Media Views 
Media Views was FAIR's annotated newswire - a forum for featuring interesting media criticism, media news and reporting that we thought merited comment.
The Media Views format is now retired. FAIR will continue to post analysis and critique, information on breaking stories, news updates, criticism, commentary and more on the FAIR Blog. Click here to join in the conversation.
Our past collection of Media Views will remain as an archived resource on this website.
Thirteen-year local TV reporter Jim Hummel resigns in protest over new owners' push for his station to join the trend toward stupider and more offensive news:
Hummel said there was pressure to sensationalize news and use slang—such as "lowlife" and "thug" to describe defendants—in an effort to increase ratings for the third-place local news station. "You know, for 13 years I've been a cheerleader and ambassador for the station despite our struggling in the ratings, because I believed in the product," Hummel said yesterday. "And I can't say that anymore."
One Globe reader asks a simple question about the paper's coverage of the congressional investigation of Bush administration evildoings: "Why should Globe readers have to go to other sources to get a straightforward account of the proceedings?":
After Spending a
C-SPAN afternoon watching the House Judiciary Committee's hearing on executive power and its constitutional limitations, I was dismayed by the superficial
Associated Press article "
Bush Critics in House Weigh In, But Skirt Impeachment Issue" (Page A7, July 26). I searched the report for any substance and found instead a brief and cynical description of the procedure, never departing from the
accepted mainstream media script: noisy anti-Bush demonstrators, a few speeches and meaningless exchanges, no actual content of interest.
Globe readers wouldn't know that there were hours of powerful testimony, thoughtful questioning of witnesses, and serious statements from some members of Congress.
See FAIR's new Action Alert: CNN Scoffs at White House Critics: Anchor With Bush Ties Dismisses Abuse-of-Power Hearings as 'Stagecraft' (7/31/08)
In the face of well-documented media lack of interest in the fate of Palestinians, human rights group B'Tselem began arming the Occupied Territory residents—with cameras. Project coordinator Diala Shamas explains:
We didn't give out a hundred video cameras to document rotten apples; it was just to show that there was something
systematic happening and that it was almost structural to the occupation. And so far, most of the violence that we've filmed has been settler violence, of course with the complicity of the army and the police usually turning a blind eye. But in this case what was really remarkable was it was actually the soldiers themselves.
Predictably enough, corporate U.S. outlets have proven entirely uninterested in the results.
The economic myth debunker takes a rhetorical "baseball bat" to the recent spate of articles like the New York Times' "White House Predicts $482 Billion Deficit" and USA Today's "Record Deficit Expected in 2009":
The government is not, repeat
not, projected to run a record deficit in 2009.... The latest projections show a deficit of $490 billion. By the absolutely
meaningless measure of nominal dollars, this is a record. But if anyone thinks this is giving information to readers, then they have no business writing news. The relevant measure is the deficit as a share of GDP. The 2009 deficit will be equal to about 3.3 percent of GDP. Even if you add in 1.3 percent of GDP for the money borrowed from Social Security this only gets you to 4.6 percent, well below the 6.0 percent deficit hit in 1983.
Baker does give "credit" to USA Today for having "included a chart that made this point," but still notes that "the headline writer blew it big time."
The Southern Poverty Law Center catches CNN featuring what Holthouse facetiously calls "the wit and wisdom of Steve Sailer, identified only as 'a columnist for the American Conservative magazine'":
What the
CNN article fails to note is that in addition to writing columns and movie reviews for the
American Conservative, Sailer is the founder of the
Human Biodiversity Institute, a neo-eugenics online discussion forum where right-wing journalists and race scientists have promoted selective breeding of the human species. He also writes frequently for the anti-immigrant hate site
Vdare.com, named for the first white child born in America.
What is CNN doing interviewing a prominent eugenicist about what it means to be "black in America"? Not that there isn't precedent in their sourcing; see FAIR's Action Alert: Dobbs' Dubious Disease Numbers: CNN Host Stands by Faulty Leprosy Statistics (5/11/07)
Examining the disconnect between the "bottom line" and the top of the heap in the "ailing" newspaper industry:
Corporate responses have also included: asking an already dispirited staff to take a 10 percent pay cut (the
Boston Globe); raising the newsstand price by 33 to 50 percent (
Gannett, the
Wall Street Journal); drastically reducing the newspaper's news/advertising ratio (all
Tribune papers); turning the paper's Sunday magazine over to the business staff (the
Los Angeles Times); reducing the physical size of the newspaper and cutting down on the news hole (everyone); buying out experienced, knowledgeable staff members and replacing them with underpaid novices (
everyone); and closing foreign and national bureaus (almost
everyone). Virtually the only expense still intact is executive pay. On the
Recovering Journalist blog, Mark Potts
notes that the average compensation among the thirteen public-company newspaper CEOs was just under $6 million a year in 2007, according to corporate proxy filings with the SEC. These figures, one can only conclude, are entirely unrelated to performance.
Bill O'Reilly has CMPA President Robert Lichter on his radio show to tell him his studies are crap—or at least they are now that they're getting the wrong result:
In 2006, after the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) released
a study showing that Democrats got more favorable coverage than Republicans... O'Reilly
praised Lichter's findings as definitive proof "that the media leans left" because "the stats are the stats" [
Fox News, 10/31/06]. But now that the CMPA has released a
new study—using the same methodology—that found that
ABC,
NBC and
CBS have been
tougher on Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) than Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently, O'Reilly has
changed his tune about the validity of Lichter’s research. In an Monday interview with Lichter on his radio show, O'Reilly called the new study "misleading" and "an enormous mistake."
Spelling out the real political consequences of superficial campaign coverage, when even somewhat critical reportage still gives valuable exposure to a presidential candidate's smears:
The number of times Senator John McCain's new advertisement attacking Sen. Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds.
The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen.
Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year—one widely panned as misleading—to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.
Asked by FAIR contributor Bybee to assess corporate media's "conventional wisdom... that the U.S. surge in Iraq has been a great success," Noam Chomsky asks his own "more fundamental question":
Why should we be asking these particular questions? Let's take some enemy, say, Russia and
Chechnya. Chechnya doesn't involve the invasion of a separate country, but it's horrible enough. The Russians devastated the country, with nobody knows how many casualties and atrocities. The capital Grozny was basically a pile of rubble. But over the last couple months (in early 2008), American reporters have gone there and
say the city is booming, it has electricity, building is going on, businesses are opening, there's little violence. Russians are in the background, but it's basically a Russian client state nominally run by Chechnyans. Their surge was a success. But do we praise Putin for less violence?
But Iraq is much worse. What are we doing there? We just invaded. While the Chinese can claim Tibet is part of China and the Russians can claim Chechnya, we can't say that Iraq is part of the U.S. unless we actually claim that we own the world. We just invaded a completely foreign country.
See FAIR's magazine Extra!: The Poisoned Chalice: Media and Double Standards (7–8/07) by Noam Chomsky
In another sharp media critique from the hip hop world, independent musician MC Lars raps about disproportionate news coverage of the fate of women who happen to not be of color:
Poor kids are kidnapped every day, black women all the time
But that's never at the top of our news headline
Elizabeth Smart and Laci Peterson
JonBenet Ramsey, yes you've heard of them
But missing black girls? tell me if you know of
Tamika Huston or
LaToyia Figueroa?...
I'm not saying it's not news when a white girl disappears
But the stations makes bank when they're preying on our fears....
Murder is a tragedy at any cost
But if you spin it right you can profit from the lost
Lars even urges his fans to phone their "local news stations and call them on this bias."
On the lack of corporate media reportage on Dennis Kucinich's impeachment proceedings:
Last Friday one of two things indisputably happened. Either a dozen senior Congress members and several well-known expert witnesses went certifiably and collectively insane, or
charges of the most extreme executive abuses of power ever heard in the history of this nation were backed up by overwhelming evidence during a six-hour hearing of the House Judiciary Committee focused on the possible need to impeach the president and the vice president. Either way, a nation with a public communications system worthy of a democracy would have learned the news. What we actually have in this country is a news media conglomerate that
functions as a part of the executive branch of the federal government....
One project of the U.S. Department of Media is the Cover Nothing Network (CNN) on which associate deputy undersecretaries of Media Campbell Brown and Erica Hill reported on Friday that there is not enough time for impeachment and that if the Democrats led the way to impeachment voters would punish them, and that therefore the hearing was a waste of money that could have been better spent publicizing the president kissing babies.
Swanson provides video to prove his contention that "I'm not making any of this up."
A reminder that "urging your representatives to veto media consolidation is one of the most significant things you could do all summer":
Just
two weeks ago, we launched a campaign to get 100 House representatives to co-sponsor legislation that would
reject the FCC's recent decision to allow media conglomerates to control more local news and information. Already, 41 lawmakers have joined the fight, which means we're nearly halfway there. But it also means we have halfway to go. We need your help to ensure that Big Media doesn't get any bigger. So put down your summer reading—you were never going to get through
War and Peace anyway—and
tell your representatives to take a stand.
The Public Broadcasting Service's ombud publishes letters from viewers outraged by a July 21 NewsHour in which a Barack Obama representative and host Margaret Warner were, by Getler's own admission, "essentially 'walked over' by [John McCain adviser Max] Boot, who rather thoroughly dominated—in terms of air time (more than 3-to-1 by my calculations)—the 10-minute discussion." Some samples from incensed NewsHour watchers:
The fact that Senator McCain's spokesperson overflowed at the mouth with incorrect facts and propaganda is no reason to give him the majority of the allotted time. Ms. Warner should have controlled the time as the professional she is supposed to be, instead of shrugging her lack of control off with a little smirk....
Mr. Boot was allowed to attack and distort Mr. Obama's position and then allowed to continue his argument. Mr. Korb was not allowed to answer the distorted attack....
The result was a lousy interview that was far from even-handed. The moderator needs to take control. Good manners on the part of the moderator and the Obama representative allowed the McCain representative... to dominate the segment. Shame on you—that is not doing your job.
A review of Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi's new book is an occasion to revisit what Mitchell dubs her "e-mail read 'round the world":
Nearly four years ago in September 2004, Farnaz Fassihi...sent a brutally frank, private e-mail to friends that somehow leaked out to fellow journalists and various bloggers.... "Iraq remains a disaster," she wrote, and that was just for starters. It was not widely known until the e-mail, for example, that, as Fassihi revealed, foreign correspondents in Baghdad were "under virtual
house arrest."... It caused a sensation. Some readers charged the U.S. media with keeping the true nature of horrid conditions in Iraq from them—was it suitable only for airing to friends?
Mitchell notes that afterwards, "coincidentally or not, the tone of a lot of reporting from Iraq by others did start to focus more on average people as conditions, for many months, went from bad to worse."
Quoting what he deems a "classic work, Obedience to Authority," by psychologist Stanley Milgram, Edwards sees great currency in Milgram's description of how, "in Nazi Germany, even among those most closely identified with the 'final solution', it was considered an act of discourtesy to talk about the killings":
The same "bad form" is very much discouraged in our own society. One would hardly guess from media reporting that Britain and America are responsible for killing anyone in Iraq and Afghanistan, where violence is typically blamed on "
insurgents" and "sectarian conflict." International "coalition" forces are depicted as peacekeepers using minimum violence as a last resort. In
reporting the November 2005
Haditha massacre, in which 24 Iraqi civilians were murdered by U.S. troops,
Newsweek suggested that the scale of the tragedy "should not be exaggerated." Why? "America still fields what is arguably the most disciplined, humane military force in history, a
model of restraint."
Edwards suggests that Patrick Cockburn's reporting in the Independent (7/11/05) may be closer to the mark:
The American army's use of its massive firepower is so unrestrained that all U.S. military operations are in reality the collective punishment of whole districts, towns and cities.
Highlighting a prominent new example of corporate media's them-not-us maxim:
Jackson Diehl, deputy editor of the the
Washington Post's editorial page, has an
op-ed...that contains a stirring defense today of "the rule of law." Diehl righteously complains the "president is already in danger of making 'legal nihilism' the byword for his administration." It might be considered quite surprising that an editorial page that has long
cheered on many of the Bush administration's most extreme acts of lawlessness is suddenly complaining about the President's "legal nihilism," except that Diehl's sermon isn't directed towards the American president, but rather towards Russia's. According to Diel, Russia is demonstrating a very upsetting disregard both for domestic and international law.
Greenwald calls it "a potent reflection of how deluded our political class has become" when "an establishment organ like the Washington Post editorial page continues to think it can credibly lecture the world on the rule of law and the need to abide by international norms."
(Ad-viewing required.)
FAIR's founder catches a graphically flashy Times column above which "the headline totally distorted the data." Cohen's careful look at the actual content of the fancy charts finds that, of the dozen "issues on which there are recognizable positions associated with right and left...the trend in opinion is unmistakenly leftward on virtually every one":
So the
Times presents Gallup data showing a clear trend toward the left, and calls it a "
Move to the Middle." Is the assumption that we were mostly right-wingers a few years ago? Or is the "move to the middle"
line simply more reassuring to an establishment newspaper? The reality is that longterm trends in American opinion are generally leftward on issues, as documented in
well-researched studies. It's a reality that troubles those Beltway pundits who constantly goad Barack Obama toward "the center" on issues like
Iraq and NAFTA—when they mean away from the center of mass opinion and upwards toward the center of elite opinion. A demagogue like Sean Hannity instinctively knows this reality, which is why his attacks on Obama emphasize
WrightAyresBitterMichelle more than issues.
See FAIR's Media Advisory: Obama Moves Right? Pundits Cheer (7/15/08)
Baker expects what he calls "wondrous 'no big deal' comments" about the recent mortgage company bailout and other economic woes from "those minimizing the economy's problems last summer." But New York Times columnist Ben Stein's July 27 comment that "employment in June was considerably less than 1 percent below its all-time peak in November 2007" has Baker up in arms:
You've got to really really love that one. Does Stein not know that economies
add jobs through time? In other words, we generally expect that in any given month we have more jobs that we
ever did before. To be 1 percent below our all-time peak, 7 months after that peak, is really quite bad.... In singing the praises of the economy, Stein also neglects to mention the loss of $5 trillion in real housing wealth over the last two years (almost $70,000 per homeowner), but that's probably a
small point.
Summarizing U.S. TV's worries about the upcoming Beijing games: "If an athlete holds a protest sign or waves a Tibetan flag, how will the Chinese hosts react? Will the television networks show the scene? How will the Chinese handle the media for the rest of the Games?" Stelter explains that
the stakes are high for both the network, which paid $900 million for broadcast rights for the Olympics, and the reputation of
NBC News. If it covers any controversies aggressively, it risks drawing the
ire of the Chinese and interfering with coverage of sports events. But if it shies from coverage of any protests,
NBC risks being criticized in the West for kowtowing to China—particularly since its corporate parent,
General Electric, is aggressively expanding its investments in China.
Promises from NBC News' president that "if there's news, we're going to cover it" somehow ring hollow in the face of such massive financial pressures.
See FAIR's magazine Extra!: Carrying a Torch for Anti-China Protests: When an Official Enemy Is Targeted, Media Take Notice (7-8/08) by Julie Hollar
Veteran blogger Atrios confesses to being "incredibly puzzled" over Adam Nagourney of the New York Times' bizarre response to the Barack Obama campaign sending out a public rejoinder to his July 16 "Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race" article. Atrios quotes from the New Republic's account of the incident:
Nagourney awoke to an e-mail from
Talking Points Memo writer Greg Sargent asking him to comment on an eight-point rebuttal trashing his piece that the Obama campaign had released to reporters and bloggers.... Nagourney had not heard the complaints from the Obama camp and had no idea they were so steamed. "I'm looking at this thing, and I'm like, 'What the hell is this?'" Nagourney recently recalled. "I really flipped out."... "I've never had an experience like this, with this campaign or others," Nagourney tells me. "I thought they crossed the line. If you have a problem with a story I write, call me first. I'm a big boy. I can handle it. But they never called."
Clearly, if a newspaper gets a story about a public figure wrong, it's less important to tell the reporter than it is to tell the people who read the offending story. Yet for Nagourney, putting out a public statement about the story "crossed the line." Nagourney exclaims that "I'm a big boy," but his reaction—"I really flipped out"—actually appears rather childish.
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