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November 15, 2009 C-SPAN
Seymour Hersh Addresses International Center For Journalist 25TH Anniversary Dinner

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I've posted a lot of clips with Jane Hall on The O'Reilly Factor. She often was paired up with the uber-right winger Bernard Goldberg and usually BillO would wind up yelling at her because she didn't agree with his point of view. Her demeanor has always been gentle so I always found it upsetting that BillO would scold her. I mean, he even cut off her microphone once, which was odd for such a mild mannered speaker. She left FOX recently and I did wonder why.

Howard Kurtz tackled the "Should have the Obama administration called FOX News the opposition?" question in his Sunday "Reliable Sources" segment on CNN, and although Hall thought it wasn't a smart move by the administration, she let it out that she quit FOX because they stopped debating the issues. She cited Glenn Beck's "scary" presence as a reason why she left. It kinds of makes the arguments moot at this point by the mainstreamers who are sticking up for FOX. Can't they handle the truth?

Another big problem I have is the way cable TV uses pundits, and it's not just FOX. They constantly will pair up a right-wing opinionator with a journalist who they just assume is a liberal. The journalist usually will go on TV, but isn't in love with this because it puts their "neutrality" at issue. Hall also expressed her displeasure on that front.

KURTZ: Did you feel like you were being used to give Fox a certain degree of legitimacy, coming on as a media professor?

HALL: No, I didn't. The reason I left was in part because they've had less debates than they used to. Is it a fair point to say how much debate is there on MSNBC? How many Republican strategists? We have a bifurcation of the media.

KURTZ: Wait a second. The reason you left is because you feel they have less debate than they used to. In other words, it used to be "Hannity and Colmes," now it's just Hannity. It used to be Bernie and Jane. Now it's just Bernie.

HALL: I think there's less debate than there was. And I'm also, frankly, uncomfortable with Beck, who I think should be called out as somebody whose language is way over the top. And it's scary.

KURTZ: Was that a factor in your decision to leave Fox?

HALL: Yes, it was.

You can see that she didn't go on gunning to attack FOX; Kurtz simply caught a remark and seized on it. Then, as usual, Howie had to defend FOX News, but in so doing, he admitted that Lou Dobbs is an offensive right-winger, just like Beck, in his own commentary about the dispute.

KURTZ: Let me give you my two cents here. This is also polarizing. You either have to take the position that Fox is a courageous news organization or a threat to western civilization. I have criticized things that O'Reilly has said, that Hannity has said. Certainly, on this program, I told Glenn Beck that he was being offensive with words that he had for a Muslim member of Congress. At the same time, I don't think an entire organization should be judged by a few commentaries, any more than I think it is fair to judge CNN by the things that Lou Dobbs says. Look at some of the people at Fox.

I wrote down some names here. Major Garrett used to work at CNN. Bill Hemmer used to work at CNN. Greta Van Susteren used to work at CNN. Chris Wallace used to work at ABC and NBC. Did they all drink the Kool-Aid when they went there? Sometimes, Fox's reflexive opposition to Obama bleeds into its news coverage, as you were saying, Nico. But I don't think it's fair to tar everyone with the same brush. You want to take that on?

Look, Howie, Ailes sets the agenda. Even if certain people working on Fox haven't been drinking the "Kool-aid" (*cough*Shep*cough*Smith*cough) the cable network is a propaganda arm. If you don't like Obama saying so, fine, but the truth is the truth.

PITNEY: I think you paint it a little too moderately. Take their flagship news program "Special Report With Brett Baier." George Mason did a study, 80 percent of the coverage is negative.

KURTZ: Toward Obama?

PITNEY: Toward Obama.

KURTZ: Is that on the opinion round table?

PITNEY: No. Just the first 30 minutes.

Says it all.

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Fox's Catherine Herridge has been reporting for a couple of weeks about the White House's change of policy regarding reporters' access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which while problematic from a journalist's perspective has all the earmarks of a classic bureaucratic conflict with reporters.

Herridge ran an update yesterday on Fox's Live Desk with Marsha MacCallum, including a clip of a Pentagon spokesman being short with Herridge, evidently, over her persistent questions on the issue. It looks like a tempest in a teapot, but Herridge is a serious reporter and her beef has some legitimacy, especially when it comes to transparency for this White House.

The interesting part of this report, though, came immediately after Herridge's report, when MacCallum hosted our old friend Judith Miller, the woman who helped bring you that six-years-and-running disaster on wheels known as the Iraq War. Miller decided that this Pentagon spokesman was in need of upbraiding:

MacCallum: What did you think of the Pentagon response there to Catherine's question?

Miller: You know, I thought, it's very combative. Excuse me, Mr. Pentagon Spokesman, for Fox doing our job. We're supposed to be there, we're supposed to be reporting on what the Pentagon is doing to and for these prisoners, or detainees, as they prefer to be called. And if he doesn't like our going back and back to look in on those people, well, maybe we should just believe everything they put out.

I found it completely combative, unnecessarily so.

So now we're being lectured on the relationship of reporters to official sources by the woman who was the faithful stenographer of Bush's Pentagon -- particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in selling the public on the notion that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. The woman who -- after the utter mendacity of her sources was revealed -- told an interviewer:

"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."

I don't have a problem with Fox reporters pushing for transparency from the Pentagon. I do have a problem with Judith Miller telling us how we should do that.

It sure is heart-warming, after all, to see Miller get concerned about looking into the accuracy of Pentagon claims -- though it does seem rather convenient that this is a concern of hers only now, now that we have a Democratic administration.

If she had demonstrated even an ounce of this concern during the Bush years, the nation might not have been talked into an outrageous, costly, and wholly unnecessary war.

James Moore wrote the ultimate survey of Miller's journalistic miscreancy.

John Stossel has been masquerading as a journalist at ABC for years. We've documented some of his hackery and whining over time and as I fully expected, he's finally making the jump to crazytown where he belongs -- Fox News:

John Stossel is leaving ABC News for Fox, where he'll host a weekly show on Fox Business and host a series of specials for Fox News.

TVNewser reports that the libertarian "20/20" host is expected to sign a multi-year-deal with Fox, where he'll host a two-hour weekly show on Fox Business and make appearances on Fox News in both the daytime and primetime hours.

Stossel's departure comes on the heels of last week's announcement that Charlie Gibson is retiring from ABC News. Read on...

At least at Fox Business he won't have to worry about ratings or being seen by very many people, but his "specials" for Fox News should fit right in with their low-brow, low-information standards. ABC will be a better network for letting him go.

I have avoided using the above wrestling, smack-down clip in past Stossel posts, but the comparison between Fox News and wrasslin' was too precious to pass up!

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August 29 2009 CNN

(Heather): Well, it looks like the Secret Service has paid someone a visit. Good. That's the least they should be doing.

SANCHEZ: All right. Hello again, everybody. I'm Rick Sanchez with the next generation of news. This is a conversation. It is not a speech. And it is your turn to get involved.

It is my duty as a journalist to make you aware of a deeply disturbing trend taking that is taking place in our country and how it ironically folds into yet another story that I shared with you just last week.

A CNN source with very close to the U.S. Secret Service confirmed to me today that threats on the life of the president of the United States have now risen by as much as 400 percent since his inauguration, 400 percent death threats against Barack Obama -- quote -- "in this environment" go far beyond anything the Secret Service has seen with any other president.

Now, I need to have you keep in mind today as we add details to this story of what we're going to share with you here. I want to take you back 11 days ago, when Mr. Obama visited Phoenix, Arizona. Do you remember this man? He's one of a dozen or so people who carried guns to that presidential event that we have been checking on.

You may remember that we heard him say on camera that he is prepared to resort to forceful resistance against the Obama administration. Now, today, I want to tell you about the church that that man attends. And, in particular, I am going to play for you parts of the sermon that were delivered from the pulpit on the very day before the president arrived in Phoenix, Arizona.

This is important. This, my friends, I believe you will agree, is chilling.

Continue reading »

The plot thickens...

RIO DE JANEIRO — A television anchor who's the only journalist known to have spoken with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's Argentine lover since news of their affair broke last week said the couple received an e-mail threat from the person who hacked into her Hotmail account.

Eduardo Feinmann, who worked with Maria Belen Chapur when she was a translator for Argentina's C5N news channel, said in a telephone interview from Buenos Aires that a member of Chapur's family told him of the threat on Saturday.He said the family member told him that the e-mail from the unidentified person warned both Sanford and Chapur that "you don't know who you are messing with." He said he didn't know how either of them responded.

Sanford's wife has said she's known about the affair for many months, so if true, this would certainly explain a lot:

Chapur said in an e-mail to Feinmann, which the anchorman read on the air Sunday night, that her Hotmail account was hacked into around Nov. 24. She became aware of the intrusion shortly thereafter and by Dec. 8 had succeeded in having the account closed. Read on...

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Such a dick, indeed.

So Dana Milbank is outraged, outraged we tell you, that the White House prearranged a list of journalists it intended to call upon at last week's press conference -- as though this were not something, as we just noted, that's been going on for years, and which reached its zenith with the Bush White House using a fake reporter named "Jeff Gannon" to raise questions favorable to its talking points.

Of course, what Pitney did was precisely the opposite: He actually asked an extremely tough question that President Obama had a difficult time answering (and in fact failed to answer). Yet this is what the Village folk are all waving their Gucci torches and Armani pitchforks about.

Moreover, as Eric Boehlert observes at Media Matters, Milbank never bothered to even write about this on the pages of the Washington Post, either while it was happening or afterward.

However, he did in fact appear on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Feb. 9, 2005, to talk about Gannon. And while he was happy to kick Gannon around a little, this was his rationale about the whole affair:

MILBANK: Let's call him Mr. G. He did get to ask a question of the president whether that was deliberate or not.

You know, what it really comes down to here is that it is not the type of question he was asking. I find that funny, it was a brief break, it was an amusement. The fact is he was representing a phony media company that doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership, it's affiliated with something called GOP USA. So there are many people, Fox News, Washington Times, they are conservative but they are legitimate organizations. So this guy is not a real journalist. And he was hanging out there wasting everybody's time in the press room.

Now, Milbank can't possibly object to Pitney's presence or inclusion in the press conference on the grounds that Huffington Post "doesn't really have any such thing as circulation or readership" -- it in fact has one of the largest readerships of any entity on the Internet, dwarfing even the Washington Post's.

So he's left to cling to the thin fiction that Pitney's preselection by the White House was some kind of massive transgression of the unwritten rules of White House press conferences. And in a way it was: It proved that the old unwritten rule -- that Beltway hacks like Dana Milbank will be permitted to dominate our national conversation by trivializing press conferences with dumbass questions about baseball and swimming suits -- is no longer quite so operative.

Indeed, no one seems to have asked the really relevant question here: Why did the White House feel compelled to ensure that someone asked an Iran question? Answer: Because they almost certainly feared the usual onslaught of swimsuit, baseball and Michael Jackson questions.

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We already knew that Griff Jenkins' attempt to ambush ACORN officials earlier this week on behalf of Glenn Beck didn't exactly produce any scintillating video moments -- except when Adam Green pinned his ears to the wall for pretending to be a legitimate journalist. (As though any legitimate journalist would bring a prop intended to humiliate his interview subjects.)

So Jenkins went on Beck's show last night and presented what little decent video he had. As you can see, no one was interested in helping his little stunt along, and most of the people who actually talked to him did little to advance the narrative he wanted to create.

Verdict: Fail. Epic Fail.

Fifty People, One Question--By the end of the day, what do you wish to have happen?

I have simple needs, I really do. I have no desire for a bigger home or a newer car. I don't want jewelry, designer clothes, a maid, or any other "keeping-up-with-the-Jones" status symbols. But sadly, the things that I do want seem far more unreachable than the possibility of getting those things. I want to see an honest debate in media over issues that concern Americans. Not pundit after pundit asserting some opinion as fact or some politico drumming up some stupid strawman that never gets questioned by the purported journalist hosting the show. We're at it again this week, with the ongoing topic of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination, Iran's election and health care reform topping the list. Perhaps rather than focusing on the crooks and liars in the media, we should start a blog of moments of honest debate...nah, there'd be next to no content.

ABC’s “This Week” - Kathleen Sebelius, Mitt Romney. Roundtable: Ron Brownstein, Kimberly Strassel, Donna Brazile, George Will.

CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Dick Durbin

NBC’s “Meet the Press” – Vice President Joe Biden. Roundtable: Joe Scarborough, Mike Murphy

NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” – Panel: Katty Kay, Claire Shipman, Helene Cooper, Norah O’Donnell. Topics: Why is Obama a more elusive target for Republicans than Bill Clinton was? Why do women report higher job satisfaction even if they are paid less? Meter Questions: Will President Obama's policies be a riper target than his personality for Republican critics? YES: 12 NO: 0; Will Senate Republicans attack Sonia Sotomayor as a liberal or show deference to her? YES: 10 NO: 2

CNN’s “State of the Union” - Kathleen Sebelius, James Carville and Mary Matalin, Sen. Ben Nelson, Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Kent Conrad

CNN’s “Reliable Sources” - ABC News President David Westin on "The New Normal" -- a network-wide series devoted to what life will be like after the recession ends.

CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” - This week, the big story is the Iranian elections. What should the world expect from Iran? What will the outcome mean for Iran's relations with the U.S. and the rest of the world? And can real reform come to Iran?

“Fox News Sunday” - Sens. Chris Dodd and Charles Grassley. Thomas Donahue, the head of the Chamber of Commerce.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

I pity Amanda Carpenter because it seems like the appearances on Bill O'Reilly's show are really affecting her, and that's too bad. She's a conservative and I'm a liberal, but I think we can both agree that the news is the news and her response to a segment on Reliable Sources was really a justification for the behavior of Fox during the teabagging parties.

SESNO: Because that's not our job. Our job is not to use our podium and our platform and our television camera to tell people what they should be thinking and doing. Our job should be to tell them what's happening out there and then they decide what to do.

KURTZ: You disagree with that?

CARPENTER: You know, this is -- I disagree with using words like "fascism" on the Fox Business Network, but we are entering a period, I think Ana Marie would agree -- I mean, we both cover things, we both have perspectives. I think this is becoming more acceptable in journalism as long as you're up front about it first.

No, it's never acceptable to do this. Never, ever. Journalists can have a point of view, but not when they are reporting on events. You can't say that Iraq is going to bomb us just because you want that war to take place, no matter what the evidence suggests. And then masquerading as a news entity is the worst form of deceit there is, especially when they turn into a propaganda enterprise. It is acceptable if you don't have the word "News" in your network.

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April 14, 2009 BBC World

March 12, 2009 BBC

January 03, 2009 BBC World

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CBC News reports that thousands of Iraqis are protesting the arrest of Muntadar al-Zaidi.

More from Democracy Now:

President Bush is returning to Washington after making surprise trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. In Baghdad, a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was interrupted when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President Bush. The shoes almost hit Bush in the head. The journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, screamed in Arabic, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." Al-Zaidi works as a reporter for the Cairo-based satellite channel Al-Baghdadia TV. Security guards removed him from the room while reportedly kicking and beating him. He is still being held by Iraqi officials. Al-Baghdadia TV has called for al-Zaidi’s release.

Al-Baghdadia News Anchor: “Al-Baghdadia TV channel calls on the Iraqi authorities to immediately release its employee, Muntadar al-Zaidi, in accordance with the democratic freedom of expression that the new regime, the US authorities and the Iraqi government have promised. Any actions taken against Muntadar will make us recall the time of the dictator era when violence, random arrests, mass graves, and ignoring of general freedoms existed. Baghdadia channel calls for international, Iraqi and Arab media institutions to support Muntadar al-Zaidi and call for his release.”

At a demonstration in Sadr City earlier today, protesters called for the release of Muntadar al-Zaidi, while throwing shoes at passing US military vehicles. Uday al-Zaidi praised his brother Muntadar for throwing his shoes at President Bush.

Uday al-Zaidi: "Millions of Iraqis, or rather millions of the people of the world, wish to do what Muntadar has done or do something similar. Thank God he had the guts to do it and avenge the Iraqi people and the country from those who plunder it and have killed its people.”