What 'Controlling the Media' Really Means | CommonDreams.org

What 'Controlling the Media' Really Means | CommonDreams.org

The same media whining over criticisms of Fox was happy to be bullied and controlled by the Bush administration.

by Glenn Greenwald

Hypocrisy is far too common a feature of our political culture to comprehensively chronicle, particularly when there is a change of party control and each side starts doing exactly that to which they spent the last several years vociferously objecting; see here for a vivid example of that dynamic, from a new Pew poll released today:

The belief that the press should keep political leaders from doing things that should not be done often depends on who those political leaders are, or more specifically, which party controls the White House. Currently, in the midst of the Obama administration, two-thirds of Republicans (65%) support the so-called "watchdog role" for the press, compared with 55% of Democrats. But last year, while Bush was still in office, only 44% of Republicans felt it was good that press criticism keeps political leaders honest, and Democrats were much more pro watchdog (71% supported press criticism). This partisan pattern has existed since the question was first asked by Pew Research in 1985.

With hypocrisy that pervasive, who could ever hope to take note of all of it? Still, the complaints from America's Right -- and especially former Bush officials -- that the Obama administration is attempting to "control the media," all because the White House criticizes Fox News, is in a class of hypocrisy all by itself. That those petulant complaints are being amplified by a virtually unanimous press corps -- "it's Nixonian!" is their leading group-think cliché -- makes it all the more intolerable.

John Cole itemizes just some of the measures adopted by the Bush White House to manipulate, control, punish and bully the very few media outlets which were ever hostile to it -- each of those Bush measures, standing alone, is infinitely more invasive and threatening than the mild and perfectly appropriate criticisms of Fox coming from the Obama White House. Indeed, the Bush White House did exactly the same thing with NBC as the Obama White House is doing with Fox, and virtually all of the media stars who today are so righteously lamenting the "attacks on Fox" said nothing. Worse, the very same Bush official who this week said it was "like what dictators do" for the Obama White House to criticize Fox -- Dana Perino -- herself stood at the White House podium a mere two years ago and did exactly that to NBC News.

But the Bush administration did far worse to media outlets than merely criticize them. They explicitly threatened to prosecute New York Times journalists -- to criminally prosecute them -- for reporting on Bush's illegal spying program aimed at American citizens. They imprisoned numerous foreign journalists covering their various wars. The administration's obsessive and unprecedented secrecy -- Dick Cheney refused to disclose even the most basic information about his whereabouts, his meetings, or even the number of staff members he had -- was the ultimate form of media control. And what was the Pentagon's embedding process other than an attempt to control media coverage and ensure favorable reporting? One will search in vain for much media protests about any of that. ...

Under Attack, Credit Raters Turn to the First Amendment

Under Attack, Credit Raters Turn to the First Amendment

Editor's note: This is the first of three articles by the Investigative Fund on the credit rating companies.

For two decades, the nation's top credit rating agencies have managed to fend off a crackdown from Washington by relying on a surprising ally - the First Amendment.

Despite their key role in the most recent economic calamity, the three big bond raters--Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch--seem poised to do it again. With help from two of the most storied constitutional lawyers in the country, the raters have successfully argued that when they make a mistake -- say, awarding the top triple-A grade to a multibillion-dollar bundle of bonds that later default -- they cannot be sued or held accountable.

That's because ratings are opinions, the agencies claim, protected by the constitutional right to free speech.

A Huffington Post Investigative Fund examination of court filings, congressional testimony and Securities and Exchange Commission documents illustrates how the companies have repeatedly invoked that right to free speech to dodge government regulation and court action. The raters have never lost a courtroom battle to a disgruntled investor, not even in the Enron scandal. Enron enjoyed high grades on its bonds just four days before it filed for bankruptcy in 2001.

Critics of the rating companies argue that they are misusing the Bill of Rights to protect a flawed but highly profitable business. ....

� Americans, Their Smiley-Face Facade, and Reality������� : Information Clearing House - ICH

Americans, Their Smiley-Face Facade, and Reality : Information Clearing House - ICH

Whenever I think of the smiley-face icon, I think of Wal-Mart because of its once-ubiquitous ad campaign. And when I think of Wal-Mart, I think of crappy wages and insecure employees who probably live paycheck to paycheck. That metaphor -- the happy face fronting a world of worry -- is the subject of a new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America , by social commentator Barbara Ehrenreich.
...
Between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent of American households saw their share of all pretax income nearly double, while the bottom 80 percent had their share fall by 7 percent. Ehrenreich quotes The New York Times , saying, "It's as if every household in the bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent."

Every working stiff in the bottom 80 percent should be outraged and politically motivated to force change. But if everyone is convinced of the convenient nostrum that our own attitude controls how much we are paid, then workers won't band together to demand a larger share of our national prosperity.

This positive-thinking message is a kind of opiate that has been particularly effective on the white-collar corporate workforce. Ehrenreich documents how corporations hire motivational speakers to convince laid-off workers that their job loss is "an opportunity for self-transformation." Somehow, she says, white-collar workers have accepted positive thinking as a "belief system" that says a person can be "infinitely powerful, if only they could master their own minds."

On the surface, prosperity gospels and positive-thinking companies appear harmless with their treacly "Successories products" of posters and coffee mugs, but they have subversively helped make each of us an island. They have convinced Americans that each individual has control and power over the conditions of their life, when that is largely not the case. Access to decent health care at a reasonable price is not a matter of individual effort. Neither is securing decent wages, pensions, safe working conditions or job security. Workers demanded those rights through collective action in the 20th century, and we are losing them now by taking an "every man for himself" approach to work.

The ultimate irony is that even with the booming positive-thinking industry, Americans are not among the happiest people.

International surveys put us behind places such as Denmark and Switzerland, where the social safety net is stronger.

It seems that happy thoughts don't alter the reality of American life, with all its attendant risks to middle-class living standards. Behind the smiley-face facade, we are privately worried, and we have reason to be.

Our Media Need a Fair and Balanced Doctrine | Media and Technology | AlterNet

Our Media Need a Fair and Balanced Doctrine | Media and Technology | AlterNet
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A fair and balanced discussion of unfair and unbalanced rightwing corporate domination of the media is difficult to wage across a rightwing corporate-dominated media. So, it seems, the new stewards of the public's own airwaves -- the Executive Branch -- decided it was largely easier to quit than to fight. Once again, the only industry specifically recognized by explicit guarantees in the U.S. Constitution would go unprotected again. The corporate masters of that industry would have free reign, while the values meant to be protected by our founders would continue to disappear, nearly as quickly as a paragraph on Obama's White House website.

Freedom of the press would continue instead as freedom for America's wealthiest corporations to dominate it to their own self-serving advantage, for the foreseeable future.

After forty years, Ronald Reagan's dissolution of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 had succeeded in embedding neither fair nor balanced voices like Limbaugh on the airwaves, without meeting the responsibility of offering any voices of opposition.

That damage to a free press was compounded exponentially with Bill Clinton's disastrous Telecommunications Act of 1996. Sold with the promise of bringing more competition to the airwaves, the act resulted [PDF] in anything but, with just five or six media conglomerates ultimately taking ownership of virtually all broadcast licenses across the nation.

The result would be a Limbaugh Nation. Opposing and/or diverse voices all but disappeared. The few progressive voices allowed on air would be ghettoized, by the same corporate conglomerates, onto low wattage stations, or simply done away with all together.

The promised competition in the marketplace never occurred. Where it does today, in the few markets where a progressive voice is allowed a level playing field against a right-winger, the progressive often wins the day. progressive Stephanie Miller, for example, is heard in about 40 markets, where she regularly beats right-winger Laura Ingraham in the same time slot in the morning. Yet Ingraham is carried by nearly 350 affiliate stations. Many of those stations are owned by just a few companies, yet for some reason, they'd rather have the corporatist-friendly Ingraham on as many stations as possible, despite Miller's better ratings. So much for fair competition.
...
In 1856 Abraham Lincoln told fellow Republicans: "Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion, can change the government."

He was right. And after decades of allowing little more than one viewpoint to reach the public across our airwaves, opinion has become so skewed to the right that changing either government or public opinion has become nearly impossible. How else to explain angry "tea party" mobs suddenly infuriated by "big government" and "violations of the Constitution" by Obama and the Democrats, after eight years of virtual silence from those same mobs, despite a Republican-dominated government which ballooned government spending to record levels, while blatantly violating section after section of the U.S. Constitution? ....

Daily Kos: CNN severely compromises itself, but is really, really sorry and stuff

Daily Kos: CNN severely compromises itself, but is really, really sorry and stuff

Greg Sargent at The Plum Line (thanks to the work of Media Matters) has the goods:

The CNN contributor, a well-known GOP consultant named Alex Castellanos, is best known for producing the racially-charged "Hands" ad, has repeatedly appeared on the network attacking the Dem health care plans and the public option, which is strongly opposed by the insurance industry.

Castellanos’s consulting firm, National Media, also happens to be the ad buyer that placed over [one million dollars] of TV advertising for AHIP, according to ad buy info obtained by Media Matters. AHIP’s most recent [one million dollar] ad buy attacks the health care plan as a threat to Medicare.

So the guy is taking a fat commission on millions of dollars worth of ad buys from AHIP, but there he sits on CNN's "Situation Room" just about daily, giving us all his cool, dispassionate analysis of... the health care bill, from inside his regulation, Very Serious^TM pundit's suit, with nary a word about this severe and glaring conflict of interest.

And while I have your attention, let me reemphasize something Sargent pointed out:

The CNN contributor, a well-known GOP consultant named Alex Castellanos, is best known for producing the racially-charged "Hands" ad....

Price Waterhouse and Big Tobacco ... "grossly exaggerated" and "one-sided analyses" were so "flawed" as to produce "patently unreliable results."

Tim Dickinson: Price Waterhouse and Big Tobacco

There's a big scary new study out today from the health insurance lobby and PriceWaterhouseCoopers purporting to show that the Senate Finance Committee's reform bill -- funded by new excise taxes on "Cadillac" health plans -- would cause future health insurance premiums to spiral out of control.

Before this genie gets too far out of the bottle, just consider the track record of such industry-funded excise tax "research" by Price Waterhouse.

In the early 1990s, Price Waterhouse did similar handiwork on behalf of Big Tobacco, serving up allegedly hard data to bolster arguments that a new excise tax on tobacco (a proposed mechanism to fund Clintoncare) would destroy hundreds of thousands of good American jobs.

Dire predictions. But a subsequent review of Price Waterhouse's methods by an independent team at Arthur Andersen, revealed that Price Waterhouse's "grossly exaggerated" and "one-sided analyses" were so "flawed" as to produce "patently unreliable results."

To wit:

"The PW Report relied on methods and assumptions that create false and misleading results."

and:

"There are serious methodological problems and errors of omission (one-sided analyses likely to lead to misinterpretation) in ... the PW Report"

my favorite part:

"The PW Report... attributes 161,601 mining and construction jobs to the tobacco industry. This is approximately equal to the entire employment of the coal mining industry. ....

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.
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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.
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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.
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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

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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’.
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... 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.
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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. ...