As I look over the colossal mess of chaotic, redundant archives and often-turgidly horrible writing, I don't think I should post on personal vexations that are, as a matter of fact, as common as organic matter in Washington State. Why should you hear me, a doddering old dork with a rapidly shriveling brain flaming around inside my other-wise empty cranium like a dried apricot, complain about an idiocy that is too common to bear mention? Yet, post away I do. And just now I spotted something so irritating I had to spew about it.

"Report: Iraq coverage wasn't biased" (AP); the report referenced is by the so-called "Project for Excellence in Journalism" (PEJ) and I was alerted to this story by a website called "The War in Context."

By equating "pro-war" with "pro-American" (actually, pro-US), Mr. Dyke and the BBC reinforced the same ideological narrative of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News itself. Both they and the BBC have doggedly clung to the position that US citizens favored the war because we benefitted from it, and opponents of the war are somehow traitors to our national interests. While Mr. Dyke would probably contradict my allegation outright if I made it in his presence, I have to insist that only after he quit did I begin to notice a whiff of dissent from this ideological narrative of the monolithic Yankee bloc of soulless yahoos.

Of course, while BBC columnists like Justin Webb probably despise Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, he is happy to collaborate with them on this narrative of which I speak. "Sure," he says ingratiatingly, "I'm happy to confirm that Americans are pecksniffian fanatics without the sense of moral inquiry bestowed on bricks. Except for a thoroughly insignificant, easily dismissed minority of misfits, Americans stand behind their dear leader 100%." The narrative of real American patriots who vehemently oppose their government's policies root and branch, is something fellows like Mr. Dyke and Mr. Limbaugh suppressed, despite having apparently opposite "biases."

However, this is not my main objection with the PEJ report. Here's their own summary of their findings:

Over all, across all media studied, stories about the war were just slightly more likely to carry a clearly negative tone than a positive one (25% negative versus 20% positive). The majority of stories, however, had no decided tone at all. The largest number, 35%, were neutral, and another 20% were about multiple subjects for which tone did not apply.

[...]

When it came to the campaign, on the other hand, the criticism that George Bush got worse coverage than John Kerry is supported by the data. Looking across all media, campaign coverage that focused on Bush was three times as negative as coverage of Kerry (36% versus 12%) It was also less likely to be positive (20% positive Bush stories, 30% for Kerry).
[linked above]

(Those who believe I'm merely spewing invective may wish to see, for example, this essay by Prof. DeLong; it's about California gubernatorial candidate McClintock, not Bush, but it shows what a "neutral" press will get you. Here's Matthew Yglesias on journalistic malfeasance regarding Social Security (The American Prospect). Or this one, also by Yglesias, on the problem of a media "neutrally" reiterating the President's lies. I could fill this web log with nothing but links to palpable evidence of Bush lies, but I'm going to succumb to old age and keel over soon anyway, so I'd like to round out my golden years grumbling about a wide variety of things. Oh, wait, here's a search that should get my more conscientious readers off to a good start.)

However, the PEJ blurb completely disregards two new phenomena that have taken over broadcast journalism: the trend towards presenting government videos as the network's own research, without warning; and replacing actual news with opinion. One of these trends is, as we'll see later, discussed in the actual report.

To illustrate what I'm talking about, there are two stories emailed to me by longtime friend Craig. The first is from the New York Times (David Barstow, Robin Stein):

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters.

"No TV news organization has the resources in labor, time or funds to cover every worthy story," one video news release company, TVA Productions, said in a sales pitch to potential clients, adding that "90 percent of TV newsrooms now rely on video news releases.".

Begun under the Clinton Administration, the federal program for creating video news releases has massively increased in size. The networks could not be happier: complaining that they are finding it harder to get adequate filler for the tiny coinslots between commercials for Cialis or Wal*Mart, they not only have become copious users of promotional videotapes, but continue to lie about it.

Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect is unclear; it is not hard to find broadcasters who are not adhering to the existing code, and the [Radio-Television News Directors Association] has no enforcement powers. The Federal Communications Commission does, but it has never disciplined a station for showing government-made news segments without disclosing their origin, a spokesman said.

Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C. rules say yes. They point to a 2000 decision by the agency, which stated, "Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded."

In interviews, more than a dozen station news directors endorsed this view without hesitation. Several expressed disdain for the prepackaged segments they received daily from government agencies, corporations and special interest groups who wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or influence.

But when told that their stations showed government-made reports without attribution, most reacted with indignation. Their stations, they insisted, would never allow their news programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside party, let alone the government.

"They're inherently one-sided, and they don't offer the possibility for follow-up questions - or any questions at all," said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the news director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, KY. Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America indicate that WDRB has broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan segments, including one for the government, without disclosing their origin to viewers.

Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, was equally opposed to putting government news segments on the air. "It amounts to propaganda, doesn't it?" he said. Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services of America show that from 2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one government-made segment featuring Ms. Ryan, 5 others featuring her work on behalf of corporations, and 19 produced by corporations and other outside organizations. It does not appear that KGTV viewers were told the origin of these 25 segments.

"I thought we were pretty solid," Mr. Stutz said, adding that they intend to take more precautions.

This reminds me of the behavior of embassy staff in the movie Missing (which I strongly recommend). They lie compulsively about everything, then, when caught out in a lie, they mumble, "Oh really?" Then they make a telephone call, feign surprise, and hang up, saying, "Oh, yes, it turns out what you said was true..." These directors may have only been stooges who are told lies by the actual managers, so they have nothing to say when confronted with evidence that they've been lying. Or, more likely, they don't see that it's important. Karen Ryan, who confronted about passing herself off as a journalist when making ads for Bush Administration policy, was sarcastic about allegations she was a corporate shill (Press Think).

Before I hit "publish," I do think some point has to be made about Ms. Ryan. Ryan was truculent in her own defense; while claiming she was used, and insisting that she's been unfairly pilloried, it must be noted that she is executive of the company that sells these videos to the White House on commission. In other words, she's not just a talking head who was prostituted; she did the pimping, too. However, I think it is unfair to scapegoat her. After all, in the industrial process of manufacturing consent, she's the least culpable party. As a woman in a brutally sexist business, this was her ship sailing into the harbor. Moreover, as maddenly, smugly unrepentant as she is (and she really, really is—CJR), she is merely one of the 3rd world toilers who arrives at the maquiladora in the hope of an income and finds herself cranking out clusterbombs that look like toys.

As the old adage in economics has it, "The consumer is the creator." Don't blame the Chinese for the proliferation of plastic kitsch in your home.

Moving along, let's move to the next alarming trend in the media: replacing journalism with fact-free rants. Here's Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post:

The project describes cable news reporting as pretty thin compared with the ABC, NBC and CBS evening newscasts. Only a quarter of the cable stories examined contained two or more identifiable sources, compared with 49 percent of network evening news stories and 81 percent of newspaper front-page stories.

This, says the study, is in part because cable leans heavily on live reports, 60 percent of which are based on only a single identifiable source ("the White House said today," etc.). What's more, cable news is far more one-sided than other media outlets, with only a quarter of the stories involving controversy making more than a passing reference to a second point of view. By contrast, says the report, the network morning shows, PBS and newspaper front pages were more than three times as likely to contain a mix of views.

UPDATE: "Administration Rejects Ruling On PR Videos; GAO Called Tapes Illegal Propaganda" (WP, 15 March; link is also courtesy of Craig). The gist of the story is that, while the Government Accountability Office has ruled that the Administration broke the law by distributing videos purporting to be news reports. That's old news (the ruling was made over a month ago), but OMB Director Joshua Bolten has just declared that the government did not break the law, the government may distribute videos without attribution, and there's essentially no way the law can be broken without defying the laws of physics.

Technically I'm exaggerating: Bolten's auto-exculpatory clause is that the news agencies knew they had government video. I understand perfectly well that Mr. Bolten is representing the Administration; but here's the shocking aspect of the story: Bolten said this not before a congressional committee examining the matter of the video press releases, but in an internal memo. Since it appears few, if any, news distribution outlets have any compunction about broadcasting government propaganda knowingly, while suppressing the fact it is propaganda ("black" propaganda), this looks like the OMB is simply defying the law.