Rape in the News

"Reporters viewing rape from the point of view of the rapists is a longstanding problem in corporate media." ~FAIR

It's been a persistent problem at the NYT.

Then there's the internal sexism at CNN in its reporting of the guilty verdict at the trial of the Steubenville, Pennsylvania high school football players.

CORPORATE SELL-OUT WITH A RIGHT-WING BACKGROUND. WHO KNEW?

I've never liked him, over-rated twat. One of the reasons why I think writing in The New Yorker has gone down the tubes. I see quite a few people I respect carry around books by Malcolm Gladwell. To impress? To appear informed? Do they really know? From S.H.A.M.E, Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media Ethics - a website that is new to me and well worth the read, I find:

In the vast ecosystem of corporate shills, which one is the most effective? Propaganda works best when it is not perceived as propaganda: nuance, obfuscation, distraction, suggestion, the subtle introduction of doubt—these are more effective in the long run than shotgun blasts of lies. The master of this approach is Malcolm Gladwell.

Oh, just go read the whole goddamn essay and you'll see what I mean.

Max Blumenthal critiques the US coverage of the Shalit release

I recommend Max Blumenthal's latest story. Underreported in USA media (or crucial context about the Palestine occupation not even given) about the Shalit release.

'Reports on the exchange generally did not mention the identities of the Palestinian prisoners, and if they did, they tended to only name those who had committed violence against Israelis. It is of course newsworthy that perpetrators of le...thal violence against Israeli civilians are being freed, and that many Israelis are outraged about it, but the American media made no effort to contextualize the conflict propelling the violence -- the word "occupation" was not mentioned once in today's reports on the exchange. Nor was there been any description of disproportionate Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians, including by Shalit's tank unit, or Israel's routine kidnapping of Palestinians without charges. In reporting the first major Israel-Palestine news event since the Mavi Marmara massacre in 2010, the American media produced an entirely Shalit-centric barrage of coverage that even the Israeli Foreign Ministry could not have matched.'

But it wasn't just US media. Radio Netherlands Worldwide pretty much reported the same way as the Americans. No surprise there, either... as RNW is becoming a propaganda arm of the Dutch Foreign Ministry in the right-wing government (e.g. The Netherlands is 'Israel's best friend').

NO LOCKHEED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

In case anyone missed it. It was the lead story in Thursday’s National section of the New York Times.

Ms. [Anna] Guyton and Jonathan Leavitt, a community organizer, have sought to rally opposition with leafleting, forums at local colleges and a blog. They are also circulating a petition for a ballot question that would urge the mayor “not to enter into agreements with corporate war profiteers like Lockheed Martin.”
Meanwhile, Liza Cowan, a local artist, is circulating an eye-catching series of “No Lockheed” prints to draw attention to the issue. She said she was especially unhappy that the letter of cooperation mentioned “possible support” for Burlington’s public schools. Six years ago, she fought the sponsorship of a reading program by General Dynamics, a military contractor that had a branch here at the time, which distributed pencils and books stamped with its corporate logo at local schools. “It just seems like this was going to be the same thing but on a bigger scale,” she said.
Ms. Cowan also raised another common theory: that the partnership was an attempt by Lockheed to win local support for basing its F-35 fighter jets at Burlington International Airport. The Vermont Air Guard already flies F-16s here, and the Air Force has said Burlington is one of two possible bases for the F-35s.

HOW TO TELL NPR ISN'T TOO LIBERAL

A post today at the Undernews blog:

How to tell NPR isn't too liberal

This afternoon, discussing the budget negotiations and the possibility of a federal government shutdown, Mara Liasson said it would remain to be seen what the reaction would be on the part of "the voters, and, more importantly, the financial markets." - Pablo Davis

90210

LOS ANGELES TIMES: - Two members of Congress, Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), called on Halliburton on Friday to provide all documents relating to "the possibility or risk of an explosion or blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig and the status, adequacy, quality, monitoring, and inspection of the cementing work" by May 7.

Oh right, the newsworthy Tiger Woods

[Confession: I'm no golfer and only knew about Mr Woods' trials and tribs because Yahoo "trended" him... Ha!]

But here's an interesting follow up to that "breaking," important News - but was really tabloid stuff - about the golfer on NPR, CNN and the other corpress. It's more a cultural observation:
"By His Wounds We Have Already Been Entertained: Tiger Woods, The Masters, and the Ritual of Celebrity Disgrace"

Evidently, however, the Chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club is not attuned to the rhythms of this Great Ritual, for he chose the eve of the Masters to issue a public condemnation of Tiger—for his “egregious” actions that let “our kids and grandkids” down.

Did the Chairman not know that, according to the Great Ritual, the days of righteous anger over Tiger’s immoral ways are now far behind us?...MORE

"The question is: Does NPR deserve underwriting support from thinking and feeling people?"

Not if you listened on Thursday to NPR's All Things Considered's disgusting and disrespectful "remembrance" of Howard Zinn, who died the day before.

Fairness & Accuracy in Media & Reporting (FAIR) has issued an important Action Alert asking people to contact the NPR ombud to ask why "All Things Considered" brought on David Horowitz to trash Howard Zinn saying, "There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect." ... Details for how to contact NPR are here.

Here's my letter to Alicia Shephard, the NPR ombud:

David Horowitz ruthlessly and verbally attacked Dr Zinn on public radio a day following his death, when people were mourning. That is disgusting behaviour for a guest on ATC and your Ms Keyes should have called him on it. As a commenter wrote on this ATC story, "The question is: Does NPR deserve underwriting support from thinking and feeling people?" A very good question, especially since Vermont Public Radio and North Country Public Radio tell us continually that their listeners are sensitive and caring people – they donate generously to underwrite NPR programming! I am writing the management at those stations, demanding them to consider dropping your expensive programming.

I included the above in my letters to VPR and NCPR management, adding,

"I urge also that you contact Ms. Shepard, Vivian Schiller [NPR's President and CEO], and Ellen McDonnell [NPR's Executive Director of News Programming] and demand NPR issue an apology to Dr Zinn's family - in national print media and broadcast it on NPR and the local stations.

Recommended: NPRCheck, a blog that monitors NPR's news programs.

Cross posted at Antemedius.

Haiti coverage is not the media's finest hour

"And in disaster after disaster, at least since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, those in power, those with guns and the force of law behind them, are too often more concerned for property than human life. In an emergency, people can, and do, die from those priorities. Or they get gunned down for minor thefts or imagined thefts. The media not only endorses such outcomes, but regularly, repeatedly, helps prepare the way for, and then eggs on, such a reaction."

The above is a quote from "Covering Haiti: When the Media Is the Disaster," by Rebecca Solnit, which appeared in CommonDreams on Friday. Recommended vis-à-vis NPR & mainstream media reporting on Haiti. It's a lengthy article covering their obsession about "looters," "panic," and "security" since the earthquake on January 12th. The article begins,

Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

I'm talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.

I encourage you to read all of it.

The article is also featured on TomDispatch. Additionally, I recommend you read the spot-on critique at Lenin's Tomb, which rips apart the media, too.

Boston Globe profiles Bernie Sanders

I don't always agree with Bernie Sanders. Local media categorise him as a far-left socialist. He's more like a European democratic socialist. This profile appeared in the Globe on Friday, January 9th:

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has spent his career trying to remake American capitalism in a more Scandinavian image. His favored targets of late have been top finance regulators he considers far too deferential to Wall Street. Last year, Sanders spent five months trying to block a new Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman before securing promises from Gary Gensler to aggressively fight market excesses.

Now Sanders is aiming at the top of the regulatory pyramid, putting a hold on the renomination of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, whom he blames for the country's financial collapse as a "key architect of the Bush economy.''. . .

Congress's only self-described socialist, the 68-year old Sanders gives the appearance of having stepped in from a tornado and speaks as though still trying to be heard over the noise.

His voice may finally be breaking through. Over 16 years in the House, his lonely crusades - which amount to a lifelong campaign to remake American capitalism and social policy - were usually received as little more than glitches in an otherwise well-functioning two-party system. Since his 2006 election to the Senate, however, Sanders has found that a junior senator's single vote is enough to keep him in the middle of things. . .

Sanders disappointed liberal allies who had counted on him to mount a one-man stand against the Democrats' health care bill for omitting a public insurance plan. Sanders, who had introduced an amendment to create a single-payer plan, had initially threatened to oppose any such bill without a public option. . .

Sanders eventually secured $10 billion to expand a national network of rural medical clinics that he calls "perhaps the most significant and least-known public health program in America.'' (The Senate bill had one perk just for Vermont: $600 million to cover the state's previous expansion of its Medicaid program.). . .

"He deep down believes he can change American politics,'' said Larry Sanders, the senator's older brother and a county councilor in Oxford, England, representing the Green Party. "He's not afraid of being boring and making the same points for 20 years.''

A longtime critic of mainstream media, Sanders controls the flow of his own information. He wrote radio ads for his congressional campaign with friends around his kitchen table. Before being elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, Sanders developed educational film strips about New England history - and one 30-minute documentary about Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs - for sale to local schools.

Last year, Sanders began working with muckraking director Robert Greenwald on weekly Web videos designed to build a national constituency around his issues. . .

RebelReports - In Closed-Door Meeting With Rights Groups, Obama Suggests He'll Use 'Preventive Detention'

By Jeremy Scahill

Just when you think President Obama’s policies on war, civil liberties and Guantanamo couldn’t possibly look any more like the Bush/Cheney regime’s than they already do, the administration goes ahead and proves you dead wrong. In a meeting Wednesday with several human rights groups including the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Human Rights Watch, Obama said he was “mulling the need for a ‘preventive detention’ system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried,” according to two participants in the “private session.” [read all of Scahill here]

Dowd's Deep Doo Doo

I don't anymore, but when I did read the NYT regularly, I'd check out Maureen Dowd for her sarcastic opinion pieces.

Dan Kennedy: ... I continue to be troubled by her explanation of how she came to lift a paragraph from Josh Marshall's megablog, Talking Points Memo.

OK, so Dowd was "talking" in a "spontaneous" manner with a friend, as she put it to the Huffington Post. Fine. I had decided to assume for the purpose of moving on that by "talking" she meant "e-mailing." It would be completely believable if she had copied and pasted from a friend's e-mail who had volunteered to help her write her column.

COMMENT: Weird times we live in, and of course, liberal bloggers and the busy media gotcha gang are having a field day with yet another diversion from the real news. But I do think this bowdlerization of language is troubling. 'Talking,' 'e-mailing.' On Gmail, when you want to write an email, you click "Compose Mail." After you click "send," the confirmation reads, "This message has been sent."

It gets worse. After you delete an email, the confirmation reads, "This conversation has been moved to the Trash" (with a capital 'T,' for typographical emphasis!).

Roman Catholic Hypocrisy

Regarding the tiff over Obama's honorary doctorate from the University of Notre Dame.

Every good Catholic knows that the church is strictly opposed to capital punishment. Since Bush set records for carrying out death sentences when he was governor of Texas, you would think that the same guardians of virtue that are protesting Obama, who has never personally signed an abortion certificate, would have been out in force for a man who presided over 152 executions. But there was nary a peep. There were no bishops signing petitions opposing Bush’s appearance. There were no protests on campus. There were no students refusing to participate in graduation ceremonies. And there were no cameras from national news networks circling like buzzards.

If these Catholic Crusaders are truly interested in demonstrating their piety without prejudice, they should immediately call for Notre Dame to revoke Bush’s honorary degree. If the press is honestly endeavoring to be objective, they should pose this question to the protesters.

Christian Avard interviews Dennis Perrin

Dennis Perrin, the author of Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War, chats with Christian Avard about Jon Stewart, The Nation magazine's turn to the center, the Palestine-Israel situation, and Dennis' assessment of the first 100 days of Dear Leader's administration. It's in P U L S E, and it's all here.

And while you're at it, Dennis Perrin's blog - http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/ is also worth following for his commentary and humour.

It's not worth the anger, if no follow-through

North Country Public Radio and Vermont Public Radio, the two NPR affiliates in my area, offer some excellent local (and award-winning) programs, but I get extremely frazzled when I listen to - usually when on the road and rarely on my home radio - the NPR news and pundit programs. An interview with a smug, smart-ass Adam Davidson of NPR's Planet Money and "bailout" monitor and Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren happened over a week ago. TalkLeft calls it "infuriating," which indeed it is. (The comments at TL are also worth a read.) Corrente has a transcript of the ugly parts. I'd never listened to Planet Money or this interview until today. Actually, I admire Warren and think she's a breath of fresh air and definitely spot on in the thankless work she's doing now. I first heard her on Terri Gross's Fresh Air talking about the credit card industry (2007) and the rising costs of credit card debt (2008), and right away, I knew she was worth listening to.

Have you seen NPRCheck? It's a "watch-dog" blog full of gotcha comments by "liberals" and "progressive" listeners people - pissed off by the regular NPR correspondents and news analysts. It's true that NPR has earned the sobriquet "Nice Polite Republicans." I've read NPRCheck occasionally, just for fun, but never really take their rants seriously, because they love to complain, and that's all. I just wish these fuckin' arm-chair liberal types - whingers all - would take the advice of a commenter in the TL discussion on the Warren interview, it's [n]ot worth the anger, if no follow-through

Do what I did -- file a formal complaint with NPR. It does no good to blow our own gaskets merely amongst ourselves; you might as well just shrug your shoulders and move on, for all the good it does.

Rather, we should harness that anger for righteous purpose. If more liberal / progressive listeners complained consistently about the wasted airspace taken up by the biased likes of Adam Davidson, Mara Liasson and Cokie Roberts, I guarantee that it would eventually get NPR's attention.

I've commented on programs and have written the (useless, but well-paid) NPR Ombudsman, who rarely responds (with the usual excuses and formula letters). I'm even on some NPR Listen's panel and receive periodic questionnaires via email. I don't hesitate to complain about their biases when I have a chance. NCPR and VPR are always asking for money, but donations cannot be earmarked to local programming. So, next time they ask for a hand-out, I'll tell 'em, don't expect any dosh from me until they - as an affiliate - tell NPR to clean up its act.

(Cross-posted at Antemedius.)

Where's the news gone?

From Sam Smith in Undernews

Let's put aside the issue of what's happening to the printed news media for a moment to deal with a more important question: where has the news gone?

Years ago, before the arrival of the Internet, I noticed a phenomenon around the middle of each June: the pile of mail arriving in our office suddenly declined.

The cause was fairly obvious: a drop off in news releases as public relations adjusted its efforts to the thermological nature of our culture. Which is to say, the warmer the weather, the less interested we are in what somebody else is trying to sell.

Then, of course, there's Thanksgiving and Christmas when many sorts of news disappear entirely. A foreigner arriving on such a day and watching TV could logically assume that we were a society with naught but violence and tragedy as the only visible hard news are accidents, murders and fires.

To a journalist, however, such occasions are reminders of how artificial and manipulated much news is. Over the past few months, I have begun to get that same holiday feeling about the news. Ever since Obama was inaugurated, hard news seems to have faded and we find ourselves in deep discussion over his daily activities, his wife's bare arms, other inanities and an amazing assortment of vagaries about what he is planning to do, appoint, go to, or talk about.

It is becoming ever harder to realize that we have recently added a new country to our Muslim war hit list, that job losses are increasing, that the budget is more out of balance than ever, that we will soon have as many troops in Afghanistan as we did in Vietnam in 1965, that banks are getting record subsidies while ordinary folk facing foreclosure or job loss are getting minimal aid, and that "health reform" is turning into a TARP program for insurance companies.

Since the media treated Obama as the Second Coming from the beginning, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised about echoes of Christmas coverage, but all holidays have to come to end sometime. It would seem to be a good time for the media to go back to work.

While the media gave Bush a full pass on post 9/11 horrors like the Patriot Act, Gitmo and Iraq, the indifference to real news in the Obama administration extends far beyond matters of falsely purported national security. The lack of interest in Arne Duncan's planned interference in public school systems, the billions for first class high speed rail with little for coach class, rail freight or bus riders, and the highly dangerous medical records act have been left to a few eccentric journals like the Review to even mention. If the print media wants us to cry over its current problems, at least give us some real reporting to be sad at the thought of losing.

Instead, we have a media that falls without fail for various manipulations contrived by the White House, including covering each stage of an Obama decision as though it was new news, i.e.

"Obama is talking about. . . "
"Obama is consulting with. . ."
"Obama is reaching out to various groups. . . "
"Obama is planning to. . . "
"Obama is expected to announce on Monday that. . . "

And, finally, yet another repetitive front page story beginning, "Obama has announced. . . "

Not bad. A half dozen stories that lead you to an announcement that you can't quite figure out what it means anyway.

Which, of course, is intentional. Which is why we look forward to 3.5 million jobs created or "saved" by Obama, as the media treats the preservation of the status quo as news and a great achievement.

Or take the promised two trillion dollars saved by the health insurance industry over a ten year period. This in a media that doesn't even care who won the last American Idol.

As a general rule, political predictions of greater than two years should be banned entirely by the media. That might free up a little space to help people understand how we ended up in a war in Pakistan without any debate or congressional vote or when the subsidies of the Wall Street welfare fathers is going to end. After all, these were the guys who told us - with unquestioning support of the mainstream media - that free markets would take care of it all.

But as long as the media sees its role as Obama's Ryan Seacrest, it won't happen. It will just remain on a perpetual holiday.

Jessica Lynch all over again....

The chief engineer on the same ship with Capt. Richard Phillips disagrees with the narrative that was presented to us in the media. I am not surprised. The folks in Underhill, Vermont may not like it, but as Jeremy Scahill writes,

One of the crew members of the now famous Maersk Alabama, the ship at the center of this month’s “Somali pirate” drama, is doing a little speaking out of school. He is directly contradicting some of the media and US government hype about what exactly went down on the ship that day. Among the stories the ship’s chief engineer, Michael Perry, says is false, is one which was “widely disseminated by media and celebrated on social-networking sites.” That is that Capt. Richard Phillips offered himself as a hostage to save his crew. Perry made the remarks to the St. Petersburg Times.

According to the paper, “although it has inspired a nation and fueled virtual fan groups, Perry, 60, wants people to know the truth:”

Perry wants to tell the story of the crew, the men who were almost baked alive in an unventilated room as pirates roamed the ship. Those men worked hard to save their captain, Perry said, even though they suffered from heat exhaustion.

For those of you who have followed this closely, you will see that Perry’s version of events closely mirrors early reports, which were quickly replaced by the other, more heroic narrative, that the US crew essentially was tricked into allowing the Somalis to get away with Phillips as their hostage:

Up on the bridge, a deal was made.

The plan: The pirates would hand over Phillips in exchange for the captured pirate, the man who Perry now believes was the leader. His name is Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, and he later surrendered and is now in New York facing international criminal charges.

The pirates got into another boat with Phillips, and Muse was brought to them. The problem: The pirates didn’t return Phillips to the ship.

Perry tried to fly under the radar. The only reason he’s telling his story now is so the truth is told and the crew gets credit, he said at his Riverview home, as he lounged in the sun.

Remember, Muse, who is characterized as the “pirate ringleader” is believed to be as young as 15 or 16 years old. He is facing a trial in federal court in New York. If convicted, there is a mandatory life sentence.

The media frenzy we read/saw/heard about the saving of Capt. Phillips promoted American exceptionalism, power and might, but it was a diversion to avoid examining the reasons for the kidnapping in the first place.

Politics and Torture

VERMONT OFFERS STRENGTH & HOPE FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY

Dan Barlow in the Times Argus quotes my friend, 'Rev. Nancy Vogel of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in White River Junction, who served on a legislative commission to study same-sex marriage last year, said some surprise votes on the House floor and one missing Democrat made her nervous that it would not pass.

"I was just so afraid that we wouldn't get those 100 votes we needed," said Vogel, who was joined in a civil union with her partner, Cheryl Elinsky, five years ago. "But now we're planning for a Sept. 1 wedding."'

How the Vermont House voted yesterday.

Beth Robinson, attorney and board chair of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force and Action Committee and Rep. Bill Lippert, Vermont state legislator, chair of Vermont House Judiciary Committee were interviewed on Democracy Now! today.

Also on Democracy Now!: a testimony of Thetford Center resident, Evann Orleck-Jetter, a twelve-year-old with two mothers, which prompted some Vermont reps to vote for marriage equality.

Beth Robinson congratulates supporters, with additional comments by Representatives Mark Larson and David Zuckerman of Burlington, co-sponsors of the marriage equality bill.

JOHN UPDIKE 1932-2009

The Boston Globe has an obituary. He wrote 27 novels, 13 short story collections, books of poetry, nonfiction and essays, at least one play. Just yesterday I'd read a book review he had written recently for the New Yorker; he had contributed to the magazine since 1954.

A two-part interview made in 1995:-