A Tiny Revolution blogger Bernard Chazelle (8/2/09) thinks it's  possible that "people fail to appreciate how tough it is to run the government." As evidence, he offers "two questions Treasury officials and politicians will soon have to answer":

• Should a Connecticut trader receive $100 million in executive pay from a bank that would be dead had it not received $45 billion in taxpayer money? Apparently, the guy's genius was to drive up the price of gas to $4 a gallon. Does he deserve 100 million bucks from you for that?
• Should unemployment benefits be extended for 1.5 million jobless Americans who will otherwise run out of money by the end of the year and fall into destitution and, sometimes, homelessness?

Chazelle notes that "the New York Times features both stories on its front page, but never connects the two" --their job "explaining the complexity of the issue" encapsulated by him as, "If the trader fails to be paid, it'll get truly ugly: The guy will go trade somewhere else!"

"On the other hand," writes Chazelle, "if mom and dad don't get their unemployment benefits, things are not quite nearly as bad: Only their kids will die." Leading him to sarcastically exclaim, "Thank god I am not in government having to make tough choices like that!"

Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "The Recession and the 'Deserving Poor': Poverty Finally on Media Radar—but Only When It Hits the Middle Class" (3/09) by Neil deMause.

Free Press's newest release (7/31/09) touts some fresh congressional legislation that "Would Protect Net Neutrality Once and for All." According to the media reform activists, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 "would protect Network Neutrality under the Communications Act, safeguarding the future of the open Internet and protecting Internet users from discrimination online."

Policy director Ben Scott explains how

the future of the Internet as we know it depends on maintaining freedom and openness online. This crucial legislation will help to ensure that the public--not big phone and cable companies--controls the fate of the Internet.

The rules that govern the Internet must protect economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech online. If we don't make Net Neutrality the law once and for all, we could see the innovation and promise of the Internet derailed forever.

While warning that "an army of lobbyists has been unleashed by the phone and cable companies to kill Net Neutrality so they can become the Internet's gatekeepers," Scott maintains that "the momentum is shifting in the public's favor," with "popular support...growing every day"--as evidenced by the fact that "millions have already called on our lawmakers to take action."

Editorial cartoonist Mikhaela Reid has a new drawing (Women In Media & News, 7/29/09) in reaction to the fact that

even Vogue has an annual "Shape" issue where they patronizingly allow someone as (*GASP*) huge as Beyonce or Kate Winslet on the cover in addition to their usual sub-zero model roundup… then offer drastic dieting tips… all while mysteriously claiming to promote body acceptance.

With faux-enthusiasm, Reid implores you, "don't miss the small print under the 'LOVE YOUR BODY!' headlines," which feature "LOSE Belly fat, TIGHTEN thighs" in Essence, "Your Thinner, Taller, Just-Right Wardrobe" on the cover of InStyle and of course, Vogue's teaser for "Longer Legs, Leaner Lines."

All of which is spoofed in Reid's cartoon as "Celebrate Your Curves: by melting them away with our body-positive parsnip and waterboarding organic torture cleanse!" Her summary: "Any magazine with an annual 'shape' issue is as empowering as strawberry-scented douche!"

Using the screenname "roberwter," one resident of the Netherlands has posted (YouTube, 7/27/09) "a video response to a Fox News broadcast about my city, Amsterdam."

The short piece starts with clips of Bill O'Reilly and guests claiming that the Dutch's "experimentation with social tolerance, free love, free drugs, clearly has backfired" and that "Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption, crime, everything is out of control. It's anarchy." Then, all under the headline "The Truth About Amsterdam," roberwter provides something Fox's talking heads rarely bring to viewers--simple facts:

Percentage of population that has ever used Cannabis
USA: 40.3 percent
Netherlands: 22.6 percent

Homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants
USA: 5.6
Netherlands: 1.2

Drug-related deaths (e.g. overdose) per million inhabitants
USA 38.0
Netherlands: 2.4

These startling statistics are all backed by something even more rarely found on the Fox channel: verifiable sources--all clearly listed in the video's final credits.

See the "Terror and Ecstasy" sidebar in this article from FAIR's magazine Extra!: "The 'Oh Really?' Factor: Bill O'Reilly Spins Facts and Statistics (5–6/02) by Peter Hart.

AlterNet's Liliana Segura has traced (7/28/09) the "nasty little rumor" that "Barack Hussein Obama is not a legitimate president because he is not really an American citizen" from "the early days of the presidential race" to its current status as "a full-blown conspiracy theory" that does "nonetheless enjoy increasingly high-profile political support, and media coverage '9/11 truthers' could only dream of":

Last week the "birthers" became big news again, after a video emerged showing Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., confronted at a town hall meeting by a woman who angrily accused him of being complicit in the coverup of Obama's true origins. Castle, who is commonly labeled a "moderate Republican"... seemed genuinely perplexed.

"Well, I don't know what comment that invites," he said, to a chorus of boos. "If you're referring to the president, then he is a citizen of the United States."

The video of Castle's unfortunate run-in with the birthers hit YouTube and went viral. MSNBC put the clip on heavy rotation; Hardball host Chris Matthews devoted multiple segments to the topic; on CNN and on his radio show, sneering nativist Lou Dobbs fanned the flames with such remarks as, "What is the deal here? I'm starting to think we have … a document issue," and on Larry King, Dick Cheney's increasingly vocal daughter, Liz, shared her highly unempirical view that "one of the reasons you see people so concerned about this" is that "people are uncomfortable with having for the first time ever … a president who seems so reluctant to defend the nation overseas."

Note how all the airtime given to these crackpots comes despite the fact that, in Segura words, the "conspiracy theory--which holds that Obama was born in Kenya, despite all evidence to the contrary--has long been debunked. The Obama camp released a copy of his birth certificate as early as June 2008, although that only seemed to fan the flames."

Philadelphia Weekly intern and Prometheus Radio Project volunteer Alyssa Figueroa has produced an excellent document of local media activists taking on global news coverage in her video showing how "nearly 100 people marched to the Philadelphia Inquirer's office demanding the paper publish more factual pieces about the coup in Honduras."

PW tells us (7/30/09) that

the marchers believed that the Inquirer's coverage of the coup has been dishonest and irresponsible, especially citing former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum's op-ed, which they thought to be not based in facts.

Participants marched from the Central Library to the Inquirer's office after attending an event at the library on community media and Latin America.

Adrienne Pine, an anthropologist and assistant professor at American University, was one of the event’s speakers. She spoke about how media coverage doesn't supply its audience with the truth, and yet citizens continue to rise up and fight for accuracy.

Pine, who "has lived in Honduras for several years and has written a book and essays on the country, also mentioned that she had written an op-ed for the Inquirer and it was rejected without a reason."

Listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Greg Grandin on Honduras Coup" (7/3/09).

The anti-racism Color of Change organization has sent out an email blast (8/30/09) warning that "more and more, right-wing talkshow hosts are bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream."

Still, they claim that "Fox's Glenn Beck just took it to another level" with his July 28 statement that "this president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people.... This guy is, I believe, a racist."

It's part of a larger argument Beck has been making: that President Obama is using the White House to serve the needs of black communities at white people's expense. This kind of talk stirs up fear, hate and it can lead to violence....

Glenn Beck is appealing to the worst in America. Of course, some people refuse to accept the fact that our president is black or the idea that he could truly serve all Americans. We know that. The only way these views will fade away is if they're not reinforced by mainstream society. Instead, folks like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh are exploiting racism and race-based fear to bump their ratings, stirring up racial discord in the process.

The dangers of these tactics are real. We saw the same dynamic during the presidential race: By the end, the McCain/Palin campaign was unable to control the violent energy whipped up by their race-baiting. The result was an unprecedented number of threats on Obama's life, a rise in the number of hate groups and an increase in the number of threats and crimes against immigrants and black people.

Fully aware that "Fox has had a long history of race-baiting and racism on its shows," Color of Change insists that "Glenn Beck appears to be taking the network to an even lower standard. He's trying to divide and distract America when we should be coming together and talking about issues that really matter--like healthcare and the economy."

See the recent FAIR magazine Extra!: "Glenn Beck Is No Howard Beale: He's Mad Like a Fox, and Wants to Take Us In" (6/09) by Steve Rendall.

In a previous post "showing Fox News' tendency to mislabel badly behaving Republicans as Democrats," one of Canadian blogger Joey deVilla's commenters has pointed out "this map of the Middle East shown on a Fox News in segment where Neil Cavuto interviewed John Bolton."

Noting a problem with the country marked "Egypt"--"that’s not Egypt, that's Iraq!"--deVilla provides (Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century, 7/28/09) a helpfully "real map of the Middle East," and puts it pretty mildly when stating that "you'd think that with their obsessions with terror, Muslims and safeguarding the nation, not to mention the presence of a former representative to the U.N. present, they'd know where Iraq was."

Following the growth of "a new right-wing scare tactic" that "has blossomed on conservative blogs and emails lists," Talking Points Memo Muckraker Zachary Roth (7/28/09) describes the healthcare meme as "the notion that the reform bill making its way through the House would lead to euthanasia by requiring senior citizens to submit to 'end-of-life consultations'"--and thinks that maybe

it won't surprise you to learn this is a lie. But President Obama just got a question on it at a public event. And the idea has now made it into Politico, where a straight news story asks in its headline, all even-handed: "Will Proposal Promote Euthanasia?" Since Politico thinks it'll be easier to "win the morning" by misleading readers into believing there's a legitimate debate over this issue, it's worth taking a minute to debunk it.

In fact, Politico's story contains pretty much all the information needed to do that. It's just that almost none of it makes it into the headline, or the first seven paragraphs of the piece, which focus on the fact that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and other reforms opponents are raising the euthanasia alarm.

Explaining how the clause in question would really only require that regular consultations with seniors contain "an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice," Roth notes that "seniors are in no way required to take advantage of this benefit."

Roth tells how "Politico renders this information as: 'It does not mandate individuals to take advantage of the benefit, proponents say'" [Roth's emphasis].

"Nor is there any reasonable basis for believing that these consultations, if chosen, would do anything to promote euthanasia," Roth writes, especially since it "is illegal in 48 states anyway."

"With the corporate media relentlessly distorting the public discussion around healthcare reform," Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon (7/29/09) has enumerated his "Top 10 Ways to Tell Your President & His Party Aren't Fighting for Healthcare For Everybody," including:

The president and his party, and the corporate media, have spent more time and energy silencing and excluding the advocates of single-payer healthcare, mostly the president's own supporters, than they have fighting Blue Dogs and Republicans.

But no matter how diligently the spokespeople for single payer are excluded from media coverage and invitations to Obama's policy forums and round tables, no matter how many times the White House cuts their questions from transcripts and video of public events, the calls, emails and letters keep pouring into Congress and the White House demanding the creation of a publicly funded, everybody-in-nobody-out system, a Medicare-for-All kind of single-payer healthcare plan.

Additionally, Dixon sees how "the president, with the cooperation of corporate media and the Republicans, is trying to make the argument about himself instead of a discussion on the merits of his policy":

The president and his critics are happy to talk about whether this will be "his Waterloo," or his Dien Bien Phu, as if that matters more than the 22,000 Americans who die each year from lack of medical care, or the three quarter million who will go bankrupt because of unpayable medical bills.

"The concentration on whether the president looks good or bad," according to Dixon, "takes up air, ink and coverage time that might otherwise be spent explaining what is and isn't in the various proposals, and why."

Read of the ongoing demand for broader media debate on healthcare in FAIR's new Activism Update: "Media Take Notice of FAIR's Healthcare Petition" (7/31/09).

Presenting yet another example of corporate media failure to grasp the concept of "Adjusted for Inflation," Kevin Drum (MotherJones.com, 7/26/09) has written up a Washington Post piece in which "David Brown says that as treatment for heart attacks has gotten better, it's also gotten more expensive":

"Over the same period, the charges for treating a heart attack marched steadily upward, from about $5,700 in 1977 to $54,400 in 2007 (without adjusting for inflation)."

I continue not to understand why anyone would write this. Why not this instead?

"Over the same period, adjusted for inflation, the charges for treating a heart attack marched steadily upward, from about $20,000 in 1977 to $54,400 in 2007."

Technically, Brown's wording is correct. But it's not helpful, since most people don't have even a vague notion of how much cumulative inflation there's been since 1977. The revised wording, however, is helpful: It gives people a correct impression of how much more we spend treating heart attacks these days. Namely, two to three times as much as 30 years ago.

And Drum maintains "this wasn't just a slip of the keyboard. Brown and his editor obviously made a deliberate decision to use nominal figures even though this doesn't give the average reader a very good idea of how much costs have actually risen."