Evergreene Digest A Journal of Progress for the Rest of Us

Glenn Beck doesn't just poison the airwaves with hatred. His hatred actually incites violence and murder.
Our boycott of Fox News advertisers is having a huge impact - over 200 advertisers have pulled their ads from Beck's show.

Bob Fertik, Democrats.com

Today (Aug 28), Glenn Beck tried to hijack Martin Luther King's legacy for his own rightwing agenda - and the corporate media gave saturation coverage to help him.

• Yes, the same Glenn Beck who insisted President Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people ... This man is a racist."
• Yes, the same Glenn Beck who said social justice "leads to death camps" and "a Jew, of all people, should know that."
• Yes, the same Glenn Beck who called progressives a "virus waiting for their chance to suck all of the blood out of the Democratic neck."
• Yes, the same Glenn Beck who called Hillary Clinton "the stereotypical bitch."

Join over 60,000 progressive activists who are boycotting Fox News advertisers.

Glenn Beck doesn't just poison the airwaves with hatred. His hatred actually incites violence and murder.

It gets the facts wrong on crucial history and context relating to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Alex Kane, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

In an article (8/10/10) on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's testimony to an Israeli panel investigating the May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, the Washington Post gets the facts wrong on crucial history and context relating to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Joel Greenberg writes:

Netanyahu said that the naval blockade, imposed by the previous Israeli government in January 2009 during a military offensive against Hamas, was meant to prevent the smuggling of arms to the Gaza Strip, which he described as "a giant weapons depot and base for attacks on Israel."

He added that 12 ships had tried to run the blockade since it was imposed, but none had reached Gaza.

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• Thousands have signed on to FAIR's petition--add your voice today and keep the pressure on NBC to have a real war debate!
• Meet the Press missing antiwar voices

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

July saw more U.S. troop fatalities in Afghanistan than any month since the war began nine years ago. Gen. Stanley McChrystal was removed from his commanding post amid controversy, and WikiLeaks released a trove of classified documents that paint a picture of a failing war and unreported civilian casualties.

How has NBC's Meet the Press responded to these developments? By inviting on guests to defend the war and Obama's Afghanistan policy.

Sundays on NBC have been a steady drumbeat of pro-war sentiment: an hour-long puff piece on Gen. David Petraeus (8/15/10); a one-on-one with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (8/1/10); and panel discussions stacked with hawks (7/27/10, 7/11/10). Over the past two months, a single strong antiwar voice has been heard on Meet the Press--California Rep. Barbara Lee (7/27/10)--but she was given little room to speak on a panel with four pro-war guests.

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• Why do newspapers alienate their most loyal readers?
• The American Media Misdiagnosis
• Save the Press

Lisa Anderson, Columbia Journalism Review

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Will Shapira

When my son’s first college roommate turned out to be from Chicago, I was delighted. His family had long subscribed to the Chicago Tribune, where I worked. I thought it gave us an immediate connection. Less than two months later, they unsubscribed. This was shortly after a drastic redesign at the paper in September 2008. The roommate’s family said there was nothing in the Tribune to read anymore.

That wasn’t quite true. There was still plenty of information in the paper. But there were fewer stories, produced by fewer reporters. The stories were relentlessly local and, increasingly, came in the form of charts, graphs, maps, statistics, large fonts, and large photos—a sort of newspaper-Internet-TV amalgam that seemed more like something to be absorbed than read. For the roommate’s family—professional people who wanted sophisticated stories that included the world beyond Chicago—it wasn’t enough.

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