One of the facets of the Gaza crisis not getting enough media attention is the fact that Israel has barred reporters from entering the Gaza Strip to report on the war--despite an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that stated that foreign journalists should be allowed into the territory.

It was good, then, to see the issue raised on CNN's media program Reliable Sources on January 5. Not so good, though, were host Howard Kurtz's comments:

And when we do see video of the attacks in Gaza or the aftereffects, much of that video, as my understanding, is supplied by Arab media outlets, so it may be very selective.

Yes, the Arab channels tend to not show the buildings that haven't been destroyed in airstrikes--a clever propaganda trick indeed. Kurtz followed up on that by saying to his guest:

Your point about civilian casualties, Paula Hancocks--I heard interviews yesterday with Palestinian officials on CNN, MSNBC and elsewhere; they were using words like "massacre" and "bloodbath." Obviously, it's in their interest to portray the Israeli incursion in the harshest light. And as you just noted, you have no independent way to check that, or do you have at least limited ways to try to check that?

It's hard to miss the point that Kurtz is trying to make about how media should cover the Gaza conflict: Journalists should be allowed into Gaza to show that Palestinians (and Arab TV stations) are exaggerating the level of suffering.

Continuing the media trend of cheering Obama's center-right cabinet nominees, the Los Angeles Times' editorial page weighs in today (12/28/08): 

The best measure by which to evaluate any president's administration is the quality of the appointees. In recent times, however, a president's inner circle also has been viewed through the prism of identity politics. Obama has succeeded on both levels, assembling an impressive roster that includes men and women, blacks, whites, Latinos and Asian-Americans. Only once did he seem willing to allow diversity to trump policy. He offered the Cabinet-level position of trade representative to the protectionist Rep. Xavier Becerra, but after Becerra withdrew -- and after Obama had named another Latino, [Ken] Salazar, as secretary of the Interior -- the Rubik's Cube was twisted again and the trade portfolio went to former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, an African-American supporter of NAFTA.

In other words, the corporate media's preference is for ethnically diverse cabinet officials who demonstrate little to no ideological diversity. Knowing that this will please the corporate press is a lot easier than solving a Rubik's Cube.

The editorial would also seem not to have noticed that it has contrasted "quality" with "identity politics"--in this context meaning the hiring of anyone who is not a white man.

The New York Times' Charles Blow writes on the op-ed page ("Heaven for the Godless?," 12/27/08): "The Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: 'I am the way, the truth and the life: No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.'”

He then expresses puzzlement that many Christians nevertheless avow that Jews, Muslims, Hindus and even atheists can get into heaven.

Maybe these Christians know their Bibles better than Blow does: In his most explicit discussion of Judgment Day (Matthew 25:31-46), the Jesus of the Gospels describes the Son of Man saying on his return: 

Come, you who are blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.

...Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.

Note the lack of any reference to believing in Jesus. Blow suggests that "many Christians apparently view their didactic text as flexible." If by "flexible" he means open to varying interpretations, that's obviously true.  But Blow seems to think that a "literal" interpretation of the Bible requires one to believe that Jesus was not speaking literally when he said that helping other people alone could get you into heaven.

The Washington Post recently published an editorial praising the city's charter schools, claiming that those schools' students outperform their public school counterparts "not because they come from more privileged backgrounds but because the charters are free to innovate and implement practices that work." The editorial pointed to an analysis the paper did that found the city's charter school students doing better on tests, attendance and graduation.

"Clearly," the editorial argues, "the 'no-excuses' innovations of the best charters make a difference: longer school days, summer classes, an inclusive culture of parental involvement, and the power to hire teachers who are committed to a school's philosophy and dismiss teachers who aren't up to the job."

When it comes to schools, the private-is-better mantra is a popular one in corporate media. But is the Post editorial's conclusion really so "clear" from the paper's news analysis? That article pointed to a big factor unmentioned by the editorial board: money.

The charters get about $3000 more per pupil per year than the public schools, which "can provide a crucial advantage over traditional public schools." The schools also have access to loans and grants that the public schools don't. The article described some of the larger charter schools' multi-million dollar surpluses that have gone to hiring additional staff and high-tech equipment.

And guess what? "The extra funding, it turns out, coincides with improved academic performance. The schools with the largest surpluses have ranked at the top on test scores."

It's hard to get much clearer than that--but it seems putting more funding towards public schools is not nearly as appealing to the Post editorial board as allowing more schools to lay off teachers at will.

For a change of pace from his incessant immigrant bashing, CNN's Lou Dobbs recently exclaimed over "unusual storms" and snow in Las Vegas, Southern California and Arizona's mountains. This "unbelievable" evidence has Dobbs wondering: "So what are those folks talking about global warming?"

Posting at Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog (12/19/08), Steve Benen describes how, "to 'discuss' the subject, Dobbs invited CNN meteorologist Chad Myers and Heartland Institute science director Jay Lehr onto the show":

Not surprisingly, Lehr told Dobbs what he wanted to hear, starting with an anecdote about Lehr's sky diving hobby.

LEHR: I have jumped out of a plane in Ohio every month for 31 years, and I track the weather constantly to find out if I can make it out of a plane. And I can tell you, the weather the last ten years hasn't been significantly different than the ten years before that or the ten years before that. It has been -- it is always changes what the weather is about. And to say that it has to do with global warming is really more of a joke than anything else. Why people are so alarmed about it, I have no clue.

DOBBS: You know, that's fascinating.

Before ending the segment, Lehr added that the sun, "not man," warms the planet, and that "right now," we're "going in to cooling rather than warming."

Let's quickly highlight reality here. First, it's not the sun. Second, snowfall on one day in one part of the country does not reflect "climate." Third, an anecdote about sky-diving experimentation is not indicative of climate science. Fourth, though Dobbs apparently forgot to mention it, the Heartland Institute is a conservative think tank subsidized by ExxonMobil, not an independent scientific organization, and Jay Lehr's background is in "groundwater hydrology," not climate science.

Oh, and fifth, this is not "fascinating."

Benen notes that "the bizarre commentary from CNN's Chad Myers wasn't much better. He argued that it's 'arrogant' to think that humans can affect the climate ('Mother nature is so big,' he said) and that people who accept global warming are only looking at 'a hundred years worth of data, not millions of years that the world has been around.'"

Benen wonders, "Why is this man a CNN meteorologist?"  But the sad fact is that a lot of TV weather people think their experience predicting local snowfalls makes them more expert on climate change than actual climate scientists, and often peddle similar nonsense on the air.

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "In Denial on Climate Change: Leading Pundits Reject Science on Global Warming" (5-6/07) by Peter Hart

FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and longtime FAIR associate Norman Solomon have compiled their 17th annual list of "P.U.-litzer Prizes" (OpEd News, 12/18/08). Among this year's "stinkiest media performances":

HOT FOR OBAMA PRIZE -- MSNBC's Chris Matthews

This award sparked fierce competition, but the cinch came on the day Obama swept the Potomac Primary in February--when Chris Matthews spoke of "the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often."

BEYOND PARODY PRIZE--Fox News

In August, a FoxNews.com teaser for the O'Reilly Factor program said: "Obama bombarded by personal attacks. Are they legit? Ann Coulter comments."...

GUTTER BALL PUNDITRY AWARD -- Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball

In program after program during the spring, Matthews repeatedly questioned whether Obama could connect with "regular" voters--"regular" meaning voters who are white or "who actually do know how to bowl." He once said of Obama: "This gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody. But the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder."

And there's plenty more malodorous journalism to be found in FAIR's extensive archive on corporate news coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

With the recent release of a tape recorded President Lyndon Johnson concerned that Richard Nixon's people had avoided Vietnam peace negotiations for domestic political purposes, Paul Jay (Real News, 12/20/08) interviews Consortium News's Robert Parry on "evidence of Nixon's treasonous legacy and the media's choice to ignore it":

PJ: So you would think this should be a... real confirmation--the story's kind of been out there, in some articles and some books--but to have this kind of confirmation that we didn't have before, one would think should have been a screaming headline all over the newspapers and all over television. But there's one AP report and not much else....

RP: This has never been focused on with the degree of attention it deserves. And the last chapter on this was when the Associated Press does report what Johnson said in these newly released tapes, but the story is treated as not much news.... And none of the background is put into this AP story. It simply states "Johnson made this claim" and there's some suggestion that maybe Nixon didn't know about it--which is, I guess, based on the AP's own impression--without going back and saying, "Hold it, there's a lot of evidence about this and it shows, and it should be something that Americans now accept as real history."

Read Bob Parry's article in the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Journalists 'Humbled' but Unrepentant: Despite Iraq Disaster, Questioning Authority Still Taboo" (11-12/07) by Robert Parry, Sam Parry & Nat Parry

This week, the FAIR radio show CounterSpin (12/19/08) has constitutional rights advocate Michael Ratner countering the fact that,

when the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report finding former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high officials responsible for abusive treatment of detainees in Guantánamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, with few exceptions, the media played the story down, preferring, for instance, righteous anger over embroiled Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

Then, education writer Alfie Kohn discusses Obama cabinet pick Arne Duncan:

Obama's pick for education secretary drew more attention than you might have expected--in large part because the press corps was lobbying Obama to make a more conservative choice. What do the media mean when they talk about things like education "reform"?

See the related FAIR Media Advisory: "Media's Failing Grade on Education 'Debate'" (12/16/08)

Veteran publisher Tom Engelhardt's rundown on the decimation of book publishers' staff (TomDispatch, 12/17/08) compares "collapsing worlds" with newspapers--"a disaster area long before the greatest downturn 'since the Great Depression' hit":

The bad news about the news has been flooding in for years, even if it's worsened under the weight of more general economic tough times. If, for instance, you were even reading a newspaper in print on Tuesday, December 9 (and, if you're under 25, odds are you weren't), then you undoubtedly caught the story about the debt-ridden Tribune Company, a news monster which owns, among other properties, the Los Angeles Times (almost half its staff lost since 2001), the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune (almost a third of its staff lost since 2005) and even the Chicago Cubs, filing for "bankruptcy."...

Only the week before the Tribune filed, America's largest newspaper company Gannett announced a 10 percent cut in its workforce due to "declining revenue," on top of a 3 percent cut last August (neither evidently being part of the 5 percent "trim" at its flagship paper USA Today in late November). And don't get me started on the rest of America's newspapers. At least 30 of them are for sale right now, including the 149-year-old Rocky Mountain News, which lost $11 million in the first nine months of this year, with few buyers in sight.

Writing that the Tribune Co. "even had the nerve to claim that bankruptcy meant it could 'cease all severance payments and deferred compensation to employees who have been laid off.' (Pity the poor reporters who took those buyouts)," Engelhardt notes that, ironically, "it also hired the investment bank Lazard and the law firm Sidley Austin as consultants. In case you're worried, they surely will get paid."

Listen to FAIR's recent radio program CounterSpin: "Bob McChesney on Tribune Bankruptcy" (12/12/08)

I was intrigued to see this in a New York Times editorial yesterday (12/18/08):

The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the "war on terror"--the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.

I doesn't seem like the paper generally puts the concept of the "war on terror" at arm's length. Looking at the last few months, the most popular editorial construction seems to be something like this (11/16/08):

Troops and equipment are so overtaxed by President Bush's disastrous Iraq War that the Pentagon does not have enough of either for the fight in Afghanistan, the war on terror's front line, let alone to confront the next threats.

The description of Afghanistan as "the front line of the war on terror" (sans scare quotes) comes up a lot. There was also this codswallop from an op-ed by Philip Bobbitt (12/13/08), from the National Security Council:

The ''war on terror'' is not a nonsensical public relations slogan, however unwelcome this conclusion may be to Pentagon planners or civil-liberties advocates. The notion of such a war puzzles us--after all, who would sign the peace treaty? -- because we are so trapped in 20th-century expectations about warfare. But success in war does not always mean the capitulation of an enemy government (as we have seen in Iraq); rather, it varies with the war aim.

In a war against terror, the aim is not the conquest of territory or the advancement of ideology, but the protection of civilians. We are fighting a war on terror, not just terrorists.

Man, we must suck at it, then! Bobbitt went on to claim that "Mexico is potentially our Pakistan...."

Then there's book critic Michiko Kakutani (10/6/08), terkeling John le Carre:

Although the story is enlivened by Mr. le Carre's intimate knowledge of tradecraft and his psychological insights into the reasons people become spies, informers and believers in a cause, the novel is flawed, like his 2004 book, Absolute Friends, by an overly schematic narrative devised to drive home the author's contempt for the take-no-prisoners methods employed by the United States in the war on terror.

Seems like the folks at the New York Times are pretty comfortable bandying the term about--unless it's time to look thoughtful on torture.