Propaganda, Free Speech, Disinformation, False Media?

Friday, February 12, 2010

Giuliani: No domestic terror attacks under Bush - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani set off a tempest about terrorism Friday with his claim that this nation "had no domestic attacks" under President George W. Bush.

Giuliani somehow neglected to mention the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as he was contrasting President Barack Obama's handling of terrorism with that of Bush in light of the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound flight. The Sept. 11 attacks toppled New York's World Trade Center, killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania and earned Giuliani accolades as "America's mayor."

The Republican said of Obama on ABC's "Good Morning America" that "what he should be doing is following the right things that Bush did."

While saying he believes Obama "turned the corner" on understanding the nature of terrorism when he publicly declared the U.S. at war, Giuliani added that Obama has plenty of room to improve on terrorism.

"We had no domestic attacks under Bush," Giuliani said. "We've had one under Obama."

...

"I usually say we had no domestic attacks, no major domestic attack under President Bush since Sept. 11," he said. He said after all the warnings of more attacks that came immediately after Sept. 11, many were surprised that this country avoided another major terrorist attack.

Giuliani said: "I did omit the words 'since Sept. 11.' I apologize for that."

Shoe bomber Richard Reid tried to bring down a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001 using similar methods to the Christmas Day attempt. In both cases, quick action by courageous passengers and crew members helped avoid catastrophe.

Concerning Friday's interview, GMA's George Stephanopoulos said he should have asked Giuliani what he meant.

"All of you who have pointed out that I should have pressed him on that misstatement in the moment are right," he wrote on his blog. "My mistake, my responsibility." ...

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Newt Gingrich WRONG: Says British Shoe Bomber 'Richard Reid Was An American Citizen' (VIDEO)

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, leveling harsh criticism against the Obama administration.

After Gingrich assailed the administration for reading Miranda Rights to Detroit undie bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Stewart drew a comparison to something that happened under George W. Bush.

"Didn't they do the same with Richard Reid, who was the shoe bomber?" he asked the Republican icon.

"Richard Reid was an American citizen," insisted Gingrich.

Reid is actually a British citizen of Jamaican descent.

...

At the end of the show, Stewart realized that Gingrich had falsely claimed the shoe bomber was an American citizen and noted that to his audience.

The relevant portion of the interview begins at the 2:15 mark. ...

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Fox News Shuns Obama Q&A, MSNBC Gets Snitty When He Encourages Senators To Turn Off TV

President Obama this morning took his 2010 Question-And-Answer Tour to the Senate Democratic Caucus, a few days after his foray to the House GOP Retreat in Baltimore turned intomust-see TV.

Last time, Fox News was criticized for cutting away from the Q&A early, presumably because it was inadvertently televising one of those rare occurrences where the president was just straight up kicking the ass of his political opponents. Or, as Jon Stewart quipped, "We're going to cut away because this is against the narrative we present."

Well, score one for consistency, I guess? Because today, while Obama was meeting with Democrats, CNN carried the session live, MSNBC carried the session live (breaking away for a few minutes to comment on Obama's call for Democrats to stop watching the cable news, more on that later), and Fox...well they tended to other matters: ...

The Greatest Story Rarely Told - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

The Greatest Story Rarely Told - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com
...

On December 30, I posted the following Twitter riff: Check this diagram of the year’s news. Find climate? Climategate? Copenhagen? http://j.mp/noCO2news.

Apture™

The diagram, drawn by compiling weekly news summaries from Journalism.org, contains not even a postage-stamp-size space for coverage of climate — or the environment as a whole, for that matter. While Joe Romm recently published a list of journalists who had moved furthest from what he considers excellence in climate coverage in 2009 (yours truly included), the absence of coverage didn’t make his cut.

[UPDATE, 1/14: Max Boykoff at the University of Colorado, has posted a chart showing a sharp spike in media coverage of climate change in late December. I've asked him if he can parse out how much was "Climategate" compared to the climate talks. I'll post an update if I hear more.]

The crew at Journalism.org, which is run by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, had already noted in a year-end wrapup that environmental coverage, including climate, was down somewhat from 2007 and 2008, representing 1.5 percent of overall coverage. (An important note: That analysis used data through Dec. 6, capturing the burst of news about the stolen climate files but missing the tumultuous climate talks in Copenhagen. Also, the weekly analysis for Dec. 14-20 showed a climate spike.) The picture has been very different online, with the same analysts noting sustained heat around climate on blogs.

There are many out there who blame the news media — either for ignoring global warming or mishandling it — for the failure of the public to engage in an energy revolution to limit climate risks. But my sense is such critics have inflated expectations of what media coverage, without a direct punch from nature, can accomplish. Mind you, media coverage of incremental, yet important, issues remains vital, to my mind; it’s just not sufficient (which is one reason I’m branching out). ...

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Populism: Just Like Racism! - Matt Taibbi - Taibblog - True/Slant

It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs.
via Op-Ed Columnist – The Populist Addiction – NYTimes.com.

Normally one would have to be in the grip of a narcissistic psychosis to think that a columnist for the New York Times has written an article for your personal benefit. But after his latest article in the Times, in which he compares the “populism” of people who “blame Goldman Sachs” with exactly the sort of racist elitism I ripped him for last week, I think David Brooks might be trying to talk to me.

...

This certainly has an effect on the content of news reporting, but perhaps even more importantly, it impacts the tone of news coverage, where outrages are covered without outrage, and stories that are not particularly “balanced” in reality — stories that for instance are quite plainly about one group of people screwing another group of people — become transformed into cool, “objective” news stories in which both the plainly bogus version of events and the real and infuriating version are given equal weight.

Brooks lays out the crux of his case his case in his first three grafs of his article:

Politics, some believe, is the organization of hatreds. The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists or elitists.
These two attitudes — populism and elitism — seem different, but they’re really mirror images of one another. They both assume a country fundamentally divided. They both describe politics as a class struggle between the enlightened and the corrupt, the pure and the betrayers.
Both attitudes will always be with us, but these days populism is in vogue. The Republicans have their populists. Sarah Palin has been known to divide the country between the real Americans and the cultural elites. And the Democrats have their populists. Since the defeat in Massachusetts, many Democrats have apparently decided that their party has to mimic the rhetoric of John Edwards’s presidential campaign. They’ve taken to dividing the country into two supposedly separate groups — real Americans who live on Main Street and the insidious interests of Wall Street.

Now, there’s bullshit all up and down this lede. The first lie he tells involves describing everyone who is a critic of Wall Street as a populist. It’s sort of a syllogism he’s getting into here:

All people who criticize Wall Street are populists.
All populists think of themselves as enlightened and pure, and are primarily interested in dividing society, the same way racists do.
Therefore, all people who criticize Wall Street are primarily interested in dividing society, just like racists.

This is obnoxious on so many levels it’s almost difficult to know where to start. As for the populism label, let me quote the Alison Porchnik character from Annie Hall (Woody’s first wife, in the movie): “I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.”

Brooks here is trying to say that by criticizing, say, Goldman Sachs for mass thievery — criticizing a bank for selling billions of dollars worth of worthless subprime mortgage-backed securities mismarked as investment grade deals, for getting the taxpayer to pay them 100 cents on the dollar for their billions in crap investments with AIG, for forcing hundreds of millions of people to pay inflated gas and food prices when they manipulated the commodities market and helped push oil to a preposterous $149 a barrel, and for paying massive bonuses after receiving billions upon billions in public support even beyond the TARP — that in criticizing the bank for doing these things, people like me are primarily interested in being divisive and “organizing hatreds.”

He is also saying that by making these criticisms, people like me are by implication making statements about our own moral purity and enlightenment relative to others. He goes on:

It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs.
Second, it absolves voters of responsibility for their problems. Over the past few years, many investment bankers behaved like idiots, but so did average Americans, racking up unprecedented levels of personal debt. With the populist narrative, you can accuse the former and absolve the latter.

Stuff like this makes me want to scream. If I’m writing about a bank that took a half-billion worth of mortgages where the average amount of equity in the home was less than 1%, and where 58% of the mortgages had no documentation, and then sold those mortgage-backed securities as investment-grade opportunities to pensions and other suckers — and then bet against the same kind of stuff they were enthusiastically selling to other people — is Brooks seriously suggesting that I also have to point out that the Chinese economy was doing well at the time? ...

Fox cuts away from Obama town hall to air health reform critic | Raw Story

...

For the second time in less than a week, Fox News on Tuesday cut away from a live broadcast of a presidential address to air comments from a critic of President Obama. ...

Large Portion Of GOP Thinks Obama Is Racist, Socialist, Non-U.S. Citizen: Poll

...

A new poll of more than 2,000 self-identified Republican voters illustrates the incredible paranoia enveloping the party and the intense pressure drawing lawmakers further and further away from political moderation.

The numbers speak for themselves -- a large portion of GOP voters think that President Obama is racist, socialist or a non-US citizen -- though, when considering them, it is important to note that a disproportionate percentage of respondents are from GOP strongholds in the South (42 percent) as opposed to the Northeast (11 percent). Also note that this is a poll of self-identified Republicans, which means that independent Tea Party types are not included.

Nevertheless here are some of the standout figures as provided by Daily Kos/Research 2000:

39 percent of Republicans believe Obama should be impeached, 29 percent are not sure, 32 percent said he should not be voted out of office.

36 percent of Republicans believe Obama was not born in the United States, 22 percent are not sure, 42 percent think he is a natural citizen.

31 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a "Racist who hates White people" -- the description once adopted by Fox News's Glenn Beck. 33 percent were not sure, and 36 percent said he was not a racist.

63 percent of Republicans think Obama is a socialist, 16 percent are not sure, 21 percent say he is not

24 percent of Republicans believe Obama wants "the terrorists to win," 33 percent aren't sure, 43 percent said he did not want the terrorist to win.

21 percent of Republicans believe ACORN stole the 2008 election, 55 percent are not sure, 24 percent said the community organizing group did not steal the election.

23 percent of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the United States, 19 percent aren't sure, 58 percent said no.

53 percent of Republicans said they believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama. ...

Reuters Pulls 'Backdoor Taxes' Story | TPM LiveWire

The news service Reuters withdrew a story last night titled "Backdoor taxes to hit middle class" after the White House reached out and pointed out "errors of fact."

The story, which claimed the White House's deficit reduction plan relies on raising taxes against the middle class by allowing tax cuts to expire, was withdrawn at about 8 p.m. Monday, according to Yahoo timestamps. The original story ran at 4 p.m. The withdrawal promises a replacement story later this week.

"The story went out, and it shouldn't have gone out," said Courtney Dolan, a spokeswoman for Reuters. "It had significant errors of fact."

She would not elaborate on the specific errors, but said Reuters will "address those specific points that were incorrect."

"The White House did contact us and point out errors of fact," she added.

Open Left:: Lies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elites

Open Left:: Lies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elites

The most fundamental lie about the Tea Party movement is that it represents some sort of working-class populist base that is heart and soul of the Republican Party, in opposition to which are the wealthy liberal elites of the Democratic Party. Contrary to his reputation for brilliance, Barack Obama has probably done more to make this absurd scenario credible than any other single individual over the past year and a half ....
...

Just to emphasize my point, I decided to divide things up by decade, so that the persistence of the pattern could be clearly seen. The orange shows values higher than statistically predicted, the blue shows them lower. The darker the color, the greater the divergence from expectations. That means that the orange band from upper left to lower right--low income liberals to upper income conservatives--shows where the greatest deviation above statistical expectations lies.

Paul Rosenberg :: Lies of rightwing populism: Those evil liberal elites

I.E. RIGHT WINGERS are OVERREPRESENTED ... and LIBERALS are well UNDERREPRESENTED ...

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Paul Krugman to Fox News CEO: ‘Deliberate misinformation’ | Raw Story

Paul Krugman to Fox News CEO: ‘Deliberate misinformation’ | Raw Story

In an interview Sunday, New York Times economist Paul Krugman hammered conservative talk show host Glenn Beck for spreading blatantly false information about the Democrats' health care bill -- and put the blame squarely on Fox News CEO Roger Ailes.

"Glenn Beck doesn't, you know," Krugman began, "what bothers me is the fact that people are not getting informed, that we are going through major debates on crucial policy issues; the public is not learning about them. And you know, you can say, well, they can read the New York Times, which will tell them what they need to know, but you know, most people don't. They don't read it thoroughly.... People did not know what was in the plan, and some of that was just poor reporting, some of it was deliberate misinformation. I have here in front of me when President Obama said, you know, why -- he said rhetorically, why aren't we going to do a health care plan like the Europeans have, with a government-run program, and then proceeds to explain whey he's different. On Fox News, what appeared was a clipped quote, "why don't we have a European-style health care plan?" Right, deliberate misinformation."

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes interjects: "Wait a minute, wait a minute..."

And Krugman replies, "I can show you the clip, and you can..."

"The American people are not stupid," Ailes says.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

ManCrunch SuperBowl Ad REJECTED: Gay Dating Site Ad Denied By CBS (VIDEO)

Update: CBS has rejected an ad from gay dating site ManCrunch, telling the site that the ad "is not within the Network's Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday.", James Hibberd reports at The Live Feed

CBS released the following statement:

"After reviewing the ad - which is entirely commercial in nature - our Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot. As always, we are open to working with the client on alternative submissions."

Hibberd reports that CBS believed ManCrunch was trying to generate free publicity by submitting an ad that was likely to be rejected.

"We're 100% serious," ManCrunch spokesperson Elissa Buchter said. "We have the money to pay for it. If the ad showed a man and woman kissing it would have been accepted. You see ads for erectile dysfunction morning, noon and night. It's discriminatory that they wont show this....They should call our bluff. If the ad doesn't air on the Super Bowl, it will air on another network. It's not like it plays like Adam Lambert [kissing another man on the AMAs]."

Original Post: CBS is considering airing an ad for gay dating site ManCrunch, Fox News reports.

On the heels of the network's decision that advocacy ads are acceptable, ManCrunch says CBS has not rejected its ad — which includes two male football fans making out.

A rep for ManCrunch told Fox News that CBS said "the spot hadn't been officially approved yet" as of last week, but "all the Super Bowl spots were sold out."

"ManCrunch requested the spot get reviewed anyway just in case another advertiser drops out and a spot becomes available, as often happens, and CBS agreed," the rep said.

A CBS rep told Fox News that "the ad is still under review, the process takes a little while....We still have a lot of ads we have yet to review." ...

Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad May Be Based On Falsehood

A commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother Pam that is likely to air during Super Bowl XLIV may be rife with inaccuracies,according to power lawyer Gloria Allred.

The ad, which is expected to promote an anti-choice message, will be based on the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." The Christian conservative group Focus on the Family has paid for the spot. James Dobson, the group's founder, has a history of inflammatory statements and once said that gay marriage will "destroy the earth."

Despite resistance from women's groups, the ad is expected to air during the Super Bowl. It is believed that the commercial will focus on Pam Tebow's 1987 pregnancy, during which time she fell ill in the Philippines. According to reports, doctors recommended that she abort the pregnancy, but she chose to go through with the birth of her son Tim.

Tebow grew up to be one of the most accomplished and celebrated stars in college football history, capturing two national championships and becoming the first sophomore to win the Heisman trophy.

Because abortion under any circumstance has been illegal in the Philippines since 1930 and is punishable by a six-year prison term, Allred says she finds it hard to believe that doctors would have recommended the procedure. ...

Obama spars with GOP in no-holds-barred debate | Raw Story

UPDATE AT BOTTOM: Fox News cut live feed of Obama debate half-way through; GOP aides say allowing cameras was a 'mistake'

...

Even some conservative commentators conceded that Obama won the day.
"Obama did well, got the better of GOP today," the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb tweeted. "Fortunately, we got the better of him the last six months or so. And health care is dead."
Daniel Foster at the National Review argued it made both sides look good.
"It would be hard to argue the exchange is anything but a plus-plus for Obama and the GOP," he wrote. "Both sides emerged from it looking as if, contra the public's greatest fears, they are serious about the deficit and health-care reform. ... [T]he Republicans went a long way toward showing that they are hardly a party of obstructionists with no solutions to offer Americans."
UPDATE: Some commentators are pointing to the fact that Fox News cut off the live feed of Obama's debate half-way through as proof that the president got the better of the GOP on Friday.
"Perhaps the most telling aspect of the speech reactions," writes David Weigel at the Washington Independent, is that "Fox News, alone among cable networks, cut away mid-broadcast and went to a newsless interview with Rep. Peter King (R-NY)."
NBC's Luke Russert offered more evidence that at least the GOP views it as a loss for their side.
"GOP aides telling me it was a mistake to allow cameras into Obama's QA with GOP members,"Russert tweeted Friday. "Allowed BO to refute GOP for 1.5 hours on TV."

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Poll finds Americans trust Fox News more than any other network | Raw Story

"The only one getting a positive review is Fox News."

An essay from a conservative media critic? A GOP blogger trumpeting the ratings of the allegedly "Fair and Balanced" news network?

Nope. A poll of 1,151 registered American voters, who were asked whether they trust each of the major television news networks. Ranking number one: Fox News Channel.

"49% of Americans say they trust Fox News to 37% who disagree," the poll's authors wrote. "Predictably there is a large party split on this with 74% of Republicans but only 30% of Democrats saying they trust the right leaning network."

"CNN does next best because it is the second most trusted of Democrats, Republicans, and independents. 39% say they trust it compared to 41% who do not, with 59% of Democrats, 33% of independents and 23% of Republicans saying it carries credibility with them."

CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding | Foreign Policy

Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.

Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency's intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC's Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed,exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water.

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA's application of the medieval confession technique.

...

Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story. On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up.

"What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts," he writes. "I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence."

But never mind, he says now.

"I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Exclusive: Obama stimulus reduced our pain, experts say - USATODAY.com

By Paul Wiseman and Barbara Hansen, USA TODAY

President Obama's stimulus package saved jobs — but the government still needs to do more to breathe life into the economy, according to USA TODAY's quarterly survey of 50 economists.

Unemployment would have hit 10.8% — higher than December's 10% rate — without Obama's $787 billion stimulus program, according to the economists' median estimate. The difference would translate into another 1.2 million lost jobs.

BUSINESS SURVEY: Slow recovery continues

RECOVERY WATCH: Tracking the economy; see VIDEO

JOBS OUTLOOK: Latest data for all states, 384 metros

But almost two-thirds of the economists said the government should do more to spur job growth. Suggestions included suspending payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, increasing spending on infrastructure, enacting a flat tax on income and extending jobless benefits. ...

How will SCOTUS decision affect corporate media? | Media Matters for America

In 2004, the United Church of Christ produced a television commercial promoting its inclusive approach to organized faith. The ad showed two nightclub-style bouncers guarding the rope line of a church as they denied entry to a gay male couple, several people of color, and a man in a wheelchair. By contrast, a white family of four had no problems getting through.

"Jesus didn't turn people away" was the ad's tagline, but CBS did, turning down the commercial which was intended for broadcast during that year's Super Bowl. The 30-second spot apparently violated the network's policy of "prohibiting advocacy ads, even ones that carry an 'implicit' endorsement for a side in a public debate."

Now, six years later, CBS has agreed to run an ad by the notoriously anti-reproductive rights, anti-gay organization Focus on the Family, featuring college football star and anti-choice crusader Tim Tebow.

The network's blatantly hypocritical decision has sparked intense controversy and brought new light to the shadowy world of corporate media policy governing political or issue-advocacy commercials.

These cable and broadcast outlets seem to make the argument that only certain entities can make certain political arguments against certain figures on certain issues during certain programs. It's difficult to follow -- and perhaps that is the point. Lack of specificity provides ample wiggle room.

...

Monday, January 25, 2010

ei: New York Times fails to disclose Jerusalem bureau chief's conflict of interest

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 25 January 2010

The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army.

Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the information and to seek his opinion on whether, if true, he thought it would be a conflict of interest.

Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The New York Times wrote in an email to The Electronic Intifada this morning:

"Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner's son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At The Times, we have found Mr. Bronner's coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case."

The Electronic Intifada also wrote to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The New York Times, to confirm the information and ask for an opinion on whether this constituted a conflict of interest, but had yet to receive a response.

Bronner, as bureau chief, has primary responsibility for his paper's reporting on all aspects of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and on the Israeli army, whose official name is the "Israel Defense Forces."

On 23 January, Bronner published a lengthy article on Israel's efforts to refute allegations contained in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its attack on Gaza last winter ("Israel Poised to Challenge a UN Report on Gaza").

As'ad AbuKhalil, a frequent critic of Bronner's coverage, blogged in response that "The New York Times devoted more space to Israeli and Zionist criticisms of the Goldstone report than to the [content of the] report itself" (The Angry Arab News Service, "Ethan Bronner's propaganda services, 25 January 2010)

Bronner's pro-Israeli bias reporting on Israel's attack on Gaza last year was also criticized by the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) (See "NYT and the Perils of Mideast 'Balance'," 4 February 2009).

The New York Times' own "Company policy on Ethics in Journalism" acknowledges that the activities of a journalist's family member may constitute a conflict of interest. It includes as an example, "A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor." Such conflicts may on occasion require the staff member "to withdraw from certain coverage." ...

Fox News leaves false report on Haiti uncorrected | Raw Story

Fox News is staying silent after bloggers and commentators criticized the news network for a January 13 report on its Web site that stated Cuba was "absent" from global aid efforts in Haiti.

Observers note that the communist country was, in fact, one of the first to arrive after the earthquake that is now estimated to have taken the lives of 200,000 people. That has led some bloggers to accuse Fox of using the devastation in Haiti to propagandize against Cuba. ...

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Haiti: FoxNews lies about Cuba’s role - Democratic Underground

Haiti: FoxNews lies about Cuba’s role - Democratic Underground
Haiti: FoxNews lies about Cuba’s role
Tony Iltis
24 January 2010

A January 13, Rupert Murdoch's US network FoxNews claimed that while the US “was leading international relief effort in Haiti“, Cuba was “conspicuously absent from the roster of helping hands”.

The opposite is the case. At the time the earthquake struck, Cuba already had 344 of them doctors and paramedics working in Haiti. Also, in the past 12 years 450 young Haitians have graduated as doctors from Cuban colleges, free of charge.

From January 13 further teams of Cuban health workers, accompanied by Haitian medical students studying in Cuba, began arriving, with medical supplies.

A January 12 Granma article said that, within a week of the earthquake, “Cuban doctors in the Haitian capital 13,418 consultancies, with 1,078 operations, more than 550 of them considered major surgery. The Cuban doctors have also assisted 38 births.”

Read more: http://www.greenleft.org.au/2010/823/42360

Friday, January 15, 2010

Newsflash: Right is Not Center | CommonDreams.org

"War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength"-more than a quarter century after those oxymorons were supposed to pervade an Orwellian 1984, today's media make such newspeak even more preposterous: On economic issues, we are often told that right is center, center is left, and left is fringe.

For a year, national reporters (with help from conservative talk-radio goons) have depicted the center-right Obama administration and its corporatist policies as quasi-Marxist. We've heard that a government-run public health care option is a "liberal" cause, even as polls confirm that most Americans-not just liberals-support the idea. We're told that legislators backing no-strings-attached bank bailouts are mainstream "centrists," while bailout opponents are extremists-even as public opinion surveys say the opposite.

This is Washington's "fair and balanced" journalism (or "journalism," as it were) and as two of the most respected metro newspapers show this week, its distortions can bleed into local coverage.

Reporting on independent Bernie Sanders, the Boston Globe headlined its recent profile: "Sanders a growing force on the far, far left-Vermont senator is gathering clout as he takes on the Fed's Ben Bernanke."

Polls, mind you, prove that disdain for the Fed chairman transcends "the left." As a failed regulator and architect of unpopular bailouts, Bernanke is despised by the public at large. Even within the Senate, his renomination faces transpartisan opposition from Republicans like Jim Bunning (KY) and red-state Democrats like Byron Dorgan (ND).

So depicting Sanders' fight against Bernanke as a "far, far left" crusade tilts the definition of the economic "center"-the premium label in politics-to the far, far right. ...

The right-wing media react to Haiti | Media Matters for America

The right-wing media react to Haiti | Media Matters for America
...

But much of the conservative media elite has reacted quite differently.

Fox News Channel's highest-rated shows, for example, all but ignored the disaster, according to a new Media Matters study:

On January 13, Fox News' three top-rated programs for 2009 -- The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck -- devoted a combined total of less than 7 minutes of coverage to the earthquake in Haiti, instead choosing to air such things as Beck's hour-long interview with Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly's discussion of Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, and Sean Hannity's advocacy for Massachusetts candidate Scott Brown's Senate campaign.

Fox News never hesitates to boast that its prime-time lineup draws more viewers than its competitors. But that success comes with a responsibility -- a responsibility to bring people important information in times of crisis. Fox fell far short of meeting that responsibility, instead inflicting upon viewers Sarah Palin's fumbling, bumbling attempt to answer a question about which of America's founders she most admires and continuing its attempts to elect Republicans to the Senate.

Not that O'Reilly, Hannity, and Beck were alone in dropping the ball. Christian Coalition founder and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson, host of the Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, had a rather unusual response to the devastation in Haiti:

ROBERTSON: [S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story. And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal."

And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. ... They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God.

Got that? Haiti was hit by a crushing earthquake because it made a deal with the devil to escape the French.

...

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh did his best to convince us that he isn't.

First, Limbaugh said President Obama would use the Haitian tragedy to enhance his standing with the "light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country." Then he seemed to dissuade people from contributing to relief efforts, complaining: "[W]e've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."

As with Robertson, this really isn't anything new for Limbaugh. He has long been contemptuous of U.S. efforts to help Haiti -- particularly when there is a Democrat in the White House.

In 1994, when Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was expelled by a military coup, Limbaugh opposed and ridiculed U.S. intervention, and claimed the only reason for restoring Aristide was to please the Congressional Black Caucus:

...

If Limbaugh and Robertson are any indication of the way the conservative media think about Haiti, maybe it's for the best that Fox's top-rated shows are ignoring the tragedy. I don't even want to think about the bizarre claims Glenn Beck would come up with. Probably something about the Obama administration faking the earthquake so they could funnel billions of dollars in funds to ACORN, just like Hitler would do.