[Note: this piece is a sidebar to Are You on the NewsHour’s Guestlist?]

When FAIR published its 1990 study, the NewsHour criticized it for not including taped sources; then–executive producer Lester Crystal argued (Broadcasting, 5/28/90) that taped segments “are a significant part of the program and have included much of the diversity [FAIR] refers to”—suggesting that including taped appearances would show the program to be more diverse than our study of the live segments indicated.

It’s worth noting that taped sources are frequently short soundbites, whereas live sources often get an extended opportunity to make various points and develop an argument or analysis. While looking at overall sources gives a more complete picture of the types and diversity of voices featured on the NewsHour, looking strictly at live sources can also reveal which voices are considered by the NewsHour to deserve a larger platform.

FAIR’s current study, which includes all sources, shows that while there are some striking statistical differences between live and taped sources, the NewsHour’s taped sources as a whole are not markedly more diverse; indeed, by some measures, they are less diverse than live sources.

[Note: this piece is a sidebar to Are You on the NewsHour’s Guestlist?]

The NewsHour features a weekly Friday debate which purports to pit a commentator from the right against one from the left. As a regular segment featuring NewsHour employees rather than outside sources, the segment was not included in the study, but it deserves mention, as it reinforces the NewsHour’s preference for right and center opinions over those from the left.

Just as he praised the NewsHour for its supposed balance, CPB ombud Ken Bode (CPB.org, 9/1/05) has singled out the weekly debate as a notable part of that “balance”: “Over the years, the regular NewsHour commentators, Mark Shields vs. Paul Gigot or David Gergen or, now, David Brooks, are a clear balance of liberal vs. conservative. But these commentators know how to disagree without being disagreeable. A balanced, civil dialogue.”

[Note: this piece is a sidebar to Are You on the NewsHour’s Guestlist?]

Following FAIR’s landmark 1989 study of ABC’s Nightline, “Are You on the Nightline Guestlist?” (Extra!, 1–2/89), FAIR was urged to compare Nightline’s narrow, elite roster of guests with those of other news programs. In 1990, FAIR published a new study, “All the Usual Suspects: The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and Nightline,” which measured Nightline’s progress in diversifying its own guestlist and compared it to the guestlist of the NewsHour, then co-hosted by Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer.

To the surprise of some, FAIR found that the guestlist of the non-commercial NewsHour favored white, male conservative-leaning elites even more than did Nightline’s. Among FAIR’s 1990 findings:

• On the NewsHour, 46 percent of its U.S. guests were current or former government officials, 38 percent were professional and 5 percent were corporate representatives, while just 6 percent of its guests represented public interest, labor or racial/ethnic groups.
  
  
• On Nightline, 34 percent of its U.S. guests were current or former government officials, 39 percent were professional and 5 percent were corporate representatives, while only 10 percent of its guests represented public interest, labor, or racial/ethnic groups.
  

[Note: this piece is a sidebar to Star Power Trumps History in AIDS Coverage]

A study published in August in the Journal of the American Medical Association (8/9/06) found that sub-Saharan Africans are better at following drug regimens than North Americans. The authors hoped the findings would lay to rest the myth that Africans are incapable of adhering to complicated antiretroviral drug treatment programs, which had been used as an excuse to restrict the region’s access to life-saving drugs.

In a related story, the New York Times (8/14/06) reported, “Only a few years ago, there was widespread skepticism that AIDS treatment programs would work in poor countries.” But that claim is seriously misleading.

Yes, such “skepticism” was official policy. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), infamously argued (Boston Globe, 6/7/01) that treatment for the 25 million Africans living with HIV/AIDS simply “couldn’t get done,” claiming that Africans “don’t know what Western time is. You have to take these [AIDS] drugs a certain number of hours each day, or they don’t work. Many people in Africa have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives. And if you say, 1 o’clock in the afternoon, they do not know what you are talking about. They know morning, they know noon, they know evening, they know the darkness at night.”

Such an attitude was in service to the U.S. government line that developing countries should not be allowed to undermine pharmaceutical companies’ profits through the distribution of generic versions of patented drugs—since their lack of infrastructure and general backwardness would make the distribution of such drugs wasteful or worse.

A number of activists at the 16th International AIDS Conference complained that the Toronto gathering foregrounded the rich and famous—most prominently Microsoft chair Bill Gates and former President Bill Clinton—at the expense of front-line workers and people living with AIDS (e.g., “Activists Blast Focus on Celebrity,” Calgary Herald, 8/17/06).

“They can’t have it both ways,” responded Conference co-chair Mark Wainberg (AP Worldstream, 8/17/06). Advocates who want the increased public attention that comes with media coverage, Wainberg suggested, should know the deal. “They should understand, as we all do, that we would not have 3,000 journalists at this conference if not for Richard Gere and Bill and Melinda Gates and Bill Clinton. We simply would not.”

For a message directed at activists, the statement was a ringing indictment of media priorities. Even with the draw of celebrity, the AIDS conference did not entice either CBS or NBC nightly news producers; of the three nightly network newscasts, ABC World News alone aired a report (8/14/06), and it was not likely to assuage activists’ concerns about the impact of using the wealthy and powerful as a lens for the AIDS story.

The message of ABC’s segment was simple (as befits a word count of 410): Clinton and Gates are “saying things no one else has said and doing things that no one else has done.” With money and star power, “They are doing everything.”

After the June 25 capture of one of its soldiers in a raid by Hamas militants, Israel responded with a massive invasion of Gaza. It destroyed the area’s electrical generators, blew up bridges and launched a barrage of artillery at Palestinian camps and settlements. Palestinian fighters vowed steadfast resistance. Whatever meager hopes remained for peace talks, cease-fires or an improvement in the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza seemed to have evaporated. Israel was demanding the unconditional release of the soldier, while leaders of Hamas—in control of the Palestinian government following the January 2006 elections—insisted he would be returned only in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

For the U.S. news-consuming public, hopes for a durable halt to Israeli/ Palestinian violence must have seemed even slimmer than the stand-off over the captured soldier might have led one to believe. For U.S. news outlets were informing their readers that Hamas was not merely an armed group holding a hostage as a bargaining chip. It was a terrorist faction “sworn to Israel’s destruction” (Boston Globe, 6/26/06) that “refuses to recognize Israel” (Baltimore Sun, 6/27/06). “Sworn to Israel’s destruction,” a New York Daily News editorial explained (6/29/06), “Hamas has made a pariah of the Palestinian government.” “The group, sworn to Israel’s destruction, has refused international calls to renounce violence or recognize Israel’s right to exist,” wrote the Associated Press (6/29/06).

On August 14, the New York Times addressed one of the significant worries for U.S. media outlets covering the Israeli bombing and invasion of Lebanon: Civilians in Lebanon were the primary victims, dying in far greater numbers than Israeli military personnel and civilians combined. (Amnesty International estimated that the fighting killed about 1,000 civilians in Lebanon and about 40 in Israel—8/23/06.)

The problem for U.S. media was how to obscure that fact. As the Times put it, “Particularly vexing for many American news organizations is the struggle to determine how and in what proportion images of civilian dead and injured should be displayed in their coverage, when one side’s casualties greatly surpass the other’s.”

What’s “vexing” about this issue is that news consumers might have more sympathy for a country where many hundreds of civilians are being killed than for another where a few dozen have died—a reaction news outlets certainly don’t want to be seen as encouraging.

To avoid this, the Times reported that some outlets declare that they “do not impose a formula for fairness,” meaning they don’t feel bound to report civilian deaths in the proportions in which they occur. CNN president Jonathan Klein told the paper, “This is not a sporting event, where we’re toting up the scores of both sides.”

In the days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as the U.S. military planned a massive aerial bombing campaign on the densely populated city of Baghdad, the Pentagon phrase “Shock and Awe” was repeated with enthusiasm on television, part of the celebration of the power of modern warfare.

At the same time, Deep Dish TV was setting in motion a plan to record, illuminate, document and bear witness to what would be left out of the commercial media war frame. They would title the 13-part series of 28-minute programs Shocking and Awful, and the group of independent artists and media producers would tell the story of an Iraq War that would be unrecognizable to the commercial media gaze.

Comparing the Deep Dish lens to that of mainstream media results in a Rashomon look at war that reveals the importance of the battle over public perceptions, a battle that employs the powerful resources of the media industry. The Shocking and Awful series stands up to those weapons of mass persuasion, and provides a view of war obliterated by commercial censorship, official government stagecraft and the emergent culture of 21st century militarism.

In March 2003, when the shock-and-awe bombing started, Americans were invited to look through the elevated eyes of the warriors in control of the exciting high-tech weapons. The digital imaging of weapons is a graphic style recognizable now across the media spectrum from TV news to films and video games. Its prominence confers a kind of video-game sensibility to war, one antithetical to concerns for the victims on the ground; such digital thrills are easily dissociated from the killing of real people. The Deep Dish series brings those people to life.

[Note: This piece is a sidebar to Lives in the Balance.]

On August 8, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, “Arabs have often argued that Americans have a double standard in the Middle East: We are more solicitous of casualties in Israel than in Gaza or Lebanon. I think they’re right, for a variety of reasons.” Indeed, in the New York Times, some of the deadliest attacks in Lebanon were mentioned in passing, or filed under headlines that would seem to diminish their importance.

On August 2, Human Rights Watch released a report that documented Israeli attacks on civilians. The report was harsh in its conclusions, noting that Israel’s excuse for civilian deaths in Lebanon—that Hezbollah fighters hide among non-combatants, therefore endangering that population—does not explain some of the more deadly attacks, which have happened away from any alleged Hezbollah activity. The Times (8/3/06) relayed this information about halfway through a story headlined: “Civilians Lose as Fighters Slip Into Fog of War.” The subhead read, “Lebanese Deaths Show Dilemma for Israel.”

Shortly after, an Israeli airstrike killed about 30 farm workers near the border with Syria. Those deaths were mentioned in the Times on August 5, under a headline that focused instead on infrastructural damage: “Israeli Raids Destroy Bridges North of Beirut.” An Israeli attack several days later on August 8 in the Beirut suburb of Al-Shiya killed dozens of people. But readers of the Times were left mostly unaware, save for a passing mention in the paper’s August 10 edition of a funeral for some of the victims.

[Note: This piece is a sidebar to The Power of Conservative Spinning.]

There was “a significant increase of understanding by conservatives on how to deal with media” with the rise of Ronald Reagan, explains Morton C. Blackwell, founder and president of the conservative Leadership Institute.

“There was very little to distinguish Barry Goldwater from Ronald Reagan in terms of policy,” he said. But there “was an enormous difference in their approach to communications.” Blackwell, who prides himself on having been the youngest Goldwater delegate at the 1964 Republican National Convention, said that Goldwater “really enjoyed needling people who disagreed with him. In contrast, Reagan generally cared what other people thought and had an ability—part-natural, part-studied—to say unpleasant things pleasantly. And it made all the difference.”

In 1979, Blackwell founded the Leadership Institute—with a focus on media. Its “mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative public policy leaders,” says its website. It has “trained” more than 39,000 students, including Bush strategist Karl Rove, former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) and Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist.

Based in Alexandria, Virginia, the Leadership Institute has a staff of 47 and a budget last year of $8 million. Understanding the need to invest in and develop communications skills at all levels of the media, the Institute offers a comprehensive package of training programs, including:

In addition to being a journalism professor (whose courses have included Politics of Media), I’m the host of a nationally aired TV program, Enviro Close-Up. My producer, Joan Flynn, and I get many e-mails proposing subjects and guests for the show—the overwhelming majority from conservative public relations companies promoting conservative guests.

In terms of volume and intensity, there’s nothing comparable from the progressive world. Speaking of the politics of media, it’s a clear and daily demonstration to me of how the right, far more than the left, realizes the importance of communication.

“Special Guests”

The most active PR operation that pitches us is Special Guests. Examples of some of the subjects and guests it has proposed in recent times:

• “New Study: Gays More Likely to Have Gay Kids.” The pitch offers Dr. Paul Cameron, chair of the Family Research Institute in Colorado Springs, ready “to discuss a new study . . . of adult children of homosexuals.” Dr. Cameron is also available to talk on “Homosexuals Twice as Apt to Drive Intoxicated”—based, too, on new “eye-opening” research.

• Then there is “Immigration 101: Public Schools Give Credits to Students Who Protest.” The peg: a Maryland school that decided to “grant students community service credit for attending immigration demonstrations.” The guest: Katharine DeBrecht, author of Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!, a right-wing children’s book. She is also available for a show on “Madonna Endorses Hillary: Life Imitates Cartoon Art,” on Madonna’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president.

Earlier this year, I asked my undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to evaluate a barrage of news stories declaring that “teen drivers are more dangerous than anyone thought” (Paula Zahn Now, 1/18/06) in response to an American Automobile Association study warning that crashes involving 15- to 17-year-old drivers killed 31,000 people over the last decade.

Within minutes, the students, ages 19–21, formulated three obvious questions reporters should have asked about the study: (1) Did the teen drivers “involved in” the crashes in the AAA study cause the crashes? (2) Why are teen drivers singled out, when older drivers also kill others, including teens? and (3) Shouldn’t reporters treat claims by political lobbies such as AAA skeptically or balance them against other opinions?

Yet a review of news coverage of the AAA study showed virtually no reporters inclined to pursue such elementary questions. The AAA media campaign was well-designed for uncritical consumption by a press corps whose portrayal of youth is high in hype and negative stereotype. It served to corroborate existing assumptions—“You already know teens and cars can be a very dangerous combination,” reported CNN (1/18/06)—but offered reporters a “new” angle by underscoring the hazard teen drivers pose for those other than themselves; in the words of CNN’s Jack Cafferty (1/18/06), “They kill other people, lots of them.”

Ageism and Katrina

Neil deMause’s piece is excellent (“Katrina’s Vanishing Victims,” 7–8/06), especially in showing that the media’s memory for race and class lasted just about a month. But what of age? That is still the most underreported story of all.

The “vast majority” of the people who died in New Orleans were old, Martin Smith reported on Frontline’s special on “The Storm” (11/22/06). Katrina was “one of the worst medical catastrophes for the aged in recent U.S. history,” reporter Roma Khanna concluded in the Houston Chronicle (1/28/05). As early as late November, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals knew that 78 percent of the identified dead were over 51. Seventy-eight percent. People died by age.

Older New Orleansians were most at risk, by being also predominantly poor and female and African-American, and also sometimes weak, ill or disabled. In New Orleans, 23 percent of the 484,000 citizens had disabilities. The figure was 50 percent for people over 65.

Not race or class but age was the most underreported story of Katrina. Front-line’s “The Storm” gave its shocking fact—“the vast majority” of dead were old—only one sentence in an hour-long show. Nobody (according to Nexis) picked up the statistic about the 78 percent over 51. Nursing-home deaths accounted for only 10 percent of the toll. The full story goes far broader and deeper than the cases of institutional abuse.

In 2005, Kenneth Tomlinson, chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—and thus the person in charge of disbursing federal public broadcasting funds—sparked controversy with his aggressive push to move PBS and NPR to the right. In a series of public statements, Tomlinson, armed with a dubious study of PBS shows he commissioned from a right-wing ideologue, charged public broadcasting programming with harboring a liberal bias (Extra!, 9–10/05). The study—which, among other things, classified conservative Republicans Sen. Chuck Hagel and former Rep. Bob Barr as “liberals” (Washington Post, 7/1/05)—was primarily an attack on the program Now, formerly hosted by Bill Moyers, and led Tomlinson to fund two new (and short-lived) conservative shows for PBS: the Journal Editorial Report, a TV version of the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorial page, and Unfiltered, hosted by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson.

No “Happy” Talk

Asked at a press conference (8/21/06) if he was “frustrated” about the situation in Iraq, George W. Bush responded: “Frustrated? Sometimes I’m frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I’m happy. This is—but war is not a time of joy. These aren’t joyous times. These are challenging times, and they’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country. I understand that.” Some outlets apparently found this reference to the president’s occasional happiness too jarring to be reported. The Washington Post (8/22/06), for example, had Bush saying, with no ellipses: “Sometimes I’m frustrated, rarely surprised. War is not a time of joy. These are challenging times.” CBS Morning News (8/22/06) managed to skip from “Rarely surprised” to “These aren’t joyous times” without any indication to the viewer that they were getting a cleaned-up quote from the commander in chief.

Free Trade Through Protectionism

No “Happy” Talk

Asked at a press conference (8/21/06) if he was “frustrated” about the situation in Iraq, George W. Bush responded: “Frustrated? Sometimes I’m frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I’m happy. This is—but war is not a time of joy. These aren’t joyous times. These are challenging times, and they’re difficult times, and they’re straining the psyche of our country. I understand that.” Some outlets apparently found this reference to the president’s occasional happiness too jarring to be reported. The Washington Post (8/22/06), for example, had Bush saying, with no ellipses: “Sometimes I’m frustrated, rarely surprised. War is not a time of joy. These are challenging times.” CBS Morning News (8/22/06) managed to skip from “Rarely surprised” to “These aren’t joyous times” without any indication to the viewer that they were getting a cleaned-up quote from the commander in chief.

Free Trade Through Protectionism