Sometimes reading the corporate media is like receiving dispatches from an alternate universe--like the one Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan (12/02/09) lives in, where Obama "bucked overwhelming conventional wisdom" to send more troops to Afghanistan, in the face of a "stunningly large number of American thinkers, strategists and pundits who have been perfectly prepared to lose wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan." The version of Obama who was elected U.S. president on Kagan's Earth-2 realized that he "might be applauded for losing in the salons of Washington and New York, the American public would not look on defeat so kindly," so he stood up to "willingness of the intellectual and foreign policy establishments to accept both decline and defeat."

Meanwhile, back on this side of the dimensional portal, an overwhelming majority of the intellectual and foreign policy establishment--as represented by the opinion writers for the real-world Washington Post as well as the New York Times--support continued war in Afghanistan, with only a small minority suggesting that it's possible to bring home the troops (Extra!, 12/09).  In this world, it's the public that's skeptical of an endless pursuit of victory, with a majority of respondents in recent polling saying they oppose the war (e.g., CNN/Opinion Research, 11/13-15/09) .

It's fun to get a glimpse of Kagan's what-if world.  But maybe Washington Post opinion writers could spend more time writing about the real world, since it's the one the rest of  us live in.

How many times does nuclear power get to have a "comeback"?

At least one more, the Washington Post Anthony Faiola reports today (11/24/09), under the headline "Nuclear Power Regains Support," and the subheads "Tool Against Climate Change" and "Even Green Groups See It as 'Part of the Answer.'"  The "greening of nuclear power" story is a perennial corporate media favorite (Extra!, 1-2/08), and no example of the genre would be complete without the environmentalist-turned-nuclear-lobbyist whose financial ties to the nuclear industry go politely unmentioned.

In this case, it's Stephen Tindale, described as the former head of Greenpeace's British office and not described as former head of communications and public affairs for npower renewables, a subsidiary of the energy company RWE, whose website declares: "Building new nuclear power stations is a key part of our commitment to meet the UK’s energy needs and to reduce carbon dioxide intensity. We have formed a joint venture with E.ON UK to develop at least 6GW of new nuclear capacity in the U.K."

So, aside from people who have been paid by the nuclear power industry, who are the "green groups" that the subhead promises see nuclear power as "part of the answer"? The article cites two groups who support the climate change bill currently before Congress, which includes nuclear subsidies--the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund. But both groups are still opposed to nuclear power--the Sierra Club's official position is still the one it passed in 1974, declaring that  "The Sierra Club opposes the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors utilizing the fission process" until safety, waste and proliferation issues are addressed; the group's magazine (1-2/07), addressing the climate change issue, concludes that "virtually every other form of power is cheaper and less risky."

The Environmental Defense Fund, meanwhile, declares in a 2005 statement that "serious questions of safety, security, waste and proliferation surround the issue of nuclear power. Until these questions are resolved satisfactorily, Environmental Defense cannot support an expansion of nuclear generating capacity."

So it doesn't sound like either of the green groups cited by Faiolo actually view nuclear power as "part of the answer." It's safe to say that reporting like the Washington Post's, which always looks for the corporate-friendliest solution to any environmental issue, is part of the problem.

Washington Post columnist David Broder rounds up some "non-partisan" budget experts-- one of whom, oddly enough, was John McCain's Social Security adviser during his 2000 campaign -- to agree with him that the Democrats' healthcare bills are too expensive.  He closes with this:

The challenge to Congress -- and to Obama -- remains the same: Make the promised savings real, and don't pass along unfunded programs to our children and grandchildren.

This advice would be easier to take from someone who didn't just write that Obama should escalate the Afghanistan war because of the "urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right." Good thing that war doesn't cost anything-- or that if it does, our grandchildren won't mind paying for it.

One of the odder outbreaks of outrage from conservative pundits is the horror expressed at the idea that people accused of being connected to the September 11 attacks would actually be put on trial.  Here's Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (11/18/09) on Attorney General Eric Holder's "destructive" decision to prosecute Khalid Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects in an actual court:

There is one serious argument for this course: that a civilian court will provide greater legitimacy for the imposition of the death penalty than a military tribunal. But the guilt of these terrorists is not in question. And it is difficult to imagine that those repulsed or impressed by Khalid Sheik Mohammed's confessed crimes will care much about the procedures surrounding his sentencing.

Gerson seems to be saying in that last sentence that nobody actually cares about the rule of law.  That's not literally true, of course, but from the vitriol expressed toward the idea of  defendants having constitutional rights, you do get the idea that its stock is at a low ebb.

The Washington Post reports its latest polling on the Afghanistan war, and once again have managed to put together a baffling question that seems intended to muddy up the debate over a troop surge. The lead and headline ("Poll Finds Guarded Optimism on Obama's Afghanistan Plan") stress the idea that the public still seems to have faith in the White House. But the strangest part comes when the paper asked people about sending in more troops. As the Post's write-up explains:

Asked to choose between a larger influx of troops to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and train the Afghan military, and a smaller number of new U.S. forces more narrowly focused on training, Americans divide 46 percent for the bigger number, 45 percent for the lower one.

Apparently the Post thinks the debate is between a smaller surge to train the Afghan military, or a larger one to do that plus defeat bad guys. No surprise, then, that a lot of people would find the larger surge option appealing. But does that resemble the actual military debate going on over Afghanistan? And why exclude the option of sending no additional troops, or bringing the ones already there back home?

This is the second time in the last few weeks that the Post's polling on Afghanistan has seemed designed to inflate support for a surge of some sort. As FAIR noted, the paper's October 21 report featured this poll question:

U.S. military commanders have requested approximately 40,000 more U.S. troops for Afghanistan. Do you think Obama should or should not order these additional forces to Afghanistan?

The Post had previously asked the question in a more neutral manner-- i.e., without referring to "U.S. military commanders" or to Obama, which seemed to significantly increase the level of support for a troop surge (from 24 percent to 47 percent).

It seems fairly clear that the Post's editorial page is strongly supportive of a troop surge; is someone trying to make sure the paper's polling helps them make that argument?

The big news out of the Middle East yesterday was the Israeli government's decision to approve an expansion of the Gilo settlement near Jerusalem. The White House's muddled position on settlement expansion has been a key part of Israel-Palestine negotiations. Many headlines framed the news as you'd expect (New York Times: "Plan to Expand Jerusalem Settlement Angers U.S.", for example) .

The Washington Post, though, went with this headline today: "Housing Plan for Jerusalem Neighborhood Spurs Criticism."

The article by Howard Schneider refers to a "disputed neighborhood of Jerusalem," the "Jewish neighborhood of Gilo," a place "annexed to the city in a step not recognized by the international community."

There is also a reference to White House policy, noting that the Obama administration "has vacillated in its stance on Israeli construction in areas claimed by the Palestinians."  This is downright bizarre; the entire discussion about "Israeli construction" concerns illegal Israeli settlements--or, perhaps more accurately, colonies--in the West Bank. Why, then, refuse to label Gilo accurately? It's an old story, actually; as Extra! pointed out in 2002, Gilo was a cause for pro-Israeli media activists, who pressured outlets like CNN to stop referring to Gilo as a settlement and use terms more innocuous like "neighborhood." It's still working, it would seem.

From ABC World News, 11/11/09:

CHARLIE GIBSON: We understand he's raising new questions about a number of plans that are in front of him. What new questions are there to be asked after all this time?

MARTHA RADDATZ: Well, you would think he'd be through with the questions, Charlie.

Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times (11/15/09):

Barack Obama is in danger of giving deliberation a bad name.

David Broder, Washington Post (11/16/09-- headline: "Enough Afghan Debate")

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.

The Washington Post reported (11/5/09) that some Democrats are "questioning whether they should emphasize job creation over some of the more ambitious items on the president's agenda." A couple paragraphs later, reporters Michael Shear and Paul Kane elaborate:

Moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday's voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt.

The implication that "job creation" is somehow at odds with "mounting spending" and "ambitious" or "far-reaching" government proposals is a another example of the neo-Hooverism that corporate reporters seem to instinctively subscribe to. In reality, spending money is one of the basic tools governments have for creating jobs during a recession--and cutting government spending is one of the surest ways to make that recession deeper.

It's worth noting that none of the sources actually quoted in the article makes the case that cutting federal spending would be a good way of creating jobs.

In the Washington Post (10/25/09), reporter Dan Balz has a piece about the "resurrection" of the public option in the Senate negotiations over healthcare reform. But like the Post's trumpeting of its recent poll on the issue, Balz's rationale doesn't make much sense. As he sees it, Senate Democrats "reevaluated the politics of the public option" in part because support was on the rise:

Then last week, new polls, one from the Washington Post and ABC News and the other from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, found clear majority support (57 percent) for a public option. The Post/ABC News poll showed support had risen five percentage points since August. The new numbers emboldened public-option supporters to press harder, even though the same polls continued to show the public divided over the overall shape of healthcare legislation.

As we pointed out already, the Post's numbers weren't all that revelatory; the public option was popular before (with as much as 62 percent support in a June 18-21 Post/ABC poll) and continues to be popular. As for the Kaiser numbers Balz singles out, that poll did find 57 percent support this month; however, the month before (9/11-18/09), Kaiser found the public option supported by 59 percent.

Figuring out why the press is pushing this "public option comeback" storyline is difficult to fathom, but it's undeniable that it is being sold with misleading citations of public opinion.

"U.S. Deeply Split on Troop Increase for Afghan War" is the headline on the Washington Post's October 21 report about its latest polling on Afghanistan.  The paper reports that "Americans are evenly and deeply divided" over sending 40,000 extra troops: "47 percent of those polled favor the buildup, while 49 percent oppose it."

If you've followed polling on this question, these results are striking--most recent surveys show the public is deeply troubled by the war and opposed to sending more troops. The most recent CNN survey (10/16-18/09), to take one example, found 39 percent support for sending more troops, and 59 opposed to that idea.

So who did the Post get those results? They've been asking questions about troop buildup in their other polls, but for this one they changed the wording of the question to this:

U.S. military commanders have requested approximately 40,000 more U.S. troops for Afghanistan. Do you think Obama should or should not order these additional forces to Afghanistan?

It's very likely that including references to "military commanders" and Obama skew the responses to the question--as has been noted, Obama tends to poll better than his policies do. One of the Post's recent polls (8/13-17/09) on Afghanistan was more neutrally worded:

Do you think the number of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan should be increased, decreased or kept about the same?

The result then: 24 percent favored an increase, 45 percent favored a decrease, 27 percent supported keeping troop levels the same. This led the Post to report the results of that poll under the headline, "Public Opinion in U.S. Turns Against Afghan War."

So did the Post change the wording of the poll to get a different outcome? Or did public opinion just dramatically reverse course in two months? The latter seems implausible.

Living up to the ridiculous notion that every right-wing slam on ACORN demands coverage in the "liberal media," the Washington Post ("Duo Release Another Video of Their Meeting With ACORN Worker," 10/22/09)  runs a story on the latest from the right-wing activists whose undercover videos shot at local ACORN offices got all the attention in the first place.

So what's the news? Well, apparently the duo appeared at the National Press Club to unveil a video of themselves at a Philadelphia ACORN office, where nothing much happened. The video they presented did not include any of the audio from ACORN workers--they removed those responses, allegedly for fear of being sued. And the pair refused to take questions from the press after their (sort of) press conference. Apparently the point of the whole exercise was to show that they spent 32 minutes at the office--and were thus not told to leave immediately.  How, exactly, does this qualify as  news?

When NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel recently returned from Afghanistan, he told MSNBC's Morning Joe, "I honestly think it's probably time to start leaving the country." Engel added, "I really don't see how this is going to end in anything but tears."

Engel's comments caused Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz (10/12/09) to raise an eyebrow at a reporter stating an opinion: "That sounds awfully opinionated for a working reporter," wrote Kurtz.

But we had to wonder if what really attracted Kurtz's scrutiny was Engel's stating of an opinion, or the opinion itself?

After all, for years FAIR has documented the phenomenon of journalists stating opinions in support of hawkish U.S. policies with virtual impunity--even when their views were catastrophically in error.

And so we wondered if Kurtz would even have commented if a network news reporter had suggested that the U.S. needed to escalate its military efforts in Afghanistan. We needn't have wondered.

Lara Logan, who holds the same position at CBS News as Engel does at NBC--chief foreign affairs correspondent--may be a more vehement cheerleader for escalation than Engel is for withdrawal. In a recent interview with Bob Orr on CBS News' Political Hotsheet, Logan expressed a disturbing devotion to  Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and chief proponent of escalating the war there: "I don't understand why no one will listen to the man you put your faith in and said he is the guy who is going to do this for us...."

Since Logan too "sounds awfully opinionated for a working reporter," we wonder how it is she escaped Kurtz's scrutiny?

For us, it isn't so much that journalists have and express opinions--the public is better served when we know what reporters are thinking--but we are troubled when  disapproval and despair over the lost standards of journalistic objectivity are trotted out only for reporters whose opinions are at odds with official views.

So we are glad to know of Logan's hero worship, even if it is at odds with the worthwhile  journalistic ethic that says reporters should hold the feet of the powerful to the fire--not massage them.
Corrected version: The original version of this post gave Stanley McChrystal's first name incorrectly.

If you want a lesson in how right-wing pressure on corporate media works, look no further than the ACORN story. Right-wing talkshow hosts have targeted the community organizing group for years, primarily on charges of vote fraud. Then two conservative activists produced some embarrassing videos of ACORN workers at some local offices giving tax advice advice to a couple passing themselves off as a pimp and a prostitute. From there, the story turned to right-wing gloating—and complaints about the media being too slow (and of course too liberal) to pick up on the right's anti-ACORN crusade.

And some in the media agreed. Washington Post ombud Andrew Alexander (9/20/09) criticized his paper for running just two early stories about the recent scandals involving the group. The problem was that the paper apparently doesn't pay enough attention to the concerns of the right--a feeling shared by the paper's executive editor, who called for more coverage of the group.

Over at the New York Times, public editor Clark Hoyt reached a similar conclusion (9/27/09), writing that when the paper misses such stories, it can "wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself." The Times was clueless, apparently, because they ran just one story about the anti-ACORN campaign, a piece that upset conservatives because it looked at the issue as a political matter--explaining that the videos and talk radio brouhaha was a way for the right to try and do harm to a group it opposes, and to try and connect ACORN to the Obama White House.  This is undoubtedly true. But editors at the Times, like the folks at the Post, offered the same self-criticism: We don't pay enough attention to the complaining of conservatives.

Sure enough, only a few days later, readers would see how this was changing. On October 6, the Post ran a piece on Republicans going after the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, for their ties to ACORN. The union has paid ACORN for various services over the years. A nearly identical story appeared in the next day's New York Times (10/7/09). So the completely-blown-out-of-proportion case against ACORN has now become a drive against SEIU, with no apparent news hook other than the fact that right-wing Republicans are trying to make this non-story into a story--and succeeding.

I guess editors at the Times and Post can rest easy knowing that they're not ignoring the whining of the right-wing.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen writes today of Iran's nuclear program:

They then turned themselves in to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and, as usual, said the site was intended for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. These Persians lie like a rug.

Classy.

The fact that this appears in a column chastising Barack Obama for not being serious enough only makes it worse ("Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States."). But it's worth remembering that Cohen also wrote that "only a fool--or possibly a Frenchman" would have argued with Colin Powell's 2003 UN presentation about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

We've talked about these "Topic A" debates in the Washington Post before, and today's installment is a doozy. The topic on the table is Obama's media strategy. And, as before, the important people are on the political right,

Here are the right-wingers: Karl Rove, Dan Schnur (communications director of John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign), Ed Rogers  (White House staffer to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush), Dana Perino (White House press secretary for George W. Bush),  Linda Chavez (chair  of the Center for Equal Opportunity, former member of the Reagan administration).

They're matched by two Democrats: pollster Douglas Schoen and Clinton adviser Lanny Davis (who's most recently been noteworthy for defending pro-coup forces in Honduras). Apparently the best media strategy comes from the right or the mushy middle.