As George W. Bush prepares to leave office, Ian Williams (Guardian.co.uk, 11/18/08) thinks that

what is really in order is some sort of pardon and apology to Dan Rather, who CBS's cowardly management squeezed from 60 Minutes for telling the truth about Bush's war record. Rather's suit against them, with its accompanying subpoenas, has now revealed that in their eagerness to throw a sacrificial victim to the swiftboating bloggers with their escorting media sharks, CBS management actually considered such paragons of journalistic objectivity as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol, William Safire and William Buckley for the investigating panel. Their concern was to counter the "reputation" of the network's liberal bias.

Williams tells us that the eventual appointee--"Dick Thornburgh, the Republican former attorney general appointed by the deserter-in-chief's dad"--did not come from this boggling list, "although apparently Roger Ailes, Fox News's brain was also under consideration."

It should be remembered that Thornburgh's stint as attorney general was marked by virulent hostility to journalists--making his appointment to CBS's panel far more explicable as an attempt to "mollify the right"--which was a broad-based CBS strategy--than as a serious effort to examine Rather's reporting.

See the FAIR publication Extra! Update: "The Real Lessons of 'Memogate'" (2/05) by Peter Hart & Jim Naureckas

In looking at "How Our Gutless Media Helped Trigger the Credit Crisis," Trudy Lieberman examines (Columbia Journalism Review, 11/20/08) "just one piece of evidence of the decline of the consumer movement, the rise of consumerism to replace it and the media's role in both trends." Lieberman recalls then-New York State Gov. Eliot Spitzer's veto of a state bill to curb exactly the type of usurious credit card interest rates which "pile on debt that has contributed to mortgage foreclosures."

Whatever the merits of Spitzer's argument, it was an important discussion for New York and the rest of the country. But his veto was like the proverbial tree falling in the empty forest. The AP's Albany bureau sent out no story, and the news editor does not recall why. A Nexis search found only one brief mention of the veto, in the Albany Times Union.

In short, "Spitzer sided with the banks and the media were silent."

Read about Lieberman's Slanting the Story: The Forces that Shape the News in Extra!: "Inside the News Shapers: New Book Exposes Right-Wing Think Tanks' Media Strategy" (7-8/00) by Peter Hart

There are two major conflicts in Africa that receive U.S. media attention. In Congo, it is estimated that 5 million people have died in a conflict that has raged for about 12 years. In the Darfur region of Sudan, estimates can range from 200,000 to 400,000. The Darfur conflict, though, has received much more press attention than Congo-- which serves to explain why Newsweek magazine would run a (short) article about Congo under the headline "Africa’s Other Holocaust."

Under the headline "Pollsters Debate America's Political Realignment," the Washington Post's Robert Kaiser tries to weigh the arguments about the political makeup of the United States in light of the 2008 election. But Kaiser's rendition of this debate only serves to confuse matters.

There are basically two sides to this clash: those who say the country is still "center-right," politically speaking, and those who think the country is moving in a more progressive direction. Kaiser seems aware that the latter group is probably more correct, but tries to undercut this conclusion:

The election results, the exit polls and the polling since Election Day all provide evidence for the liberals' refutation of this conventional wisdom, but the argument is complicated by the fact that it is conducted by ideological commentators and concerns a country that has never been very ideological.

It's not unusual that liberal commentators might try to make this argument; why this is a problem is not clear.

Kaiser gets some credit for discussing the problems of relying on exit polling about how voters categorize themselves (as liberal, conservative or moderate). Since these reponses are often cited by the "center-right" crowd (because more voters say they are "conservative" than "liberal"), he's pointing to one more weakness in their argument.

But Kaiser still doesn't want to render judgment. He writes:

Whatever the appropriate label, substantial majorities of the voters of 2008 want the war in Iraq to end as soon as possible. Large majorities favor affordable health insurance for everyone, a fairer distribution of wealth and income, and higher taxes on the rich. They want to preserve traditional Social Security. They want more effective government regulation of the financial sector.

Really now--how hard would it be to characterize a voter who wants to withdraw from Iraq, raise taxes on the wealthy and provide healthcare for all? Kaiser seems to need the argument to remain cloudy-- he summons up one polling question to shore up the idea that things are still unsettled:

The same exit poll also asked which of two statements respondents agreed with: "On healthcare, we need to act boldly to address the problems" or "On healthcare, we need to act step-by-step to address the problems." Forty-six percent agreed with the first statement, but 50 percent endorsed the second.

Such flashes of native caution or conservatism are common.

That response seems to say less about "flashes of native caution or conservatism," and more about a confusingly worded survey question-- especially since it's so out of line with other polling on the same issue.

In a sense, the debate about the "center-right" or "center-left" America has to remain unsettled in the corporate media. If it weren't, people might catch on to the fact that much of the media leans to the right on these core issues.

The New York Times' Week in Review section yesterday (11/23/08) gathered a group of op-eds under the heading "Transitions," which they described as "a series of Op-Ed articles by experts on the most formidable issues facing the new president." The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the topics under examination; we've examined who gets to weigh in on such matters before.

The Times yesterday ran seven pieces. Readers were treated to the thoughts of ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi (who, you might remember, peddled many of the false stories about Iraqi WMD) and leading neo-con Fred Kagan from the American Enterprise Institute. Also contributing was Peter Mansoor (a former executive officer to General David Petraeus) and Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies who was a somewhat reluctant supporter of the Iraq War.

Another Times contributor, author Rory Stewart, also initially supported the Iraq War; he now questions the wisdom of a "surge" in Afghanistan. The final perspective permitted in the Times was that of Linda Robinson, a former reporter at U.S. News & World Report who recently wrote a book about David Petraeus.

In other words, of the seven perspectives offered by the Times, three were enthusiastic Iraq hawks (in the cases of Rumsfeld and Chalabi, that's an understatement).  One other-- Cordesman-- was an important voice in elite foreign policy debate who supported the invasion. Another contributor worked for Petraeus. Those perspectives are "balanced," so to speak, by a pro-invasion author and a journalist who seems to advocate a rather middle-of-the-road perspective.

Where were the critics who opposed the Iraq War? Those who advocate a more rapid pace of U.S. troop withdrawal? How about someone who cautioned against the invasion of Afghanistan? Those thinkers are out there, of course; they just don't seem to make it into the New York Times very often.

Glenn Greenwald delineates for Salon readers (11/21/08, ad-viewing required) the implications of the Committee to Protect Journalists including a prisoner of U.S. forces on their list of "six journalists who have faced down persecution and grave danger in their line of work":

So, to recap the award winners: We have a reporter persecuted by the Ugandan government; another imprisoned by the Castro regime; a journalist-defending lawyer who faced down the intimidation and threats of Robert Mugabe; two journalists who work at great risk of being attacked by the Taliban; and one who was arrested by the U.S. military and then imprisoned for two years without any charges or due process of any kind by the United States government. As happens so frequently now, that is the company we keep.

But don't count on corporate reporters to take anything about Bilal Hussein's imprisonment to heart by, for instance, canning their them-not-us perspective on foreign oppression.

Listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Dave Tomlin on Bilal Hussein" (11/30/07)

Don't miss this week's offering on the FAIR radio program CounterSpin (11/21/08):

The victory of Proposition 8 in California has, at least for the moment, put the brakes on gay marriage in that state. The post-election recriminations are flying, but the main story we're hearing is that black voters turned out in droves--to support Barack Obama, and to defeat gay marriage rights. Is that narrative correct? We'll ask journalist Kai Wright.

And:

According to the New York Times, Newsweek and NPR, for Barack Obama to keep his promise to close the Guantánamo detention camp will be next to impossible, extremely complicated and easier said than done. You could get the idea that some journalists would like to put off resolving the problems created by a Bush policy to isolate detainees and totally deprive them of rights. We'll discuss Guantánamo, Obama's promise and the media with journalist Andy Worthington, the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.

Also check out FAIR's archives by subject: Race and Racism, Homophobia and Civil Liberties.

CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn confesses (Nation, 11/19/08) to being moved to violent thoughts "while listening to the McLaughlin Group, all of whom presumably haul home at least $200,000 a year, as they deplored the unconscionable wages of line workers in Detroit":

The same urge flares up when reading the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. As a matter of economic principle, the WSJ's editors have always taken a stern line about letting the weak die in the snow....

But when it came to prostrate bankers, the Angel of Mercy descended from heaven and took up residence in the WSJ's editorial suite. On September 27 an editorial approved of the $700 billion banker bailout. Then came GM's crisis. On November 10 the Angel of Mercy quit the Journal's editorial page abruptly: "We hope Messrs. Bush and Paulson just say no."...

You see, shoveling money at Goldman Sachs and the other titans of Wall Street constitutes systemic rescue of the billionaires vital to national well-being and self-esteem. Stabilizing the remaining core of America's industrial base, particularly a core infested by people with union cards, is quite another matter.

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "20 Reasons Not to Trust the Journal Editorial Page" (9-10/95) by Jim Naureckas & Steve Rendall

In a column in the Baltimore Sun, journalism professor John F. Kirch does a quick tally of coverage of third-party presidential candidates in 2008:

According to a basic Lexis/Nexis database search of election coverage from August 5 to November 5, the Washington Post and the New York Times published a combined 3,576 news stories, editorials, op-eds, photographs and letters to the editor about Mr. Obama and 3,205 items about Mr. McCain. By contrast, the two dailies published only 36 items about independent Ralph Nader, 22 about Libertarian Bob Barr, five about Green Cynthia McKinney and three about the Constitution Party's Chuck Baldwin.

Why is this a problem? Kirch argues:

The news media are allowing themselves to be co-opted by the Democrats and Republicans into viewing campaigns solely through the prism of the two-party system. This means that the major parties control which issues are permitted into the debate, thus denying the public a chance to hear proposals that might seem extreme today but could gain traction in the future if only voters had an opportunity to consider them more seriously. Remember, third parties have been the catalyst for many reforms throughout American history, including the abolition of slavery, tough child-labor laws, free public education, strong business regulations, direct election of senators and women's suffrage.

For more, see FAIR's "More Than a Two-Person Race," 10/21/08

Blogging communications attorney Harold Feld (WetMachine, 11/14/08) thinks he

missed a class in law school. Not once in my Administrative Law class did my professor ever tell me that you could respond to a federal investigation by telling the agency, "We know you have authority, but we'd rather not answer these questions because you are a great big meany." But then, I'm not working for the cable industry, which has repeatedly shown it has trouble with the concept that federal law really applies to them, and that the FCC is supposed to be a regulator, not a lap dog.

Today's episode of "I Can't Believe the Chutzpah" comes from the ongoing investigation by the FCC over whether cable operators are using the confusion around the DTV conversion to push users into buying digital tier service... or just generally violating the law by changing channel line-ups without notice to either subscribers or local franchise authorities, migrating stuff off basic tier without warning, or charging for additional tiers to get channels required by law to be available on the basic tier.

So, "after getting a bunch of consumer complaints... the FCC sent out a bunch of letters of inquiry to the named cable companies" and said "they had two weeks to reply." The cable conglomerates' belligerent response?--they simply "sent a lengthy letter to the FCC explaining that the FCC is not allowed to investigate the cable industry."

Via Beat the Press: Saying he "might expect it from right-leaning commentators like Will Wilkinson" but not "from someone like Mark Perry, who lives in Flint, Michigan," Felix Salmon of Portfolio notes (11/18/04) that "all of them are perpetuating the meme that the average GM worker costs more than $70 an hour, once you include health and pension costs." Just one problem--"It's not true":

The average GM assembly-line worker makes about $28 per hour in wages, and I can assure you that GM is not paying $42 an hour in health insurance and pension plan contributions. Rather, the $70 per hour figure (or $73 an hour, or whatever) is a ridiculous number obtained by adding up GM's total labor, health and pension costs, and then dividing by the total number of hours worked. In other words, it includes all the healthcare and retirement costs of retired workers....

As of 2007, the UAW represented 180,681 members at Chrysler, Ford and General Motors; it also represented 419,621 retired members and 120,723 surviving spouses. If you take the costs associated with 721,025 individuals and then divide those costs by the hours worked by 180,681 individuals, you're going to end up with a very large hourly rate. But it won't mean anything, unless you're trying to be deceptive.

We take exception to one part of Salmon's otherwise strong debunking. He says, "You certainly wouldn't expect to see it in the New York Times." Yeah, we would.

Responding (11/13/08) to those "who would argue that the election of the first African-American president signaled the country has moved past the need to be concerned about racial equity," PBS.org's Dori J. Maynard writes that

it is true that some television networks put on air more African-American commentators during the campaign. Those additional voices, however, were not numerous enough to avoid the frequent appearance of all-white panels to discuss race relations. That lamentable pattern and other media missteps, such as a New York Times story on the shifting African-American landscape that did not quote any African-American sources, were vivid examples of why the traditional media's reputation and credibility depend on their ability to diversify their ranks as quickly as possible.

How far back does this "lamentable pattern" go? See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "A Different Race: The Black Press Reveals Gaps in Mainstream Election Coverage" (11-12/04) by Jacqueline Bacon

Glenn Beck has been telling a personal story illustrating what he says is a particularly intense level of hatred on the left.

According to the newly signed Fox News host, he was verbally assaulted by a truck driver while standing in line at a Wendy's restaurant at a truck stop. Writing on his blog, Beck says the truck driver called him a "racist bigot," blaming the talk show host and conservatives "for everything." Wrote Beck, "The hatred was palpable." As his security detail stood between him and his assailant, Beck says the truck driver ended his rant by threatening to run him over.

It was ugly stuff, and Beck was shocked by the level of hate: "I wanted to say, I think you have me mistaken for someone else, but I knew he knew who I was and he just hated me for who I was…. Wow. Is this who we've become? Is this who we've become?"

Concluding his appeal to civility, Beck explained that he wouldn't treat his enemies the way the truck driver treated him: "I could stand in line with Michael Moore and I wouldn't say that to him. I would say some things to Michael Moore, but it wouldn't be that. Is this who we've become? I believe there is a cauldron of hatred on both sides, but the left is quite frightening."

Beck might not say such things to Moore in person, but he has expressed a desire to murder Moore to his nationally syndicated radio audience (Glenn Beck Program, 5/18/05):

I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out--is this wrong?

And Beck wasn't exactly the picture of civility two years earlier when he told his listeners that he prayed nightly for anti-war presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to be consumed by fire (Glenn Beck Program, 3/16/03): "Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames."

Beck repeated his Wendy's story on Fox's On the Record (11/17/08)--only in this version, Beck said Fox News was among the targets of the truck driver's vitriol. As he explained to host Greta Van Susteren, the story illustrated that "the left is just unbelievably out of control right now."

Whatever the truth is about Beck's truck driver story, his own record of hatred, including a prediction that in 10 years time "Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West," is not merely a matter of angry words spouted in a fast food shop, but a matter of nationally broadcast hatred.

In "Clout Has Plunged for Automakers and Union, Too," the New York Times' Micheline Maynard makes this curious observation:

[GM CEO Rick ] Wagoner and Ron Gettelfinger, head of the U.A.W., appeared on local TV in Detroit this week, but no Detroit representatives landed spots on the Sunday morning talk shows out of Washington. Senator Levin was their primary spokesman on NBC's Meet the Press and Face the Nation on CBS.

While it might be odd for a CEO like Wagoner to have trouble getting on the TV talkshow circuit, the lack of a labor spokesperson on the Sunday shows is pretty much par for the course. It would have actually been really odd for a labor leader to be invited on a network chat show. From Extra!’s survey of Sunday morning guests in 1995-96 and 1999:

Except for presidential candidate Ralph Nader, not a single one of the 364 guests invited during the 19 months studied was an environmentalist or consumer advocate. John Sweeney and Thomas Donahue, candidates for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, were the only guests who were labor leaders. Instead of worker representatives, the shows invited the CEO of United Airlines, the CEO of Continental Airlines, a Goldman Sachs analyst, retired basketball stars and political satirists.

Or as MSNBC host Chris Matthews once put it:

I watch Sunday television.... I never see a really good articulate labor leader on television. What happened to the George Meanys and the Walter Reuthers we grew up with? Where are the strong, articulate voices of the working person, the working family out there? That voice that you're talking about, who worries about trade policy, who worries about tax policy, who worries about being trained for the job, where are those voices on Sunday?

And:

They don't have speakers. I'm telling you, I can't think right now of a labor leader that could match wits with a Dick Cheney on television. They don't want to get out there and debate like they used to.... Who are the great spokesmen against this administration's trade policies or this administration's tax policies? Who are they?

Of course, the idea that labor leaders--even those with Cheney-like wit--don't want to be on TV is strange. It's more likely that they're not being asked.

Via A Tiny Revolution, a reminder from Vanity Fair website contributor Peter Newcomb (11/14/08) of the unspoken motivations of a bazillionaire pundit writing an enormously influential column on economics:

It would be easy to dismiss today's rant... by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman as yet another ideological tirade against the U.S. automobile industry. But based on the bad news coming out of shopping-mall owner General Growth Properties [GGP], it is no wonder Friedman is feeling crankier than usual. That's because the author's wife, Ann (née Bucksbaum), is an heir to the General Growth fortune. In the past year, the couple--who live in an 11,400-square-foot mansion in Bethesda, Maryland--have watched helplessly as General Growth stock has fallen 99 percent, from a high of $51 to a recent 35 cents a share. The assorted Bucksbaum family trusts, once worth a combined $3.6 billion, are now worth less than $25 million.

But Newcomb doesn't "expect Friedman to go from Beirut to Jerusalem begging for money. The distinguished columnist... is still said to get at least $50,000 per speaking engagement on top of the millions he makes writing best-sellers."