During an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski (1/25/12), NBC's Today host Ann Curry said this:

Well, one of the key topics that we have been hearing a lot about is all of this concern about Iran. You know what's been happening, the concerns, the tensions in the Straits of Hormuz, the concerns about Iran's rise in its efforts, everybody believes, in creating nuclear power--not only nuclear power, but nuclear weapons. Are we headed, in your view, based on all you know, for war with Iran?

Of course "everyone" doesn't believe that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. More to the point, no one has been able to show that they are. It's important to ask questions about whether we're headed towards war with Iran. But journalism that treats allegations about Iran as facts doesn't do anyone any good.

There's an interesting piece at the Huffington Post (9/27/11) by Joy Resmovits about what some critics of the corporate-backed NBC Education Nation conference are saying. Even though some are crediting NBC for a more balanced program than last year, not everyone's ready to give the network a passing grade:

While some lauded the increased balance and depth at this year's Education Nation, retired New York City teacher and Grassroots Education Movement member Norm Scott gave [NBC News president Steve] Capus an earful on Tuesday. "People see an absence of the word 'class size' in these debates," he told Capus.

"This notion that somehow we're skewed too close to the reformers, I just don't buy it and completely disagree," Capus responded.

"How did a guy like Jonathan Alter end up as an expert on Sunday night's panel?" Scott asked. He was referring to the Bloomberg columnist and MSNBC contributor who has taken hard-line stances on charter schools and teacher evaluations.

"We had Jonathan Alter and 300 teachers," Capus countered.

Alter has long been one of the most vitriolic critics of teachers unions in the media--which would seem to be the only reason he'd be invited on a panel in the first place. (Teacher-bashing is one of the fastest paths to becoming an education pundit.)

But his presence on the stage wasn't the only area of criticism. Among the sponsors of the event, the controversial for-profit University of Phoenix:

The event took place in a tent whose central outside decoration was the logo of the for-profit University of Phoenix.

The University of Phoenix has 200 campuses and online degree programs. An ABC News investigation found that the school routinely makes promises about work eligibility that it can't deliver on, resulting in students mired in debt without the benefits of a degree.

A U.S. Senate committee investigation found that 66 percent of associates degree students and half of bachelor's degree students at the school withdrew after beginning their programs. About 22 percent of University of Phoenix students defaulted on their loans during 2008, while the school's owner, the Apollo Group, devoted 22 percent of its spending to marketing.

Capus defended University of Phoenix's sponsorship of Education Nation. "We have about seven decades worth of experience of building a dividing line between the...commercial sponsorship side and the reporting side of NBC News," Capus said. The Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation and State Farm also sponsored the summit. "They don't shape the editorial content," Capus said.

Given the media's general tilt in favor of corporate "reformers," it's hard to imagine that Gates, Broad and the rest would need to intervene. Clearly they're happy to put their names on something that aligns with their views on education. (NBC's Brian Williams has acknowledged how deference to Gates was shaping his network's coverage of the summit, saying that "it's their facts that we're going to be referring to often to help along our conversation"--Answer Sheet Blog, 9/26/11.)

University of Phoenix, on the other hand, probably could use some good publicity. (Greenwashing isn't just for oil companies.)

As proof of their independence, Capus said: "The University of Phoenix has been subject to some tough news stories on NBC News."

Not many. Take this one from last year (Today, 9/29/10)--where the NBC anchor tells a company executive, "Good for you, helping young people":

ANN CURRY, anchor:

Welcome back to Learning Plaza, part of NBC's weeklong Education Nation. And most educators agree that personalized learning improves student performance. Well, joining us now is Rob Wrubel. He is the executive vice president for University of Phoenix and creators of the learning assessment test, which can be found on the Education Nation website.

And basically, the key is to find out what kind of learner we are, right, Rob? Good morning.

ROB WRUBEL (executive vice president, University of Phoenix): Yes, because each of us have different learning styles. Some of us are more visual, some of us are more auditory and we listen to things and learn. So by finding your learning style you can really optimize and personalize your learning outcomes.

CURRY: In fact, you've got a list of seven different kinds, and physical, as you say, aural, solitary, logical, social, verbal, visual. And by going to this Web site that you've created, people can take a test, and in just a few minutes they can find out what kind of learner they are.

Mr. WRUBEL: Right. You can go through this, it's 21 questions. And the kinds of questions they are ask you--just a range of questions about your activities, how you do things. Are you a good listener, do you do--do you talk with your hands. And then when we use our program we can give you a quick profile of what are your different types of learning styles.

CURRY: Mm-hmm.

WRUBEL: Sometimes you have a dominant learning style; sometimes you have a whole mix of different styles.

CURRY: But it would seem that it would be so important for, especially, parents of young people who may be, in fact, those young people may be having trouble in school, and may be showing some signs of having difficulty sitting still in class, that they go and maybe help their kids take this test, it would seem. The place you go is HowDoYouLearn.EducationNation.com?

WRUBEL: Yes, that's it.

CURRY: All right.

WRUBEL: And it is a very simple test. And for kids who are really trying to find a new way to learn, maybe they need more physical activity, it's a very successful tool to help parents find out what their learning style is.

CURRY: Good for you, helping young people...

WRUBEL: Right.

CURRY: ...this way. Congratulations, Rob Wrubel.

If you're in the New York area and you'd like to hear a conversation about education with a different point of view, come to FAIR's Miseducation Nation forum tonight at 7, at Manhattan's School of the Future.

NBC reporter Ann Curry's fawning interview with actor Ben Affleck (NBC Nightly News, 5/19/10), about his celebrity activist work in the Congo, is downright embarrassing:

CURRY: Why do you pick the place that people think is actually one of the worst places in terms of the number of atrocities, in terms of the level of suffering, one of the worst places on Earth?

AFFLECK: I really do see tremendous hopefulness. I'm really moved by the power of folks to find solutions to their own problems. The Congolese sense of kind of strength and self-sufficiency and resilience.

CURRY: And he's seen it in four trips since 2007.

AFFLECK: They're rebuilding the engine.

CURRY: Realizing local organizations can make the difference, hat in hand...

AFFLECK: I went to a lot of other folks who were experts and who knew a lot more than I did, and I said, `Can you help me?`

CURRY: ...convincing major philanthropists to fund his multimillion-dollar Eastern Congo Initiative so he can make efforts like Christine's.

AFFLECK: How long was the fighting with the...

CURRY: He's a policy activist in the making.

AFFLECK: There's almost no sort of law, judicial authority. You need to build some kind of a political constituency before policymakers take action.

CURRY: Boy, you come with a lot of passion. Boy! I'm like--I'm against the wall here.

AFFLECK: Sorry.

CURRY: If there was a wall back here--I mean, no, no. Don't apologize. You're so passionate about this.

Really, why would you pick One of the Worst Places on Earth as the focus of your activism? The Nightly News certainly isn't too interested in paying attention to such a place, as their story on Affleck marks the fifth segment they've devoted to the Congo in as many years. Two of those stories, by the way, were about gorillas. Sadly, this is par for the course for the Congo.

The video, which captures the moment even better than the transcript, is here.

Women In Media & News guest blogger Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser's examination (3/12/09) of the "media firestorm" that "erupted... when Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets" shows that in initial "stories playing on the well-worn 'wow factor'"--like "the AP's piece, posted on Fox News' website, [that] bore a cutesy headline: '8 Is Definitely Enough'"--"basic information was missing: the mother’s name, the doctor's name, and the specific medical treatment undergone," and "without that information, any medical ethics concerns remained wholly hypothetical." But then it

turns out, eight wasn't enough. The story's focus morphed from medical oddity, to larger ethics questions, to gawking at a woman deemed crazy for having 15 children (octuplets along with six previous kids). Media buzz about Nadya Suleman began building, and quickly....

Suleman's first interview to Dateline NBC's Ann Curry in early February was a hot property--even the interview itself became big news....

During the interview--which was rehashed in the media obsessively--Curry probed: "People feel, you know, this woman is being completely irresponsible and selfish to bring these children in the world without a clear source of income and enough help to raise them. The world outside is saying, 'What are you doing?'" A divorced mother who says all 14 came from a known sperm donor, Suleman insisted essentially that she loved all of her children and could, once she completes her education, provide for them.

From broadcast TV to newspapers to tabloid magazines, from blogs such as Jezebel to MSNBC’s Scoop, every aspect of Suleman’s life seemed fair game for the media microscope: her motivations, her mental stability (or instability).

Buttenwieser writes that the result of this "massive media rubbernecking" was that "substantive questions about medical ethics, parental responsibility and even how the media covers such outliers have been pushed aside for breathy comment" in which "profit-hungry media simply sensationalized Suleman's story for ratings-generating, tabloid-selling buzz."