jrnl fail 2 bak

419

SEE JRNL FAIL 3 1/20

see main

see corp mainstream media

see media consolidation

see escalator

jrnlfail419

promote to 2

see also primary election as ampl fdbk

aha note amplif;  big lie stop steal are ghost dance, magical thinking that will restore the dear leader to rightful place and //quanin banish the evil-doers?

sparked by:

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/end-of-enlightenment/

common dr robt freeman

The Enlightenment was a time of intellectual ferment in the Western world following the Middle Ages. Its ideas gave birth to the modern world.

We know the Enlightenment from the names of its most brilliant expositors: Francis Bacon, John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and others. We know its ideas as the foundation of our social world: the social contract, the rule of reason, the rule of law, consent of the governed, natural rights, constitutionalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and others.

The Republican agenda is a direct assault on all of that. It literally aims to return America to the pre-modern, pre-Enlightened darkness of the Middle Ages. If it succeeds, it will reverse more than three hundred years of human progress.

The most egregious of Republican assaults on the modern world is its rejection of Reason. Reason is the way we know what we know. It is not through revelations from God, or the pronouncements of priests or monarchs as had been the case before the Enlightenment.

Reason as a process for discovering Truth started in the Scientific Revolution around 1550. It was so powerful a way of knowing the physical world, the philosophers of the Enlightenment adopted it for knowing—and improving—the social world. It became the foundation of all subsequent Enlightenment thought, and all modern institutions.

The Republican broadside against Reason was on display in the first days of the Trump administration when Trump asserted that his inauguration crowd size was the largest in history. Presented with facts to the contrary, in photographic evidence, his assistant, Kellyanne Conway, proclaimed the existence of "alternative facts." It's been downhill since.

Republican discourse is a never-ending torrent of lies, idiocies, and absurdities—the very antithesis of Reason. The Muslim invasion. The caravan bringing murderers, rapists, drugs, and disease. Democrats eating babies. A satanic cult of pedophiles running the "Deep State." A pandemic that would "disappear, like a miracle." The greatest economy in the history of the world. Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head being canceled. Biden's hamburger ban. A rigged election. Massive voter fraud. Terrorists who were really just tourists handing out hugs and kisses. It never ends.

The Republican assault on Reason is an attack not just on truth itself, but on our very capacity to think at all. With their base, Republicans address not the neo-cortex—the thinking part of the brain—but the amygdala—the lizard-brain seat of fight-or-flight. The amygdala subordinates logic, facts, reason, and deliberation to deceit, conspiracy, hysteria, and fear.

It's easier to trigger hatred and fear than thinking and logic. That's why Republicans do it. That's why their base—and increasingly, their "leaders"—sound like zombies, like robots, like members of a cult when they're interviewed for the evening news. They are. They've been programmed to fear and hate and blame, and the reinforcement is unending, [feedback? amplif?] because, to work, it has to be. Otherwise, they become unprogrammed.

It doesn't matter that none of the endless effusion of lies ever turn out to be true or that they are routinely, repeatedly abandoned in favor of newer lies for the next news cycle. What matters is that the lies incite indignation, and that the dopamine high that follows gets its constant, programmed, ever-increasing reinforcement.

Trump's 35,000 documented lies are the embodiment of it all.It is a leprous, insidious disease, an inability to deal with reality, but literally the one by which Republicans define themselves. Glandular excretions are the Republican formula for generating voter turnout: inciting Pavlovian rage based on a torrential fantasmia of lurid lies. It works, but it is the living, suppurating antithesis of Reason.

Another Republican assault on the legacy of the Enlightenment is the attack on Democracy. It was John Locke who, in 1689, wrote that people who were able to think could not be bullied like ignorant people could. If government wanted thinking people's cooperation it could no longer rely on the medieval divine right of kings. It needed to obtain "the consent of the governed." This, of course, became a sacrament of the American political order.

The opening words of the Constitution are, "We the people of the United States…" That is not a paean to monarchy, or to dictatorship. It is a statement that the consent of the people—and only that consent—provides a government its legitimacy. But Republicans are working feverishly to overturn the consent of the governed, to destroy Democracy.

Their assault on the Capitol on January 6th was the most conspicuous effort to overthrow the legitimately elected government of the United States but it was not the first and will certainly not be the last.Republicans insist that their reason-denying mobs, their goons, their Brownshirts will tell the rest of us how we will be governed. No consent involved, only submission: ours. You can see this in their fevered efforts at voter suppression, explicitly preventing majority rule and the consent of the governed.

Republicans cannot win power on the strength of their ideas and policies. They lost the presidency, the Senate, and the House. Large majorities favor policies backed by Democrats. So, they need to destroy Democracy itself to gain power. To do that, they need to destroy Reason as the way we know what we know. That is the core, the essence, the modus operandi of the Republican enterprise.

Constitutionalism is a third Enlightenment ideal that Republicans are intent on destroying. A constitution defines how a country is to be governed. Before constitutions, it was autocracy that called the shots. Think of Louis XIV's notorious declaration: "I am the state." Decisions were made by caprice, by the rich and powerful, in their own interests, everyone else be damned. Constitutionalism embeds the Rule of Law—another Enlightenment ideal—into a society, making "equal treatment under the law" a modern treasure, however badly it may be realized.

Besides losing all of the branches of the federal government, Republicans failed over and over and over to persuade the judicial branch to sanction their usurpation of the Constitution. So, they resort to performative charades like the farcical ballot laundering farrago in Arizona to try to undo the Constitutionally-ordained process for the peaceful transfer of power. Now, they're taking it to other states. It will not end.

We could go on. Republicans want to destroy the social contract—another Enlightenment ideal—that says you get ahead on the basis of hard work. They insist, instead, that privilege should be based on race, with the best spots reserved for whites. This violates the Enlightenment ideal of equality for all.

Remember the opening words of the Declaration of Independence? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Pure Enlightenment. In the Republican world, however, like in Orwell's Animal Farm which was an allegory of the degradation of Soviet totalitarianism, all men are created equal, but some—whites—are more equal than others.

We should be clear. This is not about peripheral protests over policy preferences. It is a broadside against the foundation, the institutional undergirding of our civilization. It is an attempt to destroy the conceptual milieu that has survived for centuries and that, however flawed it may be, has delivered the greatest freedom, expansion of rights, material progress, and human opportunity the world has ever known.

The measure of our alarm should be that Republicans, with the help of a complicit media, have managed to normalize rampant public lying, the unrestrained desecration of Reason, are carrying out an open, unabashed attack on our democracy, are carrying out notorious, savage assaults on Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, Equality, and more. Our nation is literally under attack by anti-Enlightenment zealots determined to tear it down and it's not at all clear that they will not succeed.

It is indicative that the Republican party's highest priest is a thrice-married pathological liar, an admitted sexual assaulter, a draft dodger, a six-time filer for bankruptcy, a man who inflicted hundreds of thousands of excess deaths on the country, was twice impeached, who lost two successive popular vote counts, and who then attempted to overthrow the government. Read that sentence again and think about its implication.

The Republican hero, the man they model themselves on, the one they want us to bow down to, is a failed business man, a failed reality TV star, a failed president, a career con man who is the most corrupt, certainly the most craven and creepy individual ever known to American politics. This is the best Republicans have to offer. That is who they are, and what they insist on inflicting on all the rest of us, our consent be damned.

The Enlightenment helped the world replace monarchy with republicanism, a world ruled by theology with a world of science, autocracy with the rule of law, aristocratic privilege with the equality of all men, and feudalism with capitalism. No matter how imperfectly it may have been realized, it was as noble a vision as human beings have ever devised. The two worlds are the difference between the "Dark Ages" that went before and the modern world. That is the Republicans' promise to America.

More regression. More destruction of beautiful ideals and noble institutions. More degradation of deserving people. More humiliation of undignified people, themselves being the examples. More carnage. More chaos. More slime spewed on everyone.

There's not a syllable of inspiring vision in anything they have to say, not a word of uplifting ideals in any of it. It is all pathetic self-victimization and a lust for vengeance against those who refuse to respect them. We must all be dragged into the sewer that spawned, that is, and that sustains Donald Trump. That is his and Republicans' retaliation against a people who once had the temerity to believe in majestic ideals, the audacity to strive for them, and who once imagined that they might even be worthy of them.

https://grist.org/climate/major-news-networks-devoted-less-than-four-hours-to-climate-change-in-2019-total/

2/20

When it comes to climate change, television news is covering little more than the tip of the iceberg.

That’s according to a just-released report from Media Matters for America, which found that global warming garnered a tiny sliver — well under 1 percent — of overall broadcast news coverage. The progressive research nonprofit also found that, while these news outlets did cover climate change more often in 2019 than in the year prior, the quality of coverage was “generally shallow.” And when it came to giving voice to those hit first and worst by extreme weather and other climate-related disasters, the networks fell short: People of color were “massively underrepresented” in coverage.

“In spite of the increase in coverage from 2018 to 2019, climate coverage as a whole still made up only 0.6% of overall corporate broadcast TV nightly news in 2019, showing that these programs’ climate coverage does not adequately reflect the urgency and severity of the climate crisis,” the report found.

a study analyzed four nightly news programs and four Sunday morning political shows, focusing both on segments devoted to climate change as well as substantial mentions of the topic in other segments. Yet even with significant year-to-year increases in coverage — for example, a 180 percent increase in climate coverage on nightly news in 2019 compared to 2018 — corporate broadcasters failed to substantially improve the overall quantity and quality of their climate coverage, according to Media Matters.

The analysis focused on four nightly news programs — ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC’s Nightly News, and public broadcaster PBS’s NewsHour — as well as four Sunday morning political shows: ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday. Media Matters has produced variations of this analysis annually since at least 2012, including reports in 2018 and 2017.

Among the report’s key findings for 2019:

• Although the volume of climate change coverage on the corporate broadcast nightly and Sunday morning news shows increased 68 percent from 2018 to 2019 (142 minutes to 238 minutes), the report noted that this was not difficult to achieve because the amount of coverage in 2018 was “so pitiful” that news shows had a low bar to meet the following year. This climate coverage represented just .07 percent of the overall broadcast nightly and Sunday morning news shows in 2019.
• [graf]

• When it came to racial and gender diversity in their climate coverage, Media Matters found that broadcast television also failed: People of color were “massively underrepresented” as news guests, even though communities of color are disproportionately impacted by climate change. Just 10 percent of guests interviewed or featured in these news segments were people of color, and 2019 was the third year in a row that representation came in at this percentage or lower.

• Scientists and women were also underrepresented by broadcasters, comprising 22 and 27 percent of guests, respectively. Women of color were featured even less prominently — a troubling reminder that women “typically play second fiddle to white men” in discussions of climate change, according to Media Matters. “A lack of women’s voices in media coverage of climate change is part of a pattern of racism and sexism that these broadcast networks need to address,” the report stated.

• Not all of the findings in Wednesday’s report were grim. In 2019, more than a third of climate segments on ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox mentioned solutions or actions to address climate change — a significant increase over the previous two years. The broadcasters focused most often on climate adaptation and renewable energy technologies when discussing solutions, but advocacy and direct action, such as youth climate activism, were also featured. The report cited studies showing that media coverage of climate change solutions can help spur collective action from viewers. “Much of this shift in public debate to talking about solutions is being driven by TV weathercasters, who are often trusted and knowledgeable members of local news,” the study added.

• Media Matters praised PBS NewsHour for its climate coverage, noting that it has outpaced its broadcast counterparts in climate reporting for the past six years. PBS Newshour aired 121 climate segments in 2019, an average of 10 segments per month. “This is more coverage than we found from the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news shows combined,” the report found.

• The analysis also found that climate change coverage last year was driven in large part by reporting on the Green New Deal congressional resolution, extreme weather, climate activism, and the 2020 presidential election. Coverage of climate activism, which comprised about 16 percent of the overall climate coverage from these broadcasters, focused in large part on activist Greta Thunberg and climate strikes, which took place across the globe last year. The report also found that broadcasters did a “pretty poor job overall” covering the connection between climate change and specific extreme weather events.

Media Matters is hardly alone in its withering analysis of major media coverage of climate change — and news outlets’ failure to link global warming to wildfires and other extreme weather events that are becoming the new normal.

Some of those critics are starting to offer solutions. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, Professor Leah C. Stokes and Ph.D. candidate Emily Williams have compiled a concise fact sheet intended to help journalists and citizens understand the scientific evidence linking climate change to wildfires. They are also working on a project with Climate Signals, a science information project from the nonprofit Climate Nexus, to help journalists more easily access academic journal articles on climate change, which are typically behind paywalls, according to a radio interview Stokes gave in September.

As Grist recently reported in a story about how local journalists are tackling climate coverage, a comprehensive approach to covering climate change should include going beyond analyzing the evidence supporting global warming. John Morales, a meteorologist at NBC6 in Miami, Florida, has been covering climate change for decades. He said that local news needs to cover “how fast things are changing, the links between the observed symptoms and causes of rising temperatures, and move on to ‘what do we do about this?’”

As Media Matters made clear on Wednesday, Morales is way ahead of television’s largest news providers.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/wealth-sociopathy-and-presidency-why-corporate-media-is-force-feeding-us-the-premise-of-a-bloomberg-vs-trump-face-off

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/theres-a-corrupt-authoritarian-in-the-white-house-but-the-political-press-keeps-instigating-pointless-fights-among-dems/

1/17/20

PBS new hour flattery interview with maduro opponent, ended with charming factoid he survived mudslide as child

http://inthesetimes.com/article/22164/evo-morales-bolivia-right-wing-coup-united-states-media

article first appeared in FAIR.

Army generals appearing on television to demand the resignation and arrest of an elected civilian head of state seems like a textbook example of a coup. And yet that is certainly not how corporate media are presenting the weekend’s events in Bolivia.

No establishment outlet framed the action as a coup; instead, President Evo Morales “resigned” (ABC News, 11/10/19), amid widespread “protests” (CBS News,/maxresdefault.jpg)) from an “infuriated population” (New York Times, 11/10/19) angry at the “election fraud” (Fox News, 11/10/19) of the “full-blown dictatorship” (Miami Herald, 11/9/19). When the word “coup” is used at all, it comes only as an accusation from Morales or another official from his government, which corporate media have been demonizing since his election in 2006 (FAIR.org, 5/6/09, 8/1/12, 4/11/19).

The New York Times (11/10/19) did not hide its approval at events, presenting Morales as a power-hungry despot who had finally “lost his grip on power,” claiming he was “besieged by protests” and “abandoned by allies” like the security services. His authoritarian tendencies, the news article claimed, “worried critics and many supporters for years,” and allowed one source to claim that his overthrow marked “the end of tyranny” for Bolivia. With an apparent nod to balance, it did note that Morales “admitted no wrongdoing” and claimed he was a “victim of a coup.” By that point, however, the well had been thoroughly poisoned.

CNN (11/10/19) dismissed the results of the recent election, where Bolivia gave Morales another term in office, as beset with “accusations of election fraud,” presenting them as a farce where “Morales declared himself the winner.” Time’s report (11/10/19) presented the catalyst for his “resignation” as “protests” and “fraud allegations,” rather than being forced at gunpoint by the military. Meanwhile, CBS News /maxresdefault.jpg)) did not even include the word “allegations,” its headline reading, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Resigns After Election Fraud and Protests.”

Delegitimizing foreign elections where the “wrong” person wins, of course, is a favorite pastime of corporate media (FAIR.org, 5/23/18). There is a great deal of uncritical acceptance of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) opinions on elections, including in coverage of Bolivia’s October vote (e.g., BBC, 11/10/19; Vox, 11/10/19; Voice of America, 11/10/19), despite the lack of evidence to back up its assertions. No mainstream outlet warned its readers that the OAS is a Cold War organization, explicitly set up to halt the spread of leftist governments. In 1962, for example, it passed an official resolution claiming that the Cuban government was “incompatible with the principles and objectives of the inter-American system.” Furthermore, the organization is bankrolled by the US government; indeed, in justifying its continued funding, US AID argued that the OAS is a crucial tool in “promot[ing] US interests in the Western hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-US countries” like Bolivia.

In contrast, there was no coverage at all in US corporate media of the detailed new report from the independent Washington-based think tank CEPR, which claimed that the election results were “consistent” with the win totals announced. There was also scant mention of the kidnapping and torture of elected officials, the ransacking of Morales’ house, the burning of public buildings and of the indigenous Wiphala flag, all of which were widely shared on social media and would have suggested a very different interpretation of events.

Words have power. And framing an event is a powerful method of conveying legitimacy and suggesting action. “Coups,” almost by definition, cannot be supported, while “protests” generally should be. Chilean President Sebastian Piñera, a conservative US-backed billionaire, has literally declared war on over a million people demonstrating against his rule. Corporate media, however, have framed that uprising not as a protest, but rather a “riot” (e.g., NBC News,10/20/19; Reuters, 11/9/19; Toronto Sun, 11/9/19). In fact, Reuters (11/8/19) described the events as Piñera responding to “vandals” and “looters.” Who would possibly oppose that?

Morales was the first indigenous president in his majority indigenous nation—one that has been ruled by a white European elite since the days of the conquistadors. While in office, his Movement Towards Socialism party has managed to reduce poverty by 42% and extreme poverty by 60%, cut unemployment in half and conduct a number of impressive public works programs. Morales saw himself as part of a decolonizing wave across Latin America, rejecting neoliberalism and nationalizing the country’s key resources, spending the proceeds on health, education and affordable food for the population.

His policies drew the great ire of the US government, Western corporations and the corporate press, who function as the ideological shock troops against leftist governments in Latin America. In the case of Venezuela, Western journalists unironically call themselves “the resistance” to the government, and describe it as their No. 1 goal to “get rid of Maduro,” all the while presenting themselves as neutral and unbiased actors.

The media message from the Bolivia case is clear: A coup is not a coup if we like the outcome.

an 120 jrnl fail

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-corporate-press-is-setting-a-dangerous-precedent-by-giving-biden-a-pass-on-his-support-for-iraq-war/

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i thot maybe pearl harbor moment tip pt at last?

https://www.mediamatters.org/broadcast-networks/us-broadcast-news-coverage-australian-fires-largely-fails-connect-crisis-climate

• scale of the bushfires burning in Australia is unprecedented, and the toll they have extracted is incomprehensible -- at least 27 people have perished, more than 12 million acres have been destroyed, and an estimated 1 billion animals have died. And fire season is just getting started.

However, the magnitude of this developing crisis and the role of our increasingly warming climate in it, to date, have not been reflected by U.S. broadcast news coverage.

From September -- when the first bushfire broke out -- to early January, major morning, nightly, and weekend news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a 59 segments total on the Australian fires, and only nine of them (15.3%) mentioned climate change.

However, with several months of fire season still ahead, broadcast news has an opportunity to educate its audiences on what climate change looks like and expose the real threats of climate denial and continued inaction. A significant uptick in coverage in the first week of January -- to 24 segments, or 41% of the total aired -- suggests that the significance of this catastrophe is starting to take hold in broadcast news. But will more reporting on the role of climate change follow?

• ## Early coverage of the fires was sparse and underwhelming, absent of climate change
• The early arrival of the fire season in Australia made it a climate story from day one. The New York Times reported on September 9 that “experts and some state officials ... have been quick to identify climate change as a major cause — a contentious argument for some people here in a country that is heavily reliant on the coal industry, with a conservative government that has resisted making climate policy a priority.”

Though the fires’ first coverage by U.S. broadcast news came from ABC’s World News Tonight on September 8, connection to the climate crisis was not made until a December 22 segment by CBS Weekend News.

In fact, after World News Tonight first reported the story, more than a month passed before CBS and NBC even reported on the unfolding crisis in Australia. CBS’ first coverage came on November 11 during a segment on CBS This Morning. And NBC broke the silence on November 15 during a Today show segment on the continent’s declining koala population.

Twelve of the 59 total fire segments (20%) aired in November, and all but three were centered on the country’s koala bear population.

Twenty-two of the total fire segments (37%) aired in December, with many focusing on the debate of whether Sydney should go forward with its renowned New Year’s Eve fireworks display while massive fires consumed other parts of the country.

From this focus on the fireworks to a viral story of a woman who rescued a koala bear from fire, broadcast news has not yet seemed to grasp the gravity of this global story.

But that could be changing.

The first week of January has yielded 24 segments about the Australian fires -- more than aired in the entire month of December and nearly half of all segments since the fires began. It’s also featured more than half of the total segments linking the epic fires to the climate crisis, but broadcast coverage still has a long way to go to put the fires in context for their viewers.

• ...

corp news fail connect fires to age, plus

:{Amid raging bushfire, Rupert Murdoch's Australian media empire turns a blind eye to climate crisis:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:flex;height:1.5em;margin-right:1em;width:1.5em"):}:01/06/20 3:32 PM EST

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/missing-from-the-debate-trumps-assassination-of-suleimani-was-another-egregious-american-assault-on-iraqs-sovereignty/

no lnx

The media is ignoring why Trump’s assassination of Suleimani was such an egregious betrayal

Baghdad,Iraq,January 3,2020,thousands of Iraq people participating in funeral program of Iranian general Qasim Suleiman.

Written by Joshua Holland January 10, 2020

The mainstream debate over Trump’s order to kill Iranian general Qassim Suleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, has been typically superficial. The primary argument in support of the drone strike is that Suleimani was a bad guy with blood on his hands, which is a juvenile non sequitur. There are any number of military commanders around the world who would fit that description at any given time and, despite his prominence, Suleimani implemented policies rather than formulating them. As Maysam Behravesh wrote at Foreign Affairs, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “is a complex institution with deep roots, making it less than susceptible to ‘leadership decapitation,'” and the killing of Suleimani will only “prompt it to act more ruthlessly and with greater calculation” in the future. Opposition to the assassination has largely centered on the legal questions surrounding Trump’s order, his refusal to notify Congress and the potential for blowback against the United States.

While it’s appropriate and understandable that most analyses have centered on the geopolitical conflict between the US and Iran, there is a tragic irony in the way that Iraq–still traumatized by decades of shock and awe at the hands of Western powers and still struggling to stand up a legitimate, nominally democratic government–has basically been relegated to a backdrop against which tensions between Tehran and Washington play out.

The conversation might be very different if Iraq’s interests, and how the attack may impact its stability and domestic political conflicts, were featured more prominently.

More than a decade ago, in 2007, Raed Jarrar and I reported for AlterNet that the American media were largely ignoring an important story. After years of civil strife between various parliamentary factions, a legislative majority had emerged to demand the withdrawal of US troops from their ostensibly sovereign country. The Bush administration worked with its hand-picked Prime Minister, Nouri Al-Maliki (a previously little-known figure whom they liked in part because of his independence from Iran), to undermine their position, ignoring the constitution that had been adopted after a lengthy and difficult process led by the Bush administration’s occupation government. The international community then ignored Iraqi legislators later that year when a majority of them asked the United Nations not to extend the mandate allowing US troops to remain in the country.

Something similar is playing out today. In the aftermath of the Suleimani assassination, the Iraqi parliament once again passed a resolution demanding the US withdraw troops from the country. It’s worth noting that while there are MPs who support a continuing American military presence in the country for the sake of stability, they voted “present” because Trump’s strike made it politically toxic to vote against the measure.

Following the vote, the current PM, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who resigned last fall but continues to serve in a caretaker role, asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “to send a delegation to Iraq tasked with formulating the mechanism for the withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq,” according to the Associated Press, but Pompeo claimed that the effort to expel US troops from their country is an Iranian plot rather than an expression of popular sentiment in Iraq and Trump threatened to levy sanctions on Iraq “like they’ve never seen before” if the Iraqi government follows through. (That threat is especially pernicious given that the last US sanctions regime lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. ) As is consistent with a long pattern, Iraqis are being denied agency by Washington.

Jennifer Jacobs

@JenniferJJacobs

On Iraqi PM asking him to start negotiating withdrawal of US troops immediately, Pompeo: "OK, he didn't quite characterize the conversation correctly.

"But...we are happy to continue the conversation with the Iraqis about what the right structure is" while continuing mission. https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1215608901498015745 …

Jennifer Jacobs

@JenniferJJacobs

Iraq’s prime minister has asked Pompeo to send officials to Iraq to work out a mechanism for the withdrawal of American troops, @Khalidansary reports https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-10/iraq-s-premier-pushes-u-s-to-discuss-exit-of-troops …

If Iraqis’ perspectives featured into the reporting on Trump’s attack, Americans might come to appreciate how outraged they are that al-Muhandis and other Iraqi nationals were killed in a strike on Iraqi territory. They might understand that Suleimani was in Iraq as a guest of the government on routine business when the strike occurred, and that he was seen as a hero to many Iraqis, who credited him for defeating the feared and almost universally loathed Islamic State.

And as Trita Parsi points out on this week’s podcast, while Suleimani was a brutally efficient commander, he was, contrary to the dominant narrative in the US, a moderating influence on Iraq’s sprawling network of Shia militia groups. Iraq’s loosely organized militias are influenced by Tehran rather than tightly controlled by the Islamic state, and no other member of the Iranian establishment held the same sway with these groups.

Iraqis are now fearful of becoming caught in a crossfire in an escalating conflict between the US and Iran–of Iraqi civilian deaths mounting as the rivals wage a proxy war within their borders. They have reason to be. And many are furious at both the US and Tehran for trampling over their hard-fought sovereignty.

Just 17 years after a US war of choice that was sold to the world on a pack of lies and which led to the death and displacement of millions of Iraqis, it is this reality that most of the discussion here at home simply ignores.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-press-finally-tried-and-failed-to-stand-up-to-trump

no lnx

The press finally tried—and failed—to stand up to Trump

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos December 31, 2019

With Donald Trump becoming the first American president to be impeached in his first term, while holed up in the White House tweeting endless attacks around the clock like some internet troll, 2019 should have been the year the Beltway media finally shed its signature timidity and forcefully stood up to him. This should have been the year the press worked up the courage to disband the pointless protocols newsroom had established for covering Trump (he’s not a “liar,” he’s not a “racist”), and simply started telling the hard truths about him. And while there were some welcome flashes of truth-telling, especially surrounding the Ukraine scandal and the impeachment, for the most part the D.C. press still hasn’t signaled that’s it’s ready, or willing, to take the necessary steps needed to cover Trump.

There continues to be a collective reluctance to grapple with today’s difficult reality. Unfamiliar with covering authoritarian regimes or how to respond to them, many news outlets remain committed to treating Trump’s spectacle as a reality TV show.

Trump remains the most deeply radical player in American politics, yet the press corps is still trying to cover him as a traditional political figure, which means if the president of the United States makes some sort of public statement on a pressing issue of the day, you quote him under the assumption that he’s telling the truth and not just making stuff up. But he’s not, and he is. Trump in 2019 continued to benefit from press coverage that obediently pretended that he’s an honest broker. Wash, rinse, repeat. This, while Trump maintains his dangerous campaign to paint the press as the “enemy of the people.”

Oddly committed tonormalizingTrump by scrubbing off his hateful and dangerous rough edges, many in the Beltway press continue to play a strange game in which they refuse to describe what they clearly see in front of them. Whether it’s the fear of Trump Twitter attacks or the nearly five-decade-long GOP campaign to demonize the “liberal media,” newsrooms today nearly uniformly refuse to address the mounting, obvious signs that Trump is a deeply unstable man. Journalists watch Trump hole up in the White House spamming Twitter on some weekends with hundreds of illogical posts and then politely look away.

Incredibly, as I noted in August, this represented one 48-hour period in 2019:

He quoted a rabid conspiracy theorist radio host who declared that Israeli Jews love Trump as if he were the “King of Israel” and “the second coming of God,” while Trump himself accused American Jews of “great disloyalty” if they voted for Democrats. He attacked the prime minister of Denmark (“nasty”) because she will not sell him Greenland and she mocked the very idea as “absurd.” He suggested he might serve more than two terms in office. He slurred his words while reading a speech off a teleprompter. He accused journalists of trying to ruin the U.S. economy. He claimed Google had “manipulated” millions of votes in Hillary Clinton’s favor during the 2016 election. He suggested giving himself a Medal of Honor. He said doctors in El Paso, Texas, left their operating rooms mid-surgery in order to greet him during his visit there following a local gun massacre. And he referred to the NRA as if it were a co-equal branch of the federal government.

Compared to all previous American presidents, that would have easily surpassed the irrational missteps they made during an entire time in office. For Trump, it was just his vacation week. Yet the press remains consistently timid in dealing with Trump’s blatantly unstable behavior. Newsrooms today nearly uniformly refuse to address the mounting, obvious signs that Trump remains a deeply troubled man.

What does it mean for the most powerful leader in the free world to be acting in a bizarre and often seemingly schizophrenic fashion?And how is every administration official who appears on television not immediately and repeatedly asked whether Trump is mentally fit to hold office, and whether he poses a danger to this country? If the same journalists watched a foreign leader behaving as erratically as Trump does, that would be the first question they posed to officials.

The fact that a sitting president has unleashed so many bizarre public performances, punctuated by so many incomprehensible non sequiturs, means his stability and capacity ought to be questioned—and it ought to be a constant news story. But it’s still not.

Of course, 2019 was the year that White House press briefings were officially canceled. In a move that once would have been considered an unthinkable act by any White House, the Trump team simply pulled the plug, leaving White House reporters with extremely limited access to officials who are willing to answer even the simplest questions about the administration’s policies and agenda. In the face of that drastic action, news outlets took no collective action in response. They could have used their clout to send a powerful message if they had pulled their reporters out and signaled they weren’t going to be used as props for the press charades the White House plays.

Instead, reporters dutifully gathered outside the White House to shout questions at Trump during his so-called “Chopper Talk” sessions as he approached the presidential helicopter on the White House grounds. The controlled chaos of those sessions, where reporters yell simplistic questions, allows Trump to pick and choose reporters at random, and to ignore questions he doesn’t like. He’s also immune from follow-up questions and is free once again to lie indiscriminately, without being held accountable. All of which cable news outlets air in its entirety under the guise of “news.”

And that’s when the press wasn’t being willingly duped in 2019 by Trump’s team, and especially his attorney general, William Barr. In a signature press failure for the year, reporters for days played along with Department of Justice propaganda about the Mueller report and how it had supposedly exonerated Trump. But the only person claiming that at the time was Barr, who wouldn’t allow reporters to see the full report. Undeterred, journalists simply took Barr’s untrustworthy four-page press release and treated that as the full report. The New York Times rushed to report that Trump had been exonerated and that Mueller’s conclusions had provided Trump with a “powerful boost” toward re-election. Reminder: Nobody at the Times had read a single page of the Mueller report. News outlets everywhere scrambled to produce pro-Trump headlines based on Barr’s propaganda: “Mueller finds no conspiracy” (The Washington Post), “Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (The New York Times), “Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (Politico), “Mueller doesn’t find Trump campaign conspired with Russia” (The Wall Street Journal), “Mueller finds no Trump collusion, leaves obstruction open” (Associated Press).

They all soon discovered the obvious reality: Trump and his team had simply lied about the contents of the Mueller report, hoping (knowing?) that the press would fall for the false spin, which too many outlets did.

The key to covering Trump isn’t some deep mystery for news organizations, and it doesn’t require much sacrifice. It simply demands honesty and a willingness to be clear about what’s happening in this country. Sadly, that was lacking in 2019.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

==

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Newsfail: Climate Change, Feminism, Gun Control, and Other ...

https://books.google.com › books

Jamie Kilstein, ‎Allison Kilkenny - 2015 - ‎Biography & Autobiography

It never paid to be independent more than when Fox News's Glenn Beck went ... and number two enemies: ACORN's Bertha Lewis and cofounder of the Weather ... Beck's website, The Blaze, picked up on the story and Beck talked about the ...

jrnl fail

Cable news outlets MSNBC and CNN largely let Fox News shape the narrative around the most recent anti-LGBTQ judicial nominee, Lawrence VanDyke, who was confirmed on December 11.Fox covered the nomination more than twice as much as major broadcast and cable TV news networks combined and whitewashed his extreme record.

VanDyke has been identified as an allied attorney with extreme anti-LGBTQ group Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), and has attacked the rights of LGBTQ people for years. He is the eighth federal judicial nominee with ties to ADF, and the extreme anti-LGBTQ group Family Research Council strongly supported his nomination. Further, in advance of his nomination hearing, the American Bar Association (ABA) issued a rare "Not Qualified" rating, in part due to his anti-LGBTQ positions.

The many anti-LGBTQ judges that have been confirmed by this Senate may hurt queer and trans people for decades to come. It is crucial that the media vigorously and meticulously report on Trump judicial nominees' extreme positions and not allow Fox News to continue to shape public opinion around their nominations.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/united-nations/scant-us-media-coverage-fails-expose-conflict-interest-core-un-climate-talks

madrid

mma 1219

ABC’s evening news show World News Tonight and NBC’s evening news show NBC Nightly News both failed to report on the bombshell Washington Post series detailing systematic lies told by the U.S. military and government officials during the 18-year war in Afghanistan.

The new reporting is based on documents obtained from a federal project examining the root failures of the war in Afghanistan. The project involved interviews with “more than 400 insiders,” some of whom described “explicit and sustained efforts by the U.S. government to deliberately mislead the public” across multiple administrations since the war’s beginning in 2001. The documents the Post obtained also reveal an unclear and ineffective strategy and a “mindless rush to spend” more than $900 billion in funds from the Department of Defense, U.S. Agency for International Development, and State Department. Meanwhile, officials failed to accomplish the United States' goals to “curtail runaway corruption, build a competent Afghan army and police force, and put a dent in Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.”

Networks cannot continue to ignore this vital story about an ongoing war that has killed approximately 2,400 U.S. service members and at least 43,000 Afghan civilians and cost American taxpayers over $2 trillion.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/why-the-liberal-media-loves-trump-so-much/

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Why the ‘liberal’ media loves Trump so much

Written by Chauncey DeVega / Salon December 13, 2019

The American mainstream news media made many mistakes in its coverage of the 2016 presidential election.

It treated Donald Trump as a harmless curiosity because he was a reality TV show star and professional (alleged) billionaire.

Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings — both real and perceived — were amplified. Trump’s were downplayed if not largely ignored.

The mainstream media thought Trump was a harmless amusement, and not a demagogue, racial authoritarian or fascist in waiting. He was good for their ratings and profits. This meant the threat he posed to democracy could be overlooked because money apparently matters more than civic duty.

Too many reporters, journalists and other members of the commentariat hoped that Trump would mature into a more “traditional” candidate and then president. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, this foolish hope was the dominant narrative through the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s first year in office.

At the end of the third year of Trump’s presidency the American media continues to enable Trump and his party’s assault on democracy and the truth. Few mainstream voices are willing to consistently state the truth that Donald Trump is a fascist, a racist and mentally unwell, and that he is likely beholden to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

In all, the mainstream media cringes in terror before Trump and his supporters’ threats of violence and other and acts of intimidation. It all too often defaults to “fairness” and “balance” and both-sides-ism, elevating Trump’s most outrageous lies into reasonable opinions about “alternative facts.”

Yes, there have been successes, including important investigative reporting on Trump’s corruption, his abusive treatment of nonwhite migrants and refugees, and, of course, the Ukraine scandal. But overall, the mainstream news media has learned few lessons from the many postmortems on how it failed in its responsibilities as guardians of democracy in the 2016 presidential election. Indeed, it now appears ready to repeat the same errors in 2020.

Eric Boehlert is an award-winning journalist who has written for Media Matters, Rolling Stone and Billboard. He was previously a senior writer for Salon. Boehlert is also the author of the books “Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press” and “Lapdog: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush.”

In this conversation he explains how the mainstream American news media helped to elect Donald Trump because of a deep dislike for Hillary and Bill Clinton. Boehlert also warns that the media has helped to normalize and protect Donald Trump because of an unwillingness to explain that he is a true aberration in American history. Under Trump’s regime, Boehlert tells me, the United States really does not have a president.

Boehlert also highlights how the American mainstream news media is both cowardly and complicit with Trump’s assault on democracy because of its unwillingness to tell the truth about the threat he and his regime represent to the country and the world.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

We are now approaching the end of the third year of Trump’s regime. Are things better, worse or about how you expected?

I am not surprised. In fact, I think it was the night of the election or the day after when I put up two tweets that I remember quite vividly. One was, “It is going to be so much worse than anyone can imagine.” I also said that the American press is not going to save us from Donald Trump. Unfortunately, both of those observations were true.

Why were so many people in denial?

There was all that chatter about how America’s political institutions were so strong and they would keep Trump in check. People were also saying that we should have a businessman as a president and Hillary Clinton is so conniving and in the end it will all be fine. That was the Beltway conventional wisdom: Trump won’t be able to break anything, this country has been around for so long, we’ll be fine. And then of course the exact opposite happened.

Given all the evidence to the contrary, how were members of the mainstream media able to tell themselves such a thing? By what logic were they operating?

A lot of it was driven by their contempt for Hillary Clinton. There is a hostility towards Hillary among the news media that goes back to the 1990s. There was an attempt to normalize Trump because the mainstream, inside-the-Beltway corporate media types did not like her. Of course, almost everyone was convinced Hillary was going to win. In the fall of 2016, I believe that the American news media saw its job as to make sure her win was as unsatisfying as possible, that it wouldn’t be historic and she would limp across the finish line.

Ultimately, Hillary Clinton would not be able to take a victory lap andtoo many in the American news media miscalculated in the end. By being so relentlessly negative towards Clinton and letting Trump get away with so much stuff, the news media did not calculate that he could ever win. And in the end, that is what happened.

Given their error of overcompensating against Hillary Clinton why didn’t the American news media go after Donald Trump with more zeal?

One would reasonably think that the press would just be chomping at the bit. Trump is corrupt. He’s dishonest. He lies about everything. In theory one would think the press would have a field day with Trump. This is what the press loves to do. They’re going to knock this guy down, they are going to expose him. But exactly the opposite happened. Why? There are many reasons.

Trump effectively bullied the American news media during the campaign. They were shocked that he won. The press felt like they missed a big story. Because Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by 70,000 votes, the American news media felt like there was this huge white middle-class rural movement that they had missed. One fluke election made them feel like they were fundamentally out of touch. The American press is also perpetually afraid of the Republican Party.

The American news media is possessed by a deep fear of Republican hardball. Therefore, they were nervous about being portrayed as out of touch because Trump had won and they missed the story. They’re nervous about being portrayed as part of the “liberal media” and they had never experienced anything like Trump before. They got a taste of it during the campaign with all of Trump’s “fake news” and such things. That knocked the American news media back on their heels and they didn’t have the courage to stand up against Trump. This happened in many different ways and important moments.

The American mainstream press was cowed, and they embraced this timidity. In turn, they decided, particularly the New York Times, that they need to go write a story literally every week for the next two years about white voters in red states and how much they love Donald Trump.

But when Barack Obama was president for eight years, I don’t think there was one story in the New York Times about how black voters in Baltimore love Barack Obama. It wasn’t news. The New York Times didn’t care about love for Obama among black voters. But wow, the New York Times loves to go to those diners and find those white folks who love Donald Trump.

In total, the press has been bending over backwards because they were afraid of Trump. We are almost three years into this administration. Now, recently, the press certainly has shown signs that they’re going to stand up to Trump. This is mostly just because of the facts of the Ukraine scandal — facts which are mind-boggling. Moreover, there is really no other way to portray the facts of what Trump did with Ukraine than as a crisis for Donald Trump. But not calling him a racist, not calling him a liar, not questioning his mental stability? Those should have been basic journalism tasks from March and February of 2017 forward, and it just never happened.

Could it be that there are many people in the American news media, journalists and reporters and others, who have never had to contemplate that their work would put their lives at risk from Trump and his supporters?

Certainly, the American press, for the most part, has never had to deal with this. The American press has no history or tradition of covering authoritarian rule. That is a skill necessary in Eastern Europe and in Third World or developing countries. The idea that the press is under attack in the United States institutionally, by a ruling party or from the president of the United States — and the overall creeping loss of press freedom — has been revelatory for many reporters and journalists.

If you had said four years ago, “There will never be another White House press briefing under the next Republican president,” most people would have looked at you with incredulity. Such a prediction would be viewed as ridiculous.

We’ve been having press briefings televised since the ’90s. We’ve had them at the White House since the Kennedy years.

President Trump is going to come in and cancel the press briefings? The press would never let that happen. That was thought to be inconceivable. But now here we are in America with Trump. It has been almost 250 days since the last press briefing.

Trump hired a new press secretary, and she will likely never host a press briefing in the White House. That is a perfect example of the creep that happened over the first two years of the Trump administration. The press could have done many things in response. To say there was nothing the press could have done is total nonsense. These news organizations did absolutely nothing and they let it happen. These news organizations could have pulled their teams from the White House, for example.

Now we are left with these “chopper talk” sessions where Trump walks from the White House to the helicopter. The blades are whirling, people are shouting questions at him. Trump doesn’t answer follow-ups. That’s the press access. The press in the White House is supposed to be the people’s representative by providing some sort of transparency. Trump has totally rigged the game.

How do we make sense of the dividing line between cowardice and complicity in the press?

Cowardice versus complicity? It’s all the same stew to me. The biggest problem in the last two or three years is just refusing to tell the truth. There are so many examples of Trump and his administration not doing that. There is all this talk about Donald Trump as a “chaos agent” or some type of “disruptor” and things like that. We are so far beyond that description.

We don’t really have a president of the United States anymore.The American press should be talking about that fact. In no traditional or historical sense is Donald Trump filling the role that every other president of the United States has. When America has a foreign policy based on complete incoherence or payoffs to Turkey or Russia, the American press does not really know how to portray those events.

The American press knows that Trump is not a healthy, mentally stable person. The press can see that day in and day out, and yet they are not allowed to put that in their news stories. The news media often has to invent fantasies and narratives to make Trump look cogent.

If we in America were talking about a president being a Manchurian candidate for another county the idea would have been rejected as irresponsible. The president of the United States would never act in the interest of a foreign country. Yet, here we are.

If the American press were to talk about Trump as a racist, a fascist or a pathological liar, or say that he is not mentally well, then it changes the dominant narrative and terrain. Once you start addressing those issues in the news coverage — any one of those — that has to be the only story you cover every day and for the rest of Trump’s presidency. One can’t acknowledge the president of the United States being an open racist and then cover it for two days. It is a defining story in American history.

The press does not want to have to cover those stories every day for the rest of the Trump presidency because they know it would unleash a torrent of attacks from Trump, the Republican Party, conservatives en masse and Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber. The press wants to keep a lid on it all. So the American press says things like “Trump uses ‘racially tinged rhetoric.'” We all know what those euphemisms really mean.

You have had access to editors and newsrooms. How are these decisions being made?

How is it that the New York Times decided we’re not going to call Trump a liar? That was clearly an editorial guideline decision the Times made during the campaign and certainly during his administration. How is it that the New York Times came to the very peculiar decision that “we can’t read Trump’s mind, therefore we can’t call him a liar”?And every other news organization came to the exact same bizarre decision?

How come McClatchy Newspapers aren’t calling Trump a liar? How come CBS didn’t decide “Well, yes, we can call Trump a liar.” Such a rule was invented for Trump out of thin air. This guideline does not go back decades or centuries in American newsrooms. It was invented for Trump. The mainstream news media all decided to adopt the same invented bizarre guidelines.

I’m not conspiratorial. I don’t think they all got together like a cabal. But I do think within the Beltway that there is a collective mindset. There’s such a collective fear of the Republican Party and Donald Trump. It is completely unspoken. In many ways it comes down to the stories being pitched and published or not within many of the major journalism institutions.

So much of this is unspoken. Journalists and reporters understand how career tracks operate. For example, if you wrote for the New York Times about politics — and in particular if you are a woman writing about politics for the New York Times — and you bashed Hillary Clinton, that is a green light to a fast track. Likewise, if a black liberal decided they want the free money on the Trump or conservative side it works much the same way.

In the mainstream news media, people understand how the game is played. If you work for the New York Times and you see that editors literally cannot publish enough stories about white Trump rural voters in Ohio, guess what stories you’re going to pitch. A reporter would say, “Send me to Ohio! I want to interview these people.” It will end up on page one even though the Times just had one of those stories on page one three weeks ago.

People are smart and savvy that way. They understand the culture of the newsroom. People know which way the wind is blowing. So that’s how a lot of these collective news decisions get made.

Let’s conduct a thought experiment. What if there was a reporter at a major journal of record, such as the New York Times, who was tired of these TrumpLandia white Republican voter stories. He or she wants to go to the same areas and talk to black and brown folks, progressives and liberal Democrats. Or what about people who live in Trump country who are in fear of their lives from Trump supporters? What would happen if such a story was pitched?

Since impeachment has been on the radar, I do not think that the New York Times has interviewed a voter of color. I’ve read so many pieces and they’re always about how impeachment might be a problem for Democrats because that’s the dominant media narrative. One of the dangerous things about Trump is this assumption that white voters, especially white middle-aged voters, are the most important part of the public.

If you look at the demographics, it’s just not true. Let’s send someone to the rural Ohio diner, but let’s not just interview white middle-aged men. Let’s interview Democrats. Let’s find out if impeachment is igniting grassroots fire around the country for Democrats.

The fourth estate is not supposed to be neutral. It is supposed to be objective. There’s a difference.

Trump has represented such a shock to the system that many people in the news media, journalists and reporters, have decided they cannot have a moral compass. Moreover, if one were to suggest that journalists and reporters have a moral compass then that is somehow “liberal media bias.” It all goes back to that fear the press has of being accused of bias. Trump has obviously turned that narrative up to the extreme with his “fake news” hatred of the press.

News organizations aren’t supposed to be soulless and they’re not supposed to be incapable of suggesting when something is right or wrong.

In response to Donald Trump and all that is wrong, many journalists just decided, “Well, we know what’s going on but we’re not going to tell the public. Hopefully they will figure it out because we don’t have the moral courage to explain just how bizarre Trump’s presidency really is.”

Given the importance of ad revenue, there appears to be an unhealthy contradictory relationship between Trump, his movement and the corporate news media. On one hand, the media needs Trump for viewers. But on the other hand, Trump is threatening reporters and journalists and the very idea of the free press with Nazi slogans smearing them as “fake news.” Lügenpresse.

It should not be an issue. The newspaper industry is struggling across the country. That is a terrible threat to democracy. Donald Trump does not drive circulation. “Trump news” is not going to save any of these newspapers. People are going to read Google and Facebook for their news no matter who the president is. It could be the most boring president ever in our history and newspapers would be tanking. Conversely, it could be the most exciting whirlwind president ever and newspapers would still be tanking.

In terms of television, there is this assumption that Trump is great for ratings. In reality, cable news was up a little bit when he took office. ABC ran this ridiculous prime-time interview with Trump a couple months ago. The ratings were a disaster. Nobody tuned in. There’s such a saturation at this point with Donald Trump.

The Mueller report is a damning indictment of a criminal president. Why was it greeted with such relative lack of interest whereas the Ukraine scandal has really taken on a life of its own. Why the difference?

The Mueller story was botched the day Bill Barr put out that three-and-a-half-page press release saying, “I read the Mueller report. Everything’s fine. Exoneration. No collusion.” For almost a week the press ran with that. To me it was just absolutely stunning. There were journalists with no access to the Mueller report relying on the summation of a U.S. attorney general who had clearly been put into office with the goal of protecting Donald Trump. The White House and the Republicans were able to immediately muddy the waters. They lie about everything.

The idea that this White House was ever going to ever tell the truth about the Mueller report is a fantasy. The press bought that line, though. When Mueller testified, they then went into theater criticism mode. Why is the Ukraine scandal resonating? It is a simple story. Trump asked a foreign country for dirt on Joe Biden. Most importantly Trump admitted to it in public.

What do you think is going to happen with Trump and impeachment and the 2020 election?

There will be an impeachment in the House. I believe that Trump will lose a few votes in the Senate. I do not think it’s going to be smooth sailing for the Republicans where it is done in a day in the Senate. The Republicans are going to lose some votes.

The idea this is going to happen during an election year is just absolutely mind-boggling, not only for Trump, but for the Republican Party. Their public officials can’t answer basic questions such as, “Is it ever OK for an American president to ask a foreign government to interfere in a presidential election?”

I don’t know how the Republicans are going to campaign on any significant issues when that is happening. The Democrats won 40 House seats in the midterms. Trump wasn’t even on the ticket. That was widely seen as a condemnation of Trump. Trump is going to be on the top of the ticket acting like a lunatic every day of 2020.

Trump and the Republicans can make an argument that will excite part of their base, but I think most people are just going to be so exhausted of the insanity. That is particularly true of suburban voters who helped flip those 40 seats in 2018.

Does Trump win 2020?

Donald Trump will lose those Midwestern states. Those are gone. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are a problem for Trump. I think Arizona is a problem for the Republicans too. Unfortunately, I think Ohio and Florida are Republican states now. I don’t think Democrats should bank on those states anymore. I don’t think it’s a blowout. Donald Trump is never going to fully crater because he has a cult of personality in terms of his following.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics staff writer for Salon. His essays can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com. He also hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Chauncey can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/major-news-organizations-amplify-trumps-lie-he-barely-knows-his-hand

sondland impeach politico usa today

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-media-must-admit-that-the-republican-party-is-completely-detached-from-reality/

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The media must admit that the Republican Party is completely detached from reality

President Donald J. Trump talks to reporters outside the South Portico entrance of the White House Friday, July 5, 2019, prior to boarding Marine One to begin a weekend trip to Bedminster, N.J. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos November 15, 2019

Republicans proudly advertised their radical ways during Wednesday’s impeachment hearings into Donald Trump, wallowing in conspiracies and embracing debunked claims. The question now: How does the Beltway media cover a party that has aggressively removed itself from reality? How does the news business describe and treat a political party that routinely echoes the most unbelievable claims from Fox News and the darkest corners of the right-wing media?

The truth is, this is a decadeslong game of dare that Republicans have been playing with the press, as members of the party uniformly become more radical and more antidemocratic, and basically challenge the press to call them out, knowing full well it won’t happen. That’s because the Beltway press basically revolves around the central idea that there are two major competing parties in this country and that they are mirror opposites of each other. Republicans are just as conservative as Democrats are liberal. Republicans are just as serious as Democrats are. Republicans are just as fact-based and honorable as Democrats are. That false equivalency drives political coverage in this country, and has for decades.

Why this obsession? Because to concede that one party operates under a radically different set of guidelines (or no guidelines at all, in the case of the GOP), journalists have to do two things.They have to defend themselves against allegations of “liberal media bias,” and they have to throw out the old, dependable rule book that allowed the press to lazily suggest that Republicans and Democrats function on the same plane, and therefore had to be treated similarly.

But how on earth do you watch the Republican performances during the public impeachment hearings and still cling to that claim? How do you pretend a party that spent hours asking witnesses about Alex Jones-type conspiracy theories somehow functions on a parallel track with Democrats, who spent the hearings ensconced in facts, testimony, and firsthand witness accounts?

The equivalent would be if, during a 2002 congressional hearing, Democrats had spent hours badgering witnesses with 9/11 Truther questions, and the press had pretended that it was totally normal. It’s not! And neither is today’s irrational and reckless GOP.

The problem is that the press won’t accept that glaring fact. But there were signs after the first impeachment hearing that more and more D.C. journalists are willing to discuss just how far afield the Republican Party has gone as it follows Fox News down the rabbit hole. “We are living in a moment where we have a part of one of our major political parties that is just not accepting the premise, is just not accepting facts that are facts,” conceded NBC’s Chuck Todd.

Journalists really had no choice, given the stunning display Republicans put on at the hearings. And it wasn’t just one or two rogue members who used their time to push fictional narratives about Ukraine supposedly double-crossing the United States during the 2016 American election, or claimed that there’s simply no proof of an attempted “quid pro quo” with Ukraine, even though the White House transcript of a summer phone call with the country’s leader clearly spells out exactly that.

It was the vast majority of Republican committee members, as well as the GOP’s general counsel, who oversaw truly bizarre bouts of questioning that seemed to leave the witnesses at times stumped and confused, simply because the questions were not based in reality. Instead, they were based on close viewings of Sean Hannity’s television program.

It wasn’t spin or impassioned defense that was on display. It was up-is-down Orwellian rhetoric, and it had been telegraphed by Republicans for weeks, ever since the impeachment story broke, and ever since a parade of government officials began testifying about the obvious bribery scheme that was cooked up inside the White House. What happened with the hearings, though, was that the entire nation got to see the GOP’s descent into folly in full view.

But here’s the key point: Most casual news consumers don’t know that Republicans have become detached from reality as they watch the hearings unfold. (I mean, Republicans sound convincing when they spout convoluted claims about Ukraine working to elect Hillary Clinton.) And that’s why it’s important that journalists do their jobs and spell out what’s truly going on, and not depend on the lazy both-sides crutch in order to avoid necessary truth-telling about the state of today’s GOP.

This was a hallmark media failure during the Obama years, as the D.C. press steadfastly refused to report plainly on how radical the GOP was becoming.Republicans routinely obliterated Beltway precedents when it came to granting Obama the leeway that previous presidents were given by their partisan foes in Congress. Yet at each step along the way, journalists pulled back, refusing to detail the seismic shift taking place.Instead, news outlets  portrayed the obstruction as routine, and often blamed Obama for not being able to avoid the showdowns.

We saw it with the GOP’s gun law obstructionism, the sequester obstructionism, the government shutdown obstructionism, the Chuck Hagel confirmation obstructionism, the Susan Rice secretary of state nomination obstructionism, the Hurricane Sandy emergency relief obstructionism, and the consistent obstruction of judicial nominees.

When Republicans wouldn’t allow a vote on the Obama-backed background check bill in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School gun massacre in Connecticut, even though the initiative enjoyed 90% public support, the press didn’t depict the obstruction as radical.Instead, the news media often blamed Obama for not being able to work with Republicans. (He doesn’t schmooze enough!)

When Republicans announced in the winter of 2016 that they would categorically ignore any Supreme Court nominee Obama put forward in the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, the press pretended that it was Obama who was sparking a “partisan” fight simply by fulfilling his constitutional duty.

The impeachment hearings confirm that Republicans have taken complete flight from reality. It’s the media’s job to say so.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/why-is-the-media-cheering-trump-for-his-campaign-of-lies/

no lnx

Why is the media cheering Trump for his campaign of lies?

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos November 4, 2019

It’s gone from bad to worse: After spending years refusing to call Donald Trump a liar, the press is now toasting his reelection campaign, which is built on lies.

“That campaigns are now being fought largely online is hardly a revelation, yet only one political party seems to have gotten the message,” The New York Times recently reported in a major story on Trump’s reelection run. “While the Trump campaign has put its digital operation firmly at the center of the president’s re-election effort, Democrats are struggling to internalize the lessons of the 2016 race and adapt to a political landscape shaped by social media.” The message the Times presented was unmistakable: Trump’s reelection campaign is trouncing Democrats online. (Trump had gotten “the message.”) Separately, the Times in another piece announced, “The technical superiority and sophistication of the president’s digital campaign is a hidden advantage of incumbency.”

What did the Times almost completely ignore in its flattering reports about Trump’s “web operation”? His reelection campaign is built around spreading lies online. Somehow, that unprecedented presidential campaign strategy wasn’t considered to be the newsworthy one.

“His 2020 campaign, flush with cash, is poised to dominate online again, according to experts on both ends of the political spectrum, independent researchers and tech executives,” the newspaper reported. That was the key angle. Also, Trump isn’t necessarily pushing lies online. Instead, he’s creating “emotionally charged content” and “provocative ads” featuring “divisive themes” and touting an “angry partisan approach,” the paper reported.

If a Democratic candidate such as Joe Biden unleashed a torrent of fabricated and outlandish claims via Facebook campaign ads, it’s highly doubtful that the Times would marvel at how savvy Biden was being and how he was outsmarting Republicans with a digital strategy that relied on constant bouts of purposeful misinformation. Instead, Biden’s constant lies would be the Times’ obvious area of focus. And the brazen untruths wouldn’t be gently referred to as “provocative content.”

Yet with the Trump coverage, the fact that his campaign is wallowing in aggressive misinformation isn’t presented as the most newsworthy element. Instead, Trump’s lies are depicted as being part of a formidable, winning online formula that has desperate, overwhelmed Democrats trying to catch up.

“The campaign under Mr. [Brad] Parscale is focused on pushing its product—Mr. Trump—by churning out targeted ads, aggressively testing the content and collecting data to further refine its messages,” the Times marveled.

At least a recent Washington Post report gently noted so many of Trump’s online ads aren’t true:“Some of the ads accused the freshman [Democratic] lawmakers of making “pro-terrorist remarks,” which they have not done.” But that salient fact garnered just a passing mention.

When the press touts his online reelection campaign as a masterful stroke of marketing and largely ignores the fact that it’s built on a mountain of falsehoods, this all amounts to another way that Trump’s signature lies get normalized. Has the press become so numb to Trump’s torrent of untruths that news outlets are prepared to shrug their collective shoulders when blatant lies emerge as the driving force of a U.S. presidential campaign? That’s stunning, considering that just a few years ago the same news outlets manned fact-checking teams to put campaign ads under a microscope in search of misleading information.

It’s the same type of normalizing Facebook now does when it throws up its hands and says politicians in the Trump era are allowed to lie in their ads, knowing full well there’s only one party that traffics in lies incessantly: the Republican Party.

One Trump ad clearly has been labeled false by the press, in part because it became the centerpiece of a campaign battle over Facebook’s porous policy retarding the truth. The clip from the Trump campaign erroneously claimed that Joe Biden offered the Ukraine government $1 billion in U.S. aid if it stopped an investigation into a company tied to his son.The preposterous claims had already been debunked, and CNN refused to play the ad. But Facebook rejected the Biden campaign’s demand the ad be taken down. The lie-riddled Trump video has been viewed well over 5 million times.

Meanwhile, also being quietly set aside by the press in its mostly positive reporting on Trump’s online reelection machinery is the fact there’s no proof yet that any of it is working. For instance, the Times noted that in an attempt to change the narrative, the GOP campaign quickly spent more than $10 million in the wake of Democrats launching the impeachment inquiry one month ago. “The biggest political crisis of Trump’s presidency is translated into an “impeachment defense task force” to fire up supporters and tap their wallets,” the paper reported, clearly impressed. (Trump’s impeachment-related ads have been viewed tens of millions of times on Facebook.) Because spending more money automatically means success, apparently.

Yet since that time, the percentage of Americans in favor of impeachment and of removing Trump from office has only increased. Overall, there’s been no improvement in Trump’s reelection chances since his campaign started spending tens of millions of dollars on Facebook ads. Doesn’t that suggest Trump’s team is flushing away a lot of money online? Doesn’t that suggest the Trump campaign might not be so savvy and that Democrats might not actually be in disarray?

Recently, Axios touted the fact that online, “Trump attracted three times the attention of all the Democratic candidates combined, underscoring how he consumes the social media conversation.” But again, there’s no evidence that people talking online about Trump more often than they’re talking about Democratic candidates means good news for him, since it’s obvious that lots of people online hate Trump and that’s why they talk about him.

Trump’s online reelection campaign is unlike any in American history, simply because it’s willfully detached from facts and the truth. It’s stunning that the Beltway press looks at something that reckless and labels it super savvy.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

someone 10/19 said djt just need thinnest reed to hang dirt/ doubt about opponent, then rw media and cynicism of am ppl will do rest, hillary email, hunter biden corruption

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https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/trump-administrations-endless-information-security-breaches-show-how-mainstream

jrnl fail hillary email

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/wsj-nyt-celebrate-shale-revolution-for-investor-class-despite-its-leading-to-our-doom/

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forthcoming book excerpted by Esquire reveals "another 43 allegations of alleged inappropriate behavior" by President Donald Trump, "including 26 instances of unwanted sexual contact." These women join 24 others who have already publicly said the president sexually assaulted them or made unwanted advances to them.

While several online publications have covered this news, thus far several American newspapers are ignoring the story. At the time of publication of this story, not a single newspaper in the country published a story about the women coming forward.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/washington-free-beacon/right-wing-medias-latest-elizabeth-warren-smear-shows-how-bogus-claims-will

The latest bogus scandal about 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren shows that the right-wing media echo chamber is kicking into high gear for this election season, and it reveals the playbook these bad-faith actors will use to trap mainstream media into making the same old mistakes.

In the last week, right-wing media have been teaming up in an attempt to cast Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, as a liar by pushing irrelevant information they claim refutes an anecdote she talked about in her 2014 book and has often shared on the campaign trail.

Warren has recounted that, in 1971, she lost her job teaching special education in a New Jersey public school after she became visibly pregnant. At the time (and even today), pregnancy discrimination in the workplace was common. The Supreme Court had not yet ruled that some approaches to pushing people out of teaching jobs for being pregnant were unconsititutional, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act wouldn’t be passed in Congress for another seven years.

In recent days, right-wing media have claimed Warren was lying and was not actually fired because of her pregnancy. The central claims circling through the conservative echo chamber do not actually disprove her story, though.

They’ve offered minutes from a school board meeting showing Warren’s teaching contract was renewed that year and then later that the board accepted her resignation, but Warren has been clear that her contract was renewed months before she was visibly pregnant and that her job was given to someone else later in the pregnancy. And they’ve pointed to a 2007 interview in which she describes her short public school teaching career and does not mention being fired as evidence it didn’t happen. But they are failing to understand the historical context around pregnancy discrimination, the nuances between being blatantly fired and forced to leave in other ways, and the reality that those impacted by such discrimination may not always want to share the details. (In fact, Warren and her campaign have clarified she began to open up about the experience more as she became a public figure.)

So they’ve got nothing. But this episode is a harbinger of what’s to come this election cycle: fake, scandalous blog post after blog post cycled through the right-wing ecosystem until something sticks. As Paul Waldman wrote in The Washington Post:

This is a process of trial and error: Throw out a hundred fake “scandals” and see which one captures people’s attention, then hammer it again and again in the hope it will become all people think of when they think of the Democrat. If there’s something actually scandalous there, that’s great, but if there isn’t, that’s okay, too. … Between now and next November, they’ll float a hundred more stories like this one.

This is undoubtedly true and inevitable; the right-wing echo chamber was designed for it. It’s both coordinated enough to coalesce around a single narrative and fragmented enough to make a story look like it's garnering organic viral media attention. The end result is the story reaches different audiences: from the boomers watching Fox News to the Never Trumpers who still don’t like a Democratic alternative to the younger folks who are Very Online.

What's worse: The echo chamber is large enough in size and scope to create a swirl of stories that can con mainstream outlets into covering the claims under a false veneer of “both sides." That ultimately leads audiences into thinking exactly what the right wants them to think, or at least leaves an impression that things are more questionable than they actually are.

The smear followed a clear pathway through the right-wing media echo chamber

The spurious conservative counternarrative about Warren’s story was tested on social media and pushed to the usual outlets that are willing to publish just about anything, with zero proof. And then it was elevated by conservative outlets with reputations as more legitimate news sources. Each piece of the echo chamber had its own part to play.

This is a well-worn pathway at this point and one that will continue to mobilize at any chance to push an attack on a 2020 presidential candidate, especially one viewed as a substantial threat to President Donald Trump. (It’s likely not a coincidence this story emerged just as Warren has begun to surge in polls.)

Here’s how it happened.

The argument that Warren hadn’t mentioned her firing in a 2007 interview made its right-wing media debut on ablog called The Script on October 2. Theblog cited a tweet from a writer for Jacobin magazine, and then pointed to various retellings by Warren over the years where she did not explicitly say she was fired. Ben Shapiro’swebsite The Daily Wire picked up the claim and published its own article the same day, citing The Script. Shapiro then promoted the piece to his substantial social media following.

A handful of right-wing clickbait sites picked up the story the following day, and the story also got its first bit of attention from a more reputable-seeming (sort of)Never Trumper outlet: the National Review.

On October 5, Mediaite published an article detailing the right-wing claims about the 2007 interview alongside video of the interview itself. The article was headlined “WATCH: Elizabeth Warren Lied About Losing Public School Teaching Job Because She Was ‘Visibly Pregnant.”

A second wave of larger right-wing outlets then latched onto the claim,citing Mediaite (which lent an air of nonpartisanship to the story) or the video it published: FoxNews.com, Breitbart, Town Hall, and others. (The Daily Caller also posted an article about the interview on October 5, though it cited only The Script.) These pieces were all simultaneously circulating through the conservative social media world;the Fox News online article alone received over 78,000 Facebook interactions according to the CrowdTangle monitoring service.

Another string of outlets posted articles citing or linking to the Fox News piece, further amplifying the story and spreading it to their own social media audiences. Niche right-wing outlets that focus specifically on anti-abortion rhetoric also seized on the claims. Right-wing and anti-abortion media outlets often rely on such spin to manufacture outrage against various Democratic presidential candidates.

On October 7, The**Washington Free Beacon**added a new element to the story: It cited minutes from two meetings held by the city’s Board of Education at the time. The Free Beacon argued that the minutes were further proof Warren had lied about her firing because the board had voted to extend her teaching contract in April of 1971 (before she was visibly pregnant) and because the meeting minutes two months later showed the board had “accepted with regret” her resignation from the job. (It is highly unlikely that public school board meeting minutes would state that Warren had been fired for being pregnant.) Nevertheless, the Free Beacon article spurred another round of posts from the conservative echo chamber, including The Daily Wire, Breitbart, Conservative Opinion, and Hot Air, and amplification from at least one right-wing political action committee.

The story also ginned up enough right-wing media fervor to make thejump to conservative cable. According to Media Matters’ internal database, Fox News has discussed Warren’s pregnancy discrimination anecdote in at least 24 segments from October 7 through publication time. (MSNBC has covered it twice, and CNN once.)

Another crucial part of this playbook: goading mainstream media into playing along

Eventually, so many right-wing outlets were devoting space to repeating the claims that some mainstream media outlets began covering it, framing their stories around “just asking questions.” The right knows that mainstream outlets have, at this point, been subjected to so many bogus attacks for not covering “both sides” of a story that they are eager to jump on any chance to prove they’re unbiased -- often actually leading to bias toward conservative bullshit.

After the Free Beacon published the board of education meeting minutes (which, again, do not refute Warren’s account),CBS published a longer piece digging into the so-called discrepancies in her story. It cited both the 2007 interview and the meeting minutes -- and used the passive voice multiple times (“Warren’s changes in phrasing … have sparked questions”) to paint the story as valid and widespread rather than squarely originating in the right-wing fever swamps. 

As media critic Margaret Sullivan noted, theCBSarticle acknowledged additional historical corroboration showing that Warren’s experience was typical for the time, and even cited two retired teachers from the same school who said that being pushed out while pregnant was an unspoken trend. It also included an explanation from Warren about why her retellings in the past hadn’t always focused on the discrimination: Her rise in public life caused her to open up more about her experiences.

Yet the CBS headline was framed as though Warren alone “stands by” her account in the face of legitimate contradictions -- thereby feeding into the flames stoked by the right-wing blogosphere. Other headlines from mainstream outlets that borrow this frame sent the same message to readers scrolling through their feeds.

Absent taking the bait wholesale, mainstream media also run the risk of doing a disservice to readers by simply failing to provide crucial context. In this case, that means not just the context of where these claims originated or how they line up with reality, but also the historical moment in which Warren’s story takes place.

Any mainstream coverage of this story ought to frame it as an easily identifiable tactic of the right and should offer statistics about the continuing prevalence of pregnancy discrimination. According to The New York Times, “The number of pregnancy discrimination claims filed annually with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been steadily rising for two decades and is hovering near an all-time high.”

Besides, workplace discrimination (of all kinds) is rarely spelled out in a black-and-white, clearly illegal way. In this instance, there were plenty of unspoken messages, norms, or practices that were not as simple as blatantly firing someone, but they still amounted to job loss or unfair treatment because someone was pregnant. As Sullivan wrote, “If there is a scandal here, it’s how — in the bad-faith media world — narrowly presented facts without sufficient context can do unfair harm. They can and will be weaponized, falsely regurgitated and twisted beyond recognition.”

To ignore these realities and present this latest Warren smear in a vacuum is to give the right-wing figures exactly what they want: a convenient sound bite and a lingering air of suspicion in the public consciousness. It would also confirm, once again, how easily their echo chamber can be mobilized to game the system.

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// pod save 9/23/19

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/its-clinton-cash-all-over-again-as-the-media-blow-the-trump-whistleblower-story/

...no lnx

another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

We would praise the reporters who revealed the content of a whistle-blower’s complaint that the Trump regime has refused to turn over to Congress as the law requires. But it appears that the outlines of the story were already known in DC political circles. Two weeks before the whistleblower story broke, The Washington Post ran an editorial noting that Donald Trump was withholding $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, and that while “some suspect Mr. Trump is once again catering to Mr. Putin, who is dedicated to undermining Ukrainian democracy and independence,… the president has a second and more venal agenda: He is attempting to force [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.” The authors added, “Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.”

But we’re conflicted about crediting WaPo’s editorial board for breaking that news. They, like so many neutral outlets this week, described the goal of Trump’s extortion as forcing Ukraine to “launch an investigation” of Biden. That is flatly false, as there is no serious allegation of wrongdoing against the former Vice President. So Trump didn’t press Zelensky to investigate Biden–he used the power of his office to extort the newly elected Ukrainian leader to fabricate a controversy about a domestic political opponent.

Every headline suggesting that Trump (or Rudy Giuliani) simply pressed for an “investigation” adds credence to Trump’s defense.

This is not the first time the press has assisted Trump in his effort to smear Biden. In May, The New York Times helped mainstream Trump’s baseless allegation in a story titled, “Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies.” Although the piece acknowledged that Biden’s effort to pressure the Ukrainian government to oust former prosecutor Viktor Shokin was based on the view of the entire US government that Shokin had consistently turned a blind eye to corruption within Ukraine’s elites, and that Shokin had “long [been] a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders,” it nonetheless insinuated that something was amiss because Biden’s son, Hunter, had been connected to a firm that Shokin may have been investigating.

The story was widely panned for being misleading. CNN noted that “it wasn’t until the 19th paragraph that The Times noted that there was no evidence to support the claim that Biden intentionally tried to aide his son by working to oust the prosecutor. Bloomberg also reported on May 16 that the Ukrainian prosecutor general said he had no evidence of misconduct against Biden.”

The piece was co-authored by Kenneth Vogel and Iuliia Mendel. One month later, Mendel took a job as Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokesperson. Vogel remains with The Times.

Here’s @kenvogel of the New York Times saying on MSNBC that he views Joe Biden son’s work in Ukraine as “a significant liability for Joe Biden.”

“There is a story here,” Vogel adds, saying “we’re going to continue to, sort of, pull that back.” (I’m sure Trump is very grateful!) pic.twitter.com/HSl90pk6Zn

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 20, 2019

It’s hard not to see echoes of how The New York Times—followed by CNN and The Washington Post—helped move the Uranium One nontroversy from the fever swamps of the right into the mainstream political dialogue in 2015. That contrived scandal, like this one, had absolutely no basis in fact. It had been pushed relentless by conservative outlets for months without getting much traction, until former Breitbart editor-at-large Peter Schweizer snookered The Times into laundering the allegations in a now-infamous piece titled, “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.” After that, every ostensibly neutral outlet ran with it, and although the story was easily and repeatedly debunked, it, along with EmailGhazi, became the basis for Trump’s claims that Hillary Clinton was hopelessly corrupt and should be locked up. (Peter Schweizer, having failed so far to get traction with a different Biden “scandal” having to do with China, is now pushing hard on the Biden-Ukraine story.)

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random grab rw

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-incredible-belief-that-corporate-ownership-does-not-influence-media-content/

see also jnlism fail

no lnx

The incredible belief that corporate ownership does not influence media content

Written by Alison Rose Levy / FAIR September 19, 2019

As Sen. Bernie Sanders (CJR, 8/26/19) has recently noted, corporate ownership of media interferes with the core societal function of the press: reporting and investigating key issues at the intersection of public need and governance. And nowhere is that more critical than when it comes to climate. Due to their corporate conflicts of interest, trusted news authorities have diverted us from our primary responsibility—assuring a viable habitat for our children and grandchildren.

As a journalist who has worked both inside and outside of establishment media, I see influence as embedded in a corporate media culture rather than in isolated cases of CEO dictates. It happens in little ways, such as how an interviewer frames a question, and in big ways, like the decision to exclude a topic, a person or a group of people from the airwaves.

Like most US companies, news organizations are hierarchies, which people who have worked in corporate offices can readily understand. Given that “90% of the United States’ media is controlled by five media conglomerates,” the top executive at many news outfits is likely the CEO of a multinational corporation. The word comes down from the business execs to the company’s division chiefs, as seen in countless movies (like the 1976 classic Network). This was how it was when I worked on primetime national news at CBS in the 1990s.

On the inside, it wasn’t easy to see organizational bias, when job security and team work required overlooking it. The response to the heavily promoted primetime news pairing of two well-known anchors exemplified how news personnel learn to toe the line. The two anchors had zero chemistry, but no one mentioned it, as if an unwritten code had been instantly internalized. This dragged on for two years, pulling down the network’s ratings.

Higher-ups would never offer editorial staff direct input on content. That’s what the executive and middle management were for. Would these managers confide to their staff that the big guns gave them a certain direction? No. Whatever it was, they would present it as their own, and it would be adopted.

Within this culture, controlling the content goes on in whispers, frowns, headshakes and decisions made behind closed doors. If anyone strays into a verboten zone, as I did when I proposed a feature about Native Americans, those in the know privately communicate the ethos that is expected and allowed. “We never put American Indians on air because they talk too slow,” a producer explained.

Despite such experiences, when I left CBS, I respected the many producers with whom I’d worked, many of whom are still employed at the various networks. That work experience honed editorial judgment in ways impossible to measure, for which I am infinitely grateful. It also showed me that organizational agendas and values can trump claims to objectivity.

Reporting from Independent Media

Yet over a decade later, working in progressive online media, I was still astonished that several major stories I covered, were anywhere from underplayed to entirely absent from establishment news.

When I began to cover fracking in New York state in 2009, at first both 60 Minutes (11/14/10) and the New York Times (11/27/09, 10/29/11) covered it as a Hatfield/McCoy feud between upstate rural neighbors, rather than as an invasive industrial activity with a host of health and environmental repercussions.

During the critical years of the major fracking buildout from 2005 to 2016, the  New York Times gave a prominent environmental platform to self-declared “climate champion” Andrew Revkin, whose reporting FAIR (Extra!, 2/10) called “a source of some comfort—and crowing—for the climate change denial crowd.” His pro-industry stance on fracking and naysaying on methane impacts condoned an industrial expansion that has produced far-reaching environmental damage.

The Times’ Ian Urbina (6/25/11)  did invaluable reporting on fracking’s faulty economic model. But in 2013, the paper of record closed its environmental desk, even as   Inside Climate News (1/11/13) was reporting that “worldwide coverage of climate change continued a three-year slide.”

MSNBC show hosts like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes rarely covered fracking, instead letting gas and oil industry ads reassert claims of safety. Nonprofit environmental groups, leading activists, along with a growing body of independent journalists filled the media void, including my own reporting at Huffington Post, AlterNet and EcoWatch.

The TTP

In 2014, I began to report on the Transpacific Partnership (TTP) and other concurrent global trade agreements, which are often characterized as core to President Barack Obama’s “legacy” (e.g., New York Times, 6/14/15; Washington Post, 6/24/15). The agreement’s full provisions were never revealed to the public prior to the June 2015 vote granting absolute trade authority to Obama—authority that would have passed to Trump if the agreement had been ratified in late 2016, as Obama hoped.

In conducting multiple interviews with trade analysts, as well as following the protests in Europe and the resulting leaks of the contents, I learned from  trade analyst William Waren (Connect the Dots,  1/28/15) that even prior to the TPP’s  passage and ratification, plans were underway for the buildout of  fracking, gas and oil, and coal trade and global export freed by its anticipated passage.

Nothing within the unenforceable Paris Agreement would have prevented it. In fact, the Paris Agreement provisions were nonbinding, while the trade agreements that were being secretly negotiated concurrently, including the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), were designed to be binding, to “effectively trump whatever commitment is made in Paris,” Waren revealed on Connect the Dots (12/9/15).

Further, the TPP’s planned instatement of an international corporate tribunal with international legal authority over all nations would have mortally injured global democracies. In 2016, Mark Ruffalo summed up what was at stake in the fight: Expanding the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in NAFTA via TPP

would block worldwide environmental and social progress while empowering corporations to undermine existing climate and environmental policies.

As we witness the Trump administration’s deconstruction of US environmental regulatory infrastructure—appointment by appointment, policy by policy—let’s appreciate that in defeating TPP and associated trade deals (thanks to the work of grassroots organizers and independent media), Americans dodged a bullet.

If the US had passed the TPP as planned during the 2016 lame duck session of Congress, both the US and all co-signers (a total of 12 countries) would have been contractually bound to a wholesale takedown of environmental regulations and economic barriers to fossil fuel development—as well as the loss of any right to challenge corporate rule or prevent health and environmental impacts. The climate impacts of the intended gas and oil buildout would likely have been devastating and decisive.

Nevertheless, the forward drive to pass the TPP occurred in a near void of corporate coverage. What had been negotiated behind closed doors with multinational corporations remained their business secrets. Prior to its authorization in June 2015, no mainstream outlet thoroughly investigated and disclosed the TPP’s provisions. Obama’s most memorable pro-TPP television appearance was singing about it with Jimmy Fallon.  FAIR (6/11/16) called the enthused Vox coverage (6/10/16) of Obama’s performance

a borderline parody of everything wrong with corporate-owned “new media”: What we have here is a Comcast-funded website plugging a Comcast-owned TV show to promote a trade deal aggressively lobbied for by Comcast.

Both the New York Times and its liberal economist columnist, Paul Krugman, covered the TPP infrequently. Krugman (10/6/15) professed he was a “lukewarm opponent” of it, and minimized its importance. “We’re not talking about a world-shaking deal here,” he wrote (3/11/15) three months before the Senate granted Obama the authority to sign the final agreement without further consultation or deliberation.

Prior to the vote, a college friend of the MSNBC host Chris Hayes assured me that Hayes, a former environmental reporter for The Nation, would be deeply concerned about these trade deals. I was dubious, but she was insistent. With the contact she provided, I sent all of my TPP research and sources on to Hayes. I received no response.

Rather than cover the TPP, MSNBC went on to fire Ed Schultz, the sole show host who covered trade agreements. (Sadly, the 64-year-old Schultz died in 2018.) In surveying TPP coverage, Media Matters (2/4/15) found that Schultz was the exception in a near-total blackout by all three major networks. Week after week, Hayes and other MSNBC hosts devoted airtime to meticulously dissecting far more minor concerns.

As in any large organization, the firing and hiring of staff speaks volumes to surviving staff members about the owners’ priorities. The unseen casualties among reporters of integrity, and the disservice to journalism, cannot be overestimated. Those working in corporate media get the message without anyone having to tell them, and highly paid show hosts have the most to lose.

The press’ mission is to inform the citizenry and flag abuses to power, not promote special interests. When citizens blind themselves to a news organization’s corporate entanglements, and trust the outlet to be truthful anyway, it is, to put it mildly, extraordinarily naïve.

It’s not about whether or not the public has access to a private conversation or confidential memo sent to editorial with a corporate dictate. The evidence is what’s given airtime and what isn’t over many years.

Was it just happenstance that MSNBC, for example, failed to cover the TPP after firing Ed Schultz? Comcast, the owner of MSNBC, sat at the table behind closed doors during the five-year long negotiations of the TPP’s specific trade provisions.

Have MSNBC or any of its competitors uncovered Comcast’s agenda for the trade agreements? What if concerns over intellectual property rights, for example, made it a corporate mission to pass a deal that also happened to radically hasten the climate tipping point? Should any company have that much power?

No business, no matter how sizeable, should have the right to subvert the actions and political choices necessary to address climate, as well as the activated movement capable of assuring that at long last we do what needs to be done. The only sane response is to support the movement, and the independent media outlets that provide a platform for ideas, facts, studies, polls, policy initiatives and disclosures outside the corporate media frame—and to overhaul the media to address this unfair use of public airwaves for gain and compromise as the world burns.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/what-george-carlin-taught-us-about-media-propaganda-by-omission/

no lnx

What George Carlin taught us about media propaganda by omission

Written by Jeff Cohen / Common Dreams September 16, 2019

In the old George Carlin joke, the TV sportscaster announces: “Here’s a partial score from the West Coast – Los Angeles 6.”

For a brilliant comedian like Carlin—who skewered corporate power, class structure and political/media propaganda—that’s one of his more innocuous jokes. But it’s sharply relevant today as corporate TV news outlets serve up a series of partial scores. Call it “propaganda by omission.”

Take the coverage that followed Thursday’s Democratic debate. Bernie Sanders didn’t object in the debate when Joe Biden hung a price tag on Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan of $30 trillion (over 10 years). Sanders responded by offering the other score: “That’s right, Joe. Status quo over 10 years will be $50 trillion. Every study done shows that Medicare for All is the most cost-effective approach to providing health care to every man, woman, and child in this country.”

The $50 trillion figure for continuing the status quo (actually $47 trillion) comes from the  “National Health Expenditure Fact Sheet” of the federal government’s Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

I checked the post-debate news coverage. As in the Carlin joke, I found many references to the partial score: the $30-32 trillion estimated cost of Sanders’ legislation. But not the other score: the more costly estimate of sticking with a system in which health insurance is provided by for-profit corporations.

I watched, for example, the next day’s in-depth report on CBS Evening News lasting a full two minutes. (That’s “in-depth” nowadays on nightly newscasts.) The $32 trillion estimate was prominent, but the other score was omitted—no estimate for staying with the status quo. When the report ended, anchor Nora O’Donnell accentuated the bias by saying: “That’s an expensive plan, Ed. Thank you.”

CBS opened its report speaking of “government-run healthcare plans being touted by liberal Democrats.” It’s well-known that “government-run healthcare“ is a GOP/Fox News/insurance industry talking point. As is “government takeover” of healthcare. Just ask GOP propagandist Frank Luntz.

Of course, when Medicare simply provides the coverage—whether to older people today or everyone tomorrow—that’s NOT “government-run healthcare.”

As I recently wrote to the Los Angeles Times in response to a biased poll question: “Doctors and hospitals are private today within Medicare in the U.S. (I know because I’m old enough to be on Medicare)—and they would remain so under a Medicare for All system, just as doctors and hospitals are private today under Canada’s Medicare for All system. Insurance is government-provided; not the healthcare itself.”

It’s easy to explain why Medicare for All is more cost-effective than the corporate-insurance system. Less bureaucracy and wasteful paperwork. No sales commissions. No exorbitant CEO compensation—averaging $18 million per healthcare CEO last year. No insurance company profits; the “big 8 health insurers” raked in $7 billion in one quarter last year.

But confusion, not clarity, is the job of TV news—which is so heavily sponsored by drug and healthcare companies. (Night after night, big pharma is the main sponsor of network newscasts.) And confusion is the job of industry ads and corporate politicians like Biden, who receives more healthcare industry donations than any other Democratic candidate.

That’s why we keep getting partial scores.

Besides the reduction in financial cost, imagine the reduction in human cost—hardship and anxiety—if our country joined every other wealthy country in achieving truly universal health coverage.

Which bring us to a partial score on another crisis causing hardship and anxiety today: climate change. The Green New Deal proposal in Congress to address the problem, while creating millions of high-paying jobs, has been savaged as “too expensive”—with Mitch McConnell and Republicans incessantly invoking a concocted and ridiculous figure of $93 trillion.

As with Medicare for All, moneyed elites want to omit the other score—the price tag of sticking with the status quo into a future that Bill McKibben describes as “a modern Dark Ages.” From science-denying Republicans to solution-denying corporate Democrats who seek a go-slow “middle-ground,” there’s an attempt to downplay the more expensive cost of deny and delay, including:  rising seas and rivers, more damaging hurricanes and floods, worsening droughts and wildfires, buckling bridges and roads, increased air pollution and hospitalizations, premature deaths, crop failures, extinct species, spread of new diseases, intensified migration and more brutal civil wars.

McKibben argues that the Green New Deal “costs pennies on the dollar” compared to the bleak and costly future predicted by scientists. McKibben, of course, doesn’t sponsor TV news. The fossil fuel industry does.

In a country as wealthy as ours—when progressive proposals to address the crises of climate, healthcare and social inequality are routinely shot down by corporate politicians and media as “too expensive”—George Carlin’s quip reminds us to demand the other score: the horrific cost of our unequal and unsustainable status quo.

Jeff Cohen was associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media – and a cofounder of the online action group, www.RootsAction.org. His website is here: //jeffcohen.org.

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9/16/19 big joint effort

DN hertsgaard GUK gold st'd, criticed for using "activist" langauge eg emergency

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ctr immigr studies gets a pass

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/12/anti-immigrant-groups-mainstream-media

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9191 mma

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/confirmed-trump-lies-to-reporters-more-often-than-he-lies-to-any-other-group

no lnx

Confirmed: Trump lies to reporters more often than he lies to any other group

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos September 6, 2019

Press advocates scored an important legal victory this week when a U.S. District Court judge ordered the White House to reinstate media credentials to reporter Brian Karem, whose access had been stripped away by Donald Trump’s team after a dust-up during a Rose Garden ceremony in July. There, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka called Karem a “punk.” Announcing that the White House hadn’t provided Karem with due process when it stripped him of his credentials, the ruling marked the second time the White House has tried and failed to give a reporter the boot. (CNN’s Jim Acosta was the previous target.)

That’s the good news. The bad news? Karem is returning to what has largely become a useless White House beat. Permanently stuck in reactive mode as they respond to Trump’s catalog of bizarre and untrue pronouncements, journalists have largely become spectators at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

What’s left for the White House press corps to do often resembles a journalistic joke. The daily press briefings have been effectively cancelled, which means White House reporters have extremely limited access to officials who are willing to answer even the simplest questions about the administration’s policies and agenda. Meanwhile, the so-called White House sprays, where reporters are marched into a room and encouraged to shout questions at Trump (who then lies about everything), are relatively pointless. And that goes for the ritual of yelling questions at Trump while he stands near the whirling blades of a Marine One helicopter on the White House grounds as well.

In both cases, Trump simply uses reporters as props so they’ll record his avalanche of lies and then air those lies on a televised loop all day. The so-calledChopper Talk sessions in particular allow Trump to simply bluster and ramble through questions that clearly stump him. And because the sessions are strangely covered as breaking news, Trump’s lies are instantly amplified by the press, often without reporters providing proper context for them. The Marine One shoutfests “are terrible for reporters,” one White House reporter recently conceded to Politico. “It is impossible to hear, have a substantive dialogue, ask a follow-up question or do any serious pressing of the president. It is a fucking circus.”

Now comes confirmation that Trump spends more time lying to reporters in those gaggle settings than he does to any other group of people that he regularly interacts with in public. And yes, there’s something deeply ironic and disturbing about the fact that Trump lies to reporters more than anyone else, yet they’re the one group that won’t accurately label him a liar. The truth is that the press has never figured out how to cover a president who’s a pathological liar, and I suspect they never will. And when I say “figured out,” I’m really saying the press has never summoned the institutional courage necessary for the task.

Tracking every lie (aka “falsehood”) that Trump told between July 8 and Aug. 18, CNN concluded that heaveraged nearly eight fabrications every day. The biggest whoppers during that period were that China is paying for the trade war tariffs (they’re not), which Trump repeated 10 times, and that Democrats want to eliminate all immigration laws concerning America’s borders (they don’t), which Trump claimed 14 different times.

What was especially telling from the CNN research was the forum where Trump told the most lies during that six-week stretch. “The top venue, with 94 false claims, was his exchanges with reporters,” CNN reported. The venue that featured the second-highest number of Trump lies was the political rallies that he holds.

Why so many lies told directly to the faces of reporters? Because Trump in recent weeks has spent lots of time talking to journalists, hosting various Chopper Talk sessions that ranged from 17 minutes to 33 minutes in duration. And when Trump talks a lot, he lies a lot—period. “There is a strong correlation between how much Trump talks and how many false claims he makes,” CNN noted diplomatically.

CNN’s findings confirm recently released research that showed Trump much prefers granting reporters “access” while questions are yelled in a chaotic setting. According to the data compiled by Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project at Towson University, the shouting sessions make up 60% of Trump’s interactions with reporters, compared to just 17% of Barack Obama’s. To date, Trump has stopped more than 80 times for Q&A shout sessions while departing from or returning to the White House aboard Marine One, or on the tarmac before getting on or off Air Force One.

The White House has pointed to these shout sessions as proof that Trump’s delivering all kinds of access. Press secretary Stephanie Grisham recently bragged that Trump is “so accessible” that she doesn’t “know what any of the press could complain about.” It turns out what they could complain about is Trump using access he grants to the press to lie to them nonstop.

The CNN confirmation of Trump lying most often to reporters arrived the same week he unveiled perhaps the most ridiculous and moronic lie of his presidency—or least of the past month. That’s when Trump’s White House took a Sharpie marker to an official government map of the projected course of Hurricane Dorian, and enlarged the path’s possible cone to include Alabama. It was a pathetic and childish attempt to bolster his earlier, reckless assertion that Alabama was ever in danger from the storm, a claim that the National Weather Service aggressively debunked.

Trump lies about everything. Always. And that’s especially true when he grants access to reporters.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

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https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/08/13/climate-deniers-receive-more-media-attention-climate-scientists-research

New media organisations feature climate science deniers more than climate scientists, while the mainstream media promotes “false balance”, according to a new study published today in Nature Communications.

The authors examined some 100,000 English-language media articles relating to climate change for how often they mentioned a hand-picked group of 386 scientists and 386 contrarians.

The mainstream media is regularly accused of ‘false balance’ — where a climate science denier is invited to ‘balance’ the debate, despite the fact that rising temperatures driven by human-caused emissions is not scientifically disputed. But the study finds that across a sample of mainstream and new media, non-experts are actually given more visibility than experts.

Across all media sources, climate change contrarians were mentioned around 26,000 times – 49 percent more than climate change scientists.

The comparative attention afforded to scientists increased when the authors reduced their search to30 mainstream media outlets, including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Across these mainstream publications, sceptics and scientists were mentioned roughly the same number or times.Indeed, the most elite 224 scientists were mentioned 38 percent more times than the 224 contrarians that had at least one scientific paper to their name.

Visibility

Does that mean the mainstream media is doing a good job? Not really. Alexander Petersen, the paper’s lead author and assistant professor at the University of California Merced, questions why contrarians are still visible in the media at all.

“This is a challenge to modern information systems, which can readily scale up any voice to a very large magnitude. We’ve demonstrated objectively the degree to which new media can really amplify small positions,” he told DeSmog.

“Journalists should have moved beyond this supposed debate that really doesn’t exist, and should move onto other aspects of climate change communication – for example discussing how policy should proceed to really take action. Yes, there’s a small pool of these sceptics but it’s not clear to me why they’re even in the conversation.”

High Profile Voices

The paper highlights the media sources that publish most prolifically on climate change, alongside those that most frequently mention climate scientists. Among the blogs and publications that are frequently publishing on climate change, and which have a known preference for publishing sceptics, are Climate Depot and Heartland.

The three most visible climate scientists are Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth and Andrew Weaver (the latter is also the leader of the Green Party in British Columbia). The contrarians on which the paper focuses are kept anonymous. The database was assembled partly through data gathered by DeSmog, which did not have any role in the research.

The paper suggests that the parity between sceptics and scientists in the mainstream media could be down to an ingrained tendency among journalists to seek “balance” – until 1987, contrarians in the US were guaranteed airtime by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission Fairness Doctrine.

By now, false balance should be a thing of the past, as the evidence for climate change becomes undeniable, says Petersen. “There should be a better effort on both sides, both by the journalist seeking sources and the scientists promoting their work, to have more of an interactive dialogue that brings the scientists into these media articles as authorities,” he suggests.

“We need to give the microphone back to the scientists so they can make various findings and recommendations crystal clear.”

:{Majority of top newspapers in agricultural producing states fail to mention UN climate and land report on their front pages:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{:(style="box-sizing:border-box;display:flex;height:1.5em;margin-right:1em;width:1.5em"):}:08/14/19 MMA

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post 3x shooters

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/everyone-knows-trump-is-a-racist-so-why-cant-the-media-say-it/

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maybe not so much fail as punked?  NY Mass AG's vs Exxon knew, 1st amend BS ploy

AN

http://www.alternet.org/environment/:{exxon-using-tobaccos-failed-free-speech-defense-decades-deception-climate-change}:

The past week has seen a barrage of opinion pieces carrying water for the fossil fuel industry, defending against the ongoing fraud investigations. The Washington Post had two pieces, Newsweek had one and the Financial Times had an editorial, in addition to op-eds in a couple of other conservative outlets. Of those six, half were penned by groups funded at least in part by fossil fuel companies.

The arguments are all by and large the same, claiming that the investigations infringe on fossil fuels companies’ right to free speech while steadfastly ignoring the fact that ExxonMobil funded climate denial to protect their business model. Only the Financial Times editorial actually acknowledges the “misleading claims from fossil fuel interests and their allies” but concludes that it is “because the stakes [of the debate] are so high that all arguments must be heard.” While that sounds fair at first Glantz, it quickly sounds silly when applied to a recent example: the tobacco industry’s denial of the fact that its carcinogenic product is addictive.

All but one of the pieces similarly ignored the tobacco industry precedent and the only person who mentioned it was one of the few voices not plugged into the professional denial apparatus.

As for the pros, Newsweek ran a blog post from the Hoover Institution, which rambled on about climate science that’s supposedly still uncertain, lamenting that fair debate is impossible if one side can bring the other to court. Not mentioned is how a fair debate can be possible if one side launches multi-million dollar PR campaigns to mislead the public about the science.

Feds Refer Exxon #Climate Investigation to FBI: https://t.co/MS5BfY7PNp via @EcoWatch pic.twitter.com/mBWybUPmVb

— DeSmogBlog (@DeSmogBlog) March 7, 2016

Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky’s piece in the Washington Times misses the tobacco precedent, but went all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition for his First Amendment fear mongering.George Will used his column in the Washington Post to offer a lesson on how this campaign is part of a larger progressive strategy to shut down debate. But apparently it’s Will that needs a history lesson, as he uses as evidence a story about a 2013 IRS investigation accusing the agency of targeting conservatives. But that investigation “found no evidence” that the IRS actions were politically motivated. No doubt his column is similarly bereft of evidence.

The Washington Post also gave space to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) to defend itself by pretending it is being investigated for political dissent, not its years of Exxon funding for climate denial. Worth noting CEI’s careful phrasing about its relationship with Exxon, which CEI says “publicly ended its support for us after 2005.” With Donors Trust and others making it possible to anonymize giving, the key word is “publicly.”

Ironically, despite the admission that its Exxon funding is a perfectly legitimate reason to look into its communications, CEI considers its subpoena to be a fishing expedition. Meanwhile, CEI’s own coal-funded Chris Horner continues to engage in nuisance FOIAs for climate scientists.

Exxon’s defense is a hot topic in denierland, as it advances the narrative that the fossil fuel industry is an embattled population facing government persecution. But here’s a reality check: Before Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was murdered on March 2, she reported receiving 33 death threats after years of intimidation. Instead of investigating a man who had previously bragged about his plans to murder her, authorities claim the prime suspects are two of her fellow activists.

Heartbreaking! @GoldmanPrize Activist Berta Cáceres Murdered in Honduras https://t.co/Zj97cmwQi3 @FoEint @greenpeace pic.twitter.com/tAujvEGtMR

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) March 3, 2016

Looks like the fossil fuel industry isn’t the one facing persecution after all.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21980/i-went-to-a-climate-change-denial-conference-heartland-institute-trump

There’s no need to worry about reducing the greenhouse gases driving climate change—all that carbon dioxide is actually “greening the planet.” The Green New Deal, on the other hand, would send the country back to the stone age, or at least the pre-industrial era. Those were among the eye-popping and often-conflicting views expressed yesterday at the Heartland Institute’s 13th International Climate Change Conference, a gathering of climate change deniers that took place at theTrump Hotel in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House.

The vast majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that climate change could prove devastating to life as we know it unless we take swift and sweeping action to decarbonize the economy . But those “wild predictions have been pronouncedly exaggerated,” according to the British gadfly Lord Christopher Monckton, who holds the title 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

One of the more colorful figures in the climate denial universe, Monckton ticked off a list of problems scientists have linked to climate change that Monckton says we really don’t need to worry about. According to him, the world is seeing less, not more, drought; sea levels are falling not rising; forest fires are causing less damage; hurricane activity is decreasing, too; and carbon dioxide is actually improving the global environment by “greening” places like Australia’s Great Sandy Desert. “That’s why we need more CO2, because it greens the planet,” he declared.

Other conference panelists joined Monckton in cycling through a series of theories long debunked by peer-reviewed science. Some believe, like Monckton, that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are growing but provide more benefits than threats. (One Heritage Foundation official went so far as to suggest carbon dioxide emitters should get paid a subsidy rather than face the kind of carbon tax scheme policymakers have discussed; of course, the oil industry already does receive billions in subsidies.) Others argued that CO2 levels are in fact not rising, while still others say we should be more concerned about a coming ice age.

“The real problem is we have a lot more to worry about with global cooling than with global warming,” said Rodger Bezdek, an energy analyst and Heartland policy advisor.

If the speakers and audience members don’t all agree on why we shouldn’t worry about climate change, the few hundred people assembled in a hotel ballroom yesterday doshare a number of other ideas: chiefly, that the fossil fuel industry is under unfair attack and deserves public support, while the Green New Deal is a totalitarian communist plot to steal American liberties and cast the world into “energy poverty.”

Kevin D. Dayaratna, a senior statistician at the Heritage Foundation, told the audience the Left had already begun to take control of the country and would continue its authoritarian advance with a Green New Deal.

On the surface, times would seem to be good for Heartland and the climate change denial movement, with the world’s most prominent climate change denier living in the White House. President Donald Trump has run with many of this group’s longtime demands such as withdrawing the United States from the United Nations’ Paris climate accord and rolling back Obama-era pollution rules.

But the evidence has never been stronger that climate change is already happening and will have increasingly catastrophic impacts on human civilization (not to mention other species) unless the world takes action. Meanwhile, the surprisingly fierce rise of children activists demanding climate action has boosted public concern worldwide and helped sweep progressive politicians supporting a Green New Deal into U.S. Congress.

This may be part of why climate denialists (who prefer to be called “climate realists”) appear to be struggling to remain relevant and attract younger followers. Yesterday’s speakers and audience members were overwhelmingly old, white and male. After the first panel session, there were so many white-haired men waiting for the men’s room that a long line snaked out the door, past the gold-plated trash bins embossed with the Trump name. The line for the women’s room, by contrast, was significantly shorter.

To recruit younger generations, one audience member suggested warning them that Green New Deal supporters want to take their iPhones away and return the country to a time before electricity—never mind that electricity, in the form of solar and wind, is central to the Green New Deal proposal. (Of course, panelists and audiences expressed extreme skepticism about renewables, as well.)

Not only does the climate denial movement appear in danger of aging out, raising funds is getting more difficult.Traditionally funded by fossil fuel companies, Heartland’s oil and gas money has dried up in recent years as the scientific consensus around climate change has grown stronger, putting oil and gas companies under pressure from shareholders and the public to stop funding groups that deny the problem.

Earlier this year the libertarian Cato Institute disbanded its climate denial program, the Center for the Study of Science. And yesterday’s Heartland conference had fewer than half the number of speakers and panelists as its first International Climate Change Conference in 2008. The number of sponsoring organizations has also fallen by more than half since 2008.

Despite these developments, climate change denialism continues to get more than its fair share of media coverage, according to an analysis by the Public Citizen published Wednesday to coincide with the conference. The nonprofit consumer advocacy organization found thatmedia coverage of climate denial by Heartland, Heritage and three other think tanks increased from 2014 to 2018.

“The mounds of scientific evidence … should lead to a radical decline in the influence of climate deniers in the media,” Allison Fisher, outreach program director for Public Citizen’s climate program, said in a press release. “Amazingly, coverage of the deniers’ messages has risen over the past five years as the climate crisis has worsened, with much of it being uncritical.”

It seems possible to conceive of a time, not all that far off in the future, when the effects of climate change will become so evident and frequent that denying it’s happening will no longer be an option. But that’s hardly a comforting thought.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-journalism-is-helping-to-normalize-the-concentration-camps/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/30/how-disinformation-works-news-outlets-are-filtering-muellers-statement-through-trumps-lies/223837

no lnx pix twit

How disinformation works: News outlets are filtering Mueller's statement through Trump's lies

Blog ››› May 30, 2019 2:27 PM EDT ››› MATT GERTZ

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Wednesday statement served as an indictment of the press for its failure to effectively convey the damning conclusions of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to the public and its willingness to accept the dishonest spin of President Donald Trump and the members of his administration. But the behavior of many major news outlets since Mueller stepped down from the Justice Department’s lectern suggests that few lessons have been learned, and journalists continue their business-as-usual practice of filtering their coverage through the lens of Trump’s deceptive critiques.

New York Times reporter Peter Baker’s analysis is a key example of journalists reporting on Mueller’s statement as a good faith disagreement between Democrats and the president. The story appeared online on Wednesday under the headline “Mueller Delivered a Message. Washington Couldn’t Agree on What It Was,” and it was splashed across the paper’s front page the next day. “At long last, the sphinx of Washington spoke on Wednesday,” Baker wrote, “and here is what President Trump heard: ‘Case closed.’ Here is what the president’s adversaries heard: ‘Time to impeach.’”

These are statements that can be assessed for their accuracy, with the reporter concluding that one party’s interpretation is correct. Instead, Baker chose to examine the remarks from both sides and then all but throw up his hands in dismay, framing his story as a case of Washington partisans simply failing to agree on the facts. But the Times scribe’s own reporting in the piece showed that Trump is not credible when he discusses Mueller’s probe. As Baker noted, Mueller’s statement “effectively refuted Mr. Trump’s no-collusion, no-obstruction mantra,” demonstrating the president’s mendacity. He also wrote that the special counsel “implied that Congress could pursue impeachment without directly recommending it,” thus supporting the opinion he ascribed to “the president’s adversaries.”

Baker’s piece rewarded what Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent has called the Trump administration’s “full-saturation propaganda casting the investigation itself as the real crime — disinformation designed to blot out shared agreement on the most basic facts about what just happened before all of our very eyes.”

Jay Rosen

?

@jayrosen_nyu

 This is why journalists can't simply stand in the middle between warring parties — Barr vs. the House — and report what they say. Stakes are too big. For without 'shared agreement on the most basic facts,' journalism itself becomes impossible or pointless. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/05/29/comeys-new-attack-trump-highlights-big-danger-democrats/ …

This style of political journalism -- setting out the claims of both the Trump administration and its critics and leaving it to the reader to decide which interpretation is correct -- simply doesn’t work in the face of Trump’s systemic disinformation.

Trump and his allies know that they can take advantage of this media vulnerability by offering arguments in bad faith on every last detail. This pushes reporters to cover stories with an “on the one hand, but on the other hand” frame, leaving the public confused about basic facts.

:{

}:

This vulnerability is particularly acute when it comes to headlines -- the only part of a story that most people actually read. Since journalists tend to treat a politician’s statements as intrinsically newsworthy, Trump’s comments are often quoted without context in headlines. That pattern held true yesterday, as several major news outlets produced headlines quoting Trump’s “case is closed” reaction to Mueller’s statement without any context:

This pattern of amplifying the president’s claimscontinued the next day. Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Trump laid into Mueller with a fact-free screed, calling him a “true never-Trumper” who “should have never been chosen” as special counsel because he is “totally conflicted.” While the president’s allies have been pushing Mueller’s purported conflicts for years as a way of delegitimizing his investigation, those claims have long been debunked. But that didn’t stop a flurry of tweets from major media outlets promoting his claims in tweets:

@CBSEveningNews

 Pres. Trump slams special counsel Robert Mueller Thursday, saying he "should have never been chosen" to lead the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, a day after the longtime DOJ official made his first public statement on Russia probe https://cbsn.ws/2JLqnJl

ABC News

?

@ABC

Pres. Trump on special counsel Robert Mueller: "I think he is a total conflicted person. I think Mueller is a true never-Trumper. He's somebody that dislikes Donald Trump." https://abcn.ws/2EKwUQi

CNN Politics

?

@CNNPolitics

President Trump calls special counsel Robert Mueller a “true Never Trumper”

The Hill

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@thehill

President Trump: "There's no obstruction, there's no collusion, there's no nothing. It's nothing but a witch hunt. A witch hunt by the media and the Democrats, they're partners."

And their on-air chyrons:

View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

Lis Power

@LisPower1

Replying to @LisPower1

Houston, we have a chyron problem

(and it's not just Fox ... though, they're the worst)

Meanwhile, the president’s right-wing media allies continued hammering the message of Mueller’s malfeasance to their huge audiences, depicting the special counsel as a “sleazy and dishonest” “Trump-hating partisan” who participated in a Democratic plot to “steal” the 2018 midterm elections.

The propaganda machine marches on, and credible news outlets aren’t doing nearly enough to hold back its disinformation.

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Major newspapers largely left Carroll's story off their front pages:

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/06/22/major-newspapers-largely-leave-new-report-sexual-assault-trump-their-front-pages/224009

mma

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https:/YYY.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/22/new-york-times-protest-climate-crisis-coverage

no lnx

Arrests at protest over New York Times' 'unacceptable' climate coverage

Protesters block avenue between Port Authority and NYT

Extinction Rebellion calls for better coverage of climate crisis

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too soon to tell?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/how-the-media-is-already-trumps-willing-accomplice-as-the-drumbeat-for-war-with-iran-grows-louder/

How the media is already Trump’s willing accomplice as the drumbeat for war with Iran grows louder

Jake Johnson, Jon Queally / Common DreamsJune 14, 2019

“Do U.S. reporters, anchors, and editors really want more Middle Eastern blood on their hands? If not, they need to fix their rather credulous and increasingly hawkish coverage of Iran—and fix it fast.”

no lnx many pix

If there were any lingering hopes that the corporate media learned from its role in perpetuating the lies that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and would never again help start a Middle East war on the basis of false or flimsy evidence, the headlines that blared across the front pages of major U.S. news websites Thursday night indicated that such hopes were badly misplaced.

The U.S. military late Thursday released blurry, black-and-white video footage that it claimed—without any underlying analysis or further details—showed an Iranian patrol boat removing an unexploded limpet mine from the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous, one of the oil tankers damaged in attacks in the Gulf of Oman.

Here’s how CNN presented the U.S. military’s video:

Iran has denied any involvement in the attacks, and Yutaka Katada—the owner of the Kokuka Courageous—contradicted the Trump administration’s account during a press conference on Friday.

“Our crew said that the ship was attacked by a flying object,” Katada said. “I do not think there was a time bomb or an object attached to the side of the ship.”

Independent critics were quick to call for extreme skepticism in the face of U.S. government claims, given the quality of the “evidence” and the warmongering track records of those presenting it.

Trita Parsi

?

@tparsi

A serial liar is President.

A warmonger and a serial fabricator who helped get us into the disastrous Iraq war and who has sabotaged numerous attempts at diplomacy is the NatSec Advisor.

But go ahead, Media, treat Pompeo's accusations as "evidence"...#OilTanker #GulfOfOman

405

12:33 PM - Jun 13, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

203 people are talking about this

But the media displayed no such caution.

Just taking a random sample of screenshots after the news broke Thursday night, major outlets largely did the Pentagon’s dirty work by posting uncritical headlines that took the claims at face value.

The Washington Post used the word “purported” in its headline, but erroneously reported that the video was taken “before” the explosion on the vessel, not after. The headline was later changed, but was made no more critical of the military’s claim:

The U.K.-based Guardian also offered a simple “U.S. says” headline construction:

In the New York Times rendition—which appeared prominently on their homepage—the claim of what the U.S. military intelligence “believed” the video to show was framed with the more objective-sounding and vague phrase “what analysts believed”:

Like the Guardian, Politico made no attempt to go beyond the “U.S. says” framework:

Fox News, of course, went further than most by characterizing the Pentagon video as a “major clue” to who was behind the alleged attack:

CNN, meanwhile—specifically in the subhead of the headline story that appeared at the top of their page late Thursday night—took the military’s claim of what the video showed as actual fact:

The Hill‘s version, similar to the error made by the Post, reported that the video was taken before the explosion—a detail likely to leave readers much more suspicious of Iran’s involvement than if one of its vessels had approached the ship in the wake of the incident:

Though no single headline could be construed as explicit pro-Pentagon propaganda on its own, the uncritical nature of the coverage and ensuing echo chamber effect—or what is sometimes referred to as “propaganda reinforcement”—is one of the ways that the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies are empowered to turn a flimsy claim into a pervasive and widely-accepted fact.

Media Lens

@medialens

Classic BBC propaganda reinforcement:

'The footage released by the US on Thursday is rather more convincing...'

And ascribe doubts *solely* to the accused 'Bad Guys':

'There will likely be doubts in Tehran as to whether this video is genuine.' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48633016 …

125

3:51 AM - Jun 14, 2019

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Iran's Isna news agency published an unverified image of what it said was a burning tanker in the Gulf of Oman

US footage shows 'Iran removing unexploded mine'

Iran has strongly denied the US allegation that it was behind attacks on tankers in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday.

bbc.com

107 people are talking about this

In a blog post on Friday, historian and Middle East expert Juan Cole wrote that the Trump administration’s narrative that Iranians were removing an unexploded mine from the damaged oil tanker “doesn’t make any sense at all” and said the video footage released by the U.S. “needs to be carefully analyzed” before any conclusions are drawn.

“[Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo alleged that only the Iranians had the expertise to deploy these mines,” Cole wrote. “We heard this crock for 8.5 years in Iraq—all shaped charges had to be Iran-backed, even those of al-Qaeda, because Iraqis didn’t have the expertise…. Sure. Had to be Iran, helping those hyper-Sunni al-Qaeda. Very likely story.”

On Twitter, Sina Toossi, research associate at the National Iranian American Council, echoed Cole’s call for skepticism and an investigation.

“What we need is an impartial investigation,” Toossi wrote, “and to be highly skeptical of claims and intel assessments from Bolton/Pompeo.”

Sina Toossi

@SinaToossi

Head of the tanker says two drones caused the damaged, contradicting this “dozen men on a boat” narrative.

What we need is an impartial investigation & to be highly skeptical of claims & intel assessments from Bolton/Pompeo.

Bloomberg

?

@business

American officials released images they said show that Iran was involved in an attack on an oil tanker near the entrance to the Persian Gulf on Thursday https://bloom.bg/2IdpiIh

Embedded video

361

4:26 AM - Jun 14, 2019

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243 people are talking about this

In a column published last month as the U.S. aggressively escalated military tensions with Iran and pushed the two nations to the brink of all-out war, The Intercept‘s Mehdi Hasan asked a straightforward question that remains relevant in the present: “Do U.S. reporters, anchors, and editors really want more Middle Eastern blood on their hands?”

“If not,” Hasan wrote, “they need to fix their rather credulous and increasingly hawkish coverage of Iran and the Trump administration—and fix it fast.”

==

random mma grab 519 no lnx

ABC News somehow spent more time on the royal baby in one week than it spent covering the climate crisis in all of 2018. Other networks were not much better.

A House subcommittee held a hearing regarding a recent report that warned that human activity is causing mass extinctions -- and those extinctions in turn threaten humanity's food supply and water. Republicans called two climate change deniers who have frequently appeared on Fox News; the pair used the hearing to attack climate change and accusing the scientists who wrote the report of having a political agenda. Worst of all, the two got more air time during the hearing than the four actual scientists invited by Democrats.

Schoolchildren around the globe walked out to protest climate inaction. Bill McKibben wrote about the need for the protests in The New Yorker: "Unless it’s your town that day that’s being hit by wildfire or a flood, it’s easy to let the day’s more pressing news take precedence. It can be hard to remember that climate change underlies so many daily injustices, from the forced migration of refugees to the spread of disease. Indeed, the people who suffer the most are usually those on the periphery—the iron law of climate change is that the less you did to cause it the more you suffer from it. So we focus on the latest Presidential tweet or trade war instead of on the latest incremental rise in carbon dioxide, even though that, in the end, is the far more critical news. A one-day work stoppage—a decision to spend a day demanding action from governments or building a bike path—is a way to break out of that bad habit."

These kids protesting could have a big impact: A study found that children are effective at changing the minds of parents about climate change.

A new study found that the sea level may rise as much as seven-and-a-half feet by 2100 -- or twice as high by 2100 as predicted by the UN in a 2013 assessment. The study found that such a rise would permanently flood cities like New York, New Orleans, and Miami, as well as numerous other cities around the globe, causing hundreds of millions of refugees. On the bright side, the authors found this horrific sea level rise would only occur if nothing is done to lower emissions in intervening years. (Of course, on the other hand, nothing is being done.)

"What if reporters covered the climate crisis like Edward R. Murrow covered the start of World War II?" That was the question from Bill Moyers as Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation launched a new program to increase coverage of climate change.

:{

}:

The Trump administration moved to silence the head of the CDC's climate and health program -- but he is fighting back.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor and called for better media coverage of the climate crisis: "I have noticed this trend so I’ve begun keeping an eye on the Sunday shows’ coverage this year. Each month I look at how many substantive segments on climate change each show runs. It’s not good. In April, for instance, there were only two substantive segments on climate change across all five shows. They have basically become Sunday morning political gossip columns."

---

• "What if reporters covered the climate crisis like Edward R. Murrow covered the start of World War II?" That was the question from Bill Moyers as Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation launched a new program to increase coverage of climate change.
• The Trump administration moved to silence the head of the CDC's climate and health program -- but he is fighting back.
• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse took to the Senate floor and called for better media coverage of the climate crisis: "I have noticed this trend so I’ve begun keeping an eye on the Sunday shows’ coverage this year. Each month I look at how many substantive segments on climate change each show runs. It’s not good. In April, for instance, there were only two substantive segments on climate change across all five shows. They have basically become Sunday morning political gossip columns."

==

AN

Scientists at the United Nations’ intergovernmental body focusing on biodiversity sounded alarms earlier this month with its report on the looming potential extinction of one million species—but few heard their calls, according to a German newspaper report.

Deutsche Welle reported Thursday that partially because the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released its report on what it called nature’s “unprecedented” decline on the same day that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had their first child, news reports on the study’s grave implications were few and far between.

While some international and progressive outlets—including Common Dreams—published high-profile stories on the report when it was released, just two of Britain’s national newspapers included any reporting about biodiversity on their front pages on May 7, the day after the royal baby was born to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

ABC, NBC, and MSNBC did not air a single prime-time mention of the major new U.N. biodiversity report warning of ecosystem collapse. The new royal baby got airtime, though. By @theodorejay. https://t.co/EQPe2qnNJx #CoverClimate#CoveringClimate #ClimateCoverage #EndClimateSilence

— Lisa Hymas (@lisahymas) May 8, 2019

Deutsche Welle’sreport was mirrored by revelations in a Media Matters report published earlier this week which showed that ABC News devoted more time to covering the royal baby’s birth in the week after the child was born than it had to stories about the climate crisis in all of 2018—even as organizers like 16-year-old Greta Thunberg led worldwide climate strikes.

“Where [is] the breaking news?” tweeted Thunberg the day after IPBES released its report. “The extra news broadcasts? The front pages? Where are the emergency meetings? The crisis summits? What could be more important?”

Where are the breaking news?

The extra news broadcasts?

The front pages?

Where are the emergency meetings?

The crisis summits?

What could be more important?

We are failing but we have not yet failed.

We can still fix this.

But not if we continue like today.

Not a chance. https://t.co/qzeAJpJHei

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) May 7, 2019

IPBES’s report detailed how “The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever,” the panel’s chairman, Sir Robert Watson said in astatement.

By rapidly expanding livestock and crop production, degrading land, concentrating activity in urban areas at more than double the rate than two decades ago, and increasing pollution by tenfold since 1980, humans are “eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” Watson said.

In addition to the potential loss of one million species, the biodiversity crisis carries substantial risks for world economies, food security, and the spread of disease, scientists warn.

The report calls onpolicymakers to take immediate concrete action to protect nature by promoting sustainable agricultural practices, inclusive and equitable water management, renewable energy sources and other reforms.

On Wednesday, Democrats in the U.S. House attempted to call attention to the ecological crisis which is causing the rapid loss of life among millions of species, with a House Natural Resources Subcommittee holding a hearingon the issue, including testimony from Watson and other IPBES officials.

Biodiversity, Watson told the subcommittee, “is the substance behind food security, water security, it does control our climate in part, it does control pollination, it does control storm surges. These are things that affect everyday Americans. If we continue to lose biodiversity, if we continue to fragment our ecosystems, then human well-being will indeed suffer.”

“This is something the average American should care about,” he added.

But asThe Guardian reported, lawmakers at the hearing also heard from climate science deniers who had been invited to testify by Republican committee members, diluting the urgency of IPBES’s message.

Scientists have published more than 20,000 articles in 45 languages on the subject of biodiversity loss in recent years, Deutsche Welle reported.

Without the media reporting on and lawmakers expressing the urgency of the biodiversity crisis, the public has found little reason to become interested in the issue. The same day most news outlets devoted their coverage to the royal baby, Google searches for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle outnumbered those for biodiversity by 14 and 31 to one, respectively.

Deutsche Welle reported that while politicians and the news media have slightly increased the attention they’ve given to the climate crisis recently, under pressure from campaigners, the same consideration has not been given to biodiversity.

“Nature’s unprecedented decline, which has quietly sped up, is, in isolation, less dramatic than extreme weather events brought by global warming—such as flash floods and wildfires. Its contributions to humans are also hard to grasp,” reported Ajit Niranjan in the newspaper. “An obscure earthworm may form part of an ecosystem that keeps soil fertile and helps put food on our plates. But its death rarely stirs hearts the way a polar bear on melting ice does.”

With its latest report, IPBES aimed to change that perception.

“One of the great things about the report is that it highlights…the different ways we value nature,” environmental scientist Kathryn Williams told the outlet. “Not just tangible ways like food and clear air, but also the ways that we relate on a more emotional level.”

==

new 519

DN guk will no longer use term global warming vs crisis catastrophe? heating

==

==

new

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/saudi-arabia-beheaded-37-dissidents-last-month-and-u-s-media-called-them-terrorists/

Saudi Arabia executed 37 men on April 23, as it announced in a press release in its official gazette. The first line of the release read, “Saudi Arabia said it executed 37 citizens last Tuesday after they were convicted of terrorism.”

A cursory Google search would have shown that this assertion was completely false. But many in the U.S. press dutifully stenographed this claim into a headline:

• “37 Saudis Executed for Terrorism-Related Crimes”: Time (4/23/19)
• “Saudi Arabia Executes 37 in One Day for Terrorism”: New York Times (4/23/19)
• “Saudi Arabia Beheads 37 Prisoners for Terrorism Crimes”: PBS NewsHour (4/23/19)

In fact, by looking at court documents from the Saudi government, we know that of these 37 men, 11 of them wereaccused of being “Iranian spies,” and 22 were accused of participating in a demonstration during the Arab Spring. (These 33 belonged to the Shia minority; the others practiced Sunni Islam or could not be identified.)

Of the 22 men accused of protesting, six were juveniles at the time. Mujtaba Al Suweikat was on his way to study at Western Michigan University when the Saudi authorities arrested him and charged him with “inciting disloyalty to the king.”

Saeed Mohammed Al Skafi was 17 during the protests. One of the charges against him was “posting pictures of other detainees.” Most of the others were convicted of offenses like “chanting disloyal slogans about the king” and “using social media to incite demonstrations.”

Of the 11 convicted of being Iranian spies, they were also found guilty of farcical offenses such as “condemning the bloodshed” (in February 2012, Saudi forces in the Shia-majority Saudi governorate of Qatif had sprayed protesters with bullets) and saving images and documents of the protests (which are also available on YouTube) on their hard drives.

A

mong the other four people executed, Khaled Al Tuwairji, a Sunni, was accused of killing Maj. Gen. Nasser Othman. However, all three outlets repeated that he was a “Sunni extremist,” for which we have no other evidence. Al Tuwairji was tortured into a confession (Erem News, 4/23/19).  But all three outlets justified his execution and subsequent crucifixion by insisting that he was a convicted Sunni militant.

Another of the Sunnis executed, Khaled Al Farraj, was convicted on the vague charge of being affiliated with an outlawed terrorist organization. But even according to Saudi state media, he didn’t engage in any acts of terrorism. He is the only one of the 37 people executed who seems to have been charged with a terrorism-related offense.

PBS NewsHour (4/23/19)

Having false information in the headlines is extremely prejudicial. Studies have repeatedly shown that a large portion of readers do not read past the headlines — and those that do end up remembering the headline the most.

In its first version of the article, which has changed since then, the New York Times wrote of Saudi Arabia, “It listed the 37 men by name but provided little information about what specific crimes had been committed by whom or when.” Instead of relying on a Saudi press release, the Times could have tried a cursory web search — or even searched its own archives. In an article by the Times editorial board (8/3/17) nearly two years ago, it had a short biography of Mujtaba Al Suweikat, the “disloyal” Western Michigan student, and the specific crimes he had been charged with.

Though the Times article was edited after publication to include some information that didn’t come from the Saudi press release — citing a Human Rights Watch official’s concern that many of the cases “raised serious rights concerns,” for example — the revised article was still misleading. For example, in paragraph three, it stated, “Some men had been involved in bomb attacks on security headquarters that had killed officers, the [state news] agency said.” As far as we know, none of the 37 executed men had been involved in any bomb attacks, but the Times never challenged this Saudi government assertion.

Furthermore, the Times said that 14 of those killed had been arrested in relation to “sometimes violent protests.” It failed to mention that that violence came from the Saudi government.This video, from July 2012, clearly shows Saudi police. In searching through the news archives, articles have repeatedly mentioned protesters being shot by the Saudi police. There appear to be no reports (outside Saudi propaganda statements) of violence emanating from the protesters.

The articles in the Times, Time magazine and the NewsHour all mentioned Saudi-Iranian relations, thereby amplifying longstanding Saudi propaganda that accuses Shia of being naturally loyal to Iran, which is blamed for  “stoking unrest” to justify brutal crackdowns of the religious minority.

All three outlets also added gratuitous details about the attack in Sri Lanka and/or other ISIS-related attacks — attacks that there’s no suggestion any of the defendants were connected to. In fact, most of these defendants were arrested before ISIS existed. And a majority of those killed, being Shiites, would be viewed by ISIS as heretics. To bring up these attacks seems like a distraction from the topic of the stories, which is the Saudi government beheading people who have for the most part been accused mainly of being dissidents.

==

NEW

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/chris-hedges-and-matt-taibbi-the-rot-of-american-journalism-runs-deep/

RT

In the latest episode of “On Contact,” host and Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges sits down with Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone for the first of a two-part series on American media, which Hedges calls a “purveyor of hate.” Together they explore the ways in which Fox News has reshaped the industry in its own image, and how networks like MSNBC have come to tell viewers exactly what they want to hear. Hedges also devotes a portion of his segment to Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s seminal book, “Manufacturing Consent,” which remains no less essential several decades after it was first published. Watch a video of their conversation above.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/new-report-details-failure-of-cable-and-network-outlets-to-accurately-describe-climate-emergency-call-it-a-crisis/

no lnx twt

Name and shame.

That’s the dual directive from a new report that calls on news organizations to use appropriate language when discussing the climate crisis—even as the report calls them out for inaction.

The report—titled “‘Call It a Crisis’: The Role of U.S. Network News in Communicating the Urency of Climate Change” (pdf)—analyzed the coverage of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to determine just how much urgency the influential outlets bring to their reporting.

https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/public-citizen-call-it-a-crisis-report-april-29-2019.pdf

According to David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, the specific words that journalists and news anchors use—or choose not to use—matters.

“The words we use to characterize an issue make a difference in how it is perceived and prioritized politically,” said Arkush.

When outlets with massive nightly audiences like the ones the report studied “consistently fail to use language that conveys that climate change is a crisis or emergency,” Arkush added, “they unwittingly put a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of complacency and inaction.”

Fox News was the worst offender, with the use of “climate crisis” coming in for only five mentions during the coverage period—all of which, as Public Citizen noted, were efforts to “minimize the issue with false logic, mockery or misinformation.” But other news networks weren’t much better than the conservative channel.

The only network to use the term in double digits was CNN, and only 16 of the 26 mentions were by a host. Van Jones, whose eponymous show ran every other Sunday during the survey period, accounted for six of those mentions.

Public Citizen

?

@Public_Citizen

NEW REPORT: In 2018, only 50 of 1,429 national TV news segments used the word “crisis” or “emergency" when discussing climate change. That's a measly 3.5 percent.

Here's how the networks stack up:

MSNBC: 7%

NBC: 6%

CNN: 3%

CBS: 3%

ABC: 2%

Fox: 2%http://pubc.it/2XTXQEE

55

12:23 PM - Apr 29, 2019

50 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Networks should name the problem clearly to avoid confusion, said Allison Fisher, outreach director for Public Citizen’s Energy Program.

“Climate coverage on broadcast and cable television news is still at best spotty and at worst riddled with misinformation,” Fisher said. “Calling it a crisis indicates that the stakes are high and that the issue is urgent. Most of all it signals to viewers that the time to act on climate is now.”

How to report on the climate crisis has long been an issue for news organizations. In July 2018, MSNBC host Chris Hayes said on Twitter that while he was personally invested in the story, the topic was “a palpable ratings killer.”

“So the incentives are not great,” said Hayes.

Chris Hayes

?

@chrislhayes

Replying to @elongreen

almost without exception. every single time we've covered it's been a palpable ratings killer. so the incentives are not great.

526

7:08 AM - Jul 24, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy...

==

new

jrnl fail

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/new-study-exposes-how-the-media-is-complicit-in-trumps-assault-on-reality/

When using social media to report on President Donald Trump’s comments, many major corporate media outlets often succeed only in amplifying his misinformation and lies instead of setting the record straight, according to a new study.

After examining about 2,000 tweets from more than 30 Twitter accounts controlled by major news sources over three weeks earlier this year, Media Matters for America (MMFA)reported Friday that the accounts simply spread Trump’s lies 65 percent of the time, without providing context or disputing his remarks.

Study: Major media outlets’ frequently amplify false Trump claims on Twitter https://t.co/M3vSST2tTV pic.twitter.com/EAHR7cTqLn

— Media Matters (@mmfa) May 3, 2019

You aren’t imagining it. Major news outlets amplify false or misleading Trump claims without debunking them an average of 19 times per day. https://t.co/8OV2FFVBMN**

The group found Trump’s lies about subjects including the Mueller report, North Korea, and his claim that former President Barack Obama was spying on him were amplified by NBC, ABC,and other sources more than 400 times over the course of the study, or an average of 19 times per day.

The findings left MMFA convinced that the news media is failing during Trump’s presidency in many of the same ways it did during his 2016 presidential campaign.

“News outlets are still failing to grapple with a major problem that media critics highlighted during the Trump transition: When journalists apply their traditional method of crafting headlines, tweets, and other social media posts to Trump, they end up passively spreading misinformation by uncritically repeating his falsehoods,” said Rob Savillo, a senior fellow and data analyst at MMFA, who co-authored the report.

This is a pretty damning article and one that suggests that #Trump‘s nonstop propaganda (a nice word for lies) can is being aided the news media. #journalism #journalists #emjrn https://t.co/W47NPkhVVh

— Jerry Lanson (@jerrylanson) May 3, 2019

About 30 percent of the tweets MMFA examined contained quotes from the president, with the quotations often making up the entire tweet.

The findings have major implications for how the press is helping Trump to spread misinformation, MMFA said, pointing to anearlier study by the American Press Institute which showed that manysocial media users only read a tweeted article’s headline or the text within a post instead of reading whatever context exists in an article, which outlets often link to in their tweets.

“The way people consume information in the digital age makes the accuracy of a news outlet’s headlines and social media posts more important than ever,” wrote Savillo and co-author Matt Gertz. “But journalists are trained to treat a politician’s statements as intrinsically newsworthy, often quoting them without context in tweets and headlines and addressing whether the statement was accurate only in the body of the piece, if at all.”

Most of the lies were spread after Trump hosted informal news briefings known as press gaggles and after his interviews with the press. News outlets passed along his false statement without debunking them 92 percent of the time during the former and 73 percent of the time during the latter.

The online news source The Hill amplified the most lies and misinformation, according to MMFA. The website’s Twitter account sent 40 percent of the misleading or false tweets containing Trump’s quotes or ideas, and passed along incorrect information from the president 88 percent of the time it tweeted about him.

“The Hill also frequently resends the same tweet at regular intervals, not only amplifying his falsehoods, but also making it more likely that the misinformation will stick with its audience through the power of repetition,” wrote Savillo and Gertz.

ABC News amplified Trump’s lies about 74 percent of the time, and even major cable networks that spread misinformation less frequently did so more than half the time. NBC News amplified bad information 52 percent of the time it tweeted about Trump and MSNBC did so 55 percent of the time.

NPR and the Washington Post were among the best performers. The Post disputed the president’s claims 33 out of the 37 times it tweeted about them, and NPR tweeted Trump’s quotations only 20 times. The outlet corrected Trump’s false statements all four times it shared them with the public.

“The results were striking,” the researchers wrote, “demonstrating that media outlets have a serious, ongoing problem dealing with passive misinformation.”

==

NEW

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-corporate-media-is-preparing-to-repeat-the-mistakes-it-made-in-2016/

Continuing a firm tradition of admitting no mistakes in the 2016 campaign season, and certainly offering up no apologies for glaring errors that were made, most news organizations have played down the pivotal and almost jovial role they played in marketing Russian hackers who stole Democratic National Committee emails during the last presidential election cycle. The collective shrug comes in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian election interference, which offered up even more details regarding the brazen act of foreign sabotage. It was a campaign dirty-trick operation that only worked because the media so willingly played along as they piled on Hillary Clinton and hyped the stolen DNC emails as hugely important.

With the media’s stubborn insistence that they did nothing wrong in eagerly amplifying the work of Russian hackers, the threat looms for a repeat in 2020—and it’s not just hypothetical. For the third time in three years, House Democrats have tried to get Republicans to support a pledge not to use hacked materials against opponents in 2020. And for the third time in three years, Republicans have refused.

And there’s this:

Vice President Mike Pence refuses to answer if 1) he regrets using hacked emails during the 2016 campaign & 2) if he pledges not to do so in the next presidential campaign. He walked away upon attempted follow-up. pic.twitter.com/l2TficTFn2

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) April 24, 2019

Continuing a firm tradition of admitting no mistakes in the 2016 campaign season, and certainly offering up no apologies for glaring errors that were made, most news organizations have played down the pivotal and almost jovial role they played in marketing Russian hackers who stole Democratic National Committee emails during the last presidential election cycle. The collective shrug comes in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian election interference, which offered up even more details regarding the brazen act of foreign sabotage. It was a campaign dirty-trick operation that only worked because the media so willingly played along as they piled on Hillary Clinton and hyped the stolen DNC emails as hugely important.

With the media’s stubborn insistence that they did nothing wrong in eagerly amplifying the work of Russian hackers, the threat looms for a repeat in 2020—and it’s not just hypothetical. For the third time in three years, House Democrats have tried to get Republicans to support a pledge not to use hacked materials against opponents in 2020. And for the third time in three years, Republicans have refused.

And there’s this:

Vice President Mike Pence refuses to answer if 1) he regrets using hacked emails during the 2016 campaign & 2) if he pledges not to do so in the next presidential campaign. He walked away upon attempted follow-up. pic.twitter.com/l2TficTFn2

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) April 24, 2019

Incredibly, when pressed last week about whether they plan to change guidelines for how to treat stolen documents from foreign adversaries during an election season, most news outlets signaled that very little has changed for 2020, with CNN reporting that “Most of the news organizations that CNN Business contacted for this story did not reveal any sweeping changes to its rules about publishing hacked materials since the 2016 election.”

And make no mistake, the looming threat of hacks—and how the press plays them—poses a bigger threat to Democrats than it does to Republicans.

Fact: If it had been well-known in the summer of 2016 that Iranian operatives had hacked into Republican Party emails and were disseminating the contents in order to harm Trump’s campaign, it’s doubtful a single major news outlet in this country would have published the emails, let alone excitedly published them day after day. There’s just no way they would have wanted to draw the wrath of Trump and the right-wing noise machine, both of whom had already made press-bashing a central tenet of the campaign season. The idea that, in that scenario, news organizations would have publicly sided with agents of the Iranian government to try to sink a Republican’s White House campaign just isn’t believable. That speaks to the blatant double standard the press uses when dealing with Democrats and Republicans, and specifically when it comes to dealing with Democrats and a media bully like Trump.

In the wake of 2016, the simplistic media defense has been that the hacked Democratic emails were in the public realm and contained newsworthy information, and that therefore the decision to publish was an easy one. Set aside the idea that the press wildly overhyped the significance of the emails in order to juice up its coverage, which dragged on for weeks and months: The key to the 2016 saga was that the emails were stolen by a foreign adversary, which then used the willing U.S. media to carry out its attack on an American election and to help Trump win. And that’s the part of the equation the press remains unmoved on to this day.

The favorite excuse from editors and journalists has been that they didn’t know they were being used by the Russians in 2016, which is not at all believable. “We didn’t know then what we know now,” New York Timesexecutive editor Dean Baquet claimed in 2018. “Obviously the origins of the emails are a far bigger story than what was contained in them. But we didn’t know that at the time.” Amy Chozick, who covered the Clinton campaign for the Times, later described herself as “an unwitting agent of Russian intelligence.”

“We didn’t know”? “Unwitting”? That’s nonsense. In June 2016, a cybersecurity firm hired by the Democratic National Committee posted a public notice that concluded that the hack had been carried out by two groups associated with Russian intelligence. And in July 2016, top U.S. officials were confirming that Russians were behind the illegal attack on the DNC. Yet for months, lots of news outlets played dumb in order to cobble together some sort deniability, and in order to ignore the obvious question of whether they were actively helping a foreign adversary undermine an American election. (Answer: Yes, they were.)

Weeks after the election, David Lauter, the Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, insisted, “The fact that [the emails are] coming from an unsavory source doesn’t mean that the information isn’t accurate.” That kind of cavalier attitude suddenly doesn’t sound so convincing in the wake of Mueller’s report and the extraordinary portrait it paints of Russian intelligence doing everything possible to wreck an American election and hoping the U.S. media would actively play along.

Note this passage from Mueller’s report: “GRU (the Russian intelligence agency) officers using the DCLeaks persona gave certain reporters early access to archives of leaked files by sending them links and passwords to pages on the dcleaks.com website that had not yet become public.”

What unfolded in 2016 was almost comically breathless coverage of the emails, even though those pushing the hacked material often conceded that none of the “emails has so far actually broken any fresh scandals about the woman on track to be the next president,” as Vox stressed in a 3,700-word email story in 2016. Vox simultaneously insisted the email revelations were “ugly” and assured readers they were “not going to sink Clinton’s campaign.” (Wrong on both accounts.)

And that’s a key. The press saw the emails as a way to torment Clinton, whom many in the media did not like. The ironclad assumption was that she was going to win in November 2016, so for lots of journalists the Russian operation became an entertaining way to make sure her victory was tainted—to make sure she limped across the finish line and was not celebrated as a historic figure. So it went all-in, boosting Russian hackers who were peddling emails that detailed mundane and often pointless revelations about the Clinton campaign. All of it was done under the bogus banner of “breaking news,” and the phony claim that the emails provided a stunning look inside the Democratic operation.

According to those news outlets, they’re prepared to do the same thing all over again in 2020.

==

punked by api

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/03/branded-content-fossil-fuel-companies/

lerner

there  IT WAS in black and white ­— or black, white, and a palette of gentle greens and blues. With a headline predicting that natural gas “will thrive in the age of renewables,” the article made the case that there are limitations on solar and wind power and that — as a subhead spelled out in aquamarine type — natural gas “is part of the solution.” Why was the Washington Post weighing in on the need for continued production of this fossil fuel in the face of climate change?

:{

}:

Or was it? On closer inspection, the report wasn’t coming from the D.C. paper’s newsroom. Though the link takes you to a page published by WashingtonPost.com, the story is actually a publication of WP BrandStudio, the paper’s branded content platform. In other words, the article is really an advertisement, and the copy was paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. The tagline — “Content from American Petroleum Institute” — is plain to see if you’re looking for it, though easy to miss if you’re not.

It’s not surprising that the trade group representing the oil and gas industry would want to leap to the defense of natural gas now. The notion that the energy source is a “bridge fuel” that will somehow safely deliver us to wind and solar — and past the threat of climate change — has been vaporized by recent science.

The combustion of natural gas does in fact create less carbon dioxide than the burning of coal, as the API “article” notes, pointing out that “new natural gas plants emit 50 to 60 percent less carbon into the atmosphere than new coal facilities.”

But what the piece doesn’t mention is that the drilling, extraction, and transport of natural gas also releases methane. And though carbon dioxide is the best-known greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere longer than methane, methane traps at least 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide before it degrades.

Nor does it reference the fact that the amount of methane in the atmosphere has increased sharply in the past few years and, scientists warn, threatens to derail efforts to limit warming. While there are questions as to which of several global sources of methane — including cows, wetlands, and coal mines — is driving the recent spike in emissions, evidence has tied it to the boom of natural gas production. And that in turn has led many scientists to assail the idea that natural gas is a “greener” fuel. In fact, depending on the leakage rate during production, natural gas may be even worse for the climate than coal.

“This idea that natural gas is better than coal is just a distraction,” said Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist at Cornell whose has tied the particular type of methane newly found in the atmosphere to shale gas production. “If you’re serious about keeping the planet below 2 degrees of warming, you can’t do that without cutting down on methane. We need to move away from all fossil fuels as quickly as we can.”

Not surprisingly, the Washington Post piece — or rather, the American Petroleum Institute piece in the Washington Post — doesn’t include any comments from independent scientists like Howarth. Instead, it quotes Wayne Winegarden, a businessperson affiliated with climate-denying organizations such as the Heartland Institute and the Pacific Research Institute.

Fossil fuel companies aren’t the only ones using stories that appear to be part of a journalistic publication, but are actually paid for by advertisers in attempt to improve an image suffering in the coverage done by actual journalists. Native advertising, as it’s called, has spread misinformation on everything from the “superfood” moringa to Thai seafood slavery, and has raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.

And WP BrandStudio, which has also produced spots for BP and Lockheed Martin, is hardly the only example of a branded content shop associated with a mainstream newspaper helping fossil fuel companies spin their message. T Brand Studio, a brand marketing unit within the New York Times, has produced pieces for Chevron,, and.

[pix

sponsored  content by the American Petroleum Institute, published on the Washington Post’s website.

Screenshot: The Intercept]

At a time when many publications are struggling to stay afloat — and cover the costs of environmental reporting — native advertising is an increasingly important piece of the financial puzzle. The paid features that mimic actual reporting brought in 20 percent of all advertising income for news media organizations in 2017, according to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers and the Native Advertising Institute.

But the issue of fossil fuel companies’ massive spending to greenwash their image is quickly heating up as scientific evidence — and unbiased reporting on it — is pointing to the need to phase out fossil fuels as soon as possible. Industry trade groups spent almost $1.4 billion on PR, advertising and communications contractors over the past decade, according to the Climate Investigations Center, almost half of which came from the American Petroleum Institute.

The five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies have spent some $1 billion on “narrative capture” and lobbying since the Paris Agreement was struck in 2016, according to a report published this month by Influence Map. That spending includes $195 million on “often misleading branding campaigns.”

Even before they kicked into high gear to counter the growing public awareness of climate change, some oil and gas companies were engaged in sly, aggressive, and destructive media efforts to counter their opponents.

In 2014, Chevron launched a publication that appears to exist for the sole purpose of defending its refinery in Richmond, California. The refinery had a long history of chemical leaks, fires, dangerous emissions, and unsafe conditions before a leak led to a massive explosion in 2012. The incident sent a “toxic fireball of smoke” over Richmond and prompted 15,000 residents to seek medical help, as the East Bay Express reported after the federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board issued its final report on the incident in 2015.

But the Richmond Standard, a local publication Chevron launched in 2013, didn’t cover the report that way — and doesn’t appear to have covered it at all. The Standard “produces news about what is going on in the surrounding community,” according to Braden Reddall, an external affairs advisor for Chevron. And a recent edition of the site, which included an article on the announcement of a date for the coming Little League parade and a review of the local hot dog joint, bears that out.

Despite appearing to be an unbiased news source, the Standard also includes a section of feel-good news about the refinery that includes no mention of the health and safety issues other publications have reported as linked to the refinery. Chevron’s Reddall pointed out in an email that the section on the refinery is “clearly marked as editorial under the ‘Chevron Speaks’ heading.” His email also noted that “The West Contra Costa County region has embraced the publication.”

But not all locals have a positive view of the Standard. “They created it so they could control the narrative,” said Greg Karras, senior scientist at Communities for a Better Environment, a group that has been calling attention to health impacts of the refinery for decades. “When there’s something they want or don’t want and is really important to the business, they want their story about it to get out, rather than rely on independent reporting.”

Chevron seems to have had an even darker purpose in mind when it created the Amazon Post. The website, which has a “breaking news” column and “most read” section, identifies itself in small type as “Chevron’s Views and Opinions on the Ecuador Lawsuit.” But the Post’s real purpose appears to be the targeting of Steven Donziger — an attorney with whom the company has been engaged in a pitched legal battle over massive pollution in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador for more than two decades.

Chevron’s Reddall says that the company maintains the Amazon Post “to express the company’s views and opinions on a fraudulent lawsuit against the company in Ecuador” and that “the information about Steven Donziger chronicles his long history of illegal activity.”

For his part, Donziger, who was part of a legal team that won a $9.5 billion judgment in the Ecuadorian courts against Chevron over the pollution, says that the Post is just one of the tools the giant energy company has used to personally and professionally destroy him. While three Ecuadorian courts, including the highest court in the land, upheld the judgment, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled that it should not be enforced because parts of it were “corruptly ghostwritten” in return for the promise of a bribe.

Chevron, which has employed at least 2,000 lawyers and legal personnel from more than 60 firms to work on litigation around the pollution in Ecuador, also filed a lawsuit against Donziger in 2011 alleging that he won the judgment in Ecuador through fraud and racketeering. Kaplan decided the case in Chevron’s favor in a trial held without a jury. And recently that decision was the basis for Donziger having his legal license suspended without a hearing and his bank account frozen. While Donziger has denied that he committed misconduct and contested his suspension in court, the company has delighted over his suffering in the Amazon Post.

There may soon be more fossil fuel company publications entirely devoted to smearing the reputation of individuals, according to Robert Brulle. “They’re likely going to attack Alexandria Ocasio Cortez personally and demonize her. They’ve already begun that,” said Brulle, a sociologist and visiting professor of environment and society at Brown University. “It’s an old strategy — to delegitimize your opponents.”

Brulle also thinks that there will soon be more native advertising from oil and gas companies, which he classifies as “classic propaganda.” “We’re going to see a lot more from API, Exxon Mobil, and other companies,” said Brulle, who notes that the share of oil and gas industry spending on think tanks, such as Heartland, is about a tenth of its expenditures on communications. “As the threat of possible change to the fossil fuel industry increases, they ramp up their resources.”

And of course, change to our energy system is not just possible — it’s necessary.

“Nations have barely a decade to take ‘unprecedented’ actions and cut their emissions in half by 2030 to prevent the worst consequences of climate change,” as a December article about the climate talks in Poland explained. That article appeared in the Washington Post — the real one.

==

NEW

For the ‘:{political-infotainment:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent;white-space:nowrap"):}:-media complex,’ the Mueller investigation was a gold mine

Matthew Jordan, Pennsylvania State University

For the rest of us, it's another sign of the country's eroding media and political landscape.

==

neglected category, promoted primary 5/16

capt 419

see media bias and lamestream (need to be disambig)

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-coverage-of-the-barr-memo-shows-the-media-learned-nothing-from-its-2016-failures/

After sprinting out to erroneously announce that special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation had delivered ”total exoneration” for Trump, news outlets are now busy walking it all back as it becomes increasingly clear that the press was willingly duped by the administration. Released on March 24, Attorney General William Barr’s skeletal, four-page summary—essentially a press release—in no way should be viewed as a definitive synopsis of Mueller’s 400-plus page report. With news that some players on Mueller’s normally tight-lipped team are privately grumbling that Barr has misrepresented the Russia report to the public, and that the report may contain far more ”alarming” evidence of obstruction of justice than Barr first suggested, journalists once again stand exposed, guilty of naïvely accepting the word of an official working for an administration that lies about everything.

And yes, we’ve seen this unsettling show before, namely during the 2016 presidential campaign season. Following that debacle, most in the press refused to concede mistakes had been made, let alone offer up much serious self-reflection. It’s simply not possible for news organizations to screw up as badly as they did in 2016, not deal with the shortcomings, and then expect journalism during the Trump era to improve. During the campaign, the media failures  were manifest—they treated Trump like a celebrity and let him essentially get away with running a substance-free campaign, while every Hillary Clinton utterance was dissected in on obsessive search for hypocrisy and bad faith. Additionally, the press essentially eliminated policy coverage for Clinton because they spent so much time on their blind “But Her Emails” pursuit. (The Clinton coverage was also wildly sexist.)

To this day, most in the media have not summoned the proper courage to properly deal with a congenital liar like Trump. And so, three years after the campaign, we’re once again watching as the Beltway press fumbles through another Trump-related failure. And not just any failure: They’re bungling what might be the most important story of the Trump presidency, since in theory, the Mueller report has the power to end Trump’s time in office.

In this case, the Barr failures were immediate. Rather than going with accurate headlines, such as “Trump’s attorney general claims Mueller has cleared the president,” newsrooms just tossed all context aside and ran with GOP-friendly proclamations: “Mueller finds no conspiracy” (Washington Post), “Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (New York Times),” Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy” (Politico), “Mueller doesn’t find Trump campaign conspired with Russia” (Wall Street Journal), “Mueller finds no Trump collusion, leaves obstruction open” (Associated Press).

Overnight, journalists somehow collectively decided that a four-page summary—typed up by a partisan official who read the special counsel report—was the same thing as seeing the special counsel report. It was truly astonishing. I can guarantee you that if then-Attorney General Janet Reno had announced she had read the Starr Report in 1998, issued a four-page summary, put it under lock and key, and basically told everyone to go home, there would’ve been Beltway newsroom revolution in the streets.

The press seemed obsessed with erasing the middleman, Barr, from the story after Mueller delivered his report to the DOJ, as well as pretending it was Mueller and his staff who had handed down sweeping conclusions about Trump’s supposed innocence. Wrong. Indeed, virtually lost in the media’s “exoneration” stampede was any serious examination of Barr’s bizarre role in what now looks like an attempted cover-up. Trump’s hand-picked attorney general didn’t simply arrive at the DOJ out of the blue.

Last June, Barr sent an unsolicited, 20-page memo to the Department of Justice, stating Mueller’s investigation was “fatally misconceived” and “grossly irresponsible.” Barr explained, in great detail, why he thought Trump could not be indicted for obstruction of justice.

In November, Trump suddenly ousted Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, giving no specific reasons for the move. It had been clear for months that Trump was furiousthat Sessions had recused himself from the Russia probe, which meant Trump’s then-attorney general was not in a strong position to protect him. The following month, Barr, fresh off his memo assuring Trump that he should never been charged with obstruction of justice, got tapped as the new attorney general; he promptly announced that he had decided, after looking at the Mueller evidence, not to indict Trump for obstruction of justice. This isn’t some mysterious, Rubik’s Cube-type riddle: Trump wanted a concrete backstop at the DOJ to protect him, and today, that’s Barr’s job. The corruption is all out in the open.

Journalists quickly started announcing what the Mueller report did and did not ”confirm,” despite the fact that no journalists had read even a single sentence of the findings. The “Mueller report is out,” CBS News announced. Wait, what? Journalists, who typically demand access to documents when evaluating investigations, were making sweeping conclusions based on the Barr press release.

After the New York Times announced Barr’s findings somehow represented a “powerful boost” to Trump, the paper hit Democrats for ”downplaying Mr. Mueller’s findings,” while matter-of-factly detailing “The Mueller Report’s Findings,” as if those were verifiable things. It was complete Twilight Zone stuff, making one wonder what Times newsroom conversations sounded like: “We haven’t read the report but we think it’s a ‘powerful boost’ for Trump, and Democrats are being sore losers for not accepting Barr’s spin.”

What was so telling though, was that the public didn’t buy what Trump and the press corps were selling. Polling quickly showed that most Americans didn’t see the Barr memo as proof that Trump had been exonerated. In fact, by a margin of 2-to-1, Voters said that even the Barr summary of the Mueller report made them ”less likely” to vote for Trump in 2020. Maybe that’s because most Americans saw through the charade—why would the administration keep secret a report that supposedly cleared the president? It makes no sense. If voters could see that, why couldn’t journalists? (Unsurprisingly, Trump’s approval rating didn’t budge, despite the supposed “exoneration.”)

The Trump administration lies about everything. And yet every new pronouncement from them seems to be treated as truth. The press could and should have learned important lessons from Trump’s 2016 campaign with regard to dealing with someone who doesn’t bother with formalities like honesty and transparency. Instead, by refusing to reflect on their 2016 failings, the media just keeps stumbling into more.

3/19

In a welcome change, MSNBC had a town hall directly related to climate change. Chris Hayes talked with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) about the Green New Deal, and debunked a lot of right-wing smears. Fox News has already had a meltdown about it. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez made the sensible point that America had a massive response to thousands of Americans dying on September 11, 2001, but has not had much of a response at all to thousands of Americans dying in Puerto Rico as a result of climate-linked Hurricane Maria. Fox & Friends was furious at the comparison, with a guest even calling her "shrill" and then declaring that man-made climate change is a hoax. This entire episode matters: Fox News is driving conversation around the Green New Deal because other news outlets generally are sitting out the discussion. So it's important to call this out and have a real, serious discussion about climate change.

==

FAIR Studies

FAIR studies explore particular media issues or outlets in-depth, adding hard numbers to debates over media content and journalistic practices.

MARCH 20, 2019

When They Don’t Ignore, US Media Often Disparage Palestinians’ Right of Return

GREGORY SHUPAK

When They Don’t Ignore, US Media Often Disparage Palestinians’ Right of Return

When the right of return is mentioned in media, pundits and other journalists often baselessly call its legitimacy into question.

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OCTOBER 10, 2018

Publishing Police Press Releases as Local ‘Crime’ Reporting

ADAM JOHNSON

Publishing Police Press Releases as Local ‘Crime’ Reporting

Block Club Chicago suffers, particularly on the issue of “crime” reporting, from the same stunted ethical scope all other local corporate media does. Again and again, Block Club’s “crime” reporting consists of simply copy-and-pasting Chicago police blotters about alleged crimes, with no effort to report any side other than the police’s.

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SEPTEMBER 18, 2018

Morning Edition’s Think Tank Sources Lean to the Right

JORDAN HOLYCROSS AND OLIVIA RIGGIO

Morning Edition’s Think Tank Sources Lean to the Right

Thirty-five percent of think tank sources on NPR’s morning news show were from conservative or center-right groups, while 19 percent involved progressive or center-left groups.

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JULY 20, 2018

Calls to Abolish ICE Get Cold Shoulder on Newspaper Opinion Pages

JORDAN HOLYCROSS

Calls to Abolish ICE Get Cold Shoulder on Newspaper Opinion Pages

Of the 90 opinion pieces on the subject of ICE that were published in papers across the US from June 28 to July 18, 85 were explicitly against abolishing ICE, while only five were supportive.

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JULY 17, 2018

Child Separation Coverage Focused on Beltway Debate, Not Immigrant Voices

JORDAN HOLYCROSS

Child Separation Coverage Focused on Beltway Debate, Not Immigrant Voices

As corporate media dove into the child separation story, the voices of those impacted most by immigration policy were drowned out by soundbites from congressmembers and Trump administration officials.

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JUNE 21, 2018

Korean Voices Missing From Major Papers’ Opinions on Singapore Summit

ADAM JOHNSON

Korean Voices Missing From Major Papers’ Opinions on Singapore Summit

In major-paper opinion coverage of the Singapore summit, the people with the most to lose and gain from the summit, the people whose nation was actually being discussed—Koreans—were almost uniformly ignored.

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APRIL 18, 2018

Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed

ADAM JOHNSON

Out of 26 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Zero Opposed

A survey by FAIR of the top 100 papers in the US by circulation found not a single editorial board opposed to Trump’s April 13 airstrikes on Syria. Twenty supported the strikes, while six were ambiguous as to whether or not the bombing was advisable. The remaining 74 issued no opinion about Trump’s latest escalation of the Syrian war.

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APRIL 13, 2018

Few to No Anti-Bombing Voices as Trump Prepares to Escalate Syria War

ADAM JOHNSON

Few to No Anti-Bombing Voices as Trump Prepares to Escalate Syria War

The curators of American public opinion at the three most influential broadsheets in the United States have decided that dissent from the build-up to new airstrikes on Syria is not really an opinion worth hearing.

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MARCH 9, 2018

West Virginia Strike Highlights Corporate Media’s Atrophied Labor Coverage

REED RICHARDSON

West Virginia Strike Highlights Corporate Media’s Atrophied Labor Coverage

The statewide teachers and school staffers strike in West Virginia—just concluded earlier this week with a stunning victory by the union—offers an ominous case study of the state of labor coverage in the national press.

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FEBRUARY 2, 2018

JOSHUA CHO

Media Consensus: Dreamers Weren’t Worth a Shutdown

The opinions showcased during the recent government shutdown in three major US newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal—showed a striking lack of concern for the fate of the Dreamers and many variations of the same take on the need for a “bipartisan compromise” for immigration reform.

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JANUARY 8, 2018

MSNBC Ignores Catastrophic US-Backed War in Yemen

BEN NORTON

MSNBC Ignores Catastrophic US-Backed War in Yemen

For the popular US cable news network MSNBC, the largest humanitarian catastrophe in the world is apparently not worth much attention—even as the US government has played a key role in creating and maintaining that unparalleled crisis.

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NOVEMBER 15, 2017

NYT’s Campus Free Speech Coverage Focuses 7-to-1 on Plight of Right

ADAM JOHNSON

NYT’s Campus Free Speech Coverage Focuses 7-to-1 on Plight of Right

A review of New York Times articles, columns, op-eds and reports shows a clear emphasis on documenting and condemning perceived suppression of conservative voices at American universities,

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SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

In Month After Charlottesville, Papers Spent as Much Time Condemning Anti-Nazis as Nazis

ADAM JOHNSON

In Month After Charlottesville, Papers Spent as Much Time Condemning Anti-Nazis as Nazis

Since the Charlottesville attack a month ago, a review of commentary in the six top broadsheet newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, LA Times, San Jose Mercury News and Washington Post—found virtually equal amounts of condemnation of fascists and anti-fascist protesters.

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JULY 28, 2017

World’s Richest Person Escapes Scrutiny From His Own Paper–and Its Rivals

ADAM JOHNSON

World’s Richest Person Escapes Scrutiny From His Own Paper–and Its Rivals

A review of 190 articles about Amazon.com from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Bezos-owned Washington Post over the past year paints a picture of almost uniformly positive–ofttimes boosterish–coverage.

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JUNE 1, 2017

Media Served as Echo Chamber for Trump Nominees

JOSHUA CHO

Media Served as Echo Chamber for Trump Nominees

A new FAIR study finds that Republicans dominated coverage of Donald Trump’s appointments, with GOP partisans making up 47 percent of total sources and outnumbering their Democratic counterparts by a 5-to-2 ratio.

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APRIL 11, 2017

Out of 47 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Only One Opposed

ADAM JOHNSON

Out of 47 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Only One Opposed

Of the top 100 US newspapers, 47 ran editorials on President Donald Trump’s Syria airstrikes last week: 39 in favor, seven ambiguous and only one opposed to the military attack.

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APRIL 7, 2017

Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes–Zero Are Critical

ADAM JOHNSON

Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes–Zero Are Critical

Five major US newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and New York Daily News—offered no opinion space to anyone opposed to Donald Trump’s Thursday night airstrikes. By contrast, the five papers ran a total of 18 op-eds, columns or “news analysis” articles (dressed-up opinion pieces) that either praised the strikes or criticized them for not being harsh enough.

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MARCH 31, 2017

Study: Sean Spicer’s Handpicked Press Corps

MICHAEL CORCORAN

Study: Sean Spicer’s Handpicked Press Corps

A new FAIR study finds that 45 percent of the reporters Spicer called on were from conservative outlets. Fifteen percent of questions came from journalists working under the Fox brand.

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FEBRUARY 4, 2017

A Lesson Media Missed About the Dangers of Scapegoating

JIM NAURECKAS

A Lesson Media Missed About the Dangers of Scapegoating

An attack on a Canadian mosque could have provided a critical lesson in the fallacy, and the danger, of singling out particular categories of people. That is, if US media had paid more than passing attention to the story.

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APRIL 20, 2016

When ‘Both Sides’ Are Covered in Verizon Strike, Bosses’ Side Is Heard More

ADAM JOHNSON

When ‘Both Sides’ Are Covered in Verizon Strike, Bosses’ Side Is Heard More

Corporate media coverage of the Verizon strike illustrated the fundamental asymmetry of power that still exists between multi-billion-dollar corporations and comparatively small unions.

FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. We expose neglected news stories and defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, we believe that structural reform is ultimately needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.

Contact

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

124 W. 30th Street, Suite 201

New York, NY 10001

Tel: 212-633-6700

Email directory

==

classic wmd

https://fair.org/home/robert-dreyfuss-and-diana-duarte-on-the-medias-role-in-iraq-war/

==

Pathological Deceit: The NYT Inverts Reality on Venezuela’s Cuban Doctors

LUCAS KOERNER AND RICARDO VAZ

A New York Times “exposé” of Cuban doctors’ supposed interference in Venezuelan elections was riddled with inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations.

After debunking Washington’s lies about the burning of “humanitarian aid” trucks on the Venezuelan/Colombian border (more than two weeks after being scooped by independent journalists), the New York Times quickly reverted to form in an article by Nicholas Casey headlined “‘It is Unspeakable’: How Maduro Used Cuban Doctors to Coerce Voters” (3/17/19).

As the title not-so-subtly suggests, Casey claimed to present bombshell revelations regarding the Nicolás Maduro government’s alleged weaponization of Cuban medical personnel as a means of holding on to power. On closer inspection, however, the article is riddled with factual inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations.

Dubious claims of politicized healthcare

Relying on the testimony of three Cuban doctors who have defected from the Venezuelan/Cuban health mission and taken up residence in other countries, as well as 16 anonymous sources within Venezuela, Casey provides the reader with shocking vignettes of how Cuban medical personnel have supposedly been used to manipulate Venezuelan politics.

One central allegation is that the Barrio Adentro healthcare mission staff, most of them Cuban doctors, are denying patients care on the basis of political affiliations. One Cuban doctor currently residing in Chile told the Times that one patient was refused treatment “because she was from the opposition.” The only other evidence to substantiate this grave accusation is the account of an opposition mayor who claims he was “denied medication.”

As has been widely documented (Guardian, 10/13/15), defector testimonies are often unreliable, given the political stakes involved. Similar reservations apply to a politician aligned with an opposition spearheading a foreign-backed coup in Venezuela.

Likewise worthy of skepticism is Human Rights Watch Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco, whose quote, “it is unspeakable,” gives the piece its headline, though a reader might assume these were the words of an actual doctor. Human Rights Watch, whose revolving door with the US national security state is now notorious, can always be counted on to attack the Venezuelan government, though its charges have been debunked on several occasions.

Vivanco is an especially dubious source, given his extremely biased track record on Venezuela. Just over a decade ago, the HRW official was publicly rebuked by over 100 Latin America experts for a report on Venezuela that did “not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy or credibility,” which included similar sweeping allegations of politicized denial of care, based on the second-hand testimony of one individual.

Implausible electoral interference

The Times’ questionable allegations of denial of care quickly give way to even dodgier claims of Cuban doctors interfering in Venezuelan politics. “One former Cuban supervisor said that she and other foreign medical workers were given counterfeit identification cards to vote in an election,” Casey wrote, adding that Cuban doctors “were asked to vote with false identification” in 2013.

Anyone who knows how voting works in Venezuela would dismiss these allegations immediately. The first step upon entering a polling station is presenting ID and biometrically scanning fingerprints. Computerized voting screens will literally not open unless a valid fingerprint is presented. Cuban doctors, since they are of course not Venezuelans, would not have their fingerprints in the system, and thus not get past this first step. (It’s worth noting that Cuban doctors in Venezuela number roughly 30,000, in a country with an electorate of around 20 million, making the notion of a secret program to enable them to vote illegally in hopes of affecting electoral outcomes rather far-fetched.)

Another passage suggested a similar lack of familiarity with the Venezuelan electoral process:

On the day Mr. Maduro was elected to his first term, [a Cuban doctor] witnessed officials opening ballot boxes and tampering with votes, including destroying ballots that chose the opposition.

In Venezuela, the vote count is electronic, verified by paper receipts.

First off, there are no “ballot boxes” or “ballots,” because voting is fully automated. After the voter makes their selection on the computer screen, a paper receipt is printed and placed in a box. At the end of election day, 54 percent of all voting machines, chosen at random, have their electronic totals cross-checked with the paper receipts. Destroying the receipts (not ballots) would not serve any purpose, other than raising a red flag when they did not agree with the electronic tally. (If the Times’ source had bothered to name the voting center, one could check the results and confront the National Electoral Council with any discrepancy, since the paper tallies are kept for a number of years.)

Secondly, all parties or candidates have witnesses at every electoral center. At the end of the day, the witnesses and the electoral delegates all sign a certificate validating the results. In the case of the April 14, 2013 election, there was not a single electoral center where opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’ witnesses did not validate the results, nor any reports of destruction of ballots, perhaps because there are no “ballots.”

For someone who covers Venezuela regularly, Casey makes a remarkable number of errors in his account of the country’s electoral system. For example, he wrote, “In mid-2017, Mr. Maduro made a bid to consolidate power: a referendum for a second legislature to replace the opposition-controlled National Assembly.”

What took place on July 30, 2017, was an election, not a referendum, for a national constituent assembly, a body that is outlined in Articles 347–349 of the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution, and which is much more than a “second legislature.” Furthermore, the National Assembly was declared “null and void” by the Venezuelan Supreme Court in 2016 (BBC, 1/11/16), after defying a court order to unseat three legislators pending an investigation for electoral crimes.

Whitewashing opposition violence

Given their factual implausibility, Casey’s anonymously sourced claims of ballot-stuffing and illegal voting in the 2013 presidential election represent a thinly veiled maneuver to delegitimize Maduro’s victory, which was challenged by no country in the world except the United States—a fact that is conveniently omitted.

One unnamed source accused the Chavista government of “blackmail[ing]” voters that the opposition would eliminate the Barrio Adentro medical mission if Capriles won. Casey did not inform readers that the Venezuelan opposition has long vowed to suspend bilateral cooperation agreements with Havana should it come to power.

Cuban doctor hanged in effigy in Caracas. (The sign reads, “Out with Cuban ‘Doctors’!” (photo: News24.com, via Venezuelanalysis)

Nor did Casey mention the opposition’s repeated acts of violence against Cuban health professionals and clinics. Following Capriles’ US-sanctioned refusal to recognize the indisputable 2013 election results, and his call for his supporters to “discharge that anger” in the streets, seven people were killed in the ensuing street violence that saw 18 Cuban-staffed neighborhood health clinics set ablaze. The violent anti-government protests of 2014 likewise featured no less than 162 attacks against Cuban doctors, who were prominently lynched in effigy. In omitting these rather important details, Casey succeeded in inverting reality: He presented Cuban medical staff as witting or unwitting gendarmes of a brutal regime, rather than frequent victims of opposition violence.

This whitewashing of right-wing terror extended also to Casey’s framing of the 2017 anti-government mobilizations, which he said led to 100 deaths in a “government crackdown,” leaving out the numerous killings carried out by opposition supporters, including mob lynchings of Afro-Venezuelan men and sniper assassinations of Chavista activists.

In addition to relitigating the internationally recognized 2013 election, Casey repeated the now-boilerplate allegations of fraud in the 2018 presidential elections, pointing to opposition figures barred from running, with “Leopoldo López…dragged between house arrest and a military prison,” and Capriles “banned from running, along with most opposition parties.” Casey didn’t mention that López was convicted of inciting violence during the 2014 street protests, while Capriles was barred due to  corruption allegations that even the opposition has moved to investigate.

Casey’s highly selective picture of Capriles and López is particularly disingenuous, given that both politicians actively participated in the short-lived 2002 military coup, with the former leading an attack against the Cuban embassy, and both of them involved in the mob kidnapping of Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín. That alone would have disqualified them from holding political office anywhere else in the world.

It is also false that opposition parties were banned, since what was required of them was to revalidate their legal status by collecting a minimum number of signatures following their boycott of the December 10,  2017, municipal elections. Whether or not this was a political hurdle, some opposition parties, such as Acción Democrática, fulfilled it. And the fact remains that opposition candidates did run against Maduro, notably former Lara Gov. Henri Falcón, who was actively undermined by the hardline factions of the opposition, and was even threatened with US sanctions for defying the opposition boycott.

Erasure of sanctions

In an article explicitly dedicated to uncovering alleged foreign interference in Venezuelan state and society, it is ironic that Casey entirely omitted the most egregious form of external intervention: US sanctions. Since 2017, Trump’s financial sanctions have battered the healthcare system directly, with recurring cases of medicine shipments blocked or assets destined for imports frozen as a result of US financial crimes enforcement directives, according to Torino Capital chief economist Francisco Rodriguez. In one such case, the Venezuelan government denounced the freezing of $1.6 billion of its assets by Brussels-based financial services agency Euroclear, half of which was reportedly destined for medicine imports.

US economic sanctions also debilitate healthcare indirectly by decimating the Venezuelan economy overall. According to conservative estimates, US financial sanctions cost Venezuela at least $6 billion annually in lost revenues, or around six percent of GDP. For comparison, healthcare spending in Latin America averages approximately seven percent of GDP, and, prior to the crisis, Venezuela was importing around $2 billion in medicine per year. Rodriguez estimates that the new US oil sanctions, amounting to an effective trade embargo, will cost Venezuela an additional 15 percent in real GDP loss, for a cumulative contraction of 26 percent in 2019.

Despite his stated concern for the “politicization” of healthcare in Venezuela, Nicholas Casey doesn’t think it relevant to mention his own government’s deliberate effort to destroy the Venezuelan economy, further devastating the country’s fragile health sector and killing thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Venezuelans. Rather, the New York Times’ Andes bureau chief mobilizes anonymous sources and defectors—whose testimony ranges from dubious to preposterous—to further demonize Venezuela and provide cover for Washington’s murderous regime change policy.

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/03/11/How-broadcast-TV-networks-covered-climate-change-in-2018/223076

many graphs

no lnx

How broadcast TV networks covered climate change in 2018

Research ››› March 11, 2019 9:11 AM EDT ››› TED MACDONALD & LISA HYMAS

Broadcast TV news coverage of climate change plummeted 45 percent from 2017 to 2018, even as the climate crisis steadily worsened. The major news programs on the broadcast networks aired a combined total of just 142 minutes of climate coverage in 2018, or less than two and a half hours. Almost three-quarters of that coverage aired in just the last three months of the year. The networks did a particularly poor job of explaining how climate change exacerbates extreme weather; none of the networks' news reports on the major hurricanes of 2018 even mentioned climate change. The networks’ coverage was also lacking in diversity: Only 9 percent of the people featured in climate segments were people of color, and only 19 percent were women.

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

For this study, Media Matters examined 2018 news coverage of climate change on broadcast TV networks, counting and analyzing segments devoted to climate change and segments in which an employee of the network incorporated climate change. We analyzed coverage on the nightly news programs and Sunday morning political shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC. We also analyzed Fox Broadcasting Co.’s syndicated Sunday morning political show, Fox News Sunday. Fox Broadcasting Co. (which is separate from the Fox News cable channel) does not have a nightly news program, so overall there was far less Fox airtime to analyze.

Top trends from a year of broadcast TV news climate coverage

Key findings:

There was a 45 percent drop in climate change coverage on the broadcast networks’ nightly news and Sunday morning political shows from 2017 to 2018 -- from a total of 260 minutes in 2017 down to just 142 minutes in 2018.

Nearly a third of the time that the networks spent covering climate change in 2018, or 46 minutes, came from a single episode of NBC's Meet the Press on December 30 that was dedicated to discussion of climate change.

NBC was the only network that aired more minutes of climate coverage in 2018 than in 2017 -- an increase of 23 percent. CBS' time spent on climate coverage fell 56 percent from 2017 to 2018, Fox News Sunday's fell by 75 percent, and ABC's fell by 81 percent.

People of color made up only 9 percent of those who were interviewed, featured, or quoted in the networks’ climate coverage, and women made up only 19 percent.

None of the broadcast TV networks' news reports on hurricanes Florence or Michael mentioned climate change. Only nine of their segments reporting on other weather disasters of 2018 mentioned that climate change exacerbates extreme weather.

Almost three-quarters of 2018’s climate coverage occurred in the last three months of the year. Much of it focused on major climate science reports released by the United Nations and the U.S. government.

The links between national security and climate change were discussed only once in 2018, in an NBC segment. ABC and CBS did not mention that climate change poses serious threats to national security.

Solutions or actions offered in response to climate change were mentioned in only a fifth of climate segments aired on ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Climate change coverage fell significantly from 2017 to 2018

Coverage of climate change on the major broadcast networks declined 45 percent from 2017 to 2018. The programs aired a combined 142 minutes of climate coverage in 2018 -- less than two and a half hours. In 2017, the programs spent a combined 260 minutes on climate change. The decline would have been even steeper if not for the December 30 episode of NBC's Meet the Press, which devoted more than 46 minutes to discussing climate change.

...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/how-trumps-mastery-of-propaganda-makes-him-the-quintessential-republican/

kos

Trump is a master of propaganda, and in that respect he is the quintessential Republican — he truly is their leader because Republicans exist only by virtue of the force of their propaganda.

We keep reading that Trump is attacking the press but he really is defending himself from their attacks in two ways.  First, he is projecting his greatest strength and greatest weakness onto them, his incessant lying, to inoculate himself from charge that he is lying.  Second, he is putting them on the defensive by framing their legitimate charges against him as equivalent to partisan politics, politicizing the act of reporting of news.

The first aspect has worn a bit thin.  There is now widespread agreement that Trump lies when he opens his mouth.  But the second remains quite toxic and we need to do something about it.

This is doubly true because today’s press is made vulnerable to pressure due to their need to generate revenue, placing entertainment value above news content.

We just witnessed Howard Schultz, former head of Starbucks, ride an enthusiastic roller coaster of attention from the media.  And we are freaking out because this is a replay of how they provided Trump nonstop coverage from the day he threw his hat in the ring.

Just as alarming, he is mouthing the same platitudes about “both sides are equally broken and only I can fix things.”  Just like Trump he has no recognizable agenda beyond enriching himself.  And just like with Trump, the press can’t get enough of him.

So there is this inherent weakness in the institution of the fourth estate, this need to entertain both sides, that Trump is shining a spotlight on when he charges them with partisanship.  Just by making the attack they are immediately put on the defensive and react by looking for relief.

This is what Schultz and Trump offer, a story line that both sides are broken and only the entertainer in the “center” can fix things for them — not for society, but for the press.  The fact that Trump and Schultz have no agenda but enriching themselves is not a flaw but a feature because it eliminates the element of risk for the press going forward.  It is always easier to work with a corrupt tyrant than to be stuck between two warring camps and all the uncertainty that that entails.

On top of all of this, our knee jerk reaction to these attacks is to jump to the defense of the press, immediately inoculating the press from legitimate criticism from our side, thereby freeing them to react by shifting further to the right to embrace bothsiderism.

Of course the victim of this “fix” is the news itself, the Democratic Party, the American people and our democracy.  So what is the solution to this perverse dynamic?  Doing nothing is not the answer because we have just been through this and we know it doesn’t end well for us.

The answer is that we have to recognize the 800 pound gorilla in the room and begin a coordinated campaign at the highest levels of the Party to push back against faulty reasoning and faulty reporting in the press, as well as pushing back against blatant favoritism in how news time is being apportioned.  We have to shame them into behaving and doing their job.

We have to acknowledge that the Republicans are constantly applying pressure on the media to place propaganda above the news, to politicize the news and to report from a mythical “center” where only entertainment value holds sway.  And we have to push back, creating a new source of risk for the press — anger from the other side at their lack of objectivity.

We don’t hesitate to drop a billion dollars to elect our people, so why would we stand idly by as the press showers the likes of a Trump or a Schultz with billions of dollars in free advertising?  That makes no sense at all.  We need to up our game.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-ap-expunges-iran-contra-pardons-from-barrs-record-and-proves-how-little-interest-there-is-in-the-trajectory-of-presidential-power/

A president facing a major scandal, just as the highest-profile trial is about to begin, pardons the indicted or convicted officials around him to effectively stop the investigation that’s closing in on his own illegal conduct.

Trump soon? We’ll see. But this actually describes what President George H.W. Bush did in 1992.

The Iran/Contra scandal revealed, among other things, that the Reagan/Bush White House had secretly sold missiles to Iran in exchange for hostages held in Lebanon, using the proceeds to fund right-wing forces fighting the leftist Nicaraguan government in violation of US law.

On Christmas Eve 1992, just as the indicted former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was about to face trial, Bush pardoned him and five others, including former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and and former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. The New York Times (12/25/92) reported this as “Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Averting a Weinberger Trial; Prosecutor Assails ‘Cover-Up.’”

The attorney general for Bush who approved the pardons, William Barr, is now being nominated for the same position by Trump. Is this background relevant? Though current news columns are rife with speculation that Trump might likewise protect himself by pardoning his indicted or convicted associates, the dominant US news wire service doesn’t seem to think so.

In “Barr as Attorney General: Old Job, Very Different Washington” (1/14/19), Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker made no mention whatsoever of the Iran/Contra pardons. Rather than seriously examine the trajectory of presidential power and accountability, Tucker framed the story, as the headline indicates, as a stark contrast between the  gentlemanly Bush and the “twice-divorced” Trump:

Serving Trump, who faces intensifying investigations from the department Barr would lead, is unlikely to compare with his tenure under President George H.W. Bush.

The false implication is that Bush did not himself face intensifying investigations from Lawrence Walsh, who operated out of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Counsel.  The misleading comparison is compounded by Tucker describing Trump as “breaking with the practice of shielding law enforcement from political influence” and ousting Attorney General Jeff Sessions for “not protecting him in the Russia investigation”—as if Barr didn’t have direct experience in the first Bush administration with imposing political influence on law enforcement to protect a president from investigation.

Instead, Tucker cites Barr’s supporters calling him “driven by his commitment to the department” and “very much a law-and-order guy.” (The praise for the new head of the department Tucker regularly covers marks his article as a “beat-sweetener,” a long and unfortunate tradition of journalists’ making their jobs easier by sucking up to sources.)

This deceptive piece was apparently picked up by literally thousands of media outlets. A search of “unlikely to compare with his tenure under President George H.W. Bush” produces over 2,400 results.

As Consortium News founder Robert Parry, who broke much of the Iran-Contra story for AP, would later write in a review of Walsh’s book Firewall: Inside the Iran/Contra Cover-Up:

The Republican independent counsel [Lawrence Walsh] infuriated the GOP when he submitted a second indictment of Weinberger on the Friday before the 1992 elections. The indictment contained documents revealing that President Bush had been lying for years with his claim that he was “out of the loop” on the Iran/Contra decisions. The ensuing furor dominated the last several days of the campaign and sealed Bush’s defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton.

Walsh had discovered, too, that Bush had withheld his own notes about the Iran/Contra Affair, a discovery that elevated the President to a possible criminal subject of the investigation. But Bush had one more weapon in his arsenal. On Christmas Eve 1992, Bush destroyed the Iran/Contra probe once and for all by pardoning Weinberger and five other convicted or indicted defendants.

Parry, who died a year ago, left AP after many of his stories on Iran/Contra were squashed (Consortium News, 1/28/18).

After I criticized AP on Twitter for the omission, a later piece by Tucker, co-written with Michael Balsamo, noted perfunctorily in the 16th graph: “As attorney general in 1992, he endorsed Bush’s pardons of Reagan administration officials in the Iran/Contra scandal.” (A search on “as attorney general in 1992, he endorsed Bush’s pardons of Reagan administration officials in the Iran/Contra scandal” produced a mere 202 results.)

While much of the media obsesses over every bit of “Russiagate,” some breathlessly anticipating the next revelation will surely bring down the Trump presidency, it’s remarkable how little interest there is in the trajectory of presidential power.

Rather, much of the establishment media has gone to great lengths to rehabilitate officials from both Bush administrations, including the elder Bush himself when he died last month. (One exception to the generally hagiographic coverage of his death was Arun Gupta’s “Let’s Talk About George H.W. Bush’s Role in the Iran/Contra Scandal”— in The Intercept, 12/7/18.) Indeed, Trump naming Barr just after George H.W. Bush’s funeral could be seen as a jiu-jitsu move: How could anyone object to his nominating the AG of the just-sainted Poppy Bush? It’s as though Trump were saying, “If you all like him so much, I’ll have what he had.” See the Institute for Public Accuracy news release, “Barr as AG? Bush and Trump Dovetail.”

AP‘s actions also fit into the institution-protecting mode of what Parry derided as the “conventional wisdom”—which in its current formulation depicts Trump’s authoritarian tendencies as aberrations from the norms of US politics, rather than a continuation of the worst tendencies of his predecessors.

==

In 2018, the United States was clobbered by extreme weather events, and climate scientists are telling us that climate change is the core reason. But the issue was not mentioned nearly enough in key Senate and gubernatorial debates this election season.

Media Matters analyzed 78 tightly contested races in 2018 and found only 23 in which a moderator or panelist asked a question about climate change -- just 29 percent. This year’s results were a modest improvement over 2016, when only 22 percent of key debates we monitored included a question about climate change.

In light of an alarming report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that stressed the urgency of fighting climate change, it’s crucial that voters are equipped with accurate information regarding their candidates’ positions on energy and environmental issues.

As Media Matters’ Lisa Hymas and Evlondo Cooper explain, “With the 2018 election season coming to a close, we need journalists to further ramp up the focus on climate change. As new governors and members of Congress take their seats, they will have to make critical decisions about a rapidly changing electricity system, transportation networks, agriculture and land-use practices, and ways to make our communities more resilient in the face of disasters. Reporters should ask elected officials how climate change will factor into those decisions. And when the 2020 campaign season gets rolling, journalists and media outlets will have a crucial role to play in making sure that climate change is discussed in races from the local level all the way up to the presidency. As the recent IPCC report warned us, there's no more time to waste.”

==

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-journalists-covered-rise-mussolini-hitler-180961407/

How Journalists Covered the Rise of Mussolini and Hitler

Reports on the rise of fascism in Europe were not the American media’s finest hour

==

whoohoo go leslie:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/17/60-minutes-trump-says-not-denying-climate-change

Davies, Climate Investigations Center. Originally posted on Climate Investigations Center.

Climate change is coming at Trump even as he tries like hell to avoid the subject. Record-setting hurricanes, Florence and Michael, have caused devastation across the southeast United States. Meanwhile, the grim UN IPCC “1.5 degree” report pushed climate scientists into the headlines last week while Trump was out and about, apparently unleashed, talking to media.

Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, got the first big sit down interview and went at climate change right off the bat. Pivoting off Hurricane Michael and the IPCC report, Stahl pressed Trump to answer straight questions about climate change.

This is the most Trump has been forced to say on the subject of global warming since his Rose Garden celebration announcing that the U.S. would exit the Paris climate agreement, where he managed to barely mention climate change.

Overall, Trump responds to Stahl’s questions with the typical denier tropes, which he likely learned from Rush Limbaugh, Myron Ebell, Marc Morano, and the Heartland Institute:

“Somethings changing and it’ll change back again.”

“And you don’t know whether or not that would have happened with or without man. You don’t know.”

“We have scientists that disagree with that [anthropogenic climate change].”

“But it [climate change] could very well go back.”

“But I don’t know that it’s [climate change] manmade.”

“They say that we had hurricanes that were far worse than what we just had with Michael.”

“You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda, Lesley.”

Trump also deployed a empty economic argument against taking action, one commonly used by deniers:

“I will say this. I don’t wanna give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t wanna lose millions and millions of jobs. I don’t wanna be put at a disadvantage.”

Read the full 60 Minutes interview transcript.

Deniers Would Rather Trump Said Nothing

Trump said a couple of things the deniers don’t really want him to say, including:

“I don’t think it’s a hoax” and “I’m not denying climate change.”

Joe Bast, former CEO of the Heartland Institute, and his climate denier kin are happiest when the President doesn’t talk about it at all. A year ago, Bast provided his reason for applauding the President’s silence, quoted and memorialized in the video below:

“The President has done a great job by not talking about global warming. The less the President talks about it, the less often it appears in news stories and on TV, the less often its going to be an issue. So, this is how big issues disappear.'  Trump Questioned on Climate by Reporters in Georgia While Touring Hurricane Damage

Predictions for Hurricane Michael went from a predicted Category 1 on October 7 to making landfall at just below Category 5 three days later, surprising meteorologists and foiling predictive computer models.

While touring areas damaged by the massive storm in Georgia on Monday, reporters continued to press Trump on climate change and he continued trying to change the subject and inform us that he has “the cleanest air on the planet.”

...

ipcc report 10/8/18 check coverage 12 yrs

==

new report issued by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this week warned that if immediate and unprecedented action is not taken, the dire consequences of global warming will start to take effect within the next 20 years.

The landmark report dominated the environmental news beat this week, but its impact was not reflected in mainstream media coverage.

Unsurprisingly, Fox News did not cover the report until late Monday afternoon, when Shep Smith spent a few minutes on the topic, saying, “climate change is real, the situation is urgent, and time is running out. That's the new warning from a landmark United Nations report." Smith’s reporting was quickly watered down with correspondent Trace Gallagher describing the goals laid out in the U.N. report as “really unreasonable” and “draconian.”

While most TV networks are notoriously terrible when it comes to covering the real-life causes and impacts of climate change, Fox News stands out among the worst offenders. The network has spent years telling its viewers that global warming is a hoax. They have devoted coverage to undermining climate science across its platforms -- in 2012, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that 93% of Fox News' representations of climate science were misleading.

Fox was not alone in ignoring the climate report: 28 of the top 50 U.S. newspapers made no mention of it on their homepages, including 10 that serve cities listed among the "25 U.S. Cities Most Affected by Climate Change."

The predictions offered in the report would likely affect every American, but the media is largely unwilling or unable to dedicate substantive coverage to climate change and related environmental news. While there is clearly a hunger for climate change reporting--particularly on the responses and solutions to this global crisis--coverage is lacking, if not downright misleading, across every network.

Watch this: Fox News has spent years telling viewers that climate change is not real. We juxtaposed those lies with the dire warnings from the new climate report.

==

Coverage of Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation is even worse than the coverage of Brett Kavanaugh's nomination.

Outlets are minimizing the fact that he was credibly accused of sexual assault, puffing up Trump’s accomplishments, and rampantly deploying “both-sides” journalism.

The New York Times’ treatment seems particularly noxious, framing a dispute over whether the nominee had attempted to rape Christine Blasey Ford -- and if it should matter if he had -- as a “partisan battle.”

As Matt Gertz notes: "Pay close attention to the incentives this coverage creates for Trump. He demeaned a woman who says she was sexually assaulted to the cheers of his supporters, and some of the nation’s most powerful journalists rewarded him by saying he had the best week of his presidency and suggesting that his opposition’s flaws had been just as bad."

Also: Fox News whipped votes to get Kavanaugh over the finish line. Five years ago, that sort of thing would have been huge news. Now, it's just yet another example of the network turning into state media.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/msnbcs-rachel-maddow-reveals-how-media-was-complicit-selling-blatant-con-trumps

Trump sold himself to the country on the premise that he was a wildly successful business guru who could solve America's problems. The only problem is that none of it was true: He can't solve the country's problems, and his business success is far less impressive than he'd have you believe.

In fact, a bombshell story from the New York Times published Tuesday alleged that Trump attained much of his wealth through inheriting money from his parents — and used tax avoidance schemes and "outright fraud" to avoid giving much of that money to the government.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow pointed out Tuesday night one crucial part of the story that reveals the media's role in selling the con of Trump as a master businessman — a con that was later used to prop up his longshot presidential bid.

"The other reason this story about Trump's financial history hasn't really been told before — at least not in this level of detail — is because of what the Timesquite candidly describes as the history of Trump getting uncritical press coverage," she said.  "Particularly around his finances."

She added: "He has not been a financial genius. He has not been a great dealmaker. He has not been a great business mind. But he has been great at convincing the credulous press to describe him as such over a period of decades. And that big blustery PR effort was effective at disguising this blatant con that he played on the public for years, pretending to be some kind of self-made millionaire, or even self-made billionaire, when apparently he really isn't anything of the sort."

Watch the clip below:

==

mma Climate change is still the most crucial issue facing us. And yet, it can barely warrant a mention. Donald Trump was famously not asked a single question about climate change during all primary and general election debates in 2016. The Trump administration is now forecasting a massive increase in temperatures as a result of climate change -- and also saying that it is too late to do anything about it, so we may as well loosen fuel standards. Meanwhile, Trump is still yelling about ending a war on coal.

You would think that at some point, media figures would start asking about climate change in midterm debates. Once again, they're ignoring the issue, though. The first debate between Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Beto O'Rourke featured no questions at all about climate change.

Evlondo Cooper is tracking questions about climate change in debates -- and so far the results are bleak.

==

==

https://www.alternet.org/climate-change-turned-florence-monster-storm-corporate-media-avoided-story

That Hurricane Florence broke rainfall records for tropical storms in both North and South Carolina shouldn’t be surprising, as global climate change has increased extreme precipitation in all areas of the continental United States. One analysis released before the massive storm hit, by researchers at Stony Brook, Berkeley National Lab and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, projected that warming would cause Florence to bring twice as much rain compared to a similar storm with normal temperatures.

But news audiences were rarely informed about the contribution of human-caused climate disruption to the devastating storm, according to a study of hurricane coverage by Public Citizen. Less than 8 percent of Florence stories in the 50 top-circulation U.S. newspapers from Sept. 9 through Sept. 16 mentioned climate change — and only 4 percent of segments on major TV outlets.

The New York Times had the most Florence-related stories that made reference to climate change: 15 out of 75 stories, or 20 percent. By contrast, 19 of the top 50 papers had no stories on the hurricane that mentioned climate change, including the Chicago Tribune (out of 34 stories), Atlanta Journal-Constitution (28 stories), Orlando Sentinel (37 stories) and Miami Herald (21 stories). (Three California papers — the East Bay Times, San Jose Mercury News and Orange County Register — ran no stories on Florence.) Aside from the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer (six out of 32 stories) and Washington Post (four out of 49) were the only other papers to reference climate change in Florence stories more than three times.

ABC never referred to climate change in its coverage of Florence, Public Citizen found; its over-the-air colleagues did little better, with CBS and NBC airing one segment apiece that mentioned Florence and climate change together (out of 63 and 73 hurricane segments, respectively). MSNBC brought up climate in 13 percent of its Florence reports, considerably ahead of CNN’s 4 percent; Fox discussed climate in 10 percent of 51 segments on Florence, but, the study noted,  “All five of Fox News Network’s mentions of climate change were segments denying the relationship between the storm and climate change.”

“When outlets fail to connect these events to global warming, audiences are left uninformed about some of the most critical decisions we face,” David Arkush, who directs Public Citizen’s climate program, said in a statement. “We need a serious national discussion about the urgent, existential threat from climate change and how we are going to fix it — and it’s very difficult to have that conversation when media won’t talk about the topic.”

==

==

MMA

Is climate change amplifying the impact of hurricanes? Yes. Have the world’s leading climate scientists repeatedly warned us about climate change’s impact on extreme weather events? Yes. However, in the past, media outlets frequently failed to make this connection.

A 2017 Media Matters study found that neither ABC nor NBC aired a single segment on their morning, evening, or Sunday news shows from August 23 to September 7 that mentioned the link between climate change and hurricanes like Harvey, which made landfall on August 25 and earned the distinction of being the most extreme rain event in U.S. history.

As the frequency of severe hurricanes like Harvey, Irma, Maria and others continues to increase, media outlets have an even greater responsibility to contextualize natural disasters. They must give a platform to climate scientists and inform the public about the Trump administration’s efforts to destroy climate protections.

It's not a surprise that Sean Hannity hosts a climate denier, but it is contemptible. Furthermore, USA Today giving platforms to multiple climate change deniers is simply unacceptable in 2018.

==

Thursday morning, as the Carolinas and Virginia were preparing to be battered by Hurricane Florence, President Trump tweeted that he did not believe the official death count released by the Puerto Rican government after Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the island last year.

A study commissioned by the Puerto Rican government concluded that nearly 3,000 deaths were directly related to the storms, but apparently after watching a CNN segment on the death toll, Trump pushed a conspiracy theory that the number was just "bad politics" by Democrats who raised the death toll in order to make him "look as bad as possible." Trump also declared earlier in the week that the federal government's response to the crisis in Puerto Rico was an "incredible untold success."

Right-wing media quickly spun up a range of excuses for the president:

Fox's Geraldo Rivera responded to news of Trump's tweets by arguing that it is "grotesquely unfair" to blame Trump for the federal government's response to the hurricanes and claiming that the problem with Hurricane Maria coverage is that "intense politically motivated hatred of President Trump deflects attention from what's really needed."

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton tweeted, "The dramatic increase in death toll due to hurricane in Puerto Rico is result of statistical guess work. … we should be suspicious of a guess that moves it up to nearly 3,000."

NRATV's Grant Stinchfield said, "I'm there with Donald Trump -- I call bogus on the 3,000 deaths."

Erick Erickson tweeted, "The President would be more willing to accept the truth about the thousands dead in Puerto Rico if news outlet in the country weren't trying to blame him for the deaths."

Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell claimed, "Dems learned how to politicize natural disasters when Katrina hit New Orleans. It worked against Bush 43 so now they're trying it against @realDonaldTrump with his response to Maria in Puerto Rico last year."

Breitbart.com insisted that Trump was "correct" to argue that Democrats had created a fake death count to smear him, pointing out that earlier estimates put the death toll at around 1,000. Breitbart complained that "the media reported the new estimate as if it were an actual confirmed death toll," even though the Puerto Rican government revised the official death toll to align with that estimate.

Lou Dobbs praised the president on his Fox Business show for having "the guts to call out the Dems and national left wing media types, who have blindly accepted an amazing tortured inflation of the death toll." Dobbs later tweeted out a video of the segment, which earned a retweet from the president.

Trump’s abject dismissal of almost 3,000 dead Americans and his media allies’ immediate and supportive reaction offers more proof that there is no low to which they will not sink.

==

ref

https://datasociety.net/output/oxygen-of-amplification/

The Oxygen of Amplification

Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators

Whitney Phillips

PUBLISHED 05.22.18

cf exec report

The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators Online draws on in-depth interviews by scholar Whitney Phillips to showcase how news media was hijacked from 2016 to 2018 to amplify the messages of hate groups.

Offering extremely candid comments from mainstream journalists, the report provides a snapshot of an industry caught between the pressure to deliver page views, the impulse to cover manipulators and “trolls,” and the disgust (expressed in interviewees’ own words) of accidentally propagating extremist ideology.

After reviewing common methods of “information laundering” of radical and racist messages through the press, Phillips uses journalists’ own words to propose a set of editorial “better practices” intended to reduce manipulation and harm.

As social and digital media are leveraged to reconfigure the information landscape, Phillips argues that this new domain requires journalists to take what they know about abuses of power and media manipulation in traditional information ecosystems; and apply and adapt that knowledge to networked actors, such as white nationalist networks online.

This work is the first practitioner-focused report from Data & Society’s Media Manipulation Initiative, which examines how groups use the participatory culture of the internet to turn the strengths of a free society into vulnerabilities.

==

==

MMA

enate hearings were held for Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.As the hearings got underway, the press found itself getting very easily distracted by the chaos coming out of the White House. Word of a new book by Bob Woodward detailing the hectic state of the Trump White House quickly grabbed headlines. Then, when an anonymous administration official penned an op-ed critical of Trump’s behavior and calling into question his fitness for office, the media went into a frenzy discussing the piece and speculating about who the author may be.

You would think that an unpopular president distrusted by his own staff making a lifetime appointment of a historically unpopular pick to the Supreme Court would be a national scandal.

It isn't.

The media is focused on the chaos of Trump's White House, but it's being covered as a human interest story instead of how the most powerful office in the history of the world is making decisions that affect the rest of us. And that has largely kept negative scrutiny off of Brett Kavanaugh.

If this were any other administration in recent history, Kavanaugh's nomination would be in serious trouble, perhaps already sunk. But the media simply hasn't really bothered to engage with that story.

With the media often focused elsewhere (and convinced that the hearings would be boring), here are some of the critical moments that you might have missed:

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) repeatedly questioned Kavanaugh on his use of documents stolen from Democratic staffers when Kavanaugh worked on judicial nominations for the George W. Bush White House.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) questioned Kavanaugh on reproductive rights and pressed him to name any laws that allow the government to regulate male bodies. He could not.

Harris also explained to Kavanaugh that a phrase he used in an op-ed, “racial spoils system,” is “commonly used by white supremacists.”

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) exposed that Kavanaugh “disparaged the Native Hawaiian community” in an op-ed he wrote.

Hirono also brought attention to Kavanaugh’s attempt to erect an unnecessary barrier to a minor immigrant obtaining an abortion.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he hoped Kavanaugh would ask for his own hearing to be suspended in light of Republicans withholding a massive amount of documents related to Kavanaugh’s history

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) highlighted the role of right-wing and corporate dark money behind Kavanaugh’s nomination.

During one of the few interesting exchanges involving a Republican senator, Kavanaugh indicated his belief that birth control medications are “abortion-inducing drugs” while being questioned by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

And the hearings are not even the biggest story: Republicans are engaging in a widespread effort to obscure Kavanaugh’s record by rushing the hearings in the first place and refusing to release tens of thousands of documents. Heck, Republicans even put a former Kavanaugh deputy and current lawyer for Trump's White House counsel in charge of the document release process, with barely a mention from the media.

The entire nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, from beginning to end, is a monumental scandal.

It would be great if the media treated it for the sham it is instead of playing along with Trump.

media and sys fail:

You have seen the stories. They're uplifting stories about people and communities dealing with adversity.

Some recent examples:

“A teacher battling cancer ran out of sick days. School employees showered him with theirs”

“Birmingham college student walked 20 miles to 1st day of work so his boss gave him his car”

“Vietnam vet named 'Smiley' gets new teeth after living toothless for 40 years”

“Little girl desperate to save mom’s life after cancer diagnosis opens lemonade stand”

As Parker Molloy explains, these tales of perseverance are actually horror stories. The media's obsession with uplifting stories optimized for social media makes us miss how systems are failing Americans.

==

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/chomsky-mainstream-media-basically-joke-now-and-fox-news-state-media

New York Times reports special counsel Robert Mueller is scrutinizing President Trump’s tweets as part of Mueller’s expanding probe into Trump’s ties to Russia. This latest revelation in the Mueller investigation is part of a nearly 24-hour stream of headlines about Trump, Russia and the administration’s various scandals. But is the mainstream media missing the real stories amid its obsession with “Russiagate”? For more, we speak with world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and professor Noam Chomsky on media manipulation in the Trump era.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We continue our interview with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned dissident, linguist and author, now in Tucson at the University of Arizona. I asked him about a recent mix-up on Fox & Friends, in which the hosts thought they were interviewing former Democratic congressional candidate, a current one, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, who supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, but, in fact, they were actually speaking to a Massachusetts Democratic congressional candidate, Barbara L’Italien, who opposes ICE. Here is how the interview started.

SEN. BARBARA L’ITALIEN: Good morning. I’m actually here to speak directly to Donald Trump. I feel that what’s happening at the border is wrong. I’m a mother of four. And I believe that separating kids from their parents is illegal and inhumane. I’m actually Barbara L’Italien. I’m a state senator representing a large immigrant community. I’m running for Congress in Massachusetts. I keep thinking about what we’re putting parents through, imagining how terrifying that must be for those families, imagining how it would feel not knowing if I’d ever see my kids again. We have to stop abducting children and ripping them from their parents’ arms —

ROB SCHMITT: OK —

SEN. BARBARA L’ITALIEN: — stop putting kids in cages —

ROB SCHMITT: You want to —

SEN. BARBARA L’ITALIEN: — and stop making 3-year-olds defend themselves in court.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Barbara L’Italien said a lot there, but she was then cut off, with the shock of the Fox & Friends crew in the morning that they had the wrong Democratic congressional candidate. But this kind of media activism also just goes to the whole issue of the media, Noam Chomsky, the issue of Fox News becoming really state media, with — you have the person who supported the sexual harasser Roger Ailes, Bill Shine, now a top aide to President Trump in the White House. That’s gotten little attention. So you have Fox being a mouthpiece for Trump and a place for him to hear what people have to say, and the other networks very much running counter to Trump, on certain issues, CNNand MSNBC. But your thoughts?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my frank opinion is that — I must say I don’t pay much attention to television, so I don’t know a great deal about it. But, in general, I think the media — first of all, Fox News is, by now, basically a joke. It’s, as you said, state media. The other media, I think, are focusing on issues which are pretty marginal. There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side. So, the worst of — even on the case of immigration, once again, I think the real question is dealing with the roots of immigration, our responsibility for it, and what we can do to overcome that. And that’s almost never discussed. But I think that’s the crucial issue. And I think we find the same across the board.

So, of all Trump’s policies, the one that is the most dangerous and destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on climate change, on global warming. That’s really destructive. And we’re facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what’s going to come. A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive. It will make today’s immigration issues look like trivialities. And it’s not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald Trump, for example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in the short term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex Tillerson, who was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was thrown out, as CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to climate change denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the reports of ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the ’70s, in fact, were on the forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating phenomenon. I don’t know what word in the language — I can’t find one — that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the literal — the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t begin to approach it. These are the kinds of issues that should be under discussion. Instead, what’s being — there is a focus on what I believe are marginalia.

So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies — what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to — calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of — foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to those who elected them. There’s nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in the United States. There’s ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters’ attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they’re basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent — the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector. The elections — Tom Ferguson’s stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, US elections have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign spending. That’s only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something about the way the society functions. So, if you’re concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.

And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So, he’s perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia. Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes — Russia shouldn’t refuse to deal with the United States because the US carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done. But they shouldn’t refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn’t refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better — right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We’re very close to that. Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it’s because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama. The US has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That’s the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns. So, yes, there’s tensions at the Russian border — and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should be of primary concern. The fate of — the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media

.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, author and linguist, now a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He taught for 50 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Tune in next week when we continue our conversation with Noam Chomsky about Gaza, Israel’s new nationality law, the recent Trump-Putin summit, Iran, North Kora, the war in Yemen and more. In December, Noam Chomsky will be celebrating his 90th birthday.

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/07/27/Newspapers-are-failing-to-connect-extreme-heat-to-climate-change/

Almost 90 percent of articles about the recent heat wave in the biggest 50 U.S. newspapers failed to mention hot weather’s connection to climate change, according to a new report published by the nonprofit Public Citizen.

This unfortunate trend extends beyond newspapers. Media Matters has documented how rarely broadcast TV networks cover climate change. Our most recent study looked at how the major broadcast networks covered the links between climate change and extreme heat and found that over a two-week period from late June to early July, only one segment out of 127 about the heat wave mentioned climate change.

Public Citizen looked at coverage of extreme heat in the top 50 U.S. newspapers by circulation over the first half of 2018 and found that less than 18 percent of the articles mentioned climate change:

In the top 50 newspapers, a total of 760 articles mentioned extreme heat, heat waves, record heat, or record temperatures from January 1 to July 8, 2018. One hundred thirty-four of these pieces (17.6 percent) also mentioned climate change or global warming.

In late June and early July, when a heat wave was afflicting much of the U.S., the percentage of articles mentioning climate change was even lower:

During the period June 27 to July 8, only 23 of 204 heat-related articles (11.3 percent) mentioned climate.

Public Citizen also looked beyond the top 50 papers to see how extreme heat was covered in papers in 13 states where 10 or more local areas broke heat records from June 27 to July 8. This more localized newspaper coverage was even worse:

During the heat wave, there were 673 articles, with 26 (3.9 percent) mentioning climate.

While writers and editors may want to exercise caution in attributing any individual event to climate change, the science is clear that our warming climate is making extreme events like heat waves, floods, and fires more intense and more frequent. That’s why environmental journalists and communicators have been calling on major news outlets to do a better job of covering climate change and the environmental rollbacks that could make things worse.

Public Citizen’s report did highlight notable exceptions when newspapers did strong reporting to connect extreme heat to climate change -- such as a story by Austin American-Statesman reporter Roberto Villalpando that explained how climate change is bringing 100-degree days to Austin earlier in the year. Despite this, the report concluded, “U.S. news outlets continue to tell only half the story. These exceptions need to become the norm if the public is going to wake from its slumber on climate change in time to take the bold action we urgently need to avoid catastrophic harm, and possibly even an existential threat to the U.S., later this century."

MSNBC Has Done 455 Stormy Daniels Segments in the Last Year — But None on US War in Yemen

By Adam Johnson, FAIR

Why is the supposed network of the anti-Trump #resistance totally ignoring the president’s most devastating war? READ MORE»

==

heat wave that just swept the United States was no joke. 227 U.S. records were broken for highest temperature in a week alone. The heat wave killed at least five people in the United States and 70 more in Canada. And while the news was happy to talk about the heat wave, there was barely any mention of climate change.

Climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of these heat waves. And yet, it gets almost no mention. ABC and NBC ignored the link to climate change entirely, while both PBS and CBS aired one segment linking the heat wave to climate change. If this sounds familiar, it is because we found a similar problem with heat waves in 2012 and 2017. The link to climate change also regularly gets ignored with wildfires, hurricanes, floods, polar bear deaths, and sea-level rise. Climate change is also ignored during elections and when millions of people march take to the streets. Fox News does cover climate change when it's cold outside, so that's something.

Climate change is getting worse, and yet the media can't connect the obvious dots for how that is affecting the lives of its audiences.

https://www.alternet.org/heres-how-medias-civility-game-helps-trump

... civility game does nothing but privilege the people whose views and actions are horrific. When the president does contemptible, anti-democratic things like ordering the separation of migrant mothers from infants and demanding that due process be eliminated, he and his lackeys follow a poisonous process in which the White House enthusiastically demonizes its adversaries -- Democrats, immigrants, journalists, anyone who objects to toddler internment -- while rigorously and woundedly demanding that everyone else follow the rules of polite discourse. The idea is that the president and his cronies deserve respect and deference no matter what they say or do simply because of the offices they hold.

This cynical posturing gets helped along by journalists and pundits who acknowledge that the president’s policies and beliefs are abhorrent but nonetheless self-righteously cluck their tongues at the “incivility” of the White House’s critics. The Washington Post editorial board writes that the Red Hen’s defenders are correct on the merits when they say that the child internment scandal is “no ordinary policy dispute” and that President Donald Trump “has ordered terrible violations of human rights at the border.” But even in the face of what the paper recognizes as a uniquely appalling violation of rights and norms, the Post still takes a swipe at those who are “justifying incivility” and asks us to imagine a world in which abortion rights advocates are harassed for their (constitutionally protected) views -- something that happens literally all the time and too often has deadly consequences.

This vapid argument was perfectly crystallized in a chiding tweet from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius:

David Ignatius@IgnatiusPost

Hard to imagine an incident that would be more helpful to Trump White House and more harmful to its critics than this refusal to serve a senior government official, however troubling her views. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/06/23/why-a-small-town-restaurant-owner-asked-sarah-huckabee-sanders-to-leave-and-would-do-it-again/ …

5:57 PM - Jun 23, 2018The owner of the Red Hen explains why she asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave

"I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation,” the Red Hen owner said after asking Trump's press secretary to...

washingtonpost.com

The endurance of this worldview in the face of broadly recognized illegal and immoral behavior does not portend well for the immediate post-Trump era. The end of Trump’s administration should be met with a vigorous and thorough accounting of all its misdeeds and criminality. Standing athwart that effort will be a coalition of bad-faith Republicans, badly misguided pundits, and calculatedly centrist Democrats who will argue that any attempt to investigate Trump abuses will be too “political” and contrary to the more important task of “healing” or “bringing Americans together” or some other nonsense. That was the mindset that helped shield the people responsible for the George W. Bush-era torture program from any sort of official accountability; in 2009, the same David Ignatius snidely dismissed people who backed “retrospective investigations of wrongdoing by the CIA” as “liberal score-settlers.”“However troubling her views.” Her “troubling" views are the story! The despicable arguments and actions of the administration are driving this public backlash against senior officials. But elite members of the media are busily doing the White House a favor by prioritizing “civility” over accountability -- forget about the fact that she’s the mouthpiece for an administration perpetrating a deliberate evil against a vulnerable population; this senior government official deserves respect and steak tartare.

...

==

shadows of lib;

AMY GOODMAN: Jean-Philippe, the examples in your film are extremely powerful. And that’s what we’re going to turn to right now. We’re going to turn to a clip of the film, and this is a clip that involves Roberta Baskin. She is a reporter for CBS. The first story in the film is about this reporter, CBS chief correspondent, who traveled to Vietnam in 1996 to report on labor abuses at Nike factories. This is a clip of Roberta Baskin describing some of what she found.

ROBERTA BASKIN: One of the things that really shocked me was to discover that the word "Nike" had become a verb. The word "Nike" meant to abuse your employees. There were incidences of physical abuse, women who had their mouths taped shut for talking on the line, 15 women who were systematically hit with the top part of a Nike shoe around the face and the neck. It was this disparity between seeing the corporate image that the company sells and the reality in these factories: "Just do it, or else."

AMY GOODMAN: The report sparked protests and boycotts across the country, as Nike rushed to deny the allegations. CBS asked Roberta Baskin to do a follow-up report. The film explains what happened next.

NARRATOR: As Baskin was putting together the updated news report on Nike’s labor practices, she received unexpected news from inside CBS.

ROBERTA BASKIN: I got a call from my executive producer, who said, "The story is not going to air. It’s been taken off schedule. There’s some sort of deal being made between Nike and CBS News for the upcoming Winter Olympics." And the air went out of my soul.

BRIAN HEALY: CBS News was paying an enormous amount of money for the rights. And so, by definition, they would be seeking out commercial sponsors who would pour lots of money into it so that they could recoup the millions that they were paying for the rights of the Olympics.

CBS ANNOUNCER: The 18th Olympic Winter Games on CBS.

NARRATOR: As CBS revealed their Olympic coverage, the deal between Nike and CBS was plain to see.

ROBERTA BASKIN: Correspondent after correspondent are wearing these Nike jackets on the air, with a little CBS something or other—you really couldn’t read it—and a big swoosh on the shoulder. That was the deal. Nike had convinced CBS News to turn its correspondents into billboards. It was heartbreaking.

BRIAN HEALY: The CBS News correspondents were furious. They had to wear the Nike parkas whenever they appeared on air. It’s just not done.

NARRATOR: Baskin wrote a memo requesting CBS management to take the Nike logo off the correspondents.

ROBERTA BASKIN: CBS had crossed this incredible line. How do you trust serious stories when you’re seeing the reporter wearing a bunch of logos? Immediately, the president of CBS News responded, saying, "This was a breach of professional etiquette." It meant that I should shut up. How dare I raise a question about the integrity of CBS News?

AMY GOODMAN: That was Roberta Baskin from the film Shadows of Liberty. You also heard former CBS News producer Brain Healy in that clip. Jean-Philippe Tremblay, why did you choose to open the film with this story?

JEAN-PHILIPPE TREMBLAY: Well, Roberta Baskin is just an example of an amazing journalist. She’s one of the most awarded female journalists here in the United States. She’s won something like over 75 journalistic awards. And the report—the reporting that she does is always trying to tell us what’s happening with power. Here we see an example with the Nike corporation. And because she’s reporting on the Nike corporation, she’s stopped by the very power that she’s working for, CBS News, because they have made a deal with Nike corporation.

https://www.alternet.org/media/liberals-cheering-same-old-media

When the “War on Terror” was launched in 2001, mainstream media – especially cable TV news – started a parade. It was a narrow parade of hawkish retired military and intelligence brass promoting war as the response to the crime of 9/11, predicting success and identifying foreign enemies to attack.

We can look back at this parade and laugh at the total nonsense dispensed. But the more human response is to cry – over the toll, still mounting, of hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond, and violent instability across the region, including countries that were relatively stable and prosperous on Sept. 10, 2001. (Not to mention militarization and loss of civil liberties at home.)

I witnessed the parade of disinformation from inside cable news, where I worked as an on-air contributor at Fox News and MSNBC at the beginning of the War on Terror. In fact, this parade eventually knocked me off the air – and out of my job at MSNBC, three weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

It’s now the 15th anniversary of the tragic invasion of Iraq. The huge mainstream media failure in the run-up to the invasion is taught in college journalism courses, including mine.

Who can forget CNN’s Chief News Executive boasting that, before the Iraq invasion, he’d sought prior approval and received “a big thumbs up” from the Pentagon on the ex-generals that CNN featured as allegedly independent analysts?

Who can forget David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning expose for the New York Times – based on 8,000 pages of internal Pentagon emails and transcripts – showing that network TV’s  hawkish retired generals were not only being paid by big military contractors, but were being spoon-fed talking points and spin by the Pentagon month after month as they paraded on TV?

Who can forget that NBC/MSNBC’s top military analyst, ex-Gen. Barry McCaffrey, relentlessly pushed for war based on falsehoods (“thousands of gallons of mustard agents, sarin, nerve agent VX still in Iraq”), offered continuously ridiculous punditry (like praising Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s advance-planning of the Iraq occupation), and famously crowed on MSNBC, “Thank God for the  Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle” – without mentioning his role at military contractor IDT that made millions for doing God’s work on the Abrams and Bradley?

Who can forget all these things?

I turned on the “progressive” news channel a few nights ago to see Chris Hayes politely interviewing Gen. McCaffrey. Did Hayes – during the week marking the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq – press McCaffrey on his role in that disaster? Perhaps demand an explanation or an apology? No. The topic was Trump’s weird attraction to Putin. That’s a worthy topic. But Barry McCaffrey as expert and arbiter! Still?MSNBC, apparently.

Just as they did in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, MSNBC and CNN now serve up a steady parade of war-hawks, spies and liars, presenting them as credible and almost heroic as long as they criticize the despicable man in the White House.

I’d turned to MSNBC that night after disgustedly turning off Anderson Cooper softly interviewing a CNN contributor who seems to appear every hour: ex-National Intelligence Director James Clapper. You remember Clapper? Five years ago this month, Clapper famously perjured himself before the U.S. Senate by denying NSA bulk surveillance. His perjury is not a topic that CNN asks Clapper about – while he discusses the lack of ethics and honesty in Team Trump.

When it comes to Trump critics, CNN and MSNBC regularly serve up a basket of elite deplorables from the military/intelligence establishment – for example, the appalling ex-CIA Director John Brennan and horrific former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin. The hollowness of their Trump critique on “liberal cable news” was on display last week when both men endorsed Trump’s choice for CIA chief, torture-overseer Gina Haspel.

A few points to consider:I’m worried about anti-Trump activists, even some quite progressive, who’ve come to see corporate news channels like CNN and MSNBC as their saviors. It’s a dangerous illusion.

Not all foes of Trump are allies of progressives – especially the hawks, spooks and perjurers who parade across CNN and MSNBC every night.

Progressives should be wary of the growing alliance between Clintonite/MSNBC-style liberals and neo-con militarists forever in search of the next enemy – an alliance that began before the Trump campaign and will likely continue after Trump is deposed (hopefully soon).

Trump is doing enormous damage to our country and the world – but you won’t see most of it on MSNBC or any mainstream outlet that covers the Trump White House as a TV soap opera.

When you hear nightly on CNN and MSNBC about Putin’s “attack on our democracy,” let’s not forget that – whatever impact Russia had on the 2016 election (evidence so far suggests it was small) – “our democracy” has been under attack for decades by internal enemies: big money control of both major parties, corporate media dominance, Democratic subservience to Wall Street, Republican suppression of voters of color and youth, an archaic election system protected by both parties, etc.

I would like to see even 10 percent of MSNBC’s “Russiagate” coverage diverted to any of the above issues, but I’m not holding my breath. Nor am I waiting for the Comcast-owned channel to offer thorough coverage of Trump’s biggest threat to the First Amendment: ending Net Neutrality.

All progressives should agree that an essential job is to end Republican control of Congress and depose Trump.

Yet the fight for justice and democracy will also require battles against powerful and oppressive institutions that may now seem to be anti-Trump: certain media conglomerates and the military-industrial-surveillance complex.

Jeff Cohen is director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College. He co-founded the online activism group RootsAction.org in 2011 and founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. He is the author of "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media."

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-news-trump-2534506140.html

Trump Effect on Climate News

By Jeremy Deaton

All press is good press—except when it isn't.

For those who are happy about President Trump's attacks on climate science and policy, this will come as bad news. By shining a spotlight on the issue, Trump drove media coverage of climate change last year.

New analysis from Media Matters for America finds that, following a year of lagging coverage of climate change, 2017 saw network news programs scramble to report on Trump's full-scale assault on federal climate policy. The spike in coverage coincided with an increase in concern about climate change—Americans are now more worried than ever about the carbon crisis.

What's more, the heightened awareness comes in spite of the fact that broadcasters fell short in several key areas. "Even though corporate broadcast news coverage of climate change increased between 2016 and 2017, the quality of coverage remained poor across the board, primarily because the networks centered their climate coverage around Donald Trump while largely neglecting other important climate stories," said Lisa Hymas, director of climate and energy programs at Media Matters for America.

Here are the key takeaways from the report.

Trump drove coverage of climate change in 2017.

The nation's broadcasters didn't spend a lot of time on climate change last year, but when they did, it was almost always in response to Trump. Segments that dealt with his policies or featured statements from members of his administration accounted for 79 percent of the total time given over to climate change. Roughly half of all climate segments centered on his decision to pull out of the Paris agreement.

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press fail

http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/media-silence-during-a-year-of-climate-disasters/

Californians welcomed rain this week after months of dry weather fueled last year’s horrific wildfires. But in recently torched areas the rains triggered mudslides that turned roads into rivers of silt and caused further damage killing at least 5 people.

On the other side of the nation East Coasters are still recovering from the so-called “bomb cyclone” that hit the Atlantic and dropped record snow and froze beaches. The year has begun with a dire series of disasters and, if 2017’s record of deadly climate-related patterns was any indication of the future we face, we are in trouble.

Except you may not know it from consuming our mainstream media, which according to a new report, did an appalling job last year in linking climate change to climate disasters. According to the report called ‘Carbon Omission,’ “The proportion of pieces that mentioned climate change in climate-relevant contexts was decidedly low.”

Download the report ‘Carbon Omission,’ “The proportion of pieces that mentioned climate change in climate-relevant contexts was decidedly low.”, HERE.

https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/public-citizen-carbon-omission-media-report-january-2018.pdf

...

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bannon 60 min no q on mercer

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On television news, net neutrality dies in silence

Trump's FCC voted this week to end net neutrality. This could have sweeping consequences and end the internet as we know it. The move will allow telecoms to control the internet, undermine the infrastructure of every website, and disproportionately hurt those not big enough to stand up to them. While pro-Trump media cheered on this consolidation of corporate power, television networks ignored the story for the most part, even though it was clearly possible to cover it in a compelling way.

Republicans push astroturfed op-eds on corporate taxes

Republican leaders, including Paul Ryan's office, touted op-eds praising the Republican tax bill. The problem was the op-eds were virtually identical, having been placed in a series of newspapers with different authors by a right-wing lobbying group. Newspapers told Media Matters' Eric Hanonoki that if they had known that, they would not have run them. And this wasn't the only case. Proctor & Gamble placed nearly identical op-eds across the country in various newspapers. One of the op-eds were praised by Trump's press secretary. Two editors also told Hananoki that if they had known about this, they would not have run them.

Meanwhile: An MSNBC panel this week called out Republicans for selling out children's health insurance to fund corporate tax cuts.

Fox News warns of a coup in America

Following the indictment of Paul Manafort and the guilty plea of Michael Flynn, Matt Gertz noted that Fox News is being increasingly venomous towards special prosecutor Robert Mueller. A Fox host said that Trump should be exonerated because he won the election. Another Fox host called for a "cleansing" of the FBI and DOJ. A frequent Fox News guest said that the entire FBI may need to be shut down. And now, Fox News warnedduring an interview with Kellyanne Conway that the Mueller investigation may be "a coup in America." There are plenty of problems with the FBI and DOJ, but independence from the executive is not one of them.

https://www.alternet.org/media/wall-street-journal-echoing-trumps-derangement-and-its-own-reporters-are-appalled

During the 2016 election, the conservative Wall Street Journal declined to endorse Donald Trump, recognizing the Republican candidate's manifest personal deficiencies posed a clear and present danger to American democracy. While the newspaper has grown more Trump-curious since he was sworn into office, it has largely resisted the overt #MAGA cheerleading of Rupert Murdoch's other media organs, Fox News and the New York Post.

At least until last week. Despite multiple indictments being handed down in the Russia probe, and a separate Trump aide pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, the paper's once tepid support for the president has reached a fever pitch bordering on dissociation.

On October 25, the Journal incurred the wrath of readers and social media alike when it ran an editorial titled "Democrats, Russian and the FBI," arguing that special investigator Robert Mueller “lacked the critical distance to conduct a credible probe," and that he should resign his post for the good of the country.

Four days later, in "Begging Your Pardon, Mr. President," David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey called on Trump to issue blanket pardons to every administration official ensnared in the investigation—himself included.

The day after that, an editorial titled "The Manafort Indictment" acknowledged the malfeasance of Trump's former campaign manager, but managed to single out the Democratic Party for its financing of the Fusion GPS dossier (opposition research compiled, incidentally, by former members of the Wall Street Journal).

These rantings and ravings have not been lost on the paper's reporters. According to a recent report by Vanity Fair, staffers fear the opinion page has begun to undermine the publication's credibility. The Journal has always been a purveyor of neoconservative dogma, particularly as it pertains to the economy and foreign policy, but as one veteran editor recently confided, “It does feel like this is a different level of crazy."

“We could disprove half the stuff [the opinion writers] are saying if they just read our own reporting," a WSJ reporter told Vanity Fair. "It’s like living in some alternate universe."

Another staffer likened the paper's editorials on the Mueller investigation to the dark days of Vince Foster, a former Clinton confidante whose suicide in 1993 continues to fuel conservative conspiracy theories. (The right has since added John F. Kennedy, Jr. and the DNC's Seth Rich to Hillary's ever-expanding hit list.)

Former Wall Street Journal editor Bill Grueskin put things more succinctly in a recent tweet:[img]

Twitter Ads info and privacyThis is not the first time the Journal has embarrassed itself or its reporters. In August, editor-in-chief Gerard Baker reprimanded the paper's staff for its entirely accurate coverage of a Trump rally in Phoenix, where the president painted himself as the true victim of the terrorist attack in Charlottesville. “Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” he wrote in an email. “Could we please just stick to reporting what he said rather than packaging it in exegesis and selective criticism?”

That same month, Politico released a full transcript of his interview with the president in late July, exposing Baker's chummy personal relationship with the Trump family. At one point during the conversation, he even tells Ivanka, "It was nice to see you out in Southampton a couple weeks ago."

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before the opinion page began parroting the talking points of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Over the past 18 months, conservative publications ranging from the Weekly Standard to the National Review have, at various junctures, embraced the Republican standard-bearer, even after the latter outlet ran an entire issue "Against Trump." But as the august Wall Street Journal's descent into authoritarianism and deranged conspiracy theory reveals, no corner of right-wing media is immune from the disease of Trumpism.

https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/why-media-reluctant-cover-neo-nazi-violence

s been just a little over two months since a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd of anti-fascist protesters and killed a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia. It seems as if the mainstream media has already gotten bored with the story of neo-Nazi violence and domestic terrorism. Leading white nationalist Richard Spencer snagged a huge amount of coverage for scheduling a speech at the University of Florida, which provoked stories about how much the school was spending on security, the potential for protests and the fact that the state's Republican governor felt compelled to declare a state of emergency. But when three of Spencer's biggest fans and core followers — their names are Tyler Tenbrink, William Fears and Colton Fears (the latter two are brothers) — were arrested for attempting to murder protesters, coverage of the event was relatively sparse.

Media Matters analyzed the news coverage of the incident, in which one neo-Nazi allegedly fired a gun while the other two egged him on to shoot protesters. The watchdog group found that cable news networks almost completely ignored it. CNN and Fox News didn't mention the alleged attack at all, and MSNBC devoted a two-minute segment to it on one show.

Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, told Salon he didn't believe the incident necessarily deserved "hours of coverage over a few days." But the paltry coverage the alleged attack got, he worries, may contribute to the public's failure to understand how serious the threat of neo-Nazi violence really is.

Vicious attacks on anti-fascist protesters have happened on at least two occasions since the events in Charlottesville. In an early September rally in Vancouver, Washington, there were reports of threatening behavior from motorists, with one man driving into a crowd (fortunately injuring no one), and a group of men in another car throwing things and driving menacingly around the protesters. Then there was this latest shooting associated with the Spencer event in Florida.

Just because no one has gotten hurt doesn't mean this isn't news. It's sheer luck that separates a bullet that hits someone in the head from one that doesn't. More importantly, Americans need to see the pattern of violent behavior coming from the white supremacist subculture, to understand the threat it actually poses.

Incidents like these “really underscore the risk a lot of people talked about when it comes to these rallies, and about what these groups actually bring when they hold these events," Keegan Hankes, a researcher for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Salon.

Hankes emphasized that white supremacy is an inherently violent ideology, noting that "you don't have the 'ethno-state,' you don't have this kind of world that they're dreaming up without extreme violence.”

As far-right fringe groups, emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, plan more rallies and public speeches, there's a real risk that the centrality of violence to white supremacist ideology gets lost in the public discourse. Part of the problem is that right-wing pundits have been working to frame the challenge posed by these groups strictly in terms of "free speech" while minimizing the problem of actual or potential violence.

“The security concerns are justified, as we see, because violence follows" where neo-Nazis and white supremacists go, Hankes said. "It's more than just that people don't want to hear their ideas or don't agree with them, and don't think they should be on campus."

Carusone characterized himself as a "free-speech purist," but felt that the public's understanding of the debate over speech on campus is incomplete if they don't understand the enhanced possibility of violence that white supremacists bring.

"Alt-right" groups, he explained, "do these sort of trolling events at campuses, not trying to make a point, but just to elicit a backlash, so that they can have these kinds of skirmishes. The net effect of the skirmishes is to create conditions such that they can not just engage in violence but also bully, intimidate and suppress their opponents.”

That too, he noted, is a free speech issue: The free speech rights of anti-fascists and leftists are endangered if they are being intimidated with violence.

White supremacists and other "alt-right" types have deliberately downplayed their own acts of violence in an effort to confuse the issue, Hankes said. Instead, they focus on a narrative claiming that they "just want a fair hearing for [their] ideas" and that it's "the anti-fascists who are committing violence," permitting them to play the victim and drum up sympathy for their extremist views.

He then began to make excuses, calling Fields a "scapegoat" and saying that Heyer's death was an "ambiguous situation." He also claimed that Fields' "vehicle was attacked," and suggested that ramming a car into a crowd of protesters was Fields "attempting to escape."Spencer himself did this during his speech at the University of Florida. When an audience member asked Spencer about the killing of leftist protester Heather Heyer, for which a white supremacist named James Fields has been charged with second-degree murder, Spencer deflected and downplayed the situation. He claimed he is opposed to all forms of violence and has "explicitly called for peace."

Shortly after Spencer tried to spin his movement as nonviolent, three of his most prominent followers — men who have repeatedly attended Spencer's appearances and events, including the Charlottesville rally — reportedly fired a gun at protesters while shouting "Heil Hitler" and urging each other on.

The media has an important role to play here. It's not just about reporting on events like this, but also putting them into context. The shooting was part of a growing white supremacist movement that is growing ever more ambitious and more violent, and feels emboldened by a sympathetic leader in the White House. This shooting happened during a constant churn of stories about Trump's racially provocative attacks on NFL players, Rep. Frederica Wilson, Myeshia Johnson (the widow of slain soldier La David Johnson) and ESPN sports analyst Jemele Hill. It's no mystery why white supremacists might feel it's a good time to ramp up their activities. This shooting cannot be viewed as a random crime, but as the inescapable result of electing President Donald Trump.

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https://www.alternet.org/media/what-news-wont-tell-you-about-news

...“Used to be,” I said, “that radio and TV stations had to deliver actual news in order to retain their over-the-air broadcast license. It was called ‘the fairness doctrine,’ and Reagan stopped enforcing it in ’87 and the Obama administration’s FCC removed it altogether. Then the media consolidated like crazy, in part because Reagan had stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and no president since Jimmy Carter broke up AT&T has been willing to put it back into effect, and in part because of the media deregulation that Clinton signed in 1996.”

“So?” she asked. “Why does that mean that all we get now is nonstop hype and opinion-drivel?”

“It used to be that the metric news organizations used to determine if they were ‘doing their job’ was how well the American public was informed. That was actually a serious metric, pre-1987, because your station’s license depended on it. The public could – and did – complain that they weren’t being well-informed, and stations jumped when those FCC complaints came in. But now, the only metric the ‘news’ business uses is how many viewers they have and, thus, how profitable they are for advertisers.”

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/hillary-and-media-dreadful-coverage-2016-had-echoes-past

i am

not going to review Hillary Clinton’s book “What Happened,” since there are approximately 12,576 reviews out there already, with more to come. But I do want to discuss one issue that came up in the book that has been addressed in a couple of those reviews. That would be the fact that the press regularly and tiresomely slags Clinton for her failures in the 2016 campaign but have still completely failed to acknowledge their own.

There are many aspects of this story that are unique to Clinton. As Politico’s Jonathan Allen, then of Vox, wrote at the beginning of the campaign, there was anestablishment media groupthink about her that was obvious, although the press itself seemed completely oblivious to it. (I wrote about this on Salon in real time as it unfolded and after the race was over. )

Allen put it bluntly:

The Clinton rules are driven by reporters’ and editors’ desire to score the ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down Hillary Clinton and her family’s political empire. At least in that way, Republicans and the media have a common interest.

Indeed they did. (As it turns out, maybe some members of the Russian government did too.) And one aspect of the coverage verged on outright corruption: the “deal” The New York Times and The Washington Post made with a Steve Bannon associate to publish excerpts of a book of lies called “Clinton Cash” that set the tone for much of the coverage to come.

The Atlantic’s James Fallows addressed the press obsession with the Clinton email story in his review of “What Happened”:

No sane person can believe that the consequences of last fall’s election — for foreign policy, for race relations, for the environment, for anything else you’d like to name (from either party’s perspective) — should have depended more than about 1 percent on what Hillary Clinton did with her emails. But this objectively second- or third-tier issue came across through even our best news organizations as if it were the main thing worth knowing about one of the candidates.

David Roberts at Vox took on the subject by analyzing in depth the way the media reported one particular incident in the campaign: Hillary Clinton’s alleged “coal gaffe,” which he described as “navigating a hall of mirrors.” Her comment about putting coal miners out of business was poorly phrased, but as it was reported, it was also truncated and taken out of context. The way her response was then distorted by the GOP and the press as an illustration of Clinton’s disqualifying character flaws was the real crime, Roberts writes:

Mainstream news outlets should stop treating “how it looks” as though it’s some fact in the universe that they discover. They are the arbiters; they decide how it looks. They build and reinforce narratives. They seek out confirming evidence and ignore disconfirming evidence. They amplify some voices and not others. They direct attention, which is the coin of the realm in modern politics. If they draw attention to a bullshit scandal, they are the ones ensuring that it damages the campaign. If they play along with the ludicrous notion that Clinton loves firing coal miners, they are sanctioning and disseminating misinformation. They are not doing their jobs.

Whether you are convinced by these arguments or not, it’s tempting to write them off as something that only pertains to Hillary Clinton. There is no doubt that the narratives spun around her in the campaign and for years prior were informed by systemic sexism. The press is no different from the rest of society in being unable to grapple with that reality. But in fact, this wasn’t the only time this happened.

The coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign, and to a lesser extent the 2004 campaign as well, had similar characteristics. In the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the media mercilessly abused the latter with a series of shallow character attacks that were both unfair and untruthful. Roberts’ analysis of Clinton and the “coal gaffe” is exactly the same sort of prejudicial coverage the media gave Gore for his “I invented the internet” and “Love Canal” gaffes, among a dozen others.

One vivid illustration of journalists’ collective disdain for Gore was reported in Time’s article about an early New Hampshire debate between Gore and his Democratic primary rival, Sen. Bill Bradley:

The 300 media types watching in the press room at Dartmouth were, to use the appropriate technical term, totally grossed out. Whenever Gore came on too strong the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of fifteen-year-old heathers cutting down some hapless nerd.

Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank explained why the press corps was so hostile:

Gore is sanctimonious, and that’s sort of the worst thing you can be in the eyes of the press. And he has been disliked all along, and it was because he gives a sense that he’s better than us — he’s better than everybody, for that matter, but the sense that he’s better than us as reporters. Whereas President Bush probably is sure that he’s better than us — he’s probably right, but he does not convey that sense. He does not seem to be dripping with contempt when he looks at us, and I think that has something to do with the coverage.

Reporter Margaret Carlson explained in her book that one of the reasons the media gave Bush such good coverage was that he served Dove bars and designer water on the press plane, while Gore only offered granola bars and sandwiches.

As far as I know, the media have still never given their coverage of that campaign a second thought. Four years later, John Kerry was mocked for ordering the wrong cheese and drinking green tea and otherwise being a snobby New Englander without the common touch of George W. Bush, originally of Kennebunkport, Maine. And then there was 2016 and “her emails.”

None of this is to say that these candidates weren’t flawed or bear no responsibility for the outcome of those races. The point is that the press corps made a collective decision that they didn’t “like” these people and obsessively covered them in a trivial manner, as if they had been running for homecoming queen instead of president of the United States. With fake news and social media and foreign propaganda distorting our democracy, it’s past time for the press to stop behaving like the mean girls of D.C. High.

Heather Digby Parton

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"investigative" jrnl minor fail, escalator:

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/09/08/right-wing-medias-new-voter-fraud-proof-even-more-asinine-usual/217887

Right-wing media's new voter fraud "proof" is even more asinine than usual

Research ››› September 8, 2017 3:34 PM EDT ››› ZACHARY PLEAT

Right-wing and fringe media outlets and figures, including Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Trump administration’s election integrity commission, are citing a Washington Times article about several thousand New Hampshire voters using out-of-state driver’s licenses to register to vote to bolster conservative claims of fraud and say that Republicans may have actually won the state. But journalists and election experts shot down these claims of voter fraud and explained that New Hampshire’s voter ID law permits out-of-state driver’s licenses to be used as proof of identity when voting, an option that college students often exercise.

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

Conservative and fringe media figures: Out-of-state driver’s licenses used to vote in New Hampshire prove voter fraud against Republicans

Wash. Times used data of voters registering with out-of-state driver’s licenses in New Hampshire to promote conservative claims of voter fraud. A September 7 Washington Times article published information released by a New Hampshire Republican showing that “more than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses” to bolster conservative claims of voter fraud. While admitting that these statistics “don’t prove those accusations,” the Times wrote that “they do corroborate them,” citing further data that more than 5,000 of those voters haven’t yet obtained a New Hampshire license or vehicle registration:

More than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, and since then the vast majority have neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a motor vehicle.

Conservatives say the state’s same-day registration is an invitation for fraud because of loose proof-of-residence rules.

New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper, a Republican, issued the numbers Thursday based on inquiries he made to the Department of State, which oversees elections, and the Department of Safety.

Since Election Day, Republicans have charged that a significant number of nonresident Democrats, principally from Massachusetts, flowed into New Hampshire to vote illegally, tilting a close race to their party.

“Having worked before on a campaign in New Hampshire, I can tell you that this issue of busing voters into New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics. It’s very real. It’s very serious. This morning, on this show, is not the venue for me to lay out all the evidence,” White House policy adviser Stephen Miller told ABC News in February.

Though Mr. Jasper’s findings don’t prove those accusations, they do corroborate them.

[...]

New Hampshire law gives drivers 60 days upon establishing residence to obtain a state license.

But more than 80 percent of voters who registered on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, or 5,313 of them, neither had a state license nor registered a motor vehicle almost 10 months later. [The Washington Times, 9/7/17]

Breitbart.com’s Kris Kobach cited the data in the Wash. Times article as “proof” of “fraudulent votes” in New Hampshire and claimed Hillary Clinton and Sen. Maggie Hassan may have fraudulently won the state. Kris Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state, vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission, and a paid Breitbart.com columnist, cited the Washington Times article as “proof” of voter fraud in New Hampshire in his September 7 column:

It has long been reported, anecdotally, that out-of-staters take advantage of New Hampshire’s same-day registration and head to the Granite State to cast fraudulent votes. Now there’s proof.

According to statistics released by the Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, on the date of the general election in November 2016, there were 6,540 same-day registrants who registered to vote in New Hampshire using an out-of-state driver’s license to prove their identity. In and of itself, that doesn’t prove that any fraud occurred – theoretically, each of those individuals could have been someone who recently moved to the State and had not yet had time to get a New Hampshire driver’s license. According to New Hampshire law, a new resident has 60 days to obtain a New Hampshire driver’s license.

So if those 6,540 voters were bona fide New Hampshire residents, they would get their driver’s license no later than January 7, 2017. However, the numbers tell a very different story. It turns out that, as of August 30, 2017 – nearly ten months after the election – only 1,014 of the 6,540 same-day registrants who registered with an out-of-state license had obtained a New Hampshire driver’s license. The other 5,526 individuals never obtained a New Hampshire driver’s license. And, of those 5,526, only 213 registered a vehicle in New Hampshire.

So 5,313 of those voters neither obtained a New Hampshire driver’s license nor registered a vehicle in New Hampshire. They have not followed the legal requirements for residents regarding driver’s licenses, and it appears that they are not actually residing in New Hampshire. It seems that they never were bona fide residents of the State.

5,513 is a big number – more than enough to swing two very important elections. The closest major election was the contest between incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte and challenger Maggie Hassan (D). Hassan won the election by a razor-thin margin of 1,017 votes. Those 5,313 fraudulent votes were more than enough to swing the election. If 59.2 percent or more of them went for Hassan, then the election was stolen through voter fraud. That’s likely, since the surrounding states are Democrat strongholds.

It’s also possible that New Hampshire’s four electoral college votes were swung to Hillary Clinton through illegal voting by nonresidents. Clinton won New Hampshire by only 2,732 votes. If 74.8 percent of the 5,513 fraudulent votes were cast for Clinton, then the presidential election in New Hampshire was tipped as well. [Breitbart.com, 9/7/17]

FoxNews.com: “Out-of-staters may have won New Hampshire for Clinton.” A September 8 FoxNews.com article cited the Washington Times report, saying the data it included “could potentially call into question the validity of the New Hampshire results for Nov. 8, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton outpolled Republican nominee Donald Trump by a mere 2,736 votes.” [FoxNews.com, 9/8/17]

Gateway Pundit: “VOTE FRAUD: More Than 5,000 Out-of-State Hillary Voters May have Tipped New Hampshire Against Trump.” Right-wing fringe website Gateway Pundit cited the Washington Times story to scream “VOTE FRAUD” in the headline of a September 7 post, which claimed: “It is well known that people are bussed in to vote in New Hampshire. This is why the Democrats are fiercely working to stop any investigation into vote fraud and are working to prevent any type of voter I.D. laws. Strict laws would have tipped New Hampshire in Donald Trump’s favor.” [The Gateway Pundit, 9/7/17]

WND: “New Evidence Backs Trump Vote-Fraud Claim.” Conspiracy theory website WorldNetDaily cited the Washington Times story in a September 7 post to claim, “The discovery that more than 6,000 people used out-of-state driver’s licenses to vote in New Hampshire last November bolsters Donald Trump’s claim he lost the state because thousands of Massachusetts residents came in to vote.” [WorldNetDaily, 9/7/17]

Drudge Report: “PAPER: 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped NH…”

Follow

DRUDGE REPORT @DRUDGE_REPORT

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https://www.democracynow.org/2017/9/12/a_storm_of_silence_study_finds

"A Storm of Silence." That’s the title of a new report by the watchdog group Public Citizen that looks at the media’s failure to discuss climate change in its wall-to-wall hurricane coverage. While all the television networks commented on the magnitude of Hurricane Harvey and "extreme weather," virtually none explained how warmer ocean temperatures lead to heavier winds, warmer air causes more precipitation, and higher sea levels exacerbate storm surges. The report examined 18 media sources’ coverage of Hurricane Harvey—looking at 10 major newspapers, three weekly news magazines and national programming from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNNand Fox News over the course of eight days’ worth of Hurricane Harvey coverage. The report concludes, "Many failed to discuss the issue [of climate change] much or failed to cover important aspects of it. ... Two of the three major broadcast networks, ABC and NBC, did not mention climate change at all in the context of Hurricane Harvey." We speak to David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program.

https://www.citizen.org/system/files/case_documents/public_citizen_storm_of_silence_harvey_climate_coverage_2.pdf

Only 43 percent of Americans report hearing about climate change in the media at least once a month.1 Only 19 percent report hearing people they know talk about global warming once a month or more,2 and 28 percent say they never hear people they know talk about it.3 In the words of Yale and George Mason University researchers, there is a “spiral of silence” on climate change in which “even people who care about the issue shy away from discussing it because they so infrequently hear other people talking about it?—?reinforcing the spiral.”4

....

This report examines media coverage of climate change in the context of a major event—Hurricane Harvey—starting on the day it first made landfall, Friday, August 25, 2017, and ending the following Friday, September 1, 2017. It considers eighteen sources: ten major newspapers, three weekly news magazines, and national programming from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox News Network. The relevance of climate change to events like Hurricane Harvey is clear in multiple respects: (1) warmer ocean temperatures lead to stronger winds; (2) warmer air leads to more rain (and therefore flooding); and (3) higher sea levels worsen storm surges.7 This analysis first counts the number of articles that simply raise climate change in the context of Harvey. It then considers whether each piece generally accepts or denies the role climate change (or, if news reporting, gives a platform to deniers) and whether it covers any of seven aspects of the climate issue in the context of disasters like Harvey

...

A few conclusions stand out: ?

ABC and NBC did not mention climate change in the context of Harvey at all.8 Only one other news source, The New York Post, failed to clear that minimal hurdle. ? Climate coverage was highly concentrated among a handful of outlets. The top four outlets by volume of pieces that mention climate (The Washington Post, CNN, The Houston Chronicle, and The New York Times) produced 72 percent of pieces that mention it (98 pieces). The remaining 28 percent of coverage, 38 pieces, was scattered across 10 sources. That figure includes three pieces that deny any connection between climate change and Harvey, as well as two more that give voice to deniers or skeptics. (Again, three sources failed to mention climate change at all.) ?

Only five outlets covered all seven aspects of the climate issue that this analysis considered: CNN, The Houston Chronicle, The L.A. Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

The Denver Post, Time, and USA Today covered seven of eight. The Chicago Tribune covered just two. Despite running five pieces that mentioned climate change, The Wall Street Journal covered only one aspect of the issue that this analysis considered....

Of all the topics considered, mitigation was discussed the least. Only 16 of 136 pieces (12 percent) touched on the possibility of mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse gas pollution or switching to renewable energy sources. Finally, 27 pieces, or 20 percent, noted in some way that climate change is caused by human activity. Conclusion The problem of climate denial in the media has received a good deal of attention, as has the elevation of climate skeptics and deniers in a manner that gives the impression of real debate where the science

is settled. Far less attention has been paid to the problem of silence—underreporting on climate change directly, failures to connect it to other relevant stories, and failures to cover it with the breadth and depth it merits. This analysis considers climate coverage in the context of one instance of localized, catastrophic harm that global warming is making more severe and more common. It found that good coverage was highly concentrated among just a few outlets. Many failed to discuss the issue much or failed to cover important aspects of it. One major newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, covered only one of seven aspects of climate change that this analysis examined, giving an accurate account of some of the climate science in a news article that also featured spurious claims by a skeptic. Two of three major broadcast networks, ABC and NBC, did not mention climate change at all in the context of Hurricane Harvey.

==

perhaps minor fails? patterns? fodder?

6 of the Biggest Media Meltdowns This Week

A New York Post column casually calls for nuking North Korea... and much more.

By Adam Johnson / AlterNet September 9, 2017, 8:29 AM GMT

1. Hillary Clinton promotes dubious, culty media outlet Verrit, internet proceeds to destroy it.

Every now and then products come along that are so pointless and badly executed one can only sit back in awe of the sheer incompetence. Such a product, Verrit, was launched this week by Clinton hanger-on and man with a checkered past Peter Daou and his wife. It’s a website that nominally allows people to post memes, quotes and other information by entering a verification code that, well, the rest doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Since its launch Monday, which was strangely promoted by Clinton herself, every outlet from Gizmodo, Vox and Slate to the Washington Post and the AV Club has bashed the media upstart for being little more than a disjointed cultist meme farm.

It got so bad that Daou started attacking journalists simply for liking tweets mocking the website; an outburst that led to even more sarcastic memes. The internet can be a cruel place, but few recklessly invite this cruelty more than Mr. Daou.

2. Fox News eggs on white vigilantes threatening to 'shoot looters' in Houston.

Fox News’ business model is predicated on driving to the one-yard line of white supremacy, then acting shocked when it's accused of trying to score a touchdown. Fox's institutional flirtation with white nationalist tropes has gotten more overt with the rise of Trump, a fact that was on full display in one particularly gross segment in which a Fox News anchor laughed at the thought of a few vigilante rednecks going around shooting “looters.”

https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/906320820221464580

Who are these looters? Presumably the two gun-wielding white guys will drive around making this determination and blowing people away based on their own ad hoc judgments of guilt. All just another good laugh on the set of Fox News.

3. Alex Jones is now pro-FEMA camps.

After spending over a decade railing against the threat of FEMA and its globalist plot to take over the U.S. homeland via its camps, Alex Jones’ website and personal Twitter feed promoted a tweet insisting we fund FEMA over DACA, the Obama-created program to give citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants.

Combined with Jones’ love for the pro-cop, pro-military, pro-Department of Homeland Security President Trump, it’s beginning to seem like InfoWars “anti-government” rhetoric was based more on mindless racist grievance and paranoia than an actual opposition to the government. Oh well, he still has "Jewish” crisis actors and gay frogs.

4. Breitbart and Fox News serve up talking points for Jeff Sessions' DACA-rescinding press conference.

If one needs more evidence the Trump administration takes its tone and language directly from Fox News and Breitbart, look no further than Jeff Sessions' press conference this week. As liberal watchdog Media Matters notes, Sessions' primary talking points were ripped off directly from the two outlets. Breitbart/Fox and Sessions both claimed DACA was “amnesty” (it’s not), that the “child migrant surge” was due to DACA (it’s not), that DACA recipients take American jobs (they don’t), and that DACA was “unconstitutional” (it isn’t).

Steve Bannon may have exited the White House, but his propaganda reach hasn’t. Recently, there have been reports Trump’s new Chief of Staff John Kelly was trying to wean Trump off InfoWars, but it’s doubtful the two pillars of Breitbart and Fox News will go anywhere anytime soon. After all, where else would they trial balloon their talking points?

OMFG:

5. Pro-Trump fossil fuel lobbyist and Washington Post columnist writes greatest 'self own' in op-ed history.

America’s most corrupt columnist and noted sleazy lobbyist Ed Rogers wrote one of the greatest "self owns" in the history of op-ed writing. In his attempt to rail against the “lurch to the left” taking place in the Democratic Party, he listed off a litany of problems, a point that was laughably undermined by the tacked-on disclosure his editors forced him to put in:

Economic policies [of the Democrats in 2020] will consist of government giveaways and anti-business crusades. Social causes will give no quarter to moderate positions, and LGBT special interests, labor unions, global warming fanatics and factions such as Black Lives Matter, along with other grievance industry groups, will face no moderating counterforce. (Disclosure: My firm represents interests in the fossil fuel industry.)

Sort of takes the wind out of one's rhetorical sails to rail against—among other causes—climate change, only to have to cap it off by pointing out you’re a lobbyist for Exxon. Moreover, one has to ask how Post editors felt publishing the "disclosure" the same week three once-in-a-generation hurricanes formed in the Atlantic ocean. Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.

6. New York Post column casually calls for genocide in North Korea.

Typically when calling for war against another country, American propagandists will make some token attempt to distinguish between destroying a military or a leadership and an entire people. It maintains the pretense of distinguishing between civilians and military targets.

No such pretense was required for America’s most radical right-wing rag, the New York Post, which ran a columnby Fox News analyst and former United States Army lieutenant colonel Ralph Peters expressly calling to “destroy North Korea”:

==

http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-grovels-right-wing-and-other-despicable-media-moments-week

agw hurricane harvey, nyt stephens [50 min total last year?]

ABC and NBC ignore climate change’s role in extreme weather events.

As Media Matters notes, of the three major news networks, only CBS has bothered to point out the glaring, existential threat of climate change in the context of Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Houston earlier this week. CBS aired three segments that addressed the connection: one on CBS This Morning and two featuring environmental engineering professor Jim Blackburn; an August 30 episode of CBS Evening News and an August 31 episode of CBS This Morning. As of Thursday, neither ABC nor NBC bothered to mention climate change, instead settling on routine disaster porn and personal interest stories

2. Washington Post casually calls Venezuela an 'enemy of the U.S.'

For some reason editors at the Washington Post decided to call Venezuela “an enemy of the U.S.,” which is odd considering Venezuela has never done anything to harm the United State.

Venezuela, enemy of the U.S., offered $5 million in aid to Harvey victims https://t.co/gUTmyiBKVO

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 31, 2017

The article in question was actually noting aid Venezuela offered to Harvey victims this week, but according to the Post, this was just a devious plot (unlike American aid, which is purely benevolent). It described the offer with the dystopian phrase “trolling U.S. leaders with kindness.” Evidence for why Venezuela is an “enemy" was never made clear in the article, but the headline was later changed to something less nakedly ideological.

3. World’s coppiest reporter snitches to police during national disaster.

Oh boy, did ABC News’ Tom Llamas have a bad day on Twitter Wednesday. After posting a tweet saying, “We informed police of the looting and Coast Guard is flying overhead. Multiple officers now on the scene,” he was righteously piled on by thousands of Twitter users for snitching to the police in a time of emergency. “F**k off, snitch,” Baffler editor Brandy Jensen tweeted.

“In a disaster scenario the first response should be helping those in need, not criminalizing them,” another user insisted. All in all it was ugly; Llamas eventually deleted the tweet and tried some half-baked excuse about how there was “a body nearby,” but no one really bought it. From there it just got worse. After many failed attempts, he finally learned the first rule of handling social media pile-ons: log off.

4. What the hell is going on with the New York Times opinion section?

In a week of uniquely terrible takes, the New York Times was the unexpected winner for worst takes in the shortest period of time. In one 72-hour period, it published op-eds by neocon hatchet man James Kirtrick bashing Chelsea Manning; an infomercial by suspected war criminal and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince shilling his wares in Afghanistan; racist victim blaming of Arabs by Thomas Friedman; gross GOP revisionism by David Brooks insisting “racism was not a common feature in the conservative moment”; veiled climate change denial by columnist Bret Stephens; and a tedious AM radio screed against cultural appropriation by Bari Weiss. The Times insisted it had hired neoconservative Bret Stephens from the Wall Street Journal  because it values “ideological diversity,” which evidently means it really just wanted to seek out more odious far-right-wing viewpoints.

5. Transphobic, far-right columnist suggests we 'befriend Nazis.'

Forward columnist Bethany Mandel had a radical approach to stopping the emerging white nationalist scene: become their buddies and try to win them over. In “We Need to Start Befriending Neo-Nazis,” Mandel posed as a hand-wringing liberal and cited efforts by others to befriend rather than confront neo-Nazis via doxxing and attacks. But this posture was belied by her other posts that expose her as someone who is—while certainly not a Nazi—very far to the right. In April, she called Caitlyn Jenner by her dead name and insisted she engaged in “genital mutilation” due to a mental illness. In a post two weeks prior in the Forward, Mandel insisted we “Stop outing Nazis,” so not only are we supposed to befriend them, but it’s bad to expose them to the public.

After a video went viral of alleged antifa members beating an alt-right Trump supporter and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s subsequent condemnation of “antifa”—the loose-knit group of anti-fascist activists who often use violence—it was a buyer's market for anti-antifa takes. The Washington Post editorial board kicked things off, followed by condemnations in Vox, the Chicago Tribune, from former Bush speechwriter and WaPo columnist Marc Thiessen.6. Neocon columnists, WaPo editorial board, Vox, Marc Thiessen and Trevor Noah all play tedious 'both sides' game and officially condemn antifa.

Most grating of all was the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which derided the group in its patented, unfunny manner, dismissing them as “Vegan ISIS” (get it? Because vegans are totally lame!). The bit, aside from trafficking in lazy, cartoon depictions of antifa, was woefully unfunny. Noah and others drawing equivalences between antifa and fascists helps provide the propaganda scaffolding for the Trump administration's recent categorization of antifa as a “terrorist” group.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst at FAIR and contributing writer for AlterNet.

==

see false equiv/ balancing norms, weaponization of rw mirror strategy? aha

http://www.alternet.org/activism/media-busy-creating-left-wing-threat-balance-out-awful-racist-right-wing-hordes-who

house "mean" but senate not much better

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-corporate-media-enabled-gops-audacious-plan-steal-health-care-coverage-23

no img link

How Corporate Media Enabled the GOP's Audacious Plan to Steal Health Care Coverage from 23 Million Americans

Corporate media is finally talking about Trumpcare. It’s too little too late.

==

not exactly a fail, but op-ed/ ltr to ed a vulnerability for escalator effect (esp if going for fair and balancing norms

Conservative Op-Eds Argued Wrongly That China and India Are Not Taking Action

Right-wing op-eds falsely claimed that China, India and other developing nations were not committed to Paris goals.

In a syndicated column that appeared in USA Today and USA Today Network newspapers, Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment and a former vice president of Americans for Prosperity, wrote, "The Paris treaty effectively bans coal-fired power plants in the United States—while China has 368 coal plants under construction and more than 800 in the planning stage. India's coal production under the deal is allowed to double by 2020—and they are likely to have emissions much higher than what they promised." And in his anti-Paris op-ed in the Boston Herald, Loris wrote, "Developing nations want affordable, dependable energy to raise their standards of living, and countries such as India, China and Indonesia need to use a lot of coal to get there."

China and India are on pace to meet their emissions targets ahead of schedule.

The Washington Post recently reported that an analysis conducted by the Climate Action Tracker found that "China and India are on track to overachieve on their climate pledges" and quoted Bill Hare, CEO of the nonprofit science and policy institute Climate Analytics, saying that China and India "are going to slow the global growth in CO2 emissions significantly." A New York Times editorial discussing the same analysis noted, "The shift from fossil fuels has ... been much faster and more pronounced than most experts expected. China has reduced coal use for three years in a row and recently scrapped plans to build more than 100 coal power plants. Indian officials have estimated that country might no longer need to build new coal plants beyond those that are already under construction."

China and India are taking big steps to develop clean energy and scale back coal plants.

In January of this year, China announced that it plans to spend more than $360 billion through 2020 on renewable energy sources and is canceling plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants. Last year, India announced that it plans to get 57 percent of its total electricity capacity from renewable sources by 2027 and launch a $2 billion equity fund to boost renewable energy development. According to The Associated Press, a March report by the groups CoalSwarm, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace found that "construction starts for coal-fired plants in China and India were down by 62 percent in January from a year earlier while new facilities starting operation declined 29 percent." Additionally, a May 22 New York Times editorial noted, "Electric vehicle sales in China jumped 70 percent last year, thanks in large part to generous government incentives. India is much further behind in this area, but the country's minister of power said last month that all cars sold in the country should be electric by 2030.

Developing nations pushed for a strong Paris agreement and were "crucial" to its adoption.

Developing countries, including the least developed countries, were a key part of the "high ambition coalition" that called for tougher climate change policies and "was widely credited with ensuring the Paris meeting ended in agreement," according to Climate Change News. Far from pushing for a weak agreement and wanting leeway to burn coal, the developing nations have been insistent on the need for fast action to deal with climate change, and have sounded alarms about the role of corporations and lobbyists in UN climate negotiations, fearing that they might weaken emissions goals.

Developing nations committed to cutting emissions even though it's more difficult for them and they have less responsibility to do so.

The world's developing countries have emitted only a small proportion of the climate-warming gases that humans have sent into the atmosphere over the past 160 years, and so they're responsible for only a small proportion of the global warming the world is experiencing. And yet all but two of the world's developing nations signed onto the Paris agreement and submitted action plans, many of which experts said were ambitious. Yet developing countries face a tougher challenge reducing emissions than their wealthier counterparts do. As Robert Lempert of the RAND Corporation explained to the Chicago Tribune, "The richest countries have much of their economy in lower-emitting sectors. ... The U.S. can grow their economy and improve their quality of life without increasing energy use. But in developing countries, you can't do that."

Op-Eds Against the Agreement Pushed Climate Science Denial

Anti-Paris agreement op-eds spread climate science misinformation.

In an op-ed for The Washington Times, Princeton emeritus physics professor and climate denier William Happer wrote that the U.S. "should withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement," claiming, "For too long, well-meaning policymakers have been misled by propaganda, masquerading as science, that more atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) will harm the planet ... More CO2 is not a pollutant but is a benefit to humanity." In an op-ed in The Hill, Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute attempted to undermine the scientific rationale behind the Paris agreement by disputing that human activity is the dominant cause of recent global warming.

Slate's Phil Plait: Claiming CO2 is not a pollutant is "ridiculous" and "in-your-face wrong."

In a Feb. 18 column, science journalist Phil Plait wrote in Slate that the frequently used climate-denier claim that CO2 is not a pollutant is "ridiculous," "in-your-face wrong" and a "typical denier distraction technique, trying to downplay or distract you from what's really going on." He summarized the overwhelming scientific consensus: While some carbon dioxide is necessary for plant life, burning fossil fuels and thus releasing excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is warming up the globe "too quickly for many living things to adapt." Carbon pollution is causing rapid changes to the Earth's climate, and, as Plait explained, that speed is the "danger; the rate at which we are heating the planet is unprecedented."

Humans are "by far" the dominant cause of global warming.

InsideClimate News reported in 2016 that "ninety to 100 percent of climate scientists agree that the planet is warming due to human activity, according to a peer-reviewed paper published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The study, called a 'consensus on consensus' synthesizes findings from prior published research." In 2013, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported, "It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines "extremely likely" as having 95 to 100 percent probability. A 2009 letter signed by 18 U.S. scientific organizations stated that "greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver" of climate change. In a 2012 literature review for the blog Skeptical Science, Dana Nuccitelli laid out the overwhelming evidence that humans are the primary driver of climate change, writing, "A wide variety of statistical and physical approaches all arrived at the same conclusion: that humans are the dominant cause of the global warming over the past century, and particularly over the past 50 years. This robust scientific evidence is why there is a consensus among scientific experts that humans are the dominant cause of global warming."

Reposted with permission from our media associate Media Matters for America.

==

related to

echo 2:this is age of trump

layers/scales:

1) CEC Conservative Entertainment Complex: fox news of course but also reality TV, wrestling, even moving pict inst "documentaries" eg duck dynasty guy; give the lie to Liberal Media (tho they just claim puny counter-wt).

2) Echo chamber; this refers to earlier and now seemingly quaint constellation of WSJ, Forbes, Fox maybe Drudge.

3)  Escalator Effect: refers to low level no filter areas of vulnerability that allow BS to work its way up the food chain to mainstream legit media.  Thus "punked"

see Breitbart, fake news, bots, conspiracy theory

==

kill the msgr gary webb Cia cocaine

==

https://mediamatters.org/research/2017/03/23/how-broadcast-networks-covered-climate-change-2016/215718

great graphs: no links

In 2016, evening newscasts and Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as Fox Broadcast Co.'s Fox News Sunday, collectively decreased their total coverage of climate change by 66 percent compared to 2015, even though there were a host of important climate-related stories, including the announcement of 2015 as the hottest year on record, the signing of the Paris climate agreement, and numerous climate-related extreme weather events. There were also two presidential candidates to cover, and they held diametrically opposed positions on the Clean Power Plan, the Paris climate agreement, and even on whether climate change is a real, human-caused phenomenon. Apart from PBS, the networks also failed to devote significant coverage to climate-related policies, but they still found the time to uncritically air climate denial -- the majority of which came from now-President Donald Trump and his team.

Total Climate Coverage On Broadcast Networks Cratered In 2016

Combined Climate Coverage On ABC, CBS, NBC, And Fox News Sunday Decreased Significantly From 2015 To 2016, Despite Ample Opportunity To Cover Climate Change. In 2016, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday* aired a combined 50 minutes of climate coverage on their evening and Sunday news programs, which was 96 minutes less than in 2015 -- a drop of about 66 percent.

*Fox Broadcast Co. does not air a nightly news program

As was the case in 2015, ABC aired the least amount of climate coverage in 2016, covering the topic for just six minutes, about seven minutes less than in 2015. All the other major networks also significantly reduced their coverage from the previous year, with NBC showing the biggest decrease (from 50 minutes in 2015 to 10 minutes in 2016), followed by Fox (39 minutes in 2015 to seven minutes in 2016) and CBS (from 45 minutes in 2015 to 27 minutes in 2016).

Networks Had Ample Opportunity To Cover Climate Change In 2016. Despite the pronounced decline in climate coverage, the networks had ample opportunity to cover climate change in 2016. As The New York Times reported, in 2016, climate change took on “a prominence it has never before had in a presidential general election” given the stark contrast between the candidates’ views. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had a long track record of climate denial and differed with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on a range of important climate issues, including the Paris climate agreement, the Clean Power Plan, and the continued use of coal as an energy source, with Trump pledging that he would put coal miners “back to work” and Clinton proposing a plan that would help coal communities transition to clean energy. Additionally, there were also a host of non-election climate stories worthy of coverage in 2016, including extreme weather events tied to climate change, like Hurricane Matthew and the record-breaking rainfall and flooding in Louisiana (which the American Red Cross described as “the worst natural disaster to strike the United States since Superstorm Sandy”); the signing of the Paris climate agreement and the U.N. climate summit in Morocco; the official announcement from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2015 was the hottest year on record by far; and investigations by state attorneys general into whether ExxonMobil committed fraud by misleading the public on climate change. [The New York Times, 8/1/16; Media Matters, 5/26/16; The Huffington Post, 9/8/16; DonaldJTrump.com, 9/15/16; Media Matters, 3/15/16, 10/7/16, 8/17/16; The Huffington Post, 4/22/16; The Guardian, 4/22/16; InsideClimate News, 11/3/16; The New York Times, 1/20/16; InsideClimate News, 12/28/16]

ABC, CBS, NBC, And Fox Failed To Discuss Climate-Related Ramifications Of A Clinton Or Trump Presidency Until After The Election. ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News Sunday did not air a single segment informing viewers of what to expect on climate change and climate-related policies or issues under a Trump or Clinton administration. While these outlets did devote a significant amount of coverage to Trump’s presidency, airing 25 segments informing viewers about the ramifications or actions of a Trump administration as they relate to climate change, all of these segments aired after the election. Examples of post-election coverage include a PBS NewsHour segment about Trump’s selection of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Pruitt’s history of climate denial and ties to the fossil fuel industry; a CBS Evening News segment about Trump appointing climate denier Myron Ebell to his EPA transition team; and an NBC Nightly News report on Trump’s promise to roll back President Barack Obama’s executive actions on climate change. [PBS NewsHour, 12/7/16; CBS Evening News, 11/15/16; NBC Nightly News, 11/9/16**]

**We included citations of specific shows when we described the content of a segment. We did not include show citations for general tallies. We linked to episodes that were available online but listed only the date for those that were not.

PBS NewsHour Was The Only Show To Discuss Climate Ramifications Of A Clinton Or Trump Presidency Prior To The Election. PBS NewsHour*** was the only show in our study that examined what impact a Trump or a Clinton presidency would have on climate-related issues and policies before the election. On the September 7 edition of PBS NewsHour, correspondent William Brangham discussed “what a Clinton or Trump administration might mean with regards to climate change” with The New York Times’ Coral Davenport and The Washington Post’s Chris Mooney. And a September 22 segment explored “what the early days of a Trump presidency might look like” and featured Judy Woodruff interviewing Evan Osnos of The New Yorker about whether Trump would renounce the Paris climate agreement. [PBS NewsHour, 9/22/16, 9/7/16]

***Unlike the nightly news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC that air for a half hour seven days a week, PBS NewsHour airs five days a week and is a half hour longer.

Tyndall Report Found No Discussion Of Climate Change In Issues Coverage During Campaign. The Tyndall Report, which tracks the broadcast networks' weeknight newscasts, analyzed election-related issues coverage on the major networks’ weeknight newscasts and found no issues coverage devoted to climate change in 2016 up through October 25. The Tyndall Report defines election-related issues coverage as that which “takes a public policy, outlines the societal problem that needs to be addressed, describes the candidates' platform positions and proposed solutions, and evaluates their efficacy.” [The Intercept, 2/24/17; Media Matters, 10/26/16; Tyndall Report, 10/25/16]

Networks Aired A Disproportionate Amount Of Climate Coverage After Election Day. In the roughly 45 weeks before the November 8 election, the networks aired a total of 55 segments about climate change -- roughly one per week. After the election, the networks aired 32 climate-related segments over approximately seven weeks till the end of the year -- about five stories per week.

Networks Ignored Links Between Climate Change And National Security And Rarely Addressed Economic And Public Health Impacts, But Some Detailed Impacts On Extreme Weather And Plants And Wildlife

Networks Did Not Air A Single Segment On Link To National Security. Numerous military and intelligence organizations have sounded the alarm on climate change’s connection to national security. A September 2016 report prepared by the National Intelligence Council and coordinated with the U.S. intelligence community stated, “Climate change and its resulting effects are likely to pose wide-ranging national security challenges for the United States and other countries over the next 20 years.” And following Trump’s election victory, “a bipartisan group of defense experts and former military leaders sent Trump’s transition team a briefing book urging the president-elect to consider climate change as a grave threat to national security,” E&E News reported. Yet the national security implications of climate change never came up in any of the networks’ climate coverage for 2016. [Media Matters, 1/13/17; Scientific American, 11/15/16]

PBS Was The Only Network To Address Economic Impacts Of Climate Change. PBS was the only network to report on the economic impacts of climate change. Two segments about Washington state’s carbon tax ballot initiative that aired on the April 21 and October 20 editions of PBS NewsHour featured the president of the Washington State Labor Council explaining that Washington’s shellfish industry “has left the state and gone to Hawaii because the acid levels in the ocean has risen so much.” And on the November 17 edition of PBS NewsHour, correspondent William Brangham reported that 365 American companies “have written to the president-elect imploring him to uphold the Paris accords and warning -- quote -- ‘Failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk.’” [PBS NewsHour, 4/21/16, 10/20/16, 11/17/16]

Networks Rarely Addressed How Climate Change Impacts Public Health. The World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Climate Assessment have all concluded that climate change has a significant influence on human health and disease. And as 2016 saw the first local spread of the Zika virus in the continental United States, Climate Signals found that “climate change creates new risks for human exposure to vector-borne diseases such as Zika, particularly in the United States where rising heat and humidity are increasing the number of days annually in which disease vectors thrive.” However, only two segments on NBC Nightly News dealt with the link between climate change and public health -- no other network covered the issue. In a January 18 report about the spread of Zika, correspondent Tom Costello noted, “Researchers are also studying whether climate change and El Nino are causing certain mosquitoes populations to grow.” And a July 4 report about a massive algae bloom creating a toxic emergency in Florida featured correspondent Gabe Gutierrez explaining, “The debate is raging over what`s to blame for this latest growth, but scientists say there are many factors including population growth and climate change.” [World Health Organization, accessed 3/21/17; CDC.gov, accessed 3/21/17; National Climate Assessment, accessed 3/21/17; Climate Signals, 8/23/16; NBC Nightly News, 1/18/16, 7/4/16]

CBS And ABC Rarely Covered Climate Link To Extreme Weather, While NBC And Fox Ignored It Completely. 2016 saw no shortages of extreme weather events influenced by climate change, with Hurricane Matthew making landfall on the East Coast; wildfires -- which have become a consistent threat thanks, in part, to climate change -- charring more than 100,000 acres in seven states in the Southeast; and record rainfall and flooding in Louisiana causing what the American Red Cross called “the worst natural disaster to strike the United States since Superstorm Sandy.” Yet NBC and Fox never addressed the link between climate change and extreme weather, while CBS did so in four segments and ABC did so in just one segment. By contrast, PBS NewsHour aired eight segments dealing with the link between climate change and extreme weather. [The Weather Channel, 10/9/16; Media Matters, 10/6/16; The New York Times, 11/29/16; Climate Central, 11/23/16; Media Matters, 8/17/16]

PBS Led The Networks In Stories Detailing Climate Impacts On Plants And Wildlife. PBS provided the most coverage of climate impacts on plants and wildlife (six segments), followed by CBS and NBC (three segments each), and ABC (one segment). Examples of this reporting included a “Climate Diaries” segment on CBS Evening News about how climate change is “taking a toll on endangered mountain gorillas” in Central Africa by making their food supply less predictable and forcing human populations searching for water into their territory and an NBC Nightly News segment about how Yellowstone grizzlies are threatened because one of their food sources -- seeds from whitebark pine trees -- has been decimated by climate change. Another example was a PBS NewsHour segment reporting that “two-fifths of bees, butterflies, and related pollinating species are heading toward extinction” thanks to “a range of factors, ranging from pesticide use to climate change to habitat loss.” [CBS Evening News, 11/17/16; NBC Nightly News, 5/22/16; PBS NewsHour, 2/26/16]

Specific Climate-Related Policies Received Sparse Coverage Outside Of PBS

The Clean Power Plan Was Almost Completely Ignored On Sunday Shows And Received Sparse Coverage On Nightly News Shows. The broadcast networks provided scant coverage of the Clean Power Plan even though Trump had promised during the campaign to eliminate the policy. The Clean Power Plan establishes the first-ever federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants and serves as the linchpin of President Obama’s program to meet the nation’s emissions reduction obligation under the Paris agreement. Fox News Sunday was the only Sunday show to feature a climate-related segment on the Clean Power Plan, in which Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane claimed that the Democrats’ focus on the plan is an example of how “environmentalism in a crucial way worked against the Democratic Party this year,” because Trump carried coal-dependent states in the election. But contrary to Lane’s claim, numerous polls conducted in the run-up to the election indicated that a majority of Americans consider climate change an important issue and favor government action to address it. On nightly news shows, ABC was the only network that did not air a climate-related segment on the plan, while PBS NewsHour covered the Clean Power Plan the most (seven segments), followed by CBS Evening News (three segments) and NBC Nightly News (two segments). [DonaldJTrump.com, 9/15/16; The White House, 8/3/15; The New York Times, 3/2/16; Fox News Sunday, 11/13/16; Media Matters, 11/29/16]

PBS Far Outpaced Networks In Coverage Of U.N. Climate Agreement And Summits. In 2016, world leaders met on Earth Day for the signing ceremony of the Paris climate agreement reached by 195 nations and later again in Morocco for talks about implementing the climate accord. In Trump’s first major speech on energy policy, in May, he vowed that he would “cancel” the Paris climate agreement. But after the election he told The New York Times, “I have an open mind to it.” Despite these developments, PBS was the only network to devote significant coverage to the U.N. climate agreement and U.N. climate-related summits, doing so in 21 segments, while CBS aired five segments, NBC and ABC aired just three, and Fox aired just two. [USA Today, 4/22/16; The New York Times, 12/12/15; InsideClimate News, 11/3/16; BBC.com, 5/27/16; DonaldJTrump.com, 5/26/16; The New York Times, 11/23/16]

CBS, NBC, And Fox Addressed The Climate Impacts Of The Keystone XL Pipeline Only Once, While ABC And PBS Failed To Do So At All. During the campaign, Clinton and Trump staked out opposing positions on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar sands oil that is 17 percent dirtier than average and would “increase emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming” from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Yet there was a dearth of coverage on Keystone XL’s link to climate change, with CBS, NBC, and Fox each airing just one segment that connected Keystone XL to climate change and ABC and PBS ignoring the topic completely. The networks also ignored Keystone XL more broadly -- airing just four additional non-climate-related segments on the pipeline. [Business Insider, 9/25/16; Media Matters, 1/15/15]

Fox Was The Only Network To Cover The Dakota Access Pipeline In A Climate Context. The Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American tribes, as well as environmental activists, protested against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016, citing, among other concerns, the impact a continued buildup of oil infrastructure would have on climate change. Yet Fox was the sole network to cover the Dakota Access pipeline in a climate context. On the December 11 edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace previewed his upcoming interview with Trump by saying that he would “ask [Trump] to clear up exactly where he stands on climate change.” After returning from a commercial break, Wallace said to the Trump, “Let me ask you a couple specific questions. Will you still pull out of the Paris climate agreement, which has been signed by more than 100 countries to reduce carbon emissions? Will you restart the Dakota Access pipeline, which the Army just stopped?” To which Trump replied that he was “studying” the Paris climate agreement and would “have [Dakota Access] solved very quickly” when he takes office. ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS did air multiple segments on the Dakota Access pipeline (airing eight, 10, four, and 10 segments, respectively), but none of these segments linked it to climate change. [MPR News, 12/7/16; Time, 12/1/16, 10/28/16; Fox News Sunday, 12/11/16]

Major Networks Completely Ignored The “Exxon Knew” Story. Reports from InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that Exxon’s own scientists had confirmed by the early 1980s that fossil fuel pollution was causing climate change, yet Exxon-funded organizations helped manufacture doubt about the causes of climate change for decades afterward in what became known as the “Exxon knew” scandal. The reports prompted the attorneys general in New York, California, and Massachusetts to each launch investigations of Exxon, as well as countersuits from Exxon and subpoenas from members of Congress in defense of Exxon. Yet none of the networks covered any of these developments over the course of 2016. [Media Matters, 9/1/16; InsideClimate News, 12/28/16]

CBS, Fox, And PBS Uncritically Aired Climate Science Denial In 2016 -- All Of Which Came From Trump Or Trump Officials

CBS, Fox, And PBS Aired A Combined Five Segments That Included Unrebutted Climate Science Denial In 2016 -- All From Trump Or Trump Officials. In 2016, CBS Evening News, PBS NewsHour, and Fox News Sunday aired a combined five segments that misled audiences by featuring climate science denial. Half of Fox News Sunday’s climate-related segments included climate denial. In every instance, it was Trump or Trump officials promoting denial.

On the September 27 edition of CBS Evening News, correspondent Julianna Goldman fact-checked a portion of the September 26 presidential debate in which Clinton stated, “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real,” and Trump interjected, “I did not. I did not. … I do not say that.” Goldman noted that Trump had in fact tweeted that climate change is a hoax, but she did not fact-check the veracity of Trump’s statement that climate change was a hoax. [CBS Evening News, 9/27/16; Media Matters, 5/26/16]

On the November 9 edition of PBS NewsHour, during a segment on world leaders’ reactions to Trump’s election victory, correspondent Margaret Warner reported, “Also in question is America’s participation in the Paris climate accord. Trump has called climate change a hoax, and while it would take four years to formally pull out of the agreement, there are no sanctions in place for ignoring it.” And in a report on the ways in which Trump would dismantle environmental policy on the November 17 edition of PBS NewsHour, correspondent William Brangham stated, “Trump has repeatedly expressed his own skepticism about climate change, like in this 2012 tweet, when he said: ‘The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.’ Two years later, he wrote: ‘Global warming is an expensive hoax.’" In neither instance did the correspondent note that Trump’s statements are at odds with the scientific consensus that climate change is real and human-caused. [PBS NewsHour, 11/9/16, 11/17/16]

Shortly after Trump’s interview with The New York Times in which he stated that he had an “open mind” on climate change and the Paris climate agreement, Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace asked Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how flexible Trump would be on his campaign promises. Priebus answered that as “far as this issue on climate change -- the only thing he was saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he'll have an open mind about it but he has his default position, which [is that] most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he'll have an open mind and listen to people.” Priebus then moved on to discuss the potential nomination of Jim Mattis as defense secretary before Wallace concluded the interview. And during Wallace’s interview with Trump on the December 11 edition of Fox News Sunday, Trump declared that “nobody really knows” whether human-induced climate change is happening. Wallace didn’t challenge Trump’s claim that blatantly misrepresents the consensus of the world’s leading scientific institutions that human activities such as burning fossil fuels are the main cause of global warming. [The New York Times, 11/23/16; Fox News Sunday, 11/27/16, 12/11/16; NASA.gov, accessed 3/21/17]

Other Nightly News Segments On PBS, CBS, And NBC Also Included Climate Science Denial, But Reporters Pushed Back On Those Claims, Noting That They Conflicted With Established Climate Science. Segments on PBS, CBS, and NBC nightly news shows also included climate denial, but reporters noted that that these statements were at odds with established climate science.

In a segment about Trump selecting Scott Pruitt as his nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency on the December 8 edition of PBS NewsHour, anchor Judy Woodruff reported, “Pruitt is in sync with President-elect Trump on a range of issues, including his skepticism about man-made global warming. Writing in the National Review this year, he said: ‘That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming.’ In fact, the vast majority of scientists agree that human activity contributes to global warming, all of which underscores questions about whether a Trump administration will refuse to abide by the Paris accords on greenhouse gas emissions.” And on the December 14 edition of PBS NewsHour, Woodruff asked Sean Spicer, who was then communications director for the Republican National Committee, “Does the president-elect still believe, as he said on the campaign trail, that the science behind climate change is still not settled, in other words, something that most climate scientists say is absolutely correct?” Spicer replied by denying the consensus on human-caused climate change, stating that Trump “understands that there’s elements of man, mankind, that affect climate, but the exact impact of it and what has to be done to change that is something there is some dispute about within the community, not just science, but within the industry.” [PBS NewsHour, 12/8/16, 12/14/16]

A November 15 CBS Evening News segment on the appointment of climate denier Myron Ebell to Trump’s EPA transition team featured footage of Trump calling climate change a “hoax,” followed by correspondent Chip Reid stating, “President-elect Donald Trump has left little doubt where he stands on the issue of climate change. He wants a dramatic increase in the production of coal and oil, which he says will create jobs. And his EPA transition team is being led by Myron Ebell, a leading climate change skeptic. Ebell, who is not a scientist, disagrees with the overwhelming majority of climate scientists who say the driving force behind the warming planet is the burning of fossil fuels.” [CBS Evening News, 11/15/16]

The December 14 edition of ABC’s World News Tonight featured footage of Trump transition official Anthony Scaramucci denying climate change by arguing, “There was overwhelming science that the Earth was flat. ... We get a lot of things wrong in the scientific community.” Correspondent Brian Ross introduced Scaramucci’s comments as “a Trump transition official continu[ing] the public assault on established science.” [ABC’s World News Tonight, 11/14/16]

Because hosts or correspondents on these programs noted that the statements in question contradicted mainstream climate science, they were not counted as denial in our study.

Climate Scientists Were Completely Absent From ABC’s World News Tonight … Again

For The Second Consecutive Year, ABC’s World News Tonight Did Not Feature A Single Scientist In Its Climate Coverage. ABC’s World News Tonight did not feature a single scientist in its climate coverage for the second year in a row. By contrast, NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News featured five and six scientists, respectively, and PBS NewsHour featured 18.

Sunday Shows Did Not Feature A Single Scientist In Climate-Related Coverage. After featuring just two scientists over a five-year period from 2009 to 2013, the Sunday shows featured seven scientists in 2014 alone, and then backslid in 2015, quoting or interviewing just two scientists (4 percent of all Sunday show guests). In 2016, that backslide continued, with the Sunday shows featuring no scientists in their climate-related coverage.

PBS And CBS Frequently Aired Coverage Related To Climate-Related Scientific Research, While NBC And ABC Did So Less Often. PBS and CBS far outpaced their counterparts in the number of segments focusing on climate-related scientific research that they aired on nightly news shows. PBS NewsHour aired 10 segments on climate-related scientific research, including a segment that featured scientists explaining climate change’s influence on wildfires in Southern California and flooding in Louisiana; CBS Evening News aired seven segments on climate-related research, including a segment featuring interviews with scientists who discovered unprecedented rates of sea ice melt in the Arctic Circle. Conversely, NBC Nightly News aired just three segments on climate-related research, and ABC’s World News Tonight aired just two. None of the Sunday shows featured any segments on climate-related scientific research. [PBS NewsHour, 8/17/16; CBS Evening News, 3/4/16]

Sunday Shows’ Climate Coverage Dropped By 85 Percent

Every Network’s Sunday Show Significantly Decreased Its Climate Coverage. After dropping slightly from a high of 81 minutes of coverage in 2014 to 73 minutes in 2015, the Sunday shows’ climate coverage dropped 85 percent to just 11 minutes of coverage in 2016 -- the third-lowest amount in the eight-year time frame Media Matters has examined. Every network saw significant declines in Sunday show coverage, with Fox leading the way (down 32 minutes from the previous year), followed by NBC (down 17 minutes), CBS (down 10 minutes), and ABC (down four minutes).

Bernie Sanders Brought Up Climate Change Four Times As Much As Hosts Did On ABC, CBS, And NBC Sunday Shows. On every Sunday show except Fox News Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) brought up climate change significantly more often than the hosts themselves did. ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press aired a combined five segments in which the hosts brought up climate change, while Bernie Sanders brought up climate change 21 times during his appearances on those shows. Because our study counted only those segments where a media figure brought up or discussed climate change, those 21 segments were not counted in this study's overall network tallies.

Nightly News Shows On ABC, CBS, and NBC Aired Roughly Half As Much Climate Coverage As They Did In 2015

NBC Nightly News And CBS Evening News Significantly Decreased Climate Coverage, And ABC Once Again Lagged Behind Network Counterparts. The nightly news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC collectively decreased their climate coverage from approximately 73 minutes in 2015 to just over 39 minutes in 2016 -- a drop of 46 percent. NBC Nightly News had the biggest drop in climate coverage, decreasing by about 22 minutes, followed by CBS Evening News, which had a drop of approximately nine minutes. ABC’s World News Tonight, which aired significantly less climate coverage than its competitors in 2014 and 2015, once again continued its downward trend, dropping even further from roughly seven minutes of climate coverage in 2015 to just four minutes in 2016.

For Second Year In A Row, PBS Aired More Climate Coverage Than All Other Nightly News Programs Combined. For the second consecutive year, PBS NewsHour aired more segments addressing climate change than the other nightly news shows combined. PBS NewsHour aired 46 climate-related segments, while ABC (five), CBS (19), and NBC (12) aired a combined 36 climate-related nightly news segments. However, PBS NewsHour’s climate coverage decreased from 2015, when the network aired 58 climate-related segments.

CBS And NBC Nightly News Shows Have Stepped Up Climate Coverage In Early Months Of 2017

In 2017 So Far, CBS Evening News Has Already Aired More Than Half The Amount Of Climate Coverage It Did In All Of 2016. In the first few months of 2017, CBS Evening News has already aired about 17 minutes of climate-related coverage, just eight minutes less than the show aired for all of 2016. In fact, CBS Evening News aired nearly half as much climate coverage as it did in all of 2016 in just one week of 2017; this coverage was during a series of climate-related reports from Antarctica for its “Climate Diaries” series. [Media Matters, 2/13/17]

In Early Months Of 2017, NBC Nightly News Has Already Aired Nearly Half As Much Climate Coverage As It Did In All Of 2016. In just over two months, NBC Nightly News has already aired about five minutes of climate-related coverage, roughly half as much as the show aired for all of 2016.

Methodology

This report analyzes coverage of "climate change" or "global warming" between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016, on four Sunday news shows (ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday) and four nightly news programs (ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and PBS NewsHour) based on Nexis transcripts. Fox Broadcasting Co. airs Fox News Sunday but does not air a nightly news equivalent; Fox News is a separate cable channel. PBS NewsHour is a half-hour longer than its network nightly news counterparts, but it airs five days a week, compared to seven days a week for the other nightly news shows (PBS NewsHour Weekend was not included in this analysis). In one instance, Nexis categorized a segment that did not mention "climate change" or "global warming" as being about climate change; because the segment provided other clear indications that it was indeed about climate change, it was included. To identify the number of segments networks aired on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, we used the search terms Keystone w/20 pipe! And Dakota w/20 pipe!.

Our analysis includes any segment devoted to climate change, as well as any substantial mention (more than one paragraph of a news transcript or a definitive statement by a media figure) about climate change impacts or actions. The study did not include instances in which a non-media figure brought up climate change without being prompted to do so by a media figure unless the media figure subsequently addressed climate change. We defined media figures as hosts, anchors, correspondents, and recurring guest panelists. The study also does not include teasers if they were for segments that aired later on the same program. We acquired time stamps from iQ media and applied them generously for nightly news segments when the overall topic was related to climate change. For instance, if a nightly news segment about an extreme weather event mentioned climate change briefly, the entire segment was counted as climate coverage. However, if a significant portion of the segment was not related to climate change, such as a report on the pope giving a speech about climate change, immigration, religious freedom, and outreach to Cuba, only the portions of the segment that discussed climate change were counted. For the Sunday shows, which often feature wide-ranging discussions on multiple topics, we used only the relevant portion of such conversations. All coverage figures have been rounded to the nearest minute. Because PBS NewsHour is an hour-long show and the other networks’ nightly news programs are half-hour shows, our analysis compared PBS NewsHour's climate coverage to other nightly news programs' coverage in terms of topics covered and number of segments, but not in terms of number of minutes.

Research intern Katherine Hess and Sarah Wasko contributed to this study.

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guard uk

http://www.alternet.org/environment/pbs-only-network-reporting-climate-change-and-trump-wants-cut-it

Media Matters for America has published its annual review of American evening newscast climate coverage for 2016, and the results are stunning:

In 2016, evening newscasts and Sunday shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as Fox Broadcast Co.’s Fox News Sunday, collectively decreased their total coverage of climate change by 66 percent compared to 2015

In all of 2016, these news programs spent a combined grand total of 50 minutes talking about climate change. More than half of that come from CBS Evening News, which nevertheless only spent half as much time talking about climate change in 2016 as it had in 2015.

It’s certainly not as though 2016 lacked newsworthy climate stories. We learned in January that 2015 had smashed the record for hottest year, previously set just a year earlier. And 2016 just kept getting hotter, with nearly every month setting a new heat record . In September, the US and China agreed to formally ratify the Paris climate agreement. The list goes on and on, with newspapers like The Guardian constantly publishing important climate-related news throughout the year.

During 2016 there was also an ongoing presidential campaign in which the candidates’ views on climate science and policy should have been featured prominently. Unfortunately, climate change was rarely raised in the primary debates, and never in the general election debates. In fact, on Sunday news programs, Bernie Sanders brought up climate change four times more often than the program hosts.

Only after the election did news networks finally examine what a President Trump would mean for the Earth’s climate:

ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News Sunday did not air a single segment informing viewers of what to expect on climate change and climate-related policies or issues under a Trump or Clinton administration. While these outlets did devote a significant amount of coverage to Trump’s presidency, airing 25 segments informing viewers about the ramifications or actions of a Trump administration as they relate to climate change, all of these segments aired after the election.

As Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) noted, this was a dismal failure by the American news networks:

In a year when the American people were deciding who our next leader should be, you would think there would have been more discussions about climate change in our news programs, not less. This isn’t just shameful, it’s irresponsible. The climate is changing, and it’s affecting everything from the weather to our national security and our economy. Its impacts are already being felt and the American people deserve to know more about it.

PBS was the oasis in this desert of climate news coverage. PBS NewsHour was the only show that examined what impact a Trump or a Clinton presidency would have on climate-related issues and policies before the election. The PBS news program aired more than double the number of climate news segments as any of its network competitors, and interviewed or quoted three times more scientists than even CBS Evening News. ABC World News Tonight failed to interview or quote a single scientist about climate change.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given his climate denial, Trump’s proposed budget would completely defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which partially funds PBS. About half of that federal funding goes to local PBS stations that broadcast PBS NewsHour. Some of those stations – especially those in rural areas which rely particularly heavily on federal funding – would likely have to shut down, were Trump to get his budgetary wish.

With so little news coverage on the subject, it’s also unsurprising how confused Americans are about climate change—just 49% of Americans realize that most scientists think global warming is happening, and only 53% understand that humans are causing the problem. While concern among Americans about global warming is at an eight-year high, only 64% worry a great deal or fair amount.

That’s entirely understandable – if our leaders deny the problem, and our news networks don’t report on it, Americans are lacking the information signaling that global warming is an urgent threat. That’s why, although Americans (including Trump voters  would prefer that their political leaders take steps to address the problem, they don’t few it as a high priority, and thus aren’t bothered by the lack of political action....

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http://www.alternet.org/media/new-york-times-russian-hacking

fail?

Talk about strange bedfellows joining forces to produce an unlikely media alliance.

That’s what happened when The New York Times reported on October 31, 2016, that FBI officials had not been able to uncover any evidence that Russian operatives, through allegedly hacking Democratic emails, were trying to help elect Donald Trump.

“Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia,” read the October 31 Times headline which relied on unnamed “law enforcement officials.”

Acting as an almost unofficial time-out, and one that came with the Times’ seal of approval, the article helped put the media brakes on the unfolding Russian hacking story; the same Russian hacking story that has now morphed into a full-scale Trump scandal.

The message on October 31 from the Times’ sources was unmistakable: There’s no conclusive connection between Trump and the Russians, and the Russians’ efforts were “aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” (Question: How do you not pick sides in a two-person election if you only undermine one of the candidates, the way Russian hackers only undermined the Democrat?)

The Times piece set off audible cheers within the conservative media, which usually holds the Times in contempt for its supposed “liberal media bias.”

In fact, pointing to the newspaper’s alleged Democratic leanings, conservative claimed that if even the liberal New York Times determined there was no Trump-Russia story, then it definitely must be true.

“And as far as liberals are concerned, the Democrats are concerned, when the New York Times clears you, you are cleared,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners on November 1. “The New York Times carries as much weight as the FBI, and if the New York Times says there’s nothing to see between Trump and Russia and Putin, then there’s nothing to see.”

All across the conservative media landscape, the Times report was held up as putting the Trump-Russia story to bed.

However, to suggest the Times’ influential October 31 report “hasn’t aged well,” as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently put it, may be an understatement, as the unfolding hacking scandal continues to gain momentum and more evidence tumbles out regarding claims that Russians were trying to help Trump. (Hayes also correctly recalled that "At the same time the FBI was leaking like a sieve about Clinton, people around it went out of their way to dampen the Putin talk.")

The problems with the Times article are many. First off, Sen. Harry Reid’s spokesman claimed that Reid had been interviewed for the Times’ article, pushed back against its timid premise about there being no connection, and that Reid’s comments were omitted from the story.

More recently, we’ve seen all kinds of information revealed that contradicts the Times’ often-quoted October 31 report. For instance, FBI Director James Comey testified in December that Russia had “hacked into Republican state political campaigns and old email domains of the Republican National Committee,” but did not release information from those hacks. As Reuters pointed out, that allegation “may buttress the U.S. intelligence view that Moscow tried to help Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.”

More recently, the BBC reported that “a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign.” Also last week, the Guardian reported that FBI investigators were so concerned with a possible Trump-Russia connection that they asked for a foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) warrant to monitor Trump aides during the campaign. (The warrant request was reportedly denied.)

Meanwhile, Britain’s The Independent reported that the former intelligence officer who wrote the recently revealed Trump dossier was frustrated that the FBI had “for months” ignored the information he passed along to the bureau about a possible Trump-Russian connection.

Note that just four weeks after the election, the Times itself reported, “Both intelligence and law enforcement officials agree that there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Russian hacking was primarily aimed at helping Mr. Trump and damaging his opponent.” (Emphasis added.)

And from NPR: “FBI, CIA Agree That Russia Was Trying To Help Trump Win The Election.”

Here’s the larger context for the Times report and why it was seen as such a game-changer at the time.

On October 31, the FBI was dealing with two breaking news stories that were spinning out of its control and reflecting poorly on Comey.

The bureau was under withering criticism from legal experts, journalists, Democrats, and even some Republicans after Comey inserted insert himself into the final days of the campaign by informing Congress that the FBI was reigniting its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email while secretary of state. That last weekend in October the bureau was also battling damaging news stories that suggested its leadership had been slow to respond to the Russian hacking controversy as it pertained to Donald Trump.

Comey’s letter to Congress about the emails was dispatched October 28. In the days that followed, a steady stream of revelations undercut his actions. On October 30, CNN reported that the FBI had known about the new emails for “weeks” before Comey decided to go public with the information just days before the election.

The following day, news outlets reported that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) had sent Comey a blistering letter , insisting the FBI director was sitting on “‘explosive’ information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government.”

That same day, Mother Jones, foreshadowing the news last week about a dossier collected on Trump, reported that, “a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country” had provided to the FBI with “memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.”

And that same day, CNBC reported, “FBI Director James Comey argued privately that it was too close to Election Day for the United States government to name Russia as meddling in the U.S. election.”

The contrast was startling: Comey had publicly reinvigorated the Clinton email investigation based on emails the FBI hadn’t even read (the emails turned out to be irrelevant), yet at the same time Comey allegedly sat on new information regarding claims that Trump had ongoing ties with Russia because Comey thought the optics would look bad.

Given all this, the FBI needed a way to stop the public relations bleeding. And late in the day on October 31, the Times provided the respite.

Specifically, the article helped push back on reports Comey didn’t want to go public with any Russian information close to Election Day.

“The reason Comey didn’t announce the existence of this investigation wasn’t because it was it was ‘explosive’ and could impact the election,” announced the conservative site, Hot Air, pointing to the Times article. “It was because the FBI had already figured out it was a dud.”

In other words, FBI PR problem solved. The problems with the Times report, however, were just beginning.

Eric Boehlert is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of Lapdogs: How The Press Rolled Over for Bush.

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http://wwwwww.alternet.org/election-2016/media-spent-election-teaching-americans-how-love-dictator-what-will-they-do-him-office

...Look at the promotional campaign MSNBC is running for its anchors. The print ad features a tight close-up of Trump’s face. The text reads, “What will he do?” Beneath that, “What won’t he do?” And beneath that, an indictment not of him, but of us: “This is why you watch.” At the bottom, flanked by photos of its anchors, are the MSNBC logo and a tag line: “This is who we are.” New York magazine writer Joe Hagan tweeted about it, “This ad nails everything that is wrong with the media. Fascism as ratings spectacle.” If you grieve over the audience’s addiction to disaster porn, if you mourn the news-as-entertainment business model that fostered it, then you’re bound to feel guilty about watching, and you’ve got a rough ride ahead. But if, instead, you treat boredom like a fate worse than tyranny, if you medicate civic ADHD with always-breaking BREAKING NEWS, if you mistake engagement with social media for actual citizen participation, you’re gonna rock these next four years.

Trump voters love the rupture with the American political narrative that he ran on. But if the popular vote is any guide to the country’s mood, I suspect that fear of the future is now more widespread than exhilaration that anything can happen. The truth is that no one has a clue what’s next. That’s not fun; it’s frightening.

The next commander-in-chief is an impulsive, deceitful, corrupt, intellectually lazy megalomaniac. That’s a delicious character disorder for the villain of a comic book, and it’s ideally suited to a news industry whose audience is addicted to melodrama and whose narrative technique maximizes suspense, surprise and dread. Though horror is a thrilling genre, and real-time tension is irresistible to our animal appetites, there’s no guarantee that the scary story we’re living through will have a happy ending.

“This is why you watch.” Really? To torture ourselves wondering how bad things can get? To have a front row seat for the last days of American democracy?

There’s an awesome opportunity that responsible journalism can rise to right now. The repeal of Obamacare begs to be framed not as a retributive power struggle between political parties, but as a moral struggle for a diverse people to define a good society. Climate change cries out to be covered not as a farce about ignorance, but as an epic about the survival of our species. Explaining economic policy requires risky honesty from the media about inequality, and a fearless, patient commitment to educating its audiences. That’s not the same as keeping the country watching by keeping it on the edge of a nervous breakdown.  ...

bernie DN media ignored his rural rallies?

Now, one of the problems I think we have as a nation, I think media—and, by the way, at the back of the book, one of the important chapters—if you get tired, skip to the back. If you don’t like taxation or immigration reform, go to the back, last chapter, which deals with—it’s entitled "Corporate Media, a Threat to Democracy." And it talks about the role of corporate media in our society and in politics, in particular. But what is going on in this country is that we live in a pretty siloized nation. That’s a kind of a inside-the-Beltway term; I don’t know if it’s expanded to Pennsylvania. But what it means is we all live in our own worlds, basically. We associate with people who think the same as we do. I guess there was somebody who said, "How could Trump have won? Nobody I knew voted for Trump!" Well, you don’t know people in different walks of life than your own. And one of the things that a lot of middle-class people, upper-middle-class people don’t know is that, yes, we are better off economically today than we were eight years ago, when Bush left office—there’s no debate on that—but for 40 years in this country, under Democratic and Republican administrations, we have seen a shrinking of the American middle class, we have seen more and more income and wealth inequality, so that today the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and today we have 43 million people living in poverty, some in really dire straits.

Now, one of the things that I did in the campaign—what I wanted to do, and I did—was to go into parts of the country where media very rarely goes, and I wanted to be talking to people, and I wanted to see if we can get some national exposure. And in a sense, I failed. We had media following me all over the place, what they call embedded media, from all the networks and major newspapers, but basically they did not write about what we were seeing in various parts of the country.

And let me just talk a little bit about that. We talked—and again, these are facts; some of you know it, some of you don’t. But I want you to understand the pain and the hurt that millions of people are experiencing. You’re a single mom in Philadelphia...

http://wwwwww.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bernie-sanders-warns-corporate-media-threatens-democracy

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/broadcast-networks-climate-coverage-was-utterly-miserable-during-election-year

Secretary of State John Kerry, in Marrakesh this week for international climate talks, recently said it “pissed him off” that there wasn’t a single question asked about climate change during the six hours of televised presidential and vice presidential debates prior to the election.

Kerry’s annoyance is justified. Given rapidly rising global temperatures, dramatic extreme weather events, the global agreement to curb carbon emissions, and stark divisions among the major party candidates, climate change deserved to be one of the most talked-about issues of the campaign. And yet, outside of a passing reference during the “town hall” presidential debate, the candidates were not asked about it, despite the fact that queries about climate change were the fourth most-popular question category submitted by the public for the town hall debate, demonstrating that voters wanted to hear about it.

But it wasn’t only the debates.

Since January, the broadcast television networks barely reported on climate, even though this year is on pace to be the hottest one in the books, setting a record for the third year in a row. Out of more than 1,700 evening, morning, weekly and Sunday public affairs news programs aired between January 1 and October 31, the four commercial broadcast networks that provided moderators for the debates — ABC, Fox, CBS and NBC — collectively aired only 32 segments and 24 briefs on the topic, a total of 56 pieces. And most of the evening news segments ran less than two and a half minutes in length, while each brief was no more than three or four sentences long.

By contrast, the commercial broadcast networks found time for considerably less important topics. Take the coverage of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the fallout over his “Deflategate” football tampering scandal. During the first nine months of this year, ABC, CBS and NBC aired 33 segments and 40 briefs on Brady, for a total of 73 pieces. (Fox’s lone national news show somehow missed the story.) Nearly half of the pieces — 34 — were on Deflategate and Brady’s four-game suspension. The rest reported on such riveting topics as Brady’s haircut, his new $200 cook book, and his new family dog, Fluffy.

Rating the Networks

Fox Broadcasting Company — not to be confused with 21st Century Fox’s cable channel Fox News — was by far the worst offender. The network doesn’t have a nightly news program, but it does air Fox News Sunday, a public affairs show hosted by Chris Wallace, the moderator of the third and final presidential debate. Since the beginning of the year, Fox News Sunday only broached the topic of climate change once, during an interview Wallace did with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on September 4. Stein mentioned it in one sentence, and Wallace changed the subject. But Fox News Sunday was not alone. The topic didn’t come up on the other Sunday morning political gabfests either unless a guest mentioned it in passing. More often than not that guest was Bernie Sanders. (Given the incidental nature of these remarks, they aren’t included in the segment or brief totals.)

ABC, where town hall debate co-moderator Martha Raddatz works, was only marginally better than Fox, and it runs a lot more news programming. The network has aired only three segments on climate change this year, and they were all variations of the same story. On January 6, Good Morning America ran a relatively long segment on a melting glacier in Iceland that is retreating about a hundred yards every year. Nightline aired a shorter version of the piece that night, and the next morning, Good Morning America did a follow-up. Since then, the network aired only seven climate-related briefs, six on Good Morning America and one on World News Tonight, which merely reported that bumblebees are “threatened by climate change” in a two-sentence piece.

Over the same time frame, NBC aired 11 segments and two briefs on climate change. Seven segments were on Today, and the other four ran on NBC Nightly News, which is anchored by Lester Holt, the moderator of the first presidential debate.

Two of the four Nightly News segments piggybacked on other news stories. On August 20, an NBC correspondent took time off from the Rio Olympics to talk with locals about deforestation. Two weeks later, on September 3, the show reported on the G-20 Economic Summit in China, where President Obama and Chinese President Xi formally committed to the Paris climate agreement. All of the individual segments were well done, but given the magnitude and urgency of climate change, the fact that NBC’s premier daily news program ran only four segments on the topic over the course of nine months is incomprehensible.

CBS, whose correspondent Elaine Quijano moderated the vice presidential debate, aired the most segments and briefs of the broadcast networks — but that’s still not saying much. Nearly all of the briefs — 14 of 15 — and more than half of the segments — 11 of 18 — were on CBS This Morning or CBS Sunday Morning.

Two segments on The CBS Evening News linked climate change with extreme weather events. A July 20 segment on the heat wave broiling residents in more than two dozen states featured a National Weather Service meteorologist explaining how climate change works in simple, understandable terms. Two months later, on September 17, the show reported that the “world is on pace for the warmest year on record, breaking marks set in 2015, 2014 and 2010. But scientists say it’s more than temperatures. They have connected man-made climate change to deadly heat waves, droughts, and devastating floods.”

Those Evening News stories were excellent, but they were two of only five climate-related segments the show aired since the beginning of the year. 60 Minutes, meanwhile, sent a correspondent to Greenland to meet with climate scientists for a segment that aired on January 31 and again on July 31. That was it for the newsmagazine, but its competition at ABC and NBC — 20/20 and Dateline — avoided the issue altogether.

Millions are Watching, and They’re Not Being Served

The relatively few climate-related segments that did air on ABC, CBS and NBC since January demonstrate that the networks are quite capable of covering the subject in a compelling way. The amount of attention they devoted, however, was nowhere near what it should have been given the magnitude of the problem.

Besides their scanty coverage, the networks missed some obvious opportunities to make the climate connection. For example, all of the evening newscasts reported on the devastating rains and flooding in Louisiana last August. According to Climate Nexus, the storm that triggered the flooding “was supercharged by running over a warmer ocean and through an atmosphere made wetter by global warming.” No matter, according to Media Matters, none of the five NBC Nightly News segments, three World News Tonight segments, or three CBS Evening News segments on the floods cited the climate link. That’s just bad reporting.

One other point to consider is when the networks aired the bulk of their climate stories and briefs. Nearly two-thirds of the segments (20 of 32) aired on one of the network morning shows, as did more than 85 percent of the briefs (21 of 24). Why is that important? Because nearly twice as many viewers watch the evening news shows.

That said, despite the fact that the legacy broadcast networks have lost ground to cable and online sources in recent years, all of their news shows still command sizable audiences. According to figures from the week of October 24, slightly more than 23 million people watched one of the three broadcast networks’ evening newscasts. ABC’s World News Tonight led the pack with an audience of nearly 8.19 million viewers, just edging out NBC Nightly News for the top spot. The CBS Evening News came in last with 6.79 million viewers that week.

Fortunately, to paraphrase a Nobel Prize-winning poet, you don’t need a TV network to know which way the wind blows. Despite Donald Trump’s well-publicized contention that climate change is a Chinese-inspired hoax, nearly three-quarters of American voters now say global warming is happening and nearly 70 percent support a carbon tax.

When the story of this past election is written, however, a glaring and mystifying fact for historians will no doubt be how little attention was paid to perhaps the most important issue of our time. And the failure of the commercial broadcast networks to adequately address climate change should be front and center in that story. Their track record covering climate change this year has been so pathetic, it arguably violates the spirit — if not the letter — of the federal requirement that broadcast networks serve the public interest.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

==

http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/09/01/study-newspaper-opinion-pages-feature-science-denial-and-other-climate-change-misinformation/212700

The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Post all published climate science denial and other scientifically inaccurate statements about climate change on their opinion pages over the last year and a half, while The New York Times avoided doing so, according to a new Media Mattersanalysis of those four newspapers. The Journal published by far the most opinion pieces misrepresenting climate science, while all three instances of climate science denial in the Post came from columns written by George Will. The Journal and USA Today also published numerous climate-related op-eds without disclosing the authors’ fossil fuel ties, while USA Today, the Post, and particularly the Journal frequently published some of the least credible voices on climate and energy issues.

Three Major Newspapers Published Climate Science Denial On Opinion Pages, Led By The Wall Street Journal

Analysis: Three Major Newspapers’ Opinion Pages Published Climate Science Denial And Other Antiscience Claims. Media Matters examined op-eds, editorials, and columns in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post from January 1, 2015, to August 31, 2016, to determine how often climate science denial and other false statements about climate science appeared on each newspaper’s opinion pages. We found that the Journal, the Post, and USA Today all published climate science misinformation on their opinion pages, while the Times avoided doing so. Unlike the Journal editorial board, which has denied climate science, the editorial boards of the Times, the Post, and USA Today all recognize the scientific consensus around man-made climate change. But our analysis found that the Timeswas the only one of these newspapers that did not publish an op-ed or column containing climate science denial during this time period. [Media Matters, Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet; The New York Times, 4/29/15; The Washington Post, 7/21/15; USA Today, 11/30/15]

mma

One-Third Of WSJ’s Climate-Related Opinion Pieces Contained Climate Denial Or Other Scientifically Inaccurate Statements About Climate Change. Out of 93 climate-related opinion pieces published in theJournal during the time period examined, 31 featured climate science denial or other scientifically inaccurate claims about climate change (33 percent). This included pieces claiming that the human impact on climate change is difficult to distinguish from natural variables, casting doubt on the reliability of climate models to predict global warming, and claiming that sea level rise has not accelerated in recent years. [Media Matters,Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet]

USA Today Published Climate Science Denial Or Other Antiscience Claims In 12 Percent Of Climate-Related Opinion Pieces. Out of 52 climate-related opinion pieces USA Today published during this time period, six featured climate science denial or other scientifically inaccurate claims about climate change (12 percent). This included five op-eds questioning whether climate change is occurring or caused by human activity, as well as a column by James S. Robbins, who wrongly disputed that climate change increases health risks for those with asthma. USA Today deputy editorial page editor David Mastio -- who was in charge of editing op-eds as the newspaper’s forum editor until June 2015 -- has described himself as a climate denier. On March 15, he tweeted a link to an op-ed that linked climate deniers to allies of slavery and wrote: “In which my own op-ed page compares me to a slave owner: Will history condemn climate deniers?” [Media Matters,Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet; USA Today, accessed 9/1/16; Twitter, 3/15/16]

Three Percent Of The Wash. Post's Climate-Related Opinion Pieces Denied Climate Science -- And All Were Written By George Will. Of the 94 climate-related opinion pieces that The Washington Post published over the time period examined, three denied climate science (3 percent) -- all authored by Post columnist George Will. Another Post columnist, Robert Samuelson, asserted, “We can still debate how much [global warming] has occurred and the share attributable to human activity." But that column was not counted as denial because he affirmed a “human impact on global warming” from fossil fuel emissions and noted that increases in atmospheric carbon during the industrial age have led to more warming. Our analysis also did not include letters to the editor, such as a letter by the Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky that thePost published in June alleging that “human-induced global warming is unproven, not an undisputed fact.” [Media Matters, Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet, 6/30/16; The Washington Post, 8/9/15]

NY Times Did Not Publish Climate Science Denial On Its Opinion Pages. Of the four newspapers Media Matters examined, The New York Times, which published 164 climate-related opinion pieces during the time period studied, was the only publication that did not publish any climate science denial or other antiscience claims. [Media Matters, Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet]

Study Builds On Climate Nexus Analysis, Which Documented WSJ’s “Consistent Pattern” Of Misinforming Readers About Climate Change. A recent Climate Nexus study titled “How The Wall Street Journal Opinion Section Presents Climate Change” examined 20 years’ worth of climate-related opinion pieces in the Journal. The study found that the Journal’s opinion pieces about climate change show “a consistent pattern that overwhelmingly ignores the science, champions doubt and denial of both the science and effectiveness of action, and leaves readers misinformed about the consensus of science and of the risks of the threat.” Among Climate Nexus’ findings were the following:

Of 201 editorials dating back to 1997, none explicitly acknowledge that fossil fuels cause climate change.

Of the 279 op-eds published since 1995, 40 reflect mainstream climate science. That is 14 percent.

Of 122 columns published since 1997, four accept as fact that fossil fuels cause climate change, or endorse a policy to reduce emissions. That is three percent. [Climate Nexus, accessed 9/1/16]

Newspapers Rarely Disclosed Fossil Fuel Ties Of Climate Change Op-Ed Authors

WSJ Largely Failed To Disclose Op-Ed Authors’ Fossil Fuel Industry Ties, While USA Today Failed To Do So At All. During the time period examined, USA Today published six op-eds about climate change by individuals with fossil fuel ties, none of which disclosed those ties to readers. In one of those op-eds, by Heartland Institute president Joseph Bast, USA Today noted that Heartland “no longer discloses its donors,” but did not explain the Heartland Institute’s long history of receiving funding from ExxonMobil and organizations linked to the oil billionaire Koch brothers. The Wall Street Journal published 21 climate-related op-eds authored by individuals with fossil fuel ties, only two of which included disclosure -- and in one of those instances, an op-ed co-authored by Matt Ridley and Benny Peiser, the Journal disclosed Ridley's fossil fuel ties but not Peiser's. [Media Matters, Fossil Fuel Disclosure Spreadsheet; USA Today, 6/18/15]

NY Times And Wash. Post Each Published One Climate-Related Op-Ed By Author With Fossil Fuel Industry Ties. During the time frame examined in this study, The Washington Post published one fossil fuel-linked op-ed on climate change -- by officials from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), who noted that CEI had been subpoenaed by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands based on "our contacts with ExxonMobil, a former CEI donor that publicly ended its support for us after 2005." However, the op-ed did not disclose any of CEI's other numerous financial ties to fossil fuel companies. And, as the Climate Denier Roundup pointed out:

Worth noting CEI’s careful phrasing about its relationship with Exxon, which CEI says “publicly ended its support for us after 2005.” With Donors Trust and others making it possible to anonymize giving, the key word is “publicly.”

The Times also published one fossil fuel-linked climate change op-ed -- by an author who acknowledged that he is "a 'fracker,' an executive at an investment firm that funds oil and gas shale development, someone whose own economic interest would be crushed by a national ban on fracking." For the purposes of documenting disclosure, we did not assess op-eds that focused on environmental or energy issues without substantially discussing climate change, such as a Times op-ed by Robert Bryce of the industry-funded Manhattan Institute, who criticized the Renewable Fuel Standard. [Media Matters, Fossil Fuel Disclosure Spreadsheet; Climate Denier Roundup, 4/26/16; The New York Times, 3/10/15]

Newspapers Gave Key Climate And Energy Misinformers Significant Exposure

WSJ, USA Today, And Wash. Post Frequently Published Least Credible Voices On Climate And Energy Issues. Our analysis found that a select group of writers were responsible for much of the climate- and energy-related misinformation in the four newspapers: Wall Street Journal editorial board members Holman Jenkins and Kimberly Strassel, Washington Post columnist George Will, a few high-profile congressmen, representatives of a few key fossil fuel front groups, and frequent op-ed contributors Bjorn Lomborg and Matt Ridley. Altogether, The Wall Street Journal published 55 climate- or energy-related opinion pieces by these misinformers since January 2015, while The Washington Post and USA Today each published nine, and The New York Times published just one. [Media Matters, Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet]

Misinforming Columnists At WSJ And Wash. Post

Holman Jenkins: 32 Columns. Wall Street Journal editorial board member Holman Jenkins Jr. frequently writes columns dismissing science, attacking climate policies, and defending the fossil fuel industry. During the time period examined, Jenkins authored 18 Journal columns that mentioned climate change -- 15 of which denied the consensus that human activities are driving climate change or otherwise misinformed on climate, such as questioning whether climate change is a “problem” or disputing the reliability of climate models to predict future warming. He also frequently attacked actions aimed at addressing climate change or holding the fossil fuel industry accountable, writing eight columns criticizing government investigations of Exxon, three criticizing the Paris climate agreement, and two criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. In one column responding to Climate Nexus’ study of climate denial on the Journal’s opinion pages, Jenkins declared, "No contributor has written more frequently on the subject of climate change on these pages,” and claimed that his views on the subject are “ploddingly conventional.” Yet he then proceeded to deny climate science by asserting that “science has been unable to discern signal from noise in the hunt for man-made warming.” As climate scientist Steve Sherwood pointed out to DeSmogBlog:

“That’s just not true. There are dozens and dozens of studies that have done exactly this. There’s a whole field of climate science looking at detection and attribution. For example, you can see the human fingerprint of greenhouse gas warming in precipitation extremes, in the vertical pattern of change between the stratosphere and troposphere. And all these studies use observations and models. If you are dismissing models, then that means the person does not understand the scientific process.” [Media Matters, Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet, Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet; Climate Nexus analysis, accessed 9/1/16; Partnership for Responsible Growth, accessed 9/1/16; DeSmogBlog,7/1/16]

Kimberley Strassel: Six Columns. Journal editorial board member Kimberley Strassel is also a climate science denier, as Mother Jones has documented, and her Journal columns frequently include climate-related misinformation. Strassel defended Exxon in a June 16 column that peddled the baseless conspiracy theory that the real target of the attorneys general investigations is “a broad array of conservative activist groups that are highly effective at mobilizing the grass-roots and countering liberal talking points.” In it, she falsely claimed that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has never “taken a position on climate,” when in fact ALEC has crafted model legislation that misrepresents science while attacking climate action. Strassel also claimed that the Koch brothers’ front group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has “never taken a dime from Exxon,” but the group’s predecessor organization received hundreds of thousands from Exxon, and it remains an open question whether Exxon is continuing to funnel money to AFP via dark money groups DonorsTrust and the Donors Capital Fund. In an April 14 column, she claimed that Democratic attorneys general are “pursuing the bogus claim” that Exxon “suppressed climate science,” when in fact they are investigating whether Exxon violated the law by misleading investors about climate change in order to achieve financial gain, regardless of whether Exxon published climate research in journals. And in an April 21 column, she called climate change “the left’s new religion.” [Media Matters, Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet; 6/17/16, 7/8/16; Mother Jones,2/13/16]

George Will: Seven Columns. Washington Post columnist George Will, who is also a contributor for Fox News, wrote seven columns about climate change or energy in the time period examined, three of which denied climate science. In two of these columns, Will pointed to natural shifts in the climate hundreds of years ago to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activities are driving the climate change that is occurring now. In the other, he dismissively referred to “the supposed warming that supposedly caused Hurricane Katrina.” Will, who was Media Matters' "Misinformer of the Year" in 2014, has a long track record of pushing climate change misinformation, which led a coalition of advocates to create a 2014 petition -- ultimately signed by 110,000 people -- demanding that the Post stop publishing editorial content by Will and others who deny climate science. That same year, Will was also criticized by the Society of Professional Journalists’ then-ethics chair Kevin Smith for not disclosing his involvement in donor summits organized by the oil billionaire Koch brothers while writing columns promoting Koch-backed candidates. [Media Matters, Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet, Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet, 5/22/14, 1/9/15, 12/22/14,9/9/14; Forecast the Facts, 2/20/14; FoxNews.com, accessed 9/1/16]

==

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October 11, 2015

Freeman Dyson is interviewed in The Register's article, “Top boffin Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion, and more,” the same day the Global Warming Policy Foundation published “Carbon Dioxide: The Good News,” with the foreward written by Freeman Dyson. [8],[9]

In the foreward, Dyson argues that “carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm,” and “that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.” [9] Dyson concludes the foreward by stating, “I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.” [9]

March 25, 2009

Freeman Dyson is the feature of an 8000 word article in The New York Times titled “The Civil Heretic.” The Times quotes Dyson as saying global warming may indicate that “the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse” because increased carbon would promote forest growth and crop yields. However, the internationally-regarded IPCC concludes that “climate change is expected to lead to salinisation and desertification of agricultural land.”

Although Dyson is a brilliant mind, and is revered as a physicist, he does not have a background in climate science. DeSmogBlog speculated how it seems strange that the Times would choose Nicholas Dawidoff, a sports writer (albeit an accomplished sports writer), to research and write an article on climate change.

June 12, 2008

Freeman Dyson publishes “The Question of Global Warming“ through The New York Review of Books. Dyson writes, “the only plausible explanation of the annual wiggle,” of CO2's PPM measurements, “and its variation with latitude is that it is due to the seasonal growth and decay of annual vegetation, especially deciduous forests, in temperate latitudes north and south.” [7]

==

4/16

After another night of primary victories, in March Donald Trump took to the stage in the ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago resort. Instead of holding a victory rally, he took questions from the media.

All but one of the queries was about the horse race: Could he win the general? Could he bring the party together? Trump tried to cut off the only policy-related question from CNN's Jeremy Diamond, saying, "Nobody is listening to you, Jeremy."

This one campaign moment was a snapshot of media failure in a primary season that is unlike anything we've ever seen. Entertaining? You bet. But vetting candidates for one of the most powerful positions in the world is serious business, and for that we need serious journalism.

mojo

Early on, the cable networks discovered that airing Trump's ranting and raving was a boon for ratings. Each time he said something outrageous, he received more coverage, and he and the networks won a bigger audience—ad infinitum. Meanwhile, many in the media ignored Bernie Sanders early in the campaign; they didn't think there was a big audience for his "political revolution."

CBS president and CEO Les Moonves explained it like this: "[It] may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS...It's a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going."

==

The Tyndall Report, a non-partisan media monitoring firm that has been tracking the nightly news broadcasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC, found that Trump is tromp, tromp, tromping over the airtime of everyone else.

From last January through November, these dominant flagship news shows devoted 234 minutes of prime-time coverage to the incessant chirping of the yellow-crested birdbrain, with no other contender getting even a fourth of that.

Take Bernie Sanders, who’s stunning the political establishment with a fiery populist campaign that’s drawing record crowds. Indeed, Sanders’ upstart campaign is commanding a comparable share of support within the Democratic Party’s voting base to what Trump is enjoying from the Republican electorate.

And — get this — polls also show Bernie trouncing The Donald if they face each other in November’s presidential showdown. So surely he’s getting a proportional level of media coverage by the networks on our public airwaves, right?

Ha, just kidding! The big networks’ devotion of 234 minutes to all-things-Trump was “balanced” by less than 10 minutes for Sanders. Most egregious was ABC, the Disney-owned network. ABC’s World News Tonight awarded 81 minutes of national showtime to Trump last year — and for Bernie: 20 seconds.

How self-serving of the media moguls. The one candidate who is effectively rallying large numbers of voters to oppose the rise of corporate oligarchy — including in the media — has the plug pulled on him.

Of course, this only amplifies the truth of what Sanders is saying about the villainy of corporate profiteers, and it fuels a greater determination by his millions of grassroots supporters to end the reign of greed in America.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

==

--A U.K.-based media watchdog group is criticizing U.S. media outlets for the coverage of Donald Trump, saying the outlets have aided the rise of his presidential campaign and the acceptance of his xenophobic rhetoric. The Ethical Journalism Network says the three major U.S. cable news outlets devoted twice as much airtime to Donald Trump than to any other Republican candidate and that the majority of this coverage did not fact-check his false claims or push back against his "unapologetically xenophobic anti-immigration rhetoric."

exxon busted, jrnl fail

http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/11/13/network-evening-news-programs-yet-to-address-wh/206839

In recent months, media investigations have revealed that Exxon Mobil peddled climate science denial for years after its scientists recognized that burning fossil fuels causes global warming, prompting New York's Attorney General to issue a subpoena to Exxon and all three Democratic presidential candidates to call for a federal probe of the company. But despite these developments, the nightly news programs of all three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have failed to air a single segment addressing the evidence that Exxon knowingly deceived its shareholders and the public about climate change.

Media Reports Revealed Exxon's Acceptance Of Climate Science Pre-Dated Its Funding Of Climate Denial, Prompting Calls For Investigations

Media Report: Email Shows "Exxon Knew Of Climate Change In 1981 ... But It Funded Deniers For 27 More Years." On July 8, InsideClimate News and The Guardian reported on an email from a former Exxon employee that was highlighted by the Union of Concerned Scientists. InsideClimate News noted that the email showed "Exxon scientists studied the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming as far back as 1981," and that "company's early awareness of climate change and willingness to factor it into business decisions starkly contrasts with the path it took a decade later, when it led efforts to cloud public understanding of climate science and delay action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide." The Guardian similarly reported that ExxonMobil "knew as early as 1981 of climate change -- seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm's own scientists. Despite this, the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial." The Guardian further reported:

...

Major Broadcast Networks' Nightly News Shows Have Completely Ignored Exxon Developments

Evening News Programs On ABC, CBS, And NBC Have Yet To Address Exxon's Climate Deception.Nexis and Snapstream searches for "Exxon" and "ExxonMobil" revealed that the nightly news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC all failed to air a single segment about the growing Exxon story, covering neither the media investigations, the Democratic candidates' comments, nor the New York Attorney General's actions.

ABC And CBS Briefly Mentioned New York Attorney General Investigation On Morning News Shows.ABC's Good Morning America and CBS This Morning both briefly mentioned New York Attorney General Schneiderman's investigation into Exxon in news rundowns. [ABC, Good Morning America, 11/6/15; CBS, CBS This Morning, 11/6/15]

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hedges dl class

left fails to provide alt vision, so we get hyper-masc (Am Sniper?) disdain of empathy (trad lib). reality TV and Jerry springer/ 155 end of wwi study of german soldiers // 155

best hope of radical change with the dispossessed.  cath Worker est on Gt Dep; ~ not-for-profit, paid no tax took no grants, neighborhood food. worry about RW xian b/c now no longer team of labor, indep media and comm to resist (pop front?) 158  DD connected dots for berrigan: enough for all, but not war too 160; Th Meron monk;

IF Stone: wwii reporter, w/ holoc on leaky boats to palestine. ~ truman loyalty oath, NATO, H bomb disappeared, FBI surveil, blacklist --> newsletter, expose gulf of Tonkin, expelled from nat'l press club when black ex fed judge refused service; 167 joined black reporter club; praise malc x;

RMN used suppression against marginal eg anti war and no one cared but when he went after lib = democrats, problem 169

Liberal defectors --

expert like tom friedman become apologist for corps; end of VN, alt periodicals folded ; sydney scanberg exposed landlords, fired/demoted 146

New L short lived (// VN) never equalled Pop Front 1930's diverse vs fractured and white;

post-str French ~ pol 123, tossed marxist --> cult critics, multi-culty ghetto; pluralism becomes catchall, abandon goal of progress; (j hillis miller, greg ulmer, fredric jameson) not the public intellectuals like mumford, jacobs, dw mcD CWM; now multicult watered down to hiring, Patronage not revolution 125.

Rockford coll sp dead on predictions gulf 2 removed by sec; Spker Disrupts Graduation' headline.

media complicit w/ power but pretends to objective; pedals myth that vision/spectacle is understanding 131

paper 15% news reast on how to be feel success 132

darkie --> darlie toothpaste P&G ?

suck up to ceo reporter gets sweet gig 133

paper as institutional memory

steinbeck reported on san joaq valley

creed of objectivity infects classroom 140

death of lib class // shift from print to image; fact no longer basis of public discourse ["reality-based journalism"]; now emotional narrative in which fact and opinion indistinguishable [faux news]; lang requires context; images have the3 appearance of reality but distort it; frags and spectacle; WWW seen as salvation, but Google etc just aggregates other ppl's work, does not pay for it, so creative pll and press decline; herd mentality [jaron hive mind]: privacy, self-reflection, honesty obliterated for image 209 only journalism that gets eyeball will survive, thus sleaze; only print that makes $ is finance ; red slave states connected and getting angrier: jaron. mkts good for ct jellybeans in a jar, but not creativity, or synthetic, or compound reasoning, but rather dull; worst case violence; hypersensitive to pecking order; always someone below you in gp, and designated enemy. // KB hier built in 213

The 'exclusive' photos of 'Russian invasion in Ukraine' in 2014 turned out to be easily found in the Web, with at least one of them dating back to 2008. Now, US senator James Inhofe is furious with the Ukrainian delegation for setting him up with the 'evidence'.

Questions have been raised about the veracity of reports that claim Russian troops have invaded Ukraine after US Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe confessed that several photos of Russian convoys he obtained from a Ukrainian parliamentary group were taken during the 2008 Georgia conflict, the Washington Free Beacon said.

On Tuesday, the Washington Free Beacon ran a story that unveiled "exclusive" photos of victims of militia bombs and Russian armed vehicles seemingly rolling into Ukraine.

The photos were provided to Inhofe's office in print by an obscure Ukrainian delegation, led by a Georgetown professor, who said the images were taken at the height of Russia's alleged military incursion between August 24 and September 5, 2014.

Inhofe's spokeswoman Donelle Harder was cited as saying they had checked back with their sources - none of them high-level Ukrainian officials - before releasing the photos. She said they had been quite confident about their authenticity since the imagery allegedly matched reports about the Ukraine conflict.

But speaking to The Mirror on Thursday, Sen. Inhofe confessed he was "furious" to learn that at least one of the photos was taken by Associated Press during Russia's military operation in Georgia back in 2008. Several other images are readily available elsewhere online and can be found using a Google Images search.

Among the Ukrainian delegation was Semen Semenchenko, the commander of the "Donbas" volunteer battalion and a newly elected member of the Verkhovna Rada. Earlier, he was known as Konstantin Grishin and was reportedly suspected of fraud in Crimea.

...

2/13/15

http://www.sott.net/article/292559-US-Senator-furious-over-duped-photos-of-Russian-invasion-in-Ukraine-still-wont-change-his-mind

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http://www.alternet.org/print/media/network-tv-continues-giving-climate-change-cold-shoulder

FAIR examined ABC, CBS and NBC transcripts from January 25 (as the Northeast’s first blizzard approached) through March 4, looking at all mentions of cold, snow and ice. Over the same time period, we studied coverage of heat, warmth and drought across the West and Pacific Northwest.

Near-Exclusive Focus on East, Cold

A total of 417 network segments mentioned the extreme cold, but just seven of these included a reference to climate change--barely over 1 percent. That’s even though science is clear that climate disruption is loading the dice for extreme weather events. “Many areas are seeing bigger and more intense snowstorms, especially in the upper Midwest and Northeast,”warned Amanda Staudt [3], National Wildlife Federation climate scientist, back in 2010.

GMU Yale

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000226/full#eft231-bib-0015

Climate scientists need to set the record straight: There is a scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is happening

Edward Maibach1,*, Teresa Myers1 and Yale: Anthony Leiserowitz2

Article first published online: 7 MAY 2014

Edward Maibach Teresa Myers

Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA

2Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

*Corresponding author: E. Maibach, emaibach@gmu.edu

DOI: 10.1002/2013EF000226

Human-caused climate change is happening and is accelerating; dangerous impacts are becoming evident around the world, and are projected to get worse in the decades to come, possibly much worse (IPCC, 2013). Nearly all climate scientists are convinced of these basic facts, but more than half of Americans do not currently understand that this scientific consensus has been reached (Leiserowitz et al.,2013).

Americans are not alone in this regard, although relatively less is known about the views of people in other nations. While 57% of Britons aged 15 and older agreed with the statement “most scientists agree that humans are causing climate change” (Poortinga et al., 2011), a separate 16-nation World Public Opinion Poll (Public attitudes toward climate change: Findings from a multi-country poll, 2009, http://worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/btenvironmentra/649.php?lb=brglm&pnt=649&nid=&id=) found that only a minority of citizens in seven nations said “most scientists think the problem is urgent and enough is known to take action”; these were the United States (38%), Russia (23%), Indonesia (33%), Japan (43%), Brazil (44%), India (48%), and Mexico (48%). Across all 16 nations, 51% selected this response option, while 16% said “most (scientists) think the problem is not urgent, and not enough is known yet to take action,” and 24% said “views are pretty evenly divided,” another 10% indicated “don't know.” This public misperception about the state of scientific consensus regarding the reality and causes of climate change matters, a lot.

Different methods have been used to estimate the degree of scientific consensus about human-caused climate change—including surveys of experts (e.g., Doran and Zimmerman, 2009; Cook et al., 2013) and reviews of the peer-reviewed literature (e.g., Oreskes, 2004;Anderegg et al., 2010; Cook et al., 2013). Both methods converge on the following conclusion: 97% or more of climate scientists are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening.

Yet widespread misunderstanding of this scientific consensus persists among the American public. In 2013, only 42% of American adults said that “most scientists think global warming is happening,” 33% said “there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening,” 20% said they “don't know enough to say,” and 6% said “most scientists think global warming is not happening” (Leiserowitz et al., 2014). When asked to estimate the proportion of climate scientists who are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening (in quintiles), only 22% of American adults correctly selected 81%–100% (Leiserowitz et al., 2014).

This misperception among Americans is not only pervasive but also highly consequential (Ding et al., 2011; McCright et al., 2013). Those who do not understand the scientific consensus about human-caused climate change are, in turn, less likely to believe that climate change is happening, human-caused, will have serious consequences, and is solvable (i.e., can be mitigated through concerted action). In addition, not understanding this scientific consensus undermines Americans' support for a broad societal response to the threat. As a result, knowledge of the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change can be considered a “gateway” cognition; as members of the general public come to understand the consensus, they more likely come to the conclusion that human-caused climate change is happening and harmful.

The pervasiveness of this misperception is not an accident. Rather, it is the result of a disinformation campaign by individuals and organizations in the United States—and increasingly in other nations around the world (Norgaard, 2006; Dunlap and McCright, 2011)—who oppose government action to reduce carbon emissions (e.g., Oreskes and Conway, 2010). The claim that climate scientists are still arguing over the reality of human-caused climate change was designed to resonate with the sensibilities of political conservatives who are inherently suspicious of government intervention in markets and societies. This targeted disinformation campaign has been highly effective in the United States: far more political conservatives (49%) than liberals (18%) currently believe that there is “a lot of disagreement among the experts about global warming” (Leiserowitz et al., 2013). While originally launched in the United States, this disinformation campaign is now being pursued in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand as well (Dunlap and McCright, 2011).

This disinformation campaign has impeded the implementation of strategies to reduce the risks of climate change (McCright and Dunlap,2003; Pooley, 2010). Moreover, as an intentional effort to obscure and dispute the conclusions of climate science, the campaign should be seen as an attack on climate science itself.

Fortunately, an effective, nonpolitical response is available to scientists and their professional societies. A recently published Australian study (Lewandowsky et al., 2013)—and a series of studies conducted at research centers in the United States (Maibach et al., 2013;Kotcher et al., 2014)—demonstrates that clear messages that simply state the extent of the scientific consensus can help correct this widespread misperception. In controlled experiments, a single exposure to a message describing the extent of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change (i.e., 97%) significantly increased participants' subsequent estimates of the consensus—by as much as 10 to 20 percentage points. Importantly, these simple messages were most effective with the very people who are currently the least likely to understand the scientific consensus: political conservatives.

The potential benefits of setting the record straight are considerable. By working to overcome this barrier to public understanding of climate change, scientists can help a broader cross section of American society—and perhaps people in other nations as well—to better understand the realities and risks of climate change, as well as the range of potential solutions. Furthermore, an effort to communicate the scientific consensus can also help bridge the (manufactured) divide between conservatives and liberals about the reality of human-caused climate change and help Americans begin the real debate about climate change—how the nation should best respond. Ideally, a debate about climate solutions should harness the best ideas of people across the political spectrum. Now is the time for citizens, together with government and industry leaders, to engage in a serious conversation about how to manage the risks of climate change.

In the end, scientists cannot insist that the public accept the realities of climate change, but they can and should inform the public that based on the evidence, the vast majority of climate experts are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening. Because public understanding of climate change has been intentionally distorted by vested interests, the scientific community has an obligation to set the record straight.

Methods of effective scientific communication are well known in some parts of the scientific community (National Research Council, 1989;Maibach and Parrott, 1995; Hornik, 2002; Wakefield et al., 2010; Lundgren and McMakin, 2013). The public health and medical communities, for example, have mounted highly effective campaigns to reduce sudden infant death syndrome (Markestad et al., 1995), human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (McCombie et al., 2002; Wellings, 2002), stroke (Roccella, 2002), tobacco use among adults and teens (Pierce et al., 2002a, 2002b; Worden and Flynn, 2002), and to promote seat belt use (Williams et al.,2002). While each of these successful campaigns had unique circumstances, they all conformed to a relatively simple formula: simple clear messages, repeated often, by a variety of trusted voices.

We urge scientific organizations to patiently, yet assertively inform the public that, based on the evidence, more than 97% of climate experts are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening. Some scientific organizations may argue that they have already done this through official statements. We applaud them for their efforts to date, yet survey data clearly demonstrate that the message has not yet reached or engaged most Americans. Occasional statements and press releases about the reality of human-caused climate change are unfortunately not enough to cut through the fog—it will take a concerted, ongoing effort to inform Americans about the scientific consensus regarding the realities of climate change.

Fischhoff (2007) suggests that climate change communication campaigns are best approached as a team effort between climate scientists (who best understand the nature of the risks and potential responses), social and decision scientists (who best understand how to structure information in a manner that is most helpful to members of the intended target audience), and communication professionals (who best understand how to get the information conveyed with sufficient reach and frequency that it will be noticed and considered by members of the target audience). This is a model that any scientific organization can implement by engaging their members, relevant social science colleagues, and in-house or consulting communication professionals.

Individual climate scientists can and should also play a role in setting the record straight. In media interviews, public presentations, and even neighborhood and family gatherings, climate scientists should remember that many people do not currently understand that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus about human-caused climate change. Tell them, and give them the numbers. Contextualize the numbers with your own experience, e.g., “I personally know hundreds of climate scientists who are convinced that human-caused climate change is happening, and not a single one who isn't.”

This is not a call for scientists to become policy advocates, but rather a request that scientists take the initiative to inform the public about the empirically determined conclusions of their field—consistent with several recent prominent calls by climate scientists asking their peers to get more involved in public dialogue (Ellis and Trachtenberg, 2013; Schmidt, 2013; Mann, 2014). There is a critical need to educate the public about one of the most fundamental and important facts to have emerged from climate science, that virtually the entire climate science community is now convinced, based upon the evidence, that human-caused climate change is happening. This may seem self-evident to many scientists; however, it is not yet understood by a majority of the American public.

Such an effort to set the record straight—through simple clear messages, repeated often, by a variety of trusted voices in the climate science community—will improve public understanding of, and engagement in, the issue of climate change. A large majority of Americans—across political lines—are willing to listen.

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Before Bill O’Reilly was, well, Bill O’Reilly, he worked for a time as a foreign correspondent for CBS Nightly News, anchored by Dan Rather. O’Reilly talks about that period of his career in two of his books, and in both mentions that in early 1982 he reported from northeastern El Salvador, just after the infamous El Mozote Massacre. “When the CBS News bureau chief asked for volunteers to check out an alleged massacre in the dangerous Morazán Territory, a mountainous region bordering Nicaragua, I willingly went.”

El Mozote is a small, hard-to-reach hamlet. The massacre took place on December 11, 1981, carried out by US-trained Atlacatl Battalion, which was not just trained but created by the United States as a rapid response unit to fight El Salvador’s fast-spreading FMLN insurgency. The killing was savage beyond belief: between 733 and 900 villagers were slaughtered, decapitated, impaled and burned alive.

The story of the massacre was broken on the front page of The New York Timesby the journalist Raymond Bonner and in The Washington Post by Alma Guillermoprieto; both stories were published on January 27, 1982, and accompanied by photographs taken by Susan Meiselas. Bonner and Meiselas got to El Mozote, after hearing about the massacre, by walking for days in from Honduras. Guillermoprieto wrote about seeing “countless bits of bones—skulls, rib cages, femurs, a spinal column” poking “out of the rubble.” Bonner noted the “charred skulls and bones of dozens of bodies buried under burned-out roofs, beams, and shattered tiles.” Later, Mark Danner reported on the massacre in detail, first in a lengthy New Yorker essay and then in a book.

Aside from the brutality of the killing, El Mozote is distinguished by the fact that Washington moved quickly to cover it up. It was, in a way, the first massacre of the “second Cold War,” the Reagan administration’s drive to retake the third world; what My Lai was to the 1960s, El Mozote was to the 1980s (later, in 1989, Atlacatl would commit another infamous crime: the execution of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter).

In addition to describing the massacre, Danner documents the cover-up in detail: the US embassy in El Salvador immediately disputed Bonner’s and Guillermoprieto’s reporting, as did New Right organizations like Accuracy in Media. Thomas Enders, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for inter-American Affairs, and Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for human rights, denied the killing. Abrams said “it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas.” The Wall Street Journal called Bonner “overly credulous” and “out on a limb” and placed the word massacre in “scare quotes.” The Times sided with the critics, and Bonner eventually left the paper, after first being transferred to the business section.

O’Reilly doesn’t give an exact date for when he travelled to El Salvador, but he writes that it was just before the Falklands War. In other words, probably in March 1982, between the first reports of the “alleged massacre,” in late January, and Argentina’s early April invasion of the Malvinas. Here’s O’Reilly’s account, from his book, The No Spin Zone:

A few weeks after taking the CBS job I was flown to El Salvador to report on the war going on there at the time. I drew an assignment that sent me to the Morazán province in the mountainous northeastern part of that beautiful country. This was ‘Indian country,’ a place where the communist guerrillas (‘los muchachos’) operated with impunity. It was a dangerous place, and my crew—driver, producer, and cameraman—was not thrilled to be going there. It took us a full day to drive to Morazán from San Salvador, the capital city, because all the bridges had been blown up and we had to ford the rivers in our van. This was slow going, making us easy targets. Our only protection was a message painted in black letters over and over again on the sides of the van: periodistas—no dispare (Journalists—don’t shoot).

O’Reilly continues along these lines, emphasizing the danger he and his crew faced. He recounts being given the “local war news” by a Salvadoran army colonel: “The ‘muchachos’ had wiped out a small village called Meanguera a few miles to the south because its mayor was deemed friendly to the government. The atrocity had not been confirmed, though, because nobody in his right mind would go into the guerrilla-controlled areas.”

Note that O’Reilly doesn’t mention the massacre at El Mozote. He rather focuses on a supposed killing committed by leftist insurgents in nearby Meanguera (Meanguera, a municipal town center, is nine kilometers away from the hamlet of El Mozote). It is extremely unlikely that O’Reilly would not have known about the El Mozote massacre. Not only was it reported on in all the major papers, the Reagan administration’s denials had themselves become a story (The Wall Street Journal ran its attack on Bonner on February 10).

In any case, O’Reilly went to Meanguera and not El Mozote. Leigh Binford, an anthropologist who wrote a great book on the larger context of the massacre, tells me that “all of these municipal centers sustained attacks by the FMLN; they were, after all, where the repressive forces (National Guard or Treasury Police) were housed, and from which they had been making forays into the countryside over the course of at least a year to kill, harass, capture, and torture for some time.” So it is very possible that Meanguera was attacked by the rebels. But it certainly wasn’t “wiped out.” In other words, going to Meanguera in early 1982 would be as if Seymour Hersh, when he first learned of the My Lai massacre, decided to investigate events the next town over.

Here’s what O’Reilly writes in his book about his report: when he finally arrived in Meanguera, “the place was leveled to the ground and fires were still smoldering. But even though the carnage was obviously recent, we saw no one live or dead. There was absolutely nobody around who could tell us what happened. I quickly did a stand-up amid the rubble and we got the hell out of there.”

He continues to emphasize his courage (writing that a Salvadoran military official said that he had “cojones” for having travelled to Meanguera). Then, having made it back to San Salvador safely, he filed his story: “I explained that while a scorched-earth policy was clearly in effect in remote village—the evidence was right there on tape—it was impossible to say just who was doing the scorching. Could be the muchachos [that is, the guerrillas], could be the government. The ninety-second package contained great video and a fairly impressive ‘on the scene in a very bad place’ stand-up by yours truly.”

O’Reilly tells a version of this story in two different books, since it supposedly captures a key moment in his personal narrative, a moment when he stood up to the “liberal establishment”—that is, CBS News—and eventually becomes who he is today. His editor apparently didn’t broadcast the report until O’Reilly forced him to do so.

I’ve located the broadcast and there are a number of problems with how O’Reilly tells the story in his book....

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http://www.alternet.org/newspapers-complicit-selling-phony-war-coal

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blumenthal:

Too many journalists--Susan Schmidt, Tim Russert, Jackie Judd of ABC--remained captive to the Republicans' script. (Russert, Blumenthal suggests, once even lied to protect Starr. After attributing a story to Starr's office at a moment when Starr was under fire for leaking, Russert publicly insisted that he had ascribed his tip to "congressional" sources.) Perhaps these reporters had become too dependent on their right-wing sources. Maybe they had grown convinced of Clinton's arrant immorality. Most likely, they simply lacked the nimbleness of mind to see the issue in its broader context; superficiality and groupthink remain the cardinal sins of press corps, especially television reporters. Yet in the end these journalists were left marooned with their sources on a rock of Clinton-hating long after the public had repaired to higher ground.

WT:

In particular they cited the case of a series of stories and editorials initiated by Washington Times reporter, Audrey Hudson, claiming that scientists had been caught attempting to fabricate evidence that lynx were more widespread than they really were.

The story was picked up by Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and the Seattle Times, gaining widespread coverage within the US and even internationally. While the story was that the biologists who made the unauthorized lynx hair submissions[8] claimed to be submitting blind samples in order to test the labs[9], the limited after the event retraction did little to diminish the impact of the original story.

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El Mozote Case Study

By Stanley Meisler

Synopsis:

This case examines foreign coverage of a wartime episode when reporters have to test their powers of observation and verification. It raises the issues of one-sided information, the role of an editor and a news organization’s relationship with government.

Narrative:

In 1981, at the height of the Cold War, the new Reagan Administration rushed arms and funds to the army of El Salvador in a determined campaign to prevent the country from falling to leftist rebels the way Nicaragua had during the Carter Administration. Sensing the whiff of a possible new Vietnam, editors assigned correspondents and stringers there to find out what was going on. Watching the rebels in action was an obvious story, and American reporters repeatedly asked leftist contacts in the capital of San Salvador and elsewhere to arrange for them to travel with the revolutionary guerrillas. "As I remember it," says Ray Bonner of the New York Times, "I wanted to go in with the guerrillas. I think every reporter down there wanted to go in with the guerrillas. How could you not want to go in with the guerrillas?"

Both Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto, a stringer for the Washington Post, had received separate invitations from the guerrillas in December 1981 to enter Morazán, a province in northeastern El Salvador largely under rebel control. But the rebels called off the visits before the two reporters arrived. The Salvadoran Army was mounting a massive offensive against the guerrillas in Morazán. This was not the time for the guerrillas to entertain foreign correspondents.

Soon after New Year’s Day 1982, Bonner, back in New York, received word from the rebels that they were extending the invitation once more. He and freelance photographer Susan Meiselas, who had won international acclaim for her photographs of the Nicaraguan Civil War, prepared to fly to Honduras to enter Morazán together.

New York Times and Washington Post reporters regard themselves as competitors. But dangerous assignments like coverage of the wars in Central American foster camaraderie among foreign correspondents. Just before departing New York, Bonner phoned Guillermoprieto in Mexico City. "Ray said he would hate himself for telling me," she recalls, "but he finally said he was going in." Guillermoprieto was shocked. No one had reached her to reinstate her invitation. " I got berserk," she says. She sought help from Mexican journalists who had contacts with the guerrillas in Morazán. Those contacts had helped her set up the aborted trip in December. "I picked up all the threads," she says. Three days after Bonner telephoned, she received word from the guerrillas that they would allow her, too, into their territory. Guillermoprieto flew to Honduras, relieved yet fretful about Bonner’s head start.

Neither correspondent had much news experience in those days. Bonner, then 39, was a former Marine officer, San Francisco lawyer, assistant district attorney, Nader’s Raider and law instructor who had decided a few years earlier to seek a career in journalism. He had set out for Latin America and, as he puts it, "started bumming around." As a free lance, he attracted attention at the New York Times with some dispatches from Bolivia. The Times soon found itself short-handed in Central America because its veteran Mexico City correspondent Alan Riding had received death threats from right-wing extremists in both El Salvador and Guatemala. Bonner, asked to string in those two countries, arrived in San Salvador just before Salvadoran National Guardsmen executed four American nuns near the airport in early December 1981. "I got there on Sunday, the nuns were killed on Tuesday," he says, "and the rest is history." Within a month, the Times hired him as a reporter. He was assigned to the metro staff in New York but spent most of the year on loan to the foreign desk, heading in and out of Central America.

Guillermoprieto, then 32, was not yet a staff reporter for any publication. During the past two and a half years, she had worked as a stringer for a London newsletter, the Guardian and, since mid-1981, The Washington Post. Operating out of Mexico City, where she was born and raised, Guillermoprieto was bilingual, able to speak and write both English and Spanish fluently.

The editors had no hesitation about approving the trips into rebel territory. Bonner says he received "the usual caution — We don’t want you to do this if you don’t think it’s safe. Be careful, et cetera, et cetera." But Bonner had no intention of canceling his trip out of fear. Bonner, in fact, had long ago shrugged off the fears of working in the city of San Salvador. Despite the obvious hatred of him by right wing extremists, he would jog by himself every morning. "I used to say they would never kill a New York Times reporter," he recalls. "Then, I’d think, wait a minute. They killed four nuns. Why do I say that?"

Like Alan Riding of the Times, Guillermoprieto no longer traveled to San Salvador because of right-wing death threats. But she does not even recall discussing safety when she talked about the impending trip to guerrilla territory with Jim Hoagland, the assistant managing editor for foreign news, and Karen De Young, the foreign editor. In Guillermoprieto’s mind, there was simply no question that the story was worth the risks involved. Though she might find herself in extreme dangers, she understood that these were "the rules of the game." She does recall asking whether the Post would pay for her gear as well as her airfare. "I was a stringer," she said. "Stringers get treated like dirt." The Post agreed to pay for her gear.

On the Scene

Reports of a massacre by the Salvadoran Army were spreading before Bonner and Guillermoprieto entered Morazán. The Rev. William L. Wipfler, the director of the human rights office of the National Council of Churches in New York, telegraphed U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton for "confirmation or otherwise" of the reports of a massacre. He also left a message for Bonner in the Mexico City office of the New York Times. The message never reached Bonner. Radio Venceremos, the voice of the rebels, which had shut down during the government offensive, resumed broadcasting in late December and issued its first massacre account — a highly emotional one — on Christmas eve. Salvadoran President José Napoléon Duarte, in a national broadcast a week later, denounced the massacre story as "a guerrilla trick."

Despite these public accusations and counteraccusations, Bonner and Guillermoprieto, outside El Salvador at the time, were so preoccupied with arrangements to enter Morazán that neither recalls knowing anything about the massacre before meeting the guerrillas. Bonner and Meiselas checked into the Maya Hotel in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Their instructions were to go to a designated coffee shop and look for a contact carrying a Time Magazine. They did not find him in the coffee shop but wandering on the road nearby. The contact led them by car on January 3rd to a mountainous area near the border of El Salvador. "We removed our trousers, then held our shoes above our heads while crossing a wide river," Bonner would write a few years later. "…I was scared. I flashed back so many years earlier, to when I had been in Vietnam and how patrols were ambushed at night. Our Salvadoran escorts were so poorly armed…that I knew they would be no match for an army patrol." There would be three night marches before they reached rebel-controlled territory.

Guillermoprieto checked in at the Maya Hotel a few days later. While waiting two days for an escort, she walked up and down the hills of Tegucigalpa in what she now calls "a desperate attempt to get into shape." She later followed the same arduous and dangerous route as Bonner and Meiselas with escorts resentful that they had to endanger themselves by guiding a third journalist. Fording the wide river in her bikini underwear bottom, she slipped, ruining her camera and damaging her pack. After three nights of walking, she came to a rebel camp where Bonner and Meiselas were waiting to take the route back to Honduras.

"They were going out as I was coming in," she says. "I was jealous and envious and enraged about being scooped. But I didn’t realize they had the story." After talking with Bonner, in fact, she felt better, for he seemed excited about seeing the guerrillas in combat. "I was interested in seeing how their society was organized," she says. "I wasn’t that interested in combat."

On her first day in rebel territory, the guerrillas led her to El Mozote and nearby villages. Guillermoprieto came upon awful sights that had shocked Bonner and Meiselas a few days earlier. The "sickly sweet smell of decomposing bodies" pressed the air.

The two American journalists and the American photographer saw dozens of bodies beneath the rubble of the village and lying in nearby fields. They found little children’s bodies rotting in the charred ruins of adobe houses. The village church was in ruins. An array of bones lay in the burned sacristy. Skulls, rib cages, femurs, a spinal column and countless other pieces of bone poked out of ruble. They found charred bones in two of the burned houses of the village. These scenes, photographed by Meiselas, would appear in the Washington Post and the Sunday magazine of the New York Times. "By the end of the day," says Guillermoprieto, "I realized that something untoward and unspeakable had taken place."

In a nearby refugee camp, Guillermoprieto, like Bonner, interviewed Rufina Amaya, the sole survivor of the El Mozote massacre. Guillermoprieto also interviewed two survivors from attacks on other villages. Aside from these eyewitnesses she interviewed a dozen other civilians who told her that their relatives had been killed by the Salvadoran soldiers. In all, Bonner said he interviewed thirteen peasants who told him that Salvadoran soldiers had killed their relatives. Both Bonner and Guillermoprieto were allowed to interview the civilians without the presence of guerrillas. The rebel soldiers also gave the reporters their version of events, and Guillermoprieto said that an American working in the area also described what he believed had taken place. Bonner said that he, too, had met an American, whom he identified as Joe David Sanderson. According to Bonner, Sanderson was killed in combat a few months later. Bonner also received a list from some villagers with the names of 733 peasants killed by the Salvadoran army. Bonner was told that the survivors had compiled the list.

From their separate interviews and observations, Bonner and Guillermoprieto, who did not consult each other afterwards, put together more or less the same basic account of what had happened:

In mid-December, a few weeks before the American reporters entered Morazán, the Atlacatl Battalion of the Salvadoran Army had destroyed the village, killing almost everyone there. The Atlacatl was an elite, 1000-man battalion trained in counterinsurgency and rapid deployment by U.S. Special Forces military advisors. The Atlacatl, commanded by Lt. Col. Domingo Monterrosa, was taking part in a Salvadoran Army search-and-destroy offensive in northern Morazán, an area largely in the hands of the rebels.

The Atlacatl soldiers marched into the village of El Mozote in the late afternoon of December 11. The village had fifteen to twenty mud brick homes around a square with a church and a small building that served as a kind of sacristy. The villagers did not regard themselves as rebel supporters, and some government soldiers had assured a local businessman that no villager would be harmed if all remained in their homes.

The Atlacatl soldiers, however, pounded on the homes and forced everyone to come out and lie down on the square in the darkness. After an hour and a half, the villagers were allowed to go back into their homes. "We were happy then," Rufina Amaya told Guillermoprieto. "`The repression is over,’ we said."

But before dawn the next day, the soldiers forced everyone back into the square. After a few hours of standing, the soldiers separated the men from the women and children and herded the men into the church. The women and children were put into a single home.

The soldiers beat and interrogated the men and then led them blindfolded from the church in small groups. At noon, the soldiers pulled young girls and women out of the house and took them to the hills outside the village, raping and killing them. The soldiers returned for the older women, marching them in small groups to another house where soldiers waited to shoot them. Some soldiers hesitated about killing children. But their officers berated them. Mrs. Amaya told Bonner she heard her nine-year-old son scream, "Mama, they’re killing me. They’ve killed my sister. They’re going to kill me."

After the carnage, the Atlacatl Battalion burned down the buildings of El Mozote and moved on. Rufina Amaya, who had heard the screams of her husband and other children as they were murdered, managed to slip away. Both before and after the massacre, the soldiers killed civilians in other villages. But no other village suffered a slaughter as massive and as near complete as El Mozote. Hundreds of civilians had died.

Guillermonprieto’s Report

Guillermoprieto felt that she had to get her story out right away. It was not so much the fear of being scooped. But she was sure that, if Bonner’s story appeared on the front page of the New York Times and hers reached the Post more than a day later, the editors would cut it and place it inside. "I was desperate," she says. "I was going to lose this story. It was going to be on page 17 in four paragraphs." What had happened, she believed, was a monstrosity, and she wanted everyone in Washington to take notice.

After gathering more detail from villagers and guerrillas on the second day, she sat down and wrote the story in closely packed script on seven pages of her notebook. She rolled the pages into a plastic film canister and persuaded a young rebel courier to take it to Tegucigalpa. Her plan to get the copy to the Post involved several simple but crucial steps. "Miraculously, it worked," she says. Following her instructions, the courier phoned an American radio journalist in Tegucigalpa. He picked up the canister and, heeding the plea on the handwritten copy, dictated the story to the Post.

The Editing Process

Guillermoprieto’s visit was cut short a few days later when the guerrilla commander informed her that he could no longer guarantee her safety. It was probably time to go anyway. She had banged a leg on a rock, and it was swelling. "When I got back to the Maya Hotel in Tegucigalpa," she says, "I was a nightmare. I had this enormous purple leg. I called the Post and asked, ‘When did the story run?’ And Karen (Foreign Editor De Young) said we were waiting to talk with you."

This upset Guillermoprieto . She felt that "they didn’t believe the story. Both Jim (Assistant Managing Editor Hoagland) and Karen thought I was overwrought and got too emotional and was too sympathetic to the guerrillas. What happened was so unbelievable that they didn’t believe it." There was only one consolation. She had not been scooped by Bonner. No story of his on the massacre had yet run in the Times.

The delay in publishing Guillermoprieto’s story was less an issue of belief than of cautious editorial practice. Since De Young had covered the Nicaraguan Civil War and other Central American stories as a highly regarded correspondent, she and other Post editors were sensitive to the need in Washington to produce full evidence in any story exposing the brutality of the armies of anti-communist dictatorships in the region. Without such evidence, the stories would be dismissed as left-wing propaganda.

Hoagland took the phone to talk with Guillermoprieto. "Jim spent an hour grilling me," she says. "God bless him, he was convinced." As Hoagland recalls the hour-long conversation, "We wanted to go over the details that had to be explained…It was not an unbelievable story to me. But we had to ask the basic question that all editors ask — How do we know that?" After the talk, he says, "I was satisfied that we had shown the scope of what we knew." Even though there was a possibility the Post would be scooped by Bonner, Hoagland says he had no intention of running the story until he had talked with Guillermoprieto and satisfied himself about the evidence.

The story was heavily edited by De Young. Guillermoprieto, who now writes for the New Yorker, says she tends to write at length and take time before getting to the heart of a story. She believes that the first half of her story was incoherent and that De Young mostly used the second half. After conferring with her, De Young and Hoagland inserted a key paragraph. It stated that the rebels had invited her to the province two weeks after their radio station had broadcast reports of the massacre. "It was clear that the guerrillas’ purpose was not only to demonstrate their control of the region," the paragraph said, "but also to provide what they said was evidence of the alleged massacre in December." Hoagland says readers need to know "when you are in a situation where you are dependent on your hosts for food and lodging and, in fact, your life."

After her talks with Hoagland and De Young, Guillermoprieto slept for a day. She felt feverish but wrote quickly, finishing a series of articles on life behind guerrilla lines. The story already in the hands of her editors was published in the Post on Wednesday, January 27, with the headline: "Salvadoran Peasants Describe Mass Killing: Woman Tells of Children’s Death."

Datelined Mozote, the Post story began:

"Several hundred civilians, including women and children, were taken from their homes in and around this village and killed by Salvadoran Army troops during a December offensive against leftist guerrillas, according to three survivors who say they witnessed the alleged massacres.

"Reporters taken to tour the region and speak to survivors by guerrilla soldiers, who control large areas of Morazán Province, were shown the rubble of scores of adobe houses they and the survivors said were destroyed by the troops in the now deserted village community. Dozens of decomposing bodies still were seen beneath the rubble and lying in nearby fields, despite the month that has passed since the incident.

"In Washington, Salvadoran Ambassador Ernesto Rivas Gallont said, ‘I reject emphatically that the Army of El Salvador’ was engaged in ‘killing women and children. It is not within the armed institution’s philosophy to act like that.’ He acknowledged that the ‘armed forces have been active in that part of the country,’ particularly during a December offensive against the guerrillas, but said that their actions had ‘definitely not been against the civilian populations.’

"The survivors, including a woman who said her husband and four of her six children were killed, maintained that no battle was under way during the second week in December when the alleged massacre took place…"

Bonner’s Report

Although the Times had already published the start of the Bonner series, his first article did not discuss the massacre. There was nothing by Bonner to match the Guillermoprieto story in the first edition of the Times for that day.

Bonner flew to Mexico City to write a series on life behind guerrilla lines. He did not rush out a story on the massacre but included it as the second piece in his series. He sent it to the New York Times as one in a batch of three articles. His fourth would follow. "I was so green and naïve in journalism that I didn’t know what I had," he says. "I didn’t know what impact it would have."

Craig Whitney, then deputy foreign editor of the Times, edited the series. After the first piece was published, he worked on the massacre story and then, much like Hoagland and De Young at the Post, set it aside, assuming he could talk with Bonner about it the next day. "The reporting was there," he recalls. "The next step was making sure by asking the obvious questions. How do you know it happened? What is the evidence? How do we know how many people were killed?" But Whitney received a call at home that evening informing him that Guillermoprieto’s story had appeared on the front page of the first edition of the Post. "I said run the story," says Whitney. "I edited it and talked with Ray on the phone, and it ran. It ran on Page 1. There was never any doubt that he had the basic facts." Bonner says "the story probably had a fair amount of editing because it probably needed it. I wasn’t an experienced writer at that time."

The story appeared on the front page of the final edition of the New York Times on Wednesday, January 27, the same day that the Guillermoprieto story appeared on the Post’s front page. The headline read: "Massacre of Hundreds Reported in Salvador Village."

Also datelined Mozote, the Times story began:

"From interviews with people who live in this small mountain village and surrounding hamlets, it is clear that a massacre of major proportions occurred here last month.

"In some 20 mud brick huts here, this reporter saw the charred skulls and bones of dozens of bodies buried under burned-out roofs, beams and shattered tiles. There were more along the trail leading through the hills into the village, and at the edge of a nearby cornfield were the remains of 14 young men, women and children.

"In separate interviews during a two-week period in the rebel-controlled northern part of Morazán Province, 13 peasants said that all these, their relatives and friends, had been killed by Government soldiers of the Atlacatl Battalion in a sweep in December.

"The villagers have compiled a list of the names, ages and villages of 733 peasants, mostly children, women and old people, who they say were killed by the Government soldiers. The Human Rights Commission of El Salvador, which works with the Roman Catholic Church, puts the number at 926…"

Bonner’s story did not have a paragraph like the one in the Post story stating that the guerrillas had invited him in so that he could look at the massacre site. But, though almost all of the evidence in his story implicated the Salvadoran Army as the perpetrators of the massacres, the Bonner story did say, "It is not possible for an observer who was not present at the time of the massacre to determine independently how many people died or who killed them."

Although Bonner was too inexperienced to realize the impact that his story would have in Washington, he now feels that his inexperience was probably an advantage. "I was not journalistically trained," he says. "I wasn’t trained in the culture of the New York Times and I wasn’t trained even in the culture of journalism. I f I did a good job… I sometimes wonder how much of that was because I did not have journalistic training. I think I’d be much more cautious in what I wrote today, and I’m not sure it would be better…I had no idea what the impact of the New York Times was…Maybe that was good because I just wrote what I saw."

Guillermoprieto expected the stories to have more of an impact than they did. "I was surprised at the lack of world outrage," she says. "By my standards, what I had hoped for, there was no impact. I felt as if I were in a nightmare when you try to scream and have no voice."

Reactions Back Home

The stories on the front page of the two most influential newspapers in the country upset and embarrassed the Reagan Administration. They appeared a day before President Reagan sent Congress his certification that El Salvador was "making a concerted and significant effort to comply with internationally recognized human rights." he certification — required by law as a condition for continued military aid — was ludicrous if the stories were true.

In San Salvador, Ambassador Deane Hinton, who had already assured the National Council of Churches that he had no reason to believe that reports of a massacre were true, sent Todd Greentree, a political officer, and Maj. John McKay, a military attaché, to investigate. Greentree and McKay flew over El Mozote but, since it was in rebel territory, never set foot in it. On the ground, where they were joined by Deputy Chief of Mission Kenneth Bleakley, they interviewed refugees but mainly in the presence of Salvadoran soldiers. The conclusions of the embassy officers, sent to the State Department in a cable over Hinton’s signature, were cautiously put together.

"Although it is not possible to prove or disprove excesses of violence against the civilian population of El Mozote," the cable said, "it is certain that the guerrilla forces…did nothing to remove them from the path of battle…nor is there any evidence that those who remained attempted to leave. Civilians did die during Operation Rescate, but no evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians in the operation zone." There was a good deal of ambiguity in the cable, but it clearly blamed the rebels for leaving civilians "in the path of battle." This implied, of course, that they were killed by chance in battle and not by the deliberate act of bloodthirsty, abusive soldiers.

Citing the investigation by the two embassy officers and repeating the words of the cable, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas O. Enders told both a Senate Foreign Affairs Subcommittee and a House Appropriations Subcommittee a week after publication of the stories that "there is no evidence to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians in the operations zone." Enders also said that the number of dead civilians could not possibly have reached Guillermoprieto’s estimate of several hundred or Bonner’s of 500 to 700 since government records list the population of El Mozote as only 300. This ignored the fact that both correspondents had reported that the massacres occurred in more villages than just El Mozote.

The administration’s belittling of the news accounts soon led to a right-wing campaign against the reporters, especially Bonner. In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal, citing as evidence the paragraph that the Post editors had inserted in Guillermoprieto’s story, said that Bonner had clearly taken part in "a propaganda exercise" and "there is such a thing as being overly credulous." The presence of the "propaganda" paragraph in the Post story deflected the attack from Guillermoprieto, and the Journal did not criticize her directly. But that did not mean it believed her account. Much of the American press in El Salvador, according to the Journal, was following a Vietnam War-style of reporting "in which Communist sources were given greater credence than either the U.S. government or the government it was supporting." But Bonner seemed the main culprit. The editorial accused Times editors and reporters who had defended Bonner of closing "ranks behind a reporter out on a limb."

The attacks intensified. George Melloan, who had contributed to the editorial, went on the televised McNeil-Lehrer Report to say that "obviously Ray Bonner has a political orientation." The conservative newsletter Accuracy in Media castigated Bonner for carrying on "a propaganda war favoring the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador." Ambassador Hinton, in a breakfast with Washington reporters in June, dismissed Bonner as an "advocate journalist."

The attacks were too furious to be ignored in the Times newsroom. "There were all kinds of aspersions on Ray as a person and as a reporter," recalls Whitney, soon promoted to foreign editor. "…They (the administration) and their friends were really vicious about Ray and quite unfair. We probably applied more rigorous standards to his stories after then. But criticism makes me contrary and more determined than ever to get the story into the paper."

In August, seven months after the El Mozote stories were published, Managing Editor A. M. Rosenthal withdrew Bonner from Central America and assigned him to the business section in New York. Rosenthal insisted at the time and continues to maintain today that the relatively inexperienced Bonner needed more training as a journalist and more understanding of the way the New York Times works. The reassignment, however, was interpreted in some journalistic circles as a repudiation of Bonner and a surrender to pressures from the Reagan Administration.

This interpretation infuriates Rosenthal. Citing the Times’s history of defying Washington — especially its publication of the Pentagon Papers during the Nixon Administration, Rosenthal says, "The Times has a pretty good record. Why in God’s name should we become whores for Ray Bonner?" He says any suggestion that he punished Bonner for writing the El Mozote story "is a lie."

But Rosenthal, who covered communist Poland as a young foreign correspondent and had the reputation of a tough Cold Warrior, acknowledges that he may have been worried about Bonner’s attitudes toward the Salvadoran government and toward the Salvadoran rebels. "As a matter of fact," he says, "I had doubts about a large part of the press corps." It was no accident that he hired Shirley Christian of the Miami Herald as a Times correspondent after she wrote an article in the Columbia Journalism Review denouncing American reporters for favoring the leftist Sandinista rebels during the Nicaraguan Civil War. While the need for training was the primary motive for reassigning Bonner, Rosenthal continues, "I’m not saying we were not worried about his articles. He’s a good reporter, but he’s not Jesus Christ Almighty."

Bonner agrees that he was not reassigned because of State Department pressure over the El Mozote story. A colleague informed him that Rosenthal told several Times editors and reporters at a private meeting, "If I have to choose between Bonner and the State Department, I’ll take Bonner." But Bonner believes that Rosenthal regarded communism as a far greater threat to Central America than brutal, repressive regimes and was troubled by correspondents who spent what Rosenthal regarded as too much time exposing the tactics of these regimes. Rosenthal, according to Bonner, was probably more upset by Bonner’s favorable view of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua than by the El Mozote story. Bonner says that three of his Nicaragua stories were never published.

The reassignment may have chilled El Salvador coverage. Reporters, according to Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review, became "wary of provoking the embassy." "If they can kick out the Times correspondent," said one foreign correspondent in San Salvador, "you’ve got to be careful." A New York Times correspondent heading off to Latin America told Bonner, "I’m not going to get caught in the same trap that you did." The whole episode, said another Times foreign correspondent, "had an intimidating effect on the foreign desk."

Bonner took a leave of absence to write a book on El Salvador and then resigned from the Times in 1984. He became a free lance writer working mainly for The New Yorker. In the 1990s, after Rosenthal retired as executive editor and began writing a column, Bonner returned to the Times as a contract writer and then as a staff correspondent assigned to Washington in 1999.

The Post rewarded Guillermoprieto by promoting her to a full-time job in Washington as a reporter. But the promotion did not work out well. "The whole thing was hexed from the beginning," she says. Her mother took ill and soon died. After the excitement of covering Central America, she had to cover suburban Maryland for the metro desk. Instead of reporting wars, she had to report on fires breaking out in middle class American homes. She felt a kind of culture shock. "It was a complete mismatch," she says.

She also felt "there was a ring of mistrust around me" because of her Salvador stories and the attacks on her by the Reagan Administration. The Post in those days was subject to a continual barrage of criticism from the White House. "There was tremendous pressure on us during the Reagan Administration," says De Young, the foreign editor. "People in the White House would complain to high executives at the Post about the correspondents covering Central America. That led to an air of mistrust. You know, if you call someone a leftist often enough, some of it sticks. But, having said that, I can not think of a single time that a story was changed or dropped because of pressure from the White House."

In a similar description of the atmosphere, Hoagland, the assistant managing editor, says it was not unusual for some editors to feel suspicious about the reporting of a correspondent in the field. "It was sort of like what happened in newsrooms during the Vietnam War," he says. "There is a difference between the Washington view, based on what editors hear from officials, and the view of reporters in the field who see the problems and failures of U.S. policy." But Hoagland believes that he defended Guillermoprieto against the doubts of some editors and that he had a duty to defend her. "I defended someone who had risked her life for us and given us a scoop," he says.

After two years, Guillermoprieto won an Alicia Patterson fellowship for travel in Europe and then accepted a job with Newsweek as its Latin American correspondent. She left Newsweek in 1987 to write a book and then became a staff writer for the New Yorker.

Epilogue

Guillermoprieto and Bonner were vindicated 11 years after the publication of their dispatches on the massacres.

As part of the accords that ended the Salvadoran Civil War on December 31, 1991, the U.N. Secretary-General appointed a Truth Commission to record the violations of human rights during the war and identify the culprits who perpetrated them. The commission comprised former Colombian President Belisario Betancur as chairman, former Venezuelan Foreign Minister Reinaldo Figueredo Planchart, and Thomas Buergenthal, an American law professor who once headed the Inter-American Court for Human Rights.

The Commission issued its report in March 1993. In the section on El Mozote, the commissioners concluded that "more than 500 identified victims perished at El Mozote and in the other villages." They added that "many other victims have not been identified" but gave no estimate of their number.

There was "full proof," the commissioners said, that units of the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion "deliberately and systematically killed…the entire civilian population that they had found there." The commission added that there was "sufficient evidence" that the soldiers "massacred the non-combatant civilian population" in several nearby villages both before and after the El Mozote slaughter.

The commission’s conclusions were based heavily on the findings of forensic experts. A team of four Argentine forensic anthropologists dug up and examined the bones in El Mozote and then passed the material on to a team of four American doctors in San Salvador for a forensic examination.

The most damning evidence was exhumed in the sacristy. The Argentines found the skeletal remains of 143 bodies there. Of these, 131 were of children under the age of 12. The evidence showed that many of the victims were lying on the ground when shot from above by the killers standing in the door and by the windows. The bullets uncovered were U.S. government ammunition for U.S. government M16 rifles. The forensic experts concluded that the evidence "confirms the allegations of a mass murder." "There is no evidence to support the contention," the experts went on, "that these victims, almost all young children, were involved in combat or were caught in the crossfire of combat forces." The Truth Commission condemned the El Mozote massacre as "a serious violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law."

In all, the Truth Commission received 22,000 complaints of human rights abuses during the war. In contrast to what the Reagan Administration had insisted about rebel exaggerations and rebel killings, the commissioners said that the victims attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the army and other agents of the state, paramilitary groups allied to the government, and right-wing death squads.

After the Truth Commission published its report, Secretary of State Warren Christopher appointed a panel to examine "the activities and conduct" of the State Department during the war. The panel was made up of I. M. Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland, and two distinguished former foreign service officers, George S. Vest and Richard W. Murphy.

The panel was generally kind to the State Department. It concluded that "within the parameters of overall U.S. policy, the Department and Foreign Service personnel performed creditably — and on occasion with personal bravery — in advancing human rights in El Salvador." But the panel found a few exceptions, and El Mozote was the main one.

The panel criticized Assistant Secretary of State Enders for failing to make clear to Congress that the two U.S. embassy officers had not set foot in El Mozote during their investigation. The department was chastised for going even further than Enders in trying to discredit the Bonner and Guillermoprieto stories in its correspondence with members of Congress. Although Ambassador Hinton had cabled Washington in February his suspicion that "something happened that should not have happened and that it is quite possible Salvadoran military did commit excesses," the State Department still insisted in July that it had "no evidence to support allegations of large-scale massacres." That went even further than the testimony of Enders that they had no evidence "to confirm" the massacres.

The panel said that the reports of the massacre had clearly called for "an extraordinary effort" by the State Department to investigate what had happened. But none was mounted. "The Embassy does not seem to have been inclined to press," the panel said, "and Washington preferred to avoid the issue and protect its policy then under siege." The panel concluded that U.S. statements on the case were wrong and "undermined the Department’s credibility with its critics — and probably with the Salvadorans — in a serious way that has not healed."

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/j6075/edit/readings/mozote.html

And sometimes it's kind of outlandish. For example, there was just a review in The New York Times Book Review of Glenn Greenwald's new book by Michael Kinsley, and which bitterly condemned him as--mostly character assassination. Didn't say anything substantive. But Kinsley did say that it's ridiculous to think that there's any repression in the media in the United States, 'cause we can write quite clearly and criticize anything. And he can, but then you have to look at what he says, and it's quite interesting.

In the 1980s, when the major local news story was the massive U.S. atrocities in Central America--they were horrendous; I mean, it wasn't presented that way, but that's what was happening--Kinsley was the voice of the left on television. And there were interesting incidents. At one point, the U.S. Southern Command, which ran--you know, it was the overseer of these actions--gave instructions to the terrorist force that they were running in Nicaragua, called the Contras--and they were a terrorist force--they gave them orders to--they said "not to (...) duke it out with the Sandinistas", meaning avoid the Nicaraguan army, and attack undefended targets like agricultural cooperatives and, you know, health clinics and so on. And they could do it, because they were the first guerrillas in history to have high-level communications equipment, you know, computers and so on. The U.S., the CIA, just controlled the air totally, so they could send instructions to the terrorist forces telling them how to avoid the Nicaraguan army detachments and attack undefended civilian targets.

Well, this was mentioned; you know, it wasn't publicized, but it was mentioned. And Americas Watch, which later became part of Human Rights Watch, made some protests. And Michael Kinsley responded. He condemned Americas Watch for their emotionalism. He said, we have to recognize that we have to accept a pragmatic criterion. We have to ask--something like this--he said, we have to compare the amount of blood and misery poured in with the success of the outcome in producing democracy--what we'll call democracy. And if it meets the pragmatic criterion, then terrorist attacks against civilian targets are perfectly legitimate--which is not a surprising view in his case. He's the editor of The New Republic. The New Republic, supposedly a liberal journal, was arguing that we should support Latin American fascists because there are more important things than human rights in El Salvador, where they were murdering tens of thousands of people.

That's the liberals. And, yeah, they can get in the media no problem. And they're praised for it, regarded with praise. All of this is part of the massive system of--you know, it's not that anybody sits at the top and plans at all; it's just exactly as Orwell said: it's instilled into you. It's part of a deep indoctrination system which leads to a certain way of looking at the world and looking at authority, which says, yes, we have to be subordinate to authority, we have to believe we're very independent and free and proud of it. As long as we keep within the limits, we are. Try to go beyond those limits, you're out.