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STUDY: The Press And The Pipeline

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Media Matters - By Jfk, Jnf - Jan. 26 (Special Report) - A Media Matters analysis shows that as a whole, news coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline between August 1 and December 31 favored pipeline proponents. Although the project would create few long-term employment opportunities, the pipeline was primarily portrayed as a jobs issue.

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New Report Shows Big-Money Politics and Broadcast Media Are Undermining Democracy

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

FreePress.net - Jan. 26 (Special Report) - On Thursday, Free Press released Citizens Inundated, a report that follows the money trail from big-spending political donors to the bank accounts of the nation's largest broadcast companies.

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The State of Obama’s Facts

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, D’Angelo Gore, Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, Ben Finley, Lori Robertson - Jan. 25 (Fact Check) - The president’s State of the Union address got the facts right — mostly. Obama said “the Taliban’s momentum has been broken” in Afghanistan. But targeted assassinations continue, and at least one independent foreign policy expert says the enemy may just be waiting until the U.S. leaves. The president said a get-tough tariff on tire imports from China has saved more than 1,000 U.S. jobs. But tire industry officials say Chinese imports have simply been replaced by imports from other countries. He took credit for putting “more boots on the border than ever before.” That’s true, but the big increase was under George W. Bush. And a decrease in illegal border crossings is due mainly to the lack of jobs in the U.S., experts say. Often the president’s facts and figures were accurate — but not the whole story. It’s true (barely) that Bush issued more new regulations than Obama at the same point in their presidencies — but Obama didn’t mention that his cost more. The president pointed proudly to increased oil drilling, increased U.S. oil production, and declining dependence on imports. But understandably he passed over any mention of chronically high gasoline prices, which hit a record of sorts last year. And he boasted of recent increases in jobs — which still number nearly 1.7 million fewer than when he took office.

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GOP Debates Let Loose The Roar Of The Crowd

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Howard Fineman - Jan. 20 (News Analysis) - Candidates' attacks, gaffes and memory lapses have dominated coverage of the 21 Republican debates so far, but reporters are covering the wrong people. The real story isn't on the stage; it's in the audience.

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Wikipedia, Reddit To Shut Down Sites Wednesday To Protest Proposed Stop Online Piracy Act

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 17 (News Analysis) - Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world, will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to "go dark" on Wednesday in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently being debated in Congress. "What these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites," says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "What we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net."

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Global Internet Voting Firm Buys U.S. Election Results Reporting Firm

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Black Box Voting - By Bev Harris - Jan. 13 (News Analysis) - In a major step towards global centralization of election processes, the world's dominant Internet voting company has purchased the USA's dominant election results reporting company. When you view your local or state election results on the Internet, on portals which often appear to be owned by the county elections division, in over 525 US jurisdictions you are actually redirected to a private corporate site controlled by SOE software, which operates under the name ClarityElections.com.

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How Americans really feel about drugs - Media Criticism - Salon.com

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By David Sirota - Jan. 05 (News Analysis) - As dishonest as this kind of agitprop is, it unfortunately — but predictably — continues unabated. This is, after all, the golden era of agitprop — a moment in which wars are no longer wars, corporations are people

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The Whoppers of 2011

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Dec. 21 (Fact Check) - Despite what you may have heard in 2011: The new health care law won’t cost many jobs (and they’ll be poorly paying jobs at that). Republicans aren’t proposing to “end” Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version of the GOP plan). Most of the “millionaires” who would pay higher tax rates under a Democratic proposal aren’t job-creating small-business owners. President Obama’s mother didn’t really fight to get health insurance coverage as she was dying. And there was plenty more spin and deception in 2011. Obama claimed he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher. Michele Bachmann endorsed a claim that HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Joe Biden claimed rapes quadrupled in Flint, Mich., after police layoffs. And that’s just some of the nonsense we debunked.

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Fact-checking the Chamber of Commerce

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Dec. 07 (Fact Check) - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has begun its "voter education" drive, running ads that attack Democrats and boost Republicans. The blitz is beginning in Iowa, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington, including this ad against U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. PolitiFact Ohio checked the ad's claim that Brown "voted to block American energy production and increase energy taxes" and rated it Mostly False.

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Fact-checking the CNN-think tank debate

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Nov. 23 (Fact Check) - Eight Republican candidates will be debating on national security issues tonight at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington. The candidates are Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum. We'll be watching the debate and updating this story with our fact-checks. >>More

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Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Nieman Journalism Lab - By Andrew Phelps - Nov. 23 (News Report) - You’re reading a wrap-up of the Sept. 22 Republican presidential debate when you land on this claim from Rep. Michele Bachmann: “President Obama has the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern times.” Really? You start googling for evidence. Maybe you scour the blogs or the fact-checking sites. It takes work, all that critical thinking. That’s why Dan Schultz, a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab (and newly named Knight-Mozilla fellow for 2012), is devoting his thesis to automatic bullshit detection. Schultz is building what he calls truth goggles — not actual magical eyewear, alas, but software that flags suspicious claims in news articles and helps readers determine their truthiness. It’s possible because of a novel arrangement: Schultz struck a deal with fact-checker PolitiFact for access to its private APIs.

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GOP’s Phantom Job Losses

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Eugene Kiely - Nov. 22 (News) - Ooops! Republicans — eager to show that President Obama’s oil and gas drilling policies “cost jobs” — have been using a number they now admit was more than three times too high. Even after they corrected their error (after we pointed it out), they started using a figure that is … More >>

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‘Government-Run’ Nonsense

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson - Nov. 22 (Fact Check) - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce puts a new twist on a tired old falsehood about “government-run health care” in one of its new ads attacking Democratic lawmakers. We noted other dubious claims as well. An ad against Sen. Jon Tester in Montana accuses him of favoring “government-run health care”

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Occupy Wall Street November 17: Journalists Arrested, Beaten By Police

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Jack Mirkinson - Nov. 17 (News Report) - As thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters took to the streets on Thursday, journalists once again found themselves a target of police violence and arrests. Reporters took to Twitter and, in some cases, to television to spread the word of the heavy hand police were using against them.

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Confused NYT Coverage of Obama Health Care Law's Prospects

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Columbia Journalism Review - Nov. 16 (News Analysis) - The New York Times can't make up its mind on what a Supreme Court ruling against Obama health care plan's individual mandate would mean for the overall health-care law. On page one today, it reports this: Whatever Court Rules, Major Changes in Health Care Likely to Last On the website today, a news analysis , presumably going in...

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Herman Cain’s false attack on Planned Parenthood

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Lori Robertson - Nov. 02 (Fact Check) - Herman Cain has offered an alternate version of history in claiming that Planned Parenthood’s founder wanted to prevent “black babies from being born.” We find no support for that old claim. Cain also states that the organization built 75 percent of its clinics in black communities, but there’s no evidence that was true then. And today, only 9 percent of U.S. abortion clinics are in neighborhoods where half or more of residents are black, according to the most recent statistics.

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Barack Obama says 60 percent of his promises are 'done'

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Nov. 02 (Fact Check) - During a fundraising event at a home in Los Angeles on Oct. 25, 2011, President Barack Obama took credit for enacting a majority of his agenda during his nearly three years in office. "We’ve seen change," he told donors. "We know what it looks like. We know what it takes. But we’ve got so much more work to do. And I keep a checklist in my desk, and I kind of see, all right, I made a bunch of these promises during the campaign -- (laughter) -- and let me see, yes, I got that done -- (laughter) -- and that one, yes. No, that one’s not done yet. (Laughter.) So we’ve got about 60 percent done in three years but -- (applause) -- so I’m pretty confident we can get the other 40 percent done in the next five years. (Applause.) But to do that, I’m going to need your help." A few readers wondered what we thought about this figure, since we’ve been using our Obameter to check how well Obama has been keeping 500-plus campaign promises since his inauguration. It is the most comprehensive look at what Obama promised during the campaign. When we asked, the White House confirmed that it has indeed been using our Obameter as its yardstick.

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Political Advertisements May Face Disclosure Requirement

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Oct. 28 (News) - WASHINGTON -- Everyone is used to seeing a flood of political advertising, whether they are vicious attack ads or saccharine puff pieces, in the months...

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Glenn Greenwald on Occupy Wall Street, Banks Too Big To Jail and the Attack on WikiLeaks

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman - Oct. 26 (News Analysis) - The prominent political and legal blogger Glenn Greenwald comments on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement. "What this movement is about is more important than specific legislative demands. It…is expressing dissent to the system itself," says Greenwald. "It is not a Democratic Party organ. It is not about demanding that President Obama’s single [jobs] bill pass or anything along those lines. It is saying that we believe the system itself is radically corrupted, and we no longer are willing to tolerate it. And that’s infinitely more important than specific legislative or political demands."

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Julian Assange: WikiLeaks Could Shut Down Over Financial Woes

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Oct. 24 (News Report) - WikiLeaks said in a statement Monday that it would stop publishing for the moment in order to focus on making money – explaining that the blockade imposed by financial companies including Visa, MasterCard, Western Union and PayPal left it with no choice.

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Lisa Simeone Under Fire From NPR For Part In D.C. Protests, Remains 'World of Opera' Host

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jason Linkins, Jason Cherkis, Zach Carter - Oct. 21 (News Report) - the hammer is being lowered, and it's being lowered rather awkwardly. Simeone, as it happens, is not an NPR employee, so what appears to be happening is that they are putting pressure on her employers to get rid of her. Wednesday night, she was fired from "Soundprint," despite the fact that the show isn't produced by NPR. According to reports, Simeone was read the NPR code of ethics at the time of her dismissal. But NPR was pretty hot to get Simeone dismissed from "World of Opera" as well, and until this afternoon,

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The Fracking Industry's War on the Truth

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Oct. 21 (News Analysis) - Superb investigative journalism by the New York Times has brought the paper under attack by the natural gas industry. That campaign of intimidation and obfuscation has been orchestrated by top-shelf players like Exxon and Chesapeake, aligned with the industry's worst bottom feeders. This coalition has launched an impressive propaganda effort carried by slick PR firms, industry-funded front groups and a predictable cabal of right-wing industry toadies from cable TV and talk radio. In pitting itself against public disclosure and reasonable regulation, the natural gas industry is once again proving that it is its own worst enemy.

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Rachel Maddow Calls Out Republicans For Not Focusing On Job Creation (VIDEO)

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Rebecca Shapiro - Oct. 14 (News Analysis) - Republicans dither with "other" as America waits for jobs.

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Reuters Draws Fire For Occupy Wall Street Story

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jack Mirkinson - Oct. 14 (News Analysis) - Reuters is drawing heavy criticism -- including from some of its own journalists -- for an article which attempts to connect the Occupy Wall Street...

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"News For All The People": Juan González & Joseph Torres On the Epic Story of Race & the U.S. Media

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Juan Gonzalez, Joseph Torres - Oct. 13 (News Analysis) - which serves democracy best?" González says. "It turns out that in those periods of time when the government has opted for a decentralized or autonomous system, democracy has had a better opportunity to flourish, racial minorities have been able to be heard more often and to establish their own press. In those periods of the nation’s history when policies have fostered centralized news and information, that’s when dissident voices, racial minorities, marginalized groups in society are excluded from the media system."

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