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This week on CounterSpin: You can’t say elite US news media aren’t on the story of the federal indictment of Robert Menendez, Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But articles like the New York Times’ “As Menendez’s Star Rose, Fears of Corruption Cast a Persistent Shadow” represent media embrace of the “great man of history” theme: The story is mostly about the political fortunes of an individual; the huge numbers of less powerful people impacted by those compromised decisions are, at best, backdrop.
When they try to tighten it into a “takeaway,” it can get weirder still: That Times piece’s headline included the idea that “the New Jersey Democrat broke barriers for Latinos. But prosecutors circled for decades before charging him with an explosive new bribery plot.”
Come again?
If elite media’s takeaway from the Menendez indictment is that some people over-favor their friends and like gold bars—that’s a storyline that leads nowhere, calls nothing into question beyond the individual actors themselves. Is that the coverage we need? What does it even have to do with foreign policy?
Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. His most recent book, co-authored with Jacob Mundy, is Western Sahara: War, Nationalism and Conflict Irresolution, out now in a revised, updated edition from Syracuse University Press.
We talk with him about what’s at stake in the Menendez indictment beyond Menendez’s “political fortunes.”
Transcript: ‘Most Americans Really Do Feel Pretty Strongly About Human Rights’
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of the FCC and the 1973 Chilean coup.
Re: Zunes-Menendez indictment conversation:
Besides Menendez and Shumer, wasn’t Ben Cardin (now succeeding Menendez as chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee) another Democratic Senator to vote against Obama’s Iran Nuclear agreement?
And isn’t one reason that Egypt gets all that aid from us a lingering payback for signing onto Jimmy Carter’s Camp David Accords?
And isn’t it worth mentioning that Menendez’ claim that he stashed money at home because of his family having had assets confiscated by Cuba probably meant as a dog whistle to stir up his right-wing anti-Castro Cuban constituency in Florida and New Jersey to storm the gates for him now that he needs support?
Re: His family having assets confiscated by Cuba – They left that country before Castro’s revolution, during the times of the US-backed Batista dictatorship. He’s a lying liar.
Has little to do with him being Hispanic than him being a crook and traitor. Can be any race or color to do so. He was given a public trust which he abused. What kind of Hispanic and American is shameful. His Latino ancestors dream of this for their children in America? He has a record of this and got away with it until he got too greedy. Get him off the Senate committees now Schumer.
The question of aid I agree. Now Israeli leader is a dictator too. They are not a democracy. I question it since we have huge debt and homeless numbers. We care about our own?
Has little to do with him being Hispanic than him being a crook and traitor. Can be any race or color to do so. He was given a public trust which he abused. What kind of Hispanic and American is shameful. His Latino ancestors dream of this for their children in America? He has a record of this and got away with it until he got too greedy. Get him off the Senate committees now Schumer. It is your duty.
The question of aid I agree. Now Israeli leader is a dictator too. They are not a democracy. I question it since we have huge debt and homeless numbers. We care about our own? No arms sales are more important than human rights since it pads their pockets.