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March 24, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - March 23

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is my husband who has returned from a 13- month tour in Tikrit.

BUSH: Oh, yeah. Thank you, Buddy. Welcome back.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And his job while serving was as a broadcast journalist. And he has brought back several DVD's full of wonderful footage of reconstruction of medical things going on. And I ask you this from the bottom of my heart for a solution to this because it seems that our major media networks don't what portray the good and just want to focus...

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well as you can see, the president's audience there in Wheeling, West Virginia yesterday which was composed heavily of military families liked the question and the sentiment expressed in it. But who better to ask about this portrayal of good versus the bad than John Burns the Baghdad bureau chief of the "New York Times," who has been there for quite a long time and done a lot of reporting.

Have you under covered the good news. He told "USA Today." "Yes, we probably have," he says, "but there is nothing willful about it. I would enter a plea of mitigation that we are overstretched."

Analytical observations on this issue now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of "The Weekly Standard," Mort Kondracke, executive editor for "Roll Call' and Juan Williams, senior correspongdent of National Public Radio. FOX News contributors all.

What about it? What do you think, Juan, is there -- has this day to day necessary coverage of the carnage and the shooting and the bombs and the explosions obscured positive developments over there that the public is therefore not aware of?

JUAN WILLIAMS, NPR: No. I think the public is aware of some of it. (r)MD+IT_(r)MDNM_I think they're not aware of it to the extent they might be, Brit. But, you know, it reminds me of two points. One is the only old saying in journalism, we don't cover successful landings at National Airport. And people in terms of -- the second point, in terms of a war, people are interested in what progress we're making.

Number of deaths, that is a toll of death is part of war coverage. If you are running into unexpected difficulties in dealing with the enemy, if the shape of the war changes. At one thought we thought we were defeating Saddam's army, and suddenly we're finding an insurgency. Are we fighting an insurgency? Are defending the country against civil war? The whole notion of rebuilding the country seems is different. So I think that you have different levels of coverage. And as a result, that story is secondary to what is still primary in the mind of the American press, which is are we winning this war? And how soon can they come home?

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Well, Bob Lichter of the Center for Media and Public affairs who tracks what is on TV every night and says that the coverage is two to three to one negative since the beginning of the war. And the question is, is the story that bad? But there -- there's clearly things that are missing from the coverage. One of them is, you never see anything about American heroes. There's -- whoever is winning silver stars, we don't know anything about it. Who are these people who are willing to volunteer to be Iraqi policemen and in danger of getting themselves blown up or willing to serve as members of parliament and risking their lives? Why are they doing it? And what have they got to say?

You know, attacks on American troops are down. We reported that yesterday, but I haven't seen that much in the newspapers.

You know, you get the impression that whenever the terrorists pull off something, like the Samarra bombing, or the butchery that goes on that it is somehow our fault, you know, it's evidence that we couldn't protect these people as opposed to the monsters that the enemy is. And I think this is the unrelieved kind of stuff that comes through the American media.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STARDARD: I think it's clear that the bulk of the reporters there either oppose the war or at least have concluded long ago that the U.S. and the Iraqis can't win, can't defeat the insurgents, can barely set up a new government, have trouble doing that, they can't unify. Immediately after the Samarra mosque was bombed, they are right on the edge of it -- of a civil war and the media is still talking about that as if they are on the edge of a civil war when that's not true.

Now here's how I judge it. Now, by the way, did you notice that was not only cheering for that woman who criticized the press, it was a standing ovation. I don't care whether they're all Republicans, that is significant when it's a standing ovation on that.

The -- every one I talked to, and I talk to a lot of people as you do, Brit and other do, who come back, go over there for a while and come back from Iraq, all say the same thing, the media is not telling all the story at all. Things are much better there in most of Iraq than the media would have you know, its military officers, it's civilians who go over there, it's people like Ralph Peters, it's people even like Laura Ingraham who went out in the field with troops and everybody says -- and everybody says -- they all say the same thing. If just a few did and others said something else, I wouldn't be so dubious of the mainstream media's reporting, but everybody says the same thing, that things are much better over there than the media lets on.

WILLIAMS: Well, the thing is, if you look at the number of people who died it's just the fact Brit. And I think it's hard and indisputeable. If you want to talk about things that are points of real progress, rebuilding schools, helping children, doing away with a despot, that's what Saddam Hussein was, and therefore liberating, increasing the rights of women, protecting the rights of the Kurds in the north, all of that is true. But is that, really how history is going to record this effort? Or are they going to record it in terms of America's decision to go to war, the questions about weapons of mass destruction, the notion of spreading democracy?

And so you have a limited number of reporters, which is what John Burns was saying. He argues they are mitigating circumstances.

KONDRACKE: We don't know how history is going to report this.

WILLIAMS: I'll tell you what.

KONDRACKE: The danger is that history will record it that we lost it because the American people got so discouraged that they -- that we couldn't fulfill our mission there, that somehow we got so discouraged that we pulled out. If that's the case, then history -- it will be a disaster for Americans.

WILLIAMS: That's a political story and one we tell here in Washington about relationship between what our leaders told us and what the American people now feel about what they were led to believe.

KONDRACKE: But the American people believe on what they believe on the basis on what they read and what they see on TV. If that's not correct, then they're getting a misimpression.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, the president says the debate over immigration reform should be civil and dignified. Any chance of that? Any chance of a bill? The all-stars on that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, (D) NEW YORK: It is hard to believe that a Republican leadership that is constantly talking about values and about faith would put forth such a mean-spirited piece of legislation. This bill would literally criminalize the good samaritan and probably even Jesus himself.

BUSH: When we conduct this debate, it must be done in a civil way. It must be done in a way that brings dignity to the process. It must be done in a process that doesn't pit one group of people against another.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: What President Clinton -- I mean, President Bush and Senator Clinton are both talking about there is the debate over immigration legislation. What she is talking about is a bill that has cleared the House and a similiar bill in the Senate which would amount to simply a crackdown on illegal immigration at the border and inside this country.

Now, that is what she and her Democrats are dead set against. What the president wants is some of that, but he also wants a guest worker program.

Juan, what about this issue? Will there -- what kind of debate are we likely to have when the issue comes up next week? And does the president have the chance of getting the civil -- or civilized debate that he wants? And what about the prospects of a bill?

WILLIAMS: I think the president has a good shot here. But ther reason is because I think he has the strong backing of the business community. What we don't get in all the coverage -- we're talking about coverage in the war -- I think the coverage of this issue, it tends to be populous anger at illegal immigration coming into the country. So, there's a lot of coverage of Minutemen, a lot of coverage of everybody who is upset at the tremendous waves of illegal immigrants coming into the country.

But I think the business community and others who are sensitive to the notion of illegal immigrants as people who are oftentimes hard working, want a good place to raise their children, educate their families, all that, are saying you know what, there is a middle ground here. And so hwat I think with the backing of the business community, there is a possibility we get some progress, finally, on an immigration bill.

KONDRACKE: I don't think -- I think the best you can hope for, frankly, is going to be a stale mate no matter how much, almost no matter how much Bush gets involved. The House of Representatives passed a bill, a truly draconian bill, Hillary Clinton is not wrong, I mean, it does make it illegal for a charity like Catholic Charities or something like that to help out illegal aliens. And the Catholic Church is against this bill on account of that.

Now in the Senate, there might be a bill that is comprehensive that includes both beefed up border security and employer sanctions.

HUME: Employer sanctions means you go after the companies, and the individal employer.

KONDRACKE: Right...

HUME: ...for hiring illegals if they're found to have done so.

KONDRACKE: Right. And nobody is really against that sort of thing. I mean even the pro-immigrant people are not against border security, they're against making it illegal to be an illegal -- you know, make it a felony to be illegal, or a felony to help illegals, but as to beefing up the border, as to stricter employer sanctions, they are not against that. What they want, and what the president says he wants is a worker permit system that would -- and the more liberal of them are in favor of what McCain and Kennedy are for, and that is a path to earn citizenship, not amnesty. Now, that bill I don't think could ever past the House.

HUME: But you think a bill like that might pass the Senate.

KONDRACKE: Might conceivably pass the Senate.

HUME: Let's assume for the sake of discussion, Fred, that such a bill emerges from the Senate. We have already seen what the House is going to do. It is a tough enforcement bill and not much else. Is there a chance of a compromise?

BARNES: Yes, I think there is. That's why you have a Senate House conference. And the compromise -- if the Senate bill -- you know the most important thing in the Senate bill is a vote that will probably be in the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday, if not Monday, then Tuesday, and that's a vote that would affect the 12 million illegal aliens already here in the country. And this would provide for them a path to citizenship if they learned English, if they didn't have a criminal record, had a job, paid back taxes and all these things. If they did all that, they could earn that.

Now, that -- that may pass the Senate Judiciary Committee only with a minority of Republicans voting for it. And that's a thing that would have great difficulty in the House.

So wait a minute. The compromise would be probably to drop that, have a small guest worker program of 300,000 or 400,000 workers plus strong border enforcement and you could probably get that through.

But the most important thing, of course -- that would be evading the most important thing if it's not in the final bill, what to do with the 12 million ilegal immigrants already here.

HUME: Any chance that could -- so you agree with Fred, Juan that that is not going to be dealt with this year?

WILLIAMS: It's so hard. That's the nub of things that come down to various bills. Do you send people back. And if you say to people, you can work here for a while, then you've got to got back, will people actually leave if they -- and go through this process. Or do you say to them, if you stay here and meet the requirements of the law, go through the legal process and become legal, fine. If you're illegal, though, we're going to crack down. That's where it comes in.

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