QandO: The Daily Mislead

June 18, 2004

The Daily Mislead
Posted by Jon Henke

The GOP decided that a top priority of the legislative agenda was blocking stiffer penalties for war profiteers.

...check out this one:
[...]
A clearly uncomfortable Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., rallied Republicans against the amendment."
- CongressDaily, 6/17/04

Damning, isn't it? Those pro-fraud Republicans! .....except, not so much. David Sirota is practicing journalistic fraud, and Oliver is probably just playing follow the leader.

"Fraud", you say? That's a pretty harsh charge. What's the evidence?

Note that the line CongressDaily ends in a period in Sirota's citation. Then, follow the link, and see how it ends in the story....

A clearly uncomfortable Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., rallied Republicans against the amendment, warning the provisions were simply too vague to be placed into federal law.[emphasis added]

Sirota obscures the fact that there was a legitimate objection to the amendment. He doesn't simply gloss over it - he edits the sentence to completely remove the aspects not helpful to his argument.

That might be the only part he willfully left out, but that's not the only relevant information left out of this story, and this is where the "pro-war profiteer" slur gets currency with Oliver. Strangely, neither Sirota, nor Oliver, mentions this...

Instead, the Senate approved a Republican alternative extending two anti-fraud criminal statutes to cover overseas business operations.

And why is that particularly relevant? Because, the Leahy amendment was justified as simply making "it easier to assert U.S. jurisdiction and removes unnecessary obstacles to prosecution."

So, let's review"
1: Senator Leahy introduces an anti-fraud amendment which extends fraud jurisdiction to war zones like Iraq.
2: The Republicans reject his version as too general, and vote to extend the jurisdiction of existing fraud laws to war zones like Iraq.
3: Democrats and bloggers claim Republicans are protecting war profiteers, because....well, because Republicans passed an anti-fraud amendment, but not Senator Leahy's anti-fraud amendment. So--obviously--they're in favor of fraud.

One wonders if they'll be willing to mention that the Republicans did pass an anti-fraud amendment.....or if that simply won't fit into the narrative. We'll see.

UPDATE: More of the same to be found here.

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