What "surprises" Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik (8/30/09) more than this summer's news full of "baroque conspiracy theories" and "weepy hysteria" is "the idea that these are somehow unprecedented."

Hiltzik looks back to an earlier era of supposed presidential "socialism" in the U.S. to see such current claims as "merely the latest examples of a phenomenon that might be called Wirtism"--a label Hiltzik "just coined... to honor the memory of William A. Wirt":

Wirt's day in the sun came back in 1934, when the obscure Midwestern blowhard placed himself at the center of a political maelstrom by "discovering" a plot by members of Franklin Roosevelt's Brain Trust to launch a Bolshevik takeover of the United States.

That Wirt's yarn was transparently absurd didn't keep it from being taken seriously on the front pages of newspapers coast to coast, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. He gave speeches, wrote a book and went to Washington to give personal testimony at a standing-room-only congressional hearing.

If that reminds you of the overly solicitous treatment given by the press, cable news programs and Republican office holders to purveyors of such lurid claptrap as the Obama birth certificate story or the fantasy of healthcare "death panels," now you know why it pays to study history.

One "reason not to chuckle condescendingly at Wirt," Hiltzik warns, "is the thought of what might happen were he to walk the Earth today," when Hiltzik thinks that "rather than being disowned in embarrassment, he'd be lionized as a purveyor of an alternate truth" while "given a gig on cable news and touted as a presidential contender for 2012."

The L.A. Times has published a commentary from Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Marc Weisbrot (7/23/09) furthering recent exposés on the damaging influence of U.S. lobbyists hired by unlawful regimes throughout the world.

Under a headline about "The High-Powered Hidden Support for Honduras' Coup," Weisbrot invites us to

meet Lanny Davis, Washington lawyer and lobbyist, former legal counsel to President Clinton and avid campaigner for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid. He has been hired by a coalition of Latin American business interests to represent the dictatorship that ousted elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in a military coup and removed him to Costa Rica on June 28.

Davis is working with Bennett Ratcliff, another lobbyist with a close relationship to Hillary Clinton who is a former senior executive for one of the most influential political and public relations firms in Washington. In the current mediation effort hosted by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, the coup-installed government did not make a move without first consulting Ratcliff, an unnamed source told the New York Times.

Davis and Ratcliff have done an amazing public relations job so far. Americans, relying on media reports, are likely to believe that Zelaya was ousted because he tried to use a referendum to extend his term of office. This is false.

Weisbrot reminds us that "Zelaya's referendum, planned for the day the coup took place, was a nonbinding poll," "only asked voters if they wanted to have an actual referendum on reforming the country's constitution on the November ballot," and "Zelaya would be out of office in January, no matter what steps were taken toward constitutional reform" Zelaya even "has repeatedly said that if the constitution were changed, he would not seek another term."

Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Greg Grandin on Honduras Coup" (7/3/07).

Charlie Savage did some good reporting on the Bush signing statements, but  his front-page story in today's New York Times on reproductive rights groups' reaction to Sotomayor is way off course. His lead explains that abortion rights advocates are worried about Sotomayor, because "when she has written opinions that touched tangentially on abortion disputes, she has reached outcomes in some cases that were favorable to abortion opponents."

OK, so what are those opinions? Here's what he names: She ruled in favor of the Bush administration's reinstatement of the global gag rule; she ruled that anti-abortion protesters could take police to court for allegedly using excessive force to break up one of their demonstrations; and she's ruled in a few cases in favor of Chinese refugees seeking asylum because of China's forced abortion policies.

Now, who's uneasy about these? I've looked around, and the only one cited by any reproductive rights groups I've seen is the first--it was a case brought by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (now the Center for Reproductive Rights)--though I've also seen other reproductive rights advocates say it was a narrow ruling based pretty clearly on precedent and not something that would threaten Roe. The second one I haven't seen mentioned --it would seem to be about abusive police conduct rather than reproductive rights, anyway, so it's not really clear why it should be included here.

But the third category is just absurd. Those are pro-reproductive rights rulings that no reproductive rights group I've heard of is protesting (and it would be frankly bizarre and troubling if they were). He even quotes an anti-choice activist saying basically as much, though in a much more pejorative way: "even 'the most radical feminist' would object to forcing women to abort wanted pregnancies."

So why were those seemingly unrelated cases included in the piece? It seems Savage got most of the material for this article--an article about reproductive rights groups' reactions to Sotomayor, remember--from a religious anti-choice group's website. And as far as one can tell from reading the article, the only people he actually spoke to were two anti-choice advocates. That's a mighty odd way to write about reproductive rights backers' feelings on the subject. Since part of the way the anti-choice movement works to chip away support of reproductive rights is to falsely frame advocates as "pro-abortion," Savage plays right into their hands, making that association for them on the front page of the New York Times.

It does seem that some reproductive rights groups are concerned about Sotomayor's position on Roe v. Wade, since that hasn't been spelled out yet. If you're going to write about that, here's a much more logical (and responsible) way to do it--talking to reproductive rights groups in order to frame your story about what their concerns are, rather than using their opponents' talking points to conjure up false arguments.

Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post, 5/25/09) is offering, as "a particularly egregious example" of corporate media as "enabler of the transformation of real reform into D.C. 'reform,'" a May 23 L.A. Times editorial she thinks "might as well have been written by industry lobbyists (the way many 'reform' bills are)." After her initial reaction to the subhead, "Stung by the excesses of the financial services industry, Congress is striking back"--"Actually, it wasn't Congress that was 'stung' by those 'excesses'--it was the entire world. And why is regulation of out-of-control markets 'striking back'?"--Huffington warns us that "it gets worse":

"Rather than trusting market forces, Democrats in Congress and the administration argue that unbridled capitalism has victimized consumers."

Who wrote this, the "tea party" organizers? Glenn Beck? Since when do things like setting ground rules and demanding transparency mean you no longer believe in "market forces"?

Apparently, according to the L.A. Times, the call for reform is now a "backlash" in which "Democratic majorities in Congress" are going to "clip the financial industry's wings." And this is bad because reform means "raising costs and limiting the freedom of savvy investors and borrowers."

Really? I wonder just how many of those "savvy investors" made money in, say, 2008, when they were blissfully free of all the wing-clipping regulations the L.A. Times is so afraid of? Not many--and that's because all investors, savvy and non-savvy alike, are victimized when the entire financial system is destabilized. In fact, I believe I've heard something about the crisis affecting the L.A. Times, too.

Noting that "the closer we get to actual reform, the more hysterical the debate surrounding it becomes," Huffington tells how "mainstream media's habit of internalizing bad faith arguments in the name of 'balance' becomes more pronounced; and the public interest loses out to the interests of the established financial/political class."

Reporting that "L.A. Times blogger Andrew Malcolm started a web freakout" by suggesting "that the White House was blocking press access to a ceremony with the National Newspaper Publisher's Association," American Prospect blogger Adam Serwer (3/20/09) writes that, "in fact, part of the ceremony was an exclusive interview which naturally, the NNPA didn't want other reporters to have access to." But Serwer sees an entirely different, more substantive story here:

Lost in the hubbub is the fact that the NNPA is an association of a formerly thriving breed, the black community newspaper. Obviously the decline of the newspaper has hurt even very successful publications, but these newspapers, which report in great detail on issues and events that often get overlooked by larger publications, have been hurting for a long time. The black newspaper in America has a long, often heroic history: When white papers ignored crimes of lynching and brutality against black folks in the South, black newspapers published stories about them.

The NNPA itself has only been around for about 70 years, but it's the last of its kind. The fact that the president is giving the NNPA an exclusive interview is both a recognition of the perilous status of the black community newspaper and its illustrious history. Currently, the NNPA offices are located at Howard University, where in addition to publishing pieces from member papers, they train journalism students there in the craft of reporting.

"Given the state of the press these days," Serwer thought "this would be something worth writing about. But like the stories that the NNPA member papers themselves cover, this one isn't worth the big boys' time."
See Extra!: "A Different Race: The Black Press Reveals Gaps in Mainstream Election Coverage" (11-12/04) by Jacqueline Bacon.

Over on Media Matters' County Fair blog (3/12/09), Jamison Foser asks, "Is there any major-newspaper reporter who is more consistently wrong than Andrew Malcolm?" The latest gaffe by the Laura Bush flak-turned-L.A. Times writer comes in response to filmmaker Michael Moore's explaining what he sees as the difference between Democratic framing of Rush Limbaugh as the GOP's real leader and Republicans' similar claim about Moore and the Democratic Party:

But some commentators (Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, Chuck Todd of NBC News, etc.) have likened this to "what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore." Perhaps. But there is one central difference: What I have believed in, and what I have stood for in these past eight years--an end to the war, establishing universal healthcare, closing Guantánamo and banning torture, making the rich pay more taxes and aggressively going after the corporate chiefs on Wall Street--these are all things which the majority of Americans believe in too.

Malcolm's LATimes.com piece, attempting to summarize this passage, said:

Moore lists numerous ways that Republican strategists went after him in past years--books, ads, funny photos and how he was booed off the Oscar stage even in liberal Hollywood for his early opposition to the Iraq War, Guantánamo, torture and other things. Did that help Democratic Senator Kerry not get elected in 2004? "Perhaps," Moore admits.

Foser points out that

if you read what Moore wrote, you'll notice that Malcolm is simply not telling the truth. Moore's "perhaps" was not an admission that Republican attacks on him helped to defeat John Kerry; not even close. Moore said "perhaps" there is some similarity between what Democrats are currently doing and what Republicans tried to do to him; he is not saying Republicans were successful. Malcolm simply made that up, and ripped Moore's comment out of context in order to hide the fabrication.

Actually, Foser's citation of the quote's actual context shows that, "In fact, Moore said the GOP's attacks on him backfired."