Blogger Ben Somberg (7/3/10) notes that the New York Times is still telling readers that there is serious public concern about the budget deficit. This time the story is the debate within the Obama administration:

Political advisers are channeling the widespread public anger at deficits while the economic team argues that the government should further spur the economy to avert another recession.

For more on this, go to FAIR's recent alert (6/24/10), "Inventing a Nation of Deficit Hawks."

Time's Alex Perry, the magazine's Africa bureau chief, responded in the FAIR Blog comments section to FAIR's Julie Hollar, who recently (FAIR Blog, 6/25/10) criticized Perry for neglecting to mention the U.S. and Belgium's role in propping up the Mobutu regime in Congo.

Perry said:

The idea that the U.S. created Mobutu and maintained him in power belittles Africans and is typical of the kind of racism that dogs analysis of Africa from commentators and journalists who get as close to Africa as, er, America, like old Julie here. The U.S. did not create Mobutu. They certainly did support him. Equally, by backing Rwandan President Paul Kagame, they also helped overthrow him. The crucial dynamic here is support. Africans have been the main players in Africa since independence, and while outside powers have influence, that is all it is--influence and support....

As for this lame idea that I, and the "mainstream media", are part of some giant conspiracy to lie, cover up, dissemble etc. in the name of, I imagine, the "military industrial complex" or perhaps the CIA, what do you think happens here? Do you think I have a controller with a husky voice who directs my coverage by meeting me in badly lit subterranean car parks? Grow up. People who do my job die sometimes. I've known three myself. Do you really think we'd take those risk to tell lies? Your cheap and half-arsed conspiracies are insulting and infantile. I challenge any one of you--just one--to actually go and do some reporting in Congo, and then come back to me. Until then, your comments are pretty worthless.

Hollar responded to Perry’s comments:

Alex, were you in Africa when Lumumba was assassinated? One's physical location and experience obviously do not determine one's ability to speak with authority on historical events. I have in fact been to Africa, more than once. Assumptions make for sloppy arguments, as well as sloppy journalism.

Highlighting the U.S. and Belgian roles in Lumumba's overthrow and assassination and Mobutu's ascension is hardly racist, and pointing out your failure to do so is hardly conspiratorial. It doesn't take the CIA to produce bad coverage, it just takes a reporter who believes it's perfectly legitimate to write about "what's wrong with Africa" (specifically the "sucking vortex" that is Congo) without acknowledging the extraordinary Western role.

After Perry criticized Hollar for not contacting him for a "right of reply" to her post and saying that Hollar doesn't do journalism, which requires "actual reporting and travel," Extra! editor Jim Naureckas jumped into the fray, writing:

Alex, you misunderstand what we do here. We're not reporters covering the Congo; we're critics reviewing the work of journalists like you. If a writer for Time wrote a negative book review without calling the author to get a response, would that be a firing offense? If so, your magazine has a very odd ethical code.

As for a right of response--aren't you taking full advantage of it? Though I must say you could have made better use of it than complaining about the "invective" of a blog post while throwing around words like "racist" and "libelous." Julie's post was factually accurate--unlike your response, which accused her of never having been to Africa. When she noted that was wrong--not to claim any special expertise in the region, but to point out that you were making false assumptions--instead of apologizing, you come up with fresh insults. If you're trying to make a point about the superior ethics of corporate journalists, I suggest that you're headed in the wrong direction.

Here’s one more response from Perry:

And as for right of response--yeah, I'm calling you out now. Julie's piece was a shameless and crass piece of cant, and if she can't stand the heat, maybe she should exit a kitchen she seems to have wandered into by mistake. The bigger point is, as you know full well, you're supposed to give me a right of reply at the time, in the piece. It's only by chance that I came across Julie's piece. I give that chance to everyone I report on by contacting them, even if it's for a review. Not that odd at all, not that you apparently know that.

Finally, Julie's piece was not factually accurate. Congo did give the world Mobutu. He was Congolese. He came from Congo. He ruled it for 32 years. To suggest he was formed, shaped, maintained and only ever a puppet of the U.S. is a gross inaccuracy, and, as I say, a racist one: prejudiced against Africans for assuming they never control their own destiny, prejudiced against the U.S., for assuming it's always some shadowy bad guy.

You can read the full discussion between Perry, the FAIR staff and other commenters here.

The new Oliver Stone documentary South of the Border is raising awareness of the often shabby U.S. media treatment of Latin America.

A  recent example is a June 24 L.A. Times piece by Alex Renderos headlined "El Salvador President Under Fire."

The president is former FMLN leader Mauricio Funes, who was elected  last year. According to the Times, things are going poorly for him: Crime and corruption are still problems, he is facing an "avalanche of criticism," and "Salvadorans are growing impatient."

The paper adds:

Funes' failures have hit the poor and working class especially hard. After two decades of one-party right-wing rule, they greeted the rise of the left with great hope. Today they are deeply disillusioned.

When the evidence of public discontent--especially in Latin America--is at least in part based on a newspaper editorial, one should be cautious.

The paper cites recent poll results concerning how Salvadorans  feel about crime and corruption. But what about how they feel about their president? The same poll the Times is citing to show discontent asked direct questions about Funes, and he's actually still very popular, according to this summary:

A full year into his presidency, the 50-year-old Funes remains a popular figure. Respondents in a recent poll by the Universidad Centroamericana's Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública (IUDOP) gave the president a grade of 6.8 out of 10, down somewhat from the 7.16 score he earned last September but still a sign of continued support. Figures released in April by the polling firm Mitofsky put Funes' approval rating at 83 percent, the highest of any Latin America leader.
 

For years U.S. coverage of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told readers that he was highly unpopular, based on dubious polling data. In this case, there are certainly polls relevant to the question of whether Funes is popular--but they undermine the premise of the article, and thus aren't mentioned.

Taghreed El-Khodary, formerly the New York Times correspondent in Gaza, spoke recently at an event organized by the Palestine Center (6/23/10). She shared some interesting observations--the first being that her revelation that she left Gaza after the controversy erupted over Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner's son joining the Israeli Defense Forces:

I'm sorry that I left Gaza, but my bureau chief's son joined the Israeli army and I felt like it's not wise of me.  I don't want to risk losing my sources that I have been establishing for many, many years. It's a very sensitive issue, as you all know; not only that, but it's also risky, and you have many small groups who would like revenge and I can be a great person to get a hold of. It's very sensitive, and I was really disappointed that they took this decision, but they understand why I left.

Elsewhere she indicates that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian journalists posed other difficulties:

Imagine you are a Gazan journalist and you are just based in Gaza and you cannot see the other story that is the West Bank. And of course the Israelis don't let someone like me, who worked for the New York Times, [to] even work. They gave me a hard time and that's also another challenge. Being a Palestinian journalist, even if you work for Reuters or AP or the New York Times, Israel will never give you access to the West Bank or to Israel.

She also discussed the need for a certain type of  "balance" in every story out of Gaza:

The issue is even if you write a feature, if you write anything; you need the Israeli narrative in the story. You need to balance and that's why you need the space. That's the story here.  You have to be politically correct.   You have to have the Israeli narrative, even if you are working in a feature. So that's how it goes, and I think you need to understand also how the Israelis are looking at things. What's disturbing here is watching your TV.  I cannot watch CNN domestic.  They treat me like a stupid person, like a stupid audience. I really stopped watching it, because it's so different from the CNN International.  I'm here and I'm really not watching your Fox [News] or your CNN.  It's scary.

When asked to evaluate the Times' reporting on Israel/Palestine, she does not exactly give a ringing endorsement:

I think the New York Times is doing a good job, if I compare it to others--if you want me to compare it to CNN or Fox.  I'm sorry, but when it comes to European media, it's completely different, I would say.

Philadelphia Inquirer TV critic Jonathan Storm (7/1/10) noted that tonight, July 2, the city's public TV station WHYY is airing a documentary called The Surge: The Untold Story. As he puts it, what's most interesting about the documentary is who's behind it:

The film was produced by communications companies that work predominantly for the GOP and was financed by an ambassador who served in the Bush administration.

The station had originally planned a panel event following the broadcast that would have featured far-right pundit Liz Cheney, but those plans were apparently derailed by a lack of public interest in the event or the protests of one station donor.

The documentary was also financed by the neo-con Institute for the Study of War. WHYY vice president Christine Dempsey told the Inquirer that the documentary was a  "well-produced film with a nontraditional point of view that we don't really put on frequently." And it's also apparently a matter of balance:

To the criticism that PBS's overall schedule contains several left-leaning series, she said, "I think it's important for PBS member stations to show many different views."

It's hard to know exactly which "left-leaning" shows this is intended to balance--or how to square the idea that neo-con foreign policy views are going unheard on PBS. Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War, for example, was just on the NewsHour on June 24, praising the move to replace Stanley McChrystal with David Petraeus.

A study (4/10) by Harvard students discovered that waterboarding was commonly called torture by major newspapers--right until the United States was found to be practicing it. The study looked at coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal.

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald put it, "We don't need a state-run media because our media outlets volunteer for the task:  Once the U.S. government decrees that a technique is no longer torture, U.S. media outlets dutifully cease using the term."

The Harvard research has been widely discussed, which is certainly a good thing. Michael Calderone at Yahoo! has even managed to get the Times to respond, with a spokesperson for the paper saying that the Times "has written so much about the waterboarding issue that we believe the Kennedy School study is misleading." Whatever that means.

It's important to note for the record that the Times was called out on this in real time by FAIR. After one of the first major Times pieces addressing U.S. torture practices (5/13/04), we issued the Action Alert "'Harsh Methods' Aren't Torture, Says the New York Times," which pointed out:

The May 13 article, headlined "Harsh CIA Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogation," described "coercive interrogation methods" endorsed by the CIA and the Justice Department, including hooding, food and light deprivation, withholding medications, and "a technique known as 'water boarding,' in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown."

The article took pains to explain why, according to U.S. officials, such techniques do not constitute torture: "Defenders of the operation said the methods stopped short of torture, did not violate American anti-torture statutes and were necessary to fight a war against a nebulous enemy whose strength and intentions could only be gleaned by extracting information from often uncooperative detainees."

The Times actually responded, with public editor Daniel Okrent more or less in agreement with FAIR's position.  When he asked Times editor Craig Whitney about the failure to call torture "torture," he replied, "Now that you tell me people are reading things into our not using 'torture' in headlines, I'll pay closer attention."

FAIR also pointed out in its response to the Times that the failure to use the term torture was only part of the problem:

And FAIR's complaint was not simply that the Times did not use the word ''torture'' describe these interrogation methods (such as prolonged submersion), but that it quoted without rebuttal administration assertions that this was not torture, and seemed to echo these assertions in the reporters' own voice.

FAIR's magazine Extra! pointed out (5-6/08) that the term "waterboarding" seemed to come into play only in order to find an appropriate euphemism for what papers previously called "torture":

Indeed, a search of newspaper archives reveals that until May 2004, the term had actually meant an aquatic sport similar to surfing. Meanwhile, the technique now known as "waterboarding"--in which the person being tortured is actually drowning, aspirating fluid to the point of being unable to breathe--had previously been called "water torture," or simply "torture," by the media.

When the news is that U.S./coalition casualties in June in Afghanistan were the highest monthly total of the war, you'd think it might be an opportunity to quote a critic of the war.

Not for USA Today. In the paper's report today (7/1/10), reporter Jim Michaels gets a comment from the British defense minister ("We must hold our nerve"), and then, for an entirely different point of view, goes to someone from the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies, who says the same thing:

Stephen Flanagan, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said death statistics alone are not a good measure of how the war is going.

"They're not an indicator of success or failure," he said. "It's not a war of attrition."

You'd think after the paper's recent whopper on the magnitude of the BP oil spill, folks at the New York Times would be extra careful.

Apparently not.

Back in May the paper suggested the BP spill wasn't nearly as bad as Iraq's 36 billion gallon spill at the end of the Gulf War. That number was way off; the actual tally was somewhere between 250 and 350 million gallons, as the paper eventually noted (blaming the error on someone else).

On Saturday (6/26/10), Times business columnist Joe Nocera argued against a proposed moratorium on deepwater drilling. One of his main points was that deepwater drilling--except for, you know, that current problem in the Gulf of Mexico--is remarkably clean, and that other drilling methods were worse:

Which also leads to a great irony: importing more oil via tankers will actually create more risk, not less. Between 1964 and the Deepwater Horizon accident, a grand total of 1,800 barrels of oil were lost from rig accidents--an average of 45 barrels a year. That is an astonishing record. Ken Arnold, an expert who consulted with the Interior Department right after the BP spill--and a big critic of the moratorium--told me that much more oil is spilled in tanker accidents annually than from drilling rig accidents.

A mere 45 barrels a year is indeed astonishing. It's also way, way off the mark, as a Times correction today admits (emphasis added):

The Talking Business column on Saturday, about the effect of a moratorium on deepwater drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, misstated the record of oil spills in the Outer Continental Shelf. From 1964 to 2009, 532,000 barrels of oil were lost as a result of spills, not 1,800 barrels. (The lower figure refers to oil lost as a result of blowouts from 1971 to 2009, not to the overall amount of oil lost in accidents.)

One thousand, five hundred thousand--the point's still valid, right?