You must watch this. But have nothing sharp or heavy near you, because you’ll want to throw something at your computer.

And now that you’re sufficiently mad, go sign the petition.

From John K. Carlisle at the National Legal and Policy Center, which bills itself as “promoting ethics in public life”:

The long-term decline in newspaper circulation presents the conservative movement with an excellent opportunity to increase its influence with the media. …If conservative nonprofit organizations significantly increase their use of investigative reporting, then the movement will be able to partly offset the liberal bias of the mainstream media. Despite their political agenda, newspapers and TV networks like scandals simply because they make great headlines. Experience shows that they will cover scandals exposed by conservatives.      

So, newspapers: bad, unless we can manipulate them. Go ethics! Carlisle continues:

The Left understands the importance of nonprofit investigative journalism as well. And, unfortunately, the Left has more money and is rushing to fill this media vacuum. Herbert and Marion Sandler, liberal billionaires with close ties to George Soros, announced in October that they will donate $10 million annually for at least three years and maybe more to create a nonprofit organization exclusively dedicated to investigative reporting. The organization, called ProPublica, will be led by Paul Steiger, former editor in chief at the Wall Street Journal, and employ 24 journalists. When it starts operations in January 2008, ProPublica will be the nation’s largest nonprofit center for investigative journalism.ProPublica will most certainly push a liberal agenda. The Sandlers are fervent activists. In 2004, they gave MoveOn.org $2.5 million and, along with Soros, help fund the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank established in 2003 to counter the influence of the conservative Heritage Foundation.To hear Herb Sandler speak, the mission of ProPublica will be strictly nonpartisan and “on the side of the underdog.” According to Sandler, “I am deeply opposed to wealthy people who exploit the poor, powerful people who prey on the weak, and government representatives who betray the trust of the people they supposedly represent.”  

Protecting citizens against corrupt government…what an unethical bastard.

Two recent articles reveal some of the complexities surrounding efforts to build a progressive media sector that’s both robust and ethical:

In The Nation, Chris Hayes provides a disturbing examination of the under-the-radar distortions propagated by viral conservative e-mails:

Such is the power of the right-wing smear forward, a vehicle for the dissemination of character assassination that has escaped the scrutiny directed at the Limbaughs and Coulters and O’Reillys but one that is as potent as it is invisible. In 2004 putative firsthand accounts of Kerry’s performance in Vietnam traveled through e-mail in right-wing circles, presaging the Swift Boat attacks. Last winter a forward began circulating accusing Barack Obama of being a secret Muslim schooled in a radical madrassa (about which more later). While the story was later fed through familiar right-wing megaphones, even making it onto Fox, it has continued to circulate via e-mail long after being definitively debunked by CNN. In other words, the few weeks the smear spent in the glare of the mainstream media was just a tiny portion of a long life cycle, most of which has been spent darting from inbox to inbox.

In that respect, the e-mail forward doesn’t fit into our existing model of the right-wing noise machine’s structure (hierarchical) or its approach (broadcast). It is, instead, organic and peer-to-peer. If the manufactured outrage over Kerry’s botched joke about George Bush’s study habits was the equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster, the Gold Star Mother smear was like one of those goofy viral videos of a dog on a skateboard on YouTube. Of course, some of those videos end up with 25 million page views. And now that large media companies understand their potential, they’ve begun trying to create their own. Which prompts the obvious question: if a handful of millionaires and disgruntled Swift Boat Veterans were able to sabotage Kerry’s campaign in 2004, what kind of havoc could be wreaked in 2008 by a few political operatives armed with little more than Outlook and a talent for gossip?

Meanwhile, over at Salon, Sidney Blumenthal provides a critique of the dangers of purely partisan media:

The growth of a countervailing conservative media machine has also been a decisive political factor in mobilizing public opinion and insulating a part of it from contamination of “liberal bias.” In October 2004, the University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes conducted a study, “The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters,” revealing that 72 percent of Bush supporters believed that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that it had been proven, even though there had been extensive news reports from the Iraq Survey Group that it had found no WMD. Furthermore, 75 percent of Bush supporters believed that Saddam was substantially helping al Qaeda, 63 percent believed that that evidence had been found, 60 percent believed that experts agreed with that conclusion, and 55 percent believed that the 9/11 Commission had proven the point, even though it proved exactly the opposite. Bush supporters did not hold these misperceptions because of inattention to the news. Another University of Maryland study, “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War,” revealed that misperceptions varied significantly according to news sources and that higher levels of exposure to Fox News in particular compounded factual misperceptions and approval of Bush. Eighty percent of those who cited Fox News as a major source of their information suffered serious misperceptions, according to the study, compared to 23 percent citing National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System.

“Without protection against propaganda, without standards of evidence, without criteria of emphasis, the living substance of all popular decision is exposed to every prejudice and to infinite exploitation,” [Walter] Lippmann wrote in Liberty and the News. “The quack, the charlatan, the jingo, and the terrorist, can flourish only where the audience is deprived of independent access to information.” Yet Lippmann assumed that the people were passive, acted upon by politically motivated elites. Today, about one-third of the public actively chooses sources of information that play to their prejudices. The readers, listeners, and viewers of the Drudge Report, the Rush Limbaugh show, and Fox News have consciously selected “the quack, the charlatan, the jingo” to seal themselves from objective information. The “breakdown of the means of public knowledge,” as Lippmann called it, rests on a carefully cultivated preference for crank opinion over unsettling fact. The more reality defies this public’s understanding, the more fervently it redoubles its resistance to it, embracing the distorted stereotype as the only true account.

The entrenchment and exploitation of this segment of public opinion has become big business and political necessity on the right. In May 2003, Matt Labash, a writer for the neoconservative journal The Weekly Standard (published by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News), explained how the conservative attack on “liberal bias” operated as a profitable game. “While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective,” he said. “We’ve created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket. I’m glad we found it actually.”

Progressives like to think of themselves as card-carrying members of the “reality-based community.” But partisanship by its very nature tugs against nuance and complexity–and the left has plenty of its own cranks. And those seeking to counter and match smears like those spread by the emails that Hayes describes need a different mindset and toolset than progressive journalists striving to present the world as it is rather than as those in power would have it.

Both are needed to counter the conservative’s noise machine. But when and how should they work together?

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

Media Pundit or Media Critic?

In his new book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, Jeff Cohen, founder of the preeminent media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), offers readers an insider’s look at the soulless world of corporate media.

Cohen’s book, a fun read, bucks the dryness of most media criticism. It’s chock full of stories about his interactions with TV pundits (you’ll find yourself cheering at some of the transcripts), examinations of the corporate media’s self-interest, and his own struggles to work in and outside the system at the same time.

Starting in the ’80s, Cohen and FAIR fought tirelessly to fact-check the corporate and right-wing media. After initially reluctant guest appearances on CNN’s “Crossfire,” he eventually embraced his role as an on-air personality. His mission: balancing out the din of the right-wing and centrist pundits on cable news with strong and true progressive voices.

“For two decades, I’ve been preoccupied with one issue above all others: that both ends of the political spectrum get their say in the media,” Cohen writes. “The issue haunted me at FAIR. It haunted my TV career. It haunts my dreams. One reason (among many) that I worked so hard to retire George W. Bush in 2004 was my nightmare that a defeated John Kerry would be hired by cable news to represent ‘the left’ day after day on a TV debate show.”

In 1995, after being considered for one of Crossfire’s new co-hosts and then shunted aside for a less progressive voice, Cohen joined Fox News’ “News Watch” as a regular guest. He then embarked to MSNBC, where his work for Phil Donahue was spiked over post-9/11 fears that the show was too liberal and antiwar.

While the influence of the Internet is steadily growing, cable news and their offspring (CNBC and CNN Headline News) continue to be the places where political messaging is shaped. Cohen’s book reminds us that a battle still needs to be fought on the television airwaves and, through his victories and mistakes, he shows how to confront the challenges we face.

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

Swiftboating Murtha

After becoming media darlings in 2004 for their public relations assassination of Sen. John Kerry, the group Vets for the Truth (formerly known as Vietnam Vets for

the Truth) has turned its attention to “swiftboating” a new target–Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). Murtha, a Democrat known for hawkishness (and the first Vietnam veteran elected to the House), made waves last November when he called for the redeployment of troops from Iraq, and again in early 2006 when he claimed that there was a cover-up of the massacre in Haditha. Conservatives swung into action.

“Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” said former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

Building on the “Kerry Lied,” theme, the online attacks have moved from the now-defunct Murthalied.com to the current BootMurtha.com, where the mission is to “bring Murtha’s outrageous lies to the attention of the voters of the Twelfth Congressional District of Pennsylvania.”

Murthalied.com was the brainchild of Amanda P. Doss, the woman behind Operation Street Corner, a site dedicated to, “The Vietnam Veterans’ Grassroots Campaign Against John Kerry and Jane Fonda, traitors to our country.” Sean-Paul Kelly, editor of the blog, The Agonist, first investigated Doss’ involvement, and then publicly posted her e-mail (which Kelly said was widely available). Doss received many negative responses, and Murthalied.com quickly disappeared. Doss then joined forces with John “Proud to Be Swiftboating” Bailey of VFTT at Boot Murtha. Bailey defines swiftboating in his own special way: “Exposing the lies, deceit, and fraud of self-glorifying public officials or candidates for public office who exaggerate their military service by lying about their feats of heroism and combat wounds.”

As of July 13, the Web site had raised $6,223 in their quest to reach $7,750 by July 14 in order to mail all the veterans in Murtha’s district. To learn more about the Murtha Swiftboating, see blogger Taylor Marsh’s detailed post at The Patriot Project.

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

Calling One Wingnut

Mike Stark’s battle with Bill O’Reilly started last October when he called O’Reilly’s daily radio show to tell listeners to visit the “true no spin zone”: watchdog group Media Matters for America. O’Reilly, who has long vilified Media Matters, immediately cut Stark off, pronouncing, “We got another nut on the air.” He threatened to trace the call and pay Stark a visit at his home.

In late January, Stark launched Calling All Wingnuts a combination blog and organizing Web site that provides tools for progressives to counter misinformation spouted on the radio airwaves.

Stark and his volunteers, dubbed the “Wingnut Spinners,” soon began a new call-in campaign after O’Reilly called for the firing of his MSNBC competitor Keith Olberman on the air. After calling in—to a call-in show—“Spinners” began receiving return calls from Fox News’ security department, which threatened legal trouble for their alleged “harassment” of O’Reilly.

Olbermann has since picked up this story on his nightly show, “Countdown,” and has begun to rake O’Reilly over the coals. So far, O’Reilly has not sicced Fox security on Olbermann.

Reaching Out to Local Media

Stark has also offered his tips on talking back to conservatives to the Roots Project, a new effort to influence Congressional members where they live by contacting the media that serve their districts. The first outreach campaign harnessed blog readers living in Kansas, Maine and Nebraska to write letters to the editors of papers in those regions, urging local senators to investigate the illegal NSA wiretaps.

Jane Hamsher is coordinating the Roots Project through her blog firedoglake. She says organizing calls into local conservative radio shows is the next frontier.

The Roots Project also hopes to engage and showcase regional progressive bloggers. “We don’t want it to be outside agitation,” says Hamsher. “We don’t want to send 1,000 people from California pouncing on West Virginia. Our ability to drive traffic through to a West Virginia blog and have them be the point person—that’s where we can be the most effective.”