Mainstream Media Ignores Dems' Evaluation of Gitmo

Guantanamo Bay has been on the front pages and the lead story of telecasts for weeks. Isn't it odd that the reactions of Congressional members after a recent visit would be nearly ignored? If the trip was reported at all, the positive evaluations of the facility were buried.

It seems like the MSM can't bear to mention that Gitmo is not the gulag they want it to be.

From the Media Research Center's June 30, 2005, Cyberalert:

Tuesday night on his show, the MRC's Megan McCormack noticed, Hume did a "Grapevine" item on the media's lack of interest in how Democratic Congressmen and Senators found no evidence of abuse at Guantanamo:

"Congressional Democrats, who reported favorably on conditions at Guantanamo Bay after visiting the detention camp over the weekend, received almost no coverage in key mainstream media outlets. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said, quote, 'I feel very good' about prisoner treatment at Guantanamo. Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, also a Democrat, said, quote, 'We have made progress there,' and California Democratic Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher insisted, quote, 'The Gitmo we saw today is not the Gitmo that we heard about even a few years ago.' Wyden's quote made The New York Times today, on page nineteen; the other remarks were left out. The Washington Post, meanwhile, hasn't reported any of it."


On Wednesday night, June 29, Hume introduced Henneberg's story:

"The General who runs the terrorism detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told a House panel today that military interrogators have gained valuable information about al-Qaeda and that the detainees should continue to be held indefinitely. As for suggestions the facility should be closed, Fox News correspondent Molly Henneberg reports there was no support for that idea."

Henneberg began, as corrected against the closed-captioning by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth: "Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told a hearing today that Guantanamo Bay is not a gulag and will stay open. He and 15 other lawmakers visited Gitmo on Saturday."

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), at hearing: "We saw a world class detention facility where detainees representing a threat to our national security are well fed, given access to top-notch medical facilities, and provided an opportunity to obtain legal representation."

Rep. Madeleiene Bordello (D-Guam), at hearing: "I was particularly impressed, and I'm one of those that I inspect every little detail, the cleanliness of the facility and the treatment of the prisoners."

Henneberg: "Still, the committee members pressed Gitmo officials about allegations that detainees were abused or that U.S. guards mishandled the Koran. Today, the General in charge there said ten service members had been punished for misconduct out of 10,000 men and women who have served at Gitmo, conducting over 28,000 interrogations. And he said this is not easy duty."

Brigadier General Jay Hood, JETTED. Guantanamo Commander, at the hearing: "It is not unusual through the course of a day or week at Guantanamo that some young American walking on a guard block will have urine or feces or spit or some other liquid thrown at him by a detainee. It's not unusual for a detainee to look at an American and tell him, 'When I get out of here, I'm going to kill you and your family. I'll find you.'"

Henneberg: "The lawmakers also asked about interrogations, specifically about reports in the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times that doctors at Gitmo were providing medical information to interrogators to help them get detainees to talk. The top doctor at Gitmo says that's not true."

Cary Ostergaard, JTF Guantanamo Hospital Commander: "Interrogators are not allowed into the medical facilities where we store the medical files. We do not go into the interrogation centers except for an emergency."

Henneberg, over a big picture of the terrorist on a board in the hearing room: "This man, Abdullah Massoud, drew particular attention and anger at the hearing. He was released from Gitmo last year and returned to the fight against Americans in Afghanistan."

Duncan to Hood: "Is this a gentleman we fitted with a prosthetic leg at Guantanamo?"

Hood: "Yes, sir. He came to us without one leg from about the knee down. We fitted him with a prosthetic leg there before he left."

Henneberg: "Representative Hunter then asked rhetorically if Massoud had let the U.S. know how the leg was working on the battlefield. Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Ellen Tauscher said today's hearing was not balanced. She said Democrats wanted to hear from a lawyer for some of the detainees. Republicans scheduled that lawyer to appear before the committee later in the day. In Washington, Molly Henneberg, Fox News."

Isn't it funny the way the liberals refuse to acknowledge any left-wing bias in the media?

Actually, it is so blatantly unbalanced that it's laughable.

Of course, the success of FOX News and talk radio and Internet sources has the MSM flipping out. That's understandable. It's always difficult to watch one's power slipping away and admit one's impotence.

Thanks to the New Media, the American audience has broken free from the stranglehold the liberal outlets of the Old Media have applied for decades. They no longer control the dissemination of news and information or set the agenda.

I wouldn't call it a vast left-wing conspiracy. I'd just call what they put out thinly-veiled propaganda, political commercials disguised as journalism.