Reporting truth, exposing lies: The New York Times and the responsibility of journalism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Arthur Brisbane, the Times's public editor, writes:

I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

One example mentioned recently by a reader: As cited in an Adam Liptak article on the Supreme Court, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas had "misunderstood" a financial disclosure form when he failed to report his wife's earnings from the Heritage Foundation. The reader thought it not likely that Mr. Thomas "misunderstood," and instead that he simply chose not to report the information.

Another example: on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches "apologizing for America," a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the "post-truth" stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

Well, I'm a reader, so here's my answer:

Do you even have to ask this question? Of course reporters at the Times, and every other "news" publication with any credibility at all, should call out lies. And not just because Republicans happen to lie a lot. The Times should expose the lies of Democrats as well -- in fact of anyone it wishes to quote, cite, or report on.

As Joe Romm puts it at ThinkProgress: "Obviously any paper, but most especially the New York Times, has little value to society if it knowingly prints lies — or if it fails to do the minimal investigative reporting and fact-checking needed to determine if a statement by a newsmaker or, say, a global warming denier, is false."

Sure, there may occasionally be good reasons for not doing this, such as the need to cultivate good sources (as Booman notes). But it's really just about being accurate, as Steve Benen says. And while "neutrality" might be a good idea in some utopia where everyone tells the truth or has equally credible opinions, it seems to me that the consumers of news (i.e., us) deserve more, and better:

If an article is supposed to provide news consumers with the something more meaningful — offering context, scrutiny, and analysis that helps make sense of the arguments, giving the public a sense, not only of what the arguments are, but whether they're accurate — then media professionals, including beat reporters and their editors, have a broader responsibility to help the public separate fact from fiction.

And more often than not, they don't even try.

This generally draws howls from the right, in part because Republicans seem to lie more frequently and shamelessly, and in part because reality has a well-known liberal bias. Indeed, the constant, baseless accusations about "the liberal media" helped create the forced-neutrality dynamic in the first place.

But the result is a media that fails the public. By publishing falsehoods without scrutiny, for fear of being accused of "bias," the media is effectively leaving news consumers with the impression that lies and the truth deserve equal footing, which is ultimately untenable.

There you go. Now, New York Times, if you have any self-respect at all, go out and do something about it. In a democracy especially, where the rulers (i.e., the people) must be able to make informed decisions, is it essential that the media function not as a mouthpiece for competing spin but as a vehicle for truth. And to do that, they must tell you who's lying.

Are Herman Cain's right-wing defenders exempt from the journalism code of ethics?

By Nicholas Wilbur

Sharon Bialek, the fourth woman to come forward alleging that Cain sexually harassed her (and the first to report what sounds like assault) is not only the latest "alleged" victim of Cain, she's the latest victim of Cain's conservative apologists.

To be fair to Cain, it's possible that this sexual harassment scandal (or four) is nothing more than the usual blowback any politically powerful man should expect from a disgruntled former co-worker (or four), and that the claims (all four of them) are indeed, as Cain believes, nothing more than the political handiwork of a disgruntled fellow presidential candidate – Rick Perry.

At this point, it doesn't really matter. Cain has no intentions of admitting publicly that any of this took place. It does not appear likely that he will apologize to these women, let alone acknowledge their claims. (And why should he? It was the '90s, after all. Everybody was doing it!)

The media circus surrounding this scandal isn't likely to fade. More women are likely to come forward, and Cain will likely continue to protest how journalists do their jobs. But Cain and the (four) victims of his extra-marital sexual proclivities, his advances, harassment, and apparent assault, are not the only story.

As disgusting as these accusations are (that is, what Cain "allegedly" did), the conservative media's response is almost worse.

The card-carrying character assassins of the Republican sound machine are already jumping into their expected roles as contract-obligated defenders of the misogynists within the Republican Party, and they're hard at work painting the "alleged" victims as nothing more than two-dollar whores looking to make a name for themselves and to get their picture in National Enquirer.

The counter-assault is now in full swing.

Sean Hannity said after the news story broke (in Politico) that it is "baseless," a "hit piece," and a "smear." Dick Morris, himself no virgin to sex scandals, called Bialek "a gold-digger" who's looking for a book deal, a film deal or "a spread in Playboy" magazine. And Cal Thomas seems convinced this is part of a larger Democratic Party conspiracy to "drive a stake" through the hearts of anyone who challenges President Obama.

But perhaps even more offensive than that, if that's possible, was Rush Limbaugh, who instantly turned the accuser into a porn star simply based on his chosen pronunciation of her name: "Gloria Allred says her name is Bialek, as in (slurp, slurp) – buy a lick. There's no 'R' in the name so you can't say it's 'Rent-a-lick'... I don't know if Ms. Buy-a-lick likes scented candles or not. I don't know. How's that relevant? That hasn't been mentioned. We don't know if she's been to Happy Valley…we're still waiting for all of these details to be forthcoming."

If a little girl comes forward and tells school administrators that she was grabbed and groped on several occasions in inappropriate places by a boy in her class; if she says, in a voice so soft and so quiet it's almost inaudible, that she only recently came forward to report it because she was scared and embarrassed, and because she thought she would get into trouble, should the school administrators brush it off, make fun of the little girl, mock her name, tell her she dresses too provocatively (at 11 years old), and defend the "alleged" perpetrator as the victim of some liberal feminist smear campaign? Should this girl be called a gold-digger, a publicity whore? 

 

Would it at all be appropriate if the media, upon reporting this story, were to make any of these claims?

I ask only because the story of the little girl is true. It's true every day in every city across the country. Sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, molestation... these things actually happen, daily. In this girl's case, she's a minor, and therefore safe from the punditry wolves.

But isn't it nice to know that if the same thing were to happen to her as an adult, she would be mocked, undermined, and attacked in the media, on television and the radio as a con artist and a liar without a shred of evidence to disprove anything she said.

On Sunday, Cain's campaign sent out passages from the Society of Professional Journalists's Code of Ethics. I wonder, did he send it to Limbaugh and Morris, Hannity and Fox News? Particularly the parts about showing good taste and compassion for those adversely affected by news coverage? 

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

This day in history - July 8, 1889: The first issue of The Wall Street Journal is published

By Richard K. Barry

The Wall Street Journal is the largest newspaper in the United States by circulation and, sadly, since 2007 owned by the Rupert Murdoch news empire, which also owns the Fox News Channel among many other media entities.

In a week in which another Murdoch-owned media outlet, the British tabloid News of the World, announced that it will shut down due to despicable invasions of privacy, it seems important to remind ourselves what a cancer on the world of journalism Murdoch has been.

Despite earlier assurances from him that he would not turn the Journal into a right-wing advocacy rag, that is exactly what he has done.

And Fox News is just another "objective news source." Yeah, right.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Is Jon Stewart the new Edward R. Murrow?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There has been much ado recently, and justifiably so, about Jon Stewart's admirable advocacy in support of 9/11 First Responders, demanding passage of the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act and shaming both Congress (Democrats for not being aggressive enough and Republicans for obstructing the bill) and the news media (which, with the exception of Aljazeera, was neglecting the story entirely) into action.

Stewart has repeated denied that he is a political player, let alone a partisan, preferring to present himself as a comedian first and foremost, but there is no denying that he has become a major political figure. His rally with Colbert back at the end of October was a sign of his significant reach, but those of us who adore him, if I may put it so lovingly, have known about his influence for a long time. So, for that matter, have his critics.

While a huge fan, I have been deeply critical of Stewart's anti-partisan claims, and so, while supporting 9/11 First Reponders is hardly a partisan thing to do (even if Republicans like Tom Coburn made it partisan), I do welcome Stewart's aggressive foray into legislative politics. Without necessarily turning into an overt partisan, and without endangering his comedy (and his broad appeal across the left into the center, and especially with liberal-minded but independent young people), he should do more of it.

But the question is, is he, as no less an authority than the Times has suggested, the new Edward R. Murrow, the legendary journalist and CBS commentator who famously stood up to McCarthyism and, in the process, became the icon of journalism itself?

It's a silly question, in a way, even as it asks us to put Stewart into perspective, to figure out just what he's all about. No longer just a self-deprecating comedian with an obscure late-night cable faux news show appealing to collegiate stoners, Stewart has become a sort of icon himself, the essential progressive voice of the engaged but generally powerless, a voice speaking truth to political and media power, but doing so not as a member of the insider ranks, like Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, but as a justifiably cynical outsider pointing out the very absurdity of it all while holding those on the inside to account, catching them in their various foibles, sometimes criminal, often unethical, usually counter to the public good.

If he isn't quite Murrow, it's because he refuses to be that serious, because he remains a comedian above all, and because, honestly, Murrow was a man of his time and place. In today's media landscape, a Murrow just isn't possible, just as, say, a Cronkite isn't possible. The world is too fractured for such a singular giant. Now it's all about granular niches and multiple platforms, not overarching media figures wielding immense influence on a limited number of channels, the entire nation tuned in.

But that doesn't mean the comparison is without merit. Murrow was a man of exceptional determination and courage. Stewart is much less sure of himself, and much more of a funny man who thrives on being out there on the fringe, poking fun at the establishment, but his willingness to take on the establishment even as he and his fans are laughing at it suggests a courage that is sorely lacking in American society today, both in politics and in the media. He may not have the revolutionary aims of a Julian Assange, but, then, neither did Murrow. And like Murrow, what Stewart is ultimately fighting for is for America to live up to its professed values and principles. He doesn't go about it quite the same way Murrow did, but the similarities are there.

For more on this, see this fine piece by Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic, which has influenced much of what I've written here. Here's part of it:

Jon Stewart may or may not be the most important journalist of the 21th Century -- it's early still, plus he'd have to cop to the label and I'm not sure he would. But it should be clear from this episode, if it somehow weren't before, that Stewart (Murrow-like, you might say) wields enormous power and prestige through the medium of television (and the Internet). He showed it this fall with his well-attended Washington rally, he shows it each week with his ratings among younger viewers and the nation's political elite, and he clearly raised his game a notch with his searing light on how official Washington was screwing up the responders' health bill. I give credit to the Times and others for at least trying to cover that aspect of this story. The comparison to Murrow, which came off as facile in the Times piece, has some merit. It just wasn't explained well enough. Nor, alas, was the mainstream media's generally miserable failure -- also highlighted by Stewart -- in covering the 9/11 responders' legislation before Stewart's broadcasts. Stewart didn't just blast the Congress, remember, he blasted news organizations, too, for the latest example of their chronically short attention spans.

When Murrow took on Sen. Joseph McCarthy nearly half a century ago, he had far more to lose than Stewart did when he lobbied for the federal legislation. Murrow was standing up to bullies -- horrible, powerful bullies -- who might have ended his career and destroyed his network. By comparison, Stewart was merely speaking out against the way politics and journalism too often works in Washington. But both Murrow and Stewart dramatically changed public perceptions about a current event. Both men stuck their necks out. Both went first into a sort of no-man's-land. It is probably true that only Murrow in his time had the bona fides to stand up to McCarthy (and don't forget, Murrow waited years before doing so). But of all the media people who could have stood up in late 2010 for the brave, sick men and women who went into the rubble of September 11, 2001 only Stewart had both the will and the chops to do so in earnest. Does that make his courage any less impressive? Not in my book. Not when compared with so many other broadcasters and journalists who thought they had more important stories to file.

Courage in broadcasting, or in journalism in general, is not a zero sum game. Praising Stewart for his "mad as hell ain't gonna take it anymore" moment is no slight to Murrow or any other journalist who risks criticism and vitriol for speaking truth to power. Any comparison between the men diminishes neither. Let the historians and biographers correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Murrow would have applauded Stewart's role in redirecting public opinion back to some of the heroes who ran toward the rubble in Lower Manhattan in September 2001. And I believe Murrow would have endorsed Stewart's critical view of the media's role in the affair -- especially the navel-gazing that has occurred since the passage of the legislation. Murrow may have searched for light but he is known today for the passion, the heat, he brought to his best work. I believe history will judge Stewart similarly, in this instance and hopefully again in the future.

Hopefully indeed.

Just say Noh

By Capt. Fogg

When is a journalist not a journalist? It's a simple question with a very complicated answer and that answer has little to do with credentials or degrees. It can have nothing to do with whether the reporter reports the news or creates it from air like balloon animals at some kids' birthday party.

"Mr. Assange obviously has a particular political objective behind his activities, and I think that, among other things, disqualifies him as being considered a journalist."

said assistant Press Secretary Philip J. Crowley to assembled reporters at a December 2nd press conference. You'd expect gasps and guffaws and whispered comments like "what about Fox?" but I didn't hear any. Perhaps the disturbing idea of objective reporting was a touchy and disturbing subject for the assembled employees of corporate entertainment interests whose jobs depend on the proper slant and the ability to make headlines out of flimsy and innocuous or even non-existent words and deeds. No, says the political actor, the presidential mouthpiece, under US law, he's to be considered a "political actor."

Welcome to quantum politics, where things that are said and things that are appear and disappear like virtual particles in a vacuum; where things are sometimes their opposites and truth is relative and ephemeral.

So when political actor Glenn Beck gets teary eyed and hysterical about the proposed ability of the FDA to take poisonous, contaminated food off the shelves because if they can control what you eat, they can control your lives: so when worn out beauty queen and political actress Gretchen Carlson can pose as a news anchor and get her botoxed and painted face twisted around her rehearsed outrage that a year ago, Tulsa exercised our American freedom of religion and started calling its annual December parade a "holiday" parade, just what the hell is this journalism that it could include this foolishness but be contaminated by a hatred of secrecy and the objective of exposing a government that has villainously smiled and smiled and smiled at one lie after another while millions died in consequence.

So truth, as we can know it, is political since the concept resides in the heads of humans and not in the stones and gas and vacuum of the universe and no one can see the truth but through the filter of his mind. Just who then can we call a real journalist and why not then just make it up as we go along and accept it all as improvisational theater.

Too many people have compared it all to Kabuki, with it's exaggerated expressions and dramatizations, but it's really Bunraku, where puppets are manipulated about a darkling stage by shadowy figures dressed in black. Figures that the audience is trained not to notice.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Clean your own muddy house first, Mrs. Palin

By Carl 

Item: Palin says she will "clean up" journalism

Pardon me for a second, k?

*smirk* *grin* *hand to mouth* *giggle*

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!! 

Ok, now that I got that out of my system...

Here's the funiest bit: 

I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting. I will speak to reporters who still understand that cornerstone of our democracy, that expectation that the public has for truth to be reported. And then we get to decide our own opinion based on the facts reported to us.

"And I can see Russia from my front porch!"

Now, here we have Sarah Palin. She attended five colleges to get that "degree" in communications, something they ought to revoke retroactively given her complete inability to construct a sentence that doesn't contain either a syntatical error or a neologism that, well, reeks of plagiarism.

We have Sarah "Half-Term" Palin. We have a mother who isn't, a governor who isn't, and a college graduate who barely is. And if rumour is accurate, we have a wife who isn't.

I don't expect scintillating conversation from a political figure, but it would be nice if I could read a speech without Google Translate, or the same feeling I get trying to understand a credit card agreement.

If she truly understood reporting, the way she claims to, then Katie Couric would have been praised by Palin, instead of basically called a heartless bitch, saying she will not speak to Couric again, calling her "biased" and won't "waste my time."

Because, you know, Couric dared be a journalist! OMG! Imagine! 

Her reasons?

She added: "So a journalist, a reporter who is so biased and will, no doubt, spin and gin up whatever it is that I have to say to create controversy, I swear to you, I will not my waste my time with her. Or him."

Irony:

In an interview later tonight on Fox News... 

Where, of course, she's an analyst. 

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.) 

Keith Olbermann and the tone of political debate in America

By R.K. Barry

On November 9th, Keith Olbermann returned to the air after having gotten his knuckles rapped by MSNBC executives for making political donations to three Democratic candidates. They claimed he violated network guidelines. He claimed this prohibition was not in his contract and he was not aware of it.

Whatever.

What's interesting here is that prohibiting journalists from engaging in political activity is usually about maintaining at least the appearance of objectivity. Keith Olbermann? Really? Objectivity? Ummm. No.

Journalism has changed over the past little while. The number of public affairs programs with hosts who are rabidly partisan is growing at a prodigious rate. The idea that these folks not support candidates in order to protect their case for objectivity is a little odd. They have no case for objectivity, whatever that means.

But that doesn't mean that they are absolved of the responsibility of being fair and accurate in their work as political commentators. The best we can ever do is to make a good case for what we believe while citing fact that we hope will support our views. As long as we are then open to the possibility that we can be shown wrong by the preponderance of contrary evidence, we might be able to say that we have acquitted ourselves well.

The epistemologists in the room would likely quibble with the looseness of my terminology, but I think we all know what being open to honest argument means.

I don't think the good folks at MSNBC are without their faults on this score, but I do think by and large they put the cast of characters at Fox News to shame. Olbermann, Maddow, and Schultz are on the left; O'Reilly, Beck, and Hannity are on the right. Do I really think that these respective teams are in any way similar in the way that they do business on the scale of being fair and accurate and open to legitimate argument. No, I don't.

One last shout out to Jon Stewart, whom, of course, we all love: This is why Fox News and MSNBC are not the same.

As a lefty, I like to say that I have had many energetic political discussions with bright and decent individuals who describe themselves as politically conservative. These discussions have been marked by openness and honestly and a mutual interest in the truth. This means I know it's possible.

No, Olbermann is not "objective" in his politics. He has a point of view. But that doesn't mean he is unaware of the difference between integrity and bullshit. Strong beliefs are not what is destroying the tone of debate in America. Those who believe they bear no responsibility for proving the truth of their arguments are to blame.

I'm glad Olbermann is back and as feisty as ever.

The Front Page

By Distributorcap

Which came first -- journalists turning into to a bunch of sideshow barkers because the only thing Americans want is to be entertained or Americans losing any semblance of reality because the once noble profession of journalism has turned into nothing more than a conduit to sell Tide and Toyotas?

Once thought of as the guardians of democracy, equality, fairness, checks and balance (with figures like Cronkite, Murrow, Rice, Pyle, Bourke-White, Pulitzer), the fourth estate has (d)evolved into a bunch of bobble-headed bimbos reading propaganda off a TelePrompTer on Fox News. And if they are not reading someone else's agenda -- you have snake oil salesman like Glenn Beck -- who claim they aren't journalists -- spewing hate and lies under the cover of a misnomer called Fox News.

Journalism has a long and storied tradition in the United States. The first newspaper published in the Colonies was Publick Occurences in 1690. Today there are thousands of outlets for journalists - blogs, the tubes of the internets, radio, ever-struggling print newspapesr and the most influential of them all -- still -- television. One of the primary reasons this country has been able to flourish and develop far and above other societies has been the presence of a strong, accountable and influential press.

For a minute let's just forget coverage of business, sports, humanities, international, education, health, science, arts, and food as part of the generic heading of news. The credibility and quality of content for these particular subjects (as well as many others) has declined dramatically in an age of infinite choice and cannibalized audiences. But none of those topics compare to the absolute trashing and degraded treatment that political and government coverage has taken.

What was once one of the nation's strongest checks on power and corruption in the world's freest democracy, journalism has morphed into a lazy man's sport of quoting polls, hawking books, promoting agendas and handicapping horse races -- races that might even be years in the future.

Turn into any of the punditoria shows for any amount of time and you are sure to be a witness to the Road Map to 2012. It is over two years until the next presidential election -- and already every single journalistpundit has been giving odds and establishing strategies for the people they have deemed most likely to.

No matter how far and fast the economy is collapsing, no matter how many people are out of work, no matter how many bridges collapse, and no matter how many people cannot afford health care - there is never enough time to report about the comings and goings of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Bobby Jindal, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, and now Joe "the Senator" Miller. Talking about how these guys can (or will) win is fun and exciting. Talking about kids with cancer and people being thrown out of their houses is boring and depressing.

Fun and exciting sell Tide and Toyotas. Boring and depressing make people turn the channel.

I guess if you have to compete with American Idol, The Bachelor, The Real World, Project Runway, Cupcake Wars or a real housewife for those limited and valuable eyeballs -- the only way to get attention is to make journalism more like a combination of The Gong Show and the $1.98 Beauty Show. Quality is no longer job one. Getting Jaye P. Morgan or Rip Taylor to laugh their asses off is.

Sarah Palin and her descamisados are not news -- they are a cult void of ideas and no thought. The Palinistas derive their cohesiveness from hate and subliminal racism. The fact that Palin may be and intellectual zero and one of the stupidest pieces of shit to ever enter this kabuki theater matters little to "news" organizations, Sarah Palin generates ratings. Whether it is her looks, her lunacy or her lack of intelligence -- showing that farbissenah punim on the teevee sells. When something sells it is the media's best interest to keep that hawker in full public view. The Teabaggers are not a true political movement - they are a bunch of people united by their anger and empty rhetoric towards things they simply do not comprehend or realize are important and necessary to their own lives. The fact that they are propped up by a bunch of rich businessmen who do have a vested interest in changing the status quo again does not matter to "news" organizations. What matters is they yell loud enough and have enough offensive signs. And people tune in.

Being both groups are easy generators of eyeballs, the media covers them with the fervor of real news instead of digging for the empty shell of real ideas and political management.

The failure for the press to expose the vacuous nature of Palin and the Teabaggers is only one aspect of political journalism that has harmed American society. Look at all the current candidates who refuse to debate in public (Steve King and Jan Brewer to name two), who refuse to be interviewed by any medium other than Fox News (Rand Paul and Sharron Angel), and will only appear in front of friendly and pre-selected audiences. Some sort of unwritten code in American political journalism has been permanently broken. And the press seems at a loss as to what to do about it.

And how have the "real" journalists handle this new reality - instead of calling out Brewer, Palin and Paul - they cover Lindsay Lohan and Tiger Woods and call it journalism.  Oh and read press releases from the candidates as if they are facts.

The politicians have beaten the journalists at their own game -- the politicians know it, the public knows it -- only the journalists haven't quite figured it out. Journalists used to be savvy about their strategies and smart about their tactics when they went looking for the story. The victory was uncovering the truth, not selling the most Toyotas. Today people like Palin, Romney, Paul, Rubio, King, Boner, and McConnell have been taught to master anti-journalism skills and make the press work for them. They have been able to stack the deck and play the journalists to their advantage.

With the fourth estate having little teeth, smart politicians (or politicians with smart advisors) have become blatant in their contempt and disregard for the press. They can (and will) lie their asses off knowing there will simply be no accountability anymore. These politicians feel empowered by the timidity of the press. They don't have to debate, they don't have to put themselves through any tough questioning, they don't even have to have any ideas. They just have to act like the Unknown Comic or Gene Gene the Dancing Machine from The Gong Show and they get their 15 minutes over and over and over again.

And the saddest part is that much of the country welcomes, rather than mourns, the loss of something so critical to our progress.

Fact checking a Jones Act wingnut

By Creature

More like this:



As Digby said: "See, it's really not that hard."

Waterboarding is torture except when the U.S. government says it isn't and The New York Times and other major newspapers obediently stop calling it torture

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm a day late getting to this -- thanks, Canada Day! -- but an extremely important study was released the other day showing that the mainstream media, including large outlets like The New York Times, essentially caved in to the government, that is, to the Bush-Cheney administration, when it came to reporting on waterboarding as torture:

Is waterboarding torture? If you picked up a major U.S. newspaper before 2004, the answer would likely be yes, according to a new Harvard University study.

But in the post-9/11 world, when the practice of immobilizing and virtually drowning detainees became a politically charged issue, that straightforward definition grew murky. The study, conducted by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, examined coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and found a noticeable shift in language concerning waterboarding.

"From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture," the study noted. But the study found that things changed in the years when "war on terror" became part of the American lexicon.

The New York Times defined waterboarding as torture, or effectively implied that it was, 81.5 percent of the time in articles until 2004, the study found. But during 2002-2008 — when the George W. Bush White House made a concerted effort to normalize harsh interrogation methods for use on terror detainees — the Times "called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles." That’s 1.4 percent of the time.

The study also noted a disparity in how newspapers defined waterboarding when the United States employed the practice versus its use by other nations — in the latter instance, newspapers more readily called the practice torture.

So much, it would seem, for journalistic independence and integrity -- to the extent that the media had much left anyway. Given how the media establishment operates, after all, this is hardly all that surprising.

Andrew Sullivan is justifiably furious: 

But it is not an opinion that waterboarding is torture; it is a fact, recognized by everyone on the planet as such - and by the NYT in its news pages as such - for centuries. What we have here is an admission that the NYT did change its own established position to accommodate the Cheneyite right.

So their journalism is dictated by whatever any government says. In any dispute, their view is not: what is true? But: how can we preserve our access to the political right and not lose pro-torture readers? If you want a locus classicus for why the legacy media has collapsed, look no further.

*****

This is not editing. It is surrender. It is not journalism; it is acquiescence to propaganda. It strikes me as much more egregious a failing than, say, the Jayson Blair scandal. Because it reaches to the very top, was a conscious decision and reveals the empty moral center in the most important newspaper in the country.

When historians look back and try to understand how the US came to be a country that legitimizes torture, the New York Times will be seen to have played an important role in euphemizing it, enabling it, and entrenching it. The evidence shows conclusively that there is not a shred of argument behind the dramatic shift in 2002 - just plain cowardice.

In my view, the people who made that decision should resign. They have revealed that they are nothing but straws in the wind - in a time when moral clarity and courage were most needed.

Extremely well put. And I agree.

For more, see Steve Benen and, of course, Glenn Greenwald, who had a fantastic post on Wednesday responding to the study. As he correctly points out, such "compliant behavior makes overtly state-controlled media unnecessary."

It's great, and essential to any liberal democracy, to have freedom of the press. But what if the press doesn't want to be free?

Walter Cronkite -- Congruence

By Carol Gee

Walter Cronkite passed away on Friday. The voice of the nation for so many years was 92 years old. From the time he was named the "anchor" of the CBS evening news program, he began to build a reputation for honesty and integrity than set a standard for all the major news anchors who were to follow in his footsteps.

His legacy for me was one of congruence. For decades his reports on so many of the key events here and around the world turned out to be congruent with the eventual meaning we all took to be the core significance of the most important events. In both emotional tone and the facts, his reporting was in agreement and coincided with that of most of the rest of us.

As a kid from the country in Wyoming, I did not experience television until I moved to Texas as a nursing student in 1955. From my first black and white, small screen television viewing I was hooked. And I was always drawn to the hard news. Like millions of others I wanted to know what was happening. I has a curiosity and a need to know, so I always watched the evening news. My choices were NBC and CBS. NBC got on the list because that was the network that would come in on our radio growing up. But CBS quickly became a close second as I listened to Edward R. Murrow, and then watched, his weekly broadcast.

Walter Cronkite succeeded Murrow. The managing editor of his own program, he was trained as a print journalist and comfortable on camera, a dynamite combination. And we soon found that he could tell us what was happening in ways that were congruent, clear, unbiased, simple and believable.

It was Walter Cronkite who told me that John F. Kennedy was dead, and showed his own devastated feelings silently and without shame. He was openly angry when his news crewmen were roughed up on the floor of a Democratic Convention in the searing sixties. He went to Vietnam and said out loud the truth of that awful war. President Lyndon Johnson was convinced of the reality of his lost leadership by that broadcast. Walter Cronkite went to the moon's dusty surface with the astronauts with the rest of us. He gaged it as a most significant event for humankind. But he missed by just a few days the 40th anniversary celebration of the moon landing that will be coming up on Monday. I am moved by the congruence of that. Last night the new NASA administrator, Charles Bolden released a lovely and poetic tribute to Walter Cronkite, noting that it was Walter Cronkite who inspired him to want to become an astronaut so many years ago. And I am moved by the congruence of that, as well.

Walter Cronkite, according to a contemporary, was not happy about having to retire. But he did it without public complaint. Acclaimed by most everyone, he popped up every now and then until he was well up in years. He was a sailor and loved to have the wind at his back and the bow of his craft splitting the waves. He lost his beloved wife, Betsy a few years ago. He was one of a kind and I feel grateful that I was able to find much of my truth from his take on the significance of all those momentous life changing events.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Tom Friedman redux

By Carol Gee

Over the past years of my primary home, the South by Southwest blog, the most popular post I have ever written was about Thomas Friedman's "flat world," dated 7/19/05. In all likelihood, it is not because it was a brilliant post, but because the first line of it reads like a gold mine for college students with an assignment due. To quote:

Here's your cliff notes . . .
Thomas Friedman addressed the National Governors Association in Des Moines, Iowa recently. In an animated presentation, he talked about his thesis that "The World is Flat." (Amazon.com reviews his book here). See also "Valin"'s long post and comments following it.

Here are some of the main points and themes that I took from watching his keynote speech to the assembled governors, broadcast on C-Span.

I have been meaning to revisit this most influential author, and today is the day based on regular contributor betmo's sending me this link from The Agonist: "There will be no reboot."* The post had its genesis in Friedman's latest op-ed piece in the 12/23 NYT, in which he opined that it is "Time to Reboot America." Bemoaning the GM bailout, Friedman compared his favorable technological experience on a Far East trip, with his unpleasant recent homecoming to an aging and dysfunctional U.S. infrastructure. To quote:

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

. . . John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.

How to peg Friedman's politics? He has written a number of columns supportive of President-elect Obama, one this month speculating that Obama might just be able to fetch a success from the war in Iraq. Opinion about Friedman's stripe varies wildly:

• "Thomas Friedman's Socialist America" is posted at New York Young Republican Record.


• David Sirota, writing in 2006 at The Huffington Post, labels him contemptuously as a "pompous and grandiloquent" friend to rich elites.


• Reviewing Friedman's newest book, titled, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," NPR labeled his as a revolutionary opting for "geo-greenism." That sounds positively scary.


• Wikipedia, naturally, has a thorough exploration of the three-time Pulitzer Prize winning author, noting that he originally supported the invasion of Iraq, but "later became an outspoken critic of the war and the Bush administration."

Now, what do I really think? I am ambivalent. Friedman fancies himself as a world-class guru on the Middle East, and incidentally, the Entire World. He can be smug during personal appearances on television. But he is due much credit for articulating the flat world concept that explains globalization in a way that truly fits for me. And his television series on the history and politics of the Middle East was foundational to my understanding of the region. What is your take on Tom Friedman?

Hat Tip Key: Regular contributors of links to leads are "betmo"* and Jon#.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Best Photo Journalism of 2008

Exploring rights and wrongs

By Carol Gee

Knowing the difference between right and wrong . . . is at times a murky business. It is not always easy to see what is beneath the surface of reality.

Fallout the so-called "war on terror" -- Telecommunications companies achieved immunity from lawsuits in the latest Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act revision. And insurance companies are exploiting terrorism fears as they set museum insurance rates. These items from my CQ Behind the Lines free e-mail newsletter, by David C. Morrison, of 8/15/08:

State and local: . . Vermont’s two-year investigation into allegations that telecoms released customer data to NSA snoops appears to be drawing to a close, The Barre Times Argus tells.

Kulture Kanyon: . . Since terror fears spiked seven years ago, insurance hikes have “threatened to strangle museums’ ability to present important art to the public,” a curator tells the L.A. Times’ Mike Boehm

"This is so wrong," -- is the headline about this item from the NYT in, "Police State USA" at Yes, I take it personally. My blog friend, "betmo's" link* describes how a man got caught up in an immigration sweep, was shuttled from facility to facility, and then died due to failure to receive even minimal medical care. The map at this site is also very revealing. To quote:

. . . fifteen years of an exemplary life in the U.S. only to get thrown into a detention center. . . detention watch network has put together this handy map...

Hate speech is flat wrong -- Conservatives have long called for the heads of prominent liberals. Looks like they got their wish. This story came from my friend Jon. It was posted by Steven D. at AlterNet, and titled, "The Tragic Arkansas Shooting and Conservative Hate Speech," taken from the Booman Tribune, August 14, 2008. To quote:

. . . there was no personal connection between the shooter and Bill Gwatney, and apparently there wasn't one. Instead, there are some initial eerie similarities between the shooter Timothy Dale Johnson, and the man who massacred members of the Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee last month. Both, for example had just lost their jobs, and both were very, very angry about that fact

. . . It's past time for members of the the right wing wurlitzer to apologize for their hate speech and to renounce any further use of the language of extermination with respect to their political, religious and ideological adversaries, as well as their demonization of minorities.

Stealing the words of another to use as one's own is wrong. Jody Rosen posted an article* "Dude, You Stole My Article" -- How I investigated a suspicious alt weekly -- at Slate Magazine on Aug. 6, 2008, about someone at a Texas newspaper, The Bulletin, who plagiarized an article about Jimmy Buffett.

What is wrong with this picture, if anything? This item* came from World Changing: "Virtual Transgender Suit, Avatar Termination and Other Online World Tales," by Regine Debatty, August 15, 2008. To quote:

You might remember that a year ago Marc Owens designed the Avatar Machine, a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.

. . . A study by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University has found that 54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females "gender swap"--or create online personas of their opposite sex.

. . . Another of Owens' projects, Sabre & Mace - Second Death, was concerned more specifically with the online environment Second Life.

Collaborating with Tony Mullin, he created SABRE & MACE, a company that offers virtual characters the opportunity to experience death as a way to close their user account permanently. The project examines the notion of feeling sentimental toward a virtual character and examines the link between sentimentality and tangibility.

The ability to become invisible likely would never be allowed by our government's security apparatus. Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the FBI, the National Security Agency and many other government entities all want their full range of rights to search for terrorists and other suspicious people. This intriguing little blurb* is from The Raw Story, "Invisibility Cloak Now Within Sight: Scientists," 8/11/08. To quote:

The age-old fantasy of making yourself invisible has taken a step toward reality, with scientists saying they have created three-dimensional materials that can bend visible light.

*Thanks for these links from "betmo," who writes life's journey.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Investigating in the Middle East

By Carol Gee

Difficult to discover -- It is a long way from the United States to the Middle East. The Middle East can be a very dangerous place for fact-finders. Fortunately for us, investigative journalists persist in trying to ascertain what is actually happening in the region.

These authors did considerable investigation resulting in several contrasting elements -- wonderfully personal stories of soldiers and their families, detailed facts and figures about the war termed Operation Enduring Freedom, and trends in the current Afghan war situation. The story is worth reading for a number of reasons. "500: Deadly U.S. Milestone in Afghan War," is the sad Memeorandum headline from the New York Times. To quote from the article (By KIRK SEMPLE and ANDREW W. LEHREN. Published: August 6, 2008):

. . . in June, the war in Afghanistan roared back into public view when American deaths from hostilities exceeded those in Iraq. In the face of an expanding threat from the Taliban, the conflict is becoming deadlier and much more violent for American troops, who three weeks ago reached their highest deployment levels ever, at 36,000.

June was the second deadliest month for the military in Afghanistan since the war began, with 23 American deaths from hostilities, compared with 22 in Iraq. July was less deadly, with 20 deaths, compared with six in Iraq. On July 22, nearly seven years after the conflict began on Oct. 7, 2001, the United States lost its 500th soldier in the Afghanistan war.

Trusted Middle East expert, Juan Cole of Informed Comment has been investigating the latest news from the region and gives us some of his useful (and alarming) discovery and analysis. The Iraqi Parliament adjourned for several weeks with "no provincial election law." The Arabs are threatening violence over the issue of Kirkuk. Quoting further,

The sticking point was finding an acceptable formula for holding the elections in the mixed province of Kirkuk, which is being fought over by Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs. The failure to pass the law makes it virtually impossible to hold provincial elections in 2008.

. . . Even more alarming than the Iraqi parliament's inability to arrange for provincial elections to be held over 2 years after they were first scheduled is the reason for the failure. The debate on provincial elections has revealed that the Kirkuk dispute is a volcano about to blow, and that ordinary liberal institutions of debate and compromise seem helpless before the ethno-nationalist passions boiling there. Resolving Kirkuk is not only key to social peace in northern Iraq but also in the entire eastern Mediterranean.

"State IG to probe a deal between a Texas oil firm and Iraqi Kurds," is an article taken from TPM Muckraker, known for its investigative journalism. The story goes on to quote the details of Texas' Hunt Oil Company's deal with the Kurds from the New York Times. To quote the opening :

Publicly, the U.S. State Department said it was discouraging U.S. oil companies from forging deals with Iraqi Kurds last year.

But privately, Bush administration officials may have sent different signals.

Now the State Department's Inspector General has launched an investigation into what exactly was said to whom.

Adding unique insight into a high profile expose' -- Also from Informed Comment comes additional details from Professor Cole regarding the Ron Suskind book, "The Way of the World." The book's author discloses further details about an allegedly forged Abu Nidal letter used to make the case for the war in Iraq. Cole's post is particularly valuable as it brings in facts usually known principally in the ME region.

McClatchy has the best -- Frequently Professor Cole finishes one of his posts with a summary of the latest war facts and figures taken from McClatchy's coverage. McClatchy Newspapers carries an excellent in-depth study (8 months) of the Guantanamo Bay prison entitled, "Guantanamo: Beyond the Law." (Link to Table of Contents). Before you read the entire series, I recommend Juan Cole's (6/18/08) post, "The Great Torture Scandal."

Today's post begins in Afghanistan, moves to northern Iraq, and ends in Guantanamo, Cuba, a shameful stand-in for the war-zones, and intimately connected to the Middle East. Kudos to Kirk Semple, Andrew Lehren, Juan Cole, and to The New York Times and McClatchy Newspapers, for upholding investigations it will take years to complete.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)