International efforts to ban cluster bombs fell apart late last week. If you were reading about this in the New York Times, you might have been led to believe that the United States was pushing to get rid of the weapons--instead of the opposite.

Here's the lead sentence from a story in Saturday's paper (11/26/11):

GENEVA -- Despite last-minute attempts to broker a compromise, American-led efforts to conclude an international treaty restricting use of cluster munitions collapsed on Friday in the face of opposition from countries that said it did not address their humanitarian concerns and would undermine existing international law.

This "American-led effort," readers were told, "reflected the increasing stigmatization of a weapon recognized as causing unacceptable harm to civilians and seen as having lasting effects on development for decades after conflicts have ended."

Well, who opposes such efforts? It takes a little while to understand that the other side is taking a much tougher stance to eliminate cluster bombs, as outlined at an Oslo conference in 2008:

But countries and disarmament groups opposing the draft treaty said the humanitarian impact of the proposed protocol would be minimal and would legitimize continued use of other cluster munitions that are recognized to cause unacceptable harm.

These countries, together with the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations agencies dealing with development and human rights, also argued that the adoption of a legal instrument that was weaker than the Oslo agreement would set a dangerous precedent.

The Times' confused account is in stark contrast to other reporting. This  Reuters piece, for example, does a much better job of explaining things in its lead:

GENEVA (Reuters) -- A U.S.-led push to regulate, rather than ban, cluster munitions failed Friday after 50 countries objected, following humanitarian campaigners' claims that anything less than a outright ban would be an unprecedented reversal of human rights law.

Something tells me the Times story would look a little differently if the United States weren't on the pro-cluster bomb side of this argument.

That might explain the piece the wire service ran today, under the headline, "Who's Behind the Wall Street Protests?"

Reporters Mark Egan and Michelle Nichols suggest that Glenn Beck's demented chalkboard scribbles might have actually been on the right track; the protests "may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men"-- George Soros.

They write:

One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.

Soros and the protesters deny any connection. But Reuters did find indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, an anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests.

Readers learn than none other than Rush Limbaugh has been able to see the clear-as-day connection:

But conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation when he told his listeners last week, "George Soros money is behind this."

Indeed, when one thinks of the grassroots activists occupying Wall Street, the first question is how on Earth they are bankrolling such a costly project.

Reuters eventually gets to the heart of the critique, and sure enough it involves the Tides Center--another Glenn Beck obsession. They report:

According to disclosure documents from 2007-2009, Soros' Open Society gave grants of $3.5 million to the Tides Center, a San Francisco-based group that acts almost like a clearing house for other donors, directing their contributions to liberal non-profit groups. Among others the Tides Center has partnered with are the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation.

That's actually a somewhat accurate description of what Tides does--which makes the connection to the demonstrations... what, exactly? Here we go:

Disclosure documents also show Tides, which declined comment, gave Adbusters grants of $185,000 from 2001-2010, including nearly $26,000 between 2007-2009.

So a philanthropic clearinghouse of sorts received money from a Soros charity. And Adbusters, over the years, has received money from that same clearinghouse. Couldn't be clearer!

The Reuters piece has been picked apart by, among others, Salon's Alex Pareene and Noreen Malone at New York magazine. And a Huffington Post story points out that it's been criticized by other Reuters journalists:

Several Reuters journalists also attacked the story. Business and media writer Felix Salmon called the article "ridiculous" and social media editor Anthony DeRosa said, "When I read 'Rush Limbaugh summed up the speculation' I wanted to crawl under a rock."

UPDATE: According to the New York Observer, at some point Reuters switched to a story headlined "Soros: Not a Funder of Wall Street Protests."

The original story unsurprisingly found its way to Fox News Channel-- here's an exchange from last night's O'Reilly Factor with Margaret Hoover:

O'REILLY: I think these guys were organized by the George Soros-funded MoveOn operations. Reuters, by the way, has an article on that today that you have to read, Hoover, linking in the Soros money to these agitators.

HOOVER: And what that article actually said is that Soros money had funded the original group Adbusters.

O'REILLY: That's right.

HOOVER: But the last time Soros directly funded it was seven years ago. Although a lot of Soros money -- and this is the thing about Soros money, is that because it is...

O'REILLY: It's everywhere.

HOOVER: It's everywhere.

O'REILLY: It's everywhere.

HOOVER: And small amounts to all these progressive groups that are progressive groups. There's no way...

O'REILLY: You know what Soros money -- did you see "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," where if you went to sleep you became an alien? That's like Soros money. You go to sleep and they come.

Will the unfolding crisis in Japan lead to a debate over the safety of nuclear power in the United States? Initial signs are not encouraging.

NBC's Meet the Press (3/13/11) had an interview with Marvin Fertel of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Host Chuck Todd prefaced one question with, "I understand that you represent the industry's interests in this...."

Later on the show, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) was asked to weigh in--since he had been speaking out in favor of nuclear power, a position he doesn't appear to be abandoning:

Well, we're going to have to see what happens here. Obviously, it's still, still things are happening.  But the bottom line is, we do have to free ourselves of independence from foreign oil.... So I'm still willing to look at nuclear. As I've always said, it has to be done safely and carefully.

 On the CBS program Face The Nation, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I.-Ct.) was on to say:

I've been a big supporter of nuclear power because it's domestic. It's ours and it's clean. And we've had a good safety safety with nuclear power plants here in the United States. But I think we've got to--I don't want to stop the building of nuclear power plants, but I think we've got to kind of quietly--quickly put the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan.

ABC's This Week, to its credit, had Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund. He also appeared on Fox News Sunday--which featured pro-nuke Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) right afterward.

In the New York Times today (3/14/11) we see the headline "U.S. Nuclear Industry Faces New Uncertainty." But the article only quotes proponents of  nuclear power.  The lead graph:

The fragile bipartisan consensus that nuclear power offers a big piece of the answer to America's energy and global warming challenges may have evaporated as quickly as confidence in Japan's crippled nuclear reactors.

So we hear from a member of that "fragile" consensus (which never included "mainstream environmental groups," as the article claimed). Is the Times planning on running a separate piece detailing the concerns of critics of the nuclear power industry?

The Washington Post has a similar Reuters piece (3/14/11) headlined, "Some Nervously Eye U.S. Nuclear Plants." The lead sentence:

Anxiety over Japan's quake-crippled nuclear reactors has triggered calls from U.S. lawmakers and activists for a review of U.S. energy policy and for brakes on expansion of domestic nuclear power.

But the only quotes come from nuke boosters: Joe Lieberman, a spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute and a White House spokesperson. If there really is "anxiety" and calls from "activists," readers should hear them.

Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger sent a memo to staffers on July 8 with the subject line "How Social Media Impacts Your Professional Life," suggesting new rules for journalists' private expressions of opinion. So far, the memo seems to have only been discussed on a German language media blog (Ruhr Barone, 7/22/10).

Jumping off from the cases of Dave Weigel and Octavia Nasr, who had to leave jobs at  WashingtonPost.com and CNN, respectively, after their online communication became controversial,  Schlesinger declares that " in a linked and searchable world, your online persona can reflect on how or even whether you can do your job." The editor writes: "If you give people cause or reason to doubt your ability to be a fair and objective journalist, that will necessarily impact on our ability to give you assignments or allow you on the file."

He then lays down in a series of bullet points "some lines we can draw"--and most of them are more or less common sense. Like, "Don't start or get involved in flame wars"--does anyone think that journalists hurling insults online is a good idea?  Or, "Remember that the published word lasts forever"--that's self-evident. And "be prepared to stand behind what you say" is good advice for anyone.

One of the bulleted points seems rather broad, however: "Don't compromise your objectivity privately if you still want to use it professionally." What does it mean to "compromise your objectivity"--expressing any opinion on a subject that you cover? That would seem to be a rather draconian prohibition. But if that's not what it means, what kind of guidance is being offered here?

The memo's emphasis on "objectivity" reminds me that Matthew Yglesias has written some insightful posts on the subject lately, reminding us that this journalistic convention arose primarily a business strategy, and it's one that depends on some fairly odd ethical principles:

Something that pops up every time old/new media tensions emerge is the view--which I find, frankly, bizarre--common in the newspaper world that pretending to not have opinions makes your work better. One underlying presumption here is the odd notion that the ideal reporter would be someone who actually doesn’t have opinions, as if "the facts" were purely transparent and could be merely observed, processed and then regurgitated into inverted pyramid form without passing through the muck of "judgment" or "thoughts about the world."

Then the secondary presumption is that you can somehow make things real by pretending. Like if you want to express judgments about politicians in conversations with your friends, that’s fine, but you have to never publish them.... Somehow keeping the views secret is supposed to be a close substitute for not having them. But of course having a secret is totally different from having nothing. The conceit that make-believe is just as good as the real thing only arises because the real thing is impossible to achieve. That should make you rethink why you would deem it desirable, but instead leads to the odd conclusion that the best journalist is a consistently dishonest one.

Here's the full text of the Reuters memo:

All –

Two recent incidents in the United States have shown how hard it is to keep our social media personae separate from our professional lives.

First David Weigel had to resign from the Washington Post after inflammatory comments he made on a supposedly closed journalists' mailing list were made public. Then, CNN fired its senior editor for Middle Eastern Affairs, Octavia Nasr, after she tweeted "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah... One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot", a comment that immediately called into question her ability to cover her subject objectively.

Now I don’t want to get involved in other organisations' personnel issues. But I've repeatedly said and believe very strongly that in a linked and searchable world, your online persona can reflect on how or even whether you can do your job.

If you give people cause or reason to doubt your ability to be a fair and objective journalist, that will necessarily impact on our ability to give you assignments or allow you on the file.

We are in the early days of social media and there is no question that the journalistic landscape is changing. But there are some lines we can draw:

* Don't start or get involved in flame wars--arguments using heated language and personal attacks. As a journalist, rely on facts and reasoned arguments, not on invective. I don't care how angry you might be at a person or a company or even a country; just don't do it.

* Don't compromise your objectivity privately if you still want to use it professionally.

* Remember that the published word lasts forever and can go everywhere. A tweet by a journalist is simply not the same as a joke shared over the dinner table.

* Anything that can be forwarded probably will be at some point, so be prepared to stand behind what you say--its content and its tone.

Thanks/das

David Schlesinger
Editor In Chief, Reuters

Reuters (7/14/10) has a report today on the efforts by senators Blanche Lincoln (D.-Arkansas) and Jon Kyl (R.-Arizona) to greatly reduce the amount wealthy estates owe in federal taxes.  Under current law, after a one-year suspension, the federal estate tax rate will return to its pre-2001 level of 55 percent, with the first $1 million exempt. Lincoln and Kyl's proposal would change the rate to 35 percent and exempt the first $5 million of an estate. This change would save millionaires $440 billion in its first decade, and add the same amount to the federal deficit.

How does Reuters report on this massive transfer of wealth to the rich?  Under the headline "Two Senators Propose Reinstating Estate Tax," reporter Kim Dixon begins her story, "Two senators, a Democrat and a Republican, have reintroduced a proposal to reinstate the estate tax, which lapsed this year amid a row among lawmakers over taxing the wealthy when they die."

The story does go on to note what the rates would be under the Lincoln/Kyl proposal compared to current law, but leaves the budget-busting math as an exercise for the reader.