A Boston Tea Party …(Halloween Costume)

I purposely watched the weekend news shows to see how they treated the special prosecutor news conference held on Friday. Fitzgerald had announced that the indictment had nothing to do with the war but rather the perjury of testimony in front of the grand jury by Mr. Libby. Fitzgerald said there was no outing of a CIA agent, which was the reason the special prosecutor was named. How would the news media react?

I watched three shows over the weekend. On Friday night “Hardball” with Chris Mathews was the first to come on the television. I was anxious to see the spin Chris would put on the outcome of the case after being near orgasmic the entire week over the possibility of the indictment of Karl Rove and this case showing a false pretense for war. Chris went with the spin of how serious this was for the White House and did not nothing illegal was found in the outing of a CIA agent. That subject was brought up finally by a guest, Pat Buchanan, in the forty second minute of the show. “Hardball” was followed at the top of the hour by “The O’Reilly Factor” on FOXNEWS. O’Reilly took a whole two minutes at the beginning of his show to divulge the truth about the entire case and indictment. Sunday morning my attention turned to “Meet The Press”. Tim Russert and his panel followed much the same storyline that Mathews had the Friday night before. It was not until William Safire finally spoke thirty-six minutes into the program that the spin became factual.

While I believe the indictment of “Scooter” Libby is a very serious offense and if found guilty he needs to be punished, I will say the some in the media deliberately failed to report the real story. They put a Halloween costume on what the prosecutor found in order to continue their misrepresentation of this administration. The only difference between Libby and Joe Wilson is that Wilson did not purge himself in front of a grand jury. Wilson is known to have lied and soon we will find out if Libby is guilty of it. My hunch is that for as long as Bush is President some in the media will also keep the truth from the American public.