Pete Seeger, 1919–2014
Q: Does the media do its job?
A: Of course not. It’s hard for me to talk about the media without getting angry. Because if the United States or the world goes down in disaster, I would blame the media first of all, because the people running it are intelligent people. They know very well how evil they are. And when they say, “Oh, I’m just giving the people what they want.” Sure—so do the drug pushers.
—Musician and activist Pete Seeger, interviewed by public radio (WAMC, 4/01)
Chris Christie, a Bully? No Way
Under the headline “Christie’s Carefully Devised, No-Nonsense Image in Peril,” the New York Times (1/8/14) worried that the controversy over New Jersey officials blocking the George Washington Bridge in a political vendetta could change Gov. Chris Christie’s image: “What once seemed like a refreshing forcefulness may come off as misguided bullying.” USA Today (1/8/14) likewise warned: “It could sour his national image as a tough-talking, problem-solving pragmatist into that of a partisan bully.” CNN’s Jake Tapper (1/9/14) said the scandal “hits at the heart of Christie’s carefully honed image as a straight-talking, no-nonsense governor interested in bipartisanship and efficiency.”
National media have long been infatuated with the New Jersey governor and his supposed bipartisan appeal (Extra!, 5/11), but surely it can’t have escaped journalists’ notice that Christie routinely refers to critics with such epithets as “arrogant SOB,” “ jerk,” “partisan hacks” and “numbnuts” (NorthJersey.com, 5/1/13). Not many politicians will respond to a reporter’s question with “Are you stupid?” (The Note, 7/2/12) or tell a female voter who complained about jobs going down, “You know, something may be going down tonight, but it ain’t going to be jobs, sweetheart” (Salon, 1/9/12).
Crossfire’s Absolute Zero Contribution
“How far below zero does it have to get to cool off the global warming debate?” asked CNN’s Crossfire (1/6/14). “This week’s historic cold brings out the skeptics. Will it put the climate change debate in the deep freeze?” Contrary to the cold puns, what CNN was really doing was reheating a debate left over from last century about whether people were warming the planet—a debate that did not need to be reopened by winter weather that wasn’t even all that cold by historical standards (Time, 1/22/14). As Crossfire’s host from the left, Van Jones, pointed out: “We should not be debating whether global warming is real, whether it’s caused by humans…. We should be debating what to do about it.” Unfortunately, that’s not the debate CNN wanted to have.
Newsweek Brings Down the Average
“It’s no secret that when it comes to education, America gets a D-minus,” declared Newsweek’s Chris Weller (1/17/14)). “In the most recent global tests—scored on a 1,000-point scale —the US scored a 481 in math, 497 in science, and 498 in reading comprehension. In comparison, international averages were 494, 501, and 496.” Note how close the US’s scores are to the international averages—with reading, it’s 0.2 percentage points higher. It’s odd to assign such average scores a grade of “D-minus.”
“Why is the world’s largest economy so bad at teaching its children?” Weller asks. “One growing school of thought is that the US…is cheating its best pupils…gifted children—the tiny group smarter than 99.99 percent of their peers.”
Mathematically, it’s impossible for the top 0.01 percent to raise test scores by more than 0.01 percent. Maybe it’s Newsweek that should be getting a D-minus in math.
Bill O’Reilly Celebrates MLK Day
“The truth is, that the race factor in America is not an overwhelming problem anymore. Mr. Obama won two elections…. “Talking Points” believes that minority Americans do have a much tougher time succeeding in the marketplace generally speaking than affluent whites, for example. But it all comes down to something that is accessible in America: education and personal responsibility. Black Americans should understand that if they study and work hard, they will likely succeed in this country. And that’s the message about race that all good and honest people should be promoting.”
—Bill O’Reilly (O’Reilly Factor, 1/20/14)
Factchecking Is Not Paraphrasing and Saying ‘Gotcha!’
AP’s tradition of odd, tendentious “factchecking” from staffer Calvin Woodward (Extra!, 5/09, 2/10) continued with a piece (1/29/14) following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech that produced yet more illustrations of how not to gauge the accuracy of political speech. Take this item:
OBAMA: “We’ll need Congress to protect more than 3 million jobs by finishing transportation and water-ways bills this summer. But I will act on my own to slash bureaucracy and streamline the permitting process for key projects, so we can get more construction workers on the job as fast as possible.”
THE FACTS: Cutting rules and regulations doesn’t address what’s holding up most transportation projects, which is lack of money. The federal Highway Trust Fund will run out of money in August without action.
Or, in other words, “We’ll need Congress to protect more than 3 million jobs by finishing transportation and waterways bills this summer.”
Kurt Cobain on FAIR
The FAIR organization…has been working for years to expose a lot of injustices, and to try to promote real truths in a lot of things that have happened politically. It’s like an underground leftist organization that tries to expose the truths…. A lot of time the truth and the details of a story aren’t ever reported. And that’s what this organization does, so they came to us. And of course we’re going to want to do something with them to help them out.
—Kurt Cobain (8/10/93; YouTube, 12/11/13), referring to a benefit concert Nirvana would do for FAIR on December 30, 1993.
