The Complicit Media and the Censored Message

If there is ever a time when the politicians need the press more than the press needs the politicians, it's during campaign season. How else are the sleazebags going to get their lies out to the public if not through newspapers and TV? Media coverage is free, unlike the expensive ads.


So I was kind of (but not really) surprised to learn that our current crop of professional journalists is so cowed by the presidential candidates and their operatives that they have pretty much agreed to let the campaigns vet all quotes before they get published! You read that right. The media, upon whom we rely to present the unvarnished truth, lies and colorful language of those seeking public office, are ready, willing and able stenographers. And, in a piece by Jeremy Peters published in yesterday's New York Times, they ruefully admit that they are nothing but craven shills. And just like the unnamed government sources they are so fond of appeasing and enabling, they themselves would only make their admissions anonymously.

Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the White House — almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.

The Romney campaign insists that journalists interviewing any of Mitt Romney’s five sons agree to use only quotations that are approved by the press office. And Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article.

This is pretty shocking. Do these so-called reporters really believe that they will be denied access if they refuse to go along with this ridiculous censorship? When I was a reporter a long time ago and covering Hugh Carey's New York gubernatorial campaign, one of his sons came up to the press gaggle with "instructions" about what paragraph of Daddy's speech to put in our leads. We just laughed in his face. We had the power of the pen, and there wasn't a damn thing the pols could do about it. Once they win their elections, of course, media manipulation becomes de rigeur. But while they're desperately trying to win? The press should own these clowns.


But according to Peters, it's only getting worse. The campaign control freaks are freaking out over every last swear word and gaffe. If Obama farts while telling dirty jokes on Air Force One, or Romney lets loose with an F-bombing tirade, we the people will never find out about it. The journos' lips are sealed. Peters' article continues:

Those who did speak on the record said the restrictions seem only to be growing. “It’s not something I’m particularly proud of because there’s a part of me that says, ‘Don’t do it, don’t agree to their terms,’ ” said Major Garrett, a correspondent for The National Journal. “There are times when this feels like I’m dealing with some of my editors. It’s like, ‘You just changed this because you could!’ ”

It was difficult to find a news outlet that had not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly. Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York Times have all consented to interviews under such terms.

“We don’t like the practice,” said Dean Baquet, managing editor for news at The New York Times. “We encourage our reporters to push back. Unfortunately this practice is becoming increasingly common, and maybe we have to push back harder.”

The Obama campaign declined to make Mr. Plouffe or Mr. Messina available to explain their media practices. “We are not putting anyone on the record for this story,” said Katie Hogan, an Obama spokeswoman, without a hint of irony. She pointed to the many unrestricted interviews with campaign officials every day on television and when the press corps travels with the president.

Jim Naurekas of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) scathingly calls the campaign press corps a bunch of "brain-picking zombies." He takes the Times article a giant step forward, noting that

He (Peters) doesn't spell out the implication, which is that journalists are thereby serving as PR agents, packaging the messages of political professionals at their direction rather than independently reporting the news.

(snip)

Responsible journalists shouldn't have to be told that it's wrong to allow your sources to edit their quotes, but apparently the sort of journalists who work for national news outlets do need to be told that. In fact, they need to be told that by their editors, so that when their sources propose such a deal, they can say–sorry, we're not allowed to do that.

At which point, the political strategists can respond in one of two ways: Maybe they'll realize that they need the press more than the press needs them, and they'll allow journalists to do their jobs without interference.

The only thing worse than covering Rotary Club lunches is covering campaign season. The operatives will try to spin you in a thousand different directions. The trick is to Just Say No. The candidates are desperate, people! This reminds me of another time when I was working the graveyard shift at the local rag and the guy trailing in the polls in the State Assembly race showed up at the locked office, banging frantically on the door and waving yet another press release. Begging, begging, begging for an interview. Now the roles are reversed and reporters are the ones begging and maybe even banging for access. Fourth estate, my ass.

But that was then and this is now. I guess since corporations and billionaires are allowed to contribute anonymously and without limits to the campaigns, the candidates themselves are smugly secure in their own new-found anonymous corrupt miasmas. The Disclose Act, which would have forced political donors to reveal their identities, has just died a filibustered death in Congress.

So -- candidates and their PACs don't need no stinking reporters when they have millions of anonymous dollars to spend on TV attack ads. According to Bloomberg News, just about nine out of every ten political ads now being run are negative. Instead of getting unspun information and substantive policy discussions, we're getting caught in the middle of an unfettered food fight, a non-stop bash-o-rama gone wild. Even the fact-checking organizations are getting attacked for daring to disclose their inconvenient facts.

And just think, only sixteen more weeks of this to go. All we can do is shut off the TV, and try to stay sane.

Jaws

Attacking Mitt Romney is like shooting caviar in a barrel. The Obama campaign TV ads chewing him up and spitting him out are a hoot to watch and satisfy our great national craving for plutocratic blood. But let's face it. Picking apart one little rotten fish larva out of the whole slimy pile is not enough, when there are schools and schools of sharks circling in churned-up waters, waiting their voracious turn in the continuing feeding frenzy on what's left of our democracy.


Just because President Obama is going full-bore Captain Ahab on Mitt the Minnow does not mean he intends to harpoon the Moby Dicks of free market global capitalism. To the contrary, he is their keeper and protector. Look no further than his Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, described as "NAFTA on steroids". Actually, you can't look further because the negotiations are being conducted in so much murky secrecy that even United States senators are not allowed access to the details.



Corporate Feeding Frenzy -- Exposed!


But thanks to the Public Citizen consumer advocacy group shining a light into the murky depths, we are learning anew that although President Obama is attacking the offshoring and outsourcing of the man who wants his job, he is not attacking offshoring and outsourcing in general. In fact, he is a champion of sending our jobs overseas. We already got a hint of that when he signed the South Korean trade deal last year. That measure is estimated to cost 159,000 American manufacturing jobs. And the Panama part of the deal actually makes it easier for tax evaders like Romney to hide their millions offshore. And the Colombia part of the package allows us to ignore the worst record of labor and human rights violations on the entire planet. In effect, Obama has helped destroy more American jobs than Romney ever imagined in his most vivid vulture capitalist dreams. As a matter of fact, Obama got so much criticism from his base over his capitulation to transational corporations that he signed the final bill in secret. Only a few applauding oligarchs attended the Oval Office ceremony, as this noir-ish AP photo of the event attests:



Barry and the Barracudas

Ironically, the Obama camp's Mitt attacks are having the unintended consequence of attracting a lot more needed attention to the latest ongoing trade negotiations. There were demonstrations at last week's round of private talks in San Diego, along with petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures and letters of protest from legislators and activist groups in all 50 states. According to Public Citizen's Lori Wallach,

U.S. negotiators have tried to keep TPP negotiations totally below the radar, but even so opposition to the current "NAFTA-on-steroids-with-Asia" approach is escalating, which is good news for the public but a serious complication for the Obama campaign’s attack on Romney as a U.S. job offshorer.... President Obama is facing a growing chorus of opposition to what his trade negotiators are up to on the TPP from his base and from other Democratic elected officials, and given that his campaign seems to be honing in on job offshoring as a winning theme, he needs to redirect his negotiators from their current TPP agenda of NAFTA-on-steroids with all of Asia.

The TPP is a lot more than the usual government give-away to the oligarchs. If passed, it will free the global banking Mafia from even the limited oversight they currently enjoy, severely limit access to medicines by the countries that need them the most, make it easier for unsafe products and chemicals to flood into the United States, and absolve multinationals from adhering to domestic environmental and health policies. Even the legal system will be subverted by star chambers run by corporate judges. According to Public Citizen, it's nothing but a global corporate coup, a power tool for the One Percent. (h/t Kat.)

You obviously won't be seeing any Rombama attack ads about TPP on your TV, from either side. That's because Mitt Romney wants this deal as much as Barack Obama does. It's one more indication of it not really mattering, in the long term, which one of these apparatchiks of the Duopoly wins the election. For another great overview of what TPP means for regular people, do read this Truthout piece by Brian Moench, titled "America the Beautiful: A Fire Sale for Corporations." If this doesn't send a chill right down your spine, nothing will. An excerpt:

TPP is much worse than NAFTA, which eviscerated middle-class jobs and wealth in the US. And this sellout to foreign corporations is not just a rogue brain cramp of President Obama. Mitt Romney demanded this agreement be signed months ago, and the notorious "climate change denying" US Chamber of Commerce can't get it signed fast enough. Romney has called Obama's the most hostile administration to business in recent history. If the TPP trade agreement is "hostile" to business, god help us if we have an administration, presumably Romney's, "friendly" to business.

If you thought that with Citizens United we had hit rock bottom in surrendering our democracy to the power of money, this TPP "trade agreement" would throw our democracy into free fall. Foreign corporations will be allowed to feast like termites upon America's natural resources, trash our environment and public health, violate our rights as American citizens and make us pay them if we try to protect ourselves.

With enough public outcry, maybe we can buy some time. Although TPP had been scheduled to go into effect this year, it looks like it might be delayed until 2013 because of... you guessed it... the feeding frenzy of the presidential campaign. Plus, the Japanese are not yet part of the talks, and the plutocrats want them to get on board the corporate gravy train too. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ever the mega-lobby of unfettered capitalism, is keeping its fingers crossed. The elites are couching their crime against humanity in spin designed to foment fear of Chinese competition, making it easier for the gullible hoi polloi to swallow their poisoned bait -- hook, line and sinker.

The Horse's Ass Race

Mitt can't keep his story straight, and Barry doesn't even have a story to tell. 

And both of them claim to really stink at juggling.

Romney went on a marathon of talk shows Friday to try to untangle his web of deceit, and succeeded only in continuing his exhausting tarantella, trapping himself even further in a snare of his own making. Nixon saved his vice presidential candidacy with his famous Checkers speech. Romney can't even fall back on a Seamus speech, because Seamus outsourced himself to Canada after his car-roof ride from hell. What would Mitt even say? That Ann confines herself to driving two plain Republican Cadillacs with cloth seats instead of Corinthian leather? This is a man who doesn't even try to pretend to be humble. Any speech about his tax returns, tenure at Bain, and offshoring and outsourcing will contain only one phrase, repeated ad infinitum: "I Won't I Won't I Won't I Won't and You Can't Make Meeeeeeeeh." 

To hear Mitt tell it, he had a hard enough time juggling his various duties running the Salt Lake City winter Olympics during his Bain leave of absence to be able to manage juggling the Giant Slalom schedule with the Giant Offshoring schedule at the exact same moment in history. In fact, Mitt was so overwhelmed being Mr. Olympus that it was like jumping into an empty elevator shaft, according to Ann Romney. The guy is way too much of a nebbish to multi-task.

And Obama apparently can't walk and chew gum at the same time, either. In a cringe-worthy clip of a White House interview with Charlie Rose, (to be aired Sunday) he said his main mistake in his first few years was that he didn't spend enough time juggling his bullshit artistry skills with his other fantastic skills. Turns out he's just as lousy at juggling as Mitt:

When I think about what we’ve done well and what we haven’t done well, the mistake of my first term – couple of years – was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.

(snip)

It’s funny – when I ran, everybody said, well he can give a good speech but can he actually manage the job? And in my first two years, I think the notion was, ‘Well, he’s been juggling and managing a lot of stuff, but where’s the story that tells us where he’s going?’ And I think that was a legitimate criticism.

Yeah, Barry. Your policies -- or really the lack of policies -- which resulted in one out of every seven of us without health insurance, one out of seven of us on food stamps, stagnating wages, epidemic unemployment, continued corruption on Wall Street, never-ending wars -- would have been easier to swallow with just that one extra spoonful of your propaganda sugar. You backstabbed us behind closed doors, when you should have bullshat us to our faces. We don't need no food, we don't need no stinking jobs. In your book, we just need a goddamn bedtime story.

Somebody turn out the lights before I get accused of false equivalency.

Bastille Day Open Thread

Joyeux Quatorze Juillet, peasants. Lots to be angry about as usual, so storm away. Marchons, Citoyens!

Discognition Edition

It looks like the headline writers at the New York Times aren't even bothering to read the articles this morning.

In Latest Data on Economy, Experts See Signs of Pick Up: Happy happy joy joy, you think. Usually, the awful truth of continuing misery is buried deep within the article. So at least there is this immediate subhead:

A range of economists expect growth in the United States to increase in coming months, although only to a pace broadly considered sluggish, if not dismal.

A sluggish pick-me-up is better than no pick-me-up at all, I guess. If you feel tired, have a mug of warm milk to perk you up. If your economy is catatonic, at least it's not completely comatose. Glass half full because of Obama re-election. Maybe the economy is tired because it's gorging on too many goodies. So cut the food stamp program. Cut home-heating assistance, because shivering helps sluggish people lose weight. Distended bellies on starving children? Reactionaries say it means they're getting full. Situation hopeless but not serious. Stunted growth is better than no growth at all, say the experts. This was quite a stretch, even by the usual press propaganda standards.

JP Morgan Reports Profit of $5 Billion in Latest Quarter is on the homepage: But when you click on the link to the Dealbook section, the header magically changes to 

JPMorgan Says Trade Loss Tops $5.8 Billion; Quarterly Profit Down 9%

The Times will most likely wash away the first headline, once millions of readers have taken a quick glance at it and assume everything is hunky-dory with the Jamie Dimon economy. Still, the article insists you can have it both ways -- report a profit even though your losses more than erase it. Good. Now I can insist I'm in the black even when I am overdrawn on my checking account. I had the money before I spent it, so it's all good. 

Then, there's this smarmy headline on what Tim Geithner sort of knew about the Libor scandal years ago, and how he passive-aggressively strove to do something:

Geithner Tried to Curb Rate Rigging in 2008

As president of the New York Fed, it was Geithner's job to be a watchdog over the big banks on behalf of the public and not a coddler of banksterism. But all he did was write a CMA email when he suspected that interest rate-fixing was going on. He didn't call in the FBI, or Interpol, since the scam was international. But since it is looking embarrassing for Geithner and his boss, somebody has just hurriedly leaked a batch of exculpatory memos to The Times. He "reached out" and "made suggestions" to his British counterparts, such as maybe increasing the number of banks playing the game, so as to spread out the bad behavior and dilute the damage a bit. Too bad he didn't leak or act the whistleblower to The Times back there in 2008, thus potentially saving billions for bankrupt American cities who lost big-time from artificially low interest rates on investments. But Geithner gave the appearance of "trying", so they figure he's off the hook. Kind of like the Vatican transferring pedophile priests and admonishing them to behave, giving them helpful hints to curb their urges, rather than protecting the child victims. The Geithner response to the Libor crimes is just one more reeking example of people in power doing their utmost to protect corrupt institutions.

A Pipe Dream

Progressive Nirvana: in which both presidential candidates implode and sink into a morass of corruption just in time for the conventions later this summer, just in time for the Republican Party to die of its own self-inflicted wounds, just in time for Russ Feingold to grab the Democratic nomination by default to battle the Green Party's Jill Stein for the highest office in the land. Moderate liberal vs. European-style socialist.

It's looking bad for Mitt. At best, he evaded paying taxes on at least a quarter-billion in offshore accounts, at worst he lied to the SEC about not being in charge of Bain Capital when other documents during the same era listed him as CEO. Even the right-leaning Politico is intimating the Mittster may have broken a federal law or two. Will Mitt open his acceptance speech in Tampa with the words "I am not a crook" or better yet, "I shall not seek, nor will I accept my party's nomination for a first term as president of the United States"?

It's looking kind of bad for Barry, too, now that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is getting caught up in the Libor scandal. It is pretty obvious that Timmy knew that a massively sleazy version of price-fixing was going on under his N.Y. Fed watch, and that he knew it a long time ago. He was either too weak to stop it, too cowardly to report it, or too complicit to give a damn about it. There are an awful lot of municipalities out there, cash-strapped and crumbling, who wouldn't mind getting some of those stolen trillions in pension plans and such back from the banking mafia. The lawyers are salivating.

Of course, what I consider bad, and what the Plutocracy running things considers bad, are two different things. So what if Mitt lied through his teeth? It shows what a great American he is. It is patriotic to be savvy enough to game the system. And do you really expect Eric Holder to convene a grand jury seeking a Mitt-dictment? Remember, the motto of the Obama Administration is "Forward". If they won't prosecute the Bush war criminals or the Wall Street banksters, they are definitely not going after small-potatoes Mitt. To the contrary. In the interest of bipartisanship, Barry would probably offer him a cabinet position, or at least a seat on the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. It specializes in outsourcing and offshoring and regulation-killing, after all.

And Timmy Geithner? He's leaving anyway. The fact that the unindicted Jon Corzine was able to "lose" millions of investor dollars when his scam went bankrupt and yet is still listed as a top Obama bundler shows us that corruption is not only acceptable-- it's desirable. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the unlimited money in politics is corrupting the corruption.  

Like I said -- pipe dream. Just when you think politics can't make you any sicker, you start feeling nauseous all over again.

Strip-Searching the Troops

Apparently, there's a new law on the books that lets military personnel breeze through airport security checkpoints, the better to honor and respect their sacrifice and service to our country. Apparently, they are exempt from the requirement to remove their shoes or boots for inspection prior to boarding a plane. Apparently, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) is ignoring the exemption and enforcing the same unlawful searches on the troops as they do on everyone else. (Accepting, of course, VIPs with their own nail ladies who lunch and fly frequently. They've been getting their separate lines for awhile now,because as we all should know, rich people are inherently more trustworthy. Just ask Mitt, who told an audience of NAACP members Wednesday to just trust him because he has their best interests at heart.)

A freshman Republican congressman is livid because only three airports are sort of complying with the law, which just went into effect last week, under some sort of wimpy "pilot program". Which is so ironically unfair, because even pilots have to be screened for weapons, drugs and alcohol. Fumed Rep. Chip Cravaack of Minnesota: "Just last week, I spoke to a service member who was asked to strip down to go through security — to remove boots and his service blouse — and another service member a few weeks before that!"

Okay.... I have got three words for Cravaack: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) It turns out that the brains of soldiers exposed to the shock of roadside bombs and other trauma become physically altered, leading to personality changes -- and sometimes violence, both against themselves and others. We are asking one percent of the population to go on tour after tour, deployment after deployment, sending them into battle when they are battle-fatigued -- and then we grandiosely offer to save them ten minutes at an airport because we love them so damned much.

Easy breezy military screenings seem pretty misguided to me. Wouldn't it be more logical for the TSA perform at least the same stringent pat-downs on soldiers as they do on elderly people suspected of harboring guns in their Depends? Soldiers have access to weapons the rest of us do not. They've had training in weapons use the rest of us did not. And a small percentage of them are mentally unstable.

Between 10 and 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have suffered a TBI. It is believed that the soldier who allegedly murdered 16 people earlier this year had been diagnosed with a brain injury and returned to duty anyway. What if he had gone berserk on a crowded airplane 30,000 feet in the air, and nobody had bothered to check his boots for weapons?

Although an extremely miniscule number of TBI sufferers becomes homicidal, study after study shows a definite correlation between TBI and  violent behavior. One longterm Swedish investigation tracking 20,000 people over three decades revealed that nine percent of the TBI subjects committed violent crimes, as opposed to only three percent of the "normal" participants.

I don't want to malign the troops. This is not meant to imply that all returning soldiers are ticking time bombs who should be strip-searched before boarding an airplane. The whole screening process is just so much political theater anyway, a means to enrich manufacturers of RapiScanner x-ray machines and Homeland Security subcontractors.

But the law exempting service members from the same screening civilians get is just a tacit official admission that the whole process is an onerous, illegal, humiliating and punishing one. It is not meant to keep us safe. It is meant to keep us in line.