Politico (10/14/09) published a list of top topics on Glenn Beck's Fox News show, based on a search of Nexis transcripts since the show's January 2009 debut. It's instructive to look at the placement of some individuals, groups and places in the news as an indication of Beck's sense of whom and what his audience should be informed about:

ACORN: 1,224

Van Jones: 267

SEIU: 259

Afghanistan: 97

Iraq: 95

Valerie Jarrett: 52

Mark Lloyd: 50

Al-Qaeda: 50

Bill Ayers: 46

John Holdren: 43

Jeremiah Wright: 42

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: 41

Osama Bin Laden: 40

Taliban: 38

The Drudge Report (9/16/09) is featuring this headline (in scary red type):

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year...

The link goes to a CBSNews.com post, which declares:

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

Well, there's one problem: $1,700 is the upper estimate. The second, far more important problem: This was an analysis based on a plan that called for auctioning all of the carbon-burning permits; the bill that passed the House auctions just 15 percent of the permits, meaning that this document (FOIAed by the corporate-friendly Competitive Enterprise Institute) bears almost no relationship to reality.

The CBS report has an "update" at the bottom of the piece, from the kind of people CBS didn't bother to quote (preferring the likes of the Heritage Foundation and CEI, staunch critics of cap-and-trade):

Update 9/16/2009: The Environmental Defense Fund has responded to the documents' release with a statement saying, in part:

"Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.

"The bill passed by the House sends the value of pollution permits to consumers, and it contains robust cost-containment provisions. Every credible and independent economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (such as those done by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency) says the costs will be small and affordable -- and that the U.S. economy will grow with a cap on carbon."

That is kind of like saying "IGNORE THE PRECEDING REPORT."

The Politico had a brief story on this as well by Ben Smith--not nearly as bad as CBS's-- that also included a late correction:

CORRECTION: The League of Conservation Voters' Navin Nayak points out to me that the documents are a bit less than meets the eye: They refer to a version of the legislation profoundly different than the one that passed. Specifically, the original White House plan had 100 percent of emissions permits being distributed by auction; the plan that passed has just 15 percent.  "Can you say 'irrelevant analysis'? It would be like pricing the healthcare bills currently in front of Congress based on a single-payer system," he writes.

He also notes that the revenue comes directly from polluters, not taxpayers, and continues (and I'm quoting him at length because my original post was sloppy):

"Why not use the CBO analysis of the house bill? Republicans seem more than happy to use CBO when it helps their case (i.e. Against some of the health care bills). But CBO said that ACES would only cost a postage stamp a day per household...in 2020."

So the scary-sounding statistic is nonsense. Nonetheless, one can expect to hear this "It will cost you $1,700!" factoid all the time.

Somehow the Drudge-friendly news site Politico managed to write an entire piece today about pressure on the White House from anti-war left ("W.H. Fears Liberal War Pressure") without actually quoting anyone who might apply that pressure. Reporter Mike Allen did gather thoughts from Matt Bennett of the Third Way think tank (a self-consciously centrist group incoherently labeled  the "moderate voice of the progressive movement"), White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell and several anonymous White House officials. Bennett commented that Obama's supporters "are fighting a really serious political battle to keep the criticism under control." They probably don't need to work that hard at it--not with the help they're getting from establishment media outlets like Politico.

Following the growth of "a new right-wing scare tactic" that "has blossomed on conservative blogs and emails lists," Talking Points Memo Muckraker Zachary Roth (7/28/09) describes the healthcare meme as "the notion that the reform bill making its way through the House would lead to euthanasia by requiring senior citizens to submit to 'end-of-life consultations'"--and thinks that maybe

it won't surprise you to learn this is a lie. But President Obama just got a question on it at a public event. And the idea has now made it into Politico, where a straight news story asks in its headline, all even-handed: "Will Proposal Promote Euthanasia?" Since Politico thinks it'll be easier to "win the morning" by misleading readers into believing there's a legitimate debate over this issue, it's worth taking a minute to debunk it.

In fact, Politico's story contains pretty much all the information needed to do that. It's just that almost none of it makes it into the headline, or the first seven paragraphs of the piece, which focus on the fact that Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, John Boehner, Eric Cantor and other reforms opponents are raising the euthanasia alarm.

Explaining how the clause in question would really only require that regular consultations with seniors contain "an explanation by the practitioner of the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice," Roth notes that "seniors are in no way required to take advantage of this benefit."

Roth tells how "Politico renders this information as: 'It does not mandate individuals to take advantage of the benefit, proponents say'" [Roth's emphasis].

"Nor is there any reasonable basis for believing that these consultations, if chosen, would do anything to promote euthanasia," Roth writes, especially since it "is illegal in 48 states anyway."

Furthering the story of "Washington Post executives--reeling...over a flier promoting a 'salon' for lobbyists to mingle with prominent newsmakers," Politico reporters Michael Calderone and Andy Barr (7/4/09) think the suits at the Post might reasonably ask "Why us?":

The fact is the Post's clumsy effort to make money on its brand name and market its access to the powerful was a belated effort to follow in the steps of at least two other prominent news organizations: The Wall Street Journal and the Economist magazine.

The Journal, for instance, is charging a $7,500 for its two-day CEO Council in November, an elite gathering that will include the paper's top editors and high-profile speakers like Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. And for a few thousand dollars, the Economist can open the door to intimate off-the-record meet-and-greets with world leaders.

These events illustrate how the basic transaction--charging big fees to special interests to arrange private, special-access encounters with powerful people--that caused the Post this week to be excoriated is a more endemic practice than many people in political and media circles realize. Some watchdogs hope this week's Post scandal will help put an end to a hard-to-defend practice by revenue-hungry news organizations.

The quote from one such watchdog, Pew Project director Tom Rosenstiel, makes it totally clear: "He said, news organizations are 'encouraging the notion in the reader's mind that [they're] part of some insider establishment that it considers more important than public knowledge'"--now where would we ever get that idea?

The business department at the Washington Post has gotten into trouble in what may be a case of too much truth in advertising.

As reported by Politico (7/2/09), the Post circulated a flyer offering--for the low, low cost of $25,000--an "intimate and exclusive Washington Post salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and publisher Katharine Weymouth." The circular promised the participation of "key Obama administration and congressional leaders" as well as "healthcare reporting and editorial staff members of the Washington Post."

Lest anyone be confused as to why dinner at the Post's publisher's house would be worth $25,000, the flyer helpfully points out that "an evening with the right people can alter the debate." It calls the event "an exclusive opportunity to participate in the healthcare reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done." It's quite straightforward: The Post is offering to help a deep-pocketed customer an opportunity to alter the healthcare reform process by granting access to government officials and its own journalists.

Naturally, one is not allowed to be that honest about the relationship between money, power and journalism in Washington, D.C.  A Post spokesperson told Politico that the advertisement was released "before it was properly vetted," and that the "draft does not represent what the company's vision for these dinners are, which is meant to be an independent, policy-oriented event for newsmakers." Boy, that doesn't sound as much like it's worth 25 grand, does it?

Post publisher Katharine Weymouth then did an interview with employee Howard Kurtz in which she vowed they were "not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom." But she was aware "of the plans to host small dinners at her home and to charge lobbying and trade organizations for participation." And Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli said that "he had been involved in discussions, stretching back to last year, about newsroom participation in conferences"--but the good kind of conference, not the kind that makes you look like a sleazy influence-peddler.

So it looks like they're going to go ahead with these things--"We do believe there is an opportunity to have a conferences and events business, and that the Post should be leading these conversations," the Post statement to Politico said--but presumably next time they won't market them so nakedly as an exchange of money for power.  Don't worry, Post Co., your clients will still know what they're buying.

Responding to "both Likud Party members in Israel as well as their Americans supporters" who "complain that the Obama administration is unduly 'interfering' in Israeli politics"--as exemplified by Ben Smith of Politico reporting that "the administration's escalating pressure on Israel to freeze all growth of its settlements on Palestinian land has begun to stir concern among Israel's numerous allies"--Salon's Glenn Greenwald (6/3/09, ad-viewing required) likens the situation to "teenagers who tell their parents that they are not compelled to comply with parental dictates" and are told that "as long as they seek financial support, then the parents have the right to demand certain actions in return":

Identically, if Israel wants to be free of what it and some of its U.S. supporters call "interference" from the Obama administration, that's very easy to achieve: Israel can stop asking for tens of billions of dollars of American taxpayer money, huge amounts of military and weapons supplies for its various wars, and unyielding American diplomatic protection at the U.N. But as long as Israel remains dependent on the U.S. in countless ways, then Obama not only has the right--but he has the obligation--to demand that Israel cease activities which harm U.S. interests.

Continuing settlement expansions that the entire world recognizes as illegal--what Time's Joe Klein accurately calls "taking territory that the rest of the world, without exception, considers Palestinian"--clearly harms U.S. interests in all sorts of ways, as Obama himself has concluded. He would be abdicating one of his primary responsibilities in foreign policy--maximizing U.S. national security rather than those of other countries--if he failed to demand that Israel cease this activity and if he failed to use U.S. leverage to compel compliance with those demands.

Writing that "Israelis are taking Obama's pressure quite seriously, as are many of his Israel-centric supporters in the U.S," Greenwald encourages "those who want Obama to continue to depart from the Bush administration’s blind support for Israeli actions" to "continue to make themselves heard, since those who desire a continuation of that blind Israeli support certainly intend to"--and we all know which group is sure to get unquestioning encouragement from the big U.S. outlets...

Politico's Mike Allen writes (5/27/09)

The media's left-of-center bias is rarely more apparent than during court fights. The coverage running up to the pick was slanted heavily toward the notion of how "pragmatic" Obama's legal views are and how unlikely he was to pick a liberal.

So coverage of Supreme Court fights is one of the best illustrations of corporate media's supposed lean to the left? Only three of the current justices had what could be described as a "fight" over their confirmation: Clarence Thomas (confirmed by a vote of 52-48), John Roberts (78-22) and Samuel Alito (58-42); all the others were confirmed with less than 10 percent of the Senate voting against them.

Despite the allegations of sexual harassment that were leveled against Thomas during his confirmation hearings, media coverage at the time depicted him as highly credible in his denials (Extra!, Special Issue 1992), and generally treated the question of whom to believe as impossible to answer.

Roberts got intensely favorable coverage from corporate media, to the point where Newsweek was denouncing as "conspiracy theories"  accurate characterizations of Roberts' record (FAIR Action Alert, 8/2/05). When the pro-choice group NARAL pointed out that Roberts had filed a brief in support of an abortion clinic blockader who had previously been convicted of bombing, this was widely denounced in the media as out of bounds (Extra!, 11-12/05); can anyone seriously imagine establishment pundits chiding right-wing activists for bringing up legal work Sonia Sotomayor had done on behalf of bombmakers?

With Alito as well, corporate media tended to treat his unflappable demeanor as more important than his legal views, giving him generally high marks for his confirmation performance (CounterSpin, 1/20/06).

The only Supreme Court nominee to be voted down by the Senate in modern times was Robert Bork. That was in 1987, when FAIR was just getting started, so we don't have any contemporaneous analysis of the coverage of that fight--but corporate media have subsequently created an entirely inaccurate mythology about Bork's unfair treatment (FAIR Media Advisory, 7/21/05; Extra! Update, 4/99).

Allen says that it's during such episodes that corporate media's left-leaning bias is most apparent. What's actually apparent is that charges of left-wing media bias never need to be accompanied by actual evidence.

Blogging at SinglePayerAction.org today (5/4/09), Corporate Crime Reporter's Russell Mokhiber describes the contents of a "much-hyped special section on healthcare" from Politico that features below the headline a Matt Wuerker cartoon of "the U.S. healthcare system" as a patient--"and you can't touch patient or you'll get zapped. As in: 'Bzzt! Don't even go near proposing single payer. You'll be called a socialist!'":

The issue is jam-packed with $10,000 full-page ads from the usual suspects: United Health Group, the drug industry (the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association), the high-tech medical equipment industry (Advanced Medical Technology Association) and corporate liberal groups like AARP.

All of which oppose what the majority of doctors and the majority of the American people want--a single-payer, Medicare-for-all, everybody-in, nobody-out, free-choice-of-doctor-and-hospital healthcare system.

The Politico healthcare issue features five news articles and six opinion pieces.

Not one of which mentions single-payer.

Mokhiber can only conclude that "the editors at Politico apparently heeded Wuerker's warning" with "not a mention of single-payer in the entire issue (other than Wuerker's warning)." Listen to the recent FAIR radio show CounterSpin: "Ellen Shaffer on Healthcare" (3/6/09)

A Tiny Revolution blogger Jonathan Schwarz (4/18/09) samples the response to Mike Allen of Politico's quote of "a former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush" calling the publishing of U.S. torture memos "damaging because these are techniques that work":

This, from Andrew Sullivan, is a representative example of the reaction:

Allen is allowing a member of the administration that broke the Geneva Conventions and committed war crimes to attack the current president and claim, without any substantiation, that the torture worked. He then allows that "top official" to proclaim things that are at the very least highly questionable. What journalistic standard is Allen following in allowing such a person to speak anonymously?

But things get really interesting when, in Allen's "attempt to explain his behavior," he wound up "revealing the devouring black hole of corruption at the heart of Washington 'journalism'":

While I was writing the piece, a very well-known former Bush administration official e-mailed some caustic criticism of Obama’s decision to release the memos. I asked the former official to be quoted by name, but this person refused, e-mailing: "Please use only on background." I wasn’t surprised....

I figured that readers could decide whether the former Bush official’s comments sounded defensive or vindictive. And Politico readers aren’t so delicate that we have to deceptively pretend there's no other side to a major issue.

Schwarz explains that what Allen is "accidentally telling us here" is "that the Bush official initiated the contact, and without Allen agreeing to any conditions. In other words--even if Allen believes there's some value to printing unsubstantiated, blatantly self-serving assertions--he had absolutely no obligation to ask permission to quote the official, by name or otherwise. But since he's a well-trained little lad, he did anyway."

Blogging on "Greta Van Susteren's defensive response" to reports "saying that one of the reasons that Sarah Palin has been caught up in a 'series of public relations gaffes' is because she is 'taking advice from Greta and her husband,'" major GOP booster John Coale, the Huffington Post's Geoffrey Dunn (3/29/09) thinks the Fox News host "Doth Protest Too Much":

Let me give Van Susteren her due. This is a serious charge of direct professional misconduct, and there should have been more than a throwaway line from an unnamed source to back it up. The allegation begs further questioning.

But what Van Susteren does acknowledge in her "brief" on the subject is equally troubling:

1. She acknowledges that her husband, John Coale, has been advising Palin, that they are in weekly contact, and that he played a central role in the formation of her national political action committee, SarahPAC--all while she has been covering Palin for Fox News.
2. She acknowledges that her husband met Palin through Van Susteren's media contacts with the governor. In short, he used his wife's journalistic access to Palin to gain his own political access.

At least one thing is obvious to Dunn: "There are some serious journalistic conflicts of interest taking place here, and Van Susteren is either being duplicitous or disingenuous to characterize them as 'silly.'"

Politico reported (2/16/09) that a new poll shows that support for the Fairness Doctrine has dropped. Unfortunately, the policy described in the poll question bears no relationship to the Fairness Doctrine as it actually existed.

The Rasmussen polling firm asked respondents whether "the government should require all radio stations to offer equal amounts of conservative and liberal political commentary." But the Fairness Doctrine never called for equal time for any points of view; it actually required, as codified in a 1959 amendment to the Communications Act of 1934, that "a broadcast licensee shall afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of conflicting views on matters of public importance."

What was "reasonable" was deliberately left vague; in practice, the FCC interpreted it as requiring something like one hour of rebuttal for every five hours devoted to promoting a particular point of view.  In other words, a talkshow where the callers got as much airtime as the host, and where one out of every three callers disagreed with the host, would be perfectly in compliance with the Fairness Doctrine, without any other programming required.

Given that much more extreme and intrusive policy invented by the pollsters was only rejected by a modest plurality, you have to wonder how an honest description of the policy would poll.

See Extra!: "The Fairness Doctrine: How We Lost It, and Why We Need It Back" (1-2/05) by Steve Rendall.