Few pieces better illustrate the uselessness of so much corporate media political journalism than Kathleen Hennessey's piece in the L.A. Times (4/4/11) on Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's deficit reduction plan.

The piece is headlined "House Republican Budget Plan Would Revamp Medicare," and the lead explains that the GOP budget proposal outlined by Ryan "includes an overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid and would aim to chop at least $4 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade.""Revamp," an "overhaul"--well, that sounds good, doesn't it? How does Ryan plan to do that, exactly?

Despite reporting that Ryan's "broad overview" offered "the clearest picture yet" of Republican deficit-reduction plans, the piece is far from clear: Hennessey reports that Ryan is suggesting "changes to entitlement programs"--"dramatic changes"--and is "addressing the rising costs of the program." Then, in the seventh paragraph, we get this:

Under the proposed rework of the Medicare program, seniors would chose from several federally subsidized health plans. The changes would take effect in 2021 and would not affect people who are 55 or older now, Ryan said.

Oh, OK--so how's that going to save $4 trillion? The piece doesn't say--that's the full description.

Then in the 26th paragraph, we get a quote from a partisan critic of Ryan's plan, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D.-Md.), who says that the plan cuts "health security for seniors." He's not allowed to get any more specific than that, but Ryan gets four paragraphs of rebuttal to Van Hollen's one paragraph of vague criticism, starting with:

Ryan described the Medicare plan as a version of a "premium support" system he crafted along with former Clinton administration budget director Alice Rivlin. He acknowledged the proposal would shift more of the burden for healthcare costs to seniors, saying the wealthiest seniors would bear the largest portion.

"More for the poor, more for people who are sick, and we don't give as much to the people who are wealthy," Ryan said. "This saves Medicare."

Whoa, whoa, wait a second--"shift more of the burden for healthcare costs to seniors"? Why is this the first we're hearing about this, in the 27th paragraph of a 31-paragraph article?

Ryan's plan is not very hard to explain: He wants to replace Medicare with a system where seniors would receive vouchers to buy health insurance. As the cost of health insurance rises every year, the value of the vouchers would rise by not as much. Eventually the difference between the value of the vouchers and the cost of buying health insurance, along with a similar scheme for cutting Medicaid reimbursements, would amount to $4 trillion--which would be the amount that would come out of the pockets of seniors and the poor, plus the amount of healthcare they would do without.

That's what the L.A. Times means by "revamping." But if the paper explained that to its readers, they would mostly think Ryan's idea was a terrible one. And that would be biased--so it's better to leave the readers not knowing any more than they did before they read the article.

There's been plenty of talk about NBC's decision to skip the news about General Electric's ability to make huge profits and pay zero taxes. Now, it's possible that everyone at NBC misplaced their copies of the March 25 New York Times, but the GE story finally made it to the NBC Nightly News yesterday--in a report that was basically a chance for GE boss Jeffrey Immelt, whose company owns nearly half the network,  to try and rebut the story.

Anchor Brian Williams started off by saying this:

The news is still reverberating this week after last week's page-one story in the New York Times....

Now, that is a weird way to describe something you've never told your viewers.

Correspondent Lisa Myers went on to explain that this has created an "uproar," with "liberal groups" up in arms over GE's tax avoidance. She adds:

Well, today Immelt defended GE, saying taxes were unusually low in the last two years because of losses during the financial crisis.

She went on:

Immelt says that everyone should pay their fair share of taxes, including GE, and that the corporate tax code needs to be reformed to make it more competitive and eliminate loopholes. Also, Brian, Immelt says he does not intend to resign from the president's council on jobs.

"More competitive" here means that corporate tax rates should be lower--yes, Immelt is arguing that the fact that GE pays no taxes is a reason to lower its tax rate.

So NBC went from avoiding the news to presenting a one-sided defense of the company, courtesy of the boss. It must be nice to own a TV network.

In a mostly informative "news analysis" ("Ohio's Anti-Union Law Is Tougher Than Wisconsin's," New York Times, 4/1/11) comparing new anti-union laws that restrict collective bargaining rights in Ohio and Wisconsin, New York Times labor and workplace correspondent Steven Greenhouse seems at one point to adopt the framing and language of anti-labor politicians and pundits:

Moreover, at a time of huge budget deficits and of Republican dominance in many states, including states like Ohio and Wisconsin where unions once had swaggering power, the pendulum has swung toward the taxpayer instead of the government workers paid by the taxpayer.

Pitting "swaggering" unionized public workers against "taxpayers"--who are, in fact, mostly other workers--may be a tried-and-true strategy of anti-labor forces, but it doesn't accurately reflect the way the public see the issues. As the Times' own polling expert points out, Americans seem to be siding with public workers on the the issue of collective bargaining rights. 

Considering the fact that this isn't the only time the paper has pushed a false divide between government workers and nearly everybody else, perhaps Greenhouse would have more accurately portrayed the divisions had he written, "The pendulum has swung toward anti-labor activists and journalists, and away from public workers and the majority of the public who support them."

I was struck by how much coverage yesterday's rather small-looking Tea Party rally in Washington got in the national media.  Slate's Dave Weigel has a piece (3/31/11) explaining that the event wasn't as "extreme as Democrats would like it to be," as the subhead says.

But the movement's also not nearly as popular as the media coverage would lead you to believe. As Weigel notes, this rally was rather sparsely attended--especially if you weren't counting reporters:

About 200 Tea Party activists trod over damp grass to hear their leaders respond to [House Speaker John] Boehner. There was at least one reporter for every three or four activists. They were there to hear conservatives rip into Republicans for statements like the one Boehner had just made. "I think there are more press than Tea Party Patriots here," joked freshman Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., in an aside to one of the organizers.

Liberal media! The Tea Party media blackout continues....

The Washington Post's Greg Jaffe (4/1/11):

Some of the United States' partners have acknowledged that the initial descriptions of the intervention in Libya no longer apply. "What is happening in Libya is not a no-fly zone," a senior European diplomat told reporters, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity. "The no-fly zone was a diplomatic thing, to get the Arabs on board. What we have in Libya is more than that."

Is "customary" anonymity something like, "Now I can tell you the truth?"

(In case you're curious, the Washington Post's official policy on anonymous sourcing is that "granting anonymity to a source should not be done casually or automatically.")

There's a long tradition of U.S. pundits wishing for the day Palestinians finally decide to use non-violent means to protest Israeli occupation. Time magazine's Joe Klein weighs in on the subject this week:

Ever since Israel won control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the Palestinian national movement has been defined by terrorism, intransigence and, until recently in the West Bank, corruption. It has never been known for dramatic acts of nonviolence. "If they'd been led by Gandhi rather than Yasser Arafat, they would have had a state 20 years ago," Kenneth Pollack of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution told me. Israeli officials acknowledge that the recent, peaceful economic and security reforms led by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have been the most effective tactics the Palestinians have ever used in trying to create a state.

Of course what Palestinians are "known for" or how they are defined might not always resemble what they're actually doing.  There is a long tradition of Palestinian nonviolent resistance. There has rarely been, however, much U.S. media coverage of those acts--which means that, every so often, someone will urge Palestinians to consider behavior they've been practicing for years, or treat nonviolence as if it were a striking new development in the conflict--as the New York Times did last year.

Klein writes:

The young activists may be preoccupied by the chimera of Palestinian unity at the moment, but what happens if they turn their full attention to the Israeli occupation? What happens if they begin to organize marches to protest the near daily outrages perpetrated by Jewish settlers? What if they stage sit-down strikes to open roads that are used by settlers but closed to Palestinians? What if they march 10,000 strong against a settlement that is refusing Palestinians access to a traditional water supply? "If it is nonviolent, then that means, by definition, it is civilized," an Israeli official said. "We have no problem with that." But what if the Palestinians are nonviolent and the Jewish settlers are not? "I think about the dogs unleashed on Martin Luther King in Birmingham," Quran says. "I think about the beatings. That's what it took for Americans to see the justice of his cause. We will be risking our lives, but that is what it takes. I only hope that we're not too well-educated to be courageous."

It would be more helpful to point out that these things have happened regularly for many years.