The shoe is on the other foot

Funnily enough, when it's Clinton under attack, the MSM, while anxious to report a hot story, is also entirely willing to make sure that Clinton's position is zealously represented:

Under strong pressure from former President Bill Clinton's advisers, CBS's ''60 Minutes'' has agreed to read a statement denying an explosive charge being made on Sunday nght's program by former FBI director Louis Freeh, the WASHINGTON POST reports. In the statement, Samuel ``Sandy'' Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, challenges Freeh's assertion that Clinton failed to press Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to cooperate with an investigation of the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in that country, and used the occasion to ask for a contribution to his presidential library. The Saudis made such a donation last year _ six years after the 1998 meeting. Berger, who was at the meeting, said: ``The president strongly raised the need for Saudi officials to cooperate with us on the investigation into the attack on Khobar Towers at the time when the FBI was attempting to gain access to the suspects. The president did not raise in any fashion the issue of his library.'' Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said he told CBS's Mike Wallace that he had supportive accounts from five other former officials at the meeting, including those briefed about a private conversation between Clinton and Abdullah. ``The fair journalistic question is why they didn't call and get comments for their story from people who were in the room, such as Sandy Berger, and why they took until Friday afternoon to get that done,'' said Lanny Davis, a former White House lawyer, who tried to persuade ''60 Minutes'' producer Jeff Fager to allow him or another Clinton spokesman to appear on Sunday night's segment. Carson, who called the Freeh book ``a total work of fiction.''

I'd be infinitely more impressed with this "even-handed" approach to relaying a story if it didn't conflict with the MSM's "false but accurate" approach to any stories critical of the President.