Washington Post reporter Dan Balz (4/10/11)  presents the Obama/GOP budget deal as evidence that the White House was merely responding to public opinion:

Most important was showing the country that he could make Washington work. "Like any worthwhile agreement, both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them," he said.

At the same time, knowing that the public also favors reduced spending, Obama pointed to the size of the cuts in the new agreement while noting that his priorities had been preserved. The budget, he said, would "invest in our future."

Balz also notes that "the battle was fought on turf far more hospitable to Republicans, given the country's concerns about spending that contributed to the Democrats losing the House in November."

This was the conventional wisdom about the 2010 election, but it has very little to support it. Most public opinion polling shows far more concern about job creation than the deficit or national debt. As Jim Naureckas noted here, budget cuts will cost jobs, not create them. But in the minds of reporters like Balz, the public has lined up to back drastic spending cuts--and the media don't seem interested in talking much about the likely effects of such cuts.

This New York Times piece by Jeff Zeleny on the budget deal was actually headlined:

President Adopts a Measured Course to Recapture the Middle

Zeleny explained:

President Obama opened the week by calling on Democrats to embrace his re-election campaign. He closed it by praising Republicans for forging a compromise to cut spending this year and avert a government shutdown.

The juxtaposition made clearer than ever the more centrist governing style Mr. Obama has adopted since his party's big losses in November and his recapture-the-middle strategy for winning a second term.

If "centrism" is defined as mostly ceding the budget argument to the right (cuts, cuts and more cuts) and giving the Republican leadership most of what they say they wanted, then this article's point of view makes perfect sense.

It's a reminder that when the corporate media talk about the "center" or the "middle," they're referring to something that is well to the right of the center.

In coverage of the budget negotiations in Washington, which have largely revolved around how much money will be cut from the federal budget, it's rarely acknowledged that the standard economic assumption is that reducing government spending at a time of diminished economic activity will destroy jobs. As a rule of thumb, every $1 billion in spending cuts eliminates roughly 10,000 jobs. (The Economic Policy Institute provides a slightly more sophisticated explanation here.)

Given the the public consistently tells pollsters that job creation should be the country's top priority--often picked over deficit reduction by wide margins--this information should be included in every article on the budget debate. Thus when the New York Times (4/8/11) says that the Obama administration has agreed to $34.5 billion in cuts, and House Speaker John Boehner is pushing for $39 billion, the paper should note that the administration's position would cost approximately 345,000 jobs, while Boehner's would reduce employment by about 390,000.

I suspect that the inclusion of this information would rapidly change the debate.

Afraid of NATO killing civilians in Libya? The New York Times editorial page (4/8/11) sees the way forward by ramping up the war:

 There is a much better option: the American A-10 and AC-130 aircraft used earlier in the Libya fighting and still on standby status....

But no other country has aircraft comparable to America’s A-10, which is known as the Warthog, designed to attack tanks and other armored vehicles, or to the AC-130 ground-attack gunship, which is ideally suited for carefully sorting out targets in populated areas.

AC-130s were used frequently in the Iraq War, particularly in the bloody fight in the city of Fallujah--which was not often characterized by the careful sorting of targets. The Times established a record of downplaying the civilian deaths there, which might help explain why their editorial page has such faith in the careful sorting properties of these aircraft.

The uncritical coverage of Paul Ryan's budget plan continues. In the new issue of Time magazine, Michael Crowley and Jay Newton-Small tell us that Ryan is "the new face of federal frugality":

Just 41 years old, with jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him, the House Budget Committee chairman unveiled an ambitious package of huge budget cuts designed to dig the country out of its crippling debt crisis.  For Ryan, reining in spending is nothing less than an act of patriotic valor.

Valor. Eagle Scout. Great hair!

Ryan's critics have noted that his plan actually does very little about the "crippling debt crisis." Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo reports that the Congressional Budget Office's score of the plan "finds that by the end of the 10-year budget window, public debt will actually be higher than it would be if the GOP just did nothing."

The Time reporters add:

He may be a modern political star, but there's still something a little old-fashioned about Ryan, right down to his crow's-beak nose. Maybe it's the premature seriousness that comes from finding your father dead of a heart attack when you were 16 and then helping to care for a grandmother with Alzheimer's disease.

Now a married father of three, Ryan is a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents. "I love the field of economics," Ryan says. "I have a knack for numbers. And I've just delved into this issue for my adult life, basically."

Deep into the piece, after these tributes to Ryan's wonkery, comes this parenthetical:

(He's also been criticized for peddling fuzzy math and rosy projections. A Washington Post factcheck deemed his budget full of "dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.")

Huh. I thought he had "an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents"?

By placing the factcheck so deep into the piece, and in parentheses, Time is all but saying that it doesn't matter what the facts are about Paul Ryan's plan. What's more important is that he's a patriotic number-cruncher.

With great hair!

Dean Baker's Beat the Press is the best Early Warning Media Mythbuster. It's simple: You read it every morning before you read the papers (he is up before you are, trust me) and you're well prepared to deal with the economic nonsense you'll be subjected to.

Today (4/6/11) he proposes this headline for stories about Rep. Paul Ryan's budget blueprint:

Representative Ryan Proposes Medicare Plan Under Which Seniors Would Pay Most of Their Income for Healthcare

Baker writes: "That is what headlines would look like if the United States had an independent press." He explains that the central idea in Ryan's plan--voucher-like "premium support" instead of Medicare--will leave people paying a lot for healthcare. It's a simple idea, but not one that is expressed so simply in many press accounts.

Take one Washington Post article today (4/6/11) by David A. Fahrenthold. It leads with this:

This is the essential question for Rep. Paul Ryan: Can this man really manage the hardest sales job in U.S. politics?

That might be "essential" for him, but it's of little importance to us. We need to know what the plan actually wants to do. But papers too often find space to run these kinds of man-in-the-news profiles at the expense of telling readers, as often as they should,  how policy ideas will affect them.

In the piece we learn that Ryan "is the lanky, wonky chairman of the House Budget Committee" and "an unlikely revolutionary." The Post tells us that "Ryan studied economics in college, and in Congress he has embraced the weedy issues of the federal budget." One source seems to think that "sticking to his wonky reputation would be a good idea."

Back to the sales job:

So far, the sales pitch appears to be classic Ryan. He will make his case with earnestness and a hope that a quiet explanation of budget math can swing the country in a way that previous politicians could not.

He's just trying to explain math! That's nice, since the Post article doesn't:

The vision also includes a change in the Medicare program, in which the federal government acts as a health insurer for seniors. In coming years--Ryan's plan does not apply to people who are already 55--he would shift the program so that seniors would choose a private health plan. The federal government would then provide "premium support" to help them pay for coverage.

The main math question is how much "support" seniors will get. The answer is not much, and certainly not enough to cover the skyrocketing cost of healthcare. Pointing this out should be part of every story--even ones that tell us that Paul Ryan's a "wonk."

A Drudge Report headline today (4/6/11) represents the tip of the rotten iceberg:

RACE BASE: Obama looks to Rev. Al Sharpton for help in re-election...

NPR Morning Edition (4/5/11) keeps its audience informed about important business news (that just so happens to be about an image-burnishing campaign by the company whose heiress gave them a 9-figure bequest a few years ago):

RENEE MONTAGNE: And our last word in business today comes from another Illinois-based employer. The word is McJobs.

That word has meant low-paid work at a particular fast food chain. But McDonald's is trying to, quote, "turn the word on its ear," as one marketing executive put it to Ad Age magazine.

Yesterday, McDonald's launched a McJobs campaign, with the goal of recruiting 50,000 workers. It's aiming to recast its jobs not as dead-end work, but in ads starring its own happy employees as desirable employment.

And that's the business news on Morning Edition, from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

STEVE INSKEEP, host: Don't you mean Renee McMontagne?

(laughter)

INSKEEP: Just checking on that...

MONTAGNE: No, McInskeep. Hello.

INSKEEP: And I'm Steve McInskeep.

The big Israel-Palestine news of the week is Richard Goldstone's op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday (4/3/11). The short version you pick up from the media is that Goldstone has "retracted" his UN-sponsored report on war crimes during Israel's Operation Cast Lead war in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

The "retraction" language is fairly common--as in the  New York Times headline (4/4/11), "Israel Grapples With Retraction on UN Report."

But is there any real retraction?

Goldstone, a retired South African judge, chaired a four-person fact-finding commission investigating crimes committed by both sides. As he explains in his Post column, the Israelis refused to cooperate, which obviously affected the report's findings:

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion.

Goldstone writes that he now believes that "civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy."  He sides with a follow-up report from the UN, which credits Israel for launching some investigations of their Gaza war--though he added:

I share the concerns reflected in the McGowan Davis report that few of Israel's inquiries have been concluded and believe that the proceedings should have been held in a public forum. Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn't negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.

At CounterPunch, Jonathan Cook notes (4/5/11):

Israel would certainly like observers to interpret Goldstone's latest comments as an exoneration. In reality, however, he offered far less consolation to Israel than its supporters claim.

The report's original accusation that Israeli soldiers committed war crimes still stands, as does criticism of Israel's use of unconventional weapons such as white phosphorus, the destruction of property on a massive scale and the taking of civilians as human shields.

Cook adds that some observers see this as a mostly misdirected debate over intentionality--whether Israeli forces meant to kill civilians, or merely disregarded the fact that their actions would kill civilians. As Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch put it at the Guardian (4/5/11):

Goldstone has not retreated from the report's allegation that Israel engaged in large-scale attacks in violation of the laws of war. These attacks included Israel's indiscriminate use of heavy artillery and white phosphorus in densely populated areas, and its massive and deliberate destruction of civilian buildings and infrastructure without a lawful military reason. This misconduct was so widespread and systematic that it clearly reflected Israeli policy.

Roth also tweeted some criticism of the New York Times' coverage:

NYTimes wrong on Goldstone oped. He said intentional killing wasn't policy. No retraction on indiscriminate warfare.

And:

NYT wrong again. Goldstone says Israel didn't intend to kill but its policy was still crime of indiscriminate warfare

So what has happened then? Goldstone--who has been under tremendous pressure to distance himself from the report that bears his name--now says that there may have been cases where the Israeli military was not behaving with intent to kill civilians. Left unchallenged is the fact that many civilians were actually killed in attacks where little was done to prevent such killing.

But those details may not matter, if Richard Cohen's column in the Washington Post today (4/5/11) is any indication. Cohen writes that it was "shocking" that "Israel was accused of deliberately targeting civilians during its brutal 2008-09 war with Hamas." But now comes vindication:

Goldstone has retracted his findings. He no longer believes that Israel intentionally targeted civilians during the Gaza war (although he still believes Hamas did) and says that any deaths were inadvertent--the usual fog of war, the usual panicked decision.

The report focused on Israeli actions that were "either reckless, disproportionate or deliberate." There is nothing to suggest that most of the report's findings are in serious dispute. But to Cohen, it's now all "the usual fog of war." Cohen also claims:

As Goldstone acknowledges, Israel has looked into every charge of war crimes--incident by incident. Some soldiers have indeed been punished because some awful things happened.

It is not clear where Goldstone says or implies this in his brief op-ed. As Roth and other writers have pointed out, the Israeli investigations have yielded few indictments.

Cohen closes by writing:

Those who gleefully embraced the Goldstone report have to ask themselves why. They may hate the answer.

One might assume that he's suggesting anti-Semitism on the part of Goldstone's "gleeful" champions. Ironically in a piece admonishing those who rush to judgment, Cohen recalls that

a West Bank settler family of five was recently murdered in their home by what are universally thought to be Palestinians. This, too, has put Israel on edge.

As I noted before, there is plenty of speculation that a Palestinian committed those murders--but no evidence to date to that effect. Apparently speculation is enough for Richard Cohen. He should ask himself why. He may hate the answer.

Protests were held across the country yesterday to pay tribute to the legacy of Martin Luther King and to push back against attacks on workers' rights. Alex Seitz-Wald at Think Progress provides this take on one  D.C. rally:

In Washington, D.C., today, an estimated 2,000 protesters marched on Koch Industries' Washington, D.C., offices and attempted to give Charles and David Koch an invitation to come out and speak with the protesters. Not surprisingly, the building's doors were locked and no one was allowed inside. However, a representative from the real estate company which managed the building told an handful of organizers who attempted to deliver the invitation, "I'd be here with you guys if I wasn't working right now." Noting that he works for the building, not Koch, he said, "I don't want to be here."

And the media?

Last Thursday, Tea Party activists rallied on Capitol Hill to pressure Republican lawmakers to cut government spending. Crowd estimates ranged from "dozens" to "fewer than 200," yet the event attracted dozens of reporters and significant media interest, producing hundreds of stories in local and national press. At today's rally, which was 10 times bigger than the Tea Party one, ThinkProgress spotted three reporters--none from mainstream publications.

To corporate media outlets, nothing says "news" quite like a lightly attended Tea Party rally.

On Sunday's episode of NBC's Chris Matthews Show (4/3/11), the panel actually talked about criticism of the mainstream media, with some citing the media's Iraq War debacle as a major factor in the rise of blogosphere-based media criticism.

The discussion got somewhat confused along the way, as this segued into a discussion of the entirely unrelated phenomenon of Republican political candidates who do not like to speak to journalists.

Then the Washington Post's Bob Woodward weighed in with a solution. He explained that you can get in good with politicians--I mean, do investigative journalism--if you follow his simple advice: Tell your subjects exactly what you're going to ask them ahead of time, giving them time to come up with answers, and then print their answers.

WOODWARD: I think the survival of the so-called mainstream media has to do with quality. And if you assemble a bunch of questions and go to a candidate and say, "Look, I'm serious. I really want to ask about this," and you take them as seriously as they take themselves--and believe me, they all take themselves seriously.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

WOODWARD: And you've done your homework, they--and you're fair minded and neutral, they are going to engage. When I've done these books on Bush and Obama, I send in--I hate to disclose trade craft here--20-page memos saying this is what I want to ask about.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

WOODWARD: People say, well, you're telling them--you're tipping them off. And I say, yes. I want them to do some homework themselves. I want them to be fully engaged. And I think you can do that with lots of work. And--but if it's just we like to come in and chat about the news of the day, we'll get stiffed.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, they don't need--it's too wild, it's too crazy.

WOODWARD: Yeah.

Today the Washington Post published a tribute to David Broder that featured a few former politicians recalling how Broder was remarkably interested in talking to them. All agreed that Broder was the kind of reporter who wanted to know what they were thinking.

That's a great way to make friends with powerful people. Whether it produces good journalism is another matter entirely. The same can be said of Woodward's advice, which is particularly strange coming after a discussion of the media's Iraq failures. Getting too close to official sources was exactly the problem then; it's unlikely to be the key to the corporate media's "survival." But it's worked wonders for Bob Woodward.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow had a discussion last week (3/31/11) about the U.S. role in the Libya War with Col. Jack Jacobs, an MSNBC military consultant. Jacobs described the U.S. military's "ability to jam communications that take place between units or among units of Gadhafi‘s army," then referred to the U.S.'s

ability to jam electronic transmissions that occur when Gadhafi's army, ground forces try to fire at allied planes. The instant that a radar system is turned on on the ground, we can detect it and in very short order, send a precision-guided munition that follows the radar beam all the way down to its source.

After responding to that with "Wow," Maddow asked:

One of the things that people have questioned is if the U.S. has this high level of electronic capability, why is Libyan state TV still on the air? Is that not one of the things they would want to shut down?

Maddow's questions echo similar calls by U.S. journalists during the Iraq invasion for an attack on Iraqi government TV--calls that were heeded when the U.S. destroyed the TV studios with a missile attack on March 25, 2003. As FAIR wrote in a media advisory, "U.S. Media Applaud Bombing of Iraqi TV" (3/27/03):

Prior to the bombing, some even seemed anxious to know why the broadcast facilities hadn't been attacked yet. Fox News Channel's John Gibson wondered (3/24/03): "Should we take Iraqi TV off the air? Should we put one down the stove pipe there?" Fox's Bill O'Reilly (3/24/03) agreed: "I think they should have taken out the television, the Iraqi television.... Why haven't they taken out the Iraqi television towers?" MSNBC correspondent David Shuster offered: "A lot of questions about why state-run television is allowed to continue broadcasting. After all, the coalition forces know where those broadcast towers are located."

There is a good reason, actually, why Iraqi TV should not have been attacked: Journalists are civilians, even those who enthusiastically support their country's military efforts, and therefore targeting them is a war crime. The idea that journalists reporting in a country the U.S. is at war with deserve protection seems to have been rejected by the Pentagon, however. As FAIR wrote in "IS Killing Part of Pentagon Press Policy?" (4/10/03):

In the Kosovo War, the U.S. attacked the offices of state-owned Radio-Television Serbia, in what Amnesty International called a "direct attack on a civilian object" which "therefore constitutes a war crime." On March 25, the U.S. began airstrikes on government-run Iraqi TV, in what the International Federation of Journalists (Reuters, 3/26/03) suggested might also be a Geneva Convention violation, since it the U.S. was "targeting a television network simply because they don't like the message it gives out."

The Committee to Protect Journalists declined to count the Serbian journalists killed by the United States in its annual list of murdered journalists, a move that FAIR warned at the time would contribute to a sense that "enemy" journalists are fair game (Extra!, 9-10/00). Maddow's question suggests that treating reporters as enemy combatants has indeed become the new normal.

The Los Angeles Times' Michael Muskal explains Obama's 2012 campaign:

Running for reelection is different than running for the first time because the incumbent has a record that voters can evaluate. Obama will cite healthcare insurance overhaul, his administration's response to the recession and his foreign policy, which includes winding down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Afghan War is winding down? Well, that would be news.

Forget about Obama having "a record that voters can evaluate." I'm more concerned about reporters' inability to evaluate the present.

A brave, truth-telling whistleblower has emerged to tell the White House's side of the story in the Libya War. The inside scoop appears in a Los Angeles Times article by Christi Parsons (4/2/11) headlined, "For Obama, a Carefully Calculated Delay on Justifying Libya Airstrikes."

Are you confused by the White House's decision-making on Libya? Fear not--everything has gone according to plan. Like, for instance, the delay in public explaining the decision to bomb:

The timing was deeply controversial, but was designed to be a major part of the message itself, unfolding as the U.S. chalked up a measure of achievement in Libya and appeared to back away from lead management of the international military effort there.

The delay helped to underscore the key ideas Obama wants to drive home: that the commitment differs dramatically from the deep investment of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars he inherited, largely because the U.S. shares responsibility for it with a broad coalition of international and regional partners.

To an American audience weary and skeptical after years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama wanted to explain his reasoning when he could also demonstrate some closure.

"Instead of saying, 'I promise this is the way it's going to be,' he was able to go before the American people and say, 'Here's what I said I would do, and I did it,'" said one senior administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss the deliberations....

Some liberals joined with conservatives in objecting that Obama owed the country an explanation right away--if not before the attack.

But Obama's advisers said they wanted to break out of past practice on messaging, much like the president was breaking with the foreign policy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

"We wanted to make the point that this was not an Iraq-like war engagement," said the official. "The commitment was limited in duration and scope, and so the ways in which you deliver that message help convey it. It's not just what you say but how you say it."

Got it?

The Times also notes that some of Obama's left critics were miffed by the delay in explaining the purpose of the war: "Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) questioned a commitment to act without debate in Congress." To which the paper responded:

But steering clear of the trappings of wartime gravity could help Obama counter skeptical public perceptions.

Did that analysis come from the anonymous White House official, or is that Parsons' own contribution? Whatever the case, if ignoring the constitutional requirement that Congress authorize all wars can help us steer clear of the "trappings of wartime gravity" and "counter skeptical public perceptions,"  perhaps it's all worth it.

Corporate media's preference for "centrism" can often translate into reporting that casts two sides of a debate as equally belligerent or unwilling to compromise.  ABC reporter Jonathan Karl's report yesterday on This Week (4/3/11) offers a perfect example of the absurdity of this worldview.

His focuses was on the battle over the federal budget. On one side are Tea Party activists who want deeper spending cuts.  Karl notes that this creates some friction between the activists and GOP leaders. Then there's the other side of the debate:

KARL: Democrats have their hot heads, too. One Obama administration official said the Republican bill, which cuts $5 billion from the Agency for International Development would kill kids. That's right. Kill kids.

RAJIV SHAH, USAID ADMINISTRATOR: We estimate, and I believe these are conservative, that HR 1 would lead to 70,000 kids dying.

Karl then turns to former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean saying that Democrats could benefit from a government shutdown. Karl closes with a snide reference to the choice confronting lawmakers: "Compromise with extremists out to kill kids?"

Budget cuts have actual, real world consequences--especially when you're talking about health aid to the Third World. This is not in serious dispute. But apparently talking about those effects is a problem.

What Karl considers hot-headed extremism is Shah's claim that deaths will occur due to, among other things, cuts to USAID's anti-malaria programs. Others will die because they would lose access to life-saving medicines. Others will die at birth.

New York Times food writer Mark Bittman points out that many anti-poverty organizers have organized a fast to draw attention to the GOP budget cuts. He's joining them, and writes that some organizers are praying that God create a "circle of protection" around the world's poor and hungry.

What a bunch of hotheads.