9/24/2005 - MMFA Falsely Claimed Washington Post "Omitted" Democrats' Reason for Not Joining Republican Probe into Katrina
Posted in Unspecified
A September 22, 2005 item from Media Matters for America, the writer falsely suggested that, the Washington Post, "reported that House Democrats are boycotting the 'bipartisan' investigation but failed to provide the reasons Democrats have given for the boycott..."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509220008
The article claimed that the Post ommitted the facts that "[Democrats] would be outnumbered by Republicans on the panel and would not have subpoena power." In fact, the Washington Post has reported the Democrats whining about this and their reasons, and Media Matters has previously noted this. They may not have reported it in this specific article, but the Post has previously reported it. It is a bit crazy to think that they are "ommitting" things for "conservative misinformation" because they will not repeat the same reasons for Democrats crying about things every time they write an article.
In a September 8 article from the Wash. Post, they reported Nancy Pelosi sniffing about the facts that Democrats would not have subpoena power and that Republicans would outnumber the Democrats. As the Post says:
House and Senate GOP leaders announced the "Hurricane Katrina Joint Review Committee," which will include only members of Congress, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by a yet-to-be-determined ratio.
[...]
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the new commission "is not truly bipartisan, will not be made up of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, cannot write legislation and will not have bipartisan subpoena power."
Oddly enough, Media Matters featured this article in a previous item as proof of these facts.
Is MMFA getting sloppy?
Furthermore, in the former mentioned item, Media Matters cried about an Amy Goldstein article in the Post because it "failed to explain, however, why Democrats object to the current makeup of the inquiry. She instead reported that Democrats are 'saying that a GOP-led Congress could not be trusted to carry out a thorough investigation of mistakes by a Republican administration,' and that Pelosi 'renewed the Democrats' calls for an independent commission, similar to the one that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- a proposal that polls suggest most of the public supports.' "
Of course, Amy Goldstein is absolutely correct. Nancy Pelosi has said this herself in a press release. After the Republicans offered this commission, which, admittedly, gives Republicans more power than Democrats, Nancy Pelosi announced publicly that she now was going to fight for an independent, 9/11 commission-style probe:
"The American people want Democrats and Republicans to put their differences aside and work together to address the emergency assistance and recovery needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and to investigate why the initial federal response compounded the disaster...
"For nearly a week, I have urged the Speaker to establish a bipartisan task force that is truly bipartisan...
"The partisan proposal that Republican leaders outlined yesterday is completely unacceptable. House Democrats will not participate in a sham that is just the latest example of congressional Republicans being the foxes guarding the President´s hen house.
"Americans want an objective assessment of what went wrong during the federal government´s response to Hurricane Katrina. Now that Speaker Hastert and Leader Frist have decided to form a partisan committee, the only way to get Americans the truth about what went wrong and correct how we respond to future disasters is by creating an independent commission. It could be modeled after the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which did a huge service to our country with its excellent report detailing the urgent task before us to make our nation safer."
This has been echoed by many Democrats elsewhere, including Sen. Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader.
The overall point is that Democrats want an independent 9/11 commision-type investigation. Reporting it this way would seem accurate, especially when the Post had previously announced the anger at the Republican proposal. Why do they need to repeatedly recycle the same story? Does this really fall under "conservative misinformation"?
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