woodward's depiction over deep throat. is that fair after all these years? rupert murdock drawing a major rebuke from a british parliamentary committee. >> rupert murdock unfit -- the damning indictment from the mp's report into phone hacking. how will this impact his media empire on both sides of the atlantic? and dan rather still at war with cbs. >> we reported the truth, and that is that president bush, later president bush, when he was in national guard service, he was at least awol. >> the ex-anchor still insisting that his story, based on unproven documents was accurate, despite the fact that cbs apologized and retracted the report. i'm howard kurtz, and this is "reliable sources." it was inevitable that news organizations would mark and to be honest celebrate the one-year anniversary of osama bin laden's death, and it's hardly shocking that the obama white house would push that storyline. the president's campaign posted a web ad suggesting that mitt romney might not have made the same choice to go after bin laden. commentators, and even a few on the left recoiled in horror. sdhoo is there mr. obama ebbing metro detroiting the death of osama bin laden for political purposes? >> to run a campaign ad is one of the most despicable things you can do. >> after telling the country you don't spike the football, you come off as a hypocrite when you then go out of your way to spike the football. >> the obama camp has decided to be aggressive on national security and keep telling the story. they are putting the presses's record out in front and it's working. >> republican challenger disputed the notion that the president made a gutsy call to send special ops forces after the world's top terrorist. >> even jimmy carter would have given that order. >> now, that media debate was interrupted when obama made a surprise visit to afghanistan and delivered a primetime television address, but that hardly silenced the critics. >> one year ago from base here in afghanistan our troops launched the operation that killed osama bin laden. the goal that i set to defeat al qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild is now within our reach. >> for the past several days president obama and his re-election spin machine, well, they've been taking a victory lap, glossing over who the real heroes are. >> so have the media been even handed in covering the sniping on al qaeda and afghanistan? joining us now in new york, christa freeland, editor of thompson reuters digital, and here in washington dana millbank, columnist for the washington post, and johna goldberg, editor of national review on-line, a fox news contributor and author of the new book "the tierney of clash yeas." how criminals cheat. why have the media made such an issue about how it was unseemly for president obama to trump et the fact that he approved the mission that killed osama bin laden. >> i guess because we love issues and we love political fights. you asked earlier, howard, was this a phony war? i think it absolutely is. i mean, there is an election campaign going on. this is absolutely a reasonable thing for the president to brag about, and let's remember that democrats very, very often are accused of being weak on national security, so i think fair enough for him to say, look, i'm not, and this president in particular is someone whose ability to make these kinds of calls were questioned. remember, hillary clinton in the 3:00 a.m. ad. i think that this is fair, and, you know, the republicans are complaining because, you know, this is the president showing that he is strong in what is traditionally their territory. >> as everyone recalls, george w. bush put on a flight suit and landed on an aircraft carrier when he thought the iraq war was over. some of your fellow conservatives are now feigning that obama is touting his record, and even if he is greg bragging, what's wrong with that? >> i think the way you are framing it is exactly wrong and exactly the way the mainstream media has been framing it, which is that i don't remember there was a lot of complaining simply about the -- i mean, there's a lot of eye rolling and grumble, but there wasn't a lot of the serious complaining about obama trying to take some credit and celebrating the fact that he did this. the complaining really started where in that ad you have obama saying mitt romney wouldn't have done this, which is a completely unfalsifiable charge based on a quote out of context. >> well, out of context. let's give people the quote in 2007. romney said it's not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person, meaning osama. >> then he followed up and said of course you take your shot at bin laden if you had it, but don't design the war on terror just to get one man, or you wouldn't fight world war ii to get hitler. >> dana might agree with you because you wrote, dana, that the obama ad was sleazy. of course, here's the new york post with a ka-bull headline saying he spikes the bin laden football. should the press hold obama to a higher standard than bush was when he was running quite explicitly on the war on terror? >> i think the press should be consistent, and i think in large part we have this time. i don't think anybody begrudges -- well, johna may, but most people don't begrudge the president making a trip to afghanistan. i don't think we should call it a surprise trip. i think the fcc should fine people when they say surprise because it's not really a surprise. it's unplanned. >> i didn't know about it. >> it's not a sprisz when the president shows up in iraq or afghanistan. if he showed up in iran, that might be a surprise. i think to go further and say when this president puts out an ad like that, it's similar. maybe not to the same degree, but it's similar if we were whacking george bush about it for all these years. i for one would not feel consistent and fair if i didn't point out whether he is doing that or whether he is doing the excessive fundraising that we also whacked president bush for. >> i think the mission accomplished thing is a perfectly legitimate thing to beat up on george w. bush about. that was overdone. there's another sort of kibt si problem here. john kerry was running as sort of the anti-war guy in 2004. there was a sharp policy difference. there is no sharp policy difference, at least rhetorically. it's not like mitt romney is the anti-war guy in this contest, and the way they're framing it, it makes it sound as if there is this -- they're trying to manufacture a policy difference. mitt romney supports going after bin laden. we know that. every republican in the republican party supported going after bin laden. >> one of the things that the president does get attacked on, and i think actually quite rightly when it comes to some of the economic policy decisions, is that he is not a leader. that he is not an executive. that he is not able to take tough decisions. i think to this kind of point of character, it's fair enough for him to say, look, one of the toughest decisions, i took it. the thing that really bothers me about this whole debate that we're having is where i think that we are giving the president a pass and we really shouldn't is actually on afghanistan. it's not about did he kill bin laden or not and is it okay to brag about that. it's about what is going to happen in afghanistan, and that is the real issue, and the real acuna right now in foreign policy. >> let me jump in now. i want to turn this back into the media coverage and brian williams of nbc bringing his cameras into the situation room at the white house. it's never been done before. for this how far-long special on rock center in which williams got into the obama, biden, hillary, and others about this very subject. let's roll a clip from that show. >> here it is. there you are. >> here i am sitting right here. >> that is an intense look on your face, and everyone is intently watching that screen. >> this is -- if i'm not mistaken, pete, this picture was taken right as the helicopter was having some problems, but you may not remember. >> i can't say. >> that's what it feels like because i remember hillary putting her hand over her mouth at that point. >> this was a story the administration obviously very much wanted told and gave abc the access. do you think that program was too soft? zi think it was celebrate other. it's also a fascinating story. i don't blame nbc news if they get a chance to do this that they're going to this documentary about it. >> the situation room in the white house, and it's not just wolf blitzer's set, so i think it was useful to remind them that there was the original. >> there's branding going on. >> i mean, look, the president is entitled to, we're going to do those one-year answer versery things anyway. he is entitled to benefit from that to some extent. this election is not going to be about foreign policy anyway. i mean, it may give him some marginal advantage, and, sure, let people holler that they've been too soft. >> you talked earlier about the president and afghanistan, so the trip -- i have to call it an unannounced trip arks dorgd dana, that he was there for a few hours and gave the speech. was that covered by the media as a serious foreign policy visit, or a political victory lap? >> political victory lap. and that is where i do think that we are falling short, and it's a danger because the u.s. election is hugely, hugely important. it's the dominant story here, but other things are happening in the world. afghanistan is going to exist after the election, and that's really where i think we need to be thinking and talking about because it's far from clear to me that things and actions that make sense in the election campaign when it comes to talking about afghanistan are actually going to make sense on the ground the day after the election. >> it was something of a political stunt in that the president's trip was tied to the exact one-year anniversary of the bin laden death, but he did sign the agreement with hamid karzai for the u.s. withdrawal or transition and so to some extent didn't that force the press to play it straight? >> it forced -- it gave the press a second paragraph to write about the story. there was some substance there, but really the agreement was an agreement to have an agreement about an agreement, as far as i can tell. i also want to put one more factoid into all of this. this is not the first time the obama administration has tried to politicize and get political gain and domestic politics from the killing of bin laden. last year in may right afterwards you had jay carney going out in front of the press. you had david axelrod out there saying that obama's sdigsiveness in killing bin laden proved that we should support his domestic agenda on green energy, and he did get a free pass on all that. >> doesn't every president tout whatever accomplishments he can wrap his arms around and try to build support for the administration? it just seems to me that there's nothing unusual. >> it's not particularly unusual. i think what -- >> did bush take the toppling of saddam as a reason to support his education policies? >> did dick cheney say the decision in this election 2004 was -- could determine whether we get hit again? >> that's the question about foreign policy. it's not a transfer -- >> i think that bush absolutely tried and sought to translate his, you know, strength and leadership and decisiveness in foreign policy to have people say and he is strong in decisive in domestic policy, and i don't think there's anything wrong with that. >> let me spin back to the media. obama goes to afghanistan. he gets a lot of coverage. he gets -- that's an advantage that incumbent presidents have in elections. >> i think this president is politicizing foreign policy 10% or 20% as much as president bush did. >> you still don't like him? >> because he came in and said i'm going to do things differently. same thing with the fundraising. he said i'm going to do things differently, and he wanted us to have this walk on water standard for him, and that's why he is being punished. it's the expectation. >> here is an interesting fact. the morning of the trip bh we did not know about this unannounced visit to kabul, an afghan television station tweeted it, and a spokesman started calling around to news outlets that picked up that tweelt. buzz feed took it down. the drudge report did not. the white house was saying, no, president obama is not in kabul. that was technically true because he had not gotten there yet. they were trying to protect his security. >> lie outright. nobody would -- >> i hope they don't take you up on that and extend it to other areas. >> i think we officially know they can lie outright to dana. >> that would not be a first. when we come back, mitt romney holds an off the record meeting with conservative bloggers and pundits. is he finally starting to court the media mavens? 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[ flo speaking japanese ] [ shouting in japanese ] we work wherever you work. now, that's progressive. call or click today. mitt romney who did little to court the press during -- and i nabtd you were invited and couldn't make it. how did it work out for romney? >> it depends on who you talk to. i think at the end of the day the romney camp -- first of all, i think the romney camp is going to have a hard time switching from primary mode to general election mode. i thought it was a sign that they were responding as if president obama was rick santorum, and i think that their approach to the blogger thing was overdone. they had a lot of mainstream sort of top level press -- print reporters, and they also had just about every right wing blogger you can imagine. i love the right wing bloggers, but i don't think it was -- it was -- you guys should be cheerleaders for us kind of approach, and i don't think that sut sat well with a lot of people. >> daily caller, american spectator, red state, power line, pajamas media and some other less well known blogs. how do conservative commentators who rip romney during the primaries now evolve into supporters for the fall? >> i don't know. my invitation was lost in the mail to this, so i can only guess, but i think what this indicates is that -- and rightly so, that romney is still not comfortable with his base, at least in the conservative media, so he needs to continue to do this sort of outreach. it's not that crazy a thing to do. president obama meets with sympathetic liberal journalists in the white house. i think it says more about romney's insecurity there and his need to pivot, but i think he is making an assumption that just because he is not obama, the conservative media is going to rally, and that may be true eventually. it's not such an easy thing. >> we'll see with how much thumpl. also this week, romney foreign policy spokesman, who is openly gay, resigned, and this came after some criticism from anti-gay conservatives about his hiring. should the press have challenged the romney campaign on why the candidate didn't stand up for the guy? >> yes. and i think the press, you know -- i think this was covered, and i think people, you know, did challenge it. here we are talking about the fact that he is openly gay and suggesting maybe that's the reason that he was, and i think we're right to ask that question because there were conservative groups that called themselves pro-family that had challenged his appointment when it was first announced. i think that's an important story, actually. >> now, he had other problems. he had a whole series of offensive tweets before he joined the campaign in which he attacked the appearance of rachel maddow and hillary clinton and said that calista clinton looks like she snaps her hair on. it leads people to believe that it was his sexuality that forced him out where sfwloosh i haven't gotten to the bottom of this. you wouldn't have the romney campaign declaring to all the world that we begged him to stay. i think it's ludicrous to say thaw can't have a foreign policy spokesman who is gay. i think brian fisher, the head guy of the family -- >> american families association. >> is now going around and saying if romney -- if he is a pushover to me, how is he going to stand up to putin, which shows that appeasing these guys is like feeding an alligator one at a pop. >> he wasn't allowed to speak, and that shows how ineffective he had become in their own eyes where. >> this was an opportunity for romney to have his sister soldier moment. it shows in the press what give him a very favorable treatment if he were to do that, but i think it shows he is still not comfortable enough to do that. >> people don't remember -- look, i realize the conservative base is -- wants mre to sack this guy, but i'm not going do it because i feel otherwise, and i think he would take a few pops on the right, but he would get credibility. >> i don't know that it's the whole base. it's one segment of the base. >> i would just say quickly, putting these two strands of the conversation together, i think this underscores how tough this moment is for the romney campaign because on the one hand, they still feel they need to consolidate that conservative base. they need to prove to those guys, you know, we are your champion. please support us. but, on the other hand, they do need to have their sister soldier moment and show they can be sent rests. >> what about the other burning issue, the fact that ann romney went on cbs this morning and it was noted that she was wearing a $990 shirt. is it fair for the press to keep bringing this up? okay. they're wealthy. we get it. >> yeah, sure. sure, it's fair. i mean, michelle obama gets bashed if she wears expensive clothes, so that's fine. >> all right. we see the videotape there from cbs. before we go, in a couple of sentences, tell us the thesis of your book, the tierney of cliches. >> i wanted to write a funny book, and that's part of it. the basic argument is that conservatives are honest that we're idealogical. liberals claim to be in pure system praying mattists who only care about what works. that's not true. they have a perfectly honorable ideology. it's one they should defend. when they go around saying that they're not idealogical at all they're lying to themselves as well as everybody else. thanks for stopping by this morning. coming up in the second part of ""reliable sources" "new controversy over bob woodward and deep throat nearly 40 years after the fact. dan rather still swinging away at cbs. and rupert murdoch battling a stinging verdict from british lawmakers. just stay off the freeways, all right? 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