Media Matters exposes CNN’s nondisclosure of a regular contributor’s affiliation with a consulting firm that buys ads for the health care industry

Media Matters for America ran this story on October 14,2009. They have obtained evidence that CNN contributor Alex Castellanos' political consulting firm, National Media, is the ad buyer for the insurance industry group America's Health Insurance Plan's (AHIP) new ad blitz attacking Democratic health reform plans. You can read the entire story here.

The Daily Show reveals what CNN deems worthy of fact checking

This clip is from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Monday, October 12, 2009.

FBI and Pennsylvania State Police employ tactics that would make Iranian authorities proud——and apparently the New York Times.

According to a New York Times article Sunday, October 4, 2009, titled, “Arrest Puts Focus on Protesters’ Texting” Elliot Madison, 41 a social worker from Jackson Heights, Queens was arrested September 24, 2009 by the Pennsylvania State Police and charged with hindering apprehension of prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The article also reports that the FBI conducted a 16-hour raid of Madison’s residence in Jackson Heights, Queens the following Thursday.
The article reports that a “criminal complaint in Pennsylvania”, claims that Madison was, “directing others, specifically protesters of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse.” Here the article takes law-enforcement at their word. They do not dispute what law enforcement is claiming to be a “lawful order to disperse”. The First Amendment grants every American the right to “peaceably assemble”. So the police only have the authority to disperse the protesters that are not being peaceable if and when they are not. But the charges against Madison take an even stranger turn.
During an interview on Democracy Now with Madison and his attorney, Martin Stolar, Tuesday, October 6, 2009, Stolar claims that the police are charging Madison with “hindering apprehension of prosecution” because Madison repeated the Police’s dispersal order over Twitter. If what Stolar claims is true, the police are charging that it is a crime to repeat a dispersal order through social-networking websites and mobile-phones (in this case Twitter) to individuals that the dispersal order is intended. These details, along with others, are not only left out of the article but are completely contrary to what the article is describing since the Times reporters didn’t bother trying to get a comment from Madison, his attorney or the Tin Can Collective, nor did they run any further information in Wednesday’s edition after the interview with Democracy Now.
As a matter of fact, the article mentions that the affidavit used to secure the search warrant for Madison’s residence may have something to do with Madison’s affiliation with a group (the Tin Can Collective) that according to the Times article, “collected information and used Twitter to send mass text messages describing protest-related events that they observed on the streets.” The Times Writers then point out that, “There were many such events during the two days of the summit. Demonstrators marched through town on the opening day of the gathering, at times breaking windows and fleeing.” The Times article really reaches to show their readers how Madison could be guilty of associating with a group that coordinates events with protesters who are at the same place where there are other criminal activities, and they leave out any comment from Madison, his attorney, anyone at the Tin Can Collective and they omit any follow up information after the Democracy Now interview.
The reporters for this story are really reaching to convince their readers that Madison and the collective he’s associated with are guilty of something.
The New York Times chose to run this article by piecing together a far reaching accusation instead of obtaining comment from some of the parties involved.
This perspective is a stark contrast from the series of articles that The New York Times ran last June when the Iranian Government used similar tactics towards Iranian protesters after their national election. Then, Iranian authorities accused many of the protesters of being foreign infiltrators in order to justify their crack down, and showed televised confessions that were likely forced because of the absurdity of the claims made during the confessions. The New York Times showed its unwavering support for the protesters and condemned the state of Iran. In one article, the Times even explained how their readers can support the protesters through social-networking sites—just as Madison had in Pittsburg. A June 15, 2009 New York Times article read,
Twitter-users are posting messages, known as tweets, with the term #IranElection, which allows users to search for all tweets on the subject. On Monday evening, Twitter was registering about 30 new posts a minute with that tag.
One read, “We have no national press coverage in Iran, everyone should help spread Moussavi’s message. One Person = One Broadcaster. #IranElection.”
“#IranElection” is a method for Twitter users to communicate directly with protesters.
And in a June 22, 2009 article titled, “Web Pries Lid of Iranian Censorship”, The Times condemned the Iranian government as “authoritarian”, partly for their censorship of social networking sites used by Iranian protesters and their online supporters.
In June, The Times played its role as a competent critic of state power, Iranian state power. It even went beyond its role by aiding the Iranian protesters. But when the opportunity for the Times to fill that role presented itself this past week we saw a different paper, one that is only willing to fill its pages with acceptable state doctrine.

Fox News Channel producer caught rallying crowd at protest

Fox News Channel Producer, Heidi Noonan caught rallying crowd, out of view from the show's live camera

Here is the show's live picture.

Los Angles Times stops short of refuting Israeli claims about "Hamas operatives"

During a severe crisis like the one in Gaza, when every single day of warfare means more large scale violence in and around one of the most densely populated cities in the world, we rely on the media to inform citizens so they in-turn can make informed choices in response. The media has a profound responsibility to examine claims made by the parties that are directly or indirectly responsible for the death and destruction. When they fail us they are complicit in the crimes.
In the Jan 7, 2009 Los Angeles Times there was a report about a United Nations school shelled by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) : “Calls for Gaza truce mount after school hit.” The attack was on the Al-Fakhora school in the Jabalia Refugee Camp in north of Gaza City on Jan 6, 2009, which killed at least 30 civilians. After giving the basic facts of the attack The Time’s writers cite Israeli officials justifying the attack by saying, “the school was targeted because Hamas militants had launched mortar rounds from its grounds…”, but the article does not cite the statement made by Christopher Gunness, an Official of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), on Democracy Now: “It’s important to say that the coordinates of all of our facilities in Gaza were handed over to the Israelis well before this offensive began.” Or the Associated Press article which states that the UN had given the IDF the GPS coordinates of its 23 schools being used as a civilian shelter during the incursion. The statement by the Israeli official coupled with the information given by the UNRWA official and AP (of which is undisputed by the State of Israel) acknowledges a clear war-crime of intentionally targeting civilians under the Protocol II, article 13 of the Geneva Convention.
The Times article also doesn't clarify that it is extremely unlikely that the persons firing mortars from the school were targeting anything outside of the Gaza Strip, since most mortars have a maximum range of 2.15-2.89 status miles. There is an extended range mortar which has a maximum range of 3.46 miles; however, it is very expensive and it is not commonly used by Palestinians. If said persons wanted to target civilians it is far more likely that they would have been using Qassam Rockets instead of mortars.
Given that they couldn’t have been targeting civilians and were very likely targeting IDF positions within the Gaza Strip, their actions are protected by Article 51 of the UN Charter as defense against an invasion of the Gaza Strip by the IDF; furthermore, the IDF invasion violates Article one, two, and thirty-three of the UN Charter.
In summary The Times fails to: refute the Israeli claims of mortars being fired by "terror operatives", or “Hamas operatives”; defend the actions of the persons firing the mortars as internationally recognized acts of defense; or expose Israel's actions as war crimes.
The article does offer a comment of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon about the "dangers inherent in the continuation and escalation of this conflict", but it does not give an impression of how dangerous it was for the IDF to shell the refugee camp. The Al-Fakhora school is located in the Jabalia Refugee Camp. The Palestinian refugees living in the camp are from the war of 1948 which established Israel’s independence. The conditions in the camp are extremely dismal and cramped. According to UNRWA as of 2005, 106,691 refugees live in make-shift shelters within the .87 sq. mile camp. The IDF had to know that the density of the population along with the conditions in the camp made it almost certain that a high level of civilian casualties would result from such an attack.
Finally, the citations within the article give a heavy voice to the State of Israel, but very little to Palestinian officials. The Times cites official Israeli sources eight times (including the first after the introduction) while Palestinian ones get two. There were two official US sources, three UN and no citations of independent media or humanitarian aid, and in the last four paragraphs of the story there were two Palestinian civilian sources (including a doctor at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City).

CNN’s Ali Velshi presses the urgency of getting public funds into large banks and corporations.

During CNN’s No Bias with Campbell Brown on Nov 24, 2008, Ali Velshi (CNN’s Chief Business Correspondent) was introduced to give some analysis on the announcement that Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner would be economic advisors for the coming Obama administration.

Velshi starts the segment by pressing the urgency of getting Obama’s economic plan through Congress, saying, “They don’t have much time. They’ve got to get into this thing immediately and solve this problem.” Then during a discussion with Velshi, Campbell Brown says that some people didn’t think that there were enough strings attached to Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP, such as, “management changes” to the institutions that received government money. Velshi Comments:

Sure, there’s still more to come on this, there’s a lot that has to be fixed. But what (Congressman) Barney Frank said last week with the automakers is that we learned from the $700 billion bail out. Some banks got money and did things that they weren’t suppose to with it, so now it’s a little more directed. Remember this is still the free market so companies have to have some freedom to change how they deploy the money. Citigroup didn’t deploy it well in the first place. So this is the struggle that we got do we go into an entirely controlled economy because we want to dictate how that money goes that might be the solution but it will be a bitter pill for people to swallow. That’s the decision that these guys have to make. Do they stimulate the economy or do they start directing it?

But what Barney Frank (D-Mass.) actually said, in a press conference on Nov. 21, 2008, was after a congressional hearing with the heads of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler is that:

Congress can operate at one of two speeds either way too slow or much too fast. If we were to pass this [bail out for auto-makers] right away I could already write this story for tomorrow: in a rushed, barely examined, commitment of many more taxpayer dollars congress leapt into an abyss. The context is this, there is widespread dissatisfaction not just in the congress but in the country with what is perceived to be a failure of the recipients of those funds [of the $700 billion bail out] to carry out the intent that the congress had.

Although some of the same language from Frank crept into Velshi’s analysis his point is exactly the contrary. Frank is warning of the dangers of pushing legislation through too quickly. You would think that the Chief Business Correspondent would understand Frank’s point. Many countries including the US have rammed through economic legislation that was alleged to help but only turned out to be a giant give-away to big business in the form of deregulation, tax breaks, and subsidies. Within the segment Velshi also claims that companies should have some say in how they deploy money. But Ali should consider his next sentence where he admits that Citigroup, one of the companies needing another ‘bail out’, “didn’t deploy it [government issued money] well”. Not only does he contradict himself, and once again make the counter-argument to Frank’s with Frank’s words, but he is not even giving consideration to the very cause of the crisis: the unregulated securities market. The very problem with the credit crisis is that unregulated financial institutions turned Commodity Default Swaps into a gambling game and when real estate prices began to fall-they lost and lost big. Now lending institutions are squeamish about lending money, even to very large and well established institutions.

Velshi also never explains why companies “should have some say in how they deploy money”, or how bail-outs are contrary to a “free market.” And yet the anchors on CNN routinely treat him as some sort of economic wise man that will be able to clearly explain the economic crisis.

The next day, Nov. 25, Tom Foreman is hosting No Bias with Campbell Brown.

Tom Foreman: “Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson added to the bail out plan again another $200 billion to unfreeze consumer credit-what ever that means. Perhaps it’s a sign of hope. Maybe the bail out is being aimed at the average American wallet instead of the big pockets of those big money bankers.”

Then Ali Velshi is introduced to explain some details. Velshi shows this graphic:

what he calls “basically the deal that we’ve got going right now”, and explains that “they [government] were loaning money to banks… with the understanding that that money would trickle down into consumer loans…that isn’t what’s been happening all that well.”

Then Velshi adds a third method for the “government” to get funds to “you” in the graphic:

He then explains that a new $200 billion in aid to banks was announced today. Velshi, pointing to the “banks” on the graph says, “The government is sort of circumventing this”, and, “the trick here is that the government is lending money that is likely to be used for the purpose that is was intended. What happened is that when the government was giving money at the highest level it wasn’t filtering all the way down. So the issue here Tom is that maybe, maybe we’re getting closer to the individual, to getting money, consumer credit, for individuals.” Then Velshi notes that this is a crucial time of year. Foreman then clarifies: “So the real goal here is to have people out there considering doing their holiday shopping… to feel like maybe they can.” Towards the end of the segment Velshi does admit that he’s “not sure it’s the right plan.” According to Velshi’s graphic and explanation the only way government can “trickle down” money to you is through corporations and banks. Even the third leg that he added to the graphic is still an example of the government giving banks funds that is intended to benefit you. Velshi never explains other methods of stimulating the economy like public works projects which can be executed through public institutions, or price controls. These were major tenets of the New Deal that was passed in the 1930’s.

Later during the same show, in the debate segment Velshi talked about “if you can combine work that incentives for business to create new jobs…then you can perhaps dull some of this pain for a few years with some federal investment but in the end we are going into a different economy and this team [Obama’s economic team] is going to have to come up with a solution to that as well.”

The problem with Velshi’s explanation is that it’s highly unpopular. Some recent opinion surveys show that 62% of the country is supports government intervention into the economy, but 53% think that a government bail-out of the financial institutions would cause a hardship for taxpayers. There are much more popular incentives for business. Providing public services such as universal health care would also inject funds into the economy. Business will adapt to what ever system of economic stimulation is implemented, you don’t have to cater to them as Velshi is insisting.

Los Angeles Times avoids important details on McCain advisor

On Wednesday August 6, 2008, The Los Angeles Times ran a front page piece entitled, An ousted pioneer explores a new trail, on the female advisor and surrogate for the McCain Campaign—who is “famous for breaking glass ceilings”—former CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP), Carly Fiorina. The article begins with Fiorina as a championed "self-described change-warrior.” Since the presidential campaigns began, 'change' has become a popular mantra, and the country has demonstrated in recent polls that it wants change. Earlier this year a CBS Poll showed that eighty-one percent of respondents think that the country is on the wrong track (CBS).

But is the change that Fiorina represents the kind of change that the population is looking for from a new president? By September 2001, HP, under the leadership of Fiorina, had fired 25,700 workers (Guardian). During her tenure at HP she cut more than 20,000 jobs, according to The Times article, and after the job cuts Fiorina enjoyed a pay increase of 231 percent to $4.1 million. (Guardian) These jobs cuts were during a time of great prosperity for HP; from 1999 -2000 their profits almost tripled from $1.319 billion to $3.697 billion (Fortune). In 2004 HP nearly doubled its lobbying budget to $734,000 (News Max). The goal: to get legislation passed that would lower HP taxes, and it worked. Legislation was passed reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 32% saving HP millions (WP).

Fiorina’s leadership at HP actually represents the opposite kind of change that the country is looking for. According to a Harris Poll survey in 2007, 84% of the country believes that "big companies have too much power and influence in Washington" (Harris). Another poll, conducted by CBS News, found that 69% of the population thought that outsourcing hurt the economy more than helped it (CBS). But The Times article barely mentions this conflict of interest. Most of the criticism of Fiorina is how her tenure at HP affected the company’s ownership and profitability not on broad economic issues, issues that have become a top concern for the country.

The Times article actually claims that, “her business resume bolsters his economic credentials." But the article also mentions that “Fiorina serves several roles in shaping the candidate’s image.” For the corporate owned media, candidates that have the economic credentials are ones that have “change warriors” shaping their image; the candidate’s image is sold to the population because you can’t sell their economic policies.