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An Open Letter To Julian Assange

Posted by on January 20, 2011 at 9:43 pm. 8 Comments :

Dear Julian,

Few stories last year were more dramatic than the WikiLeaks document dump. It exposed both the internal workings of American diplomacy and the weaknesses of its infrastructure. The impact of it was so great that you were even on the short list for Time’s Person of the Year.

Subsequent to the tsunami you created there was a backwash of attacks from critics and legal authorities. I was one of those who defended you as a journalist who was doing what any journalist would do after coming into possession of controversial documents that had a clear value to the public. I saw no difference between your actions and those of Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame.

I was encouraged to hear that you regarded yourself as journalist and proudly asserted the rights and privileges of the profession. However, you cannot assert those rights selectively.

Recently you announced that you were in possession of documents that you were holding as “insurance” in the event that anything happened to you or WikiLeaks. You made it known that included in that batch were cables referencing Rupert Murdoch and News Corp.

The description of these documents as insurance implies that if they were to be released they would cause some discomfort to the subjects. So you are confessing that you have damaging information about Murdoch that you are deliberately keeping secret.

This violates the code of journalistic ethics to which you are lately claiming to be signatory. It is wholly inappropriate to use such documents as a bargaining chip for your own personal benefit. The information you are hoarding belongs to the people. What’s more, Rupert Murdoch, in his role as the planet’s chief propagandist and media baron, is doing tangible harm to the world and to the practice of journalism. If you have information that, if released, would diminish Murdoch’s grip on the press, you have an obligation to release it now. It does not belong to you. It is not your “get out of jail free” card.

By stashing these papers away for your own purposes you weaken your case for being a journalist. But worse than that, you make yourself culpable for every evil thing Murdoch does. If you have the ability to diminish his influence and refrain from acting, then you share responsibility for whatever he does until you do act.

That is why I am calling on you to release what you have on Murdoch now. If it has public value then it belongs to the public. Murdoch’s secrets have no special grant to be kept secret. Ellsberg didn’t squirrel away batches of data to blackmail his adversaries and neither should you. And remember this, if Murdoch had any damaging information about you he wouldn’t hesitate for a second to broadcast it far and wide.

Set it free, Julian. And if you do not I certainly hope someone at WikiLeaks leaks the info despite you. It would really be a shame if let your paranoia turn you into the thing you have been fighting against.

Jon Stewart Puts The So-Called “Real” News To Shame – Again

Posted by on December 14, 2010 at 2:23 pm. 3 Comments :

Last Thursday the Senate voted down a bill that would have provided health care for the 9/11 first responders, many of whom are suffering debilitating illnesses as a result of their heroic efforts following the worst act of terrorism in our nation’s history.

The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 failed to pass because every Republican senator voted against it. By contrast, every Democratic senator voted for it (with the exception of Majority Leader Harry Reid who changed his vote to “no” so that under senate rules he could bring it up for another vote).

As if it weren’t bad enough that the GOP once again put politics before people, the media exacerbated the insult by virtually ignoring the story altogether. There seemed to be a firewall erected across the mediasphere to insure that Americans didn’t learn that a pack of heartless Republican hypocrites had voted to let America’s heroes suffer and die.

However, there was at least one channel on your TV dial where you could have actually been informed about this significant issue. Guess which one:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Lame-as-F@#k Congress
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

Jon Stewart has repeatedly insisted that he is only a comedian on a fake news show. But his work belies his modesty, just as it indicts the purveyors of “real” news as unprofessional hacks with a vested interest in maintaining a corrupt status quo. Stewart once again demonstrates why many regard him as more trustworthy than the conventional press, and he does it with passion, honesty and, of course, humor.

How To Get A Job At Fox News

Posted by on December 1, 2010 at 12:49 pm. NO Comments :

For any aspiring reporters who don’t care about journalism but want to advance their careers as celebrity hacks, an enterprising anchorman from Washington, DC, has generously blazed the trail for you to future success.

Doug McKelway was anchoring the news desk at WJLA in Washington until he allowed his right-wing partisan views to seep into his so-called reporting. That led to some harsh words with his boss at the station, and eventually his termination.

Not to worry. Roger Ailes probably has Google alerts set for disgraced reporters who get fired for rightist bias. And, wouldn’t you know it, McKelway has been hired by Fox News. He is following in the footsteps of Juan Williams who was terminated by NPR for making offensive comments in his role as a contributor to Fox.

McKelway’s credentials also include another character trait valued by Fox: hostility. In an interview with a gay rights activist McKelway expressed his desire to, “take you outside and give you a punch across the face.” McKelway may have picked up that tactic from Fox reporter Charles Leaf, who once assaulted a councilwoman he was attempting to interview and, on another occasion, spewed homophobic obscenities and tried to attack an interview subject.

Leaf is still on the Fox payroll but hasn’t shown up for work lately because he is in jail awaiting trial on charges of sexually molesting a four year old girl. McKelway hasn’t employed that tactic yet (that we know of). But that oversight didn’t harm his opportunity for employment with Fox.

So good luck job-seekers. If you’re an abusive, bigot, with perverted tendencies, your future looks bright at Fox News.

Fox Spews: Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly And The Simpsons

Posted by on November 23, 2010 at 4:00 pm. NO Comments :

Fox Spews: An irregular column featuring selected morsels of regurgitated nonsense from everyone’s favorite propaganda pit.

Sarah Palin’s Alaska Ratings Plummet
 

After setting a TLC ratings record last week, Sarah Palin’s reality show plummeted for its second episode.

Sarah Palin’s Alaska fell 40% on Sunday night to 3 million viewers.

Not many were in the key adult demo either. Only 885,000 viewers were ages 18-49, dropping 44% from last week.

In fact, the median age of the show is 57 — that’s 15 years older than TLC’s average.

Gee. Who would have guessed that a program featuring a failed VP candidate and half-term governor, whose public approval is on par with herpes, would have trouble holding a television audience?

Glenn Beck’s Media Conspiracy Unraveled
 

During Glenn Beck’s Week of Soros, Beck advanced his theory that Soros was attempting to take control of the media. He offered as evidence a glimpse of a blackboard that he never showed close enough for the audience to see the elements of Soros’ alleged media empire. Well, I finally tracked down the source for Beck’s allegations. Wouldn’t you know, it was an article on Andrew Breitbart’s notoriously dishonest BigJournalism.

Beck’s Blackboard and BigJournalism’s media map (click images to see full size):

For the record, the Soros empire consists of NPR and a collection of mostly Internet media reform organizations. There is not a single prominent radio station or TV network or newspaper. Some empire. For comparison, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire consists of Fox News, Fox Business, the Fox Entertainment Network, FX, Fox Radio, the Fox TV Station Group, 20th Century Fox Studios, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Harper Collins Publishers, MySpace, Hulu, and much more domestically and internationally. Which one sounds like a mogul trying to take control of the media to you?

Bill O’Reilly Strikes Back At The Simpsons
 

Last night The Simpsons took another swipe at their Godfather Rupert and Fox News. The segment had Murdoch arriving at a meeting of media moguls in a helicopter with the Fox News logo and the motto “Not Racist, But # 1 With Racists.” Not surprisingly, Bill O’Reilly took offense at this saying…

“Continuing to bite the hand that feeds part of it, Fox Broadcasting once again allows its cartoon characters to run wild. Pinheads? I believe so.”

Presumably O’Reilly is disturbed that the folks at one Fox division would disparage another. So his reaction is to do the same thing. How is O’Reilly calling the producers and writers of the Simpsons pinheads any different than what the Simpsons did? Except that the Simpsons were joking and O’Reilly was serious. It seems to me that it is O’Reilly who is “biting the hand that feeds” him. And it’s a much bigger and more profitable hand because the Simpsons routinely get about twice the ratings that O’Reilly does.

Fox News Liberal Marc Lamont Hill Harassed By Police

Posted by on October 14, 2010 at 11:34 am. 1 Comments :

Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, an Associate Professor at Columbia University has filed a $1 million lawsuit against the Philadelphia police department alleging harassment and violation of civil liberties.

The incident took place when Hill was stopped by police and asked to produce his vehicle registration. After complying he asked why he had been stopped, and then…

…[Officer] DeCoatsworth and his partner searched his car without a warrant or permission and that DeCoatsworth went through his pockets and drug him out of the car by his left arm. DeCoatsworth then slammed Hill against his vehicle, pushed his fist into Hill’s back and threatened to take him to jail, the suit alleges. Hill claims that DeCoatsworth also asked whether he could afford his car and went through his checkbook.

Hill was eventually let go and told to get out of the neighborhood without ever being cited or arrested, the suit said.

Hill has been a frequent guest on The O’Reilly Factor and other Fox programs. He is one of the network’s most effective representatives of liberal viewpoints. On a network that presents phonies like Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell as Democrats, Hill stands apart as the genuine article (although I still object to his appearances and think that all Democrats and progressives should avoid Fox News).

Something tells me that this would never have happened to Dick Morris or Charles Krauthammer. And if it did it would be front page news at Fox. So if anyone tries to tell you that America has shed itself of racial discrimination, remember the story of this respected educator and know that there are many similar stories about people who aren’t college professors or TV pundits.

Fox News Reporter Charles Leaf Arrested For Sexual Assault

Posted by on October 8, 2010 at 9:52 am. 5 Comments :


Alleged Child Molester Identified as Charles Leaf, Alleged Reporter for Fox News

Charles Leaf of Fox News is being held in New Jersey on charges of aggravated sexual assault on a four year old girl. He has been an investigative reporter with WNYW/Fox5 in New York and has also been featured on the Fox News Channel.

This is not the first time Leaf has been accused of assault. He was previously alleged to have assaulted a councilwoman in Mobile, Alabama, where he was working at the time for a local news outlet. There were no criminal charges filed in that case, but there was reportedly a substantial settlement paid by the station.

I profiled Leaf in September in an article titled, “Charles Leaf: The New Most Repulsive Fox News Reporter.” The article details his aggressive, dishonest, and unprofessional behavior in covering real estate developers associated with the Park51 project in Manhattan (the non-mosque that is not at ground zero). The coverage, featured prominently on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program (as well as The O’Reilly Factor, The Fox Report, Fox & Friends, On the Record, and Geraldo at Large) was based entirely on innuendo and unsupported, sensationalist, allegations. I described his reports at the time as not even providing enough evidence to start a rumor:

First Leaf conducted an ambush interview on real estate developer, Sharif El-Gamal, that yielded nothing to support his contention that El-Gamal was corrupt. Leaf merely insinuated that something must be wrong because El-Gamal was a waiter eight years prior to investing in the Park51 project. The implication being that anyone who starts a small business, works hard for nearly a decade, and achieves success, is deserving of suspicion.

Then Leaf turned his focus to investor Hisham Elzanaty. Again, Leaf ambushed Elzanaty without acquiring any usable information. The only purpose for Leaf’s ambushes is to suggest something sinister when the target declines to talk to him. To that end Leaf made wild accusations about Elzanaty’s contribution to a Muslim charity. As it turns out, the charity, the Holy Land Foundation, was later investigated for ties to Hamas. But that wasn’t until two years after Elzanaty’s donation, and the feds acknowledged that contributors would not have known about the organization’s relationship with Hamas as it was deliberately concealed.

Both of these reports failed completely to produce evidence of any wrongdoing. They were exercises in insipidness and their only purpose was to insinuate and intimidate. They were utterly unprofessional and potentially libelous. Yet Leaf exalted himself as if he had exposed Watergate. And Fox News (particularly Megyn Kelly) went along by broadcasting Leaf’s empty innuendos and affirming the unsupported conclusions.

Megyn Kelly hosted Leaf on several occasions despite never having a verifiable story to report. This is further evidence of my contention that Kelly is at least as bad as Glenn Beck. It will be interesting to see if Kelly, or anyone at Fox, follows up on their new star reporter by covering his arrest. So far, the only comment from Fox is from a spokesman at the local Fox5 station who said that they are aware of the situation and are reviewing it.

Other Fox News perverts include Bill O’Reilly who paid a multimillion dollar settlement to a former producer whom he sexually harassed, and Dick Morris who was caught sucking the toes of a prostitute whom he let listen in on phone calls to President Clinton.

Is anyone taking odds on when Glenn Beck’s mug shot will rocket through the blogosphere?

Did CNN Fire Rick Sanchez? Or Was It You Know Who?

Posted by on October 2, 2010 at 2:19 am. 15 Comments :

Memo to CNN news hacks: Don’t fuck with Jon Stewart.

I’m not saying there is any connection, but the last time a CNN anchor went toe-to-toe with Stewart he also found himself out of job. Today Tucker Carlson is an Internet peddler of borrowed stories and Rupert Murdoch’s fluffer on Fox News.

When Rick Sanchez agreed to be interviewed today to plug his new book he probably had not planned to end his career, it was just one of those things that happens. We’ve all been through it. He just got caught up in the excitement of spewing anti-Semitic stereotypes and thought he could one-up Mel Gibson. Here is what he said:

“Everybody that runs CNN is a lot like [Jon] Stewart. And a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they – the people in this country who are Jewish – are an oppressed minority? Yeah.”

So Sanchez thinks that Jews are not victims of discrimination, and they are in control of the media. And he feels perfectly at ease expressing that opinion aloud. That is certainly justification for terminating a network anchor, but I am somewhat skeptical that that’s how it happened.

Generally it takes some period of time for a gaffe like this to build up a head of steam and accumulate some outrage from offended parties. But Sanchez got the boot before most of America even knew he had screwed up. What’s more, CNN has a new chief, Ken Jautz, who is not known for being controversy-averse. Jautz was the man who hired Glenn Beck at Headline News. With all the crap that Beck has said, we are now supposed to believe that Jautz was suddenly shocked by Sanchez’s remarks? Beck said that he hated the 9/11 victims’ families while he was working for Jautz. Then there was the time that Beck asked Keith Ellison, a Muslim member of Congress, to “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.” Yet Jautz didn’t rush to call security and have Beck removed from the studio.

Beck has continued his reign of error at Fox News, famously saying that President Obama was “a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Yet Fox keeps him on the payroll, as they do Liz Trotta who joked that Obama should be “knocked off” along with Osama. Fox contributor Michael Scheuer opined that the only hope for America was for Bin Laden to hit us again with a WMD. And Ralph Peters, another Fox contributor, advocated military strikes on the media.

There doesn’t seem to be an outer limit of acceptable behavior for Fox. Which makes it a great place to work for bigots and psychopaths who won’t have to worry about saying something totally insane. On the other hand, MSNBC has David Shuster on an indefinite suspension for having done a screen test for CNN. And they canceled Don Imus for making racially insensitive comments about a women’s basketball team (he now works for, that’s right … Fox). CBS fired Jimmy the Greek. ESPN canned Rush Limbaugh. And now CNN shows Sanchez the door. Fox may not have a crossable line, but every other network seems to.

Still, I have to wonder what precipitated Sanchez’s departure. Could it really have been a revulsion of his clearly offensive remarks? Or did he walk out indignantly after being reprimanded? Perhaps Jautz wanted the schedule cleared for some new programming he is developing. Who knows? It just seems like there is more to this than has been made public. We may not know the answers for a while, or until Sanchez tweets. But just for old times sake, here are a couple of occasions where Sanchez did some work for which he could actually be proud:

~~~

This will actually be a good opportunity to find out what kind of programmer Jautz intends to be. Will he fill Sanchez’s slot with his next Beck-like discovery? Will he shoot for more tabloid sensationalism? Or will he develop a show that has journalistic ethics and standards and returns CNN to its original mission of producing honest news?

For the record, I had a suggestion for a new CNN program when Campbell Brown left the network: Replace Campbell Brown With The Daily Show. The idea still works. A man can dream, can’t he?

Fox Nation: The Week The Democrat Media Industrial Complex Died

Posted by on September 26, 2010 at 12:08 pm. 11 Comments :


Classy as always, Fox Nation has posted a headline graphic of an ass with its head up its ass (and, no, it isn’t Bill O’Reilly, which would have made more sense). Remember, this is the online face of Fox News, an enterprise that wants to be viewed as a legitimate purveyor of journalism. I guess that this is the visualization of what journalism means to Fox News.

The accompanying text reads: The Week The Democrat Media Industrial Complex Died. OK then, that settles it. Since this is the week it died it is safe to assume that there will be no more assertions of Democratic control of the media; no more accusations of the press being dominated by liberals; no more whining about bias against conservatives. All of that died this week, so SHUT UP!

Of course, the illusion of the liberal media has always been a false claim by conservatives who can’t take honest criticism. The notion that a few multinational media corporations, run by billionaires, whose self-interests are squarely aligned with the right, are somehow advancing liberal ideas could only be believed by a mental patient with a fresh lobotomy.

The article that the Fox Nationalists linked to from their juvenile image was posted on a site (jedeckart.com) named for a character in the movie Red Dawn, a favorite of rightist revolutionaries and Tea Baggers everywhere. Eckart was a militia-style dissident fighting a guerrilla war against Russian invaders. It is a mythology that appeals to right-wingers who pine for a new civil war.

The content of the article is just a short list of cliche conservative complaints. Only one even relates to the media. Obviously the Fox Nationalists just wanted to exploit the link for its headline which they must have found amusing.

Now that the fictional Democrat Media Industrial Complex has been declared dead, let’s get to work on the real Corporate/Media Complex that is perverting our press. Let’s break up the Big Media conglomerates that monopolize the industry. And let’s reveal the distortions and dishonesty of propagandists like Rupert Murdoch, Phillip Anschutz, and the Koch brothers. Addressing these real problems with a media that seeks to further its own power and profits will do far more to move us forward than the childish posturing we see on Fox Nation.

Sarah Palin Pimps Glenn Beck’s Phony News Site

Posted by on September 24, 2010 at 1:37 pm. 5 Comments :

The Tracy and Hepburn of 2010’s right-wing elitist set, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, just can’t get enough of one another.

Sarah Palin was the first guest on the first show Glenn Beck aired on Fox News. He interviewed her again last January when he revealed what he wrote in his diary about her:

“Tomorrow, I meet Sarah Palin and family for the first time. I’m actually a little nervous — as she is one of the only people that I can see that can possibly lead us out of where we are.”

He continued…“OMG, I hope she likes me back.”

Palin reciprocated by attending his Acute Paranoia Revival Show in DC. Then he re-reciprocated by trodding up to Alaska for a for-profit 9/11 memorial with tickets ranging up to $225.00.

Now Palin continues the love affair with a double Twitter shout out for Beck’s phony “news” site The Blaze:

#1: Log on 2 “theblaze.com” & change the course of information gathering in America! Site helps truth be told;we’ve had to put up w/LSM too long

#2: Rock your news-gathering world! Take a look at this new website recently launched called The Blaze. Let’s change…

What a joke. Palin has called herself a journalist despite never having had a real job as one. The best she can claim is that she read sports scores for a weekend broadcast on a local station in Alaska. Now she thinks Beck’s online circle-jerk qualifies as news.

Beck has also called himself a journalist. But he’s also said that he isn’t one (typical Beckian doubletalk). The Blaze is his attempt to cash in on the sort of revenue generated by Drudge, Huffington, Breitbart, etc. When he announced the site he said that he had hired the best journalists he could find. But if you click on the headlines, most of them lead to articles posted elsewhere on the Internet. There is virtually no original reporting on the site.

The right-wing noise machine is well known for its insulated PR practice. Stories spin through Drudge, National Review, Fox Nation, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and back around through them all a few times. The Blaze is just a new destination on the map.

The fact that Palin committed two precious tweets to fluffing this waste of bandwidth just affirms the circular nature of their media. They just keep inventing new ways to tie up their disciples in a maze of conservative propaganda.

Jimmy Carter Gets Fox News

Posted by on September 20, 2010 at 6:35 pm. 15 Comments :

Appearing on the NBC Nightly News, former Pres. Jimmy Carter demonstrated that he still has keen insight into the state of modern media:

Brian Williams: How do you think it came to be that such high numbers of people believe that this American-born Christian President is either foreign born or a Muslim or both?

Pres. Carter: I think the number one factor is Fox News. It’s totally distorting everything possible concerning the facts. And I think their constant hammering away at these false premises about our incumbent President has a major impact on the consciousness of America. A lot of well-meaning people, including many of those in the Tea Party movement, believe what is said in this constant hammering away by Glenn Beck and by others who have no regards for the truth.

I have nothing to add.