Media Matters action item

floridagal posted this action item in the comments yesterday, and some of you have already shared the letters you have written in response. I felt that this was important enough to be on the front page, and floridagal kindly wrote this up for me...

The Media Matters alert for today was to contact Newsweek and Meet the Press about their editor implying Howard Dean might be insane....an unheard of thing in this country for an editor to do. I hope everyone did contact.

Newsweek's Meacham called Sen. Feingold "a sane Howard Dean"

"RUSSERT: It is interesting, Americans seem to like governors as presidents. If you look back at -- through our history, the last two Democrats, [Bill] Clinton and [Jimmy] Carter, [George W.] Bush, [Ronald] Reagan. It's quite interesting. Picking up on Bill and Gene's theme, though, Jon and Doris, Russ Feingold is really positioning himself to the left of [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY], opposing the Patriot Act, opposing the war, coming out foursquare on the eavesdropping, really trying to position himself in a way where he can say to a lot of liberal groups, "Hey, I am very authentic and real on the issues that matter to you."

MEACHAM: Yeah, a sane Howard Dean, basically, I think is where he is. I think that's true."

But that wasn't the first time that Media Matters had chastized Meacham for such things. Here are two other articles I found there.

Newsweek's Jon Meacham repeated the accusation that Wilson implied Cheney sent him to Africa

"Appearing on the July 18 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham falsely accused former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV of suggesting in an op-ed and subsequent media appearances that Vice President Dick Cheney sent him to Niger in 2002. In fact, Wilson made it clear that the CIA, not Cheney, sent him to Niger to investigate the purported sale of yellowcake uranium to Iraq."

CNN, MSNBC failed to note that applause at Bush speech was prompted by Bush staffers

"Appearing on MSNBC, Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham stated: "It was striking to me that the one moment of applause at that very well-disciplined military crowd was that 'we will stay in the fight until the fight is won.'" CNN host Wolf Blitzer stated that just once "the troops at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, interrupted the president and politely applauded him." CNN White House correspondent Dana Bash added that "it was quite noteworthy that there was only a round of applause at one particular moment" because the White House wanted it to be "sedate" in order avoid criticism for "having sort of a campaign or political rally."

Tags: Howard Dean, Media Matters, Meacham, corporate media, action item

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