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?

Elizabeth Jensen has an interesting piece in the New York Times today (6/20/11) about Los Angeles public television station KCET. After deciding to cut its ties to PBS, the channel is experimenting with different programming options, including Al Jazeera English.

And the results so far, according to one station official:

Mr. Marcus said he had been braced for some criticism from viewers about Al Jazeera English’s point of view, but “most people think it’s been very even-handed.” He praised the scope of coverage, noting that last week the program carried reports from Argentina, China and Sri Lanka. “I would guess those are all stories you would not see on a domestic newscast,” he said.

Perhaps one way to improve public television is to get away from PBS.

The public broadcasting newspaper Current (5/18/11) reports that public television--you know, the non-commercial outlet--will start airing more commercials:

The move could be controversial for the network, which has traditionally prided itself on offering uninterrupted programming over its 40-year history.

PBS will begin breaking into programs with underwriting and promo spots four times per hour on an experimental basis beginning this fall, it told station members at the PBS National Meeting here.

PBS corporate communications official Anne Bentley issued a response that actually begins, "We are always looking at ways to improve the viewer experience." It goes on to say that "It is all about the viewer," and--perhaps most bizarrely--claims, "Initial testing showed that viewers didn't really notice the change." Really? People didn't notice a commercial in the middle of a PBS show?

In other PBS news, some stations are apparently considering leaving PBS altogether, according to a report in the New York Times (5/22/11). The main complaint seems to be about money--the stations think they're paying too much to air the national programming.

There is, of course, a possible silver lining in all of this. One could imagine public TV stations breaking free from PBS and seeking out more independent programming to fill out their schedules. (Democracy Now! instead of the NewsHour-- how does that sound?). It's a long shot, perhaps, but one can at least imagine a brighter future for public television stations that doesn't necessarily involve airing the conventional PBS programming.

Two PBS-related items of interest.

-Last year when PBS announced the retirement of Bill Moyers and the inexplicable cancellation of the excellent Now program,  word came that some public TV stations would be airing a program produced by (yes, this is a real thing) the George W. Bush Institute. The show, Ideas in Action, is host by James Glassman; as FAIR noted, he is

a longtime fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, is perhaps best known for his remarkably optimistic--and wrong--book Dow 36,000. He also regularly penned op-eds for major U.S. newspapers that pushed views and policies that would directly benefit sponsors of his online news site, TechCentralStation.com (Extra!, 3-4/05).

According to a report at the Politico (8/18/10), Glassman's show will air Sunday mornings on WHUT and on Maryland Public Television (MPT).

--The PBS program Nightly Business Report, produced by a public station in Miami, has been sold to "a private company headed by Mykalai Kontilai, a former manager of mixed martial artists," according to a report in the New York Times. The Times notes that the show "has struggled recently to find enough corporate underwriting sponsors," so presumably the new owners think they can do that. The show will continue to be produced at the Miami public station WPBT.

The arrangement is somewhat puzzling: a private company now takes ownership of a public TV program, and will apparently solicit private corporate sponsors for an important "public television" show. Then again, the PBS flagship NewsHour newscast is a project of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, and the majority owner is Liberty Media, the company run by conservative media mogul John Malone.

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.

PBS's NewsHour's  Gwen Ifill (9/15/09), quizzing Richard Goldstone on his U.N. fact-finding mission that found that both Israel and Palestinian fighters had committed war crimes in the Gaza conflict:

The term "even-handed" is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of the Palestinians. Why is that?

CBS News (9/9/09), summarizing a report by Israel's leading human rights group:

Well over half of nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel's Gaza war were civilians, including 252 children younger than 16, a leading Israeli human rights groups said Wednesday, challenging Israel's claim that most of the dead were militants.... The Israeli rights group B'Tselem on Wednesday published figures it said were compiled in months of research, including visits to families of victims. It said 1,387 Gazans were killed, including 773 civilians and 330 combatants. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

So why would the U.N. be more interested in the war crimes that killed nearly 200 times as many people? Thanks to Ifill and the NewsHour for challenging this strange moral reasoning.

A Tiny Revolution's John Caruso (9/5/09) caught an instance of the Public Broadcasting System "Putting the 'BS' in PBS" when they recently "took a break to blandish us thusly: 'If you are seeking a unique sponsorship opportunity for your business and want to reach a prime demographic group through multiple platforms email us today.'"

Reacting to the crass appeal for a California Bay Area underwriter, Caruso reminds the broadcasters: "C'mon, guys, we're sitting right here. Can't you at least do us the courtesy of being subtle about the fact that as far as you're concerned, we're nothing but pairs of eyes for corporate sponsors?"

Citing 15-year-old FAIR warnings of the hazards of such "enhanced underwriting," Caruso also remembers

a day not that long ago when PBS's purpose was to provide, you know, broadcasting services for the public. Now that they're just selling audiences to advertisers like the rest of the corporate media, they really should change the name—though I suppose "Supplier of Prime Demographic Groups to Underwriters through Multiple Platforms" doesn't quite have the same ring (and SPDGUMP doesn't exactly roll off the tongue either).

Caruso even has a suggested rewrite of their longtime "standard sponsorship message as well": "This program was made possible by contributions to your PBS station from Upwardly Mobile Middle Class Consumers Like You. Thank You! But seriously, we're just as happy getting our money from ExxonMobil."

Longtime health insurance company bigwig and former holder of "the ultimate PR job," Wendell Potter recently told PBS' Bill Moyers (Bill Moyers Journal, 7/10/09) how he had been "involved in the campaign by the industry to discredit Michael Moore and his film Sicko," and now sees that "the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used... back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan" for national healthcare reform.

Potter told Moyers that he "knew that 47 million people were uninsured, but I didn't put faces with that number" until he "picked up the local newspaper and I saw that a healthcare expedition was being held a few miles up the road." Seeing "people lined up, standing in line or sitting in these long, long lines, waiting to get care," sparked his defection from the PR machine, and ultimately moved him to appear on Moyers' show to describe the insurance companies' fear of "high-profile cases":

When you have a case like that--a family or a patient goes to the news media and complains about having some coverage denied that a doctor had recommended. In this case, Nataline Sarkisyan's doctors at UCLA had recommended that she have a liver transplant. But when the coverage request was reviewed at Cigna, the decision was made to deny it.

It was around that time, also, that the family had gone to the media, had sought out help from the California Nurses Association and some others to really bring pressure to bear on Cigna. And they were very successful in getting a lot of media attention, and nothing like I had ever seen before....

It got everyone's attention. Everyone was focused on that in the corporate offices.

Unfortunately, the U.S. press' general attention toward the larger story of insurance company evildoing has been neglectful to say the least, as exemplified by the fact that this was Potter's "first extended television interview since leaving the health insurance industry...last year." Encourage journalists to correct at least part of this by signing FAIR's petition to Tell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate.

Noticing how PBS's Gwen Ifill has a penchant for "filling her Washington Week program with journalists who almost invariably agree with each other instead of actually debating the issues of the week," critic Charles Kaiser decided to contact her (CJR.org, 5/8/09) about a recent "discussion of torture in which the only issue the panelists identified was how the Obama administration should deal with the political fallout from the demands for a full-scale investigation and/or prosecution of the officials responsible for American torture."

Kaiser's question of whether it would "ruin the discussion to have one person who believes that a full investigation of American torture and prosecutions of those responsible for it are the only way to rescue the honor of America" received a curt reply from Ifill: "Opinion? You were watching the wrong program if that's what you were looking for."

Aside from its snide tone, Kaiser spells out for Ifill exactly what's wrong with this view:

Gwen,

Everyone at that table obviously believed that investigating and/or prosecuting torture was a political problem for the Obama administration, and nothing more.

That is an opinion, Gwen. The fact that all of you shared it doesn't make it anything else. It does mean you were incapable of acknowledging any other point of view.

This is why we call it "the Washington bubble."

To top it off, after Ifill's subsequent offer to "feel free to call me during working hours. You know how," Kaiser reports that "after three more e-mail requests for an interview, and four voicemails left for Ifill and her two producers over two weeks, the anchorwoman never managed to return any of our phone calls."

New York Times editorialist Lawrence Downes (5/4/09) has some good questions about Pete Seeger's big 90th birthday party. The broadcast surely is bound to "be a PBS special made in pledge-week heaven," but Downes has to "wonder, though, how many of the angry moments will survive":

Will we hear the Native American musicians pleading for support in their battle with Peabody Energy? Peabody is a giant strip-mining company that has been at the center of lawsuits by Southwestern tribes over drinking water and income from mineral rights.

Will we hear the praise for the Clean Water Act of 1972, or the acid remark from one of the Indians: "Ever since that man by the name of Hudson went up that river, it's gone to hell."

The evening was, after all, a benefit for Clearwater, the name of an organization and a boat, both built by Mr. Seeger, that have fought for decades to rescue the Hudson River from life as an industrial sewer. The job isn’t done. Remember PCBs? General Electric dumped tons of them in the river. The company is about ready to dredge them out, but for now they are still there, seeping downriver and into fish.

Some insight into the priorities likely to hold sway in PBS's editing process may be gleaned from the "public" network's long-standing close relationship with at least one major sponsor... General Electric.

A recent Frontline documentary (3/31/09) presented mandatory for-profit healthcare as the only alternative to the current U.S. healthcare system, suggesting that this was the system all other developed nations use--even though the documentary was a sequel to an earlier Frontline report (4/15/08) that examined a wide range of international options, including Taiwan's single-payer model.

If you'd like to ask Frontline why it distorted the healthcare policy options, you can take part in FAIR's Action Alert here.  And you can leave copies of letters you send to Frontline in the comments of this post.

Neurologist Robert Burton warns Salon readers (3/12/09, ad-viewing required) of PBS's latest infomercial. "By airing another self-help show disguised as medical science--the dubious UltraMind Solution--the public network continues to undermine its credibility," Burton writes:

In May I reported that PBS stations were airing medical programs that weren't adequately reviewed or vetted by either the local station or parent PBS corporation. My concern was that publicly funded stations were broadcasting questionable medical claims, made by Daniel Amen, M.D., about unproven methods for the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease, without properly warning viewers the information was controversial. I suggested that, at the very least, the stations should present a clearly visible banner or disclaimer that the program doesn't represent the views of the local station or PBS....

Unfortunately, nearly a year has passed and nothing has changed. Last week, I turned to my local PBS station, KQED, and ran headlong into yet another program of medical self-promotion. Mark Hyman, M.D., a family physician, was talking about "brain fog" and "broken minds" and how such "conditions" could be cured or prevented by using "The UltraMind Solution"--a combination of books, DVDs and home questionnaires.

Hyman's truly insane claim that "diseases don't exist" spurs Burton to exclaim that airing such "dubious science" serves to "demean viewers' reasons for watching public television. Apparently PBS's mission is to raise money by exploiting viewers' gullibility at the expense of trustworthy programming. If so, it has achieved its goal--and undermined the central reason for having educational TV in the first place."

Calling a PBS NewsHour budget plan segment by Judy Woodruff "a primer on how to conduct an interview relying almost solely on Republican talking points," Brad Jacobson (Media Bloodhound, 2/27/09) says her "first question isn't necessarily a Republican talking point, but it might as well be": "$3.66 trillion, is that a number you can actually grasp?"

Seriously, members of the mainstream media need to stop acting like they suddenly have the vapors over big government spending. The Republicans weren't the only ones to preside over the most reckless spending in our government's history over the last eight years, on a war of choice and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in an environment of profligate deregulation and zero investment in infrastructure and our citizens' future. Mainstream news outlets and their anchors and talking heads watched it all unfold while expressing little or no concern at the time.

Woodruff's second question is like a GOP talking-point smorgasbord.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, just two of the terms I heard applied to it today were, No. 1, "radical," and the other one was "taking from the rich to give to the poor." Is this about redistributing wealth in this country?

I guess she couldn't fit "socialist" in there.

Relating how "Woodruff's line of questioning, one GOP economic meme after another, continues nearly unabated throughout the remainder of the interview," Jacobson thinks she's continuing the Jim Lehrer tradition of "giving the often false NewsHour impression that the quality of an interview is due to its length instead of its depth." Despite this unusual for big radio length, Jacobson dares you to "guess how many times she poses a question citing a criticism of an actual economist rather than a Republican?" His tally: "Zero."

No newcomer to the journalist-as-Republican-shill model, read of Woodruff's antics during the last presidential election cycle in this FAIR Press Release: "GOP Rhetoric on Kerry's Voting Record Goes Unchallenged" (3/8/04)

Yesterday the New York Times reported on the status of a new PBS news program Worldfocus. Amidst budget cuts at the New York station where it originates, the program has received some unusual financial support--a $1 million grant from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. What does the funder expect to get out of it? The Times reported that

the foundation expected Worldfocus to produce reports examining how other countries have dealt with the challenges facing the United States, like healthcare and Social Security reform.

The head of the foundation, David Walker, added that the show will maintain "total control over the content."
That's pretty standard language; what the Times should have explained is that the Peterson Foundation has for years specialized in scare-mongering over the future of Social Security and warning against the perils of deficit spending.

Thus, the public broadcaster is taking funds to cover a set of issues from an institution that spends its money advocating a specific political agenda on those issues. Is this OK at PBS? The answer would seem to be yes; over the years FAIR has documented the network's conflict-of-interest double standard.