12/27/11
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4451
This year has given us simply too many worthy contenders for FAIR's annual P.U.-litzers--recognizing the stinkiest journalism of the year. A big part of the problem was that so many outlets were striving to distinguish themselves with especially awful coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. So to note those lowlights, we bring you a special installment of P.U.-litzers: The OWS edition.
--Early Warning System Award: CNN's Wolf Blitzer
On September 19: "Protests here in New York on Wall Street entering a third day. Should New Yorkers be worried at all about what's going on?"
--We Could Do It Better Award: New York Times' Ginia Bellafante
Under the headline "Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim" (9/23/11), Bellafante turned in the quintessential corporate media dismissal of progressive protests. The reporter discovered "a default ambassador in a half-naked woman...with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968."
The movement's cause "was virtually impossible to decipher," Bellafante complained, slamming [it] for "lack of cohesion and its apparent wish to pantomime progressivism rather than practice it knowledgeably." And who has more knowledge about grassroots progressive activism than the New York Times.
--What's News Award: NPR's Dick Meyer; Washington Post
Asked to explain NPR's non-coverage of OWS, executive editor Meyer said (NPR.org, 9/26/11): "The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective."
And the massive demonstrations around the world October 15th made it onto the front page of the next day's Washington Post--in the form of a lower right-hand corner blurb approximately one column inch long, directing people to page A20 to find news about protests in "more than 900 cities in Europe, Africa and Asia."
--Channeling Glenn Beck Award: Reuters
Under the headline (10/13/11) "Who's Behind the Wall Street Protests," the news agency provided an answer straight from one of Glenn Beck's conspiratorial chalk boards:
One name that keeps coming up is investor George Soros, who in September debuted in the top 10 list of wealthiest Americans. Conservative critics contend the movement is a Trojan horse for a secret Soros agenda.
Who exactly is bringing up Soros' name? Reuters names one slightly less than credible source: right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh. But Reuters did its own digging, going on to suggest "indirect financial links" between Soros and the group Adbusters, which issued the original call for the Occupy protest. The links were mostly figments of the right-wing imagination, as even some Reuters reporters pointed out. Reuters eventually changed the headline to "Soros: Not a Funder of Wall Street Protests."
--The Suites to the Streets Award: New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin
The Times star business writer (10/4/11) did little to dispel critics who say he's too close to his Wall Street sources by admitting that he checked out the protests--after a banker told him to:
I had gone down to Zuccotti Park to see the activist movement firsthand after getting a call from the chief executive of a major bank last week, before nearly 700 people were arrested over the weekend during a demonstration on the Brooklyn Bridge.
"Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?" the CEO asked me. I didn't have an answer. "We're trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all of this," he continued, clearly concerned. "Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?"
As I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don't have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn’t seem like a brutal group--at least not yet.
--Those Facts Are Biased Award: WNYC's Takeaway
Web producer Caitlin Curran was photographed at an OWS protest holding a sign that said this:
It's wrong to create a mortgage-backed security filled with loans you know are going to fail so that you can sell it to a client who isn't aware that you sabotaged it by intentionally picking the misleadingly rated loans most likely to be defaulted upon.
Curran was promptly fired by the New York public radio station for her flagrant violation of journalistic objectivity. Who could trust a journalist who took a far-out radical position like that?
--Timeless Cliches Award: Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer
"Starbucks-sipping, Levi's-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters denounce corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs," wrote Post columnist Krauthammer (10/14/11), maligning the protesters as "indigant indolents saddled with their $50,000 student loans and English degrees" whose policy proposal boils down to "eat the rich."
--We Smell a Rat Award: Washington Post
November 16: "Is this an occupation or an infestation?"
--Fact Check Failure Award: CNN's Erin Burnett
New CNN host Burnett decided on her debut program (10/3/11) to fact check the Occupy Wall Street protests. Declaring that that the protesters "did not know" why they were there, adding that "it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama." Burnett quizzed one protester: "So do you know that taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout?" Burnett assured viewers this was true--"right now to the tune of $10 billion.... This was the big issue, so we solved it."
A few problems: The TARP bailout is not "the big issue" for OWS, and it's odd to think that people should feel good that big banks were about to turn low-interest government loans into profits. And the total cost of the various bank rescue policies run into the trillions of dollars (Bloomberg News, 8/22/11). But, yes, those protesters sure don't know what they're talking about.
--Tabloid-Style Dignity Award: New York Post
The front page of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post (11/4/11), urging a crackdown on Occupy Wall Street, proclaimed: "Enough! Mr. Mayor, It Is Time to Reclaim Zuccotti Park--and New York's Dignity." This on the same front page that recently declared (8/10/11), "Crazy Stox Like a Hooker’s Drawers--Up, Down, Up." Another cover (10/27/09) photoshopped a skirt onto a Phillies baseball player with a line about the "Frillies" coming to town. And who could forget the Iraq War classic (2/14/03), "UN Meets: Weasels to Hear New Iraq Evidence," with animal heads superimposed onto the representatives from France and Germany? That's the New York Post for you: Always dignified.
--Clueless and Repugnant Award: Washington Post's Richard Cohen
After the Post columnist visited the New York protests, he wrote a column (10/24/11) defending the group against bogus charges of anti-Semitism. But he had plenty of other things to say about OWS. To Cohen, "their slogans suggest a tired socialism that is as repugnant to me as the felonious capitalism that produced the mortgage bubble and the impoverishment of millions of Americans." Cohen was just getting warmed up. The protests are "a destination for the aimless...a tourist attraction with the usual vendors, the usual zaftig young women doing the usual arrhythmic dance, somehow missing the beat of many drums."
Occupy Wall Street is "an incoherent articulation of anger...above all, a conspiracy to have left-leaning writers make jackasses of themselves by imparting grave and grand meaning to what is little more than a vast sleepover." But no anti-Semitism.
Showing posts with label FAIR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FAIR. Show all posts
Friday, January 6, 2012
Sunday, October 9, 2011
CNN's Factcheck Failure on Occupy Wall Street
10/4/11
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4408
Former CNBC reporter Erin Burnett's CNN show OutFront debuted Monday night (10/3/11) with a failed attempt to factcheck the Occupy Wall Street protests.
The show kicked off with Burnett explaining that she "went to Wall Street today to see those protests for myself. I saw dancing, bongo drums, even a clown.... I asked several protesters what it was that they wanted. Now, they did not know.... They did know what they don't want."
Burnett added that "it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama."
That segued into an interview with center-right CNN pundit John Avlon, a former speechwriter for Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Avlon dismissed the protests ("It's tough to get your demands taken seriously dressed when you're dressed as a zombie"), adding that "conservative populism has always played a major role in American politics. Liberal populist marches like this tend to alienate more people than they attract."
After that discussion, Burnett attempted to set the protesters straight on the facts. As she put it: "What are they protesting? Nobody seems to know. So, this afternoon, we went to Wall Street to find out."
Burnett quizzed one protester: "So do you know that taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout?" When he says that he was unaware of this, Burnett insists it is true-- and goes on to argue that it basically negates the whole point of the protest:
That's all it would take to put an end to the unrest? Well, as promised, we did go double-check the numbers on the bank bailout, and this is what we found. Yes, the bank bailouts made money for American taxpayers, right now to the tune of $10 billion, anticipated that it will be $20 billion. Those are seriously the numbers. This was the big issue, so we solved it.
The TARP program is not, in fact, the "big issue" of the Occupy Wall Street movement; the concerns about inequality and lack of democracy go far deeper than that. When the Wall Street bailouts are discussed by protesters, the point they seem to be making about it is that banks benefited from generous bailouts that the vast majority of Americans would never enjoy. (As one popular chant puts it: "Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!")
And the fact that the loans were repaid does not mean that they were not a subsidy to the banking industry. How much would it have cost the banks to get the money they needed to survive from private sources? The difference between those terms and what the government actually charged was a gift to the bankers--one that will never be paid back.
The assumption that society as a whole benefited from helping out the banks is debatable, though you rarely if ever see it debated in corporate media (Extra!, 10/10). As economist Dean Baker wrote (9/20/10):
We are also supposed to feel good that the vast majority of the TARP money was repaid. This is another effort to prey on the public's ignorance. Had it not been for the bailout, most of the major center banks would have been wiped out. This would have destroyed the fortunes of their shareholders, many of their creditors, and their top executives. This would have been a massive redistribution to the rest of society--their loss is our gain.
And the Wall Street bailouts are about far more than TARP. As Bloomberg News recently reported (8/22/11), Federal Reserve lending programs to the banking industry topped $1.2 trillion.
These government policies went a long way towards protecting the interests of Wall Street giants. Working people got very little, and the unemployment and foreclosure crises continue to wreak considerable damage on the economy. This is why people are protesting.
The economists and analysts who have criticized these policies could explain this to Erin Burnett's audience. MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, for instance, interviewed Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz last night (10/3/11) after he made an appearance at the protests.
Burnett used to work for the same financial companies that profited from the bailouts--Goldman Sachs, Citigroup--and she is engaged to be married to a Citigroup executive (Business Insider, 9/30/11). Burnett's journalistic career includes plenty of attempts to promote Wall Street interests, earning her praise from the likes of Rush Limbaugh (FAIR Blog, 10/3/11). She even tried to defend Wall Street giants from criticism over using TARP funds to pay giant bonuses (FAIR Blog, 2/3/09).
If CNN is interested in factchecking claims about Wall Street, they might want to start by taking a look at those made by their new host. At the very least, the show should invite the economists and policy experts who could set the record straight.
ACTION:
Please tell CNN's OutFront that Erin Burnett's factcheck of Occupy Wall Street needs factchecking.
CONTACT:
CNN OutFront
Comment Form:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/show/?s=erinburnettoutfront&hdln=2
You can also send your comments to the show on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/OutFrontCNN
And on Twitter:
@ErinBurnettCNN
@OutFrontCNN
Please post a copy of your letter on the FAIR Blog.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4408
Former CNBC reporter Erin Burnett's CNN show OutFront debuted Monday night (10/3/11) with a failed attempt to factcheck the Occupy Wall Street protests.
The show kicked off with Burnett explaining that she "went to Wall Street today to see those protests for myself. I saw dancing, bongo drums, even a clown.... I asked several protesters what it was that they wanted. Now, they did not know.... They did know what they don't want."
Burnett added that "it seems like people want a messiah leader, just like they did when they anointed Barack Obama."
That segued into an interview with center-right CNN pundit John Avlon, a former speechwriter for Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Avlon dismissed the protests ("It's tough to get your demands taken seriously dressed when you're dressed as a zombie"), adding that "conservative populism has always played a major role in American politics. Liberal populist marches like this tend to alienate more people than they attract."
After that discussion, Burnett attempted to set the protesters straight on the facts. As she put it: "What are they protesting? Nobody seems to know. So, this afternoon, we went to Wall Street to find out."
Burnett quizzed one protester: "So do you know that taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout?" When he says that he was unaware of this, Burnett insists it is true-- and goes on to argue that it basically negates the whole point of the protest:
That's all it would take to put an end to the unrest? Well, as promised, we did go double-check the numbers on the bank bailout, and this is what we found. Yes, the bank bailouts made money for American taxpayers, right now to the tune of $10 billion, anticipated that it will be $20 billion. Those are seriously the numbers. This was the big issue, so we solved it.
The TARP program is not, in fact, the "big issue" of the Occupy Wall Street movement; the concerns about inequality and lack of democracy go far deeper than that. When the Wall Street bailouts are discussed by protesters, the point they seem to be making about it is that banks benefited from generous bailouts that the vast majority of Americans would never enjoy. (As one popular chant puts it: "Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!")
And the fact that the loans were repaid does not mean that they were not a subsidy to the banking industry. How much would it have cost the banks to get the money they needed to survive from private sources? The difference between those terms and what the government actually charged was a gift to the bankers--one that will never be paid back.
The assumption that society as a whole benefited from helping out the banks is debatable, though you rarely if ever see it debated in corporate media (Extra!, 10/10). As economist Dean Baker wrote (9/20/10):
We are also supposed to feel good that the vast majority of the TARP money was repaid. This is another effort to prey on the public's ignorance. Had it not been for the bailout, most of the major center banks would have been wiped out. This would have destroyed the fortunes of their shareholders, many of their creditors, and their top executives. This would have been a massive redistribution to the rest of society--their loss is our gain.
And the Wall Street bailouts are about far more than TARP. As Bloomberg News recently reported (8/22/11), Federal Reserve lending programs to the banking industry topped $1.2 trillion.
These government policies went a long way towards protecting the interests of Wall Street giants. Working people got very little, and the unemployment and foreclosure crises continue to wreak considerable damage on the economy. This is why people are protesting.
The economists and analysts who have criticized these policies could explain this to Erin Burnett's audience. MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell, for instance, interviewed Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz last night (10/3/11) after he made an appearance at the protests.
Burnett used to work for the same financial companies that profited from the bailouts--Goldman Sachs, Citigroup--and she is engaged to be married to a Citigroup executive (Business Insider, 9/30/11). Burnett's journalistic career includes plenty of attempts to promote Wall Street interests, earning her praise from the likes of Rush Limbaugh (FAIR Blog, 10/3/11). She even tried to defend Wall Street giants from criticism over using TARP funds to pay giant bonuses (FAIR Blog, 2/3/09).
If CNN is interested in factchecking claims about Wall Street, they might want to start by taking a look at those made by their new host. At the very least, the show should invite the economists and policy experts who could set the record straight.
ACTION:
Please tell CNN's OutFront that Erin Burnett's factcheck of Occupy Wall Street needs factchecking.
CONTACT:
CNN OutFront
Comment Form:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/show/?s=erinburnettoutfront&hdln=2
You can also send your comments to the show on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/OutFrontCNN
And on Twitter:
@ErinBurnettCNN
@OutFrontCNN
Please post a copy of your letter on the FAIR Blog.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
A Bloody Media Mirror
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1129
A Bloody Media Mirror
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 07/06/2007
by Norman Solomon
Many of America's most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than 4 years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins.
The media watch group FAIR (where I'm an associate) has performed a public service in the latest edition of its magazine Extra. The organization's activism director, Peter Hart, drew on FAIR's extensive research to assemble a sample of notable quotations from media cheerleading for the Iraq invasion.
One of the earliest quotes to merit special attention came from ace New York Times reporter -- and chronic Pentagon promoter -- Michael Gordon. In a CNN appearance on March 25, 2003, just a few days into the invasion, Gordon gave his easy blessing to the invaders' bombing of Iraqi TV.
Gordon cited "what I've seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein presenting propaganda to his people and showing off the Apache helicopter and claiming a farmer shot it down and trying to persuade his own public that he was really in charge, when we're trying to send the exact opposite message" -- and so, the Times reporter went on, Iraqi TV was "an appropriate target."
Let's unpack Gordon's rationale for a military attack on Iraqi broadcasters: They presented propaganda to viewers, aired triumphal images and touted the authority of the top man in the government, while an adversary was "trying to send the exact opposite message." By those standards, Iraqis would have been justified in targeting any one of the American cable news networks, most especially Fox News Channel.
Hart -- who is author of the book "The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly" -- includes some quotes from Fox in his collection of war-crazed statements from the media. Soon after the invasion began, Fox News commentator Fred Barnes declared: "The American public knows how important this war is, and is not as casualty sensitive as the weenies in the American press are." (Unsurpassed bravery is a common denominator of rabid hawks in stateside TV studios.) But many of Hart's examples are from U.S. media outlets with reputations for judicious professional journalism.
On NBC News, Brian Williams was singing from the choir book provided by U.S. officials. "They are calling this the cleanest war in all of military history," Williams said on April 2, 2003. "They stress they're fighting a regime and not the people, using smart bombs, not dumb, older munitions. But there have been and will be accidents. ... And there's a new weapon in this war: Arab media, especially Al Jazeera. It's on all the time, and unlike American media, it hardly reflects the Pentagon line. Its critics say it accentuates civilian casualties and provokes outrage on the Arab street."
The next day, on the same network, Williams' colleague Katie Couric was more succinct in her fawning. Viewers of the "Today" program listened as she interviewed a U.S. military official and exclaimed: "Thank you for coming on the show. And I want to add, I think the Special Forces rock!"
A week later, on MSNBC, the hardballer Chris Matthews was swept up in beach-ball euphoria as America's armed forces toppled the Saddam regime. "We're all neo-cons now," Matthews exulted.
At the start of May 2003, when President Bush zoomed onto an aircraft carrier and stood near a "Mission Accomplished" banner, Lou Dobbs was quick to tell CNN viewers: "He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star and one of the guys."
On the same day, journalist Matthews assumed the royal "we" -- and, in the opportunistic process, blew with the prevailing wind. "We're proud of our president," he said. "Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple." All too simple.
Perhaps no journalist was more shameless in echoing President Bush's fatuous claims about the invasion than Christopher Hitchens.
"Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you," Bush said on March 17, 2003.
The next day, Hitchens came out with an essay declaring that "the Defense Department has evolved highly selective and accurate munitions that can sharply reduce the need to take or receive casualties. The predictions of widespread mayhem turned out to be false last time -- when the weapons [in the Gulf War] were nothing like so accurate." And, Hitchens proclaimed, "it can now be proposed as a practical matter that one is able to fight against a regime and not a people or a nation."
More than four years -- and at least several hundred thousand Iraqi civilian deaths -- later, the most reliable epidemiology available confirms that those claims were more than misleading. They were fundamentally out of touch with human reality.
If you had engaged in such cheerleading for the launch of the Iraq war in early 2003, by now you might also be eager to change the subject and argue about God.
Norman Solomon's book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" is out in paperback. A documentary film based on the book will premiere this month www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.
Technorati Tags: Guest Contribution Norman Solomon FAIR Peter Hart right-wing media Iraq corporate media
A Bloody Media Mirror
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 07/06/2007
by Norman Solomon
Many of America's most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than 4 years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins.
The media watch group FAIR (where I'm an associate) has performed a public service in the latest edition of its magazine Extra. The organization's activism director, Peter Hart, drew on FAIR's extensive research to assemble a sample of notable quotations from media cheerleading for the Iraq invasion.
One of the earliest quotes to merit special attention came from ace New York Times reporter -- and chronic Pentagon promoter -- Michael Gordon. In a CNN appearance on March 25, 2003, just a few days into the invasion, Gordon gave his easy blessing to the invaders' bombing of Iraqi TV.
Gordon cited "what I've seen of Iraqi television, with Saddam Hussein presenting propaganda to his people and showing off the Apache helicopter and claiming a farmer shot it down and trying to persuade his own public that he was really in charge, when we're trying to send the exact opposite message" -- and so, the Times reporter went on, Iraqi TV was "an appropriate target."
Let's unpack Gordon's rationale for a military attack on Iraqi broadcasters: They presented propaganda to viewers, aired triumphal images and touted the authority of the top man in the government, while an adversary was "trying to send the exact opposite message." By those standards, Iraqis would have been justified in targeting any one of the American cable news networks, most especially Fox News Channel.
Hart -- who is author of the book "The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly" -- includes some quotes from Fox in his collection of war-crazed statements from the media. Soon after the invasion began, Fox News commentator Fred Barnes declared: "The American public knows how important this war is, and is not as casualty sensitive as the weenies in the American press are." (Unsurpassed bravery is a common denominator of rabid hawks in stateside TV studios.) But many of Hart's examples are from U.S. media outlets with reputations for judicious professional journalism.
On NBC News, Brian Williams was singing from the choir book provided by U.S. officials. "They are calling this the cleanest war in all of military history," Williams said on April 2, 2003. "They stress they're fighting a regime and not the people, using smart bombs, not dumb, older munitions. But there have been and will be accidents. ... And there's a new weapon in this war: Arab media, especially Al Jazeera. It's on all the time, and unlike American media, it hardly reflects the Pentagon line. Its critics say it accentuates civilian casualties and provokes outrage on the Arab street."
The next day, on the same network, Williams' colleague Katie Couric was more succinct in her fawning. Viewers of the "Today" program listened as she interviewed a U.S. military official and exclaimed: "Thank you for coming on the show. And I want to add, I think the Special Forces rock!"
A week later, on MSNBC, the hardballer Chris Matthews was swept up in beach-ball euphoria as America's armed forces toppled the Saddam regime. "We're all neo-cons now," Matthews exulted.
At the start of May 2003, when President Bush zoomed onto an aircraft carrier and stood near a "Mission Accomplished" banner, Lou Dobbs was quick to tell CNN viewers: "He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star and one of the guys."
On the same day, journalist Matthews assumed the royal "we" -- and, in the opportunistic process, blew with the prevailing wind. "We're proud of our president," he said. "Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple." All too simple.
Perhaps no journalist was more shameless in echoing President Bush's fatuous claims about the invasion than Christopher Hitchens.
"Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you," Bush said on March 17, 2003.
The next day, Hitchens came out with an essay declaring that "the Defense Department has evolved highly selective and accurate munitions that can sharply reduce the need to take or receive casualties. The predictions of widespread mayhem turned out to be false last time -- when the weapons [in the Gulf War] were nothing like so accurate." And, Hitchens proclaimed, "it can now be proposed as a practical matter that one is able to fight against a regime and not a people or a nation."
More than four years -- and at least several hundred thousand Iraqi civilian deaths -- later, the most reliable epidemiology available confirms that those claims were more than misleading. They were fundamentally out of touch with human reality.
If you had engaged in such cheerleading for the launch of the Iraq war in early 2003, by now you might also be eager to change the subject and argue about God.
Norman Solomon's book "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" is out in paperback. A documentary film based on the book will premiere this month www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.
Technorati Tags: Guest Contribution Norman Solomon FAIR Peter Hart right-wing media Iraq corporate media
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