Coverage of Rumsfeld Speech Incident Has a Gap

Posted on May 5, 2006

While almost all media organizations reported that CIA veteran Ray McGovern publicly clashed with Rumsfeld, most labeled him a “heckler” or a “hostile war critic.” Few bothered to mention that McGovern was indisputably correct: Rumsfeld’s 2003 comments on Iraqi WMD were flat-out false.

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Think Progress:

... While the media has been quick to cover McGovern’s accusation that Rumsfeld lied, many news accounts have failed to report Rumsfeld’s own words from March 2003. The lead AP story, written by Shannon McCaffrey, fails to make any mention of it. Versions of the AP story have been reported in today’s Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, and many other papers.

Cox News Service also wrote a story that failed to report Rumsfeld’s own words. The Cox story was reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among other papers.

Fortunately, there have been a small number of reports that reported Rumsfeld’s statements, most notably in the L A Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Are newsrooms across the country afraid of being perceived as anti-war “hecklers” and “hostile war critics” if they accurately report the administration’s false claims?

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