{"id":8135,"date":"2006-08-07T10:10:58","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T14:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8135.html"},"modified":"2006-08-07T10:10:58","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T14:10:58","slug":"if-a-report-falls-in-a-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/if-a-report-falls-in-a-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"If a report falls in a forest…"},"content":{"rendered":"

To update an item<\/a> from late last week, [tag]Democrats[\/tag] on the House Judiciary Committee issued a sweeping indictment Friday of the Bush White House’s casual approach to law-breaking in a [tag]report[\/tag] called, “The [tag]Constitution in Crisis[\/tag]<\/a>.” Carpetbagger regular Hark emailed me with a question about the media’s reaction to the report so far. Needless to say, it’s not inspiring.<\/p>\n

Using Lexis-Nexis and Google News, it appears that the only mainstream media outlet — literally, the only one — to even mention the release of the report was CNN, when Jack [tag]Cafferty[\/tag] devoted<\/a> 200 words to the subject on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“Well, somebody has finally worked up the nerve to say it out loud. We have a constitutional crisis in this country. So says Congressman [tag]John Conyers[\/tag] of Michigan. He’s the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. And in an upcoming report, he describes what he calls an alarming pattern by the [tag]Bush[\/tag] [tag]administration[\/tag] of operating outside the law and with no meaningful oversight by Congress.<\/p>\n

“Conyers says the Bush administration may have broken a total of 26 separate laws and regulations, including misleading Congress and the American people about the decision to go to war in Iraq; manipulating intelligence about the justification for the war; encouraging torture and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq; allowing inappropriate retaliation against critics; and approving unlawful domestic surveillance.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As far as I can tell, this was the only reference to the report in any mainstream news outlet. It’s worth taking a moment to ask why.
\n
\nTo be fair, the timing of the release wasn’t ideal. A Friday afternoon in August was probably not the way to maximize exposure for the report.<\/p>\n

Regardless, this is a well-documented, thoroughly-researched report from congressional Democrats about the Bush administration possibly violating over two dozen federal laws and regulations — some of them multiple times<\/a>. And yet, nothing in the AP; nothing in any of the major dailies; nothing on ABC, CBS, or NBC. Not one word.<\/p>\n

Two quick thoughts: one, many of us frequently feel like congressional Democrats need to be aggressive and go on the offensive more, but let’s not forget, even when they do, much of the media blows off what Dems have to say. Over the weekend, the AP ran a 1,000-word puff piece<\/a> on how the GOP base considers Dick Cheney “a rock star,” but the AP managed to blow off the Conyers document entirely. It’s an extra challenge for the party when Dems are<\/i> aggressive but the public never hears about it.<\/p>\n

And two, if Dems accuse the administration of criminal activity, and it’s widely ignored, does it really make a sound?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To update an item from late last week, [tag]Democrats[\/tag] on the House Judiciary Committee issued a sweeping indictment Friday of the Bush White House’s casual approach to law-breaking in a [tag]report[\/tag] called, “The [tag]Constitution in Crisis[\/tag].” Carpetbagger regular Hark emailed me with a question about the media’s reaction to the report so far. Needless to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8135","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=8135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}