The New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes today (8/31/10) about the possible steps Obama might take to bolster the economy:

With voters angry about government spending, and economists divided about just what approach is the correct one, such aggressive steps are by now out of the question. "There’s a deep frustration among economists that they simply don’t know what to do under these circumstances, at least in terms of fiscal policy," said Bruce Bartlett, an economist who advised Republican presidents.

"I think there are a lot of economists who, in principle, would support some new fiscal stimulus, perhaps a jobs program where people were directly employed by the government or something of that sort," Mr. Bartlett said. "But politically it's simply not possible to do anything remotely like that under the current circumstances."

How many voters are truly angry about government spending? Take a look at this recent Newsweek poll:

"Which one of the following do you think should have the higher priority for policy-makers in Washington right now:

37 percent: Reducing the federal budget deficit
57 percent: Federal spending to create jobs
6 percent:  Don't know

Other recent surveys show that voters think unemployment is a much more urgent problem than the deficit (FAIR Action Alert, 6/24/10).

If it's "politically impossible" to introduce another stimulus bill, it's not because voters are angry about spending--it's because of the false narrative of voter anger about spending that the corporate media won't let go of.

In the coverage of Hurricane Katrina's fifth anniversary, you'll find several obligatory mentions in the corporate media of the still-decimated Lower Ninth Ward, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything as direct or damning as what you find in independent media coverage--for example, this piece on Women's eNews (8/29/10) by Kimberly Seals Allers, who recently attended a conference in New Orleans on health disparities in communities of color:

When a few of the local community leaders came to address us, what they had to say about the Lower Ninth Ward was appalling but not surprising. They said that of the $90 million that the Federal Emergency Management Agency allocated to rebuilding the city, the Lower Ninth Ward has not received any money. Nobody has been told a definitive answer as to why.

They said the Lower Ninth Ward only has one working school for kindergarten through 12th grade. The school has 750 students and a 450-student-long waiting list. There are no hospitals in the area and God help you if you need emergency care and have to travel across the bridge and across town to get it. Many displaced residents, they added, would love to return to the area, but they can't because there are no schools and no real health care options for the elderly.

The local community leaders expressed their outrage that tour companies bring busloads of people through the Lower Ninth Ward everyday to gawk at their despair, yet never share any of their profits or stop to support local businesses.

It really is offensive for commentators to use the word "violence" to mean "violence against one side in a conflict."  As in Martin Indyk's op-ed in the New York Times yesterday (8/27/10), which argues that there is "For Once, Hope in the Middle East," because, "First, violence is down considerably in the region."  Here's his complete explication of this point:

Throughout the 1990s, Israel was plagued by terrorist attacks, which undermined its leaders’ ability to justify tangible concessions. Israelis came to believe that the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was playing a double game, professing peace in the negotiations while allowing terrorists to operate in territory he was supposed to control.

Today, the Palestinian Authority is policing its West Bank territory to prevent violent attacks on Israelis and to prove its reliability as a negotiating partner. Hamas--mainly out of fear of an Israeli intervention that might remove it from power--is doing the same in Gaza.

These efforts, combined with more effective Israeli security measures, have meant that the number of Israeli civilians killed in terrorist attacks has dropped from an intifada high of 452 in 2002 to six last year and only two so far this year.

Missing, of course, is any mention of violence against Palestinians.  According to the Israeli human rights group, there have been 100 Palestinians killed by Israelis in the time period following Israel's December 2008 assault on Gaza; the assault itself killed 1,397 Palestinians, a large majority of whom were either minors or non-combatants.

It's difficult to be hopeful about peace in the Middle East when major U.S. news outlets treat Palestinian deaths as absolutely irrelevant.

"Seven Years of War Provides Many Answers" is USA Today's front-page headline (8/27/10) over a story by Jim Michaels and Mimi Hall that attempts to take stock of the Iraq War. But one issue that the paper can't seem to get right seven years later is how the war started.

USA Today provides this stunningly deceptive summary:

In October 2002, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to authorize force against Iraq. In November, the United Nations Security Council adopted a unanimous resolution offering Saddam "a final opportunity" to comply with disarmament. Three months later, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. and European intelligence agencies believed Iraq was hiding its weaponry and seeking more.

The final U.N. inspection report stated that Iraq failed to account for chemical and biological stockpiles. U.N. inspector Hans Blix said he had "no confidence" that the weaponry had been destroyed.

In his 2003 State of the Union Address, Bush said: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late."

At 5:34 a.m., March 20, 2003, a U.S. force backed by 34 nations crossed into Iraq. The war was on.

A more accurate chronology of the weapons inspection--like this one from the Arms Control Association--reveals that while inspectors expressed frustration with some Iraqi behavior, they were encouraged by the progress they were making. They determined rather early in the process, for instance, that there was no Iraqi nuclear program to speak of. That was one of the Bush administration's most damning claims against Iraq; its falsehood should figure into any account of the pre-war period.

That chronology also recalls that there was an effort to get the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution that would formally endorse the war, even though the weapons inspections process was not finished. The U.S. failed to prevail in that effort, and the inspectors were removed. Again, it's hard to imagine a summary of the run-up to the war that discounts the fact that the United States launched the war without the U.N. approval it sought.

It's not entirely clear where the Hans Blix quote ("no confidence") comes from. He does use that phrase in regards to a "preliminary assessment of Iraq's weapons declaration" (12/19/02)--pretty much the opposite of a "final U.N. inspection report"--explaining why such declarations have to be verified and can't be taken at face value.

In his February 14 presentation to the U.N., Blix seemed  pleased with Iraq's compliance:

Mr. President, in my 27th of January update to the Council, I said that it seemed from our experience that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on process, most importantly on prompt access to all sites and assistance to UNMOVIC in the establishment of the necessary infrastructure.

This impression remains, and we note that access to sites has, so far, been without problems, including those that have never been declared or inspected, as well as to presidential sites and private residences.

Blix also said:

How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programs? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed.

Recalling this history merely as Blix saying that he had "no confidence"  that Iraq had destroyed any weapons is terribly misleading. But it is helpful to those who still wish to argue that the Iraq War was a good faith effort to destroy the weapons of a madman.

Some in the media just can't let go of John McCain. David Broder's column today is really headlined, "John McCain, Your Country Is Calling."

He explains that he wasn't "bothered by the doctrinal compromises the senator made to convince Arizona voters that he was, in fact, a conservative. McCain has always been a realist, doing what was necessary to survive a North Vietnamese prison camp or a tough political trap."

So a senator willing to do whatever it takes to get elected is apparently a badly needed voice of conscience in Washington. OK.

McCain's role, according to Broder, should be something like this:

One obvious area where he will be needed is his favorite field, national security. Iraq, where he was prescient and persistent, still poses challenges, and Afghanistan, where Obama badly needs a Republican partner, is likely to be in crisis before it can be called a success. Behind them looms Iran, which could be this nation's next big test.

Wait--John McCain opposed the Iraq War? No, he supported every effort to escalate the war. Apparently that counts as being "prescient."

Obama "badly needs a Republican partner" on Afghanistan? Last time I checked, there weren't many Republicans opposing his policies; in fact, many have argued that Obama needs to drop any mention of a withdrawal timeline (which is McCain's view). So presumably what Obama--and, also, the country--needs is another voice calling for a longer war.

As for Iran, I'm not sure what McCain's expertise is supposed to be. That "Bomb Iran" song from the 2008 campaign?

New York Times reporter Matt Bai writes a piece today (8/26/10) singling out a Democratic congressmember who talks about cuts to the federal budget. This is presumably an unusual, newsworthy thing worth writing about--hence the headline, "One Liberal Voice Dares to Say, Cut the Budget." It's worth pointing out that other Democrats have proposed ideas like cutting military spending without getting points for bravery.

The point of the piece is to attack Social Security. Bai cheers on the White House deficit commission, which he argues has been unfairly attacked by liberals who are "mobilizing to discredit the panel's work" and "pre-emptively oppose the panel's findings." These critics don't get much time to explain themselves, because Bai needs space to malign their ideas as an attack on bipartisanship. As Bai quips: "In other words, the two parties might actually work together on something. They must be stopped!"

Then Bai goes on to explain how Social Security actually works--and turns in a remarkably misleading explanation:

The coalition bases its case on the idea that Social Security is actually in fine fiscal shape, since it has amassed a pile of Treasury Bills--often referred to as IOUs--in a dedicated trust fund. This is true enough, except that the only way for the government to actually make good on these IOUs is to issue mountains of new debt or to take the money from elsewhere in the federal budget, or perhaps impose significant tax increases--none of which seem like especially practical options for the long term. So this is sort of like saying that you're rich because your friend has promised to give you 10 million bucks just as soon as he wins the lottery.

Getting the government to pay out benefits from the money it has collected from citizens is like wishing your friend wins the lottery?

Economist Dean Baker points out that that Treasury bills are not "often referred to as IOUs." Some in the media and some Republicans do that, yes, but it is actually unusual to speak of Treasury bonds this way.

So a New York Times reporter thinks expecting Social Security benefits is like believing you'll win the lottery, because the trust fund is really a "pile" of "IOUs." And he's writing this in the news section.

The New York Times' Susan Dominus, writing an article (8/24/10) entirely about a congressional candidate's footwear, makes an attempt at self-inoculation:

I know. We, the news media, are not supposed to ask female candidates about their hairstyle or their choice of pantsuits over skirts or their shoes. It is irrelevant. It is trivializing. It is sexist. "You would never write about Chuck Schumer's shoes," Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand said in a New York magazine article in response to a question about her flats.

So why write this article that is irrelevant, trivializing and sexist? Because, as it turns out, the shoes worn by Reshma Saujani, who is challenging Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney to represent New York's 14th District, are not very unusual:

But the Kate Spade wedge heels are not just one candidate's shoes. They seem to be the shoes of a circle of younger women aspiring to power or already in it, women directly and indirectly passing on to one another ways of navigating the particular challenges of being a woman in the public eye.

This might be the first time that a reporter has attempted to justify covering a non-newsworthy topic on the grounds that it is not particularly newsworthy.

Aside from the fact that Saujani is wearing a style of shoe that is typically worn by female politicians, Dominus makes a case for paying attention to Saujani's footwear by pointing out that such attention could hurt her candidacy: "Those hip heels run the risk of undercutting Ms. Saujani's credibility with the people she needs to convince of her gravitas." You could wear clown shoes and not do more to undermine your credibility than the Times did by publishing this pointless, admittedly sexist piece.

Dateline NBC (8/22/10) did a special look back at Hurricane Katrina last weekend in anticipation of the disaster's five-year anniversary. Watching the collage of 2005 footage and Brian Williams' present-day commentary, I was struck by his characterization of the violence:

You know, I've been around a lot of guns and a lot of dead bodies, and a lot of people shooting at people to make dead bodies. But you put them all together and you put it in the United States of America and boy, it gets your attention. You can't shake that....

It was clear already there weren't going to be enough cops. Everywhere we went, every satellite shot, every camera shot, we were at the height of the violence and the looting and the--all the reports of gunplay downtown. Well, who's bathed in the only lights in town? It was us.

The sweltering heat in New Orleans. The more we learn about what this hurricane did, the worse it gets. We had to ask Federal Protection Service guys with automatic weapons to just form a ring and watch our backs while we were doing Dateline NBC one night. We made a decision the French Quarter was no longer safe. Things were getting too dicey and we pulled out to the suburb of Metairie, Louisiana.... I'll be candid. We heard CNN pulled out. That had some influence on our decision. We had no weapons. We don't work that way. That has to separate us as journalists. But it wasn't safe. So here we are driving through town in our rental cars.

State troopers had to cover us by aiming at the men in the street just to tell them, "Don't think of doing a smash and grab and killing this guy for the car." There was no government. There was no semblance. There was no organization. There was no New Orleans for a few days there.

In the days after the levees broke, corporate media outlets were abuzz with stories of looting, rampant murder, snipers shooting at doctors and rescue helicopters, even the raping of babies at the Superdome (stories backed by the local police chief and mayor). But a month later, the New Orleans Times-Picayune revealed (8/26/05) that "most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened"--no babies raped, no snipers, and only four confirmed murders in the entire week following the hurricane, a pretty typical week for New Orleans. (The New York Times four days later (8/29/05) reported six or seven confirmed homicides.) And while "looting" did occur, much of it was for survival in a city where no help--no food, no water--arrived for days.

Unmentioned by Williams was the documented police and white vigilante violence in which at least 11 civilians and possibly many more were shot in the days following the hurricane. Investigative journalist A.C. Thompson, who has done much of the digging on that story, reported yesterday that in the aftermath of Katrina, "an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters."

No doubt the media-stoked hysteria over rampant violence fed into the atmosphere of fear and anarchy that made such policies and shootings possible. Rather than rehash that hysteria, media should be apologizing for the part they played in it.

Somewhat surprisingly, Dateline also replayed this clip from Williams in 2005:

The politics of all this are very simple. If we come out of this crisis and in the next couple of years don't have a national conversation on the following issues: race, class, petroleum, the environment, then we, the news media, will have failed by not keeping people's feet to the fire.

So what's the verdict?

Now, about that national conversation I said we should have about all those issues of race and class and poverty and petroleum, whatever happened with that? Well, in the five years since Katrina, America did elect its first African-American president, but our economy remains crippled. And the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico put petroleum front and center again as an issue that needs our attention. There is one thing, a great thing that happened in New Orleans, a city that's always been inhabited by both saints and sinners: The Saints won, the Super Bowl, that is, putting New Orleans on top after a long struggle after a bad storm.

Huh? So then the media didn't fail, since Obama was elected president and they've covered the biggest environmental disaster in recent U.S. history? Or they kind of failed because we're in a recession? None of that seems to have a lot to do with media keeping anyone's feet to the fire.

"CIA Sees Increased Threat in Yemen" is the Washington Post's headline today (8/25/10) over a story that tells of a "sober new assessment"  of Al Qaeda-related activities that has "helped prompt senior Obama administration officials to call for an escalation of U.S. operations there--including a proposal to add armed CIA drones to a clandestine campaign of U.S. military strikes."

At present, U.S. airstrikes in Yemen are not carried out by drones, but "have involved cruise missiles and other weapon that are less precise." The Post adds:

Proponents of expanding the CIA's role argue that years of flying armed drones over Pakistan have given the agency expertise in identifying targets and delivering pinpoint strikes. The agency's attacks also leave fewer telltale signs.

When a newspaper quotes anonymous officials who argue for expanding an undeclared war in ways that hide U.S. involvement, you might hope that would call out for some balancing perspectives who might question the legality, if not the wisdom, of launching secret deadly airstrikes on a non-belligerent country. But such voices are missing from the Post story.

Some of the same problems were evident in an August 15 New York Times story about the very same issue--the expanding war in Yemen, part of a military campaign happening in "roughly a dozen countries." The Times explained the relevant concerns about such operations: fueling "anti-American rage," the lack of congressional oversight, and "a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections."

One would hope that media interest in the Geneva Conventions and international law might include larger questions than what might happen to captured U.S. soldiers and spies.  Like the actual legality of launching undeclared wars, for instance.

Deep into the piece, the Times gets back to the details of a December attack:

A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode, increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by human rights groups.

An inquiry by the Yemeni Parliament found that the strike had killed at least 41 members of two families living near the makeshift Qaeda camp. Three more civilians were killed and nine were wounded four days later when they stepped on unexploded munitions from the strike, the inquiry found.

So the United States military killed dozens of civilians in a cluster bomb attack. One has to read deep into a rather long piece in order to learn this fact. The Times neatly captures the way many media outlets view these kinds of stories:

The Yemen operation has raised a broader question: Who should be running the shadow war?

Should the military bomb Yemen, or should the CIA do it? That's the way the Times sees the "debate."

Yesterday's New York Times (8/24/10) brought this headline: "Afghans Say NATO Troops Killed 8 Civilians in Raid." About those claims, we were told this:

Maj. Michael Johnson, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO force is known, said NATO authorities were unaware of any such attack.

Today's Times (8/25/10) brings this headline: "New Case of Civilian Deaths Investigated in Afghanistan." Of civilian casualties, we are told that "the issue is a delicate one between NATO and the Afghan government."

And also:

Afghanistan is a tribal society, and the results of botched raids are often difficult to overcome.

Tribal societies sure are strange.

Starting about a minute in, this clip from last night's Daily Show is must-see media criticism.

On the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, it is revealed that the Kingdom Foundation is a dangerous Saudi organization that, according to guest Dan Senor, funds radical madrassas and has also funded Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam at the heart of the "Ground Zero Mosque"  controversy.

Unmentionned by Fox, but revealed by Jon Stewart, is that the Kingdom Foundation is run by Al-Waleed bin Talal, who also happens to be...one of the NewsCorp's largest shareholders (Fox's parent company).

The clip includes a hilarious debate over whether Fox's coverage of this story makes them evil, or merely stupid. It's a tough call.

Washington Post ombud Andy Alexander devoted his August 22 piece to lauding how the paper handles stories about its parent company and its various business entanglements--which, as he explains, are rather extensive. The Washington Post Co. owns Newsweek, several television stations, and the Kaplan company, which runs the for-profit Kaplan University, the subject of recent critical media reports.

As Alexander put it:

The list of Washington Post Co. holdings and interests is extensive, and the relationships are complex. Whenever a news story discusses investment giant Berkshire Hathaway or its chief executive, Warren E. Buffett, it must note that he is a Post Co. board member. Likewise, stories about Facebook must mention that its board includes Post Co. chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham. Any story about LivingSocial, the consumer-oriented social networking site run by Tim O'Shaughnessy, must disclose that he is Graham's son-in-law.

How have the Post's editors and reporters been able to keep track of these conflicts? Alexander explained that

The Post's newsroom intranet added a list of holdings by the parent Washington Post Co., along with the names and primary business affiliations of its directors. The instructions are clear: "When we write about something that could impact, positively or negatively, one of those interests, we should be as transparent as possible about disclosing those relationships."

At the start of the piece,  Alexander wrote, "I regularly hear from readers deeply suspicious that The Post has concealed a self-interest." Given the array of Post conflicts, that is understandable. So in the interest of disclosure, why not make the Post's newsroom list of holdings and board affiliations public?

During an August 18 segment about the Iraq War, anchor Brian Williams said (emphasis added):

Let's bring into this conversation retired US Army Colonel Jack Jacobs. He's a decorated combat veteran, a recipient of the Medal of Honor and, of course, an NBC News military analyst.

Well, at this point, people like me always ask people like you, what have we learned. Critics of this war are always going to look at it as an elective. They're always going to say those 9/11 pilots weren't Iraqis. And they're always going to say we never found the weapons of mass destruction. So as an analyst--a civilian now, but a veteran military man, what do you think we've learned?

Williams is right about one thing -- people  like him do  always seem to prefer to pose questions to retired military officials. During the run-up to the Iraq War, for instance, NBC was running this advertisement touting their coverage:

Showdown Iraq, and only NBC News has the experts. General Norman Schwarzkopf, allied commander during the Gulf War. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, he was the most decorated four-star general in the Army. General Wayne Downing, former special operations commander and White House adviser. Ambassador Richard Butler and former U.N. weapons Inspector David Kay: Nobody has seen Iraq like they have. The experts. The best information from America's most watched news organization, NBC News.

 Whether those experts provided the "best information" can speak for itself.  Back to the present: If Williams really wanted to know what critics of the war think about the war, why didn't he just ask one?

Fox News Channel continues to mislead viewers about the "Ground Zero Mosque."  On the August 18 broadcast of the O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly countered the argument that there would be no controversy over a Jewish or Christian house of worship by saying this:

 Nobody would be complaining because Christians and Jews weren't involved in the 9/11 attack. Radical Muslims were. And you may remember the Muslim world largely did not condemn the al Qaeda action, while most Christians and Jews did.

Some opponents of the Park51 development like to argue that they have no problem with Islam per se. O'Reilly seems to go the other direction; since we "may remember" that Muslims were silent after 9/11, there's something troubling about "the Muslim world."

That memory is false, though. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has catalogued numerous examples of Muslim groups immediately condemning the 9/11 attacks.

And this is an old O'Reilly line, anyway;  as I wrote in my book The Oh Really? Factor:

O'REILLY: "The telling event here is that faced with a violent faction using the name of Allah to kill civilians, Muslims the world over did little.  There were no mass demonstrations against terrorism, no peace vigils and no organized condemnation of the al-Qaida criminals.  In fact, many Muslim countries actually condoned the attacks on Sept. 11 or blamed them on 'the Jews.'" (column, 8/1/02)

 OH REALLY: There was a candlelight vigil in Iran shortly after the attacks, attended by "more than 3,000 mostly young people" (New York Times, 9/21/01).  A few days earlier (9/15/01), the Times reported that "thousands of people attending a World Cup qualifying match between Bahrain and Iran observed a moment of silence."  Palestinians gathered for a candlelight vigil in Jerusalem (Baltimore Sun, 9/15/01)  As NPR reported, "Most Arab leaders were quick to denounce the attacks. Jordan's King Hussein, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri sent their condolences.  Officials in Syria, Kuwait and other Gulf nations expressed sympathy for the American people and the families of the victims.  Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said his country was ready to send aid to the United States." (9/12/01)

Public support for the Afghanistan war continues to drop.

Casualties mount.

So why is NBC's Meet the Press giving viewers a parade of hawkish pundits and military officials?

If you haven't already done so, please join FAIR's call to broaden the debate on the war on the most-watched Sunday morning chat show.

And while you're at, RethinkAfghanistan is asking people to sign a petition to CBS anchor Katie Couric to ask tough questions of Gen. David Petraeus.