Declaring (10/22/08) that "it's hard not to read all the editorial plaudits for [Colin] Powell as something of an indictment of the opinion writers complimenting his courage," Lester Feder also chides his own CJR.org for relative silence until,

in his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, Powell cited the persistent right-wing "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim" rumors as one of the reasons that he is withholding support for Senator John McCain. "Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" Powell asked indignantly, "The answer’s no, that’s not America."

Maureen Dowd amplified Powell's comments in her New York Times column today. "It was a tonic to hear someone push back so clearly on ugly innuendo," she writes. But her praise raises the question--couldn’t someone with a New York Times op-ed column have provided that tonic without Colin Powell's prodding?

Feder's disdain is apparent when noting that, "while 'secret Muslim' rumors have been circulating for two years, it's only after Colin Powell goes on television that the opinion pages wake up."

See FAIR's new report Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation

With Glenn Beck's recent departure from CNN Headline News for Fox News Channel, there's an idea going around that his Headline News show was at least a ratings success. Beck "was arguably the network’s most conservative political voice and stirred up both controversy and better ratings in his time slot," wrote the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Kristi Swartz (10/21/08). Fox News, in announcing Beck's move, boasted that his show "has grown more than 200 percent in viewership in both the 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. timeslots since its 2006 debut."

The fact is, though, that aside from being a hatemonger who threatens entire religious groups with concentration camps if they fail to become vigilante killers (I'm not kidding--see FAIR Action Alert, 12/5/06), Beck is not a particularly popular TV personality. More than a year ago, Media Matters' Eric Boehlert (7/31/07) was asking "How Low (in the Ratings) Can Glenn Beck Go?"--and pointing out that his ratings were worse than Paula Zahn's, whom CNN let go for low ratings.

Beck's ratings have improved this year, it's true--but so have his competitors', due to the intense interest in the presidential race, leaving Beck consistently a distant fourth in the cable news ratings. To take a more or less random day, look at October 14, two days before the announcement that he was switching networks. (The day before the announcement was a debate day, so the numbers weren't typical.) According to TV Newser, a website that tabulates the Nielsen ratings, he got 575,000 viewers for his 7 p.m. slot--compared with 1.1 million for Lou Dobbs on CNN, 1.4 million for Chris Matthews on MSNBC and more than 2 million for Shepard Smith on Fox.  In the 25-54 demographic--which is what matters from a business perspective, since those are the viewers that advertisers want to pay for--Beck did slightly better, but still got beat roughly two-to-one by his rivals.

After Beck, Headline News would show Nancy Grace, the tabloid-style crime show.  On October 14--and this was not so unusual--Grace got about triple the audience that Beck got, in both total viewers and in "the demo"--and was actually competitive with the shows on at the same time on the other cable news networks. (She came in third, behind the O'Reilly Factor and Keith Olbermann's Countdown, but ahead of Campbell Brown on CNN.)

Then Headline News would re-air Beck's show--and would typically lose a lot of Grace's audience; on October 14, Headline News went from 1.5 million at 8 to 667,000 at 9. Meanwhile, the other news networks were maintaining or growing their audiences, leaving Beck with about one-quarter the total viewers of Hannity & Colmes, and roughly one-third the viewers of Larry King Live and Rachel Maddow.

Then, at 10, the rerun of Nancy Grace added 400,000 people to Headline News' audience.

That's just one night, but that seems to be the basic pattern: Beck did much worse in the ratings than the shows he was competing against, and much worse than the show both his primetime slots led into.  Perhaps CNN and Headline News will take the lesson that at the very bottom of the barrel, there isn't much worth eating.

(It's certainly possible that Beck will do better on Fox, where he may inherit an audience from his lead-in that is more in tune with his rantings.  That doesn't mean it was a good business decision for CNN to hire him--or to keep him on the schedule for almost three years.)

Bill Scher of the Campaign for America's Future has some strong media criticism on AlterNet (10/23/08), focusing on an L.A. Times piece by Stephen Braun (10/23/08) that claims, as the headline says, "Obama and McCain in Denial About Deficits, Economists Say."

"The article repeatedly assumes budget deficits as unequivocally bad," Scher notes, even though "many economists support deficit spending in response to economic recessions." This deficit spending can take the form of new programs, tax cuts or a combination of the two--exactly the kind of "ambitious tax and spending plans" that Braun insists "the nation's economic crisis will take a heavy toll on."

The idea that the only respectable response to an economic slowdown is an austerity program has been dubbed "neo-Hooverism"--and it's remarkably popular in the punditocracy.

Beat the Press blogger Dean Baker  (10/23/08) finds an instance of economic reporting so egregious it "calls for an extra long arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" The offending occurrence: "NPR just reported on Morning Edition that the markets are plummeting because investors are realizing the seriousness of the damage caused by the credit crunch." Baker sets 'em straight:

The economy is not in a recession because of the credit crunch. The economy is going into a recession because of the crash of the housing bubble. Homeowners are losing on the order of $8 trillion in housing bubble wealth, $110,000 per homeowner. For most families, this is most of their wealth.

It was this housing-bubble wealth that drove consumption and pushed the savings rate to near zero over the last four years. Now this wealth is disappearing and people are cutting back their consumption. In many cases, they no longer have the ability to consume, since many households were borrowing directly against their home equity to finance their consumption. In other cases, they now realize the need to save, since they are approaching retirement and have nothing to rely upon other than their Social Security.

Reminding us that "NPR completely missed the housing bubble on the way up" since "they relied almost exclusively on economists that did not know what they were talking about," Baker pleads: "Can't they find an economist who at least now can recognize the impact of the collapse of the housing bubble? The horror, the horror."

Listen to FAIR's weekly radio program CounterSpin: Dean Baker on the Financial Crisis (3/28/08)

After quoting New York City Councilmember Charles Barron "offering the simplest route to continued democracy: Do nothing.... The people have spoken twice [against extending mayoral term limits] already. Why not just leave things as they are?", Tom Robbins tells Village Voice readers (10/21/08) that

Barron's simple questions were matched only by the New York Times' fearless editorial page. Alone of the city's dailies, the Times refused to bend its principles. By changing the rules at this late date, the Times warned, the mayor "will tarnish his legacy and further weaken the systems of checks and balances that are essential to . . . democracy."

Uh, wait. Sorry, wrong day. That was the Times in August lecturing President Álvaro Uribe of Columbia "lest he become just another strongman" by grabbing a third term in violation of his country's constitution.

In reality, the Times editors on October 1 issued an incoherent defense of their publisher's billionaire friend and his legacy-tarnishing and checks/balances-weakening.

FAIR contributor Mark Crispin Miller and David Swanson are among those signed onto an "Open Letter to the Media from the Media" that asserts (We Do Not Consent, 10/23/08) that "federal election results are unprovable, even though the media reports them as fact." Citing how "electronic voting machines frequently produce results impossible in a legitimate election," the group offers evidence "such as John Kerry's negative 25 million votes in Youngstown, Ohio (November 2004), or Palm Beach County's 12,000 votes in excess of the number of voters (August 2008)," before telling fellow journalists that

we must challenge our industry to refuse to report as fact what can't be proven and hasn't been independently verified, particularly when the only source of the information is the government itself. The reality is that the media should be the greatest advocates of hand-counting paper ballots because this method of counting allows media greatest access to observing and documenting the process, affording the reported results the greatest credibility. Transparent coverage of a transparent counting process would create a basis for confidence in the reported results where none currently exists.

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "A 'Glitch' in Democracy: Coverage of Computer Voting Problems Too Little, Too Late?" (5-6/04) by Karen Charman

Russia writer Mark Ames notices (Nation, 10/22/08) that,

a couple of weeks ago, the New York Times slipped in a story that completely contradicted a narrative that it had been building up for two straight months, one that was leading America into another war--a so-called "New Cold War." The article exposed the awful authoritarian reality of Georgia's so-called democracy, painting a dark picture of President Mikhail Saakashvili's rule that repudiated the fairy tale that the Times and everyone else in the major media had been pushing ever since war broke out in South Ossetia in early August. That fairy tale went like this: Russia (evil) invaded Georgia (good) for no reason whatsoever except that Georgia was free. Putin hates freedom, and Saakashvili is the "democratically elected leader" of a "small, democratic country."...

And yet even as the hysteria gave way to serious questioning, and that dangerously simple narrative crumbled, the Times never recanted or corrected itself, never even had a fake mea culpa moment as it did after Iraq--an admission that came years too late. Instead of recanting, the Times took the sly road, slipping an article in between the meltdown stories that essentially told its readers, "Yeah, we screwed the pooch on Georgia, hope ya didn't notice, and, uh, have a nice day."

But some of us did notice; listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: Helena Cobban on Russia/Georgia Conflict (8/15/08)

The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression organization has named recently-freed reporter Sami al-Haj as a recipient of its 2008 International Press Freedom Award. The Indo-Asian News Service reviews the back story (10/23/08):

Held at Guantànamo Bay for six years, Sami al-Haj was freed on May 1 this year. Never formally charged, he was pressured to become an informant against Al Jazeera in exchange for a U.S. passport and release from Guantànamo Bay.

"Al-Haj refused and instead launched a year-long hunger-strike. The U.S. finally released him to Sudan, where he is now Al Jazeera's news producer for liberties and human rights affairs," the CJFE said, honoring him with its 11th annual award for courage and commitment to freedom of press.

In this context, CJFE chair Carol Off's comments bear no risk of sounding trite: "Our honorees embody the true essence of journalism and anti-censorship--their efforts send a strong message that the truth cannot be silenced."

Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: Andy Worthington on Guantànamo (5/16/08)

Analysts have projected that Barack Obama's ad spending would this week "surpass the $188 million Mr. Bush spent in his 2004 campaign."

During the last two weeks of the election, the Obama campaign has budgeted $30 million for ads in contested states, according to MSNBC. Last week alone, he also spent about $12 million on national networks and national cable channels.

While Obama's ad spending has far outpaced McCain's, McCain and the RNC have also been doing their bit to line corporate media coffers. Last week, McCain spent $9.4 million on ads in key battleground states, and this week MSNBC reports that he's spending more than that. The RNC is spending about $1 million a day between now and election day on pro-Republican/anti-Democrat ads.

Editor & Publisher (10/22/08) notes that Barack Obama is getting a wide lead in newspaper endorsements, winning 125 so far, by the newspaper trade journal's count, to McCain's 46. E&P further notes that this is, from a historical perspective, unusual.

John Kerry edged out Republican George W. Bush in 2004, 213-205, Bill Clinton got 149 endorsements to Bush the Elder's 125 in 1992, and in 1968 Lyndon Johnson was picked by newspapers over Barry Goldwater, 440-359. In the other 14 races since 1940, when E&P started keeping track, the Republican candidate has gotten more endorsements--calling twice for FDR to be replaced during World War II, hoping for Dewey to defeat Truman, liking Ike more than Stevenson.

Newspapers chose Nixon over Kennedy (and Humphrey and especially McGovern), passed over Carter for Ford and Reagan, called for Reagan's re-election over Mondale, and endorsed G.H.W. Bush over Dukakis. In more recent elections, Bob Dole was preferred to re-electing Clinton, and George W. Bush was seen as a better pick than Al Gore. Something to think about when you hear people talking about the "liberal media."

For over a week there have been huge indigenous protests against the Uribe government in Colombia, in which at least two protesters have been killed by police and more than 100 injured. Uribe denied that police were firing at protesters, until CNN got videotape that showed them doing exactly that.

How is the New York Times covering all of this? The paper's Andean bureau chief, Simon Romero, filed one report two days ago about a "whimsical riff on the bookmobile"—a guy who travels around rural Colombia on his donkeys, taking books to remote villages. (Other major papers have likewise reported nada on the protests.)

Writing at the Columbia Journalism Review's website (10/17/08), Elinore Longobardi points out the pure absurdity of Newsweek's persistence in the role of economic cheerleader:

In the October 20 cover story, Fareed Zakaria... explains the problem:

Two decades of easy money and innovative financial products meant that virtually anyone could borrow any amount of money for any purpose.

Then come the "we's":

If we wanted a bigger house, a better TV or a faster car, and we didn't actually have the money to pay for it, no problem. We put it on a credit card, took out a massive mortgage and financed our fantasies.

Fantasies like…. healthcare? Filling the gas tank? Food? Education? Childcare? The fact is that the costs of living have been rising while middle-class wages have been lagging--with growing income concentration at the very top.

Longobardi identifies "the fundamental problem with this piece" as being "that a single 'we' exists as an economic reality. We can all learn from this crisis, goes the argument, because we have all brought it on ourselves."

See FAIR's recent issue of Extra!: "Fareed Zakaria, Spokesperson for the Global Elite: Newsweek Pundit Presents Pro-Corporate Views as the Poor's Perspective" (7-8/08) by Roger Bybee

Describing the latest in "its continuing effort to combat hate and bigotry," the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee announces (10/22/08) it "has launched the 'Mail Back the Hate' campaign" to "counter the most recent attempt using the politics of fear as a tool to spread hate and division; the distribution of 28 million copies of "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West" via dozens of U.S. newspapers. This novel drive plans to

use some of the resources of the recently created Voter Protection Unit by calling on all its supporters to mail back the hate and send the copies of Obsession, with their packages, to the ADC Voter Protection Unit. Those sending the DVD and its package may cover or remove their name and mailing address if they wish. Upon receipt of the DVD's, ADC will mail back the packages of hate to the Clarion Fund.

Read more about corporate media complicity with racism and xenophobia at the web site for FAIR's new report that Unmasks the Smearcasters: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation.

Opening with the observation: Ralph "Nader, an independent, and [Bob] Barr, a Libertarian, are both on the ballot in 45 states. What they aren't on: TV," Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald (10/21/08) gives props to a new FAIR release (10/21/08) that, in Garvin's words,

raises another argument that deserves even greater consideration--that elections should be about ideas, and Barr and Nader would have injected some. The intellectual exhaustion of Barack Obama and John McCain was painfully obvious during their three televised debates. McCain is against waste in the Defense Department! (As if Obama favors it.) Obama wants to kill Osama bin Laden! (As if McCain doesn't.)

Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Dubious Debates: How Media Moderators Lowered the Level of Election '08" (7-8/08) by Jacqueline Bacon

As a new anti-"big government" documentary named IOUSA gets largely uncritical treatment from various newspapers around the U.S., the Center for Economic and Policy Research provides a typically valuable service in the form of a new report in which Dean Baker and David Rosnick give "a minute-by-minute viewers guide of the film to highlight potentially misleading assertions." In the CEPR's announcement (10/22/08), Baker says that,

while there are serious economic issues the nation needs to be concerned about, the views presented in IOUSA are misleading and one-sided.... The fact that ballooning healthcare costs are at the heart of our budget problem, not a Social Security program that will remain fully solvent through 2049 as implied in the movie, are just two examples of the misstatements found in the film....

The American public has a right to know the whole story behind our current economic conditions so that we're not railroaded into making bad policy choices.... Unfortunately, IOUSA gives less than a full accounting of the issues at play.

Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: Dean Baker on Social Security (10/5/07)