When NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel recently returned from Afghanistan, he told MSNBC's Morning Joe, "I honestly think it's probably time to start leaving the country." Engel added, "I really don't see how this is going to end in anything but tears."

Engel's comments caused Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (10/12/09) to raise an eyebrow at a reporter stating an opinion: "That sounds awfully opinionated for a working reporter," wrote Kurtz.

But we had to wonder if what really attracted Kurtz's scrutiny was Engel's stating of an opinion, or the opinion itself?

After all, for years FAIR has documented the phenomenon of journalists stating opinions in support of hawkish U.S. policies with virtual impunity--even when their views were catastrophically in error.

And so we wondered if Kurtz would even have commented if a network news reporter had suggested that the U.S. needed to escalate its military efforts in Afghanistan. We needn't have wondered.

Lara Logan, who holds the same position at CBS News as Engel does at NBC--chief foreign affairs correspondent--may be a more vehement cheerleader for escalation than Engel is for withdrawal. In a recent interview with Bob Orr on CBS News' Political Hotsheet, Logan expressed a disturbing devotion to  Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and chief proponent of escalating the war there: "I don't understand why no one will listen to the man you put your faith in and said he is the guy who is going to do this for us...."

Since Logan too "sounds awfully opinionated for a working reporter," we wonder how it is she escaped Kurtz's scrutiny?

For us, it isn't so much that journalists have and express opinions--the public is better served when we know what reporters are thinking--but we are troubled when  disapproval and despair over the lost standards of journalistic objectivity are trotted out only for reporters whose opinions are at odds with official views.

So we are glad to know of Logan's hero worship, even if it is at odds with the worthwhile  journalistic ethic that says reporters should hold the feet of the powerful to the fire--not massage them.
Corrected version: The original version of this post gave Stanley McChrystal's first name incorrectly.

Back in May, CBS' 60 Minutes aired a terrible report on the Air Force's use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan-- see FAIR's action alert for all the details. CBS never responded to the criticism, but they did re-air the segment this past Sunday, without any major changes. To let CBS know how you feel about this one-sided reporting, here's the contact info:

CONTACT:
CBS
60 Minutes
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019

Email: 60m@cbsnews.com
Phone: (212) 975-3247

Former PR agent Wendell Potter's stories of how he helped the health insurance's industry's campaign "to discredit Michael Moore and his film Sicko" calls to mind just how successful that campaign was. Corporate media coverage of the debate raised by the film's expose of the for-profit insurance system went out of its way to demonize Moore. USA Today ran an editorial tied to the film against a single-payer healthcare plan, which was paired with an "Opposing View" from an insurance executive that denounced single-payer even more harshly. CBS News' Jeff Greenfield distinguished himself with his (inaccurate) claim that the U.S. doesn't have public funding for healthcare because "Americans are just different." And reviewing CNN's report on Sicko can only make one relieved that Sanjay Gupta turned down the job of surgeon general.

If you'd like to see an end to this kind of insurance industry PR masquerading as journalism, you can sign FAIR's petition calling for the inclusion of the single-payer option in coverage of the healthcare reform debate.

Blogger Jonathan Schwarz (A Tiny Revolution, 6/24/09) has noted that when "CBS ran a story about the latest batch of Nixon tapes made public... they included a section of a February 21, 1973 conversation with Billy Graham that showed Nixon at his psycho best," addressing anti-Semitism thus: "This has happened to the Jews, happened in Spain, it happened in Germany, it's happening, and now it's gonna happen in America if these people don't start behaving. It may be they have a death wish."

But the real problem comes in CBS's quote of the Graham response: "Well, they've always been through the Bible at least, God's timepiece. He has judged them from generation to generation and yet used them and they've kept their identity." Schwarz asks us,

What do you think about Graham's response there? True, he didn't stand up to Nixon's rambling insanity, but at least he deflected it. He comes out looking pretty good!

Too bad this is how the conversation actually went (mp3):

Graham: Well, you know I told you one time that the Bible talks about two kinds of Jews. One is called the Synagogue of Satan. They're the ones putting out the pornographic literature. They're the ones putting out these obscene films.

[three minutes of talking]

Nixon: It may be they have a death wish, that's been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.

Graham: Well, they've always been through the Bible at least, God's timepiece. He has judged them from generation to generation and yet used them and they've kept their identity.

Schwarz closes with a further "P.S.": "CBS is also wrong that Nixon was talking about anti-Semitism being generated by the shooting down of the Libyan plane. Nixon was actually responded to Graham being angry about a rabbi criticizing a new attempt at widespread evangelism." But this is all part of a great tradition in the U.S. press: Corporate media have diligently worked to clean up the good reverend's image for just about as long as he's been around.

Author and journalist Sheila Gibbons has some regrettably foreseeable news (Womens eNews, 3/30/09) on how female reporters who "worked hard to establish themselves in what had long been a male-dominated field" are faring in a time of massive media cutbacks and layoffs:

By the end of 2009, a quarter of all the newsroom jobs that existed in 2001 will be gone, says the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

This outgoing tide is taking away the reporting, editing and producing jobs of seasoned journalists, many of them women.

I'm thinking of investigative reporting ace Roberta Baskin of WJLA-TV in Washington, who in January picked up a prestigious duPont-Columbia University Award for her work at the station and lost her job the next day.

Another casualty: Glenda Holste, former associate editor of the editorial page at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who left the paper when her values and those of her corporate bosses "no longer matched," as she put it, and staffing levels began to shrink.

Margie Freivogel, for 34 years a reporter and editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, took a buyout in 2006 when the paper was sold.

They, and many like them, lost or left jobs for which they were superbly qualified. What a loss for them, for their viewers and readers, and for younger people to whom they could have been marvelous mentors.

"It sometimes takes so long for women to get to those spots, it is worrisome," says Dawn Garcia...president of the Journalism and Women Symposium.

Holste's and Freivogel's silver-lining optimism--"the new platforms make the traditional media gatekeeper less relevant than it's ever been," since "the Internet may be friendlier to women" than traditional media--takes on added importance in light of the other veteran reporter's history:

In 1996, Baskin managed to break the story on Nike's Vietnam sweatshops on CBS's 48 Hours, which received enormous attention. The program was updated for re-airing in 1997 but was pulled after CBS and Nike inked a deal for coverage of the upcoming Winter Olympics that put CBS's correspondents in clothing displaying the Nike "swoosh," Baskin says.

Ira Forman set off a furor in the blogosphere this week when he reported that CBS's pick for senior VP of communications, Jeff Ballabon, had once suggested "that Democrats are inherently bad people." (Forman--who is the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council--maintains that this is what Ballabon had stated during a debate between Republican and Democratic Jews in New York ten years ago, while Ballabon has denied the charge.)

Yet for the billionaire who owns the controlling shares of CBS, the question of whether or not the Democrats are "bad people" was ruled a moot point years ago. During the '04 election campaign, Sumner Redstone, who was at the time the CEO of CBS's then-parent company Viacom, expressly stated that while "the Democrats are not bad people," he backed the Republicans--simply because he perceived the G.O.P. to be good for business.

As FAIR has noted, Redstone stated at a gathering of corporate leaders in Hong Kong in 2004 (Asian Wall Street Journal, 9/24/04):

I don't want to denigrate Kerry... but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people.... But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company.

Redstone repeated these sentiments in an interview with Time (10/4/04):

There has been comment upon my contribution to Democrats like Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry is a good man. I've known him for many years. But it happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.

As it turned out, CBS's fortunes were not looking too hot by the end of eight years of G.O.P rule. Yet CBS's backing of Republicans carried on through the 2006 election, during which 57 percent of its political action committee financing went toward Republican federal candidates (43 percent went to Democrats), according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the last election, CBS appears to have anticipated the declining fortunes that Redstone's favorite party was to suffer at the polls; in a near reversal from the previous election, 58 percent of CBS's PAC funds went to Democratic federal candidates and 42 percent went to Republicans.

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric (1/27/09) introduced a segment on civilian casualties in Afghanistan by saying, "Our Elizabeth Palmer spoke with the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who says the Taliban have become masters of manipulating public opinion."  That commander, Gen. David McKiernan, was CBS's sole on-camera source for the segment, making assertions like "we try to avoid [killing civilians]. The insurgent does it on purpose."

The U.S. military also served as an off-camera source for Palmer as well, cited for claims like "80 percent of Afghan civilians are killed by the Taliban.... But there's huge frustration that anytime the U.S. military is honest about its lethal mistakes, that's used against them."

Actually, though, the U.S. military is not the only source available on the question of how many people they kill. According to U.N. human rights monitors in Afghanistan, 2,100 civilians were killed there in 2008, and in the cases where responsibility could be determined, 41 percent were killed by U.S. or allied forces, including 455 civilians killed by airstrikes. That's an awful lot of "lethal mistakes."

Palmer concluded her report: "U.S. success in this complex war depends as much on controlling the message as deploying the guns." The U.S. military got to be the only source for a story about the deaths it causes: I'd say that's pretty good message control. The Taliban may be "masters of manipulating public opinion," but they've got nothing on CBS.

Discussing the failed auto bailout on CBS Evening News (12/12/08):

KATIE COURIC: And it's almost, meanwhile, turning to Washington, Bob, impossible to figure out just what happened to this auto bailout in the Senate. There's all this finger pointing going on. What is your take? Can you explain it to us in simple terms?

BOB SCHIEFFER: I think frankly what happened, Katie, is that this is overwhelmingly unpopular, bailing out these auto companies with the public in general. And every poll suggests that. These leaders of the auto industry came to town first in their jet planes and now you find that the members of the union are not willing to consider a pay cut for the next two years. It was a very easy vote for Republicans to vote to block this thing. They were just doing what their constituents across the country kind of wanted them to do. That may not be the right thing, but I think in the end that's really what did them in.

Every poll suggests that bailing out the auto industry is overwhelmingly unpopular? Actually, no--really, the polls are all over the map on the auto bailout, ranging from a CNN/Opinion Research poll (12/1-2/08) where the public is opposed 61 percent to 36 percent to an L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll (12/6-8/08) finding 47 percent to 42 percent support for a bailout. One of the polls that did not find an auto rescue to be overwhelmingly unpopular was CBS's own--the network's December 4-7 poll found 45 percent approving of a bailout and 44 percent disapproving. Guess Schieffer doesn't read his network's own polls--or doesn't trust them.