As mentioned in two posts I wrote to this blog over the weekend ("The "Insult to the Intelligence" Card" and "Dollargate: A Campaign of Deceit Takes Shape"), the corporate media for the most part continues to report that Obama played "the race card" first, when he said in a few campaign appearences last week that he would be attacked by McCain and Bush because he "doesn't look like those other Presidents on the dollar bills" -- and these major newspapers continue to report the story in this way even though there is now clear evidence that McCain had attacked Obama using that exact image -- his skinny head, oversized ears and mocha colored skin on a faux $100 bill -- in the campaign ad "Seal" on June 22.  In particular, I was appalled that this past Sunday, the Washington Post ran an editorial saying that Obama played the race card with that remark, and then this morning, the Editor in Chief of the Post's editorial page, Fred Hiatt, ran an op-ed piece in which he made essentially the same assertion, in both cases without mentioning that the McCain campaign had put Obama's image on a $100 bill in a campaign ad over a month earlier, which meant that Obama had not injected this into the campaign at all, he had merely referenced attacks that had already taken place. 

In response to this, I just sent off the following e-mail to Fred Hiatt:

"Mr. Hiatt:
 
I cannot express how disappointing it is that you have once again missed, in Sunday's editorial on the subject, and in your op-ed article this morning ("Answering McCain's Attacks"), a major salient fact about this controversy over whether Obama "played the race card" in his remarks last week, when he said, in effect (and in a very light-hearted and humorous way) that the McCain campaign would be trying to scare voters by pointing out that, among other things, Obama does not look the same as other presidents whose faces appear on dollar bills. 
 
In your editorial on Sunday ("Dollar Bills and Paris Hilton") , you wrote:  "But Mr. Obama is not entitled to pin responsibility for this reaction on the McCain campaign, as he did on Thursday in saying that President Bush and Mr. McCain would try to scare voters: "You know, 'He's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name.' You know, 'He doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills.' " You stated this as a counterpoint to criticism you were making regarding McCain's ad which, as the Post reported, falsely stated that Obama snubbed the wounded troops when he found out that the media and cameras wouldn't be allowed to join him on his visit (in the course of making the seemingly balanced point that both campaigns are capable of doing better).
 
In your op-ed this morning, you wrote: "Critics of his performance last week (including some supporters) focused on his "dollar bill" comments -- his apparent invocation of race in saying that his opponent would try to scare voters because he, Obama, did not resemble previous presidents whose portraits adorn our currency." 
 
However, it turns out that balance or equal time criticism is not what is called for here.  What is called for is the Washington Post doing a better job of its baseline function of reporting news.  By this past Friday, it was widely known (except in the mainstream media) that it was the McCain campaign which first used images of Obama's face on a $100 dollar bill -- in an ad entitled "Seal" that was released on June 22, 2008 (over a month ago):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDTJDv4hevU&feature=related  Moreover, as pointed out in the Jed Report on Saturday (a website your political reporters should probably visit more often, since it contains a great deal of well sourced factual information that the Post constantly overlooks or disregards), the McCain campaign not only used this image in an official campaign ad over a month ago, they went much further than that:  The link they created on You Tube to call up the ad deliberately chose the caricature image of Obama on the $100 bill as the still image for the link on the McCain campaign's You Tube page: 
 
See, e.g., http://www.jedreport.com/2008/08/setting-the-rec.html and http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=JohnMcCaindotcom
 
How do we know the McCain campaign chose this as its "still image" for "Seal" (as opposed to it being some quirk of You Tube)?  The answer is that, in You Tube, an mpeg defaults to the midpoint as its "still image", whereas in "Seal", the dollar bill image appeared 3/4 of the way through the ad.  So it had to have been a conscious choice by the McCain campaign to use that particular image as the still image for linking to "Seal", to put it out there as the image a web surfer would see whenever linking to the ad on You Tune.  Now why do you think they did that?  Why THAT image? 

Much more troubling than this initial release, is the fact that, when Obama made reference to the notion that McCain and the GOP would attack him because he doesn't look like those other Presidents on the dollar bill -- as they had already done at that point (when the McCain campaign, and not some fringe right wing attack surrogate, injected the image of Obama's face on currency in the "Seal" commercial over a month earlier) -- Rick Davis immediately hit the airwaves expressing complete outrage, crying "race card" (i.e., that Obama had injected this into the campaign) and calling it a "disgrace".  In fact -- and again, both your editorial and your op-ed piece the next day totally miss this -- "Obama's face on currency" as an attack tool originated in one of the McCain campaign's own ads, and not only that, it was an image they chose to accentuate in the link to that ad on You Tube.  So all of that outrage from Rick Davis, John McCain, and other surrogates (not to mention the right wing talk machine) was a fraud, a complete deception, deliberately intended to sandbag and mislead.  And you and others in the corporate media have fallen for it hook, line and sinker.  Your editorial on Sunday, and your op-ed on Monday, both say or imply the Obama was, in fact, playing the race card by referring to the fact that the other side would say that he doesn't look like those other presidents on the currency when, in fact, it was McCain's campaign that injected that very image into the public domain a month earlier.  The McCain campaign's professed outrage is a fraud and you have not only failed to call them on it, you have actually facilitated the deceit.
 
This is actually a very important story.  John McCain and his new Rove-school campaign managers are trying to put in motion a campaign, supported and facilitated by the mainstream corporate media, based on the dual notion that Obama has delusions of grandeur and is acting above his station -- all code words for "uppity" as David Gergen pointed out so forcefully this morning on ABC -- and that he is using a reverse race card.  And it's clear that they intend to rely on the mainstream corporate media to remind people that it was Obama who started it back at the beginning with that "dollar bill" remark (as you and they continue to do).  The only problem is that Obama didn't start it.  It's a deceit, a Rovian sandbagging, and you've got it dead wrong (and continue to get it wrong on a daily basis).  
 
Your newspaper failed to investigate the swift boat attacks before it was too late, and look where that got us.  Your newspaper failed to ask the tough questions about pre-war intelligence before the Iraq invasion, and look where that got us.  Now you are not only doing it again (with regard to this "race card" theme), you are actually affirmatively helping McCain pave the way for another deceitful campaign in which substance falls victim to deceitful culture-war attacks.  By virtue of your editorial and op-ed article, both published days after information putting the lie to these false attacks first surfaced, the Post is now officially a party to the deceit.  I think you owe it to your readers to make a conspicuous correction, without any further delay.
 
Respectfully yours,
 
Mark T
[Address and Phone ##]

PS - I have one other bone to pick, and it's unfortunately another important one:  In both your editorial Sunday and your op-ed this morning, you were clearly attempting to suggest that both campaigns bear near equal responsibility for the negative turn in the direction of the campaign.  But as shown above, and as has been shown repeatedly in relation to the other recent campaign ads run by McCain which represent this new "low road" line of attack for his campaign (Seal, Troop Snub, The One, Brittany & Paris, etc.), the turn to the negative is coming almost entirely from one of the two campaigns -- the two campaigns are NOT equally responsible or equally guilty of crossing the line.
 
There has been a recent recurrent theme in many of the op-ed pieces the Post has published from authors like David Broder and Richard Cohen (and yourself, for that matter) -- this line of thinking insists that any criticism leveled against one campaign must be balanced with a criticism from the other side, leveled against the other campaign, and then anecdotally equating the two criticisms as more or less equal, two sides of the same coin.  For example (and as pointed out by the indefatigable blogger, Digby, in her blog "Hullabaloo"), "even if the conservatives who have been in charge of the government these past 7 years have run our country into the ground, they must always be allowed at least equal say in our governance because to do otherwise would let progressives and liberals call the shots --- and we can't have that.  Now that we are finally at a moment where the conservative movement's problems and deceits lie exposed to public view -- where progressivism finally has a chance to see some light after years of being smothered by deceitful conservative rhetoric -- the message people are getting from newspapers like yours is that "progressives and liberals are at least halfway to blame for everything that's gone wrong these last few years and that the answer is to split the difference." But that is not true, and its a discredit to what was once a fine newspaper that was different from the others.  As Digby sardonically predicts, given this bias, before it's all done "the progressive movement will no doubt be blamed for the whole damned mess caused by Bush and the GOP (and Bush will likely be resuscitated by the Village scribes as some kind of genial Harry Truman.)."  I share Digby's bewilderment over why like you are so predisposed to be critical of liberalism, but your editorial board's continued effort to create the appearance of "balance" by equating things that are anything but "equal" is little more than tilting the playing field in favor of the status quo, who have driven the bus into the ditch and have never needed to be held accountable more than they do today.  Please take a renewed look at your reporting, and see if you might concede that there is truth to my criticism.  Please remember that the press is the Fourth Estate, not "For the State".  It's never too late to do start getting it right. 
 
Thank you."

Now I know in my heart that this is likely a pointless exercise, sending long letters like this to people like Fred Hiatt, but shining the light on deceit has to start somewhere, anywhere, and we can't stop until the media stops, or the inherant bias that is programmed into the system like DNA becomes so transparent that people stop taking it seriously. I might as well beat my head into a brick wall, but I can't take it anymore -- it is no longer acceptable for media to take an issue where 95% of the people (and 100% of the experts) see it one way, and 5% (consisting mostly of industry-paid lackeys) see it the other way, but the two sides are presented in such a manner that it appears that each side has valid arguments that are about equal in persuasiveness.  See, e.g., the oil industry's "scientist" attacks on the scientific rationale for concluding that global warming is real, and caused in large part by human activitiess. 

Balance does not require the media to discard all qualitative judgments and critical thinking in order to appear not to be biased in favor of one side over the other.  It is OK to call something that is dishonest a "lie" and to call something that is not true "false".  It is also OK to report more positively about someone who merits more positive reporting, and to report more negatively abount someone who merits more negative reporting.  You do not have to even the playing field when it is uneven because of qualitative differences that are real and legitimate.  As John Stewart pointed out on The Daily Show last week, when the Inspector General released a report concluding that Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson had violated the law by injecting political affiliation into the civil service hiring process at the Justice Department, Wolf Blitzer's headline was that The Inspector General had issued a report "suggesting" that Bush Administration Officials "may have" broken laws in hiring lawyers for the Justice Department.  Stewart's reponse was "NO, the Inspector General did not "suggest" that officials "may have" broken laws, they "concluded" that they "did" break laws.  I mean, what is that about??  Can't the media simply "tell people like it is", and stop sugarcoating reality for fear that honest reporters will be accused of bias by those who are criticized?

I do not know the source of the corporate media's compulsion to water down any criticism of the status quo in this way -- except perhaps the fact that they derive most or all of their income from companies which are firmly part of the status quo -- but whatever reason, it has got to stop, and ASAP.  A few weeks ago, 75% or more of the advertising in the front (news) section of the Washington Post consisted of full page ads or half page ads paid for by oil companies, defense contractors and other large scale corporte interests -- you know, the sort of corporate good citizen ads that those companies regularly put out there.   Call me cynical, but it occurs to me that it is not a coincidence that a large percentage of the Post's revenue stream comes from corporate interests, and that their new found "balance" has a decidedly corporatist bent to it.  But whatever the reason for it, it will never stop unless we continue to call them on it, and hammer away at getting them to live up to the level of unbiased reporting that once existed in the Fourth Estate.