NewsTrust - Media - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

Editor of The Progressive Calls For Eric Holder to Resign Over Spying on Press, Occupy Protesters

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 22 (Opinion) - As the Obama administration faces criticism for the Justice Department's spying on journalists and the IRS targeting of right-wing organizations, newly released documents show how the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and local police forces partnered with corporations to spy on Occupy protesters in 2011 and 2012. Detailed in thousands of pages of records from counter terrorism and law enforcement agencies, the spying monitored the activists' online usage and led to infiltration of their meetings. One document shows an undercover officer was dispatched in Arizona to infiltrate activists organizing protests around the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the secretive group that helps corporate America propose and draft legislation for states across the country. We're joined by Matt Rothschild of The Progressive, who tackles the surveillance in his latest article, "Spying on Occupy Activists: How Cops and Homeland Security Help Wall Street."

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Society of Professional Journalists: SPJ Code of Ethics

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

spj.org - By SPJ ethics committee - May. 22 (Statement) - Seek Truth and Report It - Minimize Harm - Act Independently - Be Accountable -

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60 Minutes and the Billionaire Agenda: Part 1, “Counterinsurgency Cops”

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Richard Eskow - May. 20 (Opinion) - This Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media’s ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.

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Being a Democracy Hating, Corporate Power-Defending Newspaper Owner Runs Deep in the Koch Family

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Yasha Levine - May. 19 (Opinion) - There’s a rumor going around that the Koch brothers are interested in buying up the Tribune Company, which includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun… And there’s a lot of speculation about what would happen if they did. Some worry, and rightly so, that the Kochs—whose combined wealth makes them the biggest billionaires on the planet—would integrate the Tribune Co. with the rest of their free-market thinktank-industrial complex, and turn its newly acquired news media property into a gigantic business propaganda machine. Half the reporters at the Los Angeles Times even took a vote saying they’d quit if the Kochs bought the paper

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Anna Jarvis, the Radical Behind Mother's Day

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Steve Brodner - May. 12 (Comment) - This cartoon was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.

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The Right Wing Cult Machine Exposed

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Thom Hartmann - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - a cult is a group or sect bound together by adoration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. A cult promises you redemption. It tells you that if you do what it says, and as it believes, you will be protected from the evil people that are out to get you and the rest of society. A cult purges the non-believers. And it actively tries to vilify all those who are not part of the cult

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Explaining the upper crust’s preference for austerity economics

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

seattletimes.com - By Paul Krugman - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics. Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics?

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Authoritarian Allies & the Myth of U.S. 'Leverage'

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - The most notable part of the article is the fact that Whitlock has a U.S. official essentially agreeing with a damning critique of U.S. foreign policy: "The countries that cooperate with us get at least a free pass," acknowledged a senior U.S. official who specializes in Africa but spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. "Whereas other countries that don't cooperate, we ream them as best we can."

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USA Today: Venezuelans Voted for High Unemployment and Food Shortages

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Apr. 20 (Comment) - Venezuelans know a different reality. As noted by FAIR, poverty was cut in half from 2002-10; extreme poverty was even more dramatic. Access to healthcare and free education increased. As Mark Weisbrot argued in the Guardian, this record was a notable turnaround from the pre-Chavez years. Unemployment is currently estimated to be 8 percent in Venezuela–but it was above 14 percent when Chavez took office in 1999. Inflation is estimated at 20.9 percent–but it peaked near 120 percent in 1996. That's not to say there aren't significant problems in the country. But a news report that chooses to ignore this part of the Chavez legacy is a bit like saying Venezuelans have been fooled about the state of their own lives.

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Cutting Social Security on PBS–From Left to Right

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Apr. 20 (Comment) - Even on PBS, the left and right agree that cutting Social Security is brave; I guess that makes the public a bunch of wimps.

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GOP Goes Hunting For EPA Emails About Turducken

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Tim McDonnell - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - Earlier this month, when a burst pipe spilled thousands of gallons of heavy oil into an Arkansas suburb, the message from the White House went something like: "Everybody chill, the EPA has it under control." But reporters on the scene found the cleanup orchestrated by the same company, ExxonMobil, that allowed the spill, and heard only crickets when they asked the EPA about its involvement. Turns out, on some of the nation's most pressing environmental health issues, the EPA's transparency record isn't exactly crystal-clear. So with a vote on President Obama's new pick to head the EPA, Gina McCarthy, coming up as soon as next week , it perhaps isn't a surprise that Congressional scrutiny of her nomination has centered more on the agency's secret-keeping habits than on its environmental enforcement goals. At a hearing last Thursday before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, McCarthy got grilled on EPA's transparency record by Republican members, led by Louisiana's David Vitter. ...

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China Bans Media from Quoting Foreign News

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Abby - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - China's media authority announced new regulations banning news outlets and other organizations from reporting on foreign news coverage without permission less than a day after The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its report on the hidden wealth of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's family.

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6 False Things You Heard About the Boston Bombing

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Dana Liebelson, Tim Murphy - Apr. 16 (Opinion) - More MoJo coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings There's still a lot we don't know about Monday's bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. We don't know if the bombs were set off by one person or multiple people; we don't know if it was an act of foreign or domestic terrorism; we don't know what the perpetrators(s) look like; we don't know what the motive was. One thing we do know: Many of the initial reports on media outlets on Monday and early Tuesday have proven to be false. That's inevitable during a breaking news event—and in this case, even some law enforcement officials did more to confuse than to clarify. But one day later, here's a look at some early storylines that have fizzled upon further scrutiny: 1. Cellphone service shut down in Boston. Reported by: the Associated Press , which credited the information to an unidentified "law enforcement official." But cellphone service continued uninterrupted in the city. Verizon spokesman Torod Neptune told ...

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Pulitzer Prizes announced

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Columbia Journalism Review - Apr. 16 (Editorial) - Columbia University announced the winners of the 97th annual Pulitzer Prizes on Monday afternoon. Big winners included: the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, FL, which won the prize for public service reporting for its investigation of police officers who drive recklessly while off duty; the Denver Post, which won for breaking news reporting for its coverage of the movie theater...

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Question Everything You Hear About the Boston Marathon Bombing

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Andy Kroll - Apr. 16 (Opinion) - Shortly after Monday's bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, rumors began to fly about what exactly happened and who was behind it. The New York Post , citing an unnamed federal official, claimed 12 people were dead and that a "Saudi Arabian national" was a suspect. More MoJo coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings But it soon became clear that the initial death toll was two people (later updated to three), and by the following morning law enforcement officials said that they had identified no suspects yet. As for the Saudi national in question, federal law enforcement officials said on Tuesday that he was a witness to the bombing, not a suspect. Indeed, it's a perpetual lesson of past tragedies: Don't trust what you hear or read early on. Here are eight instances of early information from past attacks that turned out to be wrong: Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing, Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995: Claim: Jordanian American Ibrahim Ahmad and three ...

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Ignore the news

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

antipope.org - Apr. 16 (Opinion) - I've been doing less and less news recently, partly because its depressing, and partly because its all Thatcher, and mostly because I haven't yet found an adequate replacement for Google Reader. Feedly looks like it will be decent. I love how I post a bl

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WATCH: Tar Sands Timmy Needs a Pipeline [Fiore Cartoon]

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Mark Fiore - Apr. 11 () - Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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7 Chilling Facts About Retirement in America That Should Make Obama Tremble Before Cutting Social Security and Medicare

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Lynn Stuart Parramore - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - We are headed for a catastrophic retirement train wreck. A Wall Street-driven financial crisis has stripped millions of people of things like jobs, pensions and home equity that were supposed to deliver a dignified retirement after a lifetime of hard work. The crisis has also provided certain interests the opportunity to make false claims about the “unaffordability” of vital social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare that help the 99% make it. These opportunistic “ Raiders of Your Lost Retirement” do not give a hoot if you starve in your golden years – this is about money to them

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Digital Disconnect: Robert McChesney on "How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy"

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman,Juan Gonzalez - Apr. 05 (Interview) - Longtime media-reform advocate Robert McChesney looks at how the future of American politics could be largely determined by who controls the Internet in his newest book. "'Digital Disconnect' talks about the difference between the mythology of the Internet -- the hope would it empower people and make democracy triumphant -- versus the reality of large corporate monopolies and the government working together are taking away the promise of the Internet to suit their interests,” says McChesney, the co-founder of Free Press and the National Conference for Media Reform. His book begins with a simple claim: "The ways capitalism works and does not work determine the role the Internet might play in society." [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Iraq War Actors Have No Shame

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Adil E. Shamoo - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - As wretched as the Iraq War was, the absence of any meaningful accountability for the U.S. policymakers and pundits who made the catastrophe happen is nearly as stomach-turning. Every day the same faces show up on the TV talk shows and Op-Ed pages spouting more of their “wisdom,”

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National Review heralds the ‘wonderland’ of tar sands with a photo of a blighted hellscape

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Jess Zimmerman - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - this is the first time I’ve seen the magazine run a cover that literally looks like a Photoshop someone mocked up to make everyone on the masthead look like assholes.

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Phil Donahue on His 2003 Firing from MSNBC, When Liberal Network Couldn't Tolerate Antiwar Voices

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzales, Amy Goodman, Phil Donahue - Mar. 21 (Interview) - In 2003, the legendary television host Phil Donahue was fired from his prime-time MSNBC talk show during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The problem was not Donahue's ratings, but rather his views: An internal MSNBC memo warned Donahue was a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war," providing "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." Donahue joins us to look back on his firing 10 years later. "They were terrified of the antiwar voice," Donahue says. [includes rush transcript]

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TJ Armand Talks With Noam Chomsky @ MIT (March 6th, 2013) - YouTube

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

tjarmand.com - By T.J.Armand, Noam Chomsky - Mar. 10 (Interview) - Noam Chomsky talks to TJ Armand about the mixed legacy of Hugo Chavez, freedom of speech violations in Turkey, religious fundamentalism and gay marriage in the U.S.

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NYT Debates Hugo Chavez–Minus the Debate

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Mar. 08 (Review) - "On Eve of His Funeral, Debating Chávez’s Legacy" is the headline over William Neuman's piece in the New York Times today (3/8/13). Funny headline, since there was no one in the Times' "debate" who argued that Chávez left much of anything.

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Bernanke joins the ranks of economic ‘hippies’

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

seattletimes.com - By Paul Krugman - Mar. 02 (Opinion) - Now, as then, this consensus has seemed impenetrable to counterarguments, no matter how well grounded in evidence. And now, as then, leaders of the consensus continue to be regarded as credible even though they’ve been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating Alan Simpson as a wise man?) while critics of the consensus are regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions — about interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity — have come true.

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