David Gregory's Daily Right

Bob Fertik — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:47:09 -0400

David Gregory recently began tweeting his Daily Reads, and I quickly noticed his overwhelming bias towards neocons, paleocons, and so-called "liberals" who supported Bush's criminal invasion of Iraq and the rest of his disastrous right-wing policies.

Conspicuously absent from Gregory's Daily Reads were progressives who opposed Bush's war and the rest of his policies. He ignores all of us who were right about Iraq when it counted, who marched in the streets by the millions but were blacked out by the Corporate Media, including MSNBC, which fired its only progressive (Phil Donahue) because he dared to even question the mad neocon rush to war.

Of course those of us who opposed the war were always the majority, despite biased polls which assumed insignificant deaths and costs. We proved it in 2006 and 2008 when we swept pro-war Republicans out of power and replaced them with with as many anti-war Democrats as we could find. And we'll keep proving it election after election until our troops return safely home.

After noticing the pattern, when Gregory posted his Daily Read on 6/17, I tweeted about it.

Truth in twittering: @davidgregory tweets should all be called "neocon war criminal reads for today" http://tr.im/oQCM

And when he posted his Daily Read on 6/18, I tweeted again.

Progress! @davidgregory only read 1 neocon war criminal today - Rove (chair of WHIG lies and Plame outer) http://tr.im/oYJ8

This time, Gregory replied:

@bobfertik I'm reading all sides. And the pieces I sent yesterday had two diff points of view. Come on.

I'm extremely grateful for Gregory's reply. But all sides? Really??

Not wanting to be unfair, I went back a month to count. Surprise! The first progressive (Gene Lyons) in a month's worth of posts appeared today - the day after my first tweet.

Based on the month's worth of data, the pattern is clear:

1. Gregory's Daily Read is weighted - usually heavily - to the right. The far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page is Gregory's favorite read.

2. Karl Rove completely "owns" David Gregory - Rove's posts go straight to the top of Gregory's list. It doesn't matter to Gregory that Rove chaired the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which manufactured all the pre-war propaganda that NBC helped "catapult," which produced the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. It doesn't matter that Rove helped "out" Valerie Plame to punish her husband for exposing just one WHIG lie (Iraq seeking uranium from Niger), which was a genuine act of treason (helping our terrorist enemies). It doesn't matter that Rove corrupted the entire Federal government, especially the Justice Department. It doesn't even matter that Rove's so-called political "genius" was proved dead wrong in 2006 and 2008, which is by far the least of his moral sins, but the obvious reason why his "punditry" should be ignored.

3. With the possible exception of Gene Lyons and Paul Krugman, Gregory appears to read none of the best progressive bloggers - John Amato & Co. at CrooksandLiars, Markos Moulitsas & Co. at DailyKos, Howie Klein & Co. at DownWithTyranny, Jane Hamsher & Co. at FireDogLake, Arianna Huffington & Co. at HuffingtonPost, Digby & Co. at Hullabaloo, Chris Bowers & Co. at OpenLeft, Glenn Greenwald and Joan Walsh at Salon, Josh Marshall & Co. at TalkingPointsMemo, Katrina vanden Heuvel & Co. at The Nation, as well as Consortium News, MediaMatters, Mother Jones, MyDD, ThinkProgress, and so many other great reads. And there is no hint of influence from MSNBC's own progressive stars - Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz.

4. Even if Gregory's Daily Read was balanced 50/50, it would still be completely out of touch with the American people, who prefer (progressive) Democrats over (conservative) Republicans by nearly 2:1 - 45%-25% according to MSNBC's own poll.

As I said above, I greatly appreciate Gregory's reply. So I'll keep tracking his Daily Reads, in the hope that someday his progressive/conservative ratio reflects the nation's overwhelming opposition to rightwing policies that produced the current disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Wall Street, the entire American economy, and the planet Earth.

Update 1: Hooray! 6/19 is the first day progressives (Paul Krugman and Ellen Goodman) outnumber conservatives (David Ignatius).

Update 2: Boo! 6/21 Meet the Press is for warmongers only - Benjamin Netanyahu, Sam Nunn, and Fred Thompson.

Update 3: 6/24 A new low - Gregory hearts Jonah Goldberg.

Update 4: 6/25 A pair of unrepentant war criminals: Karl Rove and Elliott Abrams