Robert Parry (Consortium News, 5/25/09) thinks that "there is no one, it seems, that the U.S. mainstream news media loves more than Colin Powell," and as proof offers "Powell's disingenuous response" to Bob Schieffer's May 24 CBS Face the Nation "question about the ex-secretary of state's knowledge regarding 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' which the International Committee of the Red Cross and virtually all other objective observers say constituted torture": Powell--whom, Parry recalls, "was a member of President George W. Bush's Principals Committee, which oversaw the interrogation policies"--claimed to an unchallenging Schieffer, "to have been kept mostly out of the loop.... He was 'not privy' to the legal memos authorizing the abusive treatment."

Such transparent tripe was left to the renegade Washington Stakeout questioner (and longtime FAIR associate) to take on:

Outside the CBS News' Washington offices after the interview, media analyst Sam Husseini asked Powell what he knew about the torture of al-Qaeda suspect Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who made false claims linking Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda, lies that Powell then cited in his infamous pro-invasion speech before the United Nations on February 5, 2003.

"I don't have any details on the al-Libi case," Powell responded.

When asked when he learned that some of the bogus evidence had been extracted by torture, Powell said, "I don't know that. I don't know what information you're referring to. So I can't answer."

And when Husseini explained to Powell "that the information had been publicly discussed by Powell's former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson," Powell was reduced to a grade school reply of "So what?" All of which leads Parry to some questions of his own--"Did Powell participate in the Principals Committee?... Did he object to the abusive techniques... that he says 'were judged not to be torture'?--and to a pointed conclusion:

For a Washington press corps that has been up in arms challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA obscured key details of the harsh interrogations from congressional leaders, it was impressive to see how little skepticism was evinced by Powell's claim of ignorance from his seat on Bush's Principals Committee.

See the FAIR Media Advisory: "Does the CIA Ever Lie?: Parsing the Pelosi Torture Controversy" (5/20/09)

Noticing how "in the past week, Republican politicians and pundits have been striving mightily to invoke fear in the hearts of the American people," News Corpse blogger Mark Howard has collected (5/25/09) some choice quotes from GOP members "blanketing the airwaves with assertions that President Obama's policies on national security (Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, torture, etc.) will result in another 9/11":

Cheney: "It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe."...

John Boehner: "I think this is a pre-9/11 mentality, and I think it’ll make our nation less safe."

Karl Rove: "They’re doing the wrong thing for our country, they're doing the wrong thing for our men and women in uniform, and they're making us less safe."

But another selection of quotations, from corporate journalists themselves, support Howard's observation that not only are Dick Cheney & Co. "accelerating the rhetoric," they also are "bringing along reinforcements to alert the terrorists that America is 'less safe' and therefore vulnerable":

Joe Scarborough (MSNBC): "I knew by the second day that America was less safe."

Laura Ingraham (Fox News): "I think you can make a pretty compelling case that we're less safe today."...

David Gregory (Meet the Press): "But do you agree with the vice president when he says that the country is less safe under President Obama?"
Newt Gingrich: "Absolutely."

FAIR's latest Action Alert asks media activists to ask New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt about a recent Elisabeth Bumiller article that reported on former Guantanamo prisoners "returning" to terrorism--even though it was not clear there was evidence that any of the released prisoners had ever been involved in "terrorism" of any sort.

Please leave copies of your messages to Hoyt in the comment thread here.

Reporting that "the Obama administration has recently paid a lot of lip service to freedom of the press, particularly around the case of Iranian-American journalist Roxanna Saberi, who was released May 11 from an Iranian prison," Jeremy Scahill asks (Rebel Reports, 5/26/09) the simple question, "If Iran Freed Roxanna Saberi, Why Won't the U.S. Release Journalist Ibrahim Jassam?"

Part of the answer might lie in a media environment heeding former Col. Ralph Peters' recent "essay for a leading neocon group calling for future U.S. military attacks on media outlets and journalists" along with "censorship" and "news blackouts."

Of course, Scahill is savvy enough to point out that "what Col. Peters is advocating is not new"--"It is already a de facto U.S. policy to target journalists":

The U.S. has consistently attacked journalists and media organizations in modern wars. In the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, General Wesley Clark, then the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, ordered an airstrike on Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers, including make-up artists and technical staff, an action Amnesty International labeled a “war crime.” Richard Holbrooke, who is currently Obama’s point man on Afghanistan and Pakistan, praised that bombing at the time.

The U.S. bombed Al Jazeera in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, attacked it multiple times in the 2003 Iraq invasion, and killed Jazeera correspondent Tarek Ayoub. On April 8, 2003, a U.S. Abrams tank fired at the Palestine Hotel, home and office to more than 100 unembedded international journalists operating in Baghdad at the time. The shell smashed into the fifteenth-floor Reuters office, killing two cameramen, Reuters' Taras Protsyuk and José Couso of Spain's Telecinco....

Last week, a Spanish judge reinstated charges against three U.S. soldiers in Couso’s killing, citing new evidence, including eyewitness testimony contradicting official U.S. claims that soldiers were responding to enemy fire from the hotel. One year ago, former Army Sergeant Adrienne Kinne told Democracy Now! she saw the Palestine Hotel on a military target list and said she frequently intercepted calls from journalists staying there.

All of which makes it less than surprising that, as Scahill tells us, "the U.S. military continues to hold journalists as prisoners without charges or rights in...Iraq. Ibrahim Jassam, a cameraman and photographer for Reuters has been a U.S. prisoner in Iraq since last September despite an Iraqi court's order last year that he be freed." See the FAIR Press Release: "Is Killing Part of Pentagon Press Policy?" (4/10/03)

Poking holes in the Brookings Institution's "preening conceit"--"they bequeath their website with an '.edu' suffix... They are 'scholars.' Just ask them and they'll tell you"--Salon's Glenn Greenwald (5/26/09, ad-viewing required) quotes one blogger fundamentally debunking Brookings mainstay William Glaberson's May 22 New York Times contention that, as U.S. president, Barack Obama "has sworn an oath to protect the country": "Barack Obama did not swear an oath to 'protect the country.' He swore an oath to protect the principles upon which the country was founded and the document in which those principles are enshrined."

Looking more broadly at "Beltway world," in which "the Brookings Institution is a 'liberal' think tank," Greenwald explains that

when it comes to foreign policy and civil liberties, these are three of its most consequential contributions over the last several years: (1) the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, in the form of Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon (working in tandem, as usual, with the ultra-neoconservative American Enterprise Institute); (2) unquestioning devotion to Israel's right-wing policies, in the form of major funder Haim Saban ("I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.... On the issues of security and terrorism I am a total hawk"); and (3) indefinite, preventive detention with no charges or trial in the form of Benjamin Wittes (with his close associate, Bush OLC lawyer Jack Goldsmith), who also serves at the right-wing Hoover Institution and writes for the Weekly Standard. Only in Washington would such a group be deemed anything other than extremist.

In fact, U.S. journalists see the Brookings Institute as so far from the "extreme" that they have made it the No. 1 most-cited think every single year since FAIR started tracking such things in 1995. See our annual Think Tank Spectrum report by longtime contributor Michael Dolny.

Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post, 5/25/09) is offering, as "a particularly egregious example" of corporate media as "enabler of the transformation of real reform into D.C. 'reform,'" a May 23 L.A. Times editorial she thinks "might as well have been written by industry lobbyists (the way many 'reform' bills are)." After her initial reaction to the subhead, "Stung by the excesses of the financial services industry, Congress is striking back"--"Actually, it wasn't Congress that was 'stung' by those 'excesses'--it was the entire world. And why is regulation of out-of-control markets 'striking back'?"--Huffington warns us that "it gets worse":

"Rather than trusting market forces, Democrats in Congress and the administration argue that unbridled capitalism has victimized consumers."

Who wrote this, the "tea party" organizers? Glenn Beck? Since when do things like setting ground rules and demanding transparency mean you no longer believe in "market forces"?

Apparently, according to the L.A. Times, the call for reform is now a "backlash" in which "Democratic majorities in Congress" are going to "clip the financial industry's wings." And this is bad because reform means "raising costs and limiting the freedom of savvy investors and borrowers."

Really? I wonder just how many of those "savvy investors" made money in, say, 2008, when they were blissfully free of all the wing-clipping regulations the L.A. Times is so afraid of? Not many--and that's because all investors, savvy and non-savvy alike, are victimized when the entire financial system is destabilized. In fact, I believe I've heard something about the crisis affecting the L.A. Times, too.

Noting that "the closer we get to actual reform, the more hysterical the debate surrounding it becomes," Huffington tells how "mainstream media's habit of internalizing bad faith arguments in the name of 'balance' becomes more pronounced; and the public interest loses out to the interests of the established financial/political class."

Wondering "why NPR decided it was appropriate to present Cheney's blatantly self-serving propaganda as anything remotely relevant to current policy," NPR Check contributor Brian (5/23/09) blogs about current president Barack Obama and former vice president Dick Cheney recently "attacking the policies of the other administration and defending their own positions in speeches." Even though each was given "in front of friendly audiences unable to challenge them," NPR's Morning Edition of May 22 "presented them as a face-to-face debate between the two men, alternating soundbites from each," and giving

Cheney equal billing with the president in a piece titled "Obama, Cheney: Different Views on National Security." The title is offensive not only because it presents Cheney's views as equally relevant as the current president's, but also because it refers to the crimes of torture, the prison at Guantánamo Bay and indefinite detention without trial as simply "national security." (At least the extended Web version of the "debate" is titled "Obama, Cheney Face Off on Torture.")

In case you've forgotten, Brian writes that, "yes, this is the same Dick Cheney who... has every motivation to cover up the various crimes committed under his reign in the Bush administration. So one might reasonably ask, Who gives a shit what Dick Cheney has to say now?"

Remembering all too well how the New York Times "helped sell the Iraq War with a bogus story about aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges and withheld evidence of illegal spying on Americans for more than a year," Consortium News editor Robert Parry (5/21/09) tells how the paper "is again mishandling a sensitive story in a way that panders to the right." Pointing to a May 21 Times headline and lead "reporting that a Pentagon study has concluded that 'about one in seven of the 534 prisoners' transferred out of the Guantánamo Bay prison 'returned to terrorism or militant activity,'" Parry writes that "that is not what the Pentagon can possibly know:"

Beyond the weaknesses in the Pentagon's evidence, which is only noted deep inside the Times article, there is the unsupported assertion by the Times that the detainees have "returned" to violent activity, thus assuming that the freed prisoners had previously been engaged in terrorism or other extremism.

Even assuming that the study is correct about one in seven engaging in militant activity after release, the evidence is lacking about the prisoners previous acts of terrorism because--if such evidence existed--the Bush administration presumably would not have released them.

In other words, the most that the Times should have reported is that the Pentagon study claimed that one in seven engaged in militant activities after leaving Guantánamo.

In fact, parry notes one scenario completely ignored by the Times' Elisabeth Bumiller: "it is entirely possible that some ex-prisoners became radicalized and joined with extremists because of their sometimes brutal treatment in U.S. custody at Guantánamo." Read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Dangerous Revisionism Over Guantánamo: Citing Dirty Evidence to Defend Dubious Detentions" (2/09) by Andy Worthington

Political science professors Sonia Cardenas and Andrew Flibbert survey the bloodthirsty media reaction to African pirates for CounterPunch (5/22/09):

Across countless blogs and media outlets, here and abroad, thousands of people have called unequivocally--often in blunt, colorful language--for killing Somali pirates. "Kill the Pirates" was the headline of a Washington Post op-ed on April 13 by Fred Iklé, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Shoot the pirates, problem solved." The mainstream media has described today's pirates as savage enemies of humankind, with pundits even saying that if it were not for political correctness, international law and human rights, we could eliminate this scourge. In his blog, Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University blames piracy itself on "a radical interpretation of human rights," which discourages capturing and trying pirates for fear of violating their rights. He proposes instead a "007 license" with shoot-to-kill permission for commercial ships. Even before the latest incident, Robert Farley and Yoav Gortzak wrote in the December 2008 issue of Foreign Policy, "nobody likes pirates, and nobody--legal niceties aside--really minds too much if you shoot them."

Considering that "the hatred is obvious," Cardenas and Andrew Flibbert think the more important "question is why": "Why the willingness to bypass legal procedures normally extended" to even those committing "other transnational crimes that are arguably more disturbing and reprehensible, such as the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation, or drug cartels" or even "private mercenaries that fuel armed conflict and take thousands of lives?" One facet of their answer is dubbed the "Disney Effect": being that "military action is indeed a quick, dramatic and satisfying morale-booster" that "makes for good soundbites and masquerades easily as derring-do, the stuff of Hollywood"--all of which is far too subtle analysis for a U.S. press intent on forcing all African conflict into a "tribal" framework.

Amy Goodman recently interviewed independent journalist Jeremy Scahill on her Democracy Now! show (5/19/09) regarding the fact that, in Scahill's words, "while much of the focus has been on the tactical use of torture at Guantánamo, almost no attention had been paid to a parallel force" known as the Immediate Reaction Force. Describing the methods of this "thug squad that is used to mercilessly punish prisoners"--"They go in, and they hogtie the prisoner... douse them with chemical agents.... They've squeezed their testicles.... They've taken the feces from one prisoner and smeared it in the face of another prisoner"--Scahill tells us the results, and their reaction:

In February of this year, about a month after Obama was inaugurated, there were 16 prisoners on a hunger strike at Guantánamo. The ...Immediate Reaction Force was used to go in and violently shove massive tubes down their noses into their stomachs.... They would use no anesthetics or any painkillers, shove this massive tube by force down their nose into their stomach and then yank it out. Some prisoners have described this as torture, torture, torture. And many have passed out from the sheer pain of this operation.

When Scahill mentions that "this force has received almost no scrutiny in the U.S. Congress or the U.S. media and operates at this moment," Goodman wonders, "How do you know about this?" It turns out Scahill used a little-known tactic called "reporting": "I discovered these teams, because I've been covering the investigation being done by Judge Baltasar Garzón in Spain into the Bush torture system":

And yet, the only time when it's really made any kind of a flash in the corporate media was when a U.S. soldier, a young guy named Sean Baker... was ordered, he says, by his superiors to dress up in an orange jumpsuit and play the part of a restive or combative detainee at Guantánamo. He was told that the team that was going to come in to handle him knew that he was a U.S. soldier, knew that it was a training drill, and he was given a word, a codeword, "red," that when he said it, the beating was supposed to stop.... He describes them just mercilessly beating him, and he's yelling out "Red!" and they continue to beat him, even after he then said, "I'm a U.S. soldier! I'm a U.S. soldier!"

And the fate of not-even-real-prisoner Baker?--he "has permanent brain damage, suffers from multiple seizures, and had actually sued Rumsfeld and other officials because of his treatment."

The New York Times had a story yesterday (5/21/09) about the test of an Iranian missile "that was capable of striking Israel and parts of Western Europe." This was an important point in the article--reporters David E. Sanger and Nazila Fathi included it in their lead paragraph, and later listed it among "three technologies necessary to field an effective nuclear weapon": "The second is developing a missile capable of reaching Israel and parts of Western Europe, and now the country has several likely candidates."

The article reported that the range of the missile is "believed to be more than 1,200 miles." Which led me to wonder: Which "parts of Western Europe" are within 1,200 miles of Iran? Well, the city in Iran closest to Western Europe is Tabriz, and looking at this distance calculator shows that Tabriz is less than 1,200 miles from...eastern Crete.

Now, Tabriz is not right at the border of Iran, so you could probably launch a missile with a range of 1,200 miles from some part of Iranian soil and have it land in, say, Athens. You certainly couldn't reach Italy, let alone any of the other countries that probably leap to mind when you think of "Western Europe." So why didn't the Times say "Israel and Greece" when describing the missile's potential range? Would that be too, I don't know, unalarming?

The independent website Raw Story (5/6/09) recently summarized the human toll of the U.S. government's torture program.  Approximately 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to human rights investigators, with 34 of those deaths officially classified as homicides; at least eight individuals were tortured to death.

Yet somehow, when corporate media report on the torture program's victims, they focus on the CIA, the agency that designed and helped implement the array of torture techniques known as "enhanced interrogation."  A  May 19 article by Walter Pincus, intelligence correspondent for the Washington Post, is a particularly gross example.

Pincus described the CIA as "battered by recriminations over waterboarding and other harsh techniques," and "girding itself for more public scrutiny."  The article presented the agency's view that "it is being forced to take the blame for actions approved by elected officials that have since fallen into disfavor."

"Fallen into disfavor"--that's one way to describe it.  Another way would be to say that these actions were violations of U.S. and international law, not to mention the Constitution, all of which clearly prohibit torture.

Usually when people are "forced to take the blame" for criminal actions, they are put on trial.  But Pincus notes that President Obama has promised that CIA torturers will not face punishment if they followed the Bush administration's torture guidelines.

But, writes Pincus, "agency personnel still face subpoenas and testimony under oath before criminal, civil and congressional bodies." His example: A grand jury investigation into the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes.  So even though CIA officers been effectively pardoned for the crime of torture, they still may have to answer for destroying the evidence.  Life can be so unfair sometimes.

Pincus cites a CIA officer's anguished plea, "Will I be in trouble five years from now for what I agree to do today?" In Pincus' world, the idea that a spy could commit a crime and not get away with it is a sign that something is very wrong.

Jonathan Schwarz recently caught the Washington Post crediting the author of an anti-progressive tax op-ed as just "an economics professor," when in fact he sat on tax-funded bailout beneficiary "AIG's board of directors. He's also a member of the board's finance committee." Now, continuing (A Tiny Revolution, 5/21/09) to mine the Post's editorial page for insights into "Their Cozy Little Village," Schwarz writes that

I don't think there's anything wrong with the Washington Post publishing op-eds by Bob Graham. But it does seem like they might mention that he's a member of the family that owns the Post, and the great-uncle of the current publisher.

I guess they figure everyone who deserves to know already does, so why bother? It would just make the peasants upset and confused, and set a bad precedent.

But then the Post is far from alone among corporate outlets in failing to meet even minimal disclosure requirements....

New York Times media reporter Tim Arango has a story (5/20/09) on one very serious repercussion from shrinking corporate news outlets:

Opponents of the death penalty looking to exonerate wrongly accused prisoners say their efforts have been hobbled by the dwindling size of America's newsrooms, and particularly the disappearance of investigative reporting at many regional papers.

In the past, lawyers opposed to the death penalty often provided the broad outlines of cases to reporters, who then pursued witnesses and unearthed evidence.

Now, the lawyers complain, they have to do more of the work themselves and that means it often doesn't get done. They say many fewer cases are being pursued by journalists, after a spate of exonerations several years ago based on the work of reporters.

The decline in newsroom resources has also hampered efforts by death-penalty opponents to search for irrefutable DNA evidence that an innocent person has been executed in America.

Even though, as Arango informs us, "since 1992, 238 people in the United States, some who were sitting on death row, have been exonerated of crimes through DNA testing," the collapsing for-profit media business model is resulting in a further abrogation of their role in U.S. democracy. Just one example: "In a case in Tennessee, DNA evidence from a rape and murder for which a man was executed in 2006, but for which doubts about his guilt exist, sits untested because [Innocence Project co-founder Barry] Scheck and others have not been able to recruit a local newspaper or media organization to become a plaintiff."

See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Enabling False Convictions: Exoneration Coverage Overlooks Media Role" (11-12/07) by Jon Whiten

Jonathan Hiskes of Grist--who recently exposed "The NYT's Favorite 'Climate Change Denier'"--has now (5/13/09) caught Fox News giving airtime to Marc Morano's charge of Al Gore "profiting off global warming campaign" :

Say you're a harried cable news producer with 24 gaping hours to fill with finished material every day of the week. Say you're constantly in need of articulate guests to offer a diversity of viewpoints. How do you do it?

One way is to take up offers like this one from the PR folks representing Marc Morano. Refresher: Morano was formerly an aid to climate-change-denier-in-chief James Inhofe (GOP senator from Oklahoma), now heads misinformation clearinghouse ClimateDepot.com, and is still the chief supplier of talking points to the climate-denial camp.

Hiskes' quotes from the PR release are enlightening for how skillfully they play into the false balance so key to corporate reportage:

Here’s your anti-Gore Global Warming Expert who offers the science to counteract partisan and ideologically driven Environmental entities and issues....

If you believe most, or all, of the global warming dogma, you may use Marc as your "counter guest" to offer a lively, fair and balanced discussion to your audience. If you are a skeptic of the current doctrine, Marc can aid your program by clearing up the deception with the facts.

The really troubling part comes in the release's list of news organizations that have fallen for this nonsense, boasting that Morano "has made international news" on "CNN, Fox News Channel's the O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, BBC TV, the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post."

See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: Creating Controversy Where Science Finds Consensus" (11-12/04) by Jules Boykoff and Maxwell Boykoff