Education author Alfie Kohn's got a beef (Nation, 12/10/08) with corporate news coverage of Barack Obama's choices for his cabinet, where "progressives are in short supply":

When he turns his attention to the Education Department, what are the chances he'll choose someone who is educationally progressive?

In fact, just such a person is said to be in the running and, perhaps for that very reason, has been singled out for scorn in Washington Post and Chicago Tribune editorials, a New York Times column by David Brooks and a New Republic article, all published almost simultaneously this month.

Depressingly predictable is the "eerily similar language" in these pieces urging rejection of Stanford educator Linda Darling-Hammond for fear she is "allied with the teachers' unions" and an opponent of "reform"--defined as "a heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests," " a behaviorist model of motivation" and "a corporate sensibility."
(Kohn points out that the educational model promoted by "reformers" is "already pervasive, which means 'reform' actually signals more of the same--or, perhaps, intensification of the status quo.")

Darling-Hammond is not a "reformer," Kohn writes, since she argues that "experiments with high-stakes testing have mostly served to increase the dropout rate," and that "all the talk of 'rigor' and 'raising the bar' has produced sterile, scripted curriculums that have been imposed disproportionately on children of color."

See the FAIR Media Advisory: "Media Cheer for 'Non-Ideological' Centrists" (11/26/08)

Salon's Glenn Greenwald "marvels" (12/8/08, ad-viewing required) at "how easily [John Brennan-for-CIA-head proponents] can implant their message into establishment media outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished 'intelligence sources' and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true and/or hearing any divergent views":

All of this illustrates the unparalleled power which the "intelligence community" exerts over our political debates, how easy it is for them to manipulate intelligence reporters who depend on cooperation with their intelligence sources and who thus identify with them and happily amplify whatever they are fed, and--most of all--how profoundly unrealistic is the expectation that, now that Democrats are "in control," they're just going to blithely proceed to impose all sorts of new restrictions on the CIA and the rest of the Surveillance State--let alone launch probing investigations and impose accountability for past crimes--without much of a major fight.

Greenwald's extensive citations find much blaming of "liberal critics," "liberal bloggers" and "left-leaning bloggers and columnists" for Brennan's rejection, yet "unmentioned are his emphatic advocacy for rendition and 'enhanced interrogation tactics.'"

Tom Engelhardt's nearly interminable list of media blogs and features about Barack Obama's presidential transition has him urging us (TomDispatch, 12/7/08) to "think of all this as Entertainment Weekly married to People magazine for post-election political junkies":

Obama--thank goodness--isn't George Bush. He doesn't arrive in office with a crew wedded to a "unitary executive theory" of the presidency, or an urge to loose the executive from the supposed "chains" of the Watergate-era Congress, or to "take off the gloves" globally. He doesn't have strange, twisted, oppressive ideas about how the Constitution should work, nor assumedly do visions of a "commander-in-chief presidency" (or vice presidency) dance in his head like so many sugar plums.

But don't ignore the architecture, the deep structure of the American political system. Make no mistake, Obama is moving full-speed ahead into an executive mansion rebuilt and endlessly expanded by the national security state over the last half-century-plus, and then built up in major ways by George W.'s "team." Despite the prospect of a new dog and a mother-in-law in the White House, the president-elect and his transition team show no signs of wanting to change the basic furniture.

"With so many catastrophes impending and so many pundits and journalists merrily applauding the most efficient transition in American history," Engelhardt can't help but notice that "no one, it seems, is even thinking about the architecture."

But really, to do any different would constitute a major break from corporate media protocol.

This week FAIR's CounterSpin radio show (12/5/08) takes on an important issue from the last U.S. invasion of Iraq:

For years, veterans claiming to suffer from Gulf War Syndrome were derided as cranky and hysterical by the Department of Defense and even by some journalists. Will that change now that a definitive report says the Gulf War illnesses are real, incurable, and caused by toxic materials used by the U.S. military during the 1991 Gulf War? We'll talk to Paul Sullivan, a veteran and the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

Also this week:

As the Obama White House takes shape, Americans are asking what the president-elect's cabinet choices suggest about the political direction his administration may take. Corporate media are making no effort to hide what they think are smart, responsible choices for Obama, but the reasons for those strong preferences are rarely explored. We'll talk with FAIR's Peter Hart about the press reception of the new cabinet picks.

Last week's program is still available online as well-- CounterSpin: "Mark Brenner on Big 3 bailout, Steve Rendall on the Fairness Doctrine" (11/28/08)--along with all our shows since 2004.

Feeling "especially exasperated by the readiness of TV pundits and op-ed writers to make sweeping statements about the state of the electorate without ever talking to an actual voter," veteran media critic Michael Massing took an October trip to Ohio (New York Review of Books, 12/18/08) in search of "the concerns and attitudes of ordinary voters [that] tended to get overlooked." On the way he listened to "the toxic, overheated combine of right-wing talk radio [and] cable television programs":

Americans who do not regularly tune in to it have little idea how nasty and venomous a campaign was waged there against Barack Obama. Day after day, night after night, a steady stream of poison was directed at him not only by Limbaugh but also by Sean Hannity, on his daily radio show and nightly Fox broadcast; by Bill O'Reilly, on Fox, the radio and the Internet...all joining together to produce firestorms of manufactured rage about Obama's purported ties to Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, ACORN, Castro, Chávez, Ahmadinejad and Karl Marx.

In one especially lunatic salvo, a conservative writer named Andy Martin claimed, in an hour-long special hosted by Sean Hannity on Fox News on October 5, that William Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground, was using Barack Obama as part of a radical political movement that would bring about a social revolution in America comparable to the ones in Castro's Cuba and Chávez's Venezuela. This allegation was then picked up and frequently repeated on conservative talk shows and blogs.

"Amounting to a six-month-long exercise in Swift Boating," Massing finds that "these attacks, taken together, constituted perhaps the most vicious smear campaign ever mounted against an American politician."

Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "The Myth of Pro-Obama Media Bias: Little Evidence for Self-Proclaimed 'Lovefest'" (9-10/08) by John K. Wilson

Noam Chomsky points out that a Boston Globe analysis (11/9/08) of the Obama victory claims that the president-elect owes nothing to "traditional Democratic constituencies" like labor, women, ethnic minorities and the peace movement, because a "grassroots army of millions"--seemingly unconnected to such constituencies--"propelled" Obama's win.

It's worth noting, however, that this idea of a Democratic Party set free from the voting blocs that support it is a longstanding dream of corporate media and the political establishment--represented in the Globe piece by corporate Democrat Steve McMahon and conservative think-tanker Norman Ornstein. Ornstein, in fact, offers the same argument in the paper that he gave to CNN (11/14/92) during a similar round of "liberal interest group" bashing after Bill Clinton's election in 1992, when Ornstein claimed that Clinton "enters office with the fewest debts owed to interest groups in his own party of any Democratic president in modern times."

But the reality is not exactly as corporate media dream it. The Globe quotes McMahon--who it identifies as a "Democratic strategist," but not as a flak for PhRMA, the prescription drug lobby--as saying that Obama "owes nothing to anyone except the people who elected him." That's not actually how politics works, as any corporate lobbyist knows full well, but it's instructive to look at who the voters were who "propelled" Obama's victory.

Among white voters, according to exit polls, Obama lost by 12 percentage points, but he more than made up this deficit with his margins with African-American (91 points), Latino (36) and Asian (27) and "other" (35) voters. Women gave Obama a decisive 13-point advantage, compared to his narrow 1-point win among men.

Obama won among those making less than $50,000 a year by a 22-point margin; the votes of those who made more than $50,000 were evenly split. Union households went for the Democrat by a 20-point margin, vs. 4 points for non-union households. Seventy-six percent of those who disapprove of the Iraq War supported Obama; 86 percent of Iraq War supporters went for McCain.

Obviously, voters' opinions don't translate directly into politicians' actions; we'd live in a much different world if they did. But voters do matter enough that corporate media routinely try to wish them away.

ZNet has Noam Chomsky's in-depth analysis (11/25/08) of the recent U.S. presidential election--its likely ramifications, and its overall democratic qualities as compared to other countries. Chomsky here addresses the corporate media aspect:

In the liberal Boston Globe, the headline of the lead story observed that Obama's "grassroots strategy leaves few debts to interest groups": labor unions, women, minorities or other "traditional Democratic constituencies." That is only partially right, because massive funding by concentrated sectors of capital is ignored. But leaving that detail aside, the report is correct in saying that Obama's hands are not tied, because his only debt is to "a grassroots army of millions"--who took instructions, but contributed essentially nothing to formulating his program.

At the other end of the doctrinal spectrum, a headline in the Wall Street Journal reads "Grassroots Army Is Still at the Ready"--namely, ready to follow instructions to "push his agenda," whatever it may be.

Obama's organizers regard the network they constructed "as a mass movement with unprecedented potential to influence voters," the Los Angeles Times reported. The movement, organized around the "Obama brand," can pressure Congress to "hew to the Obama agenda." But they are not to develop ideas and programs and call on their representatives to implement them. These would be among the "old ways of doing politics," from which the new "idealists" are "breaking free."

The folks at Free Press recount (11/25/08) how, "when St. Paul police launched a violent crackdown on journalists covering the Republican National Convention," the media reform group "needed an on-the-ground organizer to pressure city officials to drop the charges against the journalists"--luckily they "knew just the person to call: Nancy Doyle Brown of the Twin Cities Media Alliance":

With only two days to organize, Doyle Brown called media reform advocates throughout the city, rallying support for the petition delivery and the press conference. Free Press coordinated with its local members to prepare for the event and ensure a strong media turnout....

Not long after the petition delivery, the county announced it would not pursue any felony charges against journalists. Then, on September 19, authorities in St. Paul announced that they would not prosecute journalists arrested during the RNC.

Brown professes to have been "shocked and outraged" when she "saw the progressive city of St. Paul become a police state overnight. The RNC was a grave reminder that maintaining our freedoms requires constant vigilance." Indeed, she reminds us that "there are a hundred more subtle ways that press freedom is compromised every day in this country, from allegiance to corporate advertisers to newsroom staff cuts and overreliance on official sources."

Listen to the FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Heidi Boghosian on Convention Protests" (9/5/08)

Eric Hananoki and Lauren Auerbach have a new Media Matters exposé (11/24/08) of how,

since the beginning of October, Dick Morris has repeatedly used his columns and Fox News appearances to promote and raise money for the National Republican Trust PAC without disclosing that the organization has paid $24,000 to a company apparently connected to Morris, according to FEC filings. During that time, Morris' email newsletter has frequently included ads that state: "Paid for by The National Republican Trust PAC."

A long list of Morris plugging the group in any venue that would have him is accompanied by evidence they "paid a firm apparently affiliated with Morris at least $24,000 since the beginning of October." Hananoki and Auerbach follow this lead to its smoking-gun end: "The 'Mailing Address' for that firm, Triangulation Strategies, is listed in one of the National Republican Trust PAC's FEC filings as 'DickMorris.com.'"

Hullabaloo blogger digby deflates (11/21/08) what she says "has actually been an article of faith among the gasbags for a very long time":

Until recently, what they proclaimed (without qualification) was that this was a "conservative country." The election of a Democrat with a popular mandate required them to change their rhetoric. But it hasn't changed their belief.

Here's historian and highly respected thought leader Jon Meacham just before the election: "It is easy--for some, even tempting--to detect the dawn of a new progressive era in the autumn of Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency.... But history... tells us that Democratic presidents... usually wind up moving farther right than they thought they ever would, or they pay for their continued liberalism at the polls."...

This is an article of faith among the political establishment. In fact, it's one of the greatest successes of the conservative movement to persuade these villagers that Democratic presidents are doomed to failure before they even begin.

In digby's eyes, this "is just their way of preserving their belief system in the face of a repudiation by the people."

Under the headline "Pollsters Debate America's Political Realignment," the Washington Post's Robert Kaiser tries to weigh the arguments about the political makeup of the United States in light of the 2008 election. But Kaiser's rendition of this debate only serves to confuse matters.

There are basically two sides to this clash: those who say the country is still "center-right," politically speaking, and those who think the country is moving in a more progressive direction. Kaiser seems aware that the latter group is probably more correct, but tries to undercut this conclusion:

The election results, the exit polls and the polling since Election Day all provide evidence for the liberals' refutation of this conventional wisdom, but the argument is complicated by the fact that it is conducted by ideological commentators and concerns a country that has never been very ideological.

It's not unusual that liberal commentators might try to make this argument; why this is a problem is not clear.

Kaiser gets some credit for discussing the problems of relying on exit polling about how voters categorize themselves (as liberal, conservative or moderate). Since these reponses are often cited by the "center-right" crowd (because more voters say they are "conservative" than "liberal"), he's pointing to one more weakness in their argument.

But Kaiser still doesn't want to render judgment. He writes:

Whatever the appropriate label, substantial majorities of the voters of 2008 want the war in Iraq to end as soon as possible. Large majorities favor affordable health insurance for everyone, a fairer distribution of wealth and income, and higher taxes on the rich. They want to preserve traditional Social Security. They want more effective government regulation of the financial sector.

Really now--how hard would it be to characterize a voter who wants to withdraw from Iraq, raise taxes on the wealthy and provide healthcare for all? Kaiser seems to need the argument to remain cloudy-- he summons up one polling question to shore up the idea that things are still unsettled:

The same exit poll also asked which of two statements respondents agreed with: "On healthcare, we need to act boldly to address the problems" or "On healthcare, we need to act step-by-step to address the problems." Forty-six percent agreed with the first statement, but 50 percent endorsed the second.

Such flashes of native caution or conservatism are common.

That response seems to say less about "flashes of native caution or conservatism," and more about a confusingly worded survey question-- especially since it's so out of line with other polling on the same issue.

In a sense, the debate about the "center-right" or "center-left" America has to remain unsettled in the corporate media. If it weren't, people might catch on to the fact that much of the media leans to the right on these core issues.

Responding (11/13/08) to those "who would argue that the election of the first African-American president signaled the country has moved past the need to be concerned about racial equity," PBS.org's Dori J. Maynard writes that

it is true that some television networks put on air more African-American commentators during the campaign. Those additional voices, however, were not numerous enough to avoid the frequent appearance of all-white panels to discuss race relations. That lamentable pattern and other media missteps, such as a New York Times story on the shifting African-American landscape that did not quote any African-American sources, were vivid examples of why the traditional media's reputation and credibility depend on their ability to diversify their ranks as quickly as possible.

How far back does this "lamentable pattern" go? See FAIR's magazine Extra!: "A Different Race: The Black Press Reveals Gaps in Mainstream Election Coverage" (11-12/04) by Jacqueline Bacon

From his perch over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald (11/18/08, ad-viewing required) sees "nothing new" in the current media craze for "bipartisanship": "To the contrary, the last eight years have been defined, more than anything else, by overarching bipartisan cooperation and consensus."

Where is the evidence of the supposed partisan wrangling that we hear so much about? Just examine the question dispassionately. Look at every major Bush initiative, every controversial signature Bush policy over the last eight years, and one finds virtually nothing but massive bipartisan support for them--the Patriot Act (original enactment and its renewal); the invasion of Afghanistan; the attack on, and ongoing occupation of, Iraq; the Military Commissions Act (authorizing enhanced interrogation techniques, abolishing habeas corpus, and immunizing war criminals); expansions of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity; declaring part of Iran's government to be "terrorists"; our one-sided policy toward Israel; the $700 billion bailout; The No Child Left Behind Act, "bankruptcy reform," and on and on.

Greenwald writes that "most of those were all enacted with virtually unanimous GOP support and substantial, sometimes overwhelming, Democratic support: the very definition of 'bipartisanship.' That's just a fact"--and as such, "by definition, it does not remotely constitute 'change.'"

Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi's look back (11/13/08) at his experience covering the '08 presidential campaign features this response to Hillary Clinton adviser Mark Penn calling her "a workhorse": "'Are you implying,' snaps one reporter, 'that Barack Obama is not a workhorse?'"

This is what qualifies as a tough question on the campaign trail. The press performance in this election year would ultimately prove to be the worst of all time by miles and miles. Example: After thousands of reporters sat around for months on end listening first to Hillary's and then John McCain's people blather on about Obama's connection to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, it would take David Letterman--David Letterman!--to challenge either candidate on the matter. "Are they driving cross-country?" Letterman asked, after finally having gotten McCain to squirm about his own relationship with equivalent extremist G. Gordon Liddy.

Taibbi thinks that, "in a society of grown-ups, Brian Williams and Katie Couric and Wolf Blitzer would have done that from the start." Unfortunately, he tells us, "they didn't--they treated the mudslinging like it wasn't vile horseshit to be laughed at, but something real to be discussed with furrowed brows, debated. So it persisted."

See item No. "11. Obama's Dubious 'Associates'" in the FAIR magazine article Extra!: "Top Troubling Tropes of Campaign '08: The Media-Created Narratives that Derail Election Coverage" (11-12/08) by Peter Hart

The New York Times' Jonathan Hicks (11/17/08), writing about newly elected Staten Island Rep. Michael McMahon:

Mr. McMahon...stresses his working-class roots, telling voters of his Irish father’s lifelong job as an insurance underwriter.

That must be the same working class that Bill O'Reilly comes from.