Sex To Go: Call White House Press Office
By Bill Press
If you suspect the media are guilty of a double standard when it comes to covering the White House, you
By Robert Mânard(1) and Claude Moisy(2)
Le Figaro
Freedom of speech and of the press bump
into the limits of an emblematic democracy.
Bad news for freedom of speech and freedom of the press keeps coming from the
corner that one would generally least expect it. The United States, a country
where the sacrosanct First Amendment to the Constitution has guaranteed these
two fundamental rights for more than two centuries, increasingly exhibits the
spectacle of repression and censorship.
On February 15, a chamber of the Washington Federal Appeals Court confirmed
the inferior court’s sentencing and conviction of Judith Miller of The
New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine
to prison terms that could be as long as eighteen months for “contempt
of court.” Their crime is having refused to reveal their sources to a Grand
Jury in a sordid payback affair between the Bush Administration and a former
diplomat who publicly contradicted the intelligence the president gave to justify
the war in Iraq.
by Danny Schechter
With CNN’s Eason Jordan silent, or silenced, the right brain of the blogosphere has nailed a new media scalp to its belt. Mr. Jordan, who had been with CNN for 23 years, said during the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that a dozen journalists covering the war “not only [had] been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq but they had in fact been targeted,” according to press accounts. Mr. Jordan quickly tried to back off his statement, but the reverberations led to his resignation. Now the issue he raised seems destined to disappear, with many believing that since he didn’t offer backup, there is nothing to the story.
Not true.
Mr. Jordan’s remarks about the targeting and killing of journalists were not invented out of whole cloth, even if he did do what executives often do: attempt to dampen a controversy that turns out to be too hot to handle.
Fox News commentators said that even raising the issue of targeting journalists was “sliming our troops.” Like the Pentagon’s efforts, this was a way to dismiss the issue, even though there is evidence to make such a case.
The reality is that Jordan’s concerns have a background and context that were under-reported in our media. Before the war, the Pentagon issued warnings that sounded like threats, saying it would not guarantee the safety of journalists who were not officially “embedded” into assigned U.S. military units.
(Read the article)
CNN pillar calling it quits
By PHYLLIS FURMAN
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER
Financial news icon Myron Kandel is retiring from CNN after 25 years – another milestone in the cable net’s retreat from its once-vaunted position in business news.
CNN financial editor Kandel, who pioneered business reporting on TV in launching shows like “Moneyline,” will deliver his last report March 11.
The 74-year-old veteran New York journalist, known to friends as Mike, will remain at CNN as a consultant and keep his famously cluttered office at the Time Warner Center.
His “Moneyline” commentary and frequent CNN reports – as many as 17 a day during the stock market boom – made him one of the country’s most recognized financial news journalists.
But lately Kandel has been in front of the camera far less. And that has a lot to do with a sharp decline in business news at the Time Warner-owned network.
Today, daily money programs are all but absent on CNN – a sharp reversal from the 1990s, when CNN had as much as six hours a day devoted to business coverage.
David Shaw
Media Matters
Now that the House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved legislation to greatly increase the fines levied against broadcasters who violate decency standards, I assume we’re in for several months of bipartisan posturing among politicians maneuvering to position themselves as the true guardians of American morality and the true protectors of America’s children.
The bill will go next to the Senate, and then to a conference committee that would reconcile any language differences between the two versions. The final bill would go to President Bush for his review and signature — which he would no doubt attach with a flourish worthy of Charlton Heston signing the Ten Commandments.
It’s noteworthy that the campaign to control what we can watch and listen to is being led by a conservative administration that purports to favor individual freedoms and that demands the government get out of people’s lives.
Gimme a break.
Ever since Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson conspired in the wardrobe malfunction that exposed part of her right breast for three seconds during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, politicians in power have been treating the incident as the moral equivalent of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And they’ve responded with a fatwa of their own.
By JACQUES STEINBERG
wo of the three CBS journalists who had refused for more than a month to resign over a disputed broadcast concerning President Bush’s National Guard service have now submitted their resignations.
In a statement released by her lawyer last night, one of the journalists, Mary Murphy, senior broadcast producer of the Wednesday edition of “60 Minutes,” which broadcast the report, said, “CBS News and I have reached an amicable resolution.” She added: “During my time at CBS News, I enjoyed wonderful working relationships with many talented and dedicated journalists. I wish my good colleagues well, and I look forward to moving on in my career.”
A second journalist who had been involved in the broadcast, Betsy West, a senior vice president of the news division, also submitted her resignation this week, a CBS official said last night. The official, who had been briefed on the matter, insisted on anonymity because it concerned an employee’s contract.
How the U.S. Military Threatens Journalists
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By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Investigation
This is part one of a four-part series.
Part I: Hearing What Eason Jordan Said
Do American soldiers purposely kill journalists, as CNN’s Eason Jordan supposedly said? Or, could the problem be even worse?
Eason Jordan, CNN’s freshly ousted news chief, hardly knew what hit him. On Thursday, January 27, he was schmoozing with the global A-List at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. On Friday, February 11, he was looking for work.
“After 23 years at CNN,” he wrote, “I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq.”
“I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise.”
Corporate media managers had long envied Jordan’s diplomatic skill, as when he arranged CNN’s live coverage from Baghdad of the first Gulf War. But political conservatives reviled him for being “too liberal.” They also felt he had cozied up to Saddam.
An investigation of the US Army’s firing at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003
Following its investigation of the US Army’s firing at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003, Reporters Without Borders called for the reopening of the enquiry into who was really responsible for the US Army’s “criminal negligence”. 
January 15, 2004 Reporters Without Borders called today for the reopening of the enquiry into who was really responsible for the US Army’s “criminal negligence” in shooting at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad on 8 April 2003 and causing the death of two journalists – Ukrainian cameramen Taras Protsyuk (of Reuters news agency) and Spaniard Jos� Couso (of the Spanish TV station Telecinco).
The call came in a report of the press freedom organisation’s own in-depth investigation of the incident, which gathered evidence from journalists in the hotel at the time, from others “embedded” with US Army units and from the US military soldiers and officers directly involved.
The report said US officials at first lied about what happened and then, in an official statement four months later, exonerated the US Army from any mistake or error of judgement. The report provides only some of the truth about the incident, which needs to be further investigated to establish exactly who was responsible.
By Dennis Roddy
“We have set out to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment, and terror.”
Absent the weapons of mass destruction, the major predicate for our assault on Mesopotamia, George W. Bush now hawks democracy as the remedy for terrorism. Democracy will ameliorate many ills: social restiveness, dispossession, tribal division. But to peddle democracy as the solution to terrorism betrays a cheap misapprehension of both institutions.
Terrorism is, by its nature, a system for overthrowing an existing institution. That is what Quebec separatists used in the early 1970s in hopes of dividing a parliamentary democracy called Canada. Irish Republicans blew up much of Belfast and Derry, making little allowance for election years. The Baader-Meinhoff Gang in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy and Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City all put the lie to the notion that democracy is a panacea against the use of terror.
In Algeria 15 years ago the government canceled elections because voters were about to choose a party of Islamic fundamentalists with links to terrorism. If the terrorists are not democrats, democracy is of little use to them.
– President George W. Bush, on the first anniversary of the Iraq war.
WASHINGTON — Most of us know democracy as a system of governance. Our president understands it as a ritual incantation, something summoned as a curative for everything from terrorism to impetigo.
By Rex Smith
Sometimes advertisers create lines or scenes so memorable that they’re cemented into the culture. Here’s one: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” That was Robert Young, who played Marcus Welby, M.D., with such credibility that a drug company hired him to put on a white lab coat and hawk its product in a commercial.
Dr. Welby came to mind the other day when some of us were kicking around the tale of Jeff Gannon, who wasn’t really a journalist but played one in the White House. Actually, he wasn’t really Jeff Gannon, either; his name is James Guckert, and he might still be in the White House briefing room if not for the fact that Gannon/Guckert didn’t play his assigned role as well as Welby/Young played his.
This week the Senate will again consider the same legislation that banks and credit card company campaign contributors have been pushing for 6 years. Some contend the increasing numbers of bankruptcy filings are the fault of “deadbeat” consumers. Critics say skyrocketing medical bills and predatory lending practices are forcing hard-working families into endless debt.
A number of amendments have been proposed, to exempt those suffering from medical hardship or extended military deployment from the restrictive means tests in the revived bill, to include provisions to hold corporate insiders accountable who steal from retirement pensions, and to raise the minimum wage so that all can have a living wage. Where do you stand on these questions? We have a new multiple option form where you can vote on all at once.
By Sylvia Moreno
The Washington Post
AUSTIN, Texas — Comes now the plaintiff, surely one of the most unusual to advance a case to the highest court in the land. He’s homeless, he’s destitute, his law license is suspended.
Never mind all that, Thomas Van Orden admonishes anyone who gets stuck on the fact that he sleeps nightly in a tent in a wooded area, showers and washes his clothes irregularly, hangs out in a law library, and survives on food stamps and the good graces of acquaintances who give him a few bucks from time to time.
What is important, Van Orden says, is “I wrote myself to the Supreme Court.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear Van Orden v. Perry, a case born of Van Orden’s daily meanderings around the Texas state Capitol grounds. There, between the Capitol and the Texas Supreme Court, stands a 6-foot-tall, 3-foot-wide pink granite monument etched with the commandments and Christian and Jewish symbols. Carved in the shape of stone tablets, the monument was presented to “the Youth and the People of Texas” in 1961 by the Texas chapter of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.
One day in 2002, as Van Orden walked to the State Law Library in the Supreme Court building, where he seeks peaceful and dry refuge daily, the lawsuit dawned on him. Somebody had to challenge the state of Texas for what he believed to be a governmental endorsement of Judeo-Christian doctrine and a violation of the separation between church and state.
Why not him? As he likes to say, “I have time; my schedule is kind of light.”
In honor of him… Henry was to me both Friend and my Boss. For 20 years he was the only person I reguarded as “The Boss”. I really got to know him in 1968, about a year after we first met.. The man I discovered within the Boss I already knew was both impressive and inspiring. Maybe some of the more remarkable times we shared will oneday become public, but I will say that Henry had a feisty, impish, fearless, side that was just a bit askew and a bit different from his public persona of moderate conservatism. I saw him take great risks to defy the will of the powerful. I was part of one of the greatest bits of political mischief, which was, in part, instigated and fueled by Henry Grunwald. Then there was the weird Chicago night we had a drink with a most amazing cast, Jean Genet, Abbie Hoffman, Lester Mattox, David Douglas Duncan, Gene McCarthy, and Paul Krasner. Mattox was scared to death, but to the surprise of all, a worthwhile presence.
One hot mid 80’s spring evening, trapped in the stilted confines of the Metropolitan Museum, amplifying an offhanded quip made by me, Henry, caused myself and Caroline Kennedy to have to rush into a back hallway because we absolutely could not stop laughing uncontrolably at his incessant banter at the expense of a certain Hollywood starlet, and her blur brained suitor. I seemed to be around him at those rare times of high impact, those golden moments that remain with you forever. Some grim and gritty, some frothy and giddy, one, where our future existence could have been on the line. Henry was all that the ensuing fitting memorials will tell you he was, but he also was a whole lot more. Thanks for making my life just a bit richer Henry Grunwald……fred
By RICHARD SEVERO
enry A. Grunwald, a refugee from Nazi-dominated Austria who rose to become Time magazine’s top editor and later returned to Vienna as the United States ambassador, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 82.
The cause was heart failure, said his daughter Mandy.
Mr. Grunwald was 45 years old and had been a writer, senior editor and foreign editor at Time when he was named managing editor in 1968.
He oversaw Time’s shift from a taut, tart, right-leaning publication designed by its founder, Henry R. Luce, to a more centrist magazine that more closely resembled its major competitor, Newsweek. Under his leadership, Time began awarding bylines, and Mr. Grunwald introduced a half-dozen new departments: Behavior, Environment, Energy, the Sexes, Economy and Dance.
by Tom Engelhardt
“The great motorcade,” wrote Canadian correspondent Don Murray, “swept through the streets of the city
E.G. VALLIANATOS
GUEST COLUMNIST
According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, there were 740,670 “Negro” farmers in the United States in 1900. In 1920, black farmers increased to 922,914, and then started on a catastrophic decline. In 1969, there were 90,141 black farmers and, by 1992, the number had been reduced to 18,816. In other words, black farmers declined by about 98 percent between 1920 and 1992.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which black farmers call the “last plantation,” speeded up the exodus of black people from the land. Pearlie Reed, a senior black official at the USDA, admitted in 1997 that the USDA discriminated against black farmers, cheating them of their dignity and loans that could keep them in operation.
North Carolina illustrates how power-hungry food corporations marginalize black farmers throughout the country. In just 14 years, between 1978 and 1992, black farmers declined by 68 percent, from 5,820 to 1,866. Meanwhile, pigs, the main product of animal factories, grew rapidly in North Carolina. In the early 1980s, about 11,400 hog farmers raised 2.5 million pigs. By 1998, the number of hogs in North Carolina soared to almost 11 million, but hog farmers dropped to around 3,000.
The insidious politics of these two transformations — decline of the black farmers and growth of hogs in North Carolina — is that they are related.
By DAHR JAMAIL
GUEST COLUMNIST
How is it that more than 40 percent of Americans still believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction even though President Bush personally has admitted there are none?
How is it possible that millions of Americans believe the recent election in Iraq showed that Iraqis are in favor of the ongoing occupation of their country? In reality, the determination displayed by the roughly 59 percent of registered voters who participated in the election did so because they felt it would bring about an end to the U.S. occupation.
How do so many Americans wonder why more Iraqis each day are supporting both violent and non-violent movements of resistance to the occupation when after the U.S. government promised to help rebuild Iraq, a mere 2 percent of reconstruction contracts were awarded to Iraqi concerns and the infrastructure lies in shambles?
It’s because overall, mainstream media reportage in the United States about the occupation in Iraq is being censured, distorted, threatened by the military and controlled by corporations that own the outlets.
Exclusive: Frank Luntz “Fourteen Words Never To Use”
Pollster, Republican Political Consultant, and president and CEO of Luntz Research Companies.
He is an expert at the politics of Orwell. See the dkosopedia ink above to learn all about his ability to manipulate the people’s opinions through nothing more than the words he tells politicians to use.
His latest release is a 160 page briefing book on how the Republicans should be framing the arguments to selectively deceive the American people and appeal in turn to our best and worst qualities.
Thanks to the diligent parsing of AngryGirl, WatchingTheWatchers has an exclusive look at one of the appendices in the document, entitled “The Fourteen Words Never To Use”.
Without further ado, Frank Luntz’s commentary on how stupid we all are, and how easy it is to deceive us using nothing more than DoubleSpeak:
by Nancy Snow
If you need any more confirmation that America is the numero uno propaganda nation, look no further than the GOP language meistro Frank Luntz, who has produced a memorandum of
Craddick won’t testify this week as suit goes to trial
By R.G. RATCLIFFE
AUSTIN – A corporate political fund-raising controversy that has engulfed the Texas Capitol for more than 830 days and influenced national politics will play out in a state district courtroom this week in a lawsuit that focuses on the spending that helped make Midland Republican Tom Craddick the state House speaker.
The civil lawsuit itself is small: five losing Democratic House candidates against the treasurer of Texans for a Republican Majority, or TRMPAC.
But the lawsuit is painted against a backdrop of state and national politics that has ensnared Craddick and U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in the ongoing controversy.
It also may go far toward determining whether Republicans clenched control of Texas politics by criminal conspiracy or whether Democrats have used a legal technicality to create a hollow scandal.
“This trial is about whether clandestine corporations can buy elections in Texas and corrupt the political process,” said Cris Feldman, a lawyer representing the Democrats. “Do we want a legislature beholden to out-of-state corporate board rooms or Texas living rooms?”
TRMPAC lawyer Terry Scarborough said the lawsuit turns only on whether the committee’s spending of corporate money to pay for polling or phone banks was a legitimate administrative expense under Texas law.
A state judge will have to decide if almost $600,000 in corporate donations used to help the Republicans win control of the Texas House in the 2002 was spent legally.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Fold, Spindle, Mutilate, has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Fold, Spindle, Mutilate, endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
