Highlights This Month
Kucinich's 'futile fight' reveals worries about the media's influences
Associated Press in Raw Story
 The legacy of Dennis Kucinich's longshot presidential campaign may be less his anti-war views than a futile fight that legally reinforced the rights of TV networks to organize their own debates.
That may come at a cost, however, with some Americans are already worried about the media's influence on the campaign.
Because of Kucinich's low poll numbers and his poor performance in early contests, he was excluded from Democratic debates on ABC, MSNBC and CNN in January.
The Cleveland congressman, who officially dropped out of the race Friday, (January 25), protested each decision to either the Federal Communications Commission or the courts. He argued the networks were doing a disservice to voters by effectively silencing a candidate who had qualified for federal matching funds.
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Mike Lane
The media's love affair with McCain
By Paul F. Campos, Scripps Howard News Service
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell
One of the curiosities of American politics is the media's ongoing infatuation with John McCain. A bit of this is based on things such as McCain's opposition to torture (unfortunately, we can no longer treat opposing torture like opposing child molestation, i.e., something one assumes is standard equipment in a presidential candidate rather than a luxury upgrade). Yet most of the journalistic love affair with the Republican senator from Arizona is based on other factors.
Consider this typical endorsement from the Orlando Sentinel: While McCain "has stuck to his principles at the risk of sinking his campaign," Mitt Romney "has abandoned positions that would have alienated his party's conservative base." (Indeed, I checked a computer database and discovered that, in the national media, Romney is at least six times more likely to be described as a flip-flopper than McCain.)
This does not merely ignore but actually inverts the truth. The fact is that no presidential candidate in either party has flip-flopped as egregiously as McCain on such a wide range of issues. Here's just a small sample of Sen. Straight Talk's recent series of remarkable conversions to politically convenient stances:
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 ACLU Urges Congress not to Rubberstamp FISA Plan
Michelle Richardson, ACLU
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell
With a House vote on domestic spy legislation rumored to occur within days, there are reports of a plan to split the two titles of the terrible bill passed by the Senate that gutted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Senate bill contains almost no Fourth Amendment protections in its Title I, and its Title II contains immunity for telecommunications companies that illegally aided the president’s warrantlesss wiretapping program. The American Civil Liberties Union urges Congress to not rubberstamp the president’s plan to circumvent the Constitution.
Said ACLU lobbyist Michelle Richardson:
"We are deeply concerned about the proposal to break the Senate bill into two separate measures. If the majority uses bifurcation to leverage substantial privacy protections for Americans on wiretapping and adopts changes that allow the lawsuits to proceed, that’s a step in the right direction. However, if this split merely offers members of Congress the chance to vote on a variation of the Senate’s surveillance scheme and full immunity for the telecommunications industry, then it’s just a rubberstamp of the president’s scheme. Congress' job is to protect the civil liberties of individual Americans and to make sure those who have broken the law are held accountable.
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For polling on FISA and Telecom Immunity...
For more information...
Petition congressional leaders: No Finagling on FISA
How the Spooks Took over the News ~ By Nick Davies
A controversial new book argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda and the media simply swallow it wholesale.
The Independent/UK, in AlterNet
 AlterNet Editor's note: This is an edited excerpt from Nick Davies' book, Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media (Chatto & Windus) . Davies' book has created enormous controversy in the UK, where many of the newsmakers Davies discusses in the book have fired back with op-eds accusing Davies of relying on the same anonymous sourcing that he condemns the commercial press for using in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.
It’s not surprising that the book strikes a tender spot in many a news-maker. It is the deepest examination of the links between the "public diplomacy" -- sometimes known as propaganda -- pushed by the Bush administration and its allies, and the media’s uncritical repetition of the claims made to justify the invasion.
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Parker and Hart
Meet Tim Russert
It takes a special kind of dishonesty to falsely describe someone's previous comments in order to accuse them of lying and breaking their word. There should be a word for that kind of behavior. In light of Russert's question to Clinton last fall and to Obama this week, perhaps it should be called "pulling a Russert."
Jamison Foser, Media Matters for America
 MSNBC recently began running commercials touting its coverage of "Decision 2008." One begins with on-screen text asking, "Why do people care about politics?" Viewers then hear Tim Russert explain: "It's about the war. Our sons and daughters. It's about the economy. Our jobs. It's about education. Our schools. It's about health care. Our families' well-being. It's about everything that matters." The ad ends with the on-screen declaration: "That's why you care. That's why we cover it."
The serious and high-minded approach to political coverage Russert brags about would be a welcome change from the political coverage for which Russert is responsible.
During this week's (Feb 24 - Mar 30) Democratic presidential debate, Russert didn't ask a single question about global warming, continuing his longstanding habit of all but ignoring the topic. He didn't ask a single question about the mortgage crisis. (As one Cleveland resident noted, "We've got the mortgage industry's toxic waste scattered all over this city, but Mr. Blue-Collar-Buffalo-and-Cleveland-Marshall-Guy Russert couldn't be bothered with a question about it.") He didn't ask a single question about executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil-liberties concerns. But that shouldn't come as a surprise; of all the questions he has asked while moderating presidential debates during this campaign, only one has dealt with any of those topics.
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Open Letter to Tim Russert
The Torturous Logic of The New York Times
Marc Cooper, Huffington Post
With President Bush's veto this weekend (Mar 8-9) of a bill to outlaw the CIA's use of waterboarding, torture now becomes officially codified U.S. policy. But you'd never know it from the reading The New York Times.
At least, not the news pages. Yes, there was a prominent Times story this Sunday on the veto written by Washington-based reporter Steven Lee Meyers. But the only suggestion in the piece that we're actually talking about torture is the painful and intellectually insulting acrobatics and contortions that the reporter puts us through in avoiding any direct mention of the terrible T-word. The best Meyers can do is to refer to what he calls "harsh interrogation techniques." (You know, like calling really shoddy, third-rate journalism "something less than spectacular reporting")
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Bush Vetoes Anti-Torture Law: Don't Give Bush the Last Word on Torture!
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