FAIR has a new Action Alert (1/29/10) about All Things Considered's obituary of historian Howard Zinn, which "balances" the praise of Noam Chomsky and Julian Bond with a substance-free attack by far-right activist David Horowitz. If you communicate with the NPR ombud (which requires using a Web form), feel free to copy your message and post in the comments here.

David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist who speaks for the little guy who eats at the Applebee's salad bar, has figured out (1/29/10) what Barack Obama ought to do:

Force the country to accept common sacrifice.  This is the issue that unlocks everything else.... Establish your credibility and offer to raise taxes on the lower 98 percent.

At a time of 10 percent unemployment,  when the median wage for male workers is lower than it was in 1974, Brooks has a solution: Let them not eat so much cake.

AP's story (1/28/10) on Ben Bernanke's reconfirmation as chair of the Federal Reserve states plainly what is more usually the unstated assumption in corporate media coverage of the Fed:

The battle over Bernanke's confirmation has been a test of central bank independence, a crucial element if the Fed is to carry out unpopular but economically essential policies.

From this perspective, the Federal Reserve is an organization of financial philosopher kings who must be insulated from democracy in order to do what is best for us. There is another way to look at it, of course: that the Fed essentially represents the interests of the financial industry, and that its independence is crucial if it is to carry out unpopular but economically very profitable policies--such as maintaining the value of money, otherwise known as fighting inflation, by keeping people out of work who would otherwise be employed. You will not often find this alternative perspective discussed in corporate media.

AP's Calvin Woodward, who has the standing assignment of  "factchecking" political speeches, continues to be an embarrassment to genuine factcheckers everywhere--substituting his own weird value judgments, semantic games and crystal-ball gazing for genuine examination of facts (FAIR Blog, 10/30/08, 2/25/09, 4/30/09).  In his post-State of the Union effort (1/27/10), he singles out Barack Obama's call for a non-military discretionary spending freeze, pointing out that during the 2008 campaign Obama had said that rival John McCain's proposal for a spending freeze was "using a hatchet where you need a scalpel." Saying that Obama's "proposal is similar to McCain's," Woodward complained that "he didn't explain what had changed."

Actually, regardless of what you think of the freeze proposal, the administration has explained quite specifically how the two proposals are supposed to differ: While McCain's "hatchet" would freeze funding for individual programs, Obama's "scalpel" would freeze overall domestic discretionary spending, allowing some programs to expand while others are cut (White House Blog, 1/26/10).  Again, you can question the wisdom of the policy, but you can't claim that the White House doesn't offer an explanation of how Obama's approach differs from McCain's. Or rather, if you work for AP, you not only can--you can make it the centerpiece of your "factchecking" article. (The article's headline is a pun about Obama's "Hatchet' Job.")

Woodward indulges in fortune-telling when he dismisses Obama's talk of creating a deficit-cutting commission as a "weak substitute" for a congressionally established panel: "Any commission set up by Obama alone would lack authority to force its recommendations before Congress, and would stand almost no chance of success."  Actually, Nostradamus, the Senate plan for a deficit commission would have required three-fifths majorities in both houses to enact the recommendations (McClatchy, 1/26/10),  proposals that came from a White House-created panel could pass by majority rule (since deficit-cutting measures fall under the Senate's reconciliation rules)--a far easier political hurdle.  (Once more, the question of whether such "success" is to be hoped for is another matter--see FAIR Action Alert, 1/6/10.)

Woodward follows Obama's "Our approach would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan" with the retort, "But Obama can't guarantee people won't see higher rates or fewer benefits in their existing plans." Because an honest president would have pointed out, apparently, that his or her reform bill wouldn't permanently eliminate all medical inflation.

FAIR has a new Action Alert out, "Does NYT's Top Israel Reporter Have a Son in the IDF?" (1/27/10), about the New York Times' failure to respond to questions about whether Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner's son is enlisted in Israel's military, and, if so, whether this poses a conflict of interest. If you send a message to the Times about the alert--or otherwise have thoughts you'd like to share about the alert--please make use of the comments thread for this post.

The New York Times, which we had criticized (FAIR Blog, 1/12/10, 1/13/10) for ignoring insurgent candidate Jonathan Tasini in its coverage of the New York Senate race, ran a substantial piece about his candidacy today (1/27/10). While the piece, by N.R. Kleinfield, had a somewhat wry tone as it stressed the "long shot" nature of Tasini's bid, it also gave him space to outline his progressive policy positions and how they differ from those of incumbent Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

An interesting catch from Think Progress (1/26/10)--from an interview conducted last year by Fox News' Chris Wallace (9/27/09) with pretend pimp James O'Keefe:

WALLACE: O'Keefe says he wants to do more undercover films, and he has some targets in mind. He says his friends always tell him the next sting will never work.

O'KEEFE: I disagree with them. I think that I'll come up with a new strategy and I'll get them to say yes.

This was, of course, before O'Keefe and three of his friends were arrested while apparently trying to wiretap the phones of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

Update: O'Keefe denies that he was trying to wiretap Landrieu's phone. He and his companions were not charged under the wiretapping statute, but with "maliciously interfering with a telephone system operated and controlled by the U.S. government" (CBSNews.com, 1/29/10).

The lead in an article in today's New York Times (1/26/10) tells us that the White House and Congressional Democrats will soon decide "whether to use a procedural maneuver" to pass a healthcare bill with less than 60 votes in the Senate. That process is called budget reconciliation; it would be a complicated process, to be sure,  and as the Times tells us "it carries numerous risks, including the possibility of a political backlash against what Republicans would be sure to cast as parliamentary trickery."

Well yes, they could indeed say that--and reporters will type it into stories. As the article elaborates: "Republicans, however, have made clear that they will portray Mr. Obama and Democrats as trying to use a hardball tactic to win passage of the healthcare legislation." That was followed by a quote from Republican Rep. John Boehner, who lambasted the administration's "job-killing policies."

Read further, though, and you come to this: "The mere mention of reconciliation infuriates many Republicans, even though they occasionally used the tactic when they were in the majority."

Wait--what was that last part again? Republicans are infuriated by a tactic they used when they were in power? Isn't that hypocrisy a little more important than boilerplate GOP complaints?

This article has a familiar feel. In fact, the problem here was the problem with another Times article eight months ago, written by Robert Pear--a co-author of today's piece.  As I pointed out then, Pear called reconciliation "obscure" and "high-risk," before adding, almost as an aside: "The fast-track procedures have been used 19 times since 1980 to pass major legislation, including much of President Ronald Reagan’s domestic policy agenda in 1981, welfare overhaul in 1996 and President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003."

There was little protest from the corporate media to passing tax cuts for the wealthy using reconciliation. Healthcare reform, for some reason, is treated differently.

Time's Joe Klein wrote on his magazine's Swampland blog (1/25/10) that the American public doesn't understand that the economy benefited from the Obama administration's stimulus efforts. So far, so good--it's true that economists generally feel that the stimulus bill had some impact in curbing unemployment, saving about 1.2 million jobs, according to one survey of the profession (USA Today, 1/25/10). The CBO had a similar estimate of stimulus effects (Bloomberg, 12/1/09).

Where Klein goes wrong is blaming the public's lack of understanding of the impact of the stimulus on the public's stupidity. The post, headlined "Too Dumb to Thrive,"  notes that "it is impossible to be a citizen if you don't make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government," and concludes by suggesting that the United States has become "a nation of dodos." Klein also blames the Obama administration, which "has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people."

When media figures mock public ignorance, it always strikes me that we have an institution whose job it is to inform the public--and they work for it.  If the public doesn't know what it's supposed to, that tells us that our media system has serious problems.

Klein does note in an aside that Fox News has "misinformed" the public, but it's not just Fox--whose audience is tiny relative to the size of the population. And it's not really a problem of journalists messing up--the real problem is that they do their jobs the way corporate media expect them to.

Here's how you're supposed to report on the stimulus, if you work for a newspaper or daily TV news program:

Obama, GOP Spokesman Differ on Stimulus Results

That's from the Boston Globe (11/27/09), considered one of the most "liberal" corporate news outlets. The story that followed dutifully quoted the president claiming he had cut taxes and extended jobless benefits, followed by Rep. Mike Pence (R.-Ind)  saying that Democrats had taken the economy "from bad to worse with their failed economic agenda and big government plans." Who was right? The story gave readers not a clue, allowing the Globe to successfully avoid taking sides.

Or look at the piece from CNN (1/25/10) that set Klein off, reporting on a poll that found "3 of 4 Americans Say Much of Stimulus Money Wasted."  Is the public right to think that?  The CNN story doesn't say--it's just telling us what we think, not what the facts are.

Now, you do find the occasional report on a study that finds that, in fact, increased government spending does seem to result in lower unemployment. But such stories are  greatly outnumbered by the he-said, she-said of routine political coverage--few if any of which will refer back to the coverage that cited actual data about the stimulus program.  Expecting citizens to figure out on their own which side's line of the day is more credible is like randomly inserting passages from The Lord of the Rings into a history textbook and being surprised when students think Gandalf was a real person.

Klein had a follow-up post (1/25/10) in which he said that Americans, i.e. Time's main customers, are not actually stupider than the next nationality,  but were instead the victims of public schools, the reform of which has been blocked by  "teachers' unions and other educational reactionaries." Nevertheless, he continued to blame "lazy" citizens who "don't pay any attention to the news" or who "get their information from sources that feed their prejudices." Ironically, the progressive blogs that he's presumably including in that category are much more likely to tell their readers what's actually going on with the stimulus--and include a link pointing to evidence--than the "objective" corporate media outlets that Klein wishes people paid more attention to.

An enterprising Washington Post report by Joe Stephens (1/23/10) uses  the Freedom Of Information Act to uncover the close and creepy relationship between folksy far-right broadcaster Paul Harvey and longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.  The documents Stephens uncovered show Harvey as just the kind of journalist that Hoover liked: sycophantic ("If the Republic has survived, history will record that it was largely due to your vigilance") and servile ("For a number of years, you have been kind enough to send me your daily copy," an assistant FBI director noted to Harvey in 1957).

On its side, the Bureau appeared to view Harvey as a cracked though useful tool: Despite "a history of emotional instability," said one 1952 memo, Harvey had become "very effectively anti-Communist." The broadcaster "devoted entire shows to Hoover's heroism," the article notes.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Stephens' story is how Harvey and the Bureau got acquainted in the first place, a McCarthy Era "meet-cute" story: Harvey had been interrogated in 1951 (during the Truman administration) after jumping the fence at the Argonne nuclear laboratory in Illinois, hoping to demonstrate lax security at the federal facility, but instead being apprehended within seconds. The telling thing is that Harvey had written the script for his stunt beforehand,  indicating that he planned to lie to his audience about what had happened:

I hereby affirm the following is a true and accurate account.... My friend and I were driving a once-familiar road, when the car stalled. . . . We started to walk. . . . We made no effort to conceal our presence. . . .

Suddenly I realized where I was. That I had entered, unchallenged, one of the United States' vital atomic research installations. . . . Quite by accident, understand, I had found myself inside the 'hot' area. . . . We could have carried a bomb in, or classified documents out.

This combination of mendacity and right-wing politics would serve Harvey well throughout his career. See Extra!: "The Right of the Story: Paul Harvey Peddles Tall Tales--With a Conservative Kick" (9-10/97) by Dan Wilson.

Amy Wilentz has a strong critique of the media in her column in the new issue of the Nation (2/8/10).  Starting with the New York Times' David Brooks (1/15/10; see FAIR Blog, 1/15/10), she demolishes his facile comparison of Haiti and Barbados ("Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well") and then moves on:

Brooks goes on to discuss the Haitian family, seemingly basing his argument on a book by Lawrence Harrison, a conservative cultural critic who also knows nothing about Haiti. "Child-rearing practices" in Haiti, Brooks writes, "often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10." I don't know where this assertion comes from, but it reminds me of nothing so much as Daniel Patrick Moynihan's controversial and misguided report on the black family in the 1960s. I've never seen either of these child-rearing practices in my two decades of living in and covering Haiti. In fact, I see more parents carrying small children around in Haiti's markets than I do at the farmers' markets in Los Angeles. You can't write these kinds of things about people whose culture and nation you respect. Nor would an editor permit you to say such things blithely about people who are considered our equals or are able to respond in equally august publications. Right now, the Haitians cannot--they're too busy getting water for their neglected children.

Wilentz then turns to the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum (1/18/10):

She opens her piece (as she so often does) by telling us about herself; her reactions are important to her: "For the past several days, I have found myself unable to look at the photographs from Haiti. I have also found that when I start an article datelined Port-au-Prince, I have to force myself to read to the end." Although she doesn't like to read about it, she knows what's at the heart of her reluctance: "I have no illusions about anyone's ability to help, for this...is a man-made disaster first and foremost, and so it will remain." She goes on to fault the weakness of Haiti's public institutions for the physical collapse of buildings, including the Presidential Palace (constructed by the Marines during the 1915-34 U.S. occupation of Haiti) and many other public edifices built by perfectly well-educated architects using the best practices of their day. It's a stunningly heartless argument.

I'm tempted to quote much more, but that's what links are for.

Following a 2006 incident in which three Guantanamo detainees had apparently taken their own lives, the Pentagon responded by describing the  suicides as "asymmetrical warfare" against the U.S. Here' s how the BBC reported it at the time (6/11/06):

Rear Adm. Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair.

"They are smart. They are creative, they are committed," he said, quoted by Reuters.

"They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

As if that weren't sufficiently demented, a new report in Harper's magazine suggests the three detainees may actually have been murdered by U.S. officials in what appears to have been a black site contained within the prison compound.

Citing American whistleblowers who served at Guantanamo, Scott Horton of Harper's reports that the three detainees were moved from their cells to a secret compound only hours before their deaths.

The detailed Harper's report emerges on the ninth anniversary of Guantanamo’s opening and the first anniversary of the inauguration of President Barack Obama, who promised to quickly shutter the infamous prison.

The expose could help to spark renewed debate over Guantanamo, torture, black sites and related issues--but it won't do that if media don't report on it.  It has received some mainstream pick up: The Associated Press published an article that has appeared in some outlets (e.g., Boston Globe) and the St. Louis Post Dispatch has even editorialized for an independent investigation. But so far neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post have deemed it newsworthy.

The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

--Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (1/21/10), granting corporations the power to spend untold billions to do our thinking for us

On the January 15 edition of his show, while chatting with Ray Stevens, who recorded the song "Ahab the Arab" nearly 50 years ago, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly seemed to become nostalgic for a time when making fun of Arabs was acceptable:

Forty-eight years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs. We could make fun of people in a general gentle way, and certainly, "Ahab Was the Arab" [sic] was a general gentle parody. But now we can't. What has changed in America?

As American Prospect blogger Adam Serwer put it, O'Reilly is really

mourning the demise of what he refers to as the "white Christian male power structure." It's not really that you "can't" make racist jokes anymore; it's that when you make them, you can't expect everyone to remain silent as you assert your cultural or racial superiority through humor.”

Serwer adds that we are apparently still a country where it’s not entirely "taboo to whine about no longer being able to make fun of Arabs." However, while jokes about Arabs may be frowned upon, it should be noted that full-throated calls for their profiling, detention and bombing are practically required by certain media outlets, Fox News among them.

For more on O'Reilly's record of bigotry, see "O'Reilly's Racist Slurs--in Context" (Extra! Update, 6/03).

An illuminating account of how conservatives won the Massachusetts Senate race (Washington Independent, 1/20/10) singled out an op-ed by Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal (1/14/10) as having energized citizens to vote against Martha Coakley. And, honestly, the piece does provide plenty of legitimate ammunition for the anti-Coakley side.

The op-ed centered on a case  in which three members of the Amirault family, which ran a pre-school in Massachusetts, were sent to prison based on children's accounts of seemingly impossible sexual abuse. (Read the column if you want to see the grisly yet preposterous examples.)  Rabinowitz, who has  long written about the child sex-abuse witch-hunting that has put numerous people in jail based on  bizarre and unverifiable accusations, pointed to Coakley's strenuous defense of the convictions as attorney general as evidence of her unsuitability for higher office.

It's refreshing to see a piece of conservative opinion journalism that is grounded in actual investigation and addresses a real issue (and doesn't mention ACORN even once).  If it had an impact on the outcome of the Senate race, that's what political writing is supposed to do.

There's one false note that I want to point out in the op-ed, though, when Rabinowitz contrasted Coakley's enthusiasm for the dubious process that convicted the Amiraults with her concern over the treatment of prisoners rounded up in the "War on Terror": "It is little short of wonderful to hear now of Ms. Coakley's concern for the rights of terror suspects at Guantanamo--her urgent call for the protection of the right to the presumption of innocence."

I think it's fair to say that the point of Rabinowitz's sarcasm is that Coakley's concern for due process is misplaced--that it should be reserved for the innocent Amiraults, and not extended to the terror suspects.  This impression is confirmed by an earlier column from Rabinowitz (2/2/09) that attacked Obama for "issuing executive orders effectively undermining efforts to extract (from captured Al-Qaeda operatives) intelligence essential to the prevention of terror attacks"--i.e., preventing the government from torturing suspects.

Sexually abusing children and killing random people to make political points are both horrible things--which is why people are inclined not to worry too much about the rights of people who are accused of such crimes, and sometimes neglect the rules that are designed to separate the guilty from the innocent. Rabinowitz made a strong case that Coakley fell into this trap when it came to the Massachusetts pre-school charges--but she seems to have a similar blind spot for the possibility that some inmates at Guantanamo may have been equally railroaded.

Rabinowitz writes movingly about the heartbreak of being unjustly imprisoned and separated from one's family; she could write exactly the same story about many of the Guantanamo inmates--but provoking outrage against the politicians responsible for the tragedies might not be to her ideological taste.