1. NPR's Williams Advocates Double Taxation, Fox Colleagues Chide Him
The Fox News Sunday panel undermined the liberal premise uttered by NPR reporter Juan Williams. When Williams remarked that the Bush administration wish to end the taxation of dividends means they think "corporations shouldn't pay taxes in this country," Tony Snow and Brit Hume pointed out how that has nothing to do with corporations, Williams remained befuddled, asking "why shouldn't you be taxed on" dividend earnings" Snow succinctly explained: "Bill Gates gets to get rich and the people who own shares in his company can't."

2. 60 Minutes Scolds Bush for Repeating What CBS Reported
In a 60 Minutes story Bob Simon contended that the Bush administration has exaggerated the threat from Iraq by selectively and misleadingly citing reports of Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear weapon. But in contradicting President Bush's citation of a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) about how close Iraq was in 1991 to producing a nuclear bomb, Simon contradicted what CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin asserted on the CBS Evening News back in August as well as what te IAEA reported just after the Gulf War.

3. CBS Brings Back the Term "Gravitas"
The return of "gravatas." Reporters used the term back in 2000 in referring to what Dick Cheney brought George W. Bush as his Vice President. On Friday night, CBS's John Roberts employed the term to say what Bush's ousted economic team ousted.

4. NY Times Runs Edited Versions of Spiked Columns
The New York Times on Sunday ran the two sports columns which had been spiked because they contradicted the paper's editorial position on the relevance of the Augusta National Golf Club's male-only membership policy and how Tiger Woods should boycott the Masters tournament held at the Georgia course. The Times, however, still censored the columns by insisting that criticism of the Times editorial position be removed. Nonetheless, Executive Editor Howell Raines insisted: "There is not now, nor will there ever be, any attempt to curb the opinions of our writers" or to "get them to agree with the editorial page."

5. Journalism Prof Applauds Column Claiming Conservative Media Tilt
Why future journalists will be just as liberal as the current ones. Reacting to E.J. Dionne Jr.'s column in Friday's Washington Post in which he argued that the media are "heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians," an Ohio Wsleyan journalism professor proclaimed: "Finally, someone tells it like it is!" Plus, Dionne's reasoning.

NPR's Williams Advocates Double Taxation,
Fox Colleagues Chide Him

     NPR national political correspondent faced something on Fox News Sunday which he is unused to getting on NPR: Other panelists correcting the inaccurate assumptions upon which he built the liberal spin he had just delivered.

     When Williams remarked that the Bush administration wish to end the taxation of dividends means they think "corporations shouldn't pay taxes in this country," Tony Snow interrupted Williams to point out how "that doesn't have anything to do with corporations paying taxes," Williams plowed ahead: "They say that dividends are double-taxed, that they're taxed when the profits come in for the corporation and taxed when you receive it as a dividend....So why shouldn't you be taxed on that?" Snow succinctly explained: "Bill Gates gets to get rich and the people who own shares in his company can't."

     Just seconds after complaining about how his 401(k) has done poorly during the Bush years, Williams argued against measures to allow investors to keep more of what their investments earn. During the panel segment on the December 8 Fox News Sunday, NPR's Williams was disturbed by Bill Kristol's prediction that the administration would press for more tax cuts:
     "Bill Kristol says he's got to pick a fight, he's got to go after deeper tax cuts. That's unbelievable to me, even making the long-term tax cut package now permanent, which seems the direction they are now heading according to White House officials I've spoken with. I'm surprised that they feel that they can do that instead of directing it towards more of a short-term effort. As I understand it they want to extend the tax cuts, they want to reduce taxes on dividends, as if corporations shouldn't pay taxes in this country, accelerate depreciation-"
     Snow: "No, no, no. That doesn't have anything to do with corporations paying taxes."
     Williams: "Sure. Yeah, they say that dividends are double-taxed, that they're taxed when the profits come in for the corporation and taxed when you receive it as a dividend."
     Brit Hume interjected: "Well that's true."
     Williams: "That's what I'm saying. So why shouldn't you be taxed on that?"
     Snow: "What they're saying is that-"
     Hume: "It's already been taxed once."
     Snow: "Yeah, Bill Gates gets to get rich and the people who own shares in his company can't."

     Don't be surprised that Williams does not understand basic economics and thinks that corporations are taxed when their stockholders have their dividends taxed. After all, he probably relies on NPR for all of his news.

60 Minutes Scolds Bush for Repeating
What CBS Reported

     CBS's 60 Minutes versus George W. Bush and the CBS Evening News. In a Sunday night 60 Minutes story, CBS News reporter Bob Simon contended that the Bush administration has exaggerated the threat from Iraq by selectively and misleadingly citing reports of Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

     But in contradicting President Bush's citation of a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Simon also contradicted what CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin reported on the CBS Evening News back in August.

     MRC analyst Brian Boyd took down what Simon claimed on the December 8 60 Minutes. Simon's first example: 
     "It's generally assumed that Saddam does have chemical and biological weapons, but is he also on the verge of producing a nuclear bomb as the President says he's tried to do in the past?"
     George W. Bush, date not noted: "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied, finally denied access a report came out of the Atomic, the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."
     David Albright: "There is no such report as far as I know."
     Simon: "Physicist David Albright was a weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s and now directs a Washington think tank called the Institute for Science and International Security. He says contrary to what the President claimed, neither the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, nor any other investigative body has ever reported that Iraq was only six months
away from the bomb."

     Was Simon playing semantic games? As cited in the August 8 CyberAlert, on the August 7 CBS Evening News Martin asserted something similar to what Bush said, not that Iraq was six months away but a year away:
     "The CIA estimates Iraq is still several years away from having a nuclear weapon, but that's what it said back in 1990 and it was badly mistaken. We now know that had it not been for the Gulf War Saddam was only a year away from going nuclear. The 9-11 attacks convinced the Bush administration that is a mistake the U.S. cannot afford to make again."

     The time frame cited by Bush was an accurate estimate according to an IAEA report which seems to have eluded Simon but which the MRC's Rich Noyes tracked down.

     The International Atomic Energy Agency (which was headed in 1991 by Hans Blix) issued a report on July 11, 1991 -- "Consolidated Report on the First Two IAEA Inspections Under Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) of Iraqi Nuclear Capabilities" -- and reported that "the Iraqis had been pursuing an undeclared uranium enrichment programme using the electromagnetic isotope separation technique (EMIS)" (p. 9) with several sites being used for various aspects of the enrichment program: 
     "There is evidence that lab or pilot scale EMIS development was done at Tuwaitha. There is further evidence that this research was successful and that a large EMIS process plant was under construction at Tarmiyah....It is the opinion of this team that Tarmiyah has never operated." (pp. 13-14) Earlier, the report indicated that "initial startup of the [Tarmiyah] facilities was six to eighteen months away."

     For the report in full, which is only online as a PDF: http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/S_22788.pdf

     Maybe Simon put his personal views ahead of balanced and accurate reporting. As reported in the October 4 CyberAlert: CBS News veteran foreign correspondent Bob Simon declared his opposition to war with Iraq: "I don't think that going to war with him is the right thing to do right now." Simon contended to USA Today's Peter Johnson that most Arabs see an invasion as "arrogant American imperialism which will just sow the seeds for more terrorism." Details: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021004.asp#1

     Simon delivered commentary on the October 27 Sunday Morning in which he hoped Bush was just pulling off a big ruse and would not attack Iraq:
     "I've just spent a month in the Middle East and I can tell you that everyone here believes President Bush is going to attack Iraq. That the point of no return has been passed, that it's just going to happen. Many Americans think that too, but what I like to think is that Mr. Bush has pulled the wool over everyone's eyes. That he has orchestrated the most brilliant act of deception since the Greeks wheeled that hollow horse into Troy.
     "Here's my hypothesis: the President's critics accuse him of using war talk as a pre-election ploy to divert attention from the sagging economy, the corporate scandals and the possibility that Osama bin Laden has had a face job and is dancing right now on the wild side of Majorca discotheque. I say, what else is new? What politician hasn't tried to distract voters from what's gone wrong, and has there ever been a better way than by mobilizing for war?
     "But we all know that the situation in Iraq transcends party politics, just look at all the Democrats who voted for Mr. Bush's war resolution. We, also, know that Saddam is a bad guy and he's got nasty weapons and we'd all sleep better if he didn't. But look at what Mr. Bush's war talk has already accomplished: the UN will pass a new and improved resolution; the weapons inspectors are already packed and sleeping in airport hotels; and, listen to this, Saddam has pledged complete cooperation and says the inspectors can even go to all those presidential palaces which were off limits in the past.
     "Now we all know Saddam and we know that sooner or later he will start playing games with the inspectors. But frankly, so what? At best or at worst, he won't be able to hide much, certainly not enough to hurt us or our friends.
     "So you see where I'm going, Mr. Bush doesn't need to invade Iraq. He's already accomplished what he wanted to accomplish by convincing everyone that he's going to invade. And here's what I like to think, as soon as the elections are over and as soon as the inspectors are crawling under Saddam's presidential beds with flashlights, President Bush will go on television and declare victory. He will say, no war, not necessary, gotcha. Actually, he doesn't have to say all that. All he needs to do is wink, just once, we'll understand and I for one will dash out into the streets shouting 'hail to the chief.'"

CBS Brings Back the Term "Gravitas"

     The return of "gravatas." Reporters used the term back in 2000 in referring to what Dick Cheney brought George W. Bush as his Vice President. On Friday night, CBS's John Roberts employed the term to say what Bush's ousted economic team ousted.

     Roberts asserted on the December 6 CBS Evening News:
     "Today's purge was a clear sign of an economy in distress and a White House fearing trouble. Sources tell CBS News it was Vice President Cheney who delivered the pink slip, he and President Bush worried that the economic team didn't have the gravitas to instill confidence in Wall Street."

     Apparently it takes a man with gravitas to see the lack of it in others.

NY Times Runs Edited Versions of
Spiked Columns

     An embarrassed New York Times on Sunday ran the two sports columns which had been spiked because they contradicted the paper's editorial position on the relevance of the Augusta National Golf Club's male-only membership policy and how Tiger Woods should boycott the Masters tournament held at the Georgia course.

     The Times, however, still censored the columns by insisting that criticism of the Times editorial position be removed.

     In a Friday posting on MSNBC.com, Newsweek's Seth Mnookin quoted columnist Dave Anderson: "'All I had to do is remove one little phrase, and it's a phrase I would have removed three weeks ago.' Anderson would not say what he had to alter, but a source at the Times said the column was purged of any references to the paper's editorials."

     For Mnokin's December 6 take: http://www.msnbc.com/news/844190.asp?0cv=CB20&cp1=1

     A Saturday New York Times story by Felicity Barringer relayed the paper's justification for the censoring of the columns:
     "Howell Raines, executive editor of The New York Times, said yesterday that revised versions of two sports columns rejected by editors two weeks ago would be published tomorrow.
     "He added that the editors' original objections were based not on the opinions stated in the columns but on separate concerns: one column, by Dave Anderson, about the Augusta National Golf Club's refusal to admit women, gave the appearance of unnecessary intramural squabbling with the newspaper's editorial board; the second, by Harvey Araton, which also dealt with the Augusta issue, presented problems of structure and tone."

     Raines maintained that what had happened had not happened: 
     "Referring to the news media criticism of his handling of the columns, Mr. Raines said: 'Some of the commentary said, 'It's wrong to censor opinions of columnists.' I agree with that. That's not what happened here.'
     "Asked if he had made a mistake in handling the columns, Mr. Raines responded with a discussion of the normal editing process for all columnists in the news sections of the paper -- as distinct from the Op-Ed Page columnists. While news section columnists, like Mr. Anderson, are subject to editing, he said, 'There is not now, nor will there ever be, any attempt to curb the opinions of our writers' or to 'get them to agree with the editorial page or any other section of the paper where an opinion is expressed.' That, he said, 'is simply not in our thinking, tradition, practices.'"

     Welcome to the Orwellian world of the Howell Raines-run New York Times.

     For Barringer's article in full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/07/national/07PAPE.html

     For the edited version of Dave Anderson's column, "Woods Is Not Obliged to Boycott," go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/sports/golf/08ANDE.html

     For the edited version of Harvey Araton's column, "Other Women's Issues Need a Voice," see: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/sports/golf/08ARAT.html

     Previous CyberAlert articles about the New York Times' golf crusade and censoring of contrary columns:

     -- New York Times Executive Editor Howard Raines has gone so over the top in using the paper to advance his own political agenda that even this week's Newsweek took notice in a two-page piece by Seth Mnookin headlined, "A hard-charging editor's crusading style is coloring the Gray Lady's reputation." Newsweek picked up on a Raines quote highlighted repeatedly by the MRC: "He once said the Reagan years 'oppressed me because the callousness and the greed and the hardhearted attitude toward people who have very little in this society.'" http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021203.asp#3

     -- So much for the vaunted separation between New York Times editorial and news pages. The Times spiked columnists who wanted to disagree with a Times editorial urging Tiger Woods to boycott the Masters tournament because the host golf club doesn't have any female members. Managing Editor Gerald Boyd contended the "strict separation between the news and editorial pages" means they cannot criticize each other. Newsweek's Seth Mnookin observed: "The paper's thinking seemed to run something like this: we're against this horrible discrimination, and we're going to resort to censorship to make our point." http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021205.asp#5

Journalism Prof Applauds Column Claiming
Conservative Media Tilt

     Why future journalists will be just as liberal as the current ones. Reacting to E.J. Dionne Jr.'s column in Friday's Washington Post in which he argued that the media are "heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians," an Ohio journalism professor proclaimed: "Finally, someone tells it like it is!"

     That reaction appeared as feedback to the posting of a link to Dionne's column on Jim Romenesko's MediaNews page (http://www.poynter.org/medianews/)

     In a feedback item posted on Friday, Afi Scruggs, who identified herself as a visiting assistant professor in journalism at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, OH, praised Dionne's thinking:
     "I have to thank Mr. Dionne for his column on the truth of media bias. I'd like to add another point. -- the rise of the commentator over the reporter.
     "I'm convinced the public doesn't believe in objectivity because so many people get news from commentators, not reporters.
     "I've also noticed that my beginning reporting students have an incredibly hard time recognizing the difference between opinion and fact. I'm beginning to wonder if we're not seeing a subtle shift toward advocacy journalism."

     "Beginning to see a subtle shift toward advocacy journalism"? What do you call what has been practiced by the networks for years? Rush Limbaugh is on the radio, but how is he any more of an advocate that Bill Moyers pontificating on the CBS Evening News as he did for years during the 1980s? At least Limbaugh is clearly a commentator while the networks claim to be delivering straight news.

     The Scruggs comments are online at: http://www.poynter.org/article_feedback/article_feedback_view.asp?id=395

     A MRC Media Reality Check "Quick Take" and CyberAlert Special on Friday quoted Dionne's column and how he cited a CyberAlert item from last week about Katie Couric as an example of how conservatives have successfully intimidated the press, but below is a longer excerpt from the December 6 column by Dionne, who was a New York Times and then a Washington Post political reporters before becoming a full-time columnist nearly ten years ago. It was titled "The Rightward Press." The excerpt:

The fat is in the fire on the issue of media bias, and that is a good thing. It's time to revisit a matter on which the conventional wisdom is, roughly, 180 degrees off.

You hear the conventional wisdom all the time from shrewd conservative commentators who understand that political pressure, relentlessly applied, usually achieves its purposes. They have sold the view that the media are dominated by liberals and that the news is skewed against conservatives.

This belief fueled the construction of a large network of conservative institutions -- especially on radio and cable television -- that provides conservative viewpoints close to 24 hours a day. Conservatives argued that hopelessly left-wing establishment news sources needed to be balanced by brave, relentless voices from the right.

But the continuing attacks on mainstream journalists have another effect. Because the drumbeat of conservative press criticism has been so steady, the establishment press has internalized it. Editors and network executives are far more likely to hear complaints from the right than from the left.

To the extent that there has been a bias in the establishment media, it has been less a liberal tilt than a preference for the values of the educated, professional class -- which, surprise, surprise, is roughly the class position of most journalists.

This meant that on social and cultural issues -- abortion and religion come to mind -- journalism was not particularly hospitable to conservative voices. But on economic issues -- especially free trade and balanced budgets -- the press tilted toward the center or even toward moderate conservatism. You might say that the two groups most likely to be mistreated by the media were religious conservatives and trade unionists....

Limbaugh's new respectability is the surest sign that the conservative talk network is now bleeding into what passes for the mainstream media, just as the unapologetic conservatism of the Fox News Channel is now affecting programming on the other cable networks. This shift to the right is occurring as cable becomes a steadily more important source of news.

All this constitutes a genuine triumph for conservatives. But rather than rest on their laurels, they continue to pound away at any media deviation from their version of political correctness. When Katie Couric had the nerve to ask some tough questions of EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman on Monday's "Today" show, the ever-alert conservative Media Research Center trashed Couric for bias. When the Chicago Tribune ran an unflattering picture of President Bush on its Nov. 14 front page, it was assailed for a lack of patriotism. Editors who worry about conservative criticism are not paranoid. You just wonder: Where have the liberals been?

It took conservatives a lot of hard and steady work to push the media rightward. It dishonors that work to continue to presume that -- except for a few liberal columnists -- there is any such thing as the big liberal media. The media world now includes (1) talk radio, (2) cable television and (3) the traditional news sources (newspapers, newsmagazines and the old broadcast networks). Two of these three major institutions tilt well to the right, and the third is under constant pressure to avoid even the pale hint of liberalism. These institutions, in turn, influence the burgeoning world of online news and commentary.

What it adds up to is a media heavily biased toward conservative politics and conservative politicians. Kudos to the right. Now, what will the rest of us do about the new bias?

     END of Excerpt

     For Dionne's piece in full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16431-2002Dec5.html

     To read the December 3 CyberAlert item Dionne cited, which documented how Couric hit Whitman only from the left: http://archive.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20021203.asp#4

     Of course, Dionne avoided how our concern was not that she deviated from our definition of political correctness but that her questioning represented just the latest example of a media figure approaching the environment from the left instead of giving equal weight to the concerns of liberals and conservatives.

     But we appreciate Dionne's plug of us as "ever-alert." Maybe I could incorporate that into a new slogan for CyberAlert, something like "The ever-alert CyberAlert" or "CyberAlert: Your ever-alert media bias watchdog."

     As for Dionne's reasoning that two of the three media categories, talk radio and cable TV news "tilt well to the right" while the traditional media "is under constant pressure to avoid even the pale hint of liberalism," Dionne's reasoning presumes all three are equally credible or influential.

     Talk radio may be popular and have some influence, but no one considers it to be on par with CBS News which claims to present a balanced look at the day's news. And the traditional media, which unlike talk radio denies it has a point of view, have far more readers and viewers than talk radio and cable TV have listeners and watchers -- and the traditional media are where the least politically-aware receive their news and because of their lack of knowledge they are the ones most easily swayed by the traditional media's liberal tilt.

     And while FNC may indeed appeal to conservatives, that doesn't make CNN and MSNBC any less liberal. In the past year, in fact, CNN and MSNBC have shifted to the left with MSNBC rearranging prime time around Phil Donahue and CNN giving prime time hours to Connie Chung and Aaron Brown. -- Brent Baker

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