MediaBloodhound

Special Report: WashPo and Time Help ABC Bury Treatment of Kucinich

(updated below)

Following last Sunday's Democratic presidential debate on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Dennis Kucinich's campaign asked ABC News to address issues it had with treatment Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio) received both during the debate and afterward in ABC's online coverage. In an email sent out to supporters on Wednesday, the campaign said it "submitted objections and inquiries to ABC News representatives on Monday and Tuesday. ABC News representatives have failed to respond - or even acknowledge - those objections and inquiries." I confirmed with the Kucinich campaign yesterday that it has subsequently been forwarded the same response ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones sent to The Washington Post and Time magazine. 

ABC News representatives felt it necessary to answer the Kucinich campaign's objections when Time magazine's National Political Correspondent Karen Tumulty queried them. Writing on the Time blog Swampland, Tumulty initially says of the Kucinich team's issues with ABC's treatment (which included Kucinich not having a chance to speak until 28 minutes into the debate), "These all seemed like fair complaints to me, so I asked ABC News to respond." Then Tumulty says, "In an e-mail, Executive Director Andrea Jones answered him [Kucinich] point by point."

While I give Tumulty credit for contacting ABC News, her investigative journalism unfortunately ends there. Once she receives the email from Jones, Tumulty slips into stenography mode. Jones' "point by point" response to the Kucinich campaign's complaints does not in itself exculpate or dispel any of ABC's wrongdoing. Tumulty fails to assess the accuracy and logic of Jones' answers.

First, just so we're all up to speed, here are the issues (an aggregate of the thousands of complaints received during and after ABC's debate coverage) that the Kucinich campaign asked ABC News to address:

* Congressman Kucinich was apparently deliberately cropped out of a "Politics Page" photo of the candidates.

* Sometime Monday afternoon, after Congressman Kucinich took a commanding lead in ABC's own on-line "Who won the Democratic debate" survey, the survey was dropped from prominence on the website.

* ABC News has not officially reported the results of its online survey.

* After the results of that survey showed Congressman Kucinich winning handily, ABC News, sometime Monday afternoon, replaced the original survey with a second survey asking "Who is winning the Democratic debate?"

* During the early voting Monday afternoon and evening, U.S. Senator Barack Obama was in the lead. By sometime late Monday or early Tuesday morning, Congressman Kucinich regained the lead by a wide margin in this second survey.

* Sometime Tuesday morning, ABC News apparently dropped the second survey from prominence or killed it entirely.

* AND, as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday Presidential forum is aware, Congressman Kucinich was not given an opportunity to answer a question from moderator George Stephanopoulos until 28 minutes into the program.

Now back to Tumulty commenting on Jones' response [emphasis below is mine]:

This gist of her answer is this: She denies that Kucinich was cropped out of any photo, noting that "there are 20 photos live on the ABC News website, Mr. Kucinich is in a number of them and there is even one of him and his wife. He is one of 6 candidates who got his own photo in the slide show. As for the images, clearly nothing was cropped, the image in question was shot by Charlie Neibergall of the AP not ABC."

FALSE. Had Tumulty - Time magazine's National Political Correspondent and former member of the White House press corps - simply located the original AP photo (which, at most, should've taken a few minutes online), she would've found Kucinich in it and realized the following version ABC News prominently displayed online after the debate had, indeed, been cropped:

So Jones either lied when she said "clearly nothing was cropped" or was misinformed by someone on her staff. Since Tumulty seems to think her job ends with receiving answers from an ABC News spokesperson, she doesn't question the veracity of Jones' assertion, which is clearly false.

Adding to its duplicity, ABC News has now completely replaced the original photograph in question. If you click on the link in Tumulty's post (which is supposed to bring you to that photo), you are now taken to a wholly different shot that includes Dennis Kucinich and is currently the default debate photo sitting on the ABC News website.

So, in case you're keeping score, first ABC disappears Kucinich from a photo by cropping him out, then denies it, then later disappears the original cropped photo, replacing it with a separate photo that includes Kucinich, making it appear as if nothing improper ever occurred.

Eat your heart out Fox News.

Tumulty does later post an update after she manages (she doesn't say how) to find her way to a page on the site Pinkraygun that shows the original AP photo and the doctored ABC photo side-by-side. This compels Tumulty to gingerly concede "there does in fact appear to have been some cropping." First, it was either cropped or it wasn't. "Some cropping" gives the impression a whole cropping didn't occur, which it did. Second, if there was "some cropping," then logic follows that Jones either did some lying or some misinforming. That, in turn, means Tumulty should be doing some follow up with Jones. She does not. Third, a question for Tumulty and her editors over at Time: How did you fail to bring this simple fact to light yourselves? You had three main points to investigate - whether a photo was cropped, whether a poll was manipulated and whether Kucinich was allotted a fair amount of time. Arguably, the cropped photo was the most simple and quick of the three to verify. Did you attempt to find this on your own? If so, what's your excuse for initially failing to obtain such readily available evidence? If not, what's your excuse for failing to pursue this evidence in the first place?

On to the poll(s):

She notes that the poll was and is live on ABC's website. (When I checked it, Kucinich was still winning, with Barack Obama a distant second.) She also notes the poll's disclaimer that it is "not a scientific survey," which seems like a decent reason for ABC not to treat it as a news story.

MISLEADING. Jones' statement circumvents the facts and the original thrust of the Kucinich campaign's complaint about the poll. Tumulty's unobtrusive reporting gives the impression the poll has always been up on ABC's site in clear view and at no time were changes made to it.

FACT: The original poll, prominently displayed, asked, "Who won the Democratic debate?" Once Kucinich jumped ahead, this poll was scuttled from its prominence on the site. As it became clear Kucinich was trouncing his competition, ABC just happened to decide to post a new poll asking, "Who is winning the Democratic debate?" As the Kucinich campaign (and Tumulty) correctly cited, Barack Obama had an early lead in this second poll; but when Kucinich pulled ahead by a wide margin, ABC then dropped this poll from prominence, too. (Because the Kucinich camp had difficulty finding the poll after ABC moved it, they questioned whether ABC may have buried the poll "or killed it entirely." It appears ABC didn't kill it entirely; they just made it difficult for users work to find - which, as anyone who knows anything about online usability, is nearly tantamount to killing it).

Though of lesser importantance (due to the current unverifiable nature of online polls), Tumulty still manages to mishandle Jones' explanation of why ABC News didn't report the poll results. This issue is about nuance and context. Not exactly Tumulty's and the mainstream media's forte.

Yes, the online poll is "not a scientific survey"* (incidentally, it's verboten to mention in the mainstream media that phone surveys, many of which include leading and misleading questions, are often far from scientific accountings as well). But since news outlets (possibly ABC among them) have certainly noted some online polls in the past but in context of their scientific shortcomings, and considering ABC's shenanigans concerning Kucinich, it seems either intellectually dishonest or misinformed for Tumulty to give Jones the free pass "which seems like a decent reason for ABC not to treat it as a news story."

Does Tumulty honestly believe it's "a decent reason"? Or does she merely believe it's decent enough because the target of the question is ABC News and the questioner is the not-so-"viable" candidate Kucinich?

I should note here that Tumulty frames her post with the opening line: "Should the networks and interest groups that have been sponsoring the seemingly endless series of debates and candidate forums start limiting their invitations to those contenders who seem, by whatever definition, 'viable'?" She then claims to like "the idea of including candidates from the second tier--and beyond--in these settings," saying, "You never know when lightning may strike, and how is an underfinanced long-shot going to get a breakout moment otherwise?" and that "candidates such as Dennis Kucinich often are the only ones giving voice to ideas--like single-payer health care and a quick withdrawal from Iraq--that have not been embraced by the leading candidates, despite having significant support among the party rank and file." Yet Tumulty seems incapable of embracing such basic tenets of a democratic political process; instead, she reverts to entrenched media establishment dogma to round out her post's frame: "Still, having decided to include them, should they be given the same amount of time and attention as the leaders in the race?"

This is the journalist we're going to trust to get to the bottom of whether ABC News treated Dennis Kucinich fairly?

Finally, there's ABC's defense of Kucinich receiving so little airtime during the debate and, once again, Tumulty's stenographic framing and conclusions [emphasis below is mine]:

As for Kucinich's complaint that he was not given a question in the first 28 minutes of the debate, Jones notes: "He may not have been addressed in the first 28 minutes, but he was the only candidate questioned in his own segment on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, two weeks in a row, that appearance is posted online as well. Also. Mr. Kucinich was the only candidate to address healthcare in Sunday's debate, and that response was immediately clipped and posted on the ABC News website." Her bottom line: "After back to back appearances on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, clearly their claim is not substantiated by the facts nor by the extensive coverage of his candidacy on the ABCNews.com website."

First, Jones' "bottom line" skirts the issue at hand: she concedes ABC's debate moderators failed to address Kucinich in the first 28 minutes of the forum (though she frames her concession with the words "he may not have been addressed" rather than "he wasn't addressed," incorporating shades of doubt, as if this were somehow open to interpretation), but claims that ABC News has provided Kucinich much airtime overall.

Yet here's the real bottom line: In any equitable debate, no candidate should have to remain silent for the first 28 minutes. Period. This is not only unfair to Congressman Kucinich, but to all American citizens for whom news outlets such as ABC are supposed to be informing their decision-making process instead of acting to unduly manipulate it.

What's more, Jones' claim that Kucinich "was the only candidate questioned in his own segment on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, two weeks in a row" and that he had "back to back appearances" on this program is blatantly misleading. (I must admit this one initially slipped by me until, while fact-checking another element of this story, I stumbled across the truth in a conversation I had yesterday with Kucinich campaign spokesman Andy Juniewicz. More on that below).

FACT: Kucinich has made one appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Jones has the audacity to count Kucinich's appearance at this ABC debate as his second appearance on the show in which - breathing even new life into the word "truthiness" - he's received "his own segment." Can Jones explain how a candidate receives his own segment during a debate? What in the world is she talking about?   

Moreover, in a statistical analysis of the debate performed by USA Election Polls, Kucinich was given less time to speak than any candidate with the exception of former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel. Yet it gets worse: in the critical first half of the debate (the time when viewers tend to be most engaged), Kucinich received just 3.4% of airtime, the least of all the candidates. To put that in context, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama combined to chew up 60.4% of airtime during the first half of the debate.

USA Election Polls also points out:

In fact, even Chris Dodd got more air time than Kucinich which is ridiculous because Kucinich is beating Dodd in the majority of state polls. So if the emphasis was on giving the most time to the leaders in the polls, then what was Dodd doing speaking more than Kucinich?

Nevertheless, Tumulty and Time magazine show no interest in such further incontrovertible proof of the unfair treatment to which ABC News subjected Congressman Kucinich. Instead, Tumulty follows up Jones' "bottom line" by closing her post with these thoughts:

I honestly don't know what the right balance is here when you are dealing with such a large field of candidates, most of whom don't have a prayer of winning. What do you think? Was Kucinich treated unfairly? Or should he be included at all?*

*Not a scientific survey.

Cute. But parting shot at the Kucinich campaign aside, shouldn't Tumulty and Time magazine provide the facts in a piece titled "Dennis Kucinich vs. ABC News"? Instead, we're presented with a slanted, inaccurate, misleading and ill-researched breakdown of events that ends with Tumulty floating the question of whether Kucinich should be allowed to attend these debates in the first place.

And sadly, thanks to The Washington Post, that wasn't the worst coverage of the Kucinich-ABC incident by a major news outlet.

In a post titled "Kucinich Mad at ABC" over at The Washington Post blog The Sleuth (oh the irony), journalist Mary Ann Akers (a former reporter for The Washington Times as well as NPR) doesn't try to hide her contempt for Kucinich while barreling ahead without concern for facts or fact-checking.

She opens her post:

Don't expect to see too many more appearances by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) on ABC News.

An apparently irate Kucinich sent out a letter to supporters Wednesday accusing the network of ignoring him in the Democratic presidential debate on Sunday's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

So since Kucinich - along with, and spurred on by, thousands of other American citizens - objected to ABC's handling of the debate, should we expect, and accept, that ABC has a right to actively work to further marginalize him?

If that's Akers' frame, you can guess where this is going.

Also, because she fails to cite any source, we must assume her characterization of Kucinich as "apparently irate" hinges not on fact but projection. And as it turns out, that is exactly the case.

Yesterday, when I contacted Kucinich campaign spokesman Andy Juniewicz, he addressed Akers unfounded assertion:

"Congressman Kucinich was not irate. Nothing in the email communication expressed anger," said the soft-spoken Juniewicz. "It was just a delineation of what we were hearing from thousands of people who contacted us, many of whom weren't even Kucinich supporters. We asked ABC to respond to the questions they raised." When I asked if Akers or someone else at The Washington Post had spoken with anyone in his campaign about this purported demonstration of anger, Mr. Juniewicz said, "No. No one."

Note to Akers and The Washington Post: Before the Internets, there was the telephone. Some news outlets, though fewer and fewer these days, still find it handy for checking facts.

Moving right along, Akers then runs through roughly the same terrain on which Tumulty trodded, but her condescension and bias is profligate and shameless.

Among Kucinich's charges: he was "deliberately cropped out" of photos; after he took a "commanding lead" in ABC's online survey, the survey was mysteriously "dropped from prominence on the web site"; and "as every viewer of the nationally televised Sunday presidential forum is aware" Kucinich was not asked a question until 28 minutes into the program. (Everyone clocked that at 28 minutes, right?)

"Among Kucinich's charges" blunts the fact they've all been proven to be true (something Akers apparently has no interest in uncovering or presenting). Use of the word "mysteriously" not only mocks the assertion that the poll was buried but conjures the mainstream media's favorite attack on uncomfortable truths: it must be the work of those crazy conspiracy theorists (Akers also disregards the full story - previously addressed above in this post - behind ABC's bizarre and devious manipulation of the debate's polls). "Everyone clocked that at 28 minutes, right?" is not only disparaging but gives the ludicrous impression the Kucinich campaign is contending everyone noticed the precise number of minutes Kucinich had been shut out of the debate; rather, the campaign was noting a simple fact: everyone watching certainly saw that Kucinich didn't get a chance to speak for an usually long duration of time.

We deserve more than such absurd manufactured nitpicking from Akers and The Washington Post. Rather than chasing their tail to portray Kucinich in a poor light, think of how much easier it would've been to just present the facts. And to search them out.

But hey, according to Akers, "ABC News Executive Director Andrea Jones addressed every charge Kucinich made." Incredibly, Akers not only embraces Jones' answers without question, but also unwittingly contradicts Jones' claim that the photo in question was never cropped by providing the ABC debate photo below her post. In other words, the AP photo that ABC undeniably cropped is sitting below Akers' post in which she contends no cropping occurred. Again, all one needs to do is locate the original AP photo. And presto! Cropping mystery solved.

Again, too, Jones is either lying or misinformed, and Akers and The Washington Post (along with Tumulty and Time magazine) are complicit in perpetuating this falsehood.

Escaping Akers' notice or range of journalistic concern as well is ABC's wholesale swapping out of its cropped photo with an altogether new one in which Kucinich appears alongside the rest of the Democratic candidates. ABC News, in effect, has worked diligently to cover up this despicable act, one worthy of Fox News and Orwell's vision of totalitarian media manipulation.

In their coverage of the Kucinich-ABC incident, Time magazine's Tumulty and The Washington Post's Akers wind up crystallizing the extent to which big media rigs the game against a candidate like Congressman Kucinich. In defense of sound and equitable journalism, it is incumbent upon both Time magazine and The Washington Post to correct the record on ABC's actions, and the rest of the news media to hold ABC News accountable for this disgraceful performance.

No news organization - especially one charged with facilitating part of our electoral process - should be able to so grossly transgress such basic journalistic standards and not be held to account. This isn't a partisan issue. Congressman Kucinich's chances of capturing the Democratic nomination are irrelevant to this matter.

This speaks to the viability of our national press.

At a time when the mainstream media is struggling to retain and rebuild both its credibility and coveted market share among Americans, it ignores ABC's actions at its own peril.

UPDATE: I'll be away until after Labor Day weekend (wedding - not mine), but I first wanted to say thanks for your additional insights, passionate (yet substantive) comments and very kind words. To first-time readers, welcome! To everyone, by all means, keep the conversation going while I'm away. And if you want to do something else to keep (or turn up) the heat on ABC, request that this story does not stop here. Don't just contact ABC or other mainstream news outlets - contact Raw Story, Salon, Think Progress, Media Matters, FAIR.org and Truthout, and respectfully request they cover this story. Along with Crooks and Liars, these major alternative news outlets get the mainstream's attention and greatly increase the chances of forcing the mainstream's hand. More than anything, ABC wants this story to drop right down the memory hole: it's up to you to make sure that doesn't happen.

Story of the Day: Et Tu, PBS NewsHour?

Editor's Note: This is a loose Part II to the prior post: The Padilla Verdict, MSM-Style.

Of course, a longer segment covering the Padilla verdict doesn't necessarily mean that glaring omissions wouldn't occur. (24-hour news networks prove this point daily.)

In speaking to Associated Press journalist Curt Anderson, PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer offered a primer on how to appear to be a serious journalist without asking almost any substantive questions or follow-ups, on how to dance around the unseemly nature of a subject but give the appearance you're providing depth and breadth.

First of all, after hearing PBS fund-raisers prattle on about how it's part of Jim Lehrer and NewsHour's credo to show more than one side of every story, Lehrer then brings on Anderson for, well, the only side of this story.

JIM LEHRER: What exactly was it that Jose Padilla was convicted of doing today?

CURT ANDERSON: He was essentially convicted of presenting himself, volunteering to become an al-Qaida trainee at a camp in Afghanistan. The main piece of evidence against him was a form that he filled out back in 2000 to join the al-Farouq camp, which was one of the biggest and supposedly best in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, there was very little other evidence against him. Most of it was the form which had his fingerprints on it, and that seemed to be enough to convince the jury that he had provided himself as material support to the al-Qaida terrorist group.

To say "that seemed to be enough to convince the jury that he had provided himself as material support to the al-Qaida terrorist group" is not true. The prosecution played the jury a videotape of Osama bin Laden (Anderson himself alludes to it later in this segment) that certainly influenced the outcome of the trial as much or more so than a piece of paper the government alone said Padilla signed and left fingerprints on.

But Lehrer misses this completely, as if he wasn't aware this video of Bin Laden was presented to the jury. It's fine to bring on an "expert," but shouldn't Lehrer do some basic homework of his own before interviewing a guest on such a serious topic? It's the least he owes his audience when there's no one else but him to question Anderson's account.

He does follow up on this (though again lets every pertinent nuance go unanswered):

JIM LEHRER: Was there any evidence that he actually went to the camp and trained and got ready to be a "terrorist," end quote?

CURT ANDERSON: They stopped short of presenting that evidence directly regarding Padilla himself, but prosecutors brought other people -- notably a number of the Lackawanna Six group up in upstate New York -- to testify that he had gone to that same camp at a different time and had learned to use explosives and AK-47 and trained in a various ways like that. He was seen as a stand-in for Padilla, since they did not want to -- the prosecutors did not want to go that far in this case regarding Padilla himself.

JIM LEHRER: And the reason they didn't want to -- why would they not want to go any further? Was there a legal reason or what?

CURT ANDERSON: Yes. They were barred, primarily because Padilla, as many people know, was held as an enemy combatant for three-and-a-half years. He was interrogated extensively during all that time. And supposedly, if you believe the government, admitted to most of this information, the things he did and plots that he supposedly took part in.

None of that can be used in federal court because he was never read his rights, he never had a lawyer present to advise him, as we normally would have in our system, in federal civilian courts, so the case stopped short of actually his attendance at the camp.

While Lehrer is doing his impersonation of Fred Astaire, dancing up to the truth before adroitly leaping away, making it all look so easy, so natural, Anderson seems to think there's no bias in presenting every government claim about Padilla that was inadmissible in court but omitting the fact that the defendant was never charged on any of those claims during the three-and-a-half years he was held in solitary confinement and tortured.

Moreover, neither Lehrer nor Anderson brings up anything related to his torture, nor even the word torture during the entire segment. Nor do Lehrer or Anderson mention how extraordinary it was for a U.S. citizen to be stripped of his constitutional rights to begin with. As presented, nothing the government did in the Padilla case was unconstitutional. It's not even a failed strategy. According to Anderson, the government simply did A and then they did B, and in doing B, they had to narrow their options because of some actions previously taken in A. And Lehrer is mainly along for the ride, as if he's taking in the words of a tour guide.

The dark sinews of this story, in essence the same hard truths that NBC's Pete Williams scrubbed from his jaunty summary, have gone missing here, too.

The following exchange between Lehrer and Anderson, worthy of Fox News, underscores the absolute absurdity of this coverage:

JIM LEHRER: And was there ever any evidence put forth in public about that dirty bomb incident?

CURT ANDERSON: In public, yes. Back before Padilla was brought to Miami, in 2004, the Justice Department had a kind of an unusual press conference to detail what they said were Padilla's admissions to at least exploring the dirty bomb plot with people such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged plotter of 9/11 attacks.

And they did that because, at the time, they were in the midst of a battle over whether the president had the authority to continue detaining Padilla, a U.S. citizen, as an enemy combatant. And the Supreme Court was getting ready to possibly take the case up when the administration shifted gears and decided to charge him criminally, take him out of the military system, and send him here.

JIM LEHRER: Now, just for the record, a dirty bomb is a little small nuclear device, right?

Just to be clear, after Anderson describes what most Americans already know because once the announcement was made during that "kind of an unusual press conference" the mainstream media focused 24/7 on the dirty bomb, Lehrer lunges away from Anderson's prior statements to ask:

JIM LEHRER: Now, tell us about Jose Padilla. Where did he come from? He's 36 years old, but where did he come from? How did he get from where he started to where he is now?

First, Lehrer's question at the beginning of the previous exchange is ridiculous and, quite frankly, dangerous: "And was there ever any evidence put forth in public about that dirty bomb incident?" What value does "evidence put forth in public" have in a democracy where everyone is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of doubt? But Anderson takes Lehrer's lead and runs with it without question.

Again, why is it that Lehrer and Anderson - and this is ubiquitous in mainstream coverage of the Padilla verdict - keep trotting out unproven government claims, which amount to hearsay, but fail to touch upon anything related to Padilla's cruel and inhumane mistreatment by the same government that's making these claims? Why is it that Lehrer and Anderson can further perpetuate the oxymoronic "evidence put forth in public" but completely disregard the serious legal repercussions the Padilla case presents for every American citizen.

The government can arrest citizens indefinitely with no charge, torture them until they are unfit to stand trial (as Padilla was deemed in a psychological evaluation), then scratch up flimsy evidence and switch them into the legal system to avoid oversight.

But none of that is important to Lehrer and Anderson. Difficult as it may seem in a case riddled with legal dysfunction and dire implications for the rule of law, they fail to examine any of the blatantly illegal and seriously questionable acts undertaken by the Bush administration. Instead, for some reason, their focus is on exhausting any additional details, no matter how sketchy, that aid the government's gloss of justice served against Padilla.

CURT ANDERSON: He was born in Brooklyn. He's of Puerto Rican descent. He moved with his family to Chicago as a youngster, grew up there, got involved with street gangs, had a long rap sheet in Chicago, including a conviction as a juvenile of a murder, where he was present, not the one who actually committed the murder.

His mother moved he and other family members to south Florida. He got into more trouble and converted to Islam while in prison here in Florida. So he comes out of prison, and he starts going to the mosque, and that's where he meets a man named Adam Hassoun. Adam Hassoun was also convicted today of the same charges. And Hassoun was the leader of this cell to support Islamic extremism.

And that's kind of his journey. He got in with Hassoun, got convinced to become a Mujahedeen fighter, went over to Egypt in 1998, traveled from there to Afghanistan, and then wound up in O'Hare airport with the FBI on him.

Oh, Padilla was also a bad student (fortunately Lehrer makes clear a GED is an exam one takes to get a high school diploma), had a string of crappy fast-food jobs and longed for a more fulfilling path (who knew working the drive-thru window could lead to a life of terrorism?):

JIM LEHRER: What is known, if anything, about his family, about his education, occupation, some of the basics?

CURT ANDERSON: Yes, well, he got a GED, didn't do very well in school. It took him a while to get that.

JIM LEHRER: That's a GED, he took an exam to get a high school diploma, right?

CURT ANDERSON: Correct, yes. And he mostly worked in fast food, say, Taco Bell, things like that [note to Anderson: when a journalist is supposed to be dealing with facts and not opinion, statements like "say, Taco Bell, things like that" should be avoided]. He worked as a busboy at a Hilton Hotel and setting up for conferences and things like that [see previous note]. He seemed to be sort of a person who was continually looking for kind of what his path was going to be ["seemed to be sort of....for kind of what" - why does it sound like you seem to be sort of kind of making this up?].

I mentioned the gang membership. [Yeah, we got that.] You had various stretches of jail time. [Yup, mentioned that too.] So this was just the latest thing, it seemed like for him [or so it seemed, yes].

His mother is still living just north of Miami in Broward County. She was at the trial today. She said she's just looking forward to his chance to appeal. She thinks that he was essentially railroaded, which, you know, you would expect her to say.

You would expect a mother to say that, Curt. But in this case there are many reasons to believe that what she's alleging might have occurred. It's your job and Mr. Lehrer's job to explore those reasons. That is part of this story.

The part you both left out.

Story of the Day: The Padilla Verdict, Justice MSM-Style

How did the Bush administration manage to hold a U.S. citizen for three and a half years in solitary confinement with no charge and no access to legal representation, to perpetrate systematic physical and mental torture on this citizen until he was a broken human being, yet not incur overwhelming condemnation from the American public?

The mainstream media's reaction to yesterday's guilty verdict in the Jose Padilla trial echoed all of the omissions, half-truths and stenography that aided and abetted this administration's war crimes against Mr. Padilla. From yawning indifference and feckless summarizing to declarations of what a Great Victory this was for King George, the predominance of the mainstream media once again revealed its allegiance to this White House's narrative and its refusal to report the hard truths for fear of being branded un-American.

Of course, in doing so, they only further consecrate what has been and continues to be so highly un-American about the Bush administration: its dictatorial disregard for the rule of law.

Perfectly encapsulating the mainstream media's reaction to the Padilla verdict was last night's report filed by Justice Correspondent - paging Dr. Orwell - Pete Williams on NBC Nightly News.

First, preceding the Padilla report, anchor Brian Williams spent over six minutes on the "wild ride" on Wall Street and over a minute and a half on the weather. He then turned his attention to the Jose Padilla verdict, a landmark case that could have extremely serious repercussions on the civil rights of American citizens for years to come, and dedicates a full one minute and twenty-seven seconds to it. Moreover, like any serious journalist, Brian Williams quickly sets up the story for Pete Williams (no relation) by reminding us, in case we forgot, that Mr. Padilla was the man the Bush administration accused of plotting to set off a radioactive or "dirty" bomb, but fails to mention that even though they couldn't prove this, they nonetheless held Padilla for three and half years, obliterating his mind and dignity through cruel and inhuman treatment.

Brian also fails to ask Pete Williams even one follow-up question to this thorough report:

PETE WILLIAMS: Brian, this was a big legal victory for the Bush administration but not on the basis that led to Jose Padilla's arrest five years ago. That's when he was accused of coming to the U.S. to set off a dirty bomb. And then the government later said he was plotting to blow up apartment buildings in New York. But today a jury found him and two other south Florida men guilty of something much less serious - providing support for violent holy war in several countries overseas. Among the key evidence was an application the prosecutor said Padilla filled out to attend an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. But it wasn't just the spectacular allegations against Padilla that made his case so unusual. He was the first American citizen since 9/11 to be arrested in the U.S. and declared an enemy combatant. He was held in a Navy brig for more than three years. And then just before the Supreme Court was to consider his detention, the government brought these charges that led to today's verdict. And now Jose Padilla could face a sentence of life in prison, Brian.

To this woefully remiss Cliff Notes version of the verdict, Brian Williams responds with the probing, "All right. Pete Williams with the Padilla case out of Washington for us tonight. Thanks."

Incidentally, isn't it about time NBC found a justice correspondent who wasn't formerly employed and rewarded by Vice President Dick Cheney? From Pete Williams' MSNBC bio: "In 1986 he joined the Washington, DC staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant. In 1989, when Cheney was named Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs."

Another great victory for the Bush administration.

The Wounded-Courier: Giuliani and Media Take Aim at None of the Above

DES MOINE – After Rudy Giuliani's apology Friday morning for having said he visited the toxic 9/11 site “as often, if not more, than most of the workers,” the Republican presidential front-runner eagerly shifted the focus.

While campaigning in Iowa later that day, Giuliani attacked the one candidate he’s still trailing in the polls.

“When I said that the Democrats running for president are wussies,” Giuliani told a lunchtime crowd outside Dale’s Famous Original Grinders, “I should’ve pointed out an even bigger wussy than the Democrats. And that’s None of the Above.” The assembly of sandwich seekers fell dumbstruck as America’s Mayor explained, “If None of the Above had, as they say where I’m from, cajones, he would finally declare his candidacy. He’d debate me on the issues. He’d stop hiding behind a cowardly, or wussy-like, anonymity.”

Taking Giuliani’s lead, Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly targeted None of the Above in his “Talking Points” segment on Friday's The O’Reilly Factor.

“Talking Points has recently obtained information on None of the Above that is none too savory,” revealed O’Reilly. “Talking Points won’t disclose all of this information, or our exhaustive fact-checking methods used to confirm it. But Talking Points will tell you this about the supposedly unblemished record of None of the Above: he’s pro-choice, he wants universal healthcare and he enjoys sodomizing sheep. Now, Talking Points understands everyone has their own particular sexual peccadilloes. But universal healthcare? C’mon, None of the Above,” scolded O’Reilly. “As Talking Points has noted time and again, the Castro-ization of our healthcare system is the third rail of politics for any serious Republican candidate. In fact, according to a new poll conducted by Talking Points just before we aired tonight, Talking Points says you’d be better off promoting man-on-sheep love. And that’s the memo.”

Speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN's The Situation Room, noted political analyst and pollster Frank Luntz agreed with Giuliani’s approach to None of the Above. Said Luntz, “Mark my words, with this savvy attack by Rudy, you’re going to watch None of the Above’s lead in the polls evaporate over the next couple of weeks.” Luntz added, “This is why the Democrats are so worried about Rudy Giuliani in a national election. Here’s a guy who doesn’t mince words, who’s not afraid to attack his opponents - even before they exist.”

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who chastised Giuliani for his comments about Ground Zero workers, criticized America’s Mayor again today during a town hall meeting in Ames, Iowa.

“When I referred to Rudy Giuliani’s derogatory statement the other day about our brave 9/11 first responders as evidence he’s taken a break from reality,” said Edwards, “I couldn’t have known the depths of Mr. Giuliani’s delusional episodes until watching him attack a candidate who doesn't exist. This man is right out of Dr. Strangelove. How long before we’ll hear Rudy Giuliani talking about how we must defend ourselves from a ‘conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.’”

Giuliani’s campaign struck back immediately. His communications director Katie Levinson released a statement, saying, “None of the Above might be an empty statistic to Mr. Edwards, but Mr. Giuliani is in the trenches every day doing battle with this slippery adversary. Oh, and uh…haircut, John Edwards, haircut, John Edwards, haircut, haircut, socialist, John Edwards, not meaty enough, haircut, haircut, John Edwards.”

It appears Giuliani’s tactic to draw out None of the Above might be working.

A spokesperson for CNN notified The Wounded-Courier today that None of the Above is scheduled to make his debut national appearance in the first half-hour of Larry King Live on Tuesday. In the second half-hour, a couple of dust mites that once clung to Anna Nicole Smith’s body will join Mr. King.

NYT Front|Back: Plight of Multi-Millionaires vs. Ease of Vote Manipulation

FRONT:

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich

From reports on those who lament their struggle to sit at the billionaires' table to the weighted concern about the welfare of socialites to corporate-slanted interpretations of housing development deals and Census Bureau reports to obsessive coverage of the monied elites' prized racehorse, this site has already noted several instances of The New York Times' penchant for presenting the world through gilded glasses.

On Sunday, The Times continued to reveal its socio-economic-biased hand with another splashy above-the-fold cover story about the woes of the wealthiest 1 to 2 percent of Americans.

While millions of our citizens struggle to pay their bills and often must choose between food or healthcare (many without the luxury of either), with one in eight living below the poverty line, I'm not sure what could be less newsworthy or more galling than those with multi-millions of dollars whining about their billionaire envy.

Note to The Times: Enough already with these stories. At the very least, relegate them to the Style or Business sections (or a newly created Appallingly Wealthy and Shameless page). And when you place them there, please stop hyping them on the cover as if they were deserving of widespread attention.

You're supposed to be the Paper of Record, not the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or The Fabulous Life Of... or Cribs.

If, on the other hand, this is the direction you want to take your paper, please make your editorial change official so that your readers are more aware of your objectives. Or, you would do well, and your readers a service, to change the name of your newspaper.

Let's see...the "Wall Street Journal" is taken. Though, who knows, Murdoch might be willing to sell you the name for the right price. Well, I'm sure you'll think of something.

Intro:

By almost any definition — except his own and perhaps those of his neighbors here in Silicon Valley — Hal Steger has made it.

Mr. Steger, 51, a self-described geek, has banked more than $2 million. The $1.3 million house he and his wife own on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean is paid off. The couple’s net worth of roughly $3.5 million places them in the top 2 percent of families in the United States.

Yet each day Mr. Steger continues to toil in what a colleague calls “the Silicon Valley salt mines,” working as a marketing executive for a technology start-up company, still striving for his big strike. Most mornings, he can be found at his desk by 7. He typically works 12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend.

[...]

Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.

Leave it to The Times to coin the phrase "working-class millionaires."

BACK (page A18)

California Restricts Voting Machines

At least one U.S. public servant is taking immediate, substantive action to limit the use of our nation's easily hackable voting machines and, in doing so, is calling greater attention to the ongoing vulnerability of our elections to manipulation and fraud.

Intro:

California's top election official on Friday decertified three voting systems widely used in the state but said she would let counties use the machines in February’s presidential primary if extra security precautions were taken.      

The official, Debra Bowen, the secretary of state, said she made the decision in response to studies showing that the machines could be hacked.

In a sense Ms. Bowen’s decision amounts to barring the machines, then reapproving their use under strict new conditions.

[...]

Ms. Bowen took her toughest action against touch-screen machines, in which a voter’s ballot is generated by a computer. She said the machines made by Diebold Election Systems and Sequoia Voting Systems could be used only in early voting and to meet voting-access requirements for the disabled.

Another touch-screen model, made by Hart InterCivic, can be used more broadly, she said. But all three of the systems can be used only under rigorous security procedures, including audits of the election results.

Of course these machines should be replaced altogether. The corporatization of our election process is inarguably anti-democratic. Absurd and insane. Our Founding Fathers would be apoplectic at the thought of such an act. With the general ease of potential collusion between big business and government, and, more specifically, with the criminal track record of the Bush administration, the signers would surely see this for what it is: a contemporary tool that provides the ability to quietly but efficiently null and void our citizens' votes. Or worse. To have their votes manipulated in the service of electing a candidate they voted against.

But at least Bowen took a first step to rid her state, and hopefully our nation, of these secret machines. Machines in which our votes are cast into a shadowy ether of corporate oversight - counted, or miscounted, within a digital environment that remains "proprietary information," viewable only to its product's owners.

After three national election cycles - following the horribly misguided, misleading and aptly Orwellian-titled Help America Vote Act (HAVA) - and closing in on another presidential election, our citizens' votes continue to be tallied in secret, with no paper trail, by corporate coffers of this conservative - or, rather, right-wing extremist - leadership.

Ah, but fear not. Here's how their owners explained away the latest failure (in a long line of failures) to prevent hackers from breaching their impenetrable machines:

But industry executives complained that the tests had not taken account of security precautions, including surveillance cameras and log-in sheets, that limit access to the machines in most counties and could prevent hacking during an election.

Surveillance cameras?

I'm no computer expert, but how many hackers have you ever heard of who were thwarted by surveillance cameras? Doesn't hacking, by its very definition, preclude the usefulness of such devices to counter it?

What's next? Guard dogs? 3D glasses? A trip-wire?

How about a color-coded system that warns of voting intruders? Or maybe we should just rely on Diebold's gut feeling.

Queasy yet?

Op-Ed Column: NBC Ignores Kucinich's Grilling of Rumsfeld

It's bad enough that Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is marginalized and mocked by big media because, aside from - and due to - standing against nearly everything corporate America desires, he doesn't have the fund-raising ability to compete against the money machines of the front-runners.

Our citizens watch helplessly (or obliviously) as Kucinich and other fund-raising challenged candidates struggle to get in a word edgewise during the debates. Meanwhile, as we do every four years in this country, we then must suffer the mainstream media received notion that voters, you see, are growing frustrated with having to listen to all those minor candidates in addition to the "serious" contenders. Of course, in reality, those minor candidates scarcely receive enough attention for voters to remember their names let alone their ideas, which, were they given equal time, may actually challenge big money candidates to address issues more honestly and thoroughly while bringing new issues and ideas into the national political dialogue.

Sadly, we've grown accustomed to our elections having more to do with who can raise the most money than who might make the best president. To steal a friend's email signature quoting Bill Moyers: "There's a cancer eating at the heart of [American] democracy and it's money in politics. If free speech means you have to buy it, then only those who can afford it have free speech."

But when one of these marginalized candidates is making news, big news, yet the mainstream media refuses to cover it, then something even more intentionally misleading and disgraceful is at work here.

Kucinich's grilling of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pat Tillman hearing the other day, which focused on whether the Department of Defense had a "press strategy" to shape coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the stuff of legendary political showdowns. Far better than any exchange at the hearing, it also happened to reveal what's at the heart of this issue.

Unfortunately, most Americans will never see it.

Rumsfeld had for years fed a cowed media and Republican-controlled Congress the kind of lies that Dr. Seuss might have dreamt up had he owned a black heart: his explanations centering around "known knowns," "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns"; the dissonant dollops of "gee-whiz" and "golly" in the face of life and death questions about the war he was prosecuting; the monarchal mix of condescension and snap surliness.

Well, on Wednesday, Congressman Kucinich wasn't having any of it. Like no journalist or politician had during Rumsfeld's reign as defense secretary, Kucinich (yes, that Kucinich, the one painted by big media as the perennial prince of political lightweights) stood toe to toe with Rumsfeld. And won. Truly unwavering, in measured questions and responses, the congressman from Ohio pulled no punches and outmaneuvered the former defense secretary.

Rumsfeld reacted the way most bullies do when confronted with an earnest and feerless force of truth and justice.

First, the former defense secretary was taken aback by the directness of Kucinich's question, "Was there a Department of Defense press strategy with respect to the war?" Then he tried to scuttle the inquiry with some of that ol' flip sarcasm that used to regularly send our press corps into titters: "If there was, it obviously wasn't very good." Yet this back-fired. Kucinich, justifiably angered by the response, redoubled his efforts, pointing out, "Well you know maybe it was very good because you actually covered up the Tillman case for awhile, you covered up the Jessica Lynch case, you covered up Abu Ghraib, so something was working for you."

By the end of the questioning, Rumsfeld, reduced to a stammering, defensive man, appeared somewhat stunned and fatigued, his narrative embarrassingly feeble. Kucinich finally unmasked the former defense secretary in public as the shameless disinformation war minister he's always been. (Kucinich also provided a window into how the Bush years might have gone without a rubber stamp Congress and an obedient press corps. Watching the congressman eviscerate Rumsfeld's evasions, you realize the enormity of the handicap availed to Rummy all those years. As with Karl Rove, Rumsfeld's "genius" demanded a fixed deck.)

Yet in the NBC Nightly News report filed by correspondent Chip Reid, the Kucinich-Rumsfeld exchange is completely scrubbed. We see only snippets of Rumsfeld's defense. Reid fails to show any of Kucinich's questions. This crucial context is jettisoned. And Rumsfeld, of course, comes off looking exceedingly better than he did during the hearing.

Another brilliant piece by NBC's resident Washington stenographer Chip Reid, who appears to have a special knack for this type of reportage. You know, that disingenuous school of journalism that says, "Hey, I'm simply reporting what they said," but cherry-picks who "they" is and has undue influence on which particulars of what was said reaches the public.

NBC should make an on-air apology for this glaringly deficient coverage. It would not only be a responsible correction of journalistic negligence, but would also have the added benefit of informing Americans that some minor candidates, like Mr. Kucinich, are greater than the sum of their bank accounts.

We'd all be a lot richer for it.

(Here's the full exchange between Kucinich and Rumsfeld; scroll to the bottom of the page for video. Do not miss this! And here's Reid's report; scroll down to the bottom right video: "Rumsfeld, generals grilled in Tillman hearing.")