CNN's Weak (and false) attempt at Smearing SC Nominee Roberts

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash9.htm

Pretty damn pathetic.



CABLE CONTROVERSY: CNN AGREES TO AIR BLOODY ABORTION AD ON JUDGE ROBERTS
Tue Aug 09 2005 19:41:54 ET

CNN has reviewed and agreed to run a controversial ad produced by a pro-abortion group that falsely accuses Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers supporting a convicted clinic bomber!

The news network has agreed to a $125,000 ad buy from NARAL, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, for a commercial which depicts a bombed out 1998 Birmingham, AL abortion clinic.

The Birmingham clinic was bombed seven years after Roberts signed the legal briefing.

The linking of Roberts to "violent fringe groups" is the sharpest attack against the nominee thus far.


However, the non-partisan University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Factcheck.org reviewed the NARAL ad and found it to be “false.”

Factcheck.org found "in words and images, the ad conveys the idea that Roberts took a legal position excusing bombing of abortion clinics, which is false."

The Republican National Committee is preparing to send a letter to television stations asking them to pull the spot, according to sources.

The RNC’s letter claims: "NARAL's ad is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts that has no purpose but to mislead the American people."

Developing...

[MannyIsGod]

:lmao

Oh I see, they are only supposed to sell ads to groups you agree with. That's fucking hillarious.

Capitalism, but only if it supports us!

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Yeah, I'm sure the powers that be at CNN saw this as "just an ad."

:rolleyes

[Nbadan]

Ummm, even some conservative groups (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050809/ap_on_go_co/roberts) are now opposing Roberts because of his work on gay legislation. Meanwhile, the WH has refused to turn over thousands of documents (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/09/AR2005080901232.html) related to Robert's legal work under the Reagan and Bush41 administrations.

[MannyIsGod]

Yeah, I'm sure the powers that be at CNN saw this as "just an ad."

:rolleyes
Yes, I'm sure they didn't cash the check they got for the airtime. Give me a fucking break!

[Spurminator]

CNN has every right to run controversial (or even false) ads, but by doing so they take the risk of backlash, particularly if the ad is proven to be false or misleading. That's why most networks would probably choose not to run it.

Doesn't necessarily have to be a politically motivated move by CNN, but either way it was probably an unwise move.

[Mr. Ash]

Yeah, I'm sure the powers that be at CNN saw this as "just an ad."

:rolleyes

How about the "powers" at Fox News, CBS, NBC, and ABC? If they ran the ad, would it still be CNN's fault?

[Extra Stout]

Ummm, even some conservative groups (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050809/ap_on_go_co/roberts) are now opposing Roberts because of his work on gay legislation.Yes, right-wing fringe groups are opposing Roberts because he is a mainstream conservative and not an extremist.

I have noticed that the theocratic right is lukewarm at best about Roberts. It does not appear that he shares their belief that the history of American jurisprudence should be reinterpreted through the prism of fundamentalist Christianity.

Meanwhile, the WH has refused to turn over thousands of documents (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/09/AR2005080901232.html) related to Robert's legal work under the Reagan and Bush41 administrations.[/QUOTE]

"With the exception of documents that will be withheld for national security or privacy reasons, the White House said it plans to turn over all the documents by the start of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, and those that Senate Democrats have identified as priorities as early as Aug. 22." Huh. Sounds like you kind of twisted the meaning there.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Hey Manny, if CNN can exercise their "right" to "cash that check", I can exercise my right to call them out on it.

:)

[MannyIsGod]

Thats fine, but realize that it makes you look pretty stupid when you call out a network that makes money by selling airtime for selling airtime.

[MannyIsGod]

:lmao

You guys love to get riled up about shit. Feel free.

[CaptainHook]

ahh yes, where are those that say CNN isn't liberally biased.

[JohnnyMarzetti]

ahh yes, where are those that say CNN isn't liberally biased.
Where was the anger over those bogus "Swiftboat Veterans" ads that FoxNews played over and over. Shut the hell up and take it.

Where are those who say FoxNews isn't conservatively biased? :rolleyes

[Manu'sMagicalLeftHand]

This case shows how far into the right the U.S. has moved. If CNN is considered liberal (which by the way, being liberal is considered the right in many parts of the world), then it's obvious why Bush was elected for a second term.

Worldwide, CNN is seen as a center-right, pro-american, news network. It is cosidered to fall in line with the rest of the American media policy after 9-11, which is unconditional support for whatever action the U.S. goverment and military take.

[gtownspur]

This case shows how far into the right the U.S. has moved. If CNN is considered liberal (which by the way, being liberal is considered the right in many parts of the world), then it's obvious why Bush was elected for a second term.

Worldwide, CNN is seen as a center-right, pro-american, news network. It is cosidered to fall in line with the rest of the American media policy after 9-11, which is unconditional support for whatever action the U.S. goverment and military take.


Sorry dude but that is some bullshit. Cnn is not pro bush agenda. They are anti war just like a lot of foreign socialist outlets. THey are more subtle in their message than their euro counterparts.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Where was the anger over those bogus "Swiftboat Veterans" ads that FoxNews played over and over. Shut the hell up and take it.

Those ads played on a lot of other channels.

And it would have all gone away if Kerry released his service records (which he still to this day has not - looks like they were closer to the truth than he and his fans would have liked).

[smeagol]

Sorry dude but that is some bullshit. Cnn is not pro bush agenda. They are anti war just like a lot of foreign socialist outlets. THey are more subtle in their message than their euro counterparts.
Do you live outside the US? Have you ever watched CNN International?

[MannyIsGod]

Question: Did the group in question have the money available to air the ad on more channels?

[Mr. Ash]

Yes - and they did. But looking that up would have taken valuable seconds that could have been spent flaming CNN.

[Nbadan]

This case shows how far into the right the U.S. has moved. If CNN is considered liberal (which by the way, being liberal is considered the right in many parts of the world), then it's obvious why Bush was elected for a second term.

Worldwide, CNN is seen as a center-right, pro-american, news network. It is cosidered to fall in line with the rest of the American media policy after 9-11, which is unconditional support for whatever action the U.S. goverment and military take.

You are absolutely correct. CNN isn't liberal, it's just not a right-wing as FAUX News so that gets all the right-wing flame-throwers riled up, but the FAUX News mentality still is slowly starting to creep over the the Network News which is still the main source, and for many, the only source that people get their information.

[Spurminator]

NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/politics/11abort.final.html?ei=5065&en=c98fdd39e2d44a11&ex=1124424000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print)

August 11, 2005
TV Ad Attacking Court Nominee Provokes Furor

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 - An advertisement that a leading abortion-rights organization began running on national television on Wednesday, opposing the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. as one "whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans," quickly became the first flashpoint in the three-week-old confirmation process.

Several prominent abortion rights supporters as well as a neutral media watchdog group said the advertisement was misleading and unfair, and a conservative group quickly took to the airwaves with an opposing advertisement.

The focus of the 30-second spot, which Naral Pro-Choice America is spending $500,000 to place on the Fox and CNN cable networks, as well as on broadcast stations in Maine and Rhode Island over the next two weeks, is on an argument in an abortion-related case that Judge Roberts made to the Supreme Court in the early 1990's, when he was working in the first Bush administration as the principal deputy solicitor general.

The question before the court was whether a Reconstruction-era civil rights law intended to protect freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan could provide a basis for federal courts to issue injunctions against the increasingly frequent and violent demonstrations that were intended to block access to abortion clinics.

The court heard arguments in the case, Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, in October 1991 and then again the next October before finally ruling in January 1993, by a vote of 6 to 3, that the law did not apply. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom Mr. Roberts has been nominated to succeed, voted in dissent. The decision prompted Congressional passage of a new federal law to protect the clinics.

Mr. Roberts participated in both arguments, presenting the administration's view that the law in question, the Ku Klux Klan Act, did not apply to the clinic protests. In earlier cases, the Supreme Court had parsed the law, which prohibits conspiracies to deprive "any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws," as requiring proof that a conspiracy was motivated by a "class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus."

In this case, two lower federal courts had found that the clinic protests met that test because they were a form of discrimination against women. But Mr. Roberts argued that the demonstrators were not singling out women for discriminatory treatment but rather were trying to "prohibit the practice of abortion altogether." He told the court that even though only women could become pregnant or seek abortions, it was "wrong as a matter of law and logic" to regard opposition to abortion as the equivalent of discrimination against women.

The administration's position initially attracted relatively little attention when it entered the case in the spring of 1991. But after a summer of violent protests at clinics in Wichita, Kan., during which Mr. Roberts and other administration lawyers opposed the authority of a federal judge there to issue an injunction, the situation had become politically sensitive. Mr. Roberts began his second argument by saying the administration was not trying to defend the demonstrators' conduct but rather to "defend the proper interpretation" of the statute.

That distinction is blurred in Naral's advertisement, prepared by Struble Eichenbaum Communications, a Democratic media company here. The spot opens with a scene of devastation, the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., in January 1998. Emily Lyons, a clinic employee who was seriously injured in the attack, appears on the screen. "When a bomb ripped through my clinic, I almost lost my life," she says.

Mr. Roberts's image then appears, superimposed on a faint copy of the brief he signed in the 1991 case. "Supreme Court nominee John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber," the narrator's voice says. The spot concludes by urging viewers to: "Call your senators. Tell them to oppose John Roberts. America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans."

According to Factcheck.org, a nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania that monitors political advertisements and speeches for accuracy, "the ad is false" and "uses the classic tactic of guilt by association." The imagery is "especially misleading" in linking the 1998 clinic bombing to the brief Mr. Roberts signed seven years earlier, Factcheck said in an analysis it posted on its Web site, www.factcheck.org, under the heading: "Naral Falsely Accuses Supreme Court Nominee Roberts."

As the Factcheck critique began to be trumpeted by conservative groups early Wednesday, Naral prepared a rebuttal of what it called "glaring errors" in the organization's analysis. Michael Bray, a defendant in the case, had been convicted several years earlier for his role in bombing abortion clinics, Naral said, adding that since the Bush administration and Mr. Bray were on the same side of the Supreme Court case, "John Roberts did, therefore, side with a convicted clinic bomber" as well as with Operation Rescue, "a violent fringe group."

Naral's president, Nancy Keenan, defended the advertisement during an interview in her office here.

"It's tough and it's accurate," Ms. Keenan said.

"It has done exactly what we expected it to do," she added, namely to provide a "wake-up call" about the stakes for reproductive freedom at issue in the current Supreme Court vacancy.

"Conventional wisdom says the Roberts nomination is a done deal, so it behooves us to make sure the American public knows who John Roberts really is," she said.

Ms. Keenan, a former Montana state legislator who has headed the organization for the past year, said it was important to note that because the federal government was not a party in the Bray case, the administration's participation in the Supreme Court appeal was voluntary.

"They chose what side to take," she said. "That tells us something."

Within the larger liberal coalition of which Naral is a part, there was considerable uneasiness about the advertisement, although leaders of other groups generally refused to speak on the record. One who did, Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn't be engaging in."

She added: "As a pro-choice person, I don't like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. Naral should pull it and move on."

Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration and longtime Naral supporter, sent a letter on Wednesday to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and its ranking Democrat, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, respectively. Mr. Dellinger said he had disagreed with Mr. Roberts's argument in the Bray case but considered it unfair to give "the impression that Roberts is somehow associated with clinic bombers." He added that "it would be regrettable if the only refutation of these assertions about Roberts came from groups opposed to abortion rights."

A conservative group, Progress for America, said it would spend $300,000 to run ads, beginning Thursday, on the same stations on which the Naral ad is appearing. "How low can these frustrated liberals sink?" its advertisement asks.

[MannyIsGod]

:lmao The ad is being run on Fox as well?

Classic, did Drudge call them out as well?

[Spurminator]

Nice catch, Manny. That is interesting.

[Spurminator]

Withdrawn (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050812/D8BU4B8G0.html)

[MannyIsGod]

All the more reason organizations like Fact Check who demand accuracy are awesome.

I'm still waiting to read AHF's comments about Fox airing the ad as well.