{"id":12751,"date":"2007-09-02T16:00:04","date_gmt":"2007-09-02T20:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12751.html"},"modified":"2007-09-02T16:00:04","modified_gmt":"2007-09-02T20:00:04","slug":"petraeus-gets-a-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/petraeus-gets-a-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Petraeus gets a hand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Kevin Drum explained<\/a> that independent of Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has run a masterful, methodical p.r. campaign that effectively “outplayed” Democrats and other opponents of the president’s war policy. Atrios<\/a> held lawmakers at least partially responsible, because they “have chosen to play along.”<\/p>\n

But in order to really change the conventional wisdom, Petraeus needed a hand from a pliant press corps. Greg Sargent makes the case<\/a> today that the media made Petraeus’ media blitz a success by buying into faulty assumptions.<\/p>\n

\n

…I think it’s necessary to add another explanation for the apparent success of Petraeus’ PR push: The media, in some cases out of incompetence and in others by design, helped him get away with it, and indeed actively enabled it.<\/p>\n

If you step back and survey the totality of media’s performance this summer on the Iraq debate, it becomes a good deal clearer just how awful it’s all been — and just how complicit these failings were in helping to shift the debate.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s persuasive stuff.<\/p>\n

Greg reports that there are five angles to this: mischaracterizing Dems who noted some military gains in Iraq, downplaying the point of the surge policy (political progress), overemphasizing the opinions of surge proponents (Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack), making the September report about Petraeus instead of the White House, and accepting the idea that the president will necessarily win a showdown with Dems over Iraq.
\n
\nThey’re all important points, but it’s that first one that bugs me the most.<\/p>\n

(1) Big news orgs repeatedly twisted the words of Democrats who had returned from Iraq to make their assessments sound more positive than they were.<\/b><\/p>\n

This has happened again and again in recent weeks. When Democratic Senator Carl Levin came back from Iraq and said that the escalation was showing measurable results but has “totally and utterly failed” to reach its goal of political reconciliation in Iraq, big news orgs repeatedly spun Levin’s words<\/a> to make it sound as if he were saying that the surge was succeeding, when he wasn’t.<\/p>\n

And when Hillary Clinton claimed in a recent speech that various tactical changes in Al Anbar province were showing results, news outlets reported again<\/a> and again<\/a> and again<\/a> and again<\/a> that she’d said the “surge” was “working,” when that isn’t what she’d said at all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I noted<\/a> the other day, this has been a key talking point at the White House, too. Here’s an exchange<\/a> from Thursday’s press briefing.<\/p>\n

Q: Democrats are saying that this GAO report basically shows that President Bush’s Iraq strategy is not working. How do you respond to them? Why should they not view it that way?<\/p>\n

SNOW: Well, number one, they ought to talk to the Democrats who have just come back from Iraq who said just the opposite. So, I mean, you’ve had Senator Durbin, Senator Levin. You had a number of key Democrats who have come back and talked about — Senator Biden, even — suggesting that there have been, in fact, significant changes under the surge and there have been significant progress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The argument is ridiculous<\/a> — Levin actually said, “The purpose of the surge, by its own terms, was to … give the opportunity to the Iraqi leaders to reach some political settlements. They have failed to do that. They have totally and utterly failed.” — but every network the past couple of weeks has repeated the bogus assertion that “even Democrats” agree the surge is working.<\/p>\n

On this one, Petraeus didn’t even have to try too hard; the media bought into the nonsense fairly easily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, Kevin Drum explained that independent of Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has run a masterful, methodical p.r. campaign that effectively “outplayed” Democrats and other opponents of the president’s war policy. Atrios held lawmakers at least partially responsible, because they “have chosen to play along.” But in order to really change the conventional wisdom, Petraeus needed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}