Exhibit B In The Partisan Take on Terror: Petraeus, From Bumbler to ‘Brilliant’ Choice
One obvious double standard in network coverage of the War on Terror came in stories on Gen. David Petraeus, who was maligned by left-wing activists as “General Betray Us” under Bush. The media didn’t really object to a MoveOn.org full-page ad in The New York Times using that epithet, although they did report President Bush’s objection to it. On the September 10, 2007 World News , reporter Jonathan Karl related: “War critics inside and outside the hearing room attacked Petraeus, saying he had manipulated statistics – failing, for example, include many killings in his calculation of ethnic violence. The anti-war group MoveOn.org went further, accusing the General of cooking the books for the White House.” On the September 12, 2007 NBC Nightly News , anchor Brian Williams interviewed Gen. Petraeus, and despite telling viewers he had a Ph.D. from Princeton, the anchorman treated him as someone who couldn’t grasp that the U.S. invasion had created terrorists.
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on September 10, 2011. Filed under