Sunday, May 18, 2008

McClatchy's truth-challenged Hannah Allam mails in another Bush-bashing column

Hannah Allam, McClatchy's truth-challenged bureau chief in Cairo, is probably the most anti-Bush reporter in McClatchy's stable of left-wing reporters. Not an easy feat, given Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay are considered heroes by the left-wing blog Huffington Post.

McClatchy published an Allam column Sunday noting Bush's middle east trip was a failure. Her column: Bush ends 5-day Middle East trip with few concrete gains.  
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Now, it is one thing to be anti-Bush; it is another to be a liar.
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I first discovered Allam's dishonest reporting in January. After President Bush's last middle east trip ended, Hannah Allam wrote this:


"President Bush wraps up a weeklong tour of the Middle East Wednesday, leaving many Mideast political observers mystified as to the purpose of the visit..."
She never named the Mideast political observers who were "mystified as to the purpose of the visit". It shouldn't be hard to name one, since Allam claimed there were "many." Being skeptical that Mideast political observers could be in the dark about the purpose of the trip, I did a little Internet research and found information which led me to believe Hannah Allam had lied. Here is what I wrote about my research on January 17, 2008:


I learned the purpose of Bush's trip was widely reported. Reuters interviewed Bush 1/3/08 and Bush explained 3-fold purpose of the trip. President Bush gave an interview to foreign print media at the White House on 1/4. (Transcript here.) Prior to leaving on his trip, Bush gave 3 interviews to TV media in the Middle East. You can read the transcripts here, here, and here. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave interviews to BBC Arabic Television (transcript here) as well as Israel's Channel 10 (transcript here). Rice also spoke to the press aboard Air Force One enroute to Kuwait on 1/11 (transcript here). BBC wrote about the purpose of Bush's trip on 1/7.
I also noted that Al Jazeera had published a piece prior to Bush's trip, and quoted White House spokeswoman Dana Pierno explaining the purpose of the trip:


However, Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said Iran "is certainly not the main reason for the trip". "The main reason for the trip is to advance these negotiations and make sure that those are on the right track, as well as to talk about the president's commitment to the region."
The Al Jazeera piece is still available on the Internet.
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Given the number of interviews about the trip given by President Bush and Condoleezza Rice in print media and television media - including Al Jazeera and other Arab outlets - the only reasonable conclusion is that Hannah Allam lied about speaking to "many mystified observers."
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(I also conclude that Al Jazeera gives more credible information than McClatchy.)
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Hannah Allam has been accused of dishonest reporting before. She was named by Nibras Kazimi (along with Warren Strobel, and Jonathan Landay) as twisting quotes and distorting meaning, in a remarkable column last month. Kazimi's article: "McClatchy News Agency Purposely Distorts Quotes, Publishes Unattributed Gossip".

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