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Abrahamof
Press•Agency @B®ª•A.P.A.
Niue
5334 Posts
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 Posted?-?30 Oct 2008?:? 15:30:12 ? 
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By BETH FOUHY – 13 hours ago
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., prepares to give a brief statement during a campaign stop at Baron Sign Manufacturing in Riviera Beach, Fla. on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Pool, Alex Boerner)
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (AP) — Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin accused the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday of protecting Barack Obama by withholding a videotape of the Democrat attending a 2003 party for a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel. The paper said it had written about the event in April and would not release the tape because of a promise to the source who provided it.
McCain and Palin called Rashid Khalidi a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization, a characterization Khalidi has denied in the past. Both candidates said guests at the party made critical comments about Israel.
Khalidi is a professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University and a longtime friend of Obama's. Khalidi has publicly criticized Israel, but he and Obama have both said they hold very different opinions on Israeli issues.
McCain also has ties to Khalidi through a group Khalidi helped found 15 years ago. The Center for Palestine Research and Studies received at least $448,000 from an organization McCain chairs.
On Wednesday, McCain said 1960s radical Bill Ayers had attended the same party in 2003. McCain and Palin have criticized Obama for his ties to Ayers and questioned what the videotape of the party might show.
"Among other things, Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism rather than the victim," Palin said at a rally in Ohio. "What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he professes to support."
In a story published in April, the Times said Obama spoke out at the event on the need for common ground on the Israel-Palestinian issue. Obama has said during the campaign that his commitment to Israel's security is "nonnegotiable."
"More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape," Jamie Gold, the newspaper's reader's representative, said in a statement. "The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite — the L.A. Times brought the matter to light."
Los Angeles Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan refused to elaborate on the paper's statement or respond to the criticism from the McCain campaign.
She would not provide any details on further communication between Times' reporters and the source who provided the video.
McCain and Palin cited the paper's position as evidence of media bias. The Times has endorsed Obama.
"If there was a tape of John McCain in a neo-Nazi outfit, I think the treatment of the issue would be slightly different," McCain said in an interview with Hispanic radio stations.
Palin said the Times should win a Pulitzer Prize for "kowtowing."
"It must be nice for a candidate to have major news organizations looking out for their best interests like that. Politicians would love to have a pet newspaper of their very own," she said.
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor dismissed the complaints as a "recycled, manufactured controversy" meant to distract voters.
"Barack Obama has been clear and consistent on his support for Israel, and has been clear that Rashid Khalidi is not an adviser to him or his campaign and that he does not share Khalidi's views," Vietor said.
Khalidi taught at the University of Chicago until 2003. Obama and his wife, Michelle, often socialized with Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and the Khalidis hosted a political fundraiser for Obama in 2000.
The Woods Fund charity gave money to the Arab-American Action Network, run by Mona Khalidi, while Obama served on the charity's board. Ayers also served on the board.
The Center for Palestine Research and Studies conducted regular public opinion surveys in the West Bank and Gaza with financial support from various foundations and from the International Republican Institute, an organization that promoted democracy around the world. McCain was the IRI chairman when it gave $448,873 to the research group in 1998, according to IRI's tax return.
Ayers was a founder of the radical group the Weather Underground, which set off bombs at the Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. McCain has criticized Obama for having had a friendly relationship with Ayers, with whom Obama worked on two community organizations several years ago, and for downplaying their ties.
Obama has noted that he was a child when Ayers, now a university professor, was with the Weather Underground. The Democratic candidate has condemned Ayers' radical past and violent activities.
Discussie elders, welke ik gister in de andere topic kopieerde:
quote:
"I think Rashid Khalidi's org is the same one that an org. that Sen. McCain is (was) affiliated with gave 443K to back in 1998. Why does McCain keep shooting himself in the foot?! Lol!
Peace, Shahid"
Eh... ja.
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Abrahamof
Press•Agency @B®ª•A.P.A.
Niue
5334 Posts
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Posted?-?01 Nov 2008?:? 10:00:56 ?
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 Demonstration for Release of Obama-Khalidi Videotape
(IsraelNN.com) A demonstration has been called for 10:00 am Pacific time Thursday at the Los Angeles Times building to protest what organizers call supression of a videotape which reportedly shows Democratic presidential Barack Obama speaking of his friendship with former Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) spokesman Rashid Khalidi. The Times reported in April 2008 that Sen. Obama gave a speech at a farewell party in 2003 honoring Khalidi, who was active on behalf of the PLO when it was designated by the United States as terrorist group with a goal of destroying Israel.
Republican vice-presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin, accused the Times of “kowtowing? – presumably to the Obama campaign. While Obama himself reportedly did not criticize America or Israel during the party, others at the event were critical of both countries, she said. “What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he now professes to support,? she told Fox News.
For the full story: Report: Obama Praised PLO Activist
Zie ook: 
LA Times, Lies About Khalid-Obama Affair, Then Engages In A Coverup
Vermoeiend die gekleurde en foutieve berichtgeving van manipulatieve groepen...
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Abrahamof
Press•Agency @B®ª•A.P.A.
Niue
5334 Posts
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Posted?-?01 Nov 2008?:? 10:46:54 ?
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McCain Camp Demands That L.A. Times Release Tape of Obama at Dinner for Rashid Khalidi
By SAM DONALDSON, Oct. 30, 2008
McCain Camp demands LA Times release tape of Obama at dinner for Rashid Khalidi.
The McCain campaign is demanding that the Los Angeles Times release a videotape it possesses of Sen. Barack Obama attending (and speaking) at a dinner for Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American activist, many years ago when Obama was in the Illinois State Senate. Also at the dinner was the Weatherman co-founder William Ayers.
The Los Angeles Times is refusing to release the tape. Let's talk about it.
Last April, when the times obtained the tape it wrote a long story about the event. It quoted Khalidi and others who spoke as saying things that would surely upset many Jewish Americans, and while the story emphasized that Obama made no such similar statements, it quoted him as saying that his many talks with Khalidi had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. ... It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation ... that is necessary ... [around] ... this entire world."
My guess is that if everyone saw the tape -- and it's just a guess -- it wouldn't change a single vote at this point. But this incident is another example of the difficult interplay among candidates, the news business and the public. There is almost never a right course that pleases all parties and sometimes, perhaps unfortunately, "fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder."
Sam Donaldson, a 41-year ABC News veteran, served two appointments as chief White House correspondent for ABC News, from 1977-1989 and from January 1998 to August 1999, covering Presidents Carter, Reagan and Clinton. Donaldson also co-anchored, with Diane Sawyer, "PrimeTime Live," from August 1989 until it merged with "20/20" in 1999. He co-anchored the ABC News Sunday morning broadcast, "This Week With Sam Donaldson & Cokie Roberts," from December 1996 to September 2002. Currently, Donaldson appears on ABC News Now, the ABC News digital network, in a daily show called "Politics Live."
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Abrahamof
Press•Agency @B®ª•A.P.A.
Niue
5334 Posts
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Posted?-?01 Nov 2008?:? 10:56:55 ?
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Marjorie Miller named editorial writer and special Op-Ed correspondent
Earlier this month, six months after the original story was published about Barack Obama's ties with Palestinians and Jews, people started calling and sending e-mails to the L.A. Times urging the paper to "release the video." A few notes became a flood of more than 15,000 e-mails by Wednesday morning calling the paper un-American, partisan and worse after Sen. John McCain's campaign accused The Times of "suppressing" a videotape.
The e-mails to The Times included links to an Oct. 25 blog post that said The Times was "hiding incriminating" information.
Most who called and e-mailed seemed not to have even read The Times' April news article that had brought the event in question to light, headlined "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Barack Obama: They consider him receptive despite his clear support of Israel." The front-page piece when it was published drew some criticism from the left. But that reaction has been dwarfed by the number of page views and responses the story has drawn over the past five days. The article examined presidential candidate Obama's view of Middle East politics. It included a description of a gathering held in Chicago by local Arab Americans for Rashid Khalidi, described in the story as "an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights." The story also said, "The event was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was obtained by The Times."
The Times itself addressed the criticisms in a news story published Wednesday. In it, Editor Russ Stanton said, "The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it. The Times keeps its promises to sources."
Many responses were similar to that of Erich R. Bleiweiss, from Burlington, N.J., who said in an e-mail: "Please do not insult me by stating that the L.A. Times is protecting a source. This would only be a matter of convenience on the part of the L.A. Times and nothing more."
Those bombarding the paper saw it as if the issues were diametrically opposed -- "informing the public" vs. "protecting a source." The nuances of the issue were highlighted even more in Thursday's news story in The Times, when various journalists added to the conversation about the principle of how journalists work with sources.
The editor of the April story, Aaron Zitner, who works in The Times' Washington, D.C., bureau, noted that the paper would have preferred to be able to post the video but could not get the source to agree. Zitner said, "If we had not reached this agreement, we would not have had access to this tape at all. Then no one would ever have known Obama attended this event and spoke at it. We were pushing to say the most we could and to present the most we could to readers about what happened."
Thursday's article also quotes Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "The calculus a reporter is making is: 'What is the public good of getting the information, and does it outweigh the limitations that the source wants me to put on the information?' In this case, knowing about this event and being able to describe it to readers seems like a pretty good trade-off for not being able to release the video."
Support for The Times' sticking to its journalistic priniciples came in a post from Bill Sammon, the deputy managing editor of Fox News Channel's Washington bureau. Saying that the choice was "pretty simple," Sammon wrote of The Times and the reporter on the April story, "Indeed, [Peter] Wallsten has little choice in the matter. If he were to cave in to mounting public demands for the tape, no self-respecting source would ever give him another shred of information. Nor should they."
Others had started weighing in earlier in the week.
Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz clarified the issue in a blog entry Wednesday on the Huffington Post: "A simplistic view of freedom of speech would favor full and timely disclosure of all relevant information regardless of any promises made to a source. The more complex view of freedom of speech holds that unless newspapers keep their promises (and unless the law allows them to keep their promises) there will be less not more information available to the public."
One of the first journalists to raise the questions publicly was a blogger on Politico. Before The Times itself stated its position, Ben Smith wrote on Tuesday, "Critics have suggested that the Times is withholding the video for political reasons, but there are other possibilities: competitive reasons, or simply out of tradition. In the mechanics of reporting, there's another possibility as well. The video may have been given to the paper on the condition it not be released, or releasing it could compromise its source."
News stories Thursday in The Times and elsewhere have answered that. L.A. Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus was quoted in an article in the New York Times: “We revealed this event. We didn’t suppress it. It’s not unusual for reporters to be given information in ways that allow them to authenticate it but don’t give them complete control of the information. We are sometimes shown documents that we are allowed to read but not keep.?
Still the "release the tape" calls come in, from those who read the April 2008 article and say they want to come to their own conclusions, as well as those who were unaware that The Times had published a story at all. Typical was this from Jim Smart of Lakewood, Colo.: "I am extremely disappointed that your newspaper has information on one of the presidential candidates and has chosen not to disclose it.... It means that your paper does not believe in a free press since you are willing to act as an agent of manipulation rather than information."
But calls and e-mails like this from Michael Pievrouwelijk geslachtsdeelowski started coming in late Wednesday morning, and also are coming in by the hundreds still: "If you were to release this source, it would scare off other sources on whistle-blowing stories.... Please maintain your integrity."
More columns on the issue:
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Abrahamof
Press•Agency @B®ª•A.P.A.
Niue
5334 Posts
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Posted?-?01 Nov 2008?:? 19:33:06 ?
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 correspondent Tom-Jan Meeus
 31 okt. 2008 15:41, gewijzigd: 1 nov. 10:20
John McCain. Foto AP
Het campagne-team van McCain klaagt dat de media positiever zijn over Obama dan over hem. Een recente studie bevestigt dat.
Washington, 31 okt. De jongste klacht van John McCain gaat over de Los Angeles Times. Deze krant beschikt over een video-opname uit 2003 van een bijeenkomst waarop Barack Obama een toespraak houdt in het bijzijn van zijn vriend Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi is een hoogleraar Arabische studies in New York die kritisch is over de Israëlische bezetting van Palestijnse gebieden.
De krant schreef maanden geleden al over die bijeenkomst, maar sinds enkele dagen eist McCain dat de video wordt vrijgegeven. De LA Times doet dat niet. De krant kreeg de band in bezit als documentatiemateriaal, en heeft de bron toegezegd dat de band niet wordt gepubliceerd. Afspraak is afspraak, aldus de hoofdredactie.
De kwestie omvat alle elementen die McCain de laatste dagen van zijn campagne – de verkiezingen zijn dinsdag – nog onder de aandacht wil brengen. Om joodse kiezers in swing states zoals Florida aan zijn kant te krijgen heeft hij er belang bij Obama’s vriendschap met Khalidi uit te spelen. Dat biedt ook ruimte om de discussie te verleggen naar nationale veiligheid, het enige belangrijke terrein waarop kiezers McCain meer vertrouwen dan Obama.
Bovendien past de weigering van de LA Times volgens McCain in een stramien: de media pakken Obama met fluwelen handschoenen aan, terwijl McCain voortdurend onder vuur zou worden genomen.
Vorige week bleek uit onderzoek van het Project for Excellence in Journalism (onderdeel van het Pew Research Center) dat de media positiever zijn over Obama dan over McCain. In de eerste zes weken na de conventies brachten ze veel meer negatieve berichten over McCain (57 procent van alle berichten) dan over Obama (29 procent). Tegelijk was 36 procent van de berichtgeving over Obama positief, over McCain was dat slechts 14 procent.
Het onderzoek concludeert dat de negatieve berichtgeving voor McCain begon rond de escalatie van de kredietcrisis (het faillissement van Lehman Brothers). De dag daarna zei hij dat „de grondslagen van de economie sterk zijn?. De media waren ook negatief over zijn besluit om de aanvallen op Obama’s persoon op te voeren om de aandacht af te leiden van de economie. In reactie op het onderzoek zeggen journalisten dat McCain hiermee zelf de belangrijkste veroorzaker was van kritiek van de media.
McCain ziet dat anders. De laatste dagen besteedt zijn vriend en speechschrijver, Mark Salter, al zijn tijd om de vooringenomenheid van de media aan de kaak te stellen. Salter, die een reeks boeken met McCain schreef, zegt dat de media domweg verliefd zijn op Obama, en niet in staat om onderscheid te maken tussen zijn retoriek en zijn prestaties.
Beide kandidaten benadrukken dat zij een einde zullen maken aan de hyperpartijdigheid in Washington. Maar zij weigeren volgens Salter onder ogen te zien dat McCain in het verleden vele malen tegen zijn partij inging, terwijl Obama op dat gebied een bleke staat van dienst heeft. Ook hekelt hij de berichtgeving over McCains negatieve campagnetactieken. McCain krijgt van de media geen enkele erkenning voor het feit dat hij weigert een campagnethema te maken van Obama’s ex-pastor Jeremiah Wright (‘God damn America’), aldus Salter.
Voor een deel is de spanning met de media ook een generatiekwestie. McCain (72) stond vroeger bekend om zijn lange informele gesprekken met journalisten. Salter (53) klaagt over de voornamelijk jonge verslaggevers in het campagnevliegtuig. Zij hebben geen tijd meer voor een uitvoerig gesprek, zegt hij, omdat ze hun weblog moeten bijhouden.
Intussen wijzen verslaggevers erop dat McCains staf de laatste week zelf bijdraagt aan de negatieve berichtgeving over hem. Diverse media citeren sinds het weekeinde stafleden die anoniem kritiek uiten op Sarah Palin. Zij zou geen enkele vertrouwensrelatie met de campagne hebben opgebouwd en Politico citeerde zelfs een topmedewerker van McCain die Palin een „gek? noemde.
Ervaren verslaggevers stellen dat McCain de negatieve berichtgeving te danken heeft aan het feit dat hij zijn eigen principes in de campagne heeft laten varen. Vooral Joe Klein van Time maakt er een groot punt van dat McCain zijn afkeer van negatieve campagnes liet varen toen hem dat uitkwam. Ook de tactiek uit het script van Karl Rove, het creëren van opgeklopte controverses (Obama als terroristenvriend, Obama als socialist), is volgens Klein onbetamelijk voor iemand die een carrière van heldendom en politiek fatsoen achter de rug heeft.
Feit is dat deskundigen ook de controverse met de videoband zo interpreteren. Zij zeggen dat Khalidi niet de radicaal is die McCain van hem maakt, en wijzen erop dat McCain zelf in een stichtingsbestuur heeft gezeten van een organisatie die Khalidi subsidie toekende. McCain heeft hierop nog niet gereageerd.
Verwacht wordt dat McCain de kwestie aanwendt om dit weekeinde een laatste aanval te openen op Obama’s standpunt inzake Iran. Obama wil zonder voorwaarden vooraf met het „Iraanse leiderschap? praten, en McCain zal de zaak-Khalidi volgens een staflid aan dat standpunt koppelen om joodse kiezers – al dan niet met de hulp van de media – te herinneren aan de risico’s van Obama’s mogelijke presidentschap.
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