Wall Street Journal

CLASS WAR VICTORY! The Wealthy Have Surrendered, So Who’s Still Fighting?

Posted by on October 31, 2011 at 1:41 pm. 3 Comments :

“Conservatives say if you don’t give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they’ve lost all incentive because we’ve given them too much money.” ~ George Carlin

The national debate triggered by the Occupy Wall Street protests has given the wealth gap a renewed focus in the public arena. And with good reason. That gap is wider today than it was just prior to the Great Depression; wider, in fact, than it has ever been. The brutality of that economic disparity has thrust our nation into a bitter and persistent recession. But it has also inspired millions of Americans to step forward and demand reforms that not only restore fairness, but readjust the balance of political power.

Conservatives regard this new activism as a declaration of class war. But it’s important to note that they only call it war when we fight back. The war was already in progress and, as Warren Buffett said, “We (the rich) are winning.” Now a new survey reveals that Buffett is not the only one-percenter that is fighting on our side. The Wall Street Journal (ironically) is reporting that…

“A new survey from Spectrem Group found that 68% of millionaires (those with investments of $1 million or more) support raising taxes on those with $1 million or more in income. Fully 61% of those with net worths of $5 million or more support the tax on million-plus earners.”

We can also count Bill Gates amongst the one-percenters who advocate more progressive taxes.


[Note: The same segment from ABC’s This Week was posted on Fox Nation with a headline that perverts reality beyond all recognition: “Bill Gates Knocks Down Obama’s Millionaire’s Tax.” Gates did no such thing. He continues his remarks saying that taxing millionaires by itself will not solve the debt problem, but no one is suggesting that it will. And his support for taxing the rich more is clear and unambiguous.]

When two-thirds of the people that will be affected by a tax increase support the increase, it begs the question, who are the opponents? For the answer you need look no farther than the Office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives:

John Boehner: “[T]here’s nothing that’s disappointed me more over the last 8 weeks than to watch the President of the United States basically give up on the economy, give up on the American people.” […] “People are frustrated, and that’s why the House has been focused all year on trying to create a better environment for job creation in our country.”

Boehner is wrong about Obama. The President has not given up on the economy or the American people. He has given up on Boehner. And Boehner’s assertion that the House has been focused on creating jobs is laughable. He and his Republican troops have done nothing but obstruct progress on every legislative attempt to stimulate job growth. In fact, they have been working hard to recast the issue as one that is centered on those they call the “job creators.”

House Republicans have a web site at jobs.gop.gov. The funny thing about the site is that it has no content whatsoever that addresses the plight of workers or the unemployed. The site isn’t really about jobs at all, as the heading makes abundantly clear: The House Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators. That’s an admission that the Republican agenda for jobs is really just an agenda for business owners and corporations. Click through to their plan and you will see a short list of proposals that hew narrowly to tax cuts for business, deregulation, and deficit reduction. It’s the same tired parade of failed policies that Republicans put forth as their solution to everything. None of those policies will produce jobs and, more importantly, they aren’t even what small businesses, the biggest driver of jobs, say that they want.

A new Gallup poll asked small business owners “What would be a primary motivation or reason for hiring any new employees?” The top three responses, representing 63% of respondents, were all related to demand.

“Small-business owners point to increased revenues (27%), an improving economy (20%), and growth or expansion of their business (17%) as their top motivations for hiring new employees in 2012.”

This survey affirms the analysis of most economists who agree that companies do not expand hiring when their taxes are cut or regulations are relaxed. They hire when they need to satisfy increased demand or exploit an economic opportunity. The Wall Street Journal surveyed a group of economists and concluded that…

“The main reason U.S. companies are reluctant to step up hiring is scant demand, rather than uncertainty over government policies, according to a majority of economists in a new Wall Street Journal survey.”

Once again, that’s the conservative Wall Street Journal reporting. It’s fair to presume that the economists the Journal surveyed were not from some sleeper cell of de-thawed Bolsheviks. In addition to this widespread agreement by experts that the GOP fixation on tax relief for the Upscalers is fiscal folly, the popular sentiment on Main Streets across the nation overwhelmingly favors making those who have benefited the most contribute more to restoring our country’s economic health. After all, the rich are the only ones who have not been called upon to share the sacrifice.

Shared Sacrifice

When the big picture is unfurled there are conclusions to draw that are too obvious to ignore. The American people support raising revenue via taxes. Economists agree that demand, not tax relief, drives job creation. And a majority of millionaires believe that their own tax rates are too low. Yet Republicans in Congress continue to stonewall. The intransigence of the GOP serves no constituency and has no discernible benefit politically. The only plausible return for their bullheadedness is in the form of financial support from a deep-pocketed minority of one-percenters who simply cannot abide one more cent in taxes.

That’s the naked truth that Boehner & Co. are having such a hard time defending. That’s why the Occupy movement has captured such a broad swath of public support. And that’s why it is all the more peculiar that the media still fails to present these issues honestly, and that many in the Democratic Party, including the President, have not unambiguously acknowledged the voice of the people and joined the fight for economic justice. If the wealthy have conceded that the people’s position is the one that ought to prevail, then where are the people’s representatives?

The Wall Street Journal’s Tone-Deaf Defense Of Murdochalypse

Posted by on July 18, 2011 at 5:28 am. 8 Comments :

MurdochalypsePerhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, but Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has published a self-serving op-ed that seeks to separate itself from the travails of its corporate parent, News Corp. The Journal argues that anyone who thinks there is any carryover from the UK scandal is overreaching. Never mind that the head of the Journal’s Dow Jones division, Les Hinton, was carried over to the states from his British perch at News International and has already resigned as a result of his association with the disgraced enterprise.

The op-ed takes a decidedly arrogant approach in suggesting that they, for some unexplained reason, are above it all and should not be tarnished. They regard the whole affair as a legal matter that is limited to the UK and that the real problem is the malfeasance of Scotland Yard for not properly investigating the crimes involved. The Journal’s editorial conveniently leaves out any mention that part of the problem with the police investigation is that they were on the receiving end of bribes from News Corp.

The only thing more grating than their arrogance is their victimehood. Apparently the only controversy is that the rest of the media world is ganging up on the long-suffering Wall Streeters and their bosses:

“It is also worth noting the irony of so much moral outrage devoted to a single media company, when British tabloids have been known for decades for buying scoops and digging up dirt on the famous. Fleet Street in general has long had a well-earned global reputation for the blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true.”

It’s not only Fleet Street. The “blind-quote, single-sourced story that may or may not be true,” is the standard operating procedure for Fox News. But why is the Journal so surprised about the moral outrage devoted to News Corp when it, so far, is the only party accused of hacking into people’s phones? And it is the only party, so far, accused of bribing the police for dirt on the famous. By the way, that is very different than the practice of “buying scoops” from private sources that the Journal is attempting to conflate with paying off the police.

The obvious attempt to muddy the discussion continues when the Journal addresses the critical of issue of relationships between politicians and the press:

“The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren’t attempting to influence public affairs, and don’t skew their coverage to do so, can’t stand a day’s scrutiny.”

Here is where the op-ed deliberately tries to steer away from the real problem. Even if we were to concede that the BBC and the Guardian seek to influence public affairs through their coverage, the activities that are being “bemoanded” are those where News Corp seeks influence through intimidation and/or alliance with politicians, not via their reporting (which, of course, they do as well).

Next we see the editorial take another stab at victimhood with an unusual kicker aimed at a favorite bogeyman of News Corp, Julian Assange.

“We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur.”

First of all, I don’t know of any mainstream news organization that has given WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. For the most part Assange has been roundly castigated and, so far as Fox News is concerned, he is regarded as a traitor who should face a firing squad. But the Journal is being stunningly hypocritical in that they themselves have adopted the Wikileaks model in an attempt to emulate its success. That is the express mission of the Journal’s Safehouse web site. Unfortunately, there is nothing safe about Safehouse, which does little to protect one’s anonymity. So unless you have some perverse desire to be ratted out, arrested, or sued, stay as far away from this un-Safehouse as possible.

Finally, the Journal launches into a defense of allegations that the U.S. could prosecute News Corp under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But somehow they spin off such a prospect into an attack on their First Amendment rights. The implication is that any prosecution of a media entity for any crime whatsoever violates the Constitution. That’s a rather broad reading. The Journal complains that…

“Applying this standard to British tabloids could turn payments made as part of traditional news-gathering into criminal acts. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t pay sources for information, but the practice is common elsewhere in the press, including in the U.S.”

Is the Journal asserting that payoffs to police officials is an act of “traditional news-gathering?” In most places that’s a violation of law enforcement ethics and it is the reason that the commissioner of Scotland Yard resigned yesterday.

Moreover, the Journal’s closing argument is that the pursuit of criminal activity on the part of the press has, in the past, netted individuals who were not initially suspects. The example given in the editorial is that of Robert Novak who had participated in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The Journal notes that others, including reporters at the New York Times, were swept up in the scandal. So What? That’s wonderful! Is the Journal suggesting that the press should keep its collective mouths shut because they might get drawn in themselves? That would be the duty of an honest, ethical press. Report the news – the truth – regardless of self-interest.

It’s as if the Journal is threatening its rivals to stay out of this mud fight lest they get dirty themselves. Really? That’s their defense?

Wall Street Journal Launches Its Own WikiLeaks

Posted by on May 5, 2011 at 5:02 pm. 3 Comments :

The Wall Street Journal has gone into competition with WikiLeaks. They just launched the web site Safehouse where they are soliciting secrets that would ostensibly expose fraud and abuse. The site asks visitors to send in “newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits.”

The interesting thing about this is that it puts the Wall Street Journal in the position of emulating an avowedly anarchist enterprise. I happen to believe that WikiLeaks serves a useful purpose by promoting transparency in public institutions, despite their controversial tactics. There is a role for that in the media as well, but the tactical approach should be consistent with the standards of journalistic ethics.

In that regard the Journal ought not to be encouraging people to break the law. And that is, in effect, what they are doing. The contributions they are seeking are likely to be private materials that are proprietary and confidential. By providing these materials to the Journal, the sources are exposing themselves to legal liabilities. The Journal implies that submissions can be made anonymously, but a reading of the terms of service reveals that the Journal “cannot ensure complete anonymity” and that it “does not make any representations regarding confidentiality.”

In addition, the terms of service, to which you are assumed to have agreed, stipulate that your use may not “violate laws, regulations or rulings, infringe upon another person’s rights, or violate the terms of this Agreement.” Consequently, after taking the risk of providing the data, the Journal sets you adrift legally by holding themselves harmless in the event that your disclosures were unlawful. And to drive home that point they state explicitly that “Dow Jones is not responsible to you in any way for any loss, damage, civil claims, criminal charges, or injury that result, directly or indirectly, from your use of SafeHouse.” So they get all the benefit, but you take all the risk.

It is that sort of disclaimer that differentiates Safehouse from WikiLeaks. Anything you provide to WikiLeaks is completely anonymous without your having to request it. The ghostly, non-profit site exists in a quasi-legal state that protects whistle-blowers without disclaimers and exceptions. The Wall Street Journal exists to make money and spread the rightist ideology of its owner, Rupert Murdoch. That makes dealing with Safehouse a precarious proposition.

Other news organizations are already entering this field. The New York Times and Washington Post are said to have projects in the works. al-Jazeera has already launched its Transparency Unit, which has none of the conditions of Safehouse. Therefore, there are far better options for nervous whistle-blowers than the one offered by the Journal. And remember, the Journal is part of a media empire that includes disreputable outfits like Fox News, the New York Post, and the Times of London.

I would be wary of trusting the Journal in any case due to the general hostility of the right toward WikiLeaks, whom many on the right regard as agents of espionage. There are conservatives who have publicly called for the execution of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder. The possibility of the Journal’s editors taking your data and turning you in is not difficult to imagine. With all of their legalese drafted to protect themselves, it doesn’t seem like a particularly safe house.

[Update] Due to the universally negative reception for Safehouse, the Wall Street Journal was forced to issue a press release in response. It said in part…

“There is nothing more sacred than our sources; we are committed to protecting them to the fullest extent possible under the law. Because there is no way to predict the breadth of information that might be submitted through SafeHouse, the terms of use reserve certain rights in order to provide flexibility to react to extraordinary circumstances. But as always, our number one priority is protecting our sources.”

Obviously protecting their sources is not their number one priority because in the sentence just prior they admit that the reservation of “certain rights” takes precedence over the protection of sources. And exercising those rights puts the source at risk. So unless you have some perverse desire to be ratted out, arrested, or sued, stay as far away from this un-Safehouse as possible.

Wall Street Journal: Sarah Palin Is An Idiot

Posted by on November 9, 2010 at 12:24 pm. 7 Comments :

Sarah PalinOK, the Wall Street Journal didn’t really say that Sarah Palin is an idiot, but they proved it in an exchange that leaves no other conclusion. The following tale of deceit is particularly interesting because both sides are members of Rupert Murdoch’s media family. The WSJ is the gem of financial newspapers, and Palin is the star of Fox News. So Palin is not being attacked by some “lamestream media” hack. This thwacking comes from the most respectable source that Murdoch commands.

The intra-News Corp cat fight began when prepared remarks Palin will make at a trade association conference were released by the National Review. Her speech will address recent actions taken by the Federal Reserve with which she takes issue. She orders Fed chief Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” and oddly suggests that the U.S. should follow the economic lead of Germany. That’s odd because she and her rightist comrades generally portray anyone who offers European solutions to American problems as socialists and traitors. But here is where she proudly demonstrates her monumental ignorance of economic affairs:

Palin: [E]veryone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so.

There’s only one small problem with that statement. It simply isn’t true. It’s as false as death panels; as dishonest as $200,000,000 a day trips to India by the President; as unscrupulously fraudulent as “palling around with terrorists.” In other words, it’s just another day for Sarah Palin. Sudeep Reddy of the Wall Street Journal stepped up to correct the Tea Party Queen by presenting some actual facts:

Reddy: Grocery prices haven’t risen all that significantly, in fact. The consumer price index’s measure of food and beverages for the first nine months of this year showed average annual inflation of less than 0.6%, the slowest pace on record (since the Labor Department started keeping this measure in 1968). Even if you pick a single snapshot — say, September’s year-over-year increase in prices — that was just 1.4%, far better than the 6% annual increase for food prices recorded in September 2008.

Not content to leave dumb enough alone, Palin calls Reddy’s facts and raises some more lies. She took to her Facebook page to accuse Reddy of failing to read his own paper. Then she offers this quote from a recent WSJ story to support her position that food prices have risen in the past year:

Palin: The article noted that “an inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America’s supermarkets and restaurants…Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months.”

Notice that ellipsis Palin inserted after “supermarkets and restaurants?” Here is the complete segment with the portion she edited out in bold:

WSJ: An inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America’s supermarkets and restaurants, threatening to end the tamest year of food pricing in nearly two decades.

Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months. And food makers and retailers including McDonald’s Corp., Kellogg Co. and Kroger Co. have begun to signal that they’ll try to make consumers shoulder more of the higher costs for ingredients.

So Palin just happened to cut out the part that affirmed that price inflation has been “tame.” And she also excised the context of the staple costs that have risen, which the Journal story makes clear was at the producer level, not the prices consumers pay. The point of the article that Palin quoted was that prices may rise in the future, but they have not risen in the past year as Palin claims.

Palin went to great lengths to ridicule Reddy and the Journal for what she regards as shoddy reporting. But upon closer examination it is Palin (who supposedly has a degree in journalism) who is mangling the truth and deliberately misrepresenting the content of the articles she cites. On her Facebook page she notes that…

Palin: Ever since 2008, people seem inordinately interested in my reading habits. Among various newspapers, magazines, and local Alaskan papers, I read the Wall Street Journal. […] Now I realize I’m just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I’m surprised a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal doesn’t.

Now Palin may be just a former half-term governor, a quitter, a ghost-written book hustler, and a current reality TV star, but even wealthy, narcissists like her can spew falsehoods and propaganda. Judging from the evidence above, if Palin can read a newspaper her comprehension skills (or her respect for the truth) are abysmal. And her attempt to malign “a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal” has not only failed, but has blown back into her face.

Rupert Murdoch Epitomizes Hidebound Culture

Posted by on October 8, 2010 at 1:23 pm. 1 Comments :

Dateline: Wall Street Journal, October 8,2010.
If Schools Were Like ‘American Idol’ . . .
BY RUPERT MURDOCH

Over the past few years, I have often complained about a hidebound culture that prevents many newspapers from responding to the challenges of new technology. There is, however, another hidebound American institution that is also finding it difficult to respond to new challenges: our big-city schools.

Is that so? Rupert Murdoch’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal is apparently his prescription for improving America’s ailing schools. Unfortunately, he has locked up his own opinion behind a paywall that prevents anyone who has not subscribed to his service from reading it. All you get is two paragraphs that contribute nothing to the public discourse on education.

The irony is that while he is complaining about a hidebound culture, he is simultaneously demonstrating it. The concept of erecting paywalls to secure content online is firmly rooted in the past. Modern media theory recognizes that certain types of information cannot be corralled and apportioned for fees. That is particularly true for news which no entity can own.

What Murdoch has succeeded in proving here is that his paywall not only fails to produce revenue, it suppresses the information he intends to distribute. And he ties it to the success of his own American Idol, a television program that, unlike his newspapers, can be received entirely free of charge. The result of this illogic is that he is making himself less prosperous and less influential at the same time. And he is doing nothing to help our educational system or the young people who rely upon it. Nice work, Rupert.

Fox News And Right-Wing Media Synergy

Posted by on August 21, 2010 at 2:06 pm. 14 Comments :

The Wall Street Journal published an article this morning profiling pollster Scott Rasmussen. The column was written by the Journal’s John Fund, who is also a Fox News contributor. The article’s subject, Rasmussen, is also a Fox News contributor whose surveys lean reliably to the right, which makes him a favorite of the conservative press.

So what we have here is one of Rupert Murdoch’s columnists interviewing one of Murdoch’s pollsters for one of Murdoch’s newspapers to promote contributors to one of Murdoch’s television networks. And wouldn’t you know it, the article was effusively complimentary to Rasmussen. However, it has no more significance than a Keith Olbermann editorial praising Rachel Maddow in the NBC employee newsletter. Here is how Fund leads off:

“Thanks to the shifting tectonic plates of American society, polls have come to dominate our politics as never before, and Mr. Rasmussen is today’s leading insurgent pollster.”

The reason polls have come to dominate our politics is that outlets like Fox News seek to trivialize current affairs by overdosing on horse-race data and ignoring, or misrepresenting, the more substantive issues that people really need to know about. Fox is famous for hyping tabloid fare like the current pseudo-controversy over the mosque in New York. Then they supplement their non-story with polls about the mosque in New York story that adds nothing to their viewers’ store of useful knowledge.

It is that state of polling domination that Fund praises Rasmussen for as the “leading insurgent pollster.” I have no idea why a pollster would be complimented as being an insurgent, but it does tend to certify the widely held view that Rasmussen is an activist with an agenda.

It isn’t hard to find evidence of Rasmussen’s bias. If you take a look at the RealClearPolitics aggregation of polls, Rasmussen invariably reports numbers that are far more favorable to Republicans and conservatives. That predetermined result is built into his methodology. And just to make sure he gets the results he wants, he will also skew his survey’s questions to assure a rightward slant. Markos Moulitsos of Daily Kos has done some detailed analysis on Rasmussen’s (dishonest) game And I previously documented Rasmussen’s phony index wherein he invents something he calls The Political Class, but is really just a fake metric to create artificial comparisons between groups of respondents that don’t exist.

Fund cites Rasmussen’s Political Class index and seems to be impressed with its fantasy results. But Fund is no better at math than Rasmussen. He says that…

“Before the financial crisis of late 2008, about a tenth of Americans fell into the political class, while some 53% were classified as in the mainstream public. The rest fell somewhere in the middle. Now the percentage of people identifying with the political class has clearly declined into single digits, while those in the mainstream public have grown slightly.”

What I’d like to know is how an index with just two options adds up to only 63% (10% Political Class plus 53% Mainstream)? there is no “Other” in the survey. It seems that 37% of respondents fell into a black hole. What’s more, the change Fund cites where the political class has “clearly declined into single digits,” would only have had to move down 1 point. That corresponds to his assertion that the mainstream grew slightly. However, in most polls, that minute a change would be regarded as statistically insignificant and within the margin of error. So what is Fund’s point?

It is also worth noting that the Political Class in Rasmussen’s index constitutes a mere 7% of the total group polled. This makes the comparison even less worthy of consideration. It means that in a poll of 1,000 people, 50% of the Political Class is only 35 people, or 3.5% of the total. Nevertheless, Fund eagerly cites a series of additional results based on this nonsense that Rasmussen says “has real significance.”

Rasmussen has little credibility amongst his peers in the polling game. His entire reason for being is to pump out polls that put Republicans and conservatives in a positive light and to disparage Democrats and liberals. The goal is not to inform, but to influence and shape public opinion. That’s why he is such a frequent guest on Fox News.

And that’s why his reputation is getting polished by his colleague John Fund and the Wall Street Journal. It’s also why Murdoch has gone to such great lengths to own all his own newspapers, TV networks, and pollsters.

The Breitbart Saga Whines On (And On)

Posted by on August 1, 2010 at 10:28 am. 16 Comments :

Poor Breitbart
Cowardly Andrew BreitbartThe chronically choleric Andrew Breitbart now sees himself as the aggrieved party in the Shirley Sherrod affair that he instigated. This pathetic attempt to curry sympathy is uncharacteristic of Breitbart who ordinarily blusters his way through criticism and fiercely attacks his critics. Why the change in behavior? Could he be worried about Sherrod’s forthcoming lawsuit? This is what he told Newsweek:

Newsweek: Can you understand how this has been difficult for her to get caught up in that?
Breitbart: As difficult as it probably was for her, it’s been difficult for me as well, especially to hear her hurl an accusation of racism at me, when my motivation is absolutely pure and is driven by a desire for this country to move beyond its horrid racist past.

Was his motivation “absolutely pure” when he posted a deceptively edited video and portrayed Sherrod as a racist? Breitbart also admitted to Newsweek that the video took Sherrod out of context, and given two separate opportunities to apologize, Breitbart declined and made excuses instead. That didn’t stop him from expressing his desire to meet with Sherrod in private. If she takes him up on that she had better go wired for sound and video. I bet she could get some juicy clips.

The Wall Street Jackal
It’s interesting that Sherrod’s announcement the she intends to sue Breitbart has not been reported as a news item on Fox News, so far as I have been able to determine (if someone has evidence of such a report, please pass it along). But what Fox may be trying to sweep under the rug, the Wall Street Journal has taken on in the form of a defensive editorial by the editor of their online op-ed pages, James Taranto.

Taranto begins by surmising that Sherrod’s lawsuit would probably fail. His reasoning centered on his assertion that she was a public official and involved claims about the performance of her public duties. Sherrod was indeed an employee of the Department of Agriculture. That may make her a public official of sorts, but she was clearly not a public figure. By Taranto’s logic anyone working for the Post Office would be exempt from protection against defamation. Furthermore, Taranto was wrong in stating the the incident involved claims about the performance of her public duties. There was nothing of the sort in Sherrod’s speech before the NAACP. She was relating events that occurred 24 years earlier, before her employment with the USDA.

Finally, Taranto implied that it would be difficult for Sherrod to prove malicious intent on Breitbart’s part. It seems to me that Breitbart’s malice is fairly evident. By his own account, he had the video for months but never attempted to ascertain its validity or acquire an unedited version before posting it. Plus, he confessed to Newsweek that he knew it was out of context. Add to that his lack of remorse and his defiance in the face of evidence that his actions were defamatory, and you have a pretty good case for malice.

Taranto found it strange that Sherrod “issued this threat” of litigation before the National Association of Black Journalists. But Sherrod did not issue a threat. She answered a question. Taranto continued to be confused by the applause Sherrod received when she indicated her intention to sue Breitbart. This spurred Taranto to ask…

What kind of journalist would applaud the threat of a defamation lawsuit?

How about a journalist who takes pride in his work and is offended by pseudo-journalists who tarnish the profession? Taranto went on to make this absurd claim:

Journalists have an institutional interest in maximizing the scope of First Amendment protections, and that means keeping it as hard as possible for plaintiffs to sue for defamation.

I have no idea where he came up with that bit of lunacy. Reputable journalists who refrain from defaming people have no problem with defamation suits. It is part of the process of keeping them honest. Taranto’s argument would have gun owners opposed to laws against murder. But just as most gun owners support laws against murder, most journalists support laws against defamation.

Steele Interrupted
A scheduled fundraising event by Michael Steele’s Republican National Committee that was to feature Breibart has been “postponed.” The event was to be held at the swanky Beverly-Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills in just two weeks. This last-minute cancellation is curious considering the complex logistics in putting together a high-profile affair like this. It may or may not have had anything to do with Breitbart’s participation and the embarrassment that may entail, but when you also know that Steele backed out of an appearance before the same convention of black journalists that Sherrod attended, it does raise suspicions.

Uni-Tea: More Like Whi-Tea
Breitbart was a featured speaker at the Uni-Tea rally in Philly yesterday. The event was designed to promote the racial and ethnic diversity within of Tea Party. They did manage to assemble a pretty diverse roster of speakers, but reports from the field say that the crowd, which was far smaller than expected, contained few people of color. Thus, Breitbart spent twenty minutes assuring the predominately white Tea Baggers that they weren’t racists. I’m sure they feel better now.

Coming Attractions
Look for Breitbart’s highly anticipated appearance at the National Tea Party Unity Convention in Las Vegas in October. This event was originally scheduled for mid July, but was postponed due to lameness. Also appearing will be Sharron Angle, Lou Dobbs and Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily. This lineup up just screams unity.

Following that, Breitbart is amongst the seafarers embarking on a three-hour eight day post-election cruise sponsored by the National Review. If you ever dreamed of being shipmates with Breitbart, as well as Karl Rove, Phyllis Schlafly, Jonah Goldberg, Tony Blankley, Scott Rasmussen, Thurston Howell III, and more, then you probably awoke mopping up sweat. By the way, isn’t Rasmussen supposed to be a non-partisan pollster?

FYI: Here is a composite view of the National Review Cruise’s itinerary and the path of the Gulf oil spill:

Looks like they’re taking the scenic route.

White House May Cancel Wall Street Journal

Posted by on July 30, 2010 at 6:13 pm. 1 Comments :

Rupert Murdoch has been constructing his pay walls as a means to squeeze more revenue from his newspapers. By most accounts it is failing as viewership declines on the web sites of his newspaper properties.

In response to this failure Murdoch has doubled-down on greed by jacking up the price for news clipping services, including the one used by the White House. Politico reports that the Wall Street Journal will raise its fees by half a million dollars. The White House responded by saying…

“Obviously, we’re not paying $500,000. This is taxpayer money,” the official said. “We have no idea how we’re going to handle this. We may have to drop [The Journal].”

Considering the fact that anyone in the White House could subscribe to the Journal for $140.00 a year, this seems like a remarkably shortsighted and stupid policy. What’s more, it could motivate the White House to favor other news outlets, for interviews and other media releases, whose bundled clippings they can receive at a reasonable rate. Why would they want to deal with the Journal if their access to the stories was more difficult to obtain and dissemination might be restricted?

There is a stench of desperation about this. Murdoch has not made a successful business decision in years. The Fox Business Network is floundering; MySpace is almost invisible; the pay wall has not been adopted by peers; even the Wall Street Journal purchase resulted in staggering losses. Without Avatar and Fox News, News Corp would be a basket case. And Fox News has been losing viewers as well.

Now that the Journal is writing off some major clients like the President, it may just be a matter of time before they fall of their own bloated weight. I wonder where people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity would go if there were no Fox News to coddle them?

WSJ: The Alien In The White House

Posted by on June 9, 2010 at 12:37 pm. 6 Comments :

The right-wing media long ago cemented its status as a shrill, extremist platform for failed conservative positions, pundits, and politicians. Often it melded all three into its version of super-troopers, peddling partisan rhetoric and propaganda. Fox News, not surprisingly, is the best example of this with their employment of media-politico crossovers like Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.

However, to the extent that some of the more sober purveyors of news sought to maintain an image of seriousness and thoughtful analysis, even that boundary has been breached.

When Rupert Murdoch purchased the Wall Street Journal it was a respected news organization that, at least outwardly, aspired to adhere to established journalistic principles. Murdoch insisted that he was committed to preserving that heritage and that he would not impose his views on the paper’s editorial process. But this morning any aspiration toward ethical journalism was abandoned and replaced with an embrace of the most deranged lunacy straight off of the supermarket tabloid rack.

Dorothy Rabinowitz composed a screed for the Journal that is so devoid of rationality it makes an argument for her family to invoke conservatorship and have her confined to an institution for her own protection. It begins with the title The Alien In The White House. Despite a disclaimer at the end of the fourth paragraph that it has “nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe,” Rabinowitz has to know that the imagery in her words plants the very message she claims not to be espousing. The demented fringe will devour it with relish. She wants her readers to conjure up thoughts of a foreign, illegitimate, usurper to power.

Fox Nation Obama AlienIn support of this promotion of birtherism, Murdoch’s web site, Fox Nation, republished Rabinowitz’s column with a graphic exclamation point. The visual cues employed here escalate the routine insanity of those who believe that Obama was born in Kenya, to an even more absurd insinuation that he is not even from this planet. At this rate the Weekly World News may sue Murdoch for infringing on their fringiness.

But even the message to which Rabinowitz is laying claim distastefully casts President Obama as something other than a patriotic public servant. In fact, she paints him as borderline treasonous. In her view the President aligns himself with foreigners and pursues their interests and not those of Americans.

“A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class.”

Never mind the fact that it was a majority of Americans, not foreigners, who elected him. Rabinowitz imagines that the country has a perception of the President as having a “distant relation to the country.” However, the truth is that she is the one who feels a distance from the mainstream citizens who rejected the policies of her ideological class; the policies that drove the nation into a financial ditch and embroiled it in two costly wars.

Ironically, the first example Rabinowitz offers of Obama’s other-worldliness is that, upon moving into the White House, he failed to find a place for a bust of Winston Churchill. She is literally arguing that by removing the bust of a foreigner Obama is aligning himself with foreigners. That is the level of cognitive disconnect the right suffers from in general. And, of course, had he placed Churchill’s bust on the mantle in the East Room, he would have been criticized for glorifying a foreigner and harassed about why an American didn’t get that spot of honor on the mantle.

It is to be expected that broadsheets like the Weekly World News publish stories about presidents meeting with Venutians, but it represents a devastating collapse of integrity to see the Wall Street Journal treading that territory. And the fact that this nonsense is plastered across multiple Murdoch properties proves that it is his initiative. He cannot pretend to be removed from the hysterical madness that has permeated his enterprise. He is responsible for Rabinowitz’s incoherent daftness, just as he is responsible for Glenn Beck’s fascist evangelism, and Bill O’Reilly’s arrogant racism, and the rest of the crackpot conspiratorialists at Fox.

If Rupert Murdoch ever hoped that by acquiring the Journal he would rehabilitate his reputation, he has fouled that up entirely. Rather than having the Journal’s respected history rub off on him and polish his legacy, he has rubbed off on the Journal and stained it forever. Nice work, Rupe.

ADDENDUM: With regard to the bust of Churchill, Rabinowitz was even more off base than I thought. First of all, Churchill’s bust was on loan from the British embassy and was returned before Obama was inaugurated, so he had nothing to do with it not being displayed. What’s more, Obama put a bust of Martin Luther King in the place where Churchill’s had been. And this is what Rabinowitz is asserting is somehow un-American?

The Right’s Top 25 Journalists?

Posted by on February 11, 2010 at 4:43 pm. NO Comments :

Tunku Varadarajan, national affairs correspondent for The Daily Beast, has compiled a list of what he and 50 academics, politicians, and journalists, consider to be the top 25 right-wing journalists in America. The most enlightening thing we learn from this list has nothing to do with the ranking of wingnuts in the media. What is truly fascinating is how it reveals their definition of a journalist. Here are the top 10:

  1. Paul Gigot, Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal
  2. Glenn Beck, Fox News
  3. Rush Limbaugh, Radio Talk Show Host
  4. Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
  5. Bill O’Reilly, Fox News
  6. Michelle Malkin, Fox News/Blogger
  7. David Brooks, The New York Times
  8. Sean Hannity, Fox News
  9. James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal
  10. Matt Drudge, The Drudge Report

To be fair, placing Paul Gigot at the top of the list recognizes a veteran newsman who spent decades with ink-stained fingers pursuing his vocation as a reporter and editor. While devotedly right-wing in his current role as an editorialist and commentator, he also has the resume of a bona fide journalist. And that makes him the ONLY journalist on the list.

It is nearly hysterical that the 50 unnamed participants in this project elevated Glenn Beck to second place; and Rush Limbaugh to third; and Bill O’Reilly to fifth; and … well you get the idea. What’s more, Varadarajan obviously has a soft spot in his heart for his former employer, Rupert Murdoch. Seven of the top 10 are also Murdoch minions employed by either Fox News or the Wall Street Journal. I wonder if some of the few real journalists at those shops are upset that they were ignored in favor of Sean Hannity and Peggy Noonan?

It is rather telling that an assembly of conservative academics, politicians, and journalists, couldn’t actually come up with names of other conservatives who are actually journalists. One of their selections, Limbaugh, has already responded to the list by declaring that he shouldn’t be on it. At least he is honest enough in this circumstance to admit that what he does is not journalism.

Some of the notable non-journalists on the remainder of the list include raging propagandist Andrew Breitbart (11), serial interrupter Neil Cavuto (14), Coulter clone Laura Ingraham (21), and Marc Morano, a virulent Climate Crisis denier and science skeptic.

Overall, judging from this coterie of cranks, I’m surprised that James O’Keefe and Jeff Gannon weren’t given honorable mentions. Perhaps the panel should be consulted again and made aware of some of these glaring omissions. Remember, Joe the Plumber served as a war correspondent for Pajamas Media. How dare they insult these fine conservatives by failing to honor their contributions to the rightist media.