Ishmael Reed's contextualization (CounterPunch, 6/29/09) of the epic demonization of Michael Jackson within historical U.S. media racism also takes a swipe at CNN's Black in America program, "an exercise meant to boost ratings by making whites feel good by making blacks look bad, the marketing strategy of the mass media since the 1830s":

In preparing for a sequel to the first Black in America, which boosted the networks ratings (the O. J. trial saved CNN!), CNN rolled out the usual stereotypes about black Americans. Unmarried black mothers were exhibited, without mentioning that births to unmarried black women have plunged since 1976 more than that of any other ethnic group. Then we got some footage that implied that blacks as a group were homophobes even though Charles Blow, a statistician for the New York Times, recently published a chart showing that gays have the least to fear from blacks. Recently, the media perpetrated a hoax that blacks were responsible for the passage of Proposition 8, the California proposition that banned gay marriage. An academic study refuted this claim, but that didn't deter the New York Times from hiring Benjamin Schwarz to explain black homophobia. Schwarz is the writer who wrote in the Los Angeles Times that blacks who were victims of lynchings in the south were probably guilty.

In the last Black in America, Soledad O'Brien, CNN's designated tough love agent against the brothers and sisters, scolded a black man for not attending his daughter's birthday party. The aim of this scene was meant to humiliate black men as neglectful fathers. Ms. O'Brien won’t be permitted by her employees to mention that 75 percent of white children will live at one time or another in a single-parent household and that the governor of South Carolina's not showing up for Father's Day isn't just a lone aberration in "White America."

On that note, Reed wonders, "How would CNN promote a White in America?" Would they feature "the thousands of meth addicts who have abandoned their children? The California rural and suburban white women who do more dope than Latino and black youth?" And if not, "Why not? Can’t get State Farm, Ford and McDonald's to sponsor such a program? All of these companies are sponsoring Black in America"--"the aim of which," Reed reminds us, "is to cast collective blame on blacks for the country's social problems. For ratings."

Veteran independent Mexico reporter John Ross (CounterPunch.com, 6/28/09) wants to know which countries come to mind when thinking about "a stolen election by an entrenched regime," "demands for a recount to which election officials respond by offering to recount just 10 percent of the vote," or even "a regime-controlled media that exalts the incumbent's victory and demonizes the loser"? Are you thinking "Iran 2009? Yes!" or "Mexico 2006? Yes and no."

Toward showing that "the stealing of the Mexican presidential election by the right-wing oligarchy stirred little indignation anywhere outside of Mexico," Ross finds that "a comparison of coverage extended to both instances of electoral fraud by the New York Times, the 'paper of record', is instructive":

NYT coverage of the upheaval in Iran has been overwhelming. During the first nine days of the electoral crisis, the Times ran at least one front-page story daily--from Election Day Friday, June 12 through Saturday, June 20, the Iranian electoral sham occupied the right-hand column (the lead story) in the international edition on eight out of nine days. The Times also ran a second Iran story on the front page in six out of the nine editions reviewed--on four of those days, the stories were accompanied by a four and sometimes five column color photo....

The Times sent four by-lined reporters into Tehran for the festivities--Robert Worth, Michael Slackman, Neil MacFarquhar and the Iranian Nazna Pathi, plus Eric Schmidt reporting from Washington. Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor, flew to the Iranian capital to pen a daily journal.

As for the contested Mexican election: "The Times ran a front-page curtain raiser on election eve, but not in the right-hand column" and "a second front-pager July 3 just above the fold." Ross points out that "unlike the New York Times coverage from Tehran, news of the enormous gathering ran inside," even as "mobilizations were expanding exponentially to 2 million participants (police reports) by July 30, the largest outpourings of political protest in Mexican history."

In sum, Ross writes of how "the brand of corporate journalism that the New York Times practices distorts such stories as Iranian resistance to electoral fraud and leaves Mexico 2006, in which millions took to the streets to defy the fraudulent election of a U.S. proxy, in the dust of history." Listen to FAIR's radio program CounterSpin: "Chuck Collins on Mexican Election" (8/11/06).

Political science professors Sonia Cardenas and Andrew Flibbert survey the bloodthirsty media reaction to African pirates for CounterPunch (5/22/09):

Across countless blogs and media outlets, here and abroad, thousands of people have called unequivocally--often in blunt, colorful language--for killing Somali pirates. "Kill the Pirates" was the headline of a Washington Post op-ed on April 13 by Fred Iklé, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Shoot the pirates, problem solved." The mainstream media has described today's pirates as savage enemies of humankind, with pundits even saying that if it were not for political correctness, international law and human rights, we could eliminate this scourge. In his blog, Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University blames piracy itself on "a radical interpretation of human rights," which discourages capturing and trying pirates for fear of violating their rights. He proposes instead a "007 license" with shoot-to-kill permission for commercial ships. Even before the latest incident, Robert Farley and Yoav Gortzak wrote in the December 2008 issue of Foreign Policy, "nobody likes pirates, and nobody--legal niceties aside--really minds too much if you shoot them."

Considering that "the hatred is obvious," Cardenas and Andrew Flibbert think the more important "question is why": "Why the willingness to bypass legal procedures normally extended" to even those committing "other transnational crimes that are arguably more disturbing and reprehensible, such as the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation, or drug cartels" or even "private mercenaries that fuel armed conflict and take thousands of lives?" One facet of their answer is dubbed the "Disney Effect": being that "military action is indeed a quick, dramatic and satisfying morale-booster" that "makes for good soundbites and masquerades easily as derring-do, the stuff of Hollywood"--all of which is far too subtle analysis for a U.S. press intent on forcing all African conflict into a "tribal" framework.

Taking down "Michael Wolff's fat masterpiece of sycophancy about Rupert Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News," Murdoch Archipelago co-author Bruce Page (CounterPunch, 5/15/09) counters Wolff's "astigmatic lens of gossip" with "a true outline" of Fox/Wall Street Journal mogul Murdoch's roots:

Rupert's father, Sir Keith, founded the dynasty during World War I as a dirty-tricks minion for "Billy" Hughes, probably Australia's nastiest prime minister. His cover myth as a heroic war reporter has been so thoroughly dismantled that now it impresses none but family retainers and--of course--Mr. Wolff.

At Versailles, Keith was Billy's ever-present aide in striving to make the Peace Conference into a vicious cock-up, rich in racist and imperialist content. Curiously, the pair would have had zero leverage but for the failure of a plot of Keith's, which sought in 1918 to remove Australia's battlefield commander on the Western Front, John Monash, for being an unheroic Jew.... Monash's divisions led the British breakthrough...which...put Germany--suddenly, unexpectedly--at the Allies' mercy.

[Australian] soldiers hoped there might be space for a decent peace. But politicians of various brands thought otherwise, and none outdid Keith's boss in vengeful demagoguery, destroying at last all the credit Monash had gained for Australia. Billy and Keith weren't prime authors of the Versailles debacle in 1919. But none toiled harder in its cause.

Page sees "two items of present relevance" in "this ironic history" of the treaty that precipitated the rise of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich: "We see the core of the Murdoch business: offering political propaganda services, disguised thinly as journalism," and then "there's the stunning Murdoch talent for seizing the wrong end of any available political or military stick," calling "Keith's estimate of Monash and Rupert's of the pseudo-warrior Bush Jr... reciprocals, to be sure, but identically crass."

Writing under the pen name Jami Tarn (CounterPunch, 3/27/09), one San Francisco lawyer is rallying against "a hate-filled column in the San Francisco Chronicle." Chronicle commentator Debra J. Saunders "insinuated that Tristan Anderson, still lingering in a coma in Tel Aviv after taking an Israeli tear gas canister to the face, costing him part of his frontal lobe and possibly his right eye, deserves this comeuppance for daring to join Palestinians in protest against Israel’s illegal Apartheid wall." Saunders, Tarn wrote, reduced such suffering to the snarky "love-it-or-leave-it Amer'kuh" line that Anderson now has "found out in the worst way that political protest outside the Bay Area isn't all energy bars and catch-and-release."

Tarn notes that, to Saunders, even "a temporary traffic-snarling protest is 'menacing and violence-tinged'; everything the police say is credible":

Saunders lamented, "The problem is…when an officer's skull is fractured--as happened to SFPD's Peter Shields during an anti-World Trade Organization protest in 2005--there are no angry marches closing down Market Street." As one of the lawyers who represented independent journalist Josh Wolf, jailed for eight months for contempt for refusing on principle to turn over his video from that incident to the FBI (which did not show the attack on Shields, but did show Shields' partner, Officer Michael Wolf, choking a completely non-threatening protester half to death), I know something about the events--a protest against the G8 Summit, not the WTO. It began when Officer Shields sped down a dark street in his patrol car, dangerously scattering protesters like chickens, then jumped out wildly swinging his baton. According to his own account, he was in the midst of striking a protester in the arms and legs when someone hit him over the head.

Writing that "an astonishing number of North American dailies are gasping their last," veteran Mexico journalist John Ross (CounterPunch, 3/18/09) cites "a recent survey by the New York Times, itself on its last legs," that "lists 75 daily newspapers of being at risk from sea to stinking sea," and singles out how San Francisco Chronicle owner "Will Hearst threatens to close down the Chron if he can't break the unions and turn the Comical into a scab rag." Ross also looks at how "the New York Times has persuaded a Mexican billionaire to bail it out of impending shipwreck":

Well, not just any Mexican billionaire. Carlos Slim is usually ranked Numero Dos on the Forbes Hit Parade with $60 billion under his mattress.... The big guns of Slim's empire are Telmex, the Mexican phone monopoly that charges higher rates than any other such enterprise in the wide world, with which he was gifted in an excess of crony capitalism by the reviled ex-president Carlos Salinas, and American Movil--the Mexican tycoon's cell phone companies dominate 70 percent of the Latin American market....

Slim built his empire on corporate cannibalism and sees weaknesses in enterprises where we mortals do not. There is little else to explain his $250 million investment in the Times, a seriously sagging institution that had only $46 million cash on hand and $1.1 billion in debt when the Mexican tycoon came to the rescue. Since his initial investment, Slim has expanded his holdings to 7.4 percent with the possibility of increasing his shares to 17 percent ownership--only the Sulzberger family owns more.

"The Slim/New York Times connection suggests a solution for the ailing U.S. newspaper industry" to Ross: "Among possible Mexican investors: Joaquin 'El Chapo' (Shorty) Guzman, the capo of the Sinaloa cartel recently listed by Forbes in its up-and-coming billionaire rankings. Drug cartels in Sinaloa are said to already own several dailies in that Pacific coast state."