Torture Enablers Spin Unreleased Senate Report
The Senate’s report on CIA torture will be released in a matter of days, so why the need to give defenders of torture a platform to excuse themselves in advance?
The Question of US ‘Democracy Promotion’ in the Newspaper of Record
Today’s New York Times has a piece about whether the Obama administration is as committed to a policy of “democracy promotion” as the Bush administration had been. To anyone familiar with US history of inhibiting and undermining democracies, the whole concept must seem rather absurd.
Media Lean Left, Say Journalists Who Don’t Really Say That
When establishment journalists were asked about whether media leaned left, so little in their responses addressed what would seem to be the fundamental question: Does what is actually in the media suggest a liberal bias?
Still Getting Gitmo Wrong
President Barack Obama’s address yesterday on U.S. terror strategies got a lot of attention for supposedly charting a new course in America’s longest war. But some of the facts were mangled along the way.
Obama, Bill Clinton and the Need to Move Rightward
In corporate media, some political arguments are treated as indisputable fact. One of the most important: Democrats win by moving to the right. In the New York Times (5/3/12), Peter Baker offers the latest example: Mr. Obama, who campaigned on Sunday with Mr. Clinton, seems to be following his Democratic predecessor’s playbook. After a generation […]
The Sentence That Sums Up What Was Wrong With Election Coverage
Here’s the sentence that sums up what was wrong with election coverage ’10, courtesy of the New York Times‘ Peter Baker (11/3/10): Was this the natural and unavoidable backlash in a time of historic economic distress, or was it a repudiation of a big-spending activist government? Clearly, the economy was the main thing on the […]
Election Coverage Meme: Obama Needs an ‘Enemy’
One strand of conventional wisdom among elite D.C. reporters is that losing the midterm elections would be a good thing for the White House. Hence New York Times reporter Peter Baker (10/24/10): WASHINGTON — Let there be no mistake: President Obama wants the Democrats to win next week’s midterm elections. His voice has gone hoarse […]
It’s Hard to Make a Flat Line Sound Sexy
A New York Times article (4/23/10) by Peter Baker and David Herszenhorn remarks of Barack Obama: With his poll numbers sagging, the choreographed confrontation seemed aimed at tapping the nation’s antiestablishment mood as well as muscling financial regulation legislation through Congress. While Obama’s confrontation with the financial industry was no doubt choreographed, are his poll […]
The Debate Over Afghanistan—Newspapers Are Full of It
In his Week in Review piece wondering if Obama’s Afghanistan policy is akin to LBJ and Vietnam, New York Times reporter Peter Baker notes that the public mood is seeping into the media: That growing disenchantment in the countryside is increasingly mirrored in Washington, where liberals in Congress are speaking out more vocally against the […]
NYT Sotomayor ‘Analysis’ = What Republicans Are Thinking
Under the headline “Future Nominations Are at Stake in Hearing,” New York Times reporters Peter Baker and Charlie Savage suggested that Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination is a given; the real battle among partisans and legal activists is “to define the parameters of an acceptable nomination in case another seat opens up during Mr. Obama’s presidency.” Interesting, […]
NYT: Obama Appoints ‘Swahili-Speaking’ Envoy to Sudan
The New York Times‘ Peter Baker reports today (3/18/09) that Obama has tapped “a Swahili-speaking retired Air Force officer who grew up in Africa as the son of missionaries” to be his special envoy to Sudan. Does Baker or his Times editors realize that they don’t speak Swahili in Sudan? It’s like reporting that Obama […]
NYT Steadfastly Lowers the Political Discourse
Jane Kim of CJR.org (3/9/09) quotes some of the reactions to a New York Times reporter asking Barack Obama if he is “a socialist as some people have suggested”: Jason Linkins of the Huffington Post cracks that “the New York Times was THAT CLOSE to a journalistic coup!” and American Prospect‘s Ezra Klein wants to […]
