Disclosure Row Over White House Coverage

By: Charles Cooper
Topics: In The News

Believe me, there's nothing like a journalistic cat fight to get the blood flowing. Well, spats between intellectuals - especially fought out on the back pages of the New York Review Of Books - rate a close second. But you get the real deal when reporters square off over who sits on the side of the angels (and by process of elimination, who is not.)

We've got one brewing right now. Yuval Levin, who worked in the White House domestic policy staff as an aide to George W. Bush, now has got a gig writing news stories for Newsweek. The Nation's Ari Melber, who got wind of this, notes that when Levin's first piece ran in the magazine last March, the editors slugged it as an analysis from "a Bush veteran." No such notation was attached to Levin's new piece chronicling why "right-of-center candidates are succeeding in the age of Obama." A few months earlier, Levin even co-authored a Tom Bevan in RealClearPolitics tries. Sort of.

"If Melber is worried about a reporter's ideological bias affecting their reporting, maybe he should direct some of his indignation at Richard Wolffe, the "Senior White House correspondent" who covered Obama for the 2008 campaign for Newsweek. Wolffe was so chummy with the Obama inner circle he wrote a book about it, and hopes to write another - when he's not busy appearing on Keith Olbermann's show, that is."

Ouch. Well, let me try and bridge the gap as both scribes make valid points. Melber is entirely correct to wonder what part of the term "conflict of interest" the Washington Post Company can't understand. The corporation's assertion that a previous single declaration of disclosure covers all bases until the end of time is, um, how to put this politely - pure nonsense. At the same time, Bevan's snark doesn't detract from his perfectly sensible complaint about MSNBC's rather liberal (no pun intended) policy regarding guest selection. Knowing what we now know, did John McCain and Sarah Palin truly receive a fair shake from Wolffe during all those appearances on Olbermann's program the last couple of years? I'll leave you to decide that one.

Charles Cooper is an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.
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by markj2 November 20, 2009 4:01 PM EST: The White House is pissed off that someone from the Bush administration got the job and that their pick lost out. If newsweek wants to survive they have to be unbiased and offer opposing views and stop sucking up to Obama and his pack of misfit cronnies.; Reply to this comment


by kenjacobi November 19, 2009 5:44 PM EST: How come the GOP always blame the Media for eveything. Sarah Palin blames the media for her all her woes, she take none of the Responsibility for her failures. As Governor she quit, it's all the Media fault, as the GOP VP candidate, she lost, you guess it, it's the Media fault.She not the only one who blames the Media, ask Rush or Glenn Beck they will agree the everything bad is the Dems and there control of the "State Run" Media. I agree that the media leans one way or another, but with the Internet and PDA's all views are talk about and talk about. Everyone Lies the Dems and the GOP and yes even your President Lies sometimes. What we need is new ideas for the future and stop blaming others. It is real easy not to come up with new ideas and mock and blame those who do.; Reply to this comment


by NowBeWithThat November 19, 2009 4:16 PM EST: "...did John McCain and Sarah Palin truly receive a fair shake from Wolffe during all those appearances on Olbermann's program the last couple of years?"
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Fair shake? This is a joke, right?

When it comes to McCain and Palin, Olbermann is like a starving rabid dog on a long leash.; Reply to this comment


by pjhappy November 18, 2009 8:32 PM EST: Balfour Decleration of 1917 answers questions people, and as for the otherthings...."the good guys of America"... let's see who started them.....

Source of Day Wikipedia:" Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world. Calvin's thought exerted considerable influence over major religious figures and entire religious movements, such as Puritanism, and some have argued that his ideas have contributed to the rise of capitalism, individualism, and representative democracy in the West."
Huguenots were french followers of Calvin'd ideas, for they knew He had something to do with the Crown the Catholics of France reacted... read Huguenot history.
So the Huguenots exported their poo and guess what they accomplished......the Huguenots are French-Traitors....... here's a few of their "clan" making a "little" dent in history...
Source Wiki(Huguenots)
"Eight American Presidents (George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson) had significant proven Huguenot ancestry, as did founding fathers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Paul Revere. Twelve other U.S. Presidents had credible but unproven claims to Huguenot ancestors.[45]
Davy Crockett, celebrated 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician was of Huguenot stock. The Crocketts were the descendants of Huguenots who fled France in the 17th Century and migrated to Ireland. Crockett is an Anglicized version of the name "de Crocketagne".
Francis Marion, American Revolutionary War guerilla fighter, was of predominantly Huguenot heritage.
In 1924 a commemorative half dollar, known as the Huguenot-Walloon Half Dollar[46], was coined in the United States to celebrate the 300th anniversary of their initial settlement in what is now the United States. One Huguenot colonist was a silversmith named Apollos Rivoire, who would later anglicize his name to Paul Revere. He would, still later, give his name and his profession to his son, Paul Revere, the famous United States revolutionary."

You owe vatican 0$ ,FACT - Huguenots have led you to your national and personal debts, FACT, Kennedy the Catholic tried to warn you FACT Lyndon Johnson the Huguenot Stock followed him into office after brains were spilled FACT

The Rothschilds were writing scripts of fiction long before they supplied a few Canadian Jews with the means to create Hollywood....... and this is why America's story and little boys coming out of a battlefield with a flute victorious sounds so much like a Hollywood Script! Good Morning Sunshine, nice to see you WAKE_UP!
A.J.'s "answers" may be dangerous to your LIFE!
Hitler = Tool as Obama = Tool, the math is pure!
Check out the HOLY WAR decleration of 1933 what year did ww2 start?
This had a "offensive to fb users" warning pop up lol http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=1710662559138481080&hl=en&fs=true
I'm going hard here because on infowars.com pay or not, i get censored within 4 minutes everytime with FACTS provided
-still calling them "FREEDOM FRIES" down there y'all???
... as a.j. says , time to do your own homework, and if you do prove my claims wrong, please let me know a.s.a.p. so I can speak TRUTH..thank-you! http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/freedman.htm
and so you know.... some of us catholics do know of the evils that were committed by so called members of the church, but we choose to hunt down those devils from within the church , the one church that Jesus placed on the shoulders of St-Peter, rather than follow some of those same devils outside of HER!; Reply to this comment


by lakota2012 November 18, 2009 12:42 PM EST: by pubsrtoast:
It seems like there are lots of out of work failures from the last administration that want to ignore their own colossal errors and focus on the guy trying to piece everything back together. These are the people that need to be told to sit down and_STFU_.
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Exactly! These moronic right wingers fail to completely understand the train wreck that was handed President Obama on Day One, and only believe in instant gratification despite the worst economic catastrophe since the 1930's with the bush/cheney Great Recession!; Reply to this comment


by pubsrtoast November 18, 2009 9:02 AM EST: It seems like there are lots of out of work failures from the last administration that want to ignore their own colossal errors and focus on the guy trying to piece everything back together. These are the people that need to be told to sit down and_STFU_.; Reply to this comment