Friday, September 12, 2008

ABC News Continues Media Efforts to Distort Palin Message


ABC News Charles Gibson introduced the first comprehensive news interview of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the world with clips of how he was able to cause her to stumble in questioning over the "Bush Doctrine."

Perhaps this was his effort to appease the criticism he received from the liberal left of being too soft in interviews with the McCain ticket and reacquire "macho" liberal approval but the result was a blatant attempt to trick Palin.

Gibson, out of the blue, asked Palin about the Bush Doctrine. She immediately asked him to be more specific. As she attempted to explain he asked the same question several more times, never bothering to explain what part of the Bush doctrine he intended to address. Finally after she gave increasingly more detail about the Bush doctrine he finally asked specifically for her position on preemptive strikes against terrorist targets.

ABC promptly sent out the edited questions and the liberal media jumped on the exchange as more evidence of her lack of knowledge of foreign affairs. Well shame on you Charles Gibson, until now ABC had not joined the stampede of news outlets leaning to the left but you have reestablished your news credentials as a master of media manipulation and should get a standing ovation at the next socialist convention in America.

The truth, in case anyone cares, is the Bush Doctrine is a four pillar approach to terrorism in the world, exactly as Palin described. Preemptive strikes are one of the four pillars thus her request to him to clarify his ambiguous question demonstrated far more understanding of the Doctrine than ABC News. His repeated response of refusing to clarify it was clearly intended to make her look bad.

According to the book, yes books have been published about the Bush Doctrine, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Norman Podhoretz identifies the four pillars of the Bush Doctrine: (1) rejection of moral relativism and commitment to fostering the spread of democracy in the Middle East, (2) treating terrorism proactively, on a global basis, and not as law enforcement issue, (3) willingness to engage in preemptive attacks against terrorists and terrorist supporting states, and (4) unwillingness to support a Palestinian state until Palestinian leaders "engage in a sustained fight against terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure."

Palin was right in asking for him to be specific. Her answer was right about the Bush Doctrine being the worldview on terrorism. And once again Gibson demonstrated how the mainstream media in America is hell bent on distorting the record, words and experience of Sarah Palin. Oh yeah, when he finally asked the real question she nailed it like she did on all the rest.

ABC has already issued misinformation on the exchange trying to limit the Bush Doctrine to the issue of preemptive strikes but the Bush Doctrine was detailed in the National Security Strategy of 2002 for all the world to see and its odd ABC missed such an important document.

Finally, when the same ABC (ABC News Rick Klein Reports) asked Obama about the Bush Doctrine back on July 26, 2007 during a conference call to reporters, according to ABC Obama "said Clinton would continue the "Bush doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations if they first meet conditions laid out by the United States." Clearly Obama didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was so in terms of truth, Palin 1, ABC News 0.

Perhaps when Sarah Palin gets to Washington her first mess to clean up should be the media as they are more tied to the lobbyists and special interests than the politicians.

1 comment:

Shakes The Clown said...

Amen. I picked up on the same Obama quote about the Bush Doctrine. I wonder what ABC thinks about that.

What a smug ahole.