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NORMAN SOLOMON
MediaBeat

A Weekly Look at the US Media
by the Nation's Top Media Critic

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – “The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media,” the latest collection of his Media Beat columns won Norman Solomon the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. The award, presented by the USA’s National Council of Teachers of English, went to Solomon’s ninth book. In the introduction to that book, Jonathan Kozol wrote: “The tradition of Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and I.F. Stone does not get much attention these days in the mainstream press . . . but that tradition is alive and well in this collection of courageously irreverent columns on the media by Norman Solomon . . . He fights the good fight without fear of consequence. He courts no favors. He writes responsibly and is meticulous on details, but he does not choke on false civility.

Click here to read Norman Solomon's MediaBeat columns for 2005

Click here to read Norman Solomon's MediaBeat columns for 2003

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DOWNLOAD THE 2006 COLUMNS HERE:

44. December 26, 2006
Announcing the PU-litzer Prizes for 2006
Competition has been fierce for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes. Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author of the superb new book “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.”)

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43. December 18, 2006
Powell, Baker, Hamilton – thanks for nothing
When Colin Powell endorsed the Iraq Study Group report during his Dec. 17 appearance on Face the Nation, it was another curtain call for a tragic farce. Four years ago, “moderates” like Powell were making the invasion of Iraq possible. Now, in the guise of speaking truth to power, Powell and ISG co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton are refueling the U.S. war effort by depicting it as a problem of strategy and management.

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42. December 12, 2006
Is the USA the center of the world?
Some things don’t seem to change. Five years after I wrote this column in the form of a news dispatch, it seems more relevant than ever:

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41. December 5, 2006
Media sham for Iraq war – it's happening again
The lead-up to the invasion of Iraq has become notorious in the annals of American journalism. Even many reporters, editors and commentators who fueled the drive to war in 2002 and early 2003 now acknowledge that major media routinely tossed real journalism out the window in favor of boosting war.

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40. November 16, 2006
New media offensive for the Iraq war
The American media establishment has launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. In the latest media assault, right-wing outfits like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page are secondary. The heaviest firepower is now coming from the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA – the front page of the New York Times.

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39. November 7, 2006
Saddam's unidicted co-conspirator
Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let’s reach back into history and extract these facts:

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38. October 30, 2006
How I was wrong about Thomas Friedman
Last week my column was a parody of how Thomas Friedman writes about the global economy. Since then, I've learned that I was in error on a matter that shines some light on the worldview of the syndicated New York Times columnist and best-selling author. “Let's face it – at this point I'm a rich guy, and I work for a newspaper run by guys who are even richer than I am,” the satirical version of Friedman said in my article. But actually, Friedman is not just “a rich guy.”

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37. October 23, 2006
Channeling Thomas Friedman
Get ready for a special tour of a renowned outlook, conjured from the writings of syndicated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. As the leading media advocate of “free trade” and “globalization,” he is expertly proficient at explaining the world to the world. If we could synthesize Friedman's brain waves, the essential messages would go something like this:

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36. October 12, 2006
The pundit path to death in Iraq
No one knows exactly how many Iraqi civilians have died from the war’s violence since the invasion of their country. The new study from public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University estimates that the number of those deaths is around 601,000, while saying the actual total could be somewhere between 426,369 and 793,663. Such wartime figures can't be precise, but the meaning is clear: The invasion of Iraq has led to ongoing carnage on a massive scale.

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35. October 8, 2006
Welcome to the nuclear club
Moments after hearing about North Korea's nuclear test, I thought of Albert Einstein's statement that “there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world.”

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34. September 25, 2006
Iraq is not a quagmire
The uproar over Bob Woodward’s new book has intensified the media focus on a basic controversy that’s summed up this way: Is Iraq a quagmire?
Like many other debates that flourish in American mass media, the standard answers on both sides are wrong – because the question bypasses human realities.
Most obviously, Iraq is not a swamp; it’s a place where real people live and die. They are not metaphors, and neither is their country. Iraqi people exist quite apart from the roles imputed to them by politicians and journalists in Washington.

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33. September 25, 2006
Media tall tales for the next war
The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the U.S. news media are gearing up for a military attack on Iran. The headline over the cover-story interview with Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is 'A Date With a Dangerous Mind.' The big-type subhead calls him 'the man whose swagger is stirring fears of war with the U.S.,' and the second paragraph concludes: 'Though pictures of the Iranian president often show him flashing a peace sign, his actions could well be leading the world closer to war'.

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32. September 20, 2006
The hollow promise of digital technology
This is the time of year when media campaigns for the latest digital products are apt to go into overdrive. Schools are back in session, and the holiday sales blitz is getting underway. For the latest computerized gizmos, that means an escalating media drive – revving up news coverage, PR hype and advertisements. Often it’s hard to tell the difference between the three.

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31. September 7, 2006
As others see U.S. – the 'War on Terror'
The USA’s mass media constantly tell us how Americans see the “war on terror.” But the same outlets rarely tell us much about how the rest of the world sees it. Five years after 9/11, the gap between perceptions is enormous. Countless polls confirm the overall chasm. Yet, day to day, the media messages that surround us in the United States simply recycle American views for American viewers, listeners and readers.

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30. September 5, 2006
Spinning the troop levels in Iraq
Septemberr began with 140,000 American troops in Iraq – 13,000 more than in late July. Almost 30 months have passed since Time magazine’s mid-April 2004 cover story, “No Easy Options,” reported that “foreign policy luminaries from both parties say a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would cripple American credibility, doom reform in the Arab world and turn Iraq into a playground for terrorists and the armies of neighboring states like Iran and Syria.”

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29. August 31, 2006
A TV debate we'll never see
When Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invited President Bush to engage in a “direct television debate," the White House predictably responded by calling the offer “a diversion.” But even though this debate will never happen, it’s worth contemplating.

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28. August 24, 2006
The mythical end to the politics of fear
Nearly five years into the "war on terror," it's still at the core of American media and politics. Yeah, I've seen the recent polls showing a drop in public support for President Bush's "war on terror" claims. And I've read a spate of commentaries this month celebrating Bush's current lack of political traction on the terrorism issue, like the New York Times piece by Frank Rich last Sunday triumphantly proclaiming that "the era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over."

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27. August 6, 2006
News media's love-hate for nuclear weapons
Since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade and a half ago, nuclear weaponry has been mostly relegated to back pages and mental back burners in the United States. A big media uproar about nuclear weapons is apt to happen only when the man in the Oval Office has chosen to make an issue of them.

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26. July 25, 2006
Applauding while lebanon burns
Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen declared in the Washington Post on July 25 that an-eye-for-an-eye would be a hopelessly wimpy policy for the Israeli government. “Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness,” he wrote.

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25. July 19, 2006
The most dangerous alliance in the world
After getting out of Lebanon, writer June Rugh told Reuters: “As an American, I’m embarrassed and ashamed. My administration is letting it happen [by giving] tacit permission for Israel to destroy a country.” The news service quoted another American evacuee, Andrew Muha, who had been in southern Lebanon. He said: “It’s a travesty. There’s a million homeless in Lebanon and the intense amount of bombing has brought an entire country to its knees.”

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24. June 15, 2006
Their barbarism, and ours
The Baghdad bureau chief of the New York Times could not have been any
clearer. “The story really takes us back into the 8th century, a truly barbaric world,” John Burns said. He was speaking June 20 on the PBS “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” describing what happened to two U.S. soldiers whose bodies had just been found. Evidently they were victims of atrocities, and no one should doubt in the slightest that the words of horror used by Burns to describe the “barbaric murders” were totally appropriate.

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23. June 15, 2006
Hillary's big problem: Premature triangulation
Two years from now, Hillary Clinton might be pleased to hear the kind of boos and antiwar chants that greeted her in mid-June when she spoke at the annual Take Back America conference of Democratic activists and argued against a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But so much of politics is about timing. And right now, Clinton is facing a serious problem of premature triangulation.

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22. June 13, 2006
Why pretend that Hillary Clinton is progressive?
The scheduled speech by Sen. Hillary Clinton at the “Take Back America 2006” conference in Washington on June 13 is likely to intensify discussion about her relationship with the progressive grassroots of the Democratic Party. Many weeks ago the conference sponsor, the Campaign for America’s Future, sent out an email telling prospective attendees: “As in years past, we expect America’s most prominent progressive leaders to attend and address the conference. Invited speakers include...” On the list was Hillary Clinton.

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21. June 6, 2006
Media Memorial day
I've been thinking about Tariq Aziz a lot since the New York Times printed a front-page story on the former Iraqi deputy prime minister in late May. A color photograph showed him decked out in what the article described as “an open-necked hospital gown, with a patient’s plastic identification tag on his wrist.” He looked gaunt.

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20. May 28, 2006
Media Memorial day
People who are concerned about the state of the U.S. news media in 2006 might pause to consider those who have lost their lives in the midst of journalistic neglect, avoidance and bias. We remember that while TV and radio news reports tell the latest about corporate fortunes, vast numbers of real people are struggling to make ends meet — and many are in a position of choosing between such necessities as medicine, adequate food and paying the rent.

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19. May 16, 2006
Corporate media and advocacy journalism
We see this kind of news story now and again. Sometimes we try to imagine the people behind the numbers, the human realities underneath the surface abstractions. But overall, the responses testify to journalism’s failings – and our own. “Poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of some 5.6 million children every year,” an Associated Press dispatch said in early May, citing new data from the U.N. Children’s Fund. And: “In its report, UNICEF said one of every four children under age 5, including 146 million children in the developing world, is underweight.”

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18. April 18, 2006
When 'diplomacy' means war
One of the nation’s leading pollsters, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center, wrote a few weeks ago that among Americans “there is little potential support for the use of force against Iran.” This month the White House has continued to emphasize that it is committed to seeking a diplomatic solution. Yet the U.S. government is very likely to launch a military attack on Iran within the next year. How can that be?

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17. April 17, 2006
Will MoveOn.com oppose bombing of Iran?
MoveOn.org sent out an email with the subject line “Don’t Nuke Iran” to three million people on April 12. “There is one place where all of us can agree: Americans don’t support a pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran, and Congress must act to prevent the president from launching one before it’s too late,” the message said. And: “Please take a moment to add your name to our petition to stop a nuclear attack on Iran.”

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16. April 13, 2006
The lobby and the bulldozer
Weeks after a British magazine published a long article by two American professors titled “The Israel Lobby,” the outrage continued to howl through mainstream U.S. media. A Los Angeles Times op-ed article by Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Max Boot helped to set a common tone. He condemned a working paper by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was excerpted in the London Review of Books.

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15. April 5, 2006
When war crimes are impossible
Is President Bush guilty of war crimes? To even ask the question is to go far beyond the boundaries of mainstream U.S. media. A few weeks ago, when a class of seniors at Parsippany High School in New Jersey prepared for a mock trial to assess whether Bush has committed war crimes, a media tempest ensued.

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14. March 23, 2006
Blaming the media for bad news
Top officials in the Bush administration have often complained that news coverage of Iraq focuses on negative events too much and fails to devote enough attention to positive developments. Yet the White House has rarely picked direct fights with U.S. media outlets during this war. For the most part, President Bush leaves it to others to scapegoat the media.

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13. March 20, 2006
War-loving pundits
On Saturday, during her national radio response to the president, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the Bush administration of "incompetence" in the Iraq war.
What would be a competent way to pursue the war in Iraq? How would you drop huge bombs on urban neighborhoods in a competent way? How would you deploy cluster munitions that shred the bodies of children in a competent way? How would you take hundreds of thousands of people from their home land and send them to a country to kill and be killed – based on lies – in a competent way?

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12. March 16, 2006
War-loving pundits
The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who helped to make it all possible. Continuing with long service to the Bush administration’s agenda-setting for war, prominent media commentators were very busy in the weeks before the invasion. At the Washington Post, the op-ed page’s fervor hit a new peak on Feb. 6, 2003, the day after Colin Powell’s mendacious speech to the U.N. Security Council.

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11. March 8, 2006
Digital hype: A dazzling smokescreen
As each new season brings more waves of higher-tech digital products, I often think of Mark Twain. Along with being a brilliant writer, he was also an ill-fated investor – fascinated with the latest technical innovations, including the strides toward functional typewriters and typesetting equipment as the 19th century neared its close.

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10. February 28, 2006
Mahatma Bush
Evidently the president's trip to India created an option too perfect to pass up: The man who has led the world in violence during the first years of the 21st century could pay homage to the world's leading practitioner of nonviolence during the first half of the 20th century. So the White House announced plans for George W. Bush to lay a wreath at the Mahatma Gandhi memorial in New Delhi this week.

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09. February 23, 2006
The unreal death of journalism
Death is always in the news. From local car crashes to catastrophes in faraway places, deadly events are grist for the media mill. The coverage is ongoing – and almost always superficial.

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08. February 16, 2006
Cheney's dodge: Taking responsibility
When Dick Cheney surfaced on Wednesday long enough for an interview with Fox News eminence Brit Hume – an event that CNN's Jack Cafferty promptly likened to "Bonnie interviewing Clyde" – the vice presidential spin emerged from a timeworn bag of political tricks. Cheney took responsibility. Whatever that means.

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07. February 6, 2006
'Diplomacy' as a launch pad for missiles

The current flurry of Western diplomacy will probably turn out to be groundwork for launching missiles at Iran. Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many antiwar Americans seem eager to believe that won’t happen.

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06. January 29, 2006
The question journalists don't ask Bush

With great fanfare the other day, Oprah Winfrey asked James Frey a question that mainstream journalists refuse to ask George W. Bush: “Why would you lie?” Many pundits and news outlets have chortled at the televised unmasking of Frey as a liar. The reverberations have spanned from schlock media to highbrow outlets.

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05. January 23, 2006
When the other shoe drops

Ever since the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA operative in July 2003, prominent Democrats have denounced that leak — often with some kind of rhetoric about the sanctity of classified information. But reverence for keeping such information secret is dangerous. And so is the claim that sometimes the government should put journalists in jail to ferret out leakers.

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04. January 18, 2006
The crime of giving the orders

A prosecutor explained that “he masterminded the murders of three innocent young people and conspired to attack the heart of our criminal justice system.” And California’s governor was stern when he denied a clemency request for the 76-year-old prisoner. “The passage of time does not excuse Allen from the jury’s punishment,” Arnold Schwarzenegger said. Allen had been convicted of enlisting a fellow prisoner to kill witnesses against him in 1980.

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03. January 16, 2006
Ted Koppel, longtime booster of Kissinger

No doubt many people are glad that Ted Koppel will become a regular voice on National Public Radio. He recently ended 25 years with ABC’s “Nightline” show amid profuse media accolades. But what kind of journalist goes out of his way to voice fervent admiration for Henry Kissinger?

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02. January 6, 2006
Israel and Iran's axis of fanatics

With Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel. He’s media savvy. He knows how to spin on American television. And he’s very dangerous.

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01. January 3, 2006
Media new year's resolutions for 2006

No one is in greater need of forthright new year’s resolutions than big media outlets. In a constructive spirit, therefore, here are some resolutions for them in 2006.

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