Chickenhawk Michael O'Hanlon whines his way into an interview about Iraq

[marmar]

from ThinkProgress:



O’Hanlon’s Griping Pays Off: CNN Calls Him ‘To Tell Us Why Voters Continue To Care About Iraq’»

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), the number of news reports on Iraq have fallen dramatically since last year. In July 2007, there were an average of 15 percent of news stories devoted to the war in Iraq; that number dropped to just three percent in February 2008.

Last week, Brookings Institution analyst Michael O’Hanlon complained to the New York Times that he is a perfect example of the media’s declining interest in Iraq, as he hardly receives Iraq interview requests anymore:

“I was getting on average three to five calls a day for interviews about the war” in the first years, said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow on national security at the Brookings Institution. “Now it’s less than one a day.“

On its “This Week in Politics” segment on Saturday, CNN took pity on poor O’Hanlon. Host Tom Foreman said they decided to call O’Hanlon not because he was the most qualified, but because he heard his cries for attention:

In Monday’s “New York Times,” Brookings scholar Michael O’Hanlon was quoted as saying that the number of journalists calling him for stories on Iraq has fallen off to zero. So, we gave Michael a call and invited him to tell us why voters continue to care about Iraq. And we called in CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr to keep him honest.

Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/31/ohanlon-cnn/




While O’Hanlon blames the press for his decreasing number of interviews, there is another possibility: his authority on Iraq has declined, as he has repeatedly and inextricably linked himself to Bush’s Iraq policies.

The media refuse to abandon these discredited pundits completely though. As the National Security Network’s Ilan Goldberg observes, O’Hanlon has had “13 pieces in four of the most influential op-ed pages in the country over the past 7 months. … Unless you are a cabinet level position or higher, nobody deserves this type of representation.”

The Center for American Progress’s Eric Alterman and George Zornick also add, “Most of the pundits asked to look back on the first six years of the war in mainstream organs like The New York Times op-ed page and the online magazine, Slate, were people who got the decision wrong in the first place.”


Transcript:

FOREMAN: For all of the talk about how the candidates are battling for the White House, real battles with real bullets are raging across Iraq this week, and when General David Petraeus makes his report to Congress next month, that situation in Iraq could turn this campaign upside down again. Iraq has been out of the news spotlight lately.

In Monday’s “New York Times,” Brookings scholar Michael O’Hanlon was quoted as saying that the number of journalists calling him for stories on Iraq has fallen off to zero. So, we gave Michael a call and invited him to tell us why voters continue to care about Iraq. And we called in CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr to keep him honest.

Michael, let me ask you this first off, when General Petraeus shows up next month, all the campaigns say they want to listen to the general, is he going to say what they want to hear?

MICHAEL O’HANLON, BROOKINGS INSITUTION: Hi, Tom. Well, I think they we don’t know what he’s going to say because of the developments that you just alluded to that are ongoing in Iraq right now. This is a fundamentally different kind of situation than we’ve had in a long time and the outcome could be net very good or net very bad. There are some people trying to prejudge. President Bush for example said this shows that the Iraqi government can be decisive, because they’re the ones who chose when to do to this operation and they are leading it.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/31/ohanlon-cnn/

[Supersedeas]

1. Tom Foreman is unwatchable -- the posturing and grandstanding is over the top