With Help Like This, Who Needs Hurt?
Stop acting like you think your beliefs are true, the New York Times advises liberals.
“Are Liberals Helping Trump?” asked New York Times national correspondent Sabrina Tavernise (2/18/17). Yes, she argued—progressives’ attitude of “moral superiority” was driving moderate Republicans into the arms of Trump:
If political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.
If liberals were helping Trump, though, they weren’t helping much: At the time the piece was written, Trump’s approval rating (already a record low for a new president) had fallen 5 percentage points to 40 percent, while his disapproval had risen 10 points to 55 percent. Maybe without what Tavernise calls the left’s “moral Bolshevism,” he would have done even worse?
When US Kills Civilians, It Does So for Democracy
The New York Times (2/7/17) took issue with Donald Trump’s references to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor (2/5/17):
Rather than endorsing American exceptionalism, Mr. Trump seemed to appreciate Mr. Putin’s brutality—which includes bombing civilians in Syria…—and suggested America acts the same way.
Of course, the US has bombed civilians in Syria, and if one adds up the civilians killed in recent US wars in the Middle East, the total is orders of magnitude greater than the 5,000 or so Syrians killed by Russia. But US wars, the Times explains, “have been driven by the desire to promote freedom and democracy.”
NPR’s Expert Is SPLC’s Extremist
NPR‘s report on Iran turned for analysis to what the SPLC describes as “a conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the growing anti-Muslim movement in the United States.”
Reporting on Iranian missile tests, NPR cited Fred Fleitz to illustrate the position of “conservative critics” that tolerating such tests was “a dangerous watering-down of the international position on Iran’s ballistic missile program.” NPR’s Peter Kenyon cited Fleitz as a “former CIA analyst,” but not as a senior vice president for the Center for Security Policy, identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading resource on hate groups, as “a conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the growing anti-Muslim movement in the United States.” Writes the SPLC: “For the past decade, CSP’s main focus has been on demonizing Islam and Muslims under the guise of national security.” This background would have helped put in context Fleitz’s claim that it was “absurd” to think that Iran might seek missiles for any other reason than to launch nuclear weapons.
It’s Not About a Flag
A loaded shotgun, actually.
The sentencing of a Georgia couple made national news: “Confederate Flag Incident at Child’s Party Leads to Jail Time” was how US News (2/27/17) put it, while the New York Daily News (2/27/17) had “Pair Gets 35 Years for Terrorizing Party With Confederate Flags.” Fox News (2/27/17) reported “Man, Woman Sentenced for Terrorizing Partygoers With Confederate Flag.” (Fox News, 2/27/17).
Casual news consumers would be surprised to learn that the pair were in fact sentenced not for waving a flag, but for pointing a shotgun and threatening to kill people, including children, with it. “All of the charges were based on threats to kill others and the pointing of the shotgun,” DA Brian Fortner explained in a statement (FAIR.org, 2/28/17).
WaPo’s Conflict of Interest Live
David Ignatius interviewing Susan Rice in the glow of sponsor Raytheon. (photo: John Vela/Twitter)
Since 2010, the Washington Post has put on a series of live events, billed as PostLive, featuring Beltway notables interviewed by Post staffers—often sponsored by corporations with a direct stake in the topic under discussion. A recent event titled “Infrastructure: The Road Ahead” (3/8/17) was presented by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, whose website boasts that it “provides the construction machinery…essential for society’s infrastructure.” A series of national security talks called “Securing Tomorrow” were sponsored by the weapons maker Raytheon. A “Cybersecurity Summit” (10/6/16) was presented by Palo Alto Networks, which happens to make cybersecurity products.
A session asking “Is Technology Improving Your Health?” (6/14/16) was sponsored by Philips, which
describes itself as “a leading health technology company focused on
improving people’s health.” A program on “Chasing Cancer” (12/6/16) was presented by AFLAC, an insurance company that specializes in cancer policies, with additional support from Pfizer and Genentech, makers of cancer drugs.
Vox Licks the Hand That Feeds
Vox has 36 paragraphs on why Snap is a great investment–and none of them had room to acknowledge that Vox‘s main investor just put half a billion dollars into the company.
Hours after Comcast put half a billion dollars into the Snapchat IPO, the website Vox (3/3/17) published a piece explaining why this was a wise investment: “The Case That Snap Really Is Worth $33 Billion.” One thing left unexplained by Vox’s explainer: the fact that Comcast is also Vox’s primary investor, responsible for roughly two-thirds of the site’s entire cash intake.
In 2015, Vox (9/8/15) ran a piece claiming that cable companies like Comcast were actually saving their customers money: “Comcast may not be much loved by its customers, but it has the weight of their collective voice in its bargaining over carriage fees,” a caption put it. After getting flak for not disclosing that it was writing in defense of its main backer, Vox added a line in tiny type that appeared when you clicked on a footnote (FAIR.org, 9/9/15).
