Fred Hiatt And Liz Cheney -- Part III!
(April 13, 2007 -- 3:06 PM EDT // link // )

Indulge me one more time on this: Here's something that puts this whole Fred Hiatt-Liz Cheney thing in perspective. It pretty neatly reveals the true absurdity of the decision by Fred Hiatt and The Washington Post to publish an Op-ed by Ms. Cheney attacking Nancy Pelosi without disclosing that Ms. Cheney is the daughter of Veep Cheney.

A source sent me today's White House press pool report that I think reveals this ridiculousness as clearly as you could hope for. It turns out that Veep Cheney and daughter Liz are spending the day together today, and the pool report describes some of their activities:

A couple little newslets: Vice President Cheney's plane hit a bird as it was landing here in Chicago this morning, but Air Force Two touched down safely and no one aboard even noticed, according to Lea Ann McBride. "The landing was safe," McBride said. "The VP was notified immediately after his speech." Mechanics are now checking the plane to make sure it will be safe to fly back. No word on the condition of the bird.

After the speech, VPOTUS, accompanied by Liz Cheney, made an unannounced stop at the American Girl Place across from the Park Hyatt so that they could buy a birthday gift for one of his granddaughters. It caused a bit of a mad scene in a store that's usually a madhouse to begin with as VPOTUS provided cover for Liz by posing for pictures with little girls while his daughter secured the Nikki doll (the doll of the year for 2007, complete with Western cowboy hat and get-up).

Look: If you are going to publish a piece attacking Veep Cheney's key political antagonist right now -- Pelosi -- your readers deserve to know it if the author is so close to the Veep that she might be spending the very next day after publication frolicking around with him on Air Force Two and doing a spot of shopping for the grandkids. Right?

Relatedly, guess who agrees with us that WaPo should I.D. Ms. Cheney as the Veep's daughter when she writes for the paper: One of the Post's own columnists, Eugene Robinson. The last time WaPo published an attack by Ms. Cheney on one of the Veep's political opponents without disclosing the familial link, Robinson was asked a question by a reader who opined that the link should be mentioned. His answer:

Eugene Robinson: I think everybody knows who Liz Cheney is. But, on balance, I agree with you. Better to err on the side of too much identification.

Not everybody knows who she is, but still: This is basically it. If we're going to err, it's better to err on the side of full disclosure. Better to err on the side of more information, not less. And with that, you've heard this blog's last words on the topic. Barring another development, of course.

Update: More here on another interesting dimension to all this.

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Did Fred Hiatt Ignore His Own Op Ed Policies?
(April 13, 2007 -- 12:01 PM EDT // link // )

Okay, this is pretty interesting. I think I've found something which reasonably suggests that Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt may have broken his own stated Op-ed policies by publishing a piece yesterday by Liz Cheney attacking Nancy Pelosi without identifying Ms. Cheney as Veep Cheney's daughter.

When I asked Hiatt about this yesterday, he justified it with an email to me (again, I appreciate his willingness to answer) saying that she'd been selected to write the piece based on her professional qualifications alone and that there was thus no need to disclose her relationship with dad.

But now take a look at this column unearthed by commenter Drew below that Hiatt wrote in January of 2005. The column was called "The Rules of Punditry." Though it was in the context of a different conflict of interest pundit situation, Hiatt appeared to lay out his general rules on these questions. Here's Hiatt's key graf:

We are trying to learn from this episode here. When we publish a letter to the editor, we formally ask writers whether they have any conflict of interest that should be disclosed. By that we mean any relationship -- financial, family, employment or otherwise -- that a reasonable reader might consider relevant. We try to ascertain the same from op-ed writers, though the question has not been part of our official acceptance process. From now on it will be.

This is a bit murky, but I think you can reasonably read it as saying that "from now on" the Op ed page would see a family relationship as info a "reasonable reader might consider relevant" and "should be disclosed." Hiatt clearly didn't follow his own policy here with yesterday's Cheney Op ed. Why not? And this has happened before, too. As Matthew Yglesias recently pointed out, the Post trotted out writer Robert Kagan to defend the "surge" without mentioning that his brother Frederick Kagan was one of the leading "surge" authors.

One other point. While virtually all of you commenters have been leaning heavily against Hiatt on this, a few folks suggested that it wasn't a big deal. Here's my take: Right now Veep Cheney, the administration and the GOP is desperately trying to weaken Pelosi to undermine her ability to confront the White House on Iraq. The attack on the Syria trip has been central to this larger effort. The Post published a piece by his daughter that was obviously politically helpful to her dad's administration, in however limited a way, without mentioning the family link. While D.C. insiders know who she is, surely many Post readers don't.

Given this obvious conflict of interest potential, why not disclose the relationship? This is the key -- there's simply no downside for the reader to have full disclosure here. Of course, full disclosure did carry a downside for those trying to push the piece's anti-Pelosi argument: Knowing that it had been penned by Veep Cheney's daughter might lead readers to take it less seriously. Which may explain, of course, why the paper did this in the first place.

Update: Don't miss what may be the crowning absurdity of this whole affair.

Update: Incidentally, Liz Cheney was also an advisor to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign.

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Fred Hiatt Responds, Explains Why WaPo Published Liz Cheney Piece Bashing Pelosi Without Identifying Her As Veep's Daughter
(April 12, 2007 -- 4:54 PM EDT // link // )

Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, has just responded to my email to him about Liz Cheney's Post Op-ed today slamming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He explained why he thinks it's okay that the paper didn't identify her as the Veep's daughter in the description of her at the bottom of the piece.

Liz Cheney's Op ed is here. Though the piece is called "The Truth About Syria," the main hook for the article is an attack on Pelosi for traveling to Damascus. Ms. Cheney hammers Pelosi as "especially naive" for making the trip, and concludes: "Conducting diplomacy with the regime in Damascus while they kill Lebanese democrats is not only irresponsible, it is shameful."

Ms. Cheney is identified at the end of the piece as follows:

No mention that her pop's the Veep. Here's why this is highly questionable, in my view. Ms. Cheney's attack on Pelosi is eerily similar to the one launched on Pelosi recently by her father. So this Op ed looks like a clear effort to help him politically, by reiterating the attack, in however limited a way it does this in actual practice. What's more, this line of attack has a larger context: It is arguably designed to weaken Pelosi at a time when the House Dems she leads are locked in a critical political battle over Iraq with her dad's administration. And the WaPo editorial page has been one of the leading backers of the Bush-Cheney Iraq war.

Finally, this is not the first, but the second, piece by Ms. Cheney in the WaPo attacking one of her dad's leading political opponents in terms similar to those used by Veep Cheney himself (she wasn't fully identified at the end of the first one, either). This is on its way to becoming a pattern. And while many D.C. types know who Liz Cheney is, there's no way of knowing whether many of the Post's readers know this. So why not err on the side of full disclosure?

So I emailed Hiatt the following question:

Given that Vice President Dick Cheney has been one of the leading critics of Pelosi on a variety of fronts, and given that Mr. Cheney's administration is in the midst of an extremely high-stakes political battle with Pelosi over the future of Iraq, what is the justification for not identifying Ms. Cheney as the Veep's daughter?

Hiatt has now answered, which I sincerely appreciate. Hiatt emailed:

We published Liz Cheney's piece based on her qualifications as a former high-ranking State Dept. official with oversight of Near Eastern Affairs. I don't believe qualified professional women need to be identified by their husbands or fathers, even when well-known.

Whaddaya think, all?

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More Straight Talk From McCain About Media: His Camp Claims To "Welcome" Bad Press
(April 12, 2007 -- 10:32 AM EDT // link // )

This is a small thing, but it's pretty amusing: The McCain camp is now saying that they're happy about all the dismal press he has been getting as a result of his Baghdad Stroll and his tireless advocacy of the war. They're saying the bad press is good for him.

Check this out from today's New York Times:

Further, some recent critical reporting by newspapers and television networks of Mr. McCain’s trip to Baghdad last week has paradoxically been clearly welcomed in the McCain camp; one reason conservatives have been wary of him is because he is perceived as being close to the news media, and Mr. McCain made note of that in his speech.

“I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq,” he said. “Unlike the veterans here today, I risked nothing more threatening than a hostile press corps.”

Funny -- that isn't what the McCain camp was saying only a few days ago. On Saturday, The Washington Post interviewed McCain supporter and GOP Rep. Rick Renzi as follows:

Renzi said McCain was frustrated with the media coverage of their visit to the marketplace and what he described as an unwillingness to cover positive news from Iraq.

So when McCain's advisers want to argue that his Baghdad Stroll didn't look as ridiculous as it actually did and that things are going much better in Iraq than they really are, the spin is that they're unhappy with the media's coverage. But now that the McCain camp is trying to change the subject to how well they're appealing solely to Republican Primary voters, they suddenly no longer care about the media's allegedly misleading coverage of the war, and are suddenly happy about the media's bad coverage of him, because it lets him use the media as a foil. I wonder which version is true?

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Fox News, Drudge Still Reporting Pelosi Going To Iran -- Despite Unequivocal Denial From Her Office
(April 11, 2007 -- 7:01 PM EDT // link // )

Breaking: Fox News and Drudge are lying about Nancy Pelosi!

Okay, what else is new, right? But you really have to check this one out, it's hilarious.

Specifically: Fox News and Drudge are still reporting that Nancy Pelosi is going to Iran -- even though Pelosi's spokesperson today issued a straight, unequivocal denial, saying that, you know, she isn't going. That denial has been carried by the Associated Press for most of the afternoon, since around 2 P.M. You'd think that would put an end to this latest "scandal" surrounding the Speaker.

But -- well, it didn't. The outright denial didn't slow down Fox or Drudge one little bit. Check out these screen grabs from Fox's The Big Story with John Gibson, which aired today after 5 P.M. There's this:

And this:

So how did Fox's Gibson deal with the fact that Pelosi's office stated unequivocally that she wasn't going? Easy: He accused her office of lying. Gibson, amazingly, said:

"A spokesman for the speaker said she had no intention to, but is that really the case?"

...before continuing with the report as shown above.

And how did Drudge deal with the fact that Pelosi's spokesperson denied the story? He pretended it never happened. Drudge's link to the original bogus story is still up, with no link to the story containing the denial (note the third headline down):

Man, that's God awful, even for these people. Talk about alternate reality. Special thanks to crack TPM reporter-researcher Eric Kleefeld for help in digging these up.

Update: Drudge appears to have taken the headline down.

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Memo To Winger Media: Pelosi Isn't Going To Iran
(April 11, 2007 -- 3:18 PM EDT // link // )

A lot of winger bloggers and commentators are raising a big fuss over the fact that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared to suggest at a press conference yesterday that she might be planning a trip to Iran with Dem Rep. Tom Lantos.

In our view, her remarks were inconclusive -- while one could reasonably conclude from them that she might be open to going, she also didn't say outright that she was going, or even that she was planning on going. It seemed like further inquiry was in order.

So we tried something novel: We called Pelosi's office and asked for clarification. Her spokesman, Brendan Daly, emailed us the following:

“The Speaker has no intention of going to Iran.

“She has great respect for Mr. Lantos, who is the only Holocaust survivor in the Congress and a staunch supporter of Israel, and who would like to go to begin a dialogue there, as the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended.”

This is going to prove terribly disappointing to winger bloggers and commentators, many of whom are still stoking outrage about her trip to Syria as part of an absurdly transparent effort to weaken her in her capacity as the front-woman for Dem efforts to end the Iraq war.

Indeed, the "controversy" over Pelosi's alleged desire to go to Iran followed a remarkably similar trajectory to the one about Syria, only in this case no such trip was in the process of happening or even in the process of being planned. The controversy began yesterday after Pelosi held a joint press conference with Dem Rep. Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor. Lantos said that "speaking for myself," he wanted to go, and suggested that she might want to join him. Pelosi didn't disagree with this, but nor did she say she wanted to go, either. That nonetheless was written up in the San Francisco Chronicle with this headline:

Pelosi, Lantos may be interested in diplomatic trip to Iran

That was quickly linked to by Matt Drudge under the hed "Pelosi may go to Iran." That of course led to a series of minor explosions around the right-wing blogosphere and on cable TV. Over at Michelle Malkin's Hot Air, "Allapundit" actually admitted he wanted to see her go because it would weaken her politically, writing: "This is the one case of fascist outreach I’m keen to see them pursue, so luscious would the blowback be." (And here you thought that these good people didn't want her to meet with the enemy because it would be bad for America!) Over at National Review's The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote: "Maybe Speaker Pelosi Should Pass a Law Eliminating the Exec Branch." (That was sarcasm, in case you couldn't tell.) It bounced around the winger blogosphere a bunch and was even was discussed on Fox News, where it was heavily criticized.

Of course, no one even knew whether she had any intention of actually going to Iran or not. As best as I can determine, no one -- not the San Francisco Chronicle writer, no reporters at Fox News, no one else peddling this tale -- took the elementary step of contacting Pelosi's office to ask for clarification of her remarks. Of course, if they had, they might have discovered that they didn't have anything to get "outraged" about anymore.

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White House Reiterates: Absolutely No Compromise With Dems On Iraq
(April 10, 2007 -- 2:38 PM EDT // link // )

You've really gotta check out the video of this exchange between reporters and White House press secretary Dana Perino at today's briefing.

In it, press secretary Dana Perino clarifies just what the President meant today when he invited Congressional Democrats to discuss the future of Iraq. In a sense Bush's invitation, really, is for Congressional Dems to sit down and listen to a President whose approval rating is in the low 30s tell them to hurry up and get about doing his bidding and put aside their silly little delusions about constituting an elected co-equal branch of the U.S. government.

Is that an overstatement? Take a look:

Perino said: "This is not a meeting in order to compromise." I'm not sure how much clearer it gets than that. There's always the chance that this is just pre-negotiation bluster, but given what we know of this White House, there's absolutely no reason to assume anything but that the White House means this and nothing else.

Oh, and how about that smug little grin at the end -- lovely, huh?

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Bush Confirms It: No Compromising With Congress On Iraq. Now What, Mr. Broder?
(April 10, 2007 -- 11:59 AM EDT // link // )

I'm not sure I've ever seen a columnist proven wrong so quickly. As noted below, The Washington Post's David Broder today argued that Dems should basically give up the game in the confrontation over troop funding in hopes that President Bush will reach some kind of "bargain" with Dems over the war.

As Matthew Yglesias and this blog both argued, however, Bush won't do any such bargaining.

Well, guess who's now confirmed this again: The President himself. Check out this story just moved by the Associated Press, in which the White House not only tells Congress pretty clearly that there will be no compromising, but also basically urinates on their heads in the process:

President Bush on Tuesday invited Democrats to discuss their standoff over a war-spending bill, but he made clear he would not change his position opposing troop withdrawals. The White House bluntly said the meeting would not be a negotiation.

"It's time for them to get the job done, so I'm inviting congressional leaders from both parties — both political parties — to meet with me at the White House next week," Bush said in a speech to an American Legion audience in Fairfax, Va.

"At this meeting, the leaders in Congress can report on progress on getting an emergency spending bill to my desk," Bush said. "We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill, a bill that funds our troops without artificial timetables for withdrawal and without handcuffing our generals on the ground. I'm hopeful we'll see some results soon from the Congress."...

Earlier Tuesday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino announced Bush's intention to invite Democrats to talk. Her description immediately raised questions about exactly what the point was.

When a reporter said it sounded like an invitation for Democrats to agree with Bush, Perino said, "Well, hopefully so."

Bush has promised to veto any bill that calls for timetables to pull troops out of Iraq.

Perino said Democrats could benefit by accepting Bush's invitation. "Maybe they need to hear again from the president about why he thinks it is foolish to set arbitrary timetables for withdrawal," she said.

Shorter Bush to Congress: Please come to the White House so you can all take a long, hard look at my middle finger.

Bush is staying in Iraq on his own terms. End of story. Now what, Oh Wise and All-Seeing Dean?

Again: If David Broder -- or any other pundit, for that matter -- thinks that the right thing to do is to pull out of Iraq, then sooner or later they should feel obliged to take an actual, realistic position on how Congress might accomplish this. No more positions that depend on whether Bush will do this or that or anything else he will never, ever, ever, ever do.

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Broder: Dems Are Right On Iraq And Public Supports Them, But They Should Cave, Anyway
(April 10, 2007 -- 10:24 AM EDT // link // )

Matthew Yglesias deftly skewers David Broder's column today, pointing out that Broder says Democrats are right on Iraq but that they should nonetheless cave to President Bush in hopes that he'll try to forge a compromise on Iraq with Dems that he's never, ever, ever going to seek in the real world.

But lemme add a crucial point: Not only does Broder think that Dems are right on Iraq, he also says outright that public opinion is on their side, too. He adds the caveat, however, that unless Dems move outright to cut off funding for the war -- something Broder doesn't call on Dems to do -- the President will be the one with the "leverage" and the Dems should basically concede the game.

So, a question: If Broder thinks:

(a) Democrats are right in trying to end the war;

(b) The public wants Dems to end the war; and

(c) The only way this can happen is if Dems cut off funding...

...then why isn't Broder advocating that they do just that?

In other words, why not come out and advocate for something that he himself sees as the only route to the right outcome? If you hold the beliefs Broder professes to hold here, I just don't see how you avoid concluding that cutting off funding is the only right course of action.

The larger point here is that pundits who hold the view in one form or another that we should pull out of Iraq really should feel obliged at some point to take an actual realistic position on how this might be done -- one that doesn't depend on whether Bush will do this or that or anything else he just ain't gonna do.

Richard Holbrooke Blisters Media: Syria Story "Exploited By Journalists Looking For Fake Controversy"
(April 9, 2007 -- 7:03 PM EDT // link // )

Check out this appearance by former Clinton Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on today's Hardball.

Holbrooke delivers a stern lashing to, well, the entire American media for its pathetic performance on the Pelosi-to-Syria trip story. And he explains why this story's bogus in terms simple enough for even CNN's Suzanne Malveaux to understand:

Note how reporter David Gregory -- quite uncharacteristically -- employs one of the more vacuous and exhausted GOP talking points of this whole affair. And note Holbrooke's response:

GREGORY: But why is it appropriate to have Congress and have Democratic leaders pursuing a shadow foreign policy?

HOLBROOKE: David. David. They're not pursuing a shadow foreign policy. They're making trips to the region. The Republican group had gone out before her. She had Republicans on her group. Congressmen are supposed to travel to understand better how to spend the taxpayers' money, which is their responsibility.

One other favorite bit. Holbrooke offers his diagnosis of the media's coverage in stinging terms:

HOLBROOKE: I think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion by a deliberate ambush plan by the opposition, in this case the Republicans, and frankly, exploited by journalists who are just looking for a fake controversy. There is no issue here. Congressman Wolf, a major Republican, was in the region a few days earlier. Republicans were on her trip. There's no issue. None.

Er, yeah, that's right.

One point about this. Maybe I've missed it, but I haven't seen any Democratic elected officials or direct Pelosi allies denouncing this story in such stark terms as Holbrooke did -- that is, by striking directly at the fraudulent nature of this whole tale, by asserting that this story is a complete GOP ruse that's only being kept alive because of journalism that's incompetent at best and outright dishonest at worst. And frankly, I'm wondering why I haven't seen more Democrats doing this.

Is anyone else wondering the same thing?

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Breaking: Big News Org Reports Aggressively On GOP Attacks Over Pelosi's Syria Trip!
(April 9, 2007 -- 11:07 AM EDT // link // )

I meant to flag this piece on the Pelosi-to-Syria flap over the weekend and didn't get a chance, so let me share it with you now.

As you know, the other day we unearthed some pretty revealing past quotes from GOP House leader John Boehner. Though Boehner is now one of the people leading the assault on Nancy Pelosi's trip, it turned out he went along on then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich's efforts to meddle in foreign policy by taking a trip to China in 1997, and at the time even praised the Gingrich trip as "very educational."

Now The New York Times has picked up on Boehner's 1997 quotes in this piece on the Syria flap. But that's not the main reason the piece is important. Rather, it's the only piece of journalism I've been able to find which is a stand-alone article devoted mainly to a rundown on all the chief ways that the GOP's stoking of the Syria flap is riddled with hypocrisy and glaring inconsistencies. It says:

The tone of the complaints — particularly Vice President Dick Cheney’s public characterization of her visit as “bad behavior” — contrasts sharply with the administration’s silence about a similar trip to Damascus a week ago by Republican lawmakers, Representatives Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania and Robert B. Aderholt of Alabama.

Nor was there much heard from the White House about a meeting that Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, had with Mr. Assad on Thursday, a day after Ms. Pelosi met with the Syrian president...

Democrats say the complaints have a certain political expediency to them, and note that many of the same people criticizing Ms. Pelosi’s decision to delve into foreign policy were fine when Newt Gingrich, then the Republican speaker of the House, made his own foray into foreign policy back in 1997.

The Republican House leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, criticized Ms. Pelosi’s trip, telling reporters that she was in Syria “for one reason, and that is to embarrass the president.” In 1997, Mr. Boehner accompanied Mr. Gingrich to China, and called the trip “very educational.”

Look, it's a bit irksome that the Times needs to say that "Democrats" note that this is the case: For one thing, this is a matter of objective fact, not partisan accusation. What's more, this blog reported this; Democrats didn't. And as Josh said yesterday, there tons more on this story that's crying out for real reporting.

Still, The Times piece is definitely noteworthy, if only for what it says about the media's uniformly awful performance on this story. The fact that it took days and days and days before a big news org got around to doing a story like this -- then buried it on page 5 and slugged it a "Washington memo" -- really is nothing short of incredible, when you step back and ponder it for a sec. But something is better than nothing at all, and it would be nice if CNN's reporters, editors and producers -- not to say the good people at the other big news orgs, too -- checked it out and asked themselves why the heck they're doing such a crappy job on this story when it's plainly obvious how bogus the GOP's assault really is.

Update: I was remiss in not pointing this out earlier, but don't miss Jamison Foser's wrap-up of CNN's coverage of the Pelosi trip. Foser aptly notes that not long ago Wolf Blitzer patted CNN on the back as a "serious news organization" that "went to check out the facts" to debunk the bogus Muslim-school smear of Barack Obama. How about showing a spark of ambition on the Pelosi story, then?

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