CNN/Time pundit Fareed Zakaria is considered one of the smartest guys in elite policy/media circles. Speaking with CNN host Anderson Cooper on Friday (3/4/11), he advocated CIA intervention in Libya. Deriding a no-fly zone as something less than a "magic solution," he explained:

 ZAKARIA: There's a lot of covert stuff we can do. We can effectively fund the Contra war against Gadhafi the way we did in Afghanistan.

COOPER: So you think the opposition should be armed?

ZAKARIA: I think the opposition--I think that the CIA should start looking into covert actions that can fund the rebels, that can provide food, logistics, weaponry. And if Khadafy Gadhafi realizes this-- and believe me, we don't need to advertise it -- he would realize, he will see, the people around him will see he can't win.

Zakaria's historical references are a little bizarre. The U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua were a disaster--a murderous group trained and armed in an attempt to overthrow a left-wing government that had overthrown a U.S.-backed dictatorship. The Contras directed much of their violence against Nicaraguan civilians. When direct funding of the group was blocked by Congress, the Reagan administration hatched a plan to sell arms to Iran and funnel the profits to the Contras--what became known as the Iran/Contra scandal. In other words, not exactly the kind of plan one would cite as a model.

Zakaria refers to Afghanistan as well--presumably meaning U.S. support for mujaheddin fighters battling the Soviet Union. Some of those fighters would eventually regroup under the banner of Al-Qaeda. Again, not really the kind of project you'd want to replicate.

From a March 2 report on CNN about the U.S. killing nine Afghan boys:

MICHAEL HOLMES: I mean, just another terrible thing. We've seen this happen before.

DON LEMON: Yes. Sad all the way around. He did apologize, but still.

HOLMES: It does a lot of damage to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. You don't win hearts and minds that way.

LEMON: Absolutely. Thank you, Michael.

I can think of bigger problem here than the "damage to the U.S. mission."

Drudge Report headline, right now:

CLAIM: Iran Arranging to Buy Yellowcake in Africa...

Is my computer a time machine, traveling back to 2002-03?

From David Carr's piece on Glenn Beck in the New York Times today (3/7/11)

"When I first came here," he told his audience on Wednesday, "I had this pie-in-the-sky belief that if I told you the truth, if I verified all of my facts and double-checked, and we could make that compelling case with facts to back it up, the journalists in other places would get curious and they’d use their resources and they’d investigate and they'd prove it right and they'd show it too." Then he shook his head and laughed bitterly.

There's nothing to say about that, really. Everyone should read James Wolcott's wonderful piece in the new Vanity Fair on the cable news culture of the moment. On Beck:

Even in a clown era, Beck is an unlikely crusade leader. Round and beige, he resembles one of the squeamish pod sperm awaiting launch instructions upstream in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. Like radio god Rush Limbaugh, Beck combines the roles of pedagogue and demagogue into a single luncheon meat, slathered in blather. But where Limbaugh stays on track in the radio studio, taking a single theme and pounding it flat, Beck is a grab-bag collage artist of half-baked ideas and lore, grafting bits of history and chunks of speculation into a clanking Frankenstein monster with Barack Obama's face sewn onto Karl Marx’s head and one arm raised in permanent Nazi salute--"liberal Fascism" as an evil action figure.

As Wolcott goes on to argue, the fact that Beck's rhetoric doesn't make sense is precisely the point: "Incoherence isn't a bug in Beck's software program, it's the primary directive."

One of the big problems with recent coverage of immigration was the portrayal of the state of Arizona as a remarkably violent place due to the flood of unauthorized immigrants. It was a stew of misinformation, and one of the most prevalent claims was that Phoenix was The Kidnapping Capital of the Country (and No. 2 in the entire world).

That story always looked  a little shaky, as this ThinkProgress review pointed out (7/9/10). Now it looks like there could be more problems. A brief item in the New York Times today (3/4/11) reported that Phoenix's public safety manager was suspended

while an audit is being conducted to determine whether he inflated kidnapping statistics to win federal grant money, officials said on Thursday. The police reported more than 350 kidnappings in 2008 and said that almost all of them were linked to border violence, prompting some to label Phoenix the kidnapping capital of the United States. The actual number might have been closer to 250, officials said.

ABC News led the way on this story--you can still see Brian Ross' 2009 report, "Kidnapping Capital of the USA," here. Will he be doing an update?

The Charlie Rose show--which airs mostly on public television stations--has mostly skipped the protests in Wisconsin, one of the biggest labor stories of the past decade. This is not a total surprise--Rose seems to identify with The Bosses more than with the workers--so it was interesting to see how he finally approached the subject on his March 2 show.

The first guest was Time's  Joe Klein. He seems to identify with public sector workers, he knows they're not getting rich, but he doesn't like their unions: "Public employees' unions are a pretty questionable proposition," as he put it. The solution in Wisconsin is "to bring those pension plans and healthcare more in line with the rest of the public."

The next guest: far right Fox News host Mike Huckabee. He makes some jokes about raising the retirement age, then zeroes in on the pension problem:

So what I think the governor in Wisconsin is doing is what he has to do.  A teacher in Wisconsin puts in $1 for the retirement fund.  The fund puts in $57.  I don't know too much people who have a retirement plan.

That would be a remarkably lopsided pension plan. Where does that number come from? There seems to be little trace of it in the debate over Wisconsin. Some commenters at the right-wing Free Republic message board caught Huckabee's appearance and were excited to have a new anti-teacher talking point--only no one could seem to scare up data to support his claim.

General information about contribution rates for Wisconsin teachers can be found here--and you see nothing at all that would resemble Huckabee's formulation. And the Wisconsin pension system is relatively healthy, for the record--making this an odd focus of concern to begin with.

More importantly--what did Charlie Rose do when a guest made such a remarkable claim? He backed him up:

There is it seems to me a huge anger over the fact that people in the private sector see people in the public sector being able to retire with extraordinary benefits because they opt out at age 65.

People are outraged by public employees retiring at 65 with cushy benefits? This is not at all supported by recent polling data. You know what would help clarify things? Rose could consider an on-air clarification or correction. (Huckabee's been doing a lot of "misspeaking" as of late.)  Or he could challenge guests when they make such bizarre claims.

Or--here's an idea!--when the biggest labor story in some time is dominating the news, how about having some labor guests on the show?

"Teachers Wonder, Why the Heapings of Scorn?" is the headline of a front-page New York Times piece today (3/3/11). The article by Trip Gabriel reports, "Education experts say teachers have rarely been the targets of such scorn from politicians and voters."

Politicians, sure, but what's the evidence that voters--i.e., the public--have been heaping scorn on teachers? Gabriel offers nothing to substantiate this claim other than references to "online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators"--quoting blog commenters as evidence of the national mood has got to stop, guys--and the assertion that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's teacher-bashing has made him a "national star." (I can't find any national polling on Christie, which in itself calls into question how much of a national star he is, but his poll numbers in his own state are unremarkably average.)

Apparently it's hard to find evidence of this anti-teacher wave because it's already receding. In the 14th paragraph, Gabriel writes:

There are signs of a backlash in favor of teachers. A New York Times poll taken last week found that by nearly two to one--60 to 33 percent--Americans opposed restricting collective bargaining for public employees. A similar majority--including more than half of Republicans--said the salaries and benefits of most public employees were "about right" or "too low."

Is that a "backlash in favor of teachers," though, or is that the way people have felt about teachers all along?

And those polls probably understate the support for teachers, since they're more popular than "public employees" in general. When CBS asked last year (1/6-10/10) about public school teachers' salaries, fully 66 percent said they were paid "too little"--while only 4 percent said they were paid "too much." And this is a long-held public attitude; when Gallup (8/24-26/99) asked in 1999 about public teacher salaries, 56 percent thought they were too low and 7 percent too high.

The New York Times piece is not unsympathetic to teachers, but by buying into the notion that there is a wave of anti-teacher sentiment sweeping the public, it only emboldens teacher-scapegoating politicians. The next time a journalist wants to write a piece about the scorn heaped on teachers, they might take a look at a Gallup poll (11/19-21/10) that asked how people viewed the "honesty and ethical standards" of various professions. Elementary school teachers' ethics were rated "very high" or "high" by 67 percent; for newspaper reporters, it's 22 percent.

In 2007 Harper's journalist Ken Silverstein wanted to do a story on Beltway lobbyists' willingness to work on behalf of creepy dictators. So he went undercover:

I decided to approach some top Washington lobbying firms myself, as a potential client, to see whether they would be willing to burnish the public image of a particularly reprehensible regime.

The first step was to select a suitably distasteful would-be client. Given that my first pick, North Korea, seemed too reviled to be credible, I settled on the only slightly less Stalinist regime of Turkmenistan.

As he reported, some of the lobbyists he approached were perfectly willing to plot out ways they could improve his client's image among D.C. powerbrokers. Silverstein's reporting was criticized by Guardians of the Media Establishment like Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, who was very uncomfortable with Silverstein's methods. As he wrote, "No matter how good the story, lying to get it raises as many questions about journalists as their subjects."

Today the New York Times (3/2/11) provides an update of a sort. Under the headline "Arab Unrest Puts Their Lobbyists in Uneasy Spot," Eric Lichtblau tells of "the elite band of former members of Congress, former diplomats and power brokers who have helped Middle Eastern nations navigate diplomatic waters here on delicate issues like arms deals, terrorism, oil and trade restrictions."

The news here is that these "Washington lobbyists for Arab nations find themselves in a precarious spot, as they try to stay a step ahead of the fast-changing events without being seen as aiding despots and dictators." Which is, of course, precisely what they do. Silverstein's work taught us that they have very little reluctance about working for torturing dictators--at least until those leaders' crimes become too difficult to ignore.

The Times story, with all its hedging and tip-toeing, is the kind of journalism that is acceptable in elite circles. As for Silverstein, he left Harper's, writing that "I frequently find myself numb to political news and, even worse, to the lifeless, conventional wisdom peddled by the Washington media."

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange believes people are out to smear him and his organization. That much seems clear. Today the New York Times' Ravi Somaiya writes a piece that would seem to confirm those suspicions.

The headline today:

Assange Complains of Jewish Smear Campaign

The issue here is what an editor at the British magazine Private Eye says Assange told him--that there is, in the Times' words, "a Jewish-led conspiracy to smear his organization."

There's no way for the Times to verify this information, as Glenn Greenwald points out at Salon. So why the definitive-sounding headline?

And the background to Assange's "rambling phone call" raises more questions about the Times story.  The paper reports that Assange

was especially angry about a Private Eye report that Israel Shamir, an Assange associate in Russia, was a Holocaust denier. Mr. Assange complained that the article was part of a campaign by Jewish reporters in London to smear WikiLeaks.

That makes it sound like:

a) Assange has some formal association with Israel Shamir, a Holocaust denier;

b) Assange is angry that this magazine reported that Israel Shamir is a Holocaust denier.

But Assange's anger actually seems to stem from the suggestion that he has a formal relationship with Shamir. As a WikiLeaks statement put it:

Israel Shamir has never worked or volunteered for WikiLeaks, in any manner, whatsoever. He has never written for WikiLeaks or any associated organization, under any name and we have no plan that he do so. He is not an "agent" of WikiLeaks. He has never been an employee of WikiLeaks and has never received monies from WikiLeaks or given monies to WikiLeaks or any related organization or individual. However, he has worked for the BBC, Haaretz and many other reputable organizations.

WikiLeaks went on to say that "Shamir was able to search through a limited portion of the cables with a view to writing articles for a range of Russian media." It's possible that WikiLeaks is downplaying Shamir's role; other accounts portray him as having a somewhat closer connection to the organization. But Assange's and WikiLeaks' public pronouncements take issue with the linking of themselves to Shamir, not the exposure of his anti-Semitism (which seems to be quite real).

You get a very different impression from the headline and thrust of the Times piece, which would lead you to believe that Assange consorts with anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers, gets angry when they are exposed as such and alleges that a Jewish conspiracy is out to get him.

It's clear that Assange does believe that people are out to spread misinformation about him and his group. The Times story won't do much to convince him that he's wrong.

FAIR has a new Action Alert here pointing out the hypocrisy of the ABC Word News "Made in America" series.

ABC anchor Diane Sawyer thanked viewers last night for the feedback they've received on the series so far, so they do seem interested in what viewers have to say. Please leave copies of your messages to ABC, or thoughts on the alert, in the comments thread here.

You had to assume that there would be folks in the media who wouldn't like the recent CBS/New York Times poll that found strong public support for public workers. Sixty percent of those polled oppose stripping public workers of collective bargaining rights; 56 percent opposed cutting pay or benefits of those workers in the name of deficit reduction.

Fox's Bill O'Reilly has a solution to this problem: Union households shouldn't be polled. As he explained last night (3/1/11)

And the New York Times headline today reads "Majority in Poll Back Employees in Public Sector." But the poll is misleading because 20 percent of the responds say they are from union households. If you subtract them, those who favor cutting benefits win the poll. Wow, New York Times.

In case it wasn't clear, by "subtract them" he means exactly that--they shouldn't count in polls of the American public:

O'REILLY: You have a situation where you have 20 percent of the people polled being in the union families and you're telling me you can't throw that out? That that's a legitimate --

COLMES: You're saying -- yes, I'm saying that you are conflating numbers, 8 percent of people in the polls say are union members, 20 percent say they are in union families.

O'REILLY: Yes, families.

COLMES: You automatically--but you don't automatically take that 20 percent and move into it the other column.

O'REILLY: I'm not moving it anywhere. I'm just taking it out of the mix.

Following this "logic," the elderly shouldn't be polled on Social Security, blacks shouldn't be polled on civil rights legislation and Democrats shouldn't be polled on Barack Obama's job performance.

Richard Cohen recently (FAIR Blog, 2/15/11) took to the Washington Post to argue that Teach for America is wonderful because.... Well, it just is. He predicted that the "best teacher in America" is likely to be drawn from the ranks of the program, which draws recent graduates from elite universities into the teaching profession. His only evidence of the greatness of this scheme was that the program is very competitive.

On Sunday, George Will joined Cohen in praising Teach for America--more evidence, if any was needed, that TFA enjoys a great ride in the corporate media. In Will's column, was "Teach for America: Letting the Cream Rise," he explains:

Until recently--until, among other things, TFA--it seemed that we simply did not know how to teach children handicapped by poverty and its accompaniments--family disintegration and destructive community cultures. Now we know exactly what to do.

Will says TFA is "a template for transformation." And the cream is, obviously, rising:

TFA has become a flourishing reproach to departments and schools of education. It pours talent into the educational system--80 percent of its teachers are in traditional public schools--talent that flows around the barriers of the credentialing process. Hence TFA works against the homogenization that discourages innovation and prevents the cream from rising.

As Bob Somerby noted at the Daily Howler, Will offers no evidence to back up his argument. And even Teach for America doesn't make such claims; Somerby points out that the TFA website offers this lukewarm assessment:

TEACH FOR AMERICA: Research over time has conclusively shown that Teach For America corps members' impact on their students' achievement is equal to or greater than that of other new teachers.

So this program takes the best and brightest, the talented cream, and turns them into...average new teachers?

Somerby adds:

Indeed, in a new C-Span tape (click here), Malcolm Gladwell asks Kopp how well TFA teachers perform. To her credit, Kopp abandons her practice of making anecdotal miracle claims and seems to suggest that TFA teachers aren’t a whole lot better than everyone else. (This happens at 0:51. Rather typically, Gladwell shows no sign of having prepared for his session with Kopp, whom he describes as one of his heroes.) By the 1:05 mark, Kopp is back to making a miracle claim about a beginning teacher in Phoenix. But again: Will doesn’t cite any research about such miracles because it doesn't exist.

Luckily for Will and Cohen, tributes to TFA don't require any evidence. Call it faith-based punditry.

New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera is being promoted to the Times' op-ed page, where he'll appear twice weekly. Regular FAIR Blog readers may recall Nocera as the star of this item (7/1/10):

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?

I've found that this is a good rule of thumb: If a fact truly astonishes you, double check it, because your astonishment might be a sign that you're getting it wrong.

Nocera was earlier responsible for a similarly embarrassing correction--one that came with an extra helping of hubris (Extra! Update, 12/05):

In a New York Times business column (11/5/05), Joseph Nocera took to task the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Price of Low Cost for not including Wal-Mart's point of view--even though, as Nocera noted, Wal-Mart refused to be interviewed for the film. When filmmaker Robert Greenwald suggested that "a corporation with $10 billion in profits" could probably speak for itself, Nocera quipped, "The actual 2004 profits were $9.1 billion, but who's counting?" Not Nocera, apparently: The Times published a correction (11/8/05) noting that his column "included an outdated reference to the company's profit. It was $10.3 billion for the 2005 fiscal year, which ended January 31; the $9.1 billion cited was for fiscal 2004."

Some people learn from their mistakes, and some people don't seem to be able to. Let's hope Nocera is in the former category.

FAIR has just released a new Action Alert about USA Today's misleading front-page article today about Wisconsin public workers. If you're writing to the paper, please post a copy of your letter in the comments section below.

Today the New York Times reports its new poll (3/1/11):

As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

 That's big enough news, and once again cuts against the People-Don't-Support-These-Overpaid-Union-Workers trope. 

 But there's more. When the poll asked about fixing the deficit, people had a message rarely heard in the media:  

Asked how they would choose to reduce their state's deficits, those polled preferred tax increases over benefit cuts for state workers by nearly two to one. Given a list of options to reduce the deficit, 40 percent said they would increase taxes, 22 percent chose decreasing the benefits of public employees, 20 percent said they would cut financing for roads and 3 percent said they would cut financing for education.

 Imagine if the corporate media conversation about deficits were driven more by what the public thinks we should do. Raising revenue is hardly even part of the discussion. 

And a bonus finding--which group of people is most supportive of cutting workers' pay? The Times explains:

Although cutting the pay or benefits of public workers was opposed by people in all income groups, it had the most support from people earning over $100,000 a year. In that income group, 45 percent said they favored cutting pay or benefits, while 49 percent opposed it.

The cut-their-pay pundits don't reflect public opinions, but they do a decent job of representing their class.