Centerfield

By Friday we will be talking how Bush/Rove turned this story into a plus for them because of the appearance of unfairness.

How stupid can the media be...

You bet. And now we have a division within the establishment media: NBC/CNN vs. CBS/NYT. I wonder whether the two sides will start going after each others' throats.

Notice that Fox isn't involved -- yet.

Marc, thanks for all of these resources. I'm getting quite a bit of information.

RE Fox. They did address the issue on yesterday's Brit Hume show during the panel discussion portion. They said it was a small amount compared to the thousands of tons throughout the country. I haven't seen any further reporting on it.

The crew embedded with the 101st is adding a new twist to this story:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6323933/

An NBC News crew that accompanied U.S. soldiers who seized the Al-Qaqaa base three weeks into the war in Iraq reported that troops discovered significant stockpiles of bombs, but no sign of the missing HMX and RDX explosives.

Reporter Lai Ling Jew, who was embedded with the Army’s 101st Airborne, Second Brigade, said Tuesday on MSNBC TV that the news team stayed at the Al-Qaqaa base for about 24 hours.

‘No move to secure the weapons’
“There wasn’t a search,” she told MSNBC, an NBC cable news channel. “The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers headed off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around.

“But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away.”

So much for turning it into a plus.

I agree with Mathew. It shouldn't be long before Rove and CO. have this equated with CBS and forged documents.

We'll have to wait and see what sticks.

What's missing so far is any proof that the MSM intended to intentionally mislead by ignoring known context.

They're not off the hook because the media is supposed to vet and confirm before reporting.

Nevertheless, it's more likely that this sort of last-minute stuff is coming from the campaigns with the full knowledge that if it's leaked late enough the context won't catch up in time to undo the damage.

Both campaigns know that if they come up with something that smells juicy, time constraints will cloud media judgement.

It's interesting that Drudge is reporting this. Let's see what else Drudge reports over the next week. I'm still wondering if any ugly Kerry divorce details are going to mysteriously appear at the last minute.

bk, I don't think the television news was intentionally misleading the public. I think that, once again, they were behind the story instead of in front of it. I watch Fox News Watch and CNNs Reliable Sources. They have said on several occasions that the broadcast media has become lazy. They don't conduct investigative reporting like they used to.

Take a look at how they've been operating over the last few years. They stick to fluff or quote other news sources. If an issue of substance becomes unavoidable, then they attempt to cover it. It happened with the prison abuse. CBS held that up so that the administration could look into it first. Once CBS reported it, the other networks beat it to death. Many of them relied on Seymore Hersh for details. They were all set to run with the CBS document until the blogosphere discredited it. Right now the only way I hear about oil for food is from Fox.

I was so excited when the media fact checked the debates. It was very refreshing and short lived. Now we're back to "X said Y eats babies" but "Y says it's just more blank wing rhetoric".

Because Kerry keeps talking about the explosives, they've been forced to play catch up on the story.

This is one of the main reasons I seek more information from the Internet.

I'm waiting for the first person to blog that Rove provided the misinformation, knowing it would get discredited, so he could then spin it to his advantage. It's all about Rove don't you know.

What "misinformation" would that be, Will?

Sorry, Will, I was with Karl today at a secret war meeting of the pajamahadeen, and he swore on a stack of Korans that he had nothing to do with it. But he did let me in on the story they plan to open up on Friday. It's all about John Kerry's gay Cambodian love-child, who is serving as a Zarqawi lieutenant in Iraq.

He claims he got it direct an unimpeachable source in the Kerry Campaign with the initials L.D., so he knew it was true, especially when Dan Rather gave him supporting documents, including the original laser-printed Cambodian birth certificate. The child's name is U Binh Tuk, but he's currently going under his Muslim name of Bin Had Agin.

I think we need a friendly wager.

I've got $20 that says Rove loses this one.

State the wager, precisely?