to accuse TVC of complicity in the mailing of anthrax-laced letters to US Senators.

I realize that this isn't going to settle it for maybe half of you who read this. I'm a veteran of the Yale Political Union, and I know a "sourcing war" when I find myself in one. That is what this is: "My source beats your source!" But more to the point, I don't have to be afraid of the same old tissue of lies from the same old people. But some people are outraged that their monopoly on the news is over, and that when they pull stunts, varying from the Kestenbaum TVC Anthrax Smear to the Killian Memoranda, they're not going to get away with it anymore.