Boehner's Loss of Memory and Cover-Up... (Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?)

Weisman and Babbington of The Washington Post Saturday morning September 30:

Rep. Foley Quits In Page Scandal - washingtonpost.com: House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert. It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged online exchanges between Foley and the boy...

Weisman and Babbington Friday night September 29:

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and that Hastert assured him "we're taking care of it." It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged e-mails between Foley and the boy...

Boehner's scramble to get back on message sounds much more credible when Boehner's claim that Hastert told him "we're taking care of it" is removed. Had Weisman and Babbington left that "we're taking care of it" in, the story would be less friendly to Majority Leader Boehner. And the story would be much less friendly to Majority Leader Boehner had Weisman and Babbington added in the third story Boehner was telling last night--the one he was telling to Roll Call:

Boehner strongly denied media reports late Friday night that he had informed Hastert of the allegations, saying "That is not true."

Not "I don't remember." Instead: "That is not true."

You cannot read Roll Call and both versions of the Post story without concluding that Boehner was lying to somebody last night: three different stories in quick succession defeats all credulity.

You cannot read the Post this morning without concluding that Weisman and Babbington are unseemly eager to keep their readers from learning that Boehner was lying to somebody last night.

---

UPDATE I: Although Boehner has now tried to pull back his admission that he told Hastert, and that Hastert said "we are taking care of it," Representative Tom Reynolds says that he himself informed Speaker Hastert: "I told the Speaker of the conversation Mr. Alexander had with me."

UPDATE II: "Richard Cranium" has a somewhat cryptic message from Babbington and Weisman, or Babbington, or Weisman. They stand by their story. All versions of it:

The All Spin Zone / Response to WaPo Boehner Statement Inquiry: As I noted in my previous post, there is a link for emailing the reporters on the Washington Post story. So I took the opportunity to email them. Here's the almost immediate reply I received (edited only to remove responder's name and contact information, and to spamproof ASZ's email address):

Re: Message via washingtonpost.com: Changed paragraph
From: xxxxxxxx(at)washpost(dot)com
To: allspinzone(at)yahoo(dot)com
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2006 13:05:10 -0400

Thanks for writing. We stand by all versions of the story, which changed edition-by-edition as the evening progressed and more reporting was done. That's all I can tell you. thx. xxxxx

---

Richard wrote:

To: xxxxxx(at)washpost(dot)com
From: Richard (allspinzone(at)yahoo(dot)com)
Date: 09/30/2006 01:00PM
Subject: Message via washingtonpost.com: Changed paragraph

Richard sent the following message:

Why did the paragraph regarding Leader Boehner's comments change, with no reference to the original quote to Boehner from Hastert?

Did Boehner originally tell you "Hastert assured him 'we're taking care of it.'" or not? If he did, then the original statement (from an editorial and journalistic ethics perspective) must remain in the article.

A simple yes or no answer to my core question will suffice. Thanks in advance for your reply.

The reporters who wrote the story stand by their original reporting.

Fini.

I'm Richard Cranium, and I approved this message at 13:30:20.

Comments

[Marvin Toler]

You can manipulate a country into war, let your friends steal billions from the Treasury, accept huge bribes for legislative favors, but don't ever get caught in a sex scandal. Sex scandals don't go away. The 24/7 news cycle will fill every spare moment with "experts" discussing what is known, assumed, or unknown about the individuals involved. The press will go into a feeding frenzy trying to scoop each other. Tom Delay's activities should have brought down the Republican leadership but it looks as though the coverup of a sexual predator in Congress will damage them more. Well, whatever works....

[Cranky Observer]

My WAG is that this will be on Pg. A23 by Tuesday and gone by Friday (10/6 that is). Any takers?

The plain fact is that the traditional media only attacks / supports attacks on Democrats. It does not fuel scandals involving Radical Republicans.

IOW: IOKIYAR

Cranky

[Rich Gibson]

I don't know if Cranky is right that the media would treat this different if it were Democrats, but I think sadly that he is right that this will be gone by Friday.

I hope not, but I just looked at sfgate.com and they appear to be adding details to the same single article on the scandal.

To have legs it seems you need to get additional articles, not just more information added to the first one.

I'm also disheartened by the article they reprinted from the NY Times:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/30/MNGNKLFO3P1.DTL

It is a 'balanced' treatment of the details of the destruction of America as a moral institution.

How can they write "shoring up with legislation his determined campaign against terrorism in the face of challenges from critics and the courts."

It got worse...

The thing is, sfgate is basically as anti-bush as nominally mainstream gets, and they are (re) publishing balanced stories about something that can not be balanced, and they are not apparantly paying much attention to Foley.

So...my money is with Cranky.

[Pudentilla]

Hey, if you're for torture, boinking boys is not going to trouble you.

[jf]

via firedoglake reader, Mimir, this interesting exchange involving Weisman a few years ago:

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_03_09_atrios_archive.html#90739414

[Alan]

Well, I'm still waiting to see how the conservative press spins this as a "win" for Republicans.

But what was that saying about a dead hooker or a live boy? Seems like we have a live one.

[ptcruiser100]

There is a saying among the old folks in the community I grew up in that goes: "If it don't come out in the wash, then it will come out in the rinse."

The is just the wash phase of the Foley scandal. The rinse cycle hasn't even started. There will be more stories and it won't matter if the NY Times or Washington Post are loathe to print them.

[bigTom]

Well, if you have three different lies that don't match up, send that to the press, I'd think if they smell a scoop/scandal, they shouldn't be able to resist. Keith Oberman would probably run it, then if it has any legs.........

[RichB]

I have to agreee with Cranky that this will be gone by next week. Shouldn't it have been a scandal to start with that a senior member of the gay-bashing Republican congressional leadership was gay himself? This has been common knowledge in the gay media for years (google "Mark Foley" and "gay"), but the Washington press, ever willing to forgive Republican hyposcrisy, hasn't said a peep. Why are they going to start now?

[Rob]

Was there ever a more tellign example of the press as stenographer than this? "Since Boehner told use three different stories, we stand behind all fo them! Which is true? Well you'll haev to wait for an evenhanded analysis piece that explains it. I'm sure it will be sure to mention that Democrats have been/may be/will be in some indeterminate point in the future as bad."

[John Emerson]

A few Republicans, including Reynolds who feels that he's being set up to be the fall guy, are keeping this story alive.

Sex crimes, by contrast to the Iraq War, may be one of the few things that wingers are really serious about. It may also be that the values voters are stirred up.

The Republicans may be taking this opportunity to ditch the Republican leadership for good Republican reasons (without seeming like a Democrats).

[Marcus]

I figure by Tuesday we'll have another photogenic Missing White Woman (MWW) headlining the news. My guess it the location will be Hawaii or possibly Washington State - gotta get the news crews as far away from Florida as possible, and keep the feeding frenzy for the latest information stoked daily by anonymous leaks from the office of the local police department. A cynical thought, I know, but I would not bet against something of the sort happening....

[Anna Haynes]

So what's the term for this - "source rowback"?

(local paper did something similar recently - an "inoperative" quote from person A got replaced in later story with an "operative" (and opposite) quote from Person B - and it bugs me not to know what to call it.)

[liberal]

Cranky Observer wrote, "The plain fact is that the traditional media only attacks / supports attacks on Democrats. It does not fuel scandals involving Radical Republicans."

It's true that the media are strongly biased in favor of Republicans. But the fact of the matter is that part of the problem is that it's partly the Democrats' fault. They (I should say, "we") have to start playing the game by the Rethuglicans' own rulebook.

In this case, that means getting in front of the major media and literally claiming that "a vote for a Republican is a vote for child molestors and their protectors," and then when challenged point out Hastert's months of inaction.

It's nothing more than what the Rethuglicans would do to us.

[RKKA]

"In this case, that means getting in front of the major media and literally claiming that "a vote for a Republican is a vote for child molestors and their protectors," and then when challenged point out Hastert's months of inaction.

It's nothing more than what the Rethuglicans would do to us."

So true it hurts. Remember how Newt Gingrich used the Susan Smith case? He was all over the news about how this mom drowning her two sons was the fault of Democrats destroying family values. "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. The only way you get change is to vote Republican."

Then it came out that her stepfather, an official in the South Carolina state Republican apparat, had been sexually abusing her since she was a teen, and recently had sex with her. Now why the Democrats didn't use this to show that child murder, incest, adultery and lying were the real "Conservative Republican family values" I will never understand. Within months of this , Newt Gingrich was Speaker, with a Republican majority that continues to this day.

[monkyboy]

I wonder if there is a stained dress involved in this?

Vote for our pedophile or the terrorists have won!

Not very catchy...better just roll the dice and bomb Iran.

[John Emerson]

RKKA: I've been asking that same question for a couple of years. To me, when Gingrich became Speaker after that speech, America crossed a threshold. Most Democrats never seemed to notive, but from that point on the Republicans have felt no need to distinguish themselves from their crazies.

[Cranky Observer]

> In this case, that means getting in
> front of the major media and literally
> claiming that "a vote for a Republican
> is a vote for child molestors and their
> protectors," and then when challenged
> point out Hastert's months of inaction.
>
> It's nothing more than what the
> Rethuglicans would do to us.

I am in 100% agreement with that, but I would still argue that there is something fundamental in the structure of the traditional media that leads them to beat on Democrats and let Republicans slide with at most a wrist pat.

Cranky

[bncthor]

..."but I think sadly that he is right that this will be gone by Friday."

What will be gone?

[The Fool]

Babington is a complete idiot. I've exchanged emails with him on his coverage of budget and tax policy which revealed without a doubt that the doesn't understand basic economic facts or budget logic.

Weisman is an idiot too but he's more of a weaselly courtier than a moron, like Babington. I've spoken with Weisman personally about his coverage of Bush and it was clear that he's just another cowardly ass-kissing media whore.

Pathetic.

[Dean Moriarty]

>>I am in 100% agreement with that, but I would still argue that there is something fundamental in the structure of the traditional media that leads them to beat on Democrats and let Republicans slide with at most a wrist pat.

Cranky
>>>
I think this is because the Right has pounded the "liberal media" meme so hard into the public consciousness that the media quiver with fear of writing or saying anything negative about them.

Somebody needs to have the balls to say what liberal wrote: "In this case, that means getting in front of the major media and literally claiming that "a vote for a Republican is a vote for child molestors and their protectors," and then when challenged point out Hastert's months of inaction."

It doesn't have to be a candidate, but someone like Howard Dean or other prominent Democrat spokesperson.

[matt]

Enjoy reading this stuff and speculating on its meaning now.

Come the day after the elections, 8 November, an assault like you've never seen before will be launched against so-called liberal journalists as the administration starts its attack on what's left of the first amendment.

The target will be someone identifiably liberal (objective) like Helen Thomas who the wingnut enthusiasts in America can write-off as liberal media while the administration sends out the message that dissent will not be tolerated. The MSM will definitely get the message and when the first train loads of people are unloaded at the camps, no one will be reporting it.

The Bush family has succeeded, after almost 100 years trying, in destroying the American republic.

[Mr. X]

Oil companies create the energy policies.

Pharmaceutical companies write the health care bills.

Pedofiles propose the child safety bills.

War mongers and torture advocates establish democracies.

Corporate donors to the GOP build voting machines.

And the rest of us are just spitting into the wind.

[jon livesey]

Since this came out as the result of e-mails, I think it's worth asking why in the age of e-mail, Congress has any legitimate need for pages. This is an institutional issue as much as a "bad apple" issue. Keeping sixteen year old boys and girls around legislators, some of the latter of whom are separated from their families, is just an accident waiting to happen.

[sunlight]

GOP=Gang of Predators

[bigTom]

Brad, how many other reporters dis you email. At least it looks like the coverup -if not Boehner's incompatible lies are blowing up big time. Even our frightened press -if tweaked in enough places will respond.
Of course compared to subverting the constitution -by the whole party no less, this is really small potatoes, but the press likes to deal with stories where they can get close and personal, not abstract issues like ones ability to keep his freedom.

[RichB]

For a text book example of the main stream media sweeping Republican scandal under the rug, check out the Chicago Tribune. Any mention of the Foley scandal is half way down their website, and not a mention on their editorial page. Keep in mind that this is Dennis Hastert's home town paper. As he stands accused of covering for a child predator in Congress, doesn't it seem like this would merit a bit more attention? No wonder there's no sense of accountability in the US anymore.