Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

Press critics often use the term "false balance" to describe the practice of presenting a matter of clear-cut fact as the subject of dispute. Some media outlets have made progress on avoiding this problem in their reporting recently.

The Wall Street Journal, however, published an egregious example of false balance in its May 21 edition. In a news article about Arizona's secretary of state asking Hawaii to "verify it has" President Obama's birth certificate, here's how the Journal described the birther conspiracy theory (emphasis added):

A spokesman for [Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett] said Sunday that his request was "simply done at the request of thousands of voters in Arizona."

A spokesman for the Obama campaign in Arizona said the secretary of state's "flirtation with a conspiracy theory that has been debunked time and time again will have no bearing on the election."

The "birther" movement contends Mr. Obama wasn't born in the U.S. or at least hasn't shown beyond a doubt that he was born in Hawaii, as Mr. Obama and the state say. The U.S. Constitution requires that to be eligible for the presidency, a person needs to be a "natural born" U.S. citizen. Hawaii on its website links to a long-form copy of Mr. Obama's birth certificate that he posted last year.

That's a ridiculous way to present this subject. Obama's birth certificate was made public four years ago, and as FactCheck.org noted, it "meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship." The Honolulu Advertiser published a contemporaneous announcement of Obama's birth.

None of this is in dispute. Except, apparently, in the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

In a May 21 blog post, Politico's Dylan Byers noted the decline in Rush Limbaugh's ratings:

Rush Limbaugh took a significant ratings hit in some key radio markets last month in the wake of the Sandra Fluke controversy.

The conservative radio host's ratings fell 27 percent in the key 25-54 demo in New York City, 31 percent in Houston-Galveston, 40 percent in Seattle-Tacoma, and 35 percent in Jacksonville, according to a selection of the March 29-April 25 Arbitron ratings provided by an industry source.

Limbaugh's detractors attribute the losses to a rejection of the show following his controversial comments about the Georgetown law student.

"Clearly Sandra Fluke isn't the only one who didn't like Rush calling her a 'slut' given how many viewers that comment incinerated," one radio insider said.

But defenders say that what looks like a decline actually represents a leveling out following increased attention from the controversy. In late March, Limbaugh boasted that his ratings had increased by as much as 60 percent in the month since he had called Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" on air.

[...]

A spokesperson for Limbaugh declined to comment.

Limbaugh, without offering any substantiation, bragged about increased ratings as recently as last Friday's show.

Previously:

Limbaugh Affiliate Cumulus Media Reports Millions In Lost Revenue

The Limbaugh "Slut" Firestorm

Limbaugh Launched 46 Personal Attacks On Fluke; He Apologized For Two Words

"Slut" Firestorm Sends Limbaugh Into Crisis Management Mode

No matter how many times they say it, the facts still don't change: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright story was covered endlessly in 2008 by the press, including The New York Times.

But that doesn't stop people like Breitbart's Joel Pollak from pushing one of the right's most beloved, albeit comically inept, lies: The liberal media refused to address the Wright story.

Breitbart.com headline:  

NY Times Ignored Obama's Wright, Focuses on Romney's Mormon Faith

This stubborn untruth is crucial because the far-right's ongoing obsession with Obama's former pastor only makes sense if conservatives can argue it's a new story and that new information is coming out all the time. They need to whitewash the past  because Obama foes have to pretend voters were never informed about Obama's association with Wright and his incendiary rhetoric; that the press hid the truth about Obama.

In other words, there needs to be a conspiracy. Or, Obama was never vetted!

For the record, the Times "ignored" the Wright story so often in 2008 that it managed to publish just 200-plus articles and columns that mentioned both Obama and Rev. Wright, according to Nexis. The Times published more than 126 rticles and columns that mentioned Obama and Wright at least three times each, and 33 hefty pieces that mentioned both men at least eight times each.

As we've noted before, the avalanche of non-stop Wright coverage became so intense in 2008 that at one point the press was covering it more closely that Hillary Clinton's campaign, and she was running for president at the time. Also, just five percent of Americans thought the story received "too little" media attention, according to a CBS/New York Times poll in 2008. 

Maybe Breitbart editors just have a different definition of "ignored."

On ABC's This Week, George Will and Laura Ingraham engaged in a bit of revisionism to try to distance conservative billionaire Joe Ricketts from an incendiary plan to re-manufacture the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, and in the process accused the New York Times of journalistic malpractice. Will claimed that Ricketts, who commissioned the plan, immediately repudiated the proposal, while Ingraham asserted that he "didn't even see" it. In fact, the proposal stated that Ricketts had given "preliminary approval" of the plan and commissioned it in part because he thought it was a mistake that John McCain's campaign refused to use Wright to attack Obama in 2008.

During a discussion of the plan, which was made public by the New York Times, Will claimed that Ricketts "repudiated [the proposal] the instant he saw it." Will went on to accuse the Times of fudging the facts of Ricketts' involvement because "it didn't fit their narrative: billionaire behaving responsibly."

Fellow panelist Ingraham added: "As far as I know, he didn't even see this proposal -- I believe, George -- and the idea that he was considering it was a total false narrative put forward by the New York Times to send a message to other people, don't you dare get involved in this election in any type of, quote, 'controversial,' way."

But their contentions aren't supported by the facts.

In her May 18 Washington Post column, Kathleen Parker disputed the notion that the Republicans behind the proposal that sought to make a campaign issue out of President Obama's association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright are "racist," by suggesting that Fred Davis, who oversaw the proposal for the ads, recognized the ads' "racial sensitivity" and planned to hire a conservative African-American as spokesman.

She wrote that although the proposed ads "were not a good idea" and that "to question Obama's character based on his association with Wright at this point seems too much too late,"  it is "unfair" to cast the Republicans who would do so as racist. She then suggested that the fact that the PAC would have enlisted "prominent African Americans" to "question Obama's character" would have somehow mitigated the racial aspect of the proposed ads:

Obama has a record as president and can be challenged on that record. Raising Wright now would have been a serious miscalculation and would have been interpreted as attempting to inspire racial animus. But it is unfair to smear [ad creator Fred] Davis as a racist, as some have suggested. He obviously created a proposal based on his sense that this would appeal to Ricketts, who said upon viewing the rejected ­McCain ad: "If the nation had seen that ad, they'd never have elected Barack Obama."

Davis, whose creativity is widely acknowledged, was obviously aware of the possible racial sensitivity, which is why he also hoped to include prominent African Americans, such as radio host Larry Elder, questioning Obama's character. Whites cannot do this without suffering the consequences now in play.

On the heels of what some in conservative media circles are heralding as a "breakthrough" story and "journalism in its purest form" -- the Breitbart.com piece highlighting a 1991 pamphlet that erroneously listed President Obama's birthplace as Kenya -- Rush Limbaugh entertained the "thought-provoking theory" on Friday that Obama is actually the one who started the birther conspiracies to take advantage of an "affirmative action opportunity that was available only to those born in Africa."

Limbaugh stated that he agreed with this premise and that the final takeaway from all of this was that "the guy" -- Obama -- "will exaggerate, make it up, lie, what have you. That's the lesson to be learned here."

It's unclear where this "theory" originated, but Limbaugh was referring to a piece posted at Pajamas Media on Friday by Roger Simon, who purported to guide readers through the "mystery of the Kenyan birth" and offered several "explanations" for why the pamphlet, published by Obama's former literary agency in 1991, said Obama was "born in Kenya." He ultimately concluded that "the agent's source for Obama's birthplace was... Barack Obama." Simon went on to write:

Why would he lie about where he was born?

Well, he might have wanted to glamorize his past, but if that's so, it's pathetic. I suspected there was a more substantive reason, one that would cause him to leave his African birth place in place in the bio. But to take the risk of being found out, it would have to be strong.

[...]

What if, we thought, as others have suggested, the reason Obama's school records have not surfaced is that he enrolled, at one of those institutions at least, as a foreign student -- a Kenyan?

But why would he choose to do that? Well, maybe for a grant, a subvention, a scholarship that was available uniquely to students from Africa or similar locales.

Yes, I know that's not "fair," in the lexicon of the Lord of Fairness, to have adopted a phony identity and deprived others of an opportunity they may have more richly deserved. But it would certainly fit with Obama's early need to be recognized as a Kenyan by his agent and, presumably, his publisher. As we all know, it's not the crime, but the cover-up. (In this case, actually, it's both.)

As time went on, of course, college drifted away and politics reared its head. The Kenyan identity became less necessary, even a liability, so it was dropped.

I don't know about you -- but this makes sense to me. It also fits with the tomb-like silence around his college years.

But I could be wrong.

The conservative Powerline blog, which Limbaugh cited, jumped on Simon's thread, calling the theory "intriguing" and "thought-provoking."

Sadly, there is nothing "intriguing" or "thought-provoking" about entertaining conspiracies that are being pulled, as far as I can tell, from the air -- especially when so many holes have been poked into this particular birther bubble:

In a National Review blog post, Katrina Trinko falsely accused Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of plagiarism. She alleged that Warren lifted passages for her 2005 book All Your Worth, which she co-wrote with her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi, from another book:

Trinko has since deleted that blog post and published a correction:

I took down my earlier post on Elizabeth Warren plagiarizing from the book Getting On the Money Track.  On Amazon.com, the Warren book All Your Worth is listed as having been published January 9, 2006. As it turns out, that is the paperback publication date; the hardback book was published in March 2005. As such, it appears that Getting on the Money Track (published in October 2005) plagiarized from All Your Worth, not the other way around. 

I apologize for the error.

On Fox News' flagship news program, Special Report, guest host Shannon Bream repeated National Review's false report:

Will Special Report issue a correction on Monday?

Latching onto a Congressional Research Service report commissioned by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Fox News suggested today that government investments in clean energy hurt our military. But experts agree that investments in clean energy technology and climate mitigation benefit our national security.

The report found that the federal government has spent more than $68 billion since 2008 on climate-related activities. The majority of these funds went to the Climate Change Technology Program, which invests in renewable energy and other energy technologies that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Although only a small fraction of that funding -- about 0.01% -- went to the Defense Department, Fox anchor Martha MacCallum suggested that climate change programs are being funded at the expense of national security, asking: "Is the White House putting green energy ahead of defense?" And the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore added: "I do think this national security issue is really the crux of the issue about whether we want money that should be spent to keep us safe and keep us secure going for green programs."

Let's put things in perspective. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Pentagon has spent $776 million on climate change programs over the past 4 years. This accounts for approximately 0.0002% of total defense spending over that time frame -- hardly excessive to address a problem that military experts agree poses a major national security threat.

During a May 18 appearance on Fox's America's Newsroom, conspiracy peddler Katie Pavlich made a number of far out claims concerning how the doctrine of separation of power relates to the ongoing investigation of the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious by congressional Republicans. 

As you may recall from high school civics class, separation of powers refers to the system of government we have in the United States where the authority of the federal government is divided among three co-equal branches. This equilibrium between branches of the federal government is maintained through the system of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution.

But in Pavlich's world, the legislative branch reigns supreme and the Department of Justice must supply any and all documents requested by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) during his committee's investigation. This ridiculous theory would disrupt the system of checks and balances and is refuted by Congress' own research department and court precedent concerning the right of the Executive to withhold certain types of information. 

KATIE PAVLICH, TOWNHALL NEWS EDITOR: Not to mention you have the Justice Department engaging in a full on cover-up, the latest in Eric Holder refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena, which they have the authority to issue and Justice Department has to comply with it under the terms of the Constitution. It's just another way of proving that they really have a lot to hide here.

[...]

BILL HEMMER, HOST: You also know there are tens of thousands of documents that have been given internally to an IG -- an inspector general -- why is that not sufficient? Explain that?

PAVLICH: Well the Inspector General actually worked for Eric Holder during his time as a U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. so there is a conflict of interest there. And everything that the Inspector General is privy to, Congress is also privy too, and the Justice Department investigating itself on this matter, they are willing to go to the lengths of covering it up internally.

[...]

PAVLICH: Speaker Boehner did push President Obama this week to tell his Attorney General to start complying and getting to the bottom of Fast and Furious. In fact, this investigation has been going on for more than a year now. We deserve answers. And President Obama, as the Commander in Chief, has a responsibility to tell his Attorney General, "Congress has the authority to subpoena you and you have to comply with that."

In the span of a few minutes, Pavlich butchered a number of basic principles concerning how our federal government operates. It was pointless of Pavlich to mention that the Department of Justice's inspector general used to work for Attorney General Eric Holder in order to suggest bias on his part, because the Department of Justice's inspector general also works for Holder presently. That is what (non-presidentially appointed) inspectors general do; they serve as politically independent individuals within government agencies for the purpose of conducting internal investigations. Furthermore, the president's responsibilities as Commander in Chief relate to command of the military, not the president's ability to oversee federal agencies as Pavlich suggested.

But the biggest error made by Pavlich -- one that she repeated three times during her appearance -- is that the Department of Justice must turn over every single document requested by the House Oversight Committee in order to be in compliance with Issa's subpoena.

"You think rising cell phone thefts are bad? Wait till car thefts soar back over 100,000 a year. Wait till you start hearing about mushrooms and learn that the word refers to children who have been struck by stray bullets."

So opined the editorial board of the New York Daily News in response to public scrutiny of the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy -- a controversial program that last year alone resulted in over 685,000 stops of primarily black and Latino residents (only 12% of persons stopped were charged with a crime). This week, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin granted class action status to a group of victims of the policy who are bringing suit against the city for what they argue is a discriminatory and unconstitutional practice. The Daily News, as well as the New York Post, viewed the ruling -- which they inexplicably believe risks the existence of the "stop-and-frisk" practice altogether -- as nothing less than life-threatening.

In the aforementioned editorial, titled "How to kill New York," the Daily News editorial board ominously predicted that If the program is reformed, 'the body count will start rising.'

The NY Post's editors weighed in as well, attacking outspoken critics of the program whom the editors say "won't rest until the murder rate skyrockets":

They're playing with fire -- all of them.

Indeed, if they do manage to weaken the program, the blood of new crime victims will be on their hands.

So: Will the city once again become the Crime Capital of the World?

Alas, so it seems.

As details continue to emerge of the latest Wall Street scandal -- J.P. Morgan Chase's $3 billion trading loss - many investors would no doubt be surprised to learn that a below-the-radar effort is underway to virtually eliminate their ability to hold corporate management accountable. If this campaign succeeds, it will block investors alleging fraud, insider trading and accounting scams in financial markets from going to court, and force them into a corporate-friendly arbitration system that limits their rights and keeps Wall Street's wrongdoing behind closed doors. Consumers of credit card, cell phone and banking services (which is to say, most Americans) have already lost to forced arbitration their right to use class action lawsuits to hold corporations accountable, thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions. Significant though the consequences would be of adding investors to this list at a time when misconduct on Wall Street dominates the headlines, the effort to replace investor class actions with forced arbitration has received almost no attention in the media.

In recent months there have been several attempts to force investors in certain corporations into arbitration and strip them of the power to hold the companies publicly accountable for fraud, negligence or other misconduct via class action lawsuits. An attempt by The Carlyle Group to force arbitration by investors as part of its initial public offering was withdrawn by the company in the face of opposition from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency charged with regulating the financial markets. In two other cases, the managements of Gannett and Pfizer, to their credit, opposed shareholder proposals seeking to force arbitration, and argued to the SEC that the proposals violated federal securities law. In each case, the SEC agreed. In addition, a similar proposal was made in connection with Frontier Communications; Frontier's board recommended that shareholders vote against the arbitration proposal, and it was defeated.

On May 17, The New York Times reported on a plan presented to Joe Rickett's Ending Spending Action Fund that would highlight controversial remarks made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright and link these remarks to President Obama. Soon after the report received widespread coverage, the Romney campaign rejected the attack on Obama, despite having brought up Rev. Wright himself in Sean Hannity's radio show as recently as February. After having obsessed about Rev. Wright in the 2008 election, the right-wing media reacted to the decision by lamenting the opportunity to reignite the attack.

The New York Times article reported that in a report titled "The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama," a "group of high-profile Republican strategists" proposed a plan that:

[C]alls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.

"The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way," says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade.

[...]

The $10 million plan, one of several being studied by Mr. Ricketts, includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama's former ties to Mr. Wright, who espouses what is known as "black liberation theology."

The group suggested hiring as a spokesman an "extremely literate conservative African-American" who can argue that Mr. Obama misled the nation by presenting himself as what the proposal calls a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln."

But the right-wing media has not followed Romney as he has attempted to distance himself from the ad campaign.

A May 18 Wall Street Journal article claimed that the "tenor" of a recently proposed super PAC ad campaign to attack President Obama over his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright "was far different than that adopted so far by [Mitt] Romney," and that Romney's campaign "has been focused on raising money" and the economy while "rarely straying beyond those topics." But as Politico pointed out, Romney invoked Wright as recently as February to attack the president.

From the Wall Street Journal (note: full article available behind pay wall):

Mr. Romney's comments on the Obama campaign's attack, three days after the ad was released, underscored his campaign's approach in recent days: It has been focused on raising money and building Mr. Romney's image as a businessman concerned about the economy and federal debt, rarely straying beyond those topics--including putting him in front of a monitor at public events showing an updated total of the national debt.

[...]

The tenor of the proposed ad [linking President Obama to Reverend Wright] was far different than that adopted so far by Mr. Romney and many other GOP-leaning groups, which have chosen not to attack Mr. Obama personally. The episode was a reminder that while independent super PACs have shown their power to assist candidates they favor, they also hold the potential to complicate or contradict a candidate's own messages.

The Daily Caller recently reported that "$3.1 billion in DOE loan guarantees" to First Solar "created mostly overseas jobs." In fact, the chairman of First Solar testified before Congress that "all the jobs directly created with the loan guarantees" are American.

The Daily Caller embedded video of his testimony in its report, but apparently didn't watch it all the way through. Neither did right-wing news aggregator Weasel Zippers, which ran with a similarly misleading headline.

In a House Oversight Committee hearing, Chairman Darrell Issa attempted to make hay of the fact that First Solar, which is based in Arizona and employs thousands in the U.S., also has solar projects and employees overseas. But Michael Ahearn, the chairman of First Solar, clarified that the loan guarantees only support projects in the U.S.:

REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA): OK, so jobs created with loan guarantees, stimulus, and others, basically not American.

MICHAEL AHEARN, FIRST SOLAR: No, no, all those jobs are American and all the jobs directly created with the loan guarantee.

For conservatives, it never gets old. It's 2012 and Obama's dedicated media foes are still writing about his possible foreign birthplace.  

But now, in a confusing twist, conservatives are demanding the mainstream press pay great attention to the latest Kenya-related blip-of-a-revelation, that a 21-year-old publishing pamphlet not meant for public distribution erroneously claimed that Obama had been born in Kenya. (The author of the pamphlet insists it was a simple mistake.) One Breitbart blogger is now insisting that the press take this story very, very seriously and follow it up with detailed reports. And if journalists don't, well, that's just proof that the liberal media is covering for Obama.

Please note that up until very recently, conservatives were making the exact opposite claim. You'll recall that birtherism, according to some right-wing pundits, was a liberal media conspiracy and the only reason the story lived on was because the Obama-loving press wouldn't stop writing about it in hopes of making the president's opponents look like "right-wing nutjob kooks."  (Hint: They didn't need any help.)

The claim, of course, was pure fiction. Last year, it was Fox News that went all-in on the birther story and gave Donald Trump a national platform to embarrass himself with his birth certificate expedition.  

Nonetheless, right-wing commentators were in heated agreement: Talk of Obama's birthplace was a deliberate "distraction" cooked up by the press and the White House to keep people's minds off the real issues of the day.

If so, then Breitbart.com is now part of that vast left-wing conspiracy, as the site has morphed into a clearinghouse this week with scores of blog posts about burning questions that surround Obama's birthplace. Or at least the burning question that surrounds a 1991 pamphlet that mentioned his birthplace.

Team Breitbart is making all the strenuous claim that by raising questions about Obama being listed as "Born in Kenya" on an old publishing pamphlet, and blogging about the topic incessantly, they're not wallowing in birtherism. But it's a distinction without a difference, really. Either you purposefully feed this conspiratorial jibberish or you don't.

This week there has been lots of feeding going on and naturally it's been loudly promoted by professional birthers, such as Joseph Farah, who heralded the Breitbart pamphlet story as a "breakthrough." (Although Farah was upset the Breitbart crew was "still reticent about publishing this blockbuster for fear of being labeled 'birthers.'") Breitbart.com contributor Pam Geller also held up the pamphlet story as validation of her previous birther nonsense.

Last year, Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly, two birther non-believers, were lamenting the story's astonishing staying power when Rove noted, "Every moment that conservatives talk about this, they marginalize and diminish themselves in the minds of independent voters."

Rove and others please take note, it wasn't the liberal media or the Obama White House that forced the entire right-wing blogosphere to, once again, wallow in questions about Obama's birthplace this week. That dubious distinction came from within the heart of the conservative movement,  Breitbart.com.

UPDATED: According to a Breitbart post today, the press is now ignoring, or covering up, the site's birther scoop. So, last year the press protected Obama by hyping the birther story. Now the press is protecting Obama by not hyping the birther story.

Noted.

In a May 18 post, on his blog, RedState, CNN's Erick Erickson praised Breitbart.com for its May 17 "vetting" of  Obama, using the post to call Obama a "Composite Kenyan." From his May 18 RedState post:

The Breitbart Crew has done the world a very valuable service in finding a 1991 biography of Barack Obama from his literary agent claiming he was "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."

[...]

The point is not that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. The point is that Barack Obama has repeatedly been perfectly okay embellishing and having others embellish his qualifications and biography to make himself someone unique instead of just another Chicago politician. The pattern goes back to his job as a "financial reporter". A former colleague of his and Obama fan, way back in 2005, claims Barack Obama really embellished his resume describing his financial related reporting.

[...]

[T]he largest point, however, is that the media is yet again caught flat footed, claiming the story is no big deal, irrelevant, or that somehow the Breitbart Crew is in the wrong and peddling Birtherism.

They are not peddling Birtherism. The Breitbart Crew are kind of like illegal immigrants -- doing reporting Columbia journalism grads won't do. In 2008, the New York Times ran a big story on John McCain having an affair with a lobbyist. It got picked up all over the place. Reporters were on the trail. There was no *there* there.

FoxNews.com recently promoted the internet-based conspiracy theory that financier and philanthropist George Soros will somehow corrupt vote counting in the United States through a Spanish company "that Soros owns a big share of." The conspiracy is false: Soros has no involvement or investments in the company.  

During the May 14 edition of the FoxNews.com program Campaign Insiders, Doug Schoen read co-host Pat Caddell a viewer question asking if "there was any truth to the report that a Spanish company doing the vote count -- counting for the U.S. national election, has been engaged to do that and that it is a Soros-controlled."

After admitting that he hasn't "done enough work on it," Caddell still claimed Soros was "an investor in it" and that "this raises a problem": 

A May 17 New York Times article reported that a group of Republican strategists have proposed a sizable campaign to attack President Obama's character. The article set off a wave of condemnations not just from progressives, but also from Mitt Romney and one of the high-profile conservative donors whom the proposal was pitched to.

On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity acknowledged Romney's rejection of the proposal's tactics, which focus on playing up Obama's relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Hannity played a clip in which Romney said, "I want to make it very clear: I repudiate that effort."

After the clip of Romney, Hannity said, "Now, Governor Romney, I have to respectfully disagree with you." He continued:

Now, I do believe the economy, jobs, national security are by far the most pressing issue [sic] facing the country today. I also feel that every candidate, though, needs to be fully vetted. Now, that's something the mainstream media failed to do back in 2008 with Barack Obama, and I believe that the president's relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a man that influenced him for over 20 years, inspired him, is a very important campaign issue. After all, it is a matter of character.

Hannity is creating an alternate reality in which the "mainstream media failed" to vet Obama in 2008.

For instance, on the subject of Wright -- Hannity's undying obsession -- there was a blizzard of media coverage. Over the course of about two months in the early part of 2008, The New York Times and The Washington Post published dozens of articles and columns that mentioned Wright.

Hannity is wishing for a 2008 that never happened.

This afternoon on Fox News' America Live, Megyn Kelly did a segment on criticism of the way venture capital firm Bain Capital, under Mitt Romney's leadership, handled the takeover of a steel mill that later went bankrupt. Unmentioned any point during the segment, however, was the fact that the U.S. government ultimately had to bailout the company by funding the pension payments that the steel mill had promised its employees.

During the segment, Kelly hosted the former CEO of the company Bain created during the takeover of the steel mill. Kelly said that Bain made a "$4 million profit" and "$4.5 million in consulting fees," and adding that an Obama campaign ad -- which PolitiFact rated as "Mostly True" -- "paint[s] Bain under Romney" as "just not caring about" the pensions or employment of the steel mill workers. But she did not mention the bailout.  

During the May 16 edition of America's Newsroom, Fox News "straight news" anchor Martha MacCallum and Fox News contributor and The Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson echoed complaints from the Republican chaired House Oversight Committee about the documents the Justice Department has released responding to their subpoena of files related to the failed Fast and Furious operation: 

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well there were 22 questions in the last subpoena. 13 of them remain unanswered. The Justice Department hasn't forwarded documents that the House Oversight Committee has requested. And by the way some of those questions, that's the majority of questions, remain unanswered, some of them pertain directly to Attorney General Eric Holder. The Justice Department's position appears to be we can investigate this internally and so we don't need to comply with Congress. I think this is a collision course. Remember this subpoena was issued in October. It's been more than six months now and they have refused to comply. And they have not invoked executive privilege by the way. So it's not even clear on what grounds they are refusing to comply. I don't think there is any question, at least at this point, that there is going to be a contempt citation. 

MARTHA MACCALLUM, HOST: Well we'll see. And it feels like stalling and feet dragging to a great extent on the part of the Department of Justice.

CARLSON: Right.

MACCALLUM: Because they are saying they can't fire anybody, they are doing their own investigation. That is going to take quite some time, most likely until after the election is over and that until they finish that investigation--snicker snicker--and until that investigation is over they feel it wouldn't be right to come out and talk about who they think knew more than they say they knew or exactly when Eric Holder became aware of this program that saw a law enforcement agent killed.

Carlson's comments echo the reporting of his employee, Daily Caller reporter Matthew Boyle, who has written numerous articles about Fast and Furious over the past few months. His pieces almost invariably include the line, "Holder has failed to comply with Issa's Oct. 12, 2011, subpoena," or some variation thereof and often include the claim that DOJ has been nonresponsive to 13 of the subpoena's 22 questions.   

These reports minimize the fact that DOJ has released extensive and detailed information about what documents the agency has released to Issa. According to DOJ, responsive documents to 16 of the 22 questions contained in Issa's subpoena have been turned over to the House Oversight Committee or been made available for viewing by Oversight Committee staff. DOJ has stated that no responsive information exists to one of the questions. Additionally, DOJ has stated it does possess documents responsive to the five remaining questions in the subpoena and additional documents responsive to the other categories, but that it is unable to release this material because it is either relevant to ongoing criminal investigations or prosecutions or is deliberative and therefore protected by executive privilege.  

But Fox News and The Daily Caller would rather regurgitate Republican talking points than admit that there are two sides to this story.