Appearing on the O'Reilly Factor (3/25/10) to discuss being named by Joy Behar as one of the media figures the View panelist (3/22/10) says are inspiring hate among Tea Party activists ("There is a difference between free speech and hate speech, and we've been listening to it from Beck and Limbaugh now. And these people are all juiced up by these two. That's what's happening"), Glenn Beck attempted to demonstrate his tolerance for his political foes in the following exchange:

BECK: Have you or I ever said Michael Moore shouldn't be allowed to make a movie?

O'REILLY: No.

BECK: Michael Moore shouldn't be allowed to speak? Michael Moore shouldn't have his own TV show? Never.

O'REILLY: Never. Never.

BECK: Never. Because we believe in freedom of speech. George Washington called it the battlefield of ideas.

O'REILLY: Right.

While it may be true to say that Beck has never expressed a wish to see Michael Moore censored, precisely, he has expressed a desire to kill Moore with his bare hands:

I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out--is this wrong?

Reasonable people might see this as a desire for an extreme form of censorship--and hateful to boot.

UPDATE: O'Reilly too has fantasized about assaulting Moore--in a non-censorious way, of course.  See FAIR Blog, 10/6/09.

One of USA Today's regular op-ed features is a "right-left" conversation between conservative columnist Cal Thomas and "liberal" Democratic strategist Bob Beckel in which they seek "Common Ground"--the name of the op-ed feature--on "issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot."

Last week (3/25/10) Thomas and Beckel tackled the issue of "Bias and Fox News"--and really, what could be a better subject of debate for two paid Fox News commentators? Incredibly, they were able to overcome their great differences to defend the network that pays their bills.

Some of the highlights:

Cal: What the Obama administration and Raines and many at the Huffington Post and elsewhere in the Liberal Hemisphere are lamenting is that the media monopoly has ended. Journalists have tended to be liberal, and until the past decade or so, the newspapers and networks held the megaphones. The voices leaving those megaphones all sounded the same. Well, now everyone has a megaphone. And it might be noisier, but as President James Buchanan said, "I like the noise of democracy."

Bob: Hear, hear.

Yes, that's the voice of "the left." And even Beckel's attempts at differentiating himself from Thomas manage to come around to a plug for Fox:

Cal: And say what you will about Beck, but he teaches a lot of history that many Americans have either forgotten or were never exposed to in public schools.

Bob: Beck has brought liberal criticism on himself. Calling President Obama a racist was way out of bounds. I got on Fox the day after that comment and blasted Beck. I never received a single comment from anyone at Fox for doing so. In fact, no one at Fox has ever suggested I ease up on my criticism of conservatives.

While no such "blast" could be found in the Nexis database (Fox doesn't transcribe all of its shows), here's a typical Beckel "criticism" on Fox (Hannity, 10/19/09):

BECKEL: The issue here is the question of the Fox News issue, which is something very near and dear to my heart, since I've been on this network now for six years. And I will say this. What I don't understand is, they can disagree with you--and they should because they're right and you're wrong. And so's Beck and so's O'Reilly.

But the rest of these shows are news shows, and good shows. And why they leave this up to a few of us to come on the air against wing nuts, I mean, if you can't--I have to go up against Michele Bachmann, against Michelle Malkin. I mean, if you can't handle Michele Bachmann, you Democrats out there won't come on, you don't deserve to be in the business.

HANNITY: Have I been fair to you?

BECKEL: Yes, you have.

That Fox's "news" shows are less partisan or ideological than its "opinion" shows is Fox's standard defense (and one that both Beckel and Thomas bring up in their USAT debate), but it's easy enough to debunk; see Extra!: "Fox News—Wing of the GOP?" (12/09) by Steve Rendall.

Beckel's brand of "criticism" is hardly likely to earn him a reprimand from Fox--in fact, it's exactly what gets you a gig on Fox News--as well as at USA Today.

Implicit in much coverage of the offshore drilling debate is that such oil has the potential to lower gasoline prices. The L.A. Times' report (3/30/10) on the Obama administration's new offshore drilling plan provided this context:

The announcement will come in the run-up to summer driving season, as gasoline prices have begun a national march toward $3 a gallon, and beyond that in California.... Energy companies and conservatives have clamored for increased drilling since gasoline prices spiked during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Like virtually all offshore-drilling coverage (CEPR, 9/08), the L.A. Times doesn't note that drilling in coastal areas will have only the most minimal impact on the price of gasoline--and even that trivial impact would be a decade away.  According to the federal Energy Information Administration, considered the authoritative source on energy, opening up the entire continental shelf of the lower 48 states would have virtually no effect on all on crude prices: "Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant." This information ought to be included in every report on offshore drilling.

See Extra! Update: "Failing to Do the Math on Oil:  Support for Offshore Drilling Increases Following Media Misinformation"  (8/08) by Hannah Dreier.

The Vatican is lashing out at mounting news reports suggesting that, before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger used his positions to cover up the the church's sex abuse scandals, with little regard for the child victims of the abusers or the law.  A Vatican spokesperson denounced the reporting as an "ignoble attempt" to smear the pope "at any cost."

In fact, increased U.S. media interest in the pope's role in church scandals should be a welcome development. Following Benedict's 2008 visit to the U.S.--intended, among other things, to address the abuse scandals--Extra! (7-8/08) chided U.S. media for fawning coverage of the pope, and particularly for its failure to mention Ratzinger's key role in the scandals.

Extra! cited one London Observer report (8/17/03) that revealed that in 2001, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican agency charged with addressing the church's sexual abuse scandals, Ratzinger sent a secret directive to bishops worldwide, threatening automatic excommunication for any Catholic official who discussed pending abuse cases outside the church’s legal system.

Another Observer story (4/24/05) reported that, in 1994, Ratzinger personally dismissed charges of sex abuse against Father Marcial Maciel, the head of an influential conservative seminary in Mexico and a personal confidant to then-Pope John Paul II. Maciel was accused of abusing several children over decades. According to the Observer, Ratzinger told a reporter at the time, "One can't put on trial such a close friend of the pope." (Twelve years later, on the eve of his elevation to the papacy, Ratzinger reopened the investigation of Maciel, later asking the aging priest to resign.)

Recent Vatican attacks on the media echo earlier Vatican media assaults by Ratzinger himself. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 2001, Ratzinger dismissed coverage of scandals as anti-church bigotry (Zenit, 12/3/02), calling it a "a planned campaign" to smear the church. In that regard, little has changed. What has changed, thankfully, is that the U.S. media seem to be paying more attention now. Let's hope media interest doesn't flag in the face of church attacks.

Articles like "Accusations Fly Between Parties Over Threats and Vandalism" in the New York Times today (3/26/10) are fairly useless. Are Republicans "fanning the flames with coded rhetoric," as a Democratic lawmaker says, or is a Republican representative right that it's Democrats who are "ratcheting up the rhetoric"?

Readers are really left to judge based on their own partisan predilections, since Times reporter Michael Cooper gives them almost nothing else to go on. The article reports that "some Democrats accused the Republicans of stoking anger on the right with their fierce language during the healthcare debate," but it only gives one example: Sarah Palin telling her followers, "Don't Retreat, Instead--RELOAD!"

It actually gets quite a bit fiercer than that--as Cooper would know if he read fellow New York Times reporter Timothy Egan's blog post on the subject (3/24/10):

"Let's beat the other side to a pulp!" Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to the last stand of Tea Partiers on Sunday night. "Let's chase them down! There's going to be a reckoning."

Lest anyone accuse Egan of taking King's quote out of context, those words were immediately preceded by King's suggestion that those sorts of action were a last-ditch alternative to secession (Think Progress, 3/22/10):

I just came down here so I could say to you, God bless you.… You are the awesome American people....

If I could start a country with a bunch of people, they'd be the folks who were standing with us the last few days. Let's hope we don't have to do that!

As a professional observer of the media for the past 20 years, I can confidently state that if a Democratic member of Congress went out to address a mob on Capitol Hill that had recently been spitting at lawmakers and chanting ethnic slurs, and urged them to beat up their opponents so they don't "have to" launch a civil war, this would be a major news story.

Instead, a check of Nexis for King's quote turns up a handful of stories--one by Rachel Maddow (MSNBC, 3/24/10), another by Terry Gross (NPR, 3/25/10), an op-ed piece in the Des Moines Register (3/26/10) and a blog post from the Cedar Rapids Gazette (3/23/10).  Congressional Quarterly HealthBeat (3/22/10) had a piece, and the Bismarck Tribune (3/26/10) reprinted Egan's post. There were also about a half-dozen pieces in the alternative press--and that's all Nexis wrote.

Is it really not a significant development when a political leader--even a Republican political leader--starts urging his followers to beat their enemies to a pulp?  Is that really something that can only be discussed in blog posts and op-ed columns?

One of the main assumptions of the final weeks of coverage of the congressional debate over healthcare reform was that the public was opposed to the White House plan. But some polling analysis shows that this wasn't the case. Barry Sussman noted this at the Nieman Watchdog on March 5. A McClatchy/Ipsos poll from late February told the usual tale: 41 percent supported the plan, 47 opposed. Sussman wrote:

But the pollsters went a step further, asking those opposed--509 people in all--if they were against the proposals because they "don't go far enough to reform healthcare" or because they go too far. Thirty-seven percent said it was because the proposals don't go far enough.

So a good number of those who answered in the negative were actually saying that they thought the White House was too timid. A subsequent CNN poll asked the same type of follow-up question, and found a similar result--as noted by the blogger Digby (3/24/10), Wolf Blitzer explained it to his CNN colleague Rick Sanchez like this:

Well, you know, when people are asked, we did that poll, CNN Opinion Research Poll, that said, "You like this healthcare bill, or not like it"; we just assumed, a lot of us, that the people who said they didn't like it didn't like it because it was too much interference, or too much taxes or whatever.

But if you take a closer look at people who didn't like it, about 12 percent of those people who said they didn't like it they didn't like it because they didn't think it went far enough. They wanted a single-payer option, they wanted the so-called public option, they didn't like not from the right, they didn't like it because it wasn't left or liberal enough.

That's how you got 50 percent of the American people who said, "we don't like this plan." But only about 40 or 38 percent were the ones who said it was too much government interference.

If reporters had understood and/0r explained this earlier, we could have had a very different debate. Then again, a corporate media that dismissed single-payer and derided the public option as out of the mainstream would be unlikely to do much better.

FAIR's Jim Naureckas appeared on GritTV yesterday to discuss media coverage of ACORN:

Newsweek has a regular feature called "The Index" where the magazine picks out three current news events and maps them a 100-point scale, from Awful (1) to Awesome (100). The latest installment in the March 29 issue (which is not online) goes like this:

AWESOME (80): Dennis Kucinich, who has voted against a slew of Democratic initiatives (from the left), pledges to reverse himself on health care after previously voting no.

OK--a left-wing Democrat plays nice with the party and flip-flops on a key issue. Not hard to see why corporate media would think that's awesome. Next:

AWFUL (16): Oh, Rielle. For a while there, before your creepy photo spread in GQ, you were playing the part of the quiet mistress quite well.

Rielle Hunter--the mother of John Edwards' child--took some tawdry photos.

And, then, right in the middle, with a score of 52:

Intensified use of drone-fired missiles is wiping out militants in Pakistan. But can we see the legal memos justifying "targeted assassinations"?

Using remote-control weaponry to kill people in an undeclared war in another country, possibly in violation of international law, and certainly killing innocent civilians in the process.... Yes, it is hard to take a position on that.

Numerically speaking, the 52 score is slightly closer to the "awesome" Kucinich decision than to the "awful" photo shoot.

The New York Times, thanks in large part to FAIR activists, printed an ACORN correction today (3/23/10):

Several articles since September about the troubles of the community organizing group ACORN referred incorrectly or imprecisely to one aspect of videotaped encounters between ACORN workers and two conservative activists that contributed to the group’s problems.

In the encounters, the activists posed as a prostitute and a pimp and discussed prostitution with the workers. But while footage shot away from the offices shows one activist, James O’Keefe, in a flamboyant pimp costume, there is no indication that he was wearing the costume while talking to the Acorn workers.

The errors occurred in articles on September 16 and September 19, 2009, and on January 31 of this year. Because of an editing error, the mistake was repeated in an article in some copies on Saturday.

Well, that's better than nothing. But as FAIR has pointed out, it's not entirely clear that O'Keefe ever posed as a pimp in any of the actual meetings at ACORN offices. In many cases, he seems to be telling ACORN workers that he is the boyfriend of Hannah Giles (the "prostitute").

The Times' correction comes as little comfort given the news that ACORN is shutting down, in large part thanks to these hoax videos.  The paper covered that news, and managed to continue to misreport the story:

ACORN has been battered by criticism from the right and has lost federal money and private donations since a video sting was publicized last fall. ACORN employees were shown in the videos advising two young conservative activists--posing as a pimp and a prostitute--how to conceal their criminal activities.

Again, O'Keefe does not appear to be "posing as a pimp" in many of the encounters; he's claiming that he's trying to protect Giles from a pimp. From O'Keefe's transcript of his visit to ACORN's Brooklyn office (cited by Brad Blog, 3/22/10):

I know nothing about her business, I am just trying to be here to be professional because, ya know, she walks in and--but now we have this pimp discriminating against us.

And it's a stretch to suggest that the advice was about "how to conceal their criminal activities." The duo were trying to get advice on how to get a mortgage; the gist of the advice in the somewhat rambling meetings was about the need to file tax returns in order to be able to even apply for a mortgage.

The Times added:

While the videos gave the impression that one of the two activists, James E. O'Keefe III, was dressed as a pimp when he entered the offices, later inspection seemed to indicate that he had manipulated that part of the footage and showed no evidence that he wore the costume when talking to ACORN workers.

The transcript of several stings, however, indicate that Mr. O'Keefe clearly presented himself as a pimp and that ACORN workers in some offices told him how to hide prostitution activities from the authorities.

This is the New York Times grasping at straws, strenuously attempting to justify their sorry record on this story.

...he would have to take a leave of absence to recover from the shame of having heaped ridicule on a guest who tried to explain to him how Congress could and would pass a healthcare reform bill.

Daily Kos (3/22/10) recalled the January 22 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, in which guest Rep. Alan Grayson (D.-Fla.)  pointed out that the Senate had already passed a healthcare bill, and that the House could approve it and then pass amendments that the Senate could accept via reconciliation. Matthews' response: "OK, OK. OK, you know, this show is about reality."

Matthews continually mocked Grayson for his supposed ignorance of Senate procedure:

What are you talking about? What procedure do you know that Harry Reid doesn't know?... That Dick Durbin doesn't know? That all those top guys, that Ted Kennedy didn't know?... The secret route to the Indies that only you know about?... Why do you think the president and everybody else is dying over the fact that they lost Massachusetts? Because it didn't matter? You think they're all crazy over there, but you're smart?

Matthews' choice of insults was telling: "This is netroots talk!... This is outsider talk, and you're an elected official...and you know you can't do it. You're pandering to the netroots right now. I know what you're doing!"

By contrast, Matthews cited his insider credentials as a former Capitol Hill staffer to dismiss the lawmaker's analysis:

Well, I worked over there for many, many years, and I worked for the speaker for six years, I worked 15 years up there...and I know what I'm talking about! You ask anybody... you ask anybody in the Senate right now.... Go call the Senate legislative counsel's office and ask them if you can do this. Go ask the parliamentarians if you can do this. You haven't bothered to do that.

Matthews made it abundantly clear that only Beltway insiders are worth listening to, and that Grayson, who's only been in Congress for a little more than a year, didn't qualify: "Every night, we deal with two worlds: the real world of Congress, that has to do things and get things passed; and this outside world, represented by the netroots and the other people out there, like yourself, who play this game...and it doesn't get done!"

The host closed with a confident prediction about healthcare reform: "It's not gonna happen. Anyway, Congressman Alan Grayson, a true believer, who believes he can get things done by willing it!"

Via an interview with Raw Story (3/22/10):

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor added that it's a damning referendum on American democracy that one of the most highly supported components of the effort nationally, the public insurance option, was jettisoned. He partly blamed the media for refusing to stress how favorably it's viewed by the populace.

"It didn't have 'political support,' just the support of the majority of the population," Chomsky quipped, "which apparently is not political support in our dysfunctional democracy."

The provision has consistently polled well, garnering the support of 60 percent of Americans across the nation in a CBS/New York Times poll released in December, days after it was eliminated from the reform package. Democratic leaders deemed it politically untenable.

"There should be headlines explaining why, for decades, what's been called politically impossible is what most of the public has wanted," Chomsky said. "There should be headlines explaining what that means about the political system and the media."

See Extra!: "Healthcare Reform Minus the Public Option—or the Public" (10/09).

This week on CounterSpin: The network camera crews have mostly packed up and gone home, but the political fights over reconstruction and rebuilding in Haiti are only just getting started. University of Texas professor Jemima Pierre was part of a delegation that recently visited Haiti, and she wrote about what she saw for the Nation. She'll join us to talk about what she found, and where the Haiti story is headed next.

Also on the show: Media technology can put more control in consumers' hands over the gathering and sharing of information and entertainment. But some folks, frankly, would rather it didn't. We'll talk with Megan Tady of the group Free Press about some of the most significant media industry battles going on right now that affect what you get to see and hear.

Push play button to stream this week's show:

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (3/18/10) returns from his excursion into mocking right-wingers to return to his natural role of ridiculing single-payer advocates. His target today is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.  You know what's funny about him? He's short! Or, in Milbank's words, he's a "little man," a "little guy," a "diminutive figure" and--because he announced his support for the healthcare bill on St. Patrick's Day--a "leprechaun."

Actually, Kucinich is the exact same height--5 foot 7--as John McCain, whom Milbank can somehow write about without any elf jokes.

Milbank also includes a sneering reference to how Kucinich "led the city into default" when he was mayor of Cleveland. Yes, that's true--he stopped the plan to privatize the city's power system, which caused some banks to play hardball with the city's credit. He didn't blink, Cleveland still has municipal power and it saved the city and its residents tens of millions of dollars. It's hard to find many people in Cleveland who think Kucinich did the wrong thing.

But also... he's short! Like a leprechaun!

What most struck me as most strange, though, about Milbank's column was this line:

Our Kenyan Hawaiian commander in chief evidently has the luck of the Irish.

First of all, it's weird to refer to a president's state of birth as though it were an ethnicity. Who would anyone describe Bill Clinton as an Anglo Arkansan?  Ronald Reagan as an Irish Illinoisan? It's as if, like Cokie Roberts, Milbank doesn't really consider Hawaii to be part of the United States.

Secondly, Obama is part Irish on his mother's side--he's got Kearneys and McCurrys in his family tree.  But Milbank was apparently too struck by the hilarity of being "Kenyan Hawaiian" to look that up.

Broadcasting & Cable (3/17/10) spoke with the head of PBS's flagship New York station about the recent hire of Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former MTV and NPR host Alison Stewart for PBS's forthcoming program Need to Know, which is replacing Now and the Bill Moyers Journal:

WNET.org president Neal Shapiro did not rule out the possibility of future synergies between Newsweek and Need to Know.

"We haven't talked about anything specific," he said. "But I think all kinds of natural synergies may happen."

Shapiro said he is not concerned that Stewart and Meacham, who has been a frequent guest on Charlie Rose as well as MSNBC's Morning Joe, will bring ideological baggage to the program.

"They are both are incredibly smart. And I think, given their intellect, neither are people you can pigeonhole left or right. I think they have a history of asking probing questions on all sides."

"Given their intellect" they can't be placed on the left or the right? Yeah, smart people are all centrists, I guess. And by "probing," Shapiro must mean something like treating sources with "charity and dignity and respect."

I'm also looking forward to public television giving us Newsweek synergies. It's hard to think of a better use of PBS resources than providing another platform for commercial journalism.  Maybe if we're really lucky we'll get some Mac Margolis on Need to Know.

Boy, the folks at Amazon.com sure are mean--to hear the New York Times tell it.

A March 18 story by Motoko Rich and Brad Stone begins:

Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books, according to two industry executives with direct knowledge the discussions.

It's very clear who's the villain in the story, tabbed on the website as "Amazon May Impede Access to Some Publishers' Books": The story talks about how the online bookseller is "pressuring publishers" with its "hardball approach," shortly after it was "widely accused of abusing its position" with similar tactics that "shocked the publishing world." If Amazon keeps it up, "it could harm its reputation in the eyes of customers and the publishing industry" and (in the words of a source) do "serious long-term damage to their own brand."

By implication, the hero would be Apple, which is also entering the electronic book market. Apple's business model, at any rate, doesn't get the harsh spin from the Times that Amazon receives.

Which is funny, because Apple's plan would result in consumers paying from 30 percent to 50 percent more to buy most e-books, and prevent publishers from allowing anyone else to undercut Apple's inflated prices. It's a terrible deal for consumers, whom you would think make up the majority of readers even in the Times' Business section--but the piece is written with the unstated assumption that we're all rooting for the publishers.

The word "profit" only comes up once in the article, in reference to the $9.99 Amazon wants to charge for titles for its e-book reader: "Many Kindle owners have said the low price motivates them to buy more e-books, but publishers feared that the price would eventually erode their profits."  But it was Rich, one of the article's co-authors, who did the reporting (3/1/10) that showed that the $9.99 price would give publishers about the same profit they make selling a hardcover for $26--and that the $12.99 price (let alone $14.99) gives them a significantly higher margin.

As FAIR pointed out at the time (FAIR Blog, 3/2/10),  however, Rich's earlier piece was likewise heavily spun so as to avoid giving readers the accurate impression that higher e-book prices are a rip-off for consumers. So it's not surprising that the same pro-publisher slant is found in her coverage today.