"You know it's a perfect storm of media corruption when..."

[G_j]

Williams interviewed Cheney for Sinclair re: media objectivity re: Halliburton LOL!
Oh the irony!


============
You know it's a perfect storm of media corruption when Bob Novak lobs softballs at Armstrong Williams on Crossfire. Here, Frank Rich puts the Soviet-style propaganda operations of the Bush administration into striking focus. Another example: Armstrong Williams interviewing Dick Cheney for Sinclair Broadcasting talking about media objectivity in covering Halliburton.


All The President's Media

by Frank Rich, The New York Times
"Crossfire" hit a new low recently -- inspiring Rich to rail against the corruption of pundits, programs and news channels.

http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/#003346

ONE day after the co-host Tucker Carlson made his farewell appearance and two days after the new president of CNN made the admirable announcement that he would soon kill the program altogether, a television news miracle occurred: even as it staggered through its last nine yards to the network guillotine, "Crossfire" came up with the worst show in its fabled 23-year history.

This was a half-hour of television so egregious that it makes Jon Stewart's famous pre-election rant seem, if anything, too kind. This time "Crossfire" wasn't just "hurting America," as Mr. Stewart put it, by turning news into a nonsensical gong show. It was unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, complicit in the cover-up of a scandal.

I do not mean to minimize the CBS News debacle and other recent journalistic outrages at The New York Times and elsewhere. But the Jan. 7 edition of CNN's signature show can stand as an exceptionally ripe paradigm of what is happening to the free flow of information in a country in which a timid news media, the fierce (and often covert) Bush administration propaganda machine, lax and sometimes corrupt journalistic practices, and a celebrity culture all combine to keep the public at many more than six degrees of separation from anything that might resemble the truth.

On this particular "Crossfire," the featured guest was Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, talk-show host and newspaper columnist (for papers like The Washington Times and The Detroit Free Press, among many others, according to his Web site). Thanks to investigative reporting by USA Today, he had just been unmasked as the frontman for a scheme in which $240,000 of taxpayers' money was quietly siphoned to him through the Department of Education and a private p.r. firm so that he would "regularly comment" upon (translation: shill for) the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind policy in various media venues during an election year. Given that "Crossfire" was initially conceived as a program for tough interrogation and debate, you'd think that the co-hosts still on duty after Mr. Carlson's departure might try to get some answers about this scandal, whose full contours, I suspect, we are only just beginning to discern.

..more..
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/16/arts/16rich.html?pagewanted=print&position=

[tibbiit]

1. What if the Chimp is phone pals with Rushbo?

All he would have to do is call him up on his private phone and tell hime what he wants said.
Wouldnt that be wrong?
I would think that politicians friendships with media whores would be something to look into too!
Dont you imagine this happens??? Chimp/Rush blather?
tib

[shraby]

3. We know the White House sends

"talking points" to news people because Keith Olbermann showed some papers on the air when he interviewed Joe Wilson. He said they sent him some questions he was supposed to ask Joe. He also said there was only one worth asking.

[G_j]

2. and speaking of the media..

FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/cbs-memogate.html

MEDIA ADVISORY:
CBS 'Memogate' Fallout:
Selective punishment shows media's true bias

January 12, 2005

>From the media interest surrounding CBS's investigation into "Memogate,"
one would think that the credibility of 60 Minutes' report on George W.
Bush's National Guard service was the most pressing media issue facing the
nation.

Shortly after the report about Bush's National Guard service aired on 60
Minutes (9/8/04), right-wing commentators and bloggers claimed that the
documents supporting the CBS report were fraudulent and pointed to the
episode as evidence of "liberal media" bias.

In fact, the CBS review, headed by former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh
(an appointee of Bush's father) and former Associated Press president
Louis Boccardi, was not able to state conclusively whether the documents
were forgeries or not. The report also found no evidence that political
bias was a factor in the network's journalism. Instead, the report
documented a series of misjudgments on the part of several CBS staffers,
most notably producer Mary Mapes.

CBS's investigation did document serious failures in 60 Minutes' efforts
to check its source's claims-- an endemic problem in commercial news. If
"Memogate" had called attention to the general issue of credulous
journalism, it would have performed a valuable service for the public.
But the media discussion of the incident generally treated it as either an
aberration or as an emblem of left-wing media bias.

The hours of coverage of the Rather episode managed to ignore what should
have been the central question: Did George W. Bush, in reality, properly
fulfill his National Guard requirements? On September 14, FAIR noted that
CBS was only one of several media outlets to release important reports
about documented discrepancies in Bush's service record. Because of the
focus on the CBS documents and the accompanying right-wing accusations of
media bias on the issue, those stories-- and the important questions they
raised-- were quickly dropped by a cowed press corps.

The claims that this controversy proves that CBS, or the media as a whole,
have a liberal or anti-Bush bias, are ludicrous. When CBS staffers got
caught taking shortcuts on a story critical of Bush, it cost them their
careers. By contrast, other reporters have received much less scrutiny
and punishment for offenses of far greater magnitude-- and with much more
significant consequences to society. The New York Times, for example,
published numerous allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
that turned out to be false-- such as one source's claim that "all of Iraq
is one large storage facility" for WMD (9/8/02). Those stories, many of
which were splashed on the paper's front page, did a great deal to sell
the White House's bogus case for war against Iraq.

While the Times has admitted (5/26/04) that some of its WMD reporting was
"insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged," the reporter
most responsible for those stories, Judith Miller, was never sanctioned by
the Times-- and indeed still continues to report on Iraq for the paper.
Ironically, after MSNBC's Hardball finished its discussion of CBS and
journalistic responsibility on January 10, the show turned to a discussion
of Iraq featuring... Judith Miller.

The lesson of "Memogate," then, is that journalists may be punished for
bad reporting-- if they have offended the wrong people. If they have
merely helped steer the country into war under false pretenses, their
careers can continue unimpeded.


Below is FAIR's September release:

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/cbs-bush-documents.html

MEDIA ADVISORY:
Media Should Probe Bigger Questions About Bush's Record

September 14, 2004

In the past week, a handful of stories have cast doubt on whether George
W. Bush fulfilled his National Guard obligations 30 years ago. Reports by
the Associated Press (9/7/04), Boston Globe (9/8/04) and U.S. News & World
Report (9/20/04) have all raised new questions about Bush's military
service. Though each of these stories has been accompanied by significant
official documentation, developments in the investigations by AP, U.S.
News and the Boston Globe have been largely sidetracked by the fixation on
questions about the authenticity of documents aired on CBS on September 8.

Weighing the credibility of evidence is an essential function of
journalism. Experts have weighed in on both sides on the authenticity of
CBS's so-called Killian memos (New York Times, 9/14/04; Washington Post,
9/14/04); efforts to establish the origin of those documents should
continue. However, news outlets that focus on this tangent of the
National Guard story to the exclusion of the unchallenged new evidence
that has recently emerged are neglecting another essential journalistic
task: holding powerful people and politicians accountable.

In the wake of the stories scrutinizing Bush's stateside service during
the Vietnam era, it's hard to imagine a better situation for the White
House than to have the press corps ignore a range of evidence raising
questions about Bush's fulfillment of his obligations while obsessing
singularly on one set of documents from one story.

A review of some of the information uncovered in recent news reports:

--The September 7 Associated Press story, based on new records the White
House had long maintained didn't exist, debunked a Bush assertion that
he'd skipped his flight physical because the jet he was trained on was
becoming obsolete. According to AP, Bush's unit continued to fly the same
jets for two years after the missed physical.

--The September 8 Boston Globe expose concluded that Bush failed in his
military obligations by missing months of duty in Alabama and in Boston.
As the Globe revealed, Bush had signed contracts on two separate occasions
swearing to meet minimum Guard requirements on penalty of being called up
to active duty. According to the military experts consulted by the Globe,
Bush's Guard attendance was so bad "his superiors could have disciplined
him or ordered him to active duty in 1972, 1973 or 1974."

--U.S News & World Report (9/20/04) reviewed National Guard regulations
and reported that the White House has been using "an inappropriate-- and
less stringent-- Air Force standard in determining that he had fulfilled
his duty." The magazine noted that Bush committed to attend at least "44
inactive-duty training drills each fiscal year" when he signed up for the
Guard, but that Bush's own records "show that he fell short of that
requirement, attending only 36 drills in the 1972-73 period, and only 12
in the 1973-74 period." The magazine explains that even by using the
White House's preferred methodology for measuring Bush's service, he still
fell short of those minimum requirements.

--An NBC Nightly News segment (9/9/04) played a clip of Bush being
interviewed in 1988, acknowledging that favoritism sometimes played a part
in getting into the National Guard. While he had said that he didn't
think that happened in his case, he did voice his approval of the
practice: "If you want to go in the National Guard, I guess sometimes
people made calls. I don't see anything wrong with it." (He continued
with a remark that could be taken as an insult to the men and women who
did face combat during the war: "They probably should have called the
National Guard up in those days. Maybe we'd have done better in Vietnam.")

Even CBS's September 8 broadcasts, the subject of so much scrutiny,
included important information beyond what is contained in the disputed
memos. On the CBS Evening News and 60 Minutes II that night, CBS featured
Ben Barnes, the former speaker of the Texas legislature, describing how he
used his political influence to help a young George W. Bush bypass a
waiting list and secure a coveted position in the Guard. In addition, the
CBS stories also featured an interview with Robert Strong, a former
colleague of Bush's commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the purported
author of the disputed documents. Strong described the pressure Bush's
commander was working under: "He was trying to deal with a volatile
political situation, dealing with the son of an ambassador and a former
congressman.... And I just saw him in an impossible situation. I felt
very, very sorry because he was between a rock and a hard place."

Instead of asking the White House tough questions about the
well-documented information contained in these reports, media have focused
almost exclusively on the claims and counter-claims made about the Killian
memos-- as if the discrepancies over Bush's service record stand or fall
based on this one set of disputed documents. It's the equivalent of
covering the sideshow and ignoring the center ring.

[WEagle]

4. latest FAIR action alert on SS

http://www.fair.org/activism/nbc-socialsecurity.html

ACTION ALERT:
NBC Short on Social Security "Crisis" Critics

January 12, 2005

The debate over George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security seems
to be heating up, and some media outlets are beginning to notice the flaws
in the White House's argument that there is an imminent "crisis" in the
decades-old government program. On the January 11 NBC Nightly News
broadcast, anchor Brian Williams seemed to be addressing that issue,
introducing a segment by noting that "critics say he's exaggerating the
problem to sell his plan, while not yet talking about big cuts in future
retiree benefits."

But the report that followed included no such critics of the
administration's "crisis" rhetoric. There was certainly room for such
opinions, considering that NBC quoted Bush making a glaring exaggeration
in describing the plan: "So if you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and
you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security
system that will be flat bust." None of the projections of Social
Security's future contend that the system will be "flat bust"; even by the
Social Security trustees' pessimistic assumptions, the system will always
be able to pay more to future retirees than current recipients get
(Economic Reporting Review, www.cepr.net, 12/6/04).

But NBC correspondent David Gregory failed to check Bush's comment,
following up only by mentioning that "before settling on a final proposal,
aides say the president needs more time to define the problem, one he
calls a crisis." One would hope that a journalist would be more
interested in pointing out that Bush's attempt to "define the problem" as
a "crisis" apparently involves wild exaggerations.

NBC did include comments from one worker who was worried about future
benefit cuts in Social Security. His fears were balanced by a soundbite
from David John, billed by NBC as a "Social Security Analyst" and one of
the "supporters of the benefit cut." Left unmentioned, however, was
John's institutional affiliation: He works for the conservative Heritage
Foundation, one of the most active pro-privatization think tanks in the
country.

It's good that NBC is at least referring to the existence of "criticism
that the president is exaggerating the need for change." But NBC would
better serve its viewers by actually including those views in its reports.

ACTION:
Encourage NBC Nightly News to expand its coverage of Social Security to
include experts who believe Bush's claims of an imminent Social Security
"crisis" are untrue.

CONTACT:
NBC Nightly News
mailto:[e-mail]
Phone: [phone]

As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you
maintain a polite tone. Please send a copy of your correspondence to
[e-mail].