http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baron...one_051007b.htm

10/7/05
Poor Al Gore

Brendan Nyhan, a liberal blogger who was involved with the admirable www.spinsanity.org website, takes a quick look at a recent speech by Al Gore. He points out that Gore takes arguably fair arguments against the Bush administration (in this case, on its dealings with the press) and stretches them beyond where the facts will take them. Here's Nyhan: "There's no evidence that the White House 'placed' Jeff Gannon/Guckert in the White House press pool–they merely approved his credential. The journalists they allegedly paid for positive stories were actually pundits (Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher), not 'reporters.' And the claim that 'every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the president' is also unsubstantiated–the administration certainly pushes back against press coverage it doesn't like, but what evidence exists that they 'unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts' against journalists each day?"

This tendency to stretch truth into falsehood eventually got Gore into trouble in the 2000 campaign and, as Nyhan points out, he continues to do the same today. As one of the 648 registered Democrats who voted for Gore in the 1988 District of Columbia presidential primary, I'm sad to see him at this again; it seems to be a character flaw in a man who is entitled to claim that he has made many constructive contributions to public policy over many years. I continue to admire Brendan Nyhan, with whom I once had a constructive E-mail correspondence, as a liberal who places honesty and accuracy ahead of scoring partisan points.


Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications — including the Economist and the New York Times.

From a transcript of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism"

As far as Gannon goes, come on, the guy wrote for a website called GOPnews.com, once on C-Span he said "Fox News i by no means Conservative", he was often called by McClellan and Bush (as I recall - correct me if I'm wrong) - just the same way the other day Bush wanted to call on a reporter, the reporter wasn't there, and he said "well I'm looking for [name]", and pointed to someone and said "are you [name]" or something similar to that. He was looking for a reporter, if the reporter wasn't placed there, why would he be looking for her? I just have paraphrases here, but Mike Malloy on Air America had an audio clip of the instance. Maybe this blogger and reporter who call themselves liberals, should do their research first before claiming someone else doesn't know who they're talking.

...and particularly before kicking off a revival of old Right-Wing talking points.

Barone obviously has a problem with Gore even though he claims to have voted for him. Barone repeats the lie that Gore stretched the truth in 2000 despite that being manufactured by the media.

As far the the alleged liberal blogger, he seems very anti-Gore too. As does most of the regulars on his site. I'm glad at least one took him to task: