New Name for "The Point:" Night-lies

Mark Hyman again lectures us on journalistic ethics in an edition of "The Point" that’s humorously ironic for just about everyone except Mark himself.

This time, Hyman chastises ABC’s Nightline for not replicating his own right wing spin on John Kerry’s Vietnam service. The ABC news show sent a team to Vietnam to look into the specifics of the incident for which Kerry won a Silver Star. The journalists actually find not only the village where the action took place, but also Vietnamese survivors of the fight. As Ted Koppel himself says, the resulting interviews don’t prove Kerry’s side of the story, but they are consistent with what Kerry, his shipmates, and the Navy itself have said about the incident.

That’s not good enough for Hyman. After claiming (ridiculously) that the media was not investigating Kerry’s record and allegations made by the Swift Boaters, he condemns exactly such an investigation because the information they gathered doesn’t support Hyman’s own twisted version of things. Who knew Vietnamese peasants were part of the liberal media elite?

Hyman’s not in much of a position to throw around criticism. Even in this commentary, he gets basic facts wrong. He makes much of the fact that Kerry received “three citations” for his Silver Star. Hyman darkly hints at something improper in all of this. In fact, it’s common for veterans to request copies of their citations if the originals get lost or damaged, or if they simply want extra copies.

Here’s an excerpt from a nationally-known newspaper on the subject:

A third charge [concerning Kerry’s Vietnam service]: Mr. Kerry got his Vietnam War medal citations reissued in the 1980s because he was stripped of them for misconduct.
Navy officials say that there is no evidence that Mr. Kerry's Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts were ever rescinded and that there is no evidence of misconduct in his records.
He did receive new medal citations in the mid-1980s. Officials say the Navy receives scores, and perhaps hundreds, of such requests each year from veterans who want a second copy or have lost the originals.
The citations are simply put through a machine that implants the signature of the current Navy secretary. John Lehman's signature, via a machine, appears on Mr. Kerry's new citation for his Silver Star.

The source of this liberal propaganda? That famous left-wing radical rag, the Washington Times.

Of course, maybe ABC should have done their journalism the Sinclair way: Instead of sending a team of reporters halfway around the world to interview eyewitnesses and then to report objectively what was learned, they could’ve just found a propaganda film and forced all their affiliates to air it under the heading of “news.”

And that’s The Counterpoint.