| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Ubiquitous" |
| Date: |
16 May 2006 06:12:14 AM |
| Object: |
What liberal media? |
This New York Times article (http://tinyurl.com/quror) must have confused
the heck out of Times readers who believe what they read in the Times.
How could the Times be reporting that the administration decided not to
listen in on domestic phone calls when the Times has been claiming for
months that there was a "domestic surveillance program"? The answer, of
course, is that that is the Times' Orwellian designation for a program
that listens in only on international calls involving people believed to
have terror links.
Sloppy bias if not out-and-out dishonesty is endemic in the reporting on
the administration's terrorist surveillance programs. This is from
another Times piece:
President Bush's national security adviser,
Stephen J. Hadley, insisted today that a
newly disclosed government effort to compile
data on millions of telephone calls in search
of terrorist-linked calling patterns was a
legal and "narrowly designed program" that
did not involve listening to individual calls.
The headline: "Bush Aide Defends Eavesdropping on Phone Calls"--although
in fact he is noting that the program in question doesn't involve
eavesdropping.
Another misleading headline (though strictly speaking it isn't
inaccurate) comes from the Associated Press: "Spy Agency Watching
Americans From Space." It isn't what it sounds like:
A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery
taken from the skies has been spending
significantly more time watching U.S. soil.
In an era when other intelligence agencies
try to hide those operations, the director
of the National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James
Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission.
He said the work the agency did after hurricanes
Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an
intelligence agency do in his 42 years in
the spy business.
"This was kind of a direct payback to the
taxpayers for the investment made in this
agency over the years, even though in its
original design it was intended for foreign
intelligence purposes," Clapper said in a
Thursday interview with The Associated Press. . . .
After last year's hurricanes, the agency had
an unusually public face. It set up mobile
command centers that sprung out of the backs
of Humvees and provided imagery for rescuers
and hurricane victims who wanted to know
the condition of their homes. Victims would
provide their street address and the NGA
would provide a satellite photo of their
property. In one way or another, some 900
agency officials were involved.
Another AP dispatch, by Catherine Tsai, profiles Joseph Nacchio, former
CEO of Qwest Communications, which refused the NSA's request for call
data:
Denver-based Qwest Communications International
Inc. has been mired in criminal and ethics
allegations for years. It was accused of massive
fraud by the government and later restated $3
billion in revenue. Former executives have been
accused of wrongdoing--including Nacchio, who
faces 42 counts of insider trading accusing him
of illegally selling $101 million in company
stock after privately learning Qwest might not
meet its financial goals.
But it was apparently Nacchio who agreed with
Qwest's attorneys that surrendering "call-detail
records" to the NSA was wrong--putting him
squarely on the side of the little guy.
Why does Tsai think the "little guy" wouldn't want the government to
collect the dots so it can connect the dots before the next terrorist
attack. More to the point, why does her editor think such editorializing
is appropriate in a news story?
Then there are the polls. The lead story in USA Today is headlined "Poll:
51% Oppose NSA Database." The paper's Susan Page reports:
A majority of Americans disapprove of a
massive Pentagon database containing the
records of billions of phone calls made
by ordinary citizens, according to a
USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. About two-thirds are
concerned that the program may signal other,
not-yet-disclosed efforts to gather
information on the general public.
But the poll results tell a more complicated story. The first question
is, "Do you think the Bush administration has gone too far, has been
about right, or has not gone far enough in restricting people's civil
liberties in order to fight terrorism? Results: Too far 41%, about right
34%, not far enough 19%.
So Page could have written her lead paragraph as follows:
A majority of Americans do not think the
administration has gone too far in
restricting people's civil liberties in
order to fight terrorism. Thirty-four percent
say the balance it has struck is "about right,"
while 19% say it doesn't go far enough.
The paper, that is, could have written a pro-administration story or an
anti-administration story based on this poll, and it opted for the
latter.
What this poll really shows is that people often hold seemingly
contradictory views, perhaps because they haven't thought the issues
through. Page doesn't note the conflicting results of her paper's own
poll, but she does acknowledge:
The findings differ from an ABC News/Washington
Post poll taken Thursday night of 502 adults.
In that survey, 63% called the program an
acceptable way to investigate terrorism. The
findings may differ because questions in the
two polls were worded differently.
How the questions in the two polls were worded would seem pertinent here,
but Page doesn't tell us. So we will tell you:
USA Today: "As you may know, as part of its
efforts to investigate terrorism, a federal
government agency obtained records from three
of the largest U.S. telephone companies in
order to create a database of billions of
telephone numbers dialed by Americans... Based
on what you have heard or read about this
program to collect phone records, would you
say you approve or disapprove of this
government program?"
Post/ABC: "It's been reported that the
National Security Agency has been collecting
the phone call records of tens of millions
of Americans. It then analyzes calling
patterns in an effort to identify possible
terrorism suspects, without listening to or
recording the conversations. Would you
consider this an acceptable or unacceptable
way for the federal government to investigate
terrorism? Do you feel that way strongly or
somewhat?"
The Post/ABC question includes two crucial pieces of information: an
explanation of how the NSA uses the data it gathers, and the stipulation
that the program doesn't involve eavesdropping. USA Today leaves these
matters to the poll subjects' imagination--and since only 28% of those
polled say they've been following the story "very closely," it seems
likely that quite a few of them disapproved based on false assumptions
that the program was more intrusive than it actually was.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which the
liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn our
military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad for
them, it's failing.
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