Another common Republican tactic is to attack the messenger instead of
the message. It's been extremely successful for them, because suddenly
the reporter becomes the story and everyone forgets whatever they were
reporting about -- and at the same time, other reporters are scared to
touch that story.
In this case, bringing up Al Qaqaa seems to have been an attempt to
re-spin the Newsweek story into an attack on that same old boogeyman,
"the liberal media elites," before the not-really-all- that-liberal,
not-really-all-that-elite media can start drawing parallels between
Newsweek's bad info (17 people killed before they could retract it and
apologize) and Bush's bad info (well over 25,000 dead -- including 1,600
American soldiers -- with no real retraction or apology to date.)
"But the problem with the Bush administration excoriating Newsweek's
insensitivity to Islam isn't just hypocrisy. There's a larger issue
of bad faith and an underlying lack of appreciation for the necessary
role of a free and independent press. With increasing forcefulness,
Bush has tried to undermine the legitimacy of the media, or at least
that subculture within it that shows any tendency to challenge him. When
the Bushies say there ought to be more of a check on the Fourth Estate,
they aren't really asking for more care and accuracy on the part of
journalists. They're expressing frustration that they still have to put
up with criticism at all."
http://slate.msn.com/id/2119055/fr/rss/
Or, maybe it's all a vast left-wing conspiracy so that Jon Stewart will
get to say "Al Qaqaa" on TV a few more times?
