Adam Liptak of the New York Times (8/31/09) says that we can thank Riverside, California's Press-Enterprise for having "fought ferociously" in multiple Supreme Court battles ensuring "the press and the public have nearly an absolute constitutional right to attend jury selection in criminal cases."

According to Liptak, "news organizations used to consider those kinds of lawsuits a matter of civic responsibility":

"For the last four decades, maybe longer, citizens have been able to rely on small, medium and large news organizations, mostly newspapers, to fight their access battles on their behalf," said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press....

These days, she said, "the access litigations have dried up."

It is notable, for instance, that the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups have taken the leading role in trying to shake loose information about the Bush administration's policies and actions, while news organizations have largely sat on the sidelines.

Also notable are exactly which public interests the Times usually wields its own considerable budget in favor of--still, its valuable, if disconcerting, to read Adam Liptak reporting that the Press-Enterprise is now "so strapped that it’s quit distributing free copies of the paper to staff members in the city room."

On news that "today, a federal court threw out the Federal Communications Commission's rule to cap cable ownership at 30 percent," Free Press (8/28/09) comments "the rule served as an important consumer protection from media consolidation and growing cable cartels, and encouraged diversity in ownership in the cable industry."

The media advocacy group's Ben Scott further calls it

regrettable that the court tossed out an important public interest protection against excessive media consolidation. Congressional intent in the Cable Act of 1992 is very clear--the goals of federal policy in the cable industry are to promote competition, consumer choice and a diversity of programming. And yet today we have a cable cartel--the video industry is dominated by only a handful of large cable operators and studios.

Today consumers experience perpetual price hikes by large operators that already have market dominating purchasing power to decide the fate of new channels. The promises of lower prices through competition from satellite and telecom companies in the video business have never been realized.

While today "the court ruled the FCC's action as 'arbitrary and capricious,'" Free Press reminds us of how "the same court threw out the rule in 2001, but it was reinstated by the FCC in 2008 due to fears of growing market power of big cable companies."

Free Press's newest release (7/31/09) touts some fresh congressional legislation that "Would Protect Net Neutrality Once and for All." According to the media reform activists, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 "would protect Network Neutrality under the Communications Act, safeguarding the future of the open Internet and protecting Internet users from discrimination online."

Policy director Ben Scott explains how

the future of the Internet as we know it depends on maintaining freedom and openness online. This crucial legislation will help to ensure that the public--not big phone and cable companies--controls the fate of the Internet.

The rules that govern the Internet must protect economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech online. If we don't make Net Neutrality the law once and for all, we could see the innovation and promise of the Internet derailed forever.

While warning that "an army of lobbyists has been unleashed by the phone and cable companies to kill Net Neutrality so they can become the Internet's gatekeepers," Scott maintains that "the momentum is shifting in the public's favor," with "popular support...growing every day"--as evidenced by the fact that "millions have already called on our lawmakers to take action."

Brad Jacobson is resurrecting the "NYT Front|Back" feature of his Media Bloodhound blog (7/10/09)--spotlighting the New York Times' "penchant for placing a supremely unnewsworthy story on its cover while burying a vital one in its back pages"--only for "the most egregious and absurd examples."

The current example being their July 7 front-page headliner, "In Sex Film Industry, Some Long for a Real Plot":

No, this isn't satire. It's a cover story on our nation's paper of record.... The article opens:

The actress known as Savanna Samson once relished preparing for a role. "I couldn’t wait to get my next script," she said.

There's no reason to look at them anymore, she said, because her movies now call almost exclusively for action. Specifically, sex.

Jacobson commiserates with the Times editors' concerns: "Two wars. Jobless rate at nearly 10 percent. Healthcare in crisis. And if that weren't enough to bear, now there are dwindling plot lines in our pornography!"

Meanwhile, the same day's placement of an "In Senate, Debate on Detainee Legal Rights" piece way back on page A18 has Jacobson convinced that "apparently the Times thinks Americans are, as the kids say, so over the issue of detainee rights that the dearth of pornography plots trumped this story by 18 pages":

Intro:

Obama administration lawyers said Tuesday at a Senate hearing that detainees prosecuted by military commissions should have some of the same constitutional rights as American citizens tried in civilian criminal courts....

"So you are saying that these people who are in Guantánamo, who were part of 9/11 or committed acts of war against the United States are entitled to constitutional rights of the Constitution of the United States?" Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the panel, asked administration officials at one point.

Looking past "this article's banishment to the back pages," Jacobson notes how "the story fails to include a substantive factual rejoinder to Senator McCain's misleading statement"--the facts being that "scores of detainees have already been released by the U.S.," but only "after being held for years with no charge and incurring what the Times calls 'brutal' interrogation techniques but the rest of the world calls 'torture.'"

The Women's Media Center has a new action (7/10/09) asking you to support "Media Justice for Sotomayor" against the fact that ,"since the announcement of [her] nomination to the Supreme Court, some in the media have engaged in sexist and racist attacks against her" which are "often packaged as 'news' and endlessly discussed in mainstream media outlets":

The Women's Media Center is releasing its new video, "Media Justice for Sotomayor." It documents some of these racist and sexist comments already delivered on high-profile television programs, radio, print and online outlets.

As Judge Sotomayor's confirmation hearings approach on July 13, the Women's Media Center expects vigorous debate of Sotomayor's qualifications and abilities. But we call on the media to refrain from allowing sexist and racist remarks to go unchecked....

Sign on to our WMC statement....

I join the Women's Media Center in strongly opposing the use of sexist and racist attacks against Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The characterizations of her as an "affirmative action pick," “Hispanic Chick lady," "a brown woman," "an angry woman" and "a school marm" shown in the WMC's "Media Justice for Sotomayor" video are unacceptable....

Additionally, the WMC requests that, "if you see examples of sexism, racism or classism against Sotomayor in the media's coverage of her confirmation hearings, please send them to us." Also see the recent FAIR Media Advisory: "Misquoting Sotomayor: Media Let Right-Wing Critics Frame Debate" (6/2/09).

Salon's Greenwald (6/27/09, ad-viewing required) has taken a hard look at Washington Post and ProPublica journalists Peter Finn's and Dafna Linzer's report--"relying exclusively on three Obama officials speaking behind a veil of anonymity"--"that the White House is 'crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.'" Finding it "revealing" that "the article quotes two Bush national security officials justifying the need for detention without charges," Greenwald writes of how "anonymous trial balloon articles like this one are difficult to comment on because it's obviously designed to announce that a certain policy is being considered before it's actually written, and so none of the key details is known." That said, he gives it a shot anyway:

This specific article is even worse than the usual one of its type, since it's particularly uncritical in passing along administration claims without any skepticism.... Worse, the article does not provide any information about the Obama officials whose mission the reporters are dutifully carrying out, so there's no way to assess their motives.

Those journalistic practices produce egregious sentences like this: "'Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order,' the official said."

Greenwald would really "love to know which so-called 'civil liberties groups' are pushing the White House for an executive order establishing the power of indefinite detention," telling us that "it's certainly not the ACLU or Center for Constitutional Rights, both of which issued statements vehemently condemning the proposal."

Addressing Bush-era Department of Justice investigations, David Swanson (6/26/09) is asking OpEd News readers the provocative question, "Did you know the United States has in recent years prosecuted hundreds of people for political reasons?"

This is a crime, or rather a crime wave, that has thus far been addressed primarily by ignoring it. You can read a lot about it from bloggers like Larisa Alexandrovna or Scott Horton. But you won't hear the president mention it on TV.

In an attempt to convince the corporate media that this issue ranked right up there with governors' sex lives and celebrities' deaths, a group of notable speakers, judges, attorneys, victims and witnesses gathered and spoke on Friday morning at the National Press Club.

Swanson's piece includes the text from "what I blogged from the event" and tells us that "you can watch the whole forum on C-SPAN. You won't find it anywhere else."

Washington Monthly contributing editor Art Levine has a piece for In These Times (5/31/09) reporting on economist Anne Layne-Farrar's recent congressional appearance in which she

warned about the horrendous impact of the Employee Free Choice Act. Its potential to increase union membership from between five and 10 percent, she said, 'would result in an increase in the unemployment of around one and a half to three percentage points.'

Levine tells us how "Fox 'Fair and Balanced' News, naturally, in its TV report neglected to mention that her 'research' was funded by the corporate-friendly, anti-union 'Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs,'" and directly takes on Layne-Farrar's estimate "that 600,000 jobs would be lost in the first year after the EFCA became law":

Layne-Farrar massages the data using a complex "regression analysis" to connect the dots between card check, higher unionization rates and more unemployment, putting the loss at between 600,000 and 2.6 million new American jobs in the first year.

"That's bullshit," says Canadian labor economist Charlotte Yates, now the Dean of Social Sciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. "I don’t know of any credible economists who say [now] there is a direct correlation between unionization and the rise in unemployment."

Despite being so flawed as to elicit such strong exclamations from prominent academic economists, "since the report's publication in March, this statistic has circulated through the media, showing up on MSNBC, CBS News, the Wall Street Journal and, in spades, Fox News." For more on corporate media coverage of EFCA, read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "For Media, 'Card Check' Promise Is One to Break: Corporate Outlets Suddenly Discover 'Workers Rights'" (2/09) by Janine Jackson.

Progressive critic Dr. Roberto Rodriguez has a new commentary (New America Media, 6/2/09) demonstrating how the miserable press reaction to Judge Sonia Sotomayor's U.S. Supreme Court "nomination clearly shows us is that what this nation needs is more incisive journalism, not less." But, Rodriguez laments, "to be sure, the rise of right-wing media, which include Fox News and virtually all the known right-wing radio talkshow hosts, is the antithesis of journalism":

Their coverage of the Sotomayor nomination points to the need for honest debate, not simply on the issues of race, but on the right wing's aversion to truth. It also points to the right wing's pompous beliefs, on every topic, including affirmative action, that their positions are "American."

Extremist politicos Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo, both of whom have zero credibility but are stars of right-wing media, have led the charge that Sotomayor is a racist. They have been joined by the usual wingnuts: Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, to name a few. Even Juan Williams of NPR, has parroted the claim that Sotomayor's (out-of-context) statements are racist. The fact that the nation’s discussion centers on whether she is a racist or not--or that she is an "affirmative action" pick (Buchanan)--points to both the power of the wingnuts and also to the virtual impotence, or complicity, of mainstream media.

While "these pundits who daily rant against 'illegal aliens,' and who daily clamor on the need to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, are quoted as credible sources by the mainstream press," Rodriguez remains hopeful that "the majority of Americans can see through the false arguments...by these so-called patriots." Yet "this does not hold true for the mainstream media. As we are seeing with Sotomayor, all it takes is a handful of 'extremists' to control and shape the media debate."

Writing on Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) of the "controversy surrounding Jeffrey Rosen's New Republic anonymity-driven smear attack on Sonia Sotomayor's intellect and character," Glenn Greenwald sees more evidence that

the one trait that defines establishment pundits more than any other is a pathological inability ever to accept blame or admit error. That's because they work in the most accountability-free profession in America, where people like Bill Kristol (with a record like this) and Jeffrey Goldberg (with a record like this) get promoted despite no retractions or remorse, and establishment media stars in general can pretend that they bear no responsibility for enabling the abuses and crimes of the Bush years. And all of that is simply an extension of the prevailing ethos that political, financial and media elites should be immunized from accountability in general--which is why the Beltway elite class collectively scoffs at the very notion that there should be any consequences at all when our highest political leaders commit the most serious crimes.

Greenwald recounts for us how, in the New Republic's latest contribution to "that grand accountability-free tradition," Jeffrey "Rosen blames everyone but himself for what he did, but then melodramatically announces that he will no longer 'blog'--as though it's the medium, rather than his own standards and choices, that are to blame for what he did."

Veteran actor and activist Peter Coyote (SFChronicle.com, 5/30/09) writes about big media's overriding response to the "Largest Environmental Lawsuit in History--Silence." Taking a look at "the practices that are going on behind Chevron's carefully cultivated 'green' image" as they "drill for oil in the jungles of the Ecuadorian Amazon," Coyote does give credit to the Washington Post reporting of "several damning letters" like "an internal 1972 memo...instructing Texaco [now Chevron] officials in Ecuador to report only spills that attracted the attention of the news media." Nonetheless:

This is a case of epic proportions, where our commons, the lungs of the planet, have been violated needlessly and carelessly, to save money with no thought whatsoever paid to the thousands of people, and millions of species, that would be poisoned while the American media basically slept. Those of you who may have noticed the cozy interview with the [executive vice] president of Chevron in the SF Chronicle last week might not have noticed the small article in the Chronicle's business section mentioning the protests outside of the Chevron stockholders meeting in San Ramon on May 26. Cofan Indian leader Ermenegildo Quillolo, and lead-American attorney for the defense Steve Danziger, Ecuadorian community organizer Luis Yanza, members of Amazon Watch and a host of NGOs seeking to protect the Amazon were there protesting the actions of Chevron, and alerting stockholders that their company paid $30 billion dollars for a company with $27 billion dollars of liabilities attached, a gross failure of due diligence. We, the public, were not offered a comparable interview with the Ecuadorians, Steven Danziger or members of Amazon Watch.

Even though "this spill dwarfs the Exxon Valdez," Coyote notes that it, "aside from an excellent piece on 60 Minutes, remains virtually unreported. How many of you know about it? And if not, why not?" Listen to a similar story of oil company crimes and media neglect on the current FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Han Shan on Shell & Ken Saro-Wiwa" (5/29/09).

Claiming that he doesn't "know at this point whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice for Supreme Court justice or a bad one," critic Dave Lindorff (ThisCantBeHappening.net, 5/28/09) does note that she "is a lousy judge for writers and other creative people" for ruling "that the [New York] Times and periodical publishers could reprint, without any additional compensation, any freelance works they contracted." Then Lindorff proceeds to get to the real problem at the core of so much of the media criticism directed toward Sotomayor:

But the elite--the white male editors and TV commentators, the white male politicians, and the white male public--don't see their own decisions as rooted in their white male expereience. They see their experience as being "normal" and "unbiased." It is, to them, only others who are not "normal" like them who are biased, or or who are carrying some kind of chip on their shoulders.

See some particularly egregious examples recently critiqued on FAIR Blog by activism director Peter Hart and editor Jim Naureckas.

Remembering all too well how the New York Times "helped sell the Iraq War with a bogus story about aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges and withheld evidence of illegal spying on Americans for more than a year," Consortium News editor Robert Parry (5/21/09) tells how the paper "is again mishandling a sensitive story in a way that panders to the right." Pointing to a May 21 Times headline and lead "reporting that a Pentagon study has concluded that 'about one in seven of the 534 prisoners' transferred out of the Guantánamo Bay prison 'returned to terrorism or militant activity,'" Parry writes that "that is not what the Pentagon can possibly know:"

Beyond the weaknesses in the Pentagon's evidence, which is only noted deep inside the Times article, there is the unsupported assertion by the Times that the detainees have "returned" to violent activity, thus assuming that the freed prisoners had previously been engaged in terrorism or other extremism.

Even assuming that the study is correct about one in seven engaging in militant activity after release, the evidence is lacking about the prisoners previous acts of terrorism because--if such evidence existed--the Bush administration presumably would not have released them.

In other words, the most that the Times should have reported is that the Pentagon study claimed that one in seven engaged in militant activities after leaving Guantánamo.

In fact, parry notes one scenario completely ignored by the Times' Elisabeth Bumiller: "it is entirely possible that some ex-prisoners became radicalized and joined with extremists because of their sometimes brutal treatment in U.S. custody at Guantánamo." Read FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Dangerous Revisionism Over Guantánamo: Citing Dirty Evidence to Defend Dubious Detentions" (2/09) by Andy Worthington

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.