Topic: NewsBusters
An April 1 NewsBusters post by Tim Graham praises Wall Street Journal columnist Mark Lasswell for comparing the Bush administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys to the dismissal of 93 U.S. attorneys by the Clinton administration when it took office despite the fact that, as we've detailed, there is no comparison.
Graham goes on to further praise the columnist for noting that ABC's George Stepahnoploulos, while serving in the Clinton administration, opposed the hiring of one of those fired attorneys, Jay Stephens (a Republican -- a fact neither Lassell nor Graham point out, and something that would explain why Stepahnoploulos would be opposed to Stephens), to investigate the collapse of Madison Guaranty, an Arkansas savings and loan whose collapse was a component of the Whitewater scandal. Graham added: "Ironically, when the Stephens law firm later found no serious criminal offense in Whitewater, the Clintonistas began touting it everywhere -- and still do to this day."
Even more ironically, according to a search of the MRC and CNSNews.com archives, this appears to be the very first mention of Stephens' report -- better known as the Pillsbury report -- by the Media Research Center. As summarized by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons in "The Hunting of the President":
Based on the Clintons' sworn interrogatories, interviews with forty-five other witnesses, and some two hundred thousand documents, the report concluded that the president and first lady had told the truth about their Whitewater investment: The Clintons were passive investors who were misled about the actual status of the project by Jim McDougal almost from the start. ... The Pillsbury Report found no evidence that Whitewater's losses had been subsidized by taxpayers in the savings and loan bailout. But even if they were, it concluded, the Clintons were not at fault.
Instead of making demands of Stephanopoulos, perhaps Graham should explain why the MRC was so loath to tell its readers about evidence that exonerated the Clintons during Whitewater -- or anytime, really.
UPDATE: Graham informs us that the MRC has in fact previously (if briefly) mentioned the Pillsbury report, in a item in a February 1996 MediaWatch. But that item declared that it was a "public relations line" that the report cleared the Clintons, though it offers no evidence to the contrary. Our basic point -- that the MRC ignored or minimized evidence that exonerated the Clintons -- still stands.
