Gene Lyons: For once, press acts just as it should

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/story_Editorial.php?storyid=53679

To me, the single most significant event of the 2004 election
campaign hasn’t been the Iowa caucuses or President Bush’s State of the Union address. Rather, it was the quick debunking of an attempted smear of retired Gen. Wesley Clark by a half-dozen or so news organizations functioning exactly as a free press should. Basically, the Republican National Committee got caught doctoring Clark’s words in a vain attempt to manufacture a "flip-flop" on the Iraq war. Given the dreadful standard set during the 2000 campaign, when the Washington insiders who set the tone of political coverage at the nation’s major newspapers, magazines and TV networks conducted themselves like a high school clique trying to fix a prom queen election, the Clark incident came as a welcome surprise. Has war sobered them, or has American journalism begun to recover from Ted Baxter Syndrome?

<snip>

But hold the sociology. First, a quick outline of the ill-fated effort to portray Clark as a two-faced opportunist. Whether or not the incident shows GOP fear of facing the former four-star general in the November election, as Clark insisted, it definitely indicates that turning the Democratic nominee into a caricature won’t be as easy as lampooning Al Gore with phony stories like "inventing the Internet," " earth-tone clothing, "etc.

What happened was that on the same day RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie had a speech scheduled in Little Rock, Clark’s hometown, the infamous" Drudge Report" just happened to produce one of its "worldwide exclusives" claiming to show that, contrary to his campaign rhetoric in New Hampshire, Clark supported Bush’s rush to war with Iraq during congressional testimony in 2002.

<snip>

The heartening part was that it wasn’t only Knight-Ridder and Josh Marshall and liberal watchdog sites like mediawhoresonline. com that blew the whistle. While some of the usual suspects such as The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal Editorial page got taken (or pretended to get taken) for a ride, many others did not.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review’s brand-new Web site, The Campaign Desk, "most of the major newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Boston Globe ran pieces reflecting the whole story." (The Democrat-Gazette also got it right.)

[OKHRANA]

1. what are you talking about? Clark is toxic...

There was nothing doctored by someone else about Clark's words, Clark did say all kinds of passionately affectionate things about Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, on tape, and Clark didn't deny it, and he said all that before he was running for President, so you can bet that reflects the truth a lot more than what he says now.

Then there's a bunch of other examples of similar toxic speech by Clark, all on tape (we've seen glimpses of them, but they're mostly on hold for the right occasion, if it's ever needed). Dump him, he's radioactive!

Now he wants to run for President as a Democrat and I don't buy it for a minute.

Clark is the next Dean, if he goes up, he's gonna be exposed, we don't need him.

Some of us want to believe (in Clark), but look at the cold hard facts soberly.

[Loren645]

2. Yes!

And there's no reason to smear someone, and distort their words,
and fabricate quotes, if there's really something wrong with them.

I've seen this tactic used over and over with Clark.
KKKarl and the RNC is terrified of him.

[librechik]

3. Lou Dobbs was still using the out of context quotes

and even crediting Drudge, as late as yesterday. Guess he didn't get the memo