For the Record

Good reporters opting for comparatively free expression

Being a columnist mean not having to launder your views.

Whatcha gonna do

when the truth isn't on your side?

From The Guardian (via the Sideshow):

Yes, U2’s Bono is the latest columnist to be hired by New York’s esteemed newspaper. Editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal announced the decision at Columbia’s School of Journalism this week, saying that the former Nobel Peace Prize nominee will pen between six and 10 articles over the course of 2009…

Though rockers and pop stars are welcome, another group faces an uphill battle on to the New York Times’ editorial page — conservatives. “[US Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice is a particularly bad op-ed writer,” Rosenthal said. However, the problem doesn’t end there. “The problem with conservative columnists,” Rosenthal said, “is that many of them lie in print.”

The true measure of power

The true measure of power is how much you can get away with, which makes the gangsters running the U.S. effectively all-powerful.

Times v Post

NYT responds after a week to WaPo's inane editorial "A Good Leak", with "A Bad Leak". I'm pleased to see that in the judgement of the Times:

 

Since Mr. Bush regularly denounces leakers, the White House has made much of the notion that he did not leak classified information, he declassified it. This explanation strains credulity. Even a president cannot wave a wand and announce that an intelligence report is declassified.

To declassify an intelligence document, officials have to decide whether disclosing the information would jeopardize the sources that provided it or the methods used to gather it.

This squares with the analysis earlier in this space, against the opinion of much of the left blogosphere, which bought into the Bush Gang frame.

Scandal Fatigue

Libby's lawyers report that Cheney gives free rein to Libby to pass around classified info to sell the war, Brownie testifies that the WH lied about when it knew about the NO levee failure, Bush gets caught trying to sneak Social Security privatization into the budget, DeLay gets a post on the House subcommittee overseeing the justice dept, Gonzales testifies that the WH is willing to "listen to" the legislature's "ideas", the CIA admits the WH lied about intel to sell the war, and that there was no postwar planning for a year after the war.

All in one week! The abundance of disaster and/or attendant desensitization is remarked upon editorially by the Times, strategically by Daou, rudely by the Rude Pundit.

Libby's lawyers report that Cheney gives free rein to Libby to pass around classified info to sell the war, Brownie testifies that the WH lied about when it knew about the NO levee failure, Bush gets caught trying to sneak Social Security privatization into the budget, DeLay gets a post on the House subcommittee overseeing the justice dept, Gonzales testifies that the WH is willing to "listen to" the legislature's "ideas", the CIA admits the WH lied about intel to sell the war, and that there was no postwar planning for a year after the war.

All in one week! The abundance of disaster and/or attendant desensitization is remarked upon editorially by the Times, strategically by Daou, rudely by the Rude Pundit.

What's responsible for the failure of the press?

Digby has a characteristically readable post detailing the trajectory of their disillusionment with the press (including the so-called "liberal" papers -- hardy-har-har -- like the Washington Post and NYT) which ends with a seeming assessment of the problem and suggestion for how we can get the press back on track:

This is fifteen long years of watching the Times and the rest of the mainstream media buckle under the pressure of GOP accusations that they are biased, repeatedly take bogus GOP manufactured scandals and run with them like kids with a brand new kite, treat our elections like they are entertainment vehicles for bored reporters and generally kowtow to the Republican establishment as the path of least resistence. I waited for years for them to recognise what was happening and fight back. It didn't happen. And I began to see that the only way to get the press to work properly was to apply equal pressure from the opposite direction. It's a tug of war. They were not strong enough to resist being dragged off to the right all by themselves. They needed some flamethrowers from our side pulling in the opposite direction to make it possible for them to avoid being pulled all the way over.

No doubt a desire not to have to listen to the screeching of irrational Republican harpies has played some role in the miserable failures of the fourth estate.  Similarly for the line one sometimes hears about how reporters have bent over for the Republicans in order to retain their precious access to the mouthpieces of power -- and don't forget the incredible lure of the Washington Cocktail Party.  But honestly, does anyone think these sorts of considerations explain the phenomena?  Get real, liberals.

The comment thread on Digby's post has lots of alternative suggestions, but my own views on the matter coincide with commenter anna's:

it is a corporate media. it does what is best for the corporatocracy. plain, simple, and really fucking scary.

There it is: the plain, simple, and really fucking scary truth.  THE  SAME CORPORATIONS THAT PROFIT FROM REPUBLICAN POLICIES OF ENDLESS WAR AND DECIMATION OF SOCIAL GOODS AND RIGHTS IN SERVICE OF CORPORATE PROFITS ARE THE SAME CORPORATIONS THAT OWN (EITHER DIRECTLY, OR INDIRECTLY VIA ADVERTISING REVENUE) THE MEDIA.

A second-grader could 2 and 2 together here.  I think it's really interesting that those who expend so much effort in observing the present tattered state of the press in the U.S. so reliably fail to observe the obvious causal and constitutive explanations here.

More generally, it seems to me as if progressive criticisms of the present tattered state of the nation are similarly blind as to the obvious mechanisms of Corporate Capitalism (again, there isn't any point in qualifying CorpCap as "unregulated" -- the obvious mechanisms of power and influence guarantee that any capitalist system will eventually become unregulated).

Failure to recognize the basic fact of the malignant tendencies of a state run by and for Corporate Capitalism means that the majority of progressives are just shouting into the wind.  Their suggestions for how to improve things uniformly fail to hit the target. But the specific failure of progressives to recognize and specifically address the fact that Corporate Media is not EVER going to be on board with the progressive agenda plays a key role in the ineffectiveness of general strategies for implementing this agenda. 

No amount of "reframing" the Democratic party as the party of "common sense", of the grassroots, of the really brave or really patriotic people, or whatever, is going to make one small bit of difference if Democrats (or other progressives) can't get the word out.  Nor is there any chance that our problems will be solved as soon as some Bill Clinton Redux rides into town to save the day, given that the Corporate Media sets the agenda for presentation of that person, and has come to full realization of just how much it can get away with, either directly by way of lies and distortion (as with Al Gore's non-existent "lies" about inventing the internet, and Howard Dean's isolated-mike-feed-in-a-roaring hall "scream"), or indirectly by publicizing Republican talking points and smear campaigns (against Kerry, Hillary, whoever).

You don't believe me?  Look at what has happened -- or rather, what hasn't happened -- in the last 5 years.

Progressives need to wake up to our real enemy.  It's not Republicans (except indirectly): it's Corporate Capitalism.

Miller calls to make it safe

for reporters to aid and abet criminal acts of retribution protect their sources.  Methinks Judy has a serious  case of liar's  syndrome.

The definitive comparison of "Memo-gate" vs. WMD-gate

is here.  This says it all about what happens when the media is run by the same criminal corporate capitalists running government.

NY Times double standards

When the administration estimates some figure, the NY Times reports it as such.  When some non-admin body (e.g., the head of the Fallujah hospital, Human Rights Watch), estimates some figure that sheds unattractive light on the administration (e.g., the hundreds upon hundreds of civilian causalities associated with the onslaught on Fallujah), the NY Times reports it as "unconfirmed".  See FAIR's analysis of the Time's reprehensible reporting here. 

Wondering why a supposedly independent newspaper has been rolling over like a terrorized dog for Bush and his gang?  Tune in tomorrow for a plausible reason, as indicated by a journalist I spoke with recently.  Meanwhile you might want to follow up on FAIR's links and contact Daniel Okrent (the Times's purportedly "public representative") about the double standard.

The danger of the Gallup poll

By now the explanation for the Gallup poll's massive pro-Bush slant is clear -- they overpoll republicans. Why? The Gallup boss is a big GOP donor.

Harmless, you say? -- Maybe not, if Dems get discouraged and don't vote. Jess suggests a more sinister purpose: camouflaging the e-theft of the election. Managing public opinion as to the legitimacy of the winner was big in 2000 -- remember the Thanksgiving stuffing, the late overseas ballots Lieberman allowed to be counted which put Bush ahead of Gore and so created a fact-basis for that annoying Sore Loserman bumpersticker. So what happens if this time Kerry is known to be ahead 5 points nationally, but -- mirabile dictu -- Bush pulls off a big one (due to Diebold & ESS, natch)? Well, who knows. Certainly it will be a lot easier to get away with it if a Bush "victory" already seemed inevitable.

Even worse, it puts big pressure on Kerry to win nationwide by a big margin. If the election is close, pro-Kerry, no doubt the rethugs will challenge all the way down. Watch out for a "dems stealing the election" trope under these circumstances -- made much stickier if antecedent nationwide polls show a Bush "victory" to be inevitable. -- Benj

Update: don't forget:

Nevada, another state that will make near-universal use of touch-screen voting in November, purchased machines manufactured by Sequoia that produce a paper record - a move that received high marks earlier this month from the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative group in Washington. "Without an actual paper ballot, we are then left with only the computer's word for the election results," the group said in a news release accompanying its informal "Election Preparedness Scorecard" three weeks ago.

The group gave grades of F to several states - including Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Tennessee - based on their degree of reliance on paperless electronic voting. Florida, whose results will almost certainly receive intense scrutiny, received an F-plus, while Georgia was given an F-minus. New Mexico, a swing state that will rely heavily on touch-screen voting on Nov. 2, received a D-minus.

[...]

As for security concerns, Mr. Miller said that vendors submit their source code - the underlying instructions for the machines' software - for independent inspection, to uncover any hidden programming and to ensure that the machines calculate properly.

Critics, however, point out that the labs inspecting the software are typically paid by the vendors themselves, and that they somehow failed to uncover the flaws discovered by Mr. Wertheimer, Professor Rubin, and election officials in Ohio, Maryland and elsewhere.

While it is too late in the game to make it possible to produce a paper record for each vote on every machine already deployed, Mr. Miller said that vendors would be willing to include that feature in the future if the market demanded it. Most of the major vendors have models that can supply a printed record, but in most cases, Mr. Miller said, election officials have not required it.

The market???