New York Times

Fox News Cancels New York Times

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 4:22 pm. 4 Comments :

This past weekend, the New York Times published a profile of John McCain’s wife, Cindy. Included in the article were facts relating to Sen. McCain’s adulterous relationship with his future second wife, as well as Ms. McCain’s troubles with drugs. These are simply factual episodes that any responsible biographical piece would have to address.

Predictably, the McCain campaign was outraged and immediately began shouting about media bias and tabloid journalism. Whereupon the masters of tabloidism, Fox News, came to McCain’s aid by parroting his complaints and even helping to punish the Times by providing viewers with a telephone number they could call to cancel their subscriptions. This all occurred during a “news” broadcast, not the O’Reilly Factor.

The hubris of Fox News never seems to find it’s peak. It would be one thing for them to report on the controversial article and McCain’s response. They might even follow that up with their own views as to the presence of bias in the article. At this point everyone knows that Fox shamelessly inserts their opinions into their reporting, and since McCain has already declared war against the Times, it’s only natural that Fox, the network of the Republican National Committee, would follow suit. However, by participating in a effort to encourage the cancellation of subscribers to the paper, Fox is crossing a new line that is much further out in the sand than was previously drawn.

Aside from the obvious advocacy on the part of Fox News for the McCain candidacy, and their staking out a position on the paper’s coverage, Fox News has a vested financial interest in harming the Times. Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. which also owns Times competitors the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal. So this partisan interference in political affairs is also a brazen attempt to damage a competitor in the marketplace.

The many tentacles of the Murdoch empire continue to raise questions about monopolies and anti-trust. Is it proper for one News Corp. property to openly advocate that customers abandon a competitor of another property? If so, could NBC, which is owned by General Electric, broadcast appeals to their viewers to stop purchasing light bulbs or refrigerators made by their competitors? Could ABC, which is owned by Disney, run stories that advise people not to attend Six Flags Amusement Parks in an effort to boost attendance at Disneyland?

These are some of the easily anticipated problems with the sort of unregulated consolidation that has been rampant in the recent past, particularly in Republican administrations. If anti-trust laws aren’t taken seriously and vigorously enforced, the corporate chieftains end up controlling and manipulating markets to the detriment of competition and consumers. Barack Obama is on record in opposition to the Bush policy of ignoring, or advancing, corporate collusion, consolidation, and other anti-competitive activity:

“We’re going to have an antitrust division in the Justice Department that actually believes in antitrust law. We haven’t had that for the last seven, eight years.”

If Obama follows through on that pledge, we might begin to see some progress toward a truly open, diverse, and fair marketplace in the media and elsewhere. Regulations will need to be refined and some conglomerates will need to be broken up. Real reform in this area will be difficult to achieve, but it is essential if we want a system that provides a level playing field for everyone.

Fox News Hires Disgraced Journalist Judith Miller

Posted by on October 20, 2008 at 11:25 am. NO Comments :

In an effort to further make a mockery of the phrase “fair and balanced,” Fox News has announced that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been hired as a commentator for the cable propaganda network. Coming on the heels of last week’s announcement that imbecilic blabber Glenn Beck will be getting his own show on Fox News, Miller should feel right at home, along with Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and her very own White House source, Karl Rove.

Miller is best known for spending 85 days in jail for protecting Rove and Scooter Libby, who had conspired with her to slander Valerie Plame. Plame was the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson who had revealed the lies that the Bush administration was peddling with regard to Saddam Hussein’s alleged aspirations for weapons of mass destruction. Miller and her cohorts outed Plame as a covert intelligence operative with the CIA, ending her career as well as her important work gathering intelligence about Iran’s nuclear activities.

Miller is also the author of some of the most distorted propaganda in support of the Bush administration’s intention to invade Iraq. She operated as a functionary of the White House, retelling their lies on the pages of the New York Times so that they could cite her stories as proof of the need to initiate a preemptive war of aggression. After the fact, the Times’ editor was forced to apologize for the journalistic sloppiness and deceit of Miller and her colleagues:

“Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper…while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”

Miller left the Times in disgrace and later joined the conservative Manhattan Institute. Now she will expand her reach to viewers of Fox News, who will likely appreciate her right-skewed world view. And Fox gets another mouthpice to further its propaganda assault on America and the world.

Another Media Mea Culpa For The War In Iraq

Posted by on October 1, 2008 at 11:03 am. NO Comments :

In a book review for Bob Woodward’s latest installment of his Bush chronicles, the New York Times’ Jill Abramson decides it’s time to salve her guilty conscience. Woodward’s “The War Within” serves as the impetus for her confessional.

Abramson reveals her misgivings regarding the Times’ coverage of the build up to war with Iraq after citing a passage from Woodward’s book wherein he admits that he had not done enough at the Washington Post to expose the weakness of the administration’s arguments for the existence of WMDs and for going to war. Abramson followed up that citation by saying…

“I was Washington bureau chief for The Times while this was happening, and I failed to push hard enough for an almost identical, skeptical article, written by James Risen. This was a period when there were too many credulous accounts of the administration’s claims about Iraq’s W.M.D.”

Thanks a lot. Another too late revelation of dereliction of duty that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqi civilians. How exactly does this expression of regret compensate the victims of a disastrous and deadly war? How does it repair the damage done to both Iraq and America, who is now on the brink of bankruptcy partially due to having wasted a trillion dollars fighting an imaginary enemy.

This is not the first time that prominent figures in the press have sought absolution for their failures:

Woodward previously expressed these thoughts in an online chat:
“I think the press and I in particular should have been more aggressive in looking at the run-up to the Iraq war, and specifically the alleged intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction stockpiles.”

The New York Times issued this mea culpa:
“Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper […] while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”

New York Times editor, Bill Keller personally apologized:
“I’ve had a few occasions to write mea culpas for my paper after we let down our readers in more important ways, including for some reporting before the war in Iraq that should have dug deeper and been more sceptical about Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction.”

CNN reporter Jessica Yellin weighed in with this bit of uncharacteristic honesty:
“The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings. And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives.”

Even Bill O’Reilly announced that he was wrong (but it’s OK because, he says, everyone was wrong):
“Now I supported the action against Saddam because the Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton, William Cohen, the CIA, British intelligence, and a variety of other intelligence agencies all told me Saddam was making dangerous weapons in violation of the first Gulf War cease-fire […] I was wrong in my assessment, as was everybody else.”

I am willing to concede that a lot of people, reporters and politicians alike, were wrong, but not everyone. There were many who opposed the war, who saw through the administration’s lies, who spoke out about the fraud that was being forced upon the nation. The sane objections were mostly confined to alternative sources that were ignored or ridiculed. But even the mainstreamers quoted above seemed to have known at the time that they were being less than responsible with regard to their reportorial obligations.

Now Abramson joins those who have seen the error of their ways. Or have they? Abramson is the Times’s managing editor for news, but this revelation appears in a book review rather than in the news pages. And there has been little evidence that the press has altered its behavior. Keller, the Times’ editor noted last year that…

“The administration has subsidised propaganda at home and abroad, refined the art of spin, discouraged dissent, and sought to limit traditional congressional oversight and court review.”

But even with knowledge of that, the administration’s press releases are often reprinted or broadcast virtually verbatim as news. Some of that can be seen in the current Wall Street affair that is characterized as a crisis that demands the immediate implementation of the White House’s untested and hysterical solutions.

It isn’t enough for these people to confess their sins and be on their way. I don’t want to sift through another collection of apologies for the next disaster that they feel so sorry for having misreported or ignored. They need to initiate real reform that addresses the root causes of these journalistic failures. And they need to fire those who have let down their papers, their readers, and their country. When steps like these are taken, I will start to take seriously their assertions of regret. Until then, they are still just covering up for themselves and the Washington insiders on whom they are pretending to report.

Jon Stewart: Ready For His New York Times Close-Up

Posted by on August 17, 2008 at 11:15 am. NO Comments :

It is not surprising that Jon Stewart is getting some “real media” cred. Four years ago I wrote an article titled “The Real Fake News.” It illustrated how far the Conventional Media had sunk. While they were littered with plagiarists, fabricators, tabloid trivialities, and press releases produced by parties with vested interests in the content, the Daily Show was winning Emmys and Peabodys and praise from respected media institutions like the Columbia Journalism Review. The past four years has only validated my argument that Comedy Central is producing a more informational and insightful news broadcast than the so-called “real” media. And news consumers have responded by flocking to the Daily Show and the Colbert Report at the same time that they are abandoning newspapers and broadcast news.

Today the New York Times has published a feature story profiling Stewart. For the most part it is a routine celebrity piece, but it does hit a couple of significant points. I have long maintained that the Daily Show is not political satire – it is media satire. While the jokes frequently target politicians, it is the press that is really in their sights. The Times touches on this concept briefly:

“…at a time when Fox, MSNBC and CNN routinely mix news and entertainment, larding their 24-hour schedules with bloviation fests and marathon coverage of sexual predators and dead celebrities, it’s been ‘The Daily Show’ that has tenaciously tracked big, ‘super depressing’ issues like the cherry-picking of prewar intelligence, the politicization of the Department of Justice and the efforts of the Bush White House to augment its executive power.”

The Times also noted how Stewart amped up his political focus after 9/11 with segments that showed “the White House’s efforts to manage the news media,” and “the foibles of an administration known for its secrecy, ideological certainty and impatience with dissenting viewpoints.” The article also provided a quote that many will be able to relate to. Stewart said that he is looking forward to the end of the Bush administration “as a comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal.”

Mammals across America, and the world, are cheering in agreement right now.

John McCain’s Play For Free Media Love

Posted by on July 22, 2008 at 2:14 pm. NO Comments :

Candy McCainJohn McCain’s campaign is floundering and desperate. He is bankrupt both financially and intellectually. And nothing illustrates this more than his pathetic attempts at self-promotion through media manipulation. Rather than present his policies and personal attributes to sway a skeptical electorate, McCain has opted to beg for attention from the press and hope they favor him with some attention.

Much of the time that Barack Obama has been overseas, McCain has been complaining that he is being ignored. He is whining that the three network anchors are ditching him to tag along with Obama. Never mind the fact that he isn’t making any news, he believes that his adventures in Kennebunkport and fundraising events warrant the same reception that Obama gets while meeting with world leaders in war zones.

McCain’s campaign reacts to all of this by manufacturing news. His staff punks Robert Novak into publishing a tip that McCain will name his VP pick this week. Now Novak suspects that it was never true and he calls it “pretty reprehensible.” But it bought him some free press.

Earlier this week, McCain submitted an op-ed to the New York Times as a putative response to a previously published op-ed by Obama. The Times rejected the piece as lacking substance or even relevance to Obama’s article. The McCain camp, along with most of the rightist rabble, giddily declared that this is proof of media bias. In fact, it is merely proof that respectable news organizations will not allow themselves to be exploited by wily campaign media hacks (sometimes). Since McCain’s op-ed was not responsive to Obama’s, and it offered nothing newsworthy of its own, it was nothing but fluff and undeserving of publication.

Now McCain is supposedly preparing to release a new ad (below) that portrays Obama as a media darling. The ad is titled “Love” and his website introduces it saying…

“It’s pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it’s a love affair.”

I actually agree that the press is fascinated with Obama, although there is nothing bizarre about it. He is the first African American ever nominated for president by a major party. He is a relative newcomer to the national political stage. And he is generating more interest from voters than any other contemporary politician. McCain, on the other hand, has been in Washington for thirty years. He has run for president before. And from the public he is eliciting not much more than yawns, even amongst many Republicans. It would be bizarre if the press were not fascinated with Obama.

In addition, the new ad seems to inadvertently boost Obama’s profile. The intent of the ad is to show the quantity of positive references to Obama by various media figures. But the result is that it affirms that there is an abundance of positivity surrounding Obama. Many viewers will retain the impression that Obama is very well liked and forget any points made regarding media coverage. McCain’s previous ad (“Gas Pump”) had a similar effect. At the end, it asked who was responsible for higher oil prices, and answered the question by playing a recording of a crowd chanting “Obama!” Again, the audience will likely recall the display of adulation and not what question was asked.

However, the big problem with the new ad is that it will never appear on TV. The whole ad campaign is a fraud. Notice that it is just under 3:00 minutes long? That is far too long for broadcast. The only purpose of announcing it now is to get the media to report on the ad and have it broadcast as part of editorial coverage. McCain is angling for free media. Will the press allow themselves to be used this way? Probably. Especially the cable news nets who have an insatiable appetite for pre-produced video and lots of time to fill.

The bottom line is that McCain’s campaign has no momentum and nothing of interest to say that might generate coverage. So they are resorting to begging journalists to cover him instead of the guy over there in the Middle East. They are resorting to begging friendly reporters into printing fake news items. They are resorting to begging the New York Times for editorial space in which to publish their press releases. They are resorting to begging cable news networks to air stories on ads that they never intend to broadcast.

They are resorting to the only thing they have left: Begging for free media.

Update: As if to punctuate the analysis above, the McCain campaign has helpfully announced a pitiful response to Obama’s trip overseas. McCain has purchased ad time in American cities with the same name as the cities Obama is visiting (i.e. Berlin, WI, Paris, ME).

This is further evidence that McCain is still praying for free media as these are small markets that will have little impact on national trends. He’ll get some, of course, from Fox News. But this ad buy comes at the same time that Obama announced his $5 million purchase of air time during the Olympics. So while McCain is making penny ante, symbolic ad buys, Obama is going for the Gold. Nice juxtaposition.

The Fox News War On News

Posted by on July 7, 2008 at 3:31 pm. 3 Comments :

David Carr of the New York Times seems to finally have noticed what has been obvious for years to any objective news analyst. Fox News has a long-standing scorched Earth policy when reacting to other media who dare to report on Fox News.

In his column titled, “When Fox News Is the Story,” Carr confesses that just the thought of having to deal with Fox News as a subject in a story makes him and his peers nervous:

“Once the public relations apparatus at Fox News is engaged, there will be the calls to my editors, keening (and sometimes threatening) e-mail messages, and my requests for interviews will quickly turn into depositions about my intent or who else I am talking to.”

The key tactic in Fox’s PR strategy is to intimidate reporters and editors, and by Carr’s own admission, it’s working. Carr goes on to profile the Fox news PR machine as an operation modeled on political warfare, as directed by CEO Roger Ailes, a veteran of campaigns going back to Richard Nixon. He describes it as “a kind of rolling opposition research” effort intended to cause material harm to their perceived enemies. Carr cites the recent example of the hosts of Fox & Friends taking out their revenge on two Times reporters who wrote about how the competition is gaining on Fox. Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy displayed altered photographs of the reporters that were at best unflattering, at worst anti-Semitic.

While Carr’s revelations are interesting, they don’t go nearly far enough to provide an historical context for Fox’s behavior. This is not a recent phenomena. Three years ago David Folkenflik wrote about how Fox bears its fangs when it doesn’t like what’s being said. And the AP’s David Bauder documented what has become known as Fox’s “Wishing Well,” a back-handed slap at anyone who says anything about Fox News that isn’t complimentary:

  • Because of his personal demons, Keith [Olbermann] has imploded everywhere he’s worked. From lashing out at co-workers to personally attacking Bill O’Reilly and all things Fox, it’s obvious Keith is a train wreck waiting to happen. And like all train wrecks, people might tune in out of morbid curiosity, but they eventually tune out, as evidenced by Keith’s recent ratings decline. In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion.
  • Ted [Turner] is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network and now his mind. We wish him well.
  • Tim [Russert]’s sour grapes are obvious here, but at least he’s not using his father as a prop to sell books this time around. That said, we wish him well on his latest self-promotion tour.
  • We are disappointed that George [Clooney] has chosen to hurt Mr. O’Reilly’s family in order to promote his movie. But it’s obvious he needs publicity considering his recent string of failures. We wish him well in his struggle to regain relevancy.
  • We wish CNN well in their annual executive shuffle. We wish Jon [Klein] well in his battle for second place with MSNBC.
  • We can understand David [Shuster]’s disappointment in being let go by Fox News Channel, but he’s too young to be so bitter. We wish him well in getting his career back on track.

It’s not just PR flacks volleying in this debate. The big dogs at News Corp. are fully engaged. Rupert Murdoch’s spokesperson delivered an ultimatum to GE, saying that if they reined in Keith Olbermann, Fox would call off Bill O’Reilly. Roger Ailes stepped into the fray personally, threatening…

“…that if Olbermann didn’t stop such attacks against Fox, he would unleash O’Reilly against NBC and would use the New York Post as well.”

In the weeks that followed, Ailes made good on his threat. Bill O’Reilly, Steve Doocy, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, Gretchen Carlson, and others at Fox News all laid into NBC/GE with renewed vigor. O’reilly even has his own Media Hall of Shame. The New York Post’s gossips on Page Six initiated a week-long assault on Olbermann’s personal life, alleging tax evasion, calling him unstable, and even publishing his home address – a vile act whose only purpose could be to cause him harm.

The risks faced by reporters who merely want to do their jobs is very real. Fox News will throw whatever they can at you to derail your reporting and/or tarnish your reputation. Carr relates horror stories from his colleagues who have dared to cross Fox News:

“…they have received e-mail messages from Fox News public relations staff that contained doctored photos, anonymous quotes and nasty items about competitors. And two former Fox employees said that they had participated in precisely those kinds of activities but had signed confidentiality agreements and could not say so on the record.”

~

“…few were willing to be quoted. In the last several years, reporters from The Associated Press, several large newspapers and various trade publications have said they were shut out from getting their calls returned because of stories they had written. Editors do not want to hear why your calls are not being returned, they just want you to fix the problem, or perhaps they will fix it by finding someone else to do your job.”

That’s an old tactic practiced by political operatives and office holders. They know that if they deny you access, your editor is going to have to get someone else who doesn’t have that problem. In effect, they get you fired. It is unprecedented, however, for a media company to employ such hardball tactics against other media companies. But that is the way Fox does business, and their peers had better develop strong stomachs if they hope to endure.

The impression left by Carr is that many in the media have already given up fighting. They will either decline to report on anything having to do with Fox News (if it’s critical), or they will simply adjust their reporting to be more positive. That is the danger of letting bullies get away with their bad behavior. Once again, it will be up to the people to insist that they get honest, responsible journalism from the Conventional Media. It is up to us to force them to do their jobs. If we succeed then it won’t matter what Fox’s attack dogs do. Their vacant yelping will disperse like a fading echo. We wish them well as they collapse from the fatigue of chasing their own tails.

Gawker has more on Fox News PR Priestess, Irena Briganti.

Who Is Snubbing Muslim Americans?

Posted by on June 25, 2008 at 1:55 pm. 9 Comments :

At a recent campaign rally for Barack Obama, an event volunteer had the poor judgment to tell two women wearing head scarves that they could not be seated behind the stage where Obama was speaking. The concern was that the pictures would add fuel to the false assertions circulating about Obama being a stealth Muslim. Obama apologized to the women publicly and personally, but that did not stop the New York Times from publishing a front page story on the controversy and how it may be affecting his support in the Muslim community. The Times also accused Obama of ignoring Muslim voters:

“While the senator has visited churches and synagogues, he has yet to appear at a single mosque.”

That statement could apply with equal accuracy to John McCain, but the Times has not seen fit to address that. Not surprisingly, Fox News has also weighed in with those worried about the beleaguered voters of Islamic heritage.

Obama & MuslimsThis new found advocacy on the part of the media for respect for Muslim Americans is encouraging, if not mysterious. Since when has the press been known to stand up for Muslim rights? Yet here are just a few examples of media outrage due to the Obama campaign’s alleged insensitivity and struggles with Muslim voters:

[Note: The New York Post’s headline actually used all caps and a fabricated quote that appears nowhere in the story]

The New York Times Times article is also not alone in criticizing Obama for not visiting mosques in the course of his campaign. But neither the Times, nor any other major news outlet, has held John McCain to the same standard. How many mosques has McCain visited? So far as I can tell, none.

While the media is awash in analyses of Obama’s support from Muslim Americans, they don’t seem to have the same concern for McCain. Perhaps there is an unstated assumption that Muslims are a more natural fit for Obama than McCain; that an African American candidate with a Muslim father and the middle name Hussein would all but lock up the Muslim vote. But that assumption would require the dismissal of all of the anti-Saddam, pro-Iraq war, Muslims that ought to be flocking to the campaign of the war-mongering architect of the “surge.” It would also demonstrate ignorance of the fact that George W. Bush carried a plurality of Muslims in 2000.

So why is the media curious only about the state of Obama’s relationship with Muslims? Why is there this sudden outpouring of empathy for how Muslims are treated by the Democratic candidate for president, but not the Republican, whose party’s support amongst Muslim’s has cratered in just a few years? Could it be that it allows the media a pretense of tolerance of minorities while they bash the first African American to become the nominee of a major political party?

If the the New York Times wants to question the depth of Muslim support for Obama, they ought to also ask the same questions of McCain. Otherwise it is just an exercise in hypocrisy. And it wouldn’t hurt if both candidates took time from their schedules to visit a mosque or two.

Murdoch Stalking Newsday

Posted by on April 23, 2008 at 2:48 pm. 1 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch is on the prowl again and the editors, employees and readers of Long Island’s Newsday had better pay attention. The News Corp. chief has announced that his ravenous appetite for world media dominance is far from satisfied.

“Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been calling key state and local officials to say he is close to a deal to buy Newsday and that he looks forward to working with them.”

Murdoch already owns the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and two TV stations in the New York market, along with the Fox News Channel, and the Fox Business Network. The $580 million acquisition of Newsday would allow him to further tighten his grip on the biggest media market in the country. Murdoch hopes that by adding Newsday to his empire he might be able to reduce the debt he takes on from the Post, which has lost money for as long as he’s owned it. This would sharpen his aim at his real target, the New York Times, which he has previously vowed to bury.

As for the Newsday staff and customers, they need to be aware of what lay in store if Murdoch is successful. Despite having promised not to meddle in the editorial affairs of the Wall Street Journal as a condition for his purchasing it, his will cannot be denied.

“Marcus W. Brauchli will step down as the top-ranking editor of The Wall Street Journal after less than a year in the job, four people briefed on the matter said on Monday, just four months after Rupert Murdoch took control of the paper.”

As with most of the rest of Murdoch’s properties, Newsday would likely take on his world view. However, Newsday’s fate is not a foregone conclusion. Mort Zuckerman, who owns the New York Daily News, is reportedly preparing his own bid. This may be less because of his desire to own Newsday than his need to keep Murdoch from owning it. Whatever the reason, it may be time to start rooting for Zuckerman.

Mind War – The Pentagon’s Propaganda Assault On America

Posted by on April 21, 2008 at 4:20 pm. 1 Comments :

“World War Three will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” ~ Marshall McLuhan, 1968

SpinComThe New York Times has now documented the sad prescience of McCluhan. In an in-depth examination of supposedly independent, retired military analysts, the Times’ David Barstow has uncovered what may be the most brazen attempt at propaganda ever initiated.

“To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.”

“Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.”

“The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.”

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration would manipulate the press to shape public opinion. The press, of course, are their willing accomplices. Rupert Murdoch of Fox News even admitted it publicly. And the Pentagon has been caught doing the same in Iraq. The Associated Press reported that the U.S. military secretly paid Iraqi newspapers to publish stories intended to portray operations there in a positive light.

But the scale of this program, the fact that it was directed at Americans, and the added wrinkle of financial corruption and greed at the expense of thousands of lives, is thoroughly without precedent. The article reveals that there was deliberate intent on the part of the government to define what constituted news and to replace the analysis of independent journalists with that of hand-picked and conflict-laden Pentagon mouthpieces. It was further disclosed that many of these spokespersons provided commentary they knew was false in order to protect either their access to the media or their profits. These former military officers clearly were not protecting their troops.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

That’s just one of the more than 150 retired officers participating in this program, most of whom worked for – you guessed it – Fox News. One Fox News crony, Paul E. Vallely, called it a “MindWar” – using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.” Another analyst, General Conway, confessed that “The strategic target remains our [the American] population.” He went on to callously trivialize the loss of U.S. troops as incidental to winning in the court of public opinion and, he might as well have added, in the marketplace of war profiteering.

The scope of deceit and greed that this program encompasses is mind boggling. Read the whole story at the New York Times. Then visit FreePress where they are collecting signatures to urge Congress to further investigate this breach of the public trust.

The Media’s Gift To John McCain

Posted by on March 28, 2008 at 4:55 pm. 3 Comments :

What is being called the first general election campaign ad has hit the airwaves. It is a biographical ad for Sen. John McCain that features him in a North Vietnamese hospital bed. Most of the Conventional Media is reporting on this as if it were somehow newsworthy. The New York Times covered the ad’s release on its political blog, The Caucus, and they have shown the same level of cluelessness as every other media outlet. In demonstrating how little they seem understand even the simplest truisms of modern candidate marketing, they note that the ad…

“…for now will play only in New Mexico – a sign that the campaign expects that state to be a major battleground this fall.”

The Times doesn’t provide any support for their contention that the New Mexico ad buy is a sign of the campaign’s view of the state’s role in the upcoming election. They haven’t interviewed the candidate or queried the campaign managers. They haven’t provided any context such as the ranking of the state in the electoral college (36th, with only 5 electoral votes). They simply make a dangling statement that fails to inform the reader of any substantive facts, and they present it as if it were verifiably true.

And the Times is not alone. Here is how the Associated Press covered it:

“For now, the 60-second ad will air only in New Mexico – a signal that McCain plans to compete in that swing state come the fall…”

And this is CNN’s take:

“The ad will air for now in the battleground state of New Mexico […] a sign the presumptive nominee will focus heavily on the swing states this fall.”

Sound familiar? Did these guys synchronize their alibis?

The truth, however, is likely quite different than these portrayals suggest. The McCain campaign, like most politicians and interest groups these days, knows that they can purchase a small amount of airtime in inexpensive television markets like New Mexico and announce the release of the ad to the press. Then the media will dutifully regurgitate the ad repeatedly, giving the campaign what amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free airtime.

The McCain people know that they can manipulate the media to serve their ends. The media knows that they are being manipulated, but they allow it anyway. It should make one wonder what these big media corporations expect to get in return for their willingness to be exploited. After all, if they declined to provide free promotion for theses ads, the candidates would have to pay for them. That means the media is not only making valuable in-kind contributions to the candidates, they are also forfeiting untold millions in lost revenue. For what?

I previously wrote about this phenomenon with some historical examples of its use. I also recommended these reforms:

  • Don’t bother to report on any ad that has not exceeded a defined threshold of paid impressions. In other words, if the campaign doesn’t make a significant purchase of air time for their own ad, it isn’t news.
  • If the ad is shown it should be confined to a small percentage of the screen with a video watermark over the whole piece labeling it is a campaign ad. This would serve to blunt the promotional value of the airing and focus on the news value.

The press needs to start thinking about ways to be better servants to the public than they are to the powerful. But first they need to acknowledge their shortcomings. For the New York Times, the AP, CNN, etc., to make the wholly unsupported assertions that they did in the articles linked above is shameful. For them not to acknowledge their role in the campaign hype is an abdication of their journalistic integrity. They know better. They just hope that we don’t.