CNN/Time pundit Fareed Zakaria is considered one of the smartest guys in elite policy/media circles. Speaking with CNN host Anderson Cooper on Friday (3/4/11), he advocated CIA intervention in Libya. Deriding a no-fly zone as something less than a "magic solution," he explained:

 ZAKARIA: There's a lot of covert stuff we can do. We can effectively fund the Contra war against Gadhafi the way we did in Afghanistan.

COOPER: So you think the opposition should be armed?

ZAKARIA: I think the opposition--I think that the CIA should start looking into covert actions that can fund the rebels, that can provide food, logistics, weaponry. And if Khadafy Gadhafi realizes this-- and believe me, we don't need to advertise it -- he would realize, he will see, the people around him will see he can't win.

Zakaria's historical references are a little bizarre. The U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua were a disaster--a murderous group trained and armed in an attempt to overthrow a left-wing government that had overthrown a U.S.-backed dictatorship. The Contras directed much of their violence against Nicaraguan civilians. When direct funding of the group was blocked by Congress, the Reagan administration hatched a plan to sell arms to Iran and funnel the profits to the Contras--what became known as the Iran/Contra scandal. In other words, not exactly the kind of plan one would cite as a model.

Zakaria refers to Afghanistan as well--presumably meaning U.S. support for mujaheddin fighters battling the Soviet Union. Some of those fighters would eventually regroup under the banner of Al-Qaeda. Again, not really the kind of project you'd want to replicate.

In a Consortium News rejoinder (4/30/09) to how "mainstream U.S. news media often laments the decline of objective journalism, pointing disapprovingly at the more subjective news that comes from the Internet or from ideological programming," Robert Parry writes that

one could argue that the U.S. mainstream press has inflicted the severest damage to the concept of objective journalism by routinely ignoring those principles, which demand that a reporter set aside personal prejudices (as best one can) and approach each story with a common standard of fairness.

The truth is that powerful mainstream news organizations have their own sacred cows and tend to hire journalists who intuitively take into account whose ox might get gored while doing a story. In other words, mainstream (or centrist) journalism has its own biases though they may be less noticeable because they often reflect the prevailing view of the national Establishment.

Parry looks to "double standards" in corporate reportage on Nicaraguan Contras in the '80s and the 2005 "assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri" to make clear that "how that translates into daily coverage is that an American news outlet often will demand a much lower threshold of evidence about serious accusations against a perceived U.S. enemy than an ally." Anyway, as a longtime FAIR associate once noted on the age-old debate over the merits of journalistic objectivity: "Passive acceptance of murderous priorities in our midst is a form of de facto advocacy."