****************************** in those "4 items from columns 86-92" let's not post "Culture of lying" column yet. i want to think it over. ****************************** Here are 4 items for Columns on Media (1986-1992) The Culture of Lying (Atlanta Constitution, 12/16/91) By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon New York - David Duke's presidential campaign stands to benefit from the same culture of lying that has helped the former Klansman in the past few months. Reporters and pundits periodically decry the culture of lying, but rarely acknowledge their own complicity in it. Mr. Duke is hardly unique as a recent beneficiary tolerant of deceit. This fall we witnessed a series of televised spectacles in which it was commonplace to hear outright lying, distortion and bizarre reinterpretations of reality. Public figures with long histories succeeded in reinvesting themselves -- thanks in part to overly acquiescent media. Clarence Thomas spent days telling a Senate committee in September that dozens of lengthy unambiguous excerpts from his various speeches and articles were not what they sounded like -- the words of a far-right ideologue. Indeed, Justice Thomas made out as if he had no firm position on any subject. Under oath, he claimed to have never discussed Roe v. Wade with anyone in all the years since that Supreme Court decision legalized abortion. Justice Thomas kept straining credulity, maintaining he didn't know that his friend and political mentor, Jay Parker, was a paid lobbyist in Washington for the government of South Africa. Nor did Justice Thomas acknowledge -- or the media report -- that while on the appeals court, he failed to excuse himself from a $ 10 million case involving Ralston Purina, and ended up ruling in favor of that company, owned by the family of his patron, Sen. John Danforth (R- Mo.). To someone not steeped in -- and accepting of -- the culture of lying, Clarence Thomas's testimony was simply not credible. But this observation wasn't uttered in most of the national media. In fact, when Anita Hill came forward later with her charges, television's pundits kept describing events as a standoff between two highly credible people. What about Robert M. Gates, the new CIA director? He testified under oath that he couldn't remember meetings in which momentous events connected to Iran-contra were discussed. He claimed he never slanted intelligence to fit the Ronald Reagan view of the Soviet Union, but merely interpreted the data differently than almost every Soviet expert in the agency. An independent press would have offered us blunt reporting on Mr. Gates's contradictions. Instead we got euphemisms. The lead paragraph of one New York Times story told us that the hearings raised questions about Mr. Gates's "memory" -- not his integrity. Another Times article said Mr. Gates was "forgetful of crucial facts," an apparent euphemism for lying. What about David Duke? He sought Louisiana's governorship on three issues: discrimination against white people, crime and welfare recipients, who in Louisiana are mostly African-Americans. In short, he ran a campaign against black people. How was Mr. Duke handled on the McLaughlin Group, the "show of shows" for America's pundits? Host John McLaughlin bellowed the question: "Is Duke a racist today?" And the response from the group's token liberal, Jack Germond, was hemming and hawing and finally: "I don't know whether in his heart he's a racist or not. How do I know that?" If television's "liberal" pundits can't even tell us whether David Duke is a racist, how will they help us on that question when it comes to George Bush, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) or other politicians? On several national TV shows, Mr. Duke has been given fairly free reign to reinvent himself: Oh no, when I seemed to be praising Adolph Hitler, I was merely praising the great national unity Germany achieved in the 1930s. Sure I ran the newspaper that proposed evicting blacks to homelands in the South, and Jews to Manhattan and Long Island, but I'm not responsible for every article in my paper. Sure I sold books out of my state legislative office a few years ago about the genetic inferiority of blacks, Jews as the source of all evil, the Holocaust as a Zionist hoax - but I sold liberal books as well. Mr. Duke's reinventing of himself reached its peak in a remarkably friendly chat for a full hour on CNN's "Larry King Live." And Phil Donahue, eager to get Mr. Duke on his show last month, agreed not to show any photos or footage of him in Ku Klux Klan robes. Backstage media makeovers have become an accepted part of the political process. News coverage often treats them as little more than a show-biz ritual. But the culture of lying is not just cosmetics. It has much more to do with George Orwell than Christian Dior. And if journalists allow truth to be flushed down a national memory hole, then David Duke will have little to fear from America's news media. --- Mr. Cohen is director of the media watch group FAIR. Mr. Solomon is co-author of "Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media." Unreliable Review? -- Letter to Columbia Journalism Review (3/91) By Jeff Cohen Executive Director, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, New York, NY CJR's editors should have considered the Review's own advice before assigning David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times to review Unreliable Sources: A Guide To Detecting Bias In News Media, by FAIR associates Martin A. Lee and Norman Solomon (CJR, January/February). In "The Unruly World of Book Reviews" (CJR March/April 1990), Steve Weinberg explored ethical standards that ought to apply to the selection of book reviewers. By choosing Shaw to review Unreliable Sources, you failed to measure up to the standards offered in that article -- for example, "the book editor's obligation to question a prospective reviewer about potential conflicts of interest." The article cites New York Times Book Review editor Rebecca Sinkler, who asks potential reviewers, "Is there any reason the author would object to you?" Did CJR ask this question of Shaw? Ironically, according to Weinberg's article, Shaw's newspaper has ethical guidelines which assert: "If you receive for review a book by a friend or enemy, please notify the Book Review immediately." Last year, Shaw became embroiled in a heated controversy with FAIR regarding his L.A. Times series which claimed that news coverage of abortion had a pervasive prochoice bias. FAIR challenged his methodology and accuracy, including manipulation of statistics. While debating Shaw as FAIR's executive director on southern California talk radio, I listed what FAIR viewed as mistakes in his series; he retracted one of them. Although Shaw mentioned his analysis of abortion coverage in the CJR review, he tellingly neglected to mention his debate with FAIR. Shaw's treatment of Unreliable Sources was a predictable, ax-grinding attack by an ideologue of the political center. (Shaw holds to the centrist myth that only rightists and leftists can be biased or blinded by ideology, not centrists.) Encumbered by centrist blinders, Shaw failed to seriously examine the documentation in Lee and Solomon's book. Shaw derides the authors of Unreliable Sources for emphasizing political and economic factors in their analysis of news distortion. The main journalistic bias, Shaw says, is bias "in favor of a good story, a juicy, controversial story that will land them on page one." But he offers no explanation as to why so many juicy stories -- like Oliver North being banned from Costa Rica after a Costa Rican congressional investigation disclosed North's links to cocaine traffickers -- rarely crack the national TV networks or the newspaper of record. Tough Talk on Terrorism a Hypocrisy (L.A. Times, 1/9/89) By Jeff Cohen No sooner was it established that Pan Am Flight 103 had been destroyed by a bomb than the American press went into its predictable ritual. Journalists peppered President Reagan and President-elect Bush with all the usual questions: How can we bring terrorists to justice? Will we retaliate against any country harboring those responsible for bombing passenger planes? Reagan and Bush responded with the expected tough-sounding rhetoric. Reagan: "We're going to make every effort we can to find out who was guilty of this savage thing and bring them to justice." Bush pledged to "seek hard and punish firmly, decisively, those who did this, if you can ever find them." What's wrong with this all-too-familiar script? In a word, hypocrisy. As many in the media and in the Reagan-Bush Administration know, the United States has harbored an accused jet-bombing terrorist. Our government has done nothing to bring him to justice, nor have the media clamored for justice. And there's no doubt, Mr. Bush, about whether "you can ever find him." Folks working for the Reagan Administration, in close association with your office as vice president, hired him -- long after he was linked to a murderous jet bombing. The terrorist's name is Luis Posada, a right-wing Cuban exile who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for years after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Posada says the CIA trained him in the use of explosives. In October, 1976, he was the reputed mastermind behind the explosion of a civilian passenger jet that killed all 73 people on board. The Cubana Airlines DC-8 blew up soon after taking off from Barbados en route to Jamaica and Havana. Posada and other members of the Cuban terror group, Command of United Revolutionary Organizations, were charged in Venezuela with the crime. The two men who admitted planting the bomb identified Posada as a mastermind of the plot. Posada, however, whose trial was never completed, mysteriously escaped in 1985 from a high-security Venezuelan prison. To this day, he is wanted for terrorism. Since the Command of United Revolutionary Organizations was led by CIA veterans, the agency learned within days of the jet bombing that Posada and his associates were involved. But the CIA, according to investigative reporter Scott Armstrong, did nothing to bring the men to justice. Bush was then director of the CIA. After Posada escaped from jail, instead of hunting Posada down, the United States apparently found him a job. Posada was discovered two years ago in El Salvador working as a key overseer in the U.S. operation (Oliver North, William Casey & Co.) to resupply the Nicaraguan Contras. In May, 1986, a Venezuelan television reporter interviewed Posada from "somewhere in Central America." "I feel good here," Posada exclaimed, "because I am involved once again in a fight against international communism." Posada was recruited to the Contra supply program and was supervised in El Salvador by longtime CIA operative Felix Rodriguez. During this period, Rodriguez reported regularly to Vice President Bush's office. According to reports from a Senate subcommittee and the Wall Street Journal, Posada was one of four leaders of the Command of United Revolutionary Organizations who found work in the Contra operation. This despite the fact that the command's members had been involved in bombings and assassination plots, including one in 1976 targeted at Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. What did the United States do after major American dailies identified Posada as a Contra operative in El Salvador? Not much. He was allowed to disappear again. Instead of clamoring at Bush for hypothetical responses to still-unidentified terrorists behind the Pan Am explosion, journalists would do better to ask Bush why the United States has protected Posada and friends. Other questions need asking. If it's terrorism to blow up innocent civilians in the fight against "international Zionism" or "Western satanism," isn't it also terrorism to perform the same acts in the struggle against "international communism"? Or is blowing up civilians acceptable as long as the target is Cuba? And if it's justified for the United States to retaliate militarily against a foreign country linked to the Pan Am terrorists, would Cuba have had the right to launch an air strike against Washington because of our relations with Posada and his Command of United Revolutionary Organizations? The stories of Luis Posada and the CIA's historic links to right-wing terror groups overseas have been under-reported because much of the U.S. media is content presenting a simplistic view of the world where Americans in white hats police the globe of black hats -- usually worn by Middle Eastern terrorists. In some countries of Western Europe and Latin America -- where the terrorism issue is analyzed with fewer ideological blinders -- people don't automatically see us in white hats. They are as familiar with Luis Posada's U.S. links as we are with Abu Nidal and Libya. American journalists could begin cutting through the fog by asking George Bush a simple question: If we're serious about punishing terrorists, shouldn't we start with our own? -- Jeff Cohen is the executive director of FAIR, a media-watch group based in New York. What We Call "The Left" is a Timid Distortion (L.A. Times, 8/24/86) By Jeff Cohen and Linda Valentino Robert S. McNamara. William E. Colby. Jody Powell. Are these men leftists? That's what our television networks would have us believe as they frame the debate on national policy. Bereft of makeup and klieg lights, these men are stalwarts of the political center -- pragmatic and moderate. They'd be the first to object to the label "leftist." Yet in TV debates, they are regularly called upon to do battle with partisans of the ideological right -- George F. Will, William F. Buckley. Nowhere to be found on television are true partisans of the American left. During the nuclear-freeze campaign, leaders of the peace movement had to watch from the sidelines as TV debates repeatedly cast former Defense Secretary McNamara and former CIA Director Colby in the role of doves. These men, who had been denounced by the peace movement for Vietnam War atrocities -- were the "responsible" freeze advocates preferred by television. Meanwhile, articulate spokespersons of the left are deemed not ready for prime time -- or even the off-hours. Take the case of MIT Prof. Noam Chomsky, author of a dozen books on U.S. foreign policy. Chomsky receives standing ovations at overflow audiences on campuses across the country, but if he's not allowed into the discourse on television and the other mass media, he might as well be in political exile. Ironically, while Chomsky is marginalized on the political fringe in his own country, his views on international relations garner major media attention in Western Europe. The media of our European allies are far more receptive to leftist viewpoints. By comparison, the spectrum of political opinion in the U.S. media runs only from center to right. In fact, it has been so long since progressives were afforded their place in political debate that many have forgotten the rich history of the American left and its contributions to society. The left has consistently been in the forefront of social movements whose objectives eventually have been accepted by the majority of the public, albeit some years later. By contrast, the liberals have often been Johnny-come-latelies hovering timidly about the edges of social movements while others put their lives and livelihoods on the line. Typically, the liberals have entered the fray only after the waters were tested and deemed safe. Examples are plentiful: -- The left, then referred to in the press as "radicals," were prime movers in the abolition of slavery. -- The left was in the forefront of the movement for women's suffrage, and has played a vanguard role in today's feminist movement. -- The left's opposition to U.S. military meddling in Latin America is no new concern. Anti-intervention movements have blossomed in the U.S. since the 1890s when a radical named Mark Twain declared: "I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its claws on any other land." -- The labor movement and the struggles for the minimum wage, the eight-hour workday, Social Security and unemployment compensation were all pioneered by progressive left activists. -- The left, which championed civil rights as far back as the 1930s, was in the forefront of that movement in the 1950s and 1960s, while liberals, typified by the Kennedy Administration, admonished civil-rights leaders to "be patient, the time isn't right yet." -- The left opposed the liberal Roosevelt Administration's internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was supported by liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren, then governor of California. -- The left was practically alone in defending civil liberties in the face of McCarthyism, while many liberals toadied to the witch-hunting committees, naming names and pointing fingers -- "Not me, him." -- The left led the earliest movements for nuclear disarmament in the late 1950s and remains prominent in this effort today. -- Perhaps the single greatest achievement of the American left in this century is the movement that it built in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. While the liberal Kennedy and Johnson Administrations waged the war, the left spearheaded the anti-war movement, initially on campuses. Later, with liberals in Congress and the media either still sitting on the fence or defending the Vietnam debacle, the left extended that movement to vast numbers -- cutting across racial, economic and political lines. Anti-war sentiment ultimately brought our boys home. History teaches us that what is "left" today is often the common wisdom of tomorrow. If progressives were on the air speaking for themselves, instead of only being spoken about, there would be less ignorance about what the American left believes and what it has accomplished. The left has proposals to meet today's challenges. The American public has a right to hear them. -- Jeff Cohen is the director of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, based in New York. Linda Valentino is on FAIR's national advisory board and lives in Los Angeles.