In the wake of the News Corp scandal and the resignation of their own paper's publisher/CEO, the editors of the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal came out swinging today (7/18/11) against critics who would question the Journal's own standards and even "perhaps injure press freedom in general."

Today's editorial first goes for deflection: Scotland Yard's failure to stop the hacking is "more troubling than the hacking itself," and "it is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous." (As if bribing police officers and illegally hacking into phones are "buying scoops and digging up dirt.")

The paper also warns against U.S. investigations into News Corp wrongdoing, reminding readers of the Valerie Plame Wilson case, in which the New York Times' Judy Miller did jail time for refusing to reveal which Bush administration official leaked the identity of the undercover CIA officer to right-wing columnist Bob Novak--an episode the Journal recalled as a Times-led "posse to hang Novak and his sources." Asked the editors, "Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?"

In the Plame Wilson case, remarkably few in the media actually supported the government investigation, instead claiming source confidentiality ought to be absolute--no matter that the "whistleblowing" being protected was actually political retribution against a whistleblower. (See Extra!, 9-10/05.) Journalism that serves the public interest is crucial for a democracy and should be protected from state interference. But journalism that gives government officials cover to punish whistleblowers, or that hacks into people's phones in order to sell more copies of a newspaper, hardly serves the public interest. And the Journal made clear which master its version of journalism serves:

Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product. The news hole is larger. Our foreign coverage in particular is more robust, our weekend edition more substantial, and our expansion into digital delivery ahead of the pack. The measure that really matters is the market's, and on that score Mr. Hinton was at the helm when we again became America's largest daily.

Newsweek (7/17/11) begins a piece on David Petraeus becoming CIA director with an account of how he got the "short-term job done" after he was named commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan:

Now, after 13 months, the 58-year-old Petraeus is coming home to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Since that day in the Oval Office, hopeful signs have begun appearing that he may have performed the seemingly impossible task of stabilizing the Afghan battlefield.

The article, by reporter John Barry, doesn't provide much detail on what these "hopeful signs" are, but Afghan civilian deaths are up 15 percent in the first half of 2011 vs. the first half of 2010.  (Maybe that's why an Afghan media executive cited in the piece contends that "not everyone in Afghanistan fully appreciates what Petraeus has achieved in his year there.")

As for U.S. troops and their non-Afghan allies, 705 of them were killed in the 13 months Petraeus was in charge of Afghanistan--as opposed to 725 in the 13 months before that. Other than that, I'm sure he had a great war.

Glenn Beck's temporary replacement in the 5 p.m. slot on Fox News, Eric Bolling, has started out with a bang. On the July 13 edition of his new show the Five, the host declared:  "America was certainly safe between 2000 and 2008.  I don't remember any attacks on American soil during that period of time."

After Bolling's error, erasing 9/11 and several other deadly terrorism attacks from the Bush record, was pointed out by outlets including Media Matters and Huffington Post, the host returned to the air Thursday to issue a correction that sounded more like a retaliation against those who dared correct him. Bolling denounced the  "radical liberal left" and accused Media Matters of pettiness for pointing out the error, in an emotional tirade in which he exclaimed:

No, I haven't forgotten. I happened to be standing there, watching in true terror as radical Islamists slammed planes into the towers that morning. I remember the towers collapsing, killing 3,000, including 16 of my close friends. And I really remember trying to comfort the kids of my friends at their memorial services.

Bolling's temporary amnesia about the September 11 attacks puts him in company with many conservatives who have distorted the Bush record on terrorism  (Extra!, 3/10). But even the correction part of Bolling's tirade was in error:

Yesterday I misspoke when I said there were no U.S. terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously, I meant in the aftermath of 9/11.

Among the terror attacks Bolling's revised position erases from the Bush record: the  September/October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five, the December 2001 "shoe bombing" attempt, the July 2002 attack on the L.A. airport's El Al ticket counter that left two dead, the "D.C. sniper" attacks in October 2002 that killed 10,  the  March 2006 SUV attack on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus that injured nine and the July 2008 murder of two at a progressive Knoxville, Tennessee church, which were carried out by a gunmen who said he was inspired by Fox News contributor Bernard Goldberg.

According to the Huffington Post, none of the panelists on the show challenged Bolling's initial error about 9/11. But should we be surprised? Among those panelists was former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino, who is on the record insisting to an unfazed Sean Hannity, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term."

The headline of Al Neuharth's column in USA Today (7/15/11) summed up his case: "Murdoch Media Give You What You Want."

That sort of depends on who "you" is. Neuharth explains:

Murdoch has an uncanny knack for figuring out what a sizable segment of readers and viewers want and giving it to them. Straight or slanted.

His Fox News television network is as blatantly right-wing as Murdoch intended it to be when he started it in 1996 to counter the left-wing MSNBC.

Oh, so that's what explained the launch of Fox News Channel in October 1996--the rampant left-wing bias of MSNBC, which had been on the air for... just about three months. The channel with all the left-wing hosts--like the show that featured Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. The channel that made a big deal of hiring Don Imus in 1998.

The channel that would go on, in those early years, to bring viewers the likes of Michael Savage, Tucker Carlson, Alan Keyes, Oliver North and Joe Scarborough. Yep, Fox was launched to counter all of that.

Or maybe Neuharth means that Murdoch is so smart that he started a right-wing cable network knowing that his competitors would try to imitate his political slant for the better part of a decade, until finally deciding that counter-programming made more sense. So that in the late 2000s, Fox would finally have a liberal foil.

If that's what he means, then Murdoch really is an evil genius.

USA Today published a useful investigation today (7/15/11) finding that "rates of violent crime along the U.S./Mexico border have been falling for years," that  U.S. border cities are "statistically safer on average than other cities in their states" and "border cities, big and small, have maintained lower crime rates than the national average, which itself has been falling."

The USA Today report is not the first to dispel what it calls the "bloody"  picture of the U.S. border with Mexico. But while it cites politicians, including Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, for spreading the myth, the piece lets right-wing media, including national pundits like Bill O'Reilly, off the hook. (As FAIR has repeatedly noted, O'Reilly has been  a key propagandist pushing the border violence lie.)

But mainstream corporate outlets have done their share, too. As I pointed out in April's Extra! ("Worthy and Unworthy Border Murders"), so-called mainstream reporters frequently embrace the narrative that unauthorized immigration poses a grave threat to the nation.

Media love the "middle" in politics--where leaders of the two major parties come together to find common ground, renew the national spirit and/or live up to the ideals of the Founders. Time magazine (7/14/11) has a soppy piece about Barack Obama and Republican leader John Boehner's attempt to reach a budget deal.

Those efforts--some of which happened in secret--are, according to reporters Jay Newton-Small and Michael Scherer,

the story of two self-described dealmakers in a town where dealing is often a synonym for surrender, who ran up against the limits of their roles, their powers and their colleagues. Boehner and Obama have gotten credit for thinking big and working to overhaul outdated economic policies. But they waited too long to start, in part because they didn't take the time to get to know each other years ago. They also misjudged their armies: They rode out to rescue the country, only to watch many of their followers run for the hills.

They explain how the pair came up with the idea to use the debt ceiling as a lever for a budget deal in order to

freeze out their respective extremists and make the kind of historic deal that no one really thought possible anymore--bigger than when Reagan and Tip O'Neill overhauled the tax code in 1986 or when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich passed welfare reform a decade later.

You got it-- each side has its crazies that prevent great things from happening. Obama tried to freeze the left-wing extremists, and Boehner has.... well...I guess the upshot, according to Time, is unfortunately all the extremists balked; the left wouldn't cut Social Security benefits, the right wouldn't make wealthy people pay any more in taxes:

The Republican refusal to consider any new revenues, including making easy fixes to the tax code to close loopholes for businesses and other groups that don't need public subsidies, is as recklessly absolutist as Democrats' insistence that bloated entitlement programs are untouchable.

Protecting Social Security benefits (average monthly check: $1,177) is just the same as protecting corporations from paying higher taxes. That makes sense only in The Sensible Center that the Beltway media have concocted.

The convention in mainstream journalism is that the new stories give you the facts, and the columnists give you their opinions (hopefully backed by facts). But in the coverage over the debt ceiling and budget debates sometimes you're better off heading straight to the columns. Today offers a good example. In the Washington Post (7/15/11), Ezra Klein lays out the political dynamic that is rarely explained. As Klein writes, the White House has decided to

offer Republicans a deal that is not only much farther to the right than anyone had predicted, but also much farther to the right than most realize. In addition to the rise in the Medicare eligibility age and the cuts to Social Security and the minimal amount of revenue, it would cut discretionary spending by $1.2 trillion, which is an absolutely massive attack on that category of spending.

In the New York Times (7/15/11), Paul Krugman writes:

President Obama has made it clear that he's willing to sign on to a deficit-reduction deal that consists overwhelmingly of spending cuts, and includes draconian cuts in key social programs, up to and including a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. These are extraordinary concessions. As the Times's Nate Silver points out, the president has offered deals that are far to the right of what the average American voter prefers — in fact, if anything, they’re a bit to the right of what the average Republican voter prefers!

The conventional coverage--which pits Obama's offer against Republican intransigence--tends to gloss over these facts. The front-page article in the Times today by Jackie Calmes explains the debate as being between Obama's desire to raise taxes on the wealthy and cut the deficit, while Republicans prefer "smaller government" and lower taxes. It quotes Sen. John McCain saying that the  "president keeps talking about spending more money"--with no explanation that Obama is actually proposing to reduce non-security domestic federal spending as a percentage of GDP to its lowest level in 50 years.

These are the limits in the media debate. The fact that the public would seem to prefer an entirely different type of budget deal is a non-factor. The fact that such plans exist--the People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, for instance--is all but ignored by the corporate media. Senate Democrats have floated a similar plan.  A competent press corps would cover these proposals, if only for the sake of telling citizens that such options are available--that reducing the long-term deficit is possible without slashing spending on  programs that people support.

But the media would much prefer a budget debate that pits Obama's Republican-leaning plan against the Republicans who oppose that plan.

On Tuesday FAIR documented that Fox host Bill O'Reilly called for the prosecution of media outlets that published Sarah Palin's hacked emails in 2008-- which might mean, if he were at all consistent, that O'Reilly wants to see his boss Rupert Murdoch do some hard time over the far more serious News Corp. hacking scandal.

FAIR's research showed up on Keith Olbermann's Countdown program on Current last night-- where O'Reilly was named The Worst Person in the World. Watch it (starts at around the 2:15 mark):

The end of a Wall Street Journal article (7/14/11) on a new report on Afghan deaths highlights the peculiarity of their culture:

Of civilian casualties, 2 percent were caused by night raids, slightly down from last year, with 30 fatalities, the report says. Night raids have been a contentious issue between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. military officers and civilian leaders. The raids are sensitive in Afghanistan, because foreign soldiers burst into civilian homes, where strangers are unwelcome in the country's conservative Islamic traditions.

What a strange place. I guess in a civilized society, when a foreign soldier bursts into your home in the middle of night brandishing a weapon, you offer them dinner.

The headline in today's New York Times (7/13/11):

Plenty of Action Before the Game, but No Immigration Law Protests

The Paper of Record reported that the much-discussed protests against Arizona's SB 1070 law fizzled:

In the end, commerce trumped conscience. It was no mystery why the fervor over the immigration law was as flat as a half-full can of soda left in the 100-degree heat.

Meanwhile, back in reality (Think Progress, 7/13/11):

A New York Times piece by C.J. Chivers (7/13/11) presents a scary picture of Libyan rebel behavior:

Rebels in the mountains in Libya's west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month from the forces of Col. Muammar el-Gadhafi, part of a series of abuses and apparent reprisals against suspected loyalists that have chased residents of these towns away, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

The looting included many businesses and at least two medical centers that, like the towns, are now deserted and bare.

Rebel fighters also beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes, the organization said....

Some of the abuses, Human Rights Watch said, were directed against members of the Mashaashia tribe, which has long supported Colonel Gadhafi.

Chivers later writes:

Rebel conduct in the war has been mixed. Many captured pro-Gadhafi soldiers have received medical treatment in rebel hospitals and have been kept in detention centers that nongovernment organizations have been allowed to visit.

But Colonel Gadhafi's soldiers have also been beaten at the point of capture, and some have been shot, including several prisoners in the besieged city of Misurata who were shot through the feet, either as a punishment or as a means to prevent escape.

Rebels have also been seen by journalists repeatedly firing makeshift rocket launchers indiscriminately into territory or towns held by the Gadhafi forces.

But as if to try to repair some of the PR damage, the New York Times follows that with this:

Such rebels actions, however, have paled next to the abuses of Colonel Gadhafi's forces, which have fired on unarmed demonstrators and used artillery, rocket batteries and mortars against many rebel-held cities and towns.

Phones taken from dead or wounded soldiers have yielded images that strongly suggested that some of Colonel Gadhafi’s units have executed detainees.

The colonel's forces have also ransacked and looted homes and businesses on many fronts throughout the war.

So the real abuses of the war are by Gadhafi, who's attacked civilians, fired indiscriminately into residential areas, executed detainees and looted homes and businesses.

The alert reader will notice that these are the exact same crimes the Times has just said the rebels have been committing.

See "Gadhafi's Cluster Bombs--and Uncle Sam's" (FAIR Blog, 4/16/11) for another example of Chivers' skillful employment of the double standard.

Will the outrages ever stop?

Newsweek's "I Can Win" cover story about Sarah Palin is awful.

But Palin fans will have a hard time trying to figure out how to square this puff piece with the notion that the mainstream media is out to get Palin.

The premise is that Palin could run for president--and win. Because, well, that's what she says.  That's sort of the theme for the whole article, as it is full of quotes and observations from Palin family members and associates who are trying to 'set the record straight' about her political career. Like how she was actually a quite moderate governor with a commendable record. But on the national stage, something changed as soon as she stepped into the 2008 campaign:

Palin's eagerness for the fray lifted a dispirited Republican base and instigated an outsize response from liberal critics.

That's about the closest the article comes to Palin criticism--noting comments from overreacting liberals. But the press was guilty of getting down in the sewer and going after her family:

The press's fascination with this picturesque brood quickly turned so darkly speculative that candidate Barack Obama threatened to fire anyone in his campaign found participating in the conjectures.

This was one of Palin's first disingenuous attacks on the media. There was never much, if any, coverage of these theories that her baby wasn't really hers. But there was chatter on the Internet, which Palin turned into an attack on the press.

But the best part might be when reporter Peter Boyer tried to substantiate the claim from Palin advisers that she's actually really up to speed on the issues.

Palin has also become conversant on the subject of quantitative easing, the inflationary effects of which she illustrated with a personal anecdote. "I was ticked off at Todd yesterday" she said. "He walks into a gas station as we’re driving over from Minnesota. He buys a Slim Jim--we’re always eating that jerky stuff--for $2.69. I said, 'Todd, those used to be 99 cents, just recently!' And he says, 'Man, the dollar's worth nothing anymore.' A jug of milk and a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs--every time I walk into that grocery store, a couple of pennies more."

Newsweek is suggesting that Palin's jerky tale offers a serious insight into the Fed's policy of quantitative easing, which involves buying Treasury securities to bring down long-term interest rates and stimulate the economy. Republicans and conservatives insist this will cause disastrous inflation, but there's no evidence that this is happening; David Leonhardt's New York Times piece a few months ago (3/30/11) actually showed that core inflation is remarkably low right now, especially compared to the 1980s. (Over the last 12 months, core inflation was 1.5 percent.)

So, contrary to what Newsweek would have you believe, Palin's monitoring of Slim Jim prices do not provide particularly useful insight into the inflationary impact of Federal Reserve policy--or any evidence of Palin's supposed mastery of policy wonkery.

As we pointed out here and Monica Novoa pointed out here, Jose Antonio Vargas came out in the pages of the New York Times Magazine as an undocumented immigrant. In that piece and in some follow-ups, he seems to be aware of the distinction between "undocumented" and "illegal." His Times piece was headlined, "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant." That is the term he used in the article.

It is completely inexplicable, then, that the magazine chose this headline for the Vargas letters this weekend:

I, Illegal Immigrant

You may have heard about new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's trip to Iraq--mainly because while in the country he told some U.S. soldiers that they were there because of 9/11. That led to coverage like this in the Washington Post:

On Monday, in his first visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief, Panetta appeared to justify the U.S. invasion of the country as part of the war against Al-Qaeda, a controversial argument made by the George W. Bush administration but rebutted by President Obama and many Democrats.

Also rebutted by...reality.

Panetta's visit was covered on television too. But on NBC Nightly News (7/11/11), Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski was paying tribute to the new boss at the government agency he's paid to cover (a practice known as a "beat sweetener"). Panetta's Al-Qaeda gaffe? Well, in Miklasziewski's view, "Panetta misspoke when he appeared to suggest to these soldiers that the U.S. invaded Iraq because of al-Qaeda."

What you really need to know is that Leon Panetta's a stand up guy: "Throughout this trip, Panetta showed he's a different kind of Defense secretary, bold and outspoken." I think we very recently had a Pentagon leader who was "bold and outspoken" and attempted to link Al-Qaeda and Iraq.

Miklasziewski closed with this:

At 73, Panetta's s already had a lifetime of public service. And he told us today he took the Pentagon job because he loves the work. And so far, Brian, there's no holding him back.

Way to hold his feet to the fire.

Fox News Channel airs a weekly media criticism show called Fox News Watch.  Disgraced New York Times reporter Judith Miller is one of the panelists because...well, it's Fox.

TVNewser noticed that the show posts a web video of the chatter among the panelists during commercial breaks. On this weekend's show, they started talking about how they weren't gonna talk about Murdoch's current scandal.

You can watch the video here.  The conversation consisted mainly of right-wing panelist Cal Thomas saying, "Anyone want to bring up the subject we're not talking about, for the streamers?"

That elicited some chuckles, and Thomas said: "I'm not going to touch it."

{NOTE: Johnston's column on NewsCorp.'s tax rebate has been retracted; read his explanation of his error here):  Other things the show won't likely discuss: David Cay Johnston notes in a Reuters column that Murdoch manages to make money on his U.S. taxes:

Over the past four years Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp. has made money on income taxes. Having earned $10.4 billion in profits, News Corp. would have been expected to pay $3.6 billion at the 35 percent corporate tax rate. Instead, it actually collected $4.8 billion in income tax refunds, all or nearly all from the U.S. government.