http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/21752FOX News Attacks Bill Moyers
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2007-04-25 10:37. Media | Video and Audio
News Hounds: We watch FOX so you don't have to.
Reported by Ellen - Still ignoring the bad-news-for-Republicans stories involving Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz and now the day’s testimony that the military had lied about Jessica Lynch’s capture and Pat Tillman’s death, Hannity & Colmes went after Bill Moyers over his upcoming documentary on PBS, Buying The War, about the role of the media in the run-up to the Iraq war. Rather than debate the contents of Moyers’ film, Sean Hannity and fellow conservative Brent Bozell tried to smear Moyers. Alan Colmes and liberal guest David Swanson were at the top of their games.
Bozell complained several times about Moyers “going after conservatives and conservative organizations,” but he never cited a single example of how that operated in the film. Instead, he relied mostly on the kind of smear tactics he decried in Moyers by repeating the claim that Moyers called FOX News a slime machine.
Colmes responded, “Do I have to agree with everything Bill Moyers says? … You’re just trying to divert attention from what this is really about which is a PBS documentary which shows how the media, including the so-called liberal Washington Post, the so-called liberal New York Times was complicit with articles like Judith Miller, with people like William Saffire defending this war and things that turned out later not to be true. That’s what Bill Moyers is pointing out in this PBS documentary – how the media helped out the run-up to the war and Bush’s argument for war.”
Interestingly, Bozell never disputed those facts. Instead, he changed the subject again. He said it was “perfectly fine by me” to have that discussion “provided two things: provided you let the other side have a voice and provided you don’t distort and try to discredit people in the process and that’s exactly what Bill Moyers did.” Bozell did not provide any evidence to back up his assertions.
However, if Bozell is claiming Moyers never allowed the other side to have a voice, Bozell was either unaware of or he deliberately avoided mentioning that, according to the Orlando Sentinel, FOX News’ Roger Ailes was offered the chance to participate but turned it down. (H/T TVNewser)
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