Though it hasn’t received quite as much scrutiny,
PRI (Public Radio International) also leans consistently
to the right with its news program, The World, broadcast,
as its name implies, all over the globe. A
“reality check” — minus the reality
For instance, during a recent World broadcast, PRI
reporter Matthew Bell offered a so-called “reality
check” in response to a statement from John
Kerry.
Responding to attacks against him made during the
GOP convention, Kerry said, “I will not have
my commitment to defend this country be questioned
by those who refused to serve when they could have
…”
Kerry was referring to the fact that though George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney supported the war in Vietnam,
both managed to avoid actually going there.
Here’s how the PRI reporter fact checked Kerry’s
quote.
“As for a reality check on that score, Dick
Cheney was deferred from military service five times
and never served, but George W. Bush did fly fighter
planes on the home front during the Vietnam war
in the Air National Guard, and he received an honorable
discharge.”
To anyone remotely familiar with Bush’s National
Guard follies, the leap from “did fly fighter
planes” to “received an honorable discharge”
is simply breathtaking in its audacity and the sheer
amount of damning information it completely ignores.
A record of disservice
As others have reported in far greater detail than
I will here (beginning with a groundbreaking May 2000
article in The Boston Globe), there is no record,
no evidence whatsoever, that Bush even bothered to
show up for an entire year of his Guard service. (Tasked
with rating Bush’s performance during this time,
two of his commanders found it impossible to do so,
concluding in a written report that: ''Lt. Bush has
not been observed at this unit during the period of
this report.'')
In addition to that unexplained absence, Bush –
for reasons he’s never felt the need to discuss
publicly – failed to show up for a required
physical examination, which meant he was automatically
grounded, which meant all the taxpayer money spent
on training him had been wasted. (It also meant that
there was absolutely no chance he’d be required
to fly in Vietnam.)
How our current president got into the Guard in the
first place is a curious story in its own right. Former
Texas Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes recently acknowledged
that he had helped Bush jump over a national waiting
list of 100,000 applicants, many of which were no
doubt more qualified than Bush, seeing as how he scored
the lowest possible passing grade on his pilot aptitude
test. (As the son of a powerful Texas politician,
Bush presumably possessed other qualifications that
the 100,000 people he bypassed didn’t.)
Use PRI for that ‘squeaky
clean’ feeling
Incredibly, these inconvenient facts have simply
been scrubbed from PRI’s account. No, according
to The World, Kerry was wrong to imply Bush refused
to serve. Bush did serve. He flew fighter planes.
On the home front. (That last phrase has a rather
stirring patriotic feel to it, only slightly diminished
by the image of Bush guarding the skies above Houston,
Texas — approximately 8,661 miles from Vietnam.)
Don’t get me wrong: “Reality checking”
is a great idea and one that should be required in
journalism. (I don’t know if we need a special
term for it though; there was a time when the practice
of comparing what public figures say to the known
facts was simply called “reporting.”)
But in this case, instead of “reality,”
The World substituted Republican talking points, nearly
identical to those offered by White House spokesperson
Scott McClellan.
Bad enough that, in an election year, much of the
media willingly echo blatant falsehoods about John
Kerry’s war record while Bush suffers no such
scrutiny of his stateside escapades. But to offer
a scrubbed and highly selective account of Bush’s
National Guard service is an equally grievous insult
to the concept of an informed citizenry. I can understand
why Bush’s spokespeople would want to offer
up such a version – but why in The World would
PRI?
If you’d like PRI to be more “thorough”
in its coverage of Bush’s time in the National
Guard, write to theworld@pri.org.
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