Two PBS-related items of interest.

-Last year when PBS announced the retirement of Bill Moyers and the inexplicable cancellation of the excellent Now program,  word came that some public TV stations would be airing a program produced by (yes, this is a real thing) the George W. Bush Institute. The show, Ideas in Action, is host by James Glassman; as FAIR noted, he is

a longtime fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is perhaps best known for his remarkably optimistic--and wrong--book Dow 36,000. He also regularly penned op-eds for major U.S. newspapers that pushed views and policies that would directly benefit sponsors of his online news site, TechCentralStation.com (Extra!, 3-4/05).

According to a report at the Politico (8/18/10), Glassman's show will air Sunday mornings on WHUT and on Maryland Public Television (MPT).

--The PBS program Nightly Business Report, produced by a public station in Miami, has been sold to "a private company headed by Mykalai Kontilai, a former manager of mixed martial artists," according to a report in the New York Times. The Times notes that the show "has struggled recently to find enough corporate underwriting sponsors," so presumably the new owners think they can do that. The show will continue to be produced at the Miami public station WPBT.

The arrangement is somewhat puzzling: a private company now takes ownership of a public TV program, and will apparently solicit private corporate sponsors for an important "public television" show. Then again, the PBS flagship NewsHour newscast is a project of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, and the majority owner is Liberty Media, the company run by conservative media mogul John Malone.

The Washington Post (8/18/10) profiles some of the "conservative writers and bloggers critical of Islam" that have been fueling the national uproar over the proposed Muslim community center that would sit two-and-a-half blocks away from Ground Zero.

Michelle Boorstein looks at figures such as Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, and reports that "while some have dismissed them as bigoted attention-seekers, their attacks on the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan have gained currency in recent weeks among some Republican leaders. And their influence appears to be growing." So are they bigots? The Post never says.

Here's Boorstein's description of Pamela Geller, who publishes Islamophobic rants about Barack Obama and Muslims on her blog Atlas Shrugs daily:

The most colorful -- and perhaps most visible activist at the moment -- is Pam Geller, a former New York Observer publisher who has appeared in a bikini and a super-tight Superman costume challenging Islam.

Through her blog, Atlas Shrugs, television interviews and appearances at political and civic rallies, Geller has become one of the chief organizers of opposition to the Ground Zero mosque as well as efforts to build other Muslim prayer centers around the country...

Geller has become a prominent voice in the debate despite the fact that she once promoted the view that Obama is Malcolm X's love child. She frequently warns that Muslims are trying to impose repressive sharia law on the United States, refers to the president's holiday message to Muslims as "Obama Ramadamadingdong" and promotes a Web site, Religion of Peace, that claims to tally the number of people killed around the world by Muslim extremists.

Geller has also said (Media Matters, 7/14/10) that "it is well known that Obama allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth" and has called for the removal of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one of the most holy sites for Muslims. Geller said: "The dome has got to go. It is sitting atop the great Jewish temple. The dome has got to go. It's time to push back and stop indulging evil. Evil is made possible by the sanction you give it." Would the Post describe someone as a "colorful" activist if they had called for the destruction of a Jewish holy site, like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem?

Geller has also posted on her website (Atlas Shrugs, 5/20/10) a picture that replaced the Prophet Muhammad's face with that of a pig (Loonwatch.com, 8/4/10). When she was questioned on why that picture was on her site by a host on the English-language Russia TV, Geller responded by saying, "Who cares? What difference does it make?"

Boorstein also writes that "Geller often partners with Robert Spencer, a best-selling writer who is less flamboyant but perhaps more influential." Spencer publishes Jihad Watch, which has been described as a "notoriously Islamophobic website" (Guardian, 2/7/06). Spencer has compared the Islamic holy book, the Quran, to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (Human Events, 12/7/05), and thinks that Islam is "innately extremist and violent" (FAIR Smearcasters Report).

But only some people and Muslim-American leaders "accuse the bloggers of fueling religious hatred." They're just accusations, of course. Who knows what's true?

Boston TV newscaster Barry Nolan was outraged to learn back in 2008 that Fox host Bill O'Reilly was getting an award from the local chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. So Nolan made flyers documenting various O'Reilly outrages and distributed them at the local Emmys ceremony--and did not do so in a disruptive manner. He was soon fired by his employer (Comcast), and told his story at Think Progress.

It turns out there was even more to it.  A new article at the Columbia Journalism Review website by Terry Ann Knopf (8/16/10) reveals that pressure on Comcast came directly from News Corp/O'Reilly:

On May 12, 2008—two days after the Emmys—O’Reilly went on the offensive against what he called Nolan’s "outrageous behavior" with a carefully worded, lawyerly letter to Brian Roberts, the chairman and CEO of Comcast, which distributes Fox News and entertainment programming, to its subscribers. The letter was written on Fox News stationery and was copied to Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.

Pointedly, O’Reilly began by noting their mutual business interests. “We at The O’Reilly Factor have always considered Comcast to be an excellent business partner and I believe the same holds true for the entire Fox News Channel. Therefore, it was puzzling to see a Comcast employee, Barry Nolan, use Comcast corporate assets to attack me and FNC." Telling the Comcast CEO that Nolan had attended the Emmy Awards "in conjunction with Comcast," O'Reilly apologized for bothering him but let him know he considered this "a disturbing situation."

Knopf also reports that while Comcast has claimed that Nolan wasn't fired for speaking his mind ("Professional journalists need to have the right to express their opinions without fear of correction or retribution from a corporate parent," a company executive he explained), court documents

reveal that Comcast and Fox were involved in "ongoing" contract talks at the time, with Comcast fearing Nolan's protest "jeopardized and harmed" its business dealings with Fox. In response to a question posed by Nolan's attorneys in his lawsuit, Comcast’s written response, dated Aug. 5, 2009, states:

… Mr. Nolan’s protest at the NATAS Award Ceremony and of William O'Reilly as the recipient of the Governor's Award jeopardized and harmed the business and economic interests of Comcast in connection with its contract with Fox News Channel, and its contract negotiations with Fox News that were ongoing at the time.

One almost gets the feeling that O'Reilly just might be a thin-skinned bully.

The "Ground Zero Mosque" story is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Republican politicians apparently believe it to be an issue that works in their favor, and the media are doing little to challenge the bogus storyline in the first place.

Over at Salon.com, Justin Elliot has a  useful timeline that shows how little controversy the Park51 development attracted early on-- even on Fox News Channel:

Dec. 21, 2009: Conservative media personality Laura Ingraham interviews Abdul Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, while guest-hosting the O'Reilly Factor on Fox. In hindsight, the segment is remarkable for its cordiality. "I can't find many people who really have a problem with it," Ingraham says of the Cordoba project, adding at the end of the interview, "I like what you're trying to do."

For the record, Ingraham's current position is that the Park51 development is a sign that the "terrorists have won."

As FAIR documented in an August 11 action alert, CNN's The Situation Room was featuring alarmist views on Social Security, particularly from the network's political analyst David Gergen.

We know CNN has heard from activists; Wolf Blitzer's email response was,  "I am certain this subject isn't going away." Sure enough, the show was back at it on Friday (8/13/10)--though little had changed.

This time around, the guests were familiar CNN pundits Gergen and Gloria Borger. The problems began with Blitzer's teaser for the segment: "Are politicians too scared though to try to save the program?"

The issue isn't at all whether politicians are "scared"--the question should be whether they need to do anything at all right now.

Borger's take was this:

People right now are really concerned about spending in this country. And everybody understands that in order to control the deficit you have to get these entitlement programs under control.

As has been noted repeatedly, Social Security has amassed a $2.5 trillion surplus over the past two decades. If there are serious concerns about the federal budget deficit, it is unclear how Social Security would be a major factor. As the Economic Policy Institute put it recently (8/13/10), Social Security is "emphatically not the cause of the federal government’s long-term deficits, since it is prohibited from borrowing and must pay all benefits out of dedicated tax revenues and savings in its trust funds."

Borger went on: "So the question is, what can you do to get spending on Social Security under control?" That would seem to suggest that Borger thinks benefits that have been promised to workers—that those workers have paid for—should be cut.

Gergen echoed Borger's points, lamenting the idea that politicians (particularly Democrats) will "promise not to touch Social Security, to defend Social Security as it is. If you do that, you can't get the deficits under control."

Gergen added that "there is a real unwillingness to come to grips with what the underlying issues are, how high the benefits are and how little taxes we're paying in." That is a strange way to describe a program with a massive surplus. Perhaps Gergen's "we" is a reference to the wealthy; if the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security (FICA) tax were lifted, the additional revenues could go a long way toward shoring up Social Security's long-term finances.

It's doubtful that's actually what he meant, but if CNN is going to keep covering Social Security, perhaps they should invite some experts on who could explain these issues to viewers?

Last year, when California's Supreme Court upheld the state's gay marriage ban known as Proposition 8, there was little speculation about the sexual orientation of the seven justices or the possible heterosexual biases they might harbor.

But when federal Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Proposition 8 on August 4, reporting and commentary treated claims of Walker's gayness as a matter of fact--and a newsworthy subject. This despite Walker's never having addressed his sexual orientation publicly. As gay activist Michelangelo Signorile noted on the Huffington Post,  "Most major media organizations, from the New York Times and ABC News to the Washington Post and National Public Radio, have reported on him as gay or had commentators saying it."

This treatment, which was in sharp contrast to the the rules journalists normally use to determine if they will or will not report on a subject's sexual orientation, provided a service to anti-gay groups who wanted to claim that Walker's ostensible sexuality made him biased and unfit to rule on Proposition 8. In the twisted logic of the homophobes, of course, heterosexuals' views on gay marriage are unbiased.

While no one has come forth with actual evidence suggesting bias on Walker's part, what do you call it when journalists treat sexual orientation (or even rumors of such) as newsworthy when judges' decisions' favor gay rights, but unworthy of mention when they don't? Isn't that a bias?

As Signorile concluded on the Huffington Post (in an article that oddly referred to the allegation of Walker's gayness as a "smear tactic"), this is more than a story about the tactics of the anti-gay rights right: "It's a testament to how easily the media is manipulated by the right into doing things about which editors and reporters claim to be staunchly opposed."

USA Today's lead story on August 10 was about the pay of public workers, a subject reporter Dennis Cauchon has complained about before. "Federal Workers Earning Double Their Private Counterparts," the headline read, over a lead that reported that "federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn."

Well, that certainly sounds unfair--some workers earning twice as much as their counterparts just because they work for the federal government! It's hard not to agree with the source USA Today brings on from the right-wing libertarian Cato Institute, who says, "Can't we now all agree that federal workers are overpaid and do something about it?"

Hard, that is, until you read the second to last paragraph, which reveals: "USA Today reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20 percent more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education."

Oh. So when you look at "comparable occupations"--and don't just put all federal workers up against all private workers, which is what the paper means by "counterparts"--you don't get a 100 percent difference, you get a 20 percent difference. And that's without adjusting for differences in experience and education, which you certainly have to do if you want to make an apples to apples comparison. At TheAtlantic.com (8/13/10), Derek Thompson interviewed two experts who did try to account for job categories, education and experience; the expert from the conservative American Enterprise Institute said that federal workers get 12 percent more in compensation than comparable private sector workers, while the expert from the progressive Center for American Progress said that they get 7 percent to 12 percent less.

But USA Today doesn't even attempt to sort through the compensation for comparable workers. It wants you to focus on that "more than double" figure (which--it should be noted--includes pension and health benefits as well as salary).

So underlying USA Today's front-page story is the assumption that in a fair system, all workers would be paid the same amount--regardless of what they do, or how much education or experience they have. The word for this system is communism--a more extreme version than the one they had in the old Soviet Union. Funny, we've never seen USA Today embracing radical economic philosophies--except when it comes to lowering public workers' wages.

P.S. CBS Evening News (8/10/10) picked up on the USA Today story--leading the right-wing News Busters (8/12/10) to complain that "Only CBS Reports on Salary Gap Between Public and Private Employees."

The Los Angeles Times reports today (8/13/10) that the "moral argument" over California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages, "has morphed into a debate over the democratic process and the propriety of judges overturning laws approved by voters."

It's strange, then, that an article on this "debate" would feature only viewpoints from one side: the side that says, "The people voted on it and it should be left alone." All five of the sources quoted by reporter Mike Anton took this position. (There was also a two-word quotation from Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling: "moral disapproval.")

Anton does note that "tension between 'majority rule' and a Constitution designed to protect the rights of individuals against the majority" is "one of the oldest conflicts in the nation." Given that, wouldn't it make sense to find someone to take issue with his sources' assertions that "in a democracy, the people decide"?

In his New York Times column on Monday (8/9/10), headlined "The Flimflam Man," Paul Krugman took aim at Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who has emerged as the GOP's big thinker on budgets:

One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past experience, that D.C. insiders would be on their guard against conservatives with grandiose plans. But no: As long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic.

Krugman explains that Ryan's plan--big tax cuts, big cuts in spending--would actually not slash the deficit at all; it would make it bigger. And his tax "cuts" would really be tax hikes for everyone but the most well-off.

Krugman slammed "self-styled centrists" who "want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense.... The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future."

Now turn to today's Times, and a piece from Matt Bai. The subject is the very same Paul Ryan, whom Bai calls the "Republican star of the moment" thanks to his budget blueprint, which is termed "unusually austere."

Bai references Krugman's criticism, but then tells readers:

Let's leave aside for now the debate over the viability of the road map, which, as a practical matter, doesn't stand a chance of being enacted as is, anyway. The more pertinent question is whether Mr. Ryan is the kind of guy who just wants to make a point--or whether his road map represents the starting point in what could be a serious negotiation about entitlements and spending.

Well, why is that the pertinent question? The roadmap is presented as Ryan's ideas about what the government should do. Why would you ignore what it says and pretend that it represents a possible "starting point" for doing something different?

Because apparently Obama needs a " useful nemesis on the right," Ryan's not "blindly partisan," he's friendly with some Democrats--and, perhaps most importantly:

Mr. Ryan appears to be the rare kind of guy who actually dreams of making Social Security solvent, rather than of using the issue to bludgeon opponents or get himself on television. While his own proposal for private investment accounts might be a deal-breaker for the White House, he identifies Social Security as an area where there is "clearly room for compromise" and says of his road map generally, "I'm trying to get the discussion to an adult level."

As Tim Fernholz pointed out at Tapped (8/12/10), though, Ryan's plan would do nothing to improve Social Security's financial outlook:

This Center for Budget and Policy Priorities analysis notes that "because the plan would divert large sums from Social Security to private accounts, it would leave the program facing insolvency in about 30 years, just as under current law." A warning, then, to Bai: Appearances can be deceiving.

Krugman took to his Times blog to critique this Times piece, which is worth a read.

Former Israeli soldier and current writer for the Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg has a long cover story (9/10) on the "better than 50 percent chance" that Israel will launch air strikes against Iran by next July, with the aim of taking out the alleged nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Based on roughly 40 interviews with American, Arab and Israeli officials--some of them anonymously--Goldberg meanders from describing the worst-case scenario for what will happen after Israel attacks Iran to relaying dubious Israeli claims about how Iran is the new Nazi Germany to an analysis of Netanyahu's relationship with his right-wing 100-year-old father. He does this while assuring readers that he is "not engaging in a thought exercise, or a one-man war game."

Goldberg's is just the latest in a line of recent stories from neo-conservatives and others on Israel or the U.S. bombing Iran (The Weekly Standard, 7/26/10; The Washington Post, 8/1/10).

Why anyone would listen to Goldberg or give him space in a magazine to hype up the threat from another Middle Eastern country is beyond comprehension, given Goldberg's role in printing propaganda about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda (The New Yorker, 3/25/02; 2/10/03; Slate, 10/3/02). That turned out wonderfully, remember?

Ken Silverstein (Harper's, 6/30/06) is certainly shaking his head--he chronicled Goldberg's role in pushing for the Iraq War, writing that:

In urging war on Iraq, Goldberg took highly dubious assertions—for example, that Saddam was an irrational madman in control of vast quantities of WMDs and that Iraq and Al Qaeda were deeply in bed together—and essentially asserted them as fact...

Back in late 2003, at a panel discussion hosted by the New School for Social Research, the topic of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction came up. “Did the CIA simply mess up?” Goldberg asked Paul Wolfowitz. “Did I?” is the question he should have asked.

A lot has already been written about Goldberg's latest, so here's a selection of good analysis:

-Iran experts Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on "the weak case for war with Iran" (Foreign Policy, 8/11/10).

-Jonathan Schwartz (A Tiny Revolution, 8/11/10) argues that Goldberg is "America's greatest foreign policy propagandist."

-Glenn Greenwald on why Goldberg's piece is "exhibit A" on "how propagandists function" (Salon, 8/12/10).

-Eli Clifton on how Goldberg's article "is part of a campaign to push the Obama administration into authorizing a U.S. military strike rather than having any particularly believable scoops about an impending Israeli attack" (Lobelog, 8/10/10).

-Matt Duss on why an attack on Iran would have a "low likelihood of success" but a "high likelihood of disaster" (Wonk Room, 8/11/10).

-Paul Woodward on how the article is part of a campaign to put the Obama administration in a box to get the U.S. to bomb Iran (War in Context, 8/11/10).

-Tony Karon on Goldberg being willingly used by both U.S. and Israeli officials to "send messages" about both countries' postures toward Iran (Rootless Cosmopolitan, 8/12/10).

New Republic blogger Jonathan Chait (4/11/10) criticizes Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas for comparing the Republican Party to the Taliban, noting that the latter engages in "wanton torture and violence."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs generated a huge controversy by slamming the "professional left" for being too critical of the Obama administration.  People who compare Obama to Bush "ought to be drug tested," according to Gibbs.  Responses to the Gibbs remarks can be found almost anywhere you look--Glenn Greenwald's post provides perhaps the most thorough reaction.

In the corporate media, moving to the right and bashing the Democratic base is constantly offered up as a smart move for Democratic politicians. So it was not a surprise when Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank offered a defense of Gibbs' comments (8/12/10):

Gibbs and his colleagues have reason to be frustrated by the constant carping from the professional and semi-pro left. The Gulf oil spill has been plugged, and three-quarters of the oil is gone. Combat in Iraq is ending in a matter of days. Healthcare reform has been enacted. The auto industry is recovering, the bank bailout funds have been repaid, and a depression was averted. Yet the president, instead of getting credit, has received the sort of criticism from his unruly base that the right never bestowed on George W. Bush.

That's a pretty unconvincing case. The fact that the oil spill "has been plugged" is irrelevant; progressives disagreed with Obama's pro-drilling stance, his choice of interior secretary, the administration's failure to address existing problems at the Minerals Management Service (which oversees offshore drilling) and the degree to which the White House seemed either disengaged on this issue or acting more on BP's behalf than the public's.

"Combat in Iraq is ending in a matter of days"? That would be a surprise. If Milbank means the U.S. troop withdrawal, then yes that is happening. That policy was a continuation of George W. Bush's drawdown plan. The massive troop increase in Afghanistan, meanwhile, was opposed by the left--and is unmentioned in the column.

On healthcare, the left's critique (familiar to everyone who followed the debate) was that the White House stripped out the most progressive aspects of the reform bill, such as the public option (never mind the failure to even raise single-payer as a serious option).

The fact that bailout funds "have been repaid" does not address the criticism that the subsequent Wall Street/financial sector reforms were weak, or that the bailout itself  was structured to benefit certain Wall Street giants (Goldman Sachs, for instance).

Averting a depression is, of course, a good thing; the criticism from the left is that the federal government hasn't done enough to combat unemployment, and that the economic stimulus was smaller than it needed to be (a decision launched in a futile attempt to attract GOP support).

Looking back to this post on the FAIR Blog, I was reminded that Milbank was defending the Obama White House against left-wing agitators back in December. His main point then was that Obama's escalation of the Afghan war "is above all a pragmatic, nonideological strategy." Opposing it, then, is crazy;  Obama supporters should instead "applaud this sort of thoughtful, methodical leadership." Milbank singled out Michael Moore, Arianna Huffington and Code Pink for not having the good sense to support a president who does something they fundamentally disagree with. It was a strange argument then, and it's a strange argument now. But it's not surprising that Beltway pundits would approve of Gibbs' base-bashing.

Please read-- if you haven't already-- FAIR's new action alert about CNN's The Situation Room and Social Security. If you decide to take action and write a letter to CNN, please share it in the comments section below.

In an article (8/10/10) on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's testimony to an Israeli panel investigating the May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, the Washington Post gets the facts wrong on crucial history and context relating to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Joel Greenberg writes:

Netanyahu said that the naval blockade, imposed by the previous Israeli government in January 2009 during a military offensive against Hamas, was meant to prevent the smuggling of arms to the Gaza Strip, which he described as "a giant weapons depot and base for attacks on Israel."

He added that 12 ships had tried to run the blockade since it was imposed, but none had reached Gaza.

The naval blockade imposed by Israel is part of the full-blown embargo against the Gaza Strip, which began in 2006 and grew more severe in June 2007--three years before the January 2009 date Greenberg reports. The naval aspect of the blockade, according to the UN Goldstone report, began in 2006, when Israel set the fishing zone limit "unilaterally at six nautical miles and maintained this limit from October 2006 to January 2009, when it further restricted it to three nautical miles." The restrictions on fishing in Gaza's waters have decimated the local fishing industry, according to a 2009 report by the Gaza City-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

It is also not true that no ships have ran the blockade since it was imposed, as Netanyahu reportedly said. Greenberg may have realized this had he correctly reported the real beginning of the Israeli naval restrictions on Gaza instead of regurgitating Netanyahu's misleading testimony, who also wrongly put the start of the naval blockade at January 2009. In August 2008, the Free Gaza movement reached the shores of Gaza with two boats (BBC News, 8/23/08). And the Free Gaza movement successfully broke the naval blockade again in October 2008, when a "66-foot yacht, named The Dignity, arrived...with 26 activists and medical supplies" (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 10/28/08).

Today we learn that the New York Times does indeed print corrections if an op-ed writer makes an error:

An op-ed article on Sunday about Arizona and immigration mistakenly suggested that javelinas are pigs. They are peccaries.

Now, if someone were to, say, flagrantly misrepresent a "poll" that is the entire premise of an op-ed--as FAIR documented in this alert--would the paper correct that piece? We're still waiting to find out....