Wendy Norris of the Colorado Independent (2/2/09) reports that the "National Hispanic Media Coalition is urging the FCC to explore the extent, effects and potential counter-responses to ethnic bias on radio" and "probe whether there is a connection between odious radio yakking and hate crimes." The coalition's latest focus is a UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center report, "Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio," that

dished up some very concerning news, especially in light of a 2008 FBI report that anti-Hispanic hate crimes are on the rise among all offenses motivated by ethnicity/national-origin--from 529 offenses (or 42.8 percent of that year’s total) in 2003 to 775 offenses (61.7 percent of that year’s total) in 2007.

"The preliminary analysis reveals a systematic and extensive use of false facts, flawed argumentation, divisive language, and dehumanizing metaphors that are directed toward specific vulnerable groups. Thus far, the data show a recurring rhetorical pattern in which vulnerable groups were identified as antithetical to the core values attributed by the host to himself, his audience and the nation. These groups were then linked to social institutions that were presented as complicit. In effect, target groups are characterized as a direct threat to the listeners' way of life."

National hate-jock Michael Savage comes in for special attention for being, in Norris' words, "a one-man cottage industry for insulting Mexican immigrants, gays, Muslims and autistic children"; the other studied shows "found to perpetuate anti-Hispanic hate speech" are "the nationally syndicated Lou Dobbs Show and Los Angeles-based The John & Ken Show."

See the fair publication Extra! Update: "The Lou Dobbs Primary?: Media, Not Voters, Push Immigration Issue" (2/08) by Isabel Macdonald and the dedicated Michael Savage section of our special report on Smearcasters.

Yesterday the New York Times reported on the status of a new PBS news program Worldfocus. Amidst budget cuts at the New York station where it originates, the program has received some unusual financial support--a $1 million grant from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. What does the funder expect to get out of it? The Times reported that

the foundation expected Worldfocus to produce reports examining how other countries have dealt with the challenges facing the United States, like healthcare and Social Security reform.

The head of the foundation, David Walker, added that the show will maintain "total control over the content."
That's pretty standard language; what the Times should have explained is that the Peterson Foundation has for years specialized in scare-mongering over the future of Social Security and warning against the perils of deficit spending.

Thus, the public broadcaster is taking funds to cover a set of issues from an institution that spends its money advocating a specific political agenda on those issues. Is this OK at PBS? The answer would seem to be yes; over the years FAIR has documented the network's conflict-of-interest double standard.

Having been traveling, Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald (2/4/09, ad-viewing required) found himself "subjected to far more cable news over the last 24 hours than I typically endure in an entire month." Some results from Greenwald's impromptu casual survey:

The consensus regarding Tom Daschle seems to be that his withdrawal was necessitated due to (a) Obama's incessant nattering about ethical reform during the election; (b) the poor political imagery from having someone fail to pay his taxes on his chauffered car in a time of such economic turmoil; and (c) the unlucky confluence of similar scandals surrounding Obama nominees with tax problems.

The notion that Daschle would make a poor HHS secretary because he has so hungrily fed on the legalized sleaze and corruption that drives Washington literally doesn't seem to occur to them (with some exceptions). As usual, the last idea that ever occurs to media stars is that there is anything remotely wrong with the establishment of which they are such integral parts (and which they still claim with a straight face to scrutinize). This Friday night at 9:00 p.m., I'll be on Bill Moyers' Journal, along with NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, talking about how our political press functions and its relationship with (i.e., servitude to) political elites.

Listen to more in-depth analysis on the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Glenn Greenwald and Arianna Huffington on Right-Wing Myths" (7/4/08)

Politico.com's J.H. Snider (2/3/09) has some ideas for how "to ensure that think tanks don't abuse this public trust" manifested in the fact that "government has granted think tank donors vast tax breaks": "Media, government, donors and think tanks themselves must all do a better job of holding think tanks accountable."

Think tanks that don't uphold their own ethical claims should be subject to the same type of media scrutiny as the claims of any other major political, press or academic institution in American society. Examples of areas that need better coverage include think tanks' revolving door with government, functioning in orchestrated lobbying campaigns and claiming credit for others' work.

The media should adopt a richer terminology to categorize think tanks. The widespread categorization along a liberal to conservative continuum is inadequate. Think tanks should also be categorized by the extent to which they support academic, advocacy or journalistic norms. When think tanks operate without transparency, the burden of proof should be on think tanks, not journalists, to prove no undisclosed conflicts of interest, including in-kind contributions that do not directly flow through a think tank's financial books.

Though acknowledging that "think tanks often portray themselves as being all things to all people," Snider wants us to know that, "in fact, many are rife with ethical conflicts." See the latest annual study in FAIR's magazine Extra!: "The Incredible Shrinking Think Tank" (3-4/08) by Michael Dolny

The tiny West Los Angeles Daily Breeze gets props for running the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Munira Syeda critique (2/1/09) asserting that "any objective report card on the American media coverage of Israel's war on Gaza would have a grade of 'C' at best":

For the most part, the mainstream media reported on the conflict as a "tit for tat" between two equal opponents, with the blame resting squarely on the Palestinian side. The Israeli government's narrative was accepted as fact, even as Israel barred journalists from the battlefield.

Woefully missing were context and in-depth analyses of the invasion, a lack of willingness to ask tough questions and corroborate information. The media also seemed to ignore the fact that Israel turned Gaza, a region twice the size of Washington, D.C., crowded with 1.5 million people, into the largest open-air prison in the world.

By contrast, check out how the larger L.A. paper's concern for lives outside the U.S. fares in the new FAIR magazine Extra!: "FAIR Study: Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington’s Needs" (2/09) by Steve Rendall, Daniel Ward & Tess Hall

Norman Solomon's latest column (Creators Syndicate, 1/31/09) looks over a decade in which "the false truism of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction led to the horrors of the Iraq invasion and occupation," and "in the wake of 9/11, overall, the main journalistic outlets of the United States fed us falsehoods, hysteria, self-righteousness and endless permutations on rationales for waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq." Luckily Solomon noticed that "sometimes the best journalism is something else" that might not "pass the muster for soundbites or long-form televised discourse as historic events unfold":

During the second year of the "war on terrorism"--which was increasingly being shortened to the even vaguer "war on terror"--both [Joan] Didion and [Norman] Mailer were out with books that drew on assessments they had made in essays or interviews after 9/11.

Didion wrote: "We had seen, most importantly, the insistent use of September 11 to justify the reconception of America's correct role in the world as one of initiating and waging virtually perpetual war."

There, in one sentence, an essayist and novelist had captured the essence of a historical moment that vast numbers of journalists had refused to recognize--or, at least, had refused to publicly acknowledge. Didion put to shame the array of self-important and widely lauded journalists at the likes of the New York Times, the Washington Post, PBS and National Public Radio.

Viewing the sprawling post-2001 U.S. wars as one "war to end peace," Solomon thinks "the war seemed, by rhetorical design, to be inherently endless"--and the work of spreading of that rhetorical framing largely fell to all-too-eager corporate media; see the FAIR Media Advisory: "Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline" (3/19/07)

New York Times reporters Ethan Bronner and Sabrina Tavernise went to Gaza (2/4/09) to look into stories of civilian atrocities, and turned up some very powerful examples. Unfortunately, the impact of that reporting was undermined by the all-too-familiar tendency to "balance" these facts with criticisms of Palestinians.

For a piece that is attempting to get a better sense of who's "version" of events is more accurate, the Times reveals its bias from the start, rendering a white phosphorous attack on a house as a "phosphorus smoke bomb," the qualifier "smoke" helpfully suggesting that the bomb, which accidentally incinerated most of a family in their home, was being used legally as a smoke screen.

The Times underlines this point in the second graph by noting that the bomb was "intended to mask troop movements outside." According to whom? That claim is stated is as a fact, with no attribution.

The Times' reporters continue by writing:

The war in El Atatra tells the story of Israel’s three-week offensive in Gaza, with each side giving a very different version. Palestinians here describe Israeli military actions as a massacre, and Israelis attribute civilian casualties to a Hamas policy of hiding behind its people.

In El Atatra, neither version appears entirely true, based on 50 interviews with villagers and four Israeli commanders. The dozen or so civilian deaths seem like the painful but inevitable outcome of a modern army bringing war to an urban space. And while Hamas fighters had placed explosives in a kitchen, on doorways and in a mosque, they did not seem to be forcing civilians to act as shields.

OK--neither side's tale is completely accurate.  But after reading the Times' own account, it certainly seems that the Palestinian "version" is much closer to reality. Nonetheless, the reporters chalk up the differences as part of  "a desire to shape public opinion."

The Times goes on to review--and in some cases debunk--some of the Israeli justifications, including an attack on a school and the destruction of homes. The impact of that investigative work is, yet again, diluted by the framing of the big picture:

Both sides engage in their own denials.

Israelis argue that this war was especially tough because they had waited so long before taking action in response to the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza over eight years.

Yet after Israelis withdrew their settlers and soldiers from Gaza in late 2005, they killed, over the next three years in numerous military actions here, the same number of Gazans as those killed in this war--about 1,275.

For their part, few Palestinian villagers even acknowledged the existence of fighters here. Hamas is now asserting that it achieved a victory.

Let's compare those two forms of "denial." Israelis somehow have convinced themselves that their military has been exercising unusual restraint--while killing over 1,000 people before this latest round of attacks. Palestinians, meanwhile, deny the existence of Hamas fighters in their area-- though, by the Times' own reporting, in the very same article, Israeli claims about the numbers of Hamas fighters in this given area appear to be (in some cases) unfounded.

This equivalence comes amid stories of heart-wrenching suffering--an injured baby left to die on a tractor because Israeli soldiers were firing on family members trying to get to a hospital. Why dress up that kind of reporting with this sort of "he said, she said" balance? Perhaps the sense that the truth is too one-sided.

There's a trope that you often see in corporate media discussions of the stimulus plan: Yeah, but do you really want to spend money on that? It may have started with the misrepresented contraceptive plan--which seemed to be grounded in a traditional media fascination/embarrassment at anything involving sex--but now it's moved on to anything that...well, it's hard to say exactly what's objectionable about some of the programs media are objecting to.

Take this confused passage from an L.A. Times editorial (2/2/09):

But too many of the items have little apparent connection with economic growth--witness the nearly $5 billion for prevention, wellness, "comparative effectiveness research" and training in the health field, the $2.1 billion for Head Start and the $300 million to improve teacher quality, just to name a few examples from the 647-page House bill. Other provisions, such as the $64 billion for preventing layoffs at schools, colleges and "high priority" state programs, are about saving jobs, not creating them. In the short term, there may be no difference between preventing job cuts and increasing payrolls--one prevents a bad situation from worsening, the other makes a good situation better. But an investment this large should pay long-term dividends by increasing productivity, and that's hard to do when so much of the money is going toward maintaining the status quo.

Let me just say that if you don't see the connection between improving education and increasing productivity, than you really shouldn't be writing editorials about the economy.

Or here's a short item from the New York Times' Science section (2/3/09), a reprint of a blog post by Andrew Revkin:

Both [the Senate and House stimulus] bills would spend "$600 million for accelerating satellite development and acquisition, acquiring climate sensors and climate modeling capacity, and establishing climate data records." They also call for at least $140 million for climate modeling.

Regardless of the merits of such research, does it fit in a bill meant to exploit unoccupied labor in an economic downturn?

The short answer is: yes. A slightly longer answer is provided by economist Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 2/3/09):

Spending that is not stimulus is like cash that is not money. Spending is stimulus, spending is stimulus. Any spending will generate jobs. It is that simple. There is a question of whether the spending will go to areas that will provide benefits, long-term or short-term, to the economy, but there is no question that money that is spent will create jobs and therefore is stimulus.

Any reporter who does not understand this fact has no business reporting on the economy.

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric (1/27/09) introduced a segment on civilian casualties in Afghanistan by saying, "Our Elizabeth Palmer spoke with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who says the Taliban have become masters of manipulating public opinion."  That commander, Gen. David McKiernan, was CBS's sole on-camera source for the segment, making assertions like "we try to avoid [killing civilians]. The insurgent does it on purpose."

The U.S. military also served as an off-camera source for Palmer as well, cited for claims like "80 percent of Afghan civilians are killed by the Taliban.... But there's huge frustration that anytime the U.S. military is honest about its lethal mistakes, that's used against them."

Actually, though, the U.S. military is not the only source available on the question of how many people they kill. According to U.N. human rights monitors in Afghanistan, 2,100 civilians were killed there in 2008, and in the cases where responsibility could be determined, 41 percent were killed by U.S. or allied forces, including 455 civilians killed by airstrikes. That's an awful lot of "lethal mistakes."

Palmer concluded her report: "U.S. success in this complex war depends as much on controlling the message as deploying the guns." The U.S. military got to be the only source for a story about the deaths it causes: I'd say that's pretty good message control. The Taliban may be "masters of manipulating public opinion," but they've got nothing on CBS.

FAIR issued a press release today (2/4/09) challenging the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation over false and biased claims made by its ombud after the CBC came under pressure from a campaign launched by groups that advocate for uncritical coverage of the Israeli government.

The campaign was launched in response to CBC's October 23, 2008 airing of the 2003 educational documentary Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land (which can be viewed online here). The film cited a FAIR report on U.S. media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict, prompting the CBC's French-language radio ombud Julie Miville-Dechêne (12/08) to question the independence of FAIR’s research, referring to the organization as a "pro-Palestinian" and "militant group."

A peculiar finding, for as FAIR contributor Seth Ackerman, who authored the study, noted today in a letter to the CBC president, FAIR's spokespersons have appeared on several occasions on the CBC to discuss issues ranging from media coverage of the Kosovo War to radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Faulting the film for "failure to account for the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,"  Miville-Dechêne also cited a 2001 FAIR study that found only 4 percent of U.S. network news reports "concerning Gaza or the West Bank mention that these are occupied territories" as an example of an "anachronism" in the documentary, because Israel had subsequently withdrawn military forces and settlements from Gaza.

In a press release issued today, FAIR noted that

Under international law, however, Gaza remains an occupied territory, because Israel continues to control its borders. FAIR's finding of a chronic failure by leading American media organizations to mention the occupation is actually even more true today: A search of the Lexis Nexis database during the most recent war (12/2/08-1/18/09) reveals that the percentage of network news programs about Gaza or the West Bank that mentioned the occupation has fallen from 4 to only 2 percent.

While the ombud characterized FAIR's finding that only 4 percent of U.S. news reports surveyed in 2000 mentioned the occupation as "shocking," FAIR noted that

the coverage on CBC's own evening newscast, the National, from the same period was roughly equivalent, with only 5 percent of reports concerning Gaza or the West Bank referring to occupation.

The mischaracterization of FAIR was far from the only problem with the ombud's report. One of the "factual errors" listed by the ombud: "Repeatedly, the documentary mentions the 'illegal' occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel." As independent journalist Justin Podur writes, "This merely suggests that the ombudsman lacks the most cursory understanding of international law. And, possibly, an understanding of what constitutes a factual error."

Given that the role of an ombud is to uphold standards of factual accuracy, this is an alarming state of affairs indeed. And one that warrants action.

Contact info for the CBC-Radio Canada ombud and president:

Julie Miville-Dechêne
Ombud, Services français
Société Radio-Canada
Email: ombudsman@radio-canada.ca
514-597-4757

Vince Carlin
CBC English Ombud
P.O. Box 500, Station A
Toronto, Ontario M5W 1E6
Phone: 416-205-2978
Email: ombudsman@cbc.ca

Mr. Hubert T. Lacroix, President and CEO
CBC/Radio-Canada
P.O. Box 6000
Montreal QC H3C 3A8
ht.lacroix@cbc.ca

The roundtable on Sunday's Meet the Press (2/1/09) sure didn't look promising: Republican flat tax enthusiast Steve Forbes, former McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi and CNBC reporter Erin Burnett. It was Burnett, though, who delivered a head-scratching defense of the $18 billion bonuses recently doled out at Wall Street firms (many of which are still standing thanks only to the government's multi-billion dollar TARP bailout).

As Burnett explained, the populist anger was misplaced (see bold):

BURNETT: I understand the outrage, and you understand the populism. There are, though--well, how should we say this? The taxpayer money is not being used to pay the bonuses. I think people could understand if you work for a company--right? If the three us worked for a company, your guests, and I lost $10 billion but Steve [Forbes] over there, he made a billion dollars. So overall the company actually loses money, but Steve went and did his very darndest for that company and he made money. So should he be paid for his work? That's essentially what we're talking about here. And reasonable people could argue about this, but many reasonable people would conclude, yes, he should be paid for that. And I think, David, you've raised a fair point, which is maybe it's the whole use of the word "bonus."

GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

BURNETT: If you explained to people this is how they are compensated, that might make a difference. But there is also a fundamental misunderstanding. The taxpayer money isn't being taken and paid out in the form of bonuses. It goes in a, a separate pool, shall we say, a separate account for banks. So maybe people don't care about that distinction, but it is there.

Really? That's just a "separate pool"  money? As Adam Green and Media Matters point out, that sure doesn't seem to be the case. The original New York Times report (1/29/09) and several others rounded up by Media Matters quote several experts making exactly the opposite point-- that without the bailout funds, bonuses would have been much lower.

This isn't the first time Burnett's raised some eyebrows; she once warned that critics of China should go easy, since safe food and lead-free toys are likely to cost more. And a Today show report she did cheering the soaring Dow and the lamenting the tax burden of the super-wealthy earned her an "attagirl" from Rush Limbaugh.

Sometimes iconoclastic Washington pundit E. J. Dionne Jr. comes up with a winner (Washington Post, 2/2/09) in this description of the crucial media role in political chicanery on the national level:

If achieving bipartisanship takes priority over the actual content of policy, Republicans are handed a powerful weapon. In theory, they can keep moving the bipartisan bar indefinitely. And each concession to their sensibilities threatens the solidarity in the president's own camp.

That's why last week's unanimous House Republican opposition to the stimulus plan was so important. For the most part, the Republicans escaped attack for rank partisanship. Instead, what should have been hailed as an administration victory was cast in large parts of the media as a kind of defeat: Obama had placed a heavy emphasis on bipartisanship, and he failed to achieve it.

This week's FAIR radio show discusses how,

after several weeks of media debate, the House passed a nearly $900 billion economic stimulus package. White House efforts to reach out to Republicans resulted in exactly zero GOP voters, leaving some in the media to wonder if Obama was failing to deliver on his promises of bipartisanship.

Hear "what about the stimulus debate was entirely off the mark" on CounterSpin: "Dean Baker on Stimulus Package" (1/30/09)

Jonathan Schwarz gives his answer (A Tiny Revolution, 2/1/09) to Political Animal blogger Steve Benen's question of "why the [Washington] Post's op-ed editors feel compelled to publish the same misguided piece from [Amity] Shlaes, making the same misguided argument every month or so": "Shlaes is employed by the Council on Foreign Relations to lie about economic policy, the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt, etc." Schwarz takes the long view:

The Washington Post is a corporation, required by law to make as much money as possible. In order to make as much money as possible, businesses cater to their customers. The main customers of the Washington Post are their advertisers, who are mostly other big corporations. Big corporations, for obvious reasons, like it when people are misled about economic policy, the Great Depression, FDR, etc.

That's really all there is to it. (Well, almost all.) What Steve really should be wondering about is why people like him--and me--ever fooled ourselves into believing the Washington Post has some sort of commitment to describing reality.

For more on this fourth Shlaes commentary to appear in the Post in just the last half-year, Schwarz links to "Dean Baker, who... takes out the Shlaes garbage here." Read further about the Post opinion editors' flexible notion of reality in the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Intelligence Manipulation at the Washington Post: Editorial Page Ignores Facts to Back Bush" (5-6/06) by Peter Hart

Marina Litvinsky's Inter Press Service review (1/31/09) of "U.S. television coverage of the recent three-week conflict in the Gaza Strip" comes to the unsurprising conclusion that TV journalists "failed to tell both sides of the story, according to a number of media analysts." But a larger trend is in evidence too: "The most recent conflict... garnered some media attention, with an unusually large spike in coverage, but that level sank as the fighting dragged on":

During both the first and second weeks of the attack, including a massive aerial attack and a full-scale ground invasion of the tiny, densely populated Gaza Strip, the conflict was the top story on the nightly newscasts of the three major U.S. networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), where it got 55 minutes of total airtime.

But the first two weeks of fighting were "an aberration in terms of coverage by American broadcast networks", said Andrew Tyndall of the Tyndall Report.... "It's very rare for a foreign story to have that kind of status for two weeks."...

After the initial abnormal spike, however, coverage of Gaza fell significantly. In the week of January 12, the last full week of fighting, the conflict was discussed for a total of 20 minutes by the three networks.

Litvinsky's observation that "U.S. foreign news coverage has been on the decline. In 2008 attention to international news was at its lowest since the Tyndall Report was first published in 1988" prompts the age-old quandary: With a press this bad, is relative silence a blessing?

Scott Horton (Harpers.org, 1/30/09) is agog at the fact that, "in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the indefatigable advocate of crushing the testicles of small children to extract actionable intelligence launches a full frontal attack on President Obama" for re-banning torture. Having "followed [George W. Bush legal torture architect] John Yoo and his writings with some care for a while now," Horton thinks he can "finally understand what this is about": "The likelihood that he will face a criminal probe and then possibly prosecution is growing." Horton writes that if we "look closely at the latest Yoo column,"

we see that he tenaciously defends and repeats arguments presented in his memo that even the Bush Justice Department agreed were ludicrous. He alludes to techniques used by our allies the United Kingdom and Israel which he claims now Obama rejects. What on earth is this about? If we recall his memo, one of its more bizarre passages involves a European human rights court decision in which five specific techniques used by the U.K. on suspected Irish terrorists during the "troubles" are classified as "cruel, inhuman and degrading" rather than torture. Thus, Yoo argues, these techniques have passed international muster and are fine.

Horton calls that "the sort of answer which would get a law student a failing grade," noting that Yoo ignore the facts that "the European human rights court subsequently came to a totally different view, denouncing all these techniques and the United Kingdom discontinued their use, agreeing that they were unlawful"--but in today's fourth estate, such answers garner prime op-ed space in a major national paper. Listen to the current FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Michael Ratner on Torture 'Loopholes'" (1/30/09)