Maliki Goes Obama's Way While NYT and WP Wait--For What?

[EV_Ares]

By Todd Gitlin - July 19, 2008, 8:54PM
As of 9 pm Saturday night, the nation's major newspapers are weirdly reticent about Prime Minister al-Maliki's striking (make that extremely striking and indeed extraordinary) statement to Germany's Der Spiegel that a timetable for US withdrawal from Iraq makes sense: "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes." According to this major magazine, "In his conversation with SPIEGEL, he was once again candid about his frustration over the Bush administration's hesitancy about agreeing to a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops."

At this writing, CNN has acknowledged that Maliki said he agreed with Obama, though noting also that "a spokesman for al-Maliki said his remarks 'were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately.'" Uh-huh. We await Der Spiegel's release of the transcript, and the particulars that Maliki's spokesman rejects.

But the news cascades, or rather the absence of news does. At 9:08 pm, the NYT has yet to acknowledge the Maliki statement in anything more than a sidebar online piece to the effect that the White House mistakenly sent out the word in an e-mail blast to reports. So, according to the NYT, this is a story of a White House gaffe, not a story about how the most legitimate political authority in Iraq sides against the Bush administration and its would-be successor, John McCain.

The WP carries Garance Franke-Ruta's blog mention of Maliki's support of Obama's position, but so far, that's all. We await the morning paper.

Update 9 AM: Await no more. Both the NYT and the WP shoehorned the Maliki report into their p. 1 pieces on Obama in Afghanistan. Garance Franke-Ruta reported it on her valuable WP blog, "The Trail." The LAT not only fronted the Maliki Spiegel interview but gave it the headline.

Link: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/19/maliki_goes_obamas_way_while_n/

[Faygo Kid]

1. The Washington Post was and is the biggest Iraq war cheerleader.

The New York Times is the former home of Judith Miller.

They are both corporate media. The Times at least has Frank Rich, but they neutralize that with Bill Kristol (yuck). WaPo is hopeless. A neocon rag and home base for "columnnists" Krauthammer and Gerson, who are nothing more than neocon Bush shills.

[ladjf]

2. Our good DU posters continue to agonize over the biased media.

The media is almost totally under the control of the "dark side". That's the way it has been and will be for a long time. We'll have to elect the President and Congressmen in the face of media Resistance. It can and most likely will be done. Perhaps we could then take a serious look at just who is writing the scripts for the media.