When NPR ombud Alicia Shepard commented on an NPR blog that "we can all take a lesson from" Jon Stewart because "he holds people in power accountable for what they say"--this being her "definition of a good journalist"--Matthew Murrey, AKA NPR Check blogger Mytwords, couldn't resist asking "So when will Shepard hold the NPR journalists to such a standard?" Mytwords' challenge of Shepard "(or anyone for that matter) to show any examples in the last 10 years where NPR's main news shows... 'held people in power accountable'" was met by one reader (3/15/09) who had

only heard one instance of NPR actually standing up to spin by an interviewee: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15046448

I've never heard anything like it since, and I listen almost every day.

As I recall, there were tons of people who wrote in letters showing support and calling for more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15198525

Mytwords is encouraged "that listeners seem to be hungry for a higher quality of reporting even though it's rare on NPR"--but the sad fact is that after "carefully critiquing NPR for almost three years," Mytwords has found "NPR News consistently echoes and champions the opinions and assertions of the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and free market corporatism."

A Washington Post piece this weekend by Scott Wilson (3/14/09) centered around this "gotcha":

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."

It hasn't taken long for the recriminations to return--or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome "inheritance" of its predecessor.

Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems "inherited" from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against.

The vapidity of this observation has been noted by, among others, Steve Benen of Political Animal (3/14/09):

The problem, if I'm reading the article right, isn't that the president is saying anything untrue. Rather, we're dealing with a dynamic in which one president hands off a catastrophe -- several catastrophes, actually -- to a successor, and the successor isn't supposed to talk about it.

It's worth looking at Wilson's logic as to why Obama shouldn't be pointing out that he inherited an economic disaster--even though he did. Wilson wrote:

Upon entering the White House in 2001, Bush pinned the lackluster economy on his predecessor, using the "Clinton recession" to successfully argue in favor of tax cuts that won some Democratic support. But for Obama, who built his candidacy on a promise to rise above Washington's divisive partisan traditions--winning over many independent voters and moderate Republicans in the process--blaming his predecessor holds special risks.

He will need support beyond his Democratic base as he begins lobbying for his $3.6 trillion budget, which proposes sweeping changes in health care, the energy sector and the public education system. The president did not receive a single House Republican vote for his stimulus plan, prompting some in his administration to view his bipartisan outreach efforts as having little hope of success.

And Republicans have seemed only more emboldened in their rhetoric. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), for example, recently called the borrowing needed to fund the president's economic recovery plans "generational theft."

So when George W. Bush blamed Bill Clinton for his economic situation, that successfully gained him Democratic support for his policies. But for Obama, blaming his predecessor has "special risks"...because he needs Republican support for his policies. If you can't see why criticizing the previous president should gain support for Bush but cost Obama support, then I'm afraid you don't have what it takes to be a big-league Washington journalist.

I suppose you could read Wilson as saying that the special risks come because Obama promised to rise above Washington's divisive partisan traditions--just like Bush did. Remember "I'm a uniter, not a divider?" Or maybe it was the fact that Obama won a majority of the popular vote--i.e., he won over "many independent voters and moderate Republicans"--that puts his presidency at "special risk."

Update: Steve Benen's first name corrected.

Women In Media & News guest blogger Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser's examination (3/12/09) of the "media firestorm" that "erupted... when Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets" shows that in initial "stories playing on the well-worn 'wow factor'"--like "the AP's piece, posted on Fox News' website, [that] bore a cutesy headline: '8 Is Definitely Enough'"--"basic information was missing: the mother’s name, the doctor's name, and the specific medical treatment undergone," and "without that information, any medical ethics concerns remained wholly hypothetical." But then it

turns out, eight wasn't enough. The story's focus morphed from medical oddity, to larger ethics questions, to gawking at a woman deemed crazy for having 15 children (octuplets along with six previous kids). Media buzz about Nadya Suleman began building, and quickly....

Suleman's first interview to Dateline NBC's Ann Curry in early February was a hot property--even the interview itself became big news....

During the interview--which was rehashed in the media obsessively--Curry probed: "People feel, you know, this woman is being completely irresponsible and selfish to bring these children in the world without a clear source of income and enough help to raise them. The world outside is saying, 'What are you doing?'" A divorced mother who says all 14 came from a known sperm donor, Suleman insisted essentially that she loved all of her children and could, once she completes her education, provide for them.

From broadcast TV to newspapers to tabloid magazines, from blogs such as Jezebel to MSNBC’s Scoop, every aspect of Suleman’s life seemed fair game for the media microscope: her motivations, her mental stability (or instability).

Buttenwieser writes that the result of this "massive media rubbernecking" was that "substantive questions about medical ethics, parental responsibility and even how the media covers such outliers have been pushed aside for breathy comment" in which "profit-hungry media simply sensationalized Suleman's story for ratings-generating, tabloid-selling buzz."

Reporting that "marketers are running advertisements on the covers of some publications," Stuart Elliott (New York Times, 3/11/09) reviews past precedents--"the February issue of Esquire broke ground with a window, or flap, in the middle of the cover under which [was] an ad for...a series on the Discovery Channel" and "a hole in the [1990] Omni cover through which readers could see...part of a Motorola ad"--and says the present results have a familiar target:

The April issue of Scholastic Parent & Child, scheduled to come out on Monday, will carry an ad on the front cover for the first time in the 16-year history of the magazine. The ad, for a company called Smilebox, will appear in the lower right corner of the cover and carry the label "advertisement" in small type....

The American Society of Magazine Editors concluded that... the ad on the cover of Scholastic Parent & Child "is a violation" [of "the society’s guidelines on ad acceptability"], said Sid Holt, chief executive at the society in New York.

"It's unfortunate because it has the potential to tell readers and advertisers that editorial is for sale," he added.... "The guidelines are very clear that the cover is editorial space and advertising should not appear."

Elliott also cites the influential fact that "a print sibling, the newspaper, has reconsidered decades-old rules against display ads on section fronts or even front pages... 'like what the New York Times is doing.'"

Stating that "a lot of funny things can happen when the media translate science for the public," science writer Chris Mooney (Nation, 3/6/09) looks over more evidence that the U.S. public got really lucky when CNN's Sanjay Gupta was not made Obama's surgeon general. Mooney's list of Gupta "approaching medical coverage through 'one the one hand, on the other hand' equivocation, the selling of medical entertainment, following the pack or simply getting it wrong" clearly illustrates "what always made Gupta's nomination worrisome":

Consider a few of Gupta's journalistic missteps. In late December 2002--a slow news week after Christmas--an outfit named Clonaid, run by a member of a UFO-obsessed group called the Raelians, decided to hold a press conference announcing the first cloning of a human being. The media responded like a herd and ran off a cliff. Many outlets, including CNN, covered the group's press conference live, even though numerous scientists and bioethicists could have told them the claim wasn't credible. Yet there was Gupta, breathlessly interviewing Clonaid's "clinical science director" about "the possibility, a big possibility, that a human clone was actually born." Gupta and CNN contributed heavily to a media scare with little foundation; to this day, we've never seen proof of the existence of baby "Eve."

And of course Mooney features Gupta's infamous "'reality check' on Michael Moore's 2007 film SiCKO"; see the FAIR Action Alert: "CNN vs. SiCKO" (7/11/07).

During his well-publicized appearance with Jon Stewart (Daily Show, 3/12/09), CNBC's Jim Cramer tried to present himself as a rational financial journalist, dismissing his on-air wild man persona as entertainment. But if you listened to his calm, sober pronouncements, they really weren't all that rational.

For instance, he said by way of apology, referring to the current financial crisis, "I got a lot of things wrong because I think it was kind of [a] one-in-a-million shot." Well, no--if you build a financial system on the idea that assets are going to keep rapidly increasing in value forever, the system's eventual collapse is not a one-in-a-million shot. That's more like a one-in-one shot.

If you don't get that, even with the benefit of hindsight, then you really are not qualified to be a financial journalist.

Here's a quote from the Daily Show's original CNBC expose (3/4/09), which ought to be carved on Cramer's tombstone:

You should be buying things and accept that they're overvalued and--but accept that they're going to keep going higher. I know that sounds irresponsible, but that's how you make money.

--Jim Cramer (Mad Money, 10/31/07)

In an op-ed in today's L.A. Times, former Times writer Allan M. Jalon tells the story of how the FBI used the Los Angeles Times to destroy politically active actress Jean Seberg. According to Jalon, J. Edgar Hoover planted the rumor with a Times gossip columnist that the father of the baby Seberg was pregnant with at the time was a Black Panther:

The item made clear that Miss A was the actress Jean Seberg, who starred as the heroine of Otto Preminger's Saint Joan and became internationally known for her role in Jean-Luc Godard's classic film Breathless. Haber's item claimed that the father of the baby Seberg carried at the time was not her husband, French novelist-diplomat Romain Gary, but an official with the Black Panthers.

Documents from the time show that the smear had been concocted by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and agents in his Los Angeles bureau to punish Seberg for her political views. Soon after the item appeared, Seberg lost the baby after a premature delivery. At the baby's funeral, the 31-year-old actress had the casket opened to show the baby was white and the gossip started by the Times was false.

Corporate media outlets treat U.S. intelligence agencies with solemn reverence when those agencies are reinforcing official views about American enemies and friends. This is true even when the same media outlets are duped by intelligence agencies time and again.

But stray from the nationalist straight and narrow, and these otherwise respected sources risk becoming invisible, perhaps even suspicious.

That's what happened in the run up to the Iraq War. CIA director George Tenet was prominently quoted as he affirmed the White House's most dire fabrications, but when intelligence officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Air Force challenged key aspects of the White House's case for war, they were downplayed or ignored in favor of intelligence supporting the case for war.

As Washington Post Pentagon reporter Thomas Ricks put it (8/12/04), "There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?" And the New York Times mea culpa on the subject, for all of its faults, similarly acknowledged that "Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all."

This model goes some way in explaining why major media outlets continue to report without question President Barack Obama’s and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s claims that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, even while their own director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, says it's not true.

As an excellent post by Charlie Davis points out:

Just over a week ago -- and after Blair had told another Senate panel that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons -- Secretary Clinton told ABC's Charlie Gibson that "Iran's pursuit of the nuclear weapon is deeply troubling to not only the U.S. but many people throughout the world." Obama has likewise consistently referred to Iran's "development" or "pursuit" of nuclear weapons.

It would be simple for journalists at major media outlets with official access to ask why the president and the secretary of state are making claims that U.S. intelligence can't back up. But even after all the confessions and mea culpas, the damage resulting from other instances when they failed to challenge officials, many journalists apparently still haven't learned the lesson.

[In an earlier version of this post, the headline mistakenly referred to Dennis Blair as the “DCI”-- he is the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence.]

The federal government has to decide what to do in a court case concerning same-sex partner benefits. Robert Pear sees this as a problem for Barack Obama in today's New York Times ("Obama on Spot Over a Benefit to Gay Couples"), explaining:

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said he would "fight hard" for the rights of gay couples. As a senator, he sponsored legislation that would have provided health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Now, Mr. Obama is in a tough spot. If he supports the personnel office on denying benefits to the San Francisco court employees, he risks agitating liberal groups that helped him win election. If he supports the judges and challenges the marriage act, he risks alienating Republicans with whom he is seeking to work on economic, healthcare and numerous other matters.

It's hard to see the logic here; if Obama goes back on his campaign promise, that's a rather serious problem. (Pear's language--that he "risks agitating liberal groups"--is a rather odd way to describe a decision to deny basic rights to a class of people.)

No, the real problem--a familiar one for the media--is that if Obama keeps his campaign promise, he might alienate conservative Republicans by taking a position they disagree with. Isn't that what opposing political parties do? In the corporate media, Democrats are expected to trim their sails in order to please Republicans. It's hard to recall a Republican president facing similar warnings from the press.

In a typically half-empty David Brooks piece (3/13/09), the columnist praises Barack Obama for embracing "rigor" in education policy, for endorsing "testing and accountability," for "mak[ing] sure results have consequences." He complains about the "education establishment’s ability to evade the consequences of data" and that watered-down proficiency standards mean that "parents think their own schools are much better than they are." He commends Obama's commitment to "use data to make decisions," and Education Secretary opposition to "ignoring failure."

But Brooks says many doubt whether Obama "has the courage to follow through" on these principles, and point to "the way the president has already caved in on the D.C. vouchers case":

Democrats in Congress just killed an experiment that gives 1,700 poor Washington kids school vouchers. They even refused to grandfather in the kids already in the program, so those children will be ripped away from their mentors and friends. The idea was to cause maximum suffering, and 58 Senators voted for it.

Obama has, in fact, been shamefully quiet about this. But in the next weeks he’ll at least try to protect the kids now in the program.

The odd thing is that the D.C. voucher program is a very poor poster child for the importance of rigorous, data-driven education policy that rewards success and punishes failure. The students participating in the voucher program have been watched closely, and according to two Department of Education studies they aren't doing significantly better in reading or math than the peers they left behind in public school. The one bright spot that the studies found is that parents of kids in voucher schools report being more satisfied--in other words, "parents think their own schools are much better than they are."

"Rigorous" is not a word one would apply to Brooks' argument here.

Neurologist Robert Burton warns Salon readers (3/12/09, ad-viewing required) of PBS's latest infomercial. "By airing another self-help show disguised as medical science--the dubious UltraMind Solution--the public network continues to undermine its credibility," Burton writes:

In May I reported that PBS stations were airing medical programs that weren't adequately reviewed or vetted by either the local station or parent PBS corporation. My concern was that publicly funded stations were broadcasting questionable medical claims, made by Daniel Amen, M.D., about unproven methods for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease, without properly warning viewers the information was controversial. I suggested that, at the very least, the stations should present a clearly visible banner or disclaimer that the program doesn't represent the views of the local station or PBS....

Unfortunately, nearly a year has passed and nothing has changed. Last week, I turned to my local PBS station, KQED, and ran headlong into yet another program of medical self-promotion. Mark Hyman, M.D., a family physician, was talking about "brain fog" and "broken minds" and how such "conditions" could be cured or prevented by using "The UltraMind Solution"--a combination of books, DVDs and home questionnaires.

Hyman's truly insane claim that "diseases don't exist" spurs Burton to exclaim that airing such "dubious science" serves to "demean viewers' reasons for watching public television. Apparently PBS's mission is to raise money by exploiting viewers' gullibility at the expense of trustworthy programming. If so, it has achieved its goal--and undermined the central reason for having educational TV in the first place."

Over on Media Matters' County Fair blog (3/12/09), Jamison Foser asks, "Is there any major-newspaper reporter who is more consistently wrong than Andrew Malcolm?" The latest gaffe by the Laura Bush flak-turned-L.A. Times writer comes in response to filmmaker Michael Moore's explaining what he sees as the difference between Democratic framing of Rush Limbaugh as the GOP's real leader and Republicans' similar claim about Moore and the Democratic Party:

But some commentators (Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, Chuck Todd of NBC News, etc.) have likened this to "what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore." Perhaps. But there is one central difference: What I have believed in, and what I have stood for in these past eight years--an end to the war, establishing universal healthcare, closing Guantánamo and banning torture, making the rich pay more taxes and aggressively going after the corporate chiefs on Wall Street--these are all things which the majority of Americans believe in too.

Malcolm's LATimes.com piece, attempting to summarize this passage, said:

Moore lists numerous ways that Republican strategists went after him in past years--books, ads, funny photos and how he was booed off the Oscar stage even in liberal Hollywood for his early opposition to the Iraq War, Guantánamo, torture and other things. Did that help Democratic Senator Kerry not get elected in 2004? "Perhaps," Moore admits.

Foser points out that

if you read what Moore wrote, you'll notice that Malcolm is simply not telling the truth. Moore's "perhaps" was not an admission that Republican attacks on him helped to defeat John Kerry; not even close. Moore said "perhaps" there is some similarity between what Democrats are currently doing and what Republicans tried to do to him; he is not saying Republicans were successful. Malcolm simply made that up, and ripped Moore's comment out of context in order to hide the fabrication.

Actually, Foser's citation of the quote's actual context shows that, "In fact, Moore said the GOP's attacks on him backfired."

Economics writer David Lieberman (USA Today, 3/11/09) previews a Today show interview with CNBC's Mad Money host Jim Cramer by pointing out that Cramer will "have to answer for misguided stock predictions--including some last year urging investors to buy and hold Bear Stearns just before the investment bank collapsed." But the ironic bit comes after Cramer's dismissive quote--"Oh, oh, a comedian is attacking me!"--when business journalism academic Andrew Leckey "says that while CNBC wants to be seen as serious, 'The best ratings go to a wacky guy.' Cramer often bellows and uses sound effects to highlight his stock picks." As for Stewart's comparative journalistic value, Lieberman writes that

some media critics say that Stewart has earned the right to be taken seriously. "Stewart is a comedian who does some press criticism and does it pretty well," says Columbia Journalism Review Executive Editor Mike Hoyt.

Indeed, it's been proven that Stewart's "fake news" has a higher substance-to-hype ratio than "straight" network news and that his average viewer is more educated than are Fox "news" personality Bill O'Reilly's.

Los Angeles Times reporter Mike Dorning has some important information (3/6/09) absent from coverage of Dr. Sanjay Gupta's recent surgeon general candidacy--"For several years, Gupta has been co-anchor of a CNN-produced healthcare show distributed monthly via flat-screen TVs provided free to doctor's offices":

The show is sponsored by healthcare, consumer and pharmaceutical companies that want to get their message directly to patients, according to the website of AccentHealth, a privately held company that distributes the programs and sells them to advertisers.

Dr. Quentin Young--who heads Physicians for a National Health Program, a group that advocates for single-payer, Canadian-style national health insurance and other changes in the present system--and other critics cited occasions when Gupta favorably mentioned sponsors' brand-name drugs.

"His record is not a good one here," Young said.

While Dorning gives space to such unsupported CNN platitudes as "Gupta's on-air comments had always been under the editorial control of CNN and unrelated to any advertising contracts" and "Dr. Gupta has no relationship with the advertisers of the program--monetarily, editorially or otherwise," regular FAIR readers have known of Gupta's untrustworthiness for years; for more critique of CNN's medical coverage, see our current Action Alert: "CNN: Single-Payer Is So '90s: Medical Reporter Warns Against 'Government-Run Health System'" (3/12/09)

Claiming that "you don't hear" about the single-payer healthcare plan "as much as you used to," CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen says that "more people are on the same page" about healthcare reform than they were in 1993. A new FAIR Action Alert debunks these and other assertions by Cohen that have the effect of pushing the idea of universal government-financed health insurance to the margins of the healthcare debate.

You can post copies of your letters to Cohen in the comments section below. Please remember that letters that maintain a civil tone are most effective.