... The Al Jazeera cable channel in Qatar has led an existence filled with severe ups and downs. It has simultaneously become the most popular TV channel among Arabs living along the Persian Gulf, while being reviled by many of the governments in the region, along with the U.S. government. While showing a much more gruesome and hyper-realistic side of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (including dead soldiers on both sides), Al Jazeera has also come under attack by American forces in both conflicts, with cameraman Tarek Ayoud losing his life in a U.S. bombing on the Baghdad office.... "We report objectively," al-Sheikh says. "We leave it to the reader to decide." At times, he sounded eerily like the Fox News' motto: "We report. You decide."

Following is an edited transcript of a question and answer OJR conducted with al-Sheikh over the telephone. ...

... TERENCE SMITH: We should point out for the record that we invited Bob Novak to join this discussion. He told me this afternoon that he had said all he had to say on this. Your reaction, Larry?

LARRY JOHNSON: I say this as a registered Republican. I'm on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. [Novak's] entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.

... The results [for polls taken] throughout this year suggest that a good portion of the public didn't do its homework. Polls have revealed people harbor a number of misconceptions or bits of false information about Iraq. For instance:

?• In a January Knight Ridder poll, half of the respondents said that one or more of the 9/11 hijackers was an Iraqi.

?• Fifty-three percent of respondents in an April CBS/New York Times poll said Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in the 9/11 attacks.

?• In May, a poll for the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland revealed that 34 percent of those surveyed believed weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, and 22 percent said Iraq had used chemical or biological weapons in the recent war.

?• The next month, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found a similar result: Twenty-four percent said Iraq had used such weapons against American soldiers. (Six percent said U.S. had used those weapons against the Iraqis.)

We could cite these statistics as more evidence that the American public doesn't care about what happens outssideU.S. borders or isn't paying attention to the news. The funny thing is, people are paying attention. Or at least they say they are.

In August, a time when most Americans have traditionally shunned news coverage in favor of serious beach time, 84 percent said they were either very closely or fairly closely following news about the situation in Iraq. That's according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which has been measuring publics'ic's levels of interest in news since 1986. Other polls have found high levels of news consumption as well.

And consuming news usually--and logically--leads to greater understanding. Studies have shown that when the public is following a story and the press is covering a subject well, public knowledge increases. With the war in Iraq, it seems, this hasn't happened. Who is at fault? Did the news media fall down on the job? Could they have done something differently to better inform their audiences?

September 30, 2003 | Daily Mislead Archive
Tax Cuts Lead to Largest Deficit Ever in Complete Reversal of Bush's Prediction


Despite President Bush's assurance in 2001 that his tax cuts "could happen without fear of budget deficit, even if the economy softens,"1 the estimated $455 billion budget deficit this fiscal year will be the highest in U. S. history.2

In the President's 2002 State of the Union message he tried to shift blame onto Congress, saying "our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term so long as Congress restrains spending,"3 but earlier this month [Bush] admitted his tax cuts account for 25% of the deficit.4

The record-setting debt is at complete odds from the President's first year in office when he promised, "Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. . . I agree. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to act now."5

Instead the Bush tax cuts will pass an extraordinary hardship onto the next generation that faces paying a minimum of $43 trillion in Social Security and Medicare benefits to Baby Boomers. Even if the government limited itself to paying only for retirement benefits, health benefits and interest on the national debt, federal taxes would still have to be raised by 70 percent - permanently - to meet those obligations.6

Sources:
1. "A Sound Bite So Good, the President Wishes He Had Said It," Washington Post, 7/2/02.
2. "U.S. Deficit Goes Over $400 Billion," Los Angeles Times, 9/18/03, p.29.
3. 2002 State of the Union, 1/29/02.
4. Presidential Speech, 9/5/03.
5. Presidential Address to Joint Session of Congress. 2/27/01.
6. "What do record deficits mean for you?", MSNBC, 7/18/03.

... While Clark is making hay over his military record, his judgment as a leader of our armed forces is something that his potential supporters should ponder. In 1994, prior to serving as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Western Europe, Clark was a representative for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in war-torn Bosnia. There, against State Department advisories, Clark not only met, but jovially exchanged army caps and gifts of brandy and a firearm with Ratko Mladic, the notorious Serbian war criminal. According to the Washington Post, one U.S. official described the embarrassing incident as, "like cavorting with Hermann Goering." Five years later, during the Kosovo war, Clark ordered the British Gen. Michael Jackson to intercept Russian forces as they made their way to Pristina airport. Jackson rightly replied, "Sir, I'm not going to start World War III for you." Clark was ultimately fired from his position as Allied Commander, and few in our nation's military brass consider him a friend.

But the real bone I have to pick with Wesley Clark lies in his stance on the war in Iraq. Earlier this year, Clark was hitting all the right notes; he was cognizant that Saddam Hussein either possessed weapons of mass destruction or was developing a weapons of mass destruction program that had to be halted by the use of force. But in trumpeting Clark as Howard Dean in fatigues, the mainstream media has aptly displayed its short-term memory. Suddenly, Clark has emerged as the "anti-war general." Soon after he announced, the liberal media-watchdog group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) sent out a concise press release comparing Clark's current statements on the war to the positions he took leading up to and during the conflict[right now FAIR's search engine isn't working, and I can't locate this post-- otherwise I would have linked it] ; two such comments are displayed above. In a Jan. 18 CNN interview, Clark said that Saddam, "does have weapons of mass destruction." Same network, same issue, three months later, he said, "I think they will be found. There's so much intelligence on this." Only a few days after, in a column for the Times of London, Clark wrote that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush, the man whom he just last week derided as "reckless," "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt -- Let's have those parades on the Mall and down Constitution Avenue." So far, so good.

... democratize democratically. Be democratic in the way you go about trying to do this: consult, and don’t dictate; achieve consensus, and don’t issue ultimatums.


Perhaps the most common obstacle in the way of American hopes to promote democracy in the Middle East is the perception in the region of American double standards, on issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, implementation of UN resolutions, promoting democracy, and weapons nonproliferation. This suggests that the fastest way for the US to be accepted as a credible purveyor of democracy in the Middle East is to be much more consistent in its practical policies in the region. Simply stated, the US should apply the same standards in its policies abroad as it does at home. This will require greater sensitivity to local Middle Eastern cultural and religious values, and more consistency in promoting democratic values among all the countries of the region, including the ones that the US has long viewed as strategic allies that it has exempted from promoting....

.... Although [Dean's] totals are modest by Republican standards, [he] continues to outpace anyone else in his own party. As of last night, Dean had already far surpassed his $7.6 million second quarter by raising $12.9 million, breaking the single-quarter record for Democrats set by President Bill Clinton, $9.95
million in September 1995.

The third-quarter declines for Sens. John Edwards (N.C.), Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and John F. Kerry (Mass.) threaten their ability to pay for two expensive contests in Iowa and New Hampshire and still have enough cash for the "Super Tuesday" seven-state battleground on Feb. 3, 2004. Aides to Sen. Bob Graham (Fla.) and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) declined to estimate the amount of money they expect to raise by tonight.

But Bush demonstrated why his 2004 campaign is likely to be the most expensive in history. In the second quarter of this year, he raised $34.5 million, so he is already well on his way to eclipsing his 2000 campaign total of $101 million. The maximum amount an individual can give a presidential candidate is $2,000....

. ... Dean was the choice for 26 percent of voters, followed by Kerry with 17 percent and Clark with 10 percent, according to the poll by WHDH-TV and Suffolk University conducted between Sept. 26-28. The poll was released Monday.