Rumsfeld 'getting the bum's rush'

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The press corps turned into a lynch mob yesterday. Fueled with righteous indignation and evident agendas, some print and broadcast journalists cast themselves in the role of jurors and called for the end of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's career.

"The Democrats want a scalp, and the news media is helping them get it," Brent Baker of the Media Research Center said yesterday.

Mr. Rumsfeld, he said, is "getting the bum's rush."

Perhaps the greatest fuss came from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who penned a hyperbolic editorial calling for Mr. Rumsfeld's "firing," insisting it be done "today, not tomorrow or next month, today."

Mr. Friedman, intent on restoring the "honor" of America, also provided a four-point guide to show President Bush how to "successfully partner with Iraqis."

Analyst Mr. Baker questioned the motives behind the piece, which warranted its own hour of contentious discussion during C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" yesterday.

"Mr. Friedman is playing both sides as a reporter and a columnist. He's banking on his credibility as a veteran Times reporter but is, in reality, an analyst with a clear political stake in the process," Mr. Baker said.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch also attacked Mr. Rumsfeld yesterday, advising that he "resign and take his top deputies with him. ... Mr. Rumsfeld has consistently been wrong. He has responded to criticism by bullying and sneering."

Such posturing has a purpose, however.

"In today's bloodthirsty media environment, print often borrows the big bluster from broadcast to engage readers," observed Matthew Felling of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

"The 9/11 commission hearings are going to look like two-hand touch football compared to the rugby match Rumsfeld is walking into at his Senate hearing today," Mr. Felling added. "The water is chummed, and the senators are going to be out for a pound of flesh."

All this vitriol caps off a week that found the nation exposed nonstop to photos of naked Iraqi prisoners as first published in the New Yorker, on CBS News and in The Washington Post, with accompanying texts that relied heavily on anonymous sources.

Yesterday, judgmental stories tried to justify calls for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation, casting him as wrongdoer and framing a division between White House and Pentagon as if it were an impending explosion.

The situation was a "burgeoning scandal," according to Reuters, and rife with "escalating criticism," according to the Associated Press.

"Will Rumsfeld survive the abuse scandal?" asked MSNBC. In The Washington Post and elsewhere, Mr. Bush "chided," "scolded," "chastised" or "admonished" Mr. Rumsfeld.

At Fox News Channel, meanwhile, anchor Chris Wallace will showcase U.S. accomplishments in Iraq on Sunday, in contrast to a controversial ABC "Nightline" that featured Ted Koppel reading the names of 720 dead troops last Thursday.

"If you want to pay tribute to the troops, talk about what they fought and died for -- not just that they died," Mr. Wallace told USA Today yesterday.

• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.