By the tone of  some of the media coverage, you might have thought Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced a plan to slash military spending yesterday.  On the front page of USA Today (1/27/12), under the headline "Panetta Backs Far Leaner Military," readers learn in the first paragraph:

The Pentagon's new plan to cut Defense spending means a reduction of 100,000 troops, the retiring of ships and planes and closing of bases--moves that the Defense secretary said would not compromise security.

The piece quotes critics of the cuts like Sen. Joe Lieberman and an analyst at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute. And the article talks about the most commonly cited figure of $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. As economist Dean Baker writes about such coverage--"Military Budget Cuts: Denominator Please"--there is no way people can assess the significance of what sounds like a lot of money if they don't know how much the Pentagon is planning to spend over the same 1o-year period--roughly $8 trillion.

The PBS NewsHour did little to clarify the issue. The broadcast began with Jeffrey Brown announcing, "The Pentagon today outlined almost half a trillion dollars in budget cuts that would shrink the size of the U.S. military by trimming ground forces, retiring ships and planes, and delaying some new weapons." PBS aired clips from Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich denouncing the budget cuts, and then interviewed a Pentagon official.

Even coverage of the Pentagon's new "austerity" that managed to include some helpful context didn't make things very clear. "The Pentagon took the first major step toward shrinking its budget after a decade of war" was how a New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller (1/27/12) begins. In the fourth paragraph, readers found this:

Even though the Defense Department has been called on to find $259 billion in cuts in the next five years--and $487 billion over the decade--its base budget (not counting the costs of Afghanistan or other wars) will rise to $567 billion by 2017. But when adjusted for inflation, the increases are small enough that they will amount to a slight cut of 1.6 percent of the Pentagon's base budget over the next five years.

So the "first major step" in cutting the military budget... isn't really a cut?

A Washington Post piece by Craig Whitlock (1/27/12) had a more accurate lead--"The Pentagon budget will shrink slightly next year"-- but later tries to make a 1 percent cut sound more significant: "While the difference may sound small, it represents a new era of austerity for the Defense Department."

To make matters even more confusing, the Post points out later that

Although the defense budget will decline next year, to $525 billion from this year's $531 billion, under Obama's current projections it will inch upward in constant dollars between 1 percent and 2 percent annually thereafter.

Kudos to Nancy Yousef of McClatchy for writing a piece (1/26/12) that took a different tack. Under the headline "Defense Budget Plan Doesn't Cut as Deeply as Pentagon Says," Yousef led with this:

Pentagon officials on Thursday announced the outlines of what they called a pared-down defense budget, but their request would increase baseline spending beyond the projected end of the war in Afghanistan, even as they plan to reduce ground forces.

To Yousef, the Pentagon was " employing a definition of the term 'reduction' that may be popular in Washington but is unconventional anywhere else."

And activist/writer David Swanson pointed out that the first question at Panetta's briefing got right at this question of whether the cuts are really cut. From the transcript:

Mr. Secretary, you talked a little bit on this, but over the next 10 years, do you see any other year than this year where the actual spending will go down from year to year? And just to the American public more broadly, how do you sort of explain what appears to be contradictory, as you talk about, repeatedly, this $500 billion in cuts in a Defense Department budget that is actually going to be increasing over time?

Panetta's answer:

Yeah, I think the simplest way to say this is that under the budget that was submitted in the past, we had a projected growth level for the Defense budget. And that growth would've provided for almost $500 billion in growth. And we had obviously dedicated that to a number of plans and projects that we would have. That's gotta be cut, and that's a real cut in terms of what our projected growth would be.

See the new release from the Institute for Public Accuracy for more of the context largely missing from the Pentagon budget coverage.

Evaluating reporting and commentary about Iran could be reduced to one simple rule: There is no evidence that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon. Statements that suggest otherwise are misleading. Reports that fail to point this out are doing readers/viewers/listeners a disservice.

That sounds simple enough. But don't tell that to the outlets that are being criticized over their Iran reporting.

Take NPR and PBS, both of which were singled out by the group Just Foreign Policy.

A few days ago (1/10/12), the FAIR Blog featured a post criticizing the PBS NewsHour for a deceptive report on Iran. The report introduced a quote from Pentagon chief Leon Panetta with this statement by PBS anchor Margaret Warner: "The Iranian government insists that its nuclear activities are for peaceful energy purposes only, an assertion disputed by the U.S. and its allies."

Panetta's quote immediately followed: "We know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon." My point in that blog post was that right before he said this, Panetta had made a very candid admission about Iran, one that would no doubt be surprising to most corporate news consumers: "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No."

The fact that the NewsHour would clip this statement from his soundbite was troubling. PBS ombud Michael Getler responded (1/12/12) by agreeing that we had a point:

I think FAIR makes a good journalistic catch in calling attention to the fuller quote by Panetta on CBS. It was a very brief and clear statement by the Defense secretary on an important point about whether Iran is actually developing a nuclear weapon.

And NewsHour foreign affairs and defense editor Mike Mosettig editor agrees that "it would have been better had we not lopped off the first part of the Panetta quote."

But Getler thinks it was unfair to to call the PBS edit "dishonest," and he explains why:

The logical understanding that NewsHour viewers--and anyone who has been following this subject--would draw from the portion of the Panetta quote that was used is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon but that they are developing a "nuclear capability" and that the U.S. warning, as Panetta expressed it, is not to cross "our red line" and actually develop a weapon.

So viewers who are paying close attention to Iran coverage (and who are hopefully tuning out the rhetoric coming from many of the Republican presidential candidates) would know that when Panetta was saying, "We know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability," he meant that they were not trying to develop a nuclear weapon--even though the program had edited out his very straightforward explanation of what is actually known about the state of Iran's nuclear program.

This is a curious argument. One of the things that made Panetta's comment so revealing was that it represented a break from the usual chatter about Iran--even within the Obama administration. That's precisely what made it newsworthy. PBS seems to think its viewers should have to read between the lines in order to arrive at the accurate assessment about Iran's nuclear program they left on the cutting room floor.

Now to NPR.

The criticism of Robert Naiman and Just Foreign Policy centered on NPR reporter Tom Gjelten's statement that "the goal for the U.S. and its allies...[is] to convince Iran to give up a nuclear weapons program." The suggestion, it would seem, is that Iran is indeed pursuing such weapons.

But NPR ombud Edward Schumacher-Matos (1/13/12) sees it exactly the other way around. He writes:

The story didn't say or imply that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. As Bruce Auster, the senior editor for national security, notes, "The story was about how the sanctions are designed to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapons program, which automatically suggests it may not have one."

Does NPR really think that the best way to inform its listeners is to assume that when people hear a report about forcing Iran to "give up a nuclear weapons program," these listeners should fill in the blanks themselves so as to arrive at an entirely different meaning? That every time you hear something about Iran's "nuclear weapons program," that is really code for "the-nuclear-weapons-program-that-may not exist-since-there-is-no-evidence-that-it-exists"? That'd be an unusual burden to place on listeners.

For good measure, the ombud throws in another defense of the NPR report by pointing out that the "quote carefully refers to 'a' program--using the indefinite article--and not the definite 'its' or 'the' program." Again, NPR listeners: If you hear one of the reporters use the word "a," remember that could be a reference to something that doesn't exist. Got it?

As if tensions between the United States and Iran weren't high enough, here's PBS NewsHour anchor Margaret Warner (1/9/12):

The Iranian government insists that its nuclear activities are for peaceful energy purposes only, an assertion disputed by the U.S. and its allies. On CBS yesterday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta repeated international demands that Iran stop enriching uranium.

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE LEON PANETTA: But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us. They need to know that, if they take that step, that they're going to get stopped.

The way that's presented you'd think that the United States has evidence that Iran is pursuing a weapon. Leon Panetta's soundbite is from his appearance on Face The Nation on Sunday. But the NewsHour removed one key phrase; right before Panetta says, "But we know," he said this:

Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.

So Panetta's statement--that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon--is being used to argue that the United States disputes Iran's long-standing contention that it not building a nuclear weapon.

The PBS NewsHour did a pretty strong piece last month (8/16/11) on inequality in America. So perhaps it was a sense of "balance" that drove them to do a follow-up segment on September 21 that argued that things aren't so bad after all.

As anchor Jeffrey Brown put it:

NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman has been examining that subject, including studies showing an alarming rise in the so-called wealth gap. But tonight's interview takes issue with that view.

It turns out that one of Solman's old friends, American University economics professor Bob Lerman, didn't much care for that piece: "It would be nice if there was more equality, but let's not overdo it."

In case that doesn't sound convincing to you,  he elaborated:

I think it's somewhat of a problem, but you way overstated it. There were no nuances to the report. You ignored a big source of wealth, which is the wealth embodied in Social Security.

Lerman and Solman go on to visit a nursing home, where older people are apparently enjoying their staggering wealth--mostly in the form of healthcare. As Lerman put it: "Take a lot of the people right here at this nursing home. Medicare is a source of wealth that finances their stay here." Solman seemed to see the logic in this, telling a woman at the home, "Medicare is like a stash of wealth that you're now drawing on." She must have been relieved to know about her secret wealth!

It's hard to imagine comparing assets like a house or cash to the healthcare one receives (or might receive one day)--much of which is derived from taxes you've paid over the years. By that logic, someone who gets really ill and requires massive amounts of care is actually striking it rich!

As we pointed out recently (in response to a Robert Samuelson column about the lucky duck senior citizens), half of all Medicare beneficiaries had incomes below $22,000, and half had less than $2,100 in retirement account savings.

The argument shifts a bit as the segment moves on, as Solman's friend seems to want to argue...well, I'm not sure exactly what you'd call this:

Today, you could have a Ferrari or you could have a Kia. You could stay at the Taj Boston or you could stay at the Holiday Inn. Is there that big a difference? So, let's be clear. The rich do have more opportunity to consume than everyone else, but I'm not sure that we need to be as concerned about it as implicit in your program.

So there's inequality, but the difference between luxury and poverty isn't as wide as you might think. Thanks, PBS.

One of the most common criticisms of the PBS NewsHour is that it too often mimics the elite bias of the commercial media.

A recent broadcast of the NewsHour (6/8/11) had two segments about the debate over the Afghan War--the first a news report covering the Senate nomination hearings for Ryan Crocker, Obama's nominee to be ambassador to Afghanistan. Quoted in the piece were senators Jim Webb (D.-Va.) and Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Barack Obama.

The discussion segment that accompanied it featured two more senators: Republican Saxby Chambliss  of Georgia and New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez. Chambliss is a supporter of the war, with some reservations, while Menendez wants to continue the war with a different strategy: 

I think you could do more of a counterterrorism effort, where you are striking at Al-Qaeda and along the Afghan/Pakistan border, even striking at the Taliban to just to continue destabilize them.

As FAIR pointed out in our most recent study of the NewsHour, actual opponents of the war are hard to find.

On June 7, the NewsHour had a discussion about the state of the economy, and what the White House might be able to do to turn things around. Again, the guestlist was disappointing. Here's Gwen Ifill's introduction:

We explore that now with Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today, Mark Vitner, senior economist for Wells Fargo in Charlotte, N.C., and Tom Binnings, senior partner at Summit Economics in Colorado.

A Beltway political reporter for a mainstream daily, an economist for a bank and a partner at an economic forecasting firm. The banker expressed a view common in corporate America--that there's too much government regulation. ("It seems that regulation has increased.... Companies are really kind of put off by the amount of regulations that are hitting them all at once.")

There was little challenge to that sentiment--a predictable outcome, given the guests that the show booked to talk about the issue. The NewsHour should do better.

Some mystical power forces the corporate media to cover Donald Trump.

In the New York Times today:

But White House officials concluded about a month ago that the falsehoods had moved from "the nether regions of the Internet" into the mainstream political arena, thanks in large part to the efforts of Mr. Trump, the real estate developer and reality television host who has used the issue as a media magnet.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post elaborated on the PBS NewsHour:

I mean, I think that the press probably does bear some responsibility for this but there's no question that what Donald Trump had done over the last month, in bringing this issue back to the forefront, at a time when I think most people thought it had been pretty well settled politically, not that--not that there wasn't still some controversy, but that, for the most part, this wasn't a live issue.

But Donald Trump helped to make it a live issue. And all the press coverage attendant to that, some of it aimed at debunking what Donald Trump was saying, nonetheless contributed to this atmosphere.

"Issues" are not brought "to the forefront" and made a "live issue" by some series of accidents, or the physical properties of magnets. Media outlets make decisions about what to cover.  In Balz's world, Trump started talking and the press simply had to cover it. Trump didn't make anything a "live issue"--people who have television stations and newspapers decided to treat him as if he is a serious person.

The bombing of Libya has sharply divided public opinion, but the PBS NewsHour has avoided a wide-ranging debate by overwhelmingly featuring the views of current and former government and military officials. If you'd like to see a more diverse group of voices arguing the pros and cons of intervention, see FAIR's Action Alert.

Please leave copies of your messages to PBS, and comments on the alert, in the comments thread of this post.

Last night (3/24/11) Jim Lehrer introduced a NewsHour discussion segment about the Libya War:

Now, how it looks to two former U.S. senators, Democrat Gary Hart of Colorado and Republican Norm Coleman of Minnesota. Senator Hart is now a scholar in residence at the University of Colorado and chair of the Defense Department's Threat Reduction Advisory Council. Senator Coleman is CEO of the American Action Network, an issue advocacy organization that supports Republican candidates and policies.

The same broadcast featured an interview with Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough.

Monday's broadcast featured this segment:

JIM LEHRER: Now some perspective on the Mideast turmoil from two former U.S. national security advisers. Zbigniew Brzezinski held that post for President Carter. He's now a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Brent Scowcroft had that same job during the George H.W. Bush administration. He now has his own consulting firm.

And also this one:

GWEN IFILL: Now, for a closer look at the situation in Libya, we turn to retired Maj. Gen. Dutch Remkes. He spent 32 years in the Air Force, including service -- service as a top commander of Operation Northern Watch, the no-fly zone over Iraq. And Robert Malley, he served as director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He's now Middle East and North Africa program director at the International Crisis Group.

That's a lot of Official Voices--exactly the sorts of folks well represented everywhere else in the media. PBS exists (in theory at least) to bring us something more. Unfortunately, this sort of coverage is par for the course on the NewsHour.

UPDATE: Last night's NewsHour:

JEFFREY BROWN: And we assess the military campaign in Libya now.

 For that, we're joined by retired Army Gen. Jack Keane. He was Army vice chief of staff when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001. He now has his own consulting firm. And Frederic Wehrey is a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation. As an Air Force Reserve officer, he served as a military attache in Libya in 2009 and then earlier this year.

 Keane favors putting U.S. Special Forces on the ground in Libya. Wehrey, on the other hand, agrees with that idea.

From the Friday broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (2/4/11) came a discussion about how the U.S. supports dictators--which elicited some chuckles. Remember, Mark Shields is the one who plays the "left" on the program.

MARK SHIELDS: Just one little point of personal privilege on Joe Biden, who did take a hit for not being able to say dictator, but in United States politics, I mean, it's always been, if someone is on our side, he is a strongman.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: If he is on the other side, he is a dictator. I mean, that has sort of been the nomenclature throughout. All of these guys who were such stalwart anti-Communists, I mean, the Marcoses of the world, they were--they became dictators when they fell.

DAVID BROOKS: Hey, strongman is a bad word, too. But this was--the policy, I mean....

MARK SHIELDS: No, I'm not arguing with policy. I'm just...

DAVID BROOKS: I mean, I'm not blaming Biden. They told him what to say.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

Laughing about U.S. support for dictators is one thing. Expressing outrage that the U.S. is abandoning a dictator in his hour of need is another. But that's what MSNBC host Chris Matthews appeared to be saying on Morning Joe today (2/7/11), as he explained that all dictators want to hand off control to their children:

It all comes down to the same thing. They want their oldest kid to replace them. And what was the plan for transition for our friend? Did we ever talk to him about it? Did we talk about it, encourage him? That's my view. Character and planning. And I don't see--I feel shame about this. I feel ashamed as an American, the way we're doing this. I know he has to change. I know we're for democracy, but the way we've handled it is not the way a friend handles a matter. We're not handling as Americans should handle a matter like this. I don't feel right about it. And Barack Obama, as much I support him in many ways, there is a transitional quality to the guy that is chilling.

I believe in relationships. I think we all do. Relationship politics is what we were brought up with in this country. You treat your friends a certain way. You're loyal to them. And when they're wrong, you try to be with them. You try and stick with them.

So on the one hand you have public TV pundits chuckling about U.S. support for dictators--this is just the way the world works, apparently. And on the other hand, a host from the supposedly liberal cable news channel is "ashamed" that our government is not doing enough to support Mubarak.

Joe Biden on Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak (PBS NewsHour, 1/27/11):

 I would not refer to him as a dictator.

 On WikiLeaks' Julian Assange (NBC's Meet the Press, 12/19/10)

 DAVID GREGORY: Mitch McConnell says he's a high-tech terrorist, others say this is akin to the Pentagon Papers. Where do you come down?

 JOE BIDEN: I would argue that it's closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers.

For the record, neither journalist pushed Biden to explain his opinions.

In FAIR's recent study of the PBS NewsHour, we found that discussions of the Afghan War were incredibly narrow--no opponents of a war that is broadly unpopular among the American public were allowed to make their case.

Last night's NewsHour (12/16/10) offered a chance to see that narrow sourcing yet again. The show featured a reported segment on the administration's much-anticipated review of the progress (or lack thereof) in Afghanistan. The NewsHour quoted Barack Obama, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A wide range of views from inside the administration.

For the debate segment, anchor Jim Lehrer presented "two views of the review." The first guest was retired Gen. Jack Keane, a well-known proponent of the Iraq surge. The other guest was Andrew Wilder of the U.S. Institute for Peace. He saw "somewhat modest tactical and operational gains" in the war, and commented favorably on U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. He remained concerned that the Afghan and Pakistani governments were not performing well.

Keane said pretty much the same, though he sounded more certain: "It's unmistakable that the momentum is beginning to switch to our favor." Both agreed that the key to the war is somehow pressuring Pakistan. These are not conclusions that are all that surprising, and would hardly conflict with what you would hear from U.S. officials.

Can't public television offer a wider view? Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) wrote a strong piece critical of the administration's war review, for starters. Independent experts and critics of the war are not exactly hard to come by. They seem to have a hard time being heard on public TV's flagship newscast.

As you may have heard, the White House-backed deficit commission failed to gain a supermajority vote to support a proposal from co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Their suggestions came under sharp criticism from liberal and progressive critics.

But the December 3 broadcast of the PBS NewsHour, a short report on that failure was tilted heavily in favor of supporters of the plan. Quoted in the piece were Bowles, Simpson and their ally Sen. Kent Conrad. Former SEIU chief Andy Stern, who voted against the plan, was the only no vote who was heard from.

On December 1, the NewsHour had interviewed Bowles and Simpson as they continued to make their pitch for their plan. (When asked how he would respond to critics who say the deficit panic is mostly hype, and that other problems are more pressing, Simpson said: " I will tell them to kind of sober up, and the fact that the tectonic plate has shifted in America.").

And the December 3 broadcast included a discussion with conservative David Brooks--who supports the Bowles/Simpson plan--paired with "liberal" Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, who also supports it, praising it for being an "adult" approach to the problem.

If only the debt commission had considered opening the voting to the media--they would have received near-unanimous support.

New York Times columnist David Brooks is a regular on TV talk shows--including his weekly appearance on the PBS NewsHour (allowing the public to hear regularly from a widely syndicated columnist and commercial TV pundit, just as public TV was intended to do!).

On a NewsHour midterm election post-mortem discussion (11/3/10), Brooks made this point about the supposed economic ignorance of some voters:

If you looked at the exit polls, the independents were more likely than other voters to really be alarmed about the deficits. They were also more likely than other voters to want to protect Social Security, Medicare and all the things that create the deficits. If the American people are not willing to square that circle, then how can you expect elected leaders to do that?

If David Brooks believes that Social Security--a government program that at present has amassed a $2 trillion surplus-- is "creating" the deficit, he either doesn't know what he's talking about, or says things that he knows are false because he feels like they make his arguments sound more appealing.

A decent program would either feature another panelist to refute this nonsense--Mark Shields, the show's regular liberal, did not--or have a host who would set the record straight--which didn't happen.

In the coverage of French retirement protests, you often hear U.S. reporters state the debate is over raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. As Dean Baker has pointed out (as did Amitabh Pal from the Progressive, when he appeared on CounterSpin) this is incorrect; the retirement age for most French workers is 65; they are pushing to raise it to 67. Early retirement for some workers would shift from 60 to 62.

Last night (10/19/10) the PBS NewsHour had two discussions on this topic, and both made the same error. A live report by Channel 4 reporter Jonathan Rugman included this John Stosselesque exchange:

RUGMAN: In England, I have to work until 65.

WOMAN: Yes?

RUGMAN: Why shouldn't you in France work until 62?

WOMAN: It's not because Europe has a system, that we have to have the same system. We are not OK with that.

RUGMAN: The French are the French.

WOMAN: France is France.

In a discussion segment,  GlobalPost journalist Mildrade Cherfils said, "But the majority of French people do understand that the retirement age has to change. It has to go from 60 to 62."  With polls showing that the French public overwhelmingly back the protests, one might conclude that the public isn't exactly embracing this "change."

On Wednesday night's broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (9/23/10), Gwen Ifill announced: "Now to the first of several conversations on whether or not to extend tax cuts that expire at the end of the year."

The first guest was Republican Glenn Hubbard, who Ifill told viewers "was the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, and he helped to design those cuts." Not surprisingly, he is a big supporter of extending the tax cuts, and gave the usual laundry list of reasons why, and criticized Obama for creating uncertainty in the markets and so on.

So who else will they feature in this series? One clue came at the end of the show:

JUDY WOODRUFF: In our next conversation, we will hear from Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, who once testified in favor of the Bush tax cuts. He now argues, it's time to let them lapse.

Greenspan, it should be noted, is a conservative Republican, elevated to the Fed by Ronald Reagan, and a lifelong devotee of Ayn Rand. If the point of the series is to explore the tax debate among conservatives, the NewsHour is off to a great start.

Ifill has previously despaired at the partisanship of this debate--Republicans say one thing, Democrats say something else, which led her to wonder: "Is there any real way to sort that out, or is it in both parties' interest to keep that uncertain?"

Sorting it out is the job of journalists. NewsHour can't do that without finding some independent experts to talk about the issue.