This Week's Reliable Sources

The full transcript when you click below. Full report from GWU later today... Full Transcript THIS IS A RUSH FDCH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Welcome back. We're here at the George Washington University. More on the House page scandal in just a moment, but joining us now to talk about coverage of the Iraq war, David Frum, "National Review" contributor and a former speechwriter for President Bush, and Bill Press, who hosts a morning program on Sirius Satellite Radio. David Frum, the press is increasingly depicting Iraq as a major liability for the Republicans, mounting violence, the situation kind of being portrayed as hopeless. Have the media just turned against this war? DAVID FRUM, "NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE": Well, it is a place of mounting violence, and the situation is very difficult. And in a way, that is an important piece of information for the public to know. We're not going to be able to fix the problem unless we absorb the gravity of the problem. So I think on the whole, the media there face incredible dangers. I think they do a pretty good job. And I think maybe we'd be better off now if people had paid more attention to warnings earlier on. KURTZ: Bill Press, President Bush recently tried to kind of refrain this whole debate by casting Iraq as just another front on the war on terror. Did news organizations push back hard or hard enough in your view against that argument? And if so, was that a change from the media's behavior earlier in this conflict? BILL PRESS, SIRIUS SATELLITE RADIO: I don't think they pushed back hard enough, but I do think they -- they've started to push back. I think what happened unfortunately for President Bush is the national intelligence estimate came out but sort of took the fire away from that part that was leaked. KURTZ: It didn't just come out. It was leaked to "The New York Times," and then Bush declassified other parts of it and that kicked off this whole debate. PRESS: The part that kicked off this whole debate. It also undermined his argument. And then Mark Foley comes along, and then a shooting in Pennsylvania, and suddenly Iraq and the war on terror and everything is off the front page and George Bush can go to California and give lots of speeches about Iraq and nobody listens. FRUM: I think there's a poisonous dynamic that's governed a lot of the coverage of Iraq. You're supposed to believe one of two things, and only two things. You're supposed to believe Iraq is really important and necessary and going well, or you're supposed to believe that Iraq was a distraction and a diversion and going badly. But you should be able to cross those positions, and you should be able to believe logically Iraq is really important, it was really necessary, the president did the right thing, but it's not going well and we better act as fast as we can to fix it. KURTZ: One journalist who says it's not going well, Bill Press, is Bob Woodward. We talked about his book "State of Denial" earlier in the program. Now, you and your fellow liberals criticized Woodward on his first two books. You thought he was way too favorable to George W. Bush. Now he writes a book that says Bush is in denial, he's misleading the public about Iraq, and you love him. PRESS: Now Bob Woodward is new hero. I admit it. KURTZ: So great -- so great journalists are the ones who agree with you? PRESS: No, I have to tell you, I think Bob Woodward is the best investigative reporter in the country. I think he's proven that through a serious of 10 books now. The first two books were very, very positive for George Bush. They showed him as a man in charge that did the right thing, took us into a war where we should be in. KURTZ: The second book was mixed. PRESS: Yes, but it was still -- I thought it was still pretty favorable. This book, you know, the same reporter did the same kind of reporting. I think things have changed in Iraq and he comes up with a much more negative story. KURTZ: Now, by contrast, David Frum, the White House pretty much embraced Woodward's first two books. President Bush gave him several interviews. And now the White House is saying this book is very different, all sort of mistakes, all sorts of distortions. Isn't that a tough sell when he was sort of the anointed favorite author of this administration? FRUM: Well, their behavior in the first two was reckless and inexplicable. KURTZ: Reckless to talk to journalists? FRUM: Reckless to invite a journalist in during the conduct of a war, to give him that kind of access, to invite people to talk to him individually, to give him lots of opportunities to back-bite, and then to extract no promise that this is for history, to allow him to print... KURTZ: Extract no promise? A journalist and author should in exchange for being able to interview these high officials promise them an account that they're going to like? FRUM: No, promise them that he'll wait until some time has passed. Edmund Morris made that deal for his Reagan biography. KURTZ: Oh, you're saying to delay the publication. FRUM: Right. KURTZ: But the book publishing world doesn't work that way. FRUM: Well, if you're president of the United States and you're allowing somebody to come into your office and have national security council notes, if you want someone to write history, let them write history. PRESS: But they wanted the book out at that time. They wanted that book out. They wanted that... (CROSSTALK) FRUM: I'm not -- I'm not blaming Bob Woodward for taking this one-sided deal. I'm blaming the White House for having agreed to it. It was predictable how this would come out. KURTZ: Let's go back to our audience. Hi. Your name and question, please. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi. My name is Matt Savage (ph) from St. Charles, Iowa. And I guess my question for you guys is, what ethical responsibility do you believe that the media should have in reporting the news around election time? KURTZ: In terms of the war? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In terms of just everything. It seems like before any election, you know, a month before the election, there seems to be some sort of scandal that seems to be leaked right before the election to try and affect politics. KURTZ: But, of course, is it our fault that the scandal has erupted in five weeks to go before Election Day? PRESS: No, absolutely not. I think the media's responsibility -- I think the media's responsibility before the election is the same that it is at any other time, which is to ferret out the facts and report the facts right straight down the middle. FRUM: Well, I think I would say I would agree with that, but with this caveat. It is impossible or very difficult for journalists to avoid becoming part of the story. And we saw with Dan Rather, for example, in the 2004 election that I think there was there a pretty conscious attempt to influence a vote with a story that was not a highly relevant story even if it had been true because it dealt with matters that were years old. Now, in the end, of course, that story blew up in CBS' face and in Dan Rather's face, and it ended up helping the president. But, you know, ideally you'd like journalists to report without reference to the election cycle, but they're aware of the Ds and the Rs. That's one of the reasons why, for example, they covered -- why we got so little coverage, for example, of Haley Barbour's handling of the Katrina story. I think if Haley Barbour had been a Democratic governor, he would have been on the cover of "TIME" magazine. KURTZ: All right. Well, I need to get a break here. We're going to come back to this question of scandal around election time. Stick around. Just ahead, we'll go back to the story that is absolutely consuming the media this week. Why are news organizations obsessed with the Mark Foley sex scandal? (APPLAUSE) (COMMERCIAL BREAK) KURTZ: House Speaker Dennis Hastert told "The Chicago Tribune" the other day -- talking about the Mark Foley sex scandal -- "The people that who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George soros." Bill Press, leaving George Soros aside, ABC News, why beat up on ABC, which broke this story? PRESS: Well, they didn't want the story broken. That's why they beat up on ABC News. But, I mean, the idea... KURTZ: So what is Dennis Hastert saying, that he would prefer that this not have been reported by ABC and that Mark Foley, therefore, would still be in Congress and still be sending messages to pages? PRESS: Well, I think Denny Hastert would much prefer that Mark Foley still be in Congress and we knew nothing about what he was doing until after the election, and then deal with it after the elections. But Brian Ross, I wish as a Democrat -- I'm a Democrat, I'll admit that. You called me a liberal earlier. I wish Democrats were organized enough and smart enough to have engineered this entire crisis. They can't organization a two-car funeral. So you can't blame this on the Democrats. KURTZ: The one thing we can agree upon, David Frum, is that the story is true. These computer messages were sent. "Do I make you horny" and all of that. So even as a political strategy, does it make sense for any Republicans to be attacking the messenger in the sense of attacking the press? FRUM: Well, I think a lot of Republicans do feel that these stories do get orchestrated. They remember the Dan Rather story. KURTZ: You keep bringing up the Dan Rather story. Is there any evidence that this story was orchestrated by ABC News in order to affect the midterm elections? FRUM: I don't have evidence of that, but I know that there are a lot of Republicans who have a smell politics about the timing of this story. And what they do know is that because they operate in a more hostile information environment, the Democrats do, they remember in 2000 how the George Bush DUI story broke just the weekend before the election. They remember Dan Rather. They remember -- and there's a long list of these things engraved in the Republican memory... KURTZ: Sure. FRUM: ... going back to 1968. And they feel that they are always in the disadvantage in the information war. And that may -- they could be wrong about that, and there may be a perfectly innocent explanation, but when a story like this breaks five weeks before the election, a lot of old wounds start twitching among Republicans who know the media -- you know, the media is an institution that tends to see the world through Democratic eyes, even if it's not actively sympathetic to them. KURTZ: Well, just for the record, Brian Ross has said that his source on this initially were Republicans. He's obviously plugged into the network of former House pages. And so, if anybody's got any evidence that this was orchestrated, I'd like to see it. We have a questioner here in the audience. Hi. What's your name? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi. KURTZ: Stand up, please. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jamie Barmerra (ph) from Diamond Bar, California. KURTZ: And your question? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I just wanted to know, do you think the media coverage would have been different if it were a female page and if Foley wasn't gay? KURTZ: Gentlemen? PRESS: I would hope there would be equal outrage. I think there would be. And not just hope. I think there would be equal outrage, maybe even more outrage if it were a female page. And I think that Mark Foley is gay has nothing to do with this whatsoever. This is a grown person taking advantage of an underage child. KURTZ: But don't you think a congressman taking advantage of an underage child if it was a woman would have been a 10 on a scale of 10, but this is an 11 on a scale of 10 because it led to all these sidebar stories about gay Republicans and why they're closeted, David Frum? FRUM: I think for sure it gives an extra impetus, because the Democrats use the story as a way of splitting the Republican coalition. And, I mean, I think we now have this very ironic punch line where Nancy Pelosi is trying to signal in coded language and the kind of dog whistle politics above the air that, vote Democratic is a way to clean up that nest of perverts on Capitol Hill. And, I mean, it's a strange message for a Democrat to run on. KURTZ: But before you completely go off on the Democrats, David Frum, there was an editorial in the conservative "Washington Times" days ago that demanded Denny Hastert's resignation at a very early stage here. A number of conservative commentators have piled on, have criticized Hastert's handling of this. Why? FRUM: Because the handling of it has been bad. And so people would pile on. And I think they are very genuinely shocked by the story. And I think what is laudable about conservatives is they do not have the impulse to protect and shield their own when their own are guilty. I mean, William Jefferson is still in Congress, after all, and Mark Foley is not. KURTZ: Bill Press? PRESS: Well, first of all, I think that the Republicans here have -- are shielding their own, and they're shielding -- they're shielding -- but they're shielding Dennis Hastert, who knew about this, didn't know the explicit e- mails, but certainly knew that there was unwelcome or inappropriate activity going on and didn't... (CROSSTALK) KURTZ: But just to bring you back to the press coverage. We've got about half a minute. PRESS: I'm sorry. KURTZ: Just to bring you back to the press coverage, is what -- is part of what is fueling this is a story day after day, the fact that there are conflicting accounts among Hastert and his top Republicans, a lot of finger- pointing? Isn't that providing some of the fuel for this fire? PRESS: I think it's several things, Howie. It is that. KURTZ: We only have time for one or two. PRESS: We don't know -- we just said earlier we don't know all of the answers, right? Also, you have a congressmen preying on an underage kid, and you have leadership who knows about this. The alarm should have gone up, did not go off. And they all gathered around to protect him, and now they're protecting Dennis Hastert. So it keeps going. And it's gong to keep going. KURTZ: It will probably keep going until our next show. Bill Press, David Frum, thanks very much for joining us. Well, that's it for this special edition of RELIABLE SOURCES here at George Washington University. I'm Howard Kurtz. I want to thank the studio audience here at the university for their insightful questions. We'll be back in our own studio next Sunday morning, 10:00 a.m. Eastern, for another critical look at the media.

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