Mainstream media cover-up: In five weeks following its disclosure, Downing Street memo drew little attention In the five weeks following its disclosure, both newspapers and the broadcast media in the United States largely ignored the Downing Street memo, a secret British intelligence document indicating that British intelligence officials believed the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq.
A Media Matters for America search of Nexis databases following the memo's disclosure on May 1 in the British Sunday Times revealed that U.S. newspapers published only 10 articles by their own reporters focused on the substance of the memo prior to a June 7 press conference at which a reporter asked President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about it. In addition, a Knight Ridder story dated May 6 was reprinted or excerpted in several newspapers. Of these reports, only a handful included new information or original reporting. On television, the memo was the subject of only two reports on prime-time cable news programs prior to the press conference; among the three major networks' evening news shows, only NBC's Nightly News had devoted a report solely to the memo as of June 14, and even that occurred after the press conference.
Newspapers slow to respond to Downing Street memo storyIn the weeks following the disclosure of the Downing Street memo, U.S. newspapers offered little coverage of its content. Stories that were published included very little, if any, original information about the memo, preferring to restate facts that had been available since the Sunday Times' initial story.
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Television coverage also lackingCoverage of the Downing Street memo on prime-time network and cable news programs has been even more limited. No channel aired a prime-time report on the memo until more than two weeks after its May 1 publication. Besides the initial mention of the memo by Fox News host Alan Colmes on the May 11 edition of Hannity & Colmes, initial reports on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports and MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann on May 16, and a panel discussion on the June 6 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, the memo did not receive significant prime-time coverage until after Bush and Blair were asked about it at a June 7 press conference.
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