Soundbites May 2016

Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange irresponsibly helped overthrow the dictators of Tunisia and Egypt and end the occupation of Iraq.

‘We’re Not WikiLeaks’—Unfortunately

Gerald Kyle, the director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that coordinated the release of the tax haven documents known as the Panama Papers, was quoted in Wired (4/4/16): “We’re not WikiLeaks. We’re trying to show that journalism can be done responsibly.”

WikiLeaks is best known for the Pentagon and State Department documents that were exposed by Chelsea Manning, including secret videotape of a US helicopter firing on Reuters reporters. Manning’s revelations are credited with toppling dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as forcing the United States to complete the withdrawal of most of its troops from Iraq as promised (Slate, 6/4/13). A subsequent investigation by the Pentagon found “no instances…of any individual killed by enemy forces as a result of having been named in the releases” (Guardian, 7/13/13).

As a result of her whistleblowing, Manning is now serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth. Investigative journalists should aspire to be as responsible as she was.

When Cokie Roberts is your firebrand, things have come to quite a pass.

The Limits of Opinion at NPR

You might not think it would be particularly controversial for a commentator to say that if Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president, “the reputation of the United States would suffer a devastating blow around the world.” But when Cokie Roberts co-wrote that column (with husband Steve Roberts—Topeka Capital Journal, 2/26/16), she was basically called on the carpet by NPR, where she has worked as a commentator for many years. Morning Edition host David Greene (3/14/16) admonished her:

Objectivity is so fundamental to what we do. Can you blame people like me for being a little disappointed to hear you come out and take a personal position on something like this in a campaign?

Obviously, “objectivity” is not particularly fundamental to being a commentator—nor has Roberts been particularly objective over the years: She told David Letterman (Extra!, 11­–12/01) she was “a total sucker for the guys who stand up with all the ribbons on and stuff”—meaning military officials—and “so when they say stuff, I tend to believe it”; her advice to Bill Clinton (Extra!, 1–2/95) after the Republican congressional victories of 1994 was “move to the right, which is the advice that somebody should have given him a long time ago.”

It’s interesting that taking those kinds of positions doesn’t get you in trouble at NPR—but declaring your opposition to Donald Trump’s “throwing out undocumented immigrants” and “barring Muslims from entering the country” does.

JOHN LOCHER/AP

‘Largely White and Rural’ = Largely Urban and Non-White

“Bernie Sanders dominated the Pacific Northwest Saturday, gaining victories over Hillary Clinton in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington state Democratic caucuses,” CNN’s Chris Moody (3/28/16) reported:

These caucus states—largely white and rural—are the type of places Sanders traditionally does well. In order to win the nomination, he must replicate this success in other, more ethnically diverse states that hold primaries, as he did in Michigan last month.

In fact, Hawaii is only 25 percent white—the least-white state in the country—and Alaska, at 67 percent white, is less white than 44 other states. Washington state is 77 percent white, a little whiter than the US average of 72 percent, but still less white than 26 other states.

Nor are these states “largely rural”: Hawaii, at 92 percent urbanized, is the 5th-most urban state. Washington, 84 percent urban, is No. 16. Even Alaska, while more rural than the average state, is 66 percent urban.

NYT’s Unpaid Ad for Private Pensions

The New York Times (3/17/16) ran a story based on a Citigroup study that warned about the dangers of public pensions:

Twenty countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have promised their retirees a total $78 trillion, much of it unfunded, according to the Citigroup report.

As economist Dean Baker (FAIR.org, 3/21/16) pointed out, that’s roughly 4 percent of these nations’ projected GDP over the next 80 years, which sounds much less alarming. But the Citigroup study acknowledged what the Times story didn’t, which is that private-pension operators like Citigroup have an obvious incentive to make public pensions sound untrustworthy: “Finally, the silver lining of the pensions crisis is for product providers such as insurers and asset managers.” It’s unclear, though, how readers are supposed to benefit from this scaremongering.

Why No Who?

Examining a year’s worth of anonymity in the New York Times (FAIR.org, 3/29/16), media critic Reed Richardson found at least 1,538 articles by Times reporters in 2015 that acknowledged concealing a source’s identity. (Counting wire stories, the Times published nearly 15 stories a day with unnamed sources.) Of the in-house stories, 190 violated the paper’s guidelines by failing to offer any justification for not using the source’s name, while another 133 resorted to the unhelpful tautology that the source was “not authorized to talk to the media.”

Richardson listed some of the other “sometimes absurd, sometimes contrived reasons” offered by the Times for withheld names, including “afraid of looking bad,” “always wanted to be an anonymous source,” “hoped to be asked to play [golf with President Obama] again,” “did not want to affect his company’s stock price,” “as is customary before meetings of eurozone ministers” and “to treat a delicate situation with a level of candor frowned upon in politics.”