Words Matter: How Media Can Build Civility or Destroy It

The media can, as we know, promote fear, hatred, and extremism. Can it also lead us to greater civility and more productive debate?

by Sarah van Gelder and Brooke Jarvis

“Just as media outlets have been used to create a pervasive sense of fear, they have also been used to convince people that conflict is inevitable. This leaves media consumers resigned to the notion that conflict will happen.”

Those words [1] could have been used to describe an increasingly hostile and provocative media [2] in the United States. In fact, they were written to describe the use of the media to incite Hutus to slaughter their Tutsi neighbors in Rwanda, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths [3].

After Jared Loughner opened fire at a political event for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon, Arizona, attention quickly focused on the role that divisive and aggressive media may have played in his actions. Pima Country Sheriff Clarence Dupnik lamented “the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government.”

Members of the media were quick to defend themselves. Any discussion of possible political motives, the editors of the National Review wrote, constitute a “vile attempt to tar the opposition with the crimes of a lunatic so as to render illegitimate the views of about half of America.”

The reasons for Loughner’s actions are still unclear, and evidence suggests that he is mentally ill. We can’t know at this point what role media provocation may have played in his decision. Indeed, his actions raise as many questions about our policies on gun ownership and mental illness as they do about our political climate.

Words matter! That’s why we write! That’s why there are advertising agencies! That’s why there is a Rush Limbaugh, a Sean Hannity, and a Glen Beck.

Now, suddenly when the use and tone of some words are coming under scrutiny for the damage they can do, those who are the most inciteful are running from their words and claiming they have no influence, and even claiming to be victims, such as Sarah Palin.

We are passionate believers in free speech, but we are also passionate in judging people by the things they say. Words tell us a great deal about each of us, and words have consequences. One of the consequences of irresponsible language should be a loss of respect, a loss of public support, and a clear and resounding repudiation of such language.

We have a very divisive political culture that has reached fever pitch. Our observation is perhaps onesided–but it is this: the right has been throwing outrageous attacks against our President who has remained calm and unruffled and understanding through it all, and his supporters from the left have repudiated the attacks with vitriolic language of its own.

There is certainly a difference between those who initiate the attacks (the right) and those who respond in kind (the left). President Obama has remarkably stayed above the fray and has been one of the few adults in the room for two years. His patience has been remarkable, so remarkable that he lost support from his supporters for not defending himself more aggressively in their view.

There is also a significant difference in whether the topic stays on the issues of the day or declines into ad hominen attacks. Our conversations about issues should be the pros and cons of the subject matter, not about denigrating the individual expressing his view. The focus should stay on the debate subject, not the debaters.

Conversations between those with opposing viewpoints are happening rarely nowadays. Conservatives listen only to conservatives and liberals listen only to liberals. The reason is because neither side has been able to stay on the subject without demeaning one another and so friendships are lost and conversations are stopped. Liberals get nowhere when only talking with other liberals, and likewise for conservatives—and so no progress is made. No discussions concluded. To avoid making enemies we’ve all given up rational discussion and our conversations have deteriorated into two people standing side by side and discussing the weather, and that isn’t even a safe subject because it is just too damn close to climate change, which could just set off another fuse.

At the very least, though, this should be a moment to reflect on the role that media can play in directing the political dialogue in this country. It can, as we know, promote fear, hatred, and extremism. Can it also lead us to greater civility and more productive debate?

Violence and the media

Sadly, the Arizona shooting is only the latest evidence that words do have consequences. [4]

On July 18, Byron Williams was approached by California state police for driving erratically on Interstate 580. A firefight ensued-remarkably, all survived-and Williams later admitted he had been on his way to attack the ACLU and the non-profit Tides Foundation. Why Tides? According to Media Matters [5], Fox News commentator Glenn Beck had verbally attacked the Tides Foundation 29 times in the 18 months before the attempted shooting.

After then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused presidential candidate Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” the Secret Service reported [6] a dramatic increase in threats against Obama.

There are many more stories [7] of threats and vandalism directed at private citizens and public officials, and the links to the violent rhetoric from right-wing media personalities and politicians is chilling. One Texas man, who called the office of Senator Debbie Stabenow and threatened “We’ll get you … like we did RFK; like we did MLK,” told [8] FBI officers he was worried the government would take Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh off the air as a result of the “Fairness Doctrine.”

Another way

The media can choose to provoke the least stable, most trigger-happy sectors of the population. Or it can choose to strengthen democracy, civility, and the rule of law. When the former Yugoslavia was erupting in ethnic cleansing and massacres, Macedonia’s ethnically diverse population remained at peace. South Africa made the transition from Apartheid to majority rule largely without violence. In these and other places, media that highlighted the humanity of all involved played a role, according to [9] the U.S.-based Search for Common Ground.

Instead of simply repeating the anger and allegations of each side-which may have the effect of deepening the conflict or inciting violence-journalists are in a unique position to uncover the causes of conflict and discover opportunities for finding common ground. The Conflict Resolution Network advises [10] journalists to:

• Focus on the root causes of problems, not just positions or back-and-forth arguments.
• Ask questions that get people thinking about solutions and common ground: “What would be possible if this problem were fixed?” “What would it take to solve this problem?” “What is it that you do want?” “What would satisfy you?”
• Avoid simplistic divisions between good and bad. Don’t encourage or sensationalize personal attacks.
• Report areas of agreement as well as disagreement.
• Think of emotions as symptoms that point to where the real problems are. What clashes of values, needs, or scarce resources are causing an emotional response?

Disagreement over policy is part of a healthy democracy, and conflict is human. But whipping up fear and hatred, demonizing those with conflicting opinions, using violent language, playing on the insecurity and distrust that so easily arise during difficult times-these are irresponsible and wrong. Especially when the media is capable of so much more.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Sarah van Gelder and Brooke Jarvis wrote this article for YES! Magazine [11], a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sarah is the executive editor and Brooke is the web editor of YES! Magazine.

In WikiLeaks Fight, U.S. Journalists Take a Pass

by Nancy A. Youssef

WASHINGTON — Not so long ago, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could count on American journalists to support his campaign to publish secret documents that banks and governments didn’t want the world to see.

But just three years after a major court confrontation that saw many of America’s most important journalism organizations file briefs on WikiLeaks’ behalf, much of the U.S. journalistic community has shunned Assange — even as reporters write scores, if not hundreds, of stories based on WikiLeaks’ trove of leaked State Department cables.

Some call him a traitor, responsible for what’s arguably one of the biggest U.S. national security breaches ever. Others say a man who calls for government transparency has been too opaque about how he obtained the documents.

The freedom of the press committee of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him “not one of us.” The Associated Press, which once filed legal briefs on Assange’s behalf, refuses to comment about him. And the National Press Club in Washington, the venue less than a year ago for an Assange news conference, has decided not to speak out about the possibility that he’ll be charged with a crime.

This is truly disappointing. U.S. journalism has been slipping for years, intimidated into silence. Assange has done exactly what American journalists should have been doing on a daily basis for the past dozen years. The many atrocities that our country has committed in secret has been enabled because of the compliance of a weak press.

Great journalism has been the foundation of freedom, but it has been absent ever since 9/11. It may be at an all time low.

Transparency was one of President Obama’s main campaign pitches, and yet he has been responsible for massive coverups.

For example, the current administration has determined that there will be no prosecution of the CIA for deliberately destroying evidence of torture at Guantanomo, and yet this same administration seems to be intent on building a case against Assange for publishing information that is more embarrassing than a threat to our national security.

Go Assange! Release it all! Do for America and the world what the American press won’t do!

With a few notable exceptions, it’s been left to foreign journalism organizations to offer the loudest calls for the U.S. to recognize WikiLeaks’ and Assange’s right to publish under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

Assange supporters see U.S. journalists’ ambivalence as inviting other government efforts that could lead one day to the prosecution of journalists for doing something that happens fairly routinely now — writing news stories based on leaked government documents.

“Bob Woodward has probably become one of the richest journalists in history by publishing classified documents in book after book. And yet no one would suggest that Bob Woodward be prosecuted because Woodward is accepted in the halls of Washington,” said Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and media critic who writes for the online journal Salon.com. “There is no way of prosecuting Julian Assange without harming investigative journalism.”

Woodward, who rose to fame by exposing the Watergate conspiracy that forced President Richard Nixon from office, told a Yale University law school audience in November that WikiLeaks’ “willy-nilly” release of documents was “madness” and would be “fuel for those who oppose disclosure.” But that appearance came before U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder launched a criminal probe against Assange. Woodward didn’t respond to e-mails seeking comment.

Woodward’s newspaper, The Washington Post, however, is one of the few that’s editorialized against prosecuting Assange. “The government has no business indicting someone who is not a spy and who is not legally bound to keep its secrets,” the Post said.

Assange increasingly has presented himself as a journalist in the weeks since Holder’s threat to bring charges. He’s the website’s editor, and WikiLeaks publishes editorials.

Few could argue that WikiLeaks didn’t perform journalistic functions in April when it released video taken from an Army helicopter of a 2007 incident where Army pilots fired on civilians in Baghdad, killing 17 Iraqis, including two employees of the Reuters news agency, and wounding two children. In addition to editing and captioning the video, WikiLeaks interviewed the Iraqi families about the incident. The release of the video, which Reuters had sought for years but had been denied, was widely covered by U.S. news organizations.

U.S. journalists have been far less zealous about WikiLeaks, however, in the ensuing months, as the Obama administration has mounted increasingly vocal attacks on the organization over three batches of leaked U.S. documents — military logs of events from the war in Afghanistan, including the names of Afghans who’d cooperated with the U.S.; initial incident reports from throughout the Iraq War; and most recently, thousands of diplomatic cables.

The problem with speaking up for WikiLeaks now, said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, one of the country’s most prominent defenders of press freedom and one of the groups that backed WikiLeaks in its 2008 court case, is that she doesn’t consider Assange to be a journalist.

Assange, she said, “has done some things that journalists do, but I would argue that what the New York Times does is more journalism. They vet the information. . . . They consider outside sources. They take responsibility. They publicly identify themselves. . . .They do some value added. They do something original to it,” Dalglish said.

She added that part of her hesitation to back Assange is that the public knows so little about him and how he acquires information.

WikiLeaks “takes secrets. But they are secretive. We don’t know who they are. I think one thing journalists pride themselves on is transparency. I think people are a little apprehensive because he was releasing information last summer he had an agenda to bring down the U.S. government,” she said. “I think that makes people reluctant to jump into making a statement.”

Greenwald rejects that argument. He noted that U.S. journalists often don’t reveal their sources or how they gather information for stories.

Greenwald said he thinks journalists aren’t rallying to defend WikiLeaks because it has no building, no ties to the U.S. and doesn’t feel obliged to consult with the U.S. government before publishing. The issue, he said, is that American journalists too often befriend the government and seek its approval for their work.

Besides, he said, the Constitution protects everyone’s right to publish.

“What matters is the activity itself and not who the person is. Bob Woodward is no more entitled to publish classified information than some random person out of the phone book,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald’s position is echoed by Joel Simon, the executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, another prominent U.S. advocacy group that’s made one of the rare public arguments against prosecuting Assange.

Simon said he and his colleagues had an extensive debate about whether to speak up. In the end, they determined that debating whether Assange is a journalist is irrelevant.

“If he is prosecuted, it will be because he is a journalist,” Simon said.

The group sent a letter to Holder on Dec. 17 urging him not prosecute Assange, warning that it could have a chilling effect around the world.

“There is a commonality of purpose,” Simon said in an interview. “The function of WikiLeaks is to take information, particularly classified information, and distribute it to the public. From a legal perspective, it is essentially a journalistic function. We have to respond when there is a threat to journalism.”

The current situation even has split former allies in the battle over press freedom. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, has come out strongly in support of WikiLeaks. But Floyd Abrams, who was the Times’ attorney in its fight against the Nixon administration’s efforts to block publication, has taken the opposite position.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Abrams noted that Ellsberg himself kept secret four volumes of the classified Pentagon history that became the Pentagon papers because he feared they’d harm diplomatic efforts to end the Vietnam War. Abrams said WikiLeaks’ publication of so much secret material could lead to tougher restrictions for U.S. journalists.

“His activities have already doomed proposed federal shield-law legislation protecting journalists’ use of confidential sources in the just-adjourned Congress,” Abrams wrote. “An indictment of him could be followed by the judicial articulation of far more speech-limiting legal principles than currently exist with respect to even the most responsible reporting about both diplomacy and defense.”

And if Assange isn’t indicted or is acquitted of any charges, Abrams warned, Congress might pass “new and dangerously restrictive legislation.”

There was no such debate in February 2008, when 12 journalism organizations, including the Associated Press and Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, filed a brief on behalf of WikiLeaks and its domain register, Dynadot, in a case brought by a Swiss bank, Bank Julius Baer.

The bank filed the suit after WikiLeaks published hundreds of private documents on a land deal that suggested money laundering and tax evasion. It asked a U.S. district judge in California to enjoin WikiLeaks from publishing the documents and order Dynadot to stop hosting its website.

The judge agreed, but quickly reversed his order after the U.S. journalism organizations weighed in, calling the decision an affront to the First Amendment and WikiLeaks’ right to publish.

The Justice Department now appears serious about building a case against Assange, though it remains unclear which law he violated — officials acknowledge that the Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used to prosecute anyone for publication of secret documents.

Last month, a U.S. magistrate in Alexandria, Va., issued a secret subpoena ordering the Twitter online messaging service to turn over all information it has about five of its users, including Assange and Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, 23, the one-time Baghdad-based intelligence analyst accused of unauthorized downloading of the hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents WikiLeaks is now publishing.

The subpoena was unsealed Wednesday after Twitter said it intended to notify each of the account holders that their records had been sought and became public on Friday, when one of those account holders told The Guardian newspaper in London. In addition to Assange’s and Manning’s, the targeted accounts include those of an Icelandic member of parliament and two computer programmers. WikiLeaks, however, argued in a “tweet” posted Saturday that the records of all 670,000 of its Twitter “followers” are subject to the subpoena because it demands information about outgoing messages from the WikiLeaks account.

Dalglish said her organization might reconsider its silence if the U.S. files a criminal case against Assange. That will depend, she said, on a determination of the case’s potential threat to journalism.

Alan Bjerga, the president of the National Press Club, said his organization also might take a stand depending on what the Justice Department does.

“The National Press Club is always concerned about any government action that would harm the ability of journalists to do their work, and any action against Julian Assange that would impede journalists is one we would oppose,” he said in an e-mail Saturday. “It is difficult at this time to comment on the specifics of a case the government has yet to make.”

Until then, it’s fallen largely to foreign-based journalism organizations to defend WikiLeaks.

In August, Paris-based Reporters without Borders wrote a letter condemning Assange for publishing the names of Afghan informants, saying it could endanger lives.

But it decided last month to provide a mirror site to WikiLeaks’ website after the WikiLeaks site came under attack.

The change came after lengthy discussion — and because WikiLeaks has since been more cautious about redacting the documents it posts.

“We think WikiLeaks is doing a public service,” said Clothilde Le Coz, who directs the group’s Washington office.

The idea of America, heralded as a beacon of press freedom internationally, prosecuting someone for publishing secret documents would have a chilling effect throughout the world, the Australian Newspaper Editors group wrote in a letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose government also is considering charges against Assange, who’s an Australian citizen.

“Any such action would impact not only on WikiLeaks, but every media organization in the world that aims to inform the public about decisions made on their behalf,” the organization said in its Dec. 15 letter. “It is the media’s duty to responsibly report such material if it comes into their possession. To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press.”

A recent University of Maryland study confirms that those who watch Fox News daily are significantly more likely than those who never watch it to believe that:

• Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses. (It has created millions of jobs.)

• Most economists estimate that the health care bill will worsen the deficit. (Most estimate it will reduce the deficit.)

• The economy is getting worse. (It is improving.)

• Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring. (Scientists are at near consensus that it is.)

• The stimulus did not include tax cuts. (Forty percent of it was in tax cuts to the middle class and small businesses.)

• Their own income taxes have gone up. (They have gone down.)

• The auto bailout only occurred under President Barack Obama. (The program was initiated by President George W. Bush.)

• Most Republican congressmen opposed TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. (Republicans overwhelmingly voted for it.)

• It is not clear that Obama was born in the United States. (His birth certificate has been authenticated by experts.)

Fox News intentionally misinforms. It can better advance its far-right agenda when its viewers are ignorant.

Jim Sargent

Salt Lake City

The second part is a similar story that is about a year old when DISH network made the same kind of settlement.)

DirectTV agrees to $13.25 Million Settlement With All 50 States

DIRECTV, one of the most complained-about companies in the country, has reached a settlement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia on a variety of consumer protection issues, including its notorious cancellation penalties.
The company has agreed to pay about $14 million and abide by a collection of rules of conduct for how it will treat its customers.

Curiously, the settlement comes almost exactly five years after a 22-state settlement was reached with DIRECTV over similar accusations. Complaints against the company have mounted in recent years, with more than 41,000 complaints processed just by the Better Business Bureau over the past three years.

Once again, this is Corporate America deliberately ripping off American consumers. They have a monopoly over American television and they could care less about these law suits. They will just add it onto next year’s rates and the mamby-pamby regulators will let them get away with it.

The latest round of state actions started exactly one year ago when Washington’s Attorney General sued DIRECTV. Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna’s office said the 2,000 complaints against the company made it the single largest source of complaints.
Washington settled its case separate from the collective settlement with other states, but with largely the same terms and a $1 million payout to McKenna’s office. DIRECTV, as is customary in settlements, admitted no wrongdoing.

“Under our settlement, DIRECTV agrees to disclosures that will help consumers know exactly what they’re signing up for so that there are no painful surprises,” McKenna said in a statement.

The company took an upbeat approach to reaching the settlements.

“DIRECTV has worked hand-in-hand with the Attorneys General to formalize many of the customer improvements we have made over the past few years and are pleased to have come to this agreement,” Mike White, chairman, president and CEO of DIRECTV, said in a statement. “DIRECTV is committed to always operating with the highest standards of integrity and will move forward with continued dedication to providing the best video experience possible for our customers.”
The settlements are supposed to end the long-vilified DIRECTV policy of imposing hundreds of dollars in cancellation penalties even if the reason for the customer canceling was due to the inability to receive a DIRECTV signal.

Refunds for certain complaints will handled by the states. Generally, they would be given to those who have lodged formal complaints with an attorney general’s office. It may still be possible to file a complaint for a past issue you’ve had with DIRECTV.

According to Washington officials, here are some of the agreed-upon policies:

• Cancellation Fees: DIRECTV will not impose a cancellation fee on a consumer who ends service because of a recurring problem that can’t be fixed.

• Advertising and Sales Disclosures: The company must clearly disclose the cost of the service, the contract length, additional charges for HD or DVR equipment, cancellation penalties, whether a promotional price is conditional on a rebate, whether an offer requires a particular payment, and other pertinent details. Extremely important disclosures, such as the requirement for a rebate, the required term of the consumer’s commitment and the period the promotional price will be charged, must be disclosed in direct proximity to the price itself.

• Contract Changes: DIRECTV can’t require consumers to enter into a new or extended contract when simply replacing or repairing defective equipment. If a service upgrade or other change by a consumer requires a new or additional term of commitment, DIRECTV must first obtain the consumer’s consent to enter into a new or extended contract.

• Rebates and Promotional Offers: DIRECTV must disclose whether a rebate is required to obtain the promotional price. If the consumer’s first bill does not reflect the price agreed to at the time of sale, DIRECTV must either provide that price or cancel the contract without penalty, if requested.

Dish Network dishes up millions to settle complaints filed by 46 states

Dish Network has reached an agreement with 46 states’ attorneys general to pay nearly $6 million plus restitution to settle allegations of deceptive consumer marketing and a lack of disclosure about costs and service limitations.The states came after Dish after thousands of consumer complaints were lodged.

Consumers with complaints against Dish are eligible for restitution from the settlement if they have filed a complaint with their state’s attorney general or Dish Network between Jan. 1, 2004 and July 9, 2009. Complaints eligible for compensation from the settlement will continue to be accepted through Dec. 14 as long as it involves problems that happened over the past two years.

Dish was the subject of more than 13,000 closed complaints over the past three years just to the Better Business Bureau (pending complaints are not disclosed). Despite the volume and nature of the complaints and a pending federal action over alleged telemarketing violations, the BBB rates Dish — a dues-paying member of the business organization — a “B.”

UPDATE: Competitor DirecTV, which draws similar complaints from consumers, was assessed more than $2 million in penalties by the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year for alleged telemarketing violations. The BBB also rates DirecTV a “B,” after amassing more than 30,000 complaints, explaining the company has been responsive to formal complaints.

Among the complaints filed with the state and the BBB regarding the Dish Network: Dish and its authorized retailers would offer big packages with discounts for a two-year commitment from consumers and then boost the price and/or reduce service. Consumers who then wanted to cancel their service were told they would face hundreds of dollars in cancellation penalties. Dish also was accused of drawing payment from customers’ bank accounts and credit cards without proper warning or authorization and violating Do-Not-Call telemarketing laws. Also, customers complained they were not informed that their premium sports packages were subject to blackout and that they might not receive their local TV stations.

“DISH Network’s misleading marketing beamed bad deals to thousands of consumers, causing financial hardships for those on limited incomes,” Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna said “This agreement makes the picture much clearer as to what business practices are acceptable.”

McKenna’s office cited the example of a senior citizen who had to pay $100 in overdraft fees after Dish drained her bank account.

To settle the cases, Dish agreed to fully disclose the terms and conditions of its contracts with consumers in plain English. In resolving the complaints, Dish, which claims more than 13 million customers of its satellite TV service, admitted no wrongdoing.

“Customer satisfaction has always been a top priority for DISH Network, and we continuously implement new approaches to strengthen our customer relationships,” Tom Cullen, executive vice president of DISH Network said in a statement.

The only states not party to the settlement are: California, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio. Those states did not accept the terms of the settlement. A copy of the settlement can be found here.

For consumers who don’t want to accept Dish’s restitution offer can appeal to a third-party claims administrator at CEO@dishnetwork.com. Questions may also be sent to that address.

by Heather Brooke

As Julian Assange emerged from his nine-day imprisonment, there were renewed concerns about the physical and psychological health of Bradley Manning, the former US intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the diplomatic cables at the centre of the storm.

Manning, who was arrested seven months ago, is being held at a military base in Virginia and faces a court martial and up to 52 years in prison for his alleged role in copying the cables.

His friends and supporters also claim they have been the target of extra-judicial harassment, intimidation and outright bribery by US government agents.

Can anyone trust our government to tell the truth? Can anyone trust our government to treat prisoners humanely? Can anyone say assuredly that our government would not torture prisoners? Can anyone say assuredly that our government would not drug prisoners involuntarily? No! There is no assurance. Our faith and confidence have been destroyed.

Our government is in disarray, lost in the Sea of Corruption, being tossed to and fro. Strangely, it is a time when technology is abundant everywhere but our government seems devoid of a simple moral compass.

According to David House, a computer researcher from Boston who visits Manning twice a month, he is starting to deteriorate. “Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing,” he said. “His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to [prison] regulations has affected his physical appearance in a manner that suggests physical weakness.”

Manning, House added, was no longer the characteristically brilliant man he had been, despite efforts to keep him intellectually engaged. He also disputed the authorities’ claims that Manning was being kept in solitary for his own good.

“I initially believed that his time in solitary confinement was a decision made in the interests of his safety,” he said. “As time passed and his suicide watch was lifted, to no effect, it became clear that his time in solitary – and his lack of a pillow, sheets, the freedom to exercise, or the ability to view televised current events – were enacted as a means of punishment rather than a means of safety.”

House said many people were reluctant to talk about Manning’s condition because of government harassment, including surveillance, warrantless computer seizures, and even bribes. “This has had such an intimidating effect that many are afraid to speak out on his behalf,” House said.

Some friends report being followed extensively. Another computer expert said the army offered him cash to – in his words – “infiltrate” the WikiLeaks website. He said: “I turned them down. I don’t want anything to do with this cloak and dagger stuff.”

When the Washington Post tried to investigate the claim, an army criminal investigation division spokesman refused to comment. “We’ve got an ongoing investigation,” he said. “We don’t discuss our techniques and tactics.”

On 3 November, House, 23, said he found customs agents waiting for him when he and his girlfriend returned to the US after a short holiday in Mexico. His bags were searched and two men identifying themselves as Homeland Security officials said they were being detained for questioning and would miss their connecting flight. The men seized all his electronic items and he was told to hand over all passwords and encryption keys – which he refused. The items have yet to be returned, said House. He added: “If Manning is convicted, it will be because his individual dedication to human ethics far surpasses that of the US government.”

House, who met Manning through friends but came to know him only after his detention, said he was committed to his cause. “Like many computer scientists, I identify with the open government issues at the core of this case.”

The postal address for Bradley Manning is:

Quantico Marine BRIG
Marine Corps Base Quantico
3247 Elrod Avenue
Quantico, VA 22134

The base commander’s postal address is:

Commanding General
MCB, Quantico
3250 Catlin Avenue
Quantico, VA 22134-5000

Consider writing to them.

All US military personnel swear an oath to honor and defend the US Constitution. The Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment”. The base commander is obligated by oath to protect Mannning’s well-being.

The Constitution also declares that treaties are “the supreme law of the land”. The Geneva Conventions are treaties that prohibit occupation military forces from killing civilians. The leaked Iraq videos are evidence of US military violating the Geneva Conventions, and thus violating the US Constitution. A person like Manning, sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC, is obligated by oath to try to stop those violations of the US Constitution.

WikiLeaks: The Emperor Wears No Clothes

Now WikiLeaks has laid bare the lies and collusion, we pledge to not just witness but actively participate in its fight for democracy

by John Pilger and Others

We are writing this statement in support of democracy.

Since Sunday, 28 November, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from around the world (the Guardian [1], the New York Times [2], Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais) have been publishing redacted versions of leaked US diplomatic cables in an ongoing story that has become known as “Cablegate”. The identity of the original leaker is – as yet – unconfirmed.

As this Wikileaks melodrama unfolds we shall see whether Barack Obama really believes in transparency. We shall see! We are adding our name to this statement. Join with us by adding a comment. There is a place to add comments at the end of the story.

This is not the first leak of confidential documentation that exposes governmental lies – and it won’t be the last. Secret information has long been used by elites to build and maintain power over huge populations of citizens, workers, armed forces and others. But when the secrets of the elite are revealed, the power they represent can be confronted and reversed.

Nor is this the first time that state (and other) forces of power have acted to prevent dissemination of information on the internet – and it won’t be the last.

Sites have been removed by their hosting companies [3], servers seized by police or other governmental authorities, take-down requests issued under the rule of law: none of these prevented information spreading.

But the issues run deeper than this. As former US president Thomas Jefferson once stated, “information is the currency of democracy”. Democracy – the rule of the people – as currently understood and practiced is, and has long been, severely restricted.

Power is abused in our name by governments and transnational corporations around the world: they fight illegal wars; abuse and kill people; pillage property and planet. The powerful accumulate wealth and force the majority – the rest of us – to pay for it: with our health, our freedom, our time, our money and with our lives. For a long time, we have been deceived about the reasons for this: it is our right for the truth to be known. Without that right, democracy cannot and does not exist. The current assault on WikiLeaks is yet another instance of democracy-hating by elites.

Now, we find we are witnessing a new level of info-struggle. We are witnessing how the emperor wears no clothes. We can see the lies made bare, we can see the posturing and propositioning that our governments participate in. We can see the collusion that occurs with transnational corporations and with global media giants. WikiLeaks and others are battling against powerful institutions bent on curtailing our knowledge of and influence over policies and structures that impact our lives: they are information heroes, not information villains. We see all this being done in our name, and we condemn it.

Thus, we pledge to not simply bear witness but to actively participate in this fight – for freedom of speech, for real democracy and for justice. We know this is only the beginning: de-masking the puppeteers facilitates action towards fairer and more just societies. We demand that the truth be heard. We stand at the doorway to a new, just and democratic world: a doorway we pledge to keep open and to march through. We stand with all the inhabitants of this world who are affected daily by governments that oppress the right to free speech and obstruct the path to true democracy.

Signed:

Andrei Morgan

Michael Albert

Jamie McClelland

Daniel Kahn Gillmor

Tachanka! [4] collective

London Indymedia [5]

John Pilger

Donnacha Delong, vice-president, National Union of Journalists

Yvonne Ridley, founder, Women In Journalism

Hessom Razavi

Mike Holderness, freelance journalist

Pennie Quinton, freelance journalist and human rights campaigner

May First/People Link [6]

Phil Edwards

Sheffield Indymedia [7]

Chris Grollman

Chris Anderson

David Graeber, reader in social anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Toile-Libre [8]

Plentyfact [9] collective

Koumbit Worker’s Committee [10]

Sasha Costanza-Chock, fellow, Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University

Added Names

Joe Watts, Watts Cookin’ Blog

WikiLeaks Activists Rally Supporters in Several Nations

by CNN Wire Staff

Pro-free-speech rallies are scheduled in several international cities Saturday to protest the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is being held in a prison on the outskirts of London on suspicion of sex crimes unrelated to his controversial website.

Protesters hold pictures and signs in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a demonstration in front of the British Consulate in Barcelona December 11, 2010. (REUTERS/Gustau Nacarino)

The Wikileaks web page has been shut down. We do not know the background on it except that it seems to have all happened as a result of ‘unauthorized’ material being published on the site.

Nati0nal security has always been used as a reason for censorship, but based on the material that has been published it has nothing to do with national security, only national embarrassment. Several diplomats have been guilty of opening their mouths and putting their foot in it, and yes, the language used was not very diplomatic, but a threat to national security? Silliness.

If Wikileaks can be shut down, so can Watts Cookin Blog, and so can Fox News, and so can Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, and it has the result of intimidating respected national news organizations to the point that the public is denied the truth.

Shutting down Wikileaks is a sad day for America and the world.

A Spanish website that supports WikiLeaks’ cause urged protesters Saturday to gather in the capitals of Spain, Peru, Mexico, Argentina, the Netherlands and Colombia to demand Assange’s release.

“We seek the liberation of Julian Assange in United Kingdom territory,” the website said.

The website called on protesters to gather at 6 p.m. (noon ET) in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Seville, and other Spanish cities.

Similar rallies were held in Assange’s native Australia on Friday.

Protests are also scheduled in London’s Hyde Park on Saturday, according to Justice for Assange, a website that collects and lists rally information. Demonstrators are scheduled to continue their protest at London’s Westminster Court and the Swedish Embassy on Monday and Tuesday. The planned rallies come after massive student protests in London caused violence and disruption during a busy holiday shopping week.

Assange, who is being held at the Wandsworth prison south of London, faces extradition to Sweden over allegations of sexual assault. He was denied bail during a court appearance Tuesday. Some pro-Assange activists believe his incarceration is politically motivated for his role in disseminating secret U.S. diplomatic cables and other classified documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the WikiLeaks site.

Support for WikiLeaks has also been voiced by several world leaders, including Brazil’s outgoing president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“I show my solidarity with WikiLeaks,” Lula said during a press conference Friday.

“The fault is not with the one who divulged the information but with the ones who wrote such stupidity,” he said.

U.N. Human Rights commissioner Navi Pillay also showed her support for Assange and criticized what she called policies of “intimidation” against him.

“If WikiLeaks has committed any recognizable illegal act, then this should be handled through the legal system, and not through pressure and intimidation, including on third parties,” Pillay said during a conference Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland.

In addition to demanding Assange’s release, demonstrators are also calling for the resumption of the WikiLeaks domain name as well as the the restoration of WikiLeaks’ Visa, Mastercard and Swiss accounts so supporters can continue to send financial support to the website.

WikiLeaks, which facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information, began posting the first of more than 250,000 U.S. State Department documents late last month. Since then, the site has been hit with denial-of-service attacks, been kicked off servers in the United States and France, and lost major revenue sources.

The release has been blasted by U.S. and other Western leaders, who say the documents’ publication threatens national security.

© 2010 Cable News Network

When Gary Herbert assumed the governorship from Jon Huntsman Jr. in August 2009, we said that he was known to be a thoughtful, careful man who likes to listen to all sides and drill down into policy issues. We urged him to steer a moderate political course. In his year in the job, he has done that, for the most part, and he’s earned our endorsement to continue in office for another two years.

By any objective measure, Herbert is a bona fide conservative on both financial and social issues. But in Utah, where the Republican-dominated Legislature is pulling further to the right every day, dancing happily with tea party enthusiasts, Herbert has emerged as a moderating force, a voice of reason. We hope he will play that role more strongly if he is re-elected, backed by an electoral mandate of his own in the top job.

Nevertheless, a governor must work with the Legislature, and Herbert has done that, too. He formulated his first budget proposal, the one for the current fiscal year that began July 1, just as the economy was showing signs of weak recovery from the Great Recession. In the face of further erosion of revenues, he promised to dip into the Rainy Day Fund, protect education as far as possible and make judicious cuts elsewhere in state government while avoiding any recovery-killing tax hikes. In the end, he accomplished most of that, though he allowed the Legislature’s tobacco tax increase to pass into law without his signature.

In the political storm over immigration, he called for a summit to provide a civil forum, and he has urged the Legislature to retain in-state college tuition for children of undocumented immigrants who graduate from Utah high schools. He backed an immediate investigation that quickly exposed rogue state workers who anonymously published a list of 1,300 aliens allegedly in the country illegally. He wisely decided not to call a special session to make voluntary a state law that requires employers to verify the eligibility of employees to work in this country because he worried the session could take hasty, extremist decisions. He has warned about the risks of racial profiling and arrests without probable cause inherent in Arizona-style immigration enforcement legislation.

After lengthy deliberation, he correctly decided that Utah would administer the new high-risk insurance pool under the federal health reform law. He dismissed calls for the state to turn down federal stimulus money to keep teachers in their jobs.

Herbert took a stand to prevent further shipments of depleted uranium from coming to Utah for disposal until federal and state regulators can develop rules that take account of its peculiar long-term hazards.

The biggest disappointments of his young administration have been Herbert’s refusal to part company with the climate-change deniers in his party and his opposition to caps on financial contributions to political campaigns, including his own. But we applaud his decisions not to sign the proposed agreement with Nevada to divide Snake Valley water and his move to protect a Native American archaeological site in Draper that otherwise could have become a FrontRunner station.

He has been too cautious in wielding his veto pen to strike down absurdly unconstitutional “message” legislation, such as that declaring eminent domain on the part of the state over federal lands, or that federal gun laws don’t apply to firearms manufactured and sold exclusively within the state.

But he has argued rightly that Utah should not be the wholesale clearinghouse for anyone outside the state who wants a permit to carry a concealed firearm.

Herbert’s opponent, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, is also worthy to hold the governor’s office. He, too, is a fiscal conservative who resisted subsidizing the Real Salt Lake soccer stadium with public funds and turned back one property tax increase during the recession, though he reluctantly agreed to another. Like Herbert, he has trimmed budgets and sacrificed public jobs to financial reality. He has an impeccable environmental record, something that Herbert should emulate, particularly where Salt Lake Valley air quality is concerned. Corroon and running mate Sheryl Allen offer the refreshing alternative of a genuinely bipartisan ticket.

But Herbert has a leg up on experience in the job, and he can play a more constructive moderating role on Capitol Hill as a Republican than could Corroon as a Democrat. Herbert also has a moderate running mate in Lt. Gov. Greg Bell.

With a bit more seasoning, Herbert could emerge as a strong, consensus-building governor who represents all Utahns, recognizing that the state body politic is much more progressive than the Legislature. We believe he will. That’s why we enthusiastically endorse him to continue as Utah’s governor.

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn is not the only one taking lumps for hot-tubbing in the nude with a 15-year-old and later paying her hush money. The Deseret News is, too — for knowing about the incident eight years ago and not reporting it.

“It was a bad decision not to report it,” said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a journalism training organization.

To its great credit this contrite story was published in The Deseret News. At this point The Tribune has not publicly recognized that it was aware of the story. This was about the time that Dean Singleton took over as publisher of The Tribune from the McCarthey family and so the newspaper, especially the editorial department, was in a bit of turmoil itself. Singleton became publisher on August 1st, 2002. The date of Garn’s interview with the Deseret News is not fixed, but it was around this time frame. The Tribune may or may not have received the letter Maher contends she sent.

The public relies on major newspapers to dig up stories and make reliable judgments and to protect the public interest. At what point in time should The Deseret News have responded? It’s hard to pass judgment without more information. The fact that Garn confessed to the Deseret News is troubling, but the reader is not aware of whether the Deseret News knew that hush money was being paid or had been paid. That was probably something that happened at about the same time and Garn probably didn’t tell the News about that. That it is responding now and explaining the details of its decision process at the time is noteworthy and a credit to them. It will certainly be helpful to them going forward.

“You essentially have someone who has presented one face to the public and it has been revealed that may not be true and accurate. And most likely you guys (the Deseret News) helped him present his narrative to the public. For that reason alone, you have an obligation to correct the record,” she said in a telephone interview.

That was typical of many comments on web sites and from some readers. But top Deseret News editors say they believe they made the right choice back in 2002, and they still defend it.

Former Deseret News reporter Jerry Spangler said the episode began in 2002 when he wrote a profile of Garn and his congressional race just before the Republican primary election. He said Cheryl Maher called him to say “there is a side of him you don’t know about,” and told him about the nude hot-tubbing.

Maher said Friday that she also contacted the Salt Lake Tribune in 2002 and told it the same story.

“It was the week before the election,” Spangler said. He remembers writing a draft of a story about the incident with Bob Bernick, the political editor, and inviting Garn to comment. He also remembers that Maher was hesitant to give many details and seemed “flaky.”

He and Bernick said Garn came into the Deseret News offices and met with them and several editors. “I remember him crying,” and confessing what happened, Spangler said.

But by then it was nearly the weekend before the election. Spangler said editor-in-chief at the time, John Hughes, and managing editor Rick Hall chose not to run the story.

Spangler said they questioned if something that had happened 17 years earlier was still news and said they did not want it to be the main issue on the minds of voters as they voted in the primary. When Garn lost — which meant he would be out of politics — Spangler said editors decided the story was moot.

Both Hughes and Hall said Friday that they do not remember the incident nor the discussion about how to handle it and why. “You think I would because it sounds juicy, but I don’t,” Hughes said. “Maybe we discussed it out, and I just moved on.”

Hall, who is still managing editor, said he does not dispute Spangler’s version of what happened. While he can’t remember it, he also says he thinks the right call was made.

“It was last-minute — was it coming from the other camp? There wasn’t time to verify it,” he said. “Should that be the thing on people’s minds as they go to the election booth? It’s a balancing act that we play every day.”

Spangler said he kept in contact with Maher for a few weeks after the election, and she finally told him that she didn’t want to talk about the incident anymore — that she had received an apology from Garn and that is what she wanted. “She didn’t tell me about the $150,000, though” — hush money that Garn paid her, he said.

Spangler left journalism before Garn re-entered politics and was re-elected to the Legislature.

Bernick said he remembers Garn telling him at some later point that he had paid some undisclosed amount of money to Maher and that she had signed a non-disclosure agreement, so Bernick said he figured she would no longer talk. He said he also did not know her name or phone number, because Spangler had dealt with her.

Bernick said Garn called him when he was considering involvement in the 2004 gubernatorial campaign of Marty Stephens and asked if the incident might come up. He asked the same later when he ran again for the Legislature in 2006. Bernick said he gave him no guarantees but also said he didn’t know the woman’s name or how to contact her.

Bernick said, “I think we made the right call, not to try to rush something into print when the woman was kind of a flake. I think it was the right call then and the right call now.”

McBride, however, says bad calls were made. “The standard would have been to report it,” she said. “You had it verified and you had the woman talking to you.” She added, “It clearly was a bad call when he got back into politics.”

Weber State University journalism professor Alison Barlow Hess, who is also president of the Society of Professional Journalists in Utah, also feels a bad call was likely made but was less harsh in her criticism.

“If these issues were easy, we would not be here discussing it. It’s not always an absolute,” she said. She adds that the Deseret News at least took a good step by apparently discussing it among several editors and reporters, including those with opposing opinions, before making the decision.

But she said the decision that was made will make readers wonder “how many other lawmakers have come in crying, and say ‘I’m really sad,’ and ‘this happened a long time ago’ and didn’t have it reported.”

She added, “People in Utah are pretty skeptical about the ethics of Utah legislators, and whether they are getting sweetheart deals” — including from the press because of decisions like this.

e-mail: lee@desnews.com

This news, at once unsettling and unsurprising, came from the Gallup polling organization on Wednesday. Beck, the new Fox News host who has said President Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people” and alternately likens administration officials to Nazis and Marxists, was also more admired by Americans than Billy Graham and Bill Gates, not to mention Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. In Americans’ esteem, Beck only narrowly trailed South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, the man who defeated apartheid.

The 45-year-old recovering alcoholic and Mormon convert has become the first true demagogue of the information age. His nightly diet of falsehoods and conspiracies on Fox, and his daily outrages on the radio, have propelled his popularity past even Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. His method is simple: He goes places where others are forbidden by conscience.

Death panels? Government health insurance for dogs? FEMA concentration camps? An Obama “civilian national security force” like Hitler’s SS or Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard? An administration official advocating forced abortions and sterilization agents in drinking water? Beck trafficked in them all in 2009.

He also proposed on his radio show that people should read Hitler’s Mein Kampf to prepare for Obama’s health care plan — and that’s in addition to the 28 times the fuhrer made an appearance on Beck’s Fox show in 2009. The Anti-Defamation League identified the secret to Beck’s success when it noted that he, unlike other prominent right-wing talkers, was willing “to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists.”

His critics during his ascent over the year have compared the pudgy Fox News host to Father Coughlin, George Wallace and Joe McCarthy. Time magazine put Beck on its cover and asked: “Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?”

A better question might be: “Is Glenn Beck America?” All ages have their charlatans. The fact that Beck’s stew of venom and fabrication has been such a triumph probably says less about Beck than about us. He has merely captured the moment.

There’s scant evidence that Beck holds his zany views with any conviction — even if he often breaks into tears on the air to demonstrate his passion. At the very least, he has come to his views recently, after years as a morning-zoo radio DJ with libertarian leanings. The Atlantic ‘s James Warren reported that the comedian Stephen Colbert recently spoke about the difficulty of lampooning Beck, reasoning that “if somebody doesn’t believe what they’re saying, it’s very hard to out-stupid them.”

But if Beck isn’t a true believer, he’s a brilliant entertainer, and he has calculated, correctly, that a large number of Americans would turn on cable news for more of the insults and conspiracies they get online.

In terms of the political culture, he’s more parasite than host. Yet, he’s had a huge impact on the body politic.

» Viewers: The former DJ is getting nearly 3 million a night, besting even the likes of O’Reilly among the viewers most valuable to advertisers, even though there are far fewer people watching TV during Beck’s 5 p.m. slot than during prime time.

» Cultural impact: At The New York Times , where Beck’s frequent books often top the bestseller list, Motoko Rich reports that novelists are calling Beck the “new Oprah,” and some entertainment industry executives consider him a possible replacement for Oprah herself.

» Scalps: He single-handedly brought down Obama adviser Van Jones over the official’s far-left past.

» Followers: He launched the 9.12 Project, which held a large protest in Washington, was a major promoter of the Tea Party movement and is planning conventions and rallies in 2010.

In a hearing on “policy czars” by the Senate Homeland Security committee this fall, the chairman, Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., insisted the topic had come up before “it got to be a hot topic on the airwaves, particularly from He Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned, who is my constituent and longtime acquaintance, since he had a morning radio show in New Haven, Connecticut.”

Lieberman didn’t mention that he wrote a letter of recommendation that helped get the high-school-educated Beck into a nondegree program at Yale. Beck quit after just one course in religion — and now this theology dropout has earned a status in America more exalted than the Holy Father’s.

As Glenn Beck likes to say: I fear for my country.

Published in Boston Phoenix

Glenn Beck: Latter-day Taint

Glenn Beck’s Mormonism may even frighten fellow believers.

By Adam Reilly

Fifteen years ago, Glenn Beck was a small-market DJ with a drinking problem, no friends and bleak professional prospects. Today, he’s a Fox News superstar averaging 2.4 million viewers (in a mediocre time slot, no less), an inexorably successful author (his new book, Arguing with Idiots, is the fourth Beck opus to top the New York Times best-seller list), and the leader of a popular movement that condemns government in general and President Barack Obama in particular.

What’s more, he’s gotten under the skin of politicians from both parties. In recent months, the White House took vigorous issue with Beck’s criticisms of senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina ripped Beck’s cynicism and teary tendencies in an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

Notwithstanding Beck’s reckless asininity—e.g., his infamous claim that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”—that’s an impressive career arc. And the media, naturally, have been striving to grasp the Beck phenomenon: witness Time magazine’s credulous Sep. 28 cover story, a sharp column by The New York Times’ Frank Rich, an earlier New York Times profile and sundry other treatments ranging from the academic (Columbia Journalism Review) to the middlebrow (CBS’s Katie Couric).

Beck’s would-be interpreters occasionally note that he’s a Mormon: He joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as an adult, in 1999, with his wife and children. But in contrast with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose Mormonism was discussed in great detail during his failed 2008 presidential bid, the ramifications of Beck’s faith have gone largely unexplored. That’s unfortunate, because a case can be made that Beck is to Mormonism what Father Charles Coughlin was to Catholicism in the 1930s, when the “radio priest” peddled nasty, faith-based opposition to another ambitious Democratic president.

Given the ease with which this discussion could degenerate into Mormon-bashing, this reticence may be understandable. To fully ‘get’  Beck, though, it’s necessary to understand just how many of his beliefs have specifically Mormon roots or are conveyed in uniquely Mormon ways—from his embrace of former Mormon leader Ezra Taft Benson’s insatiable anti-communism to his Mormon-bred suspicion that the government is the agent of Satan. For some of Beck’s co-religionists, these links are obvious. Back in March, for example, writing on the Mormon-history blog The Juvenile Instructor, Christopher Jones—a doctoral student in history at William & Mary— noted that Beck seemed to be plumbing the disturbing depths of Mormon millenarianism and marveled at the media’s seeming disinterest.

Once the link between Beck’s faith and politics gets made, intriguing questions emerge: Without his unsettling brand of Mormonism, would Glenn Beck still be Glenn Beck? Should members of the LDS Church be cheering or lamenting Beck’s protracted moment in the spotlight? Could Beck’s forays into stealth Mormon sermonizing make his conservative evangelical fans rethink their loyalty? And, if Beck’s religiosity finally becomes a story, what might that mean for the lingering presidential hopes of 2012 Republican contender Mitt Romney?

DEEP TIES TO THE PAST
To be fair, the media haven’t totally ignored the significance of Beck’s Mormonism. In September, Salon published several stories by Alexander Zaitchik, author of a forthcoming Beck biography, on Beck’s improbable march to conservative superstardom. One—“Meet the Man Who Changed Glenn Beck’s Life”—focused on Beck’s deep ties to Cleon Skousen, an eccentric, prolific Mormon thinker who died in 2006. These days, Skousen is best known as the author of The Five Thousand Year Leap, a book that dubs the U.S. Constitution a “miracle” and casts the Founders as deeply Christian men. Beck has lavishly praised The Five Thousand Year Leap on air, and even wrote the foreword for a new edition of the book; as a result, this formerly obscure text is now a bestseller in its own right.

But Skousen wasn’t just a cheerleader for Christianity. He was also a zealous purveyor of conspiracy theories, obsessed with communism in his earlier years, and later warning of a vast mega-conspiracy in which communists and capitalists joined forces to seek total world domination.

Oddly, Skousen’s mega-conspiracy clarion call—a 1970 volume titled The Naked Capitalist—was actually a booklength pseudo-review of Tragedy and Hope, a sprawling tome by the Mormon historian Carroll Quigley (who taught future president Bill Clinton at Georgetown). Stranger still, Quigley insisted that Skousen had fundamentally misinterpreted his work. “Skousen is apparently a political agitator. I am an historian,” Quigley complained in Dialogue, a Mormon intellectual journal, in 1971. “I never anywhere said that financial capitalism or any of its subsidiaries sought to ‘support communism.’”

Nonetheless, The Naked Capitalist gained a wide readership at Brigham Young University (BYU), where Skousen was a professor of religion—and where he apparently taught one Willard Mitt Romney. (One internecine Mormon squabble, one former president, and one serious presidential contender … what are the odds?)

Of course, just because Beck’s politics are Skousenian doesn’t necessarily mean they’re deeply Mormon. No intellectual tradition can be reduced to one individual—and in 1979, the LDS Church formally distanced itself from the Freemen Institute, which Skousen founded in 1971 to promulgate his half-baked ideas. (At the time, the LDS Church was led by Spencer Kimball, known for receiving the revelation that finally opened the Mormon priesthood to black men. For his part, Skousen accused critics of this notorious racial ban of using communist tactics.)

But Skousen is hardly Beck’s only major Mormon influence. His understanding of present-day realities also reflects the paranoid anti-communism of Ezra Taft Benson, who served as secretary of agriculture in the Eisenhower administration and later, from 1985 to 1994, as president and living prophet of the LDS Church.

Beck made his troubling fondness for Benson explicit just before the 2008 presidential election while riffing on the comments of a clueless Obama supporter, who was caught on tape saying that Obama’s election would mean no more gas or mortgage payments. On his Oct. 31, 2008, radio show, Beck cited these absurd remarks as evidence that a dire prediction made by Benson in 1966, during a speech at BYU, could soon come to pass.

Introducing Benson only as Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture, and omitting any mention of his subsequent role leading the LDS Church, Beck noted that his listeners were likely the same age as Benson’s grandchildren. Then came Benson’s voice, describing an ominous conversation he once had with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev:

As we talked face to face, [Khrushchev] indicated that my grandchildren would live under communism. After assuring him that I expected to do all in my power to assure that his and all other grandchildren will live under freedom, he arrogantly declared in substance, “You Americans are so gullible! No, you won’t accept communism outright. But we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism, until you finally wake up and find that you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you. We’ll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands!”

Church and State
Benson and Skousen were products of the Cold War’s heyday, in which Americans of all religious stripes were spooked by real and imagined manifestations of the Red Menace. But they both also emerged from the distinct culture of Mormonism—which was shaped in its earliest days by violent conflict with the U.S. government and which still brings its own unique understanding to bear on key political concepts and institutions.

Take the U.S. Constitution: As Michelle Goldberg explained in Kingdom Coming (Norton), Christian nationalists of every denomination believe that the Constitution is a fundamentally Christian document—and that the separation of church and state, as currently understood, represents a radical departure from the Founders’ ideals.

But Mormonism goes a step further. According to Mormon scriptures, the Constitution isn’t merely a document written by deeply Christian men. It is, instead, the indirect handiwork of God himself. (See, for example, Doctrine and Covenants 101:80, in which God explains: “[F]or this purpose”—i.e., the preservation of moral agency— “have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose.”)

In addition, there’s a widely known concept in Mormonism—not contained in the Mormon scriptures, but attributed to Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, and still influential among some believers—that effectively places believers on perpetual Red Alert for the Constitution’s possible demise. According to this tenet, commonly known as the “White Horse Prophecy,” there will come a time when the Constitution is in great jeopardy—when it will “hang by a thread,” in Smith’s purported words—at which point the Mormon people will come to its rescue.

Apparently, Beck believes that this terrifying crisis is now at hand (or just thinks LDS apocalypticism makes great radio). On Election Day in 2008, Beck interviewed Utah’s Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, also a Mormon, on his radio program:

Beck: Senator, do you believe—I mean, when I heard Barack Obama talk about the Constitution, and I thought, we are at the point or we are very near the point where our Constitution is hanging by a thread.

Hatch: You got that right …

Beck: We are so close to losing our Constitution. We are so close to losing what we have, and people aren’t thinking. The next generation, our children will look to us and say, “You sold my freedom for what?”

Hatch: Well, let me tell you something. I believe the Constitution is hanging by a thread.

More recently, Beck used his radio show to propound the Mormon conception of Satan—though many in his audience may not have noticed. On May 5, waxing indignant about governmentsponsored social services—as opposed to freely chosen acts of charity—Beck asked, “Did Jesus say when a man asks for your shirt, you give the government your coat also, and have the government give that coat to the man? No! The government is a middleman. … The government is the devil.”

That’s a bizarre statement—but it jibes with a passage in the “Pearl of Great Price,” one of the LDS Church’s canonical scriptures, in which God explains that Satan was cast down after he “rebelled against Me, and sought to destroy the agency of man …” God’s conflict with the devil, in other words, originated with the latter’s attempts to deprive humans of free moral agency. Hence, Beck’s overheated assessment of a hypothetical, government-sponsored clothing giveaway. As Jones, the aforementioned Mormon historian and blogger, immediately noted, Beck’s strange claim was actually a “variation on a standard Sunday School theme.”

Romney’s Apocalypse?
So is Beck’s retro Mormonism responsible for his particular brand of politics?

Not everyone thinks so. “Anybody that’s going back to the John Birch era is going to discover Ezra Taft Benson,” says Jan Shipps, an emeritus professor at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and eminent non-Mormon scholar of Mormonism. “To say he’s going in that direction because he became a Mormon is pushing it a little far.”

The prolific historian D. Michael Quinn, who grew up in the LDS Church, makes a similar point. Quinn—who was trained at Yale and has taught there and at BYU—was excommunicated by the LDS Church in 1993 after pursuing several incendiary topics in Mormon history. He suspects that Beck’s conservatism led him to embrace the LDS Church, rather than the other way around. “The combination of Skousen and Benson would have been very attractiveto him,” says Quinn. “I think he’s now sharing with America what originally attracted him to Mormonism.”

Even if Shipps and Quinn are right, though, that doesn’t mean that Beck’s faith is insignificant. After all, thanks to Beck’s chosen LDS influences, he’s currently interpreting the first years of the 21st century via a melodramatic, anxiety-soaked worldview that was established 50 years ago—and which, in turn, was itself grounded in Mormon scripture and the LDS Church’s 19th-century travails. Given this intellectual lineage, is it any wonder that Beck and his fans tend to regard fundamentally political problems— health-care reform, say—as apocalyptic battles between good and evil?

Among some Mormons, meanwhile, there’s fear that Beck’s ascent could reinvigorate a strain of Mormon thought that’s been fading away. Rory Swensen is co-chair of the board of directors of the Sunstone Education Foundation, which publishes the independent, liberal-leaning journal Sunstone; he also writes for the Mormon blog Times and Seasons. In a best-case scenario, Swensen says, Beck’s ascendance could foster discussion of the notion—repeatedly endorsed by the LDS Church hierarchy—that Mormonism doesn’t require allegiance to any political party, even though most Mormons tend to vote Republican.

That said, Swensen worries that Beck could help throw the LDS Church into a sort of ideological time warp. “Mormons tend to be one or two generations behind the broader culture, which is frustrating—a church that espouses prophetic inspiration should be the headlights on issues affecting the oppressed and the downtrodden, not the taillights,” he argues. “On civil rights, we were about 30 years too late. We’re fighting gay marriage right now, but I think you’re going to see the broader culture adopt it—and about 30 years later, we’ll find some way to make it work.”

That’s his hope, anyway. But, Swensen adds, “With Beck tapping into and exploiting mid-20th-century fears of anti-communism and anti-fascism, we might see a resurgence in that culture within Mormonism—and another generation of LDS leaders like Ezra Taft Benson.”

Mitt Romney’s politics are radically different from Swensen’s— but as the Massachusetts former governor girds for another run at the White House, he should probably be concerned, too.

During the 2008 campaign, Romney wooed Christian conservatives by arguing that the doctrinal particulars of his faith weren’t important. What mattered instead, Romney claimed, was that he had faith—that he wasn’t a godless secularist. “While differences in theology exist between the churches in America,” Romney said in his December 2007 speech on faith, “we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it’s usually a sound rule to focus on the latter.”

But, as Beck’s example shows, shared moral conviction can mask radically different ideas about important subjects. If the media start examining Beck’s Mormon influences in detail, they just might follow suit with Romney.

Back in 2007, after Romney cited Skousen during a radio interview, the National Review’s Mark Hemingway—himself a former Mormon—struck a deeply skeptical note in a piece titled “Romney’s Radical Roots.” Skousen’s anticommunism, Hemingway wrote, was “so irrational in its paranoia that it would have made Whittaker Chambers blush. … For better and for worse, Romney’s familiarity with Cleon Skousen does convincingly demonstrate that Mitt Romney is not far removed and indeed well-acquainted with a radical and firebrand conservatism—even if it is of the variety he might want to keep chained to a radiator in the attic.”

That’s precisely the sort of talk that Romney’s speech on faith was supposed to quash. Instead, thanks to the converted zealotry of Glenn Beck, the conversation might just be getting started.

This story originally appeared in the Boston Phoenix.

This letter of praise to the Tribune is spot-on. We also love the Tribune editorial page. It is always full of interesting observations from all sides of the spectrum. Our Watts Cookin’ Blog is full of articles from the Salt Lake Tribune because they are timely, informative, and crucial.

Everyone in Utah should subscribe to and read the Tribune, otherwise they are simply uninformed about what is going on around them.

The Tribune ‘s Oct. 4 op-ed page was exceptional. First, Nicholas Kristof explained rationally why more troops are not the answer in Afghanistan, helping me change my position (“Sending more troops to Afghanistan a bad bet”).

Next, Ed Firmage Jr. takes on Sen. Orrin Hatch about global warming, explaining how the science the senator uses is fundamentally flawed and how Hatch is wrong (“Professor Hatch’s ‘Climate 101′ lacks science”). I hope Hatch sees this article; every Utah fifth-grader ought to read it. It’s simple and understandable.

Lastly, Karrie Galloway explains how some in the Legislature simply have no idea what Planned Parenthood does to help thousands of Utahns every year get the help and education they need (“Planned Parenthood given bad rap by legislators”). This is not some evil organization, as many of them believe; it plays a necessary and practical role in the lives of many Utah families. As a result, I’m joining PP and donating $100. I hope others do, too.

These are the types of articles that inform, educate and entertain. They are at the heart of the reason I subscribe to The Tribune . Please keep it coming.

Tom Love

Salt Lake City

The Salt Lake Tribune

Thou shalt air only “nonsectarian” shows may be a tenet of public television, but PBS leadership on Tuesday chiselled in an exception that will allow Brigham Young University’s KBYU to keep broadcasting Mormon devotionals on Channel 11, while hanging on to PBS staples like the “NewsHour,” “Nova,” “American Experience” and “WordGirl.”

KBYU’s status as a public television station was jeopardized under a PBS membership policy overhaul, which had considered barring member stations from airing church services and other faith-oriented programming. But in a compromise gesture, the PBS board, which is comprised mostly of station managers, decided to permit the handful of member stations that air such material to continue doing so as long as they don’t add new programming deemed “sectarian.”

“It allows us to continue the programming we have. We are very pleased,” BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. Had the PBS board struck a hard-line position, KBYU would have had to either quit airing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints General Conferences and other Mormon material or sacrifice its PBS membership. Four other public television stations, which broadcast Sunday Masses, were in a similar situation.

PBS officials stressed that the decision arose during a much-needed review of membership policies, the first since the digital revolution transformed the media landscape allowing stations to “multicast” on Web sites, podcasts and other new platforms in addition to the airwaves. But during the review, the board realized some public stations, such as KBYU and WLAE in New Orleans, historically provided sectarian programs, said board member Peter Morrill, Idaho Public Television’s general manager.

“They have provided these services for decades. That fact needed to be recognized,” Morrill said. The board’s decision to allow these members to continue such broadcasts is a testament to the organization’s diversity and commitment to local autonomy, officials said.

In the meantime, a PBS policy adopted Tuesday encourages members to “migrate” sectarian content from their main channel to other platforms. Long-standing policy also bars members from airing commercial and political content.

It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit’s ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU.  Agree or disagree with Obama’s decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama’s actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now — obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) — Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman — called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 — that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.”  As long as the Defense Secretary certifies — with no review possible — that disclosure would “endanger” American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure.  The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely.  The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.

Just imagine if any other country did this.  Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse.  Further imagine that the country’s judiciary — applying decades-old transparency laws — ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public.  But in response, that country’s President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence.  What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn’t even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.

That this exact scenario is now happening in the U.S. is all the more remarkable given that the President who is demanding these new suppression powers is the same one who repeatedly vowed “to make his administration the most open and transparent in history.”  After noting the tentative steps Obama has taken to increase transparency, the generally pro-Obama Washington Post Editorial Page today observed: “what makes the administration’s support for the photographic records act so regrettable” is that “Mr. Obama runs the risk of taking two steps back in his quest for more open government.”

What makes all of this even worse is that it is part of a broader trend whereby the Government simply retroactively changes the law whenever it decides it does not want to abide by it.  For decades, we had laws in place authorizing citizens to sue their telecommunication carriers if the telecoms allowed government spying on their communications in violation of the law, but when it was revealed that the telecoms did exactly this, the Congress simply changed the law retroactively so that it no longer applied.  For decades, we had laws imposing civil and criminal liability on government officials who engaged in or authorized torture, but when it was revealed that our government did that, the Congress just retroactively changed the law to protect the torturers.  And now that courts have ruled that our decades-old transparency law compels disclosure of this torture evidence, the Congress is just going to retroactively change the law — again — this time to empower the President to suppress that evidence anyway.

Other than creating an illusion of transparency and accountability, what’s the point of having laws that purport to restrict what the Government can do if political officials just retroactively waive those laws whenever they want?  What’s the point of having a FOIA law if the Government will simply pass a new law exempting itself from FOIA’s mandates any time it loses in court and wants to conceal evidence anyway?   And what conceivable rationale is there for limiting the President’s new secrecy powers to post-9/11 photographs?  Given that anything which reflects poorly on our Government can be said to endanger our troops and American citizens, why stop here?  Why not just have a general power of suppression whereby the President can keep any evidence secret as long as his Defense Secretary decrees that its disclosure will ”endanger” the troops?

The debate over whether there is value in disclosing these specific photographs is entirely misplaced.  That isn’t how open government works.  The burden isn’t on citizens to prove that there is value in disclosure.  Everything that government does is supposed to be transparent to the public unless there is a compelling reason for secrecy — and the whole point of FOIA always has been that mere embarrassment, the mere fact that information reflects poorly on our government, isn’t a legitimate ground for concealment.  That’s a critical principle for open government.  This new law explicitly guts that principle.  It institutionalizes the pernicious notion that secrecy is justified where disclosure would reflect badly on the Government and thus “endanger” American citizens and/or our troops.

Combine all of this with the increasingly disturbing spectacle taking place in a California federal court in the Al-Haramain case — where the Obama DOJ is on the verge of being sanctioned by a federal judge for defying the court’s order to make available documents relating to Bush’s illegal eavesdropping activities — and the infatuation with excessive presidential secrecy, the linchpin of government abuse, appears alive and well in the new administration.  Is there really anyone who wants to argue that defiance of a federal court’s order and enacting a new law authorizing suppression of torture evidence — the disclosure of which is compelled both by courts and FOIA — are remotely consistent with anything Obama said he would do, or remotely consistent with what a healthy democratic government would do?

© 2009 Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.

Last week’s press coverage of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court was gruesome in so many ways, as reporters routinely fell down and failed to reflect even the most basic tenets of journalism.

One of the most disturbing examples of how fundamentals were ignored involved Sotomayor’s now-infamous quote from eight years ago about a “Latina woman” judge reaching a “better conclusion” on the bench than her white male counterparts. Sotomayor made the comment as part of a speech she gave at University of California, Berkeley, in 2001 in which she explored what it would mean to have more women and minorities on the bench.

To see just how dreadful the coverage of that story became, let’s look at the efforts by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, which published nearly identical news articles about the unfolding political battle surrounding Sotomayor and the “Latina woman” quote, which conservatives have latched onto. The quote became the basis for the incendiary claim made by Newt Gingrich and Glenn Beck, among others, that Sotomayor is, in fact, a racist because she thinks Hispanic judges render better decisions than whites.

Here was how the Journal reported out the story on May 28 (emphasis added):

Conservatives are focusing on a speech Ms. Sotomayor delivered at the University of California at Berkeley law school, where she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

“Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.’ Wouldn’t they have to withdraw?” asked former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on his Web site. “New racism is no better than old racism.”

White House aides said the comment was being taken out of context, and predicted it wouldn’t put the nomination off course.

And here’s how The Washington Post treated the same story, on the same day, in a news article:

Leading conservatives outside the Senate, however, did not hold back, targeting a pair of speeches in which Sotomayor said appellate courts are where “policy is made” and another in which she said a Latina would often “reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Critics also targeted her support for affirmative action, with Rush Limbaugh calling her a “reverse racist” in his syndicated radio program, citing a case in which she ruled against a group of white firefighters who claimed discrimination in hiring practices. White House officials argued that the comments in the speeches were taken out of context, and they said that the firefighters case was an example of Sotomayor accepting established precedent, something they said conservatives should applaud.

For good measure, the Journal returned to the topic on May 30, again referencing the “Latina woman” quote:

Earlier this week, administration officials said the nominee’s comments at the University of California, Berkeley, were being taken out of context.

Both the Post and the Journal reported on the conservative attack on Sotomayor driven by her “Latina woman” quote. Both the Post and Journal reported that the White House had complained the quote had been taken out of context. And incredibly, both newspapers failed to explain what the actual context was.

What was the context? When Sotomayor asserted, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she was specifically discussing the importance of judicial diversity in determining race and sex discrimination cases.

Placed in the proper framework, Sotomayor’s comments become far less controversial. (She was not making a sweeping claim about the superiority of Latina women.) And placed in the proper context, the right-wing allegation that she’s a racist utterly collapses and instead reveals itself to be the ugly, hateful charge that it is.

But Post and Journal readers were never given the context, which meant they were unable to conclude if the White House claim about the quote being unfairly lifted was accurate. Readers didn’t know if the attack against Sotomayor — that she was a “racist” because she thought minority judges were better than white men — was fair and legitimate. Readers were left in the dark because all the Post and Journal thought to do was record the attack and get the White House response. It never occurred to reporters and editors at the Post and the Journal to spell out for news consumers what the context of the “Latina woman” quote was.

And trust me, those two corporate news outlets were hardly alone.

CBS’ Bob Schieffer stripped out all context of the Sotomayor quote and then asked a Republican senator appearing on Face the Nation if it was enough to “keep her from being confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court.” Keep in mind, virtually no senators currently oppose Sotomayor, not even Republicans. But Schieffer was eager to know if her nomination was doomed. The only thing more amazing than that was the fact it took a Republican senator to remind Schieffer that there was missing context to the “Latina woman” quote.

After many hours of Googling and searching Nexis and combing through television transcripts, I can say with complete confidence that not only did most news organizations fail to include context for the “Latina woman” quote, but it was the absolute iron-clad rule. Providing even passing context for the quote was basically banned. The Village Did. Not. Allow. It.

Politico, for instance, failed to provide context for the quote here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

So did Time, The Economist, Congressional Quarterly, The Dallas Morning News, The Denver Post‘s Vincent Carroll, USA Today, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Pretty much every news outlet in the country followed the rule.

They all reported on the “Latina woman” quote. They all reported it was controversial. And they all failed to explain that Sotomayor was specifically discussing discrimination cases when she made the remark.

And that doesn’t even take into account the dozens (hundreds?) of “Latina woman” mentions on TV last week that failed to provide any framework whatsoever. Instead, the quote was simply used as a springboard for conservatives to launch malicious attacks against the esteemed judge. (Select journalists who actually did include context last week included Hanna Rosin at the Double X blog XX factor, Mike Barnicle on MSNBC, and Westchester, New York, newspaper columnist Noreen O’Donnell.)

Given the near ubiquity of the press failing, it’s hard for me to believe that it wasn’t been done intentionally. I’m not into newsroom conspiracies, but it’s just difficult to believe that among these elite, college-educated journalists, that virtually every one of them covering the Sotomayor story mysteriously forgot to provide even the slightest context for the “Latina woman” quote — a single sentence from a speech given eight years ago. Having looked at this story from every angle, I can only conclude that the lack of context has been a conscious, deliberate decision by journalists to, in a sense, purposefully un-inform news consumers, which, of course, is the opposite of what journalism aspires to accomplish.

I don’t see how reporters and editors working for some of the largest news media outlets in the country could, almost without exception, fail to include crucial context about the Sotomayor quote and have it be some sort of cross-country cosmic event. It just doesn’t make sense. I think it’s premeditated.

Why? Simple: The press has already penciled in weeks’ worth, if not months’ worth, of Supreme Court nomination coverage for this summer. Married to the idea that Senate hearings hold the promise of dissolving into the wild pie fights, like the raucous affairs that unfolded during the dramatic Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork showdowns, the Beltway press relentlessly hypes these stories even though, as more recent nominations have shown, the hearings themselves turn out to be wildly anticlimactic.

Worse for the press was the fact that early indications from key Republican senators last week were that Sotomayor faced a relatively easy confirmation “battle” and that excluding some type of unforeseen personal scandal, she was good as confirmed.

Where’s the drama in that? How are reporters and pundits supposed to gobble up endless hours of TV talk time by simply marveling at how Obama picked an eminently qualified judge who garnered bipartisan Senate support?

That’s not the storyline the press wanted to embrace. So, in order to prop up any semblance of Sotomayor drama, the press turned away from Republican senators and turned its time and attention to highlighting outlandish claims made by GOP Noise Machine leaders, like Limbaugh and Gingrich, who were in heated agreement that Sotomayor was a racist. (Fact: The press treated that hateful claim with a stunning nonchalance, as if that kind of character assassination were commonplace for Supreme Court nominees.)

That was a story the press could get excited about. But to chase the “racist” story, the press had to both embrace and amplify conservative talking points about Sotomayor and play dumb on an epic scale in order to pretend that the “Latina woman” quote was perhaps just as damning as Gingrich and company claimed it was, to pretend maybe Sotomayor did think she was better than everyone else.

And, boy, did everyone play dumb. And I thought staffers at The Washington Post played dumb especially well. The entire newsroom got into the act while “covering” the Sotomayor “Latina woman” angle. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

The Washington Post editorial page? Check.

Howard Kurtz? Check.

George Will? Check.

Ruth Marcus? Check. And check.

Dana Milbank? Check.

David Broder? Check.

None of the high-profile Post writers ever bothered to explain the context of the “Latina woman” quote. Incredibly, Milbank wrote an entire column about it without putting it in context.

Bottom line: It was virtually impossible for Post readers to understand what Sotomayor was referring to with the 8-year-old “Latina woman” quote. But it was possible, given the purposefully sketchy reporting, to see how Sotomayor might be prejudiced.

Sadly, I have a hunch that was the whole point of the misguided newsroom exercise.

Samuelson is right, democracy demands an informed public through an aggressive, fair, and open media, but where was he when the media went into hibernation and turned the country lock, stock, and barrell over to Bush and Cheney and their neo-con extremists? We are in a mess because of the lack of a fair, objective, dependable press independent of corporate dominance.  How to improve the quality of our media is an important public discussion.

Published: Monday, June 1, 2009 12:18 a.m. MDT

WASHINGTON – The Obama infatuation is a great unreported story of our time. Has any recent president basked in so much favorable media coverage? Well, maybe John Kennedy for a moment; but no president since. On the whole, this is not healthy for America.

Our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power. But the main checks on Obama are modest. They come from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals if not always his means. The leaderless and confused Republicans don’t provide effective opposition. And the press – on domestic, if not foreign, policy – has so far largely abdicated its role as skeptical observer.

Obama has inspired a collective fawning. What started in the campaign (the chief victim was Hillary Clinton, not John McCain) has continued, as a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism shows. It concludes: “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”

The study examined 1,261 stories by The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC, Newsweek magazine and the “NewsHour” on PBS. Favorable stories (42 percent) were double the unfavorable (20 percent) , while the rest were “neutral” or “mixed.” Obama’s treatment contrasts sharply with coverage in the first two months of the presidencies of Bush (22 percent of stories favorable) and Clinton (27 percent).

Unlike Bush and Clinton, Obama received favorable coverage in both news columns and opinion pages. The nature of stories also changed. “Roughly twice as much of the coverage of Obama (44 percent) has concerned his personal and leadership qualities than was the case for Bush (22 percent) or Clinton (26 percent),” the report said. “Less of the coverage, meanwhile, has focused on his policy agenda.”

When Pew broadened the analysis to 49 outlets – cable channels, news Web sites, morning news shows, more newspapers and National Public Radio – the results were similar, despite some outliers. No surprise: MSNBC was favorable, Fox was not. Another study, released by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, reached parallel conclusions.

The infatuation matters because Obama’s ambitions are so grand. He wants to expand health care subsidies, tightly control energy use and overhaul immigration. He envisions the greatest growth of government since Lyndon Johnson. The Congressional Budget Office estimates federal spending in 2019 at nearly 25 percent of the economy (gross domestic product). That’s well up from the 21 percent in 2008, and far above the post-World War II average; it would also occur before many baby boomers retire.

Are his proposals practical, even if desirable? Maybe they’re neither? What might be unintended consequences? All “reforms” do not succeed; some cause more problems than they solve. Johnson’s economic policies, inherited from Kennedy, proved disastrous; they led to the 1970s’ “stagflation.” The “war on poverty” failed. The press should not be hostile; but it ought to be skeptical.

Mostly, it isn’t. The idea of a “critical” Obama story is a tactical conflict with congressional Democrats or criticism from an important constituency. Larger issues are minimized, despite ample grounds for skepticism.

Obama’s rhetoric brims with inconsistencies. In the campaign, he claimed he would de-emphasize partisanship – and also enact a highly-partisan agenda; both couldn’t be true. He got a pass. Now, he claims he will control health care spending even though he proposes more government spending. He promotes “fiscal responsibility” when projections show huge and continuous budget deficits. Journalists seem to take his pronouncements at face value even when many are two-faced.

The cause of this acquiescence isn’t clear. The press sometimes follows opinion polls; popular presidents get good coverage, and Obama is enormously popular. By Pew, his job performance rating is 63 percent. But because favorable coverage began in the campaign, this explanation is at best partial.

Perhaps the preoccupation with the present economic crisis has diverted attention from the long-term implications of other policies. But the deeper explanation may be as straightforward as this: most journalists like Obama; they admire his command of language; he’s a relief after Bush; they agree with his agenda (so it never occurs to them to question basic premises); and they don’t want to see the first African-American president fail.

Whatever, a great edifice of government may arise on the narrow foundation of Obama’s personal popularity. Another Pew survey shows that since the election both self-identified Republicans and Democrats have declined. “Independents” have increased, and “there has been no consistent movement away from conservatism, nor a shift toward liberalism.”

The press has become Obama’s silent ally and seems in a state of denial. But the story goes untold: Unsurprisingly, the study of all the favorable coverage received little coverage.

Distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group