WHY don't they challenge the falsehoods? Are they just too lazy?

I just don't know, wren...I really don't get it...

Because the polls aren't considered part of the historical record: they just fill up airtime in a very nice, convenient way. As do interviews full of bullshit from Saint John McCain.

You really think Miles the [Auto]Pilot remembers the stuff he reads from the autocue?

WHY don't they challenge the falsehoods? Are they just too lazy?
Posted by: Wren

it would be impolite, woonit?
besides, think of the 'lese majeste' aspect:
mebbe every and any tom, dick, or harry might think they had the right to challenge the aristos and their lackeys.
coont have that; it'd be imprudent.

ahem gets at the key point: most beltway journalists aren't particularly well-informed about most issues. it's not clear to me that they read much of anything; it certainly is clear to me that they prefer their information predigested.

the average business, local politics, or sports writer knows his or her subject matter way, way better than the average pundit or pundit interviewer....

I get it Greg. They are so in the tank for Bush and their "hero" McCain that they don't want to do ANYTHING which would contradict him.

Wasn't the idea of sending more troops polling at, like, 12 percent before the president announced his intentions to do so? Doesn't this just prove that 30 percent of people will support him, no matter what he proposes?

[McCAIN:] Overnight ratings, I understand, were slightly in favor of supporting the president's proposal.

See? He said "I understand." He wasn't actually lying; he's just not a very good understander!

Actually, I think this one is a little iffy. I do recall seeing polls just before the speech saying that the support for escalation was sub-teen (11 or 12%, if memory serves) and after the speech that support seemed to have jumped to the low thirties...

Greg,

I forget where I saw it, but there was an overnight poll of State of the Union viewers that showed 52% supporting the president's plan. I'm sure that's what McCain's referring to.

That said, the people who actually tuned in to watch the president's SOTU are hardly representative of the public at large. I'll bet the sample is heavily skewed with people who already supported the president.

All you have to do is watch Wolf Blitzer wilt like a flower in front of Dick Cheney to understand.

Most journalists just want to keep their heads down. It's just a job; they don't really see themselves as truth-seekers. And they generally don't want to piss off the right.

So, once again, the threat by the dummies who support the 'Iraq debacle'..."If we leave, there will be 'chaos' in Iraq...or the 'region' or th 'area'", or whatever term first rolls off their tongues.

To which, just once, I'd like to see some interviewer (or print juounalist) retort with: "But, Senator McCain, wouldn't you call what we have in Iraq right now 'chaos'?"

There was a report on CBS radio the day after the speech about a poll *of people who had heard the speech* that was generally more positive for Bush than a general population poll. I don't remember the numbers, but it is quite possible that a majority in that poll favored the "surge". (Of course, polling a population predisposed to view Bush positively gives you essentially meaningless results.)

So McCain isn't flat out lying, he's just being terribly mis-leading.

McCain is a phony and always has been.

I wish that people would call them for what they are: LIES. Calling them 'falsehoods', 'mis-statements', or even just 'spin' and the like is making them sound less pernicious than they are. I understand that at times one has to be diplomatic, but when one is confronted with a serial liar, it's time to haul out the blunt language. When McCain (or anyone else) engages in this behavior, it's time to bluntly call them out on it, and brand them with the term 'liar'. Pretty soon, if the public sees enough republican politicians branded as liars, they may start to notice the pattern - not only is there a 'culture of corruption', but a 'culture of lies'.

Most so-called reporters today are really readers. They receive copy from the shows producers and are unable to stray from the script. How often do you hear "we're out of time and will take this up at some later time"? This format rules out any follow-up questioning and prevents upsetting the program's agenda.

The only possible explanation is that it benefits them more to not challenge the bs than it does to challenge it. It's classical conditioning and self-interest at work, but whatever the rewards are, they don't seem to outweigh the penalty of being attacked by the wrong-wing noise machine.

Here's the relevant paragraph from the story about the CBS poll...

"In discussing Iraq, the president said "it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory." A slim majority of speech-watchers – 52% - favor sending an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. This is an improvement from before the speech when just 43% of the same people supported sending more troops."

Note "...slim majority of speech-watchers..."

And the paragraph that shows that "speech-watchers" are predisposed to view Bush more favorably...

"Americans who watched the speech were more likely to approve of the overall job President Bush is doing as president than Americans overall. 43% of speech viewers said they approved of the job President Bush is doing heading into the speech, compared to 28% of all Americans in the latest CBS News Poll."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/24/opinion/main2392699.shtml

Those journalists (if we can still call them that) who ask tough questions will be denied access in the future. This wold put their jobs in jeopardy. In essence, they are no longer paid to investigate, but merely to report.

It's a sad state of affairs in our representative democracy when truth is subject to job descriptions.

i honestly don't think the chattermonkeys are even listening to the responses. they've got the script or are being directed thru the earpieces by their producers. besides, being fully informed to rebut the lies is such hard work. why do you think the obriens got the jobs in the first place. remember how bruce springsteen actually called soledad obrien an idiot to her face, and it didn't even register -- she giggled.

ot, but this one has been pissing me off every time i see that hag on teevee.

when will tweety or timmeh or wolf ever question their frequent guest -- kate obeirne -- about her husband's role in setting the stage for failure in iraq by his policy of staffing the cpa with the spawn of aei true believers.

not only have they failed to broach that subject with her -- i don't recall ever hearing that her husband had that critical role until the publication of rajiv chandrasekaran's book.

but guys, that cbs poll is an online one. not reliable. plus, if you look at the cbs poll I linked to, which appears to have been conducted by phone, it even shows that a minority even of people who watched the speech -- only 33% -- were for the plan:

http://www.pollster.com/CBSNews011107.pdf

If they challenge the falsehoods, they are afraid they will lose access. They are in awe of power, and feel their very existence depends upon their access to the powerful and their invites to those parties with the cocktail weenies.

McCain's just blowing smoke, but Greg's post is based on a bizarrely bad reading of what McCain said. It's obvious from the context that he was talking about the reaction to the SOTU (he refers to overnight ratings in a conversation on Jan. 24 -- why would Greg think that he was talking about a speech given two weeks earlier?). Citing all these polls from Jan. 11 is meaningless. Now, as has already been pointed out, the overnight numbers don't tell us anything about what the American people as a whole think, and O'Brien should have called him on that. But the evidence Greg cites has nothing to do with what McCain was talking about. This is a lazy post.

Greg, again you're not speaking to the point. Data from 1/11 is not relevant to the question of what the American people thought after the State of the Union, which is what McCain was talking about when you said he lied. And the CBS poll that others referred to:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/01/24/couricandco/entry2395399.shtml

found that, after the speech, 52% of those surveyed supported the push while a majority had opposed it before the speech.

This poll was not an "online poll" in the way you mean to suggest, which is to say it wasn't open to anyone to vote. It was a random sample (albeit one that, in its makeup, was more pro-Bush than the electorate as a whole). The data aggregation was done via the Net rather than by phone, but there's no reason to think that somehow that makes the results less reliable.

Just update the post and admit you made a mistake.

It's been pretty much determined that the majority of Americans support the surge.

That is because it has been pretty much determined that if we lose the Iraq War the terrorists will follow us back to our shores.

It has been pretty much determined that the terrorists will not only follow us home, but also put Americans to the sword.

K. Williams, the context was a discussion about the troop increase proposal:

M. O'BRIEN: There's a bit of a revolt going on across the street, even among Republicans. Lots of resolutions kicking around your side of the Congress, which would put the Senate on record opposing the president's surge and the escalation of the war, some would call it.

Doesn't a war like this, or any war, need bipartisan support? You're a Vietnam veteran.

MCCAIN: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: In Vietnam, that was a key issue.

MCCAIN: It does. I do believe, though, that in Vietnam, they decided to cut off funding. That was their decision, and that's their constitutional right.

To issue disapproval, you're sending the troops over there that you're saying that you support, but telling them you don't think they can succeed, and you're not supporting their mission. I'm not sure that's a lot of support, or it would be interpreted by our troops as a sign of support.

M. O'BRIEN: But can the war be sustained without support from the people, without bipartisan support here?

MCCAIN: We have to show the American people a path to success. Joe Lieberman would never have been re-elected in Connecticut supporting the war if it was as simple as some of my Democratic friends portray it.

Overnight ratings, I understand, were slightly in favor of supporting the president's proposal. We've got to sell it and it's got to be done, and we've got to explain better the consequences of failure, which is chaos in the region.

note that he said, "overnight ratings, I understand, were slightly in favor of supporting the president's proposal." the proposal he's referring to is the surge. the surge was proposed on january 10. his point was clearly that at first, when Bush sold it to the public, people were in favor, and then turned against it when the pro-surge forces failed to sell it in the days that followed.

he's obviously referring to the jan 10 speech. if he were referring to the sotu, what proposal would he be referring to, exactly?

I think McCain is using the same pollsters that Rove and Bush were using in early November.

One reason most television 'journalists' do not challenge the lies is that they are themselves millionaire Republicans whose first loyalty is to the Republican Party. I have seen enough of Miles O'Brien to be certain that this generalization applies to him, (though not to all CNN commentators).

He'd be talking about the proposal that Bush spent a good chunk of the SOTU trying in vain to justify and that he begged Congress to support. It's not like the proposal has gone away -- it's still "the president's proposal," and overnight ratings did in fact show that a slight majority of those who watched the speech were in favor of supporting the president's proposal. That was a true statement.

Greg, come on. If you were sitting around with a friend the day after a speech in which some guy had spent a lot of time trying to talk about his new idea, and he said "overnight ratings show that people are slightly in favor of it," would you really think the "overnight" he was talking about was two weeks earlier? Not a chance.

They choose not to rebut winger lies because they are affraid of offending the right wing blog o sphere that barks "bias" every time they are challenged. So, it's just easier for CNN to sit there quietly and let them lie; the GOPers know this, which is why Olbermann never gets interviews.

Maybe in this case O'Brien chose "not to rebut winger lies" because what McCain said wasn't actually a lie. I'm all in favor of challenging the falsehoods that the right keeps offering up. But it doesn't help our case when we call statements lies that aren't.

It may not have been a flat-out lie, but it was utterly misleading. (And I assume he knew it was.)

WOW! Does this mean that even hand picking the people to be polled, they could only come up with 52% of the people supporting President Bush's "SURGE"?

please, k. . when he said "overnight" he was obviously referring to the public reaction the night it was proposed -- which was january 10. his point, very obviously, was that the public was inclined to support it when it was sold to them at first, but that pro-surge people had since failed to sell it.

and where are these polls you're referring to that showed a majority supporting the surge after the sotu?

His point was "very obviously" not what you're describing it as, because if that was his point, then he would have said "we've done a bad job selling it" or "the idea was popular, but now isn't" or something of the sort. Contrary to your description of the conversation, he said nothing of the kind. McCain's point was a simple one: after the SOTU, there's more public support for the surge, and it's now the job of the pro-surge advocates to follow through and sell it, both to Americans and to Congress.

Are you really saying McCain just pulled the "overnight ratings were slightly in favor" of the surge completely out of the air? Even though overnight ratings -- after the SOTU -- were in fact "slightly in favor" of the surge? Again, come on. You're willfully misreading things here.

I linked to the relevant CBS poll above (at 2:52 pm). Here it is again:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/01/24/couricandco/entry2395399.shtml

McCain is probably quoting the poll of something like 800 people chosen before the SOTU as being likely to watch. About half that group were self proclaimed Bush supporters and about the same half were favorably disposed to the surge proposal after the SOTU. So McCain either didn't know the specifics of the poll or more likely chose to highlight only those factors favorable to his point.
A more honest reading of the poll would have McCain say something like "the television audience for the SOTU consisted largely of Bush supporters, now only about 25% of Americans, and the same percentage reacted favorably to Bush's plea for another chance in Iraq." And yes his twisting of the Connecticut vote and its meaning is an open lie.

Jaimie T's point is not quite right -- the sample wasn't half pro-Bush, and there was movement in favor of the surge -- 43% had been in favor beforehand and 52% were in favor after. But he's right that if McCain were trying to be truly accurate, he would have remarked on the nature of the poll sample, etc. My point is simply that he was not lying in the way that Greg claims he was.

Picking up on the thread above about lies, I just read a very interesting little book called "On Bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt, a professor emeritus in philosophy at Princeton. Not terribly academic and, IMHO, quite insightful.

"This CBS News Poll was conducted online by Knowledge Networks among a nationwide random sample of 525 State of the Union viewers."

That is, the morning-after SOTU poll. Polling only 626 is also going to give a pretty large (5%?) margin-of-error, besides the poll population being SOTU viewers.

Ooops! make that "Polling only 525..."

Damn typos.

Yes, the poll was unreliable, like all small-sample overnight polls, and the original sample was biased -- which I'd, contra Robert, actually be surprised if McCain knew, just because I don't think he wanted to dig past the 52% number. And frankly even if the SOTU had a short-term effect on people's feelings about the surge, I'd be shocked if they lasted more than a couple of days.

All these things are true, but they don't have anything to do with Greg's original post, which claimed that McCain was lying because overnight ratings after Bush's speech two weeks ago were not in fact positive.

Let's just stick to the Republican lies that are out-and-out lies. God knows there are enough of them.

Get a life. Do you want the Muslims to win??? That is what it seems. YOU CANNOT negotiate with them.

On Sunday the Maverick was on national TV insisting in the 1991 Gulf War that only 15% supported that War. It was precisely the opposite -- 15% were against the war, not for it. The guy is either way out of his depth or a pathological liar.

This is pretty simple really. John McCain has learned from Bush, Cheney and the rest of the gang that facts just don't matter. Just say what your gut wishes were true. It's that easy, no one will question you, at least not until 10 million people have heard the 'truthiness'

Put me in the camp that Greg misread it. This was the day after the SOTU so "overnight" would pretty logically refer to last night. Also, maybe its just me, but "overnight" seems to suggests polling done after the SOTU - pollsters often get immediate raction after the SOTU. The polls Greg cites are from the next day after the speech, not "overnight."

Yes, McCain is a liar, but I also think it is more likely that he would give himself some cover if it was available rather than make up a completely unsubstantiated claim (not that he's above that). The poll K Williams cites, despite the flaws that have been noted, was probably his "cover." IMO, an update would be appropriate.

Jim, absolutely, you can negotiate with Muslims. No worries. Didn't you see Dear Leader holding hands with Prince Abdullah and skipping through the flowers at Crawford?

We have successfully negotiated loans with the Saudis, and we owe them huge debts. We successfully negotiated with Saddam to wage war against Iran. We successfully negotiated arms treaties with evil Soviets, and they had a massive arsenal of nukes aimed at us, traking "nothing off the table," while we negotiated with them. We give favored trading staus to totalitarian communist Chinese, and they too have nukes aimed at us.

I'm guessing if we permitted those same Chinese to send aircraft carriers into the Gulf of Mexico and allowed them to occupy Texas oil fields at the barrel of a gun, I suspect you'd see some patriotic American citizens fighting back, especially if we'd had family mebers killed by those occupiers. It's human nature (and just like the Wolverines in Red Dawn, brother!) I suppose then the Chinese could make preposterous statements like, "You can't negotiate with them, after all, they're shooting at us."

Damn straight. And I'd be the one shooting at them. If I was an Iraqi, I'd be shooting at the occupier too -- be they German, British, Russian, Chinese -- or American. That's what loyal nationalists do when their homeland is under siege by aliens. The only thing you need trust is that as long as WE are the occupier, THEY will behave just like we would under the same circumstances.

Think about it. The British crown thought it beneath them to negotiate with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson too. We spoke the same language, were bloood brothers, and taught the exact same religious sermons. So, what exactly were we rebelling against? Was it because we hated the Brits "freedom"? Or maybe we wanted the occupier out?

Semper Fi, good buddy.

thanks k for correcting my numbers, something i should have doubled up on myself (precoffee 4am memory) but that 43 were self described pro bush and pro surge before the sotu.

Baby Hughie writes:

"It was precisely the opposite -- 15% were against the [first Gulf] war, not for it."

Totally false. On the eve of the bombing in January 1991, a little less than 50 per cent -- somewhere between 44 and 49 per cent -- favored going to war.

Having said that, I have no idea where McCain got the 15% number, unless he was trying to say "50%," which would have been close to accurate.

Link to the 1991 poll data:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n8_v43/ai_10709732