If Arthur Brisbane wants the Times to consider becoming factchecking 'truth vigilantes," this is hopefully not what he had in mind.

At last night's Republican debate (1/19/12), CNN host John King asked the candidates how they would convince a corporation like Apple to employ more workers in the United States:

It employs about 500,000 people in China. It is based in the United States, has some employees here, about 40-something thousand, I think 46,000. Most of them in retail stores and at the headquarters. 500,000 of them are in China.  As a president of the United States, what do you do about that?

The candidates gave the answers you might expect--Santorum advocated for cutting the corporate tax rate to zero, Ron Paul thought the this situation might be partly due to "the union problem."

It's the kind of exchange that's rather difficult to factcheck; it's a political argument more than anything else. But the Times thought a factcheck could be found in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, where the late Apple CEO explained his decision to manufacture in China:

At a dinner party in Silicon Valley, Mr. Jobs told the president that the company needed 30,000 engineers to support those factory workers.

"You can't find that many in America to hire," Mr. Jobs said.

Mr. Isaacson wrote: "These factory engineers did not have to be PhDs or geniuses; they simply needed to have basic engineering skills for manufacturing. Tech schools, community colleges or trade schools could train them."

"If you could educate these engineers," Mr. Jobs said, "we could move more manufacturing plants here."

Not taxes. Not regulation. Education.

Of course the justification that a CEO uses to take advantage of much cheaper labor available in China is going to sound something like this. It's highly unlikely that Apple could not possibly find thousands of community college-trained workers in the United States.

If you really want to know why Steve Jobs liked manufacturing in China, the Huffington Post singled out a different answer from Isaacson's book

Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.

If you want to know why Apple does what it does, Steve Jobs might not be the best source. You could ask one of the company's critics, like Mike Daisey. A recent Times review of Daisey's recent Steve Jobs monologue revealed this about Daisey's research into Apple's Chinese manufacturers:

While the official Chinese workday is eight hours, the norm at Foxconn is more like 12 and even longer when the introduction of a product is at hand. One worker died after a 34-hour shift. Some of the workers he meets are as young as 13, and because of the repetitive nature of the labor, their hands often become deformed and useless within a decade, rendering them unemployable.

It doesn't sound like the substandard American educational system explains Apple's corporate philosophy. But it's apparently what the Times believes, because Steve Jobs once said so.

On December 25, New York Times reporter David Barstow filed this update on the scandal that he broke back in 2008:

A Pentagon public relations program that sought to transform high-profile military analysts into "surrogates" and "message force multipliers" for the Bush administration complied with Defense Department regulations and directives, the Pentagon's inspector general has concluded after a two-year investigation.

Those who don't recall Barstow's original story can catch up by reading this FAIR action alert (4/22/08):

According to the Times, the Pentagon recruited over 75 retired generals to act as "message force multipliers" in support of the Iraq War, receiving special Pentagon briefings and talking points that the analysts would often parrot on national television "even when they suspected the information was false or inflated." The Times even noted that at one 2003 briefing the military pundits were told that "We don't have any hard evidence" about Iraq's illicit weapons--a shocking admission the analysts decided not to share with the public.

The idea that the Pentagon has exonerated itself (again) isn't all that notable.

Among the many serious problems with the Pentagon's PR efforts was the idea that corporate media outlets would be so enthusiastic to put "experts" on the air who were basically acting in concert with the military.  To that end, one anecdote in Barstow's new report is worth singling out:

Wesley K. Clark, a retired four-star Army general who worked as a military analyst for CNN, told investigators he took it as a sign that the Pentagon "was displeased" with his commentary when CNN officials told him he would no longer be invited to special briefings for military analysts. General Clark told investigators that CNN officials made him feel as if he was less valued as a commentator because "he wasn't trusted by the Pentagon." At one point, he said, a CNN official told him that the White House had asked CNN to "release you from your contract as a commentator."

So CNN didn't want an on-air analyst of the Iraq War who was too critical of the Pentagon? That would be astonishing--or, at least, it ought to be. As the FAIR alert noted, one former CNN executive spoke openly about vetting their war pundits with the Pentagon:

The Times likened the program to "other administration tactics that subverted traditional journalism," but that would seem to discount the fact that the media have for decades demonstrated a preference for featuring retired military officials in their war coverage, with little if any serious efforts to offer balancing perspectives. The run-up to the Iraq invasion was no different. As former CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan explained (4/20/03): "I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, 'Here are the generals we're thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war,' and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important."

If Clark is telling the truth, it would seem that it was also "important" for CNN to drop an analyst if the Pentagon gave him a thumbs-down.

As one would expect, corporate media reacted to the developments in Libya by turning to one of their favorite sources: Republican Sen. John McCain. He was on CNN this morning (and last night as well), and odds are that he'll be on a  Sunday show.

McCain's line on Libya is that the White House should have waged a more aggressive war.  If any of these outlets wanted to challenge him on his record on Libya, all they would need to do is talk about this ancient newspaper article from August 2009:

Or perhaps this item from Politico, from way back in August of this year:

Last night (10/4/11) CNN host Erin Burnett noted that her  fact check of the Occupy Wall Street protests had drawn some criticism. But she still doesn't seem to get it.  "Well, our story got noted documentarian Michael Moore, who watched the show last night," she reported before playing a video response from Moore:

I just don't understand that piece, you know, that new show. These companies, these banks, Goldman Sachs up here, they took billions and billions of dollars of citizens' money, and they ask us to pay for their crime and we're supposed to be OK because some of them have paid some of it back with interest. I mean, it just boggles the mind.

Burnett then replayed the exchange highlighted in FAIR's Action Alert--where Burnett tells a protester that the TARP bailout funds were paid back (hence, there is apparently no reason to be protesting on Wall Street).

As we noted--as did Moore--this misses the point of the protests,  and doesn't even understand the criticism of the TARP bailouts in the first place.  But Burnett still thinks she's done some kind of service:

As I said last night, Dan was an earnest person and he wanted facts. And the best we can do all is have accurate information and then have serious conversations.... So, Michael Moore, come on, please, come OutFront.

Journalists like Burnett make choices about which guests to have on their show. If she were actually interested in hearing from an advocate for the Occupy Wall Street protests, or from an economic or policy expert who could talk about TARP bailouts or economic inequality, these people are not hard to find--they've been showing up on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann's Current show and so on. One such critic--Harold Meyerson--wrote a column in the Washington Post that was particularly informative. Erin Burnett chose instead to have a former speechwriter for Rudolph Giuliani on to dismiss the protests, and then attempted to do so herself.

She can plead with Michael Moore to appear on her show, or she can actually address the criticism of her report. That's the way to have an actual serious conversation.

CNN's newest show--OutFront, featuring Erin Burnett--did a "factcheck" of the protest in Lower Manhattan that was long on attitude and short on accuracy. If you'd like the network to take another look, see FAIR's latest Action Alert.

Please leave copies of your messages to CNN, or responses to the alert, in the comment thread below.

A full-page ad in USA Today reminded me that today is the debut of Erin Burnett's CNN show OutFront.  Burnett gained a following at CNBC, and came to the attention of many conservatives with a report on the Today show (7/17/07) that managed to touch on almost every conservative myth about the economy, earning praise from Rush Limbaugh in the process.

After a clip of Hillary Clinton saying that soaring corporate profits were "like trickle-down economics but without the trickle," Burnett made these claims:

But while the rich are getting richer, you may be, too. Here's why: More than half of Americans are invested in the market whether through a 401(k) plan or buying stocks or mutual funds, and many of those investments are surging. The Dow Jones industrial average is up 12 percent so far this year. And if your retirement plan invested in oil, that alone is up 21 percent. It's also worth noting that while politicians talk about two Americas, virtually all Americans are seeing wages rise, and unemployment is at an historic low.

The idea that a surging stock market is great news for everyone because we all have a piece of the Wall Street pie is totally misleading--most people have little invested in the market, even when retirement accounts are counted.  But Burnett really wanted to push that point--she even squeezed it into an NBC Nightly News segment the same evening (7/17/07), claiming that because everyone has a piece of the action this "means the majority of Americans directly benefit from what happens on Wall Street."

And when a deal was cut to keep low tax rates on dividends and capital gains at the end of 2010, Burnett explained: "With capital gains and dividend taxes staying low, the half of Americans that own stocks get a benefit there as well." Except they don't--very few Americans report any such income.

Back to her Today show segment:

You know, for a while, Matt, wage growth had lagged inflation for most Americans. Right now, though, that's not the case. Wages are growing more quickly than they have over the past few years. And, you know, you've been talking so much about whether the tide lifts all boats, the issue of taxes is important here. The top 1 percent of Americans, Matt, pay 30 percent of taxes in this country. The bottom 20 percent of American wage earners pay only 5 percent.

Over this period there was very little growth in median household income;  it's not clear what Burnett was excited about.  And, of course, nothing warms conservative hearts more than complaining about the heavy tax burden of the wealthy. The bottom 20 percent, who are mostly below the poverty live, pay relatively little in taxes because they don't have much money--according to the Congressional Budget Office (6/10), they make 4 percent of the income in the country, so if they were paying 5 percent of the taxes, as Burnett says, that would be more than their share.

That report earned her praise from right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh. When he reiterated his support for her work on MSNBC, she responded: "You made my day. I'm done now, I'm going home."

That wasn't Burnett's only chance to stick up for the wealthy. She attempted to bat away criticism that TARP bailout funds weren't going to pay sky-high bonuses--only the evidence would seem to indicate that they were.

Then again, Burnett may be best known for these comments about China:

I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. Ya know, if China were to revalue it's currency or China is to start making say, toys that don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too. So, I would say China is our greatest friend right now, they're keeping prices low and they're keeping the prices for mortgages low, too.

When Limbaugh cheered Burnett, he teased that he was  "probably now ruining her career because I have praised her." Quite the opposite.

CNN anchors Carol Costello and Ali Velshi today (9/26/11) provided some rare TV coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest in Lower Manhattan:

VELSHI: A group of people protesting Wall Street greed are now screaming abuse after they were arrested over the weekend. The incident happened Saturday in Lower Manhattan. The protesters say they were pepper-sprayed, roughed up and denied food and water. Police defending the arrests saying the marchers blocked traffic and ignored orders to stay on the sidewalks.

And here's an iReport from Saturday's demonstration. At one point, you can actually see a protester and police getting into a fight. You see that in the middle. At least 80 people were arrested.

COSTELLO: Of course, what you can't see is what came before the fight.

VELSHI: Yes. We don't know.

COSTELLO: We don't know.

Let's head to Atlanta and check in with Reynolds Wolf. Any extreme weather on the horizon?

Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC (9/19/11):

Or, if you prefer reading:

But last week when Wolf Blitzer and CNN had that debate, the CNN/Tea Party Express debate, and Wolf sat there and called them his partners--I just thought, this was amazing, because would you ever see the CNN nurses union debate or the CNN teachers union debate? Because I think there are a few more teachers and nurses in this country than there are members of the Tea Party.

But we'll never see that in the mainstream media. And liberal organizations which have many more members just don't get the attention. A thousand people arrested in front of the White House a couple of weeks ago on the tar sands environmental issue -- hardly any coverage of this.

Can you imagine if 1,000 Tea Party members had been arrested in front of the White House? It would be at the top of every news story.

People are down on Wall Street right now, holding a sit-in and a camp- in down there--virtually no news about this protest.

This goes on with liberals and the left all of the time, and it gets ignored. And, fortunately, there are shows like yours and others who aren't ignoring it. It doesn't mean it isn't happening, and it will continue to happen.

The New York Times reported today (9/13/11) on the controversy, citing FAIR:

But the CNN debate on Monday was the first event hosted jointly by a major news organization and a Tea Party group. And their partnership left some questioning whether the network had gone too far in reaching for centrist credibility.

"Is there really a need for another national cable news channel devoted to promoting far-right elements within the Republican Party?" the liberal media watchdog group FAIR said Monday in an e-mail alert to its members in which it labeled the Tea Party "a controversial political group."

Jeremy Peters and Brian Stelter also picked up on CNN's weak attempts to spin their Tea Party connection--despite the fact that questions were being piped in from Tea Party events, and the Tea Party Express picked the audience members inside the auditorium:

Here in Tampa, there were signs the network was sensitive to perceptions that it was being too cozy with Tea Party activists. During a tour of the debate hall, Mr. Feist referred to the gatherings in Arizona, Virginia and Ohio, saying, "We'll have watch parties." He was swiftly corrected by CNN's special events producer, Kate Lunger, who interjected, 'Well, we won’t have watch parties."

That distinction--whatever it might be--was probably lost on most viewers.

Veteran journalist Bob Parry wrote a great piece about "the hidden political reality behind 'centrist' journalism--a never-ending pandering to the right." Parry added that he's seen this kind of thing first-hand:

it's useful to have some specific right-tilted story--or event--to point to, just in case a right-wing critic decides to target you as a "liberal." CNN, which the right has sometimes smeared as the "Communist News Network," can now cite its collaboration with the Tea Party as valuable right-wing "cred."

When I was working at PBS Frontline in the early 1990s, senior producers would sometimes order up pre-ordained right-wing programs--such as a show denouncing Cuba's Fidel Castro--to counter Republican attacks on the documentary series for programs the right didn't like, such as Bill Moyers' analysis of the Iran/Contra scandal.

In essence, the idea was to inject right-wing bias into some programming as "balance" to other serious journalism, which presented facts that Republicans found objectionable. That way, the producers could point to the right-wing show to prove their "objectivity" and, with luck, deter GOP assaults on PBS funding.

Send a message to CNN about the cable network's partnership with the Tea Party Express, a far-right group with a history of virulent racism, to produce a Republican presidential debate: See "CNN Throws a Tea Party," FAIR's latest Action Alert.

Please post copies of your messages to CNN, or comments on this Action Alert, in the comments thread below.

Radio hosts author/social activists Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are on anti-poverty tour, trying to draw attention to issues that are neglected in most political discussions--and all but absent in corporate media.

The good news, in theory, is that they're getting some national TV attention. But this is one of those cases where you start off wishing there was more media coverage--until you see what kind of coverage you get. Then you're wishing for something else.

Appearing on CNN's American Morning (8/8/11), host Carol Costello got off on the wrong foot, quoting from a letter from a CNN viewer:

This is from Stacy, she says welfare in theory was a good thing, but it's become a way of life for generations. The poor actually have it better than the middle class.

Perhaps the intent was to ridicule that absurd point of view--that's certainly how Smiley responded. But Costello seemed to be indicating that this viewer maybe had a point:

But, Cornel, put it this way, Cornel, the Heritage Foundation, this is conservative organization. They did this study. They say the poor in America today, are unlike the poor in America years ago. In fact, most of the poor in America live in a decent house. They have TVs. They have microwave ovens and they even have a refrigerator. What are they complaining about?

Those Heritage talking points, courtesy of analyst Robert Rector,  have been a staple of media coverage of poverty--see Extra!, 1-2/99. Though I think Costello is going a little further than even Rector would--unless he, like her, really thinks there's something weird about how the pampered poor "even have a refrigerator."

When West begins talking about the gap between the top 1 percent and the rest of us, Costello interrupts to say: "Those people pay the taxes in America and the poor don't pay any." That's not true , though it's the kind of thing you're likely to hear on right-wing talk radio.

But perhaps the most revealing moment came after the interview had ended, when the CNN hosts were chatting among themselves. That's when Costello said this:

And, frankly, I think to an extent the poor have been demonized because many people in America think they're leeches on society. They're just, you know, sucking everything out of us.

Like the question that started off the interview, a charitable interpretation is that Costello doesn't agree with what she's saying.

But given her attitude during the interview, it's more likely that when she talks about how "many people" think the poor are "leeches...sucking everything out of us"--a sentiment that I doubt is all that widely shared--she's talking about herself.

Update: Carol Costello responded on Twitter to our criticism:

@FAIRmediawatch and u r fair? Wow.

Of the 24 members of Congress who have appeared three or more times in 2011 on any of the five Sunday morning shows (i.e., CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox or CNN), according to Roll Call's ongoing tally, 16, or two-thirds, have been Republicans. Just seven, or 29 percent, have been Democrats. (The other one was Sen. Joe Lieberman.)

We've looked at the right-wing slant on Sunday morning before (Extra!, 9-10/01,  12/10), but this more-than-2-to-1 bias is extreme. For the record, Democrats control one of the two houses of Congress.

You can probably guess who the Sunday shows' favorite congressional guest is.

The Sarah Palin hostage drama continues.

In case you haven't heard, Palin is taking a bus tour up the East Coast, visiting various sites of historic interest. Which naturally means that every media outlet is forced to follow along, covering  this series of non-events as if they are of tremendous importance, asking the pertinent questions: Is she running for president? Has she launched a crafty non-campaign that appears much like a campaign, without really being a campaign?

On Sunday (5/29/11), CNN host Howard Kurtz wondered:

Is the press in danger of being bamboozled by somebody who, in the end, is probably not going to run?

To me, being bamboozled would imply that you're being tricked. Corporate media are doing something they've done plenty of times before: giving Sarah Palin far, far more attention than she deserves.

Salon's Justin Elliott had a great round-up of the faux-bewilderment of the press corps. He cites these anecdotes:

According to the AP:

By some counts, more than 200 journalists trooped alongside Palin in Philadelphia....

And from the Times:

The CNN Express bus, filled with producers, camera operators and on-air talent, sat in Gettysburg for hours Monday, not even sure she was coming.

Hopefully Palin will release the journalist/hostages soon, so that they can go out and do the sort of reporting they would prefer to do.

I saw a press release yesterday announcing that Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I.-Vt.) were introducing a single-payer healthcare bill in both houses of Congress. Unless there was a drastic change in the corporate media, this news wasn't going to be, well, news.

And it hasn't been so far. There were mentions in independent outlets like Democracy Now!, GritTV and the Nation. But in the corporate media, next to nothing-- except for one brief mention on CNN, thanks to Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel:

VANDEN HEUVEL: The progressive caucus, which put out a people's budget which is fair, did not get attention because the media slighted it and marginalized it. That is a mainstream budget.

SPITZER: One second, you'll get your turn.

VANDEN HEUVEL: No, but I do think, when Bernie Sanders and McDermott put forth a Medicare-for-all, that is a majority position.

The single-payer bill and the People's Budget will likely suffer the same media fate--marginalized by the Beltway elites, despite the fact that they represent policies that are broadly popular.

Maybe media would behave differently if someone as serious, wonky and handsome as Paul Ryan was holding the press conference.

During an interview on CNN last night (5/1/11) with New York firefighter and 9/11 first responder Kenny Specht:

BLITZER: Did you ever give up hope, Kenny, that the U.S. would kill bin Laden?

SPECHT: No, but I'd be lying to you, Wolf, I'd be lying to you if I thought about it every night. No, I didn't give up hope. That's all we had. That's all we had. It's like anything else, though. It's just sometimes we think that when it's not spoken about anymore, we wonder really what's being done.

I mean, we're in a quagmire, for lack of a better term, in Afghanistan. I hope to God that tonight is one large step to maybe wrapping up operations in Afghanistan.

BLITZER: Kenny, I'm going to interrupt because I think I've lost contact with you. But I want you to--I want you to stand by, Kenny, if you can. Stand by for a moment because Peter Bergen is joining us now, our national security contributor.

(Thanks to reader Blake Wood for the tip. See something that should be written up? Send us a note:  fair@fair.org)