USA Today has a piece today headlined "Drawdown's effects debated"-- meaning the timetable for troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

The article starts with critical comments from U.S. military officials David Petraeus and Mike Mullen, who say they think the troop withdrawals are too much, too soon.  And on the other side of this debate? USA Today explains: "Critics however say the drawdown risks reversing hard-won gains against the Taliban." In other words, critics who question the wisdom of the troop withdrawal.

The piece quotes a litany of such pro-war voices: Seth Jones of the Rand Corporation, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Danielle Pletka from the right wing American Enterprise Institute and former Bush UN ambassador John Bolton.

The piece finally includes one expert-- Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations-- who stresses that there will still be plenty of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. I guess he would qualify as the dove.

Don't debates  usually involve people who have different opinions?

USA Today's Fredreka Schouten reports (6/20/11) on states adopting photo ID laws to crack down on the nearly non-existent problem of voter fraud. Schouten lays out the argument:

Proponents say the measures prevent vote fraud. Opponents say they are designed to stifle turnout among students, poor people and minorities, who are more likely to vote for Democrats but might lack government-issued IDs, such as driver's licenses and passports.

Actually most opponents tend to point out that there is no voter fraud problem. Any decent report on this subject would point this out-- otherwise readers are left with the impression that Republicans want to maintain the integrity of the vote, and Democrats are upset that they'll lose some of their supporters.

We noted here on June 3 that a USA Today column by former Secretary of States James Baker was missing some important disclosure.

Baker argued that the United States needs to encourage more domestic oil drilling. Baker championed efforts by Shell to drill in Alaska, which have been stymied by government bureaucrats.

As FAIR noted, Baker's Rice University institute receives funding from an array of energy companies, including Shell-- which also funds the institute's lecture series. It would be normal for a newspaper to mention this to readers, but USA Today did not.

After receiving a letter from FAIR, the paper issued this correction yesterday (which is hard to find on their website):

USA TODAY
June 8, 2011 Wednesday
FINAL EDITION
Corrections & Clarifications

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 10A

A June 1 Forum column by former secretary of State James Baker on Alaska energy exploration should have noted that Baker has links to Shell Oil Co., which is mentioned in the piece. The James A. Baker III Center at Rice University receives funding from Shell, and the company also sponsors a lecture series for Baker's institute.

A condensed version of an AP story (3/23/11) about USA Today's new business plan:

The nation's second-largest newspaper is expanding its coverage of advertising-friendly topics, designing content for smartphones and tablet computers and refreshing the look of its print edition, whose circulation has fallen by 20 percent over the past three years....

For readers, it means lots of travel tips, gadget reviews, sports features, financial advice and lifestyle recommendations. Top editors say investigative journalism will also be emphasized....

Even as it publishes more stories aimed at attracting advertisers, USA Today is promising to produce more hard-hitting coverage from an expanded team of investigative reporters. The investigative unit now consists of nine reporters and editors compared with more than 30 people devoted to entertainment coverage.

For more on the reality of ad-friendly journalism, read Janine  Jackson's "Fear and Favor" report in the March issue of Extra!.

While FAIR Blog complained earlier (3/30/10) that coverage of the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal was overlooking Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's involvement in the story before he became Pope Benedict XVI, yesterday two prominent op-eds focused on this history. Unfortunately, both op-eds present a highly selective version of Ratzinger's role.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat (4/12/10) cites the reporting of Jason Berry (National Catholic Reporter, 4/6/10), who is critical of Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, for his support of Marcial Maciel Degollado, a child molester who founded the influential Legion of Christ:

Only one churchman comes out of Berry's story looking good: Joseph Ratzinger. Berry recounts how Ratzinger lectured to a group of Legionary priests, and was subsequently handed an envelope of money 'for his charitable use.' The cardinal 'was tough as nails in a very cordial way,' a witness said, and turned the money down.... It was Ratzinger who re-opened the long-dormant investigation into Maciel’s conduct in 2004, just days after John Paul II had honored the Legionaries in a Vatican ceremony. It was Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict, who banished Maciel to a monastery and ordered a comprehensive inquiry into his order.

The Maciel case was similarly cited in a USA Today op-ed (4/12/10) by Philip Lawler, editor of the Catholic World News (and former Senate candidate of the far-right Constitution Party), as evidence of Ratzinger's integrity: "Soon after his election, he instigated action against another notorious abuser: the head of a wealthy and influential religious order."

You wouldn't think from reading these testimonials that Ratzinger was first informed about Maciel's pattern of abuse in 1994, at which time the cardinal reportedly said that the Maciel case was a "touchy problem" due to the "benefits" the priest had brought to the Vatican. (The future pope was later quoted, "One can't put on trial such a close friend of the pope as Marcial Maciel.") Nor would you imagine that Ratzinger's secretary had written in 1999 to the men who had brought detailed charges against Maciel to say that the case against the cleric was considered closed (London Observer, 4/24/05). These details put Benedict's discipline of the then-86-year-old Maciel in 2006 in a less-heroic light.

Both writers also present Ratzinger's centralization of sexual abuse investigations under his office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as evidence for his zeal to persecute child abusers in the church. "It was Ratzinger who persuaded John Paul, in 2001, to centralize the church’s haphazard system for handling sex abuse allegations in his office," Douthat wrote, while Lawler noted, "In 2001, at Cardinal Ratzinger's urging, all disciplinary cases involving sexual abuse by Catholic priests were assigned to the Vatican office he then headed."

Unmentioned was the controversy over the letter Ratzinger wrote in 2001 threatening to excommunicate any bishop who discussed abuse cases outside of the church's legal system (Extra!, 7-8/08; FAIR Media Advisory, 5/13/08). Ratzinger's 2002 assertion that the scandal amounted to a persecution of the church--"I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign" (Zenit, 12/3/02)--was not quoted.

Both Douthat and Lawler are surprisingly critical of Pope John Paul II, long a hero to conservative Catholics, for protecting prominent pedophiles. This criticism would come across as more sincere if the record of the current head of the church were subjected to the same scrutiny.

One of USA Today's regular op-ed features is a "right-left" conversation between conservative columnist Cal Thomas and "liberal" Democratic strategist Bob Beckel in which they seek "Common Ground"--the name of the op-ed feature--on "issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot."

Last week (3/25/10) Thomas and Beckel tackled the issue of "Bias and Fox News"--and really, what could be a better subject of debate for two paid Fox News commentators? Incredibly, they were able to overcome their great differences to defend the network that pays their bills.

Some of the highlights:

Cal: What the Obama administration and Raines and many at the Huffington Post and elsewhere in the Liberal Hemisphere are lamenting is that the media monopoly has ended. Journalists have tended to be liberal, and until the past decade or so, the newspapers and networks held the megaphones. The voices leaving those megaphones all sounded the same. Well, now everyone has a megaphone. And it might be noisier, but as President James Buchanan said, "I like the noise of democracy."

Bob: Hear, hear.

Yes, that's the voice of "the left." And even Beckel's attempts at differentiating himself from Thomas manage to come around to a plug for Fox:

Cal: And say what you will about Beck, but he teaches a lot of history that many Americans have either forgotten or were never exposed to in public schools.

Bob: Beck has brought liberal criticism on himself. Calling President Obama a racist was way out of bounds. I got on Fox the day after that comment and blasted Beck. I never received a single comment from anyone at Fox for doing so. In fact, no one at Fox has ever suggested I ease up on my criticism of conservatives.

While no such "blast" could be found in the Nexis database (Fox doesn't transcribe all of its shows), here's a typical Beckel "criticism" on Fox (Hannity, 10/19/09):

BECKEL: The issue here is the question of the Fox News issue, which is something very near and dear to my heart, since I've been on this network now for six years. And I will say this. What I don't understand is, they can disagree with you--and they should because they're right and you're wrong. And so's Beck and so's O'Reilly.

But the rest of these shows are news shows, and good shows. And why they leave this up to a few of us to come on the air against wing nuts, I mean, if you can't--I have to go up against Michele Bachmann, against Michelle Malkin. I mean, if you can't handle Michele Bachmann, you Democrats out there won't come on, you don't deserve to be in the business.

HANNITY: Have I been fair to you?

BECKEL: Yes, you have.

That Fox's "news" shows are less partisan or ideological than its "opinion" shows is Fox's standard defense (and one that both Beckel and Thomas bring up in their USAT debate), but it's easy enough to debunk; see Extra!: "Fox News—Wing of the GOP?" (12/09) by Steve Rendall.

Beckel's brand of "criticism" is hardly likely to earn him a reprimand from Fox--in fact, it's exactly what gets you a gig on Fox News--as well as at USA Today.

Under the headline "Va., N.J. Give GOP Reason to Celebrate," USA Today's front-page election report (11/4/09) featured this quote from GOP strategist Frank Donatelli:

The warning is that if you're in a moderate district, or you're in a moderate-to-conservative state, you should think twice before you rubberstamp Obama's agenda.

Well, there were two districts choosing representatives and two states picking governors yesterday. Both the districts, including the one generally described as "moderate," went for the Democratic candidate, so it's not clear what warning that sends about Obama's agenda.

In both states, the Democrat lost the governor's race, and one of them, New Jersey incumbent Jon Corzine, can fairly be described as politically close to Obama. But New Jersey, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992, is not a "moderate-to-conservative" state;  Corzine lost the race based on local issues involving corruption and property taxes.

In the state that can be described as moderate-to-conservative, Virginia, Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds went out of his way not to "rubberstamp Obama's agenda"--coming out against allowing "card check" union certification, suggesting he would opt-out from a "public option" health insurance program, running ads touting his opposition to Obama's climate change proposals, and declaring in the final debate of the campaign, "I'm not afraid of going against my fellow Democrats when they're wrong."

So of the four top electoral contests, only one fit Donatelli's model of Democrats getting a warning about how they should appeal to moderate or conservative voters; in that race, the Democrat took Donatelli's advice--and was soundly trounced, based on the Obama voters from 2008 staying home in 2009.

One is tempted to ask whether a source's claims have to make any kind of logical sense to appear on the front page of USA Today. But given that "move to the right" is always the corporate media's advice to Democrats after an election--whether they win or lose--it's a safe bet that they thought Donatelli was making sense.

Ousted President Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras, though not to office.  Unfortunately, press accounts still manage to mangle the story behind his ouster, relying on those who supported the coup to explain what happened. In today's New York Times (9/22/09):

At the time of his removal, Mr. Zelaya was planning a nonbinding referendum that his opponents said would have been the first step toward allowing him to run for another term in office, which is forbidden under the Honduran constitution. Mr. Zelaya has denied any attempt to run for re-election.

An Associated Press report appearing in today's USA Today (9/22/09) was much worse:

The legislature ousted Zelaya after he formed an alliance with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and tried to alter the nation's constitution. Zelaya was arrested on orders of the Supreme Court on charges of treason for ignoring court orders against holding a referendum to extend his term. The Honduran Constitution forbids a president from trying to obtain another term in office.

This is inaccurate, not to mention strange (ousted for a Chavez "alliance"?).  As economist Mark Weisbrot put it shortly after the coup (7/8/09), these pro-coup arguments makes no sense--and the media should say so. By the way, the example he cites is also from the New York Times....

Unfortunately much of the major media's reporting has aided this effort by reporting such statements as "Critics feared he intended to extend his rule past January, when he would have been required to step down."

In fact, there was no way for Zelaya to "extend his rule" even if the referendum had been held and passed, and even if he had then gone on to win a binding referendum on the November ballot. The June 28 referendum was nothing more than a non-binding poll of the electorate, asking whether the voters wanted to place a binding referendum on the November ballot to approve a redrafting of the country's constitution. If it had passed, and if the November referendum had been held (which was not very likely) and also passed, the same ballot would have elected a new president and Zelaya would have stepped down in January. So, the belief that Zelaya was fighting to extend his term in office has no factual basis -- although most people who follow this story in the press seem to believe it. The most that could be said is that if a new constitution were eventually approved, Zelaya might have been able to run for a second term at some future date.

USA Today 's left/right op-ed feature today is a doozy-- a "debate" on escalating the Afghan War between regulars Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel. The headline gives it away:

Time to Dig In, Not Bail Out

Forget left or right. Forget politics. Think "war on terror." Bob and Cal agree that now is not the time to abandon the war in Afghanistan.

The back and forth between arch-conservative Thomas and TV leftist Beckel ends with this exchange:

Bob: As much as my liberal instincts want us out of this war, I have to agree with you that it's time to stay and fight. The more dangerous path would be to retreat.

Cal: Among the many things I admire about you, Bob, is that you are often able to overcome your instincts when facts get in the way. Your party was once a keeper of freedom's flame when it came to engaging and defeating Communism. Now we have a new enemy. Nothing would benefit America more than to see Democrats and Republicans unite to defeat this enemy.

The thing that Cal Thomas admires about his liberal sparring partner--his inability to be an actual advocate for the left--is exactly the same quality that the corporate media look for in liberal pundits. It earns you a pat on the head from Cal Thomas, and a regular gig as a TV leftist.

Conservative Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana unveiled his long-awaited health reform proposal yesterday, the results of weeks of negotiations among the Senate Finance Committee's so-called "Gang of Six"--three Democrats from the right-wing of their party and three moderate-to-conservative Republicans. The bill (unsurprisingly) does not include a public option and could end up leaving middle-income Americans paying too much for health insurance (Think Progress, 9/15/09). At the same time, no Republican--including those in the Baucus' Gang--has indicated that they intend to vote for this bill.

But some of the early media coverage seems to find it encouraging that the Baucus bill pleases almost no one. The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly presents that view today ("From Finance Chief, a Bill That May Weather the Blows"), with the lead: "On the surface, it appears that no one is happy with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)--and that may be the best news President Obama has had in months."

What exactly is the good news? Connolly explains that liberals unions "fumed," but more importantly, "the fragile coalition of major industry leaders and interest groups central to refashioning the nation's $2.5 trillion health-care system remains intact." These "influential players" have not found "reasons to kill the effort." Quite the opposite: "Most enticing was the prospect of 30 million new customers." Well, that is good news--if you happen to believe that pleasing health insurance companies is the key to passing meaningful reform of that industry. Here you see the worldview of the Washington Post in action.

Meanwhile, USA Today's front page headline in the print edition (9/17/09) is "Bill Seen as Step in the 'Right Direction.'" This is a strange conclusion to reach about a bill that no one seems to like. The "right direction" comment was made by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican included in Baucus' Gang of Six, who the paper tells us isn't even sure she'll support the Baucus plan anyway. On their website USA Today has changed the headline to read, "Bill Elates Few but Seen as Progress"-- an improvement, but still a strange way to describe the state of the debate. Unless, of course, one sees Max Baucus, Olympia Snowe or the insurance industry as the most important voices in that debate.

Former PR agent Wendell Potter's stories of how he helped the health insurance's industry's campaign "to discredit Michael Moore and his film Sicko" calls to mind just how successful that campaign was. Corporate media coverage of the debate raised by the film's expose of the for-profit insurance system went out of its way to demonize Moore. USA Today ran an editorial tied to the film against a single-payer healthcare plan, which was paired with an "Opposing View" from an insurance executive that denounced single-payer even more harshly. CBS News' Jeff Greenfield distinguished himself with his (inaccurate) claim that the U.S. doesn't have public funding for healthcare because "Americans are just different." And reviewing CNN's report on Sicko can only make one relieved that Sanjay Gupta turned down the job of surgeon general.

If you'd like to see an end to this kind of insurance industry PR masquerading as journalism, you can sign FAIR's petition calling for the inclusion of the single-payer option in coverage of the healthcare reform debate.

Looking at last week's "whole series of bad reports on the state of the economy," Dean Baker of Beat the Press and the Center for Economic and Policy Research tells readers of London's Guardian (6/1/09) if they think "these reports might have led to gloomy news stories," such assessments are to be found "not in the U.S. media": "The folks who could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble are still determined to find the silver lining in even the worst economic news":

For example, National Public Radio told listeners that the new home sales figure reported for April was up from the March level. While this was true, the April figure was only 1,000 higher than a March level that had just been revised down by 5,000. April new home sales were 4,000 below the sales level that had originally been reported for March. USA Today touted a "surge" in durable goods orders, which was also based on a sharp downward revision to the prior month's data.

The media have obviously abandoned economic reporting and instead have adopted the role of cheerleader, touting whatever good news it can find and inventing good news when none can be found. This leaves the responsibility of reporting on the economy to others.

Predicting that "at some point it will be impossible to conceal the bad news, and Congress' attention will return to stimulus," for now Baker notes that "media's reality defying happy talk on the economy is delaying this moment." Read the recent issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Stimulus Snake Oil: Media Promote Nonsensical GOP Talking Points (3/09) by Peter Hart.

USA Today had a remarkable headline (4/29/09) on a story about Pennsylvania's Sen. Arlen Specter switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party:

Leaving GOP, Specter Gives Dems a Boost in Stifling Dissent

The headline writer does not seem to understand the meaning of the word "dissent," which is the expression of opposition to reigning policies, not the ability to prevent policies from being enacted even when they're supported by a majority of elected representatives.

This same misunderstanding is found in the article itself, which reports, "As a minority in the House and without the votes to filibuster the Senate, Republicans would find it harder to block Democratic initiatives or even be heard." Actually, each side does get a chance to debate in the Senate, even if there is no filibuster; if corporate media won't cover the views of elected critics who don't have the power to block legislation, that would seem to be a problem of--well, of a media that doesn't understand what "dissent" means.

We're not in the habit of linking to Accuracy In Media--and here's an Extra! article that explains why--but I thought this piece, by the apparent though unacknowledged daughter of USA Today founder Al Neuharth, deserved an exception.

Writing in response to a USA Today column by Neuharth (3/20/09) celebrating his six adopted children, Rosamunda Neuharth-Ozgo writes:

My mother, Betty Moore, met Mr. Neuharth in St Paul, Minn., in 1962, at an Associated Press convention. At the time, he was a young editor with the Detroit Free Press and my mother was a Paris-based translator in town on business. I am the result of their affair which continued for more than a year.

With Mr. Neuharth reneging on his paternal responsibilities and my mother unable to care for me, I spent the first few years of my life in a foster home under auspices of the New York City Department of Welfare.

Al Neuharth paid child support to my mother for 21 years, per a 1963 New York City Family Court agreement, but over the years he has gone to great lengths to hide my existence from the world. Despite the overwhelming evidence--which also includes a striking physical resemblance and the fact that his name is listed on my birth certificate--he has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that I am his daughter or to have anything to do with me.

Neuharth-Ozgo recounts various steps that Neuharth has taken over the years to keep her story out of the public eye--including scuttling an authorized biography by Mike Gartner when the former NBC News chief decided he would include a chapter on Neuharth-Ozgo.

Obviously, if Neuharth is really Neuharth-Ozgo's father, it's grotesque for him to be quoting his (third) wife talking about how "what you do for children who need help means more than anything else in your life."

But even taking at face value his claim that he is not her father, and only paid child support to her mother to avoid publicity--is it really so hard to imagine that a person who grew up with your name on her birth certificate might believe that she's related to you? While as Neuharth-Ozgo notes, there weren't DNA tests when she was born, there certainly are now, and the compassionate thing would be for Neuharth to take a paternity test and put her mind at ease one way or another.

People dislike the Afghan war more than ever, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll; 42 percent of Americans now think invading that country was a mistake.

For some reason, the paper's front page write-up of the poll (3/17/09) quotes two experts: John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security and Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute. Both of them support sending additional troops to Afghanistan. USA Today is showing, once again, that it's very difficult for them to entertain debate over the Afghanistan war in their news pages.