http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57618-2002Oct7?language=printe r
ABC, CBS and NBC all decided not to carry President Bush's speech
live at 8 Monday night. "They said yesterday that they made this
call because the White House never asked them to carry the speech
live," reports the Washington Post. "But the White House said it
did not put in the usual formal request because it wanted to keep
the American public from thinking we were going to war." However,
the fact that we are going to war did manage to register with a few
pundits. As media critic Doug Ireland observes, "it was politically
savvy David Gergen -- spinmeister for four presidents, both
Republican and Democratic -- who got it absolutely right when he
told MSNBC the speech was 'blunt, hardline, a prelude to war.' ...
And Gergen accurately delivered the most frightening on-air
analysis of all: 'The logic of the speech says that Iraq is our
first stop, not our last stop, in the Middle East.'" (The Institute
for Public Accuracy has prepared a line-by-line critique of the
misrepresentations in Bush's speech.)
SOURCE: Washington Post, October 8, 2002
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