The headline on a story by Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi is "On Iraq, Journalists Didn't Fail. They Just Didn’t Succeed." To make that case, though, he has to redefine "failure" so far down that it's hardly possible to avoid failing.
Oct
01
2012
When Nonsense Is Your Reality, Reality Naturally Seems to Have a Slant
By 15 Comments
Washington Post ombud Patrick Pexton (9/30/12) presents conservative opinion as a prima facie case for a left-wing slant in corporate news media: "Republicans think the news media are being too easy on Barack Obama…. Everyone sees more bias, and Republicans see it more than other groups." Offering this as evidence of a left media bias is, of course, highly dubious. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans say that humans aren't warming the planet. Sixty-three percent still maintain that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans "believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 [...]
Apr
25
2011
Drone 'Debate' Breaks Out at Washington Post
By 7 Comments
Readers of the Washington Post can see this headline in today's edition (4/25/11) about the U.S. drone airstrikes: Debates Underway on Combat Drones But there is no actual debate in the article. Reporter Walter Pincus cites a British military study that calls the use of missile-firing drones "a genuine revolution in military affairs," adding that the "use of unmanned aircraft prevents the potential loss of aircrew lives and is thus in itself morally justified." Pincus goes on to explain: At a Washington conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) last week, the issue of drones was also widely [...]
May
22
2009
CIA Tortured by Questions About Torturing
By 3 Comments
The independent website Raw Story (5/6/09) recently summarized the human toll of the U.S. government's torture program. Approximately 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to human rights investigators, with 34 of those deaths officially classified as homicides; at least eight individuals were tortured to death. Yet somehow, when corporate media report on the torture program's victims, they focus on the CIA, the agency that designed and helped implement the array of torture techniques known as "enhanced interrogation." A May 19 article by Walter Pincus, intelligence correspondent for the Washington Post, is a particularly gross [...]
Mar
27
2009
Howard Kurtz: Media Critic and Comedian
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Salon's Glenn Greenwald has an explanation (3/23/09, ad-viewing required) for why he thinks that Howard Kurtz's belief that the image of corporate reporters as "just a bunch of cozy Washington insiders" is not "that big a deal"–because "there's such a built-in adversarial relationship between the press and the pols"–constitutes "an extremely funny joke today, showing why he is the 'media critic' for both the Washington Post and CNN": That is some very penetrating media criticism there. The media and political leaders are at each other's throats so viciously, they have such sharply conflicting interests, that it's a wonder they can [...]
