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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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How far did PBS go to avoid offending a sponsor?

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

New Yorker - By Jane Mayer - May. 20 (News Report) - When Koch joined the boards of WGBH and WNET, it seemed to mark an ideological inroad, enabling him to exert influence over a network with a prominent news operation. Meanwhile, the member stations, by having Koch as a trustee, were inoculating themselves against charges of liberal bias, and positioning themselves to receive substantial new donations.

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Popular Resistance Is Percolating Across the Country -- Inspiring Activism That the Corporate Media Always Ignores

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers - May. 18 (News Report) - The heart of the conflict faced in the United States is the inequity of an unfair economy supported by a corrupt two party system. This week there was a very creative protest in New York City against the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim of Mexico. He’s made his billions with the help of government allowing a monopoly on phone service resulting in Slim gouging the public.

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Obama’s unfortunate scapegoat

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Alex Seitz-Wald - May. 15 (News Analysis) - Miller is a scapegoat in the most pure and classic sense. The acting commissioner was not running the IRS at the time employees improperly targeted Tea Party groups — that would be Bush-appointee Doug Shulman, who resigned as commissioner last year — and Miller’s name isn’t mentioned a single time in the Treasury Department inspector general’s report. Indeed, there is no evidence that Miller was in any way responsible, involved or even aware of the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups by underlings. He is falling on his sword for something he did not do. But why Obama made this decision is easy to understand: The political pressure to fire someone — anyone — was deafening, and the president literally didn’t have other options.

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Gov't obtains wide AP phone records in probe

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Mark Sherman - May. 13 (Special Report) - The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery.

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Inside the Collapsing Media Empire of Deceased GOP Sleaze-Peddler Andrew Breitbart

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Mark Ames, Max blumenthal - May. 05 (Special Report) - Breitbart, the adopted son of a wealthy West Los Angeles restauranteur, used his privilege to immiserate the most marginalized, impoverished, widely demonized groups of Americans. He was a faithful errand boy for rich, Scrooge McDuck tycoons like Peter Thiel, Foster Friess, and the Koch Brothers, wielding smear journalism against anyone or any interest that threatened their power — usually African-Americans or groups like ACORN, serving impoverished, neglected inner city communities.

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Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers. - Grist

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By John Upton - May. 02 (News Report) - Women in the developing world, many of whom work in agriculture, are vulnerable to climate change. Apparently the idea of girls being sold off into early marriage and women being pushed into prostitution is fucking hilarious.

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Drug Agency Lowers Age For Next-Day Birth Control

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Pam Belluck - Apr. 30 (News) - The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would make the most widely known morning-after pill available without a prescription to girls and women ages 15 and older, and also make the pill available on drugstore shelves, instead of keeping it locked up behind pharmacy counters.

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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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The Great Degrader

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

New York Times - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - I’ve been focused on economic policy lately, so I sort of missed the big push to rehabilitate Bush’s image; also, as a premature anti-Bushist who pointed out how terrible a president he was back when everyone else was praising him as a Great Leader, I’m

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Tom Brokaw on the Lohan-ization of the White House Correspondents’ dinner

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Roxanne Roberts, Amy Argetsinger - Apr. 26 (Comment) - The veteran NBC newsman has recently become a vocal critic of the gaudy celebrity dominance of what used to be a media-political dinner.

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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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America Is Ruled by Billionaires, and They Are Coming After the Last Shreds of Our Democracy

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Michael Brenner - Apr. 06 (Special Report) - The United States today qualifies as a plutocracy – on a number of grounds. Let’s look at some striking bits of evidence. Gross income redistribution upwards in the hierarchy has been a feature of American society for the past decades. The familiar statistics tell us that nearly 80% of the national wealth generated since 1973 has gone to the upper 2%, 65% to the upper 1 per cent. Estimates as to the rise in real income for salaried workers over the past 40 years range from 20% to 28 %. In that period, real GDP has risen by 110% – it has more than doubled.

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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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Washington Post Defends Not Running Article On Iraq Media Failure

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Michael Calderone - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - Mitchell noted that the Outlook section did run what he called a “misleading, cherry-picking” piece by Post media writer Paul Farhi, in which Farhi claims the media didn’t fail during the 2002-2003 rush to war. The Post’s decision to run Farhi’s piece defending the press, and not Mitchell’s, got a lot of attention Sunday morning on Twitter. It was especially noteworthy given that the paper’s editorial board –- which helped promote the Bush administration’s bogus rationale for invading Iraq -– was silent on last Tuesday’s 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict.

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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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The Lesson of Mitt Romney’s 47-Percent Video: Be Nice to the Wait Staff?

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

ABC News - Mar. 13 (Opinion) -

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Senators Bearing Arms

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By GAIL COLLINS - Mar. 09 (Opinion) - Whenever talk turns to gun control in Congress, lawmakers feel compelled to mention their love of weaponry. “I’m probably one of the few who have a pistol range in my backyard,” said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont on Thursday...

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Chávez Dies, Leaving a Bitterly Divided Venezuela

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By William Neuman - Mar. 05 (Breaking News) - President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela died Tuesday afternoon after a long battle with cancer, the government announced, leaving behind a bitterly divided nation in the grip of a political crisis that grew more acute as he languished for weeks, silent and out of sight in hospitals in Havana and Caracas.

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From political 'House of Colbert', a South Carolina candidate called Lulu

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - Feb. 09 (Comment) - Elizabeth Colbert Busch, also known as 'Lulu,' is running to fill a vacated South Carolina congressional seat. Does it help that her little brother is Stephen Colbert? ...

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14 Propaganda Techniques Fox "News" Uses to Brainwash Americans

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

churchandstate.org.uk - Feb. 09 (Opinion) -

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