In light of the recent and tragic spate of gay youth suicides, the Washington Post's On Faith blog chose to honor National Coming Out day with a guest post (10/11/10) by raging homophobe Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

The post, titled "Christian Compassion Requires the Truth About Harms of Homosexuality," accused "homosexual activist groups" like the Gay Lesbian and Straight Educators Network (GLSEN) of being the real bullies, pushing kids to come out and believe they can't change, which he argues  is "likely exacerbating the very problem they claim they want to solve."

As evidence, Perkins cites two studies, claiming that they show that depression amongst gays is not connected to discrimination. Trouble is, as Box Turtle Bulletin's Jim Burroway explains, the two studies show exactly the opposite. Which wouldn't be unusual for Perkins, whose group (as John Aravosis points out) often relies on the pseudo-scientific "studies" of the Family Research Institute, which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "churns out hate literature masquerading as legitimate science." (Its head, Paul Cameron, once argued that "extermination of homosexuals" might be needed in the next three to four years.)

Yet Perkins is a regular in the corporate media Rolodex. In response to the push for repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell (Extra!, 5/10), Perkins put out a press statement saying a repeal would "jeopardize our nation’s security to advance the agenda of radical homosexual lobby."  CNN felt that merited not one but two chances for Perkins to talk about the issue (Larry King, 2/2/10; Newsroom, 2/2/10). With Perkins so busy at CNN, MSNBC had to settle for his colleague Peter Sprigg (2/2/10), who warned that repealing DADT was "guaranteed" to lead to sexual assault--by, not against, gays.

The heartening thing about the Post column is that the comments on the post are overwhelmingly, and fiercely, critical of "On Faith" blog editor Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn's decision to give space to Perkins on this subject and not factchecking his propaganda. The question is, when will corporate media outlets finally start listening to them and stop lending legitimacy to bigots spouting lies?

UPDATE: If you'd like to contact the editors about their decision, here's the email: onfaith@washingtonpost.com

In his editor's note in the current edition of Newsweek, Jon Meacham surveys the failures of the past decade or so and comes to a completely unsurprising conclusion: the right and left both failed.

From the financial sector to the Roman Catholic Church, it has been a bad couple of years for--to borrow a phrase from a BP chieftain--"big, important" players in global life. Going only a bit further back in the decade, the occupation of Iraq and the response to Katrina seem to mark the beginning of an era in which apparently competent institutions have all too often proved incompetent. The history of these years fails to fit neatly into the ideological categories of left or right, for both public and private enterprises have managed to miss the mark in hours of crisis. Government is not the root of all evil; neither are corporations.

The pull quote in the print edition reads, "Recent debacles do not fit into the categories of left or right, for both public and private enterprises have failed spectacularly."

Huh. Actually, I think most of those examples do fit pretty nicely into one category: The left opposed the Iraq War, opposed financial deregulation and sounded warnings about the housing bubble. Meacham also cited the BP oil spill; the left has long opposed offshore drilling.  Meacham's trying to say that when "government" fails, it's evidence that the left is mistaken in putting so  much faith in government. But that would require one to attribute Bush's disastrous Iraq War to the "left."

If you stick to the examples Meacham offers, it would seem more logical to conclude that the left was right, and the right was mostly wrong. Unless, that is, Katrina and Catholic priest sexual abuse were ideas of the left.

Jon Meacham, who's the co-host of PBS's new Need to Know public affairs program, lives in a world where the answers are always found in the center-right part of the political spectrum. You really have to twist yourself in knots in order to try and get this to make any sense, though.

Broadcasting & Cable (3/17/10) spoke with the head of PBS's flagship New York station about the recent hire of Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former MTV and NPR host Alison Stewart for PBS's forthcoming program Need to Know, which is replacing Now and the Bill Moyers Journal:

WNET.org president Neal Shapiro did not rule out the possibility of future synergies between Newsweek and Need to Know.

"We haven't talked about anything specific," he said. "But I think all kinds of natural synergies may happen."

Shapiro said he is not concerned that Stewart and Meacham, who has been a frequent guest on Charlie Rose as well as MSNBC's Morning Joe, will bring ideological baggage to the program.

"They are both are incredibly smart. And I think, given their intellect, neither are people you can pigeonhole left or right. I think they have a history of asking probing questions on all sides."

"Given their intellect" they can't be placed on the left or the right? Yeah, smart people are all centrists, I guess. And by "probing," Shapiro must mean something like treating sources with "charity and dignity and respect."

I'm also looking forward to public television giving us Newsweek synergies. It's hard to think of a better use of PBS resources than providing another platform for commercial journalism.  Maybe if we're really lucky we'll get some Mac Margolis on Need to Know.

FAIR has a new Action Alert reacting to reports that PBS's replacement for the retiring Bill Moyers and the canceled Now series will be headed by Newsweek editor Jon "Center-Right Nation" Meacham. To learn more or to send a message to PBS ombud Michael Getler, click here. Feel free to leave copies of your responses in the comments thread here.

A headline over an Evan Thomas story in this week's Newsweek (3/8/10) tells us:  "We the Problem: Washington Is Working Just Fine. It's Us That's Broken."

Thomas blames, among other things, "our 'got mine' culture of entitlement," adding:

Politicians, never known for their bravery, precisely represent the people. Our leaders are paralyzed by the very thought of asking their constituents to make short-term sacrifices for long-term rewards. They cannot bring themselves to raise taxes on the middle class or cut Social Security and medical benefits for the elderly. They'd get clobbered at the polls. So any day of reckoning gets put off, and put off again, and the debts pile up.

Now that's the problem--the middle class needs to pay more taxes, and everyone should get less from Social Security. These are very familar "hard truths" you hear from corporate pundits. Thomas goes on to finger "the college hookup culture," and suggests that Obama should give in to Republican demands on "tort reform" in order to make progress on healthcare--an offer Obama has actually already made, with no discernible response from Republicans.

The blame-the-people narrative was echoed in Jon Meacham's editor's note, where he advised that we should "own up to the reality that Washington is not an abstraction but a mirror. Our political life is a reflection of who we are, no matter how unattractive we may find the image looking back at us. Washington is an expression, not a thwarting, of the will of the people."

It's odd for journalists to conclude that Washington politics is a perfect expression of Americans' political views. If it were, one would have to think that Congressional approval ratings would be somewhat higher, and that political outcomes would be very different. The public consistently favors higher taxes for the wealthy, for example--but don't hold your breath waiting for pundits to take up that cause.

Meacham goes on to illustrate this misguided notion by comparing Obama's healthcare reform drive with George W. Bush's push to privatize Social Security. The two are apparently similar in that they were both about reforming the system, and Americans prefer the status quo. It's hard to know what to say about that, though one could point out that the threat to the country's fiscal well-being posed by the rising costs of healthcare are  significantly greater than anything having to do with Social Security.

Meacham also warns readers not to idealize the past, though, since urgent political problems weren't solved back then either:

The first report predicting a crisis in Social Security was released 35 years ago, but the fabled bipartisanship of ages past produced only incremental fixes. If more had been accomplished, it would not be an issue today.

That crisis was handled with tax increases that created a multi-trillion dollar surplus for Social Security. The only reason Social Security remains "an issue today" is due to journalists like Meacham making it one, usually by misleading people about the program's imminent collapse.

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's enthusiasm for Dick Cheney is not a new thing. Appearing on MSNBC back in 2004, Meacham praised the Republican National Convention speeches of Cheney and Sen. Zell Miller:

If I taught at the Kennedy School, I would take these two speeches as ur-text of partisan rhetoric. I think it was a brilliant tactical night, one of the most brilliant in the age of television. These were two concise, rather devastating rhetorical hits at John Kerry. And there was just--they did not miss a base. They did not miss anything that they could hit.

The remarkable thing about those two speeches was their breathtaking dishonesty. (See "If Only They Had Invented the Internet," FAIR Media Advisory, 9/3/04.) Those were the speeches in which Miller and Cheney claimed that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was opposed to all U.S. weapon systems, had promised to give the U.N. a veto over U.S. military action, and so on--all blatant falsehoods.  If you saw that non-stop parade of lies as "brilliant," then maybe it's not so surprising that you would be looking forward to Dick Cheney running for president.

The website Gawker (6/9/09) caught Newsweek making some sneaky changes in an online article--changes that were ordered by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, and which just happened to favor the host of a show that Meacham appears on regularly.

On the afternoon of Friday, June 5, Newsweek's website put up an interview with Joe Scarborough, the conservative host of MSNBC's Morning Joe program.  The introduction pointed out that Scarborough had once been the defense attorney for an anti-abortion terrorist who murdered a doctor, and noted that the host had been criticized for giving insufficient attention to the murder of Dr. George Tiller, which occurred less than a week before the interview appeared.

By Friday night, though, the introduction to the interview had been completely rewritten.  Gone was any reference in the lead to abortion shootings, replaced instead by rather bland observations about "the rise of partisan media outlets" and "how conservatives lost their way."  What happened?  Jon Meacham happened, that's what. The Newsweek editor, a frequent guest on Morning Joe, told Gawker he was contacted about the interview by "a member of Scarborough's team," and after looking at the item he decided that "it was better to include that material in the flow of the interview."

Journalists don't usually think it's "better" to make the lead of a story less newsworthy by taking out references to current events.  But then newsworthiness might not be the first thing you think of when you're editing a story about your friend--especially a friend who routinely gives you valuable national TV exposure.  Which is why the better thing to do would have been for Meacham to tell the member of Scarborough's team that he couldn't second-guess the Web editor's decision-making.

The Daily Howler's Bob Somerby has a look (4/27/09) at how Newsweek bigshot Fareed Zakaria "pandered and fawned in dragging out yesterday's panel" on his CNN show

Zakaria: As I was thinking about the smartest people I could gather to talk about the first stage of Barack Obama’s presidency, I thought of that wonderful quotation from Oscar Wilde: "Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it."

So today, I'll be talking with a panel of geniuses. Each of them has books and accomplishments too numerous to mention. I'll talk about a few. The others will be on the screen.

With a set up like that you must be on the edge of your seat, right? Well here's the full roster of Zakaria's "panel of geniuses": Jon Meacham, Walter Isaacson and Peggy Noonan. Click on each of those names for a look at the real nature of their intellects. And click here to read of Zakaria's--Extra!: "Fareed Zakaria, Spokesperson for the Global Elite: Newsweek Pundit Presents Pro-Corporate Views as the Poor’s Perspective" (7-8/08) by Roger Bybee.