Chris Hedges Defends Snowden's Heroism in the Face of a Growing Smear Campaign

Media  

Democracy Now! / By Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges, Geoffrey Stone

Chris Hedges Defends Snowden's Heroism in the Face of a Growing Smear Campaign

Hedges: "If there are no Snowdens, if there are no Mannings, if there are no Assanges, there will be no free press."

 

 

 

 

June 18, 2013  |  

 

 

In this excellent debate from Democracy Now!, Chris Hedges makes a brilliant defense of Edward Snowden, and the collapse of our institutions:

"Unfortunately, the press, like most institutions in this country, and I would add the legal profession, has largely collapsed under this corporate coup d’état that’s taken place and is no longer functioning. And I want to get back, that what this is fundamentally a debate about is whether we are going to have, through the press, an independent institution within this country that can examine the inner workings of power or not. And it is now—I mean, many of us had suspected this widespread surveillance, but now that it’s confirmed, we’re seeing—you know, why did Snowden come out publicly? Well, because I think he knew that they would find out anyway, because they have all of Glenn Greenwald’s email, phone records and everything else, and they can very quickly find out who he was speaking to and whether Snowden had contact with him. And that—I speak as reporter—is terrifying, because it essentially shuts down any ability to counter the official propaganda and the official narrative and expose the crimes. And we have seen in the last few years tremendous crimes being committed by those in power. We have no ability now to investigate them."

The full transcript is well-worth reading to the bottom 

Edward Snowden’s decision to leak a trove of secret documents outlining the NSA’s surveillance program has elicited a range of reactions. Among his detractors, he’s been called "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison," (Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker), who’s committed "an act of treason," (Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee). To supporters, Snowden is a hero for showing that "our very humanity [is] being compromised by the blind implementation of machines in the name of making us safe," (author Douglas Rushkoff), one whom President Obama should "thank and offer him a job as a White House technology advisor," (American Conservative editor Scott McConnell). We host a debate with two guests: Chris Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, and Geoffrey Stone, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Stone served as an informal adviser to President Obama in 2008, years after hiring him to teach constitutional law.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to a debate on Edward Snowden’s decision to leak a trove of secret documents outlining the NSA’s surveillance program. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Snowden described why he risked his career to leak the documents.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: I think that the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. When you are subverting the power of government, that that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy. And if you do that in secret consistently, you know, as the government does when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took, it will kind of get its officials a mandate to go, "Hey, you know, tell the press about this thing and that thing, so the public is on our side." But they rarely, if ever, do that when an abuse occurs. That falls to individual citizens. But they’re typically maligned. You know, it becomes a thing of these people are against the country, they’re against the government. But I’m not. I’m no different from anybody else. I don’t have special skills. I’m just another guy who sits there, day to day, in the office, watches what happening—what’s happening, and goes, "This is something that’s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong." And I’m willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say, "I didn’t change these. I didn’t modify the story. This is the truth. This is what’s happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this."

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Edward Snowden’s actions have elicited a range of reactions. Jeffrey Toobin of CNN and The New Yorker writes that Snowden is, quote, "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison." Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Snowden should not be considered a whistleblower because, quote, "what he did was an act of treason." And Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina tweeted, "I hope we follow Mr Snowden to the ends of the earth to bring him to justice," language echoing what Senator Graham once said in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Douglas Rushkoff wrote on CNN, quote, "Snowden is a hero because he realized [that] our very humanity was being compromised by the blind implementation of machines in the name of making us safe," unquote. The editor of The American Conservative, Scott McConnell, wrote, quote, "If Obama wanted to do something smart, he should thank Snowden and offer him a job as a White House technology advisor." And Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg sang Snowden’s praises, writing, quote, "In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release ofNSA material—and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago."

For more, we host a debate on Edward Snowden. Is he a hero or a criminal, whistleblower or a traitor? Here in New York, we’re joined by Chris Hedges, senior fellow at The Nation Institute; was a foreign correspondent for The New York Timesfor 15 years, was part of a team of reporters that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism; author, along with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, of the New York Times best-seller Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt . His most recent article is called "The Judicial Lynching of Bradley Manning" at Truthdig.org.

And in Chicago, Illinois, we’re joined by Geoffrey Stone, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. His recent piece for The Huffington Post is called "Edward Snowden: 'Hero or Traitor'?" Stone served as an informal adviser to President Obama in 2008. In 1992, 20 years ago, Professor Stone hired Obama to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago. Geoffrey Stone is also author of many books, including Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark and Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime: From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism.

Chris Hedges, Geoffrey Stone, we welcome you both to Democracy Now! Professor Stone, I want to begin with you. In your piece, you say that Edward Snowden’s actions were criminal. Can you explain why you feel he should be in jail?

GEOFFREY STONE: Well, there is a federal statute that makes it a crime for public employees who have been granted access to classified information to reveal that information to persons who are unauthorized to receive it. So, from a simple, straightforward, technical legal standpoint, there’s absolutely no question that Snowden violated the law. And from that standpoint, if he’s tried, he will be convicted, and he is in fact, from that perspective, a criminal. Whether one admires what he did is another question, but it doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not what he did was unlawful.

The question, why I think he deserves punishment, is—he said it actually himself in the clip that you played earlier: He said, "I’m just an ordinary guy." Well, the fact is, he’s just an ordinary guy with absolutely no expertise in public policy, in the law, in national security. He’s a techie. He made the decision on his own, without any authorization, without any approval by the American people, to reveal classified information about which he had absolutely no expertise in terms of the danger to the nation, the value of the information to national security. That was a completely irresponsible and dangerous thing to do. Whether we think it was a positive thing in the long run or not is a separate question, but it was clearly criminal.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Hedges, your response?

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, what we’re really having a debate about is whether or not we’re going to have a free press left or not. If there are no Snowdens, if there are no Mannings, if there are no Assanges, there will be no free press. And if the press—and let’s not forget that Snowden gave this to The Guardian. This was filtered through a press organization in a classic sort of way whistleblowers provide public information about unconstitutional, criminal activity by their government to the public. So the notion that he’s just some individual standing up and releasing stuff over the Internet is false.

But more importantly, what he has exposed essentially shows that anybody who reaches out to the press to expose fraud, crimes, unconstitutional activity, which this clearly appears to be, can be traced and shut down. And that’s what’s so frightening. So, we are at a situation now, and I speak as a former investigative reporter for The New York Times, by which any investigation into the inner workings of government has become impossible. That’s the real debate.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Chris, how do you respond to the point that Geoffrey Stone made and how Snowden identified himself as an ordinary guy? Should any regular government employee or contractor be allowed to disclose whatever information he feels the public ought to be privy to, whether it’s classified by the government and his employer or her employer or not?

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, if—that is what an act of conscience is. And reporters live—our sort of daily fare is built, investigative reporters, off of people who, within systems of power, have a conscience to expose activities by the power elite which are criminal in origin or unconstitutional. And that’s precisely what he did. And he did it in the traditional way, which was going to a journalist, Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian, and having it vetted by that publication before it was put out to the public. Was it a criminal? Well, yes, but it was—I suppose, in a technical sense, it was criminal, but set against the larger crime that is being committed by the state. When you have a system by which criminals are in power, criminals on Wall Street who are able to carry out massive fraud with no kinds of repercussions or serious regulation or investigation, criminals who torture in our black sites, criminals who carry out targeted assassinations, criminals who lie to the American public to prosecute preemptive war, which under international law is illegal, if you are a strict legalist, as apparently Professor Stone is, what you’re in essence doing is protecting criminal activity. I would argue that in large sections of our government it’s the criminals who are in power.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Stone, your response?

GEOFFREY STONE: Well, first of all, there is, so far as I can tell from
everything that’s been revealed, absolutely nothing illegal or criminal about these programs. They may be terrible public policy—I’m not sure I approve of it at all—but the fact is the claim that they’re unconstitutional and illegal is wildly premature. Certainly from the standpoint of what’s been released so far, whether Mr. Hedges likes it or not, or whether Mr. Snowdon likes it or not, these are not unconstitutional or illegal programs.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to a letter that you co-signed, Professor Stone, in 2006 with other prominent attorneys about NSA surveillance under President Bush. You were criticizing it. You wrote, quote, "Although the program’s secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department’s defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law." How do you compare that to what we’re seeing today?

GEOFFREY STONE: They’re two completely different programs. The Bush NSAsurveillance program was enacted in direct defiance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Obama program, if we want to call it that, was approved by Congress. That’s number one. Number two is, the Bush program involved wiretapping of the contents of phone conversations. The Supreme Court has long held that that is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, if there’s not an individualized determination of probable cause. The Obama program, if we want to call it that, does not involve wiretapping; it involves phone numbers. And the Supreme Court has long held that the government is allowed to obtain phone records, bank records, library records, purchase records, once you disclose that information to a third party. And there is no Fourth Amendment violation. So they’re two completely different programs.

AMY GOODMAN: But if you just heard our conversation with the mathematician Susan Landau, she argued that often metadata is more revealing than the transcript of an actual conversation. Do you think the law should change, Geoffrey Stone, to include this metadata?

GEOFFREY STONE: Well, I’m not persuaded by her argument that it’s more revealing. I do believe that it’s problematic, and I think, in fact, there should be statutes that prohibit the gathering of this type of data by private entities, as well as by the government, in the absence of at least a compelling justification. And I thought the Supreme Court’s decisions initially on this question were wrong. So I would certainly want to see them differently. But in terms of what the law is, it’s not unconstitutional, it’s not illegal, and it’s completely different from what the Bush administration was doing.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Chris Hedges, do you agree that—

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, there are plenty of lawyers who disagree with Professor Stone.

GEOFFREY STONE: Not many.

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, the ACLU has just issued a lawsuit over this, claiming that it’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So, I haven’t done a poll. Frankly, the legal profession, under this steady assault of civil liberties, can’t hold its head very high. There are a few out there, at the ACLU—

GEOFFREY STONE: Unlike—unlike the journalistic profession?

CHRIS HEDGES: —Michael Ratner and a few others. But, you know—

AMY GOODMAN: Geoffrey Stone, aren’t you on the board of the ACLU, or were you?

GEOFFREY STONE: I’m on the National Advisory Council.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes. So what do you think of them suing the government over this?

GEOFFREY STONE: I think it’s great. I think that they are perfectly right to bring the question. That’s their job. Their job is to challenge whether or not things are constitutional, to raise those questions. That’s exactly what they should be doing. Doesn’t mean they’re always right, but they should be presenting these questions to the courts. That’s their job. That’s their responsibility.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Chris Hedges, one of the problems that people have pointed to is that there aren’t procedures or mechanisms in place for people within the government to point out wrongdoing when it does occur. Do you think that’s one of the problems that’s occurred in this case with Edward Snowden? Or, for that matter, your most recent article was on Army whistleblower, Private Bradley Manning.

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, we used to have a mechanism. It was called the press. And we used to be able to tell our sources that they would be protected and that they would not be investigated for providing information that exposed the inner workings of power. Unfortunately, the press, like most institutions in this country, and I would add the legal profession, has largely collapsed under this corporate coup d’état that’s taken place and is no longer functioning. And I want to get back, that what this is fundamentally a debate about is whether we are going to have, through the press, an independent institution within this country that can examine the inner workings of power or not. And it is now—I mean, many of us had suspected this widespread surveillance, but now that it’s confirmed, we’re seeing—you know, why did Snowden come out publicly? Well, because I think he knew that they would find out anyway, because they have all of Glenn Greenwald’s email, phone records and everything else, and they can very quickly find out who he was speaking to and whether Snowden had contact with him. And that—you know, I speak as reporter—is terrifying, because it essentially shuts down any ability to counter the official propaganda and the official narrative and expose the crimes. And we have seen in the last few years tremendous crimes being committed by those in power. We have no ability now to investigate them.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Stone, let me ask you about whether the reporters from The Guardian and The Washington Post should be prosecuted. CNN’s Anderson Cooper put this question to Republican Congressmember Peter King of New York last night.

ANDERSON COOPER: As far as reporters who helped reveal these programs, do you believe something should happen to them? Do you believe they should be punished, as well?

REP. PETER KING: Actually, if they—if they willingly knew that this was classified information, I think actions should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude. I know that the whole issue of leaks has been gone into over the last month, but I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Stone, your response to what Peter King is saying?

GEOFFREY STONE: He’s just wrong. The Supreme Court, in the Pentagon Papers case, for example, made very clear that although Daniel Ellsberg could be prosecuted for—as a public official stealing information, that The New York Times and The Washington Post could not be restrained from publishing that information. The court has essentially held that although the government can control classified information at its source by prohibiting employees from revealing it, once the information goes out, it cannot then punish the press for publishing it. It’s a little bit odd as a system. But the idea is that, on the one hand, we have freedom of the press, which has to be preserved; on the other hand, the government has a legitimate interest in maintaining confidentiality at the source within the government itself. So, no, clearly, Greenwald and Reuters and so on, none of those can be — The Guardian, none of those can be punished, consistent with the First Amendment. That’s clear.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Stone, so do you believe that Edward Snowden’s position is comparable to Daniel Ellsberg’s position with the Pentagon Papers and that The Guardian played a comparable role to The New York Times?

GEOFFREY STONE: So, I think Snowden’s position, based upon what I know now, is much worse. Ellsberg revealed historical information that had really no appreciable threat to the national security. It was all old information about what the government had done in the past. And what Snowden has revealed is information about ongoing programs, which, we’re told, are extremely important to the national security, and we’re told that the revelation of those programs makes them far less efficient. That’s a very serious—potentially very serious harm to the nation. That was not the case in Ellsberg’s situation.

AMY GOODMAN: But, Professor Stone—

GEOFFREY STONE: So I think, from that standpoint, what—

AMY GOODMAN: Henry Kissinger said—

GEOFFREY STONE: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —Dan Ellsberg was "the most dangerous man in America," so they certainly—at that time, they were telling us that what he was doing was threatening national security.

GEOFFREY STONE: He said that at the time before they had an opportunity to really reflect on what was released. Years later, or even weeks later, that was no longer the case. So, I think that those two situations are not remotely comparable, in terms of the harm that Ellsberg did to the country, which I think was trivial, relative to what Snowden has done, which arguably is far more serious.

Let me make another point about civil liberties here, by the way, that it’s extremely important to understand that if you want to protect civil liberties in this country, you not only have to protect civil liberties, you also have to protect against terrorism, because what will destroy civil liberties in this country more effectively than anything else is another 9/11 attack. And if the government is not careful about that, and if we have more attacks like that, you can be sure that the kind of things the government is doing now are going to be regarded as small potatoes compared to what would happen in the future. So it’s very complicated, asking what’s the best way to protect civil liberties in the United States.

CHRIS HEDGES: I just don’t buy this argument that, you know, this hurts national security. I covered al-Qaeda for The New York Times, and, believe me, they know they’re being monitored. The whole idea that somehow it comes as a great surprise to jihadist groups that their emails, websites and phone calls are being tracked is absurd. This is—we’re talking about the wholesale collection of information on virtually most of the American public, and the consequences of that are truly terrifying. At that point, we are in essence snuffing out the capacity of any kind of investigation into the inner workings of power. And to throw out this notion that it harmed—this harmed national security, there’s no evidence for that, in the same way that there is no evidence that the information that Bradley Manning leaked in any way harmed national security. It didn’t. What the security and surveillance state is doing is playing on fear and using that fear to accrue to themselves tremendous forms of power that in a civil society, in a democracy, they should never have. And that’s the battle that’s underway right now, and, frankly, we’re losing.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Professor Stone, to reflect on Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham jail written April 16, 1963, when he said, "One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law." ... Could you respond to that?

GEOFFREY STONE: Sure. Obviously, King is right. The question is whether it’s an unjust law. So, people who violate a law because they think it is unjust don’t necessarily fit within the letter from the Birmingham jail. King was talking about protesting racial segregation, and that’s a little bit different in terms of the moral status of it. Now, maybe it’s true. I mean, maybe Chris Hedges is right, and maybe that—that Snowden is a hero, and maybe this is all a fraud on the part of the government, this information serves no useful purpose, and it’s fundamentally important to the United States that it’s been revealed. Maybe that’s true. And if it turns out to be true, then I’ll be the first to say Snowden was a hero. But at the moment, I have absolutely no reason to believe that. And to say that some people act on legitimate conscience and therefore violate unjust laws is not to say that everyone who violates a law is Martin Luther King in the Birmingham jail.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to put that question to Chris, but I wanted to ask you, Geoffrey Stone, if you were Edward Snowden’s attorney, what arguments would you put forward for him right now?

GEOFFREY STONE: Legally, I don’t think he has—honestly, I don’t think he has any legal arguments that would be a defense to the charge that he violated the law about government contractors not disclosing classified information to persons who are not authorized to receive it. I don’t think he has a defense. Some people commit a crime, and they committed the crime. And I don’t know that there’s any defense sometimes.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Dan Ellsberg faced treason trial, but ultimately, the—he ended up being exonerated because of the illegal wiretapping that was done of him.

GEOFFREY STONE: Well, he wasn’t exonerated. In his case, the judge dropped the charges against him because the Nixon administration searched his psychiatrist’s office in violation of the Constitution, and the judge concluded that that was prosecutorial misconduct, and therefore dismissed the prosecution. If the government does something similar in Snowden’s case and the court finds that it’s a violation of his constitutional rights in the course of the investigation and dismisses the charges, that would be something, as his lawyer, I’d certainly want to know. But on the merits of the charge as they presently—as it presently stands, I think it’s a sentencing question, not a criminality question.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Hedges, if you could respond to the King quote and the significance of what Snowden did?

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, without figures like Snowden, without figures like Manning, without figures like Julian Assange, essentially, the blinds are drawn. We have no window into what’s being done in our name, including the crimes that are being done in our name. Again, I—you know, having worked as an investigative reporter, the lifeblood of my work were figures like these, who had the moral courage to stand up and name the crimes that they witnessed. And these people are always, at the moment that they stand up—and even King, of course, was persecuted and reviled and denounced, hounded by J. Edgar Hoover, who attempted, through blackmail, to get him to commit suicide before accepting the Nobel Prize. Let’s not forget that all of these figures, like Snowden, come under this character assassination, which, frankly, I think Professor Stone is engaging in. And that’s not uncommon. That’s what comes with the territory when you carry out an act of conscience. It’s a very lonely and frightening—and it makes these figures, like Snowden, deeply courageous, because, I mean, the whole debate—traitor or whistleblower—for me, you know, hearing this on the press is watching the press commit collective suicide, because without those figures, there is no press.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end with Professor Stone. You were an early adviser to President Obama. You gave him his first job at University of Chicago Law School. You were the dean of the University of Chicago Law School. What would you advise him today?

GEOFFREY STONE: I think there needs to be a really careful re-evaluation of the classification system. I—there’s no question that we wildly overclassify, and that creates all sorts of problems, both for the press and for the ability of the government to keep secrets, because if you try to keep everything secret, you don’t effectively keep very much secret. So I think that’s critical. I think there is a serious question about how we make the trade-off between security and privacy, and I think that that’s an issue that needs to be addressed carefully. Certainly, within the administration and within the government, to the extent there are genuinely secret policies that need to be kept secret, and I believe that perfectly possible, then I think that does not immunize them from serious debate by responsible people within the four corners of the administration, bringing in people who can have national security clearances to take the devil’s advocate position and challenge these issues. So I think there’s a lot that can and should be done, and I think that it’s easy to get swept up in the notion of security being the be all and end all. This is a nation that’s committed to individual privacy, to freedom of the press, to freedom of speech, and those values need to be respected. And I think government constantly has to be re-examining itself, because all the temptations are in the wrong direction.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Geoffrey Stone, before we conclude, I’d like to ask you about an article you wrote in 2011 for The New York Times called "Our Untransparent President." You wrote, quote, "The record of the Obama administration on this fundamental issue of American democracy has surely fallen short of expectations. This is a lesson in 'trust us.' Those in power are always certain that they themselves will act reasonably, and they resist limits on their own discretion. The problem is, 'trust us' is no way to run a self-governing society," end-quote. What’s your assessment of the comments that you made then relative to now and his—Obama’s record on transparency and civil liberties?

GEOFFREY STONE: Well, I think the comment was correct then, and I think it’s correct today. I think that there’s a temptation on the part of public officials to basically say, "We don’t to be hassled, we don’t want to be bothered, we don’t want to be criticized, so we’ll just do what’s in the best interest of the country, and we don’t have to tell anybody about it." And that’s a huge danger in a democracy. And—but the fact that I accept that and passionately believe it does not mean that everything the government does in confidence and in secret should not be in confidence or in secret. The problem is where to draw the line.

So, yes, I would criticize the Obama administration, in general, for being overly concerned with secrecy and not being sufficiently transparent. The point I made earlier about overclassification is a good example. But at the same time, I do recognize that there are situations in which secrecy is critical, and the problem is being able to discern when that’s necessary and when it’s not. And to do that, you need to have people within the debate who are internally challenging the necessity for secrecy and confidentiality. I don’t think the Obama administration has done a very good job of that.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Hedges, just 30 seconds, and I know that you were attending the Bradley Manning trial, but linking the two.

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, we’re talking about the death of a free press, the death of a civil society. This is far beyond a reasonable debate. We make the East German Stasi state look like the Boy Scouts. And if we don’t wrest back this power for privacy, for the capacity to investigate what our power elite is doing, I think we can essentially say our democracy has been snuffed out.

 

 

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Media  

AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore

9 COMMENTS

Why Does the NYT Refrain from Explaining the Predatory Motives of a Billionaire-Backed Think Tank?

 

By concealing the Peterson Institute's ideological bias, the paper of record is muddling the record. 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

May 27, 2013  |  

 

 

One of the all-time greatest hits of right-wing pundits is the insistence on a “liberal bias” in the media. Journalist and historian Eric Alterman exposed this myth in his 2003 book, What Liberal Media? yet it persists, often resulting in mainstream media outlets caving to a strategy known as “working the refs,” in which shrill cries of bias cause journalists and pundits to privilege right-leaning perspectives so they won’t be accused.

A disturbing example of this trend haunts the pages of the New York Times, in which the pernicious work of the decidedly right-wing Peter G. Peterson Institute is treated as ideologically unbiased while that of other organizations across the spectrum are consistently mentioned along with an ideological tag; often one designed to misguide readers on the actual nature of the organization’s agenda.
Let’s take a tour of the NYT archives.

When the Koch-backed Cato Institute is mentioned, the label “libertarian” tends to appear. An article about Ben Bernanke’s stance on China’s currency undervaluation, for example, tells us that “speakers at a conference in Washington, organized by the libertarian Cato Insitute warned that the Fed’s monetary policy could lead to asset-price bubbles….” The ideological tag alerts the reader to take the assertion with a grain of salt. The obviously right-wing Heritage Foundation is usually tag-less and never characterized as “right-leaning,” but occasionally the term “conservative” will appear when it is mentioned.

The Obama-supporting Center for American Progress is alternatively described as “liberal” or “center left” as in this article: “The center-left Center for American Progress opened in 2003 when the Democrats were in political exile.” The Institute for Policy Studies is called a “left-leaning think tank in Washington.” (AlterNet, on the rare occasion it is mentioned, is described as a “left-leaning news site.”)

Third Way, a big money front group whose governing board is totally dominated by Wall Street financiers, is absurdly characterized as a “moderately left-wing think tank,” when in fact, as Bill Black has pointed out, it is dedicated to a right-wing agenda of shredding the social safety net and imposing self-destructive austerity on America.

Which brings us to the case of the Peter G. Peterson Institute, which backs Third Way. Pete Peterson, the founder and principal doner of this “policy center” is a conservative Republican billionaire who made his money as a Wall Street hedge fund manager and served as secretary of commerce under President Richard Nixon. He has devoted himself and his billions to promoting deficit hysteria and convincing the public that programs like Social Security and Medicare will destroy the economy. His economic policies come from the far right and his organization is dedicated to producing propaganda masquerading as serious research. He has a huge and well-paid staff (and one of them will be contacting me after the publication of this article attempting to brow-beat me into telling lies about their boss).

The mythology promoted by Peterson has done incalculable harm to America. His belief in the absurd efficient market theory, in which financial markets magically regulate themselves, has helped produce widespread and continuing fraud epidemics. He has consistently pushed austerity (based, as we now know, on the discredited research of Harvard economists Reinhart and Rogoff) which has led to job loss, economic stagnation and untold misery for millions.
Yet something interesting happens when you type Peterson Institute” into the
New York Timesonline archives. Nowhere do you see the phrase “right-leaning.” When you do see a descriptor at all, it’s one of praise – Adam Davidson of the NYT Magazine, always eager to show off his affection for economic quacks, refers to the Peterson Institute as a “prominent Washington policy group.” The fact that the Peterson Institute never receives an ideogical tag conveys that its positions are neutral, and therefore highly credible.
Which is absolute bunk.

On Saturday, May 25, the NYT ran a front-page story purporting to examine a new trend in Chinese economic policy, a topic of great importance to readers. Quotations in the article come from bank officials, a Chinese government website, politicians, and exactly one think tank representative, Nicholas R. Lardy, “a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and an authority on the Chinese economy.” The reader is not informed that the positions of the Peterson Institute will tend to include free market fundamentalist economic theories that focus on discrediting economic stimulus, driving down wages and curbing regulation. All of these positions appear in the article, without any counterweight.

For what many people still consider the paper of record, this kind of reporting merely muddles the record and allows propaganda to disguise itself as truth.

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' She received her Ph.d in English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.

A Right-Wing Mole Exposed at ABC News

FAIR: Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

Extra!

Jul 01 2011

A Right-Wing Mole at ABC News

Jonathan Karl and the success of the conservative media movement

By Peter Hart

 

 


Conservatives don’t just complain loudly, endlessly and inaccurately about liberal media bias. They also train right-leaning journalists to make their way into the supposedly hostile terrain of Beltway media. And one of the most famous alums of a conservative media training program is now a major star at a network news outlet: ABC’s senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Karl came to mainstream journalism via the Collegiate Network, an organization primarily devoted to promoting and supporting right-leaning newspapers on college campuses (Extra!, 9-10/91)—such as the Rutgers paper launched by the infamous James O’Keefe (Political Correction, 1/27/10). The network, founded in 1979, is one of several projects of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which seeks to strengthen conservative ideology on college campuses. William F. Buckley was the ISI’s first president, and the current board chair is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery. Several leading right-wing pundits came out of Collegiate-affiliated papers, including Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry and Laura Ingraham (Washington Times, 11/28/04).

The Collegiate Network also provides paid internships and fellowships to place its members at corporate media outlets or influential Beltway publications; 2010-11 placements include the Hill, Roll Call, Dallas Morning News and USA Today. The program’s highest-profile alum is Karl, who was a Collegiate fellow at the neoliberal New Republic magazine.

After a stint at the New York Post, Karl soon found his way to CNN, but he was still connected to ideological pursuits; he was a board member at the right-leaning youth-oriented Third Millennium group and at the Madison Center for Educational Affairs—which, like the Collegiate Network, seeks to strengthen young conservative journalism. After moving to ABC in 2003, Karl contributed several pieces to the neo-con Weekly Standard, such as his April 4, 2005 article praising Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as out to “make her mark with the vigorous pursuit of the president’s freedom and democracy agenda.”

Karl’s high profile at ABC demonstrates that conservative messages can find a comfortable home inside the so-called “liberal” media. Karl channeled former ABC corporate cheerleader John Stossel with a segment (3/5/11) complaining that regulation of the egg and poultry industries was “almost embarrassing,” since different government agencies regulate different aspects of the industries. “Got that?” Karl asked. “Fifteen separate agencies have responsibility for food safety.”

During the rollout of Paul Ryan’s budget plan, Karl (1/26/11) gushed that the Republican media darling was “a little like the guy in the movie Dave, the accidental president who sets out to fix the budget, line by line.” And while Democrats were saying Ryan “is a villain,” Karl was clear about which side he was on: “Ryan knows what he sees.... Paul Ryan is on a mission, determined to do the seemingly impossible: Actually balance the federal budget.” (Actually, even with its draconian spending cuts and absurdly optimistic economic assumptions, the Ryan plan still foresees a cumulative deficit of $62 trillion over the next half century—Congressional Budget Office, 1/27/10.)

On a This Week roundtable (2/20/11), Karl declared that state budget debates were “the Tea Party’s moment” and “also the Chris Christie phenomenon. Will politicians be rewarded for making tough choices—again, something I don’t think we’ve ever seen happen?” Of course, it’s hard not to conclude that the “tough choices” made by Christie and other Republicans are the ones that ought to be rewarded.

And in one World News segment (2/14/11), Karl likened the federal budget to stacks of pennies in order to demonstrate that deeper spending cuts would be necessary in order to balance the budget. Karl concluded that “the bottom line, Diane, is unless you’re willing to talk about cutting entitlements or defense or both, really, there’s no way you can even think about balancing the budget.” This is not actually true—one could raise revenues by increasing taxes on the wealthy—but it is how Republicans want to frame the budget debate.

Perfectly unbalanced factchecking

Karl is often tapped by ABC to offer factcheck segments, and the results frequently reinforce some of the misinformation that is supposed to be corrected, or attempt to spread the blame to “both sides.” During the debate over extending the Bush tax cuts, conservatives complained that a tax increase on the top 2 percent would actually be a crushing burden on small business owners. Karl’s “factcheck” interviewed two small business owners who claimed they would be adversely affected. One said an increase in his personal tax bill would cost him between $20,000 and $40,000, and the other claimed a potential tax bill increase of $120,000. If these estimates were true, Karl’s small businessmen were making enormous amounts of money—upwards of $700,000 a year for the first, nearly $3 million for the second (FAIR Action Alert, 9/13/10). That was never explained to ABC viewers.

Karl’s report, ironically enough, was supposed to be a “factcheck” of Democratic claims that the tax cuts would not affect many small businesses—about 2 percent. Karl finally admitted this was true—and then made it sound less so: “894,000 small businesses that would see their taxes go up. A small percentage, but a large number of small businesses.”

Karl produced one factcheck (10/25/10) of political rhetoric about the stimulus package. This would seem to be an easy one; some Republican candidates were claiming that the stimulus either created no jobs, or actually led to millions of lost jobs—both of which, as Karl noted, were not true. But due to the apparent need to create “balance,” Karl followed that debunking by stating, “The most extravagant claim related to the stimulus, though, comes from Harry Reid.” What followed was a short soundbite of the Nevada Democrat saying, “But for me, we’d be in a worldwide depression.” Karl’s retort: “Hmm, maybe not.”

Reid’s comment, however, did not seem to refer to the economic stimulus plan at all. It was drawn from an interview with MSNBC host Ed Schultz (10/21/10), where Reid was talking about the perils of campaigning in an economic downturn: “So people have been hurting, and I understand that, and it doesn’t give them comfort or solace for me to tell them, you know, ‘But for me, we’d be in a worldwide depression.’ They want to know what I’ve done for them.” How Karl came to use this quote as an example of stimulus extravagance is hard to fathom, but it was prominently featured on right-leaning websites like the Drudge Report.

Though not billed as a “factcheck,” Karl did something similar for a report on This Week (4/3/11) about the budget debate. Tea Party activists make unrelenting demands about spending cuts, explained Karl—before pivoting to say:

Democrats have their hotheads, too. One Obama administration official said the Republican bill, which cuts $5 billion from the Agency for International Development would kill kids. That’s right: Kill kids.

What Karl considered hotheaded extremism was the claim that deaths in poor countries will occur due to, among other things, cuts to USAID’s anti-malaria programs. Others will die because of a lack of life-saving medicines or cuts in programs fighting infant mortality. That cutting health aid to poor countries will cost lives, apparently, is a claim only a “hothead” would make.

Stimulus cop: looking for pork!

One of the most frequent themes of Karl’s ABC reporting is government spending. After the passage of the economic stimulus bill, Karl set out to track potential signs of wasteful “pork.” According to anchor Diane Sawyer (2/10/11), “Jon Karl really is a Sherlock Holmes of waste in Washington.” What he produced was a series of trivial reports that seemed to mimic standard Republican complaints about government waste: Two reports complaining about Recovery Act signs (7/14/10, 7/10/09), a railroad/flood prevention project in California’s Napa Valley “wine country” (2/2/10), and small airports receiving government funding (4/23/09, 9/18/09).

In the midst of these reports, Karl could go back to more mundane complaints about government spending, which usually mean relying on Republican politicians for your research: “For the past week, [John] McCain has been twittering a daily top 10 list of the bill’s porkiest projects,” Karl (3/4/09) reported about a government spending bill. “Today’s top 10 includes $150,000 for lobster research, $950,000 for a convention center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.”
A few months later Karl wasn’t just reading McCain’s Twitter feed—he had a downright “exclusive” from McCain and Republican Sen. Tom Coburn. On ABC’s Good Morning America (8/3/10), Karl outlined the Republican complaints, mocking the stimulus bill for including “nearly $1 million for the California Academy of Sciences to study exotic ants.” (How crazy to study potential pest species—it’s not like California has a $37 billion agriculture industry or anything.)

On another program (12/20/10), Karl derided a government “cow burp study”—related to the trivial problem of global climate change—while earlier he joked (6/16/09): “Why did the turtle cross the road? Because $3.4 million in stimulus money hadn’t been spent yet to build them a tunnel. But that’s about to change.”
It’s a timeless theme. “The bill is supposed to fund government operations,” he explained on one newscast (2/24/09) “but it includes things like more than $1 million for so-called ‘Mormon crickets’ in Utah, $200,000 for tattoo removal in Los Angeles and $443,000 to control beavers in Mississippi.” If Republican congressional leaders ever need someone to fill in on their PR team, Karl would be a perfect fit.

What’s striking about Jonathan Karl’s reporting, however, is that it’s not flagrant Fox News-type bias. Rather, Karl comes across as a somewhat exaggerated version of the kind of Beltway center-right conventional wisdom you’re likely to see on any network newscast. Perhaps the lesson is that right-wing pressure to push the news business to the right has been so successful, a conservative movement plant fits right in.

Extra! July 2011

 

ABC’s Jonathan Karl is an Alumnus of a Conservative Media Training Program

ABC’s Jonathan Karl is an Alumnus of a Conservative Media Training Program 

 By: Sarah JonesMay. 18th, 2013

 



ABC’s senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl, of the now infamous Benghazi email lie, is an alumnus of a conservative media training program Collegiate Network. He stands now accused of making himself vulnerable to being used for political purposes, as he still refuses to apologize for taking the word of a Republican and passing it off as having access to the actual documents.

Fair Org reported:

Karl came to mainstream journalism via the Collegiate Network, an organization primarily devoted to promoting and supporting right-leaning newspapers on college campuses (Extra!, 9-10/91)—such as the Rutgers paper launched by the infamous James O’Keefe (Political Correction, 1/27/10). The network, founded in 1979, is one of several projects of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which seeks to strengthen conservative ideology on college campuses. William F. Buckley was the ISI’s first president, and the current board chair is American Spectator publisher Alfred Regnery. Several leading right-wing pundits came out of Collegiate-affiliated papers, including Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry and Laura Ingraham (Washington Times, 11/28/04).

The Collegiate Network also provides paid internships and fellowships to place its members at corporate media outlets or influential Beltway publications; 2010-11 placements include the Hill, Roll Call, Dallas Morning News and USA Today. The program’s highest-profile alum is Karl, who was a Collegiate fellow at the neoliberal New Republic magazine.

CN has received funding from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Scaife Family Foundation, The Carthage Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, and the JM Foundation. But it’s administered by ISI. ISI claims to be non-partisan and tax exempt (cough), but read Reagan’s thanks to ISI for the “troops”, “By the time the Reagan Revolution marched into Washington, I had the troops I needed—thanks in no small measure to the work with American youth ISI had been doing since 1953.”

On January 27, 2010, Talking Points Memo reported that three of the four men arrested for allegedly attempting to wiretap Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office were involved with conservative student newspapers that were supported by the conservative Collegiate Network, administered by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. TPM also pointed out that the Leadership Institute is a “group that aims to recruit and train conservative activists.”

Does this mean that Jonathan Karl is not a good reporter? No, it doesn’t. One can have an ideological bent and still be an excellent reporter. If not, most reporters would be out of work. However, it’s troubling that our media doesn’t require the disclosure of this bent (thaanks, Fox). But the real problem comes from him allowing his desire for an anti-Obama scandal to be true to cause him to drop his standards. His crime isn’t being taken in by a source with a grudge or running with that source, even, though you’d think he would want to get a second, non partisan source to corroborate the claims of a Republican from Capitol Hill.

Jonathan Karl did something unforgivable when he claimed to have reviewed the emails.

Journalism experts are not impressed with Karl, and say that he has made himself vulnerable to being used for political purposes. They call his reporting at best sloppy and at worse a deliberate attempt to conceal the nature of his source. Here’s a roundup from Media Matters:

“At best, it’s extremely sloppy. At worst, it’s a deliberate attempt to conceal the secondhand — and possibly distorted — nature of the information ABC was relying on so as to put its shoulder to the wheel of a highly prejudicial reading of the affair,” said Edward Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Miami Herald columnist. “Whether best or worst is true, it’s highly problematic ethically, and the failure to acknowledge and correct is even worse.”

Tim McGuire, journalism professor at Arizona State University and former president of the American Society of News Editors, criticized Karl for failing to adhere to basic standards of ethics.

“If the ethical journalist is dedicated to transparency Mr. Karl seems to have failed that standard,” he said in an email. “The Benghazi story raises such trust issues anyway it seems to me all the details of what Mr. Karl saw are crucial to both sides.”

Tom Fiedler, dean of the Boston University College of Communication and former Miami Herald executive editor, (snip) said that Karl’s reporting has suffered from its inconsistent and at times false descriptions of what he had reviewed.

“At minimum, Karl should have acknowledged on the air and in his on-line postings that he had only seen (or had read to him) summaries, and that he couldn’t say whether those summaries were in context of the original e-mails,” he added. “This caveat is no small thing as Karl could well have left himself vulnerable to being used for political purposes.”

Following his lead, CBS’ right wing Sharyl Attkisson “also presented a set of email “summaries” as authentic emails, but stopped short of explicitly claiming that she had “obtained,” “reviewed,” or ha otherwise actually seen the real emails…”

This is not acceptable. It’s made worse by Karl’s partisan background and the stench of O’Keefe-esque associations. If this were Fox News, we’d be headlining, “Jonathan Karl started his career in the living rooms of serial liars and extremists, pallin’ around” with Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, Michelle Malkin, Rich Lowry and Laura Ingraham.” But remote associations are not character indictments per se, no matter how cravenly the right used Sarah Palin to suggest otherwise. They do, however, smell a bit rotten when the same person just forwarded the agenda of said associates by misleading the public in the same sort of way as the associates.

Karl has won numerous awards for his reporting, but he’s also accused of being a bit naive in reporting Republican talking points. This time, his ability to believe got the better of his judgment and what I presume to be his standards. That’s not something to be brushed aside lightly.

Bias should be disclosed, but bias should also inform your values, not your facts or your standards.

Yes, everyone makes mistakes and yes, it’s not entirely Karl’s fault that he got taken by a source. It is his fault that he did not explain that the emails were never provided to him directly, and that he was taking a Republican’s word for what they said. That was also just plain stupid, and unworthy of a blogger let alone an award winning journalist.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl is an Alumnus of a Conservative Media Training Program was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, May. 18th, 2013. All Rights Reserved

Related Posts :

• 
  Cowardly Karl: ABC Let's Their Chief White House Correspondent Issue Non-Apology
  On CNN's Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz read a statement this Sunday from Jonathan Karl, chief Whit ...
  
  
• 
  ABC Admits That They Never Read Benghazi Emails That They Smeared Obama With
  After Jake Tapper exposed ABC's Benghazi email scoop as edited to make Obama look bad, ABC News admitted ...
  
  
• 
  Benghazi Bombshell: Leaked Emails Were Edited to Make Obama Look Bad
  Turns out the press got played again by Republicans. Jake Tapper has the smoking gun of the original ema ...
  
  
• 
  Benghazi Bullshit: The Real Scandal is the Media Pretending that Republicans Aren't Lying
  Pardon my language, but I've had it with this bullshit. The real scandal, the only scandal, is that ...
  
  
• 
  ABC Faces No Consequences for Passing Republican Propaganda Off as Fact
  It's really not that hard to spot a planted story. They have tells. On the heels of last night's bomb ...

Media Lies: Benghazi Bombshell: Leaked Emails Were Edited to Make Obama Look Bad

 

 

Benghazi Bombshell: Leaked Emails Were Edited to Make Obama Look Bad

By: Sarah JonesMay. 14th, 2013





Turns out the press got played again by Republicans. Jake Tapper has the smoking gun of the original email from the Obama administration which differs significantly from the “leaked emails” ABC ran with.

In an exclusive for CNN, Tapper reveals that CNN has the original email sent by a top Obama aide, regarding the administration’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks. Tapper reported, “The actual email differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.”

“The actual email from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever (sic) leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department,” Tapper concludes (my bold).

The email was sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m. and was obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source. Ironically, the email points out that there is a “ton of wrong information” coming from Congress and people who are not particularly informed (waving hello to Congressional Republicans and Mitt Romney):

“Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

“There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.
“We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.”
Read the full email here.

Tapper notes how ABC and the Weekly Standard covered the leaked emails, which were “paraphrased” “inaccurately” and “inventing the notion” that the White House tried to protect the State Department:

Whoever provided those quotes and paraphrases did so inaccurately, seemingly inventing the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment. Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his email on the State Department’s concerns.
Previous reporting also misquoted Rhodes as saying the group would work through the talking points at the deputies meeting on Saturday, September 15, when the talking points to Congress were finalized. While the previously written subject line of the email mentions talking points, Rhodes only addresses misinformation in a general sense.

Tapper condemned the leaker as having the agenda to make the White House look like they were protecting the State Department.

This is why we do not run with these stories when they first come out. Consistently over Obama’s first term, we found that when the facts come out later (as I pointed out in the new shiny ball IRS scandal story), it has turned out that the stories were being planted in the press. The information was wrong. There was an agenda afloat.

What is even worse for Republicans is that the real email expresses dismay at the uninformed spreading bullcrap. The only people screaming bullcrap about Benghazi were Republicans who sought to use it to win an election.

Another day, another conspiracy debunked. Now, when will the press stop falling for this crap? Note to the media, the next time a “Republican congressional aide” or unnamed source has a smoking gun OMG!!11!!! Nixon Bush scandal, you might want to find a back up source, and get the original documents before being Breitbarted by edited emails/videos/etc.

Will the media apologize to Obama and Clinton? Will the leaker be outed? Will an investigation be set up to find out who misled the public on such a serious matter? We await House Republicans investigating themselves to stop the misinformation leaks.

Update 7:44PM EST: Jonathan Karl, who wrote the original ABC story in which he claimed to have reviewed the actual emails, now admits that he did not read the actual emails, but rather was “quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes.” As Media Matters notes, Karl’s original report read, “White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.” The emails were not actually reviewed by ABC News.

Benghazi Bombshell: Leaked Emails Were Edited to Make Obama Look Bad was written by Sarah Jones for PoliticusUSA.

Related Posts :

• 
  ABC Admits That They Never Read Benghazi Emails That They Smeared Obama With
  After Jake Tapper exposed ABC's Benghazi email scoop as edited to make Obama look bad, ABC News admitted ...
  
  
• 
  Republicans Outed as the Source Of ABC's Deliberately Edited Benghazi Emails
  Major Garrett of CBS outed Republicans as the source behind the edited Benghazi emails that ABC News use ...
  
  
• 
  Cowardly Karl: ABC Let's Their Chief White House Correspondent Issue Non-Apology
  On CNN's Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz read a statement this Sunday from Jonathan Karl, chief Whit ...
  
  
• 
  John Boehner's Benghazi Smoking Gun Email Backfires and Blows Up In His Face
  It turns out John Boehner's smoking gun Benghazi email was more like a firecracker that has blown up in ...
  
  
• 
  Republicans Demanded an Investigation into AP Leaks; Now They're Blaming Obama
  In the lead up to the 2012 elections, Republicans were upset that the Obama administration was getting such ...

Tick-Tick-Tick: Do 60 Minutes And America’s Billionaires Want Us to Beg?

Published on Friday, May 10, 2013 by Campaign for America's Future Blog

Tick-Tick-Tick: Do 60 Minutes And America’s Billionaires Want Us to Beg?

60 Minutes” was once a shining light of independent journalism. Now it’s a covert mouthpiece for the far-right, anti-government values of the Peterson crowd

 

by Richard Eskow

 

 

If you’re a jobless person looking for food or a wounded vet who needs health care, “60 Minutes” has a solution: Beg a billionaire for it. That was part of the powerful, if covert, message behind last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” broadcast.

The rest of Sunday night’s message, which tracks closely with the right-wing agenda promoted by billionaires like Pete Peterson, goes like this: Keep downsizing government. Keep tolerating and promoting the hijacking of our national wealth by the rich, even as it suffocates the middle class and creates soaring poverty rates. Surrender democratic control over the social safety net to wealthy donors.

And whatever you do, keep stroking their insatiable egos.

The Agenda

Did the “60 Minutes” staff sit around a table and choose this message? Probably not. Chances are we’re just seeing more evidence of a herd mentality among our well-paid elites. But they might as well have.

“60 Minutes” was once a shining light of independent journalism. Now it’s a covert mouthpiece for the far-right, anti-government values of the Peterson crowd.

This ideological bias agenda was glaringly evident in Lesley Stahl’s “Counterinsurgency Cops” story. Viewers weren’t informed that Stahl is on the board of anti-government billionaire Pete Peterson’s Foundation, for example, or that her foundation works closely with the defense contractors of “Fix the Debt.” Those contractors stand to make billions more in taxpayer-funded profits if America’s cities buy into Stahl’s premise and purchase even more military equipment – including tanks, sniperscopes, full battle regalia, night vision goggles, and drones.
The Peterson anti-government vision dovetails nicely with a conservative fantasy world in which all government spending is bad – but military and police spending somehow isn’t “government,” or “big government,” or whatever it is they’re railing against today. We discussed “Counterinsurgency Cops” in Part 1 of this piece.
Sunday’s broadcast also featured Scott Pelley’s flattering portrait of a hedge fund billionaire’s generosity, which failed to ask the fundamental question: Why do we need to depend on a hedge fund billionaire’s generosity in the first place?
As they say on “60 Minutes”: The answer might astonish you.

Say what?

The “60 Minutes” website^[1] tells us that “Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones’ charity – the Robin Hood Foundation — fights poverty with the hardnosed, business sense of Wall Street.” Say what? The “hardnosed, business sense” of Wall Street? That “hardnosed, business sense” was actually, by any objective measure, fiscal incompetence and gross managerial negligence.

Wall Street’s “business sense” would have driven every single financial institution in the country into catastrophic collapse – that is, if the government (which presumably lacks such “sense”) hadn’t stepped in to rescue them. Not only did Wall Street’s titans grievously mismanage their books. There is now overwhelming evidence that executives at every major bank criminally and fraudulently deceived their customers.
You could call that latter trait “hardnosed,” I suppose.
Mr. Jones
What about Paul Tudor Jones himself? We don’t hesitate to trash bankers and hedge funders, and there are plenty of them who deserve it. (See Robespierre of the Hedge Fund Revolution or any of our Jamie Dimon pieces.) But as hedge fund managers go, Jones seems to be one of the smarter ones.

As hedge fund managers go, that is … Jones’ apparent talent doesn’t change the fact that, based on current incentives, today’s hedge fund industry is unethical by design. We remain unconvinced that hedge funds as they’re currently structured are anything except economically and socially destructive.

That said, Jones the Trader seems to be an intelligent and effective business person. Jones the Political Donor is straight GOP, all the way, but that’s not surprising. And Jones the Philanthropist seems to be well-intentioned enough. He deserves a lot of praise for devoting so much time and energy to good works.
So far, so good.

You Are What You Measure

Even Pelley’s misguided “hardnosed” comment has a kernel of truth to it. There are new and smart initiatives which seek to apply better metrics to philanthropy. They’re sometimes called “SROI” (for “Social Return on Investment”). But, as in business, the value of your measurements is determined by what you choose to measure. Those are the decisions which reflect your values. “Applying business metrics” is a meaningless notion in philanthropy, since profit – the proverbial “bottom line” – is always paramount in business.

Profits are relatively easy to measure, compared to questions like: How many kids did we feed this year? Would they have eaten otherwise? Could we have fed more kids, and more needy kids, with different foods? Different advertising? A different location? There are thousands of questions like these for each charitable venture.

“60 Minutes” told us that Jones and his board like to do a lot of measuring, but they didn’t tell us how. The entire issue was glossed over after Jones said “we probably de-fund 5 percent to 10 percent of our grantees.” There’s nothing wrong with that percentage – it’s reasonable and, if anything, on the low side – but the important question was, “How do you decide?” Instead we’re treated to the sight of a starry-eyed Pelley repeating with slack-jawed admiration: “You do that to 5 percent to 10 percent of your projects every year?”

We weren’t told which projects are de-funded or why. Instead the very idea is treated as a novel concept, as if the ordinary concept of withdrawing support for less effective programs is some new visionary breakthrough from the “hardnosed geniuses” of Wall Street.

Government measures its results, and so do independent economists and researchers. Did Paul Tudor Jones and his people find better ways to measure social services? There’s no way to know, because “60 Minutes” didn’t tell us. Apparently it was too dazzled to even ask.

The Unasked Question

About the question we asked earlier: Why would New York City need to rely on the generosity of billionaires? Pelley poses it in typically breathless fashion:

“Paul Tudor Jones wonders that if billionaires, like him, are such geniuses, then why do nearly two million people live in poverty ^[2] in New York City alone?”^[3]

We’ll skip lightly over the “geniuses” remark ^[4] to offer a better answer to that question than Jones and Pelley provide: One of the reasons is because hedge fund billionaires like Paul Tudor Jones don’t pay enough in taxes. 

Paul Tudor Jones, Charity Recipient
 
When it comes to taxation, Paul Tudor Jones isn’t a philanthropist. He’s their beneficiary of everyone else’s generosity. Let’s do the math. Rather than invade Jones’ privacy, we’ll run some rough estimates instead^[5] for illustrative purposes: What if there had been no hedge fund loophole for people like Paul Tudor Jones and he had paid Obama’s top tax rate of 39.5 percent? Our hypothetical Jones would have paid an additional $1 billion in taxes. That’s nearly as much as all the donors to the “Robin Hood Foundation,” including Jones, have given in its entire history.

If the top rate were raised to 70 percent, as it was when Ronald Reagan took over, our presumptive Jones would have paid roughly $2.3 billion in additional taxes, nearly doubling the “Robin Hood” figure.

And if it were raised to the 92 percent level, as it was under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower^[6], our Mr. Jones would have paid an additional $3.2 billion in taxes.

Taxpayers Are Subsidizing “Robin Hood”

Of course, Paul Tudor Jones doesn’t want to pay more taxes. That’s undoubtedly one reason why he donated to the McCain and Romney campaigns. It’s much more gratifying to give whatever you feel like giving, whenever you feel like it. And it must be way more fun to dictate terms to women running soup kitchens (as portrayed in “60 Minutes”), give pseudo-evangelical speeches to adoring crowds, and be lionized on television under the adoring gaze of Scott Pelley.
Can’t blame him for that, I suppose. But why should the rest of us subsidize it?
That’s right. If the “Robin Hood Foundation” has collected $1.2 billion in tax-deductible contributions, that means the U.S. government has given up nearly $200 million in tax income (perhaps much more) as a result.^[7] The rest of us are picking up the slack – either with our taxes, or in the loss of needed services. We’re subsidizing the generosity of billionaires.

That’s no reason to end deductions for charitable giving, but here’s a thought: If we’re paying 15 to 40 percent of the price tag, shouldn’t taxpayers have a voice in how this massive foundation is run?

Robin Hood, My A**

Most Wall Street billionaires are Robin Hoods in reverse. The work of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the Levin Senate Subcommittee, and other investigative bodies have shown that they earned much of their wealth through the duplicitous treatment of bank customers, homeowners, union pension funds, and the plundering of other middle-class financial resources. And over the past several decades leaders in both parties (although the Republicans are far more extreme) have presided over the most extreme upward transfer of wealth in modern history.

“Robin Hood Foundation”? We admire his philanthropic instincts, but Jones should be ashamed of that name. It’s a gesture of supreme arrogance. Robin Hood, as we all know, stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Far too many of his foundation’s benefactors have done precisely the opposite.

Jones says he wants to be “at the forefront of actually finding a way to kick poverty’s ass.” Gotta love that attitude. But that particular ass-kicking will require systemic change – and genuine sacrifice from the likes of Paul Tudor Jones.

Nobody wants to steal from the ultra-wealthy class, a group which “60 Minutes” shows celebrating itself at a Jones fundraiser. But we do want them to pay their fair share. It would be nice if they stopped stealing from others, too.

Handout Nation

The Jones/”60 Minutes” vision of America is of that of a nation in which the majority must tolerate the slow siphoning off of its wealth, while hoping against hope that some of the siphoners will then deign to rescue them from poverty. Is that the kind of society we want to become? A “Handout Nation”? A people who must rely on the kindness of strangers?

We’ll close with a few words about the third and final story on last Sunday’s “”60 Minutes”,” entitled “The Invisible Wounds of War.” The producers couldn’t even cover that story without ladling out a thick gravy of anti-government ideology. Instead of covering the Veterans Administration, for example (it’s done some impressive things), the story focuses on yet another private donor. Says host David Martin:

“Head of one of New York’s most successful construction firms, (Art) Fisher offered to build a state of the art brain injury center. His foundation would raise the money. All he asked of the government was to stay out of his way.” (Emphasis ours)

The story never asks why our government doesn’t have the money or resources to treat brain-injured veterans, especially since we supposedly honor and respect their sacrifice. Again: One of the reasons is because people like Art Fisher don’t pay enough in taxes.

The report doesn’t even raise the issue. Instead it gives the floor to Fisher, who sneers that “we can build (a veterans’ brain injury facility) in half the time, half the cost and twice the quality” (as the government can).

The numbers say otherwise. Government health care is more efficient, and more cost-efficient, than its private-sector counterparts. And its greatest cost limitations come from the restrictions which Republicans (beneficiaries of these donors’ generosity) have placed on its ability to negotiate prices and manage its services.

The Kindness of Billionaires

“All he asked of the government was to stay out of his way.”

That’s Art Fisher’s agenda, and it’s Paul Tudor Jones’ agenda too: If you’re nice to us, and if you let us keep siphoning the nation’s wealth, a few of us will help you – just as long as the a) flattery keeps flowing, b) you keep subsidizing our gifts, and c) you relinquish control over your destinies to us. It seems to be the “60 Minutes” agenda, too.

“60 Minutes” was once a shining light of independent journalism. Now it’s a covert mouthpiece for the far-right, anti-government values of the Peterson crowd. Once it spoke to, and for, a majority whose interests it fought to defend. Now it represents an atavistically self-centered billionaire class which expects flattery from its subjects whenever it deigns to take notice of their misery. CBS News, I want my hour back. But then, I want my country back, too.
Tick-tick-tick. They’ll be back next week with another edition of “60 Minutes”.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Curiously, the CBS web page which touts his work also tells us that “Bill Clinton tried to get Led Zeppelin back together.” I don’t get the connection between these stories. That group’s bass player was John Paul Jones. Different guy altogether. Maybe the common thread is the Clintons, who have benefited mightily from the generosity of hedge funders. You’re not likely to find them challenging the “60 Minutes” narrative.

[2] Twenty percent of New Yorkers – one in five – live in poverty. Neither Pelley nor Jones seems curious about that – at least, not curious enough to investigate it.

[3] I don’t know why the CBS News website uses so many commas in its sentences. It’s distracting and hard to read, but that’s how they transcribe their scripts.

[4] The money-making talent doesn’t always equate with intelligence per se, although there are forms of intelligence that can be used to accumulate great wealth. Some billionaires are very gifted people. But sometimes average intelligence, when combined with rapacious greed, personality quirks, or character defects, can do the trick very effectively. And sometimes “idiot savant” is a better description of their gifts than “genius.”

[5] Let’s assume that Jones’ wealth comes from income taxed at the “hedge fund loophole” rate of 15 percent. (That’s generous, since he and his fellow billionaires often pay far less than that.) That would mean that he earned $4.235 billion and paid $635 million in taxes.

[6] Conservatives love to claim that the actual top tax rate under Eisenhower was much less than that. They base that argument on a simple math error, or deception, which has been explained elsewhere.

[7] Here’s the math: Even if all the donors were hedge funders (which is unlikely), they were able to write $1.2 billion off at a 15 percent rate, which comes to $180 million. At the 35 percent Bush tax-cut rate, the figure comes to $420 million in lost tax revenue. (We’re assuming these deductions came to less than 50 percent of donors’ adjusted gross income, which is the limit for charitable deductions.)

© 2013 Campaign for America's Future

 

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a well-known blogger and writer, a former Wall Street executive, an experienced consultant, and a former musician. He has experience in health insurance and economics, occupational health, benefits, risk management, finance, and information technology. Richard has consulting experience in the US and over 20 countries.

The Right Wing Cult Machine Exposed

Media  

Thomhartmann.com / By Thom Hartmann

The Right Wing Cult Machine Exposed

 

People are waking up and recognizing the far right-wing media for what it is, and the dangers it poses to this country.

April 26, 2013  |  

Far right Conservatism has become a cult, and Rush Limbaugh is its leader.

By definition, a cult is a group or sect bound together by adoration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.

A cult promises you redemption. It tells you that if you do what it says, and as it believes, you will be protected from the evil people that are out to get you and the rest of society.

A cult purges the non-believers. And it actively tries to vilify all those who are not part of the cult, saying that they're doomed and destined to go to hell.

So how did Limbaugh become the leader of such a large, and influential, cult?

Like with any cult, the power that Limbaugh has over his flock as grown over time.

Right wing radio started out in conflict with mainstream society, and outside of mainstream politics.

What was once a little cult guided by Limbaugh has transformed into a massive cult that today has enveloped much of the Conservative movement.
So how did this transformation occur?

Well, like cult leaders do, Limbaugh offered up a theatrical flair, and accompanied that with a marketing genius.

He offered his followers redemption. He offered them protection from what he told them they should fear – liberals and feminists. He demanded ideological purity, and absolute devotion to the ideology of far-right "conservative" corporatism. And he vilified all those who didn't see things his way.

Limbaugh then managed to convince his followers that faith in his word was more important than facts. No matter what everyone else said, if Rush said it, it must be true. Only information that supports Limbaugh's positions can be believed, and everything else is just lies.

Since his first successes, he's been followed by a succession of other right-wing cult leaders, from Glenn Beck to Mark Levin to Alex Jones.
Which brings us to today.

Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing talk radio cult have conjured up such a large following that they're helping the Koch Brothers drive the polarization within the Republican Party, and within America's political discourse.

Ironically, so says Frank Luntz, a top Republican consultant and campaign guru.
Earlier this week, Luntz told a group of college students at the University of Pennsylvania that Limbaugh and his fellow right-wing talk-radio cult leaders are "problematic" for the Republican Party because they're responsible for the stark polarization within the party.

In a secret recording of his comments, Luntz can be heard saying that, "And they get great ratings, and they drive the message, and it's really problematic. And this is not on the Democratic side. It's only on the Republican side...[inaudible]. [Democrats have] got every other source of news on their side. And so that is a lot of what's driving it. If you take—Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He's trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn't the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him. That's what's causing this thing underneath. And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy."

Basically, Luntz was saying that the right-wing media and its cult following are not serving the national political debate and not helping the Republican Party widen its appeal beyond its declining base of aging boomer cultists.
But no matter what Luntz says, Limbaugh and the rest of his right-wing media pals will continue to rally their followers, and continue to vilify those who dare think otherwise.

They will continue to paint President Obama as America's anti-hero, using terms like "socialist" and "Muslim" to further scare their cult followers into seeing things their way.

The good news is that there are still some semblances of a normal, and non-cult media in America.

Unlike the right-wing media, real media – and even progressive media – is not cult-like. It talks about ideas that are widely accepted (social safety net, clean environment, nondiscrimination, a solid middle class), and that are not in conflict with the rest of society.

It's not based on fear or faith. It's based on facts. And it respects other beliefs and ideas, instead of vilifying them.

And perhaps, most importantly, real media doesn't fear or hate our government, and certainly doesn't suggest we should be armed and ready to attack our own government.

Sadly, that cult is coming dangerously close to having complete control over the Republican Party and much of the political discourse in our country.
Thankfully, people are waking up and recognizing the far right-wing media for what it is: a cult.

Thom Hartmann is an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is The Thom Hartmann Reader.