Is this the Real McCain? The Smell from the Republican Camp is Repulsing Even Some of the News Media

Fact Checkers and other print media reporters are finally reporting on the lies of the McCain camp.  This guy even calls the regular job that news media does covering campaigns "wishy washy".  Who knew that they knew?

Unfortunately, most people watch TV News and analysis.  Will the facts get out there?

I've also read or heard that many of the McCain camps ads never even get shown on TV, instead relying on the free air time at YouTube and other online video sites and bloggers who host the vids.

LA Times' James Rainey collects some links in  "New election low: distorting the fact-checking "

Excerpt:

It got so bad the day before the anniversary of the terrorist attacks that FactCheck.org -- one of the nonpartisan journalism websites heroically trying to strain truth amid all the sound and fury -- had to put out an extraordinary news release.

It chastised John McCain's campaign for -- now get this -- distorting FactCheck’s debunking of distortions.

News organizations and these admirable truth-squadding outfits, including PolitiFact.com, do not collaborate. But in independent news reports and commentaries this week, they seemed to reach a consensus to say "enough" to the McCain camp's efforts to demonize Barack Obama.

...

 The article cites the fact checkers' reactions to:

The McCain camp's "lipstick on a pig" smear where they took a quote about McCain's proposed economic policies and by dishonest cutting gave the impression that Obama was talking about Sarah Palin.

The lies about Obama's vote for a measure in favor of age appropriate sexual education beginning in Kindergarten letting children know that they can get help if someone touches them inappropriately pretended the legislation was about something explicit and disturbing.  It was also about a bill in the Illinois legislature making is less likely that a Republican in the US Congress had also supported the measure.  So the Republicans went all out.  And Rainey notes that the excessive unfairness of the ad caused at least one reporter to drop the usual "wishy washy" (his words) approach to an allegation by one campaign or the other.

but

McCain team, ... plumbed new depths this week by distorting a fact-checking outfit that had come to its aid.

It happened when FactCheck (a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center) shot down rumors flying around the Internet about Alaska Gov. Palin.

FactCheck rejected claims that Palin cut special education in Alaska, endorsed Pat Buchanan for president and joined the secessionist-leaning Alaskan Independence Party. (Her husband, Todd, was an AIP member.)

The McCainites tried to attribute anonymous Internet falsehoods to one individual: Surprise! Barack Obama.

Superimposing FactCheck's "completely false, or misleading" finding over a photo of Obama, the Republicans suggested the Democrat had trumped up the charges.

FactCheck, however, found "no evidence" tying Obama to the anonymous Internet attacks. The muckrakers announced Wednesday that McCain & Co. had been "less than honest."

I hope that such a late start to fact checking the McCain camp lies and distortions will reach the TV news venues so that the majority of McCain's followers can get a whiff of the stench coming from that campaign.

And its not just the lies but the efforts to damage news agencies by yanking interviews with top candidates, and -- more surreptitiously -- to damage the individual careers of journalists if they step out of the Republican promotion line as we say most recenly with the broo ha ha over something Andrea Mitchell said and then using her desire to restore her good credit to get her to later pass on the nonsense idea that Hillary hadn't been vetted for the Vice Presidency, when the Obama campaign itself had to vet her earlier this yearin  whatever Ken Starr and the FBI hadn't done in the 90s.  If Ken Starr's investigation hadn't been able to find something that would destroy the "uppity" first lady, as much as he burned for it, then a news bomb from her pre2001 life couldn't be found.

The extreme levels of deceit that the McCain camp is using won't stop when someone gets into the White House next year. As we saw with the Bush administration the news manipulation  will move onto Pennsylvania Avenue with the Republicans. (The GOP has promised Cheney that he can have a seat on the cabinet if he wants.  I'm guessing he'll chose the one to be selected as "third in line" if there is another House controlled by Democratss.)   Or will set itself up in opposition as it did during Bill Clinton's presidency if Barack Obama can pull off the winning the presidency by being a nice guy and a mostly fair campaigner.

So mainstream better be prepared to carry on opposing lies, because they have us bloggers with our hot breath on their back, though we are grateful for what they've done in the last week or so.

tags: james rainey  fact check  mccain  steve schmidt  mainstream news  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit