Boston Globe reporter used blogs to attack Kerry, support Bush during '04

paineinthearse

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Fri Mar-04-05 07:22 PM
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Boston Globe reporter used blogs to attack Kerry, support Bush during '04

http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200503020002

Boston Globe reporter used blogs to attack Kerry, support Bush during '04 campaign

While reporting on the 2004 presidential campaign for The Boston Globe, technology reporter Hiawatha Bray apparently wrote posts for several weblogs in which he declared his support for President Bush, attacked Sen. John Kerry, and bolstered discredited allegations by the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now Swift Vets and POWs for Truth).

Bray reported on technological aspects of the 2004 presidential campaigns for the Globe. In an August 11, 2004, article, Bray chronicled an incident in which hackers altered the websites of online bookstores featuring the anti-Kerry book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (Regnery, August 2004), co-authored by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth co-founder John E. O'Neill. Bray reported that "computer vandals altered an online bookstore's website that was selling a popular new book harshly critical" of Kerry. He added: "The website attacks, at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, underscore the passions unleashed by the new book, 'Unfit For Command.'"

In an August 19, 2004, article, Bray reported on political computer games, including a game on former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's website that encouraged support for Dean's candidacy and several games featured on the Republican National Committee's website "mostly devoted to mockery of John Kerry." In a July 22, 2004, article, Bray reported that the Fleet Center in Boston, site of the Democratic National Convention, was potentially vulnerable to hackers using laptop computers with wireless Internet capabilities.

On August 26, 2004, two weeks after he reported on the hacking of websites selling Unfit for Command, Bray apparently posted a comment to an entry on Dan Gillmor's eJournal, a weblog hosted by SiliconValley.com, a technology news website operated by the San Jose Mercury News. Bray's post attacked Sen. Kerry's "moronic strategy" of publicly discussing his service in Vietnam and bolstered the allegations of discredited Swift Boat Vets' attacks:

While Bush says scarcely a mumblin' word about Vietnam, Kerry has made his Vietnam service the central issue in his campaign. Until recently, when the true cost of this moronic strategy became apparent, Kerry spoke of little else.

Now if Kerry's Vietnam service had been uncontroversial, this might have worked for him. But now we find that of the hundreds of men who served with him, nearly all hated his guts. The very fact that the SwiftVets backlash took him completely by surprise doesn't speak very well of his skills as a judge of human nature or as a strategic thinker.

Besides, the Swifties raise a bunch of telling and legitimate questions. Did Kerry really earn his medals, or did he wangle Purple Hearts for trivial injuries to earn himself a quick ticket back home? A look at the medical records would help answer the question, but Kerry won't release them.

<...>

Then we come to Kerry's post-war behavior. From his own lips, we hear him claim that his comrades were little better than the Waffen SS. He even claims to have committed atrocities himself. Either he's telling the truth about this -- and should have been put in the cell next to William Calley -- or he's lying, and shouldn't be allowed to serve as commander in chief of the soldiers he so casually lied about. Take your pick.

more......

— S.S.M.

Posted to the web on Tuesday March 1, 2005 at 8:03 PM EST