WP highlighted Democratic divisions on Iraq; ignored Republican split

[sabra]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200508220004

Wash. Post highlighted Democratic divisions on Iraq; ignored Republican split on the conflict

On August 22, The Washington Post devoted a front-page article to reporting on internal Democratic divisions about the war in Iraq but ignored similar divisions within the Republican Party, including recent remarks by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) questioning the Bush administration's policy in Iraq and comparing the conflict to the Vietnam War.

In the Post article, titled "Democrats Split Over Position on Iraq War," staff writers Peter Baker and Shailagh Murray reported: "Democrats say a long-standing rift in the party over the Iraq war has grown increasingly raw in recent days, as stay-the-course elected leaders who voted for the war three years ago confront rising impatience from activists and strategists who want to challenge President Bush aggressively to withdraw troops."

But nowhere in the article -- or anywhere else in the August 22 edition of the Post -- was it reported that, in recent days, Hagel, a potential Republican presidential candidate, had harshly criticized the Bush administration's policies in Iraq. On the August 18 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, Hagel said that "there is a parallel emerging" between Iraq and Vietnam and that "he longer we stay in Iraq, the more similarities will start to develop, meaning essentially that we are getting more and more bogged down, taking more and more casualties, more and more heated dissension and debate in the United States." Hagel reiterated the point on the August 21 broadcast of ABC's This Week, stating: "e are locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam."

The Post posted an Associated Press article about Hagel's most recent comments on the newspaper's website on August 22 but did not publish the story in its print edition, much less compile an independent report. Other newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times, did publish their own stories on Hagel's comments.

[TheFarseer]

1. I think support for the war

among democratic rank and file is virtually nil. I think repuke rank and file is about split 50-50. That is to say, when the question is, was it the right decision to invade Iraq?