IRAQ PULL-OUT: AN NBC EXCLUSIVE?

Amid complaints that the Obama administration granted MSNBC exclusive privileges to cover the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman has told Yahoo News that MSNBC received no such privilege and that it treated its application to cover the pullout “a normal press request.” If the cable news channel’s four hours of live coverage turned out to be an exclusive, it was only because other news organizations allowed it to become so, the Pentagon spokesman suggested, (MSNBC and NBC were allowed to place a satellite truck in the withdrawing convoy. No other news organization did the same.) Indeed, other news organizations gave the withdrawal short shrift. Fox News barely mentioned it during its primetime lineup of conservative commentators.