Why the Discredited Right Still Sets the Agenda and Dominates the Debate

April 28, 2008
Why the Discredited Right Still Sets the Agenda and Dominates the Debate

These three factors have combined to allow the lunatic fringe that has taken over the Right to hijack our country, our democracy, and our Constitution. So that 28 percent of the population that continues to support George W. Bush no matter how many bodies pile up in Iraq, how many jobs disappear overseas, how many For Sale signs go up on their block, or how high gas prices get, continues to dominate our politics.

Let's take them one by one, starting with the media which remains hopelessly addicted to the false belief that in order to be fair and balanced every story needs to be given the "on the one hand... and on the other" treatment. But not every story has two sides -- and the truth is often to be found not in the middle but solidly on one side or the other.

The earth is not flat. Global warming is a fact. Evolution is a fact -- sorry Mike Huckabee. And not even Republicans still believe in the unfettered, free market. Look how they rushed to Big Government to save their beloved Bear Sterns.

Nor are there two sides to the proposition that Iraq is our generation's greatest foreign policy disaster. It is. Period. Full stop. Yet the same media that enabled the administration to sell us the multi-trillion dollar war are -- nearly six years later -- still pushing the Right's line that "the surge is working." Green Zone bombardments be damned.

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

April 18, 2008
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as "military analysts" whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Federal Judge Linked to Prostitution Ring

March 14, 2008
Federal Judge Linked to Prostitution Ring

One of the country's top federal judges has been linked to an investigation of a Denver-based prostitution ring, according to federal officials.

Edward Nottingham, the chief federal judge in Denver, Colo., was "implicated as a customer" in an ongoing IRS and Denver police investigation of an alleged prostitution operation called Denver Sugar/Denver Players, according to officials.

Debunking Iran's Nuclear Program: Another 'Intelligence Failure' -- On the Part of the Press?

December 4, 2007
Debunking Iran's Nuclear Program: Another 'Intelligence Failure' -- On the Part of the Press?

NEW YORK (December 04, 2007) -- Press reports so far have suggested that the belated release of the National Intelligence Estimate yesterday throwing cold water on oft-repeated claims of a rampant Iranian nuclear weapons program has deeply embarrassed, or at least chastened, public officials and policymakers who have promoted this line for years. Gaining little attention so far: Many in the media have made these same claims, often extravagantly, which promoted (deliberately or not) the tubthumping for striking Iran.

As I've warned in this space for years, too many in the media seemed to fail to learn the lessons of the Iraqi WMD intelligence failure -- and White House propaganda effort -- and instead, were repeating it, re: Iran. This time, perhaps, we may have averted war, with little help from most of the media. In this case, it appears, the NIE people managed to resist several months of efforts by the administration to change their assessment. If only they had stiffened their backbones concerning Iraq in 2002.

A Top U.S. General in Iraq Blames Public's Antiwar Views on the Media

September 20, 2007
A Top U.S. General in Iraq Blames Public's Antiwar Views on the Media

NEW YORK Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, said Thursday, back in the U.S. on leave at Fort Stewart, that the war in Iraq is "a winnable mission" if the the media would only cooperate.

"If the American people are informed properly," Lynch told reporters after he arrived home on leave, "I believe they will be supportive of the mission. But they're not getting the right story. As a result, they're anti the war."

U.S. media curtail Iraq war coverage

August 20, 2007
U.S. media curtail Iraq war coverage

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. media reporting of the war in Iraq fell sharply in the second quarter of 2007, largely due to a drop in coverage of the Washington-based policy debate, a study released Monday said.

Taken together, the war's three major story lines -- the U.S. policy debate, events in Iraq and their impact on the U.S. homefront -- slipped roughly a third, to 15 percent of an index of total news coverage, down from 22 percent in the first three months of the year.

The study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism examined 18,010 stories that appeared between April 1 and June 29. Its "News Coverage Index" encompasses 48 outlets, including newspapers, radio, online, cable and network television.

Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations

August 9, 2007
Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations

he American public continues to fault news organizations for a number of perceived failures, with solid majorities criticizing them for political bias, inaccuracy and failing to acknowledge mistakes. But some of the harshest indictments of the press now come from the growing segment that relies on the internet as its main source for national and international news.

The internet news audience – roughly a quarter of all Americans – tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. As many as 38% of those who rely mostly on the internet for news say they have an unfavorable opinion of cable news networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, compared with 25% of the public overall, and just 17% of television news viewers.

Media report "do-nothing" Congress, not GOP obstruction

July 27, 2007
Media report "do-nothing" Congress, not GOP obstruction

Several media outlets have reported recent claims by Senate Republicans, President Bush, and members of his administration that Democrats are currently presiding, or may soon preside, over a "do-nothing Congress" without challenging the claim in any way. These claims are apparently part of a strategy laid out in a "talking-points memorandum" reportedly "circulat[ed]" by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) that advises Republicans to attack congressional Democrats for their supposed lack of legislative accomplishments. In fact, Republicans have blocked Senate action at an unprecedented rate -- apparently putting into action a strategy that Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-MS) described as "obstructionist."

Minneapolis Tribune: "end the war"

July 15, 2007
Minneapolis Tribune: "end the war"

President Bush, having dispatched top officials to Capitol Hill to shore up support on Iraq, saw defections occurring instead and ended up in a high-stakes power showdown on Thursday. After lecturing Congress on its role (consultation, by his lights), he emphasized his power as chief decider. But it's way past time for all that. Members of Congress must counter his stance with a strong new, and newly bipartisan, effort to responsibly end this war.

Perhaps strangest -- if he truly believes what he said -- were the president's repetitive attempts Thursday to portray the struggle in Iraq as principally a fight against Al-Qaida. This is getting old, and it suggests acute persuasion desperation. We all know that Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia is one of the extremist elements in Iraq, that it is responsible for a high percentage of suicide attacks there. But it is neither the principal problem in Iraq nor connected to the 9/11 attacks in 2001, as he continues to imply. In fact, it didn't exist then, and has enlisted support largely because of the U.S. occupation.

Since Bush is having his logic all ways and clearly is in denial about the state of affairs in Iraq, senior members of Congress -- despite Bush's implication that they are overstepping their authority -- must get beyond their party interests and/or 2008 campaign maneuvering and craft a firm, joint message to Bush.

Media and Political Decline

June 25, 2007
Media and Political Decline

According to two former F.C.C. officials, Mr. Murdoch's chief in-house lobbyist at the time, Preston Padden, confronted Mr. Hundt's chief of staff at a meeting at a coffee shop near the agency's headquarters. Mr. Hundt would not be able to "get a job as dog-catcher" if the F.C.C. took away a single News Corporation television license, Mr. Padden warned, they said.

Mr. Lott's book sold 12,000 copies, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of all domestic retail and Internet sales. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, received $24,506 from HarperCollins for his modest-selling book "Passion for Truth," according to financial disclosure forms. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, got $141,666 for her book "American Heroines," which has sold better. All sit on either the Commerce or Judiciary Committees that most closely oversee the media business.

Journalists dole out cash to both parties

June 25, 2007
Journalists dole out cash to both parties

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.The donors include CNN's Guy Raz, now covering the Pentagon for NPR, who gave to Kerry the same month he was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq; New Yorker war correspondent George Packer; a producer for Bill O'Reilly at Fox; MSNBC TV host Joe Scarborough; political writers at Vanity Fair; the editor of The Wall Street Journal's weekend section; local TV anchors in Washington, Minneapolis, Memphis and Wichita; the ethics columnist at The New York Times; and even MTV's former presidential campaign correspondent.

GOP/Media Rewrite Iraq War History

June 6, 2007
GOP/Media Rewrite Iraq War History

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and radio personality Jay Diamond are right to wonder why Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney got away with rewriting a key chapter of the Iraq War history without political reporters raising a peep.

At the June 5 Republican debate, co-sponsored by CNN, Romney defended George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in March 2003 on the grounds that Saddam Hussein refused to let United Nations weapons inspectors in to search for WMD.

Lies, Sighs and Politics

June 8, 2007
Lies, Sighs and Politics

In Tuesday's Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely
misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq.

Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan's
birthday.

Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the "gaffe of the
night"?

Folks, this is serious.

If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven't changed a bit.

Military Rules Ban A Free Press

May 28, 2007
Military Rules Ban A Free Press

Since last year, the military's embedding rules require that journalists obtain a signed consent from a wounded soldier before the image can be published. Images that put a face on the dead, that make them identifiable, are simply prohibited.

If Joseph Heller were still around, he might appreciate the bureaucratic elegance of paragraph 11(a) of IAW Change 3, DoD Directive 5122.5:

"Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without the service member's prior written consent."

Center Urges CNN to Retract False Reporting by Lou Dobbs

May 9, 2007
Center Urges CNN to Retract False Reporting by Lou Dobbs

"We're not talking about a newscaster who simply made a mistake — we're talking about someone with a national platform who cites wildly inaccurate data to demean an entire group of people and who, when confronted with the truth, simply repeats the lie," said SPLC President Richard Cohen. "It's outrageous, and CNN should do something about it immediately."

The dispute highlights the SPLC's concern that Dobbs and some others in the media are regularly using discredited and inaccurate information about immigrants — material that often originates with far-right ideologues and organizations dominated by white supremacists and nativists.

The dispute highlights the SPLC's concern that Dobbs and some others in the media are regularly using discredited and inaccurate information about immigrants — material that often originates with far-right ideologues and organizations dominated by white supremacists and nativists.

Journalists banned from scene of bombings

May 16, 2007
Journalists banned from scene of bombings

Reporters Without Borders today voiced concern about the press freedom implications of a decision by the Iraqi interior ministry announced yesterday to prevent journalists from getting access to the scene of bomb attacks.

The worldwide press freedom organisation said it feared that growing restrictions on the media could end in a total news blackout.

CBS News Fires Gen. Batiste

May 11, 2007
CBS News Fires Gen. Batiste

Last night, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste appeared on MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann." Batiste has been a CBS News consultant, but last night it was disclosed that he has been asked to leave that position due to his participation in an ad criticizing President Bush. Says Batiste in the ad: "Mr. President, you have placed our nation in peril."

CBS News Vice President, Standards and Special Projects Linda Mason confirmed to me that Batiste was asked to vacate his position.

"When we hire someone as a consultant, we want them to share their expertise with our viewers," she said. "By putting himself front and center in an anti-Bush ad, the viewer might have the feeling everything he says is anti-Bush. And that doesn't seem like an analytical approach to the issues we want to discuss."

What Americans Know: 1989-2007

April 15, 2007
What Americans Know: 1989-2007

Well-informed audiences come from cable (Daily Show/Colbert Report, O'Reilly Factor), the internet (especially major newspaper websites), broadcast TV (NewsHour with Jim Lehrer) and radio (NPR, Rush Limbaugh's program). The less informed audiences also frequent a mix of formats: broadcast television (network morning news shows, local news), cable (Fox News Channel), and the internet (online blogs where people discuss news events).

Aside from news media use, demographic characteristics, especially education, continue to be strongly associated with how much Americans know about the larger world. However, despite the fact that education levels have risen dramatically over the past 20 years, public knowledge has not increased Accordingly.

It's not just Imus

April 12, 2007
It's not just Imus

On April 11, NBC News announced that it was dropping MSNBC's simulcast of Imus in the Morning in the wake of the controversy that erupted over host Don Imus' reference to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." The following day, CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves announced that CBS -- which owns both the radio station that broadcast Imus' program and Westwood One, which syndicated the program -- has fired Imus and would cease broadcasting his radio show. But as Media Matters for America has extensively documented, bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and ethnicity continue to permeate the airwaves through personalities such as Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Michael Smerconish, and John Gibson.

On the March 30 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, The Savage Nation, Michael Savage stated that he "agree[d] 100 percent" with a caller who said: "I'm very concerned that the Jews are now accepting gays as rabbis. And as a Catholic, I can tell you it almost destroyed our church when we accepted gays as priests." The caller added, "[T]hey were raping teenage boys, and if you allow them to come into your churches, I'm sorry, your synagogues, I have no reason to believe they're not going to do the same thing." Savage responded: "The idea of a gay rabbi is an oxymoron. Think about it: 'Rabbi' means teacher. You cannot have a homosexual teacher teaching boys how to be a Jew," adding, "I'm not going to mince words for fear of offending homosexuals. They're everywhere, anyway, trying to tell me what to say and what not to say and what to think. I know what's right and what's wrong. And that's all there is to it."

The Many Man-Crushes of Chris Matthews

April 9, 2007
The Many Man-Crushes of Chris Matthews

Certainly Matthews couldn't have meant Bill Clinton's sex life. First off, it's Hillary who's running this time. And when it comes to screwing around while in office, well, the ex-President is the proverbial pisher compared with Mr. Pee Smell Out of the Subway. While serving as Mayor of New York, Rudy moved in with a couple of gay guys to facilitate cheating on his wife, and let the mother of his children know he wanted a divorce by holding a press conference. This led Mrs. Giuliani (Donna Hanover) to complain about yet another affair he'd apparently conducted with a member of his staff and to seek a restraining order to keep his new girlfriend (now wife) out of Gracie Mansion.