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New York Times
Benghazi-Palooza: The New York Times Nails The Republican Circus
Something has gotten into the water at the New York Times. This week they published an editorial that is not only rich in facts and substance, it is entertaining and persuasive. The headline announced an excursion into the “Center Ring at the Republican Circus.” And the opening paragraph may be the best introduction to a Times editorial ever:
“The hottest competition in Washington this week is among House Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal. Half the House has asked to ‘serve’ on the committee, which is understandable since it’s the perfect opportunity to avoid any real work while waving frantically to right-wing voters stomping their feet in the grandstand.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. The Times’ editorial board appears to have hired some writers with both insight and humor. They correctly note that the committee is an unambiguous fraud whose members are only concerned with promoting a manufactured scandal and, of course, themselves. The article goes on to say that the GOP Congress…
“…won’t pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration.”
The newly appointed chair of the committee, Trey Gowdy, recently proved that he is unfit to lead a fair hearing when he admitted that his party runs the House in a brazenly biased manner. Discussing whether another committee should call expert witnesses to determine whether Lois Lerner waived her 5th Amendment rights, Gowdy said “Let me take out all of the drama. We would pick three that said she waived, and they would pick one that said she didn’t. I hate to do a spoiler, but that’s the way that hearing would go.”
Shameless self-promotion…
Get Fox Nation vs. Reality. Available now at Amazon.
In other words, he is admitting that the GOP-run House would stack the deck in their own favor. So why bother discussing it with experts. That’s a preview of how he can be expected to run the Benghazi committee. And with regard to that IRS pseudo-scandal, the Times continued to needle the scandal mongering of the GOP, saying that Lerner is the person that…
“…they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.”
In addition, the Times couldn’t let the right-wing’s previous obsession with ObamaCare go unmentioned just because it didn’t happen to mark the commencement of Armageddon like they predicted/hoped. So the article noted the GOP’s…
“…need to rouse the most fervent anti-Obama wing of the party and keep it angry enough to deliver its donations and votes to Republicans in the November elections. For a while it seemed as if the Affordable Care Act would perform that role, but Republicans ran into a problem when the country began to realize that it was not destroying American civilization but in fact helping millions of people.”
Finally, the editorial concluded with the correct advice for wavering Democrats:
“Democrats who are now debating whether to participate in the committee shouldn’t hesitate to skip it. Their presence would only lend legitimacy to a farce.”
I can’t remember the last time I read an editorial in the Times that was so spot on in its analysis and delivered with such punch. I hope this wasn’t an aberration or the work of a ghost editor who has since faded back into the ether. We need more of this kind of commentary. And we need it from more than just the New York Times.
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New York Times Demolishes Benghazi Hoax – Fox News Freaks Out
After what was described as an “exhaustive investigation” the New York Times has published a report that thoroughly debunks right-wing accounts of attacks on the United States mission in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The story concludes that there was no direct Al Qaeda involvement and that many of the participants in the attack were motivated by an anti-Islam film, an explanation that Republicans and conservative media had dismissed.
The months following the attack led to a relentless campaign by Fox News and others to promulgate their Benghazi Hoax theory of events, but they were never able to supply the evidence to support their wild accusations against President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, and other administration targets of their politically inspired wrath.
Excerpts from the New York Times article: A Deadly Mix in Benghazi
Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.
The violence, though, also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.
[O]n Sept. 8, a popular Islamist preacher lit the fuse by screening a clip of the video on the ultraconservative Egyptian satellite channel El Nas. American diplomats in Cairo raised the alarm in Washington about a growing backlash, including calls for a protest outside their embassy.
There is no doubt that anger over the video motivated many attackers. A Libyan journalist working for The New York Times was blocked from entering by the sentries outside, and he learned of the film from the fighters who stopped him. Other Libyan witnesses, too, said they received lectures from the attackers about the evil of the film and the virtue of defending the prophet.
Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar al-Shariah with Al Qaeda’s international terrorist network.
The leaders of Ansar al-Shariah…lauded the assault as a just response to the video.
Not surprisingly, Fox News reacted swiftly to the New York Times reporting to defend their vested self-interest in advancing some sort of conspiracy on the part of members of the Obama administration. First to take Fox’s fire was Hillary Clinton. On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked GOP Rep. Mike Rogers a particularly loaded question whose premise was not supported by any evidence.
Wallace: Do you think there was a political motivation for this Times report? Some people have suggested that, well, this is trying to clear the deck for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Rogers: (saying that he “finds the timing odd”) I don’t know but I find it interesting that there was this rollout of stories.
Wallace never identified who the people were who suggested that the Times was clearing the deck for Hillary. He simply used the old “some people” contrivance to disguise the fact that it was Wallace himself who making the ludicrous suggestion.
Fox’s Catherine Herridge also did a report about the Times story that dismissed much of its findings, but offered no substantive rebuttal to the facts as they were laid out by the Times. In addition, she brought along a uniquely preposterous angle that did little to advance the discourse:
“Fox News was able to review the findings of an independent data mining firm which assessed the social media traffic in Benghazi in the 24 hours leading up to the attack and the 24 hours after the attack and, significantly, the first reference to this anti-Islam video was in the day following. It was in a retweet of a Russia Today story. So once again, this does not comport with the idea that this was in response to the anti-Islam video.”
This is a demonstration of Fox’s desperation to belittle the Times’ story. Trying to tie references to Twitter mentions of the event with affirmations of its execution is absurd in the extreme. Especially when there were verifiable accounts of information about the film being broadcast on local Libyan television, and many witnesses testified of its impact as an inspiration for the violence.
Stalwart proponents of the Benghazi Hoax also appeared on TV this weekend to defend their rapidly dissolving positions. They included GOP super-hawk Peter King and the mastermind of a flurry of fake scandals, Darrell Issa, who said on Meet the Press that “We have seen no evidence that the video was widely seen in Benghazi, a very isolated area, or that it was a leading cause.” If Issa hasn’t seen any evidence, he obviously hasn’t been paying attention. Or more likely, he is deliberately diverting his attention to the dishonest horror stories he prefers to peddle.
Fox News has behaved true to form in the wake of the revelations published by the Times. They circle their wagons and defend their phony and sensationalist version of what they laughably call “news.” They fail to address any of the specific assertions in the story and retreat to friendly interviews with conservative characters who will plod forward with their false narratives. The last thing Fox wants is for people to be exposed to actual journalism that presents information in a coherent and factual manner. That would destroy the whole Fox business model if it got out of hand.
Addendum: You didn’t think that Fox Nation was going to be left out of this hoax-mongering, did you? They jumped in with two stories about the New York Times article, and both were typically dripping with lies and partisan distortions, as they have been known to do (see abundant proof in the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality).
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Now Glenn Beck Loves The New York Times
“We have always been at war with Eastasia…” George Orwell, 1984.
Never mind that Glenn Beck has long been a critic of the so-called liberal New York Times; set aside his frequent tirades against it as a mouthpiece for progressives and other “enemies” of freedom. Today is ValenTimes Day as Beck cites the Times as proof that his crackpot scenarios of a global Caliphate are true.
The source of Beck’s evidence is a Times story about young activists engaging in protests to remove Mubarak from power in Egypt. Beck quotes a single paragraph from the article that describes the efforts of a small coalition of protesters:
“In the process many have formed some unusual bonds that reflect the singularly nonideological character of the Egyptian youth revolt, which encompasses liberals, socialists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
This statement merely affirms that the movement to oust Mubarak is broad-based and includes many factions of disaffected young Egyptians. But it is embraced by Beck as confirmation of his inane theory that radical Islamists are working with secular leftists around the world to topple capitalism. The only thing this article asserts is that the people in the streets of Egypt have diverse reasons for being involved in the protests. The people interviewed by the Times were a tiny group of 15 young individuals who are not powerful national figures and will not participate in the formation of a new government. They are simply engaged citizens who share only the desire to bring democracy to Egypt. In fact, they said so explicitly in a paragraph that Beck neglected to cite:
“Most of the group are liberals or leftists, and all, including the Brotherhood members among them, say they aspire to a Western-style constitutional democracy where civic institutions are stronger than individuals.”
Once again Beck has cherry-picked the information that supports his delusions and ignored facts that dispute them. That’s standard operating procedure for Beck.
Side Note: As Beck was dissecting this article, news that Mubarak will step down hit the wires. Without hesitation, Beck launched into wild speculation of an imminent bloodbath, an Islamic takeover of Egypt, and the fall of more Middle Eastern nations to come. Like the rest of Beck’s predictions, these will be left floating in the ether after they fail to transpire.
I have long cast Beck as being closer to a televangelist than a political analyst. And like other supposed prophets whose promise of a Second Coming fail to occur, Beck will simply change his story or select another date. And his disciples will obediently follow.
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The So-Called Liberal New York Times Profiles Alan Grayson
The fact that there still lingers a perception that the media leans to the left is a testament to the hard working propagandists of the right. The Sunday New York Times has provided us with yet another demonstration that this perception is fatally flawed.
In a profile of outgoing Representative Alan Grayson of Florida, Times correspondent Michael Barbaro described his commitment to traditional Democratic themes. Then, noting that Grayson was critical of his fellow Democrats for not “acting Democratic enough,” Barbaro belittled that view saying…
“It is not exactly a widespread sentiment among the electorate.”
Where did Barbaro get that idea? Who knows. He doesn’t say. And unfortunately for him, it isn’t true. Recent polls show that the Democrats’ position on issues like allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire, are favored by a majority of Americans. The same poll shows that most Americans favor keeping the Democratic health care bill or expanding it. The Republicans were recently shamed into voting for the Democratic proposal for aid to the 9/11 First Responders. Majorities agreed that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy should have been repealed, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
Grayson’s point that many Democrats may have lost in the election last November because they did not sufficiently support the agenda that voters expected of them was exactly right. The result of that failure was that many Democratic voters stayed home on election day. As Grayson said…
“If you want people to support you, then you have to support them. You have to think long about what you did for people who voted for you, made phone calls for you, who went door to door for you.”
Therein lies the mistake that Barbaro, and most of the rest of the press, have made in their analysis of the mid-terms. There was no message from the people to move to the center. Barbaro does not, and can not, support his contention that this is “a moment when centrism seems to be the party’s antidote to a redrawn political landscape.” The problem for Democrats was not that the people didn’t support their agenda. It was that they themselves didn’t support it, so the people bailed out.
There is still a great deal of talk about the “success” of Tea Party candidates, even though most of their most prominent members lost. Recall senate candidates Sharron Angle, Joe Miller, Linda McMahon, Carli Fiorina, Ken Buck, and Christine O’Donnell. All losers. Only two Democratic incumbent senators were defeated. The rest of the Republican gains were for open seats, some of which were held by retiring Republicans.
Poll after poll shows that the Tea Party is a trumped up charade whose views are wildly out of touch with the mainstream of America. Yet the media continues to pretend that they matter. Even worse, they prop them up to deliberately and falsely inflate their significance. How else can you explain CNN partnering with the discredited Tea Party Express for a GOP primary debate?
As for Grayson, he will be missed in the Congress. But hopefully he will find his own place in the media. He would make a great radio/TV host. And in that role he could provide some balance to the heavily over-weighted conservative presence of extreme right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, etc.
It is long past time to abandon the falsehood that the media is liberal. When CNN and the New York Times, two of the right’s favorite “liberal” targets, engage in overtly right-wing politics; when Fox News boasts of their dominance in the cable news marketplace; when the vast majority of news outlets are controlled by a handful of giant multinational corporations; the pretense of liberalism in the media should finally be put to rest.
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Fox Nation And The Right-Wing Embrace Of Censorship
The release of some 250,000 documents by WikiLeaks has stirred up a hornets nest of protest from the rightist martinets of virtue. There have been calls to shut down the WikiLeaks web site, to arrest its principals, and even to execute those responsible for treason. But what it all amounts to in the end is that the right-wing extremists just simply abhor a free press.
The Fox Nation has been consumed with the issue, promoting it beyond all other news items. The economy, jobs, Iraq, Afghanistan, tax cuts, etc., have all taken a back seat to WikiLeaks. As of this writing the front page of the Fox Nation has six separate articles on this subject.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that in their haste to criticize the WikiLeaks document dump, the Fox Nationalists frame their criticism in a barrage of animus directed at President Obama. The whole thing is somehow his fault. What’s more, they condemn his response to it as “incompetent” and “gutless.” Sarah Palin and Bill O’Reilly are “livid” – and Lord knows we can’t have that.
But here’s the thing: If Obama had taken a hardball approach to this, cutting off access to the WikiLeaks web site and arresting those involved, the reaction from the right would be to assail him as a tyrant intent on imposing censorship on independent media. They would be shocked that an American president would assert such unprecedented control over a private enterprise. It would be portrayed as fascist or Stalinist oppression (take your pick). So either way, the right would engage in a fevered bashing of the President. It’s what they do.
Since the President has accommodated the right by taking a measured approach to ascertain the facts and proceed with due diligence, the right is free to wail about such imaginary violations as treason. But what they are really condemning is freedom of thought and expression. And it isn’t the first time. During the Bush administration a Republican congress voted to condemn the New York Times for publishing a story that revealed the government’s unlawful spying into the banking activities of American citizens. If Obama’s administration were to propose such an intrusion he would be castigated as a dictator bent on destroying America (again).
Make no mistake, the WikiLeaks affair is being used as a cudgel with which to hammer the President. But it is also being used as en excuse to censor independent sources of information and to intimidate anyone who entertains the notion of revealing to the American people what is being done by government in their name. It doesn’t matter if it’s an obscure, off-shore web site or the New York Times. The right is intent on suppressing free expression. They prove it again and again.
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Glenn Beck Admits He Disgusts Himself. He’s Not Alone
In a new profile of Glenn Beck for the New York Times, Beck summarizes how most of America feels about him:
“You get to a place where you disgust yourself…Where you realize what a weak, pathetic and despicable person you have become.”
It’s about time. The article, by Mark Leibovich, is an in-depth examination of the Fox News prophet of paranoia. It covers a fair bit of ground personally as well some highlights (and lowlights) of his professional career. As for the causes of Beck’s self-hatred, there is sufficient justification for it in his past behavior:
“He was in therapy with ‘Dr. Jack Daniels.’ He smoked marijuana every day for about 15 years. He fired an underling for bringing him the wrong pen. And, according to a Salon.com report, he once called the wife of a radio rival to ridicule her – on the air – about her recent miscarriage.”
Now it’s bad enough that he was an abuser of drugs and alcohol, and a world class jerk who didn’t care about anyone but himself, but those things occurred during a difficult time in his life and prior to his having entered rehab and finding God. So let’s give him the benefit of a doubt and take a look at how sobriety and religion changed him and how he mellowed to merely…
“…joking about poisoning the speaker of the house or talking about choking the life out of a filmmaker or fantasizing about beating a congressman ‘to death with a shovel’ (as Beck did for Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore and Charles Rangel, respectively).”
I think I liked him better when he was tokin’ doobies. At least none of his delusions invoked bloody murders. Also since his “recovery” he has embarked on a non-stop campaign to convince his followers that President Obama and a phalanx of progressives are amassing to destroy America, revoke all freedom, confiscate every penny you earn, defile your daughters, rebuke your Lord, and otherwise end civilization as we know it. Then, after making the case for how these heathens are plotting to unleash a millennium of evil, he softly interjects that their Satanic onslaught should not be met with violence. But nevertheless, you must not allow them to get away with it. And thank God for the Second Amendment.
Mixed signals? Not really. Beck knows very well that his disciples will take up arms to defend themselves against the Hellish regime of slavery that he prophesies. Who wouldn’t if they really believed that was imminent?
The ramifications of Beck’s rhetoric stretch ominously into Apocalyptic territory. His rants run the gamut from political extremism to fanatical, pseudo-evangelistic cultism. More often than not he makes no sense at all, but that hardly matters. His audience can read between the lines, as he once begged them to do:
“[I]f you hear me stop saying these things, it’s because I can no longer say them to you. But hear them between the sentences. Hear them, please. I will be screaming them to you.”
It’s that sort of madness that has many wondering if Beck is doing more harm than good (including Beck who wrote that very question in an email to Sarah Palin). It isn’t just liberals who are wondering this. According to the article in the Times Beck’s raving is causing some consternation amongst many conservatives and even his colleagues at Fox:
“Several Fox News journalists have complained that Beck’s antics are embarrassing Fox, that his inflammatory rhetoric makes it difficult for the network to present itself as a legitimate news outlet. Fearful that Beck was becoming the perceived face of Fox News, some network insiders leaked their dissatisfaction in March to The Washington Post’s media critic, Howard Kurtz, a highly unusual breach at a place where complaints of internal strains rarely go public.”
This is nothing new. In recent months former Foxies have been all too willing speak up. Jane Hall, an associate professor in the School of Communication at American University, and a Fox News contributor, quit Fox in part because of Beck. Eric Burns, the former anchor of Fox News Watch told the press that he is grateful that he no longer has to “face the ethical problem of sharing an employer with Glenn Beck.” And it isn’t just jealous on-air competitors. The Times went on to reveal that Beck’s bosses are also having second thoughts:
“The cross-promotion can be a sore spot at Fox News, particularly for its president, Roger Ailes, who has complained about Beck’s hawking his non-Fox ventures too much on his Fox show.” […]
[Ailes has] been vocal around the network about how Beck does not fully appreciate the degree to which Fox News has made him the sensation he has become in recent months. In the days following Beck’s Lincoln Memorial rally, which by Beck’s estimate drew a half-million people, Ailes told associates that if Beck were still at Headline News, there would have been 30 people on the Mall.”
While Ailes is a potentially dangerous enemy, he has enemies of his own. Members of Rupert Murdoch’s family, who will inherit his media empire, have not been shy about their distaste for the programming style of Ailes. Murdoch’s son-in-law publicly said that he was ashamed and sickened by Ailes.
In all likelihood, Beck probably feels that he can afford to weather these storms. He sees himself as a messenger from God with a congregation of devotees who will support him and, if necessary, avenge him. Fox would be treading on thin ice if they contemplated canceling his show. This is one of those situations where Beck would have to be caught with either a dead girl or a live boy before he could be cast off. In this case we can add any connection to the sort of acts of domestic terrorism that his outrage inspires.
So even though Beck disgusts you, and me, and his fellow hosts, and his bosses, and even himself, he is going to have to slip up pretty bad to lose his perch.
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NYT: David Brooks vs. The Wizard of Beck
It took long enough. The evidence has been there for years. Somehow it has been inadvertently missed or deliberately ignored by most of the Conventional Media. But the truth has a persistent habit of elbowing its way into the public consciousness.
Today’s New York Times published an editorial by conservative pundit David Brooks that breaks news that most observant analysts have known for months or years: The uber-rightist blowhards on Fox News and talk radio are phony commanders of a tiny, but rabid assortment of fringe-dwelling followers. And the more they are appeased, the farther they venture from reality.
Brooks: “It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche – even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.”
Better late than never. The revelation that Brooks is boasting is simply the notion that it’s better to win at the ballot box than on the idiot box. Two months ago I wrote an article that illustrated just how contrary were the concepts of media and political success: As Fox News Goes Up, The GOP Goes Down. A month before that I published an article on how Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party. It explored in detail how the embrace of lunatics and their demented ravings, along with a misunderstanding of the television marketplace, was literally dragging the Republican Party down to some of its lowest historical depths:
Me: “The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds.”
~~~“Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.”
I could even go back to May of 2007 when I wrote The Cult Of Foxonality™ Part I, that argued that Fox viewers had become more attached to the network than to the Republican Party or conservatism.
So Brooks is joining a rather recent parade of pundits who are stepping back from the wacko contingent. Last month the American Enterprise Institute’s David Frum took a swipe at the “reckless defamation” practiced by Glenn Beck. Frum advised that it is beyond time that conservatives begin…
“…emancipating ourselves from leadership by the most stupid, the most cynical, and the most truthless.”
And Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs warned of…
“…further marginalization of the GOP unless people start behaving like adults instead of angry kids throwing tantrums and ranting about conspiracies and revolution.”
However, as Brooks appears to have attained enlightenment, he sadly slips back into pundit-speak that betrays his lack of insight. In lamenting the egotistical self-promotion of the ranting class, Brooks blames Democrats for their endurance:
“They still ride the airwaves claiming to speak for millions. They still confuse listeners with voters. And they are aided in this endeavor by their enablers. They are enabled by cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P.”
What Brooks fails to grasp is that Democrats aren’t enabling Limbaugh, Beck, et al. They are anchoring Republicans with the dead weight of these TV and radio clowns as a means to define an otherwise personality-less party. It isn’t an accident – it’s a strategy. Just as Brooks recognizes that the association of media nutcases with the party is harmful, he should figure out that that is precisely why Democrats are encouraging the association.
The most profound observation in the column was Brooks’ assertion that the problem for Republicans is that “They mistake media for reality.” That is undeniably true for the Party as well as for most of the media. In fact, it is an even bigger problem that the media mistakes itself for reality. And the consequences are devastating for both the practice of journalism and for democracy.
Addendum: Neal Gabler has an outstanding editorial in the the Los Angeles Times that addresses these same issues: Politics as religion in America. Highly recommended.
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Emmy News: Nominations – PBS 41 / Fox News 0
The Emmy nominations for News and Documentaries were released today by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. PBS scored the lion’s share with 41 nominations, including two more for Bill Moyers, who has won more than 30 Emmys already. CBS was a distant second with 23. One notable name missing from the list of honorees is the #1 cable news network in the country, Fox News. There are two principle reasons for the absence of Fox News.
First, Fox claims to have declined to participate because they believe that the Emmys are biased against them. That’s a rather piddling complaint that, more than anything, exposes their self-centered pettiness with an attitude that recalls a school child taking the ball and going home.
The more likely reason for their Emmy snub is that Fox is not actually a news network and, knowing this, they are acknowledging that nominations will not be forthcoming. I suspect that they are preparing to submit their programming for Emmys in the drama and, perhaps, comedy categories, where they have a better chance of being recognized. Of course then their other fictional fare, like “24” and “The Simpsons” will have to compete against the far more flagrant fiction produced by Fox News. Whatever will they do?
Well, we can expect Bill O’Reilly to issue a blistering condemnation of the Academy shortly. He did the same thing when the Peabodys snubbed him (again), despite honoring Moyers and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on multiple occasions. What does it say when a comedy network’s fake news programs receive more plaudits from their journalism “peers” than a network that pretends to be a bona fide news enterprise? And furthermore, what does it say about the viewers of a so-called news network that is held in such ill repute by other news professionals?
Amongst the Emmy hopefuls is David Barstow, the New York Times reporter who wrote Message Machine. This article, which has already won a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Press Club’s Golden Keyboard, described how the Pentagon in the Bush administration conspired to train and deploy former military personnel to spread propaganda in support of the war in Iraq. And if that weren’t bad enough, the program also permitted them to use their high profile media platform to enrich themselves and the defense contractors to whom they were attached.
Despite the acclaim the article has received, Barstow has still yet to be invited to tell this important story in any conventional media venue. The only in-depth broadcast interview was conducted by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. This may be the most egregious example of a heralded, Pulitzer caliber investigation being so brazenly suppressed. The obvious explanation is that the media organizations that have actively blackballed the story are also the subjects of it. They are the news enterprises employing the compromised Pentagon Pundits, and they have a vested interest in preventing the truth from getting out.
Now that the report has been awarded another honor, will Barstow’s phone start to ring? Will the media pay attention to what may be the worst instance of propaganda executed by the U.S. government against its own people? At the very least, MSNBC has a special obligation to pursue this story. They have a contractual relationship with the New York Times, and their own John Harwood is a frequent guest on both MSNBC and CNBC. Why on earth wouldn’t the Times be lobbying to promote a story by their own Pulitzer award winning reporter who has now been nominated for an Emmy?
Contact MSNBC and tell them to book David Barstow:
MSNBC General
Keith Olbermann
Rachel Maddow
Ed Schultz
David Shuster
Chris Matthews
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Bill O’Reilly Supports Abolishing Freedom Of The Press
Once again, Bill O’Reilly has proven that what he said two years ago regarding his lack of journalistic standards is still true:
In his most recent editorial, O’Reilly has exposed both his ignorance and his appreciation for officially-sanctioned speech. It should come as no surprise that the top “personality” on the Fox Propaganda Network would harbor such notions given their reputation as the media mouthpiece for the Republican Party.
The column began by thoroughly misrepresenting the philosophy of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. While any free-thinking observer of the press would keep a watchful eye on the media and retain their right to criticize it, O’Reilly flatly states that Jefferson “didn’t much like the press.” However, the truth is that Jefferson regarded the press as an essential component of a free society. He said:
“…were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
With that disinformational kickoff, O’Reilly set about to discredit a poll by the New York Times that found that a majority of Americans would prefer healthcare reform that covers everyone, even if it means paying more in taxes. Never mind that most polls reveal the same preference, O’Reilly’s only real purpose was to dispute the validity of a poll with which he disagreed.
The gist of O’Reilly’s complaint was that the Times oversampled Obama voters, producing a skewed result. The problem with his typically shallow analysis is that 50% of Republicans in the poll expressed the same preference as Democrats. What’s more, as a pollster testing the mood of the nation, the goal is not to balance respondents by political affiliation. The goal is to have a representative sample of the public at large. By that standard, the sampling of the Times poll was accurate.
Nevertheless, O’Reilly can’t contain his disdain for anyone who disagrees with him. His outrage is so intense that it led him to say this:
“The most frustrating part about this is that nothing can be done. The Times has an ombudsman, but he’s a joke, and no outside agency has any power over the paper. It can pretty much do what it wants, and does.”
Stop the presses! You mean to say that a newspaper can do whatever it wants? How the heck did that happen? Why isn’t there an outside agency that has power over these papers? No wonder O’Reilly is tee’d off. He would be much happier if journalists all had to have their work approved by editorial boards that could certify the conservative purity of the message before being disseminated to the people. You know, like the way Fox News does it.
This is a man whose daily delusions can’t be summed up simply by describing them as paranoid. A new word must be coined to encompass the naked madness he embodies (Paranoxious?). His perception of enemies lurking in every shadow is enough to warrant institutionalization. Yet, instead, this is a man who has his own TV show and millions of viewers to whom he can peddle dangerous ideas like “outside agencies” that have power over the press.
This isn’t the first time that O’Reilly has expressed a desire to control the press. He frequently rails against it and ferociously attacks it. It is nearly impossible to go a day without hearing him besmirch the media as a bastion of hate that poses a very real risk to society:
“Knowing that partisan hostility is boiling over in America, the Secret Service is tense because the candidates are exposed when they campaign in public. Hatred is definitely in the air and the media is partially to blame.“
You have to give O’Reilly credit for his superhuman capacity for denial, in that he doesn’t recognize himself in that statement. He even refutes it entirely in his recent defense of his provocative comments regarding the murdered doctor, George Tiller. In that case it is not, to him, the least bit inflammatory to refer to someone as a “baby killer” who “has blood on his hands”.
This is also a man who has a severe fear and hatred of the media – that’s right – the media that he works so hard to demolish despite his prominent role in it. Take, for example, this brazen threat to journalists everywhere:
“[T]here is a huge problem in this country and I’m going to attack that problem. I’m going to attack it. These people aren’t getting away with this. I’m going to go right where they live. Every corrupt media person in this country is on notice, right now. I’m coming after you…I’m going to hunt you down […] if I could strangle these people and not go to hell and get executed…I would.“
That’s what we’re up against. That’s the sort of mindless hostility that is being spread throughout the mediasphere. And it isn’t just O’Reilly. It is Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, etc. It would be tempting to ask what can be done about these freaks. But that would just be adopting their response that promotes censorship and suppression. The real question is how do we educate the people who watch and listen to this garbage? How do we replace those sensationalistic rantings with honest and deliberative discourse? And how do we do it before it erupts into (more) violence?
That’s a difficult assignment, as snarling shoutfests seem to make for more popular viewing than rational dialogue. But it’s an assignment that we need to complete for the sake of our country, if not for our mental health.