In a news report on the Israeli military's investigation of its own deadly raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, the Wall Street Journal (7/13/10) passes off as fact, with no qualifier, the Israeli government's claim that members of IHH, a Turkish humanitarian organization, "attacked the Israeli soldiers as they boarded the ship."

While it's true that activists on board the Mavi Marmara tried to defend themselves against Israeli naval commandos and fought with the Israelis (War in Context, 6/6/10), the Journal’s framing of the incident gets what happened on board the ship backwards, implying that it was the activists who first started the clash.

Regardless of who initiated the violence on board the ship first--and witnesses claim that soldiers started shooting even before they landed on the Turkish ship (Common Dreams, 6/5/10)--when heavily armed commandos invade a ship in international waters without legal authorization to do so, that in itself constitutes an attack. The Israeli navy attacked the boat in international waters even as it was moving away from Gaza’s coast (Ali Abunimah, 6/7/10).

The Wall Street Journal’s reporting is the latest in a pattern of U.S. corporate media reporting the Israeli assault through Israel’s eyes (FAIR Media Advisory, 6/1/10). What Israel says goes, it seems--what actually happened during the flotilla raid is apparently of little interest.

The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is getting attention for one rather unusual finding: that the right-wing Tea Party movement is more popular than either the Democratic or Republican parties. The point was made on MSNBC's First Read website and on the channel's Morning Joe program this morning (12/17/09).

Don't buy it.

The MSNBC headline-- sure to be repeated everywhere on Fox News today-- is straight-forward: "Tea Party More Popular Than Dems, GOP." The numbers tell you that Republicans are viewed positively by 28 percent of the public, the Democrats are at 35 percent, while the Tea Party is at 41 percent.

But look at the poll a little more closely. The first thing to know is that most people don't know what the Tea Party movement is--25 percent said they "know very little," 23 percent "know nothing at all." So the question that elicited the 41 percent approval mark had to give people some idea of what it's about. And NBC's poll question offered a remarkably upbeat description:

As you may know, this year saw the start of something known as the Tea Party movement. In this movement, citizens, most of whom are conservatives, participated in demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and other cities, protesting government spending, the economic stimulus package and any type of tax increases. From what you know about this movement, is your opinion of it very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative or very negative? If you do not know enough to have an opinion, please say so.

In other words, the "no-tax-hike, responsible spending" party that you've never heard of is a little bit popular.

WashingtonMonthly.com blogger Steve Benen (Political Animal, 8/12/09) has words for corporate pundits lambasting Barack Obama's "Attention to Detail" as "going "into the weeds":

A few weeks ago, MSNBC's First Read had an item questioning whether President Obama "knows too much" about healthcare policy. The piece complained that the president is willing to offer Americans details about reform....

The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Weisman raised a similar concern today, arguing that Obama cares too much about policy details....

This, apparently, is criticism, not praise. The president who inherited a devastating economic crisis is interested in U6 numbers--a measure that includes the unemployed, those who are working part-time but want full-time employment, and those who've simply given up--and this, we're told, is somehow evidence of excessive interest in detail.

Benen thinks that too-skeptical-for-the-Washington Post Dan Froomkin "has this just right" when writing that "there are all sorts of legitimate reasons to be concerned about Obama's approach to governing" but "intellectual curiosity is one thing journalists in particular should celebrate, not sneer at."

In Benen's closing thoughts he really "can't help but wonder if" reporters might simply "prefer a more superficial president because they have a more superficial perspective?"

Posting on Canada's Centre for Research on Globalization website (6/29/09), economic historian Michael Hudson notices that "Happy-face media reporting of economic news is providing the usual upbeat spin on Friday's debt-deflation statistics. The Commerce Department’s National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) for May show that U.S. 'savings' are now absorbing 6.9 percent of income":

I put the word "savings" in quotation marks because this 6.9 percent is not what most people think of as savings. It is not money in the bank to draw out on the "rainy day" when one is laid off as unemployment rates rise. The statistic means that 6.9 percent of national income is being earmarked to pay down debt--the highest saving rate in 15 years, up from actually negative rates (living on borrowed credit) just a few years ago. The only way in which these savings are "money in the bank" is that they are being paid by consumers to their banks and credit card companies.

Explaining how "income paid to reduce debt is not available for spending on goods and services," Hudson says "it therefore shrinks the economy, aggravating the depression"--leading back to his main question: "So why is the jump in 'saving' good news?":

It certainly is a good idea for consumers to get out of debt. But the media are treating this diversion of income as if it were a sign of confidence that the recession may be ending and Mr. Obama's "stimulus" plan working. The Wall Street Journal reported that Social Security recipients of one-time government payments "seem unwilling to spend right away," while The New York Times wrote that "many people were putting that money away instead of spending it."

For more on stimulus misreporting, see the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Stimulus Snake Oil: Media Promote Nonsensical GOP Talking Points" (3/09) by Peter Hart.

In the wake of the release of the U.S. military's own figures showing a record number of bombs were dropped by U.S. warplanes in Afghanistan during April, newspapers are reporting today on a particularly deadly bombing attack on Monday that killed over 100 civilians, according to Afghan officials and witnesses.

Anonymous U.S. military officials of course vigorously denied that they were responsible, instead blaming the deaths on Taliban grenades. As one anonymous offiical put it in an interview with the Washington Post, "the Taliban went to a concerted effort to make it look like the U.S. airstrikes caused this;" however the Post noted that "The official did not offer evidence to support the claim, and could not say what had caused the deaths."

If the more than 100 dead are confirmed, the New York Times notes, Monday's bombing "will almost certainly be the worst in terms of civilian deaths since the American intervention began in 2001."

Yet the fact of the U.S.-authored civilian deaths themselves is not what the Times found to be the most newsworthy aspect of the story, as expressed by the headline it chose for its front page story about the attack: "Civilian Deaths Imperil Support for Afghan War"

To the Times,  as well as to the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, there is clearly a far more significant cost to this deadly U.S. attack than the reported killing of a hundred Afghans. As the Times remarked, "Civilian deaths — more than 2,000 Afghans were killed last year alone, the United Nations says — have been a decisive factor in souring many Afghans on the war." And, as the Washington Post noted, "The allegations came at a particularly sensitive time for the U.S. military and the Obama administration, which is pushing more than 21,000 additional American troops into the country and shifting strategy."

And the Wall Street Journal's headline took the prize for callousness: "Claim of Afghan Civilian Deaths Clouds U.S. Talks."

One has to wonder about the values of a press where U.S. taxpayer-funded slaughter of civilians elicits journalists' concern not about victims, but about the war's popularity with the population having record numbers of bombs dropped on them and how that might hamper U.S. strategic goals.

Editorializing in the Wall Street Journal (3/18/09) on how "Financial Journalists Fail Upward," Wrecking Crew author Thomas Frank sees the "world of financial infotainment" as its own "market where accountability does not seem to exist" and in which "the old order discredits itself, but the old order persists nevertheless":

This needs to be repeated every time someone pleads, "Who could have known?" Plenty of people did see the disaster coming. Most of them were marginalized, however, laboring at out-of-the-way econ departments, blogs and B-list think tanks. They were excluded and even ridiculed because their larger understanding of the economy was not one that fit well with the sort of Wall Street worship preached by the likes of CNBC....

The reasons the financial-entertainment biz failed us are many and complex, but they ultimately come down to this: In the marketplace to describe the marketplace itself, there is precious little competition. There is a single, standard product that comes in packaging that is alternately sultry, energetic or fun--bitter, brainy or Cramer "crazy"--but which rarely strays beyond certain ideological boundaries.

At such outlets, "Adversarial voices are few. Criticism is sacrificed for access. Advice sometimes shades over into simple propaganda." For some analysis of the current flavor of just such propaganda, listen to the new edition of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Melissa Harris-Lacewell on Earmarks" (3/13/09).

Writing that someone needs to "Tell the WSJ: Workers Can Already Unionize Without a Secret Ballot Election" (Beat the Press, 3/10/09), Dean Baker details how big media still gets this wrong:

Okay, let's see if we can teach the Wall Street Journal something this morning. In an article reporting on the prospects for the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate, the WSJ told readers that "the bill would allow unions to organize workers without a secret ballot, giving employees the power to organize by simply signing cards agreeing to join."

Wrong! The current law already allows workers to organize by majority sign-up. They can also have a union de-certified by majority sign-up. The difference is that under current law it is the employer's option to accept majority sign-up or to demand an NLRB election. Employers who wish to prevent unionization can demand an election. They can then delay the actual election for several years. They can use time to require workers to attend mandatory anti-union propaganda sessions. They can also fire the key organizers, thereby undermining the organizing drive and intimidating workers.

Summing up that "the main change in the law" is that "under the Employee Free Choice Act is that workers, not employers, would decide the method for union certification," Baker insists "the WSJ should be able to get this one right"--or are these misrepresentations willful? Read the FAIR magazine Extra!: "For Media, 'Card Check' Promise Is One to Break: Corporate Outlets Suddenly Discover 'Workers Rights'" (2/09) by Janine Jackson

Writing about the Employee Free Choice Act, Melanie Trottman and Brody Mullins of the Wall Street Journal write (3/10/09):

At least six Senators who have voted to move forward with the so-called card-check proposal, including one Republican, now say they are opposed or not sure--an indication that Senate Democratic leaders are short of the 60 votes they need for approval.

It really is worth being specific on this: It does not take 60 votes to pass an ordinary bill in the Senate; it takes a majority of the senators voting. If everyone is present, it takes 51 votes, or 50 votes if the vice president votes to break the tie. Under the current rules of the Senate--which can be altered by a majority vote--it takes 60 votes to proceed to a vote on a bill when some senators want to continue debate forever, or filibuster.

It has not traditionally been the custom that every bill gets a filibuster and so requires 60 votes in order to pass; plenty of bills in the past have passed the Senate with fewer than 60 votes. In recent years, the filibuster has changed from an occasional gambit to a more routine part of the process. Since  the Democrats took back the Senate after the 2006 elections, it has become almost a matter of course that a bill opposed by most of the minority party will have to overcome a filibuster in order to pass.

But that doesn't mean that a bill needs 60 votes to be approved; it means 41 senators can keep a bill from being voted on.  The distinction is worth making, particularly since the ability of the minority to obstruct is dependent on the willingness of the majority to be obstructed.

The Wall Street Journal has named right-winger Gerard Baker (formerly at the Times of London) its new deputy editor-in-chief. This reaction I find somewhat puzzling:

It would be one thing for Baker to move to the conservative editorial page, but the self-described "right-wing curmudgeon" will have a role overseeing news coverage, a move that surprised some staffers because of his strong, right-wing political views.

Wait a second. You mean to tell me that Rupert Murdoch is going to use one of his media platforms to promote his right-wing politics!?