A new FAIR Action Alert (5/16/12) calls on the New York Times public editor to address the conflict of interest posed by Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner's marriage to someone whose job it is to sway the coverage of international outlets like the Times in a pro-Israel direction. Please leaves copies of your messages to the Times, or comments on the alert, in the comments thread below.

Norman Ornstein at the Center for American Progress.

Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann are well-known in the Beltway. They work at big-time think tanks (Brookings and American Enterprise Institute), appear on television chat shows, and write books and op-eds that powerful people pay attention to.

Lately, though, it seems they've become dangerous men.

Mann and Ornstein recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post (4/27/12) based on their new book. In it, they argued that whining about increased polarization or partisanship in politics obscures a central truth: This problem is not seen in equal measure on both sides. The headline summed it up: "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem."

They wrote:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

And the piece pointed a finger at the media's false balance:

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don't seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

The article became quite an internet sensation–with something like 200,000 recommendations on Facebook. But as Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent (5/14/12) points out, one class of people seem uniquely uninterested in the argument: Sunday talkshow bookers.

It turns out neither man has been invited on to the Sunday shows even once to discuss this thesis. As Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum note, these are among the most quoted people in Washington–yet suddenly this latest topic is too hot for the talkers, or not deemed relevant at all.

Ornstein tells Sargent, "Not a single one of the Sunday shows has indicated an interest, and I do find it curious."

Unfortunate, perhaps. But it's not all that curious. As FAIR's recent study of the Sunday shows revealed, the programs exhibit a remarkable right-wing slant, favoring Republican politicians over Democrats and conservative-leaning pundits over their more progressive counterparts. If anything, the Sunday programs serve to confirm the thesis laid out by Ornstein and Mann. It'd be hard to imagine these shows would be all that keen on inviting guests on who would challenge the extremely narrow political worldview that they attempt to pass off as reality every week.

Either that or they're trying to get a guest who can take the "other side" in this debate. You know, for the sake of balance.

That's not to say that nothing can be done about this–the more people speak up the better. That's why FAIR has encouraged activists to sign a petition to the Sunday shows urging them to diversify their guest lists.

 The New York Times editorially decried the New York City police department's stop-and-frisk practices ("Injustices of Stop and Frisk," 5/13/12), noting that the criterion of "furtive movements" most often used for stopping disproportionately black and brown people is "so vague as to be meaningless," that people of color are treated more violently than white people when stopped, and that the excuse that stop-and-frisk keeps guns off the street is not supported.

The paper's conclusion: "The mounting evidence reveals a pattern of abusive policing that warrants the attention of the Justice Department, which should be using its broad authority to investigate these practices."

That might sound all right, but as I recently wrote for Extra! (3/12), the Times has been clutching its pearls over stop-and-frisk for 10 years, and it's become clear that there is no evidence, no research, no investigation that will move the paper beyond calls for more of the same. It seems inescapable that, for the country's paper of record, the fact that a practice violates the human rights of black and brown people in the city daily is simply not sufficient cause to call for its end.
 

You have to wonder: Do journalists covering energy issues imagine they and their loved ones are going to be living on another planet in the not-too-distant future?

That seems like the only reason you would write a piece about the world discovering ways to extract and burn vast new quantities of hydrocarbons without mentioning one word about climate change. That's what Bryan Walsh gave us in the May 21 issue of Time magazine–an article about fracking that doesn't mention the technology's powerful contribution to global warming.

The headline over this article: "The Golden Age."

Walsh does refer to fracking's ecological impact, referring to "environmental concerns over fracking–chiefly the possibility of groundwater pollution." The groundwater contamination associated with fracking is certainly bad, but most environmentalists will tell you that climate change is the biggest challenge facing humanity–and that finding new ways to burn carbon (and release methane as well) is utterly unhelpful.

Walsh concludes his article: "Fracking is here to stay, scrambling a global energy picture that had long seemed settled." Actually, the only thing that was settled was that people would have to totally reinvent their energy systems if they wanted to avoid catastrophe. But for Time magazine, ignoring that catastrophe seems to be the next best thing.

The Washington Post (5/13/12) ran a piece by Ed O'Keefe under this headline:

Ryan Budget Still an Issue in Congressional Races

Still? You mean candidates keep talking about Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal to replace Medicare with an entirely inadequate privatized health insurance program–even though the upcoming elections are the first chance voters will have to say what they think of the idea?

Yep: "More than a year after the proposal's initial release, Republican candidates continue to find themselves on the defensive about what the plan will actually do, and Democrats continue to make claims about the dire consequences if it were to become law." Surely in a just world, politicians would have lost interest in the topic long before the public had a chance to weigh in on it. You know, the way journalists have.

Of all the Arab Spring uprisings, Bahrain probably gets the least attention in the U.S. press. There are perhaps some good arguments why;  it could be the fact that the United States is on the side of the monarchy violently suppressing the democratic aspirations of its people.

So it was news that the United States decided on Friday to ahead and continue selling arms to Bahrain. But barely news. The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung (5/12/12) gave space to some critics of the deal to point out the troubling level of support for a regime torturing and imprisoning dissidents.

The administration officials explaining the decision to reporters, though, were granted anonymity–which of course makes it easier to say that the military supplies being sold to Bahrain would not be "used against protesters in any scenario."  Those sources also assured that administration officials "raised a number of human rights concerns" when they met with Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa last week (get a decidedly different take from the Institute for Public Accuracy).

And then there was this explanation of the apparent White House conundrum:

The escalating violence and repression has presented the Obama administration with a complex panorama of conflicting priorities. Its genuine concern about political reforms in Bahrain is set against the backdrop of a long-standing security relationship with Bahrain and an escalating threat from Iran.

A complex panorama–good grief! This echoes some of the coverage of the uprising in Egypt, where U.S. officials were said to be walking a "tightrope" in a "delicate" crisis, and so on.

One can assume that in countries with state-controlled media, the decision to send arms to a regime attacking democracy protesters might be presented in a similar manner.

Right before the United States invaded Iraq, Newsweek magazine published a remarkable story. Reporter John Barry revealed that former Iraqi weapons chief Hussein Kamel had told UN inspectors in 1995 that the country had destroyed its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

As FAIR pointed out at the time, this was a remarkable discovery, especially considering that Kamel's words had be used so often by U.S. officials to serve the opposite point–that Iraq still posed a dire threat.  As FAIR pointed out:

According to Newsweek, Kamel told the same story to CIA analysts in August 1995. If that is true, all of these U.S. officials have had access to Kamel's statements that the weapons were destroyed. Their repeated citations of his testimony–without revealing that he also said the weapons no longer exist–suggests that the administration might be withholding critical evidence. In particular, it casts doubt on the credibility of [Colin] Powell's February 5 presentation to the UN, which was widely hailed at the time for its persuasiveness.

That brings us to this week's Newsweek, which includes an excerpt from Powell's new book. The former secretary of state is still trying to claim that he didn't mislead anyone about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Sure he wishes things had turned out differently, but he's not the one to blame.

Powell writes:

Facts are verified information, which is then presented as objective reality. The rub here is the verified. How do you verify verified? Facts are slippery, and so is verification. Today's verification may not be tomorrow's. It turns out that facts may not really be facts; they can change as the verification changes; they may only tell part of the story, not the whole story; or they may be so qualified by verifiers that they're empty of information.

Well OK.

He goes on to say, "My warning radar always goes on alert when qualifiers are attached to facts." So I guess the point is that Colin Powell has these radars, but other people do not. And those people failed him and his warning system:

There is nothing worse than a leader believing he has accurate information when folks who know he doesn't don't tell him that he doesn't. I found myself in trouble on more than one occasion because people kept silent when they should have spoken up. My infamous speech at the UN in 2003 about Iraqi WMD programs was not based on facts, though I thought it was.

And later, still blaming someone else for what he said: "Yes, the evidence was deeply flawed. So why did no one stand up and speak out during the intense hours we worked on the speech?"

As FAIR pointed out, various layers of the U.S. government were aware that the famous defector who was used to advance the Bush/Clinton Iraq WMD argument had actually told investigators that the weapons had been destroyed. Powell says someone should have told him this kind of thing.

It's hard to believe Powell and his staff weren't aware of those Kamel interviews. But there's much more to it than that. Jonathan Schwarz (A Tiny Revolution, 5/10/12) shows pretty clearly that State Department intelligence analysts voiced serious reservations about a number of aspects of the case for war–starting with the infamous Iraqi aluminum tubes story. Schwarz also points out that in his United Nations speech, Powell added incriminating words to an intercepted phone conversation between Iraqi officials.

Indeed, as Schwarz documents, Powell's presentation at the UN overstated the view of his own intelligence analysts on a number of important points. Arguments that were labeled "weak" by the analysts became facts (or "facts") in Powell's presentation.

Powell can blame his subordinates for this, and complain that someone should have stopped him. That's his right, and hopefully people will see it for what it is.

The real question is why Newsweek would publish this self-serving revisionism. The magazine did critical reporting when it mattered on the Iraq War. Colin Powell wants you to think that never happened, and Newsweek is helping him do that in its own pages.

If you watch TV news you're bound to see a lot of commercials for oil companies. As Miranda Spencer reported in Extra! (2/12), there are far more commercials about energy companies and natural gas than there are actual news reports about controversial industry practices like hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."

But then there are the news segments that might as well be commercials. Last night's ABC World News broadcast (5/10/12) featured a report on the oil boom in the Midwest that looked more like an ad than anything else.

"A rising number of Americans are finding a windfall right where they live," explained anchor Diane Sawyer. She added that "new drilling techniques are finding oil in your backyard"–residents of a small town in Kansas are suddenly wealthy thanks to this "pot of gold."

Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi explained that oil companies were signing expensive leases with local farmers, who believe they could become quite wealthy if the drilling works: $500,000 a month in royalty payments, says one guest–a figure Alfonsi repeats with some astonishment.

Could that possibly be true? Who knows–no one actually receiving this kind of windfall is interviewed in the segment. ABC seems most interested in assuring us that people could become  "millionaires overnight."

Alfonsi explains that "a new drilling technique that finds oil on lands once thought to be sucked dry."  That's all the explanation you get on the television broadcast. The Web version of the story, though, explains a bit more:

From Pennsylvania and North Dakota to Texas, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing are quickly turning the U.S. into an oil superpower. By some estimates, 2 trillion barrels of oil are waiting to be drilled–nearly twice the reserves in the Middle East and North Africa.

The newer techniques can produce as much as 10 times more oil than a traditional well. Horizontal drilling works by digging 5,000 feet into the earth, then a mile across in several directions.

Using hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking," crews then blast sand, water and chemicals into the rock to draw out even more oil and gas.

Why would ABC neglect to mention fracking by name on the broadcast? Perhaps because plenty of people are aware of the controversies surrounding this practice–the heavy use of dangerous chemicals and the threat to local water supplies, to name just two.

But ABC can't be bothered with any criticisms at all. The point of the segment was that that this "could transform the Midwest into the new Mideast."

At the end of the segment, Alfonsi declared that there could be "2 trillion barrels of oil in our backyards." Anchor Sawyer could hardly contain her excitement: "I hope it's in your backyard!"

Never mind the hazards of fracking–think for a second about the devastating effect this would have on the global climate, which does not even merit a mention.

ABC isn't the first network newscast to give a big thumbs up to the "new drilling technologies" that will make us all millionaires. But this was easily one of the most propagandistic news segments I've ever seen.

 

The election results in Greece and France sent a clearer message about austerity: Voters don't like it. That sentiment isn't hard to fathom; massive spending cuts and pay cuts aren't fixing the problems in their economies–they're making things worse.

Media coverage seems to be clearer these days about what the public thinks of austerity. But the assumption that austerity is mostly "good" still seems firmly in place. Like this Washington Post lead (5/7/12):

Voters in France and Greece redrew Europe's political map Sunday in a powerful backlash against the German-led cure for the region's debt crisis: painful austerity.

It's not a "cure" if it makes things worse, is it?

The New York Times (5/4/12), in a piece prior to the French election results, wrote that Socialist candidate Francois Hollande could press for a growth agenda "which would challenge the German medicine, or at least try to dilute it." Again, it's not good medicine if it makes you sicker.

And in today's Washington Post (5/8/12), a piece begins:

The shrill anti-incumbent message that has emerged from a pair of European elections…

At his Beat the Press blog, economist Dean Baker wonders why the Post thinks the election results are "shrill"–it might indicate the paper doesn't like the how the vote went.  He points out other problems with the article:

The piece also includes the bizarre assertion:

"A new round of political paralysis that delays Europe's recovery or calls into question the austerity agreement reached this year to help bail out Greece would probably lead to an immediate slowdown of U.S. economic growth and job creation while confusing bond and equity markets."

Actually, Europe is not on a path to recovery. It is on a path to recession because of the austerity being imposed by the European Central Bank and the IMF. If this austerity is reversed and Europe starts growing again, that would help the U.S. economy.

But one of the clearest examples of this which-side-are-you-on reporting came from the CBS Evening News on May 5, courtesy of correspondent Mark Philips:

Francois Hollande would become only the second Socialist president of France in more than 50 years, a man committed to free-spending policies that are making the markets and the governments in Europe and the U.S. extremely nervous.

Hollande has said he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and spend more to grow the French economy. Perhaps those are "free-spending policies," but there are other words for it. As for other markets and governments, it's not clear there's a verdict yet. The New York Times has a piece today arguing that Hollande's economic policy ideas are somewhat closer to Obama's than Sarkozy's were.

But the overriding assumption in much of the coverage is that austerity was doing what its proponents said it was doing. Here's CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley last night (5/7/12):

France and Germany got other European countries to slash their budgets to solve their debt crisis. But the incoming French president has vowed to unravel that deal.

Unraveling a solution to a crisis sounds bad, doesn't it?

 

Covering Hillary Clinton's trip to India, USA Today's Richard Wolf writes (5/8/12):

Fielding rapid-fire questions at a town-hall-style event in Kolkata, she denounced Iran's nuclear arms program and urged India to reduce its Iranian oil imports further.

"We appreciate what has been done, and of course we want to keep the pressure on Iran," she said.

When I read that I thought, "Here we go again, another outlet misstating the basic facts about the Iran debate."

Then I checked the transcript of the Clinton's town hall, and that is indeed what she said, in response to a question about U.S. pressuring India to stop buying oil from Iran:

That's a very good question, and let me give you a little context for that question. When President Obama took over in 2009, we knew Iran's continuing development of a nuclear weapons program would be very destabilizing in the region, because there would be an arms race with the nations in the region who have pre-existing enmity between themselves and Iran. And it would also cause a great threat to Israel. 

USA Today should have noted that there is no evidence that Iran has any nuclear weapons program at all–as U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon secretary have acknowledged. That's what newspapers should do when politicians mislead. Instead, the paper puts this headline over the piece: "Clinton Wraps Asia Trip with Tough Talk on Iran."

"Tough talk" is a weak way to describe a government official's misrepresentation of the facts.

FAIR's recent study of the Sunday morning network shows documented a distinct right-wing bias in the guestlists. Republicans and conservatives were everywhere; progressives and people of color, not so much.

Since the study was released, there left-leaning commentator/TV host Tavis Smiley has been on two shows, CBS's Face the Nation (4/22/12) and ABC's This Week (5/6/12)

The latter showed how a guest like Smiley can broaden the discussion– at one point he invoked Martin Luther King's critique of militarism to talk about current U.S. policy. And he talked about poverty:

I think we have to all agree here, though, that neither Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney are speaking to the angst of the poor. Every politician who runs for the White House, Jake, thinks they can campaign by talking about the angst of the middle class. The middle class of this country as we know it is disappearing. You have the perennially poor. You have the near poor. And you have the new poor.

We believe that the new poor are the former middle class. So you can't have a campaign now where we just talk about the angst of the middle class without talking about the poor. That's what's missing in this context.

Unfortunately, regular panelist George Will and Fox News host Greta van Susteren redirected the conversation to more familiar terrain–one where poverty is about too much dependence on government, and student loan debt isn't such a big deal:

VAN SUSTEREN: But even with the poor, it's sort of the morality issue, but there's also–it's sort of the, you know, almost the selfish issues, because as the poor class grows bigger and bigger, the entitlement grows bigger and bigger, and we have bigger and bigger economic problems. So there's morality issue and also the question, it's a real drag on the economy, if we don't help them and don't inspire…

(CROSSTALK)

JAKE TAPPER: And, George, you and I were talking about this earlier. You think that we're witnessing the birth of a new entitlement, with the president's push on student loans.

WILL: Well, look what happened. It's a slow-motion, almost absentminded creation of a new entitlement, exactly at the moment when the entitlement state is buckling under the weight of its already existing commitments. Five years ago, Congress says, well, let's cut in half the interest rate on certain student loans, from 6.8 to 3.4.

TAPPER: 6.8 to 3.4, yeah.

WILL: We'll do it, they said, temporarily. Well, now we're coming up against the expiration of that, and they're saying, well, let's temporarily move it on yet again.

TAPPER: But Romney supports that, as well.

WILL: I understand that. And that's why this is a bipartisan example of how entitlements — because once you do this, once you extend it again, you'll never go back to 3.4 percent.

SMILEY: But when student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt, and we want to label that an entitlement, we don't call corporate welfare an entitlement. I just — I don't see….

WILL: Of the two-thirds of the people who graduate from college with debt, the average debt is something under $30,000 total. That is just about the one-year difference in earnings between a college graduate and a high school graduate. We're talking about a pittance a month.

That "pittance," it's worth remembering, doubled between 1996 and 2008. Then again, George Will frequently told viewers that there was nothing to be worried about in the housing market. The perfect TV pundit: Often wrong, while suffering no consequences.

On Wednesday (5/2/12), MSNBC host Chris Matthews played a long clip from the Daily Show, where Jon Stewart mocked Republicans who are complaining about Barack Obama's celebration of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Stewart naturally recalls George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo op stunt from 2003.  Stewart points out that if Republicans are angry about Obama "spiking the football," Bush was spiking the ball before the game started.

So the clip played, and then we cut to Matthews, chuckling away. Of course Stewart's point is right on–anyone who listens to this whining from the right is bound to recall Bush's celebration of the Iraq "victory." The hypocrisy is staggering.

But if you're going to have a laugh about this, then you might want to remember how excited Chris Matthews (5/1/03) was about that Bush stunt. It probably won't make you laugh, and Matthews probably doesn't want to remember it either:

We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits.

A few more, courtesy of Media Matters (4/27/06):

MATTHEWS: What's the importance of the president's amazing display of leadership tonight?

[...]

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically… the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That… if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take [that] away from him.

And:

MATTHEWS: The president there — look at this guy! We're watching him. He looks like he flew the plane. He only flew it as a passenger, but he's flown….He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him — I mean, he seems like — he didn't fight in a war, but he looks like he does.

Matthews is mocked–and rightly so–for saying that hearing a Barack Obama speech made a thrill go up his leg.  His ability to be dazzled by politicians would appear to be bipartisan.

The New York Times shouldn't be trusted to report on future wars if it can't get the facts about previous wars right.

Once again, the Times misleads readers about the lead up to Israel's invasion of Gaza in late 2008. Isabel Kershner writes (5/3/12):

Up to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during Israel's three-week offensive against Hamas in Gaza in the winter of 2008-09, which came after years of rocket fire into southern Israel by Gaza militants.

So Israel was responding to "years of rocket fire."

The real story is a bit different. 2008 actually saw a remarkable decline in Israel/Gaza violence, thanks to a cease fire. And this was reported in the New York Times (12/19/08) before the full-scale assault known as Operation Cast Lead began:

Hamas imposed its will and even imprisoned some of those who were firing rockets. Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than 300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July, depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included. In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10.

This graph shows how remarkable the decline in rocket fire was for five months (June-November). That Times piece also reports that Israeli forces continued attacks in Gaza and the West Bank, and did not fulfill economic promises associated with the cease fire.

So what actually happened? Israel launched an attack in November 2008 that killed six Hamas members (Guardian headline, 11/5/08: "Gaza Truce Broken as Israeli Raid Kills Six Hamas Gunmen"). That proved to be the decisive breach of the cease fire.

The Times and Kershner have done this re-writing of history before. It's certainly a more comforting, familiar narrative for corporate media: Palestinians attack, Israel finally retaliates. It also happens to be totally misleading.

In corporate media, some political arguments are treated as indisputable fact. One of the most important: Democrats win by moving to the right. In the New York Times (5/3/12), Peter Baker offers the latest example:

Mr. Obama, who campaigned on Sunday with Mr. Clinton, seems to be following his Democratic predecessor's playbook. After a generation of Democrats alienating voters with liberal domestic positions, Mr. Clinton moved the party toward the center on issues like trade, welfare and deficit spending.

First off: Democrats had been alienating voters for a generation with their liberal policies? I am not sure what this is supposed to mean, but it's part of the Clinton Lesson so popular with mainstream reporters.

Clinton went to the "center" to win. With what? "Trade" would seem to mean NAFTA, which was never all that popular with most Americans (but it's still "centrist" because, well, it just is).

In any event, it's hard to figure how Clinton's moves to the right were key to his electoral success.  The press loved his "Sister Souljah" moment, but it's hard to imagine voters much cared. And the 1994 election losses for the Democrats might suggest that voters, if anything, weren't at all happy with Clinton's rightward shift. The media drew a different lesson: Clinton the right-leaning New Democrat had veered too far to the left.

And in 2010, when Democrats suffered similar losses, the media again chalked it up to a Democratic president who hadn't learned the lesson and governed too far to the left.

But the Clinton presidency remains the corporate media's model for all other Democrats.

On New York City Fox station WNYW, Good Day New York celebrated May Day by attempting to link the Occupy Wall Street movement to the mailing of letters containing white powder and the greeting "Happy May Day."

On a segment where Good Day hosts Greg Kelly and Rosanna Scotto were joined by NYPD commission Ray Kelly–Greg Kelly's father, and a frequent guest on his son's show–the younger Kelly all but concluded that Occupy was behind the frightening mailing that saw seven letters delivered to six banks and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Greg Kelly noted that the powder had been identified as harmless, then announced what would have been a bombshell if he had had any evidence. The letters, said the host, "are being linked to the Occupy Wall Street movement. The contents of the letter seriously suggest that Occupy Wall Street had something to do with these letters with the powder inside." Kelly then asked the commissioner:

What about the link to Occupy Wall Street movement? The content of the letter, according to the Times, has a reference to "Happy May Day." May 1. Occupy Wall Street is planning some pretty big disruptions throughout the city today. This letter is linked to Occupy Wall Street, or not?

New York City’s top police official then answered the imprudent question imprudently: "I think it's reasonable to assume. Yes."

The commissioner had nothing further to add in the way of evidence linking Occupy to the mailings–besides enumerating several protest marches planned for May Day, including ones that had explicit permission from the police to proceed.

There were no probing questions, no discussion of who stood to gain from tying the mailings to Occupy, virtually nothing in the way of actual journalism.

Introducing the piece, Good Day's Kelly had mentioned that the story was "reminiscent of the anthrax attacks" of 2001–when journalists and politicians received doses of actual anthrax in the mail, accompanied by messages proclaiming "DEATH TO AMERICA," "ALLAH IS GREAT" and the like.

Kelly didn't mention that media outlets embarrassed themselves on that story, fingering Al-Qaeda (Wall Street Journal, 10/15/01) and Iraq (ABC World News Tonight, 10/28/01) for the anthrax–which the FBI ended up tracing back to U.S. Army biological weapons labs.

With Occupy Wall Street making its May Day comeback, what did the corporate media have to say? Take a look at the New York Times story (5/2/12), which was stuffed in the Metro section and focused on… well, take a look at the headline:

About half of the article is focused on arrests, "occasionally bloody clashes" and the like.

Before the protests even started, there were warnings about what was to come. On ABC's Good Morning America (5/1/12), Josh Elliot warned viewers:

We're gonna begin with what's shaping up to be a potentially brutal morning commute, particularly in major cities across the country.

Elliot went on to link OWS with some scary mailings at several banks:

Demonstrators here in New York and across the country, as you just saw, threatening now to block bridges, tunnels and ferries, all to protest corporate America. And already a big scare, white powder sent to several major banks.

Early in the day (5/1/12), Reuters television correspondent Conway G. Gittens filed a report headlined "Occupy Wall Street Resurgence a Dud." Several hours–and thousands of protestors–later, Reuters was telling peopleon Twitter:

Live coverage of #MayDay protests show Occupy Wall Street resurgence far from being a dud

What about on liberal-leaning MSNBC? The channel didn't seem to have much to say. Here was host Ed Schultz:

Today, Occupy Wall Street staged May Day protests around the world. It's another reminder of which candidate supports the 1 Percent and which candidate is with the 99 Percenters.

Given Occupy Wall Street's longstanding aversion to electoral politics–not to mention criticism of the Obama administration's Wall Street connections–this sounds like partisan wishful thinking.

The New York Times' Alissa Rubin (5/2/12) reports of President Barack Obama's trip to Afghanistan:

The trip communicated something of vital importance to the Afghans: reassurance that the United States is not in an all-out scramble to get away.

It's not clear what the basis for Rubin's claim that "reassurance" that the U.S. is in no hurry to leave Afghanistan is "of vital importance" to Afghans. A poll taken in 2010 on behalf of the Washington Post, ABC, BBC and the German broadcaster ARD found that 55 percent of the Afghan public supported the rapid withdrawal of foreign troops (GlobalPost, 12/9/10). A 2011 poll by the International Council on Security and Development (5/11) found that 76 percent of respondents in the north of Afghanistan believed NATO military operations were bad for the Afghan people, as did 87 percent of respondents in the south. A March 2012 poll by the German Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis (PressTV, 4/17/12) reported 60 percent support for early withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Based on available evidence, it sounds like news that Americans plan to stay in their country would be of vital importance to Afghans. But "reassurance" is not the word for it.

Stories about new state voter ID laws should, at a minimum, explain that the problem the laws supposedly address–voter fraud–doesn't really exist.

On that count, a New York Times report (4/30/12) by Michael Shear failed, since it presented the issue as a partisan dispute. On the one hand, Democrats complain:

Many of the laws in question–including the ones in Florida and Wisconsin–are the subject of legal challenges by Democratic groups who say they are part of a partisan, Republican effort to dampen the turnout of voters, particularly members of minority groups, for Mr. Obama and his party.

While on the other hand:

Advocates of the new laws, which have been passed in about 30 states since the last presidential election, say they are necessary to prevent voter fraud. They include tougher voter identification requirements and more rules about where and how groups can register new voters.

The Times' editorial page has been clear on this issue. Too bad news reports like this one don't do justice to the facts.

As we've written before, some political flipflops are better than others. The ones that Mitt Romney commits, or might commit in the future, are often seen as being the good kind.

That argument was advanced once more this Sunday (4/29/12) on the Chris Matthews Show, by Time editor Rick Stengel and the host himself, who were engaged in a familiar Beltway media discussion where journalists pretend to be campaign strategists. In this case, the question was whether the Obama campaign should push the idea that Romney is a flipflopper, or the idea that he's very conservative.

STENGEL: The thing that I want to praise is the Etch A Sketch line that the Romney adviser used. He said, you know, when the primaries are over, it's like an Etch A Sketch, you start over. He's exactly right. The scandal, of course, is that he's speaking truth. Romney will set the table again and he will always campaign on the fact that he's been consistent about, which is that I can fix the American economy.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, let's see–you don't think the Democrats have a better opportunity of nailing him with all these right wing positions.

STENGEL: You know, the fact that he is a flipflopper, to me that's like saying, "You know what, I change my mind when circumstances change."

MATTHEWS: Well, no, that's what I…

STENGEL: "That's the kind of guy I am."

MATTHEWS: That's what I… that makes the case, I think, for not doing it. Don't make him a flipflopper, because a lot of middle-of-the-roaders will say, "Hey, I'm a flipflopper." The actual voter will say that.

So on the one hand, Romney changes his mind when circumstances change. (When did this happen, one wonders?) On the other hand, "middle of the road" voters relate to flipflopping politicians. It's hard to know which take is worse.

As I noted a few months back, Paul Krugman's take on this question of Romney's sincerity was refreshingly direct: "If he doesn't dare disagree with economic nonsense now, why imagine that he would become willing to challenge that nonsense later?" Indeed.

New York Times columnist Gail Collins had a good critique of standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind law (4/28/12), weighing in on the "Pineapplegate" controversy about a bizarre question that appeared on a New York English exam.

She writes:

We have turned school testing into a huge corporate profit center, led by Pearson, for whom $32 million is actually pretty small potatoes. Pearson has a five-year testing contract with Texas that's costing the state taxpayers nearly half-a-billion dollars.

Indeed. But then comes this:

This is the part of education reform nobody told you about. You heard about accountability, and choice, and innovation. But when No Child Left Behind was passed 11 years ago, do you recall anybody mentioning that it would provide monster profits for the private business sector?

Me neither.

While it's good to see columnists use something in the news to talk about a larger political issue–that's what they do–Collins shouldn't pretend that no one was drawing a connection between a law that would require a massive increase in test taking and the financial interests of testing companies.

And in fact it was being written about. Just one example: Stephen Metcalf wrote an excellent piece in the Nation (1/10/02) –an article that so impressed the nobodies here at FAIR that we interviewed him  on CounterSpin.

Metcalf pointed out:

And, not surprisingly, the Bush legislation has ardent supporters in the testing and textbook publishing industries. Only days after the 2000 election, an executive for publishing giant NCS Pearson addressed a Waldorf ballroom filled with Wall Street analysts. According to Education Week, the executive displayed a quote from President-elect Bush calling for state testing and school-by-school report cards, and announced, "This almost reads like our business plan."

The bill has allotted $387 million to get states up to speed; the National Association of State Boards of Education estimates that properly funding the testing mandate could cost anywhere from $2.7 billion to $7 billion. The bottom line? "This promises to be a bonanza for the testing companies," says Monte Neill of FairTest, a Boston-based nonprofit. "Fifteen states now test in all the grades Bush wants. All the rest are going to have to increase the amount of testing they do."

Testing was already big business: According to Peter Sacks, author of Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It, between 1960 and 1989 sales of standardized tests to public schools more than doubled, while enrollment increased only 15 percent. Over the past five years alone, state testing expenditures have almost tripled, from $141 million to $390 million, according to Achieve Inc., a standards-movement group formed by governors and CEOs. Under the new legislation, as many as 15 states might need to triple their testing budgets.

All of which has led to a feeding frenzy.

The big educational testing companies have thus dispatched lobbyists to Capitol Hill. Bruce Hunter, who represents the American Association of School Administrators, says: "I've been lobbying on education issues since 1982, but the test publishers have been active at a level I've never seen before. At every hearing, every discussion, the big test publishers are always present with at least one lobbyist, sometimes more." Both standardized testing and textbook publishing are dominated by the so-called Big Three–McGraw-Hill, Houghton-Mifflin and Harcourt General–all identified as "Bush stocks" by Wall Street analysts in the wake of the 2000 election.

It's all right there, a decade ago. Proof that reading independent media–be it in the Nation or countless others–is essential for understanding the political debates of the present–and the future.