Wired Magazine Owes Al Gore an Apology

[AtomicKitten]

Wired Magazine Owes Al Gore An Apology
from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/wired-magazine-owes-al-go_b_19980.html

If Wired magazine considers its current laudatory cover story on Al Gore to be a sort of make-good for the role the magazine played in launching a phony press accusation against the VP in 2000--an accusation that took on a life of its own and helped define Gore as a so-called exaggerator--than Wired needs to think again.

Wired ought to apologize to Gore once and for all. In fact, given Gore's continued renaissance, with him being proven stone-cold right about the dangers of global warming and the insanity of invading Iraq--two positions the MSM often mocked him for in real time--it's likely Wired won't be the last outlet forced to issue an apology of sorts for its previously dishonest coverage of Gore. But if Wired acts fact, it could be the first.

Media and political junkies may recall the mag played a key role in helping create the myth that Gore once awkwardly claimed to have invented the Internet. Indeed, Wired's new Gore profile can't resist revisiting the tale in its headline: "He invented the Internet (sort of)." The inventing-the-Internet charade represented a new low in MSM campaign journalism; a case in which a fabricated story came to dominate the coverage. And make no mistake, it dominated. In researching my new book on Bush and the press, I went back to the 2000 election and counted more than 4,800 television, newspaper and magazine mentions during the campaign of Gore supposedly claiming to have invented the Internet. The fact that it was not true seemed to be of little interest to a press corps often obsessed with tearing Gore down. (Gore was a fake and Bush was authentic, remember?)

The online tale was first hatched in the pages of Wired. On March 11 1999, Wired's Declan McCullagh wrote up a nasty article mocking Gore for his little-noticed comments to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Inelegant wording perhaps, but Wired treated Gore's statement as an outrageously false claim. (McCullagh later bragged, "I was the first reporter to question the vice president's improvident boast.") To give the story some oomph, Wired downplayed the real role Gore played legislatively in helping shepherd the Internet's commercial applications to life (even Newt Gingrich vouched for that), did not call the Gore campaign for additional comment or explanation, but did include a quote from conservative flak who ridiculed the VP. In fact, the GOP partisan was the only person apparently contacted by Wired for its Gore story.

The caustic Wired story was quickly picked up by Republicans who, busy planting the Gore-is-a-liar narrative in the press, began the mantra that Gore claimed to have "invented" the Internet. He never did. Nonetheless, pundits on the right (Bill Kristol) and left (Mark Shields) unloaded on Gore, as journalists ran with with the much more pleasing "invented" phrase. Even in its follow-up Gore/internet article, Wired, which knew Gore never claimed to have "invented" anything, effortlessly adopted the GOP spin, reporting in the very first paragraph that Gore "claimed to have invented the Internet." For that, Wired announced in 1999, the VP was "spewing half-witted comments."

Admit it Wired, it's time for that apology.

[nashville_brook]

1. kick and rec' -- i'm so tired of this story. so tired of the lies.

justice and honesty requires a full apology.

[Doctor_J]

2. Fuck them and the lies they rode in on

It was 1000 little lies like theirs that saddled us with a drunken, stupid loser, 3000 dead in WTC, 250,000 dead in Iraq, 9 TRILLION dollars of debt, torture as a foreign policy, and all the rest of the destruction of America.

[bunkerbuster1]

15. Actually 4800 lies

as reported in the Huffpost piece. 4800 references to "inventing the internet" in media outlets.

Some liberals have tried mightily to laugh this one off, but I never have. It continues to piss me off that in a race between an elegantly articulate gentleman and a buffoon who can barely string two sentences together, one tiny slip of the tongue was distorted and lied about incessantly.

Almost exactly the way that Kerry's authorization vote comment was repeated.

The Goopers don't need hit squads and 527s when the media are their willing executioners.

[Uncle Joe]

21. 4800 only includes the he claimed to have invented the internet slander.

The he claimed to have invented the internet lie was just one of many slanders and trashings they used against him. Al claimed to have discovered Love Canal, Al claimed to be an inspiration for the novel "Love Story", Al's statement that his daddy worked him hard on the family farm to teach him the value of hard work and strengthen his character was supposed to be another lie, the earth tones B.S. etc. All of these things and more were lies propagated by the MSM, not Al. I believe to this day, no one has been more unjustly trashed and slandered for a longer period of time as punishment because of their dedication, vision and service to the American People than Al Gore. You would have to check out Greek Mythology and look up Prometheus to find the closest analogy. The war against Gore actually began in March of 1999 long before the election cycle. The largest mistake the American People have made during the past decade was in trusting the MSM to actually look out for their interests and tell them the truth.

[Doctor_J]

27. Or, as Eric Alterman put it

the 2000 race was between the least qualified man ever to run for President versus one of the most qualified ever. I loathe the MSM for a) forcing SMirk on us, and 2) never apologizing for it.

[ixion]

3. spewing half-witted comments

gee, they hadn't talked to chimpy, then, I guess.

Chimpy, of course, being the King of Half-Witted and No-Witted comments.

[MADem]

4. WIRED has had their wires crossed for some time, now

I get the sense they're in bed with the corporate pigs, anyhow...

[Nictuku]

6. You have to admit

It is a great picture of Al Gore on the cover.

[LisaLynne]

5. Awesome and so true.

I wonder if any of those vultures in the media have ever let it cross their minds that they enabled * to steal the 2000 election (put him in a spot where the Supremes could 'select' him) and thus are culpable in some part for everything that has happened since. I hope some of them think about that sometimes, but I doubt it.

[mdmc]

7. isn't wired a right wing mag? or at least a m$m owned rag?

[Mabus]

8. Eric's earlier article "The Press vs. Al Gore" when the press booed Gore

...Journalists did little to hide their contempt. During a primary debate against former Sen. Bill Bradley in New Hampshire, Gore was openly booed - not by Bradley supporters but by reporters. "The 300 media types watching in the press room at Dartmouth were, to use the appropriate technical term, totally grossed out," said a 1999 Time report. "Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of fifteen-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd."

Did bad press cost Al Gore the election last year? It's naive to think Gore's chronically caustic coverage didn't cause him to lose votes during a historically close election. Looking back, Gore's handlers accept responsibility for mistakes they made during the campaign.

When will journalists do the same? http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gore/

Eric has been speaking out on the media's treatment of Gore in the 2000 election cycle for some time. He's been asking journalists to acknowledge their responsibility for helping to install Bush via their so-called reporting.

Eric also has a book coming out next month:

NEW YORK Eric Boehlert, former senior writer for Salon, in his forthcoming book, “Lapdogs,” details what he calls “the double standard adopted for Bush and Republicans that became the unfortunate news norm….timidity became entrenched and the results plain to see.” That may explain why the subtitle of his book, due to be published by Free Press on May 11, is “How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.”

The book—an advance copy was obtained by E&P—ranges across the leading media/political controversies of the Bush II years, from Terry Schaivo to Jeff Gannon, from Swiftboating to the Downing Street Memo. Boehlert often refers to story counts that reveal the surprisingly modest coverage certain significant subjects received during certain time frames. For example, he counts 180 episodes of “60 Minutes” and “60 Minutes II” from the time the Plame/CIA leak case broke through October 2005 without a single segment on the affair. The same held true at NBC’s “Dateline” and ABC’s “Primetime Live.”

***

And: George W. Bush’s shaky National Guard service was barely covered during the 2000 campaign while stories about Al Gore allegedly claiming to have “invented the Internet” numbered at least 4,800.

Then, in 2004, "the zeal with which he press, after ignoring the Bush Vietnam story, chased down the legend of Kerry's bogus war service was stunning." http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002383623

[AtomicKitten]

11. From an article I wrote a thousand years ago

The concept of a liberal media bias is a myth. Most of the mainstream media is
owned by giant corporations closely associated with the Republican Party.
Now the GOP engages in political assassination by virtue of ridicule and control
of the press. Lazy reporting, pack journalism, and GOP spin dominated the press
during the 2000 presidential campaign and election. The mass media technique
of "distort, distract, and trash" continues to enable the right-wing agenda.

CNN's Reliable Sources August 10, 2002 was a genuine eye-opener. Guest
Josh Marshall, webmaster of Talking Points, stated, "...
I think deep down most reporters just have contempt for Al Gore. I
don't even think it's dislike. It's more like disdain and contempt."
None of the talking heads disagreed. Guest Dana Milbank, White House
reporter for the Washington Post offered, "You know what it is? I think
that Gore is sanctimonious and that's sort of the worst thing in the eyes
of the press. And he has been disliked all along and it was because he
gives a sense that he is better than us ... as reporters."

The coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign was much more aggressive
and adversarial than ever seen before. It was at times blatantly
dishonest. The media practiced trivial "gotcha" journalism carried to the
absurd extreme. Gore was mocked. Press releases were FAX'd directly
from the GOP, and the press just didn't care if any of it was accurate.
Gore was misquoted, and reporters passed it on. Some corrections were
run but in an off-handed way and after the fact.

The media focused on every insignificant misstatement or nuance by Gore
in 2000, while never delving in depth into the background of Bush or
the factual evidence of many of his shortcomings as governor of Texas.
Instead of focusing on the issues, the media focused on Al Gore's
alleged "serial exaggerations" and an armchair psychoanalysis of his
wardrobe. Despite the fact that Gore is the quintessential straight-arrow, the
media convinced more Americans that Bush had more integrity even in the
face of Bush's drunk-driving arrest, his insider-trading at Harken, and
being AWOL from the Texas National Guard from 1971-1973. The criticism
of Gore was so harsh, according to the Weekly Standard, "If Gore walked
on water, people would deride him for not being able to swim."

And now that Al Gore has re-entered the political fray, he continues to
be dogged by the same media that stepped on his presidential campaign
in 2000.

The media did a great disservice to this country. We now are all
paying for their failure to responsibly and ethically do their jobs. The
abusive reporting of Al Gore's campaign began with an incident known as
"Floodgate" and continued on until the most recent incident known as
"Ticketgate." Simply put, the GOP employs a destroy and dash maneuver,
reporting false information, spinning it, and when the truth comes to
light the press has moved on to its next lie.

[Mabus]

14. The MSM and their character assassinations

Your article is right on. Today, the media doesn't like to cover Gore because it would force them to acknowledge their past misdeeds, character assassination and their out & out bias. This is especially true because of the internet. We, the people, have more access to information and each other and we can set the record straight. Part of setting the record straight is holding the media accountable for their shoddy reporting. Yes, there is a liberal media bias. The liberal media bias is media bias against liberals and the truth they/we represent. They don't want Gore in the spotlight because, just as you wrote The media did a great disservice to this country. We now are all paying for their failure to responsibly and ethically do their jobs..

From The Daily Howler:

We've mentioned our incomparable rule before—the analysts don't annoy us on Sunday mornings. We define Sunday morning as "quiet time," when we lounge in our sumptuous editor's quarters and ponder the really big questions.

But yesterday morning, we heard halting steps, and then a timorous knock on the door. And under that door, someone cautiously slid E. R. Shipp's "ombudsman" piece in the Post! That very term—"ombudsman"—normally occasions low, mordant chuckles at DAILY HOWLER World Headquarters. But yesterday's column was a whole 'nother thing. Writing about her newspaper's Love Canal/Love Story coverage, the Post's E. R. Shipp got it right!

Shipp's overall theme was the Post's inclination to engage in what we call "novelization." According to Shipp, the Post has tended to "speculate" about the candidates' "motives in seeking the office of president:"

SHIPP: (R)eaders react—sometimes in a nonpartisan way, more often not—to roles that The Post seems to have assigned to their actors in this unfolding political drama. Gore is the guy in search of an identity; Bradley is the Zen-like intellectual in search of a political strategy; McCain is the war hero who speaks off the cuff and is, thus, a "maverick"; and Bush is a lightweight with a famous name...As a result of this approach, some candidates are whipping boys; other seem to get a free pass.

We agree with Shipp's overall assessment, although the syndrome is hardly confined to the Post. The press corps in general exhibits the tendency Shipp describes.

[sandnsea]

16. Disdain and contempt

Yeah, that sounds familiar. It's almost as if they're afraid if they say something good about a Democrat he'll go out and get a blow job or something. Then what would people say in Muskogee!!

[klook]

9. His father invented the Interstate, though

No kidding.

In 1954 Eisenhower appointed a committee to study a national interstate program. Consequently Congress, with bipartisan support, passed the 1956 Federal Highway Act sponsored by Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee and Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana.
Source: http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=I006
Also see http://www.tdot.state.tn.us/news/2006/022406.htm

Some time back I was driving through Nashville and noticed that we were on a stretch of I-40 labeled the "Albert Gore, Sr. Memorial Highway" or something like that. I couldn't help pointing this out to my fellow passengers: "Hey look, Al Gore, Senior invented the Interstate!"

I didn't know it at the time, but it turns out he actually did.

[glitch]

10. Beautiful. Show you are adults people and apologize. Not just Wired either

Whole lotta people owe Al Gore an apology. But he's so gracious he doesn't even ask for one.

[Totally Committed]

12. I agree.

Wired was a Bush tool where Al was concerned.

TC

[EVDebs]

13. Wired's ownership must still be happy with the * they ended up with

Who owns Wired, anyway ?

[AtomicKitten]

18. In 1998 it was sold to Advance Magazine Publishers

owners of Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair.

[IronLionZion]

17. Supercomputer Networking Act 1986

and the High Performance Computing Act of 1991.

by Senator Albert Gore


http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

Nobody thinks President Eisenhower paved roads or even invented the concept of highways. So why would they think Al Gore invented the technology behind the Internet or even layed cables or installed routers?

[AX10]

19. So it was Wired Magazine that started that rumor.

Thanks for letting me know. Shitrag! :puke:

[ieoeja]

20. But Gore DID (sort of) invent the INTERNET.

Maybe Gore never used those words. But if he had, he would not have been in error.

Most people probably do not recall the 1992 vice-presdential campaign because it was, you know, just the VPs. We only pay attention to them if they do something really stupid.

But I was running a global network of computers at the time. So Al Gore's promise of an "information superhighway" was very prominent on my radar. I thought it was a pie-in-the-sky promise, but it was one of the three reasons I voted Clinton-Gore that election after voting Bush in the previous.

And, of course, there is plenty of documentary evidence that says Gore delivered on his promise. From pressuring the NSA to give up their patents to getting the industry leaders (networking and computing) to buy into the product. That last was particularly impressive. I fully expected Microsoft to go the IBM we-are-so-much-bigger-than-everyone-else-we-do-not-have-to-adhere-to-ASCII-standards route and refuse to adhere to TCP/IP in an attempt to lock everyone into their proprietary network.

[indie_voter]

22. Cerf and Kahn supported Gore and spoke up for him

Of course it was all ignored by our media. MHO, I wish Gore had used one of the debates to hold up the email sent by Cerf and Kahn and said "I DID NOT SAY I INVENTED THE INTERNET MORONS!" Okay, perhaps in a nicer way. LOL

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed
telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the
improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official
to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact
than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily
forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial
concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even
earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we
know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in
the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual
leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high
speed computing and communication.

[CabalPowered]

23. I've read this month's article and it was excellent

"Al Gore and the rise of the neo-greens" I like how that sounds. Does it make up for Wired's coverage in the past? No, but it is still a great article.

[incapsulated]

24. Fuck them.

And they are so "over", please, Wired. :eyes:

[otohara]

25. The Entire MSM Media Owes Gore

an apology. For one week, they should get on their knees and beg for forgiveness for the way they portrayed him in 2000/01/02/03/04/05

[chaumont58]

31. I think they owe the nation an apology

Lot of new gold star mothers that wouldn't have been if Gore was now into his second term.

[Festivito]

33. They owe the whole world apologies, and its ideas.

The whole world has been terrorized by Republican incompetence.
The ideas of freedom and democracy have been sullied.
Our nation is hated.

They don't have enough ink to cover their ugly behinds.

[scarletlib]

26. I read this post and read the entire Wired article.

Yes, they do owe him a big apology and so does all the media who screwed him over big time. I was nearly in tears as I read this.

The media and nation just totally trashed a brilliant, intelligent and truly decent man who would have made a great president. I do not believe 9/11 would have happened if Gore had been in charge.

This nation has lost more than it can ever know.

[Usrename]

28. kick for truth-

:kick:

[Scout1071]

29. Agreed. And all DU'ers with subscriptions should cancel until they do

apologize. In fact, we should all cancel all mag subscriptions to their parent company.

[chaumont58]

30. There is a mention of Mark Shields bad mouthing Gore

I developed a dislike for Mark Shields, Al Hunt, and Margaret Carlson over their treatment of Gore and Bill Clinton. I'm glad Capitol Gang is off the air, but I'm sorry they weren't struck by lightning before they went off.

[mrdmk]

32. Here is the real reason for the Gore Jr. massacre

The GOP aka Karl Rove made promises to loosen up the FCC ownership rules. There were many promises made to corporations and Mr. Bush Jr. being such a right-wing zealot, they believed him.

Some interesting reading here about the GOP and FCC rules changes:
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2003/6/media-beckerman.asp