Bush Gates McCain & The Press

At Media Matters, Jamison Foser runs down how the MM covered the contradictory comments of Robert Gates and his Commander in Chief, George Dubya:

During a speech to the Israeli parliament yesterday morning, President Bush attacked Barack Obama, comparing him to Nazi appeasers for the Illinois senator’s willingness to hold discussions with Iran.

One problem: Bush’s speech came just hours after The Washington Post reported that Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, said that the United States needs to “sit down and talk with” Iran. Not only that, Gates added, “We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander.”

Oops.

[...]

A quick look at ABC’s The Note — which claims for itself the responsibility for providing “editorial guidance on the leading political stories of the day” — demonstrates how thoroughly Gates’ comments were ignored in coverage of Bush’s attack. Yesterday’s edition of The Note didn’t mention either Bush’s comments (which came after The Note was finished) or Gates’. But a later posting did devote 341 words to Bush’s criticism of Obama without bothering to mention Gates’ comments about meeting with Iran. Today, The Note included 560 words about Bush’s remarks — but still no mention of Gates.

[..]

But the most striking disappearance of Gates’ comments came on CNN. On yesterday’s American Morning, host John Roberts interviewed Obama communications director Robert Gibbs. Gibbs twice brought up Gates’ comments — though when CNN aired clips of the interview later in the day, the cable network edited Gibbs’ comments to include the sentence before he mentioned Gates, and the sentence after he mentioned Gates — but to omit any reference to the defense secretary.

Here’s what Gibbs actually said, which CNN did air in its entirety the first time:

GIBBS: Obviously this is an unprecedented political attack on foreign soil. It’s quite frankly sad and astonishing that the president of the United States would politicize the 60th anniversary of Israel with a false political attack. I assume he also is going to come home and fire his secretary of defense who was quoted in The Washington Post just yesterday saying we need to figure — quote, “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage and then sit down and talk with them.” Them being Iran. Look, we have come to expect, and we’ve seen from this administration over the last eight years this type of cowboy diplomacy. Again, we’ve come to expect it. But over the past eight years it’s made this country far less safe than we were.

But twice during the day, CNN again aired that clip of Gibbs — except that it edited out the portion in bold, in which Gibbs pointed out the Bush administration’s hypocrisy. Several other times, CNN aired a portion of Gibbs’ comments, without the references to Gates.

CNN covered the controversy over Bush’s attack on Obama with numerous segments throughout the day, but the only times viewers were told of Gates’ comments were when they were mentioned by Gibbs and Sens. Joe Biden and John Kerry — and one report in which CNN reporter Zain Verjee quoted Gates. On Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper mentioned written comments Gates made in 2004 about the importance of contact with Iran. Cooper then noted, “That was back in 2004. He says the situation has changed.” But Cooper didn’t mention that just that morning, The Washington Post reported new comments by Gates about the need to talk to Iran.

Foser also has a look at how the other networks and major news outlets handled the non-controversy, then goes on to draw a comparison to how the MM downplays or outright ignores McCain hypocrisies.  It’s a great piece and Media Matters does a terrific job.