Media Matters for America

On the December 8 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly again attacked the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), calling the organization "grossly irresponsible" and accusing it of "going out of its way to help Al Qaeda" and "aiding and abetting the enemy." Media Matters for America has documented several of O'Reilly's previous attacks on the ACLU (here, here, here, here, here, and here). When O'Reilly asked Fox News contributor and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) if he agreed with his characterization of the ACLU, Gingrich replied, "Yes," and asserted that "the ACLU has been taken over by a group of people whose vision of America is so weird and so contrary to the overwhelming values of over 95 percent of the American people." Gingrich added, "[I]t's almost as though they were into destruction for its own sake and weakening and undermining America for its own sake." He also labeled the ACLU "a consistently destructive organization that is opposed to and undermines the values of most Americans, and takes positions that are consistently weakening the security of the United States."

O'Reilly and Gingrich's comments came during a segment that also focused on whether ABC News should have reported the locations of secret CIA detention facilities in Poland and Romania.

From the December 8 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: All right, and that brings us to the other group. And you know, certainly ABC News is a responsible organization. They made a decision. And the folks can decide for themselves whether -- who they agree with. The ACLU, I think, is a grossly irresponsible, irresponsible organization that is going out of its way to help Al Qaeda, that I don't think ABC News is in that category at all. I mean, I think they're doing what they think is best for the country. The ACLU is doing what they think is best for the country they envision, not the country we have now, but certainly is aiding and abetting the enemy. Do you agree?

GINGRICH: Yes. I think the ACLU has been taken over by a group of people whose vision of America is so weird and so contrary to the overwhelming values of over 95 percent of the American people. And they are so aggressive in pushing some of the most extreme cases that one has to wonder what their underlying core values are. I mean, it's almost as though they were into destruction for its own sake and weakening and undermining America for its own sake. And certainly in a free society, you have to put up with a certain amount of this kind of behavior. But I do think there's a point to which it's legitimate to say that the ACLU is a consistently destructive organization that is opposed to and undermines the values of most Americans, and takes positions that are consistently weakening the security of the United States.

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights president William A. Donohue took to the airwaves December 7 and 8, criticizing the White House holiday card for excluding the word "Christmas." He described the omission as a "dumbing down" of the holiday, and charged President Bush with "pulling a Clinton" by "caving in to the forces of political correctness." Donohue appeared in segments on the December 7 broadcasts of ABC's World News Tonight and MSNBC's Scarborough Country. On December 8, he was interviewed live on CNN's American Morning by anchors Miles O'Brien and Carol Costello. As anchors or commentators on all three networks noted, White House holiday cards have not included the word 'Christmas' during the terms of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. It was not included in the final six years of former President Ronald Reagan's term. This year's card does not mark a departure from the practices of recent previous administrations.

Donohue also indicated that his indictment of the White House holiday card stemmed from his desire to maintain "leverage" against retailers who similarly choose to employ non-Christian holiday greetings in advertisements or store displays. On American Morning, O'Brien pressed Donohue, "What if Jesus got this card, what would he do? Would he be angry about it? He'd be OK with it, wouldn't he?" Donohue responded, "Well, maybe he would, but I've never met him." O'Brien subsequently asked twice, "WWJD?"

From the December 7 broadcast of ABC's World News Tonight which featured anchor Bob Woodruff and ABC News correspondent John Donvan:

WOODRUFF: Finally tonight -- every year around this time, about a million and a half people get a card from the White House. And even in those kind of numbers, a lot of people enjoy the gesture from the president and Mrs. Bush. Well, this year, some of the president's most energetic supporters were less than thrilled with what they got in the mail. Here's ABC's John Donvan.

DONVAN: This most popular president among conservative Christians. He lights the tree. He discusses the true meaning of Christmas.

PRESIDENT BUSH [clip]: For over two millennia, Christmas has carried the message that God is with us.

DONVAN: But the card he sent out this year, that was not Christian enough, better make that "Christmassy" enough, for some: family pets; a nice gold seal inside; some Old Testament. But "Best Wishes for the Holiday Season," that is not "Merry Christmas," which infuriated William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

DONOHUE [clip]: At a time when a lot of Christians today are very upset about the way our society is dumbing down Christmas, they certainly don't want to see the president of the United States chiming in. We know him as a man of courage. So why is he caving in to the forces of political correctness?

DONVAN: It's that secular "Happy Holidays" thing that Donohue's and other groups can't stand. In recent years, they've threatened boycotts of stores like Macy's and Targets for failing to mention Christmas by name.

DONOHUE [clip]: Prior to Clinton, none of the presidents had a problem saying "Merry Christmas" at Christmastime. Now Bush is pulling a Clinton. I expected more from this guy.

DONVAN: Well, that's not quite right. Both Presidents Carter and Reagan sometimes sent cards that never said "Christmas." By the way, President Bush almost never explicitly says the words "Jesus" or "Christ" out loud in public. A rare exception, in this debate, when asked to name his favorite philosopher.

BUSH [clip]: Jesus Christ. Because he changed my heart.

DONVAN: Conservative Christians like William Donohue, obviously, would like to see more of that. In fact, today I asked him, "What if we elect a Jewish president? He or she should send out cards every year that say 'Merry Christmas'?" "Absolutely," was his answer. John Donvan, ABC News, Washington.

WOODRUFF: The White House released a statement late today saying that the holiday card is similar to what they've sent for the last five years and they went to people of many faiths.

From the December 7 broadcast of MSNBC's Scarborough Country which featured host Joe Scarborough and radio host Bill Press:

SCARBOROUGH: Welcome back. The controversy over Christmas continues. I just can't believe it, but it does. The latest flash point: the White House. This year's Christmas card is not a Christmas card at all. It's actually a holiday card. And some evangelical leaders out there are not happy. With me to talk about it, Jennifer Giroux. She's the founder of Women Influencing the Nation. She's running a website called OperationJustSayMerryChristmas.com. We also have Bill Donohue. He's the president of the Catholic League. And Bill Press, author of the new book How the Republicans Stole Christmas (Doubleday, October 2005). Well, William Donohue, people like Bill Press would say, this is a large country. It's a diverse country. Shouldn't the president of the United States represent everybody when he sends out holiday cards, and not just evangelical Christians?

DONOHUE: No. He had a Hanukkah party yesterday in the White House, and that's fine with me. And you know what? I have been invited to St. Patrick's Day get-together, and I guess he excluded everybody who is not Irish. Too bad for them. That's our day. Look, everybody in this country -- you have Gay Pride Week. That means straight guys like me are excluded. Too bad for me. Look, it's a Christmas card. Why can't you say 'Merry Christmas and Happy New Year' in a Christmas card? I am not going to be a hypocrite about this. If I am going after some of the retailers, I am not going to give W. a pass, even though I think he is basically a good guy.

[...]

SCARBOROUGH: Bill Press, though, what's the big deal, though, if the president does send out a card that says 'Merry Christmas,' just like George Bush 41 did, and just like presidents have been doing for quite some time?

PRESS: Some presidents have, and other presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton at some point and the first President Bush, I believe at some point, did send out 'Happy Holiday' cards.

[...]

DONOHUE: Look, in Kansas, they wanted to put on -- in Shawnee, Kansas, they wanted to put on a depiction of a nativity scene, and they said, "well, you can't, because we are not allowed to have Baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph there. So, you can just have some animals in the background, like they did in Memphis, Tennessee." You've got friendship trees. You've got peace trees. You have union trees. Look, why are people so sensitive? As a matter of fact, from FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt], up until Bush's father, every president had at least one Christmas card where they said, "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year." My question is this: Where is the evidence that the 15 percent of the population which is not Catholic -- or not Christian, I should say -- were in a rage over this? There's no evidence about this. As a matter of fact, I think it's really damnable, because you are suggesting that Jews and Muslims are a bunch of bigots who suffer apoplexy every time they hear the word Christmas. That is simply wrong. The bigotry is coming from the left, as usual.

PRESS: There's no bigotry from the -- there's no bigotry from the -- we are talking about the president of the United States. He is hardly a member of the left. The president -- listen, for one time, on national television, I want to defend George W. Bush. I think it's very keeping with the season that he is embracing all Americans. He is being very inclusive. And he is saying, "no matter what your faith is, we are all Americans, let's all celebrate a holiday season." I have got to tell you, I think -- I don't want to get personal here -- but I think anybody's faith is awfully thin if they are -- their Christianity is so thin that it's thrown off by somebody saying "Happy Holiday."

From the December 8 broadcast of CNN's American Morning which featured hosts Miles O'Brien and Costello:

COSTELLO: Let's talk about another controversy going on -- the White House Christmas card.

O'BRIEN: Well, but it's not a Christmas card, that's the problem.

COSTELLO: Oh yeah, it's a holiday card.

O'BRIEN: Holiday card. See, it doesn't mention Christmas. And so there's this whole thing -- it has -- it's interesting. There it is, there's Barney and -- what's the other one? -- the two Scottish terriers. I forget their names -- Beasley -- Beasley and whatever. Beasley and Barney. Beasley and Barney. OK. Outside -- the White House, very pretty thing. You open up the card and there is a passage from the Old Testament. The pre-Christmas testament. And then a happy holiday season greeting, and this is in keeping with what the Bush White House has done thus far during its tenure, and what the Clinton White House did and apparently six out of eight Reagan holiday cards were, you know, non-religious. People this year, because of all this discussion about Christmas, are upset about it.

COSTELLO: Oh, yeah. It's become quite the issue. Quite the explosive issue. We're gonna talk to someone from the Catholic League about this because he's really angry.

[...]

O'BRIEN: It is the holiday season, and I say that h-word with some trepidation, because you say that these days and people get upset with you. That's how things are going in this season of concern about what's happening to Christmas. And enter into all that along with all the other concerns about Wal-Mart and whether they're say -- doing things to exclude Christmas, the White House -- I would say Christmas card, but holiday card, which is distinctly well, it's Old Testament, put it that way. Joining me now is Bill Donohue. He's president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He got this card in the mail -- not very happy about it. Why not?

DONOHUE: Well, when I first got it, I wasn't too unhappy, quite frankly, cause I thought this -- this kind of generic Christmas card is probably something all presidents did. Then I found out later in the day -- I got a phone call from Alan Cooperman from The Washington Post and said I was wrong on that, that every president from FDR up until Bush one [President George H.W. Bush] had at least one Christmas card where they mention 'Merry Christmas.' It began under Clinton, they decided to neuter it. So I began to wonder, why is W not following his father' precedent, as opposed to Clinton's. That made me a little bit angry, and after all we went after Wal-Mart, I'm not gonna be a phony about this and say that a president whom I've met and that I like -- I'm not gonna be be a phony about it and give him a pass. So I think he should put out a Christmas card after all, is it too much to ask people to say "Merry Christmas" at Christmastime in a Christmas card?

O'BRIEN: Well, maybe the concern is, there are people of other faiths and the White House is representative of all Americans who practice all kinds of religions.

DONOHUE: I don't know of any evidence whatsoever that there was a protest by any segment of the American population -- of those 15 percent of Americans who are not Christian, when they got a Christmas card from W's father, from Reagan, from [former President Jimmy] Carter, and everybody else going back to FDR. The assumption is that somehow these non-Christians are bigots, they get upset with a 'Merry Christmas' card at Christmastime. If somebody mistakenly gave me a 'Happy Hanukkah' card I might laugh at it, I certainly wouldn't feel insulted.

COSTELLO: Oh come on though, I mean, is this really hurting Christmas, is this really diminish--I mean is this really such a big deal?

DONOHUE: On one hand, no. However, when you put it together with everything else that's happening in our society, where you have nativity scenes that are banned but you have menorahs that are okay, and you get a president who's in there -- in office -- because traditional Catholics and evangelical Protestants put him there -- if he's gonna be the leader and he starts to dumb down Christmas, how can I then have any leverage against retailers who are trying to dumb it down at the same time?

COSTELLO: So, to heck with all the rest of the people, he's gotta just, you know, his backers, he's gotta please them, but nobody else in the country?

DONOHUE: No, I think that, you know, I'm Irish and I'm a veteran and if you're not Irish and you're not a veteran too bad for you on St. Patrick's Day and Veteran's Day. I am straight and I don't get celebrated during Gay Pride week. Too bad for me. What have we come to in this country? We can't celebrate real --

O'BRIEN: Okay, let me ask you this, I'm going to ask you a quick question, Bill. What if Jesus got this card, what would he do? Would he be angry about it? He'd be okay with it, wouldn't he?

DONOHUE: Well, maybe he would, but I've never met him.

O'BRIEN: Well, you know what I mean.

DONOHUE: No, but oh, come on --

O'BRIEN: No, but you follow his precepts: WWJD? He wouldn't be angry about this. He'd say, it's OK --

DONOHUE: Well, I'm not gonna be in a position of criticizing Jesus, but I will criticize the president because I think that he should have followed the lead of his father -- you're getting me in a very tough situation, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Well, I mean, I think that's a legitimate question. You're talking -- you know, if it's a Christian holiday and you as a Christian are demanding it, you have to ask, what would the person who invented Christianity do about it, right?

DONOHUE: Why do we have to dumb down and neuter Christmas? The assumption is if you say "Merry Christmas" to a non-Christian, they're gonna get angry? I don't believe it. Yes, there are some bigots, but I don't think most Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists and others and including atheists are a bunch of bigots who get upset with "Merry Christmas." They know a Christmas card when they see it, they expect people to say 'Merry Christmas,' including the president.

COSTELLO: Well, I just have a final question. If we had a Jewish president, would the Jewish president --

DONOHUE: Of course he would send it out because --

COSTELLO: -- he would send out Christmas cards?

DONOHUE: It's not about him, it's about the fact that this is a recognition of a merry Christmas. If we -- look I mean -- what is the big deal here? People send me St. Patrick's Day cards who are Italian. I don't get upset about that and they're not angry because they send it to me. I mean, our sensitivities have gone too crazy here.

COSTELLO: Everybody celebrates St. Patrick's Day. We could argue about this --

O'BRIEN: And, and, and everybody celebrates Christmas in a sense because there is --

DONOHUE: That's right.

O'BRIEN: -- it's become a very secular, commercial --

DONOHUE: So why can't they say Christmas?

O'BRIEN: Well, I --

DONOHUE: What's wrong with "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays"? Or "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year"?

O'BRIEN: That sounds -- that sounds very [inaudible]. 'Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Chanukah, Peaceful Kwanzaa,' do it all, just list it all.

DONOHUE: No, no, no --

O'BRIEN: No, you don't like that one either? (laughs)

DONOHUE: No, no, I don't. I don't want it dumbed down and generic, I want 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.' That's what I want.

O'BRIEN: That's what you want. Alright, Bill Donohue.

DONOHUE: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: WWJD?

In his December 6 column, National Review editor Rich Lowry, in an effort to refute claims made in the documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, argued that Wal-Mart is not "a welfare queen," repeating the misleading claim that "only about 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are on Medicaid, the same proportion as other retailers." Lowry did not note that an internal Wal-Mart memo acknowledges that 27 percent of children of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). According to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education, that figure is significantly greater than the percentage for all large retailers, as is the total percentage of children of Wal-Mart employees who either are on Medicaid or SCHIP or are uninsured.

From Lowry's December 6 column:

Although The High Cost attacks Wal-Mart as a welfare queen, only about 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are on Medicaid, the same proportion as other retailers. [New York University visiting scholar Jason] Furman points out [in a report titled, Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story]that a Wal-Mart worker who has to decide whether to buy the company's family insurance policy at a cost of $1,800 annually or take Medicaid coverage instead is wise to go on Medicaid. "The beneficiary of choosing Medicaid is the worker," Furman writes, "not Wal-Mart."

Like Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby and New York Times columnist John Tierney, who have offered similar misleading defenses of Wal-Mart, Lowry based his column largely on Furman's paper. (Mallaby and Tierney apparently relied on a preliminary version of Furman's paper dated November 14; Furman released a revised version dated November 28.) In his paper on Wal-Mart, Furman did state that "[i]n total, ... 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are on Medicaid, which is similar to the percentage for other large retailers and is comparable to the national average of 4 percent." Furman's source for this comparison was an internal memo written by M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits. The New York Times reported on the memo in an October 26 article.

But in his column, Lowry omitted a different figure that Furman included in the revised, November 28, version of his paper: Citing the Chambers memo, Furman noted that 27 percent of the children of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP.* According to the memo, the national average for all employers is 22 percent. Chambers's memo further stated that "[i]n total, 46 percent of [Wal-Mart] Associates' children are either on Medicaid [or SCHIP] or are uninsured" -- a fact not noted by either Furman or Lowry.

In a supporting exhibit, Chambers's memo claimed that 36 percent of all retail employees' children are on Medicaid or SCHIP -- a figure that exceeds Wal-Mart's 27 percent. Citing the memo, Furman repeated these figures.

However, as Media Matters for America has noted, an October 26 paper by researchers at UC-Berkeley's Center for Labor Research and Education presents a very different conclusion. Using data from the 2005 Current Population Survey, the UC-Berkeley researchers "analyzed the difference between Wal-Mart's reported numbers and those for large retailers in general (defined as those with 1,000 or more workers)." They found that "22% of children of employees of large retailers are enrolled in Medicaid/SCHIP, compared to 27% reported by Wal-Mart for their employees' children." In contrast to Wal-Mart's claim, the UC-Berkeley researchers reported that only 22.7 percent of children of all retail employees are enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP. Additionally, they noted, "While 46% of the children of Wal-Mart workers are either uninsured or on Medicaid/SCHIP, the comparable figure for children of all large retail workers is 29%."

* A previous Media Matters item referring to Mallaby's November 28 column and Tierney's November 29 column (subscription required) stated: "Furman, Mallaby, and Tierney all failed to reveal that in that same paragraph of the Chambers memo [noting that 5 percent of Wal-Mart employees are enrolled in Medicaid], Chambers acknowledged that children of Wal-Mart employees receive Medicaid or SCHIP at a significantly higher rate than the national employer average." Mallaby and Tierney's columns apparently cited the November 14 preliminary version of Furman's paper, which did not include data on the percentage of Wal-Mart employees' children enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP. The November 28 version of Furman's paper does provide this data.

Two major news outlets, in their coverage of President Bush's speech about the state of affairs in Iraq, reported without challenge the president's claims of success in two troubled Iraqi cities. A December 7 Associated Press report and a December 8 USA Today news article on Bush's December 7 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations about reconstruction in Iraq uncritically reported his claim of accomplishments in the cities of Najaf and Mosul as evidence of the progress of reconstruction efforts. A December 8 Washington Times editorial provided a similar assessment of reconstruction in those cities. By contrast, coverage of the president's speech in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times critically assessed the president's claims, reporting that both cities still face continued security issues as well as religious and ethnic tensions; an Associated Press article that similarly assessed conditions in Najaf and Mosul did not receive nearly as widespread publication as the AP's article covering the president's speech.

Both the AP and USA Today noted the president's claims regarding Mosul without challenge. The AP article, by reporter Deb Riechmann, offered Bush's claim that Najaf and Mosul were "two cities where headway is being made." Riechmann did note that "[i]n focusing on progress in the two cities, however, Bush did not dwell on violence-scarred cities like Baghdad or western expanses that have been a gateway for foreign militants." Similarly, the December 8 edition of USA Today, in an article by staff writers David Jackson and Andrea Stone, reported only that Bush had pointed to "Najaf and Mosul as prime examples of cities where reconstruction plans are working." A December 8 Washington Times editorial presented a similarly one-sided view of progress in Najaf and Mosul:

Najaf used to be one of Iraq's worst problem areas; now it has an elected government, political campaigns and signs of new economic activity. Iraqi police handle security; U.S. forces are now 40 minutes outside town, as Mr. Bush observed -- a sign that a place once overrun by terrorist militias is returning to a normalcy it never enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, whose thugs terrorized the Shia city.

In 2004, Mosul ranked with Fallujah as perhaps the most infamously violent place in the country; today U.S. forces are moving into a supporting security role. Insurgent violence is still a problem, but last year's chaos is over, and the city's political leadership has regained control. As one of Iraq's most populous cities and a center of commerce, Mosul's improvements rank among the most encouraging signs that things are improving on the ground in Iraq.

By contrast, reports in the December 8 editions of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times each provided independent assessments of the situation in Najaf and Mosul. The Post stated that "[i]n Najaf, militia fighters of the two rival religious parties that control the Shiite holy city recently clashed in street battles. A few days ago, former prime minister Ayad Allawi was attacked during a visit by an angry, rock-throwing mob that some Iraqis charge was backed by a militia -- and that Allawi called an assassination attempt." The New York Times article on the president's speech also described the attack on Allawi, noting that local security forces "did nothing to stop the attack" because of their loyalty to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia American forces battled last year in Najaf.

Regarding Mosul, the Post reported that "last Friday, Iraq's government imposed emergency law and a curfew in Sunni-dominated Mosul and throughout Ninevah province, and a senior U.S. official in Baghdad yesterday referred to the city of about 1.7 million as 'nasty Mosul.' " The New York Times reported that the Mosul police "still must be heavily backed by American firepower" when facing insurgents and that the "starkly sectarian nature of the security forces is evident, as the largely Sunni police are sharply at odds with the Kurd-dominated Iraqi Army in the north."

Both the Post and the Los Angeles Times articles also reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during her recent visit to Mosul, never entered the city itself due to security concerns. Instead, the military transported her from the airport to her destination in the area using a Black Hawk helicopter. The Los Angeles Times further reported that security concerns kept Rice from flying over the city; instead her helicopter had flown around it, through mostly unpopulated areas.

The Los Angeles Times report also provided the assessments of "[p]rivate analysts," who said that "each city had made progress. But they cautioned against reading too much into the improvements":

Patrick Clawson, a longtime Iraq analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank, said it was "a fair statement" that Najaf had improved. Although Mosul had improved, he said, it had suffered reversals before.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also a nonpartisan think tank, said that Najaf was "a fairly homogeneous Shia city" that wasn't representative of the real challenges in Iraq. And, he said, in Mosul the U.S. had frequently "patched one leak only to find another."

The same day as Bush's speech, the AP also put out two stories on conditions in Mosul and Najaf, respectively, that reported many of the same issues covered in the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times articles. However, far more newspapers appear to have picked up Riechmann's article on Bush's speech than the contrasting stories on conditions in the two cities, according to searches of Google News* and Nexis.** In particular, the Nexis search revealed five papers that ran Reichmann's story but did not run either of the AP stories that challenged the administration's claims: The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, The St. Petersburg Times, The State in Columbia, South Carolina, and The Capital in Annapolis, Maryland.

From the December 8 USA Today article by David Jackson and Andrea Stone:

Citing Najaf and Mosul as prime examples of cities where reconstruction plans are working, Bush said: "Many who once questioned democracy are coming off the fence. They're choosing the side of freedom."

Bush blamed many of Iraq's current problems on the ongoing insurgency and on Saddam Hussein's former regime.

From the December 8 Washington Times editorial titled "Progress in Iraq":

Najaf, Mosul and the Iraqi economy: These were the three pillars of President Bush's speech yesterday before the Council on Foreign Relations, and they are three of the best reasons why Howard Dean is utterly wrong to predict American defeat in Iraq. One wouldn't know it from the acrimonious debate in Washington, but the two former trouble spots are rapidly joining the 80 percent or so of Iraq that suffers little or no violence, while the Iraqi economy is looking better than it has in years.

Najaf used to be one of Iraq's worst problem areas; now it has an elected government, political campaigns and signs of new economic activity. Iraqi police handle security; U.S. forces are now 40 minutes outside town, as Mr. Bush observed -- a sign that a place once overrun by terrorist militias is returning to a normalcy it never enjoyed under Saddam Hussein, whose thugs terrorized the Shia city.

In 2004, Mosul ranked with Fallujah as perhaps the most infamously violent place in the country; today U.S. forces are moving into a supporting security role. Insurgent violence is still a problem, but last year's chaos is over, and the city's political leadership has regained control. As one of Iraq's most populous cities and a center of commerce, Mosul's improvements rank among the most encouraging signs that things are improving on the ground in Iraq.

From the December 7 Associated Press report by Deb Riechmann:

Bush cited Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, and Mosul in northern Iraq -- the stage for some of the bloodiest battles of the war -- as two cities where headway is being made. In focusing on progress in the two cities, however, Bush did not dwell on violence-scarred cities like Baghdad or western expanses that have been a gateway for foreign militants.

He said victory will be achieved when insurgents and others seeking to derail democracy in Iraq can no longer threaten the future of the nation, when Iraqi security forces can safeguard their own citizens and Iraq is not a haven for terrorists plotting attacks against the U.S. Yet, Democrats argue that U.S. engagement in Iraq is open-ended, costly in terms of lives and dollars, and they say the president refrains from giving the American people an idea of when U.S. troops might be able to return home.

* Google News searches: "Bush cited Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, and Mosul in northern Iraq -- the stage for some of the bloodiest battles of the war" (Reichmann article) and "former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited the Imam Ali shrine, among the holiest in Shiite Islam" (A closer look at Najaf)

** Nexis searches: "'Bush cited Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, and Mosul in northern Iraq'" for dates on or after 12/7/2005, on the All News database. Newspapers running the story were then searched using Nexis for "Najaf or Mosul," in the same time period in order to find any other stories about those cities in those papers.

On the December 8 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly offered a Factor jacket to radio "shock jock" Howard Stern. After Stern said, "I won't wear it, but I will give it to a crack whore" and handed it back, O'Reilly told him: "I'm not having this on some lesbian somewhere. It's not going to happen."

O'Reilly's comment came during part two of his three-part interview with Stern. Throughout his December 8 television show, O'Reilly read teasers for the taped interview:

• "And part two of my interview with Howard Stern. He has some problems with The Factor, and he's sticking up for lesbians."
• "And later, Howard Stern, a walking controversy. He talks about how lesbians have made him millions. Upcoming."
• "Howard Stern has some problems with The Factor but no problems with lesbians. We'll discuss the issues with him."
• "When we come back, part two of my interview with Howard Stern. He's got some problems with The Factor but no problems with lesbians. Don't miss this one. Right back with it."

In the interview, O'Reilly brought up the lesbian "issue," asking Stern if his show was "still going to be lesbians on parade and strippers and all that" following its move to Sirius Satellite Radio in January. After vowing, "As long as I'm breathing, there will be lesbians," Stern criticized O'Reilly for selling Factor merchandise, saying, "It looks like you emptied out a junkyard and slapped your name on everything." O'Reilly countered that "all the proceeds go to charity," noting that he just wrote Habitat for Humanity "a big check." O'Reilly then suggested: "You can join Habitat for Humanity ... and build houses, Howard Stern, for poor lesbians. I mean, this would be perfect." O'Reilly then offered Stern the Factor jacket. When Stern declined it, O'Reilly told him, "You're not getting it back," adding, "I'm not having this on some lesbian somewhere."

O'Reilly introduced the segment by explaining that Stern had become "the highest paid entertainer in American history" by "saying whatever pops into his mind, no matter how offensive it is." O'Reilly then clarified: "No, I have not copied that concept. Roll the tape."

From the December 8 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: And part two of my interview with Howard Stern. He has some problems with The Factor, and he's sticking up for lesbians.

[...]

O'REILLY: And later, Howard Stern, a walking controversy. He talks about how lesbians have made him millions. Upcoming.

[...]

O'REILLY: Plenty more ahead as The Factor moves along this evening. Howard Stern has some problems with The Factor but no problems with lesbians. We'll discuss the issues with him.

[...]

O'REILLY: When we come back, part two of my interview with Howard Stern. He's got some problems with The Factor but no problems with lesbians. Don't miss this one. Right back with it.

[...]

O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Personal Story" segment tonight -- and this might not be for children -- part two of our interview with Howard Stern. As we told you last night, he's now the highest-paid entertainer in American history, and his success is based upon a very simple concept: saying whatever pops into his mind, no matter how offensive it is. No, I have not copied that concept. Roll the tape.

[...]

O'REILLY: Is it still going to be lesbians on parade and strippers and all that?

STERN: Bill, there will always be lesbians on this show. I make this vow to you. As long as I'm breathing, there will be lesbians. I will give the people lesbians, because there is nothing sexier in this world -- besides you -- there is nothing sexier than two women getting it on. Ad man, I'm going to do it. In fact, I'm going to take a lesbian dating game, and I'm going to blow it up into an hour show on my channel. You'll see the date.

O'REILLY: Does this cost extra? Or is that under the $12 [monthly subscription fee for Sirius Satellite Radio]?

STERN: That's all under the 12 bucks.

O'REILLY: OK.

STERN: Not as good as the Bill O'Reilly mug. How much is that?

O'REILLY: Oh, you want to get into that now?

STERN: Let's talk about that kazarai you're selling. It looks like you emptied out a junkyard and slapped your name on everything.

O'REILLY: OK, here's where we're going.

STERN: And you've got a briefcase, the Bill O'Reilly briefcase.

O'REILLY: Let me set this up --

STERN: I wouldn't be caught dead in the Bill O'Reilly -- no offense.

O'REILLY: No, of course no offense.

STERN: Who's walking around with a Bill O'Reilly briefcase?

O'REILLY: No, of course there's no offense --

STERN: Imagine I walked into a --

O'REILLY: You wouldn't offend me at all, would you? You would never do that.

STERN: Yes, I would.

O'REILLY: Oh, I'm stunned.

STERN: Sure, I would.

O'REILLY: I'm stunned. You didn't wish me to get cancer, did you, on your show?

STERN: Not yet.

O'REILLY: OK. Now listen, you go on your show, and you say, "O'Reilly's selling all these" -- what, tchotchkes? Is that what you said?

STERN: Tchotchkes. Garbage.

O'REILLY: Garbage. OK.

STERN: Welcome mats. Bill O'Reilly welcome mat.

O'REILLY: All right. All right, whatever. Now, you know that all the proceeds go to charity.

STERN: I don't believe that. What charity?

O'REILLY: You don't believe it?

STERN: What charity?

O'REILLY: OK. Habitat for Humanity, I just wrote them a big check.

STERN: What is Habitat for Humanity?

O'REILLY: That's when people, like you --

STERN: Me?

O'REILLY: You know, if you cared about other people --

STERN: Yes.

O'REILLY: -- would then build a house for poor people. Novel concept. In fact, you know what you could do?

STERN: And give 100 percent of the profits?

O'REILLY: Yes. Everything I get. You know what you can do, though?

STERN: But doesn't this appeal to your ego? Can't you -- you make a lot of money. Can't you donate money to charity? Can't Fox News --

O'REILLY: This is -- I do that anyway. This is extra money.

STERN: Why does Fox News -- listen --

O'REILLY: Are you filibustering now? Because I have a good idea for you. You can join --

STERN: Come outside with me right now. Let's --

O'REILLY: You can join Habitat for Humanity --

STERN: Yes.

O'REILLY: -- and build houses, Howard Stern, for poor lesbians. I mean, this would be perfect.

STERN: Now you're thinking.

O'REILLY: This would be perfect. All --

STERN: Now you're thinking like a degenerate.

O'REILLY: the money that I derive from BillOReilly.com from Factor gear goes to charity, to help kids and poor people. And you are mocking it.

STERN: I'll tell you why I mock it. I mock it because you have such an ego. For you to say --

O'REILLY: You're telling me I have an ego?

STERN: Yes. At least there's some things I don't slap my name on.

O'REILLY: What? What?

STERN: You have your name on jackets, mugs, pens, papers.

O'REILLY: It's all for charity.

STERN: Listen, you're a wealthy guy. Give money of your own to Habitat.

O'REILLY: I do that.

STERN: Give them -- let Fox News donate money to Habitat. You should take those welcome -- when I'm walking around with a billboard of the Bill O'Reilly Show.

O'REILLY: Do you want a Factor jacket, by the way?

STERN: Yes, give it to me for free.

O'REILLY: All right. Give me the Factor jacket.

STERN: Let me ask you a question --

O'REILLY: I'm only going to give you this "no spin" jacket if you wear it. Are you going to wear it?

STERN: If I wear it?

O'REILLY: Look, this is a beautiful, beautiful jacket.

STERN: It's not.

O'REILLY: It is, it's gorgeous.

STERN: Let me tell you why it's not. Can I be a fashion designer for a second?

O'REILLY: Look at the way you're dressed.

STERN: You see this? This grabs you around the middle. If a guy's got a gut, this is going to squeeze his fat.

O'REILLY: This is a terrific garment. Now are you going to wear it? I'll give it to you.

STERN: The "no spin" jacket?

O'REILLY: Yeah. With the flag, the American flag. You are American, correct?

STERN: I won't wear it, but I will give it to a crack whore.

O'REILLY: No, no. You're not getting it back.

STERN: Here, take it.

O'REILLY: I'm not having this on some lesbian somewhere. It's not going to happen.

STERN: But I'm proud of you. You're doing well.

O'REILLY: Thank you.

As a promotion for the December 10 edition of Fox News' Bulls & Bears, the leading program in Fox News' Saturday business lineup -- which the news channel refers to as "The Cost of Freedom" -- Fox aired a screen capture of Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean delivering a speech, superimposed over a stock market ticker. The on-screen text read: "Liberals on Iraq: Bad for America & Stocks?"

On the December 5 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly told two Democratic guests: "[I]f you guys can think ... of any far-right people who have shouted down, demanded people be fired, boycott somebody to shut them up, please let me know and we'll put it on tomorrow." His request came at the end of a segment that focused on the heckling of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) by anti-war protesters during a December 3 speech in Chicago. O'Reilly cited the incident as evidence that progressives, not conservatives, want to curtail the free speech of those with whom they disagree.

In fact, O'Reilly himself is no stranger to "shoutdowns" and calls for boycotts of his political opponents to silence them. During a panel at the May 31, 2003, BookExpo America in Los Angeles, O'Reilly exploded (Windows Media / QuickTime) at liberal satirist and author Al Franken, whose book Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (Dutton Adult, 2003) was highly critical of the Fox News host. O'Reilly interrupted Franken and repeatedly told him to "shut up." (Slate.com has compiled a long list of instances in which O'Reilly has used this phrase.) Media Matters for America has also documented O'Reilly's pattern of cutting off O'Reilly Factor guests' microphones when he disagrees with what they are saying. Additionally, O'Reilly has recently called for a boycott of the New York Daily News, the St. Petersburg Times, and MSNBC for allegedly helping to "distribute defamation and false information supplied by far left websites." O'Reilly's website states: "In the months to come, we expect to add more names to this list."

From the December 5 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, which featured Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh and Democratic consultant Kirsten Powers, both Fox News political analysts:

O'REILLY: Can you can give me --

MARSH: Yes, I can: Jack Murtha.

O'REILLY: -- one example of a far-right shoutdown? Go.

MARSH: What -- [Rep.] Jack Murtha [D-NY] being attacked on the floor of Congress by the Republicans, especially Congressman Jean Schmidt [R-OH].

O'REILLY: It wasn't a shoutdown. It was an opinion --

MARSH: Oh, it abso --

O'REILLY: -- by an elected representative. Mr. Murtha was not interrupted in his discourse. Can you, Mary Anne, give me one example of a far-right shoutdown? Go.

MARSH: That is, Bill.

O'REILLY: No.

MARSH: We disagree on who was shouting to whom, but the fact is --

O'REILLY: Wait, Kirsten is stepping up to the -- no, Mary Anne.

MARSH: I'll give you an example.

O'REILLY: With all due respect, that is not an example. That was one congressman disagreeing with another. It wasn't a shoutdown.

[...]

O'REILLY: If you guys -- if you guys can think maybe later on this evening, in a moment of leisure, of any far-right people who have shouted down, demanded people be fired, boycott somebody to shut them up, please let me know, and we'll put it on tomorrow.

A December 5 Washington Times editorial omitted key facts about the process of nuclear weapons production, giving readers a distorted impression about the time it would take Iran to construct nuclear weapons. The editorial stated that "Israeli intelligence estimates that Iran has produced 45 tons of uranium hexafluoride gas since June, enough for at least three or four nuclear devices, and Tehran's capability to develop this material continues to grow every day that it continues its illicit nuclear activities." But the editorial did not mention that, regardless of how much uranium hexafluoride gas Iran has, the gas alone cannot be used directly to make nuclear weapons. Instead, the uranium must first be enriched to a weapons-grade level. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and news reports on U.S. intelligence, Iran is at least two years away from being able to enrich uranium on its own.

Nuclear weapons rely on "enriched" uranium, which has a higher concentration of the easily split uranium type of atomic weight 235 (known as U-235) than occurs naturally. While natural uranium contains, on average, 0.71 percent of nuclear-fissile U-235, nuclear reactors require uranium that has been enriched to roughly 5 percent U-235, while nuclear weapons-grade uranium contains 90 percent or more U-235. Prior to enrichment, raw uranium is converted into uranium hexafluoride gas, which Iran has done. Efforts to defuse international tensions surrounding Iran's nuclear program have recently focused on a Russian offer to enrich Iran's uranium to reactor-grade levels, so that Iran would not possess its own operational uranium enrichment facility, which it could use to create weapons-grade uranium [The Washington Post, 11/17/05].

Iran publicly resumed converting uranium yellowcake to uranium hexafluoride on August 8. But, as The Washington Post noted in a November 17 article reporting on Iran's subsequent conversion of "a new batch of uranium," "[t]he work [of conversion] at the facility in the town of Isfahan does not bring Iran significantly closer to nuclear capability." The article later quoted David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, who told the Post that "Iran's move at Isfahan was 'mostly symbolic' but the Iranians will 'end up with a larger stock' of converted uranium that they can store away for the day when their own enrichment facility is completed."

When Iran will have the capability to produce enriched uranium is unknown, but news reports have indicated that the IAEA and U.S. intelligence believe that the Iranians could not produce enough weapons-grade uranium for at least two years. The Independent, a British newspaper, interviewed IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei and reported on December 5 that "[a]lthough IAEA officials have said it would take at least two years for [the underground enrichment plant at] Natanz to become fully operational, Mr. El-Baradei believes that once the facility is up and running, the Iranians could be 'a few months' away from a nuclear weapon." The article noted that Iran so far has not begun the process of re-opening the plant at Natanz. U.S. intelligence reportedly believes it will take longer. An August 2 Washington Post article reported that "[a] major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis." The article also reported that the intelligence review, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, "extended the timeline [for Iran's achievement of the ability to produce a nuclear weapon], judging that Iran will be unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for an atomic weapon, before 'early to mid-next decade,' according to four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the shift, based on a better understanding of Iran's technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with recently revised British and Israeli figures."

The Washington Times editorial ran the same day as a post on the Drudge Report website that blared, "Iran 'months away' from nuke." Both the Drudge Report headline and the Jerusalem Post article it linked to misrepresented a comment from ElBaradei regarding the status of Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program by taking it out of context. As previously documented above (and first noted by the weblog Raw Story), ElBaradei told The Independent that Iran would be " 'a few months' away from a nuclear weapon" after the Natanz enrichment facility became "fully operational," which the article, citing "IAEA officials," said would take at least two years.

From the December 5 Washington Times editorial, titled "Iran, Israel and Nukes":

In a Dec. 14, 2001, speech, former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (long depicted by the Europeans as an Iranian "moderate"), declared that, if the Muslim world had an atomic bomb, it would be in good shape after a nuclear exchange with Israel, because a nuclear bomb would destroy the Jewish state, while Muslim countries (with their much larger populations) would survive. The man who defeated him in this year's presidential election, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking in October at a conference in Iran titled "The World Without Zionism," vowed that a wave of Palestinian attacks would destroy Israel. "There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will soon wipe this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world," he declared. "Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury," while any Islamic leader "who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world."

Israeli intelligence estimates that Iran has produced 45 tons of uranium hexafluoride gas since June, enough for at least three or four nuclear devices, and Tehran's capability to develop this material continues to grow every day that it continues its illicit nuclear activities.

With Tehran making its genocidal intentions clear, Israel is not waiting around to see if European Union or American diplomacy will change Iran's behavior. Ironically, Germany, which has played a leading role in Western kowtowing to Tehran, may hold part of the key to ensuring that Israel retains its deterrent against attack.

On the December 6 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, radio host and regular Fox & Friends guest Erich "Mancow" Muller stated that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean "ought to be kicked out of America" and "tried for treason" in response to a San Antonio radio interview in which Dean said that the idea that the United States can win the war in Iraq is "just plain wrong." After Muller asserted that Dean should be "kicked out of America," Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed, replying: "Absolutely."

Muller went on to state that Dean "is the enemy." He exclaimed, "This is the head of the Democrats!" He went on to add: "These people want every boy to die. They're bloodthirsty animals. Howard Dean is a vile human being." Muller later said: "[T]his guy is bloodthirsty. He is evil. I'm telling you, I really think that every time you report another dead body in Iraq, they go, 'Hoo hoo, it's perfect.' "

Muller is no stranger to making inflammatory statements. During a appearance shortly after Paula Zahn left Fox News for CNN in 2002, Muller performed an on-air skit with an actor he said was portraying Zahn. He hit the actor in the face, knocked him down, and shouted, "I'll kill you, Paula. We will kill you, Paula"; he also made an off-color remark that referred to Zahn's hobby of cello playing. And as Media Matters for America previously noted, Muller compared singer Cat Stevens's Muslim name, Yusuf Islam, to "American Killer" and "Hijacker."

Between 2000 and 2002, the Chicago radio station that airs Muller's show was fined $42,000 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to settle three complaints of indecency on the show. This was followed by a payment of $300,000 by the station's owner, Emmis Communications, to settle all outstanding indecency complaints. Muller then sued for $3 million a man who had filed numerous FCC complaints against him; Muller later dropped the lawsuit.

Additionally, a Chicago radio station that previously aired Muller's show, settled for $1.6 million, a lawsuit filed against it by Keith Van Horne, a former player for the National Football League's Chicago Bears. Following a 1994 confrontation between Muller and Van Horne, Muller called Van Horne "psychotic," "nuts," "extremely violent," "over the edge," and "a Charles Manson who works out," and claimed that Van Horne was stalking him. Van Horne sued the station for defamation and also claimed that the station owners were negligent for hiring Muller since they knew of his reputation for outrageous behavior on the air. Muller also settled, for an undisclosed amount, a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Janet Dahl, wife of Chicago radio host Steve Dahl; according to an August 18, 2001, Chicago Sun-Times article, the lawsuit claimed that Muller "repeatedly and falsely referred to [Janet Dahl] as engaging in adultery, fornication and sexual promiscuity in the vilest of terms."

Muller's Mancow's Morning Madhouse originates from Chicago radio station WKQX. It is syndicated by Talk Radio Network and airs on approximately 25 stations across the country.

From the December 6 edition of Fox News' which also featured co-hosts Steve Doocy and E.D. Hill:

MULLER: Guys, I do want to do one serious thing today. Howard Dean ought to be kicked out of America.

KILMEADE: Absolutely.

MULLER: He ought to be tried for treason. He is the enemy. These people, these Dummy-crats -- I'm not a Republican. I'm a Libertarian --

DOOCY: What did he say, Mancow, this time?

MULLER: He said yesterday -- it was late-breaking news -- I, -- I've never done this before in my life -- I was calling radio shows. I've never done that. I called Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes last night [saying]: "You guys gotta get on this. Howard Dean said we're going to lose the war."

KILMEADE: Yeah.

MULLER: This is the head of the Democrats!

HILL: Hey, Mancow --

MULLER: These people want every boy to die. They're bloodthirsty animals. Howard Dean is a vile human being. I can't believe it.

KILMEADE: Many people can't. His quote was: "The idea that the U.S. will win the war in Iraq is plain wrong."

DOOCY: Mancow, we have invited Howard Dean on this program many times and he has declined.

MULLER: Because you'll ask him questions. You'll ask him real questions -- and if I sound like I'm ranting and raving and furious, well, it's because I am. But this guy, this guy is bloodthirsty. He is evil. I'm telling you, I really think every time you report another dead body in Iraq, they go, "Hoo hoo, it's perfect!"

HILL: Well, that's it. You get the sense that people are rooting for the U.S. to lose the war.

DOOCY: For political purposes.

MULLER: We know the enemy is watching the news.

DOOCY: Mancow, thanks very much.

On the December 5 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson, host Gibson responded to media writer Neil Gabler's comments that Gibson and fellow Fox News anchors Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly were "demagogues" by stating that Gabler was an "ultra-lefty liberal" who, if "in charge," would send Gibson "off to a Khmer Rouge re-education camp to make sure that his [Gabler] message that there is no war on Christmas is beat into my [Gibson's] head."

Gibson's comments came during the "My Word" segment of his show, in which Gibson opines about a topic of his choice.

As Media Matters for America has previously noted, Gabler made his comments came during an appearance on the December 3 edition of Fox News Watch in which panelists discussed, among other things, a purported battle over public acknowledgement of Christmas. Gabler claimed that Fox News Channel's coverage of the issue was excessive; declared the so-called "war on Christmas" a "demagogic campaign"; and referred to O'Reilly, Hannity, and Gibson as "demagogues" who seek to "rally the masses."

Calling dissenters "anti-Christmas warriors," Gibson concluded the segment by likening the the "war on Christmas" to "the secret bombing of Cambodia [by the United States during the Vietnam War]. It was a secret from everybody except the people getting bombed."

Gibson also acknowledged "[a]nother guy on television somewhere" who called Gibson "the worst person in the world." On the December 2 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named Gibson that day's "Worst Person in the World" for Gibson's November 17 suggestion that people "following the wrong religion" were not reciprocating the tolerance afforded them by "the majority religion -- Christianity." Responding to Olbermann's designation, Gibson stated, "[M]aybe the guy [Olbermann] is seeing my hair on the real worst people" while airing an edited picture of Saddam Hussein with Gibson's blond hair.

Gibson is the author of the book The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Holiday is Worse Than You Thought (Sentinel, October 2005), which defines the so-called "war on Christmas" as the "secularization of America's favorite holiday."

From the December 5 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson:

GIBSON: All right, it's time now for "My Word." I was away for a few days, and the war on Christmas exploded. O'Reilly's been leading the charge and covering tons of places where someone's trying to change the name of the tree, change the name of the season. You'd think saying the word "Christmas" would kill some people.

On my own network, ultra-lefty liberal Neil Gabler called me a demagogue for even bringing the subject up. If Neil were in charge, I'd be sent off to a Khmer Rouge re-education camp to make sure that his message that there is no war on Christmas is beat into my head.

But par for the course, Neil is almost always wrong, and his co-panelists on Eric Burns's [Fox] News Watch program were so fatigued from trying to counter his out-deep-orbit diatribes that they hardly put up a fight anymore.

But Neil's not the only one. Another guy on television somewhere called me the worst person in the world. I tried to imagine how that could be possible. Like maybe the guy is seeing my hair on the real worst people. You never know. Maybe this explains why he could say such a thing.

Look, denial is the name of the game with the anti-Christmas warriors. They deny they are changing the name of the Christmas tree. Everybody knows this country has been calling the thing a holiday tree or giving tree. Where did they ever think -- get the silly idea there was a Christmas tree anyway?

The same thing with the war. They're denying it is even happening, accusing me of making up a phony war. But no one will say the incidents in my book didn't happen. Instead, they say it's just a few people who have gone over the top, not really a countrywide movement.

Well, I think not. I hear it all the time from my emailers and from callers to the radio shows I do and from people who walk up to me on the street. I do go out in the street. It's like the secret bombing of Cambodia. It was a secret from everybody except the people getting bombed.

Same deal here -- people trying to keep Christmas in schools and parks and libraries and city halls know about the war on Christmas. The people waging this war are trying to keep it secret, but it's too late. They have been outed. That is "My Word."

On the December 2 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer claimed that President Bush "is probably the least poll-driven president in history." This characterization of Bush has been repeatedly put forth by administration supporters -- and the president himself -- ever since his 2000 presidential campaign. But while Bush has gone to great lengths to create the impression that he doesn't rely on polling, there is ample evidence that polling data play a substantial part in his administration's political strategy and messaging.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush often emphasized his purported lack of interest in studies of public opinion. "I really don't care what the polls and focus groups say," he said prior to the second presidential debate. "What I care about is doing what I think is right" [CBS' The Early Show, 10/11/00]. Following his election, Bush's aides and supporters continued to highlight what they claimed was a clear distinction between Bush and President Clinton, whose reliance on polling data was well documented. In a speech shortly after Bush's inauguration, Vice President Dick Cheney stated: "The days of the war room and the permanent campaign are over. This president and this administration are going to change the tone in the city of Washington."

Several months later, however, White House officials' repeated use of certain catchphrases in public statements on the administration's national energy policy caught the attention of Time magazine reporters James Carney and John F. Dickerson. In a May 18, 2001, article, they identified certain frequently occurring words (such as "balanced," "comprehensive," "leadership," and "modern") in the "White House's quiver of talking points." Carney and Dickerson went on to report:

Forgive us for being cynical, but years of training -- plus the "find" feature on Microsoft Word -- led us to a startling hypothesis: the Bush White House had tested certain words, phrases and ideas in polls and focus groups before launching its national energy policy.

And, in fact, they have been. Jan van Lohuizen, a Washington pollster who worked for the Bush campaign and now polls for the Republican National Committee, has been testing feelings and reactions to the President's energy plan for weeks. It is true that this White House is less poll-driven than its predecessor, but the difference is getting harder and harder to see.

A July 4, 2001, USA Today article on the Bush administration's ongoing political operation delved deeper into the White House's polling operation:

Clinton's reliance on opinion polls was derided by Republicans who said he followed polls, not principles or conviction.

Bush says he doesn't care about polls, and he may not pay attention to those taken for the nation's newspapers and TV networks. But the White House does pay attention to polls and focus groups paid for by the RNC and conducted by Bush's former campaign pollster, Matthew Dowd.

Dowd says he doesn't test which policy positions the White House should adopt. Once Bush takes a position, though, Dowd tries to gauge how voters will respond. His results are used to help sell a plan like the tax cut or education program to the public by determining which points to emphasize. The polls also help aides predict which parts of a given proposal will be unpopular and prepare to answer critics.

"We pay attention to them," Card says of polls. "But we aren't driven by them."

American University's [James] Thurber says the administration's wide-ranging political efforts are among the most sophisticated he's seen -- and he says they are part of a necessary strategy for any White House.

"They're realists," he says of Bush and his aides. "They indeed criticized the Clinton administration for doing it, and now they're doing it in their own way. But that's normal. It's naive to think that they would do anything else."

More information about the Bush White House's use of public opinion data emerged in Joshua Green's April 2002 Washington Monthly article headlined "The Other War Room." Green examined the amount Bush had spent on polling during the first year of his presidency and described the Bush administration as "a frequent consumer of polls"; though he reported that the administration takes "extraordinary measures" to appear otherwise:

Republican National Committee filings show that Bush actually uses polls much more than he lets on, in ways both similar and dissimilar to Clinton. Like Clinton, Bush is most inclined to use polls when he's struggling. It's no coincidence that the administration did its heaviest polling last summer, after the poorly received rollout of its energy plan, and amid much talk of the "smallness" of the presidency. A Washington Monthly analysis of Republican National Committee disbursement filings revealed that Bush's principal pollsters received $346,000 in direct payments in 2001. Add to that the multiple boutique polling firms the administration regularly employs for specialized and targeted polls and the figure is closer to $1 million. That's about half the amount Clinton spent during his first year; but while Clinton used polling to craft popular policies, Bush uses polling to spin unpopular ones -- arguably a much more cynical undertaking.

Bush's principal pollster, Jan van Lohuizen, and his focus-group guru, Fred Steeper, are the best-kept secrets in Washington. Both are respected but low-key, proficient but tight-lipped, and, unlike such larger-than-life Clinton pollsters as Dick Morris and Mark Penn, happy to remain anonymous. They toil in the background, poll-testing the words and phrases the president uses to sell his policies to an often-skeptical public; they're the Bush administration's Cinderella. "In terms of the modern presidency," says Ron Faucheux, editor of Campaigns & Elections, "van Lohuizen is the lowest-profile pollster we've ever had."  

Just as Carney and Dickerson had examined how polling data determined the presentation of Bush's energy plan, Green reported how Bush relied on pollsters in marketing his Social Security proposals:

On the last day of February [2002], the Bush administration kicked off its renewed initiative to privatize Social Security in a speech before the National Summit on Retirement Savings in Washington, D.C. Rather than address "Social Security," Bush opted to speak about "retirement security." And during the brief speech he repeated the words "choice" (three times), "compound interest" (four times), "opportunity" (nine times) and "savings" (18 times). These words were not chosen lightly. The repetition was prompted by polls and focus groups. During the campaign, Steeper honed and refined Bush's message on Social Security (with key words such as "choice," "control," and "higher returns"), measuring it against Al Gore's attack through polls and focus groups ("Wall Street roulette," "bankruptcy" and "break the contract"). Steeper discovered that respondents preferred Bush's position by 50 percent to 38 percent, despite the conventional wisdom that tampering with Social Security is political suicide. He learned, as he explained to an academic conference last February, that "there's a great deal of cynicism about the federal government being able to do anything right, which translated to the federal government not having the ability to properly invest people's Social Security dollars." By couching Bush's rhetoric in poll-tested phrases that reinforced this notion, and adding others that stress the benefits of privatization, he was able to capitalize on what most observers had considered to be a significant political disadvantage. (Independent polls generally find that when fully apprised of Bush's plan, including the risks, most voters don't support it.)

This is typical of how the Bush administration uses polls: Policies are chosen beforehand, polls used to spin them. Because many of Bush's policies aren't necessarily popular with a majority of voters, Steeper and van Lohuizen's job essentially consists of finding words to sell them to the public.

In the Summer 2003 edition of The Brookings Review, Brookings Institution senior fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas further highlighted how, rather than avoid polling, the Bush White House has simply tried to hide its reliance on polls -- an effort aided by administration supporters, such as Krauthammer, who help foster the image of a White House unconcerned about gauges of public opinion:

In a way, Bush's approach to polling is the opposite of Clinton's. He uses polls but conceals that fact, and, instead of polling to ensure that new policies have broad public support, takes policies favored by his conservative base and polls on how to make them seem palatable to mainstream voters. This pattern extends to the entire administration. Whereas Clinton's polling data were regularly circulated among the staff, Bush limits his to the handful of senior advisers who attend Rove's "strategery meetings." According to White House aides, the subject is rarely broached with the president or at other senior staff meetings. "The circle is tight," Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief of polling, testifies. "Very tight." As with Kennedy and Nixon, the Bush administration keeps its polling data under lock and key.

[...]

Indeed, the unprecedented visibility and perceived influence of Clinton's pollsters created much advance interest in President George W. Bush's prospective pollsters. But Bush's determination to be the "anti-Clinton" and his repeated campaign promises to give polls and focus groups no role in his administration led him to relegate his pollsters to near anonymity. Still, their low profile, particularly compared with that of Clinton's pollsters, has not kept them from performing essential polling for the White House.

Like Green and Thurber, Tenpas conceded that the Bush White House's reliance on public opinion is relatively standard from a historical perspective. What is "unusual," she went on to write, is the stark contrast between the administration's rhetoric and its actions on the issue:

President Bush's use of polling is by no means pathbreaking, nor is the amount of polling particularly astounding. What is unusual about the Bush team's polling operation is the chasm between its words and actions. Never before has a White House engaged in such anti-polling rhetoric or built up such a buffer between the pollsters and the president.

Krauthammer's characterization of Bush as "probably the least poll-driven president in history" came during a "Fox All-Star Panel" discussion of the president's recent efforts to shore up public support for the Iraq war. In this context, Krauthammer's comments are particularly misleading, as recent news reports have shown that the Bush administration has relied heavily on pollsters in devising its political strategy on Iraq. A June 30 Washington Post article, published two days after Bush gave a prime-time speech on the war, reported that the White House had hired "experts on public opinion during wartime" to aide in this effort:

When President Bush confidently predicts victory in Iraq and admits no mistakes, admirers see steely resolve and critics see exasperating stubbornness. But the president's full-speed-ahead message articulated in this week's prime-time address also reflects a purposeful strategy based on extensive study of public opinion about how to maintain support for a costly and problem-plagued military mission.

The White House recently brought onto its staff one of the nation's top academic experts on public opinion during wartime, whose studies are now helping Bush craft his message two years into a war with no easy end in sight. Behind the president's speech is a conviction among White House officials that the battle for public opinion on Iraq hinges on their success in convincing Americans that, whatever their views of going to war in the first place, the conflict there must and can be won.

One of the two experts cited by name in the Post article, Duke University professor Peter D. Feaver, was more recently reported to have played a central role in the writing of "Our National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," a 35-page document released by the Bush administration on November 30. Feaver's analysis of polling data on Iraq was "clearly behind the victory theme" in both the document and Bush's November 30 speech on the topic, according to a December 4 New York Times article:

Although White House officials said many federal departments had contributed to the document, its relentless focus on the theme of victory strongly reflected a new voice in the administration: Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University political scientist who joined the N.S.C. staff as a special adviser in June and has closely studied public opinion on the war.

Despite the president's oft-stated aversion to polls, Dr. Feaver was recruited after he and Duke colleagues presented the administration with an analysis of polls about the Iraq war in 2003 and 2004. They concluded that Americans would support a war with mounting casualties on one condition: that they believed it would ultimately succeed.

That finding, which is questioned by other political scientists, was clearly behind the victory theme in the speech and the plan, in which the word appears six times in the table of contents alone, including sections titled "Victory in Iraq is a Vital U.S. Interest" and "Our Strategy for Victory is Clear."

"This is not really a strategy document from the Pentagon about fighting the insurgency," said Christopher F. Gelpi, Dr. Feaver's colleague at Duke and co-author of the research on American tolerance for casualties. "The Pentagon doesn't need the president to give a speech and post a document on the White House Web site to know how to fight the insurgents. The document is clearly targeted at American public opinion."  

From the December 2 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

JIM ANGLE [guest host]: All right. About a minute left. That raises the question of why the president and the Pentagon haven't paid more attention to public opinion and haven't done more to make sure that they weren't losing this war in the halls of Congress. What do you think, Charles?

KRAUTHAMMER: The president, I think, is a person who leads and he is probably the least poll-driven president in our history. Succeeding the most poll-driven president in our history, Bill Clinton. And I think he's ignored that. I think he understands that diplomacy, public diplomacy at home is extremely important. But in the end, his words aren't going to make a difference, it's going to be what's happening on the ground. If our casualties are reduced, we will succeed, I think, in changing public opinion, otherwise it's not going to happen.

The December 3 edition of the program After Words on C-SPAN2's Book TV featured an interview with former CBS producer Mary Mapes conducted by L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of the conservative Media Research Center (MRC), an organization that purports to "prove -- through sound scientific research -- that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values." Yet at no point did C-SPAN identify Bozell or his organization as conservative, nor was it noted that Bozell and the MRC have long criticized Mapes for her role in the controversial CBS 60 Minutes II story on President Bush's alleged failure to meet his Vietnam-era Texas Air National Guard (TANG) requirements. In the C-SPAN interview, Bozell confronted Mapes with unsourced "criticisms" of the TANG story, leaving viewers unaware that the "criticisms" Bozell offered were actually drawn from MRC research and his own nationally syndicated columns.

Mapes discussed her new book, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power (St. Martin's Press, 2005), in which she offered her "account of the often-surreal, always-harrowing fallout she experienced for raising questions about a powerful sitting president." After 15 years as a CBS producer, during which she broke the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story, Mapes was dismissed following an internal investigation into the authenticity of the documents used for the TANG story.

The introduction to the Mapes interview noted simply that Bozell is the "president of the Media Research Center":

VOICEOVER: This week on Afterwords, journalist Mary Mapes explains her role in producing the 60 Minutes II investigative report on George W. Bush's National Guard record, and the controversy it created. Her new book is titled, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. It's her version of the story, and the ensuing internal investigation at CBS that led to her dismissal, and Dan Rather's resignation as anchor of the evening news. She's interviewed by Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.

While discussing the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Bozell confronted Mapes with the suggestion that the story received too much media attention:

BOZELL: Let's go back to Abu Ghraib for a moment. I don't think anybody can question that it was a story; a legitimate news story. But critics would say that it was overdone. That it was overplayed. In that, it was Abu Ghraib night after night after night. Do you agree or disagree with that?

In claiming that "critics would say that it was overdone," Bozell masked the fact that he is one of the critics who claim Abu Ghraib received too much media attention. In his May 18, 2004, nationally syndicated column, Bozell wrote:

While NBC aired 58 stories on U.S. prison abuse in the first few weeks of that story, NBC aired only five stories over 16 months on the discovery of Saddam's mass graves. Abu Ghraib holds 1,500 prisoners, a fraction of whom were abused. Saddam's graves held as many as 300,000 people, all of whom were murdered. How is Abu Ghraib 10 times more important than that?

Later in the program, Bozell again presented Mapes with another anonymous "criticism," this time of the TANG story:

BOZELL: I want to read you something, Mary Mapes. I want you to comment on this.

MAPES: All right, Brent Bozell.

BOZELL: (laughs) The criticism of the story -- a criticism of the story -- is that there were -- and what I'm going to say to you is nothing new, you've heard it -- is that there were all manner of people who weren't interviewed for this piece who would have said otherwise. One of the people who has been very outspoken on this is Jerry Killian's son, and to backtrack, Jerry Killian is the man who allegedly wrote those memos that displayed all the preferential treatment for young George Bush. Gary Killian, his son, went on the Hannity & Colmes show the night after your program came out, and I want to read to you this quick exchange, and ask you to comment on it because your name came up in it.

Bozell then read the transcript of the September 10, 2004, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, on which Gary Killian claimed that Mapes "ignored" statements from him and his family that indicated that Jerry Killian liked Bush (Mapes disputes the charge). However, Bozell again obscured the fact that this "criticism of the story" has been pushed by the MRC. According to the MRC's September 11, 2004, CyberAlert:

Rather offered up Robert Strong, an administrative officer during Killian's tenure, to insist the memos matched Killian's concerns. But Rather ignored how the wife and son of the late Lieutenant Colonel maintain that he did not write memos such as the ones given to CBS News. In a phone call with FNC played on Friday's Special Report with Brit Hume (see item #2 below for more of the story), son Gary asserted: "I can tell you that he didn't type memos to himself." Gary Killian elaborated during a Friday night phone conversation on FNC's Hannity & Colmes, emphasizing that he conveyed his knowledge to a CBS News producer before the 60 Minutes piece aired.

Bozell later asked Mapes about the documents upon which the TANG story was based and referenced document analyses initiated by Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com), but neglected to note his connection to the conservative news outlet:

BOZELL: Alright. Along those lines, the morning after your show aired, the CNSNews.com news service took those memos and gave them to three random typography experts -- independent experts -- and asked them to analyze them. Within one hour, these three experts -- none of whom was known to this news service -- came back and all three of them independently said this could not have been done on a 1972 machine. This was done on a late-model computer. That was within an hour.

MAPES: Mm-hmm.

BOZELL: How could a news service comment that quickly?

By referring to CNSNews.com as "a news service," Bozell hid the fact that CNSNews.com is his news service. It is a division of the MRC, founded by Bozell, who also serves as its president.

The only indication from Bozell of his conservative political activism was a hypothetical scenario Bozell put to Mapes regarding her political ideology:

BOZELL: You use the phrase throughout the book -- I don't know how many times I saw it, dozens, a hundred times -- "radical right." Let me tell you why that phrase jumps out. If I write a book, and I label all my critics "radical left," it would be fair to assume that I was a conservative -- at least a conservative -- because all my critics are on the radical left, according to me. Why isn't it fair to assume that you're politically a liberal?

At one point, Bozell asked Mapes why, given her investigation into Bush's Vietnam War record, there was no similar investigation into Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) military record:

BOZELL: In the introduction to the National Guard story, Dan Rather says -- and I don't recall the exact words -- but he says words to the effect that Vietnam is a major debate on both sides of the campaign, with accusations about George Bush and accusations about John Kerry. I guess the same question: if it was important to do a story about George Bush, in the interest of fairness, ought not there have been an investigation into the charges about John Kerry?

MAPES: I know there certainly was coverage of the Swift Boat [Veterans for Truth (now called Swift Vets and POWs for Truth) ] charges. Tremendous, don't you think? Heavy coverage?

BOZELL: No, not -- not, not -- not to the degree that there was about the National Guard, no.

MAPES: Oh God, I disagree completely. I think there was much more coverage in the 2004 campaign of the Swift Boat issue on its merits, I mean -- I shouldn't say on its merits, I mean a repetition of the various charges and the testimonies of these various people. There also were tremendous political connections to that Swift Boat story.

Media Matters for America documented the widespread media attention the Swift Boat's scurrilous charges received during the 2004 presidential campaign. On the August 18, 2004, edition of Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor, Bozell disregarded the Swift Boat's extensive print and televised media coverage to claim that the group was "completely ignored by the media." In his October 20, 2004, nationally syndicated column, he complained that anti-Kerry veterans "are never invited to sit for extended interviews with [recently retired ABC anchor] Ted Koppel or Dan Rather." But in the same column, Bozell contradicted himself, writing: "Koppel sat down with an anti-Kerry veteran on live television for the first time this year."

On the December 5 edition of Fox News' Special Report, host and Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume claimed that President Bush "refused to criticize" Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) for her response to Hurricane Katrina. Hume's assertion is highly misleading at best. In making it, Hume suggested that Blanco's aides had no basis for their belief -- revealed in a series of recently released state documents -- that "the [Bush] administration was trying to scapegoat them." In fact, the White House's strategy to shift blame to Louisiana officials for the poor response to Katrina has been well documented and included a senior administration official's false accusation -- widely repeated by the media -- that days after the August 29 hurricane made landfall in her state, Blanco had yet to declare a state of emergency.

The administration's offensive against Blanco began soon after it became apparent that the overall response to the disaster had been ineffective. On September 4, The Washington Post uncritically quoted a "senior Bush official" who falsely claimed that as of September 3, Blanco had not yet declared a state of emergency. In fact, Blanco declared a state of emergency on August 26 -- well before the hurricane made landfall. Blanco's aides' concern of being "scapegoat[ed]" was further borne out a month later, when former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown falsely asserted on September 27 that Bush's August 27 declaration of emergency for Louisiana did not include Orleans, Jefferson, and Plaquemines parishes -- encompassing the city of New Orleans and vicinity -- because Blanco had omitted those parishes from her request earlier that day. In fact, Blanco requested a federal declaration of emergency "in all southeastern parishes," which clearly included the three parishes in question, as the weblog Think Progress has noted.

Numerous media outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, documented the White House's public relations strategy to deflect blame onto Louisiana officials. The Times reported in a September 5 article that the Bush administration "sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan." Similarly, a September 5 Post article reported the administration's attempt to "undo what many Republicans described as considerable damage to the White House inflicted by Bush's crisis management":

In public statements and even more bluntly behind the scenes, Bush administration officials have questioned local efforts to rescue thousands of people who were stranded for days without food, water and shelter, resulting in death of an unknown number of Americans.

From the December 4 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

HUME: Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco apparently refused to allow the state National Guard to be placed under federal control in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina because she and her staff didn't understand the state's role in commanding the troops. More than 100,000 pages of documents released by the Democratic governor show that her team was not familiar with National Guard procedures, and one aide told The Washington Post that staffers didn't even know what the term "unified command" meant. Though the president refused to criticize Blanco at the time, the documents show that Blanco's team believed the administration was trying to scapegoat them.

Bill O'Reilly misrepresented the reason that "San Francisco pinheads" have called on Fox News and Westwood One to take O'Reilly off the air. On the December 5 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, in a list of criticisms against "the far left," which "doesn't want free speech," O'Reilly claimed that the "San Francisco pinheads wanted me to be fired because I criticized their anti-military vote." In fact, Chris Daly, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, did not demand that O'Reilly be fired over his criticism of the city's "anti-military" vote; rather, Daly cited comments O'Reilly made on November 8, documented by Media Matters for America:

O'REILLY: Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."

O'Reilly made those remarks in the context of criticizing a recent ballot measure passed by 60 percent of San Francisco voters urging public high schools and colleges to prohibit on-campus military recruiting.

In response, Daly appeared on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann and stated:

DALY: We don't find your satirical riff funny. We find your words damaging, you know, and dangerous for 770,000 San Franciscans, over 100,000 San Franciscans who are children. You know, this is dangerous, Fox News and Westwood One need to take some accountability for this and terminate Bill O'Reilly's employment.

From the December 5 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: Now for the top story of the night: Talk about attacking those with whom they disagree, some anti-Iraq zealots booed [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] over the weekend in Chicago.

CLINTON [video clip]: -- expressing your opinion. But let's make sure that people have a chance to be part of a dialogue. And I do not believe that they want to hear from you at this moment.

O'REILLY: All right. Well, those boobs were taken out of the arena. Joining us now from Boston, Fox News political analyst Mary Anne Marsh. Here in the studio, Kirsten Powers, also a Fox News analyst.

All right now, ladies, look, there's no question that the far left doesn't want freedom of speech. We've seen it in the last week. Ann Coulter, they're having a riot up there in Storrs, Connecticut, the university. They don't want her to speak up there. The San Francisco pinheads wanted me to be fired because I criticized their anti-military vote. And now, we have Hillary Clinton, the icon of the left, being booed and tried to shout it down.

So what say you, Kirsten Powers?

POWERS: I think that people are expressing their free speech. And they have a right to protest. And Hillary Clinton can respond to that.

O'REILLY: Oh, OK. So you think shouting down someone at a podium is appropriate behavior?

During the final broadcast of the Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) Journal Editorial Report on December 2, host Paul A. Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, thanked former Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson "for defending the importance of balance and diversity on public television." Tomlinson stepped down as chairman when his term ended in September. He subsequently left the CPB board of directors on November 3 after CPB inspector general (IG) Kenneth A. Konz presented the board with the preliminary findings of his investigation into alleged legal and ethical violations by Tomlinson.

As Media Matters For America has noted, the IG's final report alleges that Tomlinson violated federal law by dealing directly with Gigot while PBS was negotiating with the Journal over the creation of what became The Journal Editorial Report. The IG's final report, issued November 17, alleges, among other things, that Tomlinson "violated statutory provisions and the Director's Code of Ethics by dealing directly with one of the creators [Gigot] of a new public affairs program [The Journal Editorial Report] during negotiations with PBS and the CPB over creating the show." According to the report:

Our review also showed that the former Chairman had been dealing directly with the former PBS commentator during this same time period [in which the negotiations were taking place]. The former Chairman advised him about strategies for getting his own show and even suggested a format modeled after "NOW with Bill Moyers," including a panel and remote reporting. At the same time, he admonished CPB senior executive staff not to interfere with his deal to bring a balancing program to PBS. These actions raise questions about the extent of the former Chairman's involvement in selecting and funding of "The Journal Editorial Report." Specifically, the questions involve whether he breached his fiduciary responsibilities, was directly involved programming decisions, influenced the program format increasing the cost of the program, and exceeded his role as a Board member in directing the actions of CPB staff.

The report also alleges that Tomlinson hired a consultant without CPB board authorization, a violation of CPB bylaws, initially to evaluate, for "objectivity and balance," PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers. The consultant's review was later expanded to include three additional programs -- one broadcast by PBS and two by National Public Radio (NPR). The IG also reported that Tomlinson employed, in violation of the Public Broadcasting Act, a "political test" in hiring former Republican National Committee co-chairwoman Patricia de Stacy Harrison as CPB president and chief executive officer.

The Journal Editorial Report will resume broadcasting in January 2006 in a new slot on Fox News.

From the December 2 broadcast of PBS' The Journal Editorial Report:

GIGOT: This is our last show on PBS, and we have many people to thank for helping us during the 15 months that we have been invited into your homes. Our executive producer, Paul Friedman, and his talented crew, helped us to sharpen our thinking and made us look and sound better than we had a right to expect. Our sponsors, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Royal Dutch Shell, allowed us the freedom to speak our minds. I would especially like to thank the former chairman of the CPB, Ken Tomlinson, for defending the importance of balance and diversity on public television. To the many PBS stations that carried us around the country, thank you for your commitment to public affairs programming that represents more than one point of view. We wish every station shared that commitment.

Media Matters runs the Hands Off Public Broadcasting campaign, an effort to ensure that public broadcasting remains independent and free from political pressure and to highlight conservative misinformation in and about public broadcasting.

On the December 2 broadcasts of his Fox News talk show The O'Reilly Factor and his Westwood One radio show The Radio Factor, Bill O'Reilly played a year-old clip from Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to demonstrate an assault on Christmas by secular forces. However, he told his radio listeners the clip aired the day before and left his cable viewers with a similar misleading impression. O'Reilly's comments during both shows were part of his ongoing coverage of a so-called "war on Christmas."

Noting first on the Radio Factor that a Macy's department store television ad includes the word "Christmas," O'Reilly said, "the secularists, they don't like this at all. 'Secular Central' is Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Here's what happened there last night. Roll it." He then played an audio segment of a Daily Show clip featuring correspondent Samantha Bee:

BEE: But really, let's face it. All other days bow down to the 25th. It's the only religious holiday that's also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services and everyone else can stay home and reflect on the true meaning of separation of church and state.

Later, on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly showed the Macy's ad during the "Talking Points Memo" segment of the show. He said: "Christmas is here again at Macy's. Predictably, the opponents of public displays of Christmas continue to put forth counter-arguments on 'Secular Central'. I -- I mean, Comedy Central."

He then played the Daily Show clip, this time without Bee's first two sentences. Though he did not repeat the claim that the clip had aired the previous day, by playing the clip immediately after the ad, O'Reilly implied that it had aired concurrently with the Macy's ad.

A Media Matters for America review of Daily Show broadcasts for the week leading up to O'Reilly's December 2 claim shows that the clip was not replayed on the Daily Show during that time. As The Brad Blog weblog noted, the clip appears to be from an episode of the Daily Show that aired during last year's holiday season, not the current one. In the clip, Bee is standing in front of a calendar that clearly shows the month of December 2004.

O'Reilly told his O'Reilly Factor viewers he would remain "vigilant on the subject" until Christmas day.

From the December 2 broadcast of Fox News' The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Now the secularists, they don't like this at all. "Secular Central" is Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Here's what happened there last night. Roll it.

BEE [audio clip]: But really, let's face it. All other days bow down to the 25th. Christmas: It's the only religious holiday that's also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services and everyone else can stay home and reflect on the true meaning of separation of church and state.

O'REILLY: [Laughs] There you go. Jon Stewart, "Secular Central." Oh, I'm sorry, Comedy Central -- and I like Stewart, but we know what he's doing over there. And it's not just Stewart. You know, 90 percent of -- quote/unquote -- "entertainers" are secular progressives. [Laughs] OK, we're up for the fight. We're up for it, man.

From the December 2 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: Christmas is here again at Macy's. Predictably, the opponents of public displays of Christmas continue to put forth counter-arguments on 'Secular Central.' I -- I mean, Comedy Central. They said this:

BEE [video clip]: Christmas: It's the only religious holiday that's also a federal holiday. That way, Christians can go to their services and everyone else can stay home and reflect on the true meaning of separation of church and state.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)

O'REILLY: And a Merry Christmas to you, Jon Stewart. As I said in my newspaper column this week, three wise men, one showed up to honor the Baby Jesus way back when. And if corporate executives are not wise enough to emulate that, well, those of us who respect Christmas might look elsewhere.

[...]

"Talking Points" is proud to be a part of the pro-Christmas movement. And things are moving our way, but eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. And over the next three weeks, we will be vigilant on this subject. Trust me. And that's the Memo.

U.S. News & World Report senior writer Michael Barone criticized The New York Times for making a "howling error" in reporting that the Bush administration claimed Saddam Hussein "posed an imminent threat to the world." According to Barone, the Times made this assertion "despite the fact that Bush in his 2003 State of the Union message did not say that the threat was 'imminent,' but said it should be addressed anyway." But while Bush never actually used the word "imminent" to describe the threat posed by Saddam, his spokesman affirmed that the Iraqi dictator posed "an imminent threat to U.S. interests." The president and members of his administration routinely offered similar characterizations of the Iraq threat, describing it as "urgent," "gathering," and "mortal."

From Barone's column in the December 12 edition of U.S. News & World Report:

My sense from such occasional glimpses that I get of life at the top of the administration is that people there have believed for some time that Iraq is obviously headed for success. But that's not how things have looked on the outside. Bush came to Washington from Texas, where the political dialogue was set by the Dallas Morning News and other newspapers with not much in the way of an ideological agenda. But in Washington, the dialogue is set by papers like the New York Times, whose White House correspondent wrote in a front-page story of "administration claims that Mr. [Saddam] Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world" --despite the fact that Bush in his 2003 State of the Union message did not say that the threat was "imminent" but said it should be addressed anyway. So deeply ingrained in the Times 's newsroom are the distortions and talking points of the anti-Bush left that its top people let a howling error like this on their front page.

Barone was referring to an October 3, 2003, Times article by reporter David Sanger, who wrote: "The preliminary report delivered on Thursday by the chief arms inspector in Iraq forces the Bush administration to come face to face with this reality: that Saddam Hussein's armory appears to have been stuffed with precursors, potential weapons and bluffs, but that nothing found so far backs up administration claims that Mr. Hussein posed an imminent threat to the world."

As Media Matters for America has noted, although Bush and members of his administration did not actually utter the word "imminent," they conveyed the same message with other words: Bush called Iraq an "urgent threat"; Vice President Dick Cheney called Iraq a "mortal threat"; and another senior White House official agreed in response to a press question that Iraq posed an "imminent threat." During an interview with White House communications director Dan Bartlett on January 26, 2003, CNN host Wolf Blitzer specifically asked whether Saddam represented an "imminent threat to U.S. interests." Bartlett replied, "Well, of course he is." In addition, during an October 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati, Bush said, "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Media writer Neil Gabler, a regular Fox news panelist, asserted that Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and John Gibson are "demagogues" who seek to "rally the masses" with their talk of a purported effort to suppress public recognition of the Christmas holiday. On the December 3 edition of Fox News Watch, Gabler said of those making such accusations: "They'll do it every Christmas. They did it last Christmas; they'll do it next Christmas." Later in the segment, Gabler stated: "The media, particularly Fox media, has been pumping the hell out of this thing."

Gabler's comments came during a segment that an off-screen announcer previewed by asking, "Is there a Grinch taking the holly jolly out of Christmas? Why has this holy season become a target of the liberal media?" Early in the discussion, Gabler remarked that the battle over public acknowledgement of Christmas "is being called a war ... in certain places." During the segment, American University professor and Fox News contributor Jane Hall specifically criticized O'Reilly and Gibson for their emphasis of the issue:

HALL: Bill O'Reilly has made this a huge issue. He's obviously getting a lot of feedback. John Gibson has a book about it, another Fox anchor. I think this is largely a fund-raiser for Jerry Falwell to pick up on some run-amok PC [political correctness].

Gabler later said: "I want to talk about the media angle, because we've avoided it; it's the elephant in the room -- it's Fox News." He then launched into a critique of "demagogues" O'Reilly, Hannity, and Gibson.

When host Eric Burns protested, "I don't think it is demagoguery to point out that there are people who are themselves being demagogues by trying to take away the worship terminology of 95 percent of Americans," Gabler replied, "[W]e are at war. There's [the humanitarian crisis in] Darfur. There's an AIDS crisis. And you're worried about whether people are saying 'Merry Christmas' or not? ... What world do you live in?"

When Burns defended his focus on the Christmas issue, on the grounds that "it's one issue, and it's the issue that's the subject of this ... segment," Gabler again criticized "[t]he media, particularly Fox media" for focusing excessively on the story.

From the December 3 edition of Fox News Watch:

ANNOUNCER: Is there a Grinch taking the holly-jolly out of Christmas? Why has this holy season become a target of the liberal media? Details next on Fox News Watch.

[...]

GABLER: Michelle Goldberg had a great article, and anybody interested in this issue -- in Salon -- ought to read it, in which she said that Henry Ford, back in 1921, declared that there was a war on Christmas. Of course, he blamed Jews. She cites the John Birch Society -- the reactionary John Birch Society -- in the 1950s saying there's a war on Christmas in 1959 by secularists.

BURNS: All right. Listen, hold it. Let's not call it a war necessarily --

[crosstalk]

GABLER: No, it is being -- it is being called a war --

BURNS: It is.

GABLER: --in certain places.

BURNS: Well, let's not do it here. But let's just say, isn't it ridiculous, Jane, to want to get rid of the word "Christmas tree" and say "holiday tree." But wait -- let me just mention this before you answer. You know, a few years ago in Pittsburgh, there was an edict in one of the school districts that if you were an employee in that school district, you couldn't say "Merry Christmas" to a kid. A memo came down -- you had to say, "Happy Sparkle Season."

[laughter]

BURNS: Serious. Aren't we going too far?

HALL: Well, if you cite those examples, yes. But I think there's -- there's a real question that I have here. I mean, the last time I checked, Jesus was for tolerance. And to have -- Bill O'Reilly has made this a huge issue. He's obviously getting a lot of feedback. John Gibson has a book about it, another Fox anchor. I think this is largely a fund-raiser for Jerry Falwell to pick up on some run-amok PC. I think to talk about the corporations, as Bill O'Reilly has been doing, and what they do -- I mean, he's certainly within his rights. But I think, what are they saying? Boycott the corporations that have holiday wishes? What is the point of that?

[...]

JAMES P. PINKERTON (Newsday columnist): This story was ignored by the mainstream media for --

GABLER: Because it's not a story, and that's why it was ignored. And as I said, in 1921 this began.

HALL: It's a fund-raiser.

GABLER: Now let's talk about the elephant in the room; let's talk about the media.

BURNS: Just a minute, Neal; if it started in 1921 --

GABLER: It's not a story.

BURNS: If I can just --

GABLER: It was a demagogic campaign.

BURNS: If I can just give three examples right now in different parts of the country --

GABLER: We're 300 million people. You know, I can give you --

BURNS: But there are -- just a minute, there are more than three examples to give --

GABLER: Three incidents of chicken pox doesn't make an epidemic.

HALL: But what is the media -- where is the media angle?

GABLER: The media angle right here -- Look, I want to talk about the media angle, because we've avoided it; it's the elephant in the room -- it's Fox News. Come on. It's O'Reilly; it's Hannity; it's Gibson. They're demagogues who realize that at Christmastime, you can -- you can --

[crosstalk]

GABLER: You rally the masses on this issue.

[crosstalk]

GABLER: They'll do it every Christmas. They did it last Christmas; they'll do it next Christmas.

BURNS: I spend this whole show sitting back most of the time. I don't think it is demagoguery to point out that there are people who are themselves being demagogues by trying to take away the worship terminology of 95 percent of Americans.

GABLER: Eric, we are at war. There's [the humanitarian crisis in] Darfur. There's an AIDS crisis. And you're worried about whether people are saying "Merry Christmas" or not?

BURNS: No.

GABLER: What world do you live in?

BURNS: Hey, Neal, it's one issue, and it's the issue that's the subject of this top -- that's the subject of this segment.

GABLER: And the media have been pumping it, and that's my point.

PINKERTON: All right.

GABLER: The media, particularly Fox media, has been pumping the hell out of this thing.

On the December 4 broadcast of Fox News Sunday, Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume and National Public Radio national correspondent Mara Liasson mischaracterized as "pull out now" the Iraq redeployment plan proposed by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), which House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has endorsed. Hume used this false characterization to support his claim that the American public does not back proposals for leaving Iraq put forth by Democratic elected officials, telling National Public Radio special correspondent Juan Williams: "The public has to some extent, as you correctly note, lost faith in this conflict. However, the pull-out-now number is very low in the public's estimation, and that, however, is the viewpoint to which the Democratic Party increasingly is rallying."

When host Chris Wallace asked Liasson if it was actually "fair ... to say that the Democrats are for 'pull out now,' " she responded, "I think it is fair to say a big chunk, not all, because Democrats -- are split ... in the House, are in the pull-out-now camp."

In fact, no prominent Democratic politician has proposed pulling out of Iraq immediately. In particular, as Media Matters for America has noted, Murtha's proposal does not call for the United States to "pull out now." Instead, his resolution (House Joint Resolution 73) would force the president to withdraw American troops from Iraq "at the earliest practicable date," which Murtha explained at a November 17 press conference meant an "immediate redeployment of U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces to create a quick reaction force in the region, to create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines, and to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq." Asked by a reporter "how long that would be," Murtha responded, "you have to do it in a very consistent way, but I think six months would be a reasonable time to get them out of there."

Other Democrats in Congress have made proposals for pulling troops out of Iraq, none of which called for American forces to leave immediately. Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) has proposed a flexible timetable that targets December 2006 for the full departure of U.S. troops from Iraq. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has proposed a non-specific timetable, which a statement says, "[i]f followed, the process will be completed in 12-15 months." The Senate Democratic leadership offered a proposal that declared, "Democrats believe we should see a significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty in 2006 so that our troops can begin coming home." The amendment, offered to the Defense Authorization Bill, would require that the Bush administration provide regular progress reports on Iraq and "a campaign plan with estimated dates for the phased redeployment of our troops from Iraq as each condition is met, with the understanding that unexpected contingencies may arise." While the amendment was rejected 58-40, an almost identical plan proposed by Sen. John Warner (R-VA) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) -- which principally lacked the requirement that the administration produce a withdrawal timetable -- passed 70-19.

Hume's rhetorical straw man -- claiming that Democrats support a "pull out now" policy and then saying that public opinion does not agree with such a proposal -- recalls similar mischaracterizations of Democrats' positions by The Washington Post, CNN, and National Review editor Rich Lowry.

From the December 4 broadcast of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:

HUME: We now have the Democratic Party and the House of Representatives coalescing, at least a majority view, as Nancy Pelosi put it this week, that it is time to get out now. Now, obviously, "get out now" logistically takes some months, but that's the view, and that is increasingly where I think the opposition party is headed. That is certainly the drift in the comments you hear from people like John Kerry and others. So that is becoming the debate. Should we just simply say -- I mean, Murtha's view, Jack Murtha's view, is -- and he's a serious man with a serious viewpoint, wide adherence, that we can't win, and we must now get out. And that is what is being argued. So that really is the debate.

WILLIAMS: Well, you can try to put it on the Democrats, but what this really is about is the American people who have lost faith in this war. If you look at the poll numbers, that's what's driving it. In fact, the Democrats are a lagging indicator. If the Democrats were truly responding to public opinion, if the Democrats were playing politics with this, they would be far more aggressive in saying, "Let's get out."

HUME: No, Juan, that's incorrect.

WILLIAMS: Howard Dean, in a speech just yesterday, said --

HUME: Juan, I'm sorry.

WILLIAMS: -- the Democratic Party should coalesce around a plan that would keep troops there for two or three years.

HUME: Juan, unfortunately, that's not right. The public has to some extent, as you correctly note, lost faith in this conflict. However, the pull-out-now number is very low in the public's estimation, and that, however, is the viewpoint to which the Democratic Party increasingly is rallying.

WALLACE: Well, wait, wait. Is that fair, Mara, to say that the Democrats are for "pull out now"?

LIASSON: Well, I think the Democrats are split. I think that up until now, there was a group of Democrats, Joe Biden among them, who were pushing the president not to withdraw immediately but to create benchmarks. If we have X number of Iraqi battalions able to take the lead, then we -- I suppose this would be the kind of benchmark they're looking for -- then we could imagine drawing down X troops by X date. And then you had -- and this was a surprise for many people, when Nancy Pelosi, who had been up until now at least not publicly stating that she supported Murtha's call, kind of trying to almost have their cake and eat it, too, have Murtha, who's a respected military man, out there saying this but not have the entire Democratic caucus in the House identified with that -- she crossed a line this week, and I think it is fair to say that a big chunk, not all, because Democrats --

HUME: Majority.

LIASSON: -- are split, in the House --

HUME: I think we'd have to agree a majority in the House.

LIASSON: -- in the House, are in the pull-out-now camp.

Appearing on the December 4 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams told host Howard Kurtz that the Bush administration has "the right" to pay a columnist to tout its views in his column. Williams also condoned the "politiciz[ation]" of programming on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

Discussing the recent disclosure by the Los Angeles Times of, in Kurtz's words, the "Pentagon planting positive stories, in some cases paying for positive stories in Iraqi newspapers," Kurtz asked Williams for his views on the propriety of actions in which the administration and former Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson were reportedly involved, including: 1) the administration's payment of $240,000 to conservative pundit Armstrong Williams in exchange for promoting the administration's No Child Left Behind education policy; and, 2) Tomlinson's alleged use of "political tests" for hiring a president and chief executive officer (CEO) for CPB and Tomlinson's involvement in direct contact with Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul A. Gigot while securing a programming spot for the Gigot-hosted PBS program The Journal Editorial Report. Asked by Kurtz if the two incidents were something to be "worr[ied] about," Brian Williams, who had moments earlier emphasized that expressing opinion is "a line I've always been unwilling to cross," responded: "Well, this is all part of the -- they have the right to do this on their team, I think."

Contrary to Brian Williams's claim that the Bush administration, Armstrong Williams, and Tomlinson have a "right" to engage in such activities, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and CPB's inspector general have determined otherwise.

In a September 30 report by General Counsel Anthony H. Gamboa, the GAO found that the Department of Education "violated the fiscal year 2004 publicity or propaganda prohibition" by contracting with Ketchum Inc. to obtain commentary by Armstrong Williams without requiring Ketchum to ensure that Williams disclosed the Education Department's role. The GAO similarly found that Armstrong Williams's commentary "violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition because it was 'covert,' in that it did not disclose to the targeted audiences that it was sponsored by the Department and was paid for using appropriated funds."

A November 15 report by CPB Inspector General Kenneth A. Konz alleged that Tomlinson "violated statutory provisions and the Director's Code of Ethics by dealing directly" with Gigot "during negotiations with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the CPB over creating the show." Konz also alleged that Tomlinson violated statutory provisions by establishing "political tests" as a "major criteria" for hiring a new president/CEO for CPB. Konz further noted that Tomlinson's decision to hire a consultant to evaluate PBS' Now with Bill Moyers complied with federal statues, but the inspector general alleged that Tomlinson violated CPB bylaws by acting without the authorization of CPB's board of directors.

Brian Williams's defense of Tomlinson, Armstrong Williams, and the Bush administration came just moments after the Nightly News host refused to comment on efforts by the Pentagon to pay Iraqi newspapers to run its own positive stories about the war and to pay Iraqi journalists to write similar reports. Brian Williams attributed his unwillingness to comment to the need for an anchor to steer clear of expressing "opinion" on such matters.

When asked by Kurtz about the Pentagon initiative, Brian Williams responded that "as long as there is no illegality proven," it falls into "that lovely, gray, undefined area in American history and culture where the government uses just about every tool at its disposal to win wars." When asked if he found such incidents "troubl[ing]," Williams replied: "[S]ince this takes us into the area of opinion, and that's a line I've always been unwilling to cross, I'll leave it to the journalism professors, the journalists who cover journalism to make a judgment about propriety vis-à-vis the government in this case."

From the December 4 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources:

KURTZ: The L.A. Times this week broke the story about the Pentagon planting positive stories, in some cases paying for positive stories in Iraqi newspapers. NBC followed it up, as did about every news organization on the planet. Does that kind of practice trouble you?

BRIAN WILLIAMS: I think as long as there have been conflicts and media to report on conflicts, the pejorative here is propaganda. I think there is -- as long as there is no illegality proven, or laws broken, this is in that lovely, gray, undefined area in American history and culture where the government uses just about every tool at its disposal to win wars.

We've just been through a debate about the unseemly way some governments win wars and get information out of people. This is one that takes place almost above board every day. And again, since this takes us into the area of opinion, and that's a line I've always been unwilling to cross, I'll leave it to the journalism professors, the journalists who cover journalism to make a judgment about propriety vis-à-vis the government in this case.

KURTZ: But there are those who say -- and you know this as well as anyone -- that the Bush administration has mounted an offensive against the press, whether it's making payments to pundits like Armstrong Williams, whether it's politicizing PBS, according to an inspector general's report, whether it's tightly controlling information that people in your organization try to get. Is this something that you worry about?

WILLIAMS: Well, this is all part of the -- they have the right to do this on their team, I think.

KURTZ: But isn't some of it crossing an ethical line?

WILLIAMS: Well, that's up to the individual journalist, and it's up to -- you know, an educated consumer is our best customer, to quote a New York clothier from years ago. It's still true that we hope our viewers realize that if it comes out of here, again, we have vetted it and reported it.

I mean, this is -- this is all the individuals involved. People -- people need to judge this administration. And despite any of the constrictions you mentioned that have been put on the news media, we have a free media in this society, and it hasn't affected our reporting this past week or these past several years.