Corporate media's incredibly uncritical boosterism of so-called "free trade" deals has been remarked on many times, and continues to be remarkable.

What else but blind faith would allow a story to carry a line like one in the October 12 New York Times, about textile industry opposition to the new deal with South Korea: "The production of shirts and sheets has shifted steadily from the United States to countries with lower-cost labor. Economists argue that this process strengthens the economy as companies and workers shift to more productive and lucrative kinds of work." Of course, if the Times has evidence of laid off textile workers' mass movement to more lucrative work, they're sitting on the scoop of the century.

Elite media's presentation of deals like those just passed with South Korea, Colombia and Panama consists of a barrage of unchecked claims: This time around, those featured funny numbers from proponents, who spoke of increased export growth without talking about imports--kind of like giving half a baseball score--and misleading context, like setting the deals within a storyline about jobs when there's no evidence such deals promote them.

Then you get a line, like that in the October 13 New York Times, once the deals have passed and been heralded as a "rare moment of bipartisan accord," that "the passage of the trade deals is important primarily as a political achievement, and for its foreign policy value in solidifying relationships with strategic allies. The economic benefits are projected to be small."

Some would call that bait and switch. For the corporate press on trade deals, it's standard operating procedure.

New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer takes a look (8/26/11) at U.S. trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama that are currently languishing in Congress. The piece calls them "free-trade" agreements, which is generally misleading: Trade deals usually involve complicated horse-trade negotiations regarding tariffs, patent protection and the like--meaning they make trade in some ways less free.

But more important are the other assumptions in the piece:

The three free-trade agreements, which originated with the Bush administration, would eliminate tariffs on cross-border transactions, expanding exports of American goods by about $12 billion a year, according to estimates by the United States International Trade Commission. Under the agreements, American service providers would be able to compete in the three countries, ostensibly adding new jobs to the American economy. Because of this, they are widely supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business trade groups.

First is the assumption that these deals do something special to increase U.S. exports. A study from Public Citizen last year found more export growth to countries that don't have "free trade" agreements with the United States.  (Todd Tucker joined us on CounterSpin to talk about it at the time.) And the estimates of export growth haven been called into question as well.

"Ostensibly adding new jobs to the American economy" seems like a rather generous leap of faith.  Critics have consistently argued that these deals will cost jobs-- even the New York Times concluded last year that the Korea pact "is likely to result in little if any net job creation in the short run, according to the government's own analysis."

Lastly--is there any reason to suspect that the "U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business trade groups" support these trade deals because they create U.S. jobs? As Dean Baker put it:

Corporations do not exist to create jobs, nor do they claim this as a goal. Invariably, corporate CEOs will say that their responsibility is to produce returns for shareholders as they announce large layoffs. If the Chamber of Commerce is supporting these deals, it is because it believes that they will increase profits, end of story.

With the discussion of Afghanistan sounding more and more like the debate over Iraq these days, we thought it would be worthwhile to point out how similar the media rhetoric around all of the U.S.'s recent wars has been. To that end, we've put up some classic FAIR articles from the January/February 1990 issue of Extra!--which happens to be the first issue that I edited--critiquing corporate media coverage of the Panama invasion.

There's the main piece, "How Television Sold the Panama Invasion" by Mark Cook and Jeff Cohen, documenting how U.S. journalists viewed the brief war through the eyes of the U.S. military and Panama's tiny elite; "Censored News: Drug Links of Panama's New Rulers," which exposed the hypocrisy of the main rationale offered for the invasion; "'Noriega Offered His Usual Damp, Limp Handshake to Bush's Firm Grip,'" dissecting the propaganda offered in a Newsweek cover story; and "Reporters Rallying Round the Flag," which offered this classic quote from a CBS producer:

When American troops are involved and taking losses, this is not the time to be running critical commentary. The American public will be rallying around the flag.

For more evidence that coverage of U.S. warfare hasn't changed all that much in the past three decades, see FAIR's work on Kosovo, Somalia, the Gulf War and Grenada.