Expert Calls Missing Weapons Story Biased Media Hit Job
by Chad Groening
October 28, 2004
(AgapePress) - A media watchdog says CBS is once again preparing to do a hatchet job on President Bush when it airs a controversial story this Sunday on 60 Minutes.The New York Times has already released a report on what CBS plans to air Halloween night: a news story suggesting the Bush administration was somehow negligent because nearly 400 tons of explosives were reported missing from a facility south of Baghdad. But last year, NBC reported that when U.S. troops arrived at the site where the weapons supposedly were stored, no weapons were there to be found.
Tim Graham of the Media Research Center suspects the selective reporting on these alleged missing weapons, and its timing, suggests that this is just another cheap trick from left-leaning mainstream media. "This was meant to be the 'October surprise,'" he says, adding, "CBS has a history of dirty tricks. This is their latest one."
And stranger still in the way CBS News is harping on the story, the media analyst asserts, is the fact that the report about the explosives really does not even help the Democratic presidential candidate.
"It's funny for me," Graham says, "that the media can turn around now and say here were these dangerous weapons, and they were neglected by the Bush administration. Well, the fact of the matter is, this cache of weapons makes the case for war. It doesn't make the case for John Kerry."
Nevertheless, the MRC spokesman expects the same politically biased media that painted Jimmy Carter as competent in Iran will paint President Bush as incompetent in Iraq. Graham contends the upcoming 60 Minutes report is simply another "partisan hit job by the national news media."
An October 27 CyberAlert from MRC noted that a number of the mainstream network and cable news agencies have at least provided new details on the missing weapons story, including satellite photos of trucks that had been at the storage facility before U.S. troops had arrived. CBS News, notably, still had not reported these new details by the time of the alert.
