If Giuliani gets booted from the ISG in a forest….

June 20, 2007

Yesterday, Newsday broke a huge story that everyone else had missed: Rudy Giuliani was on the Iraq Study Group but blew off his responsibilities to give lucrative private speeches. Under pressure from the ISG leadership, Giuliani quit two months after committing to the panel. For that matter, the Giuliani campaign tried to spin the story, but its explanation didn’t make any sense. Given that the former mayor is billing national security as his signature issue, this story has the potential to be very damaging.

If only the media cared. Yesterday afternoon, Greg Sargent asked, “Will the rest of the media cover this hard-hitting scoop on Rudy and his alleged national security credentials?”

Is it really possible that the big news orgs don’t view this as newsworthy?

More to the point, is it really conceivable that the same big news orgs who have unquestioningly and baselessly conferred on Rudy the aura of having national security experience will take a pass on an actual reported story that’s now emerged casting doubt on those same credentials?

By morning we’ll know for sure.

That was yesterday. Today, Kevin Drum did a Nexis search and discovered that “no one in our press corps considered either the news itself or Giuliani’s laughable explanation for his absences to be worth commenting on.”

A quick Nexis search shows that among the mainstream media, the New York Times wrote a short piece, and the Kansas City Star and Chicago Tribune carried brief blurbs. That’s it. On TV, Olberman discussed it, but no one else.

I’m cautious about throwing around phrases like “journalistic malpractice,” but once in a while, the shoe fits.

Kevin added:

I’m keenly aware that an awful lot of blog criticism of the mainstream media is basically just partisan sniping. But is this seriously not considered news? A guy who’s running for president based on his reputation as a hero of 9/11 was given a seat on the highest profile group ever created to investigate a way forward in Iraq, but he decided it wasn’t worth his time? He blew off James Baker and Lee Hamilton so that he could give speeches in South Korea and attend fundraisers for Ralph Reed in Atlanta? And the consensus reaction is a big yawn?

Yeesh. Somebody please tell me this is just a case of the Nexis record being incomplete. Please?

No can do. I no longer have access to Nexis — if there are any Nexis employees out there want to help me out, I’ll be forever indebted — but I checked Google News and found similar results.

In addition to what Kevin already mentioned, I saw a small blurb in the Seattle Times and a quick mention on MSNBC’s morning-news blog. That’s it. Not even a story on one of the wire services.

In contrast, I thought I’d add that Barack Obama has a researcher who mentioned “Punjab” in a stupid memo and the media obsessed over it for five days. The AP ran multiple stories about it, and every network reported on it in some length.

But Rudy Giuliani blows off the Iraq Study Group to cash in on his celebrity, is forced to resign, and the vast majority of news outlets don’t even lift an eyebrow. They’ll assert without reason that Giuliani is strong on national security, but they’ll also ignore evidence to the contrary.

This is why Dems complain about the media.

And this is why more and more people turn to blogs for political coverage.

And Bill Clinton gave a speech on Sept 10th for money. Big story.

  • If you do a Google News search of “Giuliani” and “Iraq”, you get LOTS of horce race stories

  • Will the rest of the media cover this hard-hitting scoop on Rudy and his alleged national security credentials?”

    Not while Obama has big ears, Hillary wears dresses and Edwards gets haircuts. Clearly the MSM feels those are bigger stories.

    And this is why more and more people turn to blogs for political coverage.

    100% accurate.

  • On the notion of turning to blogs for political coverage, what are the larger rightwing blogs saying about this? I’d love to hear their rationalization (let me guess: “Bill Clinton did it too! or would have if he’d been invited”) but most of their blogs are blocked by my corporate firewall.

    Anyone care to summarize the rightwing blog response to Guiliani putting a higher priority on big $ speaking gigs than the Iraq Study Group?

  • I expect that the media will jump all over Rudy if another Rep candidate appears to “get the nod”. Unless of course, the corporacracy has already decided that Rudy is “their man”. Sorry, just finished reading Armed Madhouse and I’mm feeling a wee more paranoid than usual…

  • It’s a conspiracy by any other name, isn’t it? When you’re destined to win, it’s just great to have your opponents throw at you everything they’ve got. Then they can go [unowhat] themselves for decades to come. ‘Bring it on’, shoe and all!

  • I’m cautious to throw around phrases like “journalistic malpractice,” but once in a while, the shoe fits

    Bu-but CB, Paris Hilton is in jail!

    I no longer think it is a case of “the media” being biased, they’re just bloody lazy and frankly, if I could get paid that much to fart out an in-depth analyisis of what H. Clinton’s clothes say about her personality, I’m not sure I’d do much better.

    10,000 years from now alien archeologists will dig out a library’s periodical section and say “No wonder those dipshits melted their polar ice-caps. Thank Zorgq they killed themselves off before they discovered FTL propulsion.”

  • I think the new media rule is: If you can’t something nice about how a republican candidate smells, don’t say anything at all. Obviously, RuPaul Giuliani stinks to high heaven on this,

  • But this is common press corps conduct. When they get a story they like—a story which promotes a view they have formed—they tend to ignore the facts of the case. They recite the tale in its most pleasing form. All questions—all probing—tends to stop.

    —Bob Somerby

    Rudy is a 9/11 hero is a story they like a lot.

  • Oh, they’ll cover it, when the ads mentioning it come out. Which they will, if Giuliani doesn’t self-destruct for otehr reasons first.

    The main problem is that the herd reporters hate to get out in front of the herd on anything, the pundits hate to admit they were wrong about him, and the MSM heads like Rudolph’s pro-business stands.

  • I was just listening to Ken Rudin doing his Wednesday, “Political Junkie”, stint on NPR’s TOTN. He was asked about the impact of this story and he basically took Guiliani’s explanation without much analysis and said Rudy did the right thing by not showing up and then leaving so as not to blur that line. There was no mention of the tension between his choosing cash over responsible involvement in the ISG.

    I detected no curiosity at all that there might be more to the story than what the Guiliani camp said there was. I expected better but I’m no longer surprised when that doesn’t happen.

  • And this is why more and more people turn to blogs for political coverage.

    We are subverting the dominant paradigm! May the MSM implode under the weight of their own bullshit!

  • I’m no longer surprised. These guys have more teflon on them than all the pots and pans in the world.

    We need a Star Chamber.

  • Well you have to admit, it’s not like he overpaid for a haircut or something. A little perspective, please.

  • It’s not experience that passes for national security cred nowadays, it is the odor of cigar smoke, and how masculine you look.

    How tall is Giuliani, anyway? He always looked like a midget to me. Someone get me Chris Matthews!

    There we go, that should do it.

  • The breakup of media consolidation is going to take some stealth operations by our candidates. We saw in ’03-’04 what happened to Clark after he spoke about the dangers of media consolidation — he was effectively blacked out. The only way it can be dealt with is for the candidates to remain silent on this most major problem in this country — but then how do *we* know it’s even on their radar? — and once in office get to work breaking up the monopoly.

    Our republic and its press will rise and fall together.
    –Joseph Pulitzer

  • It’s clear that we are not going to be able to count on the MSM to inform the electorate in any substantive way, and clearer still that the concepts of quality control and fact-checking have been completely abandoned. “News” is now just another form of entertainment, and it gets packaged and sold that way. The culture of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears is why we are being treated to commentary on what the candidates smell like, and whether they’ve had any “work” done – because that’s the demographic that’s watching TV and that’s the kind of thing they want to know.

    The bigger problem is that there are vast numbers of people who believe that what they see on the TV and read in the paper is actually a fair representation of what is going on in the world. And with such important issues as war and constitutional rights and nuclear capability and energy and climate change confronting us – things that really matter to our quality of life and our future – that the media has chosen to remain silent on the Rudy/ISG thing – among many others – is appallingly negligent. It’s as if they are more interested in being publicists, who keep negative things about their clients out of the news, instead of anything resembling journalists, who present the facts and allow people to come to their own conclusions.

    What I have not figured out, though, is how to change it, because corporate America eclipses all efforts to do so.

  • I don’t think Giuliani is anyone’s candidate right now, I think it’s just a matter of him representing Republicans as a high-profile, ambitious Republican, and concerned people trying to not let him look bad because of how it reflects on Republicans in general.

    I’ll do something more general on the candidates that I’ve meant to do for a while soon, and link to it on an open thread.

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