FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
When the issue is trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Times throws out its usual journalistic standards to push its pro–trade deal agenda. Therefore it is not surprising to see a story in the news section that was essentially a misleading advertisement for these trade deals.
A New York Times report on public opinion, trade and the election cherry-picks numbers to make voters seem more pro-“free trade.”
President Obama is pulling out all the stops in pushing the TPP, and it seems the New York Times has decided to abandon journalistic principles to join this effort.
In pushing trade agreements, it is fair to say anything, even if it has no relationship to the truth. Therefore it is not surprising to see Fareed Zakaria pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by claiming that it will boost growth.
“These are specific choices. Interests that wanted to pursue certain strategies for their maximizing of profits got their protections to help them offshore, put in specific instruments called NAFTA, WTO, that deliver a specific version of globalization.”
Few ideas are as hard-wired into current corporate media as the notion that so-called “free trade” agreements of the sort we have are best for everyone. Given that the deals are not primarily about trade, and that what freedom they entail accrues to corporations and not people, you could say the very use of the term “free trade” implies a bias,
News “explainer” Vox ran a seemingly innocuous write-up on Friday of President Barack Obama appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon the night before, “slow jamming” the benefits of the highly controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. It would be funny if it weren’t a borderline parody of everything wrong with corporate-owned “new media”:
It is likely that performers will get less than 10 cents for every dollar of lost benefits to consumers, and their take may well end up being less than one cent per dollar. Unfortunately, the New York Times never mentioned these losses at all, ignoring the well-known benefits of free trade.
“Both sides want to include something we haven’t seen before much in trade agreements, what’s called regulatory cooperation, so basically establishing a lot of new roadblocks to new rules. Any kind of new rule on, say, food safety or toxic chemicals or what have you would have to go through this whole obstacle course of different cost/benefit analyses and different things that would slow down new rules.”
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), like all such agreements, was being negotiated in secret–until Greenpeace Netherlands released classified documents revealing elements of the deal the EU and the US were moving merrily toward — now some say the pact may be scuttled.
The New York Times, reporting that a final agreement had been reached on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a still-secret commercial agreement involving 12 nations in Asia and the Americas, subtly sneered at critics for opposing a document that they had not been allowed to see yet.
The New York Times subtly sneered at TPP critics for opposing a document that they haven’t been allowed to see yet.
It is amazing how the elite media can be dragged along by their noses into accepting that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) can have a big impact on trade and growth.
Wall Street executive Steve Rattner had a column (8/14/15) in the New York Times in which he derided Donald Trump’s economics by minimizing the impact of trade on the labor market.
Elizabeth Jensen talked to Neal Carruth, a senior editor on NPR’s business desk, who said that had the piece by Yuki Noguchi been longer, it “could have devoted more space to the opposition’s views regarding the business community’s win.” But, he said, “the piece did not ignore the opposition.”
Three corporate lobbyists were all the voices National Public Radio chose to air on the victory of fast-track–ignoring the literally thousands of labor, environmental and other public interest groups that strenuously opposed giving Obama special authority to negotiate trade deals.
It hasn’t been probing media coverage that’s roughened the road for the corporate power grab known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership; public interest activism is the missing piece in much top-down media coverage. Plus: To hear media tell it, the EPA found that fracking doesn’t pose any widespread harm to drinking water. Is that really what the science said?
The New York Times pundit pulled out all the stops, using his column to yell at “Tea Party” Democrats for not supporting the fast-track authority that would facilitate passage of the TPP.
Virtually every organized Democratic constituency made it clear that defeating fast track was a top priority. Yet all these movements tended to drop out of establishment media accounts of the fast track fight, leaving labor as the lone opponent.
TPP supporters claim that over 10 years, the trade pact could increase US GDP by as much as half as much as it was decreased by last winter’s snowy weather. That’s probably overly optimistic.
