Rob Schneider wrote on 2 January:
Natalie,
In tonight’s BBC news Matt [Frei] was reporting on ex-President Ford’s funeral in Washington. He said (and I can’t remember the exact quote) that “He was a popular president. But he pardoned President Nixon and the country never forgave him.”
That is simply not true and misrepresents history.
Ford became president on 9th August 1974. He announced his decision about President Nixon on 8th September 1974. That was approximately one month after assuming office. He hadn’t achieved any level of “popularity” during that month. Instead, the country was still reeling from events which lead the resignation of President Nixon. There are vast numbers of people in the country, while regretting that such a pardon was necessary, but still understand that it was the right thing to do. The “country” never considered the issue of “forgiveness” as that’s not really the issue.
Surely the pardon could be on many people’s thoughts as they voted in 1976, when Ford lost to Carter. However there were many other issues, including the economy (it was a period of high-inflation), the remants of the Vietnam War, Republican vs. Democrat (the Republicans had won the two previous elections), etc.
–rms
I can’t claim to know a great deal about the events in American history that Mr Schneider describes, and I have no strong opinion either way on whether the pardon was a good thing. But Matt Frei’s statement that “the country never forgave him” is contradicted by the many recent articles covering Ford’s death saying that the pardon turned out to be a good decision. These articles did not just come from right wing or Republican sources. Here, for instance, is a leading article from the Guardian. If that does not count because it is not an American newspaper, here is another from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. There were many others.
More lies and bulllshit left wing propaganda from the Bastard Broadcasting Corp….
Thank your God that so many millions of people are turning away from the Bastard Corp, and the Government is going to give them a shitty pay deal, meaning the loss of 1000s of jobs…….
The BBC is Dead…long live the internet…….
Yours is an interesting opinion…thats what it is, your opinion.
But FREI is meant to give NEWS not OPINIONS! And he gives opinions all the time the ungrateful twit! Were he a guest in MY house he’d have been thrown out long ago for his constant whining about the people whom he is a guest of!
With my own eyes I saw Teddy Kennedy state that he’d been wrong (there’s a red-letter occasion right there) when he’d been opposed to the pardon of Nixon. He said that in retrospect it had been wise.
He didn’t wait for Ford to die to do it, either. He said this when presenting Ford with the JFK Foundation “Profiles in Courage” award in 2001.
And the rest of the country must’ve been a couple decades ahead of Teddy.
Frei might have been right if he was suggesting the pardon cost Ford the election, but then he made the goof about “popularity” so he likely just making stuff up.
I have been following this blog for several months now but this is my first time to post.
I’ve read BBC defenders somewhere in this blog saying that the USA must be put to a higher journalistic standard.
My question– Is this part of the BBC constitution?
If so, how can the BBC meet its obligation for impartiality if this is the mentality of its journalists?
Did the US “never” forgive Ford for the Nixon pardon? I really don’t know. However, I also don’t know if current retrospectives of Ford contradict that. After all, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. And I’ll speculate that there’s a bit of a desire to damn Bush by praising Ford.
“The country never forgave Ford for pardoning Nixon”
The people who “never forgave” President Ford for pardoning Nixon were the left-liberal media, the American equivalent of the BBC. As with the BBC, they regard themselves as representing “the country”.
And as with the BBC, no-one has elected them.
If you want to get a measure of Frei’s character watch the Washington Sniper docu that he’s in (it’s repeated regularly on Sky). It’s a wonderful mix of nowitallness, everyone is stupid but reporters, and expert in hindsight.
I’m waiting for his report that the Democrat leader of the Senate was in the KKK and tried hard to block Civil Rights.
It may also be pertinent that the Liberal Left hated Nixon long before Watergate because he had the gall to prosecute Alger Hiss for being a soviet spy.
Hiss’s innocence was a pillar of Liberal faith for decades and they are still in major denial over his proven guilt.
Liberals *never* forgive anybody who challenges their dogmas. Or who costs them power. Nixon did both.
Of course now we also know that obstruction of justice is a minor pecadillo not rising to the level of impeachment. At least not when the criminal in question is a Democrat.
Roxana: because Hiss was a filthy traitor, it does not mean that Nixon was not a crook. There was a reason why he became known, even to his supporters, as Tricky Dicky. And he got worse with age. His mendacity and his immense, embarrassing capacity for self-pity made him a genuine time bomb for his own party. And while the Democrats may have exploited Watergate as much as they could (gee whiz, so they are politicians), they did not create it. Long before the Plumbers got into the Watergate Building, Nixon was practically paying blackmail to insure the silence of them and equally unsavoury characters.
And yet, in the end, his doom was not so much that he was dishonest, as that he was not as clever – as “tricky” – as he thought. Really successful scoundrels do not leave embarrassing evidence of their links with crooks – I am thinking of the legendary Italian politician Andreotti, who has been suspected of everything from collusion with the Mafia to favouring Palestinian terrorists, and has always managed to end up smelling of Roses. Nixon was no Andreotti. The evidence of his dishonesty was so widespread and so easily found that, as soon as someone started paying attention, he was ultimately doomed.
On the subject of this thread, what nobody seems to notice is the idiocy of Mr.Frei’s central contention – that popularity is important. Even if “the country had never forgiven him”, so what? Gerald Ford acted as a patriot, putting what he regarded as the country’s good first, and he was probably quite aware that he would not be thanked for it. He did not give a tinker’s damn about popularity; he did it anyway, and eventually the country did in fact see his point and “forgive” him.
Did I say Nixon was not a crook? No I said that the Liberal Left was after him because he offended their political sensibilities not moral ones – assuming they have the last.
The Clinton Impeachment shows how forgiving LLs can be of politicians who toe the ideological line. And the MSM follows suit.
Clinton smells at least as bad as ‘Tricky Dicky’ ever did but do the Intelligentsia care? Heck no!
Matt Frei is the most obnoxious Washington correspondent the BBC has ever had. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina he referred to a hospital ship sent to New Orleans to treat and evacuate casualties as “the toy of a superpower.”
More recently, during a piece on the publication of the Iraq Study Group report, he described the chairman of the group, James Baker, as the “consiglieri of the Bush family.”
His reports always appear to be addressing his leftist colleagues at the BBC and not a wider audience. No wonder he’s being tipped for the top.
Is it just Matt Frei? Is it just the BBC?
Here’s the (London) Times on this issue:
Initially Ford commanded an enormous wave of public support …..But his action in pardoning Nixon from the putative charges which had been in preparation during the period before his resignation, caused an abrupt plunge in his popularity.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2520436,00.html
and the Washington Post:
The president’s approval rating reached 71 percent…..
This euphoric honeymoon lasted precisely one month.
On Sept. 8, Ford granted Nixon a full pardon for all federal crimes he had “committed or may have committed” when he was in the White House. …The response was a tidal wave of criticism. Every opinion poll showed a large majority of Americans opposed the pardon. It was denounced in Congress, including by members of Ford’s own party. Republican officials gloomily and accurately forecast that it had reintroduced the Watergate issue into the 1974 elections, which proved to be a Democratic landslide. TerHorst resigned in protest.
It was widely assumed that Ford had doomed his political career. By January 1975, his approval rating had plummeted to 36 percent. Not even two assassination attempts, both in California in 1975, generated significant popular support.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/26/AR2006122601257.html
And even Gerald Ford himself (quoted by the LA Times):
Ford defended his actions by saying he had hoped to end the bitter debate over whether to prosecute Nixon, which had become a serious distraction for the White House. He conceded after his narrow defeat by Carter in 1976, however, that the pardon had had “an adverse impact” on his popular support
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-ford27dec27,0,5566263.story?coll=la-home-headlines
John Reith: did you even bother to read what I said? I said that Ford was not looking for popularity. Evidently you find the notion that popularity is all-important so obvious that it never even occurs to you that someone might do something for other reasons.
Whoops, that was me – weird cookie moment.
“Yours is an interesting opinion…thats what it is, your opinion.”
No…the BBC is screwed….last poll from ITN said 95% of the UK population want the Licence fee ABOLISHED!!!!!!!
Suck on that FACT, while you search for more excuses for the BBC and it’s terminal downfall……
Do you know the simple TRUTH of why the BBC clings to the licence fee like baby to a nipple?….becasue it KNOWS that we would NOT pay for it if we had a choice……
Cowards, who threaten people with prison in order to spread their vile religious propaganda……..
I’m right…the BBC is dying…..their “hit shows” on a Saturday night can barely get 5 million viewers, when it used to be 25 Million……
Terminal Decline, State Media is not the future…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Deal with it loser……lol.
Fabio P.Barbieri
Of course I read what you said – and I agree with most of it.
What this thread is about, though, is an allegation of bias on Frei’s part.
As evidence of this supposed bias, one sentence (that someone thinks they might have heard) in one of Frei’s reports has been adduced.
I was merely pointing out that broadly the same point (that in the eyes of posters here demonstrates the BBC’s anti-Americanism) was made by the Times (prop: R. Murdoch), the Washington Post and the LA Times.
I do think though that Ford did regret losing the Presidential election against Carter. But being such a decent man – he was a most gracious loser.
You also talk of ‘Mr.Frei’s central contention – that popularity is important’ – why do you think this is a ‘central contention’?
Frei made no such claim. He merely mentioned why it was that the Republicans first lost the mid-terms and subsequently the Presidential elections…..as laid out in more detail in the WP article above.
On 21 May 2001 Gerald Ford was made the recipient of the annual Profile in Courage Award given by the Kennedy Foundation designed to honour the late John F.Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Profiles in Courage” outlining 8 US Senators in history who had taken unpopular stands either with the public or with their own party on a matter of principle which had resulted in political cost or damage to their careers, ranging from John Quincy Adams, who like Ford had emerged as President after the House of Representatives had resolved an indeterminate election result but who was not reelected, to Robert Taft, whose isolationism probably cost him the Republican Presidential nomination in both 1940 and 1952.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education+and+Public+Programs/Profile+in+Courage+Award/Award+Recipients/Gerald+Ford/Award+Announcement.htm
Ford, the only President to be so honoured by the Kennedy Foundation and only the second Republican (the other being Senator John McCain in 1999), was presented with the award at the John F.Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, Massachussetts by Caroline Kennedy, President Kennedy’s only surviving child and in his congratulatory remarks, President Kennedy’s only surviving brother and scion of the liberal establishment, Senator Edward Kennedy, said the following:
“At a time of national turmoil, America was fortunate that it was Gerald Ford who took the helm of the storm-tossed ship of state. Unlike many of us at the time, President Ford recognized that the nation had to move forward, and could not do so if there was a continuing effort to prosecute former President Nixon. So President Ford made a courageous decision, one that historians now say cost him his office, and he pardoned Richard Nixon.
I was one of those who spoke out against his action then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us. He eminently deserves this award, and we are proud of his achievement.”
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education+and+Public+Programs/Profile+in+Courage+Award/Award+Recipients/Gerald+Ford/Remarks+by+Senator+Edward+M.+Kennedy.htm
It is clear from the above, from the remarks of a former candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination and the brother of a Democratic President, that the award was specifically intended to honour Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon, even though it probably cost him the possibility of election as President in his own right 2 years later (in 1976 Ford lost to Carter 50-48% in the popular vote and 297-240 in the Electoral College, where the election is actually decided, the closest margin in recent times of any election apart from 2000 and 2004). There is a broad consensus among historians, both liberal and conservative, that Ford did the right thing in pardoning Nixon and there is far less disagreement about the rightness of Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon than there is about Truman’s decision to drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan in 1945 or send US troops to South Korea in 1950. Truman,however, like Ford, is generally regarded as an accidental President who America was fortunate in taking “the helm of the storm-tossed ship of state”, to quote Senator Kennedy’s words about Ford.
All this could have been found out by Matt Frei with the most cursory research. He could have also mentioned that at the same time as he pardoned Nixon he offered clemency to Vietnam War draft-evaders who had fled to Canada during the Presidencies of both Johnson and Nixon but of course that would have conflicted with the four legs-good (Democrat), two legs-bad (Republican) view of US politics that the BBC likes to propagate.
I am sure Frei has already written a glowing encomium on Jimmy Carter, in preparation for his demise, praising his ethical foreign policy and championing of human rights but omitting any mention of his problems managing the economy and his support for the Shah of Iran and a certain year-long hostage crisis which cost him the chance of re-election.
‘Is it just Matt Frei? Is it just the BBC?’
A person is doesn’t stop being biased, arrogent, or wrong just because others are.
Matt Frei is simply the most egotistical journalist working for the BBC
As far as I know …
Alfred Bolaney writes:
“Matt Frei is simply the most egotistical journalist working for the BBC”
Gosh! That’s like a beauty contest in a pigsty, isn’t it?
Frei is a disgrace, I’ll agree, but is he worse than John Simpson? Or Sackur?
My own vote would go for Eddie Mair, whose smug self-confidence knows no apparent bounds.
The trouble (as we have seen from “Reith”) is that a job at the BBC among like-minded hacks seems to endow its journalists with a sense of infallibility a mediaeval Pope could only gasp at in envy.
Yeah there’s lots of them
Rageh Omarr would be in the running if he hadn’t left
Although he keeps turning up on shows like Question Time
Another grand BBC tradition
Get things in proportion guys.
When Matt Frei (allegedly) used the phrase ‘…and the country never forgave him’, what did he mean?
Well, I’d have thought that any normal person hearing that would understand it to mean:
….the voters gave his party a drubbing in the mid-terms and then elected Jimmy Carter in his place denying Ford a second term
AND/OR
his personal ratings never recovered
Since both of these are true – why the fuss? Where’s the ‘bias’?
It is always better JR to look for the cause first not the effect.
I do agree it is not an example of bias just really poor journalism.
The problem, Mr. Reith, is with the word “never”.
It would be correct to say that Ford’s popularity fell drastically after the pardon. It might be correct to say that Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976 because voters had not forgiven him for the pardon. (By the way, that race was closer than many realize; if Ford had carried Ohio and Hawaii, both of which he lost very narrowly, he would have beaten Carter by one vote.)
But it is not correct to say — without powerful evidence from current polls — that most voters had not forgiven Ford by the time of his death.
A parallel may help make this point clearer. When President Truman left office in 1953, he had terrible poll ratings. But as the years went by, voters changed their minds and his retrospective ratings rose. Most voters, in short, forgave him.
Matt Frei was imprecise, and perhaps biased. But I’ll forgive him if he corrects the record.
Oh well, so it’s a case of never say never again.
I take your point Mr Miller, but don’t you think you are being a touch pedantic – or, at least, a touch literalist?
I imagine Frei thought his listeners would understand the ‘never’ to refer to Ford’s political lifetime, not his actual one.
Most journalists assume some degree of licence in this regard, hence the subhead in today’s Daily Telegraph:
‘Blair forced to condemn Saddam hanging’
and the lead headline in today’s (London) Times:
‘Top judges revolt over reform of sentencing’.
Ah Matt Frei,
Remember when he was pretending to rescue Katrina victims from a boat that floated in ankle deep water?