In his editor's note in the current edition of Newsweek, Jon Meacham surveys the failures of the past decade or so and comes to a completely unsurprising conclusion: the right and leftbothfailed. From the financial sector to the Roman Catholic Church, it has been a bad couple of years for–to borrow a phrase from a BP chieftain–"big, important" players in global life. Going only a bit further back in the decade, the occupation of Iraq and the response to Katrina seem to mark the beginning of an era in which apparently competent institutions have all too often proved incompetent. The [...]
Jun
01
2010
Newsweek Still Pushing Phony Climate Controversy
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Newsweek's "environmental issue" has an article (5/28/10) by correspondent Stefan Theil declaring climate change to be "Uncertain Science." Giving the Reader's Digest condensed version of the denialist case, Theil refers to "e-mails and documents suggesting that researchers cherry-picked data and suppressed rival studies to play up global warming"–without mentioning that after sensationalistic media stories suggested a scientific conspiracy, subsequent academic investigations cleared the researchers of wrongdoing (Extra!, 2/10 ; FAIR Blog, 4/19/10). He talks about a U.S. scientist "under investigation for allegedly using exaggerated climate data to obtain public funds"–without mentioning that the scientist, Michael Mann, is being investigated by [...]
May
27
2010
Managed News From the Gulf of Mexico
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A troubling article from Newsweek (5/26/10) reports on efforts by both BP and government officials to limit media access to the aftermath of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials–working with BP–who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging [...]
May
12
2010
Newsweek and the Criminal Immigrants Next Door
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Newsweek has another installment in the don't-blame-Arizonans coverage of the state's new immigration law (FAIR Blog, 4/28/10, 5/3/10, 5/4/10). Under the charming headline "Mexican Standoff," reporter Eve Conant writes: Some accuse lawmakers and the 70 percent of Arizonans who support the bill of acting like Nazis, or of turning Arizona into an apartheid state. But spend some time in Arizona, and you may come to see why so many Arizonans want this. The bulk of what follows is Conant's account of a month worth of ride-alongs with Arizona law enforcement officials, who showed her a number of ostensibly immigrant-related crimes. [...]
May
11
2010
Remembering Newsweek's Glory Days
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Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam writes of his first job in journalism, at "now-foundering Newsweek," which he describes as being "like an upside-down journalism school, where I learned an astonishing number of bad habits." But it clearly gave him some valuable insights into how corporate journalism works: I was an editorial assistant/fact-checker, with duties analogous to those of an 18th-century cabin boy in the Royal Navy…. In addition to pouring vodka I checked facts, a process that left me bleakly cynical about journalistic accuracy. We would publish whole stories that were lies–Francois Mitterrand's plan to destroy the French economy was [...]
May
05
2010
Newsweek: Stop Blaming Robert Rubin
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Newsweek's Jacob Weisberg is tired of people picking on Robert Rubin. Sure, his critics to point to his involvement in the financial deregulation of the 1990s and his disastrous tenure at Citibank, but they're wrong. At least that's what Weisberg tries to argue in his column "In Defense of Robert Rubin" (5/10/10). Weisberg admits early on that he "helped Rubin write a memoir," but not to worry–this column is all Weisberg. And hewrites: "To me, the most wrong-headed accusation is that Rubin prevented effective regulation during the Clinton years." This is a false chargebecause Rubin's "view has always been that [...]
Apr
26
2010
Someone Has to Defend Goldman Sachs
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And that someone is Fareed Zakaria, in columns published in the Washington Post ("Cool the Goldman Rage") and in the Post-owned Newsweek. Zakaria is unimpressed by the SEC's fraud case against Goldman Sachs; he likens the firm's mortgage securities bonds to someone placing a bet against the New York Yankees. Then he writes: But the rage surrounding the Goldman case can cloud our perspective and distort public policy. We're going through a familiar part of America's boom-and-bust cycle. Having been mesmerized during the go-go years, having unduly lionized and feted industries, firms, and people as they rode the wave, we [...]
Apr
20
2010
Newsweek Makes a Mess of Texas
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The cover of Newsweek (4/26/10) proclaims: "Don't Mess With Texas: What Governor Rick Perry's Hard-Right Creed Tells Us About America." I can't say I learned much about America, but I guess I learned something about Newsweek: They really like Rick Perry. The story, by Evan Thomas and Arian Campo-Flores, beginswith the observation, "The myth of the once and future king is as old as Camelot, as ancient as the Bible."Perry, it seems,is a living example of such a"redeemer": In Texas, his name is Rick Perry. Raised in a ranch house with no running water in the West Texas town of [...]
Apr
10
2010
Newsweek's Implausible Defense of Catholic Priests
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The evidence Newsweek presents to back up the heading of a recent Web article–"Priests Commit No More Abuse Than Other Males" (4/8/10)–is remarkably unpersuasive. Here's the main argument offered by reporter Pat Wingert: The only hard data that has been made public by any denomination comes from John Jay College's study of Catholic priests, which was authorized and is being paid for by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops following the public outcry over the 2002 scandals. Limiting their study to plausible accusations made between 1950 and 1992, John Jay researchers reported that about 4 percent of the 110,000 priests [...]
Mar
18
2010
All Smart People Are Centrists–and Other News From PBS
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Broadcasting & Cable (3/17/10) spoke with the head of PBS's flagship New York station about the recent hire of Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former MTV and NPR host Alison Stewart for PBS's forthcoming program Need to Know, which is replacing Now and the Bill Moyers Journal: WNET.org president Neal Shapiro did not rule out the possibility of future synergies between Newsweek and Need to Know. "We haven't talked about anything specific," he said. "But I think all kinds of natural synergies may happen." Shapiro said he is not concerned that Stewart and Meacham, who has been a frequent guest [...]
Mar
10
2010
Action Alert: PBS Replacing Moyers, Now. . .With Jon Meacham?
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FAIR has a new Action Alert reacting to reports that PBS's replacement for the retiring Bill Moyers and the canceled Now series will be headed by Newsweek editor Jon "Center-Right Nation" Meacham. To learn more or to send a message to PBS ombud Michael Getler, click here. Feel free to leave copies of your responses in the comments thread here.
