T1B

http://www.media.nationalreview.com

It's run by Stephen Spruiell and has gems like this:

More U.N. Flackery
06/24 12:26 PM
The Agence France Presse issues forth this story today:

GENEVA (AFP) - Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.

"They are no longer trying to duck this, and have respected their obligation to inform the UN," the Committee member told AFP.

"They they will have to explain themselves (to the Committee). Nothing should be kept in the dark."

The entire story rests upon a single anonymous source, one of these ten committee members. Is there any doubt that the document in question merely rehashes the same stories of detainee abuse we've already heard so much about? Yet this report does not explain the nature of the incidents in question or whether they are already known to the public. The reporter merely serves as a flack for the U.N. But that's nothing new.

UPDATE: Patrick at Conspiracy Squirrels took a glance at the committee membership:

I just noticed the following name on the list of Committee Members:

Mr. Alexander M. YAKOVLEV - Russian Federation

Is that the same fellow that was just 'outed' in the Oil for Food Scandal, and had to resign? If so, then I think I know where the leak came from!
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Beautiful...

Here's another comparing the mainstream media coverage on Rove's comments and Durbin's comments:

That Was Fast
06/24 09:15AM

Hoystory.com has the full analysis of the disparity between the New York Times coverage of Durbin’s remarks vs. Rove’s remarks:

Let me make this perfectly clear – the No. 2 ranking Democrat leader in the U.S. Senate compared American troops to the guards of the Soviet gulags and the murderers of the Nazi regime who sent millions of men, women and children to their deaths – and the New York Times gives it a thimblefull of ink and relies heavily on wire copy.

Just days later, Rove calls liberals – not Democrats specifically, though the two definitely overlap – soft on terrorism and the Times produces a staff-written report. The next day, Democrats come out in force to assail Rove, and we get another staff-written report with a photo.

Tim Graham has more on the Washington Post’s similar disparity on the Corner:

The Washington Post puts the Karl Rove "controversy" on the front page today. That's funny. Durbin's remarks never made the front page (June 17, A-11; June 18 in briefs, A-5; June 19, A-6; June 22 apology, A-6). This seems like Democratic party news judgment, not an independent person's news judgment. Durbin compared American soldiers to Soviet henchmen in the gulag, and that's less outrageous to the Posties than saying liberals thought therapy was the answer to terror. Durbin was dead serious. Rove was in campaign red-meat humor mode.

To this I would add a criticism of this item in yesterday’s CJR Daily, the blog of that objective media watchdog, the Columbia Journalism Review. Unable to debunk James Lakely’s thesis in the Washington Times yesterday that Durbin’s remarks received far less press play than Trent Lott’s remarks about Strom Thurmond’s segregationist presidential run in 2002 (after trying but finding that Lott’s remarks got five times more coverage than Durbin’s), CJR Daily’s Samantha Henig moves the goalposts:

Responding to Democrats in the Senate who were protesting against a potential rule change that would have killed filibusters against judicial nominations, [Sen. Rick] Santorum said, "The audacity of some members to stand up and say 'How dare you break this rule' – it's the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.'"

Santorum's remarks are much closer to Durbin's than anything Trent Lott said.

Actually, no. Durbin likened the abusive interrogations at Guantanamo Bay to the systematic murder of the Nazis, Stalin and the Khmer Rouge. Santorum used a historical analogy (albeit a stupid one) to say that while the Democrats didn’t have control the Senate, they claimed to be outraged that the Republicans had threatened their ersatz control-via-filibuster. When we look back on the horrors of the Nazi regime, we don’t immediately think, “Yes, Hitler’s cruel “How dare you invade me” speech. We must never forget.”

In the same way, the press has tried to equalize Durbin’s and Rove’s remarks in an attempt to make this look like a trading of political barbs. Here’s the NY Times:

"Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said, 'We will defeat our enemies,' " Mr. Rove continued at a gathering in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State. "Liberals saw what happened to us and said, 'We must understand our enemies.'"

The remarks led to a cascade of criticism from Democratic lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, where Republicans have sought to put the party on the defensive for days after a leading Democratic senator, Richard J. Durbin, compared abusive treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the war crimes of the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.

Here’s the Post:

The acrimonious exchanges came just two days after Durbin bowed to Republican-led pressure and apologized for comparing the treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba to techniques used by the Nazis and the Soviets. Together, the episodes underscored the growing harshness and rising political stakes of the debate over national security at a time of declining support for Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq and pressure on him to outline a strategy for success there.

Except what Rove said and what Durbin said were not the same at all. The mainstream media will not point this out, whether because they refuse or because the tenets of “objective” journalism won’t allow them to call things what they really are. On the other hand, at least they’re finally writing about Dick Durbin.
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Bwaahahahaaaaaa!!

Looks like the mainstream media was caught fabricating stories, again...

“U.N. Uncovers Torture at Guantanamo Bay”
06/23 02:13 PM

The Associated Press chose that headline for this story about the latest 1st Avenue farce. And how did the U.N. “uncover” this torture?”

Many of these allegations have come to light through declassified (U.S.) government documents," said a statement from the four, who report to U.N. bodies on different human rights issues.

Yet, even though the U.S. government’s own investigations have provided the grist for this exercise in publicity, the U.N. accuses the U.S. officials of stonewalling investigators because they have so far failed to let this merry band have unlimited access to al-Qaeda fighters who have been trained to lie about their treatment:

The failure of the United States to respond is leading the experts to conclude that Washington has something to hide, said the specialist on torture, Manfred Nowak, a professor of international law in Vienna, Austria.

"At a certain point, you have to take well-founded allegations as proven in the absence of a clear explanation by the government," he said, though he also noted: "We are not making a judgment if torture or treatment under degrading conditions has taken place."

Is “U.N. Uncovers Torture” really the appropriate headline when even Manfred himself said, “We are not making a judgment if torture… has taken place”? I would suggest the more appropriate headline:
U.N. Tries to Distract Press Attention From Latest Oil-For-Food Scandal Revelations;

Officials Wave Hands, Shout “Look, Over Here!”
(via LGF)

UPDATE: Jeff Harrell at Shape of Days has more:

Only when you get down to the last graf does reporter Brad Klapper deign to mention that the [International Committee of the Red Cross] has been conducting inspections of the facilities at Guantanamo Bay since days after Camp X-Ray opened in January 2002. But the ICRC keeps their reports secret, you see. They’re obviously in on it.

UPDATE II: Jeff just informed me that the story has gotten an extensive rewrite, including a new headline: "U.N. Officials Seek Guantanamo Bay Visit." As he puts it, "If they could get the story right at 3:28 p.m., why couldn’t they get the story right at 12:04 p.m.?" Agreed.
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Bwaahahahahaaaa!!!