Washington Post Reporter Dana Priest At NKU, Gets Hard Question From Me, Gives Clueless Answer

Dana Priest a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with the Washington Post was the guest lecturer last night at an event sponsored by Northern Kentucky University's Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement.

Dana Priest is the lady who wrote the story disclosing that the CIA was operating secret prisons, called 'Black Sites', where those suspected of having knowledge of terrorism were being interrogated.  Her story of course resulted in the liberal cry to end waterboarding and was the wind beneath the wings of Barack Obama's executive order closing Guantanamo Bay and other similar facilities.

The audience was populated with some of Northern Kentucky's liberal establishment.  Though the hall was set for 300, it appeared to me that there were only about 50 in attendance.  I was the only conservative.

After she gave her talk, telling everyone how she developed the sources for her story, and generally repeating the reasons why she was given the Pulitzer Prize by the very liberal Columbia University (where of course Ahmadinejad was invited to speak) she was kind enough to open the floor to questions.

And so I took that opportunity to ask her this question:

"The media watchdog group, Accuracy in Media, has equated you with Soviet apologist Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who covered up Stalin's crimes, pointing to your husband's connections with various Marxist groups and his long history of far left activism, and concluded that your story on Black Sites was a "carefully designed and planted effort to sabotage the war on terror" putting Americans at an increased risk of attack.

Under these circumstances, with all the stories you could have reported, how do you address those people who believe your motivations translate into media bias?"

And here was her answer:

I don't feel the need to address it necessarily because I have a long career and many articles that people can look at judging for themselves whether those articles turned out to be accurate or not.  And I cannot think of a story in many years that I had to write a correction about....I am married to someone who is liberal with a think tank that has a liberal bent.  You know, I don't feel the need to have to defend it, it is what it is.

And here is where I believe the liberal media dodges the question.  Bias is not, as they would like it to be, limited to false reporting.  Bias includes selective reporting. 

In the middle of the war on terrorism, when our government was dealing with low life thugs, living in the shadows in far off lands, hell bent on executing secret plans to blow up shopping malls, schools and kill thousands of innocent people, why would you report a story designed to bring the CIA efforts to thwart those activities to a halt?  Who cares if what you report is factually accurate or not, that's not the question, the question was of all the stories you could have written why pick one that had the potential, and in fact did deprive us of a meaningful tool to prevent the loss of innocent life?

Well, the answer she didn't want to give was revealed in the question.  Here is who she is, and who her husband is and how the timing of the story was in FACT carefully designed and planted:

The Washington Post released the article at a point of maximum impact—the eve of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's crucial visit to America's European allies in the War on Terror. Priest's shocking claims did more than embarrass the administration; they harmed America's national security and intelligence gathering capabilities during a time of war.

Was political embarrassment for the Bush Administration her educated prediction or her deliberate intent?

Mary O. McCarthy, one of Priest's reported "anonymous" sources, has been outed as a Democratic partisan who worked closely with members of the Clinton Administration and the John Kerry Campaign foreign policy team, including Sandy Burger, Richard Clarke, Rand Beers and Joe Wilson.

As if that isn't enough to raise eyebrows, Dana Priest's matrimonial tie, not generally known to readers of the Washington Post, leaves a strong appearance of conflict of interest. As it happens, she is married to William Goodfellow, a far-left political activist and current executive director of the Center for International Policy (CIP), who has been at the vanguard of many of the most rabid attacks on Bush Administration policy.

Goodfellow has been described by his wife as a human rights activist. Yet, that is hardly an accurate or complete job description. For the past 30 years, William Goodfellow has pushed radical causes in a string of inter-related far-left think tanks.

In 1974, he wrote a widely circulated op-ed for the New York Times that served to excuse the genocidal Pol Pot's forced evacuation of the Cambodian people from the cities. The piece was so influential that it is still quoted by Noam Chomsky and his followers to this day. According to Goodfellow, the urban population of Phnom Penh was force marched to the killing fields because the Khmer Rouge believed that more food was available in rural areas—ignoring the evidence that the communist group was engaging in the systematic slaughter of the innocent, in order to create a communist society.

Goodfellow's CIP was created with the assistance of the Marxist Chilean diplomat and suspected Cuban spy Orlando Letelier, who was assassinated in Washington, D.C. Even after the truth about Letelier's Cuban Communist connections emerged in materials found after his death, Goodfellow continued to honor him.

While Goodfellow has remained with CIP since the seventies, he has also maintained a relationship with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, a notorious Marxist-oriented think tank). Throughout its history CIP has lobbied for the weakening of the U.S. military through unilateral nuclear disarmament measures and opposition to vital weapons systems, constraining U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities, and appeasement of Marxist regimes around the globe.

And for those with an eye toward understanding how her answer to my question DID NOT address  how her motivations translate into media bias, take a look at this web of far left loons at the center of which is Dana Priest:

Priest's lecture at NKU was no doubt intended to bring a prize winning journalist to the area and to increase the standing of the Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement funded in part by the Murry Seasongood trust.  But if this state sponsored educational institution is sincerely interested in advancing the cause of journalistic integrity, it must do a better job of investigating its speakers.

The job of exposing the truth is never ending, and as Dana Priest herself admitted, that job is now being shared by bloggers in the new media, just like me.

The truth is that NKU quietly celebrated the accomplishments of a woman whose reporting received an award, but whose motivations deserved a layer of tar covered by feathers.

Comments

[Redman]

Marcus, what I did find "cute" was your attempt to compare yourself with Dana Priest. Now that was rich.

It is also noted that you made no attempt to explain the yellow journalism you practice on this site. Just that you are an
"aggregator", just following the pact.

Who cares if the "pack" is made up of mad dogs, right? Let someone else figure out if it is accurate or not? I just pass it on under my name. Right?

NKU seems to have a fetish for inviting and applauding known Marxists. I remember a few years ago they wanted to re-name Louis Nunn Drive after some Marxist Black Panther. They also invited Barbara Einrich to give the school-wide convocation with freshmen as part of the first-year reading program. Sometime they should encourage freshmen to read something like the Federalist Papers instead of the Communist Manifesto. I can't think of a conservative that they have recently invited to give a lecture that wasn't countered by a liberal (such as the Alumni Lecture Series) but they regularly invite and even award these communists.

I spent 4 years actively involved in their campus, so if some commenter takes exception to that, they should provide some pretty hard evidence to the contrary. This is one thing I know about.

[Marc Carey]

Thanks Redman. I'm glad you get it.

For example, your quote from my post "Who cares if what you report is factually accurate..." is precisely the issue. One cannot report anything except in context.

Despite your attempt to mislead others, anyone with half a brain who reads the original post knows that I was not giving approval to false reporting, rather I was calling out a liberal press for reporting facts which helped our enemies in time of war.

Now as far as my posts are concerned, you are precisely correct. On many occassions my blog is an aggregator, I find interesting things on other sites and bring them to my readers attention. If you read the "about" page you will see that. And with very few inadvertent exceptions, I always link to the source of my story.

But your suggestion that when I link to stories which reveal bad things about Obama, that I am helping to inspire those who oppose his policies, you are right.

I oppose his policies. As Dana Priest said the other night, there should be a distinction between the editorial and the news account at a newspaper. And as she also accurately pointed out, that line is often blurred in the blogosphere.

On this blog I often express my personal viewpoint. And this blog often contains the items of news I find interesting.

I'm glad you read it and truly do appreciate your comments. In fact I have sometimes made subtle changes after reading constructive criticism.

And I know you were only trying to be cute by misrepresenting my quote, but try harder next time.

[Redman]

Marcus, it is indeed refreshing to see you expose the hypocrisy of your blog, and your never ending political hack-ery.

"Who cares if what you report is factually accurate or not, that's not the question..."

I think the list of Posts from your blog will make my point:

"Now This Is Bizarre: Obama Had A Communist Pothead, Sex Pervert As A Mentor? Truth Or Tripe, You Be The Judge"

"Obama Had An Affair With His Finance Director"

"Obama Official Senate Office Helps Kenyan Candidate Impose Sharia Law"

"Obama Admits He's A Marxist"

"Michelle Obama Goes On Tirade With African Press"

"In His Own Words: Obama Promises To Defend America By Disarming America"

Just as you state Marcus, "Who cares if what you report is factually accurate or not"?

[Marc Carey]

To Steve Smith:

First thanks for commenting.

Second, you say you are not a liberal, I will take your word for that. But you were seated with some very well known liberals at the lecture and, well, you know what they say about lying down with dogs.

You next complain that I only quoted a couple of lines from Ms. Priest's answer which went on for five minutes. Let me assure you, I taped the entire answer to my question and my report is spot on accurate. What she said after the quote in my blog did nothing to change that answer.

And your comment suggests that something in my question was unfair. I'm a little surprised at that comment, knowing that you are a lawyer. In fact given that the criticism about Ms. Priest which has been out there for some time now including the criticism of her husbands known Marxist ties, I think the question was a very fair one had it been asked by you or anyone else. I merely told her what she admitted she already knew and asked her to respond to the suggestion that her reporting was biased.

For you to suggest that I had to report the rest of her speech, including the Walter Reed stuff is ludicrous. Have you ever read a newspaper? I was there to ask her about claims regarding her bias. What, if Bill Clinton came to speak and I asked him about his perjury, I'm then obligated to publish a transcript of his entire pontification? Not hardly.

And to your suggestion that I had some obligation to temper my remarks about the size of the crowd with a reference to the weather, what you either don't know, or won't acknowedge, is that at the request of the sponsor of the event, for two days I blogged about the speech, and sent a message to hundreds of my friends in an effort to help build the crowd. Check it out dude. You may be a first time blog reader, but learn to scroll down.

And lastly to the meat of your whining. Dana Priest said that because her reporting was factually accurate means that her reporting is not biased. Bullshit.

So what if it is factually accurate that our troops are about to make a particular movement? The only people who would "report" that fact would be those who wanted our enemies to know about it. And somehow you don't think that is a bias?

Well, you may not be a liberal, but your comment surely to goodness makes you look like a liberal apologist. Where were you when reporters asked hard questions of President Bush?

And I'm sorry to hear that you will not be back. I welcome and encourage dissent from my views. It's all about a free and open debate. I hope you do come back, and comment again.

And lastly about me puffing myself up, thanks again for commenting. It helps to drive traffic.

[Steve Smith]

Marcus,

I was there, and I am definitely not a liberal; far from it. You make a really silly , and I mean silly, attempt to belittle someone who is accomplished in ways you never will be. You don't even state the truth in trying to puff yourself up. You predictably repreat a sentence or two that supports your position, rather than anything resembling the truth of the speech. It is so disappointing. Your need to puff yourself up with such a contrived question, followed by the half-truths and innacuracies of this blog are sad, but not suprising.

First, Ms. Priest's response to your question lasted about 5 minutes and was far more revealing than the sentence you attached to your post. Your very weak and transparent attack on her did not merit a response at all(you simply presume that it did), but she did politely respond. You should return that courtesy with something approaching accuracy.

Second, you also fail to "report" that she did not beleive that President Bush or those carrying out his directives were bad people with bad intentions. You simply parade the same old worn out dogmatic mantra that conservatives are good and liberals are bad. She stated that those in charge honestly thought that there were WMD's." They simply relied on incorrect intelligence. There was no bile or accusation in her speech, and she never made the kind of belittling comments about the subjects of her reporting that you make of her. That says a whole bunch about relative character, don't you think?

Third, I suppose you also object to her "liberal" reporting on the atrocious conditions at Walter Reed, though you fail to mention that she broke the story nationally. Our soldiers deserved better treatment. She saw the issue and reported it. Perhaps it is part of your agenda to deprive soldiers of humane conditions and you object to her report? Or perhaps there is hypocracy in you? You tell me, since you failed to mention that in your self serving and stupid post.

Fourth, why should I bother. This is the first time I have read this blog and it will be the last. I logged on assuming that you would plump yourself up for your brave and scripted attack from the back row. You don't even report that the speech was moved from Tuesday due to weather, and despite the move, short notice, and lack of a press release, many showed. The number was far more than 50, but not at all full. What do we expect on a Friday night with no notice at our local commuter college?

I have never posted anything on any blog before and wouldn't do so anonymously. People who post without their name have no merit.

Bimbo zzzzzzzzzzz and zzzzzzzzzzzz.

[BimBeau]

From your graphic display of interactivity, it appears that Howard Dean is the great architect, the ultimate satanic presence on the human lanscape.

Or ... other such drivel!

Since you have personally determined that Marxism is dead, what's the purpose of this message?
Since you have personally determined that all liberlism is ineffectual, why continue?
Since you have personally determined that there is no future for socially determinative policy, what's O'Bama doing?
Marcus - you guys lost and since you've rejected change as appropriate response to changing conditions on the planet and in the country - where possibly can these screeds be headed? More limbaugh style treason?

You (collective) lost to liberalISM. It's here to stay. You guys are dinosaurs, not mammals, you are refusing to address change other than denying to do so.

Thank you.

No choice ... no democracy, no capitalism;
Choice is not an option; it's a way of life.
.