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No Mention of WMD Documents on ABC News Tonight
ABC News ^ | June 22, 2006 | Self

Posted on 06/22/2006 4:16:11 PM PDT by StJacques

I am posting this observation of the ABC Evening News, which has just concluded its evening broadcast here in the Central Time zone, without any mention of what I, and I suspect many of you, view as one of the major news stories of this day -- the revelations surrounding the discovery of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. I believe that ABC News's failure to do this is news in and of itself. I watched carefully this evening to see if, either as a stand-alone story or within its reporting of the Senate Debate on Iraq policy, whether ABC News would make this known to the public today and I can now report that they did not.

I am not introducing this topic to reveal the information about the disclosure of the verified existence of WMD in Iraq, specifically chemical weapons and nerve agents, but rather to open a discussion that the omission of this story from the evening news is an important development of today's news cycle, since it offers us one more piece of evidence that the presentation of news within the mainstream media reflects a political orientation on the part of major news organizations to the detriment of President Bush and his Iraq policy. News organizations are supposed to report the news, not shape it.

And as a final point, I would also like to ask my fellow Freepers to post their own observations of newscasts on NBC and CBS, to see if they pursued a similar tact in their own reporting this evening. This is not just "harping at the news media." The release of this information today was a significant event and I believe we must put the decision of major news organizations to downplay it in proper perspective. I am frankly outraged to see that it was ignored in the ABC News broadcast tonight.


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abc; abcnews; chemicalweapons; iraq; iraqiwmds; mainstreammedia; media; msm; news; propagandawingofdnc; santorum; senate; shivvingfordnc; slant; wmd
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FR Threads on this Issue Today:

Rick Santorum Reading Unclassified Version of Over 500 Chemical WMDs Found

2003 UN Report: Iraq Sulfur Mustard Gas Chemical Weapons Have High Quality After 12 years of Storage
1 posted on 06/22/2006 4:16:16 PM PDT by StJacques
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To: StJacques
Finding WMD's does not fit their template.

ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC are heavily invested in the 'no WMD's' storyline.

2 posted on 06/22/2006 4:19:04 PM PDT by keithtoo ("Drilling in ANWaR is OK with us" - Alaskan Caribou Benevolent Association.)
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To: StJacques

Gee, what a surprise!


3 posted on 06/22/2006 4:19:13 PM PDT by From The Deer Stand
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To: StJacques

I watched one network start it's broadcast the other evening by mentioning our two dead men, then saying it would return to that story in a moment as it went into a detailed report of the two troops who were charged with murder that day. It's clear what the networks priorities are.


4 posted on 06/22/2006 4:19:50 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (The Democrat Leadership Trifecta 2006: Anti truth, U.S. and sanity. Another leftist generation lost.)
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To: StJacques

Nor will they be.


5 posted on 06/22/2006 4:20:32 PM PDT by sport
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To: StJacques

They've spiked it. It's not a politically correct story. It's like telling people about the Gulag during the Cold War.


6 posted on 06/22/2006 4:20:50 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (The MSM is "the propaganda arm of our enemies." - Jack Kelly)
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To: StJacques

I'm shocked, I tell you shocked!!


7 posted on 06/22/2006 4:21:10 PM PDT by Empireoftheatom48 (God bless our troops!! Our President and those who fight against the awful commie, liberal left!!)
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To: All
It just occurred to me to check the ABC News story on the Iraq policy debate, which you can read at this link, to see if they might have buried the story within their web reporting, perhaps to give themselves an "out."

I have just examined that story and it is not included within the web article just linked.
8 posted on 06/22/2006 4:25:47 PM PDT by StJacques
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To: StJacques

9 posted on 06/22/2006 4:26:00 PM PDT by The G Man (The Red States ... the world's only hope for survival.)
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To: StJacques
Someone should copy the text of the report into the global warming anecdotes e-mail they have going. They'll look at that.
10 posted on 06/22/2006 4:26:39 PM PDT by MAexile (Bats left, votes right)
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To: StJacques

WLWT here in cincy

NBC Nightly news with Brian Williams did show a snip of a snippet of Santorum saying that the weapons list was very important....

But thats all maybe 60 seconds at best but of course it showed ant least 2.30 minutes of dems trying to discount the claim ! some woman from California [D] blond bimbet...


11 posted on 06/22/2006 4:33:04 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK (GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS)
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To: StJacques

Ms. Ashwari-Jennings and terrorist Arafat:
"Why should we at ABC give a rats a$$
about anything which might ever help any of you stupid dhimmis."

12 posted on 06/22/2006 4:34:45 PM PDT by Diogenesis (Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum)
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To: StJacques

I still want to know why we haven't heard anyone from the Bush admistration comment on this... Have they been talking about it and it just hasn't been reported? Or is there another reason the White House isn't talking about this...


13 posted on 06/22/2006 4:40:53 PM PDT by Stone Mountain
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To: ATOMIC_PUNK

Officials: U.S. didn’t find WMDs, despite claims
Comments are response to claims by GOP senators


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13480264/


The Brian Williams Report ...er well it's more of a slam than a report but what did you expect ?


14 posted on 06/22/2006 4:44:22 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK (GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS)
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To: Stone Mountain

I think it has been "hushed" as a policy.

Reasons for it, I couldn't tell.


15 posted on 06/22/2006 4:44:32 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
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To: Jet Jaguar

That's what it seems like. But if that's the case, if the administration isn't going to talk about it, you can't blame ABC for not reporting on it...


16 posted on 06/22/2006 4:46:24 PM PDT by Stone Mountain
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To: Stone Mountain
"I still want to know why we haven't heard anyone from the Bush admistration comment on this... Have they been talking about it and it just hasn't been reported? Or is there another reason the White House isn't talking about this..."

I've been wondering about this myself. What I am now guessing is going on is that the White House wants talk to start circulating a bit and then the President will say something like "I know a lot of you in the media have placed a high premium on whether we actually found WMD in Iraq, but from where I sit the real issue was always the fact that Saddam had actually used them in the past and he was obviously in continued violation of UN resolutions, etc. . ."

So it looks to me like the White House spin on this will be, "we knew how dangerous he was all along and we didn't set a standard of 'show and tell' as the proof of whether or not we were right."
17 posted on 06/22/2006 5:19:03 PM PDT by StJacques
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To: Stone Mountain

A question and short answer at todays White House Press Briefing; it was a most unsatisfactory response. Here is a link:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1653694/posts


18 posted on 06/22/2006 5:19:43 PM PDT by CedarDave (When a soldier dies, a protester gloats, a family cries, an Iraqi votes)
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To: ATOMIC_PUNK

If a couple of chemical weapons pre 1991 went off at NBC I guess the dead would not be REAL!!


19 posted on 06/22/2006 5:24:16 PM PDT by navysealdad
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To: CedarDave
Thanks!

Anything else? Steve.

Q This document that was unclassified yesterday, Republican lawmakers released it pointing toward 500 weapons dumps or munitions found in Iraq since 2003, of some chemical weapons. Do you consider this as a smoking gun of some sort, proving the WMD charge, or is this old material that is pre-Gulf War? What do you make of it?

MR. HADLEY: I think really it is what it is. There's a declassified, I think one-pager, that the intelligence community has cleared. I don't know whether that's been released to the press.

Q It has, yes, it has.

MR. HADLEY: That's really the story, I think. And I don't have a whole lot to add. It sort of, it is what it is. And I think -- I read that statement quickly last night and it's really all we can say about it. And I think people are going to have to draw their own conclusions.

But the bottom line is, 500 chemical munitions in Iraq, and obviously we're concerned about the potential threat they pose to Iraqis and to our forces.

Well, that was indeed most unsatisfactory...

20 posted on 06/22/2006 5:24:37 PM PDT by Stone Mountain
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