Is Asking that You Ask Questions too Much to Ask?

By Quill

Glenn Greenwald has a recent post that questions the Colin Powell-with-the-jar-of-anthrax-like "evidence" behind the Bush administration's latest claim that North Korea is helping Syria to develop a plutonium-producing nuclear facility.

The only scary thing about this news is how eerily similar it sounds to the sketchy arguments made by the same administration five years ago about the relationship between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Furthermore, as Greenwald points out, very, very few media outlets are actually getting a second opinion on the validity of this relationship, and are simply parroting the administration's talking points without questioning them.

Is it too much to ask "respectable" news organizations like the Associated Press, The Washington Post and Reuters to question these claims? It can't be that hard to find critical voices on the subject, as the The New York Times has managed to dig up a few. Instead, they're just giving Bush and his sycophants a free pass to spew highly questionable allegations similar to the ones that led to a disastrous, ongoing war.

My question is, has the press corps simply not learned its lesson, or do they just not give a shit?

Food for Thought

By Quill

Via The Guardian:

The UN is to halt food handouts for up to 800,000 Palestinians from tomorrow because of a severe fuel shortage in Gaza brought on by an Israeli economic blockade.

John Ging, the director of operations in Gaza for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which supports Palestinian refugees, said there had been a "totally inadequate" supply of fuel from Israel to Gaza for 10 months until it was finally halted two weeks ago. "The devastating humanitarian impact is entirely predictable," he said.

A shortage of diesel and petrol means UN food assistance to 650,000 Palestinian refugees will stop tomorrow, and aid from the World Food Programme for another 127,000 Palestinians due in the coming days will also be halted.

Of course, the negative effects of Israel's blockade is not appearing in any of the mainstream U.S. papers, a point we have made before here at DisPro.

And of course, this collective punishment of the Palestinian people on the part of Israel is completely illegal under international law, not to mention that the entire logic behind the blockade is a tad off. By not feeding bellies, Israel is inevitably feeding Hamas' ranks with thousands of hungry, angry new supporters. A quote taken from a Palestinian makes this clear:

For nearly three weeks, the fuel distributors have effectively been on strike in protest at the shortages. "We ask Israel to declare they will send the right amount of fuel into Gaza that is necessary for our needs," said Mahmoud Khazendar, vice-president of the distributors' association. "If they want to punish Hamas then OK, but not 1.5 million people."

Violence doesn't justify more violence, especially when it's being committed against many for the deeds of a few. Where is the moral authority in that?

Tell Congress to Investigate the Pentagon's Propagandizing

(UPDATED BELOW)

Freepress.net has launched a campaign to urge Congress to investigate the Pentagon's co-opting of the media for propagandistic purposes. Head over there now, and tell your representatives to take action. Check this out, too:



(Our favorite Rumsfeld talking point: "You go on O'Reilly, and he's eating out of your hand, because you're smart.")

UPDATE: The Senate Armed Services Committee has called for the Pentagon to conduct an internal probe. This is not enough—Congress needs to appoint an independent investigator. Asking the Pentagon to investigate itself is sort of like asking Bush's Justice Department to do the same.

The Great (or not-so-great) Debate

By Quill and Farol

UPDATED BELOW
UPDATE II

So if you haven't watched the recent Democratic debate held in Philly on Wednesday, lucky you! You missed one of the most atrocious examples of shoddy and self-righteous journalism ever to play out in front of a mass audience here in the U.S. We mean ever. (No, we haven't forgotten Tim Russert.)

Basically, ABC News (the host of the debate) had two of their stooges, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos go on stage and re-hash (for the first 45 minutes of the debate) a whole bunch of petty, insignificant questions about the kind of drivel that the media has been blithering on about for the past month or so, including flag pins, sniper fire, America-hating pastors, aging members of the Weather Underground, and small-town bitterness.

Arguably worse was some of the coverage the debate received in the mainstream media. As Glenn Greenwald notes, in their report on the debate in yesterday's Washington Post, Anne Kornblut and Dan Balz devoted about 97 paragraphs to recounting this trivial bullshit, before remarking that "the debate also touched on Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, taxes, the economy, guns and affirmative action."

Because, after all, the little people out there are just too darned ignorant to understand or care about boring stuff like that. As Greenwald argues in his take of the debate, journalists repeatedly choose to dish this deliciously dirty personality-based politics out because they consider themselves the true representatives of where the "salt of the earth", down-home, small-town average people want to see the political discourse go.

Of course, in reality this is a disgustingly condescending and hypocritical self-designation of the press and punditry class to take on. When is the last time these overpaid gasbags ever had to choose between flute lessons for the kids or saving for retirement because their job has stopped paying overtime? Or when is the last time they prayed that it wasn't "the call" every time the phone rang, because their child was in Iraq? Answer: Never. They simply want to feel important while being big slackers: the less substance in their reports, the less they actually have to work on doing their Goddamn job.

Time and again, poll after poll shows that what most concerns the American people is the ever-faltering economy, Iraq, and health-care. Why then, are we getting 45 minutes of vapid nonsense when we should be forcing the presidential candidates to answer tough questions about how the hell they plan to clean up after Bush and the kids in his administration?

Various right-wing talking heads have suggested that the only people who should be angry about this travesty are supporters of Clinton and (especially) Obama. It is true, of course, that Republicans are largely pleased with the debate (because it plays right into their talking points), and Democrats are fuming. But you shouldn't have to be an Obama supporter to care about journalistic integrity. Here at DisPro, we have often voiced sharp criticism of Obama, and we wouldn't consider ourselves unconditional Obama (or Clinton) supporters. Indeed, while the odious likes of David Brooks (and Stephanopoulos himself) go to great lengths to defend their despicable dialog, the truth is that, according to a poll conducted by the Philadelphia Daily News, 85% of Americans are disgusted with the debate that took place on Wednesday. It was a complete waste of their time. And yet, in a testament to the true scale of egoism these so-called "journalists" possess, even after hundreds of angry blog posts and thousands of disgruntled comments on ABC's website, both moderators can't seem to find anything wrong with their pathetic performance.

Ultimately, the debate provided a good look at how low our political discourse has sunk in this country, thanks to ABC ogres like Gibson and Stephan-umpa-loompoulos and their disgraceful sycophants in the media.

Update:
MoveOn is conducting a petition to ABC concerning the networks outrageous lack of substance in the debate and demanding better coverage in the future. You can sign it here. You know you want to. Do it. Go on, do it. Please?

Update II:
What was Joan Walsh thinking?!

Israel Ethnically Cleanses West Bank, World Turns Its Back

By Farol

One of the unspoken rules of our establishment press (and our political establishment in general) is that the Israeli government can do no wrong. Israel, we are told, is a beacon of democratic freedom in a land dominated by barbarians. Their interests are ours because they are peace-loving and good, and whatever military action they take is always in self-defense.

Because of this unspoken rule, the many horrendously brutal policies Israel has enacted over the years have been under-reported, if even reported at all, here. When, before the recent raids in Gaza, an Israeli defense minister threatened the people of Gaza with "a bigger shoah", this extraordinarily chilling statement received no mention here. Later, when the Israeli military denied wounded Gazans access to medical care, that, too, went unnoticed. But, after the raids, when eight Israeli students were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber, the story was right up there on the front page of the New York Times. So it goes, and so it will continue to go for a long while.

In order to read truly balanced coverage of this conflict, you have to go to non-American news sources. In the latest issue of The Guardian, Rory McCarthy has an excellent article detailing Israel's ongoing demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank in order to make room for more (illegal) settlements. The piece should be read in full, but some relevant excerpts follow:

In the end it came down to a single-page letter, written in Hebrew and Arabic and hand-delivered by an Israeli army officer who knocked at the front door. The letter spelt the imminent destruction of the whitewashed three-storey home and small, tree-lined garden that Bassam Suleiman spent so long saving for and then built with his family a decade ago.

It was a final demolition order, with instructions to evacuate the house within three days.

If Suleiman was in any doubt about the Israeli military's intentions he had only to look outside his back door where large piles of rubble and broken concrete mark the remains of the seven of his neighbours' houses that were demolished in the same way last year.

"How would you feel when you've spent 20 years finishing your life's project?" said Suleiman, 38, a teacher. He began moving his furniture out after the letter, from the civil administration of Judea and Samaria, the defence ministry department responsible for the Israeli-occupied West Bank, came on January 31. Now there are just a couple of plastic chairs in his front room and in the hallway the carpets are rolled up and ready to be moved. Clothes are piled on the floor and the shelves are empty, save for a stack of documents charting the story of the impending demolition. His brother, Husam, has already left the ground floor flat but the new washing machine and fridge stand still wrapped in plastic. Suleiman, his wife and two children wait for the bulldozers.

"Everything I did in my life was for what's now inside this house and now it's going to be destroyed," said Suleiman. "It's very hard for me to find somewhere else to live."

The Israeli authorities argue that Suleiman's house was built in a part of the West Bank known as area C, a designation from the era of the Oslo Accords which means Israel has full military and administrative control. In order to build, a Palestinian must apply for a permit from the Israeli authorities. If there is no permit - as in Suleiman's case - the building is liable for demolition.

(...)

Area C covers 60% of the West Bank, home to around 70,000 Palestinians. It is also the area in which most Jewish settlements, all illegal under international law, are built. Compelling statistical evidence shows that while it is extremely hard for Palestinians to obtain building permits, settlements continue to grow rapidly.

Research by the Israeli group Peace Now found that 94% of Palestinian permit applications for Area C building were refused between 2000 and September 2007. Only 91 permits were granted to Palestinians, but 18,472 housing units were built in Jewish settlements. As a result of demolition orders 1,663 Palestinian buildings were demolished, against only 199 in the settlements. "The denial of permits for Palestinians on such a large scale raises the fear that there is a specific policy by the authorities to encourage a 'silent transfer' of the Palestinian population from area C," Peace Now said.

The article goes on to detail not only how the rate of demolitions has increased over the past year, but how some Palestinians who were originally told their homes weren't even in Area C are now finding them demolished, as well. "Silent transfer" is too polite a term: this is ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.

But I know this ethnic cleansing isn't really Israel's fault. I know Israel has no choice but to do this, because Barack Obama told me that the conflict in the Middle East "emanates from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."

Ana Marie Cox and the Journalistic Rat Pack

By Farol and Quill

In a recent bloggingheads.com video, Glenn Greenwald and Time.com journalist Ana Marie Cox debated whether or not hobknobbing with politicians and public figures they cover skewes the way in which journalists portray their hosts in the national media.

Take, for example, the now infamous video of the press party at John McCain´s ranch in Sedona, Arizona. His daughter Meghan, the videographer, croons over how ¨the guys from the Politico brought my mom flowers¨ while McCain himself serves up some reportedly very juicy ribs.

Now consider for a moment the kind of coverage John McCain receives in the media. From the Washington Post story on the press party:

If he loses the presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will have a career as a barbecue chef
to fall back on.
At his weekend cabin just outside Sedona on Sunday
afternoon, McCain took a break from campaigning and grilled ribs and chicken for
three dozen reporters, some staff members and a few Republican friends from the
Senate.
Dressed in jeans, an L.L. Bean baseball cap, sunglasses and a sweat shirt featuring a
picture of his family, McCain held court the way he does almost daily aboard his
"Straight Talk Express" bus.

This is entirely representative of the coverage McCain typically receives. He's portrayed as the honest, "straight-talking", manly-man centrist, while Obama is the effeminate weakling who can't bowl, and Hillary is the cold, calculating bitch.

Yet, in the bloggingheads dialogue, Cox goes to the utmost lengths to defend both McCain and the conduct of her peers. She repeatedly - absurdly - insists that socializing with the people you're assigned to cover doesn't make you any less willing to ask them tough questions. Then, at about the 25-minute mark, Greenwald mentions the media's recent half-assed coverage of McCain's blatantly false statements regarding the relationship between Iran and Al-Qaeda, and he demonstrates fairly conclusively that a bias exists in McCain's favor. Cox, who seems visibly subdued, provides no meaningful rejoinder; instead, she changes the subject to how bloggers are making her job difficult (boo-hoo).

Indeed, one of the most telling moments in the video occurs when Cox states that she isn't afraid of being wrong - just of people not listening to her. We think it's fair to conclude that Cox inadvertently reveals that the pack mentality that plagues all journalism - but particularly campaign coverage - in the establishment press is actually the result of the insecurities of the journalists themselves. They want to be recognized, thought of as powerful, and those who bestow favors on them are in turn viewed favorably.