Swift Vet Interview -- a lesson in media partisanship

Swift Vet John O'Neil gives this interview on his education on media bias and partisanship.

TAE: At the Swift Boat veterans' May 4 press conference you had an open letter calling Kerry unfit to be Commander in Chief. It was signed by virtually all of John Kerry's commanders in Vietnam. Yet the story fell flat. The media ignored it. How did your group react to the media blackout?

O'NEILL: We were shocked. We couldn't believe it. I haven't been involved in politics or media relations, and I thought the job of the media was primarily to report the facts. It was obvious to me that many hundreds of his former comrades coming forward to say that he lied about his record in Vietnam and that he was unfit to be President would be important information for Americans. I only then became aware of the bias of the media.

TAE: How do you explain the media's response?

O'NEILL: The establishment media was very pro-Kerry. They were opposed to any story that was critical of Kerry, and I believe that they were captured by their own bias. We met with one reporter around that time. We told a story to him relating to Kerry's service. He acknowledged it was true and terribly important. And he told us he would not print it because it would help George Bush. That's when we began to realize we had a real problem on our hands.

He also said this:

Our analysis after the press conference was that the three major networks, the New York Times, and the Washington Post would under no circumstances carry a story like ours, no matter how well documented.

Of course, history proved that their analysis was absolutely correct. More:

TAE: Before the first ad came out, who picked up the story?

O'NEILL: The only people willing to publicizing the story very early were Sean Hannity, the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, several Web sources, and finally C-SPAN (which aired the press conference). Other people who contributed to the story later in a significant way were the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh. Another very important person was Laura Ingraham, who went through the allegations point by point and permitted rebuttal, and there was none. That made it apparent that there was a large-scale media cover up in progress.

A large-scale media cover up indeed. If there was such a thing as an honest journalist, they'd be deeply embarassed. Later on:

TAE: Were you surprised when Senator Kerry focused so much on his Vietnam record at the Democratic Convention in late July? How do you account for this when he clearly knew you were out there?

O'NEILL: I think he thought that he had good control over the mainline media, that they were sympathetic, that they would kill the story. And I think he was very confident that was the case with the New York Times and the three major networks and CNN, and that he could intimidate the portions of the media not already friendly to him. And so he thought the story would never come out. That had been his experience over and over again in Massachusetts.

And, for the difference between the media now and when he debated Kerry in 1971:

in 1971, while the media would spin facts on occasion and spin them very favorably to Kerry and his group, they wouldn't actually suppress the news.

What's happened now is the mainline media, by which I mean the three major networks, and the New York Times, suppress news stories. It's one thing to provide opinion, even in the news section. It's another to suppress facts that are adverse to your views. That is really a brave new world that did not exist in the 1970s.

TAE: Does your experience suggest the major media have lost their gatekeeper role?

O'NEILL: Yes, without question. Major networks tried to blacklist us and to hide the story from the public. In doing so they seemed to follow the directions of the Kerry campaign. As long as the campaign ignored us, they ignored us. When the Kerry campaign went on the attack, the big media attacked us.