THE MEDIACRACY

SEAN HANNITY RIGS INTERVIEW
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/300125p-256914c.html

LLOYD GROVE, NY DAILY NEWS - On the March 31 installment of the shouting-head show [Hannity & Colmes], the guests included two of the late Terri Schiavo's former nurses, Trudy Capone and Carla Sauer Iyer, arguing that their patient wasn't brain-dead. Between commercials, according to an off-air audiotape obtained by investigative comedian Harry Shearer for last Sunday's episode of his weekly radio program, "Le Show," Hannity coached the women on exactly how to respond when liberal co-host Alan Colmes cross-examined them.
"Just say, 'I'm here to tell what I saw,'" Hannity can be heard instructing his guests. "No matter what the question, 'I'm here to tell you what I saw. I'm here to tell you what I saw.'"
Hannity adds helpfully: "Say, 'I'm not going to be distracted by silliness.' How's that? Does that help you? Look into that camera. Look at me when I'm talking."
On the air, Iyer performs beautifully. "I don't have any opinions or judgments. I was there," she declares
After the segment ends, Hannity gushes off the air to the nurses: "We got the points out. It's hard, this isn't easy. But you did great, both of you. Thank you, guys. Those nurses are powerful, aren't they?"

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MEDIA BIAS IS IN THE ADJECTIVES
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8525.htm

TED RALL - The American media uses repeated arbitrary labeling in its supposedly impartial coverage in a deliberate campaign to alter public perception. Americans were meant to feel less sympathy for an kidnapped Italian woman shot by U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint in Iraq after the talking heads repeatedly referred to her as a "communist journalist." A Fox News reporter in the same story would never have been dubbed a "neo-fascist journalist." John McCain (R-AZ) might become president someday but "maverick senator John McCain" probably won't. Ralph Nader's name rarely appears in print without the unappealing word "gadfly" or a form of "crusading." Why not describe figures in the news using terms that aim for neutrality, like "Italian reporter" or "former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader"?
Labeling bias works to marginalize political outsiders while powerful elites receive their full honorifics. Howard Dean was antiwar firebrand Howard Dean but George W. Bush was never referred to as pro-war crusader George W. Bush. The press calls the founder of the Moral Majority "the Reverend Jerry Falwell," not "radical cleric Jerry Falwell." Even the word "cleric" implies foreignness to a xenophobic public; American religious leaders are the more familiar "ministers" rather than clerics. . .
Loaded labels are commonly used to influence the public's feelings about groups of people as well as individuals. Under Ronald Reagan the Afghan mujahedeen, who received CIA funding and weapons that they used to fight Soviet occupation forces, were called "freedom fighters." Iraqis who take up arms against U.S. occupation troops, on the other hand, are called "insurgents," a word that implies rebellion for its own sake. This was the same term used by the New York Times and other mainstream media to refer to anti-U.S. fighters in Vietnam during the 1960s. Only later, when the Vietnam War became unpopular, did American newspapers begin calling the former "insurgents" members of an infinitely more patriotic-sounding "resistance."
Editors and producers who value balance ought to establish a consistent policy--either negative smears or positive accolades for both sides. Anti-occupation forces should always be called insurgents, guerillas, etc., while pro-occupation troops are dubbed collaborators. Either that, or call them freedom fighters and government loyalists, respectively.
I too have been victimized by the idiotic practice of repeat labeling. "Controversial cartoonist Ted Rall" garners no fewer than 58 hits on Google. Care to guess the results for "patriotic cartoonist Ted Rall"?

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RIGHT WING COUP AT FEDERAL BROADCAST BOARD?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38692-2005Apr8.html?nav=rss_print/style

LISA DE MORAES, WASHINGTON POST - One of the things you learn as a cub reporter at the Podunk Independent is that when a company puts out a news release at 5 p.m. on a Friday, they're hoping the reporter already has left to get a head start on the weekend and won't see it until Monday. In other words, something big and unpleasant is up. Or, more usually, someone's out.
At 5 p.m. yesterday, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced that "after implementing the findings of the McKinsey study" (say what?), CPB President Kathleen Cox feels that it's a natural time for her to step aside and let the board conduct a search for her successor.
For the time being, CPB said, Ken Ferree will take over. A senior official for then-Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell, Ferree was named CPB's chief executive officer and executive vice president a mere three weeks ago. Cox has been CPB president since July 1. That would make it just about nine months that she has had the job. . .
Yesterday's announcement comes just three days after CPB appointed two ombudsmen to critique the work of public TV and radio. At the time, Cox told The Post's Paul Farhi that the appointments were part of an effort "to raise public broadcasting's ability to address [public] concerns about issues of journalism." She declined to say what, if any, journalistic issues have arisen recently, Farhi reported. . .
Jeff Chester, executive director of advocacy group Center for Digital Democracy, told The TV Column, "It's not a coincidence they bring in Ken Ferree and Cox's head rolls." He added, "The fact is she was basically an apolitical bureaucrat in an incredibly polarized agency."
Common Cause President Chellie Pingree said in a statement that naming Ferree even interim president "raises some serious concerns" because, Pingree said, "as Michael Powell's chief of the FCC's media bureau, Mr. Ferree seemed to be dismissive of the public interest obligations of broadcasters."
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BEFORE JOURNALISM WAS PURE . . .

In gratuitously setting their immutable standards for the rest of us, people like Tom Rosentiel of the Project for Ennui in Journalism seldom delve into the trade's history further than Watergate. It is occasionally useful, however, to go back to a time before journalism became just another item in some mega-corporation's product line - when journalists reminded us more of the wonders of the democracy than of the banality of bureaucracy.
For example, you could return to the late 18th century as Abbe Reynal was defending the accuracy of his work, Histoire des duex Indes, to seminal American journalist Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane - as told in HW Brand's 'The First American.'
Deane questioned Reynal for citing the story of Polly Baker who had allegedly been prosecuted in Massachusetts for having given birth to a bastard. There was no such law in Massachusetts, Deane pointed out.
Reynal insisted it was true at which point Franklin laughed and interjected, "I will tell you, Abbe, the origins of that story. When I was a printer and editor of a newspaper, we were sometimes slack of news and to amuse our customers I used to fill up our vacant columns with anecdotes and fables, and fancies of my own. This of Polly Baker is a story of my making on one of these occasions."
The abbe replied gracefully, "Very well, doctor. I had rather relate your stories than other men's truths."
Today, Franklin would be condemned by the Poynters and the Rosentiels to that purgatory already crowded with the likes of Jason Blair and, who knows, we might still be without lightening rods, bifocal glasses or odometers.