Ishmael Reed's contextualization (CounterPunch, 6/29/09) of the epic demonization of Michael Jackson within historical U.S. media racism also takes a swipe at CNN's Black in America program, "an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s":

In preparing for a sequel to the first Black in America, which boosted the networks ratings (the O. J. trial saved CNN!), CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans. Unmarried black mothers were exhibited, without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 more than that of any other ethnic group. Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow, a statistician for the New York Times, recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks. Recently, the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8, the California proposition that banned gay marriage. An academic study refuted this claim, but that didn't deter the New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia. Schwarz is the writer who wrote in the Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last Black in America, Soledad O'Brien, CNN's designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters, scolded a black man for not attending his daughter's birthday party. The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers. Ms. O'Brien won’t be permitted by her employees to mention that 75 percent of white children will live at one time or another in a single-parent household and that the governor of South Carolina's not showing up for Father's Day isn't just a lone aberration in "White America."

On that note, Reed wonders, "How would CNN promote a White in America?" Would they feature "the thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth?" And if not, "Why not? Can’t get State Farm, Ford and McDonald's to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring Black in America"--"the aim of which," Reed reminds us, "is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country's social problems. For ratings."

Posting on Canada's Centre for Research on Globalization website (6/29/09), economic historian Michael Hudson notices that "Happy-face media reporting of economic news is providing the usual upbeat spin on Friday's debt-deflation statistics. The Commerce Department’s National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) for May show that U.S. 'savings' are now absorbing 6.9 percent of income":

I put the word "savings" in quotation marks because this 6.9 percent is not what most people think of as savings. It is not money in the bank to draw out on the "rainy day" when one is laid off as unemployment rates rise. The statistic means that 6.9 percent of national income is being earmarked to pay down debt--the highest saving rate in 15 years, up from actually negative rates (living on borrowed credit) just a few years ago. The only way in which these savings are "money in the bank" is that they are being paid by consumers to their banks and credit card companies.

Explaining how "income paid to reduce debt is not available for spending on goods and services," Hudson says "it therefore shrinks the economy, aggravating the depression"--leading back to his main question: "So why is the jump in 'saving' good news?":

It certainly is a good idea for consumers to get out of debt. But the media are treating this diversion of income as if it were a sign of confidence that the recession may be ending and Mr. Obama's "stimulus" plan working. The Wall Street Journal reported that Social Security recipients of one-time government payments "seem unwilling to spend right away," while The New York Times wrote that "many people were putting that money away instead of spending it."

For more on stimulus misreporting, see the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Stimulus Snake Oil: Media Promote Nonsensical GOP Talking Points" (3/09) by Peter Hart.

Looking at a June 28 New York Times report that the "Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup," A Tiny Revolution blogger Bernard Chazelle (6/28/09) writes that "from the byline alone, you know this is going to be good": "Elisabeth Malkin, in Mexico City, with reporting by Simon Romero from Caracas." To Chazelle this all "makes perfect sense since, as we all know, Mexico City and Caracas are the two major cities in Honduras. (Too bad they had no reporter in Bangkok. I hope the Pulitzer committee doesn't notice.)"

Moving on to the piece's actual content [since altered by the Times], Chazelle responds to the peculiar opening line stating that "The Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by the army on Sunday after pressing ahead with plans for a referendum":

A referendum? OK, but for what? "... a referendum that opponents said could lay the groundwork for his eventual re-election"

OK, so we ask his opponents what the referendum is about. How about asking a more neutral observer? Like? "Mr. Zelaya pressed ahead with plans for a nonbinding referendum that opponents said would open the way for him to rewrite the constitution to run for re-election despite a one-term limit."

Yes, I think we got that point. Opponents of the referendum really don't like that referendum. But what's the referendum about? I'll go out on a limb and, on the basis of what our crack reporters have told us, I'll take a wild guess: "Can I, el Caudillo Zelaya, run for president again and again and again? Yes or no?"

Let's check with Dr. Wikipedia to see how well I'm doing: "Incumbent President Manuel Zelaya wanted to hold a non-binding referendum on whether to convene congress to modify the constitution."

So, "it's non-binding, meaning that it has no enforcement power," and "it's not a referendum to change the constitution," but only "a referendum to convene a constitutional assembly to modify the constitution." No wonder the Times lede has Chazelle reduced to this: "Hmm... me very confused."

One thing Chazelle is sure of: "There's no way this would have happened if the U.S. had said no. And if anyone doubts there's bad blood between Honduras and the U.S., one has to go back only nine months for Honduras' decision to delay the accreditation of the U.S. ambassador in solidarity with Bolivia."

Calling the six months of unanimous news media silence on New York Times reporter David Rohde's kidnapping "the most amazing press blackout on a major event that I have ever seen," Greg Mitchell (Editor & Publisher, 6/23/09) now wonders

if a great debate will break out over media ethics in not reporting a story involving one of their own when they so eagerly rush out piece about nearly everything else. I imagine some may claim that the blackout would not have held if a smaller paper, not the mighty New York Times, had been involved. Or is saving this life (actually two, there was a local reporter also snatched) self-evidently justification enough?

Bob Steele, the Poynter media ethicist, summed it up well for [E&P's Joe] Strupp this weekend: "News organizations are balancing competing obligations if a journalist is kidnapped or detained. The primary obligation to the public is to report accurately and timely on meaningful events. If you have a journalist who is detained or kidnapped, that will generally reach the level of newsworthiness. News organizations also have an equal obligation to minimize harm. That means showing care and caution to not further endanger someone whose life may be in jeopardy. These are competing obligations and loyalties."

High ideals to be sure, but Steele comes back to what may be the overriding realistic factor here: "There is also a matter of fairness and consistency. Would a news organization apply different standards in the case of a government diplomat or a business executive or a tourist than they would one of their own?"

Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research had one of the most informative pieces I've seen on the Iranian election, published on WashingtonPost.com (6/26/09). Weisbrot examines the actual Iranian vote-counting procedures, and concludes that in Iran, "large-scale fraud is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without creating an extensive trail of evidence."

Since votes are supposed to be counted at individual polling places in the presence of 14-18 witnesses, Weisbrot points out that "if this election was stolen, there must be tens of thousands of witnesses--or perhaps hundreds of thousands--to the theft. Yet there are no media accounts of interviews with such witnesses."

But Weisbrot would no doubt acknowledge that the absence of such interviews is not definitive proof that fraud did not occur, because his column is as much about the failure of the U.S. media system as it is about the Iranian political system. Here's his account of looking into the actual mechanics of the vote:

After searching through thousands of news articles without finding any substantive information on the electoral process, I contacted Seyed Mohammad Marandi, who heads the North American Studies department at the University of Tehran. He described the electoral procedures to me, and together we interviewed, by phone, Sayed Moujtaba Davoodi, a poll worker who participated in the June 12 election in region 13 (of 22 regions) in Tehran. Mr. Daboodi has worked in elections for the past 16 years. The following is from their description of the procedures.

The Iranian election is a major foreign-policy story for the U.S. corporate media, and coverage has centered on the question of electoral fraud. Yet Weisbrot, a diligent researcher, found no news account that answered the most basic questions about how the Iranian vote was actually supposed to be conducted.

The main point of having a free press is to protect other freedoms, the right to free and fair elections prominently among them. If this is how they go about investigating claims of vote fraud, though, how can we hope that corporate media will ever be an effective guardian of voting rights when they're threatened here at home?

Richard Posner is the sort of judge who gets mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee because of his supposed brilliance. But, then, he's also the person who wrote this:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder's consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

With the first suggestion, does Posner mean that copyright laws should forbid people from posting other people's material online without permission, or hacking into subscriber-only sites? Because copyright laws already do that. If he means that whenever someone puts up something on a website, you have to get their permission before you can type in the url,  that would be quite bizarre. What does he mean?

The second part is no less strange. As an anonymous commenter points out, prohibiting links would be like prohibiting footnotes; you could also compare it to outlawing card catalogs, or phone directories.  And the idea that linking to a newspaper's website somehow harms the newspaper is nutty; newspapers don't want people to stop linking to them. (They would like people to give them money for doing something that people have an inherent 1st Amendment right to do, but that's a different question.)

The gap between the federal Appeals Court judge's understanding of copyright law and the Internet commenter's is striking.  Maybe Anonymous should be nominated to the Supreme Court?

Tying the urgent present-day topic of economic reporting in with the most pressing global emergency of climate change, Dean Baker has posted at his Beat the Press blog (6/29/09) on "What Does 'Free Trade' Have to Do With Taxing Greenhouse Gas Emissions?":

That is the question that the New York Times should have been asking in an article that reported President Obama's opposition to taxing imported items from countries that have not taken steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The point of his cap-and-trade program is to make items that require large amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions more expensive, thereby discouraging their consumption.

If goods can just be imported from countries that have no tax on GHG, then the point of cap-and-trade is undermined, as goods that require large amounts of fossil fuels will just be produced abroad. It is understandable that importers and other special interest would be opposed to measures that prohibit this sort of evasion, but that has absolutely nothing to do with "free trade."

Baker notes that "the NYT completely misrepresents the issue by implying that this is somehow a debate over principles of free trade," when really "it is a debate of whether special interests will be allowed to import goods to undermine the limits set by a cap-and-trade bill for GHG emissions." For more on press distortions of Obama's cap-and-trade policies, listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Mike Lillis on Climate Bill" (5/22/09).

Knowing how much "we reporters love a catch phrase," Iran writer Reese Erlich (ZNet, 6/28/09) wants you to know that, despite "Twitter being all a flutter in the west," current reporting is "highly misleading" in that "Iran is not undergoing a Twitter Revolution. The term simultaneously mischaracterizes and trivializes the important mass movement developing in Iran."

After tracing the concept's origins back to self-obsessed Western media--"desperate to find ways to show the large demonstrations...reporters were getting most of their information from Tweets and YouTube video clips"--Erlich gives us the reality of the situation:

First of all the vast majority of Iranians have no access to Twitter. While reporting in Tehran, I personally didn't encounter anyone who used it regularly. A relatively small number of young, economically well-off Iranians do use Twitter. A larger number have access to the Internet. However, in the beginning, most demonstrations were organized through word of mouth, mobile phone calls and text messaging.

But somehow "Text Messaging Revolution" doesn't have that modern, sexy ring, especially if you have to type it with your thumbs on a tiny keyboard.

More importantly, by focusing on the latest in Internet communications, cable TV networks intentionally or unintentionally characterize a genuine mass movement as something supported mainly by the Twittering classes.

In actuality, as "hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured into the streets in Tehran and cities around the country," they largely "organized silent marches through word of mouth and phone calls, since the government had shut down text messaging just prior to the election." Erlich makes clear it is important to understand that, "contrary to popular perception, these gatherings included women in chadors, workers and clerics--not just the Twittering classes."

Listen to FAIR's current radio program CounterSpin: "David Barsamian on Iran Upheaval" (6/26/09).

Veteran independent Mexico reporter John Ross (CounterPunch.com, 6/28/09) wants to know which countries come to mind when thinking about "a stolen election by an entrenched regime," "demands for a recount to which election officials respond by offering to recount just 10 percent of the vote," or even "a regime-controlled media that exalts the incumbent's victory and demonizes the loser"? Are you thinking "Iran 2009? Yes!" or "Mexico 2006? Yes and no."

Toward showing that "the stealing of the Mexican presidential election by the right-wing oligarchy stirred little indignation anywhere outside of Mexico," Ross finds that "a comparison of coverage extended to both instances of electoral fraud by the New York Times, the 'paper of record', is instructive":

NYT coverage of the upheaval in Iran has been overwhelming. During the first nine days of the electoral crisis, the Times ran at least one front-page story daily--from Election Day Friday, June 12 through Saturday, June 20, the Iranian electoral sham occupied the right-hand column (the lead story) in the international edition on eight out of nine days. The Times also ran a second Iran story on the front page in six out of the nine editions reviewed--on four of those days, the stories were accompanied by a four and sometimes five column color photo....

The Times sent four by-lined reporters into Tehran for the festivities--Robert Worth, Michael Slackman, Neil MacFarquhar and the Iranian Nazna Pathi, plus Eric Schmidt reporting from Washington. Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, flew to the Iranian capital to pen a daily journal.

As for the contested Mexican election: "The Times ran a front-page curtain raiser on election eve, but not in the right-hand column" and "a second front-pager July 3 just above the fold." Ross points out that "unlike the New York Times coverage from Tehran, news of the enormous gathering ran inside," even as "mobilizations were expanding exponentially to 2 million participants (police reports) by July 30, the largest outpourings of political protest in Mexican history."

In sum, Ross writes of how "the brand of corporate journalism that the New York Times practices distorts such stories as Iranian resistance to electoral fraud and leaves Mexico 2006, in which millions took to the streets to defy the fraudulent election of a U.S. proxy, in the dust of history." Listen to FAIR's radio program CounterSpin: "Chuck Collins on Mexican Election" (8/11/06).

Investigative reporter Gareth Porter's careful reading (Dissident Voice, 6/28/09) of "the official military investigation into the disastrous May 4 airstrike in Farah province" of Afghanistan, which "omitted key details" and "gave no explanation" for reasserting "that only about 26 civilians had been killed"--"well-documented reports by the government and by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission [showed] that between 97 and 147 people were killed"--yields a "central contradiction between the report and the U.S. military's 'human shields' argument" that "was allowed to pass unnoticed in the extremely low-key news media coverage of the report." In fact,

news coverage of the report has focused either on the official estimate of only 26 civilian deaths and the much larger number of Taliban casualties or on the absence of blame on the part of U.S. military personnel found by the investigators.

The Associated Press reported that the United States had "accidentally killed an estimated 26 Afghan civilians last month when a warplane did not strictly adhere to rules for bombing."

The New York Times led with the fact that the investigation had called for "additional training" of U.S. air crews and ground forces but did hold any personnel "culpable" for failing to follow the existing rules of engagement.

Contributing to these outlets' dissembling on behalf of U.S. troops' bloody actions, Porter found that "none of the news media reporting on the highly expurgated version of the investigation pointed out that it had confirmed, in effect, the version of the event that had been put forward by residents of the bombed villages." Listen to more about Afghanistan deceptions in U.S. media on the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Gareth Porter on the Afghanistan Surge" (4/3/09).

Spanish sociologist Pablo Ouziel has a new Consortium News essay (6/28/09) describing the consequences of how "we wake up in the morning to hear and watch the newest tragedy that has swept the world's media attention"--whether it's "the tragic crash of an airplane" or "the death of a star." Meanwhile:

Serious events and acts are taking place everyday which merit serious social debate, yet because of the fact that our societies are deeply fragmented, broken and clashing between each other, we are unable to grant ourselves the necessary pause, required for conciliation and unity.

Because of this, we are easy to control as a mass of isolated individuals, which is held together by norms and regulations, bureaucracies, military and police, and concepts such as the nation state, the church and the corporation.

If we are to stay in this model of society, I fear we will live in perpetual war until we destroy ourselves by not paying attention to the fact that something is drastically wrong.

Ouziel's digest of exactly what is wrong reads like a list of topics steadfastly avoided by corporate media in the U.S.: "We are living in societies plagued with corruption at all levels, we are constantly expanding our militarized societies surveilled by police forces and colonizing armies, which are rapidly eroding our freedoms." See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "The Media Ignore Their Core Duty: Arianna Huffington & Glenn Greenwald on Media Accountability" (9–10/08).

Salon's Greenwald (6/27/09, ad-viewing required) has taken a hard look at Washington Post and ProPublica journalists Peter Finn's and Dafna Linzer's report--"relying exclusively on three Obama officials speaking behind a veil of anonymity"--"that the White House is 'crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.'" Finding it "revealing" that "the article quotes two Bush national security officials justifying the need for detention without charges," Greenwald writes of how "anonymous trial balloon articles like this one are difficult to comment on because it's obviously designed to announce that a certain policy is being considered before it's actually written, and so none of the key details is known." That said, he gives it a shot anyway:

This specific article is even worse than the usual one of its type, since it's particularly uncritical in passing along administration claims without any skepticism.... Worse, the article does not provide any information about the Obama officials whose mission the reporters are dutifully carrying out, so there's no way to assess their motives.

Those journalistic practices produce egregious sentences like this: "'Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order,' the official said."

Greenwald would really "love to know which so-called 'civil liberties groups' are pushing the White House for an executive order establishing the power of indefinite detention," telling us that "it's certainly not the ACLU or Center for Constitutional Rights, both of which issued statements vehemently condemning the proposal."

Addressing Bush-era Department of Justice investigations, David Swanson (6/26/09) is asking OpEd News readers the provocative question, "Did you know the United States has in recent years prosecuted hundreds of people for political reasons?"

This is a crime, or rather a crime wave, that has thus far been addressed primarily by ignoring it. You can read a lot about it from bloggers like Larisa Alexandrovna or Scott Horton. But you won't hear the president mention it on TV.

In an attempt to convince the corporate media that this issue ranked right up there with governors' sex lives and celebrities' deaths, a group of notable speakers, judges, attorneys, victims and witnesses gathered and spoke on Friday morning at the National Press Club.

Swanson's piece includes the text from "what I blogged from the event" and tells us that "you can watch the whole forum on C-SPAN. You won't find it anywhere else."

In his evaluation of the Dan Froomkin firing, Washington Post ombud Andy Alexander (6/26/09) confidently asserts that "first, it's not about ideology," then later asserts that Froomkin "was urged not to do media criticism." Clearly, though, the notion that the Post should not be subjected to criticism is a central tenet of the paper's ideology.

Alexander quoted with a straight face Post columnist Gene Weingarten questioning whether Froomkin "was as informed and qualified to opine as people who had been actively covering the White House for years." Alexander did not point out that Weingarten writes a humor column, which might have helped readers put into context an otherwise inexplicable claim.

In Dan Froomkin's last column for the Washington Post (6/26/09), he promises to "continue doing accountability journalism"--as good as any self-description to distinguish his work from his typical Post colleague's obsequiousness--and tries "hard to summarize the past five-and-a-half years" in which "George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes":

In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve.... How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, Murray Waas, Michael Massing, Mark Danner, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage and Philippe Sands; there was also some fine investigative blogging over at Talking Points Memo and by Marcy Wheeler. Notably not on this list: The likes of Bob Woodward and Tim Russert. Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars.

Read of some other journalists worth mentioning in this regard in the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Wrong on Iraq? Not Everyone: Four in the Mainstream Media Who Got It Right" (3–4/06) by Steve Rendall.