Pew Study Finds Wall St. and Capitol Dominate Financial News - NYTimes.com

Pew Study Finds Wall St. and Capitol Dominate Financial News - NYTimes.com

A study to be released Monday of financial news coverage this year found that government, Wall Street and a small handful of story lines got the bulk of the attention while much less was paid to the economic troubles of ordinary people.

The study, by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, also found that when the stock market rebounded from its lows and pitched battles in Washington ended, the news media turned their attention away from economic coverage.

Reviewing almost 10,000 reports from Feb. 1 to Aug. 31 in newspapers, on news Web sites, on the radio and on network broadcast and cable television, Pew found that almost 40 percent of economic news reports dealt with the trials of the banking and auto industries, and the federal stimulus bill passed in February.

Unemployment and the housing crisis accounted for 12 percent. And, the study said, “stories that tried to explicitly examine the broader impact of the economic downturn on the lives of ordinary Americans filled 5 percent of the economic coverage.” ...

Another War in the Works

Another War in the Works : Information Clearing House - ICH

By Paul Craig Roberts

September 29, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the “mainstream media” about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that no such weapons existed.

The weapons inspectors did an honest job in Iraq and told the truth, but the mainstream media did not emphasize their findings. Instead, the media served as a Ministry of Propaganda, beating the war drums for the US government.

Now the whole process is repeating itself. This time the target is Iran.

As there is no real case against Iran, Obama took a script from Bush’s playbook and fabricated one.

First the facts: As a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, Iran’s nuclear facilities are open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which carefully monitors Iran’s nuclear energy program to make certain that no material is diverted to nuclear weapons.

The IAEA has monitored Iran’s nuclear energy program and has announced repeatedly that it has found no diversion of nuclear material to a weapons program. All 16 US intelligence agencies have affirmed and reaffirmed that Iran abandoned interest in nuclear weapons years ago.

In keeping with the safeguard agreement that the IAEA be informed before an enrichment facility comes online, Iran informed the IAEA on September 21 that it had a new nuclear facility under construction. By informing the IAEA, Iran fulfilled its obligations under the safeguards agreement. The IAEA will inspect the facility and monitor the nuclear material produced to make sure it is not diverted to a weapons program.

Despite these unequivocal facts, Obama announced on September 25 that Iran has been caught with a “secret nuclear facility” with which to produce a bomb that would threaten the world. ...

...

The US media, even the “liberal” National Public Radio, quickly fell in with the Obama lie machine. Steven Thomma of the McClatchy Newspapers declared the non-operational facility under construction, which Iran reported to the IAEA, to be “a secret nuclear facility.”

Thomma, reported incorrectly that the world didn’t learn of Iran’s “secret” facility, the one that Iran reported to the IAEA the previous Monday, until Obama announced it in a joint appearance in Pittsburgh the following Friday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkoszy.

Obviously, Thomma has no command over the facts, a routine inadequacy of “mainstream media” reporters. The new facility was revealed when Iran voluntarily reported the facility to the IAEA on September 21.

Ali Akbar Dareini, an Associated Press writer, reported, incorrectly, over AP: “The presence of a second uranium-enrichment site that could potentially produce material for a nuclear weapon has provided one of the strongest indications yet that Iran has something to hide.”

Dareini goes on to write that “the existence of the secret site was first revealed by Western intelligence officials and diplomats on Friday.” Dareini is mistaken. We learned of the facility when the IAEA announced that Iran had reported the facility the previous Monday in keeping with the safeguards agreement.

Dareini’s untruthful report of “a secret underground uranium enrichment facility whose existence has been hidden from international inspectors for years” helped to heighten the orchestrated alarm.

There you have it. The president of the United States and his European puppets are doing what they do best--lying through their teeth. The US “mainstream media” repeats the lies as if they were facts. The US “media” is again making itself an accomplice to wars based on fabrications. Apparently, the media’s main interest is to please the US government and hopefully obtain a taxpayer bailout of its failing print operations. ...

Think Progress � Ridge admits Bush administration pushed to raise security alert for political reasons on eve of re-election.

Think Progress � Ridge admits Bush administration pushed to raise security alert for political reasons on eve of re-election.

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is releasing a book on September 1 titled, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again.” U.S. News’ Paul Bedard reports that, in the book, Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

Playing politics with terror was a relatively frequent occurrence in the Bush administration. In August 2004, the AP reported that even “some senior Republicans” privately questioned Ridge’s timing of a terror alert that came just three days after the Democratic National Convention. According to the AP report, “One top GOP operative, who works closely with Bush’s political team, said the White House appeared to overplay its hand, and voters may smell politics behind the warning.”

Think Progress � Fox News viewers overwhelmingly misinformed about health care reform proposals.

Think Progress � Fox News viewers overwhelmingly misinformed about health care reform proposals.
...
MSNBC’s First Read notes that self-identified viewers of Fox News are disproportionately misinformed:

Here’s another way to look at the misinformation: In our poll, 72% of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79% of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69% think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75% believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly. But it would be incorrect to suggest that this is ONLY coming from conservative viewers who tune in to FOX. In fact, 41% of CNN/MSNBC viewers believe the misinformation about illegal immigrants, 39% believe the government takeover stuff, 40% believe the abortion misperception, and 30% believe the stuff about pulling the plug on grandma. What’s more, a good chunk of folks who get their news from broadcast TV (NBC, ABC, CBS) believe these things, too. This is about credible messengers using the media to get some of this misinformation out there, not as much about the filter itself. These numbers should worry Democratic operatives, as well as the news media that have been covering this story.

As ThinkProgress has pointed out, Fox News regularly distorts the truth about health care reform. Last week, Media Matters found that over a two day period opponents of health care reform outnumbered supporters by a 6-to-1 margin on Fox. ...

Howard Dean: The Media's Treatment of Palin's Outrageous "Death Panel" Claims

Howard Dean: The Media's Treatment of Palin's Outrageous "Death Panel" Claims

Former Governor Sarah Palin made some preposterous claims over the weekend which attracted mainstream media attention. She made up the term "death panel" and claimed that part of the health care reform bill now working it's way through Congress required that families with children with disabilities, or elderly people who are infirm, could be judged by one of these death panels, which could control their fate and decide if they would die. GOP leadership repeated this outrageous claim across the airwaves on the Sunday morning talk shows. The mainstream media gave this claim credibility simply by repeating it.

My wife and I have practiced medicine for over forty years combined. There is no truth now, nor has there ever been any truth to the idea that the government encourages euthanasia or infanticide.

Our country is in trouble. Claims like these are routinely refuted by people who know better, but they are recirculated because they are sensational, and the MSM purports to take a balanced position without a thoughtful assessment of the facts. Fox News actually has people on in support of these outrageously false claims.

In fact, these kinds of claims are lies. There is no nice way to say it. This kind of stuff is far beyond the usual politicians' tricks of shading words and imputing meanings that aren't there. To quote a famous American who began the process of ending the McCarthy era in the fifties I address the MSM: "At long last, Have you no sense of decency?"

CNN Refusing To Run Health Care Ad Critical Of Insurance Industry | The Plum Line

CNN Refusing To Run Health Care Ad Critical Of Insurance Industry | The Plum Line

The network — already taking criticism for declining to run an ad criticizing Lou Dobbs — is now refusing to run an ad nationally criticizing the insurance industry, the group that tried to place the ad tells me.

CNN’s reason: The ad “unnecessarily” singles out a top insurance industry executive by name for criticism.

...

That very well may be CNN’s policy. But AUC maintains that the mention of Cigna’s CEO was necessary to dramatize the enormous stake the insurance industry has in the health care wars. What’s more, AUC argues, the industry is made up of companies that are run by individuals deciding how to spend huge money to impact the health care debate — so why are they off limits?

“The bottom line question is: Would CNN run ads from Cigna that are positive about the company?” Funk asks. “If yes, why would they turn down an ad critical of the company for their role in trying to kill health insurance reform?” ...

H2O Man's Journal - "Top Secret" CNN Memo (re: Lou Dobbs) [Is this for real? ed.]

H2O Man's Journal - "Top Secret" CNN Memo (re: Lou Dobbs)
...
Due to the Democratic Underground’s ground rules on the number of paragraphs from other sources which can be copied here, I am only able to provide readers with about 1/5 of the actual "TOP SECRET" memo. ...
...
Now, for the memo. It was sent to the heads of various CNN departments, after a number of workers throughout CNN had filed complaints against Lou Dobbs. Many were concerned about his apparent unstable, increasingly threatening behavior. Some highlights from the memo include:

"Please be aware that the management of CNN is fully aware of the issues regarding Mr. Dobbs’ recent behavior, and shares everyone’s concerns. We have held a series of high-level meetings with the senior staff of our Employee Assistance Program (EAP), and with the CNN attorneys. In order to protect the rights of all of the members of the CNN Family, we are not allowed to comment on the specifics of any single employee’s status. However, due to the high volume of complaints filed this week against Mr. Dobbs, our attorneys have suggested that we share some ‘generic’ information with department heads. Please use this general information when dealing with individuals who continue to express concerns about Mr. Dobbs’ behavior. ….
...
"(3) Employees of CNN are not allowed to actively campaign for public office while on company time. There are further restrictions in CNN policies for CNN employees who appear ‘on air’ time. Before discussing this matter with Mr. Dobbs, CNN attorneys did review the seven documented cases of Mr. Dobbs violating this policy. Six of the seven groups that he was in contact with on company time were listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremist, white-supremacist groups. ...
...
The memo is signed by Jonathan Klein, who apparently has a high-ranking position at CNN. I’ve never heard of him before, but this document appears very official

Raw Story � AP, other news outlets omit killer’s racist diary rants

Raw Story � AP, other news outlets omit killer’s racist diary rants

The Associated Press and other news outlets have omitted references to President Barack Obama, the election of “The Black Man” and remarks that black men have “their choice of the best white” women when republishing excerpts of the diary by a Pittsburgh-area man who killed three women and himself at an LA Fitness gym Tuesday evening.

In fact, the Associated Press’ primary story contains no reference to Obama at all, even though the first entry of the killer’s diary came the day after Obama was elected and references Obama’s election directly.

The omission was noted by the blog of Editor and Publisher. ...

Israeli settlers 'are wrecking peace process' - Times Online

Israeli settlers 'are wrecking peace process' - Times Online

Britain has accused Israel of allowing extremist Jewish settlers to disrupt attempts at relaunching the peace process after police evicted more than 50 Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem.

As Jewish settlers moved into the Palestinian homes, the British consulate said it was appalled by the evictions, which took place a few hundred yards from the diplomatic mission, after an Israeli court decided in favour of the settlers.

“Israel’s claim that the imposition of extremist Jewish settlers into this ancient Arab neighbourhood is a matter for the courts or the municipality is entirely unacceptable,” the consulate said in a statement. “Their actions are incompatible with Israel’s desire for peace. We urge Israel not to allow extremists to set the agenda.” ...

Op-ed pages: 77 percent of pieces authored by think-tank affiliates came from conservative outfits

The Right-Wing Op-Ed Insurgency | CommonDreams.org

Liberal bias? A Daily Beast investigation crunches the numbers and shows how conservative think tanks have quietly achieved domination over the opinion pages of America's biggest papers.

For all the noise about liberal bias in newsrooms, you'd think the country's big three papers had contracted George Soros, Ralph Nader, and Gloria Steinem as their exclusive opinionators.

But a Daily Beast review of the archives of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post tells a much different story: Conservative think tanks are pummeling their liberal peers in the race for the most prominent placement on op-ed pages. During the past year, 77 percent of pieces authored by think-tank affiliates came from conservative outfits, 18 percent came from centrist groups, and a tiny 5 percent came from the left wing.

...

The American Enterprise Institute [the organization that brought you the Iraq war ... ed.] crushes the competition, liberal and conservative, in racking up bylines, scoring 99 of the total 217 pieces published by major think tanks from the third week of July 2008 to July 21, 2009, as shown by a review of the archives of the Times, Post, and Journal.

Of course, you're four times as likely to find an AEI piece in the right-leaning pages of the Journal than in the more liberal pages of the Times and Post put together. In fact, 79 AEI-bylined op-eds appeared in the Journal during the period surveyed. Considering that the Journal publishes only six days a week, that's one AEI appearance every four days. Bush hawks like John Yoo, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, who nest at the D.C. institute and are frequent contributors, help pad the stats. A recent offering from Yoo, the former Bush Justice Department official: " Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps." Last month, Bolton, Bush's former representative at the United Nations, floated this thought balloon in the Journal: " What Would Happen if Israel Strikes Iran?"

But it's important to note that the AEI crowd is not completely confined to the Journal. They also find themselves in the opinion section of the Washington Post more times-16 during the last year-than any other think tank. ...

New Poll: Less Than Half Of Republicans Believe Obama Was Born In U.S.

New Poll: Less Than Half Of Republicans Believe Obama Was Born In U.S.

Less than half of Republicans believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America, a new public opinion poll finds.

Only 42 percent of Republican respondents in a Research 2000 survey, conducted for the liberal website Daily Kos, said they thought Obama was a natural born citizen; 28 percent said they did not believe Obama was born in the United States; 30 percent said they were not sure.

The responses, which were gathered afterseveral prominent conservative media personalities fed suspicion that Obama was unconstitutionally holding office, show the extent to which the conspiracy has taken hold in the GOP.

That only a plurality of Republicans were willing to acknowledge the president was born in America is nothing short of astounding, considering the preponderance of evidence that confirms his Hawaiian birth.

The conspiracy has a regional flavor. Overall, even including Democrats and independents, only 47 percent of respondents in the South said they believed Obama was born in America, with 23 percent saying he was not and 30 percent saying they were unsure. In the Northeast and Midwest, the percentage of respondents who believe Obama was born in the U.S. was over 90 percent.

Ninety-three percent of Democrats say the president was born in the United States, as do 83 percent of independents. ...

“roughly 80 percent” of the media is controlled by no more than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations.

Washington's Blog

...

Rather pointed out that “roughly 80 percent” of the media is controlled by no more than six, and possibly as few as four, corporations.

This is only newsworthy because Rather said it. This fact has been documented for years, as shown by the following must-see charts prepared by:

• Media Channel

• The Nation

• Free Press

And check out this list of interlocking directorates of big media companies from Fairness and Accuracy in Media, and this resource from the Columbia Journalism Review to research a particular company.

This image gives a sense of the decline in diversity in media ownership over the last couple of decades:

Pulitzer prize: networks have been active participants in a Pentagon sponsored propaganda campaign intended to sell the Iraq and Afghanistan wars

The Creek | | Pulitzer Prize Winning Story News Networks Won’t Report | | By Matt Sullivan / RCFP

The Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting was awarded last month to David Barstow of the New York Times but you didn’t hear a word about it from the TV and cable networks. The reason for their silence is obvious; they don’t want you to know what Barstow revealed: that the networks have been active participants in a Pentagon sponsored propaganda campaign intended to sell the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (among other things) to the American public.

In the words of the Pulitzer Committee, Barstow’s prize was “for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.”

The prize-winning stories appeared in The New York Times on April 20, 2008 and November 29, 2008 and were the product of a three year “Freedom of Information” effort to wrench documentation of the propaganda effort out of the Department of Defense (DoD).

Barstow revealed Pentagon documents that repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration themes and messages to millions of Americans as if were their their own opinions.

The Pentagon-controlled pundits, most of them retired generals, were given hundreds of classified Pentagon briefings, provided with Pentagon-approved talking points and flown at Pentagon expense to Iraq and other sites. But this extraordinary access came with a condition. “Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.” In their television appearances, the military analysts did not disclose their ties to the Pentagon, let alone that they were its surrogates. The military analysts were little more than puppets for the Pentagon. In the words of Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret who was a Fox News military analyst, “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’”

David Barstow wrote, “Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.”

The blatant refusal of the TV and cable news organizations involved to even mention what Barstow uncovered in his reporting, reveals a lot about the depth of the networks’ involvement in the deception. In fact, many of the Pentagon sponsored “analysts” named in Barstow’s story are still employed, still being given air time and are still spinning their views at the very same cable news outlets that now refuse to inform viewers about this Pulitzer Prize winning story. ...

OpEdNews � Fascism Coming to a Court Near You; Corporate Personhood and the Roberts' Court

OpEdNews � Fascism Coming to a Court Near You; Corporate Personhood and the Roberts' Court

by Thom Hartmann Page 1 of 3 page(s) www.opednews.com

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Get ready.

...

This new case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, presents the best opportunity for the Roberts Court to use its five vote majority to totally re-write the face of politics in America, rolling us back to the pre-1907 era of the Robber Barons.

As Jeffrey Toobin wrote in The New Yorker ("No More Mr. Nice Guy"): "In every major case since he became the nation's seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party."

...

Chief Justice Roberts weighed in, too, in the main decision. It's a fascinating decision to read - and search for occurrences of the word "corporation" - and here's one of Roberts' more convoluted observations in defense of corporate free speech rights:

Accepting the notion that a ban on campaign speech could also embrace issue advocacy would call into question our holding in Bellotti that the corporate identity of a speaker does not strip corporations of all free speech rights. It would be a constitutional 'bait and switch' to conclude that corporate campaign speech may be banned in part because corporate issue advocacy is not, and then assert that corporate issue advocacy may be banned as well, pursuant to the same asserted compelling interest, through a broad conception of what constitutes the functional equivalent of campaign speech, or by relying on the inability to distinguish campaign speech from issue advocacy.

Bottom line - corporate free speech rights are Real Rights that Must Be Respected.

Justice Souter wrote a rather frightening dissent (this was a 5-4 decision, with the usual right-wing suspects on the "5" side): "Finally, it goes without saying that nothing has changed about the facts. In Justice Frankfurter's words, they demonstrate a threat to 'the integrity of our electoral process, which for a century now Congress has repeatedly found to be imperiled by corporate, and later union, money: witness the Tillman Act, Taft-Hartley, FECA, and BCRA.

"McConnell was our latest decision vindicating clear and reasonable boundaries that Congress has drawn to limit 'the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth,' and the decision could claim the justification of ongoing fact as well as decisional history in recognizing Congress's authority to protect the integrity of elections from the distortion of corporate and union funds.

"After today, the ban on contributions by corporations and unions and the limitation on their corrosive spending when they enter the political arena are open to easy circumvention, and the possibilities for regulating corporate and union campaign money are unclear.

"The ban on contributions will mean nothing much, now that companies and unions can save candidates the expense of advertising directly, simply by running 'issue ads' without express advocacy, or by funneling the money through an independent corporation like Wisconsin Right To Life."

Sounding almost depressed, Souter closed his dissent with these words: "I cannot tell what the future will force upon us, but I respectfully dissent from this judgment today." ...

Raw Story � Will Supreme Court allow unlimited corporate contributions to election campaigns?

Raw Story � Will Supreme Court allow unlimited corporate contributions to election campaigns?

The most troubling part of the court’s action is the brave new world of politics it could usher in. Auto companies that receive multibillion-dollar bailouts could spend vast sums to re-elect the same officials who hand them the money. If Exxon Mobil or Wal-Mart wants something from a member of Congress, it could threaten to spend as much as it takes to defeat him or her in the next election.

– From an editorial in the New York Times, July 4, 2009

If this editorial in the Times has it right, American democracy could be in for a rough ride in the coming years.

...

This is important because that was the Supreme Court case which ruled that restrictions on campaign contributions by corporations, unions and other organizations were legal despite their infringement on First Amendment rights.

Simply put, if the Supreme Court decides to overturn Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, it will mean that any restrictions on campaign spending by corporations will be invalid because they violate those corporations’ right to freedom of speech.

“The court, at the very least, is considering reversing more than 100 years of campaign finance precedent prohibiting corporate spending,” Paul Ryan, associate legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Hill. “It would be a pretty large step, and remarkable step, for the court to overturn a century of public policy.”

Judicial observers fear overturning the 1989 ruling would mark the beginning of a wild, unbridled era where elections are won by the highest bidder.

“Banks like Citigroup, investment firms like Merrill Lynch, insurance companies like AIG and corporations like General Motors and Chrysler would be free to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of their corporation’s wealth” on elections, Fred Wertheimer, president of advocacy group Democracy 21, told the Washington Post. ....

AP Edits Palestinian Suffering Out of Obama’s Speech | KABOBfest

AP Edits Palestinian Suffering Out of Obama’s Speech | KABOBfest | By Will

An alert KABOBfest reader noted that an AP transcript of Obama’s speech “as provided by CQ Transcriptions” left out the President’s comments on the suffering of the Palestinians.

The AP’s version has him jump from his moving description of Nazi crimes against the Jews to a warning against the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran:
Six million Jews were killed, more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless. It is ignorant, and it is hateful.

It’s about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.

In the transcripts posted on the White House’s website, the President’s words on the Palestinian experience are posted:

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations — large and small — that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. (Applause.)

Given the accolades for that being the greatest presidential summary of Palestinian victimization under Israeli rule ever, it is shocking it was selectively excised from the transcripts.

Looking at the AP’s version, which is hosted on Yahoo, it is clear the transcripts are abridged. First, they do not acknowledge that. Second, why remove such an important point? I cannot help but think it was motivated by pro-Israel bias.

The AP or Congressional Quarterly Transcriptions (or Yahoo) must account for this.

Dilemma we Face in an Era of Right Wing Control of our News Media

Time for change's Journal - The Dilemma we Face in an Era of Right Wing Control of our News Media: "
Posted by Time for change in General Discussion | | Sun May 17th 2009, 06:00 PM | Inco"

Most Americans do not share the values of the Republican Party, blue dog Democrats, or our corporate news media: Most Americans would like their government to provide a national health care plan; most believe that women should not be branded as criminals for choosing to have an abortion; most believe we should have laws to require a higher minimum wage than we have; the list goes on and on. So right wingers need something other than their policies to get the votes they need to win elections.
...
But the virtual monopoly by supporters of the Republican Party on the ownership of major news sources in our country does much to stem the free flow of information. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, our corporate news media failed to explain to the American people that the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq was based on little or no evidence; even now they refuse to inform us in any detail of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from our invasion and occupation of their country.

During both the 2000 and 2004 elections they did everything they could to elect and re-elect George Bush to the presidency: They failed to follow-up on clear evidence that Bush had failed to fulfill his National Guard commitments; and they failed to explain to the American people that the proposed Bush tax cuts would benefit only our wealthiest citizens. In marked contrast to their protection of Bush, they did everything they could to destroy Gore’s and Kerry’s candidacies: During the 2000 Presidential race, Al Gore, one of the most decent men to ever run for the U.S. Presidency, was recast as a liar and an egomaniac. His resounding victory over George W. Bush in debate after debate was recast by our corporate media as a humiliating defeat by repeatedly emphasizing his sighs, rather than the numerous Bush lies that were the cause of those sighs. In 2004, John Kerry, a legitimate war hero, was recast as a fraud, through the constant repetition of lies promulgated by an organization with close (but unrevealed at the time) ties to George W. Bush.
...
But with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, we began to see a rapid decline in the quality of the news we receive. By relaxing rules that prohibited monopoly control of telecommunications, that Act led to the concentration of the national news media of the United States largely into the hands of a very few wealthy corporations, to an extent never before seen in our country. This, more than any other event, has allowed the content of the news received by American citizens to be determined by a small number of very wealthy and powerful interests. Hence the pervasive blackout of meaningful news.
...
This situation is intolerable. A free and independent press, which provides unbiased accurate information to the people, is crucial to a healthy functioning democracy. When most of the press is under the control of corporate interests, which strive to tilt elections in their favor, democracy becomes nothing but a fig leaf. The result is not only a playing field tilted heavily towards the conservative (Republican) Party, but also that the more progressive (Democratic) Party is intimidated into moving way to the right. The American people suffer for that because the corporate interests are served at the expense of the vast majority of people. ...

DC Special Interests Examiner: CBS News employs push-poll tactics to claim Americans oppose Employee Free Choice Act

DC Special Interests Examiner: CBS News employs push-poll tactics to claim Americans oppose Employee Free Choice Act

...

CBS claims the results show that American are opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act by a 45 to 38 percent margin, but the question uses loaded language leaving the outcome almost certain to be negative.

 

The poll asked respondents:

 

Currently, employers can demand employees vote by secret ballot if they wish to form a labor union. Legislation has been proposed that would make it easier to form labor unions by allowing employees to publicly sign a card saying they want to form a union without having to vote by secret ballot. Do you favor or oppose making it easier for people to form labor unions by allowing them to publicly sign a card, even if that might eliminate a secret ballot vote?

 

Yesterday a Gallup poll showed overwhelming support for the Employee Free Choice Act by a 53 to 39 percent margin. Gallup asked the question this way:

 

Generally speaking, would you favor or oppose a new law making it easier for labor unions to organize workers?

 

The Gallup question is straight and to the point about the right to organize without the nuance and spin of the CBS question. Groups opposed to the right to organize have released push-polls in the past, but those groups make no claim to fairness and in fact keep their funding and membership in the shadows. So the question remains, why did CBS allow this question into the poll and what is their agenda? ...

purge at HaAretz. New owners of the newspaper are slowly but surely ‘weeding out’ the only voices of truth and reason in the Israeli press ...

FREE WORLD OF CENSORSHIP ~~ PURGE AT HaARETZ NEWS « DesertpeaceMay 31, 2008

Many of my readers may have noticed that I have not been posting many articles by Amira Hass lately. I have also not been cross posting a regular column by Gideon Levy called ‘The Twighlight Zone’. To be honest with you, I have combed the pages of HaAretz looking for these tidbits but to no avail.

This morning I found out why… there has been a purge at HaAretz. New owners of the newspaper are slowly but surely ‘weeding out’ the only voices of truth and reason in the Israeli press…. so typical of what has been going on generally in the ‘free world of censorship’.
...
... According to inside sources, the new owner has carried out a rough, sittingroom survey that revealed that “the occupation doesn’t sell newspapers” and they are therefore concentrating on the business world (ie. The Marker). Twilight Zone, Gideon Levy’s regular Friday column, has been scrapped, Amira Hass has been degraded to freelance on half salary, Meron Rapaport has been fired and Akiva Eldar has lost at least one half page a week.
...
It appears that the Israelis are closing down many if not all of the sources of critical information coming out of Israel. The hypocrisy of it all is that Israel complains that when the British Academic Union proposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as a way to pressure Israel and to protest Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians the Israelis start to scream that the proposed boycott is a violation of freedom of speech and a violation of academic freedom. ...

Perhaps the most flagrantly racist of all the games was GTA: San Andreas (2004) ...

Anthony DiMaggio: Gaming the Ghetto May 31 / June 1, 2008 |
Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle
...
GTA IV has been celebrated, as with its award winning predecessors, as one of the best games of all time.Game Informer magazine deemed it a work of “perfection,” surpassing “epic gaming experiences” in its “stunning realism” and “unbelievable” action. Electronic Gaming Monthly deemed it a “magnificent” specimen of “destructive mayhem,” and a “truly exciting” gaming experience.
...
... Niko works for the Bratva (Russian mafia), conducting various assassinations and other jobs, keeping with the standard motif of the series. GTA IV’s depiction of the Eastern European “other” is merely one of many stereotypes employed throughout GTA’s history.

Previous games were centered on members of the Cosa Nostra (Italian mafia) and various black and Latino street gangs located in American cities. Perhaps the most flagrantly racist of all the games was GTA: San Andreas (2004), which was advertised on television alongside the tune “Welcome to the Jungle” (by Guns N’ Roses).

The advertisement portrayed inner city blacks and Latinos walking around with missile launchers and multiple Uzi’s, riding in bouncing low-riders, and partaking in drive-bys, carjackings, police chases, prostitution, and gambling. The not-so-subtle racist imagery and stereotypes of GTA: San Andreas were hard to miss, even for the game’s most ardent defenders. Inner city minorities were dehumanized and mongrelized in the construction of the city as the concrete jungle.
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Political-Communication scholars Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki have uncovered evidence of a “racial subtext of Chicago’s local news.” In the period of coverage they examined during the 1990s, “white victims outnumbered Blacks in news reports – even though Blacks in Chicago and most core cities are more likely to be victimized.” Stories featuring black victims of violence were consistently shorter than those that focused on white victims, with a “total story time” ratio imbalance of 3:1 in favor of whites. Studies have also implicated violent media images in negatively affecting audience beliefs and perceptions.

Such studies go far beyond the simplistic, clumsy and unsubstantiated claims of those conservatives in the media who blame entertainment and video game consumption for “causing” children and teens to engage in violence against their family, friends, and peers. Rather, a substantial body of literature has developed in implicating media in far more subtly “cultivating” conservative, racist, and militaristic thinking within the minds of heavy television consumers. Heavy viewers of television programming have been found to be more likely to “express fear of crime,” particularly amongst those viewers who are white, and/or middle or upper income elites.
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... Subsequently, those who more heavily consume television programs – including reality based crime shows and news reports – are significantly more likely to provide “higher estimates of crime prevalence” in society. It is perhaps the subtle effects of media violence on individual perceptions of crime and race that makes the Grand Theft Auto series so problematic. ...

Who'll Unplug Big Media? US since its founding, relied on freedom of the press to rest authority in the people

Who'll Unplug Big Media? Stay TunedBy Robert W. McChesney & John Nichols | May 29, 2008
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... With a voice vote that confirmed the near-unanimous sentiment of senators who had heard from hundreds of thousands of Americans demanding that they act, the legislators moved to nullify an FCC attempt to permit a radical form of media consolidation: a rule change designed to permit one corporation to own daily and weekly newspapers as well as television and radio stations in the same local market. The removal of the historic bar to newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership has long been a top priority of Big Media. They want to dramatically increase revenues by buying up major media properties in American cities, shutting down competing newsrooms and creating a one-size-fits-all local discourse that's great for the bottom line but lousy for the communities they are supposed to serve and a nightmare for democracy.
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... Public broadcasting, community broadcasting and cable access channels have withstood assault from corporate interlopers, fundamentalist censors and the GOP Congressional allies they share in common. And against a full-frontal attack from two industries, telephone and cable--whose entire business model is based on lobbying Congress and regulators to get monopoly privileges--a grassroots movement has preserved network neutrality, the first amendment of the digital epoch, which holds that Internet service providers shall not censor or discriminate against particular websites or services. So successful has this challenge to the telecom lobbies been that the House may soon endorse the Internet Freedom Preservation Act.
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... In sum, we need to establish rules and structures designed to create a cultural environment that will enlighten, empower and energize citizens so they can realize the full promise of an American experiment that has, since its founding, relied on freedom of the press to rest authority in the people.

Despite all the revelations exposing government assaults on a free press, too many media outlets continue to tell the politically and economically powerful, "Lie to me!" Five years into a war made possible by the persistent refusal of the major media to distinguish fact from Bush Administration spin, we learned this spring about the Pentagon's PR machine's multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign that seeded willing broadcast and cable news programs with "expert" generals who parroted the White House line right up to the point at which the fraud was exposed. Even after the New York Times broke the story, the networks still chose to cover their shame rather than expose a war that has gone far worse than most Americans know. ...

Tutu's Trip to Gaza Censored by the US media : Information Clearing House - ICH

Tutu's Trip to Gaza Censored by the US media : Information Clearing House - ICHBy Mike Whitney

“There can be no justice, no peace, no stability, not for Israel, not for the Palestinians, without accountability for human rights violations." Archbishop Desmond Tutu

01/06/08 "ICH" -- - Why was Desmond Tutu's trip to Gaza censored by the US media?

When Nobel Laureate and world renowned peacemaker Desmond Tutu goes to Gaza to visit the site of an Israeli massacre; that's news, right? So why is it impossible to find any account of his trip in America's leading newspapers? Is it because any information that is incompatible with the territorial ambitions of the Israeli leadership is simply “disappeared” into the media-ether?

Archbishop Tutu was a leader in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He is neaither a terrorist nor an anti-Semite. His work as a human rights activist spans 4 decades. Like former president Jimmy Carter he was shunned by the Israeli government and refused entry into Gaza.
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Bishop Tutu had to go through Eqypt to get to Beit Hanoun; the town where 18 members of the al-Athamna family--including 14 women and children--were killed by Israeli artillery fire in November 2006. Tutu said that hearing "from the survivors of the massacre" had left him in a "state of shock".

Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, told the UK Guardian that her preliminary assessment of the attack was that it was a breach of international law.

"Firing in a way that cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants is clearly a violation of international humanitarian law," she said. "I don't think that the idea of a technical mistake takes away from the initial responsibility of the action of firing where civilian casualties are clearly foreseeable ... it has to be foreseeable when you give yourself such a small margin that any error has the potential to lead to civilian casualties." (UK Guardian)

Chinkin is right, of course. It was a massacre and should be thoroughly investigated by the international community. The responsible parties need to be held accountable.

According to the UK Telegraph, “No soldiers were ever charged in connection with the incident. Israel blocked attempts by the UN's Human Rights Council to investigate the shelling, saying that members of the body were "biased". ...

Wolf_Blitzer_defends_CNN_preIraq_war_0529.html">Blitzer on defense: CNN had 'pretty strong' anti-war coverage

Blitzer on defense: CNN had 'pretty strong' anti-war coverage | David Edwards and Muriel Kane | Published: Thursday May 29, 2008

From the point of view of a network anchor like CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "one of the most provocative allegations" in former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book is his assertion that "those of us in the news media who cover the president" were "too deferential to the White House" during the run-up to the Iraq war.

Blitzer strongly defended CNN's pre-war reporting, pointing out that he had frequently interviewed people like Scott Ritter, who made the case that there was no evidence for Iraqi possession of WMD's. "I think we were pretty strong," Blitzer stated, "but certainly with hindsight, we could have done an even better job. There were a lot of things missing in our coverage. ... I think we asked the tough questions, but we could have done better."

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post pointed out to Blitzer that "anti-war voiced had limited access, it seemed, to the airwaves, while administration officials were on every day."
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CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative - enormous pressure from corporate executives

CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.comThursday May 29, 2008

Jessica Yellin -- currently a CNN correspondent who covered the White House for ABC News and MSNBC in 2002 and 2003 -- was on with Anderson Cooper last night discussing Scott McClellan's book, and made one of the most significant admissions heard on television in quite some time:

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

I think, over time...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience. ...

[Bush Press Secretary:] "I spent countless hours defending the administration ... some of them were badly misguided"

Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House | By MIKE ALLEN | 5/27/08 6:18 PM EST
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McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”
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“I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan writes. “It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn’t learn that what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later.
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Among other notable passages:
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• “As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.” ...