List first one in columns (1997 to present, which we'll have to change to 1996 to present) Filegate Can't Be Compared to Crimes of Watergate (7/3/96) by Jeff Cohen (This column appeared in San Jose Mercury News, St. Louis Post Dispatch and other papers.) Repeated incessantly in the echo chamber of conservative punditry, a myth can be fabricated and marketed nationwide almost overnight. It happened recently when millions of Americans were bombarded with the latest fable: "Filegate" is equivalent to Watergate. Behind the comparison is a purported fact perpetually served up: that the two Clinton employees who obtained FBI files committed the same crime as Watergate convict Charles Colson. The myth is launched. Cal Thomas started it all in his syndicated column, published June 27 in the Post-Dispatch, which featured an interview with Colson, a self-described "born-again Christian," who used to describe himself as Nixon's chief "hatchet man." It seemed as if the old, non-believing, Ninth-Commandment-breaking Colson made a reappearance in Thomas' column. According to Thomas, "Colson called to ask me if I remembered what got him a one-to-three year prison sentence" - and then Colson provided this answer: "They got me for taking one FBI file and giving it to a reporter." Colson went on to express indignation over the "brazen" and "frightening" Clinton administration staff members who obtained the FBI files. "People ought to be marching in the streets over that," said the former foe of street protests. The myth gathers steam. Tony Snow picked up the thread - half of it, at least - in his syndicated column: "Columnist Cal Thomas notes that Charles Colson got a prison sentence for obtaining one FBI file." No mention of Colson disseminating any files. The myth rockets across the country, propelled by dozens of media voices. "Does anybody know why Chuck Colson went to jail?" bellowed talk show behemoth Rush Limbaugh. "He looked at unauthorized FBI files . . . It's in the latest Cal Thomas column. Colson's reminding everyone that he went to jail for what's going on in Washington today." On "Larry King Live," Rep. Newt Gingrich asserted that Colson "went to jail for having one file." Washington Times Editor Wes Pruden declared that Colson "went to jail for having one file." The senior columnist for the Dallas Morning News wrote: "Tricky Dick Nixon's guys did pen time for misusing just one FBI file." Told enough times, a fairy tale begins to sound almost true. But in fact, the criminal activities that put Colson behind bars involved far more than a single file. As White House special counsel, Colson was one of Nixon's closest and dirtiest political operatives, a man who'd "walk over his grandmother" to get Nixon reelected. It was Colson who brought to the White House - and supervised - E. Howard Hunt, the ex-CIA agent behind the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex. Newsweek wrote in June 1974 of "the omnipresence of (Colson's) fingerprints across the whole range of Watergate scandals." "Colson would do anything," Nixon said, as recorded on the White House tapes. Soon after presidential candidate George Wallace was shot, Colson and Nixon hatched a failed plan to have Hunt plant Democratic literature inside the gunman's apartment - "to damage McGovern," in Nixon's taped words. Colson played a big role in compiling the White House "Enemies List" targeting Nixon critics for federal reprisals. Two White House staffers told investigators that Colson once suggested setting fire to the Brookings Institution, a think tank, to hide a search for documents there. Colson was ultimately indicted for conspiracy in the burglary of the psychiatrist of Dan Ellsberg, the Vietnam War whistleblower. He was also indicted for conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in. If convicted at these two trials, he faced years behind bars. The Watergate special prosecutor was also investigating Colson's role in obtaining or covering up suspicious campaign pledges from corporate interests (ITT in one case, dairy farmers in another) that had received favors from Nixon's White House. But Colson, the consummate political fixer, was able to stop those indictments and inquiries by cutting a deal with prosecutors (that's when he announced his religious rebirth) - and agreeing to testify against co-conspirators, one of whom was Nixon. The deal let Colson plead guilty to a single felony count: "obstruction of justice" in the Ellsberg case by conspiring to disseminate derogatory material about Ellsberg. He ultimately served seven months in prison and was disbarred. To say that Colson went to prison because he obtained (or misused) one FBI file is like saying the bloody gangster Al Capone went to prison because be was a tax cheat. Colson was a Watergate criminal of the highest order, and of Nixon's inner circle. Comparing him to today's low-level "Filegate" operatives is inaccurate and absurd. Even more absurd is the implication that Filegate is on a par with Watergate - a conspiracy that involved burglaries, bribes, spying, wiretaps, forgeries and other serious political crimes. List this in Media Beat Prejudice That Kills: The Toll in AIDS (1/17/96) By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon Not long ago, driving on an interstate highway, we were listening to the radio when a man on a request line asked that a love song be dedicated to ''Tony.'' The disc jockey shot back: ''I hope that's 'Toni' with an 'i.' '' The man on the phone quickly assured the DJ that his loved one was indeed female. Such talk on the airwaves might seem inconsequential. It's not. The reinforcement of timeworn prejudices has deadly results. ''Stigma and discrimination are the enemies of public health,'' says Dr. Jonathan Mann, director of the International AIDS Center at Harvard University. He has written the preface to an important new report -- ''The Impact of Homophobia and Other Social Biases on AIDS'' -- released by the Public Media Center based in San Francisco. Though media coverage has slacked off during the last several years, the AIDS crisis has not. On the contrary: Among Americans between the ages of 24 and 44, AIDS is now the leading cause of death. Worldwide, more than 17 million people have died from the disease. ''Our nation is suffering in the midst of an unprecedented public health emergency in which more than a million Americans may be diagnosed with AIDS by the year 2000 -- nearly one out of every 250 Americans,'' the report notes. ''Yet, as a nation, we continue to work in the dark, without fully implementing a national AIDS plan, without a concerted national commitment to conquering the AIDS crisis and without sufficient public or private resources to deal with the issue.'' Ask yourself: If, 15 years ago, a cross-section of the American people had become infected with AIDS via heterosexual intercourse, would the federal government have been so slow to respond? And would anti-AIDS endeavors still be so low on the agendas of elected officials and mass media? In the early 1980s, AIDS became known as a disease afflicting gay men. Since then, AIDS has spread widely, hitting the poor especially hard. Boosted by intravenous drug use, the illness is killing large numbers of blacks and Latinos. ''Irrational prejudices like homophobia have obstructed public health efforts that prevent the spread of AIDS,'' the Public Media Center points out. The stigma attached to AIDS is a ''social pathology that distorts public policy, fuels infection and subverts AIDS care.'' These days, it's true that we're likely to see quite a few laudable, empathetic news stories about people with AIDS. We're also apt to see in-depth scientific articles about AIDS research in the mainstream press. But an AIDS crisis with a terribly urgent need for much more effective countermeasures? Judging from routine media coverage, such a crisis does not exist. The nation's persisting failure to confront the AIDS epidemic is directly linked to anti-gay prejudices, as the new report makes clear: ''Despite the fact that numerous 'risk groups' have been associated with HIV/AIDS, the disease has maintained its greatest hold on the public imagination in terms of its connection to gay and bisexual men. This perception coincides with an underlying and prevalent homophobia.'' The obstacles to effectively mobilizing against AIDS are especially difficult ''because homophobia has never been addressed through an open, public dialogue, and because a social consensus condemning homophobia has never been formed.'' Anti-gay prejudices, combined with a common view of AIDS as a gay disease, ''continue to hamper our efforts to address this as a health crisis not only for gay and bisexual men but for women, for people of color, for intravenous drug users and for other populations.'' The report urges Americans to ''address homophobia as an independent moral issue involving the goals of fairness, human dignity and the promotion of social tolerance and understanding.'' Clearly, wide implementation of preventive measures will be necessary to stop the AIDS epidemic. Even now, however, news media provide sparse information. If only the major media outlets were as good at informing the public about AIDS prevention as they are at informing us about superficial events in the lives of Hollywood celebrities. Halting the spread of AIDS will require ''continual'' and ''pervasive'' messages encouraging protective behavior, the Public Media Center report concludes. AIDS is an ''indiscriminate killer that we allow to thrive only as a result of our own uncon- fronted prejudices, fears and ambivalence.'' By confronting our own prejudices, we can turn away from ambivalence -- and move toward determination to end the AIDS crisis. -- Jeff Cohen is executive director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Norman Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.'' List in MediaBeat as Robert Parry: Investigative Journalism vs. Conventional Wisdom By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon BODY: Imagine working as an investigative reporter in the nation's capital and breaking some of the biggest stories of the 1980s. You win the prestigious George Polk Award for exposing a CIA assassination manual distributed to U.S.-backed Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. The next year, you're a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and you receive a slew of other awards. In June 1985, you write the first article about a Marine colonel named Oliver North and reveal that he's running a secret intelligence operation out of the White House. And you continue to produce well-documented articles about clandestine actions later known as the Iran-Contra scandal. But your supervisors at Associated Press get skittish. In late 1985, when you team up with a colleague to write a comprehensive expose of drug-trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras, AP editors block the story -- which only sees the light of day when AP's Spanish-language wire distributes it by mistake. Later, you find out that your boss has been conferring with North on a regular basis. In 1987, after 10 years with AP in Washington, you quit to become a staff correspondent for Newsweek -- where you write the first story linking the Oval Office to a cover-up of Iran-Contra. You go on to pull the lids off a domestic propaganda apparatus overseen by CIA Director William Casey, the CIA's covert political operations inside Nicaragua, and hidden deals between the U.S. government and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Before long, however, Newsweek's editors are slamming on the brakes. They don't seem to want you to dig too deeply. Soon, they're insisting that you abide by Washington's conventional wisdom even when you've amassed documentation that disproves it. Robert Parry doesn't have to imagine any of this. He lived it. Today, the 46-year-old Parry is pursuing a path that led him out of mainstream media -- and into cyberspace. A few weeks ago, he founded what may be America's first on-line magazine of investigative journalism. Parry offers The Consortium as ''an investigative magazine distributed free on the World Wide Web -- at http://www.consortiumnews.com/ The same attitude that caused Parry to leave AP and Newsweek is now guiding his current activities. What distinguishes Parry's project from the mass media's cyber-ventures is his passionate belief that journalism has a responsibility to follow the trail of the truth, wherever it leads. Parry's 1992 book, ''Fooling America,'' pulled no punches -- and it probably ensured that he'll get no job offers from media outfits like Newsweek. He deftly skewers the magazine's top editors with firsthand accounts of behind-the-scenes deference to powerful politicians. The lead story in The Consortium's first issue of 1996 recounts how a congressional panel bungled -- or covered up -- an inquiry into charges that high officials in Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign interfered with President Jimmy Carter's efforts to secure the release of 52 American hostages in Iran. Two years ago, a House task force concluded there was ''no credible evidence'' to support the charges of Republican dirty tricks. But now, Parry has unearthed documents showing that the task force suppressed incriminating CIA testimony and excluded evidence of big-money links between wealthy Republicans and Carter's Iranian intermediary. Parry's new journalistic breakthrough is mainly based on U.S. government documents. How did he find them? He kept searching -- and, early this winter, literally blew the dust off thousands of pages in cardboard boxes that were stored in a converted ladies' room near the parking garage of a congressional office building. ''An intimidating array of individuals and forces wanted President Carter ousted from the White House in 1980,'' Parry reports. ''Newly revealed documents, meant to stay hidden from the public, now show the interlocking relationships that operated behind the facade of American democracy.'' So far, national news outlets have ignored the evidence Parry exhumed. He isn't surprised. ''Mainstream media cannot deal with the new information because it clashes with the conventional wisdom,'' he says. Working closely with Parry on some journalistic projects recently, we've been struck by his abiding belief in the free flow of information. He takes very seriously all that idealistic stuff in civics textbooks. It's a shame that big media outlets haven't been more supportive of Robert Parry's talents. But, thank goodness, he is persevering as a journalist. Maybe you'll get a chance to see the results -- if only in cyberspace. -- Jeff Cohen is executive director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Norman Solomon is co-author of ''Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the News Media.''