NewsTrust - Ethics in Journalism - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Jon Stewart Catches Sean Hannity Falsifying Footage To Make GOP Protest Appear Bigger

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Nov. 11 (Comedy News) - Sean Hannity and his team did more than cover the event. They not only inflated the number in attendance with their words, but actually used footage from a heavily-attended protest this summer to make this health care rally appear more popular. Hannity even pointed out that this was a huge crowd for a Thursday, when the protest footage they used was from a Saturday.

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War Fever at the Times: A Five-Day Log

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By David Bromwich - Oct. 20 (Comment) - These things occur by stealth, but not by chance. Plenty of reports of the Afghanistan war, the jihadists in Pakistan, U.S. bombing and efforts at rebuilding and the uncertain morale of our troops have appeared on the front page and elsewhere in recent

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Why Fox News Is Un-American

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Jacob Weisberg - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - That Rupert Murdoch may tilt the news rightward more for commercial than ideological reasons is beside the point. What matters is the way that Fox's model has invaded the bloodstream of the American media. By showing that ideologically distorted news can drive ratings, Ailes has provoked his rivals at CNN and MSNBC to develop a variety of populist and ideological takes on the news. In this way, Fox hasn't just corrupted its own coverage. Its example has made all of cable news unpleasant and unreliable.

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Obama Vs. Rupert Murdoch: Fox News' Blatant Transition into GOP TV

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Eric Boehlert - Oct. 14 (Opinion) - Rupert Murdoch's cable cabal is now, first and foremost, a political entity. Fox News has transformed itself into the Opposition Party of the Obama White House, which, of course, is unprecedented for a media company in modern-day America.

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'Daily Show' Destroys CNN For Fact-Checking 'SNL' But Not Their Guests

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Show - By Jon Stewart - Oct. 13 (Comedy News) - Jon Stewart began his show last night by skewering CNN for fact-checking a "Saturday Night Live" skit in which Fred Armisen (playing Barack Obama) claimed to have done "nothing" since taking office. In this hard-hitting report, CNN found that while many of the president's initiatives have not moved forward, he has in fact done "something" since taking office. Take that, comedy show.

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Fox: a news source in name only

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Leonard Pitts Jr. - Oct. 04 (Opinion) - Fox is in a class by itself. In its epidemic inaccuracy, its ongoing disregard for basic journalistic standards of fairness, its demagogic appeals and its blatantly ideological promotions it is, indeed, unique — a news source in name only. That's not just an opinion: a 2003 study found Fox viewers more likely to be misinformed than those who get their news elsewhere.

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US Press Corps Fails Again on Iran

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Sep. 30 (Opinion) - the most dangerous parallel between the misreporting on Iraq and the current hysteria about Iran may be that major U.S. news outlets, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post, continue to paint the disputes in black and white and leave shades of gray out of the frame. In doing so, these news organizations again are casting aside their own rules about objectivity and balance.

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The Public Editor: Tuning in Too Late

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Clark Hoyt - Sep. 27 (Opinion) - By stressing the politics, the article irritated more readers. “A suspicious person might see an attempt to deflect criticism of Acorn by highlighting how those pesky conservatives are at it again,” said Albert Smith of Chatham, N.J.

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A welcome message for the NYT’s new “opinion media monitor”

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Michelle Malkin - By Michelle Malkin - Sep. 27 (Opinion) - "Insufficient tuned-in-ness."

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-- Yes Men Say No to Corporate Greed

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Jacques Servin, Igor Vamos - Sep. 25 (Opinion) - We are the Yes Men, two guys who dress up as powerful businessmen, propose horrible things to audiences of actual powerful businesspeople and film them cheerfully applauding our most outrageous -- and often illegal -- ideas.

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Banish the Cyber-Bigots

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Michael Gerson - Sep. 24 (Opinion) - The Internet could represent a flourishing of democracy. Instead it amplifies hate. The brutality of public debate on the Internet is due to one fact above all -- the option of anonymity

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Porn, Glenn Beck and Nudie Pics: Is Our Mass Culture Turning Kids Into Sex Crazed, Right-Wing Automatons?

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Branwyn Lancourt - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - The new generation is a different breed altogether. Kids today are being made to process an insane amount of sex, violence and stupidity in the form of reality TV, internet porn, and World Of Warcraft. In addition they’ve got all the Limbaughs, Hannitys and Becks aggressively spouting their righteous faux morality across the nation’s airwaves. This strange dichotomy must be far more stressful to try and make sense of, than what previous generations have had to contend with. It can only stand to reason that what might be waiting for us at the finish line could be a pretty mixed up bunch of sick puppies.

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US Hypocrisy Astonishes the World

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Vdare.com - By Paul Craig Roberts - Sep. 11 (Editorial) - Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the US government and a significant percentage of the US population believe that the US has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda. For the American War Secretary it is a photo that is insensitive, not America’s assertion of the right to determine the fate of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers.

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Living in a Culture of Cruelty: Democracy as Spectacle

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Henry A. Giroux - Sep. 08 (Opinion) - Within these politics, largely fueled by market fundamentalism - one that substitutes the power of the social state with the power of the corporate state and only values wealth, money and consumers - there is a ruthless and hidden dimension of cruelty, one in which the powers of life and death are increasingly determined by punishing apparatuses, such as the criminal justice system for poor people of color and/or market forces that increasingly decide who may live and who may die.

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Free Press Calls on Obama Administration to Resist Extremism in the Media

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Common Dreams - By Josh Silver - Sep. 08 (Press Release) - "Beck has a First Amendment right to stoke prejudice, and we do not and will not support efforts to silence him. This is not about censorship; it’s about sanity. Our leaders have a responsibility to condemn fear mongering in all its forms, defend those who are unfairly attacked, and support a more diverse media system that provides alternative voices to the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other extremists. The lesson from the shameful McCarthy era that culminated in 1954 is that we must confront the politics of personal attack with decency, reason and a commitment to more political speech, not less.

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We All Blew It

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Carl Pope - Sep. 07 (Opinion) - This was a lynch mob and, when it started forming a month ago, we didn't take it seriously enough. When I saw the first Glenn Beck piece on Van Jones and the Apollo Alliance as the new vast left-wing conspiracy, I could not take it seriously. Silence enabled Fox to keep pushing. The statements for which Jones apologized -- the reference to the right as "assholes" and saying that Bush was talking "like a crack-head" were such ordinary political discourse -- think Rahm Emmanuel, think Dick Cheney saying "fuck yourself" to Senator Leahy, think Tom Friedman dubbing Bush "the addict-in-chief" -- that I didn't understand why an apology was necessary; I assumed it would blow over.

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The Pentagon's New Watchdog - Forbes.com

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Dirk Smillie - Sep. 05 (Interview) - For years, the military has been systematically bouncing reporters from their embed assignments in the middle of their tours simply because they didn't like a particular story a reporter did. The Pentagon established the embedding system to give reporters access to information about what America is fighting for.

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Rep. John Conyers: Why David Broder Is Wrong

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By John Conyers - Sep. 04 (Comment) - The decision whether to investigate possible crimes connected to our interrogation programs is simply not a political one.

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It's time to embrace American royalty

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - We're obviously hungry to live with royal and aristocratic families so we should really just go ahead and formally declare it: Bush daughter Jenna Hager becomes 'Today' reporter NBC's "Today" show has hired someone with White House experience as a new correspondent — former first daughter Jenna Hager, the daughter of former President George W. Bush. . . . She "just sort of popped to us as a natural presence, comfortable" on the air, [Executive Producer Jim] Bell said. Hager will work out of NBC's Washington bureau.

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The Washington Post's Support For Torture

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Aug. 30 (Comment) - In the latest release from those in the Bush administration and CIA who authorized and supported America's torture of prisoners of war, we get the following story today in the Washington Post. It details that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed gave up a ...

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The Washington Post's Cheney-ite defense of torture - -

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 29 (Opinion) - If anyone ever tells you that they don't understand what is meant be "stenography journalism" -- or ever insists that America is plagued by a Liberal Media -- you can show them this article from today's Washington Post and, by itself, it should clear

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Pundits attacking government health insurance rely on it

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Daniel Gross - Aug. 21 (Opinion) - This is a something of a Churchillian moment. Never before have so many known so little about so much. The meme that my Slate colleague Timothy Noah has been tracking about Medicare not being a government program has two sources: ignorance and mendacity. Some people may really not know that Medicare is taxpayer-funded health care. That's ignorance. Many more people know it—and know the degree to which taxpayers are already funding lots of health care for them and their loved ones—and argue otherwise. That's mendacity.

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LOST CONTROL OF THE MESSAGE

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Monthly - By Steve Benen - Aug. 13 (Comment) - it pays to lie, blatantly and repeatedly, when launching a campaign against a policy initiative. If proponents ignore your bogus claims, they go uncontested, making it easier to persuade uninformed voters. If proponents challenge your bogus claims, the media will say they've "lost control of the message."

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Conservative Idol: Health Care & the Fox News Incentive

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By David Sirota - Aug. 11 (Review) - To understand how Fox News crosses the line from right-leaning news outlet into partisan propaganda machine (and there is a difference between the two), look no further than exactly how the network is driving (or at least trying to drive) the health care debate via the congressional town hall meetings.

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McGovern on 'Downing Street Minutes'

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern recalls the remarkable case of the Downing Street Minutes, the documentary proof of President George W. Bush’s willful misuse of intelligence to justify an aggressive war in Iraq -- and the unwillingness of the major U.S. news media to do much with the evidence.

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