Top Censored News Stories of 2004-05.
Project Censored at Sonoma State University announces the annual release of the most important under-covered stories of 2004-05. For full postings see: http://www.projectcensored.org/
For Interviews with Project Censored Spokespersons contact: Peter.Phillips@sonoma.edu
1. BUSH ADMINISTRATION MOVES TO ELIMINATE OPEN GOVERNMENT Common Dreams, September 14, 2004, New Report Details Bush Administration Secrecy, by Karen Lightfoot http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0914-05.htm;
http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/story.asp
The Bush administration has been working to make sure the public - and even Congress - can't find out what the government itself is doing. In the Fall of 2004, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) released an 81-page report that found that the feds have consistently "narrowed the scope and application" of the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and other key public information laws. At the same time the government expanded laws blocking access to certain records - even creating new categories of "protected" information and exempting entire departments from public scrutiny.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gives citizens the ability to file a request for specific information from a government agency and provides recourse in federal court if that agency fails to comply with FOIA requirements. Over the last two decades, beginning with Reagan, this law has become increasingly diluted and circumvented by each succeeding administration.
Under the Bush Administration, agencies make extensive and arbitrary use of FOIA exemptions such as those for classified information, privileged attorney-client documents and certain information compiled for law enforcement purposes.
Bush administration has even refused to release records to Congressional subcommittees or the Government Accountability Office. A few of the potentially incriminating documents being held secret from Congress include records of contacts between large energy companies and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force; White House memos pertaining to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction; and reports describing torture at Abu Ghraib.
The Critical Infrastructure Information Act of 2002 (CIIA) as part of Homeland Security exempts from FOIA any information that is voluntarily provided to the federal government by a private party, if the information relates to the security of vital infrastructure. But under the act, even "routine communications by private sector lobbyists can be withheld from disclosure if the lobbyist asserts that the changes are related to the effort to protect the nation's infrastructure. Such a broad interpretation of CIIA could hide errors or misconduct by private-sector companies working with the Department of Homeland Security.
In March 2002, the Bush Administration reduced public access to information through FOIA by mandating that agencies safeguard any records having to do with "weapons of mass destruction." This included "information that could be misused to harm the security of our nation and the safety of our people," according to a memo by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. However, the memo did nothing to define these terms and agencies were left free to withhold virtually any information under the vague charge of "national security." In 2003, the Bush Administration won a new legislative exemption from FOIA for all National Security Agency "operational files." The Administration's main rationale for this new exemption is that conducting FOIA searches diverts resources from the agency's mission. Congressman Waxman describe the government secrecy moves as "an unprecedented assault on the laws that make our government open and accountable,"
2 MEDIA COVERAGE FAILS ON IRAQ: FALLUJAH AND THE CIVILIAN DEATHTOLL
Peacework, December 2004-January 2005, The Invasion of Fallujah: A Study in the Subversion of Truth" By Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell World Socialist Web Site, November 17, 2004, US Media Applauds Destruction of Fallujah, by David Walsh, The NewStandard, December 3, 2004, Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone, by Dahr Jamail, The Lancet, October 29, 2004, Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, By Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi and Gilbert Burnham, The Lancet, October 29, 2004, The War in Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities, by Richard Horton, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2005, Lost Count, by Lila Guterman, Asheville Global Report, April 15, 2004, CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?"
Les Roberts, an investigator with the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, conducted a rigorous inquiry into pre- and post-invasion mortality in Iraq, sneaking into Iraq by lying flat on the bed of an SUV and training observers on the scene. The results were published in the Lancet, a prestigious peer-reviewed British medical journal, on Oct. 29, 2004 - Roberts and his team (including researchers from Columbia University and from Al-Mustansiriy University in Baghdad concluded that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is about 100,000 civilians, and may be much higher. 95% of those deaths were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry and more than half of the fatalities were women or children.
The study was done before the second invasion of Fallujah in the Fall of 2004. More than 83 percent of Fallujah's 300,000 residents fled the city. The people had nowhere to flee and ended up as refugees. Many families were forced to survive in fields, vacant lots, and abandoned buildings without access to shelter, water, electricity, food or medical care.
The 50,000 citizens who either chose to remain in the city or who were unable to leave were trapped by Coalition forces and were cut off from food, water and medical supplies Men between the ages of 15 and 45 were refused safe passage, and all who remained were treated as enemy combatants. Coalition forces cut off water and electricity, seized the main hospital, shot at anyone who ventured out into the open, executed families waving white flags while trying to swim across the Euphrates or otherwise flee the city. US forces shot at ambulances, raided homes and killed people who didn't understand English, rolled over injured people with tanks, and allowed corpses to rot in the streets and be eaten by dogs.
Medical staff and others reported seeing people, dead and alive, with melted faces and limbs, injuries consistent with the use of phosphorous bombs. As of December of 2004 at least 6,000 Iraqi citizens in Fallujah had been killed, and one-third of the city has been destroyed.
The International Committee for the Red Cross reported on December 23, 2004 that three of the city's water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth badly damaged.
Not long after the "coalition" had embarked on its second offensive, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called for an investigation into whether the Americans and their allies had engaged in "the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons, and the use of human shields," among other possible "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions ... considered war crimes" under federal law.
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists, has noted that the U.S. invasion of Fallujah is a violation of international law that the U.S. had specifically ratified: "They [US Forces] stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions." Updates: English Al-Jazeera website at http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage, and website at www.dahrjamailiraq.com, The World Tribunal on Iraq at www.worldtribunal.org
3. ELECTION FRAUD LIKELY IN 2004
In These Times, 02/15/05, A Corrupted Election, by Steve Freeman and Josh MitteldorfSeattle Post-Intelligencer, January 26, 2005, Jim Crow Returns To The Voting Booth, by GregPalast, Rev. Jesse Jackson www.freepress.org, Nov. 23, 2004, How a Republican Election Supervisor Manipulated the 2004 Central Ohio Vote, by Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman
On Nov. 2, 2004. Bush prevailed by 3 million votes despite exit polls that clearly projected Kerry winning by a margin of 5 million. The 8-million-vote discrepancy was well beyond the poll's recognized, less-than-1-percent margin of error. And when Freeman and Mitteldorf analyzed the data collected by the two companies that conducted the polls, they found concrete evidence of potential fraud in the official count.
The overall margin of error should statistically have been under one percent. But the official result deviated from the poll projections by more than five percent-a statistical impossibility of over a 100,000 to one.
"Exit polls are highly accurate," Steve Freeman, professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Organizational Dynamics, and Temple University statistician Josh Mitteldorf. "They remove most of the sources of potential polling error by identifying actual voters and asking them immediately afterward who they had voted for."
"Only in precincts that used old-fashioned, hand-counted paper ballots did the official count and the exit polls fall within the normal sampling margin of error. And "the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official count was considerably greater in the critical swing states.
Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, the two companies hired to do the polling for the Nation Election Pool in a final report stated that the discrepancy was "most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters."
The corporate media widely reported that this proved the accuracy of the official count and a Bush victory. The body of the report, however, offers no data to substantiate this position. In fact, the report shows that Bush voters were more likely to complete the survey than Kerry voters. The report also states that the difference between exit polls and official tallies was far too great to be explained by sampling error, and that a systematic bias is implicated.
In precincts that were at least 80 percent for Bush, the average within-precinct error (WPE) was a whopping 10.0 percent-the numerical difference between the exit poll predictions and the official count.
Also, in Bush strongholds, Kerry received only about two-thirds of the votes predicted by exit polls. In Kerry strongholds, exit polls matched the official count almost exactly.
Greg Palast reported how in June 2004, well before the election, his co-author of "Jim Crow" Rev. Jesse Jackson brought him to Chicago to have breakfast with Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards. The Reverend asked the Senator to read Palast's report of the "spoilage" of Black votes-one million African Americans who cast ballots in 2000 but did not have their votes register on the machines.
Edwards said he'd read it over after he'd had his bagel. Jackson snatched away his bagel. No read, no bagel. A hungry Senator was genuinely concerned-these were, after all, Democrats whose votes did not tally, and he shot the information to John Kerry. A couple of weeks later, Kerry told the NAACP convention that one million African-American votes were not counted in 2000, but in 2004 he would not let it happen again. But he did let it happen again. More than a million votes in 2004 were cast and not counted
For the rest of the top 25 see: http://www.projectcensored.org/
My musings on and criticisms of American culture, media and politics.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Monday, August 29, 2005
Peter Rachleff -- labor history professor at Macalester College in St. Paul and a leader of the progressive wing of the Minnesota labor movement-- wrote the following statement of solidarity with Northwest workers who are on strike. Please sign and encourage others to sign. Reply to Peter at rachleff@macalester.edu.
A STATEMENT OF PROTEST AND SOLIDARITY
As union leaders and activists, we want to make it clear that we stand against the behavior of Northwest Airlines management and with the workers of Northwest Airlines and their unions as they seek economic justice.
For too many years, the management of Northwest Airlines -- and other U.S. corporations -- has demanded that workers give more hours, more effort, and more of their lives to their jobs while receiving reduced compensation, less security, and less respect. At the same time, management has taken home fat compensation packages, stock options, bonuses, and golden parachutes.
NWA management is now in the midst of spending, by their own admission, more than $100 million to bust the mechanics' union. They are recuiting hastily trained scabs and employing the infamous union-busting Vance Security company to intimidate the hard-working men and women who have given decades of their lives to Northwest.
NWA management has demanded that mechanics allow the contracting-out of the 53% of their work that remains since management already contracted out 38% of it. Fewer than one-fourth of the mechanics employed in 2000 will continue to have jobs. For those who remain, management demands a 26% wage cut and the emptying of their underfunded defined-benefit pensions into 401K plans tied to the stock market.
NWA management has demanded that flight attendants undergo a 40% cut in their overall compensation. They are seeking similar cuts from other workers and, if they are able to force the mechanics and the flight attendants to accept these cuts, these other workers -- pilots, baggage handlers, ticket agents, clerical workers, and others -- will have little base from which to resist. The flying public will also have many reasons to question the safety of NWA flights.
NWA management's behavior is all too familiar. It mirrors the actions of Hormel, the Detroit newspapers, Caterpillar, Staley, Delphi Auto Parts, Enron, and United Airlines. It also sets the stage for other corporate employers to demand that their workers and unions allow expanded outsourcing of work, accept slashed wages and benefits, and give up the pensions that they have sacrificed for over many years.
This must stop. These actions by NWA management, combined with their abuse of the trust of Minnesota citizens, tax-payers, and state government, make them a suitable poster child for the labor movement's renewed efforts to educate, organize, and mobilize all Americans -- native-born and immigrant, blue collar and white collar, manufacturing and service, women and men, union members and non-union members.
All of us need to say "NO!" to this kind of behavior. NO to union-busting! NO to corporate greed! NO to a race to the bottom of the economic ladder!We union leaders and activists stand against Northwest Airlines' behavior and we stand with Northwest's workers and their unions in their struggle for economic justice.
A STATEMENT OF PROTEST AND SOLIDARITY
As union leaders and activists, we want to make it clear that we stand against the behavior of Northwest Airlines management and with the workers of Northwest Airlines and their unions as they seek economic justice.
For too many years, the management of Northwest Airlines -- and other U.S. corporations -- has demanded that workers give more hours, more effort, and more of their lives to their jobs while receiving reduced compensation, less security, and less respect. At the same time, management has taken home fat compensation packages, stock options, bonuses, and golden parachutes.
NWA management is now in the midst of spending, by their own admission, more than $100 million to bust the mechanics' union. They are recuiting hastily trained scabs and employing the infamous union-busting Vance Security company to intimidate the hard-working men and women who have given decades of their lives to Northwest.
NWA management has demanded that mechanics allow the contracting-out of the 53% of their work that remains since management already contracted out 38% of it. Fewer than one-fourth of the mechanics employed in 2000 will continue to have jobs. For those who remain, management demands a 26% wage cut and the emptying of their underfunded defined-benefit pensions into 401K plans tied to the stock market.
NWA management has demanded that flight attendants undergo a 40% cut in their overall compensation. They are seeking similar cuts from other workers and, if they are able to force the mechanics and the flight attendants to accept these cuts, these other workers -- pilots, baggage handlers, ticket agents, clerical workers, and others -- will have little base from which to resist. The flying public will also have many reasons to question the safety of NWA flights.
NWA management's behavior is all too familiar. It mirrors the actions of Hormel, the Detroit newspapers, Caterpillar, Staley, Delphi Auto Parts, Enron, and United Airlines. It also sets the stage for other corporate employers to demand that their workers and unions allow expanded outsourcing of work, accept slashed wages and benefits, and give up the pensions that they have sacrificed for over many years.
This must stop. These actions by NWA management, combined with their abuse of the trust of Minnesota citizens, tax-payers, and state government, make them a suitable poster child for the labor movement's renewed efforts to educate, organize, and mobilize all Americans -- native-born and immigrant, blue collar and white collar, manufacturing and service, women and men, union members and non-union members.
All of us need to say "NO!" to this kind of behavior. NO to union-busting! NO to corporate greed! NO to a race to the bottom of the economic ladder!We union leaders and activists stand against Northwest Airlines' behavior and we stand with Northwest's workers and their unions in their struggle for economic justice.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
TWO THINGS TO CHEER ABOUT
Happily, Pat Robertson's crazy demand that the U.S. murder Hugo Chavez has-- much to my suprise-- actually gotten the attention it deserves. It is all over the papers and has been the focus of quite a lot of debate on TV talk shows, talk radio and in the blogosphere. Granted, the corporate media continue to ignore the Bush administration's repeated and illegal efforts to destabilize the Venezuelan government (including, of course, its backing for the failed 2002 coup which breifly ousted Chavez from power). But at least they seem appropriately outraged at the open suggestion that the U.S. state should just start killing foreign leaders they don't like. Yeah!
Even more encouraging, the American Library Association Council just endorsed a strongly worded resolution calling for the immediate withdrawl of American troops in Iraq. Here's the text:
Resolution on the Connection Between the Iraq War and Libraries
WHEREAS, The justifications for the invasion of Iraq have proven to be
completely unfounded; and
WHEREAS, The war already has taken the lives of more than 100,000 Iraqis
and more than 1700 U.S. soldiers; and
WHEREAS, These numbers will continue to mount as long as the U.S.
remains in Iraq; and
WHEREAS, During the current occupation, many of Iraq's cultural
treasures, including libraries, archives, manuscripts, and artifacts,
have been destroyed, lost, or stolen; and
WHEREAS, As long as U.S. forces remain in Iraq, the inevitable
escalation of fighting threatens further destruction of Iraq's cultural
heritage; and
WHEREAS, The U.S. is spending billions of dollars every month for the
occupation; and
WHEREAS, Even a small fraction of these resources would be more than
sufficient for rebuilding and greatly enhancing the libraries and
educational institutions of both Iraq and the U.S.; now, therefore, be
it
RESOLVED, That the American Library Association calls for the withdrawal
from Iraq of all U.S. military forces, and the return of full
sovereignty to the people of Iraq; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the American Library Association urges the United States
government to subsequently shift its budgetary priorities from the
occupation of Iraq to improved support for vital domestic programs,
including United States libraries; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the American Library Association calls upon the United
States government to provide material assistance through the United
Nations for the reconstruction of Iraq, including its museums,
libraries, schools, and other cultural resources; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That this resolution be sent to all members of Congress, the
Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the President of the
United States, and the press.
Adopted by the Council of the American Library Association
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
In Chicago, Illinois
From
http://www.ala.org/ala/ourassociation/governanceb/council/councilagendas/annual2005a/CD62.doc
Happily, Pat Robertson's crazy demand that the U.S. murder Hugo Chavez has-- much to my suprise-- actually gotten the attention it deserves. It is all over the papers and has been the focus of quite a lot of debate on TV talk shows, talk radio and in the blogosphere. Granted, the corporate media continue to ignore the Bush administration's repeated and illegal efforts to destabilize the Venezuelan government (including, of course, its backing for the failed 2002 coup which breifly ousted Chavez from power). But at least they seem appropriately outraged at the open suggestion that the U.S. state should just start killing foreign leaders they don't like. Yeah!
Even more encouraging, the American Library Association Council just endorsed a strongly worded resolution calling for the immediate withdrawl of American troops in Iraq. Here's the text:
Resolution on the Connection Between the Iraq War and Libraries
WHEREAS, The justifications for the invasion of Iraq have proven to be
completely unfounded; and
WHEREAS, The war already has taken the lives of more than 100,000 Iraqis
and more than 1700 U.S. soldiers; and
WHEREAS, These numbers will continue to mount as long as the U.S.
remains in Iraq; and
WHEREAS, During the current occupation, many of Iraq's cultural
treasures, including libraries, archives, manuscripts, and artifacts,
have been destroyed, lost, or stolen; and
WHEREAS, As long as U.S. forces remain in Iraq, the inevitable
escalation of fighting threatens further destruction of Iraq's cultural
heritage; and
WHEREAS, The U.S. is spending billions of dollars every month for the
occupation; and
WHEREAS, Even a small fraction of these resources would be more than
sufficient for rebuilding and greatly enhancing the libraries and
educational institutions of both Iraq and the U.S.; now, therefore, be
it
RESOLVED, That the American Library Association calls for the withdrawal
from Iraq of all U.S. military forces, and the return of full
sovereignty to the people of Iraq; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the American Library Association urges the United States
government to subsequently shift its budgetary priorities from the
occupation of Iraq to improved support for vital domestic programs,
including United States libraries; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the American Library Association calls upon the United
States government to provide material assistance through the United
Nations for the reconstruction of Iraq, including its museums,
libraries, schools, and other cultural resources; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That this resolution be sent to all members of Congress, the
Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the President of the
United States, and the press.
Adopted by the Council of the American Library Association
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
In Chicago, Illinois
From
http://www.ala.org/ala/ourassociation/governanceb/council/councilagendas/annual2005a/CD62.doc
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Who Would Jesus Assassinate? (WWJA)
The contempt of the American religious right for democracy has been evident to rational observers for quite some time and exhibits clear parallels with the authoritarian passions of the Islamic fundamentalists they supposedly abhor. That Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson-- longtime freind and business associate of bloodthirsty Zairian dictator Mobuto Sese Seko -- has called for the assasination of Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected President of Venezuala, is thus hardly surpising. What is shocking, though, is that other than AP, few news organizations have seen fit to report on his comments.
Pat Robertson calls for assassination of Hugo Chavez
By Gene Puskar, AP
VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on
Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,
calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.
Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former
pre
sidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States'
duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist
infiltration and Muslim extremism."
Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President
Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government
and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have
called the accusations ridiculous.
"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he
thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to
go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than
starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
Electronic pages and a message to a Robertson spokeswoman were not
immediately returned Monday evening.
Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier of oil
to the United States. The CIA estimates that U.S. markets absorb almost
59% of Venezuela's total exports.
Venezuela's government has demanded in the past that the United States
crack down on Cuban and Venezuelan "terrorists" in Florida who they say
are conspiring against Chavez.
Robertson accused the United States of failing to act when Chavez was
briefly overthrown in 2002.
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that
we exercise that ability," Robertson said.
"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know,
strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have
some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The contempt of the American religious right for democracy has been evident to rational observers for quite some time and exhibits clear parallels with the authoritarian passions of the Islamic fundamentalists they supposedly abhor. That Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson-- longtime freind and business associate of bloodthirsty Zairian dictator Mobuto Sese Seko -- has called for the assasination of Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected President of Venezuala, is thus hardly surpising. What is shocking, though, is that other than AP, few news organizations have seen fit to report on his comments.
Pat Robertson calls for assassination of Hugo Chavez
By Gene Puskar, AP
VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) - Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on
Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,
calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.
Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former
pre
sidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States'
duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist
infiltration and Muslim extremism."
Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President
Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government
and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have
called the accusations ridiculous.
"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he
thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to
go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than
starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
Electronic pages and a message to a Robertson spokeswoman were not
immediately returned Monday evening.
Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier of oil
to the United States. The CIA estimates that U.S. markets absorb almost
59% of Venezuela's total exports.
Venezuela's government has demanded in the past that the United States
crack down on Cuban and Venezuelan "terrorists" in Florida who they say
are conspiring against Chavez.
Robertson accused the United States of failing to act when Chavez was
briefly overthrown in 2002.
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that
we exercise that ability," Robertson said.
"We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know,
strong-arm dictator," he continued. "It's a whole lot easier to have
some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
That the military and the U.S. government is attempting to suppress further evidence of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib is perhaps understandable. What is surprising, though, is that they are arguing that releasing the photos would violate the prisoner's rights under the Geneva Conventions. This is a tacit admission that the people detained by U.S. troops in Iraq are, in fact, prisoners of war. And that , in turn, could provide more fuel for the human rights law suits against Rumsfeild and Co.
RIGHTS:New Abuse Photos Could Spark Riots, US General Warns
William Fisher
NEW YORK, Aug 16 (IPS) - Civil libertarians and the Pentagon appear headed for yet another trainwreck in the ongoing dispute over the so-called second batch of photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and a number of medical and veterans groups demanding release of 87 new videos and photographs depicting detainee abuse at the now infamous prison, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said the release would result in ”riots, violence and attacks by insurgents.”
In court papers filed to contest the lawsuit, Gen. Myers said he consulted with Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq. Both officers also opposed the release, Gen. Myers said.
He believes the release of the photos would ”incite public opinion in the Muslim world and put the lives of American soldiers and officials at risk,” according to documents unsealed in federal court in New York. ”The situation on the ground in Iraq is dynamic and dangerous,” Myers added, with 70 insurgent attacks daily. He also said there was evidence that the Taliban was gaining ground because of popular discontent in Afghanistan.
Gen. Myers cited the violence that erupted in some Muslim countries in May after Newsweek published an item, which it later retracted, saying that a Koran had been thrown in a toilet in the United States detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He also said the images could fuel terrorist disinformation campaigns.
"It is probable that Al Qaeda and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill, which will result in, besides violent attacks, increased terrorist recruitment, continued financial support and exacerbation of tensions between Iraqi and Afghani populaces and U.S. and coalition forces,” he said.
The 87 ”new” photos and four videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib were among those turned over to Army investigators last year by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, a reservist who was posted at the prison.
In legal papers unsealed last week, the ACLU and its allied groups urged the court to order the release of photographs and videos, and also asked the court to reject the government's attempt to file some of its legal arguments in secret. It said that until the first photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, the government had consistently denied that any wrongdoing had taken place, despite news reports to the contrary. Since then, the ACLU has obtained, through a court order, more than 60,000 pages of government documents regarding torture and abuse of detainees.
At a court hearing on Monday, the judge said he generally ruled in favour of public disclosure and ordered the government to reveal some redacted parts of its argument for blocking the release of pictures and videotapes. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said his rulings pertained to arguments by Gen. Myers. ”By and large, I ruled in favour of public disclosure,” he said.
The judge said he believes photographs ”are the best evidence the public can have of what occurred” at the prison. He scheduled arguments on the question of whether the photographs and videos should be released for Aug. 30, saying a speedy decision is important so the public's right to know isn't compromised.
The ACLU has also called for an independent counsel with subpoena power to investigate the torture scandal, including the role of senior policymakers, and has filed a separate lawsuit to hold Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and high-ranking military officers accountable. Reed Brody, head of international programmes for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS, ”The problem is not the photos but the policy of abuse. The release of the first photos last year led us to the revelations that senior U.S. officials had secretly sidelined the Geneva Conventions, re-defined 'torture', and approved illegal coercive interrogation methods.”
”The release of new photos showing crimes perpetrated on detainees could create new impetus to expose and prosecute those ultimately responsible and hopefully prevent these practices from being repeated.” Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, noted that, ”The administration's response to the release of the photos is to kill the messenger, rather then to investigate and prosecute the real culprits: Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, Generals Miller and Sanchez, and others.”
He agreed that ”the photos will be upsetting to anyone who cares about humane treatment and particularly to those in the Muslim world, but the photos reflect the reality of the type of treatment detainees were subjected to.”
”Rather than suppress the best evidence of widespread torture of Muslim detainees, the Administration ought to launch a fully independent investigation and ought to see that an independent prosecutor is appointed,” Ratner told IPS. He added, ”Ensuring accountability for the torture conspiracy is the best way of demonstrating to the Muslim world that this outrage has come to an end and will not be repeated.”
The government initially objected to the release of the images on the grounds that it would violate the Geneva Conventions rights of the detainees depicted in the images. That concern was addressed by court order on Jun. 1 directing the government to redact any personally identifying characteristics from the images. The ACLU did not object to those redactions.
The ACLU said the government has repeatedly taken the position that the detainees themselves cannot rely on the Geneva Conventions in legal proceedings to challenge their mistreatment by U.S. personnel. In a court declaration, former U.S. Army Colonel Michael E. Pheneger, a retired military intelligence expert, responded to the government's ”cause-and-effect” argument that release of the images would spark violence abroad.
”Our enemies seek to prevent the United States from achieving its objectives in the Middle East,” he said. ”They do not need specific provocations to justify their actions.” Attacks by insurgents ”will continue regardless of whether the photos and tapes are released,” he added.
The case arose from a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the ACLU, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. (END/2005)
RIGHTS:New Abuse Photos Could Spark Riots, US General Warns
William Fisher
NEW YORK, Aug 16 (IPS) - Civil libertarians and the Pentagon appear headed for yet another trainwreck in the ongoing dispute over the so-called second batch of photos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and a number of medical and veterans groups demanding release of 87 new videos and photographs depicting detainee abuse at the now infamous prison, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said the release would result in ”riots, violence and attacks by insurgents.”
In court papers filed to contest the lawsuit, Gen. Myers said he consulted with Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the United States Central Command, and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq. Both officers also opposed the release, Gen. Myers said.
He believes the release of the photos would ”incite public opinion in the Muslim world and put the lives of American soldiers and officials at risk,” according to documents unsealed in federal court in New York. ”The situation on the ground in Iraq is dynamic and dangerous,” Myers added, with 70 insurgent attacks daily. He also said there was evidence that the Taliban was gaining ground because of popular discontent in Afghanistan.
Gen. Myers cited the violence that erupted in some Muslim countries in May after Newsweek published an item, which it later retracted, saying that a Koran had been thrown in a toilet in the United States detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He also said the images could fuel terrorist disinformation campaigns.
"It is probable that Al Qaeda and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill, which will result in, besides violent attacks, increased terrorist recruitment, continued financial support and exacerbation of tensions between Iraqi and Afghani populaces and U.S. and coalition forces,” he said.
The 87 ”new” photos and four videotapes taken at Abu Ghraib were among those turned over to Army investigators last year by Specialist Joseph M. Darby, a reservist who was posted at the prison.
In legal papers unsealed last week, the ACLU and its allied groups urged the court to order the release of photographs and videos, and also asked the court to reject the government's attempt to file some of its legal arguments in secret. It said that until the first photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, the government had consistently denied that any wrongdoing had taken place, despite news reports to the contrary. Since then, the ACLU has obtained, through a court order, more than 60,000 pages of government documents regarding torture and abuse of detainees.
At a court hearing on Monday, the judge said he generally ruled in favour of public disclosure and ordered the government to reveal some redacted parts of its argument for blocking the release of pictures and videotapes. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said his rulings pertained to arguments by Gen. Myers. ”By and large, I ruled in favour of public disclosure,” he said.
The judge said he believes photographs ”are the best evidence the public can have of what occurred” at the prison. He scheduled arguments on the question of whether the photographs and videos should be released for Aug. 30, saying a speedy decision is important so the public's right to know isn't compromised.
The ACLU has also called for an independent counsel with subpoena power to investigate the torture scandal, including the role of senior policymakers, and has filed a separate lawsuit to hold Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and high-ranking military officers accountable. Reed Brody, head of international programmes for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS, ”The problem is not the photos but the policy of abuse. The release of the first photos last year led us to the revelations that senior U.S. officials had secretly sidelined the Geneva Conventions, re-defined 'torture', and approved illegal coercive interrogation methods.”
”The release of new photos showing crimes perpetrated on detainees could create new impetus to expose and prosecute those ultimately responsible and hopefully prevent these practices from being repeated.” Michael Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, noted that, ”The administration's response to the release of the photos is to kill the messenger, rather then to investigate and prosecute the real culprits: Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld, Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, Generals Miller and Sanchez, and others.”
He agreed that ”the photos will be upsetting to anyone who cares about humane treatment and particularly to those in the Muslim world, but the photos reflect the reality of the type of treatment detainees were subjected to.”
”Rather than suppress the best evidence of widespread torture of Muslim detainees, the Administration ought to launch a fully independent investigation and ought to see that an independent prosecutor is appointed,” Ratner told IPS. He added, ”Ensuring accountability for the torture conspiracy is the best way of demonstrating to the Muslim world that this outrage has come to an end and will not be repeated.”
The government initially objected to the release of the images on the grounds that it would violate the Geneva Conventions rights of the detainees depicted in the images. That concern was addressed by court order on Jun. 1 directing the government to redact any personally identifying characteristics from the images. The ACLU did not object to those redactions.
The ACLU said the government has repeatedly taken the position that the detainees themselves cannot rely on the Geneva Conventions in legal proceedings to challenge their mistreatment by U.S. personnel. In a court declaration, former U.S. Army Colonel Michael E. Pheneger, a retired military intelligence expert, responded to the government's ”cause-and-effect” argument that release of the images would spark violence abroad.
”Our enemies seek to prevent the United States from achieving its objectives in the Middle East,” he said. ”They do not need specific provocations to justify their actions.” Attacks by insurgents ”will continue regardless of whether the photos and tapes are released,” he added.
The case arose from a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the ACLU, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. (END/2005)
Friday, August 05, 2005
Finally, Bob Novak gets kicked off the air and is accurately labeled "inexcusable and unacceptable" by CNN. Maybe there really is a God...
CNN Suspends Novak After He Walks Off Set
CNN Suspends Novak After He Walks Off Set
By DAVID BAUDER
The Associated Press
Friday, August 5, 2005; 12:42 AM
NEW YORK -- CNN suspended commentator Robert Novak indefinitely after he swore and walked off the set Thursday during a debate with Democratic operative James Carville.
The live exchange during CNN's "Inside Politics" came during a discussion of Florida's Senate campaign. CNN correspondent Ed Henry noted when it was over that he had been about to ask Novak about his role in the investigation of the leak of a CIA officer's identity.
A CNN spokeswoman, Edie Emery, called Novak's behavior "inexcusable and unacceptable." Novak apologized to CNN, and CNN was apologizing to viewers, she said.
"We've asked Mr. Novak to take some time off," she said.
A telephone message at Novak's office was not immediately returned Thursday.
Carville and Novak were both trying to speak while they were handicapping the GOP candidacy of Katherine Harris. Novak said the opposition of the Republican establishment in Florida might not be fatal for her.
"Let me just finish, James, please," Novak continued. "I know you hate to hear me, but you have to."
Carville, addressing the camera, said: "He's got to show these right wingers that he's got a backbone, you know. It's why the Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show 'em that you're tough."
"Well, I think that's bull---- and I hate that," Novak replied. "Just let it go."
As moderator Henry stepped in to ask Carville a question, Novak walked off the set.
Only two weeks ago, CNN executives defended their decision to keep Novak on the air during the ongoing probe into the revelation of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. In a July 2003 newspaper column, Novak identified Plame, the wife of administration critic and former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, as a CIA operative.
Wilson has said the leak of his wife's name was an attempt by the administration to discredit him. Two other reporters connected to the case openly fought the revelation of their sources, and Judith Miller of The New York Times has been jailed for refusing to cooperate with prosecutors.
Novak has repeatedly refused to comment about his role in the federal investigation.
After Novak walked off on Thursday, Henry said that Novak had been told before the segment that he was going to be asked on air about the CIA case.
"I'm hoping that we will be able to ask him about that in the future," Henry said.
Novak has been a longtime contributor to CNN, taking the conservative point of view during the just-canceled "Crossfire" show.
© 2005 The Associated Press
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19345
David Horowitz's Battlefield Academia
Sixties lefty turned right wing activist, provocateur, and GOP
political consultant is leading a McCarthy-like charge on college
campuses across the country
Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange
07.14.05 - A specter is again haunting U.S. colleges and universities.
At the beginning of the Cold War in the early 1950s, Joseph McCarthy,
the infamous Republican Senator from Wisconsin, stalked the political
landscape hurling reckless charges that hordes of Communists had
infiltrated the U.S. government before, during and after World War II.
Sen. McCarthy and his band of self-proclaimed patriots also trained
their guns on the creative community -- writers, directors and actors
working in Hollywood and on Broadway -- as well as public school
teachers and academics on college campuses across the country.
The hysteria these men stirred up through largely unsubstantiated
charges caused thousands of people to lose their jobs. Some committed
suicide.
Flash forward 50 years: David Horowitz, the 1960s left-wing radical
turned right-wing activist/provocateur and Republican political
consultant, has picked up McCarthy's baton. Disguised as an attempt
to broaden free speech on campus, Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights
-- which aims to stifle the speech of liberal academics -- has been
making the rounds of state houses and college campuses during the
past year or so.
In Florida, State Representative Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) has
introduced an Academic Freedom Bill of Rights after he "attended a
conservative conference in St. Louis last summer where Horowitz spoke
about academic freedom," the St. Petersburg Times reported.
Baxley's legislation, which in late March passed out of the House
Choice and Innovation Committee by an 8-to-2 vote (the only two
Democrats on the committee voted against it), was a broad assault on
academic freedom.
In addition to guaranteeing that students would "not be punished for
professing beliefs with which their professors disagree," the bill
would have advised professors "to teach alternative 'serious academic
theories' that may disagree with their personal views."
"Some professors say, 'Evolution is a fact. I don't want to hear
about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don't
like it, there's the door,'" Baxley maintained.
According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, students who
felt their views were disrespected in the classroom or thought they
were singled out for "public ridicule" by their professors would have
the right to sue them and the university.
"Despite the state Senate's decision not to consider Baxley's bill, I
have heard that he hasn't given up and may reintroduce the House bill
next session," Susan Greenbaum, the president of the Faculty Senate
at the University of South Florida, told IPS.
"Baxley also appealed directly to the state's university presidents
to implement his proposals administratively. As chair of the
Education Council and as a member of the Education Appropriations
Committee, a very important House committee, Baxley certainly has
their attention."
"The real test," Greenbaum pointed out, "will come in whether there
is an escalation in student grievances at Florida universities, and
what happens to those complaints. However, what seems to be lacking
in this whole issue is real student dissatisfaction. They have
garnered almost no action among students on these campuses; David
Horowitz presented a pitiful array of dubious anecdotes when he
testified in Tallahassee."
In addition to Florida, legislators in 13 other states have
introduced some type of "Academic Freedom" legislation. California
and Maine are considering "an academic bill of rights [containing] an
eight-point credo designed to increase political diversity in the
classroom."
In early June, the Christian Science Monitor reported that "four
state universities in Colorado... [had] adopted the principles under
legislative pressure in 2004."
In Minnesota, right-wing state senator Michelle Bachman, a vocal
opponent of gay rights, introduced two bills modeled on Horowitz's
complaints, one targeted at state colleges and universities and one
at state high schools.
Horowitz, who operates a number of projects -- including the online
magazine Frontpagemag.com -- out of the well-funded offices of his
Los Angeles, California-based Center for the Study of Popular
Culture, set up Students for Academic Freedom in 2003 to do the grunt
work. Since then, the Washington-based outfit has been making headway
on college campuses across the nation.
Students for Academic Freedom is not only involved with lobbying
state legislatures; on some campuses, they and similarly minded
groups have launched an all-out assault on liberal professors, using
classic McCarthyite tactics.
At Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) in Santa Rosa, California, the
struggle over academic freedom took a particularly ugly turn earlier
this year. Conservative students, supporting a California version of
a Student Bill of Rights, issued "leaflets quoting Section 51530 of
the [California] Education Code," and then "anonymously posted [them]
on the doors of ten faculty members" at the College, veteran
journalist David Bacon reported.
The leaflet quoted the code:
"No teacher... shall advocate or teach communism with the intent to
indoctrinate, inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for
communism." Such "advocacy," the statute says, means teaching "for
the purpose of undermining patriotism for, and the belief in, the
government of the United States and of this state."
Claiming responsibility for the action, SRJC Republicans issued a
press release stating that they "did this because we believe certain
instructors at SRJC are in violation of California state law."
At the same time, a news release with the headline "Operation 'Red
Scare,'" appeared on the website of California College Republicans.
In McCarthyite cant, the organization's chair, Michael Davidson, told
reporter John Gorenfeld "a lot of the college professors are
leftovers from the Seventies -- and Communist sympathizers."
Meanwhile, in Florida, Horowitz's local partner, Rep. Dennis Baxley,
appears to see himself as a modern-day Daniel fighting the lions of
liberal academia. During the debate over his legislation, Baxley
claimed he was called a McCarthyist by "leftist critics [who]
ridicule me for daring to stand up for students and faculty."
Then, similar to a tactic used by Sen. Joseph McCarthy himself,
Baxley claimed that he "had a list of students who were discriminated
against by professors," but, the St. Petersburg Times reported, he
"refused to reveal names because he felt they would be persecuted."
Horowitz's efforts at campuses across the country, and Rep. Baxley's
work in Florida "represents an inversion of the original intent of
academic freedom, which is to protect the right of professors to
express controversial ideas without fear of retaliation," Susan
Greenbaum maintains.
"This protection is designed to shield free inquiry and encourage
innovation. It enables the creation of new knowledge and secures the
basis to challenge old ideas," she continued.
"In Baxley's bill -- which is really the Horowitz bill -- students
are customers, whose tastes and prejudices must be accommodated.
Professors are likened to vendors who must take care not to offend or
disturb those who have come to purchase their wares."
"It's like the Wal-Mart model: Maybe they can import holographic
images of professors made in China, attractive classroom automatons
who can be programmed to present marketable and politically
acceptable material," she said dryly.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
David Horowitz's Battlefield Academia
Sixties lefty turned right wing activist, provocateur, and GOP
political consultant is leading a McCarthy-like charge on college
campuses across the country
Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange
07.14.05 - A specter is again haunting U.S. colleges and universities.
At the beginning of the Cold War in the early 1950s, Joseph McCarthy,
the infamous Republican Senator from Wisconsin, stalked the political
landscape hurling reckless charges that hordes of Communists had
infiltrated the U.S. government before, during and after World War II.
Sen. McCarthy and his band of self-proclaimed patriots also trained
their guns on the creative community -- writers, directors and actors
working in Hollywood and on Broadway -- as well as public school
teachers and academics on college campuses across the country.
The hysteria these men stirred up through largely unsubstantiated
charges caused thousands of people to lose their jobs. Some committed
suicide.
Flash forward 50 years: David Horowitz, the 1960s left-wing radical
turned right-wing activist/provocateur and Republican political
consultant, has picked up McCarthy's baton. Disguised as an attempt
to broaden free speech on campus, Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights
-- which aims to stifle the speech of liberal academics -- has been
making the rounds of state houses and college campuses during the
past year or so.
In Florida, State Representative Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) has
introduced an Academic Freedom Bill of Rights after he "attended a
conservative conference in St. Louis last summer where Horowitz spoke
about academic freedom," the St. Petersburg Times reported.
Baxley's legislation, which in late March passed out of the House
Choice and Innovation Committee by an 8-to-2 vote (the only two
Democrats on the committee voted against it), was a broad assault on
academic freedom.
In addition to guaranteeing that students would "not be punished for
professing beliefs with which their professors disagree," the bill
would have advised professors "to teach alternative 'serious academic
theories' that may disagree with their personal views."
"Some professors say, 'Evolution is a fact. I don't want to hear
about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don't
like it, there's the door,'" Baxley maintained.
According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, students who
felt their views were disrespected in the classroom or thought they
were singled out for "public ridicule" by their professors would have
the right to sue them and the university.
"Despite the state Senate's decision not to consider Baxley's bill, I
have heard that he hasn't given up and may reintroduce the House bill
next session," Susan Greenbaum, the president of the Faculty Senate
at the University of South Florida, told IPS.
"Baxley also appealed directly to the state's university presidents
to implement his proposals administratively. As chair of the
Education Council and as a member of the Education Appropriations
Committee, a very important House committee, Baxley certainly has
their attention."
"The real test," Greenbaum pointed out, "will come in whether there
is an escalation in student grievances at Florida universities, and
what happens to those complaints. However, what seems to be lacking
in this whole issue is real student dissatisfaction. They have
garnered almost no action among students on these campuses; David
Horowitz presented a pitiful array of dubious anecdotes when he
testified in Tallahassee."
In addition to Florida, legislators in 13 other states have
introduced some type of "Academic Freedom" legislation. California
and Maine are considering "an academic bill of rights [containing] an
eight-point credo designed to increase political diversity in the
classroom."
In early June, the Christian Science Monitor reported that "four
state universities in Colorado... [had] adopted the principles under
legislative pressure in 2004."
In Minnesota, right-wing state senator Michelle Bachman, a vocal
opponent of gay rights, introduced two bills modeled on Horowitz's
complaints, one targeted at state colleges and universities and one
at state high schools.
Horowitz, who operates a number of projects -- including the online
magazine Frontpagemag.com -- out of the well-funded offices of his
Los Angeles, California-based Center for the Study of Popular
Culture, set up Students for Academic Freedom in 2003 to do the grunt
work. Since then, the Washington-based outfit has been making headway
on college campuses across the nation.
Students for Academic Freedom is not only involved with lobbying
state legislatures; on some campuses, they and similarly minded
groups have launched an all-out assault on liberal professors, using
classic McCarthyite tactics.
At Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) in Santa Rosa, California, the
struggle over academic freedom took a particularly ugly turn earlier
this year. Conservative students, supporting a California version of
a Student Bill of Rights, issued "leaflets quoting Section 51530 of
the [California] Education Code," and then "anonymously posted [them]
on the doors of ten faculty members" at the College, veteran
journalist David Bacon reported.
The leaflet quoted the code:
"No teacher... shall advocate or teach communism with the intent to
indoctrinate, inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for
communism." Such "advocacy," the statute says, means teaching "for
the purpose of undermining patriotism for, and the belief in, the
government of the United States and of this state."
Claiming responsibility for the action, SRJC Republicans issued a
press release stating that they "did this because we believe certain
instructors at SRJC are in violation of California state law."
At the same time, a news release with the headline "Operation 'Red
Scare,'" appeared on the website of California College Republicans.
In McCarthyite cant, the organization's chair, Michael Davidson, told
reporter John Gorenfeld "a lot of the college professors are
leftovers from the Seventies -- and Communist sympathizers."
Meanwhile, in Florida, Horowitz's local partner, Rep. Dennis Baxley,
appears to see himself as a modern-day Daniel fighting the lions of
liberal academia. During the debate over his legislation, Baxley
claimed he was called a McCarthyist by "leftist critics [who]
ridicule me for daring to stand up for students and faculty."
Then, similar to a tactic used by Sen. Joseph McCarthy himself,
Baxley claimed that he "had a list of students who were discriminated
against by professors," but, the St. Petersburg Times reported, he
"refused to reveal names because he felt they would be persecuted."
Horowitz's efforts at campuses across the country, and Rep. Baxley's
work in Florida "represents an inversion of the original intent of
academic freedom, which is to protect the right of professors to
express controversial ideas without fear of retaliation," Susan
Greenbaum maintains.
"This protection is designed to shield free inquiry and encourage
innovation. It enables the creation of new knowledge and secures the
basis to challenge old ideas," she continued.
"In Baxley's bill -- which is really the Horowitz bill -- students
are customers, whose tastes and prejudices must be accommodated.
Professors are likened to vendors who must take care not to offend or
disturb those who have come to purchase their wares."
"It's like the Wal-Mart model: Maybe they can import holographic
images of professors made in China, attractive classroom automatons
who can be programmed to present marketable and politically
acceptable material," she said dryly.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
This is an important and welcome development. Read on...
AFL-CIO CONVENTION CALLS FOR TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ
By David Bacon
CHICAGO, IL (7/26/05) - On the second day of its convention inChicago, the AFL-CIO took an historic step, calling for the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, and an end to the country's occupation. Public attention has focused largely on the split in US labor, and the decision by two of the federation's largest unions to leave. Yet the impact of this call will reverberate for years, with asprofound effect on the future of US workers and their unions.
Brooks Sunkett, vice-president of the Communications Workers of America(CWA), started a train of passionate speeches on the convention floor,saying that the government had lied to him when it sent him to war inVietnam three decades ago. "We have to stop it from lying to a newgeneration now," he implored. Henry Nicholas, a hospital union leaderin the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,told delegates that his son, who has served four tours of duty in Iraq,is now threatened with yet another.
Speaker after speaker rose to condemn the war and occupation, and todemand the return of the troops. No one dared defend a policy that hascaused revulsion throughout US unions. Watching from the visitors' gallery was a handful of Iraqi unionleaders. One of them had traveled to the US two months ago, with fiveother union activists, to plead the case of Iraqi workers. For 16 daysthey traveled to more than 50 cities, often speaking before hundreds ofangry workers, demanding an end to the occupation. The Iraqis urgedtheir US union counterparts to take action.
The resolution at the convention was the answer to this call. It wasthe culmination as well of an upsurge that has swept through US unionssince before the war started two years ago. From the point when itbecame clear that the Bush administration intended to invade Iraq,union activists began organizing a national network to oppose it, USLabor Against the War. What started as a collection of small groups,in a handful of unions, has today to become a coalition of unionsrepresenting over a million members.
The network organized the tour of the Iraqi unionists, to provide thema chance to speak directly to US workers. "We believed strongly thatif unions in our country could hear their Iraqi brothers and sistersasking for the withdrawal of US troops, they would respond in a spiritof solidarity and human sympathy," said Gene Bruskin, one of USLAW'snational coordinators. "We were right."
Resolutions calling for troop withdrawal poured in from unions, laborcouncils, and state labor federations across the country. But as theconvention began, AFL-CIO national staff tried to substitute anotherresolution that called for ending the occupation "as soon aspossible." This was the same position as that put forward by the Bushadministration.
Delegates at the convention, who belong to the USLAW network thencalled for using instead the phrase "rapid withdrawal" of the troops. At a strategy-planning session attended by over 150 delegates, US andIraqi unionists joined together to plan a fight on the convention floorto win that language. Before it could take place, however, CWAVice-president Larry Cohen went to the AFL-CIO executive council, thefederation's ruling body, and asked them to accept the change.
Knowing that a fight was in store, and suddenly unsure of their abilityto win it, the council agreed.
The resolution was put on the floor of the convention Tuesday afternoon, two days before the scheduled debate on Iraq. When the proposal for rapid withdrawal was introduced by Fred Mason, head of theAFL-CIO in Maryland, it was obvious what he meant by the words. Hiscall to "get out now" became a chorus thundering from speaker afterspeaker. The new language was adopted with the votes of an overwhelming majority.
The resolution marks a watershed moment in modern US labor history. It is the product of grassroots action at the bottom of the US labormovement, not a directive from top leaders. The call for bringing thetroops home echoes the sentiments of thousands of ordinary workers andrank-and-file union members, whose children and family have been calledon to fight the war. A growing number, who now form a majority in US unions, believe the best way to protect them is to bring them home.
The resolution represents a deeper understanding that is making its wayinto thousands of discussions in workplaces and union halls. The warin Iraq never had much credibility as an effort to find weapons of massdestruction, since none were ever found. The administration's claimthat it is fighting to bring democracy to Iraqi people inspired asimilar disbelief. After five years of administration attacks on USworkers and unions, none but the most diehard of its supporters havemuch faith left in its pro-democracy pronouncements.
Over the last year, however, the Iraqis themselves have provided a newunderstanding of the occupation's anti-democratic impact. Americanmilitary authorities, they told US union members, have banned labororganization in oil fields, factories and other Iraqi publicenterprises. Meanwhile, Bush political operatives have begun toengineer the sell off of those enterprises to foreign corporations,with a potential loss of thousands of jobs and the income needed torebuild the country.
"This is not liberation. It is occupation," said Ghasib Hassan, aleader of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, one of the unions thatsent its members to speak in the US. "At the beginning of the 21stcentury, we thought we'd seen the end of colonies, but now we'reentering a new era of colonization."
In the many meetings and discussions that finally led to the resolution, union members understood the purpose of the occupation in anew way - as the imposition, at gunpoint, of Bush administration freemarket policies on Iraq. After the resolution's passage, the Iraqiscalled on delegates to act on that understanding, and asked the AFL-CIOto bring its members out to coming national demonstrations against thewar.
Rapid withdrawal means more than just bringing US soldiers home. Calling for it puts American workers on the side of Iraqis, as theyresist the transformation of their country for the benefit of a wealthy global elite. Brooks Sunkett, Vietnam vet turned union leader, spokepowerfully for this renewed unwillingness to wage wars based on liesand greed. His call for rapid withdrawal breathes new life into theVietnam syndrome - so feared by US administrations intent on militaryintervention to defend their free market policies around the world.
AFL-CIO CONVENTION CALLS FOR TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ
By David Bacon
CHICAGO, IL (7/26/05) - On the second day of its convention inChicago, the AFL-CIO took an historic step, calling for the rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, and an end to the country's occupation. Public attention has focused largely on the split in US labor, and the decision by two of the federation's largest unions to leave. Yet the impact of this call will reverberate for years, with asprofound effect on the future of US workers and their unions.
Brooks Sunkett, vice-president of the Communications Workers of America(CWA), started a train of passionate speeches on the convention floor,saying that the government had lied to him when it sent him to war inVietnam three decades ago. "We have to stop it from lying to a newgeneration now," he implored. Henry Nicholas, a hospital union leaderin the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,told delegates that his son, who has served four tours of duty in Iraq,is now threatened with yet another.
Speaker after speaker rose to condemn the war and occupation, and todemand the return of the troops. No one dared defend a policy that hascaused revulsion throughout US unions. Watching from the visitors' gallery was a handful of Iraqi unionleaders. One of them had traveled to the US two months ago, with fiveother union activists, to plead the case of Iraqi workers. For 16 daysthey traveled to more than 50 cities, often speaking before hundreds ofangry workers, demanding an end to the occupation. The Iraqis urgedtheir US union counterparts to take action.
The resolution at the convention was the answer to this call. It wasthe culmination as well of an upsurge that has swept through US unionssince before the war started two years ago. From the point when itbecame clear that the Bush administration intended to invade Iraq,union activists began organizing a national network to oppose it, USLabor Against the War. What started as a collection of small groups,in a handful of unions, has today to become a coalition of unionsrepresenting over a million members.
The network organized the tour of the Iraqi unionists, to provide thema chance to speak directly to US workers. "We believed strongly thatif unions in our country could hear their Iraqi brothers and sistersasking for the withdrawal of US troops, they would respond in a spiritof solidarity and human sympathy," said Gene Bruskin, one of USLAW'snational coordinators. "We were right."
Resolutions calling for troop withdrawal poured in from unions, laborcouncils, and state labor federations across the country. But as theconvention began, AFL-CIO national staff tried to substitute anotherresolution that called for ending the occupation "as soon aspossible." This was the same position as that put forward by the Bushadministration.
Delegates at the convention, who belong to the USLAW network thencalled for using instead the phrase "rapid withdrawal" of the troops. At a strategy-planning session attended by over 150 delegates, US andIraqi unionists joined together to plan a fight on the convention floorto win that language. Before it could take place, however, CWAVice-president Larry Cohen went to the AFL-CIO executive council, thefederation's ruling body, and asked them to accept the change.
Knowing that a fight was in store, and suddenly unsure of their abilityto win it, the council agreed.
The resolution was put on the floor of the convention Tuesday afternoon, two days before the scheduled debate on Iraq. When the proposal for rapid withdrawal was introduced by Fred Mason, head of theAFL-CIO in Maryland, it was obvious what he meant by the words. Hiscall to "get out now" became a chorus thundering from speaker afterspeaker. The new language was adopted with the votes of an overwhelming majority.
The resolution marks a watershed moment in modern US labor history. It is the product of grassroots action at the bottom of the US labormovement, not a directive from top leaders. The call for bringing thetroops home echoes the sentiments of thousands of ordinary workers andrank-and-file union members, whose children and family have been calledon to fight the war. A growing number, who now form a majority in US unions, believe the best way to protect them is to bring them home.
The resolution represents a deeper understanding that is making its wayinto thousands of discussions in workplaces and union halls. The warin Iraq never had much credibility as an effort to find weapons of massdestruction, since none were ever found. The administration's claimthat it is fighting to bring democracy to Iraqi people inspired asimilar disbelief. After five years of administration attacks on USworkers and unions, none but the most diehard of its supporters havemuch faith left in its pro-democracy pronouncements.
Over the last year, however, the Iraqis themselves have provided a newunderstanding of the occupation's anti-democratic impact. Americanmilitary authorities, they told US union members, have banned labororganization in oil fields, factories and other Iraqi publicenterprises. Meanwhile, Bush political operatives have begun toengineer the sell off of those enterprises to foreign corporations,with a potential loss of thousands of jobs and the income needed torebuild the country.
"This is not liberation. It is occupation," said Ghasib Hassan, aleader of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, one of the unions thatsent its members to speak in the US. "At the beginning of the 21stcentury, we thought we'd seen the end of colonies, but now we'reentering a new era of colonization."
In the many meetings and discussions that finally led to the resolution, union members understood the purpose of the occupation in anew way - as the imposition, at gunpoint, of Bush administration freemarket policies on Iraq. After the resolution's passage, the Iraqiscalled on delegates to act on that understanding, and asked the AFL-CIOto bring its members out to coming national demonstrations against thewar.
Rapid withdrawal means more than just bringing US soldiers home. Calling for it puts American workers on the side of Iraqis, as theyresist the transformation of their country for the benefit of a wealthy global elite. Brooks Sunkett, Vietnam vet turned union leader, spokepowerfully for this renewed unwillingness to wage wars based on liesand greed. His call for rapid withdrawal breathes new life into theVietnam syndrome - so feared by US administrations intent on militaryintervention to defend their free market policies around the world.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Finally, a well financed, politically progressive challenge to the hegemony of the big (American) media conlomerates. It'll certainly be an experiment worth following....
MEDIA-LATIN AMERICA:
New Regional Network of the South is BornHumberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 24 (IPS) - Telesur, a regional public TV network envisioned as a Latin American version of the Arab world's Al Jazeera broadcasting group, was officially launched Tuesday at a ceremony in the Venezuelan capital. The fledgling broadcasting company is jointly owned by Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay and Venezuela.
"After 513 years of looking at ourselves through foreign eyes, we Latin Americans are beginning to see ourselves through our own eyes," said the director of the new regional network, Aram Arahonian, a Uruguayan journalist based in Venezuela for the last 18 years, at the official ceremony. Venezuelan Information Minister Andrés Izarra, the chairman of Telesur, reported that the new network has already invested roughly 10 million dollars in facilities, equipment, and the leasing of a satellite.
The first brief broadcast on Monday consisted of a 10-minute video reflecting what Telesur aims to be, nationally televised in Venezuela and aired on TV networks in other countries of the region. These first images emphasised the social struggles and progressive movements of Latin America, including statements from indigenous organisations, scenes of street protests against free-market economic policies and U.S. meddling, and footage of students attending schools in poor, working-class neighbourhoods. Also shown were photographs of leftist icons like legendary Cuban-Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and former Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende, overthrown in a 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.
Telesur "will indeed be biased, towards promoting Latin American integration, diversity and plurality, and against the uniform point of view imposed through the privately owned media's control of information," Aharonian told IPS. The Telesur director added that the new network is a response to the current "media latifundia", an allusion to the system of land ownership in which enormous areas are controlled by a single private owner.
Left-leaning Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has been a driving force behind Telesur. He has promoted the initiative at numerous international forums over the past year, asking, "Why do we have to be told everything we know about ourselves by a network from the North, like CNN? Why this media dictatorship?"
When former Ecuadorian president Lucio Gutiérrez was removed by Congress, Chávez admitted he found out about it on CNN. In response to a reporter's question of whether the new network will be fully devoted to spreading the messages of state TV networks in the participating countries, Aharonian stressed that if it were only used to broadcast speeches by Chávez and other presidents, "we would have to take it for granted that no one would watch it. If this were to turn into a propaganda tool, we would all leave."
The brief promotional segment that premiered Monday will be repeated in a number of countries until Jul. 24 - the anniversary of the birth of Simón BolÃvar, founding father of South American independence and fervent proponent of the integration of the region's nations - when full-length programmes will begin to be aired, followed by 24-hour broadcasting as of mid-September.
News and current affairs will account for 40 percent of all programming, according to the Telesur board of directors, which includes Beto Almeida from Brazil, Jorge Botero from Colombia and Ovidio Cabrera from Cuba. In addition to a full-length newscast, a morning news and analysis show and other current events programming, brief news updates will be aired every half hour. Other regular segments will include a showcase of Latin American filmmaking, past and present, entitled Memories in Development (a play on the title of the classic Cuban film Memories of Underdevelopment), and another featuring movies from non-Latin American countries other than the United States, called Nojolivud (the Spanish phonetic spelling of "No Hollywood").
Another segment, Memories of Fire, will be entirely devoted to documentaries. "Last year, there were 646 documentaries filmed in Latin America, according to the figures we have gathered, but only 21 of them have ever been shown. We will be providing a space for all of these productions," said Aharonian. There are also plans for regularly scheduled shows dedicated to music, regional travel and tourism destinations, agriculture, and survival in the large urban centres of Latin America.
Telesur plans to air programming produced by both privately owned and national and local public TV stations, as well as community, university and independent producers. The network will also have a branch devoted to promoting regional TV production dubbed the Latin American Content Factory. But while the programming directors will be open to submissions from all sources, their decisions will be based on high standards of quality in terms of both content and form, said Aharonian. When Telesur is fully functioning at the end of the year, viewers will be able to tune in throughout the Americas, in western Europe, and in the northwest tip of Africa, according to the network management.
"This is a challenge we have always dreamed of pursuing," said Gabriel Marotto, the Argentine media undersecretary. "We are counting on providing a different vision of our reality, and on the fact that this will be a TV network run by states, and not by governments," he added.
Venezuela owns 51 percent of the shares in the Empresa Multiestatal Telesur, CompañÃa Anónima, as the Telesur broadcasting company is officially known, while Argentina owns 20 percent, Cuba 19 percent, and Uruguay 10 percent. "But more than a financial or commercial operation, the participating states are taking part in Telesur for a political purpose, which is to foster the integration of our peoples," stressed Izarra.
In view of the notable absence of Brazil - which has come to play a leading role in regional integration - Izarra noted that the project is still open to the incorporation of all other Latin American nations. Venezuela provided the start-up financing for the network, while the other shareholding partners are contributing programming, equipment and staff, he added. Botero, the head of news and current affairs programming, reported that local bureaux have already been opened in Brasilia, Bogota, Caracas and La Paz, and will soon be followed by others in Buenos Aires, Havana, Mexico City, Montevideo and Washington, D.C.
(END/2005)
MEDIA-LATIN AMERICA:
New Regional Network of the South is BornHumberto Márquez
CARACAS, May 24 (IPS) - Telesur, a regional public TV network envisioned as a Latin American version of the Arab world's Al Jazeera broadcasting group, was officially launched Tuesday at a ceremony in the Venezuelan capital. The fledgling broadcasting company is jointly owned by Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay and Venezuela.
"After 513 years of looking at ourselves through foreign eyes, we Latin Americans are beginning to see ourselves through our own eyes," said the director of the new regional network, Aram Arahonian, a Uruguayan journalist based in Venezuela for the last 18 years, at the official ceremony. Venezuelan Information Minister Andrés Izarra, the chairman of Telesur, reported that the new network has already invested roughly 10 million dollars in facilities, equipment, and the leasing of a satellite.
The first brief broadcast on Monday consisted of a 10-minute video reflecting what Telesur aims to be, nationally televised in Venezuela and aired on TV networks in other countries of the region. These first images emphasised the social struggles and progressive movements of Latin America, including statements from indigenous organisations, scenes of street protests against free-market economic policies and U.S. meddling, and footage of students attending schools in poor, working-class neighbourhoods. Also shown were photographs of leftist icons like legendary Cuban-Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and former Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende, overthrown in a 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.
Telesur "will indeed be biased, towards promoting Latin American integration, diversity and plurality, and against the uniform point of view imposed through the privately owned media's control of information," Aharonian told IPS. The Telesur director added that the new network is a response to the current "media latifundia", an allusion to the system of land ownership in which enormous areas are controlled by a single private owner.
Left-leaning Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has been a driving force behind Telesur. He has promoted the initiative at numerous international forums over the past year, asking, "Why do we have to be told everything we know about ourselves by a network from the North, like CNN? Why this media dictatorship?"
When former Ecuadorian president Lucio Gutiérrez was removed by Congress, Chávez admitted he found out about it on CNN. In response to a reporter's question of whether the new network will be fully devoted to spreading the messages of state TV networks in the participating countries, Aharonian stressed that if it were only used to broadcast speeches by Chávez and other presidents, "we would have to take it for granted that no one would watch it. If this were to turn into a propaganda tool, we would all leave."
The brief promotional segment that premiered Monday will be repeated in a number of countries until Jul. 24 - the anniversary of the birth of Simón BolÃvar, founding father of South American independence and fervent proponent of the integration of the region's nations - when full-length programmes will begin to be aired, followed by 24-hour broadcasting as of mid-September.
News and current affairs will account for 40 percent of all programming, according to the Telesur board of directors, which includes Beto Almeida from Brazil, Jorge Botero from Colombia and Ovidio Cabrera from Cuba. In addition to a full-length newscast, a morning news and analysis show and other current events programming, brief news updates will be aired every half hour. Other regular segments will include a showcase of Latin American filmmaking, past and present, entitled Memories in Development (a play on the title of the classic Cuban film Memories of Underdevelopment), and another featuring movies from non-Latin American countries other than the United States, called Nojolivud (the Spanish phonetic spelling of "No Hollywood").
Another segment, Memories of Fire, will be entirely devoted to documentaries. "Last year, there were 646 documentaries filmed in Latin America, according to the figures we have gathered, but only 21 of them have ever been shown. We will be providing a space for all of these productions," said Aharonian. There are also plans for regularly scheduled shows dedicated to music, regional travel and tourism destinations, agriculture, and survival in the large urban centres of Latin America.
Telesur plans to air programming produced by both privately owned and national and local public TV stations, as well as community, university and independent producers. The network will also have a branch devoted to promoting regional TV production dubbed the Latin American Content Factory. But while the programming directors will be open to submissions from all sources, their decisions will be based on high standards of quality in terms of both content and form, said Aharonian. When Telesur is fully functioning at the end of the year, viewers will be able to tune in throughout the Americas, in western Europe, and in the northwest tip of Africa, according to the network management.
"This is a challenge we have always dreamed of pursuing," said Gabriel Marotto, the Argentine media undersecretary. "We are counting on providing a different vision of our reality, and on the fact that this will be a TV network run by states, and not by governments," he added.
Venezuela owns 51 percent of the shares in the Empresa Multiestatal Telesur, CompañÃa Anónima, as the Telesur broadcasting company is officially known, while Argentina owns 20 percent, Cuba 19 percent, and Uruguay 10 percent. "But more than a financial or commercial operation, the participating states are taking part in Telesur for a political purpose, which is to foster the integration of our peoples," stressed Izarra.
In view of the notable absence of Brazil - which has come to play a leading role in regional integration - Izarra noted that the project is still open to the incorporation of all other Latin American nations. Venezuela provided the start-up financing for the network, while the other shareholding partners are contributing programming, equipment and staff, he added. Botero, the head of news and current affairs programming, reported that local bureaux have already been opened in Brasilia, Bogota, Caracas and La Paz, and will soon be followed by others in Buenos Aires, Havana, Mexico City, Montevideo and Washington, D.C.
(END/2005)
Friday, June 03, 2005
While I'm a fan of the 'Daily Show,' McManus, of the fine watchdog group Grade the News, is absolutely on the money here. As a college professor, I encounter evidence that young people are "tuning out" the news every damn day. It has gotten to the point where I actually had to explain to some students exactly what Bush's Social Security reform proposal was so that I could proceed to criticize the news media's coverage of it. Of course, as our collective quality of life deteriotates in the coming years thanks to the misrule of the plutocrats, maybe some of them will develop an interest in current affiars. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
When the 'Daily Show' Becomes Your News
By John McManus, Grade the News. Posted June 2, 2005.
What does it say about journalism when young people use “fake news” as their primary source of information?
So many people -- particularly young people -- tell me they now get most of their news from Comedy Central’s "Daily Show," I decided to record it for analysis.
Jon Stewart is a brilliant comic. Watching his show I learned more about national stories like the confirmation hearings for John Bolton, the Bush administration’s proposed United Nations ambassador, than I read on the front pages of some American newspapers.
But the "Daily Show" makes no pretense of being real news. It skims the events of the day for the comic or ironic. It pokes fun at journalism’s hallowed conventions of accuracy, objectivity and fairness. And while you may learn something about national and international events, it doesn’t cover local news.
What does it say about journalism when intelligent people claim a program that prides itself as “fake news” is their primary source of information about current events?
Turning away from real news makes no sense. Not for those interested in democracy’s promise of self-government, certainly. Not even for those seeking more entertaining alternatives to news.
It defies economic logic.
When a product becomes more useful, more available and cheaper, you would expect its popularity to soar. It happened with automobiles, television, computers and cell phones.
But oddly, not journalism. News has never been so valuable, so accessible and so inexpensive. Yet study after study shows Americans under the age of 40 have never valued it less.
News is about change
The purpose of journalism is to help people make sense of change. Driven by technology, the world around us has never changed so rapidly.
A hundred years ago, if you knew little about the world you got along fine. Then, what labor was paid in China didn’t affect workers in California. Only the most cataclysmic distant events mattered at home.
Today ignorance of world affairs can take food off your table as corporations hire globally and fire locally. What’s being discussed by militants half a world away today may take more than your job tomorrow. The radius of news that matters now spans the planet. Distance is obsolete.
The reach of government has also expanded from 100 years ago, making political news more valuable. Government decisions now affect almost every aspect of life – from the quality of air and water to schools, transportation, job availability, public safety, even spotted owls.
Technology has also exponentially increased the volume of news available. On cable, satellite, and the Web, a world of news outlets has bloomed – from main stream media to bloggers -- almost all offering information for free.
Yet polls, circulation numbers and Nielsen ratings show unmistakably that Americans under 40 are following current events less than their parents. Even less than their parents and grandparents did when they were young.
Eighteen to 24-year-olds may be the Internet Generation, but a recent poll found only 11 percent use the ‘net to learn of current events. Not surprisingly, other polls show those under 40 know less and care less about politics.
A democracy, more than other forms of government, is a continuous contest for power among many constituencies. Nearly everything not nailed down by the Constitution is up for grabs.
Groups that don’t know what’s going on are sure losers in our system.
Young people at risk
The effects of youthful disengagement from news may already be evident. Arguably, young people are the least likely to benefit from the Bush administration’s policies.
• The burdens of war always fall hardest on the young, who risk life, limb and psyche.
• The proposed privatization of Social Security won’t change the system for those about to retire, but it raises risks for younger workers.
• The Medicare drug benefit is aimed at the elderly. The federal health program helping the most young people is Medicaid. The administration proposes to cut billions from its budget.
• And the growing federal budget deficit is shifting debt from current to future tax-payers.
Madison's warning
When you abandon the news, you don’t lose your vote. But you may lose its effectiveness.
Unaware of their records and policies, you may elect politicians indifferent or hostile to your interests. And when people organize to promote their agenda before school boards, city councils, county supervisors, state legislatures and congress, your place at democracy’s table will be taken by someone else.
Almost 200 years ago, James Madison warned that “knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
In the information age, Madison’s words ring truer still.
John McManus is director of Grade the News — a media research project focusing on the quality of the news media in the San Francisco Bay Area.
When the 'Daily Show' Becomes Your News
By John McManus, Grade the News. Posted June 2, 2005.
What does it say about journalism when young people use “fake news” as their primary source of information?
So many people -- particularly young people -- tell me they now get most of their news from Comedy Central’s "Daily Show," I decided to record it for analysis.
Jon Stewart is a brilliant comic. Watching his show I learned more about national stories like the confirmation hearings for John Bolton, the Bush administration’s proposed United Nations ambassador, than I read on the front pages of some American newspapers.
But the "Daily Show" makes no pretense of being real news. It skims the events of the day for the comic or ironic. It pokes fun at journalism’s hallowed conventions of accuracy, objectivity and fairness. And while you may learn something about national and international events, it doesn’t cover local news.
What does it say about journalism when intelligent people claim a program that prides itself as “fake news” is their primary source of information about current events?
Turning away from real news makes no sense. Not for those interested in democracy’s promise of self-government, certainly. Not even for those seeking more entertaining alternatives to news.
It defies economic logic.
When a product becomes more useful, more available and cheaper, you would expect its popularity to soar. It happened with automobiles, television, computers and cell phones.
But oddly, not journalism. News has never been so valuable, so accessible and so inexpensive. Yet study after study shows Americans under the age of 40 have never valued it less.
News is about change
The purpose of journalism is to help people make sense of change. Driven by technology, the world around us has never changed so rapidly.
A hundred years ago, if you knew little about the world you got along fine. Then, what labor was paid in China didn’t affect workers in California. Only the most cataclysmic distant events mattered at home.
Today ignorance of world affairs can take food off your table as corporations hire globally and fire locally. What’s being discussed by militants half a world away today may take more than your job tomorrow. The radius of news that matters now spans the planet. Distance is obsolete.
The reach of government has also expanded from 100 years ago, making political news more valuable. Government decisions now affect almost every aspect of life – from the quality of air and water to schools, transportation, job availability, public safety, even spotted owls.
Technology has also exponentially increased the volume of news available. On cable, satellite, and the Web, a world of news outlets has bloomed – from main stream media to bloggers -- almost all offering information for free.
Yet polls, circulation numbers and Nielsen ratings show unmistakably that Americans under 40 are following current events less than their parents. Even less than their parents and grandparents did when they were young.
Eighteen to 24-year-olds may be the Internet Generation, but a recent poll found only 11 percent use the ‘net to learn of current events. Not surprisingly, other polls show those under 40 know less and care less about politics.
A democracy, more than other forms of government, is a continuous contest for power among many constituencies. Nearly everything not nailed down by the Constitution is up for grabs.
Groups that don’t know what’s going on are sure losers in our system.
Young people at risk
The effects of youthful disengagement from news may already be evident. Arguably, young people are the least likely to benefit from the Bush administration’s policies.
• The burdens of war always fall hardest on the young, who risk life, limb and psyche.
• The proposed privatization of Social Security won’t change the system for those about to retire, but it raises risks for younger workers.
• The Medicare drug benefit is aimed at the elderly. The federal health program helping the most young people is Medicaid. The administration proposes to cut billions from its budget.
• And the growing federal budget deficit is shifting debt from current to future tax-payers.
Madison's warning
When you abandon the news, you don’t lose your vote. But you may lose its effectiveness.
Unaware of their records and policies, you may elect politicians indifferent or hostile to your interests. And when people organize to promote their agenda before school boards, city councils, county supervisors, state legislatures and congress, your place at democracy’s table will be taken by someone else.
Almost 200 years ago, James Madison warned that “knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
In the information age, Madison’s words ring truer still.
John McManus is director of Grade the News — a media research project focusing on the quality of the news media in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
The conservative flak-machine is apparently once again in attack mode, this time targeting Newspaper Guild president Linda Foley for suggesting that the U.S. military has a "cavalier" attitude toward the slaughter of journalists in Iraq. Given the evidence, Foley's criticisms were, if anything, too mild. Steve Weissman of Truthout last year wrote a four part series, Dead Messengers: How the U.S. Military Threatens Journalists, that makes a good case that it is U.S. military policy to attack independent reporters covering the occupation (which would certainly explain the whole Giuliana Sgrena incident). Since the right-wing media have no reporters in Iraq who aren't "in bed" with the military, it is hardly surprising that they haven't taken up the issue. Read more below....
Guild chief under fire for comments about attacks on journalists in Iraq
From Editor & Publisher, May 20, 2005
By Joe StruppNEW YORK
Linda Foley, national president of The Newspaper Guild, drew criticism Thursday from some conservatives for comments she made last Friday about the killing of journalists in Iraq. Foley said, among other things, that she was outraged by “the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it’s just a scandal.”
Last month, Foley sent a letter to President Bush criticizing the U.S. investigation into the deaths of journalists in Iraq.The backlash became so severe Thursday that staffers at Guild headquarters in Washington, D.C., stopped answering the phone because of abusive phone calls and “people screaming at us,” Foley said. Instead, callers were required to leave messages on voice mail and await a return call.
“We don’t want people to be subjected to that kind of abuse,” Foley said, adding that the angry calls began early Thursday. “It is annoying, but it isn’t deterring us from doing what we have to do.”
The calls were apparently in reaction to comments Foley made during a panel discussion at the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis on May 13. There she offered a lengthy commentary on corporate ownership of media, and she refuted certain criticism of journalists. During that session, she also briefly discussed deaths of journalists covering the war.
Foley’s comments, which she says have been distorted, have drawn the ire of several conservative news organizations, including NewsMax.com, The Washington Times, and Sinclair Broadcasting, charging that she accused the U.S. forces of deliberately targeting journalists.
According to a video of the session available on the conference’s Web site, her only comments on this specific subject were:“Journalists are not just being targeted verbally or politically. They are also being targeted for real in places like Iraq. And what outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it’s just a scandal.”
“It’s not just U.S. journalists either, by the way. They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries, at news services like Al Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios, with impunity. This is all part of the culture that it is OK to blame the individual journalists, and it just takes the heat off of these media conglomerates that are part of the problem.”
A NewsMax.com story charged that Foley had accused U.S. soldiers of “committing atrocities without offering any evidence to back the charge up.” Mark Hyman, a Sinclair commentator, called her comments “irresponsible” and “horrible allegations.” Several critics immediately compared her criticism to the case of Eason Jordan, the former CNN executive who resigned after suggesting that the U.S. military may have targeted some journalists in Iraq.
Foley told E&P Thursday that her words were taken out of context by critics and said her original intent was to discuss how journalists are often scapegoated for their coverage.
“This was almost an aside,” she said. “But it is true that hundreds of journalists are killed around the world, and many have been killed in Iraq.”
When asked if she believed U.S. troops had targeted journalists in Iraq, she said, “I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military. Could I have said it differently? There are 100 different ways of saying this, but I’m not sure they would have appeased the right.”
She did point out that those who bombed the Al Jazeera studios in Baghdad in 2003 had the coordinates of the television station, “because Al Jazeera had given it to them and they bombed the hell out of the station. They bombed it knowing it was the Al Jazeera station. Absent any independent inquiry that tells the world otherwise, that is what I believe.”
Her comments at the conference followed the letter she sent last month to President Bush criticizing the U.S. investigation into the deaths of journalists in Iraq, including several during an attack on the Palestine Hotel in 2003. In that attack, two journalists — one from Spain and the other from Ukraine — were killed. She also noted the bombing of the Al Jazeera office the same day, in which a reporter died.
“Neither of these attacks has been independently investigated nor have the deaths been properly explained to the satisfaction of the victims’ families, their friends and their colleagues,” the letter said, in part.
This article is from Editor & Publisher. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their website and register an account to view all their articles on the web. Support quality journalism.
Guild chief under fire for comments about attacks on journalists in Iraq
From Editor & Publisher, May 20, 2005
By Joe StruppNEW YORK
Linda Foley, national president of The Newspaper Guild, drew criticism Thursday from some conservatives for comments she made last Friday about the killing of journalists in Iraq. Foley said, among other things, that she was outraged by “the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it’s just a scandal.”
Last month, Foley sent a letter to President Bush criticizing the U.S. investigation into the deaths of journalists in Iraq.The backlash became so severe Thursday that staffers at Guild headquarters in Washington, D.C., stopped answering the phone because of abusive phone calls and “people screaming at us,” Foley said. Instead, callers were required to leave messages on voice mail and await a return call.
“We don’t want people to be subjected to that kind of abuse,” Foley said, adding that the angry calls began early Thursday. “It is annoying, but it isn’t deterring us from doing what we have to do.”
The calls were apparently in reaction to comments Foley made during a panel discussion at the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis on May 13. There she offered a lengthy commentary on corporate ownership of media, and she refuted certain criticism of journalists. During that session, she also briefly discussed deaths of journalists covering the war.
Foley’s comments, which she says have been distorted, have drawn the ire of several conservative news organizations, including NewsMax.com, The Washington Times, and Sinclair Broadcasting, charging that she accused the U.S. forces of deliberately targeting journalists.
According to a video of the session available on the conference’s Web site, her only comments on this specific subject were:“Journalists are not just being targeted verbally or politically. They are also being targeted for real in places like Iraq. And what outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq. I think it’s just a scandal.”
“It’s not just U.S. journalists either, by the way. They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries, at news services like Al Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios, with impunity. This is all part of the culture that it is OK to blame the individual journalists, and it just takes the heat off of these media conglomerates that are part of the problem.”
A NewsMax.com story charged that Foley had accused U.S. soldiers of “committing atrocities without offering any evidence to back the charge up.” Mark Hyman, a Sinclair commentator, called her comments “irresponsible” and “horrible allegations.” Several critics immediately compared her criticism to the case of Eason Jordan, the former CNN executive who resigned after suggesting that the U.S. military may have targeted some journalists in Iraq.
Foley told E&P Thursday that her words were taken out of context by critics and said her original intent was to discuss how journalists are often scapegoated for their coverage.
“This was almost an aside,” she said. “But it is true that hundreds of journalists are killed around the world, and many have been killed in Iraq.”
When asked if she believed U.S. troops had targeted journalists in Iraq, she said, “I was careful of not saying troops, I said U.S. military. Could I have said it differently? There are 100 different ways of saying this, but I’m not sure they would have appeased the right.”
She did point out that those who bombed the Al Jazeera studios in Baghdad in 2003 had the coordinates of the television station, “because Al Jazeera had given it to them and they bombed the hell out of the station. They bombed it knowing it was the Al Jazeera station. Absent any independent inquiry that tells the world otherwise, that is what I believe.”
Her comments at the conference followed the letter she sent last month to President Bush criticizing the U.S. investigation into the deaths of journalists in Iraq, including several during an attack on the Palestine Hotel in 2003. In that attack, two journalists — one from Spain and the other from Ukraine — were killed. She also noted the bombing of the Al Jazeera office the same day, in which a reporter died.
“Neither of these attacks has been independently investigated nor have the deaths been properly explained to the satisfaction of the victims’ families, their friends and their colleagues,” the letter said, in part.
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Friday, April 22, 2005
The relentless right-wing campaign to eliminate all independent and critical voices from the public sphere continues unabated. First, they forced Howard Stern -- no hero of mine but a defender of free speech and a thorn in the side of the hated Bushies nonetheless-- off commercial radio. Then they got CBS anchor Dan Rather to resign (just for practicing semi-hard-hitting journalism). Now, they're hellbent on ousting even the lukewarm liberals at CPB and PBS. Scary stuff.
washingtonpost.com
New Scrutiny of PBS Has Raised Political Antennas
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page C01
Liberal commentator Bill Moyers is out on PBS stations. Buster the
animated rabbit is under a cloud of suspicion. And right-wing yakkers
from the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been handed their own
public-television chat show.
Some observers, including people inside the Public Broadcasting
Service, see these recent developments as troubling. PBS, they say, is
being forced to toe a more conservative line in its programming by the
Republican-dominated agency that provides about $30 million in
federal funds to the Alexandria-based service.
Officials at the agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, say
they are merely seeking to ensure balance and fairness in the
network's presentation of political news and ideas.
Under its mandate from Congress, which created the agency in 1967,
CPB is required to act as an independent buffer between lawmakers
and public broadcasters, although it can set broad programming
goals. Appointees of President Bush currently control the majority of
seats on CPB's eight-member board. Each board member serves a
six-year term.
Typically one of the quietest bureaucracies in Washington, the
quasi-governmental CPB has been unusually active in recent weeks.
CPB this month appointed a pair of veteran journalists to review public
TV and radio programming for evidence of bias, the first time CPB has
sought such oversight in its 38-year history. PBS officials were
unaware that the corporation intended to review its news and public
affairs programs, such as "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and
"Frontline," until the appointments were publicly announced.
In negotiations with PBS earlier this year, the corporation also insisted,
for the first time, on tying new funding to an agreement that would
commit the network to strict "objectivity and balance" in each of its
programs -- an idea that PBS's general counsel described in an
internal memo as amounting to "government encroachment on and
supervision of program content, potentially in violation of the First
Amendment."
Late last week, CPB's board declined to renew the contract of its chief
executive, Kathleen Cox, a veteran administrator at the agency. She
was replaced by Ken Ferree, a Republican who had been a top adviser
to Michael Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission. The Ferree appointment followed the dismissals or
departures in recent months of at least three other senior CPB officials,
all of whom had Democratic affiliations.
"We don't want to be alarmist, but I would be less than honest if I said
there wasn't concern here," said one senior executive at PBS, who
insisted on anonymity because CPB provides about 10 percent of its
annual budget. "When you put it all together, a pattern starts to
emerge."
A senior FCC official, who would not speak for attribution because he
must rule on issues affecting public broadcasting, went further, saying
CPB "is engaged in a systematic effort not just to sanitize the truth, but
to impose a right-wing agenda on PBS. It's almost like a right-wing
coup. It appears to be orchestrated."
In an interview yesterday, CPB board chairman Ken Tomlinson called
such comments "paranoia," and said critics of CPB's initiatives should
"grow up."
"We're only seeking balance," said Tomlinson. "I am concerned about
perceptions that not all parts of the political spectrum are reflected on
public broadcasting. [But] there are no hidden agendas."
Asked for specific examples of slanted or unfair programming,
Tomlinson declined to name any. "You've heard the same complaints
of bias that I have in congressional hearings year after year," he said.
In fact, congressional Republicans have been generally critical of
public broadcasting's news and informational programming for years,
saying it favors liberal ideas. These criticisms fueled a movement led
by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to "zero out" CPB's federal
funding a decade ago. Those efforts failed; federal appropriations to
CPB have grown 40 percent since then, to some $386.8 million this
year. About 90 percent of this money is passed directly to public radio
and TV stations, which then pay fees to PBS and National Public Radio
for programming such as "Nova" and "All Things Considered."
However, conservatives recently were exercised that Moyers -- an
outspoken liberal -- was involved in hosting a weekly newsmagazine
called "Now." (Moyers left the show in December, citing personal
reasons.) PBS responded, in part, by trying to recruit Gingrich to host a
weekly program. It wound up developing public affairs shows starring
the Wall Street Journal's conservative pundits and Tucker Carlson, a
columnist for the conservative Weekly Standard and a co-host of CNN's
"Crossfire." (Carlson has since left PBS and CNN for a job at MSNBC.)
In January, PBS came in for more criticism, this time a rebuke from
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings over an episode of a children's
travelogue program in which a rabbit character named Buster paid a
visit to two families headed by lesbians. PBS pulled the episode from
distribution to stations around the country.
Tomlinson would not comment on specific programs. He said CPB's
efforts were aimed at making "incremental changes that meet the
needs of the American people and the aspirations of the American
people."
The corporation's own research indicates broad public satisfaction with
the quality of news programming on PBS and NPR. A series of focus
group sessions and two national surveys conducted by two polling
firms -- the Tarrance Group and Lake Snell Perry & Associates -- found
few perceptions of bias in PBS's or NPR's reporting in 2002 and 2003.
For example, among people who identified themselves as "news and
information consumers," 36 percent said PBS's coverage of the Bush
administration in 2003 was "fair and balanced," and 46 percent offered
no opinion. Eleven percent judged NPR's coverage of the Middle East
to be biased, and this group split almost equally between those who
felt NPR was biased toward Israel and those who felt it was biased
toward the Arab or Palestinian side.
Wayne Godwin, PBS's veteran chief operating officer, said in an
interview yesterday that he wanted to give CPB's new chief executive,
Ferree, some time before he drew conclusions. "They're in such a
significant state of flux at this time that we want to be fair in looking
at
it," he said.
He added, "I don't know that Ken [Tomlinson] is or is not trying to
change our programming. . . . I will say there is reason to remain aware
and vigilant to what is going on. The long run will determine if he wants
changes."
Tomlinson said his goal is to seek increases in federal funding of
public broadcasting in order to strengthen it in an increasingly
competitive media environment. "Public TV, public broadcasting, is in
trouble," he said. "It will wither and die if we continue the way we have.
That's why it's so important for us to rally national support for it. If we
don't have true excellence, we won't be able to gain the support we
need. We have to make sure that these [programming] concerns don't
prevent us from gaining the national consensus we need."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com
New Scrutiny of PBS Has Raised Political Antennas
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page C01
Liberal commentator Bill Moyers is out on PBS stations. Buster the
animated rabbit is under a cloud of suspicion. And right-wing yakkers
from the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been handed their own
public-television chat show.
Some observers, including people inside the Public Broadcasting
Service, see these recent developments as troubling. PBS, they say, is
being forced to toe a more conservative line in its programming by the
Republican-dominated agency that provides about $30 million in
federal funds to the Alexandria-based service.
Officials at the agency, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, say
they are merely seeking to ensure balance and fairness in the
network's presentation of political news and ideas.
Under its mandate from Congress, which created the agency in 1967,
CPB is required to act as an independent buffer between lawmakers
and public broadcasters, although it can set broad programming
goals. Appointees of President Bush currently control the majority of
seats on CPB's eight-member board. Each board member serves a
six-year term.
Typically one of the quietest bureaucracies in Washington, the
quasi-governmental CPB has been unusually active in recent weeks.
CPB this month appointed a pair of veteran journalists to review public
TV and radio programming for evidence of bias, the first time CPB has
sought such oversight in its 38-year history. PBS officials were
unaware that the corporation intended to review its news and public
affairs programs, such as "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and
"Frontline," until the appointments were publicly announced.
In negotiations with PBS earlier this year, the corporation also insisted,
for the first time, on tying new funding to an agreement that would
commit the network to strict "objectivity and balance" in each of its
programs -- an idea that PBS's general counsel described in an
internal memo as amounting to "government encroachment on and
supervision of program content, potentially in violation of the First
Amendment."
Late last week, CPB's board declined to renew the contract of its chief
executive, Kathleen Cox, a veteran administrator at the agency. She
was replaced by Ken Ferree, a Republican who had been a top adviser
to Michael Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission. The Ferree appointment followed the dismissals or
departures in recent months of at least three other senior CPB officials,
all of whom had Democratic affiliations.
"We don't want to be alarmist, but I would be less than honest if I said
there wasn't concern here," said one senior executive at PBS, who
insisted on anonymity because CPB provides about 10 percent of its
annual budget. "When you put it all together, a pattern starts to
emerge."
A senior FCC official, who would not speak for attribution because he
must rule on issues affecting public broadcasting, went further, saying
CPB "is engaged in a systematic effort not just to sanitize the truth, but
to impose a right-wing agenda on PBS. It's almost like a right-wing
coup. It appears to be orchestrated."
In an interview yesterday, CPB board chairman Ken Tomlinson called
such comments "paranoia," and said critics of CPB's initiatives should
"grow up."
"We're only seeking balance," said Tomlinson. "I am concerned about
perceptions that not all parts of the political spectrum are reflected on
public broadcasting. [But] there are no hidden agendas."
Asked for specific examples of slanted or unfair programming,
Tomlinson declined to name any. "You've heard the same complaints
of bias that I have in congressional hearings year after year," he said.
In fact, congressional Republicans have been generally critical of
public broadcasting's news and informational programming for years,
saying it favors liberal ideas. These criticisms fueled a movement led
by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich to "zero out" CPB's federal
funding a decade ago. Those efforts failed; federal appropriations to
CPB have grown 40 percent since then, to some $386.8 million this
year. About 90 percent of this money is passed directly to public radio
and TV stations, which then pay fees to PBS and National Public Radio
for programming such as "Nova" and "All Things Considered."
However, conservatives recently were exercised that Moyers -- an
outspoken liberal -- was involved in hosting a weekly newsmagazine
called "Now." (Moyers left the show in December, citing personal
reasons.) PBS responded, in part, by trying to recruit Gingrich to host a
weekly program. It wound up developing public affairs shows starring
the Wall Street Journal's conservative pundits and Tucker Carlson, a
columnist for the conservative Weekly Standard and a co-host of CNN's
"Crossfire." (Carlson has since left PBS and CNN for a job at MSNBC.)
In January, PBS came in for more criticism, this time a rebuke from
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings over an episode of a children's
travelogue program in which a rabbit character named Buster paid a
visit to two families headed by lesbians. PBS pulled the episode from
distribution to stations around the country.
Tomlinson would not comment on specific programs. He said CPB's
efforts were aimed at making "incremental changes that meet the
needs of the American people and the aspirations of the American
people."
The corporation's own research indicates broad public satisfaction with
the quality of news programming on PBS and NPR. A series of focus
group sessions and two national surveys conducted by two polling
firms -- the Tarrance Group and Lake Snell Perry & Associates -- found
few perceptions of bias in PBS's or NPR's reporting in 2002 and 2003.
For example, among people who identified themselves as "news and
information consumers," 36 percent said PBS's coverage of the Bush
administration in 2003 was "fair and balanced," and 46 percent offered
no opinion. Eleven percent judged NPR's coverage of the Middle East
to be biased, and this group split almost equally between those who
felt NPR was biased toward Israel and those who felt it was biased
toward the Arab or Palestinian side.
Wayne Godwin, PBS's veteran chief operating officer, said in an
interview yesterday that he wanted to give CPB's new chief executive,
Ferree, some time before he drew conclusions. "They're in such a
significant state of flux at this time that we want to be fair in looking
at
it," he said.
He added, "I don't know that Ken [Tomlinson] is or is not trying to
change our programming. . . . I will say there is reason to remain aware
and vigilant to what is going on. The long run will determine if he wants
changes."
Tomlinson said his goal is to seek increases in federal funding of
public broadcasting in order to strengthen it in an increasingly
competitive media environment. "Public TV, public broadcasting, is in
trouble," he said. "It will wither and die if we continue the way we have.
That's why it's so important for us to rally national support for it. If we
don't have true excellence, we won't be able to gain the support we
need. We have to make sure that these [programming] concerns don't
prevent us from gaining the national consensus we need."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Monday, March 21, 2005
A distressing example of "target marketing" in action. And the Republicans have the gall to accuse the left of dividing the country along lines of race....
www.slate.com
The Soft Bigotry of Life Expectancy
Different Social Security messages for blacks and Latinos.
By William SaletanPosted Wednesday, March 16, 2005, at 1:08 PM PT
Different strokes for different folks?Why is President Bush's Social Security reform plan heading south inthe polls? Maybe because he's selling different messages to differentaudiences and some audiences are overhearing messages meant forothers. He's telling older people that nothing relevant to them willchange. Meanwhile, he's telling the younger people who are propping upthe system that it's a dead end and he'll help them get out.
This iswhy Republican "town halls" that were supposed to boost the plan inthe polls failed so miserably. The town halls were for the youngerfolks, but the older folks showed up. Oops!It turns out the young and the old aren't the only groups gettingdifferent pitches. Bush is narrowcasting to blacks and Latinos, too.
The message to blacks is that Social Security screws them because theydie younger. By all accounts, that's what Bush told black business andcommunity leaders at a two-hour private meeting on Jan. 25. It's alsothe centerpiece of black community town halls and speeches to blackaudiences by GOP chairman Ken Mehlman, according to the Los AngelesTimes.
At one forum, Bush told a black executive, "African Americanmales die sooner than other males do, which means the system isinherently unfair to a certain group of people." The executive,referring to black male life expectancy, said to Bush, "If you'retelling me that it's 69, and the [retirement] age is going to go to67, you do the math." Bush replied, "Right."Bush was encouraging a misconception.
As Paul Krugman has explained,remaining life expectancy for a 65-year-old black man is 14.6 years,not two. It's true that black male life expectancy at birth is only69, but black-white mortality differences trail off throughout life.(By the late stages, black men outlive white men of the same age.) So,while blacks are likely to spend fewer years taking money out, they'realso likely to spend fewer years paying in.
What's more interesting, however, is another misconception Bush seemsto have floated. On Dec. 21, he met with Kweisi Mfume, the outgoingpresident of the NAACP. According to a Federal Document Clearing Housetranscript, Mfume told reporters afterward that in the meeting Bush"was very strong in his belief that some communities in particular,because of low life expectancy rates, don't get a chance to get outmuch of what they put in all their lives." Black men and women "havedisproportionately lower life expectancies," said Mfume. "And so myassumption is that that group, along with Latinos, may be what thepresident was referring to."
Mfume said he hadn't pressed Bush to clarify the reference to "somecommunities." But the reference did its job. The next day, the Coxnewspaper chain reported that "Mfume said they discussed how toaccount for groups, such as African-Americans and Latinos, that havelower-than-average life expectancy rates and, as a result, don't drawretirement benefits commensurate with what they pay in payroll taxesover the course of their working lives."
There's no record of anyeffort by the White House to correct this account. Indeed, three weekslater, the White House issued a "fact" sheet claiming that "Hispanics,African-Americans, and unmarried elderly women are even more relianton Social Security." The sheet added nothing to suggest that therationales for making this claim about the three groups might differ.A couple of weeks ago, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles-based newspaperLa Opinión, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez reportedly argued thatbecause of their disproportionate reliance on Social Security, Latinosstood to lose disproportionately if Bush's plan were defeated. (Theop-ed can't be found online, and I've asked the Commerce Departmentfor a copy of it but haven't received it, so for now I'm relying on aMarch 4 Los Angeles Times account of it.)
What Gutierrez and the White House seem not to have mentioned is that,contrary to the impression Bush gave Mfume, Latinos can expect tooutlive whites. According to a report issued five years ago by what isnow Gutierrez's department, life expectancy for Americans of "Hispanicorigin" in 1999 was 77.1 years among men and 83.7 years among women.That's a 2.4-year surplus for Latino men over white men and a 3.6-yearsurplus for Latino women over white women.So, here's the situation. In an op-ed written in Spanish and not madeavailable in English on any federal Web site, the administrationargues that Latinos, who live longer than whites do, should supportBush's reform plan because upon retirement they relydisproportionately on Social Security.
Meanwhile, in forums andprivate meetings aimed at blacks, the administration argues thatblacks, who upon retirement rely disproportionately on SocialSecurity, should support Bush's reform plan because they don't live aslong as whites do. Only once has Bush slipped up and alluded to onegroup in the course of making his pitch to the other. And on thatoccasion, at best, he seems to have conveyed?and failed to correctafter its publication?an impression that helped him politically butwas contrary to the truth.
The only other ethnic groups analyzed in the 2000 Commerce Departmentreport on life expectancy?or apparent in any other such governmentreport?are Asian-Americans and American Indians. Asian-Americans werebeating white life expectancy by six years among men and 6.5 yearsamong women. American Indian men were trailing white men by two yearsin life expectancy, but American Indian women were exceeding whitewomen by the same amount.
So, here are two questions for PresidentBush: When you told Mfume that some communities in particular were getting shafted by Social Security due to low life expectancy, which communities were you talking about? And if you're telling the wholetruth to blacks and Latinos, why aren't you telling them the samething?
William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author ofBearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.Photograph of George Bush by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI Photo
www.slate.com
The Soft Bigotry of Life Expectancy
Different Social Security messages for blacks and Latinos.
By William SaletanPosted Wednesday, March 16, 2005, at 1:08 PM PT
Different strokes for different folks?Why is President Bush's Social Security reform plan heading south inthe polls? Maybe because he's selling different messages to differentaudiences and some audiences are overhearing messages meant forothers. He's telling older people that nothing relevant to them willchange. Meanwhile, he's telling the younger people who are propping upthe system that it's a dead end and he'll help them get out.
This iswhy Republican "town halls" that were supposed to boost the plan inthe polls failed so miserably. The town halls were for the youngerfolks, but the older folks showed up. Oops!It turns out the young and the old aren't the only groups gettingdifferent pitches. Bush is narrowcasting to blacks and Latinos, too.
The message to blacks is that Social Security screws them because theydie younger. By all accounts, that's what Bush told black business andcommunity leaders at a two-hour private meeting on Jan. 25. It's alsothe centerpiece of black community town halls and speeches to blackaudiences by GOP chairman Ken Mehlman, according to the Los AngelesTimes.
At one forum, Bush told a black executive, "African Americanmales die sooner than other males do, which means the system isinherently unfair to a certain group of people." The executive,referring to black male life expectancy, said to Bush, "If you'retelling me that it's 69, and the [retirement] age is going to go to67, you do the math." Bush replied, "Right."Bush was encouraging a misconception.
As Paul Krugman has explained,remaining life expectancy for a 65-year-old black man is 14.6 years,not two. It's true that black male life expectancy at birth is only69, but black-white mortality differences trail off throughout life.(By the late stages, black men outlive white men of the same age.) So,while blacks are likely to spend fewer years taking money out, they'realso likely to spend fewer years paying in.
What's more interesting, however, is another misconception Bush seemsto have floated. On Dec. 21, he met with Kweisi Mfume, the outgoingpresident of the NAACP. According to a Federal Document Clearing Housetranscript, Mfume told reporters afterward that in the meeting Bush"was very strong in his belief that some communities in particular,because of low life expectancy rates, don't get a chance to get outmuch of what they put in all their lives." Black men and women "havedisproportionately lower life expectancies," said Mfume. "And so myassumption is that that group, along with Latinos, may be what thepresident was referring to."
Mfume said he hadn't pressed Bush to clarify the reference to "somecommunities." But the reference did its job. The next day, the Coxnewspaper chain reported that "Mfume said they discussed how toaccount for groups, such as African-Americans and Latinos, that havelower-than-average life expectancy rates and, as a result, don't drawretirement benefits commensurate with what they pay in payroll taxesover the course of their working lives."
There's no record of anyeffort by the White House to correct this account. Indeed, three weekslater, the White House issued a "fact" sheet claiming that "Hispanics,African-Americans, and unmarried elderly women are even more relianton Social Security." The sheet added nothing to suggest that therationales for making this claim about the three groups might differ.A couple of weeks ago, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles-based newspaperLa Opinión, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez reportedly argued thatbecause of their disproportionate reliance on Social Security, Latinosstood to lose disproportionately if Bush's plan were defeated. (Theop-ed can't be found online, and I've asked the Commerce Departmentfor a copy of it but haven't received it, so for now I'm relying on aMarch 4 Los Angeles Times account of it.)
What Gutierrez and the White House seem not to have mentioned is that,contrary to the impression Bush gave Mfume, Latinos can expect tooutlive whites. According to a report issued five years ago by what isnow Gutierrez's department, life expectancy for Americans of "Hispanicorigin" in 1999 was 77.1 years among men and 83.7 years among women.That's a 2.4-year surplus for Latino men over white men and a 3.6-yearsurplus for Latino women over white women.So, here's the situation. In an op-ed written in Spanish and not madeavailable in English on any federal Web site, the administrationargues that Latinos, who live longer than whites do, should supportBush's reform plan because upon retirement they relydisproportionately on Social Security.
Meanwhile, in forums andprivate meetings aimed at blacks, the administration argues thatblacks, who upon retirement rely disproportionately on SocialSecurity, should support Bush's reform plan because they don't live aslong as whites do. Only once has Bush slipped up and alluded to onegroup in the course of making his pitch to the other. And on thatoccasion, at best, he seems to have conveyed?and failed to correctafter its publication?an impression that helped him politically butwas contrary to the truth.
The only other ethnic groups analyzed in the 2000 Commerce Departmentreport on life expectancy?or apparent in any other such governmentreport?are Asian-Americans and American Indians. Asian-Americans werebeating white life expectancy by six years among men and 6.5 yearsamong women. American Indian men were trailing white men by two yearsin life expectancy, but American Indian women were exceeding whitewomen by the same amount.
So, here are two questions for PresidentBush: When you told Mfume that some communities in particular were getting shafted by Social Security due to low life expectancy, which communities were you talking about? And if you're telling the wholetruth to blacks and Latinos, why aren't you telling them the samething?
William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author ofBearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.Photograph of George Bush by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI Photo
Monday, March 07, 2005
Stop the Right's Attack on Academic Freedom!
An Open Letter From Concerned Academics
March 2, 2005
URGENT: The University of Colorado Board of Regents will be making
its recommendations about Ward Churchill in the week of March 7.
We call on all those who teach and research at colleges and
universities to raise their voices in opposition to this inquisition.
Sign and act on this open letter. Circulate it widely. Inform the
media.
As an immediate step, we call on our colleagues to pass emergency
resolutions in faculty and professional associations and send them to
the University of Colorado Board of Regents. We offer the following
as a template for such resolutions:
Resolved, that the attempt, escalated by government authority, to
fire Ward Churchill and the trial by media which he is undergoing
amount to a serious assault on dissent, critical inquiry, and
academic freedom, and a heightening of the repressive atmosphere in
American society overall. This attack is intolerable and must stop
now. The precedents already set in this case - that a professor can
be publicly pilloried and threatened with dismissal for what he
writes - must not be allowed to stand. The University of Colorado
Board of Regents must drop any effort to fire Churchill, cease its
spurious investigation into his body of work and repudiate its
actions up to now; and all colleges and universities must reaffirm,
in word and deed, their commitment to defend critical thinking.
The past month has witnessed a chilling turn in American political
and intellectual life. Ward Churchill, a tenured professor and
former chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of
Colorado, has been made the object of an unprecedented nationwide
attack for an essay he wrote three years ago. Two governors,
including the governor of Colorado, have called for his firing. The
national and local media have not only misrepresented his work and
views, but have increasingly vilified and slandered Ward Churchill
himself. Some of Churchill's speaking engagements have been
cancelled. Death threats have been made against him. In response,
the University of Colorado Board of Regents not only "apologized" for
Churchill's remarks - itself an utterly gratuitous and inappropriate
action - but initiated an investigation into his entire body of work
to search for mistakes and supposed evidence of "fraud." During the
week of March 7, the Board of Regents will conclude its 30-day review
of all of Churchill's writings and statements.
One must go back to the "scoundrel time" of the McCarthy years to
find anything even close to this. And now, as an unmistakable sign
of what this portends, just a week ago the University of Colorado at
Boulder announced an investigation into campus records to make sure
that every faculty member has actually signed his or her
state-required loyalty oath!
All this is intolerable and must be reversed--immediately.
To be clear: the issues here have nothing to do with the quality of
Ward Churchill's scholarship or his professional credentials. However
one views his choice of words or specific arguments, he is being put
in the dock solely for his radical critique of U.S. history and
present-day policy in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.
Apparently, 9/11 is now the third rail of American intellectual life:
to critically probe into its causes and to interrogate the
international role of the United States is treated as heresy; those
inquiring can be denied forums, careers, and even personal safety.
And now Churchill's persecutors have gone further, repeatedly
ridiculing his scholarly argumentation that the United States
committed genocide against the indigenous people of this continent,
and that the FBI systematically attempted to disrupt and destroy the
movements and leaders of the 1960s. Rather than debate or disprove
such theses, Churchill's attackers attempt to render them beyond the
pale of respectable discourse. Through all this, new ground rules
are being established: any criticism or even questioning of the
institutional foundations of the United States, or of the motives and
interests behind its policies, will be treated as essentially
treasonous. Left unopposed, this trajectory will lead to a situation
of uncontested indoctrination enforced by the state.
The Churchill case is not an isolated incident but a concentrated
example of a well-orchestrated campaign launched in the name of
"academic freedom" and "balance" which in fact aims to purge the
universities of more radical thinkers and oppositional thought
generally, and to create a climate of intimidation. While the
right-wing claim that the universities are "left-wing dictatorships"
is specious beyond belief, it is unfortunately true that the campus
remains one of the few surviving refuges of critical thinking and
dissent in this country. This is something to defend and strengthen.
It would be hard to overstate the serious nature of what has already
happened, let alone what it would mean should the Regents fire
Churchill. If this assault on academe succeeds, the consequences for
American society as a whole will be nothing short of disastrous.
The response from the academic world has thus far fallen short of
what is required. Voices have been raised in opposition, but many
have been intimidated. What is needed is an outpouring of faculty
resolutions condemning this witch-hunt. Teach-ins. Protests.
We propose that emergency faculty resolutions be passed and sent to
the University of Colorado Board of Regents (secretary:
millie.cortez@colorado.edu, cc:
EthnicStudies@colorado.edu) and major media outlets. We further
propose that if the Colorado authorities continue their persecution
of Churchill, we mount major nationally coordinated protests on
campuses all over America - and internationally - as soon as
possible, and that we begin to join efforts to reverse this dangerous
direction in American political and intellectual life
The hour is very late; this case is nothing less than a watershed. We
must act, and act now.
Initial Signatories:
Steven P. Best, Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Texas-El Paso
Henry A. Giroux, Global Television Network Chair Professor in English
and Communications, McMaster University
Ruth Y. Hsu, Associate Professor of English, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Alan Jones, Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs,
Pitzer College
Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of
Religions, University of Chicago
Raymond Lotta, author and lecturer
Henry Silverman, Professor and Chairperson Emeritus, Michigan State University
Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University
Allen W. Wood, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
******************
AMONG NEW SIGNATORIES TO THE OPEN LETTER:
Robert M. Baum, Director of African Studies, Iowa State University
Prasenjit Duara, Chair, Department of History, University of Chicago
Allen F. Roberts, Director, James S. Coleman African Studies Center,
University of California, Los Angeles
******************
E-mail this letter to colleagues, as well as people and institutions
in other walks of life. Please get back to us with your ideas and let
us know what you are doing. Send us copies of resolutions and
statements. Add your name to this Open Letter.
E-mail to: criticalthinking@pitzer.edu
An Open Letter From Concerned Academics
March 2, 2005
URGENT: The University of Colorado Board of Regents will be making
its recommendations about Ward Churchill in the week of March 7.
We call on all those who teach and research at colleges and
universities to raise their voices in opposition to this inquisition.
Sign and act on this open letter. Circulate it widely. Inform the
media.
As an immediate step, we call on our colleagues to pass emergency
resolutions in faculty and professional associations and send them to
the University of Colorado Board of Regents. We offer the following
as a template for such resolutions:
Resolved, that the attempt, escalated by government authority, to
fire Ward Churchill and the trial by media which he is undergoing
amount to a serious assault on dissent, critical inquiry, and
academic freedom, and a heightening of the repressive atmosphere in
American society overall. This attack is intolerable and must stop
now. The precedents already set in this case - that a professor can
be publicly pilloried and threatened with dismissal for what he
writes - must not be allowed to stand. The University of Colorado
Board of Regents must drop any effort to fire Churchill, cease its
spurious investigation into his body of work and repudiate its
actions up to now; and all colleges and universities must reaffirm,
in word and deed, their commitment to defend critical thinking.
The past month has witnessed a chilling turn in American political
and intellectual life. Ward Churchill, a tenured professor and
former chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of
Colorado, has been made the object of an unprecedented nationwide
attack for an essay he wrote three years ago. Two governors,
including the governor of Colorado, have called for his firing. The
national and local media have not only misrepresented his work and
views, but have increasingly vilified and slandered Ward Churchill
himself. Some of Churchill's speaking engagements have been
cancelled. Death threats have been made against him. In response,
the University of Colorado Board of Regents not only "apologized" for
Churchill's remarks - itself an utterly gratuitous and inappropriate
action - but initiated an investigation into his entire body of work
to search for mistakes and supposed evidence of "fraud." During the
week of March 7, the Board of Regents will conclude its 30-day review
of all of Churchill's writings and statements.
One must go back to the "scoundrel time" of the McCarthy years to
find anything even close to this. And now, as an unmistakable sign
of what this portends, just a week ago the University of Colorado at
Boulder announced an investigation into campus records to make sure
that every faculty member has actually signed his or her
state-required loyalty oath!
All this is intolerable and must be reversed--immediately.
To be clear: the issues here have nothing to do with the quality of
Ward Churchill's scholarship or his professional credentials. However
one views his choice of words or specific arguments, he is being put
in the dock solely for his radical critique of U.S. history and
present-day policy in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.
Apparently, 9/11 is now the third rail of American intellectual life:
to critically probe into its causes and to interrogate the
international role of the United States is treated as heresy; those
inquiring can be denied forums, careers, and even personal safety.
And now Churchill's persecutors have gone further, repeatedly
ridiculing his scholarly argumentation that the United States
committed genocide against the indigenous people of this continent,
and that the FBI systematically attempted to disrupt and destroy the
movements and leaders of the 1960s. Rather than debate or disprove
such theses, Churchill's attackers attempt to render them beyond the
pale of respectable discourse. Through all this, new ground rules
are being established: any criticism or even questioning of the
institutional foundations of the United States, or of the motives and
interests behind its policies, will be treated as essentially
treasonous. Left unopposed, this trajectory will lead to a situation
of uncontested indoctrination enforced by the state.
The Churchill case is not an isolated incident but a concentrated
example of a well-orchestrated campaign launched in the name of
"academic freedom" and "balance" which in fact aims to purge the
universities of more radical thinkers and oppositional thought
generally, and to create a climate of intimidation. While the
right-wing claim that the universities are "left-wing dictatorships"
is specious beyond belief, it is unfortunately true that the campus
remains one of the few surviving refuges of critical thinking and
dissent in this country. This is something to defend and strengthen.
It would be hard to overstate the serious nature of what has already
happened, let alone what it would mean should the Regents fire
Churchill. If this assault on academe succeeds, the consequences for
American society as a whole will be nothing short of disastrous.
The response from the academic world has thus far fallen short of
what is required. Voices have been raised in opposition, but many
have been intimidated. What is needed is an outpouring of faculty
resolutions condemning this witch-hunt. Teach-ins. Protests.
We propose that emergency faculty resolutions be passed and sent to
the University of Colorado Board of Regents (secretary:
EthnicStudies@colorado.edu) and major media outlets. We further
propose that if the Colorado authorities continue their persecution
of Churchill, we mount major nationally coordinated protests on
campuses all over America - and internationally - as soon as
possible, and that we begin to join efforts to reverse this dangerous
direction in American political and intellectual life
The hour is very late; this case is nothing less than a watershed. We
must act, and act now.
Initial Signatories:
Steven P. Best, Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of Texas-El Paso
Henry A. Giroux, Global Television Network Chair Professor in English
and Communications, McMaster University
Ruth Y. Hsu, Associate Professor of English, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Alan Jones, Dean of Faculty and Vice President for Academic Affairs,
Pitzer College
Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of the History of
Religions, University of Chicago
Raymond Lotta, author and lecturer
Henry Silverman, Professor and Chairperson Emeritus, Michigan State University
Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University
Allen W. Wood, Professor, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University
******************
AMONG NEW SIGNATORIES TO THE OPEN LETTER:
Robert M. Baum, Director of African Studies, Iowa State University
Prasenjit Duara, Chair, Department of History, University of Chicago
Allen F. Roberts, Director, James S. Coleman African Studies Center,
University of California, Los Angeles
******************
E-mail this letter to colleagues, as well as people and institutions
in other walks of life. Please get back to us with your ideas and let
us know what you are doing. Send us copies of resolutions and
statements. Add your name to this Open Letter.
E-mail to: criticalthinking@pitzer.edu
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Sleuths of Spin
By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet
Posted on February 22, 2005, Printed on February 22, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21307/
Given the sorry state of the journalism these days, The Center for
Media and Democracy's John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton are setting
about an ambitious – yet necessary – undertaking: reinventing
journalism.
Several right-wing activists/pundits/columnists have already developed
their own roadmap for reinventing journalism. The latest case is that
of Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James D. Guckert. As Gannon, Guckert
reported for a conservative news site called Talon News. Somehow,
Guckert gained access to White House briefings and and was seen tossing
softballs at White House officials. Gannon/Guckert even got called on
by President Bush at a news conference. He ended his question with "How
are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves
from reality?" referring to Sen. Hillary Clinton and Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid.
Gannon/Guckert had about 13 of his 15 minutes before Media Matters for
America and John Aravosis' Americablog blew the lid off his charade.
Underneath that lid was James D. Guckert on full display – he was outed
as a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net,
Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com.
The administration's payoffs to syndicated newspaper columnists
Armstrong Williams, Mike McManus and Maggie Gallagher may not be nearly
as scrumptious a story as the Gannon/Guckert Affair, but they could be
far more significant. After all, this loose coalition of the shilling
received government money to write about their support for Bush
administration policies. In early January, USA Today revealed that
Williams, a prominent African-American radio and television
personality, had received $240,000 from the Department of Education –
through a contract with the Ketchum public relations firm – for his
support for the president's No Child Left Behind project. Mike McManus
and Maggie Gallagher received their checks from the Department of
Health and Human Services to help promote the president's healthy
marriages initiative.
Sleuths of spin John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton have exposed how
corporate shills and government spokespersons manipulate the media and
undermine democracy for more than a decade. Through the Madison,
Wis.-based Center for Media and Democracy, they have produced a number
of groundbreaking books, including Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies,
Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage Press,
1995), Trust Us, We're Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and
Gambles with Your Future (Tarcher/Penguin, 2001), Weapons of Mass
Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
(Tarcher/Penguin, 2003) and most recently, Banana Republicans: How the
Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State (Tarcher/Penguin,
2004).
Two years ago, the Center launched Disinfopedia, a web site that
Rampton described in a recent e-mail as "an experiment in media
democracy and citizen investigative journalism." Rampton pointed out
that Disinfopedia had "grown into a leading resource on the players who
work behind the scenes to shape public opinion and public policy."
Since its mission has evolved and expanded during the past two years,
the Center recently renamed it SourceWatch. (Disclosure: I have been
cited by SourceWatch.)
Rampton maintains that SourceWatch "is an example of media democracy in
action – an information source that is truly 'of, by and for the
people' who use it. It has become a tool that journalists and activists
use to research and report on key issues such as media concentration
and reform, democratic revitalization, environmental health and
sustainability, the war in Iraq, corporate manipulation of government
agencies, and the power and influence of right-wing special interest
groups and lobbies."
In late February, I conducted an e-mail interview John Stauber. We
covered a number of issues related to the media, starting with the
current payola scandal.
Bill Berkowitz: How do you view the recent scandals involving the Bush
administration giving payoffs to Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher
and Michael McManus in exchange for favorable coverage of their issues?
I'm very happy to see this coming out, but it's really just the tip of
an iceberg. Sheldon Rampton and I wrote our expose of the Public
Relations industry, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, ten years ago. It's
filled with propaganda horror stories. Forty percent or more of what
passes for news and information these days is the result of organized
PR campaigns. It's been wonderful to see these scandals exposed and
others such as the "Karen Ryan reporting" news reports. Karen Ryan runs
a PR firm, and her government funded video news releases (VNRs) are
aired as news by hundreds of TV news directors.
In Toxic Sludge we reported that there were already thousands of
corporate and government VNRs produced and aired each year, and that
number continues to increase. The skillful manipulation of the media by
professional propagandists, often with the consent and approval of
editors and news directors, is rampant and worsening.
Do you think there will be more revelations?
The mainstream media does a horrific job of reporting on itself, and I
think that there will be more revelations only to the extent that
independent journalists are able to document and expose these abuses.
The best PR, like the best propaganda, is invisible. In the more than a
decade that our organization has been reporting on and exposing
propaganda in the media, not one major newspaper to my knowledge has
committed a reporter to this as an investigative beat.
What can reporters do to break through the sound bite/talking points
media culture?
Reporters need to understand the business of propaganda and to view the
public relations industry and the culture of spin as anathema to
journalism and to democracy. Today PR flacks outnumber real working
journalists, and many of the flacks are former reporters who know
exactly how best to manage, cajole and manipulate the media because
they are from the media. J-schools have combined journalism and public
relations and told students that it's all the same, it requires the
same skills, and there is little fundamental difference. This is like
combining accounting and embezzling as a field of study.
Today in the corporate mainstream media reporters are overworked,
underpaid and pressured to avoid topics that offend advertisers.
Reporters need to dedicate themselves to real journalism and find ways
to practice it. Journalism is a sacred trust in a democracy, and if you
don't believe that you should probably go into PR.
Your books have generally focused on the way the American people are
getting hoodwinked by PR companies that set and then explain the agenda
of powerful corporations and politicians. Is there any way to render
them less powerful?
Simply stated, PR firms are corporations that help other corporations
and government agencies to manage public information, perceptions and
policy. Many people think that propaganda doesn't exist in democratic
societies, that it is a problem of dictatorships. Alex Carey, the
Australian academic, and others have pointed out that it is precisely
in democracies where sophisticated, hidden propaganda is most
prevalent, and the news media has become the major disseminator of
propaganda, rather than a force for exposing it.
In our book Weapons of Mass Deception, Sheldon and I explained how
rather than challenge Bush's war and exposing the falsehoods and
failures in Bush's claims, the U.S. news media became a propaganda arm
of the government. It shut out and ridiculed critics of the war, and
enabled it to take place. There are many fundamental reforms that could
be legislated to limit and control the power of corporations to
dominate our news and our politics. But powerful special interests and
governmental ideologues will use the best available techniques of
propaganda to manipulate and manage public perception. It is the
responsibility of journalists, educators and citizen activists to
expose and thwart such manipulation, and it's specifically our mission.
Given such a closed system, why the efforts around building media
democracy?
Twelve years ago when I founded our investigative quarterly PR Watch, I
chose the name Center for Media and Democracy for our non-profit
organization in order to emphasize the idea that without a vigorous,
independent, courageous and muckraking media, democracy cannot survive,
especially in this age of cranked-up propaganda. I've been happy to see
the term "media democracy" come into wide use. With the emergence of
the internet it has taken on new meaning in the age of blogs,
indymedia, wiki web sites like SourceWatch, and all the wonderful
reporting from web sites like AlterNet, Common Dreams, Buzzflash,
WorkingForChange, and those associated with the left[ist] press.
Media democracy seems like a catch-all phrase that is pretty ambiguous.
How would you define it?
Media democracy means that we recognize that one-way, top-down,
corporate mass communications has become much more a foe of democracy
than its friend. Democratic society is impossible without a courageous
and independent news media. The dominant mainstream media, the MSM, is
driven by the corporate bottom line and filled primarily with fluff,
sensationalism, right-wing politics, PR posing as news, and a
commitment to serve corporate advertisers. We need a powerful new
political movement to fundamentally challenge and change the corporate
media environment, and we also need to create new media that takes
advantage of internet technology to better serve democracy. Community
radio stations, non-profit media watchdogs, investigative bloggers, and
alternative news websites are all becoming important producers of
online web-based news and information that is building media democracy.
One project our organization is currently discussing with other groups
committed to media democracy is to develop standards for online
journalism that enable it to fulfill its promise of becoming a vital
media that serves our democracy.
What makes "SourceWatch" unique?
SourceWatch is unique because it is an experiment in collaborative
online investigative reporting. It's a very powerful educational,
organizing, research and networking tool that allows a growing
community of global citizens to collaborate to research and write
investigative news articles.
The open source "wiki" software that powers SourceWatch is in the
public domain, as are the articles that are written. Anyone can go to
SourceWatch and read, write and edit the information there. And every
change made in any article is logged for transparency. Bob Burton, an
investigative journalist, author and activist from Australia, is our
online editor.
We are constantly striving to improve the accuracy, depth and quality
of articles on SourceWatch. It is only two years old [it was originally
launched as Disinfopedia], and we are really just at the beginning of
this experiment. Anyone who first hears about it understandably says,
as I did when my colleague Sheldon Rampton proposed SourceWatch, "what
good is it if anyone with internet access can write or edit or for that
matter vandalize its articles?" But the fact is that the vast majority
of users are dedicated to the concept of investigative online
journalism, and by insisting on journalistic standards of accuracy and
fairness, and relegating opinions to an opinion page, the experiment is
working.
One problem it is solving is that by harnessing the investigative power
of hundreds of citizen journalists, we are finally able to keep track
of the myriad of industry front groups, PR firms, lobbyists and
anti-environmental PR campaigns that exist and are created every day.
SourceWatch has been a great success in its first two years, yet it is
just starting to take off. That said, everyone who reads an article on
the site should understand its limitations; that the article has not
necessarily been vetted by us, that no article is 100 percent accurate,
that anyone can contribute, and that it is a work in progress with no
copyright on its articles. So SourceWatch, like every other bit of the
news media, needs to be read with a critical eye. But with that
qualification I must say that I find most of the information very
accurate and much of it very unique. Wiki websites like SourceWatch are
becoming an important part of the online information environment.
Are you working on another book? What will it be about and when can we
expect it?
Sheldon and I have just begun outlining a new book examining media
corruption, spin and the growing media democracy movement. It would in
some ways be a return to the territory of our first and third books,
Toxic Sludge Is Good For You and Trust Us, We're Experts. We hope to
have it out in hardcover sometime in 2006. We've co-authored two books
in less than two years, timely paperbacks exposing the selling of the
war on Iraq and the political propaganda and strategy of the Republican
right. It seems to be a good time to step back and examine how citizens
might understand and overcome the toxic propaganda emanating from the
right-wing echo chamber.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21307/
By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet
Posted on February 22, 2005, Printed on February 22, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21307/
Given the sorry state of the journalism these days, The Center for
Media and Democracy's John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton are setting
about an ambitious – yet necessary – undertaking: reinventing
journalism.
Several right-wing activists/pundits/columnists have already developed
their own roadmap for reinventing journalism. The latest case is that
of Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James D. Guckert. As Gannon, Guckert
reported for a conservative news site called Talon News. Somehow,
Guckert gained access to White House briefings and and was seen tossing
softballs at White House officials. Gannon/Guckert even got called on
by President Bush at a news conference. He ended his question with "How
are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves
from reality?" referring to Sen. Hillary Clinton and Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid.
Gannon/Guckert had about 13 of his 15 minutes before Media Matters for
America and John Aravosis' Americablog blew the lid off his charade.
Underneath that lid was James D. Guckert on full display – he was outed
as a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net,
Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com.
The administration's payoffs to syndicated newspaper columnists
Armstrong Williams, Mike McManus and Maggie Gallagher may not be nearly
as scrumptious a story as the Gannon/Guckert Affair, but they could be
far more significant. After all, this loose coalition of the shilling
received government money to write about their support for Bush
administration policies. In early January, USA Today revealed that
Williams, a prominent African-American radio and television
personality, had received $240,000 from the Department of Education –
through a contract with the Ketchum public relations firm – for his
support for the president's No Child Left Behind project. Mike McManus
and Maggie Gallagher received their checks from the Department of
Health and Human Services to help promote the president's healthy
marriages initiative.
Sleuths of spin John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton have exposed how
corporate shills and government spokespersons manipulate the media and
undermine democracy for more than a decade. Through the Madison,
Wis.-based Center for Media and Democracy, they have produced a number
of groundbreaking books, including Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies,
Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage Press,
1995), Trust Us, We're Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and
Gambles with Your Future (Tarcher/Penguin, 2001), Weapons of Mass
Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
(Tarcher/Penguin, 2003) and most recently, Banana Republicans: How the
Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State (Tarcher/Penguin,
2004).
Two years ago, the Center launched Disinfopedia, a web site that
Rampton described in a recent e-mail as "an experiment in media
democracy and citizen investigative journalism." Rampton pointed out
that Disinfopedia had "grown into a leading resource on the players who
work behind the scenes to shape public opinion and public policy."
Since its mission has evolved and expanded during the past two years,
the Center recently renamed it SourceWatch. (Disclosure: I have been
cited by SourceWatch.)
Rampton maintains that SourceWatch "is an example of media democracy in
action – an information source that is truly 'of, by and for the
people' who use it. It has become a tool that journalists and activists
use to research and report on key issues such as media concentration
and reform, democratic revitalization, environmental health and
sustainability, the war in Iraq, corporate manipulation of government
agencies, and the power and influence of right-wing special interest
groups and lobbies."
In late February, I conducted an e-mail interview John Stauber. We
covered a number of issues related to the media, starting with the
current payola scandal.
Bill Berkowitz: How do you view the recent scandals involving the Bush
administration giving payoffs to Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher
and Michael McManus in exchange for favorable coverage of their issues?
I'm very happy to see this coming out, but it's really just the tip of
an iceberg. Sheldon Rampton and I wrote our expose of the Public
Relations industry, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, ten years ago. It's
filled with propaganda horror stories. Forty percent or more of what
passes for news and information these days is the result of organized
PR campaigns. It's been wonderful to see these scandals exposed and
others such as the "Karen Ryan reporting" news reports. Karen Ryan runs
a PR firm, and her government funded video news releases (VNRs) are
aired as news by hundreds of TV news directors.
In Toxic Sludge we reported that there were already thousands of
corporate and government VNRs produced and aired each year, and that
number continues to increase. The skillful manipulation of the media by
professional propagandists, often with the consent and approval of
editors and news directors, is rampant and worsening.
Do you think there will be more revelations?
The mainstream media does a horrific job of reporting on itself, and I
think that there will be more revelations only to the extent that
independent journalists are able to document and expose these abuses.
The best PR, like the best propaganda, is invisible. In the more than a
decade that our organization has been reporting on and exposing
propaganda in the media, not one major newspaper to my knowledge has
committed a reporter to this as an investigative beat.
What can reporters do to break through the sound bite/talking points
media culture?
Reporters need to understand the business of propaganda and to view the
public relations industry and the culture of spin as anathema to
journalism and to democracy. Today PR flacks outnumber real working
journalists, and many of the flacks are former reporters who know
exactly how best to manage, cajole and manipulate the media because
they are from the media. J-schools have combined journalism and public
relations and told students that it's all the same, it requires the
same skills, and there is little fundamental difference. This is like
combining accounting and embezzling as a field of study.
Today in the corporate mainstream media reporters are overworked,
underpaid and pressured to avoid topics that offend advertisers.
Reporters need to dedicate themselves to real journalism and find ways
to practice it. Journalism is a sacred trust in a democracy, and if you
don't believe that you should probably go into PR.
Your books have generally focused on the way the American people are
getting hoodwinked by PR companies that set and then explain the agenda
of powerful corporations and politicians. Is there any way to render
them less powerful?
Simply stated, PR firms are corporations that help other corporations
and government agencies to manage public information, perceptions and
policy. Many people think that propaganda doesn't exist in democratic
societies, that it is a problem of dictatorships. Alex Carey, the
Australian academic, and others have pointed out that it is precisely
in democracies where sophisticated, hidden propaganda is most
prevalent, and the news media has become the major disseminator of
propaganda, rather than a force for exposing it.
In our book Weapons of Mass Deception, Sheldon and I explained how
rather than challenge Bush's war and exposing the falsehoods and
failures in Bush's claims, the U.S. news media became a propaganda arm
of the government. It shut out and ridiculed critics of the war, and
enabled it to take place. There are many fundamental reforms that could
be legislated to limit and control the power of corporations to
dominate our news and our politics. But powerful special interests and
governmental ideologues will use the best available techniques of
propaganda to manipulate and manage public perception. It is the
responsibility of journalists, educators and citizen activists to
expose and thwart such manipulation, and it's specifically our mission.
Given such a closed system, why the efforts around building media
democracy?
Twelve years ago when I founded our investigative quarterly PR Watch, I
chose the name Center for Media and Democracy for our non-profit
organization in order to emphasize the idea that without a vigorous,
independent, courageous and muckraking media, democracy cannot survive,
especially in this age of cranked-up propaganda. I've been happy to see
the term "media democracy" come into wide use. With the emergence of
the internet it has taken on new meaning in the age of blogs,
indymedia, wiki web sites like SourceWatch, and all the wonderful
reporting from web sites like AlterNet, Common Dreams, Buzzflash,
WorkingForChange, and those associated with the left[ist] press.
Media democracy seems like a catch-all phrase that is pretty ambiguous.
How would you define it?
Media democracy means that we recognize that one-way, top-down,
corporate mass communications has become much more a foe of democracy
than its friend. Democratic society is impossible without a courageous
and independent news media. The dominant mainstream media, the MSM, is
driven by the corporate bottom line and filled primarily with fluff,
sensationalism, right-wing politics, PR posing as news, and a
commitment to serve corporate advertisers. We need a powerful new
political movement to fundamentally challenge and change the corporate
media environment, and we also need to create new media that takes
advantage of internet technology to better serve democracy. Community
radio stations, non-profit media watchdogs, investigative bloggers, and
alternative news websites are all becoming important producers of
online web-based news and information that is building media democracy.
One project our organization is currently discussing with other groups
committed to media democracy is to develop standards for online
journalism that enable it to fulfill its promise of becoming a vital
media that serves our democracy.
What makes "SourceWatch" unique?
SourceWatch is unique because it is an experiment in collaborative
online investigative reporting. It's a very powerful educational,
organizing, research and networking tool that allows a growing
community of global citizens to collaborate to research and write
investigative news articles.
The open source "wiki" software that powers SourceWatch is in the
public domain, as are the articles that are written. Anyone can go to
SourceWatch and read, write and edit the information there. And every
change made in any article is logged for transparency. Bob Burton, an
investigative journalist, author and activist from Australia, is our
online editor.
We are constantly striving to improve the accuracy, depth and quality
of articles on SourceWatch. It is only two years old [it was originally
launched as Disinfopedia], and we are really just at the beginning of
this experiment. Anyone who first hears about it understandably says,
as I did when my colleague Sheldon Rampton proposed SourceWatch, "what
good is it if anyone with internet access can write or edit or for that
matter vandalize its articles?" But the fact is that the vast majority
of users are dedicated to the concept of investigative online
journalism, and by insisting on journalistic standards of accuracy and
fairness, and relegating opinions to an opinion page, the experiment is
working.
One problem it is solving is that by harnessing the investigative power
of hundreds of citizen journalists, we are finally able to keep track
of the myriad of industry front groups, PR firms, lobbyists and
anti-environmental PR campaigns that exist and are created every day.
SourceWatch has been a great success in its first two years, yet it is
just starting to take off. That said, everyone who reads an article on
the site should understand its limitations; that the article has not
necessarily been vetted by us, that no article is 100 percent accurate,
that anyone can contribute, and that it is a work in progress with no
copyright on its articles. So SourceWatch, like every other bit of the
news media, needs to be read with a critical eye. But with that
qualification I must say that I find most of the information very
accurate and much of it very unique. Wiki websites like SourceWatch are
becoming an important part of the online information environment.
Are you working on another book? What will it be about and when can we
expect it?
Sheldon and I have just begun outlining a new book examining media
corruption, spin and the growing media democracy movement. It would in
some ways be a return to the territory of our first and third books,
Toxic Sludge Is Good For You and Trust Us, We're Experts. We hope to
have it out in hardcover sometime in 2006. We've co-authored two books
in less than two years, timely paperbacks exposing the selling of the
war on Iraq and the political propaganda and strategy of the Republican
right. It seems to be a good time to step back and examine how citizens
might understand and overcome the toxic propaganda emanating from the
right-wing echo chamber.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21307/
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