Kitty Kelley and the so-called liberal media

Before the stuff about the charges in Kitty Kelley's book get too out of hand, I'd like to take this opportunity to add yet another piece of evidence to the already substantial pile that suggests that the media isn't actually liberal at all. Let's take a little gander through this so-called liberal media, and how they're covering Ms. Kelley's book, shall we?

The NYTimes is the bastion of the liberal media. Surely, one would expect them to have a review of the book that was favorable to Ms. Kelley, since her attack on the Bush family would be so damning were it substantial. Funny then, some editor must not have been paying attention:

Kitty Kelley's catty new book about the Bush family is a perfect artifact of our current political culture in which unsubstantiated attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record and old questions about President Bush's National Guard service get more attention than present-day issues like the Iraq war, the economy, intelligence reform or the assault weapons ban.

It is also a perfect artifact of a cultural climate in which gossip and innuendo thrive on the Internet; more and more biographies of artists and public figures dwell, speculatively, on familial dysfunction and disorder; and buzz - be it based on verified facts or sheer rumor-mongering - is regarded as a be-all and end-all.

"Catty," not clear whether it's based on "verified fact or sheer rumor-mongering" -- doesn't sound to favorable to me. And later:

Certainly family members (particularly George W. Bush, running in the aftermath of the Bill Clinton scandals) have to some degree invited this sort of scrutiny by selling themselves as a close, wholesome, all-American clan, but Ms. Kelley's relentless concentration on these matters, often to the exclusion of far more serious issues, makes for a tacky, voyeuristic and petty-seeming narrative.

Whoa! Some liberal at the Times sure screwed up in printing this review!

Let's look at CNN, what some of our more, um, vocal conservative friends call the "Communist News Network" or the "Clinton News Network." Last night on NewsNight with Aaron Brown, they carried an extended interview with Kitty Kelley. Surely such a liberal news network's interview would be a complete whitewash. Let's look:

BROWN: Because we're at a couple months before a presidential election, and they know that this book is not any bed of roses. We all knew that before it came out. So I can -- I don't have any problem understanding why they're on the attack. That makes perfect sense.

Let's talk about some of the things they -- a couple others they object to. Actually, one that they object to and one I got a problem with, how's that?

KELLEY: Oh, boy.

BROWN: You want to take the last one first?

You write this on possible spousal abuse. You say, "Often George would" -- this is when he was drinking -- "would disappear at night and Laura would not know where he was. Friends recalled a drunken George being bitingly sarcastic and pugnacious. One friend even worried about spousal abuse, but there is no official police report to document the allegation."

Why is that there? You have no source that says it exists, that there was spousal abuse. There is no record there was spousal abuse. That is pure gossip, isn't it?

KELLEY: Well, I interviewed an awful lot of people. And they talked about how abusive George W. was.

Gosh, it sure sounds like Aaron Brown is accusing her of printing gossip to me. It goes on:

BROWN: But you have no source...

KELLEY: I do have sources, I promise you.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: All right. All right. Let me ask -- I'm not going to -- really, I don't want to argue.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: It's just, the best I can tell, you -- as best I can tell, you have no source that says there was spousal abuse.

KELLEY: No.

BROWN: You have a source that says, well, people worried about it, and there's no evidence there was.

KELLEY: That's right.

BROWN: Isn't that to some degree -- that's just printing gossip. That's unfair, isn't it?

KELLEY: No, I really don't think it is.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Fair or not, the rest of the interview with Kitty Kelley after the break.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

How did someone at CNN let such a non-liberal on the air!? I'm outraged!

But surely Chris Matthews, the most liberal of them all, must have merely had a Bush-bashing fest with her last night.

MATTHEWS: OK. Until we get some of that information out, let‘s talk about your book and your methodology as a reporter. What are your rules in deciding what to put in your book, if someone tells you—if I said something about someone else, how would you decide whether to use it or not?

KELLEY: It depends on who it is and what they say, where they said it and how they said it. In this book, behind every name source, I‘ve really tried to have unnamed sources. And this book was the most heavily vetted book that I have ever written in my life. It took me four years, and it also took four sets of lawyers who have gone over the manuscript.

That's an awfully fair question for a liberal!

MATTHEWS: Let‘s look at the first quote here. “Bush‘s failure to accomplish annual medical examination, as the record states, could not have been either casual or accidental, said retired First Lieutenant Robert Rogers. There is circumstantial evidence pointing to substance abuse by Bush during this period. Is it unreasonable to raise the possibility that he was suspended from flying as a direct or indirect consequence of substance abuse? It might be if there was no way for Bush to prove his innocence. But George W. Bush can readily defend himself if he so chooses, simply by voluntarily releasing his complete military records, which he has refused to do.”

Who is Robert Rogers, Lieutenant Rogers, and what is his role with regard to Bush‘s role in the Air National Guard?

KELLEY: He is retired First Lieutenant Robert Rogers, an 11-year veteran of the National Guard. And...

MATTHEWS: What was his relationship to President Bush when he was in the Air Guard?

KELLEY: I don‘t think there‘s any relationship.

MATTHEWS: Well, why -- what does he know -- what does he know about -- what does he know about the possibility or impossibility or plausibility of our current president having involved himself with substance abuse, as he says in this book of yours?

KELLEY: He says that this is a logical assumption to make. However...

MATTHEWS: Who is he to tell us that? I‘m just curious of why you chose this man...

KELLEY: He is a member...

MATTHEWS: ... to talk about President Bush‘s use of illegal substances or whatever.

KELLEY: [...] I went to Rogers because he has written about the National Guard and he seems to be a historian of the National Guard. And I needed it explained to me.

Then I went to a classmate of Bush‘s, Mark Soler (ph), to just explain to me what 1968 was like at Yale. Did you get into the National Guard easily? Were there reserved slots open? How did one do it? And then I interviewed...

MATTHEWS: Excuse me, I‘m sorry. I just want to talk to you about Lieutenant Rogers.

KELLEY: OK.

MATTHEWS: Did he ever meet President Bush?

KELLEY: Didn‘t ask him.

MATTHEWS: Well, do you think he ever met president—did he know anything about President Bush, the man? President Bush as he was when he was with the Guard?

KELLEY: I don‘t know that.

MATTHEWS: How old is he?

KELLEY: He is in his 60s.

MATTHEWS: Was he a contemporary of President Bush? Was he in that Guard unit down in Texas, or not? Did he ever meet President Bush?

KELLEY: No.

MATTHEWS: And yet he‘s here speculating on President Bush‘s use of drugs.

And why not one more:

MATTHEWS: Kitty, I‘ve got a quote here. This is very alluring. “Some people felt that George—this is George W. Bush, the president, his past did not seep out and embarrass him and his family because he was protected by a coterie of former CIA men with an allegiance to his father” who is of course for a while there director of the CIA.

Where did that come from? How did you get upon that?

KELLEY: You‘re quoting me or you‘re quoting...

MATTHEWS: This is just a direct quote from you, the author, on page 551. 'Some people felt that George Bush‘s past did not seep out because you had been talking about drug use and extramarital affairs and embarrass him and his family because he was protected by a coterie of former CIA men with an allegiance to his father.' That‘s not in quotes. That‘s just right from you.

KELLEY: That is the author. That is an informed opinion based on information and belief and the interviews of nearly 1,000 people. I don‘t think it is preposterous. It is really—where does logic lead us?

MATTHEWS: You didn‘t use logic. You used the word felt. You said some people felt. That‘s an unusual way of saying something if it‘s basically even secondhand testimony.

As we can see, both Aaron Brown and Chris Matthews (and I chose the two of them because they were who happened to be on TV last night when I was watching) question her reporting techniques extensively, because it's obvious that her methodology is flawed (though, to be fair, and I haven't read the book, and I don't have a good sense personally of whether what she writes is true or not). If the media is so liberal, how is it that these two real journalists got there, and cast doubt on Ms. Kelley's work? As a liberal, I'd like to object. If the media's going to be so liberal, and I want to hear them actually supporting liberal causes instead of being so... what's the phrase?... fair and balanced.

-- Michael

Comments

[d meyers]

You are correct, her book is a big pile of GARBAGE and totally junk. Must be nice to be able to get so much media attention for a book full of junk...

Given the pile of BS she is hawking it was sure nice of the Today Show to feature her for 3 straight days..... Still waiting for the Today show to interview John O'Neil.

[bog]

Nice d... way to stay on topic.

Michael's post was not about the media's coverage of the book or John O'Neill, not about the book's content. He hasn't read it. Have you? How can you call it garbage if you have not?

[Heather]

Still waiting for the Today show to interview John O'Neil.

Poor John O'Neill, getting snubbed by a show that's on in the morning when most people are at work and that currently features such penetrating topics as "Zero-gravity flights go mainstream," "Cojo: How celebs say ‘I love you’ and more…" and of course the groundbreaking and ultra thought-provoking "Paris Hilton tells all, with a wink, in new book."

Michael is talking about serious news shows and you're boo-hooing about the friggin Today Show. And you accuse us of whining. Sheesh.

[d meyers]

I knew I would rile you all up with that post. Honestly, Kitty Kelly means absolutely nothing to me. I could care less about her.

Honestly, I wish every News agency in America would spotlight her and let her spout her garbage. She is about as significant as the bug that smashed into my windshield on the way to work this morning...

I just enjoy observing how the cable and network tv and news shows conduct their business. I like observing what is shown, who is shown, what is not shown and who is not shown. No big deal