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Just Example Of Big Media Journalism Making Itself Ever More Irrelevant

I can't even begin to summarize this crap... but, you know, in an anti-intellectual, toadying environment, Big Media's not going to work very hard to actually, you know, report accurately. And, more likely than not, the money lost by audience loss and erosion is less than what is at risk by failing to suck up to Our leaders. So there's your answer to crap like this....

What happens when someone lobs a missile at the credibility of NBC Nightly News? The program tries to ignore it.

Yesterday, White House counselor and longtime Republican hit man Ed Gillespie fired off a furious letter to NBC News president Steve Capus, alleging that the president's interview with chief NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel about his speech before the Israeli Knesset was "deceptively edited."

Last night, NBC anchor Brian Williams reported the existence of the letter—but he gave no hint about the substance of the charges from the White House. He also offered no defense against them. Instead, he merely directed viewers to an unedited version of the interview on the Web, a suggestion that many members of Nightly's aging audience probably found completely unhelpful.

Williams' approach was unfortunate, and not just because it was so uninformative. The truth is, Engel's interview was appropriately (and refreshingly) tough, and the White House attack on him was completely unfounded. But anyone relying on Nightly News for their information would have no way of knowing that.

Engel said to the president, "You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless, and then you went further. You said that it was appeasement. Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama?" Here is the disputed paragraph from the president's response, with the parts NBC left out in italics:

"You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has. People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I said was is that we need to take the words of people seriously. And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously. And if you don't take them seriously, then it hearkens back to a day when we didn't take other words seriously. It was fitting that I talked about not taking the words of Adolph Hitler seriously on the floor of the Knesset. But I also talked about the need to defend Israel, the need to not negotiate with the likes of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas. And the need to make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon."

Abbreviated, to be sure, but I don't see any harm done to the truth by NBC's editing. Gillespie disagreed, partly because he believed that the full version of the quote "corrects the inaccurate premise of Engel's question by putting the 'appeasement' line in the proper context of taking the words of leaders seriously, not 'negotiating with Iran.'"

In other words, even though John McCain immediately inserted Barack Obama's name into the empty space in Bush's speech, the White House was now pretending that Obama had never been his target.

Last night, Keith Olbermann explained the problem with that assertion: "As to his promise that, quote, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has, and its implicit denial that his appeasement comment at the Knesset was directed at Senator Obama, the president has yet to explain why, if he was not referring to Senator Obama, his White House aides were busy telling the media that his Knesset speech would raise eyebrows and make news, as there was certainly nothing else in it that was out of the ordinary." Other reporters agreed that White House aides had made it clear, off the record, that Obama was the president's target.


THE INTERVIEW IN QUESTION Engel chats with President Bush

Immediately after Gillespie's attack, NBC issued this statement: "Richard Engel's interview with President Bush has been available, unedited, in its entirety, for the past day, on our website. Our reporting accurately reflects the interview. Just as the White House does not participate in the editorial process at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions."

And yesterday, in a letter responding to the White House, NBC News president Steve Capus said, "Let me assure you, there was no effort to be 'deceptive,' as you suggest. Furthermore, the notion this was 'deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline' is a gross misrepresentation of the facts." But again, as of this afternoon, none of Nightly's viewers had heard that. Perhaps Williams will correct the record in tonight's broadcast.

Another complaint from Gillespie concerned NBC's characterization of Iraq as a civil war: "Please allow me to take this opportunity to ask if your network has reconsidered its position that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, especially in light of the fact that the unity government in Baghdad recently rooted out illegal, extremist groups in Basra and reclaimed the port there for the people of Iraq, among other significant signs of progress."

That's a lovely insight into the way the non-reality-based White House continues to view the war, but NBC News president Capus refused to comment on that at all. "I think it wise to discuss those matters in a more appropriate forum," Capus wrote.

This was the second time in a month that Nightly News has come under attack, and Williams tried to ignore it. The first time was the New York Times story describing a huge Pentagon propaganda scandal, in which retired military officers alternated between spouting the Bush administration line on all of the major TV networks and collecting inside information for the military contractors who employed them so they could get more contracts connected to the war. The nightly newscasts of NBC, CBS, and ABC all ignored that attack, although, after some prodding, Williams eventually gave an unsatisfactory reply in his own blog.

Yesterday, Williams and a NBC News spokesman both refused to comment about any of this to Full Court Press, and Williams was apparently dodging other press inquiries as well.

Link.

The Corporatist State Is Noticed....

If only this actually leads to anything good....

There is a fundamental problem these days with economic policy - US corporations have run amok. No longer do they act in the national interest or even give a pretense of being good national corporate citizens. It's all about profits, maximizing profits. In fact, we are told that is a corporation's only responsibility. But is that really the case or have we been spun a lie so long and often we believe it to be true without question? How does the United States align it's Corporations to the interests of the nation?

In a recent House Science Subcommittee hearing, American Decline or Renewal? – Globalizing Jobs and Technology, some these fundamental questions of corporate governance were addressed.

it has gradually become clear to me that much of a nation’s economic strategy is embedded in the institutions through which that particular nation is governed, and that the existence of institutions imply a certain strategy

- Dr. Bruce R. Scott, testimony before the Investigations and Oversight House Science Subcommittee.

From Dr. Margaret Blair, a law professor and economist, opening statement:

I want to speak to you today on a question about the fiduciary obligations that corporate directors have, by law, in this country. In particular, I want to address a claim often made in the financial press, and by members of what a Delaware Court judge has recently called the “corporate governance industry.” This is the claim that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize share value.
What I hope you will take from my testimony today is that this claim is, at best, a misleading overstatement. At worst, this claim is simply false, but is often asserted as a weapon to try to persuade corporate managers and directors that they should take actions that benefit particular shareholders of a given corporation, regardless of whether those actions may impose high costs on creditors, employees, the communities where corporations have their operations, or other stakeholders, or sometimes even on the long run ability of the corporation itself to compete effectively for market share, or to develop the next technology

Dr. Margaret M. Blair even wrote a book about it, Ownership and Control: Rethinking Corporate Governance for the Twenty-First Century .

So, is everyone getting that? In order to sustain the United States as a Democracy versus a haven for multinational corporations akin to the No Man's Land of Oklahoma where outlaws were under no jurisdiction, had no consequence, we must make corporate entities accountable to the citizenry of the United States. We must realize not only can we do precisely that, we must do precisely that. We must hold and make these US based corporations responsible and responsive to the United States national interest.

Ralph Gomory said:

We need to realize that the interests of the American global corporation, whose interest is profit, and the interests of most Americans, who want a higher standard of living, have been diverging.

In other words, globalization is putting America at greater and greater risk by the very corporations it spawned.

So maybe this is a little hard to digest. Why are they bothering with such esoteric concepts? Well, after some pondering, it dawned on me that to enact dramatic, strategic trade and economic policy change, one must directly confront this false assumption that corporations must be like glorified Ferengi.

In order to convince lawmakers to pass legislation and enact policy we desperately need and also to console legislators, to assure such new legislation and policy would not be overturned in the courts, we must address these fundamental definitions of corporate history and governance.

Bruce Scott (read his entire testimony, watch the video) noted:

Today’s global economy is much like the US in the later 19 century
In today’s economy, nations and states charter firms to compete in a global common, but no chartering authority exists that wields the political power to impose rules on these global markets. While there are rules for trade, the chartering of financial firms in particular invites a race to the bottom to escape taxes as well as regulations. At the same time, some countries are imposing conditions on foreign firms as a condition for doing business in their countries. This issue is particularly important in the case of a few very large countries, notably China.
These countries, with priorities that favor rapid growth, are using national power to partner with US firms on the condition that the latter move some of their activities to China. These countries are behaving much the way New Jersey did in an earlier era, taking advantage of an inadequately regulated common

Dr. Scott is pointing out today we are living in a corporate bandit outlaw haven. We're in No Man's Land with the multinational globalization corporate cartel, running amok, thumbing their nose at what is actually good for America.

And the kicker, Dr. Scott recommends:

you consider reopening the question of a federal charter or license for US firms as a way to specify certain requirements for behavior

Link.

Prof. Scott's prepared testimony is here.

Another Victory For Corporatism, Another Defeat For America

Really, when are the, well, the people going to take back this country? Huh? Ever??

Off the front page of the Times (Hear, hear! Props to the Times):

On campuses nationwide, professors and administrators have passionately debated whether their universities should accept money for research from tobacco companies. But not at Virginia Commonwealth University, a public institution in Richmond, Va.

That is largely because hardly any faculty members or students there know that there is something to debate — a contract with extremely restrictive terms that the university signed in 2006 to do research for Philip Morris USA, the nation’s largest tobacco company and a unit of Altria Group.

The contract bars professors from publishing the results of their studies, or even talking about them, without Philip Morris’s permission. If “a third party,” including news organizations, asks about the agreement, university officials have to decline to comment and tell the company. Nearly all patent and other intellectual property rights go to the company, not the university or its professors.

“There is restrictive language in here,” said Francis L. Macrina, Virginia Commonwealth’s vice president for research, who acknowledged that many of the provisions violated the university’s guidelines for industry-sponsored research. “In the end, it was language we thought we could agree to. It’s a balancing act.”

But the contract, a copy of which The New York Times obtained under the Virginia Freedom of Information law, is highly unusual and raises questions about how far universities will go in search of scarce research dollars to enhance their standing. It also brings a new dimension to the already divisive debate on many campuses over whether it is appropriate for universities to accept tobacco money for research.

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Victory For Freedom From Corporatism

A second US university has had the moxy to stand up for its students instead of instanty caving into to RIAA extortion.

Following the path laid out in Oregon, where the state attorney general and University of Oregon jointly told Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA they weren’t going to stand still for blackmail, Marshall University in West Virginia has become the second known US university to attempt to quash an RIAA subpoena.

This won’t come as a surprise, however.

It’s also one of the few universities to point out the RIAA sue ‘em all campaign is having a seriously debilitating effect on universities and their staffs.

“We have to protect our institutions as well as our students, but we have yet to find a solution,” the university’s Jan Fox was last year quoted as saying, reported p2pnet.

We went on that the so-called trade organisation has been successfully using the mainstream media to create the illusion that thousands of people in America, students and children included, have been found guilty of file sharing, never mind that no such crime or offence exists in civil or criminal law, and that Jammie Thomas is the only RIAA victim to have actually been inside a court.

At Marshall, the file sharing issue has been so time-consuming for Fox and her staff, “she fears many employees can’t focus on the real issues that need to be confronted,” Fox told the Parthenon.

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