Web-based outlets like Salon (7/21/10) and Talking Points Memo (7/21/10) have picked up on the connection--apparently first pointed out by dagblog (7/21/10)-- between shooting suspect Byron Williams and Fox News host Glenn Beck. But to judge from a Nexis search, traditional media have ignored the story almost completely. (One exception, found via Facebook:  local CBS station KPIX, 7/21/10.)

Arrested in Oakland after he was wounded in a shootout, Williams is said by police to have had both a hefty arsenal and plans to commit mass murder at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation.  The latter organization, a group that supports environmental and social justice causes (including, in the past, FAIR), is not exactly a household name--so what would make a Tim McVeigh wannabe fixate on it?

Williams' mother said he followed TV news and was upset at "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." (SF Chronicle, 7/19/10). We don't know what specifically he watched, but his reported obsessions parallel those of Glenn Beck, who gives Tides a prominent position in those conspiracy flowcharts that he routinely presents to his audience as a threat to all that is good.

On his August 12, 2009, radio show, Beck portrayed the group as the force behind archnemesis Van Jones:

The Tides Foundation, they started laying the groundwork on this back during the Reagan administration. They have been assembling an army that we have laughed at and have dismissed as a bunch of community organizers.

Tides became a regular part of Beck's cast of sinister characters. On one radio broadcast (9/29/09), he described the foundation as being  "behind it all...involved in the nasty of the nastiest."

Perhaps Beck's most recent attack on Tides came earlier this month, on his July 13 Fox show. Here's TPM's description:

And most recently, on July 13, Beck was railing against the former New Black Panther Party Chairman Dr. Khallid Abdul Muhammad, who he showed in a clip saying: "Why kill the babies? They're just little innocent blue-eyed babies. (Expletive), they're going to grow up one day to rule your babies. Kill them now."

Beck then tied this to Tides, saying that liberal groups "are using failing capitalism to destroy it. They're using the churches through social justice. The media -- do I have to explain that one? This is what progressives and all power-seekers do. They find something vulnerable. They latch on to it. They exploit it for power."

He added that Tides "infiltrated" the education system, the media, and capitalism during the Reagan administration, but indicated that now that they're in power, liberal groups will not be able to disavow people like Muhammad: "When they are the ones holding the guns, sometimes it is hard to stop those who said, 'Yes, we can kill white babies.'"

It's hard to say whether or not Beck believes that the Tides Foundation is the linchpin of a sinister plot that's going to lead, if left unchecked, to the extermination of white children. Thanks to his work, though, it's a good bet that a lot of his most fervent fans believe precisely that.

Sometimes it almost seems like one of the requirements for a high-placed job in corporate media is an inability to learn from experience. Take the front page of USA Today (7/22/10)--the "cover story" is about Shirley Sherrod (FAIR Blog, 7/21/10), whose ordeal is blamed in part on "conservative blogger" Andrew Breitbart taking advantage of "a media culture in which half-truths can spread like a virus online, to be instantly and endlessly chewed over on cable TV."

And right next to this piece, the paper's lead story is about voters being registered at welfare offices.  It concludes with a right-wing spin insinuating that registering poor people to vote is a form of electoral fraud:

Jason Torchinsky, a former Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration, says liberal groups want welfare offices to replace the work of ACORN, a coalition of anti-poverty groups that disbanded this year after allegations of voter fraud.

"With the demise of ACORN, the left needs somebody to pick up that function," he says.

Except, of course, ACORN didn't disband after allegations of voter fraud; it disbanded after that same Andrew Breitbart who smeared Shirley Sherrod put out an equally fraudulent video that falsely portrayed the group as giving professional counseling to a guy dressed like Superfly--you know, one of those half-truths that spread like a virus online and wad instantly and endlessly chewed over on cable TV...and has clearly not yet been spit out by USA Today.

The lesson of Shirley Sherrod's disgraceful treatment by right-wing and not-so-right-wing media (followed by her equally squalid dismissal by an administration that took that media at face value) boils down to a single question: When will journalists see Andrew Breitbart as the serial promoter of journalistic frauds that he is, rather than as a legitimate source for story ideas?

FAIR readers will remember Breitbart's dissemination of videos that purported to show ACORN employees advising a "prostitute" and her "pimp" -- conservative activists Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe--on how to avoid paying taxes. The videos have since been heavily debunked. As FAIR has noted before (Action Alert, 3/11/10), O'Keefe didn't "pose" as a pimp--he didn't wear his ridiculous  "pimp" outfit inside ACORN offices, and in almost every case pretended to be a concerned boyfriend trying to get his girlfriend away from an abusive pimp. He also did not receive advice on how to "cheat" on his taxes. Additionally,  ACORN has been cleared of wrongdoing by three separate independent investigations.

Breitbart's latest fraud--posting a selectively edited video in which Sherrod appears to make some overtly racist statements to a local NAACP chapter--led to the forced resignation of the USDA employee.

That video went viral in the right-wing media and beyond, as accusations of Sherrod's racism were tossed about, along with the larger implication that the Obama administration harbored racists. As Sherrod tells it, she soon received three separate calls telling her the White House was asking for her resignation, with one official telling her she would be on Glenn Beck that night.

The Sherrod story didn’t actually make it on Beck that night, but it was all over Fox News. Bill O'Reilly (7/19/10) called Sherrod's comments "unacceptable" and called for her to "resign immediately."  Sean Hannity (7/19/10) called the comments "racist" and praised Breitbart for exposing them.

The next day, as details of Sherrod's entire speech emerged, it became clear she was describing her experience of struggling with and surmounting bias. Her point was an anti-racist one. Even the white farmer who was allegedly wronged by Sherrod appeared on CNN (7/20/10), along with his wife, to defend her.

Predictably, many right-wing media personalities stood by Breitbart even as the truth was being revealed. Rush Limbaugh (7/20/10) said Breitbart did "great work getting this video of Ms. Sherrod at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and her supposed racism."  Hannity (7/20/10) invited Breitbart on his show to defend himself.  Meanwhile, O'Reilly (7/20/10) stood by his demand for Sherrod's resignation, and even chastised the rest of the media for not reporting on Breitbart's heavily edited video--adding it to a long list of invented right-wing controversies he believes have been ignored by the mainstream media, including the aforementioned ACORN hoax, as well as the  New Black Panther voter intimidation "scandal" and the Van Jones resignation--both of which were wildly overblown (Counterspin, 7/16/10; Extra!, 11/09), but were, contrary to O'Reilly's protestations, picked up by more centrist media after amplification in the right-wing echo chamber.

The same is true of the Sherrod resignation, which some outlets continued to frame as a he said/she said controversy even after the truth began to emerge--outlets such as AP (7/20/10), which also took the opportunity to laud Breitbart's BigGovernment.com as the site that "gained fame after releasing video of workers for the community organizing group ACORN counseling actors posing as a pimp and prostitute."

In the Washington Post (7/21/10), Karen Tumulty and Krissah Thompson were still lending credence to Breitbart's video even after the entire speech was released, reporting on the episode as a controversy between Sherrod and "her critics" as well as one that reinforces the right-wing narrative "that the administration of the first African-American to occupy the White House practices its own brand of racism."

It isn't surprising that right-wing media continue to exalt Breitbart, but when will the rest of the corporate media learn that he can't be trusted?

The list of First Amendment-trampling rules for Guantanamo reporters makes for dispiriting reading in today's New York Times (7/21/10)--e.g., "If information the government deems protected is inadvertently disclosed, the Pentagon can order reporters not to reveal it."

But perhaps the most discouraging part of Jeremy Peters' article is the list of reporters who fell afoul of a rule requiring them to refrain from publishing "secrets" that have already been widely reported: "Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Steven Edwards of Canwest and Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail in Toronto."

What do three of those four reporters have in common? That's right, they report for Canadian outlets. While it's nice that our neighbors to our north are taking in an interest in our government's ongoing efforts to find a way around our Constitution's protections for criminal suspects, it would be much nicer if U.S. outlets found the subject a high priority.  But, reports Peters:

Of the few American newspapers that still cover the commissions, the Herald is the only one that sends a reporter to Guantánamo on a routine basis. "I only go down there because nobody else does--to report on a court that nobody else can see," [Rosenberg] said.

New York Times blogger Brian Stelter (7/20/10) reports on the controversy over the PBS documentary on George Shultz that was funded by Shultz's friends and associates. Stelter quotes the producer of the show's response to the criticism, along with FAIR's rejoinder:

The series' producer, David deVries, said in a statement to Mr. Getler that "throughout the almost three years it took me to create the series, I was completely unaware of who the funders were." (In response, FAIR said Tuesday that the producer needn't be aware of the funders' identities because the company behind the series, Free to Choose Media, "consistently" produces conservative projects.)

In other words, it's not necessary for the producer to know who the funders are to be affected by the funding; the funders determined that the product would be a conservative-friendly portrayal of their conservative friend when they gave their money to Free to Choose Media, because that's the kind of programming that  Free to Choose makes. As for deVries' insistence that he was totally independent, and that's it's merely a coincidence that his documentary came up with the same kind of message that all other Free to Choose documentaries have, George Seldes said it best:

The most stupid boast in the history of present-day journalism is that of the writer who says, "I have never been given orders; I am free to do as I like."

USA Today's Susan Page has a front-page piece (7/20/10) headlined "Faith in Social Security Tanking: Most Expect Cuts or Lose Hope for Funds." The piece notes:

A USA Today/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of retirees say they expect their current benefits to be cut, a dramatic increase in the number who hold that view. And a record six of 10 non-retirees predict Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.

Page seems a bit puzzled about why the public holds these views, since they are "more dire than the calculations of Social Security's trustees." She points out that even if the trust fund were exhausted by 2037, the system "could finance about three-fourths of current benefits through the payroll tax." Page quotes one expert who points out that public misperceptions might be a result of "all the attacks on Social Security that we have this total crisis in the program."

True enough. Take, for example,  a USA Today front-page article from February of this year (2/8/10) that was headlined, "Social Security Races to 'Negative': Rash of Retirements Push Fund to Brink." That piece sounded the fear alarm by reporting that Social Security's "annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in 25 years." Read FAIR's February 9 alert for all the details.

Where do people get these wrong ideas about Social Security? They read them in the newspaper, and believe them.

The Washington Post's blockbuster story (7/19/10) by reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin on the bloated, secretive and largely privatized national security apparatus established after the September 11, 2001, attacks is making a lot of noise, and for good reason. The Post describes a "top-secret world" that has become "so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

But the story of how many "national security" functions of the U.S. government have been privatized, from fighting wars to collecting intelligence to interrogating prisoners, is not a new one, as readers of the alternative press would know. The Post, however, does not credit the independent journalists who have been doing the legwork on this issue--like Tim Shorrock (Democracy Now!, 7/19/10) and Jeremy Scahill of the Nation--continuing a pattern (Salon.com, 10/31/08) of corporate media picking up important stories first reported in the independent press without giving credit where it's due. As Shorrock pointed out in a Twitter posting today, he first wrote about the vast privatization of the collection of intelligence back in 2005 (Mother Jones, 01-02/05), with a major follow-up in Salon (6/1/07) and a 2008 book, Spies for Hire.

This is also not the first time that Post reporter Priest pushed a big story into the spotlight without mentioning independent journalists who had earlier investigated the same terrain. Priest's story (Washington Post, 10/07) on the sub-par conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center led to a number of government-appointed commissions to investigate the quality of care for returning veterans. But it was Mark Benjamin in Salon that first reported on the conditions at Walter Reed (1/27/05) more than two years earlier. There was no mention of Benjamin's piece in Priest's story (CounterSpin, 3/2/07).

In his New York Times column today (7/19/10), Paul Krugman offers a prediction about the likely pundit response to the drubbing Democrats are expected to take in the November elections:

What I expect...if and when the midterms go badly, is that the usual suspects will say that it was because Mr. Obama was too liberal--when his real mistake was doing too little to create jobs.

Krugman is on solid historical ground here: There is indeed a longstanding pattern of Democratic politicians, previously praised by pundits for their determinedly centrist policies, later being attacked by the same punditocracy for their self-defeating left-wing tendencies. As Extra! wrote back in 1992, in "Conventional Wisdom: How the Press Rewrites Democratic Party History Every Four Years":

According to mass media, [Bill] Clinton is running as a moderate who appeals to the "middle class" -- a plan that is seen as a contrast to previous Democratic runs. "The platform is not Mondale-Dukakis liberal, but Clinton moderate," reported the Christian Science Monitor (7/17/92).

Actually, both Mondale and Dukakis tried to win by moving the party to the right. "Look at our platform," said Mondale in his acceptance speech. "There are no defense cuts that weaken our security, no business taxes that weaken our economy, no laundry lists that raid our treasury." At the time, journalists agreed: "Democrats' Platform Shows a Shift From Liberal Positions of 1976 and 1980," ran the headline of the New York Times' analysis (7/22/84). "The minority planks that could have crippled his campaign were blocked," said the Christian Science Monitor (7/20/84).

It was the same story with the 1988 platform. Wrote the Washington Post (7/19/88): "The expansive promises of Democratic Party platforms of earlier years--the crowded bazaar of special interests and special pleadings--have been streamlined into the version that will go before the convention here Tuesday."

The piece concluded:

Why is it that Democratic party history gets revised every four years? It's largely because the "left" perspective in mainstream debate is represented by centrists who identify with the establishment politicians who dominate the Democratic Party leadership and feel estranged from the party's progressive constituencies. These pundits and political journalists seem reluctant to acknowledge that it was insiders, not activists, who led the party to crushing defeats in 1984 and 1988.

After describing the 1988 convention as a transition between the "Old Party" dominated by liberal "special interests" and the "New Party" characterized by post-ideological "problem-solvers" like Dukakis, William Schneider made a prediction (L.A. Times, 7/24/88): "If the problem-solvers can't win...there is every likelihood that Democrats will go back to what they really believe in." What actually happened, of course, was the same move that was made in 1984: When the "pragmatists" lose badly with their centrist approach, they are repainted after the fact as radicals, so the strategy of tilting to the right can be tried again and again.

And, in fact, when the Clinton administration's centrist policies, particularly NAFTA, resulted in the political disaster of the 1994 midterms, the Democrats' trouncing was indeed blamed on Clinton's supposedly left-wing policies (Extra!, 1-2/95).

It looks like history is going to repeat itself once again in November 2010.

As France's lower house of parliament approved a ban on wearing full-face Islamic veils such as the burqa or niqab, many U.S. news outlets left out a key voice in their reports: the Muslim women in France who are actually affected by the ban.

Several major outlets, including the New York Times (7/14/10), Washington Post (7/14/10) and the Los Angeles Times (7/14/10), have managed to cover the story without seeking commentary from a single Muslim woman. Out of 11 named sources used by these newspapers in their July 14 reports, only two were Muslim--both men, one a rector and one leader of a government council, each of whom discourage women from wearing the burqa.

Furthermore, 10 out of the 11 sources on the issue came from French government officials, most of whom unsurprisingly (since the ban passed 335 to 1) echoed the sentiment of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that these veils "could be a threat to women's dignity and freedom" (Chicago Tribune, 6/24/10). While the New York Times (7/14/10) quoted Daniel Garrigue, the one parliament member who opposed the ban, and another anti-ban official,  it followed up with five rebuttals, along with a poll that showed French voters as a whole--most of whom are little affected by the law--support the ban.

On CNN (7/13/10), Republican strategist Mary Matalin and journalist Roland Martin discussed the ban with no debate:

MATALIN: You know what, the vote was 336 to 1 [sic] in the lower house of the parliament, and it's a good vote. The assimilation there of Muslims, who are the largest percentage in European countries are in France. Assimilation is tough when you have a full-face burqa. And it's also oppressive to women. No woman chooses to wear that full-face burqa. So I say to France, tres bien, good vote.

MARTIN: And I will say this, I mean, you do have to understand the cultural issues there. I think what this really says though is about freedom for women, in terms of French saying, look, they perceive that as being oppressive to women. And then if you want to operate in this country, this is how we are going to operate here. And so I understand that.

But I do think we have to be careful to recognize that there are cultural things that happen, more different cultures we also have to respect.

MATALIN: That is--I completely agree with that. The veil is a beautiful thing. All of my Muslim girlfriends say it's great. It's not only respectful and mindful of their religion, it's great for bad hair days. So we get that. But the full-face burqa, nyet.

MARTIN: Right, absolutely.

MATALIN: Tres bien, Francois.

But despite Matalin’s assertion, not everyone agrees that the burqa is exclusively a tool of repression, or that banning the burqa is the best way to promote women’s equality--and many of the dissenters happen to be Muslim women. USA Today and NBC News both interviewed Kenza Drider, who was born and raised in France and has worn the burqa for 11 years, who said (NBC Nightly News, 7/7/10): "I'm a feminist. I wear this by choice, and I submit to no man, only God." The Huffington Post (7/13/10) quoted an Islamic scholar, Abdelmotie Bayoumi, who has written books that include modern testimonies about the full-face veil: "A Muslim woman wears the niqab not because of religious duty, but as a personal freedom." Sahar (Nuseiba.wordpress.com, 7/4/10), a Muslim blogger, said that though she isn't personally fond of the burqa, she believes that "a woman's right to choose how to express her religion... or her culture as she sees fit is fundamental to her dignity and should be protected."

In covering a law targeting Muslim women, it is essential to include such perspectives, instead of simply packing the views of powerful leaders and Western ideology into a report.

Ever since the Israeli raid on a Turkish group's boat filled with aid for the Gaza Strip, there has been a lot of attempts in the press (FAIR Blog, 6/10/10), following Israel's lead, to label the Turkish humanitarian group IHH a supporter of "terrorism."

The latest salvo comes from a New York Times article (7/15/10) about the Turkish group having "extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite."

The Times reports:

On Monday, Germany banned the charity's offices, citing its support for Hamas, which Germany considers a terrorist organization. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said the charity abused donors' good intentions "to support a terrorist organization with money supposedly donated for charitable purposes." The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung said that from 2007 the charity collected $8.5 million and transferred money to six smaller organizations, two belonging directly to Hamas and four with close ties to it.

The charity called the ban a "disgrace" and "misanthropic" and said it would challenge it in court.

It looks like the reporters on this story didn't do their homework. Numerous news outlets have noted that the German organization, which shares the Turkish group’s initials, is not connected to the Turkish group that co-sponsored the aid flotilla, meaning that Germany did not ban the Turkish group over "terrorist" ties. (The Turkish group's initials stand for İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri, or Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms; the German acronym stands for Internationale Humanitäre Hilfsorganisation, the International Humanitarian Aid Organization.)

A report in Ha'aretz (7/12/10) states: "Despite sharing the name, the German IHH has no connection to the Turkish group that organized the flotilla"; the Financial Times (7/12/10) reports that "IHH Turkey and IHH Germany share the same roots, as they were founded as a single group in Freiburg, Germany, in 1992. But the group split in two five years later"; and a Turkish daily (Hurriyet, 7/16/10) states that "German authorities" say the group split in 1997 and "are now two separate entities."

The Times also relays the Israeli talking point that "the group has links to Al-Qaeda," despite the fact that independent journalist Max Blumenthal (MaxBlumenthal.com, 6/3/10) forced the Israeli Defense Forces to retract that false claim.

New York Times London bureau chief John Burns has joined other high-profile reporters (e.g., CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan) in denouncing fellow journalist Michael Hastings. Hastings' Rolling Stone expose prompted the dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was relieved of his Afghanistan command following Hastings' revelations that he and some of his aides had used insubordinate language in discussing Obama administration superiors.

Appearing on Hugh Hewitt's conservative national radio program on July 6, the Times' former Baghdad bureau chief responded to Hewitt's question about how the Rolling Stone story had affected relations between journalists and military officials:

I think it's very unfortunate that it has impacted, and will impact so adversely, on what had been pretty good military/media relations. I think, you know, well, this will be debated down the years, the whole issue as to how it came about that Rolling Stone had that kind of access.

My unease, if I can be completely frank about this, is that from my experience of traveling and talking to generals--McChrystal, Petraeus and many, many others over the past few years--is that the old on-the-record/off-the-record standard doesn't really meet the case, which is to say that by the very nature of the time you spend with the generals--the same could be said to be true of the time that a reporter spends with anybody in the public eye--there are moments which just don't fit that formula.

There are long, informal periods traveling on helicopters over hostile territory with the generals chatting over their headset, bunking down for the night side-by-side on a piece of rough-hewn concrete. You build up a kind of trust. It's not explicit, it's just there.

And my feeling is that it's the responsibility of the reporter to judge in those circumstances what is fairly reportable, and what is not, and to go beyond that, what it is necessary to report.

Appearing two days later on PBS's NewsHour (7/8/10), Burns reiterated his criticism, and suggested that journalists ought to see to it that the Rolling Stone debacle wasn't repeated: "I think we in the press have to really look at cases like this and say, to what extent can we change the way we behave in such a way that this sort of thing doesn't happen again?"

By embarrassing the brass, Hastings harmed "military/media relations"--and presumably, in Burns' view, harmed journalism. But if the ideal of journalism is to serve the public by providing information to help them more fully understand events of the day, and not just to cultivate cozy relations with the powerful, it's hard to understand exactly what Burns is defending. Indeed, a review of U.S. journalism produced before the Rolling Stone writer mucked things up, when the warmer media/military relations championed by Burns prevailed, does not strike one as a model of public service.

There were the adoring profiles of McChrystal by journalists who wisely refrained from going "beyond what is necessary to report." As media critic and Hastings supporter Charles Kaiser documents on his website Full Court Press (7/2/10), "virtually every profile of McChrystal had either sharply downplayed the defects in his CV or ignored them altogether, including the general's central role in the cover-up of the killing of former football star Pat Tillman by friendly fire." Indeed, a little-noticed aspect of Hastings' expose was his reporting on unflattering aspects of McChrystal's career, including the Tillman cover-up and an Abu Ghraib-like torture scandal at another detention facility in Iraq that McChrystal supervised (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/25/10.)

Burns and other Hastings critics talk up the need to build trust between journalists and military officials--a questionable goal in itself, but all the more so when the resulting "trust" really just means journalists will continue to believe military officials who have repeatedly misled them. Take reporting on U.S. strikes that were ultimately determined to have killed and injured Afghan civilians. The rule for reporting such casualties is to take official U.S. denials at face value, to attempt to discredit Afghan sources who disagree, and to portray admissions of wrong-doing as "PR setbacks." The pattern was described last year in a FAIR Media Advisory (5/11/09):

Early reports of a massive U.S. attack on civilians in western Afghanistan last week (5/5/09) hewed to a familiar corporate media formula, stressing official U.S. denials and framing the scores of dead civilians as a PR setback for the White House's war effort.

It's a pattern that has frequently "fit the formula" at Burns' own New York Times (FAIR Action Alert, 1/9/02).

The habit of believing Pentagon sources even when they have  proven to be unreliable not only stretches the notion of trust beyond the breaking point, it tramples on the infinitely more important relationship between the reporter and the public.

Good relations between journalists and Pentagon officials have also paid off nicely in the way corporate journalism has truncated "debates" about what should be done in Afghanistan, almost entirely excluding from discussion the majority American view in favor of withdrawal. Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria (9/14/09) unwittingly summed up the findings of FAIR's 2009 study of the Afghanistan debate presented on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, stating in his lead: "It is time to get real about Afghanistan. Withdrawal is not a serious option."

The corporate media whose deference to the military has failed the public so often in the course of the Afghan War did so again in reporting on the Rolling Stone article. Media discussions (including Burn's and Hewitt's) missed Hastings most significant findings. As a FAIR Media Advisory, "Media Missing the McChrystal Point" (6/25/10), pointed out,

The real significance of the piece is in the criticism--voiced by soldiers in Afghanistan and military experts--of the war itself. "Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm," wrote Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings.

It's no mystery why Hastings dire reporting on the status of the war failed to make it into the media discussion. But in accurately reporting truths likely to anger the powerful, Hastings Rolling Stone expose upheld the best traditions of journalism. By the same token, his detractors, including Burns, have shown themselves as opponents of those traditions and perhaps more than a little confused about who they work for.

Noting that policies like the stimulus plan tend to poll pretty badly, New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes (7/16/10) that Obama says he has pursued such policies because they're "the right thing to do for America." To Stolberg, that sounds familiar:

It is an argument that sounds eerily similar to the one Mr. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, made to justify an unpopular war in Iraq as he watched his own poll numbers sink lower. Mr. Bush and his aides often felt they could not catch a break; when the economy was humming along--or at least seemed to be humming along--the Bush White House never got credit for it, because the public was so upset about the war.

Two things.

One, I think we can all agree that efforts to stimulate the economy are actually nothing at all like the invasion of Iraq.

Two, the "humming" Bush economy? Now that actually sounds familiar.... Where have we heard the argument that Bush wasn't getting enough credit for his economic boom? Oh yeah--that was from Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times:

FAIR Action Alert

NYT Falls for White House Spin on Economy
No one 'envies' Bush GDP record

1/28/08

The New York Times (1/28/08) claimed in a front-page story that George W. Bush's economic growth record "would be the envy of most presidents." This claim has no basis in fact and should be corrected by the newspaper.

The assertion was part of a "White House Memo" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg. Opening with the question, "Will George W. Bush be remembered as the president who lost the economy while trying to win a war?," she continued:

Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents. Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it, in large part because Americans were consumed by the war in Iraq.

As that alert noted, this was not the first time Stolberg had tried to applaud the Bush boom:

More than a year ago (7/12/06), Stolberg described Bush as "blessed with a growing economy but facing voters who do not give him much credit for it." She claimed that "by standard measurements, the economy does look good," citing "a gross domestic product that grew an average of 4 percent in the past three years."

As Dean Baker wrote in response to Stolberg's 1/28/08 piece: "President Bush's growth record is better than his father's, but it is worse than the record of every other president in the last half century. It's not clear why they would be envious."

It's troubling that Stolberg seems so peculiarly wedded to this idea.

New York Times reporter Isabel Kershner (7/15/10) writes a news analysis of why "peace talks" between Israel and the Palestinians are at a virtual standstill, despite the "upbeat atmosphere" in Washington following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama's recent meeting.

When she attempts to contextualize the "peace talks," Kershner throws in this misleading history:

Mr. Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert made a far-reaching proposal in late 2008 to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It included an Israeli withdrawal from 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with land swaps and a safe route for Palestinian travel between Gaza and the West Bank making up the other 6.5 percent of the land area that Israel won in 1967.

The notion that Mahmoud Abbas rejected a generous offer in 2008 is a commonly heard media trope: Jackson Diehl (Washington Post, 5/29/09) called the proposal a "a generous outline for Palestinian statehood," and the Post's editorial board described it as a "far-reaching peace offer" (11/5/09).

But the proposal was only "generous" or "far-reaching" from the official Israeli perspective. The Olmert plan (Newsweek, 6/13/09) would have had Israel annex illegal settlement blocs as well as reject the Palestinian "right of return," a position firmly grounded in international law. The “far-reaching” proposal actually would have required Palestinians to give away rights guaranteed to them, and would create a series of Palestinian islands surrounded by Israeli settlements.

Kershner also omits important context about Olmert's term as Prime Minister that would make it understandable as to why Palestinians did not act immediately on the proposal (Mondoweiss, 7/17/2009):

-While Olmert held final-status negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas (between the Annapolis Conference in November 2007 and the end of his term), there was a 43% increase in construction-starts in settlements.

-During Olmert's term as prime minister, 4,560 new housing units were constructed in settlements and 1,523 new tenders were issued for new housing units.

-Almost 1,500 new housing units were constructed east of the separation barrier (not in settlement blocs).

-Some 560 new structures were built in illegal outposts during Olmert's term.

-None of the illegal outposts in the West Bank were removed during Olmert's term.

In addition, Olmert's offer kept the majority of Israeli settlements and infrastructure in the West Bank, and would have resulted in permanent apartheid in the West Bank.

Kershner's reading of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is really nothing new. Looking back at the failed Camp David talks in 2000, the U.S. press repeatedly referred to the Israeli offer in similarly glowing terms, even though that proposal, too, would have made impossible a contiguous Palestinian state and had no basis in international law (Extra!, 07-08/02, NormanFinkelstein.com).

I think Jim Naureckas' Erick Erickson/David Duke equation (FAIR Blog, 7/14/10) is overdrawn. Erickson was playing off remarks by King Samir Shabazz, the New Black Panther Party (NBPP)  member who stood in front of the largely African-American polling place in Philadelphia with a night stick in his hand. Shabazz is on record in another context saying that black men should kill white people, including children: "You want freedom, you're going to have to kill some crackers. You're going to have to kill their babies." So Erickson is not, as Jim says, "hallucinating" this kind of language--just exploiting it.

Erickson and the rest of the right-wing media establishment are trying to create a major scare by painting the NBPP as a black version of the Ku Klux Klan. But while there are certain rhetorical similarities, and these should not be lightly dismissed, the Klan actually killed black children. And while the NBPP is notorious for its hateful rhetoric--which deserves condemnation, to the extent that this marginal group warrants notice at all--there's scant evidence that its race-baiting language has ever been acted upon. The group seems to exist only to attract attention through its vile, racist rants.

So Erickson's suggestion that this creepy, powerless group  is actually likely to start "killing our kids"--and that the Obama administration is abetting this slaughter of white children--is simply politics. By linking Obama to violent black rhetoric, Erickson and his talk radio and Fox News allies are trying to turn this weak episode into a summer Swift Boat for the November elections. In other words, Erickson and his colleagues are engaging in racial rabble-rousing, much like the NBPP--but with a much more prominent platform and to much greater effect.

David Duke would not disapprove.

The fact that the Federal Reserve could be doing much more to stimulate the economy--but so far has chosen not to do so--is finally getting some prominent corporate media attention. The New York Times wrote today (7/15/10), referring to Fed chair Ben Bernanke:

As Mr. Bernanke pointed out in a speech in 2002, when he was a Fed governor, a central bank that has run out of ordinary tools to prop up the economy, like lowering short-term interest rates, still has other options to prevent deflation.

It's good to see discussion of disagreements within the Fed. But these would be more useful if they acknowledged that the Fed's board does not just have technical disagreements about how best to improve the economy; they have political differences over whether it's worth fighting unemployment if there's any risk at all of inflation. That actually existing extreme levels of unemployment are seen by a majority of the Fed as less frightening than purely hypothetical inflation relates to major role that private bankers play in the Fed's governing structure--a crucial fact that is hardly ever mentioned in discussions of Fed deliberations.

See Extra! (6/10): "Framing the Fed as Financial Philosopher Kings: 'Independent' of the Public, but Not Bankers"