Category: Blog

November 8, 2024

Harmful Chemicals in Plastic Are Wreaking Havoc on Our Bodies and the Environment

^{This blog is co-authored by Cassie Barker, Senior Program Manager for Plastics}

We’re surrounded by plastic. Every day, we touch and eat from hundreds of plastic things – from toys, dishes and clothing to electronics and food packaging. And it’s not just your imagination: the use of plastic in our everyday lives has been growing. This is not a good thing.

It’s the government’s job to protect us and the environment from harmful chemicals in plastic…and they need to get on it

While the plastics industry claims its products are sanitary and safe, the truth is much more complicated. And governments around the world have been slow to catch up to what is an urgent global health and environmental crisis: we are “choking” on plastic – and the chemicals used to make it.

That’s why we’re hopeful that a Global Plastics Treaty – being negotiated right now through the United Nations Environment Programme – will make a difference. We want to see not only limits that reduce the amount of plastic produced and used around the world, but also a plan to tackle particularly harmful plastic products and chemicals. But Canada doesn’t have to wait for a Global Plastic Treaty to act. We must also demand that the federal government get ahead of the curve and do its part at home to protect us from the harms of plastic.

The chemical soup in our everyday products

Virtually all plastic is made from oil, gas or coal. In other words, nasty fossil fuels that pollute the earth and drive global warming from the moment we extract them from the ground all the way to when we refine them for energy or petrochemicals and plastics. Plastic products are a foul chemical soup made from a disconcerting list of ingredients. The byproducts of refining fossil fuels, dangerous chemical additives, and even poisonous heavy metals are all part of the recipe.

The people living close to extraction and refining sites bear the brunt of the environmental and health impacts – including the Indigenous communities living in Treaty 8 territory in northern Alberta and members of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in what is now known as Chemical Valley in southwestern Ontario.

But regardless of where you live, this is an issue that impacts us all. We are all exposed to these chemicals in products we play with, eat from and wear every day. We recently participated in product testing and were shocked to find high levels of lead and the phthalate DEHP – a harmful plastic additive – in products marketed for children. Popular off-brand shoe charms sold as accessories for Crocs contained 1 per cent lead and more than 13 per cent DEHP by weight. These substances are linked to brain damage and ADHD, liver damage, reproductive harms and other devastating diseases.

Lead has long been confirmed toxic under Canada’s environmental protection law (CEPA), and DEHP was recently added to the list. So why are these substances allowed to be in kids’ shoe charms or any other product?

Regulation of chemicals is too slow to keep us safe

It turns out that more than 16,000 chemicals have been identified in plastic products, and while more than 25 per cent of these are known to be hazardous to human health or the environment, only 6 per cent are regulated on a global scale. Governments around the world, including in Canada, are caught up in the powerful plastics industry. An industry that uses everything at its disposal – including lawyers, PR firms and court systems – to preserve its right to pollute the environment and threaten our health.

And given how many products sold in Canada are imported from other countries, it’s not good enough to simply stop using these chemicals in the products we make here in Canada. We need to tighten the rules to make sure these chemicals are not in any products on Canadian shelves, regardless of where they were made.

The Global Plastics Treaty and Canada’s updated environmental protection law give us the opportunity to speed up the regulation of harmful chemicals in plastics and to protect the people who are being disproportionately impacted by plastic. People like the communities on the frontline of plastic production and vulnerable plastic consumers, like children. Canada also needs to make use of the fact that the law allows for whole classes of problematic chemicals – for example all heavy metals, including lead – to be eliminated all at once instead of trying to play toxic chemical whack-a-mole. We can’t restrict chemicals one by one or the process will stretch out beyond our lifetimes.

Canada has the power to show leadership both at home and abroad. Let’s demand it. Tell the federal government you want to see ambitious action to protect the environment and our health from toxic plastics and chemical additives – in Canada and around the world.

The post Harmful Chemicals in Plastic Are Wreaking Havoc on Our Bodies and the Environment appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
November 8, 2024

“That’s not the world I want to live in”: Slow and steady, El Salvador’s climate monitors take action

Lucy Medina Serrano grew up with nine siblings in El Castaño, a tiny village along a river on El Salvador’s border with Guatemala. Her family has always relied on local groundwater from the well outside their home to grow tomatoes, peppers, yuca, aloe, basil, papaya, bananas and more. But for years, sugarcane processing plants upriver …
Source

This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
November 7, 2024

Media Blame Left for Trump Victory—Rather Than Their Own Fear-Based Business Model

Corporate media may not have all the same goals as MAGA Republicans, but they share the same strategy: Fear works.

Appeals to fear have an advantage over other kinds of messages in that they stimulate the deeper parts of our brains, those associated with fight-or-flight responses. Fear-based messages tend to circumvent our higher reasoning faculties and demand our attention, because evolution has taught our species to react strongly and quickly to things that are dangerous.

This innate human tendency has long been noted by the media industry (Psychology Today, 12/27/21), resulting in the old press adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Politicians, too, are aware of this brain hack (Conversation, 1/11/19)—and no one relies on evoking fear more than once-and-future President Donald Trump (New York Times, 10/1/24).

This is why coverage of issues in this election season have dovetailed so well with the Trump campaign’s lines of attack against the Biden/Harris administration—even in outlets that are editorially opposed, at least ostensibly, to Trumpism.

Scary issues

Corporate media rarely point, as this New York Times graphic (7/24/24) did, that crime has fallen dramatically since 1991, and continued to fall during the Biden/Harris administration.

Take immigration, a topic that could easily be covered as a human interest story, with profiles of people struggling to reach a better life against stark challenges. Instead, corporate media tend to report on it as a “border crisis,” with a “flood” of often-faceless migrants whose very existence is treated as a threat (FAIR.org, 5/24/21).

This is the news business deciding that fear attracts and holds an audience better than empathy does. And that business model would be undermined by reporting that consistently acknowledged that the percentage of US residents who are undocumented workers rose only slightly under the Biden administration, from 3.2% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022 (the latest year available)—and is down from a peak of 4.0% in 2007 (Pew, 7/22/24; FAIR.org, 10/16/24).

With refugees treated as a scourge in centrist and right-wing media alike, is it any wonder that Trump can harvest votes by promising to do something about this menace? Eleven percent of respondents in NBC‘s exit poll said that immigration was the single issue that mattered most in casting their vote; 90% of the voters in that group voted for Trump.

Crime is another fear-based issue that Trump hammered on in his stump speech. “Have you seen what’s been happening?” he said of Washington, DC (Washington Post, 3/11/24). “Have you seen people being murdered? They come from South Carolina to go for a nice visit and they end up being murdered, shot, mugged, beat up.”

Trump could make such hyperbolic claims sound credible because corporate media had paved the way with alarmist coverage of crime (FAIR.org, 11/10/22). It was rare to see a report that acknowledged, as an infographic in the New York Times (7/24/24) did, that crime has dropped considerably from 2020 to 2024, when it hit a four-decade low (FAIR.org, 7/26/24).

‘Classic fear campaign’

Republicans spent so much on transphobic ads (Truthout, 11/5/04) because they knew voters had been primed by media to fear trans people.

Trans people, improbably enough, are another favorite subject of fear stories for media and MAGA alike. “Republicans spent nearly $215 million on network TV ads vilifying transgender people this election cycle,” Truthout (11/5/04) reported, with Trump spending “more money on anti-trans ads than on ads concerning housing, immigration and the economy combined.”

Journalist Erin Reed (PBS NewsHour, 11/2/24) described this as “a classic fear campaign”:

The purpose of a fear campaign is to distract you from issues that you normally care about by making you so afraid of a group of people, of somebody like me, for instance, that you’re willing to throw everything else away because you’re scared.

Transphobia has been a major theme in right-wing media, but has been a prominent feature of centrist news coverage as well, particularly in the New York Times (FAIR.org, 5/11/23). Rather than reporting centered on trans people, which could have humanized a marginalized demographic that’s unfamiliar to many readers, the Times chose instead to present trans youth in particular as a threat—focusing on “whether trans people are receiving too many rights, and accessing too much medical care, too quickly,” as FAIR noted.

‘Alienating voters’ with ‘progressive agenda’

The New York Times (11/6/24) didn’t want people to vote for Trump—but its reporting contributed to the perception that “an infusion of immigrants” and “a porous southern border” were among “the nation’s urgent problems.”

But rather than examining their own role in promoting the irrational fears that were the lifeblood of the successful Trump campaign, corporate media focused on their perennial electoral scapegoat: the left (FAIR.org, 11/5/21). The New York Times editorial board (11/6/24) quickly diagnosed the Democrats’ problem (aside from sticking with Biden too long):

The party must also take a hard look at why it lost the election…. It took too long to recognize that large swaths of their progressive agenda were alienating voters, including some of the most loyal supporters of their party. And Democrats have struggled for three elections now to settle on a persuasive message that resonates with Americans from both parties who have lost faith in the system—which pushed skeptical voters toward the more obviously disruptive figure, even though a large majority of Americans acknowledge his serious faults. If the Democrats are to effectively oppose Mr. Trump, it must be not just through resisting his worst impulses but also by offering a vision of what they would do to improve the lives of all Americans and respond to anxieties that people have about the direction of the country and how they would change it.

It’s a mind-boggling contortion of logic. The Times doesn’t say which aspects of Democrats’ “progressive agenda” were so alienating to people. But the media all agreed—based largely on exit polls—that Republicans won because of the economy and immigration. The “persuasive message” and “vision…to improve the lives of all Americans” that Democrats failed to offer was pretty clearly an economic one. Which is exactly what progressives in the party have been pushing for the last decade: Medicare for All, a wealth tax, a living minimum wage, etc. In other words, if the Democrats had adopted a progressive agenda, it likely would have been their best shot at offering that vision to improve people’s lives.

More likely, the paper was referring to “identity politics,” which has been a media scapegoat for years—indeed, pundits roundly blamed Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump on identity politics (or “political correctness”) (FAIR.org, 11/20/16). Then, as now, it was an accusation without evidence.

‘Democratic self-sabotage’

The Washington Post‘s Matt Bai (11/6/24) thought Trump’s anti-trans ads resonated with “a lot of traditionally Democratic voters who feel like the party is consumed with cultural issues.”

At the Washington Post, columnist Matt Bai‘s answer (11/6/24) to “Where Did Kamala Harris’s Campaign Go Wrong?” was, in part, that “Democrats have dug themselves into a hole on cultural issues and identity politics,” naming Trump’s transphobic ads as evidence of that. (In a Post roundup of columnist opinions, Bai declared that Harris “couldn’t outrun her party’s focus on trans rights and fighting other forms of oppression.”)

At the same time, Bai acknowledged that he does “think of Trump as being equally consumed with identity—just a different kind.” Fortunately for Republicans, Bai and his fellow journalists never take their kind of identity politics as worth highlighting (FAIR.org, 9/18/24).

George Will (10/6/24), a Never Trumper at the Washington Post, chalked up Harris’s loss largely to “the Democratic Party’s self-sabotage, via identity politics (race, gender), that made Harris vice president.”

Bret Stephens (10/6/24), one of the New York Times‘ set of Never Trumpers, likewise pointed a finger at Democrats’ supposed tilt toward progressives and “identity.” Much like other pundits, Stephens argued that “the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity.”

Of the Harris campaigns’ “tactical missteps,” Stephens’ first complaint was “her choice of a progressive running mate”—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He also accused the party of a “dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes.” Here he mentioned trans kids’ rights, DEI seminars and “new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive,” none of which Harris vocally embraced.

But underlying all of these arguments is a giant fundamental problem: It’s simply a fantasy (advanced repeatedly by Republicans) that Harris was running on identity politics, or as a radical progressive. News articles (e.g., Slate, 9/5/24; Forbes, 11/5/24) regularly acknowledged that Harris, in contrast to Hillary Clinton, for instance, shied away from centering her gender or ethnic background, or appealing to identity in her campaign.

‘Wary and alienated’

In a rare instance of actually listening to left-wing voices, a New York Times article (10/24/24) focused on pre-election warnings that Harris “risks chilling Democratic enthusiasm by alienating progressives and working-class voters.”

The Times‘ own reporting made Harris’s distancing from progressive politics perfectly clear not two weeks ago, in an article (10/24/24) headlined, “As Harris Courts Republicans, the Left Grows Wary and Alienated.” In a rare example of the Times centering a left perspective in a political article, reporters Nicholas Nehamas and Erica L. Green wrote:

In making her closing argument this month, Ms. Harris has campaigned four times with Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman, stumping with her more than with any other ally. She has appeared more in October with the billionaire Mark Cuban than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers and one of the nation’s most visible labor leaders.

She has centered her economic platform on middle-class issues like small businesses and entrepreneurship rather than raising the minimum wage, a deeply held goal of many Democrats that polls well across the board. She has taken a harder-line stance on the border than has any member of her party in a generation and has talked more prominently about owning a Glock than about combating climate change. She has not broken from President Biden on the war Israel is waging in Gaza.

Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
November 7, 2024

Breast Cancer and Plastics: A Toxic Pair

^{This blog is co-authored by Milena Gioia, Popular Education and Advocacy Coordinator at Breast Cancer Action Quebec and Dr. Sharon Dod, a family physician practicing in B.C., and a member of CAPE BC, with expertise in plastics and health risks.}

Breast Cancer Awareness Month wrapped up last month, but awareness alone won’t end breast cancer. We need to stop cancer before it starts.

Physicians and their patients might assume that the government protects us from toxic substances linked to cancer. But companies and governments aren’t doing enough to address known or suspected breast carcinogens and, as a result, are contributing to the ongoing breast cancer epidemic.

Business branding in recent decades has seen companies pinkwash their products by adding a pink ribbon to their logo to show their support to those facing the crushing impacts of breast cancer. But some of these same companies use cancer-causing, mutagenic, and hormone-disrupting chemicals in their products and packaging. They seem to disregard the links between hazardous ingredients, breast cancer, and other devastating health harms. For example, the toxic relationship between plastics and breast cancer.

Just last month, researchers identified hundreds of chemicals in food packaging and plastic that are absorbed into our bodies, and linked to breast cancer. Add to this flame retardants found in plastic cooking utensils and our latest research on toxic phthalates and heavy metals in plastic children’s products, and we see the serious health hazards of the plastics chemical soup we’re swimming in.

In Canada, 1 in 8 women are expected to develop breast cancer during their lifetime, and 1 in 34 will die of it.

Black, Indigenous and other racialized people are experiencing more aggressive forms of breast cancer, diagnoses at earlier ages, and cancers that are more resistant to treatments. These disproportionate impacts highlight how a toxic system of dirty products and environments burden some of us far more than others, and that producers of toxic plastic are either indifferent or complicit in these harms. These practices perpetuate environmental injustice.

If companies really want to stand in solidarity with the people who are impacted by breast cancer, they need to clean up their act. And when they don’t, we should make them. Our government can drive that change by setting stronger rules here and around the world for the products that touch our food and bodies, and impact our environment.

When Canada’s representatives head to the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations next month, plastics companies and their lobbyists will do their best to delay the process, and deny the harms of their products. But we cannot let them triumph over the world’s urgent need to end the cancer-causing and polluting plastics era. Getting toxic chemicals out of plastic products needs to be a top priority in order to protect our health.

But Canada doesn’t have to wait for a treaty to act. It can regulate these toxic plastic products off the shelves, and expedite the research and rule-making needed to deal with this crisis in a comprehensive way. We need a strong Global Plastics Treaty, and an even stronger regulatory approach to protect us all from cancer-causing chemicals. If we can achieve that, we will be one step closer to preventing breast cancer before it starts.

The post Breast Cancer and Plastics: A Toxic Pair appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
November 5, 2024

Bad Surprises, Good Surprises: Reflections on the Trump Rally in New York City

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I went into New York City to attend Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, but I couldn’t get in. It was so oversubscribed, I was surprised.

And as …
The post Bad Surprises, Good Surprises: Reflections on the Trump Rally in New York City appeared first on Laura Flanders & Friends.

This post was originally published on Laura Flanders & Friends.
November 5, 2024

Food + Plastic Packaging = A Recipe for Trouble

It is fair to say that most food in the average Canadian grocery store is now wrapped in plastic. When Environmental Defence surveyed key shelves in the country’s major grocery chains two years ago, we found an overwhelming amount of plastic – more than 70 per cent – on several key shelves. Shelves where food used to be mostly packaged in cans, jars or paper bags, like pet food, soups and baby food.

When we went back this summer, we found even more plastic on the baby food and soup shelves. In both surveys, we didn’t even bother looking at the meat and dairy cases, where almost all food has long been packaged in plastic.

Grocers like to say that plastic food packaging is environmentally friendly and prevents food waste. But the truth is MUCH more complicated. Nearly half of all food in Canada is wasted and one of the causes are high-volume “bulk” products offered in plastic packaging.

In our original grocery survey, we found that it’s often cheaper by weight to buy pre-packaged fruits and vegetables than buying them loose from a bin. The problem is, buying things pre-packaged means you often take home more than you will actually use, which just means you have to throw some out at home. This is a terrible use of plastic packaging. Because of the persistence of unnecessary plastic produce packaging, a UK organization recently called on their government to impose a ban on plastic wrapping for 21 fruits and vegetables sold in supermarkets.

TAKE ACTION – tell the Canadian government you support requirements on grocery chains to eliminate unnecessary plastic packaging

What’s more, offering plastic-wrapped food that could be sold loose also contributes to plastic waste and can contaminate our food with microplastics and other harmful chemicals found in plastic.

Plastic is a chemical soup that almost exclusively comes from oil, gas or coal. Researchers have determined that thousands of chemicals are used in plastics. These chemicals can leach into our food, and our bodies from food packaging. While many have not even been tested for safety, others have been linked to hormone disruption, developmental delays and devastating illnesses.

We should not be exposing people – and certainly not babies and toddlers – to these chemicals simply because food manufacturers and grocery stores find them more convenient or profitable than the packaging they used to use. Glass jars, for example, are inert and can be washed out and refilled very safely.

Plastics and chemicals also pose significant hazards in the environment. And it’s not only the litter you can see with the naked eye. Another recent study looked at the impacts of microplastics and “forever” chemicals (per- and poly-fluoronated alkyl substances, or PFAS) on the environment. Together, this combination – which is now pervasive in water bodies around the world – caused harm to daphnia, an organism that is crucial to aquatic food webs.

There are alternatives to plastic food packaging that are better for the environment. The Canadian government has already proposed requirements for the country’s biggest grocery retailers to eliminate packaging for many fruits and vegetables and establish reuse and refill systems for containers for packaged foods. These major grocers certainly rake in more than enough profits for them to be able to invest in sustainable alternatives. And we know they have the market power to change their supply chains.

These big retailers are not doing enough to protect people in Canada and the environment from plastic food packaging. If they won’t do it voluntarily, then we have to make them. Join us in telling the government that you support requirements for the major grocery retailers to reduce plastic packaging and implement reuse systems.

The post Food + Plastic Packaging = A Recipe for Trouble appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
November 4, 2024

When Lights Go Out in Cuba, Media Blame Communism—Not US Sanctions

Cuba is in the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis, and October’s widespread power outages are only adding to the Cuban people’s troubles. For the last six decades, Cuba has been on the receiving end of myriad sanctions by the United States government. This blockade has proved devastating to human life.

Reporting on Cuba’s blackouts have either omitted or paid brief lip-service to the effects of US sanctions on the Cuban economy, and how those sanctions have created the conditions for the crisis. Instead, media have focused on the inefficient and authoritarian Communist government as the cause of the island’s troubles.

Pulping the economy

Michael Galant (The Hill, 1/5/24): “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves for association with ‘a sponsor of terror.’”

One of President Donald Trump’s final acts in office was to re-designate Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, after President Barack Obama had removed them from the list in 2015 as a part of his Cuban thaw. Inclusion on the list subjects a country to restrictions on US foreign aid and financing, but, more importantly, the SSoT list encourages third-party over-compliance with sanctions. “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves,” The Hill (1/5/24) reported.

Trump reportedly added Cuba to the list for harboring members of FARC and ELN, two left-wing Colombian armed movements. However, Colombian President Gustavo Petro later “noted that Colombia itself, in cooperation with the Obama administration, had asked Cuba to host the FARC and ELN members as part of peace talks,” the Intercept (12/14/23) wrote. Indeed, if Cuba deported the dissidents, they would have been in violation of the protocols of the peace talks, which they were bound to by international law (The Nation, 2/24/23).

President Joe Biden has not begun the process of reviewing Cuba’s inclusion on the list, despite his campaign promises to the contrary.

The terror designation, plus the many other sanctions imposed by Trump and continued by Biden, are no small potatoes. Ed Augustin wrote at Drop Site (10/1/24) that

the terror designation, together with more than 200 sanctions enacted against the island since Obama left office, has pulped the Cuban economy by cutting revenue to the struggling Cuban state…. The combined annual cost of the Trump/Biden sanctions, [economists] say, amounts to billions of dollars a year.

Augustin argued that the economic warfare regime is a root cause of the rolling blackouts, water shortages and mass emigration that have plagued Cuba in recent years. Even imports that are ostensibly exempt from sanctions, like medication, are caught in the dragnet as multinational companies scramble to cut ties with the island. Banks are so reluctant to run afoul of US sanctions, Augustin wrote, “that often, even when the state can find the money to buy, and a provider willing to sell, there’s simply no way of making the payment.”

Cuba’s pariah status as a SSoT has put a stranglehold on its economy, and its government’s ability to administer public services. However, US restrictions on Cuba are almost never mentioned in US coverage, and reporting on the recent blackouts is no exception.

Cash-strapped Communists

Reuters (10/10/19): “Tougher US sanctions against Cuba have led international banks to avoid transactions involving the island, while prospective overseas investors put plans on hold.”

Coverage has emphasized the inability of Cuba’s government to pay for necessary fuel imports. The New York Times (10/19/24) reported “the strapped Communist government could barely afford” to pay for fuel. Elsewhere, the Times (10/18/24) claimed “a severe economic crisis and the cash crunch it produced made it harder for Cuba to pay for those fuel imports.”

The Washington Post (10/18/24) made broadly similar arguments, chalking the blackouts up to “a shortage of imported oil and the cash-strapped government’s insufficient maintenance of the creaky grid.”

The “cash crunch” referenced by the Times is not just the result of an abstract economic crisis, as is implied. Instead, it is a direct effect of US sanctions on financial institutions. During the Obama administration, European banks, including ING and BNP Paribas, were fined to the tune of over $10 billion for transacting with Cuba (Jacobin, 3/27/22). Even before Cuba was choked further as a result of their SSoT designation, reporting by Reuters (10/10/19) showed the extent to which banks were terminating operations with Cuba and Cuban entities:

Many Western banks have long refused Cuba-related business for fear of running afoul of US sanctions and facing hefty fines.… Panama’s Multibank shut down numerous Cuba-related accounts this year and European banks are restricting clients associated with Cuba to their own nationals, if that.…

Businessmen and diplomats said large French banks, including Societe Generale, no longer want anything to do with Cuba, and some are stopping payments to pensioners living on the Caribbean island.… For the first time in years, the island has had problems financing the upcoming sugar harvest. Various joint venture projects, from golf resorts to alternative energy, are finding it nearly impossible to obtain private credit.

This de-risking by financial institutions manufactures a cash-scarce economy. Cuba’s inability to procure cash for imports is not a function of financial mismanagement, or a lack of credit-worthiness. Instead, it is a deliberate effect of American foreign policy. By omitting the actions of the most powerful government on earth, mainstream coverage allows only that only Cuban failures could be the cause of a shortage of cash.

‘Terrorism’ cuts off tourism

Britain’s ambassador to Cuba told the Telegraph (11/6/23), “Those who come are profoundly shocked at what the SSOT designation is doing to the people here.”

Cuba has historically used tourism as a way of bringing money into the economy, but lately the Cuban tourism industry has been severely depressed. The explanation employed by corporate media for the decline of this industry is to blame the extended effects of the pandemic recession (New York Times, 10/19/24; Washington Post, 10/18/24).

This explanation, however, is incomplete. Cuba has indeed had a lackluster rebound in their tourism industry, but the Times and the Post fail to explain why Cuba has faltered while other Caribbean islands have more than re-achieved their pre-pandemic tourist numbers.

Travelers from Britain, Australia, Japan and 37 other countries do not need to procure a visa for travel to the United States. Instead, they can use ESTA, an electronic visa waiver. This greatly reduces the cost and the annoyance of obtaining permission to visit the US. However, since Cuba’s 2021 listing as a SSoT, any visit to the country by an ESTA passport-holder revokes the visa waiver, for life (Telegraph, 11/6/23). In other words, any Brit (or Kiwi, or Korean, and so on) who visits Cuba must, for the rest of their lives, visit a US embassy and pay $180 before being able to enter the United States. US policy, not a Covid hangover, is hamstringing any possibility of a resurgence in tourism to Cuba.

Blame game

During Cuba’s most recent energy crisis, the New York Times published three stories describing the blackouts. Two of these stories mention the US blockade only as something that the Cuban government blames for the crisis.

The New York Times (10/21/24) presented the idea that the US is punishing Cuba’s economy as a Communist allegation: “The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration.”

The headline on the Times website (10/21/24) read: “A Nationwide Blackout, Now a Hurricane. How Much Can Cuba Endure?” The paper was right to report on the humanitarian crisis ongoing in Cuba, but it chose to downplay the most important root cause: the decades-long US blockade on Cuba’s economy and its people.

That same story described Cuba as “a Communist country long accustomed to shortages of all kinds and spotty electrical service.” Why is the country so used to shortages? Eleven paragraphs later, the Times gave an explanation, or at least, Cuba’s explanation:

The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration, which severely restricts the Cuban government’s cash flow. The US Department of the Treasury blocks tankers that have delivered oil to Cuba, which drives up the island’s fuel costs, because Cuba has a limited pool of suppliers available to it.

Earlier coverage by the Times (10/18/24) similarly couched the effects of the blockade as merely a claim by Cuba. The Washington Post (10/22/24) also situated the blockade as something that “the Cuban government and its allies blame” for the ongoing crisis.

To report that Cuban officials blame the US sanctions for the energy crisis is a bit like reporting that fishermen blame the moon for the rising tide. It is of course factual that US trade restrictions–which affect not just US businesses, but also multinational businesses based in other countries–are a blunt weapon, with impact against not just a government, but an entire people.

At the very least, it is incumbent upon journalists to do at least minimal investigation and explanation of the facts concerning the subject of their reporting. None of the coverage in either major paper bothered to investigate whether this was a fair explanation, or even to report generally the effects a 60-year blockade might have on an economy.

Brief—and buried

“Cuban economists and foreign analysts blamed the crisis on several factors,” the New York Times (10/19/24) reported; 18 paragraphs later, the story gets around to mentioning US sanctions.

On October 19, the Times gave its most complete explanation of the relationship between the US sanctions regime and the Cuban blackouts:

Cuba’s economy enjoyed a brief honeymoon with the United States during the Obama administration, which sought to normalize relations after decades of hostility, while keeping a longstanding economic embargo in place. President Donald J. Trump reversed course, leading to renewed restrictions on tourism, visas, remittances, investments and commerce.

This explanation can be found in the 31st paragraph of the 37-paragraph story. Only once the Times has painted a picture of all the ways the Communist government has gone wrong can there be a brief mention of the role of US sanctions. And how brief it is; the Times chose not to detail the extent of blockade against Cuba, nor how Cuba was wrongfully placed on the SSoT list, nor the failure of Biden to reevaluate Cuba’s status as he promised on the campaign trail.

Describing the US starvation of Cuba’s economy in abstract terms like “economic crisis” provides cover for deliberate policy decisions by the US government. By reporting on the embargo only as something that the Cuban government claims, it is easy for readers to dismiss that explanation as simply a Communist excuse. Instead of asking why the United States is choosing to enforce a crippling sanctions regime on another country, outlets like the New York Times find it easier to repeat the line that Cuba’s government has only itself to blame for its problems.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
November 1, 2024

Despite History of Fabrication, Press Uncritically Covers IDF-Provided Documents on Hamas

The New York Times (10/12/24) says it “verified” supposed Hamas documents provided to the paper by Israel—which turns out to mostly mean that that the Israeli military “concluded the documents were real.”

Earlier this month, the New York Times (10/12/24), Washington Post (10/12/24) and Wall Street Journal (10/12/24) each published front-page articles based on different sets of documents handed to them by the Israeli military.

Israel claims it seized all the documents—in the form of meeting minutes, letters and planning documents—in its ground invasion of Gaza, and that they reveal insights into Hamas’s operations prior to the October 7 attacks. The documents include alleged evidence of Hamas’s pre-10/7 coordination with Iran, plans to blow up Israeli skyscrapers, and even a scheme to use horse-drawn chariots in an attack from Gaza.

Documents received directly from intelligence agencies should always be treated with skepticism, and that’s especially true when their government has a well-documented history of blatant lying. Yet leading newspapers took these Israeli document dumps largely at face value, advancing the agenda of a genocidal rogue state.

A history of lying

Fake “Hamas” documents were being cited in the press as recently as September 2024 (Middle East Eye, 9/9/24).

Israel’s use of fabrications to shape public perception is well known, and was put on display early in the assault on Gaza that began last October. After an explosion at Al Ahli hospital killed and injured hundreds (misreporting of which caused a great deal of confusion), the media naturally pointed the finger at Israel. The Israeli government, concerned about the public backlash, denied responsibility, claiming that the explosion was caused by a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (See FAIR.org, 11/3/23.)

To back up their claims, Israel released a recording allegedly capturing two Palestinian militants discussing Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s responsibility for the strike. However, an analysis by the firm Earshot found that the audio was the result of two separate channels being edited together (Channel 4, 10/19/23). In other words, Israel engineered a phony audio clip in an attempt to clear itself of war crimes in the public mind.

Investigations based on open sources have since come to various conclusions about the attack (Guardian, 10/18/23; Bellingcat, 10/18/23; Human Rights Watch, 11/26/23; AP, 11/22/23; Michael Kobs, 2023; New Arab, 2/19/24), but Israel’s fraudulent attempt to manipulate evidence certainly suggests that they had something to hide, and demonstrates their lack of reliability as a media source. Recently, the UN released a report accusing Israel of systematically targeting healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, making their denials of this earlier attack far less credible.

In another instance, Israel presented 3D renderings of a supposed Hamas “command center” beneath Al Shifa hospital, claiming it was based on intelligence. However, no such command center was ever found (FAIR.org, 12/1/23). Upon storming the hospital, Israel staged scenes in order to bolster claims that the facility was used by militant groups. The deception was so blatant that mainstream outlets were openly calling it out.

Recently Israel was caught actually providing fabricated documents to the press with the aim of manipulating public opinion. Earlier this year, the Israeli government provided documents to both the Jewish Chronicle (9/5/24) and the German paper Bild (9/6/24) that purportedly showed that Hamas had no interest in a ceasefire, and had a plan to sneak the late Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar out of Gaza to Iran, along with some of the remaining hostages. The reports were then uncritically repeated in outlets like the Times of Israel (9/6/24).

Shortly after these documents were published, the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth (9/8/24) reported on an internal IDF investigation that found that they had been leaked to foreign media as part of a campaign to “shape public opinion on Israel.” The documents were determined to be forgeries, after a comprehensive search of all databases containing documents found in the wake of Israel’s operations. The IDF told the paper that an investigation was underway to determine the origin of the leak.

This non-exhaustive list of examples demonstrates a pattern of Israel engineering misleading narratives to shape public opinion, and fabricating the evidence needed to do so.

Questionable authenticity

The Washington Post (10/12/24) reported that “the documents’ authenticity could not be definitively established”—but there’s no trace of that doubt in the story’s headline or subhead.

Whether they are authentic or not, it is clear that the documents leaked to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post serve the same purpose of propagandizing on behalf of Israel. In an attempt to preserve some journalistic integrity, the Post and Times both gave separate justifications for why they believed the respective documents leaked to them were authentic.

The Post was quick to note that “the documents’ authenticity could not be definitively established,” but gave readers the impression there was reason to believe they were real. First, it claimed that the contents of the documents it received were

“broadly consistent” with US and allies’ post–October 7 intelligence assessments about Hamas’s long-range planning and complex relationship with Iran.

Then it wrote that unnamed US and Israeli officials they shared the documents with did not express concerns about their authenticity. (Iranian and Hamas officials they consulted didn’t comment on the documents but accused Israel of having a history of “fabricating documents.”)

The New York Times consulted former Hamas member Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, whom the paper frequently quotes on matters related to Hamas, and an unnamed Palestinian analyst with “knowledge of Hamas’s inner workings.” It also said an internal Israeli military report concluded the documents were authentic, and the paper “researched details mentioned in the meeting records to check that they corresponded with actual events.” It said “Hamas and Hezbollah did not respond to requests to comment” and that Iran “denied the claims made in the minutes.”

The Wall Street Journal story did not describe any attempt to verify the authenticity, and only reported that the paper “hasn’t independently verified the documents.”

But given Israel’s track record, there is no epistemologically sound way of verifying the validity of documents provided by the Israeli government without confirmation from Hamas itself. Citing sources who say that the documents resemble Hamas documents, without noting Israel’s history of creating credible forgeries, creates a patina of credibility without actually substantiating anything.

Advancing Israel’s agenda

Haaretz (10/14/24): The documents bolster Netanyahu’s claim that Israel is “fighting a terrifying ‘axis of evil’ led by Iran that threatens to destroy Western culture as a whole.”

The Israeli paper Haaretz (10/14/24), which took the documents as authentic, argued that their release by Israel was “Aimed at Aiding Netanyahu.” While both the Times and the Post have largely advanced Israel’s agenda over the past year of bombing (FAIR.org, 10/13/23, 2/1/24, 10/7/24), both papers are considered to be on the critical end of the press spectrum in the US, particularly towards Netanyahu. As Haaretz explained, this perception enhances the propaganda value of the document leak: “The Times and the Post enjoy greater credibility when they fall in line with Israel’s narrative.”

While Haaretz made no note of the leaked documents provided to the Wall Street Journal, the article ironically acknowledged that

having them published by Fox News or even the Wall Street Journal would have looked like an Israeli public diplomacy operation rather than a legitimate journalistic investigative report.

Haaretz noted that the documents promote narratives that “Israel would be happy to burn into the world’s consciousness,” namely the well-known propaganda effort to equate Hamas with organizations that are universally reviled by Americans. The Post documents purportedly outlined a Hamas plan to blow up a skyscraper in Tel Aviv, evoking the September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center:

The Hamas documents are supposed to bolster Netanyahu’s claim that Israel isn’t fighting against a liberation movement seeking to free the occupied Palestinian people, or even against a paramilitary organization that is poorly funded and trained and lacks planes, the Iron Dome anti-missile system, tanks and artillery….

Rather, it is fighting a terrifying “axis of evil” led by Iran that threatens to destroy Western culture as a whole.

Haaretz also argued that this kind of propaganda campaign was designed to ensure that the violence continues to escalate:

In this spirit, the documents are supposed to justify Israel’s counterattack, which has so far caused enormous death and destruction in Gaza and, to an increasing degree, also in Lebanon.

Obvious PR value

Unlike the New York Times or Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal (10/12/24) acknowledged in its headline that the revelations in the documents are what “Israel says” they show.

While Haaretz overlooked the story from the Wall Street Journal, the same logic can be applied to the documents given to that paper as well. The Journal was apparently curious about the political purpose of the documents, noting that “the officials who provided the documents declined to say why they were releasing them now.”

The Journal wrote that the documents “suggest that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was negotiating with Iran over funding for a planned large-scale assault on Israel as far back as 2021,” and gave specific dollar amounts that Iran provided to Hamas’s armed wing. The obvious public relations value of these documents was that they boosted the negative image of Iran prior to Israel’s recent attack on that country.

Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza and greater war in the Middle East has been successful in part because the Israeli government can count on Western press to present and contextualize facts in a way that advances their narrative. Despite Israel’s long history of fabrications, the corporate media will dutifully republish documents, statements and explanations with complete credulity.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
November 1, 2024

Nature & Energy: Following a new path forward

For over 30 years I have volunteered for, hiked across and worked on conservation lands in Alberta advocating for their lasting protection.

This passion was born from the thousands of kilometres of hiking trails I’d put under my boots. Every step I took on a trail, every high mountain pass I crossed, fueled my passion for nature. This is how I got my literal and metaphorical footing in Alberta.

At first, all I saw was nature’s splendour. In time, however, the changes on the landscape caused me to consider the impact of climate change in my work.

Photo by Stephen Legault

Today my efforts look very different from the meandering paths I trekked for years. Now, I focus on advancing Alberta’s energy transition and tackling climate change for Environmental Defence Canada, and there is a very good reason. If we don’t address the warming climate – and the polluting industries that are the reasons behind our extreme weather – then what we love about nature will disappear.

We can see changes whenever we go for a walk in our local parks, the mountains, or Alberta’s northern woods. Those changes are disturbing. Every year, warmer temperatures mean drought for our prairies, mountains and forests, and that means more fires like the one that decimated the Town of Jasper this summer.

Water levels in our rivers are at historically low levels. That impacts fish and wildlife, and also our ability to enjoy those rivers for canoeing, kayaking, and angling.

Food sources for wildlife are changing as plant communities are impacted by warmer, dryer conditions. Even the forests are changing, as aspen woodlands invade prairie ecosystems at lower elevations and suffer heat-related die-offs elsewhere. The expansion of pine and spruce forests into higher elevations is creating favorable conditions for critters who like trees, while making it difficult for species like Pika to feed, and be secure from predators.

A Pika. Photo by Diana Roberts via Unsplash

It’s what we can’t see day-to-day, however, that really frightens me. Over the past decade, new forest pests have started to invade our woodlands, and species like the Mountain Pine beetle, once held in check by cold winters, are running rampant. In our rivers, lower water levels, warmer water, and non-native species are making survival for favourite fish species such as Bull Trout and Westslope Cutthroat Trout challenging.

Even at the microscopic level, changes are occurring that alter how plants and animals can adapt to climate change.

So what can we do about any of it? Well, you’ve taken important steps already. You spend time in nature, walking, backpacking, fishing, or riding your bike. That means you know and love many of the places that climate change threatens.

Now, please consider taking the next step. Tell the Alberta government that you want a clean energy future, because we can’t protect nature if we let the climate crisis spiral out of control.

What compelled me to join the team at Environmental Defence might encourage you to do the same, in your own way. Because you love nature, and you want to help protect it. If you join us on this journey to fight climate change, you’ll also be helping to ensure our prairies, rivers, woodlands and mountains are protected from future impacts of a warming planet.

And by taking this action, you’ll be sending a powerful message to the government of Alberta; that doing nothing to battle climate change is no longer an option.

Let’s trek a new path together, one that creates a safer climate future for our children and grandchildren.

The post Nature & Energy: Following a new path forward appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
October 31, 2024

WaPo Says Not to Worry About Climate Disruption’s Disastrous Costs: Reassuring report based on long-debunked climate contrarian

The Washington Post (10/24/24) claims that “the rise in billion-dollar disasters, while alarming, is not so much an indicator of climate change as a reflection of societal growth and risky development.”

As the country begins to vote in an election that will be hugely consequential for the climate crisis, the central task of news outlets’ climate beats should be informing potential voters of those consequences. Instead, the Washington Post‘s “Climate Lab” seems to be working hard to cast doubt on whether climate change is really causing weather disasters to be more expensive.

In a lengthy piece (10/24/24) headlined “The Real Reason Billion-Dollar Disasters Like Hurricane Helene Are Growing More Common,” Post Climate Lab columnist Harry Stevens highlighted a NOAA chart depicting a notable increase in billion-dollar weather disasters hitting the US that he says is widely used by government reports and officials “to help make the case for climate policies.” But, in fact, Stevens tells readers:

The truth lies elsewhere: Over time, migration to hazard-prone areas has increased, putting more people and property in harm’s way. Disasters are more expensive because there is more to destroy.

The takeaway is clear: The (Democratic) government is lying to you about the supposedly devastating impacts of climate change.

Distorting with cherry-picked data

The problem is, it’s Stevens’ story that’s doing the misleading. It relies heavily on the work of one source, Roger Pielke Jr., a longtime climate contrarian beloved by climate denial right-wingers, who cherry-picks data to distort the truth.

What’s worse, from a media critic’s perspective, is that it’s not even a new story; it’s been debunked multiple times over the years. Pielke—a political scientist, not a climate scientist, which Stevens never makes clear—has been promoting this tale since 1998, when he first published a journal article that purported to show that, as Stevens describes, “after adjusting damage to account for the growth in people and property, the trend [of increasing economic costs from weather disasters] disappears.”

A review of Roger Pielke’s book The Climate Fix in the journal Science (11/26/10) accused him of writing “a diatribe against the IPCC and other scientists that is based on highly selective and distorted figures and his own studies.”

When Pielke published the argument in his 2010 book, the journal Science (11/26/10) published a withering response, describing the chapter as “a diatribe against the IPCC and other scientists that is based on highly selective and distorted figures and his own studies.” It detailed the multiple methodological problems with Pielke’s argument:

He makes “corrections” for some things (notably, more people putting themselves in harm’s way) but not others. Some adjustments, such as for hurricane losses for the early 20th century, in which the dollar value goes up several hundred–fold, are highly flawed. But he then uses this record to suggest that the resulting absence of trends in damage costs represents the lack of evidence of a climate component. His record fails to consider all tropical storms and instead focuses only on the rare land-falling ones, which cause highly variable damage depending on where they hit. He completely ignores the benefits from improvements in hurricane warning times, changes in building codes, and other factors that have been important in reducing losses. Nor does he give any consideration to our understanding of the physics of hurricanes and evidence for changes such as the 2005 season, which broke records in so many ways.

Similarly, in discussing floods, Pielke fails to acknowledge that many governing bodies (especially local councils) and government agencies (such as the US Army Corps of Engineers) have tackled the mission of preventing floods by building infrastructure. Thus even though heavy rains have increased disproportionately in many places around the world (thereby increasing the risk of floods), the inundations may have been avoided. In developing countries, however, such flooding has been realized, as seen for instance this year in Pakistan, China and India. Other tenuous claims abound, and Pielke cherry-picks points to fit his arguments.

That year, climate expert Joe Romm (Climate Progress, 2/28/10) called Pielke “the single most disputed and debunked person in the entire realm of people who publish regularly on disasters and climate change.”

Debunked a decade ago

In response to Pielke, climate scientist Kerry Emanuel (538, 3/31/14) pointed out that it’s not necessarily appropriate to normalize damages by gross domestic product (GDP) if the intent is to detect an underlying climate trend,” since “GDP increase does not translate in any obvious way to damage increase,” as “wealthier countries can better afford to build stronger structures and to protect assets.”

Pielke peddled the story in 538 (3/19/14) four years later—and lost his briefly held job as a contributor for it, after the scientific community spoke out against it in droves, as not being supported by the evidence.

The backlash led 538 to give MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel (3/31/14) a column to rebut Pielke, in which she explained that while it’s of course true that “changing demographics” have impacted the economic costs of weather disasters, Pielke’s data didn’t support his assertion “that climate change has played no role in the observed increase in damages.” She pointed to the same kinds of methodological flaws that Science did, noting that her own research with Yale economist Robert Mendelsohn projected that through the year 2100, “global hurricane damage will about double owing to demographic trends, and double again because of climate change.”

That all happened ten years ago. So why is Pielke’s same old ax-grinding getting a platform at the Washington Post shortly before Election Day?

Stevens does tell readers—quite far down in the article—that Pielke has “clashed with other scientists, journalists and government officials” over his research—though Stevens doesn’t give any details about those clashes, or about Pielke’s reputation among climate scientists more generally.

Stevens also briefly notes that Pielke was recently hired by the American Enterprise Institute, which Stevens characterizes as “center-right,” but more helpfully might have characterized as “taking millions from ExxonMobil since 1998.” But in the same paragraph, Stevens also takes pains to point out that Pielke says he’s planning to vote for Harris, as if to burnish Pielke’s climate-believer bonafides.

Pielke agrees with Pielke

Roger Pielke “agrees with studies that agree with Pielke” (Environmental Hazards, 10/12/20).

Stevens tells Post readers that the science is firmly on Pielke’s side:

Similar studies have failed to find global warming’s fingerprint in economic damage from hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and crop losses. Of 53 peer-reviewed studies that assess economic damage from weather events, 52 could not attribute damage trends to global warming, according to Pielke’s 2020 review of the literature, the most recent and comprehensive.

You’ll notice Stevens just used Pielke’s own review to bolster Pielke’s argument. But the journal that published that review (Environmental Hazards, 8/5/20) immediately followed up with the publication of a critique (10/12/20) from researchers who came to the opposite conclusion in their study on US hurricanes. They explained that there are “fundamental shortcomings in this literature,” which comes from a disaster research “field that is currently dominated by a small group of authors” who mostly use the same methodology—adjusting historical economic losses based strictly on “growth in wealth and population”—that Pielke does.

The authors, who wrote a study that actually accounted for this problem and did find that economic losses from hurricanes increased over time after accounting for increases in wealth and population, point out that Pielke dismissed their study and two others that didn’t agree with his own results essentially because they didn’t come to the same conclusions. As the authors of the critique write drily: “Pielke agrees with studies that agree with Pielke.”

A phony ‘consensus’

Stevens includes in his article an obligatory line that experts say

disputing whether global warming’s influence can be found in the disaster data is not the same as questioning whether climate change is real or whether society should switch from fossil fuels.

He also adds that

many scientists say that global warming has intensified hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and other extreme weather, which must be leading to greater economic losses.

Note that he frames it as only “many,” and suggests they are only using (faulty, simplistic) logic, not science. But of course, climate change is intensifying extreme weather, as even Stevens has reported as fact recently (in the link he provides in that passage). In contrast, Stevens writes that

the consensus among disaster researchers is that the rise in billion-dollar disasters, while alarming, is not so much an indicator of climate change as a reflection of societal growth and risky development.

But in fact, as mentioned above, there’s not consensus even among disaster researchers (who are primarily economists). And the “many scientists” who disagree with Pielke aren’t the scientists the Post chooses to focus on. While Stevens quotes a number of different experts, including some who disagree with Pielke, they are not given anywhere near the space—or credence—Pielke and his arguments are. (Pielke’s name appears 15 times across the article and its captions.)

When he does get around to quoting some of the scientists, like MIT’s Emanuel, whose research shows that extreme weather events are intensifying, Stevens presents the conflicting conclusions as a back-and-forth of claims and counterclaims, giving the last word in that debate to a disaster researcher whose goal is to refocus blame for disasters on political decisions—like supporting building in vulnerable locations—rather than climate change.

Changes in our built environment, and governments’ impact on those changes, are certainly an important subject when it comes to accounting for and preventing billion-dollar disasters—which virtually no one disputes. (Indeed, the four government reports Stevens links to in his second paragraph as supposedly misusing the NOAA data explicitly name some variation of “increased building and population growth” as a contributing factor to growing costs.) It’s simply not an either/or question, as the Post‘s teaser framed it: “Many blame global warming. Others say disasters are more expensive because there is more to destroy.” So it’s bizarre and frankly dangerous that ten years after climate scientists debunked Pielke’s claim that there’s no evidence climate change is increasing extreme weather costs, Stevens would take, as the “urgent” question of the moment, “Is global warming to blame” for the growing billion-dollar disaster tally?

By giving the impression that the whole thing is basically a government scam to justify climate policies, Stevens’ direct implication is that even if climate change is indisputable, it doesn’t really matter. And it feeds into climate deniers’ claims that the climate change-believing government is lying about climate change and its impacts, at a time when a large number of those deniers are seeking office.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com.

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 31, 2024

Murray Edwards: The Fossil Fuel Fanatic
The fossil fuel industry has long been the main driver of climate change, but Big Oil’s CEOs and profiteers would like you to believe that it is a part of the solution. One of the people peddling this idea is the man behind Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) – Murray Edwards, the Fossil Fuel Fanatic.

Murray Edwards is the founder of CNRL and is one of the wealthiest people in Canada. As an oil-i-garch and multi-billionaire, Edwards has made it his mission to keep the oil pumping despite production sites killing wildlife and harming the environment. Edwards has a track record of cutting corners, like skipping proper cleanup of extraction sites and passing the cost onto the public. He’s just as focused on these shortcuts as he is on promoting false solutions like carbon capture. CNRL is a member of the Pathways Alliance – a tar sands lobby group that is trying to rebrand this polluting industry as a clean one while pushing back against government climate action behind closed doors.

But like any great villain, he’s a man of contradictions. Sure, he has turned CNRL into a behemoth corporation, but when it comes to cleaning up their mess, well, that’s someone else’s problem.

He’s even managed to dodge the pesky consequences of the Mount Polley mine disaster – a toxic tailings pond spill by Imperial Metals, the company where he is the largest major shareholder, owning 45 per cent. And when it comes to CNRL’s safety violations? Let’s just say “safety first” isn’t quite their motto. With every spill, every fine for violating environmental rules, every increase in emissions, and every lobbying push for subsidies and looser environmental regulations, Edwards cements his place as a true master of fossil-fueled villainy. After all, what’s a little wildlife destruction when CNRL has a stock market value of over $100 billion to boast about?

Environmental Defence has been calling on the federal government to stand up to Big Oil and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its pollution. Will you join the call?

Take Action: Tell Canada to Stop Big Oil’s Climate Villains
- Chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Limited: 1989 – present
- President of Edco Financial Holdings Ltd: 2003 – 2015
- Penn West Petroleum (later Penn West Energy Trust): 1992 – 2005
- Founding member at FirstEnergy Capital Corp: 1993 – 2016
- Co-founder at Peters & Co. Capital: 1988 – 1993
- Director and Chair of the Board at Ensign Energy: – present
- Director and Chairman of Magellan Aerospace Corporation: – present
- Owner of Resorts of the Canadian Rockies company: 2001 – present
- Co-owner of the NHL team the Calgary Flames: 1994 – present
- Advisory Board member for the Edwards School of Business at the University of Saskatchewan
- Former Board member at the Business Council of Canada
- Former Director at the CD Howe Institute (until 2015)
- Former Board member at the Canada West Foundation
Villain Career Profile

Murray Edwards, the Fossil Fuel Fanatic, has perfected the art of blending ambition with environmental disregard. As the chairman and co-founder of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL), he stands at the helm of one of Canada’s largest oil producers, all while raking in profits like there’s no tomorrow—quite literally, as the future looks increasingly bleak for our planet.

Under his leadership, CNRL has been linked to staggering annual emissions of 26.34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO₂e), equivalent to 5.2 million homes’ electricity use for a year! This impressive feat is overshadowed only by the company’s notorious track record of environmental infractions, including multiple oil spills and safety violations. Just this summer CNRL was fined $278,000 for a problem at one of their toxic tailings ponds that was left unaddressed and killed wildlife.

Edwards was also a key player in the Mount Polley tailings dam disaster of 2014, where Imperial Metals, of which he is a controlling shareholder, experienced a catastrophic breach to one of its tailings ponds that released billions of liters of toxic waste into nearby waterways. This incident not only devastated local ecosystems but also raised serious questions about corporate responsibility and environmental oversight. The province and taxpayers of B.C. paid $40 million in cleanup costs, which did not restore the ecosystem and could only make a small a dent in the cleanup efforts.

Now, having climbed to the top of the oil business, Edwards has diversified his interests. He doesn’t only profit from fossil fuels, but has expanded his ownership into mining companies, speculative carbon capture technofixes, recreational resorts, a consulting firm, and even co-ownership of the Calgary Flames.

But Edward’s is not just an owner, he’s a giver. In 2013 he organized a fundraising dinner at Calgary’s Petroleum Club to help raise political donations to former BC Premier Christy Clark’s re-election campaign. That night, his comrades at oil, gas and pipeline companies helped raise more than $1 million dollars for a pro-fossil fuel politician. In 2017 he shared his yacht with the interim leader of the Conservative Party, Rona Ambrose, for her vacation around the Caribbean. He spent years giving encouragement for the federal government to approve and build the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline project. After an $11 million donation to the University of Saskatchewan in 2007, the business school was named after him. Edwards seems committed to “giving back”—by funneling fossil fuel profits to shareholders and himself, climate concerns be damned.

The Climate Villains campaign highlights the leaders of the fossil fuel industry that play key roles in expanding and financing climate-wrecking fossil fuels, blocking climate action, and spreading disinformation. These villains are more concerned about their profits and wealth than the future of the planet, and that’s why we’re profiling the ‘resume’ of each climate villain.

The post Murray Edwards: The Fossil Fuel Fanatic appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
October 31, 2024

Everything you need to know about COP29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference
This year, we yet again witnessed the dramatic consequences of the world’s continued burning of fossil fuels, such as hurricane Debby in Quebec, the wildfires in Jasper, and the flooding in southern Ontario. Around the world, millions of people were displaced, harmed and even killed by climate catastrophe.

It is in that context that world leaders will gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22 to continue the global effort to address the climate crisis. This important gathering, known as COP29 (which stands for the ‘Conference of the Parties’), is the 29th annual United Nations climate negotiations since the establishment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1995.

Ahead of this important moment, here are the key things you need to know.

Why is COP important?

COP is far from just a showy conference – it is an important forum that has created agreements and momentum which over the past three decades have measurably reduced the severity of climate change. Before the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the world was on track for a catastrophic four degrees of warming. Though we’re still not on track to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, progress has been made that otherwise wouldn’t have been. For example, at COP28, for the first time, all of the countries agreed to a transition off of fossil fuels, a tripling of renewable energy and a double in energy efficiency.

Let’s start with four quick reasons why COP is important
- Global equity: COP is the only forum where every country, including those most vulnerable to the climate crisis, has an equal seat at the table. Decisions are made by consensus, giving Global South countries, at least in theory, an equal voice, though Global North countries often exert influence. This is essential, as the Global South contributes the least to, but suffers the most from, climate change. COP has also established funding mechanisms for wealthier nations, like Canada and the U.S., to support countries needing help with climate adaptation and emission reduction. This COP aims to set a new funding goal to ensure fair contributions from wealthy nations.
- COP is the only forum where all countries have an equal seat at the table, including those who are most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. At COP, final decisions are reached through consensus, meaning that at least in theory Global South countries have a platform to negotiate as equals. (In practice, Global North countries still exert a lot of power and influence). This is critical. Countries in the Global South are the least responsible yet most impacted by the climate crisis. COP is the only forum where multiple funding mechanisms were created to transfer funding from wealthy countries like Canada and the United States to countries that need assistance with both adapting to climate disasters and reducing their emissions. This COP will set a new funding goal, to ensure wealthy nations are paying their fair share.
- Global collaboration on climate action: We need global collaboration to address global problems. The most important outcomes of the COP process are binding treaties to increase climate ambition, like the Paris Agreement. Every year, negotiators at COP develop processes and tools which are used to ratchet up countries’ individual approaches to climate change. Alongside the official negotiations, lots of countries use COP as a platform for bilateral or multilateral initiatives, like a global treaty to reduce methane emissions.
- Accountability: The process forces governments to report back on their progress against their “Nationally Determined Contributions”, which are their domestic plans to reduce emissions. At COP, everybody pays attention to which countries are leading or lagging. This can create pressure on polluting countries from civil society, the media, and through inter-country diplomacy and negotiations to speed up climate action. And that’s why Canadian civil society groups like Environmental Defence go there: to hold Canadian government representatives accountable!
- Global attention: COP is also a major moment where much of the world is focused on the issue of climate change. It’s an opportunity for impacted communities to share their stories on the world stage and for climate experts to help build awareness and public mobilization.
Who attends COP?

The primary attendees are representatives from national governments that signed on to the United Nations Framework Convention Climate Change – the UNFCCC. Catchy, right?

Each country sends a delegation that includes government officials as well as Ministers and their staff (known as the ‘negotiators’). They’re the only ones allowed to engage in formal negotiations.

But countries also bring representatives from outside the government to help shape the conversations. For the Government of Canada, this usually includes representatives from provincial governments, Indigenous nations and organizations, climate experts, labour, and voices from the business community. These people are allowed into some of the negotiations, but they don’t actually get a direct say.

Observers are also welcome at COP. This includes non-profit organizations and other civil society groups and activists, industry representatives, scientists, labour representatives, and Indigenous nations. Observers are key to the COP process because they provide expertise and insights that can inform negotiations and, very often, push governments further.

Indigenous nations joined forces with Environmental Defence to call out the Alberta Government’s greenwashing at COP28

Unfortunately, fossil fuel lobbyists and other big polluters also have a strong presence at COP. Last year, the oil and gas industry represented one of the largest contingencies of interest groups present at COP28. Canada was one of the worst countries for enabling fossil fuel lobbyists to participate. There is a clear conflict of interest. Fossil fuel lobbyists aren’t coming to help push for more ambitious action. Their goal is to protect their profits (aka business as usual) and they do so by derailing the negotiations and blocking progress. Each year the movement to Kick Big Polluters Out of climate negotiations grows.

What comes out of COP?

The ultimate goal of COP is to reach global agreements and commitments to combat climate change, like the famous Paris Agreement, which was adopted at COP21 in 2015. Under this Agreement, countries across the world committed to doing everything in their power to prevent temperature rise above 1.5 degrees (which is the temperature limit beyond which climate catastrophe becomes irreversible) all while supporting sustainable development in a way that eradicates global poverty. This is a tall order and one that we are still fighting for.

Other outcomes of COP include commitments from wealthy countries to help fund vulnerable countries dealing with the climate crisis, the signing of bilateral and multilateral agreements between countries, announcements for increased domestic climate action, and new collaborations between state and non-state actors.

Why is COP28 happening in Azerbaijan?

The COP summit rotates through different regions, and this year it was Eastern Europe’s turn. The country that hosts the summit also holds the pen on the final agreement’s text and is responsible for securing unanimous approval of the text from all other countries. Rotating the COP summit between regions is a way for the UN to help promote equity.

Countries from the year’s designated region can volunteer to host the summit based on their interest and infrastructure. Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, therefore emerged as the chosen host for this year’s COP.

Now you’re up to speed on what COP is and why it matters. Stay tuned for another update soon on what we’re hoping to achieve at COP this year!

The post Everything you need to know about COP29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference appeared first on Environmental Defence.
October 31, 2024

Why experts agree there must be no additional exposure to toxins in the tar sands
When oil companies started mining the tar sands for bitumen at a large scale in the 1960s, they quickly realized they’d also be producing huge volumes of toxic waste. The industry pumped this waste into what they called a “tailings pond”, but is actually just a hole in the ground without any lining to protect the surrounding environment. Then they waited, hoping the problem would go away. It didn’t.

Instead, over a trillion litres of toxic waste has accumulated in huge industry-made lakes, with no clear solution to clean it up. Despite decades of advocacy from local Indigenous communities, companies have not been forced to clean up their mess. However, these huge lakes are costly to maintain, and the risks they pose to human health and the environment have attracted national and global attention, much to the industry’s dismay.

In response, oil companies proposed a “solution”: treating the waste and releasing it into the river. Local Indigenous communities and conservation experts immediately opposed the idea, because the industry provided no evidence the waste could be treated to safe levels. Now, a group of academics have published a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Evidence-Based Toxicology which expresses their concerns with the idea and recommends what a safe path forward looks like. The authors are experts in human health, risk assessment, biology, toxicology, and environmental policy.

A huge toxic tailings pond in the Alberta oil sands

Here’s my TL/DR version of their article – trust me, this is the short version!

There is so much we don’t know about the oil sands’ toxic tailings

Oil sands process water, the technical name for the oil industry’s toxic waste, contains thousands of chemicals including benzene and mercury, as well PAHs, which are known carcinogens, and naphthenic acids, which we know disrupt reproductive systems in animals. We have evidence of how dangerous these chemicals are on their own, but we are still largely in the dark about how they interact with each other – especially if they reach a different environment, like the human body!

There is also an “information asymmetry” between oil companies, who know what they are putting in the environment, and communities who are largely in the dark. A jarring example of that was when it was revealed that Imperial Oil knew that its Kearl mine had been leaking toxic waste for months and didn’t inform local communities.

These uncertainties, information gaps and unequal distribution of resources should be taken into account when thinking of solutions.

Take Action: Ensure companies clean up their toxic tailings!

The way we deal with tailings now is unacceptable

In the tar sands, companies are legally required to reclaim the area disturbed once they are done using it, meaning they have to restore the area to a state similar to how they found it.

Yet, companies currently decide the criteria for what counts as reclaimed, and the Alberta Energy Regulator approves it. It’s like letting a fox guard the hen house! There is no requirement for these criteria to include measures to reduce or eliminate toxic chemicals in reclaimed areas, and in fact, all companies currently have criteria that only consider what the reclaimed surfaces look like and if they seem to function as before.. In short, they are more concerned about whether you can drive over the “reclaimed” area than whether your kids can play nearby.

Even with these weak criteria, only 0.1% of the area disturbed by oil sands mining has been certified as reclaimed by the Alberta Energy Regulator, and none were areas containing tailings.

Any solution to the tailings problem must put a stop to the contamination

Oil companies are focused on finding a “solution” to the tailings problem which minimizes what it costs them. Impacted communities, on the other hand, are interested in minimizing risks to their health and livelihoods. There needs to be an agreement on the final goal of reclamation before the work starts.

In the article, experts propose that one of the goals of reclamation should be to guarantee “no further exposure” to chemicals of concern, meaning the clean-up methods must guarantee that the environment or communities would not be exposed to any additional dangerous chemicals. While this might sound obvious, it’s not the norm. In most industries, the rules allow for some exposure, as long as it stays under a level considered to be safe, like the concentration of salt in our drinking water.

In the case of the oil sands, that’s not enough, say the experts. Here’s why:
- There is a high level of uncertainty about the risks posed by tailings waste, because of the interactions between the many substances in the mix. This means we don’t have the evidence to say what’s a safe level of exposure to this toxic cocktail.
- The volume of waste is so large that even a small concentration of toxins would, given the trillions of litres that could be released, end up creating a high level of exposure.
- The ecosystems and the Indigenous communities downstream of the oil sands have already been exposed to high levels of toxins, both from five decades of oil sands mining and from other industries further upstream. Since we don’t know just how exposed they’ve been, they might already be way past what’s considered “safe” for a certain substance, so any additional exposure could be disastrous.
For example, if this standard is applied to the “treat and release” method of eliminating tailings, governments would closely monitor the environment in which the release is happening. If there was any measurable increase in the levels for any of the substances of concern, even if the concentration is still under the amount considered “safe”, the release of tailings would have to stop immediately. Companies would have to revisit their treatment method and show they’ve addressed the issue before being able to move forward.

Toxic tailings continue to increase…and leak.

Truth and transparency are necessary to move forward

The authors highlight that it should ultimately be up to the Indigenous nations who are living with the consequences of the contamination to make decisions about what they want to see happen next.

Still, they provide recommendations for what governments must do, or force companies to do, to put a stop to the environmental injustice in the tar sands:
1. Provide a complete picture of the risks posed by the toxic waste, including investigating the toxicity of the whole mixture, not just the individual parts.
2. Regardless of the technical method chosen for tailings clean up, governments should require companies to prove they can guarantee “no further exposure” to toxic chemicals.
3. Establish a website which shows in real-time any data we have about what is in the tailings, what leaks or other incidents are happening, what exposure we already know of, and other crucial information that allows health professionals to understand the risk the communities face at any given time.
4. Charge the companies whose leaking tailings violate Canada’s environmental laws, such as the Fisheries Act, to put a stop to the contamination and ensure there are consequences for the companies who pollute.
You can also take action to ensure companies clean up toxic tailings. Sign our letter here.

The post Why experts agree there must be no additional exposure to toxins in the tar sands appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
October 30, 2024

Bezos’ Declaration of Neutrality Confirms: Billionaires Aren’t on Your Side

Jeff Bezos has finally taken the halo off of his head. It should have never been there in the first place.

Ever since his $250 million purchase of the storied Washington Post in 2013, Bezos has been feted as a savior of the free press (e.g., Slate, 8/6/13; Business Insider, 5/15/16; AdWeek, 11/28/16; New York Times, 2/27/21; Guardian, 6/12/24). The endless fawning was always misplaced. And for me, having grown up watching my parents run the local newspaper, this praise was nauseating.

While Facebook and Google have rightly been called out for destroying the news business, Amazon has been given a comparative pass, even though it may be the worst offender.

Amazon may hoover up a smaller (but growing) portion of ad revenue than Google and Facebook. But its ruthless business practices have helped turn once vibrant Main Streets into ghost towns across the country. Thanks to Amazon, it’s not just ad dollars being lost, but the advertisers themselves—local bookstores, clothing stores, toy stores, etc. And those losses destabilize fragile local economies, and the newspapers that depend on them.

If current trends continue, by the end of the year the US will have lost one-third of its newspapers and nearly two-thirds of its journalism jobs in a span of just two decades, according to a 2023 report by Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative. The number of lost reporting jobs, 43,000, is more than enough to fill DC’s baseball stadium.

‘A terrible mistake’

CJR (10/25/24): “Journalists at the Post, in both the news and opinion departments, were stunned” to learn that the paper would not be issuing a presidential endorsement.”

Fortunately, we won’t have to read this Bezos-saves-the-free press drivel any longer, which may be the only good thing to come out of his halo-off moment.

That moment came last Friday when the Post announced that it will no longer be endorsing for president, breaking with its decades-long precedent, and providing a shot in the arm to Trump’s candidacy. The Post’s move came a week after the LA Times, another billionaire-owned paper, did likewise (FAIR.org, 10/25/24).

In short order, Bezos’ top lieutenants at the Post dutifully fell on their swords, claiming it had been their decision. But simultaneously they (or others) leaked to the media that the decision was in fact Bezos’ alone, and they’d even argued against it (New York Times, 10/27/24). In fact, the Post editorial board had been working on its draft endorsement of Kamala Harris for weeks, and for the past week had been awaiting only the sign-off from the top that Bezos never gave (CJR, 10/25/24).

The gold star for trying-to-put-a-happy-face-on-this-hot-mess goes to Will Lewis, the Post CEO and publisher. Bezos tapped the Brit for the paper’s top job last year despite his shady right-wing past. In attempting to defend the indefensible, Lewis (Washington Post, 10/25/24) wrote, “we are returning to our roots.”

No one found this terribly convincing, not even Post columnists, 21 of whom signed onto a statement (10/25/24) calling the non-endorsement “a terrible mistake.” “Disappointing” is how the famed Post duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein put it. But maybe the harshest criticism came from former Post executive editor Marty Baron, who called it “cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty.”

The fallout from Bezos spiking of the Harris endorsement has been swift. Since Friday, nearly a third of the Post’s 10-person editorial board has resigned in protest, two Post columnists have departed the paper entirely (with more resignations expected), and 250,000 readers—10% of the Post’s total—have canceled their subscriptions. “It’s a colossal number,” said another former Post executive editor, Marcus Brauchli.

Bezos’ blocking of the Harris endorsement came just 11 days before the election, and on the heels of the Post issuing endorsements for lower-level offices like Senate and House—a practice the Post will continue, even as it discontinues endorsing for president, the one office that can seriously threaten Amazon’s sprawling interests.

Hedging Bezos’ bets

Former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron (CNN, 10/27/24): “Trump rewards his friends and he punishes his perceived political enemies and I think there’s no other explanation for what’s happening right now.”

“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory,” Post columnist and opinion editor Robert Kagan, who resigned in protest after 25 years at the paper, told CNN (10/27/24):

Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’ business. Bezos runs one of the largest companies in America. They have tremendously intricate relations with federal government. They depend on the federal government.

Recall that Trump as president routinely attacked Amazon and Bezos over the Post’s coverage of him. Trump even went so far as to upend a $10 billion cloud-computing deal between the Pentagon and Amazon Web Services. (Amazon then sued; the contract was ultimately divided among four companies, including Amazon.)

With Trump’s return to office looking as likely as not, Bezos has reason to hedge his bets. That’s especially true considering how dependent on federal largess Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, also is. It currently has a $3.4 billion contract with NASA, and is expected to compete for $5.6 billion in Pentagon contracts over the next five years. Surely this came up when Blue Origin’s CEO met with Trump only hours after the Post announced its non-endorsement (Guardian, 10/27/24). (Blue Origin’s chief competitor is SpaceX, headed by Trump superfan Elon Musk.)

‘Endorsements do nothing’

“Something we are doing is clearly not working,” writes Jeff Bezos (Washington Post, 10/28/24)—and he’s decided that “something” is endorsing presidential candidates.

With all hell breaking loose in the wake of his personal electioneering, Bezos—who can rarely be bothered to explain himself to the free press he supposedly cherishes—had to interrupt his European vacation to pen an op-ed for the Post (10/28/24).

Mustering all the humility you’d expect from the world’s third-richest man, Bezos began not with an apology but an attack—directed at, of all things, the media, including his own paper.

“In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom,” Bezos wrote at the top of his op-ed, headlined “The Hard Truth: Americans Don’t Trust the News Media.”

The fact that Bezos’ last-minute nixing of the Harris endorsement will only worsen trust in the media went unstated, of course. Thin-skinned billionaires are better at pointing fingers.

Bezos’ op-ed continued:

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None.

And with that, Bezos absolved himself of any role in aiding Trump’s potential return to the Oval Office.

But in the eyes of Trump fundraiser Bill White, it sure looks like Bezos just put his thumb on the scale. “Bezos not endorsing Kamala Harris—I think that’s a $50 million endorsement for Trump,” White told the Post (10/28/24). “Not picking a horse is picking a horse.”

‘No quid pro quo’

Robert Kagan (Daily Beast, 10/26/24): “All Trump has to do is threaten the corporate chiefs who run these organizations with real financial loss, and they will bend the knee.”

The billionaire went on to assure readers that there was “no quid pro quo of any kind” regarding the meeting between the Blue Origin CEO and Trump that took place immediately following the non-endorsement.

Bezos may have penned this line in response to Kagan, the recently departed Post columnist who two days earlier told the Daily Beast (10/26/24) that a quid pro quo is exactly what went down:

Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people…. Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.

While Bezos’ non-endorsement may seem like a last-minute decision, it had “obviously been in the works for some time,” Kagan said, citing Lewis’ hiring as Post CEO and publisher back in January.

Lewis rose to prominence over a decade ago when he helped steer the British wing of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to calmer waters, at a time when Murdoch’s tabloid News of the World was engulfed in a phone-hacking scandal. While Lewis’ actions during this time remain the subject of legal inquiries, Murdoch was quick to promote him, naming Lewis CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal in 2014.

When Bezos tapped Lewis to helm the Post earlier this year, he was aware of Lewis’ shady background (Washington Post, 6/28/24)—and may have even viewed it as a plus.

“[Lewis’] eager solicitude before power could well be why Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos tapped Lewis for the publisher’s job in the first place,” the Nation’s Chris Lehmann (6/21/24) wrote. “[Bezos] may well look at Murdoch’s sleazy antidemocratic empire and think, ‘I want one of those, too.’ If so, his eager quisling Will Lewis is already hitting all the right notes.”

For Kagan, Lewis’ hiring was an early signal of Bezos’ intention to take the Post in a different, right-wing direction. “All the facts” point to Bezos’s desire to remake the Post in the image of the Wall Street Journal, with an “anti-anti-Trump editorial slant,” Kagan told the Daily Beast (10/26/24).

Amazon’s antitrust antipathy

FTC chair Lina Khan (Wired, 9/26/23): “Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform.”

While media are focused on how Bezos bent the knee for Trump, something important has been left out of the story: namely, that it may be President Harris whom Bezos fears most.

A second Trump presidency may put Amazon’s (and Blue Origin’s) current government contracts in danger, but it’s Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair, Lina Khan, who poses a more serious long-term threat to Amazon, as she seeks to break apart dominant monopolies like the online retail giant, which she’s currently suing.

If Harris wins, there’s a possibility that Khan will stay put, enabling her to continue building on the Biden administration’s aggressive antitrust enforcement.

While the FTC’s case against Amazon hasn’t received much attention, it “marks the biggest legal test to date for Amazon’s 30-year-old e-commerce business,” according to the Post (10/1/24). Khan’s lawsuit—which is joined by 17 state attorneys general—alleges that the retailer is “punishing sellers who offer their goods elsewhere at lower prices,” according to Wired (9/26/23)—keeping prices artificially high not only at Amazon, but at thousands of other sites across the web.

In addition to antitrust enforcement, there’s another reason that Bezos (and his ilk) may prefer Trump. “Further compounding the incentive for some executives to stay out of the race is Democrats’ policy agenda,” the Post (10/28/24) reported. “Harris has backed a plan to raise taxes on many of the country’s highest earners.”

For Bezos’ part, he insists (10/28/24), “I do not and will not push my personal interest.” But now that the halo is off, it’s easier to see this is nonsense.

“With Jeff, it’s always only about business,” a former Blue Origin employee told the Post (10/30/24). “It’s business, period. That’s how he built Amazon. That’s how he runs all of his enterprises.”

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 29, 2024

White Men Get Short End of Stick—in NYT Chart, if Not in Reality

It’s supremely unhelpful of the New York Times (Upshot, 10/26/24) to compare income of white men without college degrees to white, Black, Latine and Asian-American women with college degrees:

The Times provided no similar graphic making the more natural comparison between white men without college degrees and Black, Latine or Asian-American men without college degrees. Why not?

Someone who did make that comparison is University of Maryland sociologist Philip N. Cohen, who has a blog called Family Inequality (10/27/24). Maybe you won’t be surprised to find that not only are white men without college degrees not uniquely disadvantaged, they’re actually better paid than any other demographic without a college degree. White men with college degrees, meanwhile, are at the top of the income scale, along with Asian-American men with college degrees.

As Cohen writes, the way the New York Times presented the data “is basically the story of rising returns to education, turned into a story of race/gender grievance.” That fits in with the Times‘ long history (e.g., FAIR.org, 12/16/16, 3/30/18 , 11/1/19, 11/7/19) of trying to explain to liberals why they should learn to love white resentment.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 28, 2024

[RECORDING] Market Failure: The Climate Crisis and the Limits of Capitalism

Brett Christophers and Adam Tooze in conversation, moderated by Kate Aronoff.

This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
October 28, 2024

How could the U.S. elections affect AJWS’s fight for human rights around the world?

This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
October 26, 2024

In Midst of Palestinian Genocide, Late Hamas Leader Scolded for ‘Eradicating’ Israel

The Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip on October 17, and it didn’t take long for the usual media suspects to line up with their anti-eulogies.

Reuters (10/18/24) called October 7 “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”; no similar Nazi comparisons were offered for the (probably far more than) 42,000 Palestinians killed by Israel.

Reuters (10/18/24), for example, produced an obituary headlined “Yahya Sinwar: The Hamas Leader Committed to Eradicating Israel Is Dead”—a less than charming use of terminology in light of the genocide Israel is currently perpetrating in Gaza.

Since last October, more than 42,000 Palestinians have officially been, um, eradicated—although according to a Lancet study (7/20/24; Al Jazeera, 7/8/24) published in July, the true death toll could well exceed 186,000. Per the view of Reuters, this is really the fault of Sinwar, a “ruthless enforcer” who, we are informed in the opening paragraph,

remained unrepentant about the October 7 attacks [on Israel] despite unleashing an Israeli invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, laid waste to his Gaza homeland and rained destruction on ally Hezbollah.

Never mind that Sinwar’s elimination will have no impact on the genocide, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear: “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still not been completed.”

Delegitimizing resistance

The New York Times headline (10/21/24) seems to express surprise that assassinating a negotiating partner is not a pathway to peace.

Further down in the obituary, Reuters journalist Samia Nakhoul managed to insert some biographical details that hint at reasons besides “evil” that Sinwar chose to pursue armed resistance:

Half a dozen people who know Sinwar told Reuters his resolve was shaped by an impoverished childhood in Gaza’s refugee camps and a brutal 22 years in Israeli custody, including a period in Ashkelon, the town his parents called home before fleeing after the 1948 Arab/Israeli war.

This, too, is a rather diplomatic way of characterizing the ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter that attended the 1948 creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian land—an enterprise predicated on perpetual killing, as we are now witnessing most acutely. By portraying Sinwar’s actions as stemming from an intrinsic diabolicalness that made him hellbent on “eradicating” Israel—in contrast to Israel’s actions, which are implicitly restrained until “unleashed” by Sinwar—the corporate media delegitimize resistance while effectively legitimizing genocide.

This longstanding commitment to laying nearly all responsibility for the conflict at Palestinian feet also leads to bizarre headlines like the New York Times‘ “Yahya Sinwar Is Dead, But a Palestinian State Still Seems Distant” (10/21/24). It is the Biden administration’s alleged hope that Sinwar’s killing could “help pave the way for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.” The idea attributes the failure to create a Palestinian state to Sinwar rather than Israel, and ludicrously imagines that genocide, along with the massive destruction of housing and basic infrastructure that Israel is committing in Gaza, are logical ways to go about state-building.

That report came on the heels of another Times intervention (10/19/24) that critiqued “Hamas’s single-minded focus on the Palestinian struggle, which had dragged the whole region into the flames”—even while acknowledging that Israel is the party presently responsible for perpetuating the conflict. This particular effort bore the headline: “Despite Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive.” Well, yeah.

‘Terrorist Hamas leader’

Fox News (10/17/24) labeled Sinwar a “terrorist,” but didn’t use the word when noting that he “rose to the top positionthe killing of previous leader Ismail Haniyeh in the explosion of a guesthouse in Tehran”; in fact, it couldn’t even bring itself to mention that Israel had carried out the assassination.

For its part, Fox News (10/17/24) deployed predictable lingo in its memorialization of Sinwar, describing him in the obituary headline as “The Israeli Prisoner Turned Terrorist Hamas Leader.” Indeed, the “terrorist” label never gets old, even after decades of being wielded against enemies of Israel and the United States, the Israeli military’s partner in crime and the primary financial enabler of the current bloodbath. Lost in the linguistic stunt, of course, is the fact that both the US and Israel are responsible for a great deal more acts of terrorism than are their foes.

But pointing out such realities goes against the official line—and so we end up with Sinwar the “Hamas terrorist leader,” as ABC News (10/17/24) has also immortalized him. Time magazine (10/18/24) opted to go with a front cover featuring Sinwar’s face with a red X through it.

CNN (10/17/24), meanwhile, offered space in the second paragraph of its own reflections on Sinwar’s demise to Israeli officials’ spin on the man, noting that they had “branded him with many names, including the ‘face of evil’ and ‘the butcher from Khan Younis,’” the refugee camp in southern Gaza where Sinwar was born.

Given the Israeli butchery to which Khan Younis is continuously subjected these days, it seems CNN might have refrained from taking Israel’s word for it. On just one bloody day this month, October 1, at least 51 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on a tent camp in Khan Younis (BBC, 10/2/24)—a space that had been designated by Israel as a “humanitarian area.” Israel killed 38 more there yesterday (AP, 10/25/24).

‘The threat remains’

Time (10/18/24): “The corpse of Yahya Sinwar was found in the landscape he envisioned—the dusty rubble of an apocalyptic war ignited by the sneak attack he had planned in secret for years.”

Sinwar is not the only Middle Eastern resistance leader to have been recently eliminated by the Israelis. On July 31, Israel assassinated Sinwar’s predecessor Ismail Haniyeh with a bombing in Tehran, and on September 27, it killed Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, in an operation that entailed leveling an entire residential block. (What was that about terrorism?)

On the latter occasion, the Jerusalem Post (10/6/24) got its panties in a bunch over the allegedly “unnerving eulogy of the terror chief” that appeared in the New York Times (9/28/24), whose authors had not only had the audacity to call Nasrallah a “powerful orator…beloved among many Shiite Muslims,” but had also mentioned that the man had helped provide social services in Lebanon.

(That Times article also reported that some Lebanese “felt he used Hezbollah’s power to take the entire country hostage to his own interests,” and it linked to another Times piece—9/28/24—about those who “welcomed Mr. Nasrallah’s death.”)

The Washington Post (9/28/24) went with the noncommittal headline “Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah Leader and Force in Middle East, dies at 64,” while simultaneously running an op-ed by Max Boot (9/28/24): “Nasrallah Is Gone. But the Threat of Hezbollah Remains.”

Now that Sinwar is gone, too, rest assured that Israel will continue to exploit all manner of threats to justify unceasing slaughter—and that the media will be standing by with disingenuous and reductionist narratives all the way.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 25, 2024

LA Times Non-Endorsement Another Sign of Our Billionaire-Dominated Politics

The Los Angeles Times will not be making a presidential endorsement in this election, the first time the paper has stayed silent on a presidential race since 2004. But the decision not to endorse a candidate was not made by an editor. The paper’s billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, stepped in to forbid the paper from doing so.

The move sparked a furor over the lack of editorial freedom (Semafor, 10/22/24; KTLA, 10/22/24; Adweek, 10/23/24). The paper lost 2,000 subscribers, and editorials editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest, along with two other staffers, including a Pulitzer Prize winner (Guardian, 10/25/24).

Guardian (9/23/16): “The lack of transparency around Soon-Shiong’s reasons for not allowing his paper to make a presidential endorsement has left journalists in the Los Angeles Times’ newsroom frustrated and confused.”

The LA Times was widely expected to support the Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris, a Southern California resident and former senator from the state. The paper’s editorial board enthusiastically supported Joe Biden in 2020 (9/10/20) and Hillary Clinton four years before that (9/23/16).

According to news reports, the paper had been preparing an endorsement until Soon-Shiong reached across the wall that is supposed to separate the business and editorial wings of a newspaper. He tried to rationalize his decision, according to the Guardian:

“I think my fear is, if we chose either one, that it would just add to the division,” Soon-Shiong told Spectrum News, noting he was a “registered independent.”

On Wednesday, Soon-Shiong tweeted that he had asked the editorial board to instead publish a list of positive and negative attributes about both of the presidential candidates, but that the board had refused.

Soon-Shiong said that the dangers of divisiveness in American politics was highlighted by the responses to his tweet about his decision not to endorse, saying the feed had “gone a little crazy when we just said, ‘You decide.’”

And the LA Times is not alone. The Jeff Bezos–owned Washington Post will also issue no presidential endorsement, for the first time since 1980 (NPR, 10/25/24). Former editor-in-chief Martin Baron called the move “cowardice,” telling NPR:

Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.

Alarms about editorial freedom

Stat (11/21/16): “Soon-Shiong called it an ‘incredible honor’ to dine with Trump, who ‘truly wants to advance health care for all.’”

Soon-Shiong, who bought the LA Times from Tronc in 2018, attempted to portray himself as a defender of the free press against attacks from then-President Donald Trump (CNBC, 9/7/18). But Soon-Shiong—a doctor who made a fortune in the for-profit medical industry (New Yorker, 10/25/21)—was not shy about his ambitions for a top health position in the Trump administration (Stat, 11/21/16, 1/25/17).

Is Soon-Shiong trying to make nice with Trump? One thing we know about him is that he’s not big on paying taxes; “He hasn’t paid federal income tax in five consecutive recent years,” ProPublica (12/8/21) reported.

He’s also not overly concerned about ethical niceties; Stat (7/20/17) has raised questions about conflicts of interest in his medical business and how they might impact patients. A Politico investigation (4/9/17) of Soon-Shiong’s research foundation found widespread self-dealing:

Of the nearly $59.6 million in foundation expenditures between its founding in 2010 and 2015, the most recent year for which records are available, over 70% have gone to Soon-Shiong–affiliated not-for-profits and for-profits, along with entities that do business with his for-profit firms.

This isn’t the first time Soon-Shiong’s intervention at the paper has raised alarms about editorial freedom. The Daily Beast (10/22/24) reported that earlier this year “executive editor Kevin Merida resigned after Soon-Shiong tried to block a story that accused one of his friends’ dogs of biting a woman in a Los Angeles park.”

Layoffs at the Times earlier this year also sparked outrage from trade unionists and journalists. “A delegation of 10 members of Congress warned Soon-Shiong in a letter that sweeping media layoffs could undermine democracy in a high-stakes election year,” reported Los Angeles Magazine (1/23/24).

There was also a racial element, the Times union said in a statement (Editor and Publisher, 1/24/24):

It also means the company has reneged on its promises to diversify its ranks since young journalists of color have been disproportionately affected. The Black, AAPI and Latino Caucuses have suffered devastating losses.

Bezos is far better known than Soon-Shiong; while it’s not reported that he directly intervened to stop a Post endorsement, like at the LA Times, NPR noted that Bezos depends on harmonious interactions with the federal government, as the company he founded, Amazon, depends on government contracts. Conflict-of-interest questions have long surrounded his control of the paper (FAIR.org, 3/1/14, 3/14/18, 9/19/19; CJR, 9/27/22; Guardian, 6/12/24; CNN, 6/18/24).

Helping a fellow billionaire

NPR (10/25/24): Elon Musk “has become one of the leading boosters of baseless claims that Democrats are bringing in immigrants to illegally vote for them — a conspiracy theory that Trump and other Republicans have made core to their narratives about the 2024 election.”

It’s hard to ignore that in blocking endorsements expected to go to Trump’s opponent, billionaire owners are using their media power to help a fellow billionaire. With the Washington Post, readers can easily assume that Bezos cares more about not offending the powerful than its now-laughable slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Bill Grueskin (X, 10/25/24), a professor at Columbia Journalism School, said that these endorsements are “unimportant politically” because “few votes would be swayed”—the Los Angeles area and the Beltway are solidly blue. But there’s an ominous factor here, he said, because “the billionaire owners are (intentionally or not) sending a signal to the newsrooms: Prepare to accommodate your coverage to a Trump regime.”

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is likewise using his wealth and his ownership of the social media network Twitter (rebranded as X) to boost Trump (PBS, 10/21/24; NPR, 10/25/24).

And Republican megadonor and billionaire Miriam Adelson “shelled out $95 million to the pro-Donald Trump Preserve America PAC during its third quarter,” Forbes (10/15/24) reported. Her late husband bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal in December of 2015 (AP, 12/17/15), and as the New York Times (1/2/16) reported:

Suspicions about his motives for paying a lavish $140 million for the newspaper last month are based on his reputation in Las Vegas as a figure comfortable with using his money in support of his numerous business and political concerns, said more than a dozen of the current and former Review-Journal staffers and local civic figures who have worked closely with him.

Big money has played an enormous part in US elections, especially since the Citizens United decision eviscerated limits on campaign spending (PBS, 2/1/23). “A handful of powerful megadonors have played an outsized role in shaping the 2024 presidential race through mammoth donations toward their favored candidates,” Axios (10/23/24) reported. These megadonors “skew Republican,” the Washington Post (10/16/24) reported.

Much of the press in the United States has, correctly, portrayed a second Trump term as a threat to democracy and a move toward corrupt autocracy, eroding institutions like the free press and independent justice system (Atlantic, 8/2/23; New York Times, 9/21/24, 10/3/24, 10/22/24; MSNBC, 10/22/24; NPR, 10/22/24). Yet the intervention of Soon-Shiong and his fellow moguls is an indication that our media are already not in democratic hands. Far from it; they are in the hands of the billionaire class. And it is sure to have an impact on this election.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 25, 2024

Media Hawks Make Case for War Against Iran

The Wall Street Journal (10/1/24) describes an Iranian missile barrage as a response to “Israel’s restraint”—rather than as a response to an Israeli terrorist bombing in Tehran, which went unmentioned in the editorial.

The media hawks are flying high, pushing out bellicose rhetoric on the op-ed pages that seems calculated to whip the public into a war-ready frenzy.

Just as they have done with Hezbollah (FAIR.org, 10/10/24), prominent conservative media opinionators misrepresent Iran as the aggressor against an Israel that practices admirable restraint.

Under the headline, “Iran Opens the Door to Retaliation,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board (10/1/24) wrote that Iran’s October 1 operation against Israel “warrants a response targeting Iran’s military and nuclear assets. This is Iran’s second missile barrage since April, and no country can let this become a new normal.”

The editors wrote:

After April’s attack, the Biden administration pressured Israel for a token response, and President Biden said Israel should “take the win” since there was no great harm to Israel. Israel’s restraint has now yielded this escalation, and it is under no obligation to restrain its retaliation this time.

‘We need to escalate’

“Bully regimes respond to the stick,” Bret Stephens (New York Times, 10/1/24) declared—citing the fact that Iran was reluctant to make a nuclear deal with the United States after the United States unilaterally abrogated the last deal.

The New York Times‘ self-described “warmongering neocon” columnist Bret Stephens (10/1/24), in a piece headlined “We Absolutely Need to Escalate in Iran,” similarly filed Iran’s April and October strikes on Israel under “aggression” that requires a US/Israeli military “response.” And a Boston Globe editorial (10/3/24) wrote that Iran “launched a brazen attack,” arguing that the incident illustrated why US students are wrong to oppose American firms making or investing in Israeli weapons.

All of these pieces conveniently neglected to mention that Iran announced that its October 1 missile barrage was “a response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], Hezbollah and Hamas” (Responsible Statecraft, 10/1/24). One of these assassinations was carried out by a bombing in Tehran, the Iranian capital. But we can only guess as to whether the Globe thinks those killings are “brazen,” Stephens thinks they qualify as “aggression,” or if the Journal believes any country can let such assassinations “become a new normal.”

Likewise, Iran’s April strikes came after Israel’s attack on an Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers (CBS, 4/14/24). At the time, Iran reportedly said that it would refrain from striking back against Israel if the latter agreed to end its mass murder campaign in Gaza (Responsible Statecraft, 4/8/24).

‘Axis of Aggression’

Bret Stephens (New York Times, 10/8/24) thinks we’d be safer if “cunning and aggressive dictatorships…finally learned the taste of defeat.”

A second Stephens piece (New York Times, 10/8/24) claimed that “the American people had better hope Israel wins” in its war against “the Axis of Aggression led from Tehran.” The latter is his term for the coalition of forces resisting the US and Israel from Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran, which refers to itself as the “axis of resistance.” Stephens’ reasoning is that, since Iran’s 1979 revolution, the country

has meant suffering for thousands of Americans: the hostages at the US embassy in Tehran; the diplomats and Marines in Beirut; the troops around Baghdad and Basra, killed by munitions built in Iran and supplied to proxies in Iraq; the American citizens routinely taken as prisoners in Iran; the Navy SEALs who perished in January trying to stop Iran from supplying Houthis with weapons used against commercial shipping.

The war Israelis are fighting now—the one the news media often mislabels the “Gaza war,” but is really between Israel and Iran—is fundamentally America’s war, too: a war against a shared enemy; an enemy that makes common cause with our totalitarian adversaries in Moscow and Beijing; an enemy that has been attacking us for 45 years. Americans should consider ourselves fortunate that Israel is bearing the brunt of the fighting; the least we can do is root for it.

This depiction of Iran as an aggressor that has victimized the United States for 45 years, causing “suffering for thousands of Americans,” is a parody of history. The fact is that the US has imposed suffering on millions of Iranians for 71 years, starting with the overthrow of the country’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It propped up the brutal Pahlavi dictatorship until 1979, then backed Iraq’s invasion of Iran, helping Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons against Iranians (Foreign Policy, 8/26/13). It imposes murderous sanctions on Iran to this day (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23).

Given this background, suggesting—as the Journal, the Globe and Stephens do—that Iran is the aggressor against the US is not only untenable but laughable. Furthermore, as I’ve previously shown (FAIR.org, 1/21/20), it’s hardly a settled fact that Iran is responsible for Iraqi attacks on US occupation forces in the country. Stephens’ description of the Navy SEALs who died in the Red Sea is vague enough that one might be left with the impression that Iran or Ansar Allah killed them, but the SEALs died when one of them fell overboard and the other jumped into the water to try to save him (BBC, 1/22/24).

Stephens went on:

Those who care about the future of freedom had better hope Israel wins.

We are living in a world that increasingly resembles the 1930s, when cunning and aggressive dictatorships united against debilitated, inward-looking, risk-averse democracies. Today’s dictatorships also know how to smell weakness. We would all be safer if, in the Middle East, they finally learned the taste of defeat.

What Stephens is deploying here is the tired and baseless propaganda strategy of hinting that World War II redux is impending if America doesn’t crush the Third World bad guy of the moment. More realistically, the “future of freedom” is jeopardized by the US/Israeli alliance’s invading the lands of Palestinian and Lebanese people and massacring them. These crimes suggest that, in the Journal’s parlance, it’s the US/Israeli partnership that is the “regional and global menace.” Or, to borrow another phrase from the Journal’s editorial, it’s Israel and the US who are the “dangerous regime[s]” from which “the civilized world” must be defended.

‘A global menace’

“Iran launched a brazen attack,” the Boston Globe (10/3/24) editorialized—brazenly ignoring Israeli violence toward Iran.

Corporate media commentators didn’t stop at Iran’s direct strikes on Israel, casting Iran as, in the Journal‘s words (10/1/24), “a regional and global menace”:

It started this war via Hamas, which it funds, arms and trains to carry out massacres like the one on October 7, and it escalated via Hezbollah, spreading war to Lebanon. Other proxies destabilize Iraq and Yemen, fire on Israeli and US troops and block global shipping. It sends drones and missiles to Russia and rains ballistic missiles on Israel. All while seeking nukes.

Stephens’ column (10/1/24) similarly argued that “Iran presents an utterly intolerable threat not only to Israel but also to the United States and whatever remains of the liberal international order we’re supposed to lead.” The Globe editorial (10/3/24) wrote that “the threat posed by Iran extends beyond Israel’s borders.” Both cited the Houthis in Yemen, among other alleged Iranian “proxies.”

Painting Iran as the mastermind behind unprovoked worldwide aggression helps prop up the hawks’ demands for escalation. But the US State Department said there was “no direct evidence” that Iran was involved in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel, “either in planning it or carrying it out” (NBC, 10/12/23).

As FAIR has shown repeatedly (e.g., FAIR.org, 4/21/21, 8/26/20), it isn’t true that Hezbollah is an Iranian puppet. The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, likewise aren’t mere proxies (Democracy Now!, 2/1/24)—and don’t expect the media hawks to tell you that the Houthis began attacking ships they understand to be Israel-linked in response to the US/Israeli assault on Gaza, and say that they will stop if the US/Israeli war crimes in Gaza end.

Moreover, it’s clear that the Journal has no problem with US arms exports, including when they are used to carry out atrocities against civilians, so its posturing about the harm done by Iranian arms sales to Russia cannot be taken seriously (FAIR.org, 1/27/23).

Propaganda goes nuclear

Uriel Hellman (LA Times, 10/17/24) writes that “the responsible nations of the world have tried myriad methods to thwart this doomsday scenario” of Iran making a nuclear weapon, including “negotiated agreements.” The US has tried making deals with Iran, it’s tried violating those deals—nothing seems to work!

As usual, those who are itching for a war on Iran invoke the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Stephens (New York Times, 10/1/24) wrote:

This year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. Even with the requisite fissile material, it takes time and expertise to fashion a nuclear weapon, particularly one small enough to be delivered by a missile. But a prime goal for Iran’s nuclear ambitions is plainly in sight, especially if it receives technical help from its new best friends in Russia, China and North Korea.

Now’s the time for someone to do something about it.

That someone will probably be Israel.

By “something,” Stephens said he also meant that “Biden should order” military strikes to destroy the “Isfahan missile complex.” “There is a uranium enrichment site near Isfahan, too,” Stephens wrote suggestively.

The LA Times published two guest op-eds in less than two weeks urging attacks on Iran based on its alleged nuclear threat. Yossi Klein Halevi (10/7/24) wrote:

Today, Iran sits at the nuclear threshold…. The culminating moment of this war to restore Israeli deterrence against existential threat will be preventing Iran’s nuclear breakout.

Ten days later, Uriel Heilman (LA Times, 10/17/24) argued: “With Iran’s belligerence in overdrive, the US and its allies should seriously consider a military option to take out Iran’s nuclear sites.”

The first question posed by CBS‘s Margaret Brennan in the vice presidential debate (10/1/24)—”would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?”—was premised on the claim that Iran “has drastically reduced the time it would take to develop a nuclear weapon. It is down now to one or two weeks time.”

‘Threshold’ is a ways away

If this New York Times piece (10/2/24) seems to have a different, less alarmist tone than other corporate media reports, perhaps that’s because its author, William Broad, is a science reporter and not someone whose beat is foreign policy.

Readers who aren’t versed in the technical terms used to discuss nuclear proliferation can be forgiven for thinking that a country at “the nuclear threshold” is mere days away from being able to use nuclear weapons against their enemies, as these media warnings seem to suggest. But in reality, as the blog War on the Rocks (5/3/24) explained:

Three distinct elements distinguish a state that has achieved a threshold status. First, the conscious pursuit of this combined technical, military and organizational capability to rapidly (probably within three to six months) obtain a rudimentary nuclear explosive capability after a decision to proceed. Second, implementation of a strategy for achieving and utilizing this status. And third, the application of this status for gain vis-à-vis adversaries, allies and/or domestic audiences. Nevertheless, a threshold state remains sufficiently short of weapons possession and even from the capacity to assemble disparate components into a nuclear weapon within days.

According to a Congressional Research Service document (3/20/24) published in March, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports “suggest that Iran does not yet have a viable nuclear weapon design or a suitable explosive detonation system.”

Estimates of how long it would take for Iran to develop nuclear weapons vary. US intelligence said that Iran could enrich enough uranium for three nuclear devices within weeks if it chose to do so (Congressional Research Service, 9/6/24). Yet as noted by Houston G. Wood, an emeritus professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who specializes in atomic centrifuges and other nuclear issues, it “would take Iran up to a year to devise a weapon once it had enough nuclear fuel” (New York Times, 10/2/24).

Siegfried S. Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, likewise told the New York Times that “it would likely take many months” for Iran to develop nukes, “not weeks.” As the Times noted, CBS‘s question in the vice presidential debate “conflated the time it would most likely take Iran to manufacture a bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium with the overall process of turning it into a weapon. ”

What’s more, US intelligence continues to say that Iran “is not currently undertaking nuclear weapons-related activities” (Congressional Research Service, 9/6/24). In 2003, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa against building nuclear weapons that has not yet been rescinded (FAIR.org, 10/17/17).

‘Iran won’t stop itself’

“Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments,” the IAEA (3/5/18) said in March 2018. Two months later, the same could not be said to the United States.

Even if Iran were pursuing nuclear weapons, nothing under international law supports the idea that Israel and the US therefore have the right to attack Iran. India would not have been within its rights to attack Pakistan to prevent its rival from building a nuclear weapon.

But media assume different rules apply to Iran. The editors of the Wall Street Journal (10/1/24) contended:

If there were ever cause to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, [Iran’s October attack on Israel] is it…. Iran is closer than ever to a nuclear weapon and won’t stop itself. The question for American and Israeli leaders is: If not now, when?

Recent history shows that Iran has been willing to “stop itself” from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran abided by the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal, under which Iran limited its nuclear development in exchange for a partial easing of US sanctions. It stuck to the deal for some time even after the United States unilaterally abandoned it.

Just before President Donald Trump ripped up the agreement in 2018, the IAEA reported that Iran was “implementing its nuclear-related commitments” under the accord. The year after the US abrogated the agreement, Iran was still keeping up its end of the bargain.

‘Provocative actions’ from US/Israel

Responsible Statecraft (5/7/24): “Relations between the United States and Iran have been so damaged by Trump’s withdrawal that it does not appear as though the deal can be resurrected.”

Iran subsequently stopped adhering to the by then nonexistent deal—often advancing its nuclear program, as Responsible Statecraft (5/7/24) noted, “in response to provocative actions from the US and Israel”:

In early 2020, the Trump administration killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and soon after Tehran announced that it would no longer abide by its enrichment commitments under the deal. But, even so, Tehran said it would return to compliance if the other parties did so and met their commitments on sanctions relief.

In late 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by Israel. Soon after, Iran’s Guardian Council approved a law to speed up the nuclear program by enriching uranium to 20%, increasing the rate of production, installing new centrifuges, suspending implementation of expanded safeguards agreements, and reducing monitoring and verification cooperation with the IAEA. The Agency has been unable to adequately monitor Iran’s nuclear activities under the deal since early 2021.

However, situating Iranian policies in relation to US/Israeli actions like these would get in the way of the Journal’s campaign, which it articulated in another editorial (10/2/24), to convince the public that “If Mr. Biden won’t take this opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the least he can do is not stop Israel from doing the job for its own self-preservation.”

Of course, the crucial, unstated assumption in the articles by Stephens, Halevi, Heilman and the Journal’s editors is that Iran’s hypothetical nuclear weapons are emergencies that need to be immediately addressed by bombing the country—while Washington and Tel Aviv’s vast, actually existing nuclear arsenals warrant no concern.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 25, 2024

[EVENT | October 29] Left Adrift With Timothy Shenk

A conversation in New York with Dissent editor emeritus Timothy Shenk about his new book, Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics.

This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
October 25, 2024

Know Your Enemy: The Infernal Triangle

Historian and journalist Rick Perlstein explains what Democrats and the media are (still) getting wrong about the threat from Trump and the far right.

This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
October 24, 2024

CPB Funds Ideological Overseers at NPR in Response to Right-Wing Criticism

NPR is adding a new team of editors to give all content a “final review”—thanks to the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

After the public broadcaster came under right-wing scrutiny in the spring for supposed left-wing bias, NPR editor-in-chief Edith Chapin (NPR.org, 5/15/24) announced the organization would be adding 11 new oversight positions, though she wouldn’t say who would be funding them. The hires include six editors for a new “Backstop” team that will give all content, including content from member stations, a “final review” before it can be aired.

The CPB announced its role in a press release (10/18/24) that declared it was giving NPR $1.9 million in “editorial enhancement” funding to help NPR

further strengthen its editorial operations and meet the challenges of producing 24/7 news content on multiple platforms that consistently adheres to the highest standards of editorial integrity—accuracy, fairness, balance, objectivity and transparency, and the obligation to include diverse viewpoints.

‘You push people away’

A disgruntled NPR employee’s ax-grinding (Free Press, 4/9/24) prompted CPB to give nearly $2 million to keep an eye on NPR‘s politics.

That language reads as a direct response to the recent right-wing criticism. In April, former NPR business editor Uri Berliner published a lengthy essay in Bari Weiss‘s Free Press (4/9/24; FAIR.org, 4/24/24) arguing that NPR‘s “progressive worldview” influenced its journalism. Berliner’s essay centered around what he claimed was the “most damaging development at NPR: the absence of viewpoint diversity.”

Berliner was referring to the viewpoints of NPR journalists—he claimed he looked up the voter registration of NPR‘s Washington, DC, staff, and found no Republicans—but suggested that led to skewed reporting, including “advocacy” against Donald Trump.

NPR alum Alicia Montgomery (Slate, 4/16/24) penned a lengthy response to Berliner, noting, among other things, that staffers were “encouraged to make sure that any coverage of a Trump lie was matched with a story about a lie from Hillary Clinton.” Indeed, during Trump’s presidency, NPR senior vice president for news Michael Oreskes (WUNC, 1/25/17; FAIR.org, 1/26/17) announced that NPR had decided not to use the word “lie”: “I think the minute you start branding things with a word like ‘lie,’ you push people away from you.”

Montgomery wrote that the real problem with NPR was

an abundance of caution that often crossed the border to cowardice. NPR culture encouraged an editorial fixation on finding the exact middle point of the elite political and social thought, planting a flag there, and calling it objectivity.

‘Intractable bias’

NPR‘s editor-in-chief Edith Chapin spun the installation of government-funded commissars as “something positive for journalism” (Current, 5/20/24).

Despite the lack of merit to Berliner’s arguments, the GOP jumped at the opportunity to engage in their time-worn ritual of investigating public broadcasting’s “intractable bias,” demanding that NPR CEO Katherine Maher document and report the partisan affiliations of all news media staff of the past five years, as well as all board members (FAIR.org, 5/11/24).

Chapin, who in an internal email (X, 4/9/24) about Berliner’s attack stressed the need to serve “all audiences” and “[break] down the silos,” said Berliner’s piece and the scrutiny it prompted was “a factor” in her decision to add the editorial positions (Current, 5/20/24).

Under the new editorial organization, it appears that all reporting, whether produced by NPR or its member stations, will have to undergo final review by the “Backstop” team (which reports to Chapin herself) before it can be aired or published—which has some staff worried about bottlenecks as well as bias (New York Times, 5/16/24).

Survival through capitulation

Looking at NPR‘s sources (e.g., FAIR.org, 9/18/18) consistently finds a bias not to the left, but to the center and right.

The CPB was created to insulate public broadcasters from political intimidation, offering a degree of separation from government pressures. But since its inception, it has instead been used as a political tool to push PBS and NPR to bend over backwards to programming demands from the right, which has developed a winning formula: accuse public broadcasters of liberal bias, threaten to cut CPB funding, allow it to be “saved” by extracting programming concessions—rinse and repeat (FAIR.org, 2/18/11).

As FAIR wrote 20 years ago (Extra!, 9–10/05), in the midst of that year’s right-wing assault on PBS:

With each successive attack from the right, public broadcasting becomes weakened, as programmers become more skittish and public TV’s habit of survival through capitulation becomes more ingrained.

Public broadcasting’s founding purpose was to promote perspectives that weren’t already widely represented in the media, yet it has consistently failed to live up to that mission. Some PBS and NPR programming tries to be faithful to that standard—particularly local programming from member stations—but FAIR studies (e.g., Extra!, 11/10, 11/10; FAIR.org, 9/18/18) have repeatedly shown that PBS viewers and NPR listeners often get the same, government-dominated voices and ideas they hear on other major media outlets.

Conservative voices in particular, in part because of right-wing pressure, have long found a welcoming home in public broadcasting, hosting PBS shows such as Firing Line, McLaughlin Group, Journal Editorial Report, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered and In Principle. NPR focuses much more on straight news and cultural programming; a FAIR study (7/15/15) of NPR commentators found them to be almost entirely apolitical.

No help seeing America whole

Sarah Jaffe (FAIR.org, 2/1/17): “The norms of ‘balance’ that for-profit media have relied on to avoid offending news consumers…seem utterly useless under an administration that considers lies simply ‘alternative facts.‘”

Now we have the CPB providing funding to NPR to hire editors that will make sure its programming adheres to standards that include “objectivity,” “balance” and “the obligation to include diverse viewpoints.” NPR staffers have every right to be worried about that.

How will the new editors define these terms? FAIR has repeatedly pointed out that objectivity is a journalistic myth; subjective decisions are made every time one story is greenlighted over another, and one source is selected over another.

And if objectivity were possible, it certainly wouldn’t square with a journalistic notion of balance that orders offsetting coverage of Trump party lies with coverage of Democratic lies. It’s not hard for politicians to realize that if “balance” and “objectivity” mean passing along whatever powerful voices say without scrutiny, media will serve as a frictionless delivery system for whatever reality you choose to make up.

Public broadcasting was indeed created to promote diverse viewpoints. The 1967 Carnegie Commission that launched public broadcasting wrote that it should “provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard,” and air programs that “help us see America whole, in all its diversity.” But as we’ve shown over and over, it’s not GOP viewpoints that are missing—it’s the perspectives representing the public interest, which are largely absent in corporate media, and which the new CPB funding is not designed to address.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR‘s public editor here. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.

FEATURED IMAGE: NPR headquarters, Washington, DC (Creative Commons photo: Cornellrockey04)

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 24, 2024

When It Comes to the Grocery Store, We’re Still Left Holding the Bag
If you’re worried about plastic pollution, you’ve likely felt exasperated unpacking your reusable bag after a trip to the grocery store. There is still WAY too much throwaway plastic wrapped around our food. And if you’re thinking the grocery sector is headed the wrong way when it comes to wasteful plastic packaging, you’re right. Our updated survey of the major retailers’ shelves proves it.

When we first surveyed key shelves in stores of the major grocery chains across Canada in the fall of 2022, we found that more than 70 per cent of products that were recently packaged in cans, jars or paper, or sold loose, were in plastic packaging. One of the most striking tallies was on the baby food shelf, where 76 per cent of foods were packaged in plastic.

Over the course of a couple of weeks this past August, we sent auditors back to 13 stores owned by the major chains – Loblaw, Empire, Metro and Walmart – to follow up on our original survey. They scanned the products in the produce section and the soups and baby food aisles. Sadly, they found even more plastic than before.

The amount of plastic on the baby food and soup shelves is up while there is no measurable drop in the plastic wrapped around fruits and vegetables.

What’s more, the vast majority of the packaging on the shelves is not widely recycled in Canada. From mesh bags and foam trays to plastic pouches, the most commonly found packaging is destined for landfills or incinerators – if it doesn’t blow directly into the environment before it gets there. And let’s not forget that packaging is the number one source of plastic waste in Canada.

The answers to all this throwaway plastic are clear:
- No packaging for sturdy fruits and vegetables, especially those that come in their own peels or shells (how are we still wrapping coconuts in plastic?)
- Refillable containers so we don’t have to treat packaging as garbage
The good news is that reusable packaging is coming, including at the major grocery retailers. Empire, Metro and Walmart are all participating in a new program in Ottawa to replace single-use plastic takeout containers with reusable ones. Customers buying prepared foods at the deli counter will get them in a sturdy reusable container to be returned to any participating store, restaurant or café. It is then sent for cleaning at a local washing facility before it is put back on the shelf for the next customer.

We urgently need more reuse systems like this for many more of our grocery items. We should be able to return all kinds of packaging to the grocery store so that it can be sanitized and refilled.

That’s why it’s important to support the federal government’s proposal to require grocery chains to reduce their single-use plastic food packaging. Our audits show that the major retailers are not moving enough to eliminate unnecessary single-use plastic packaging on their own – shameful evidence that rules are needed to reign in plastic.

The good news is that people in Canada support elimination of plastic packaging in the grocery store. If you’re in Ottawa, we urge you to embrace the shift to reusables now on offer in grocery stores and cafés. You can find out more and download the app here. As for the rest of Canada, it’s time to demand change in your grocery store!

The post When It Comes to the Grocery Store, We’re Still Left Holding the Bag appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
October 22, 2024

US Sanctions Shoot Down Sputnik Radio

A spokesperson for Kansas City’s KCXL defended its former Radio Sputnik programming as “produced in Washington, DC, by American journalists who jumped at the chance to not be told what to report on by big media and big corporations” (Desk, 10/15/24).

Russian state radio network Radio Sputnik is off the air in the two markets on which it aired in the United States, and the cause of the closure is reportedly US government sanctions.

The Desk (10/15/24), quoting “one source familiar with the decision to wind down the network,” said “it was directly influenced by the US State Department’s imposition of new sanctions on Russia-backed broadcast outlets last month.”

“While Sputnik was not specifically named by the State Department,” the Desk reported, the sanctions did hit Sputnik‘s parent company, a Russian government media agency called Rossiya Segodnya. This “made it difficult to continue leasing time on Washington and Kansas City radio stations where its programming was heard.”

The State Department (9/13/24) accused Rossiya Segodnya of carrying out “covert influence activities”; earlier (9/4/24), it had named Sputnik itself as well as Rossiya Segodnya as “foreign missions.” Significantly, the executive order under which Rossiya Segodnya was sanctioned extends penalties to the property of anyone who “acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly…any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.”

‘Years of criticism’

When Moscow does it, it’s “propaganda”; when Washington does it, it’s the Voice of America (10/16/24).

US government broadcaster Voice of America (10/16/24) said Sputnik‘s departure comes “after years of criticism that its local [Washington] radio station, WZHF, carries antisemitic content and false information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

The VoA did not offer any evidence of its claims of antisemitism, other than saying Jack Bergman, a Republican congressman from Michigan, “cited a steady stream of antisemitic tropes.” (Critical profiles of Sputnik‘s US programming have not previously charged it with antisemitism–Washington Post, 3/7/22; New York Post, 3/28/22.)

Sputnik’s departure from US airwaves is sudden but not unexpected. Communications lawyer Arthur Belendiuk, who has represented the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, has been trying to shut down Sputnik via the Federal Communications Commission since February (Radio and Television Business Report, 2/1/24).

Belendiuk maintains that the network “is in violation of commission rules for broadcasting ‘paid Russian state propaganda’” (Radio and Television Business Report, 10/16/24). He told FAIR that while he understood Sputnik had freedom of speech, he also had a “freedom to petition my government.” Bergman, the Republican congressmember, requested that the FCC take action against Sputnik (Inside Radio, 1/5/24).

The pressure has been building against the radio network for some time. VoA reported that the National Association of Broadcasters had issued a statement in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine calling on “broadcasters to cease carrying any state-sponsored programming with ties to the Russian government or its agents.”

The Washington Post (3/7/22) also noted:

In 2017, three Democratic members of Congress sought an investigation into why it was still on the air despite evidence that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission at the time, Ajit Pai, declined to take action, saying the First Amendment would bar his agency “from interfering with a broadcast licensee’s choice of programming, even if that programming may be objectionable to many listeners.”

Chilling effect on speech

In 2020, the New York Times (2/13/20) called the arrival of Radio Sputnik in Kansas City “an unabashed exploitation of American values and openness.” Those loopholes have subsequently been closed.

I have been interviewed several times on Sputnik programs about my articles here at FAIR (e.g. By Any Means Necessary, 4/26/23, 5/27/23, 9/27/23). I have objected to much of the network’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which its website still calls a “special operation,” as if it’s gallbladder surgery. But I am open to talking as a source to many forms of media.

Sanctions that scare broadcasters against carrying Sputnik do carry a chilling effect on speech; if programmers know that a certain kind of content could open them up to government punishment, most are going to steer well clear of that content.

The feds have made it clear that their punishments are serious. In 2009, New York City small-business owner Javed Iqbal “was sentenced…to nearly six years in prison for assisting terrorists by providing satellite television services to Hezbollah’s television station, Al Manar” (New York Times, 4/23/09). This is an outlet that Middle East reporters constantly monitor, as they do with lots of other Middle East media.

The New York Times (2/13/20) called Sputnik “Russian agitprop,” carrying the message that “that America is damaged goods.” The Kansas City Star editorial board (3/4/22) said that listeners to KCXL, which carried Sputnik programming, were “bombarded with pro-Putin talk” thanks to Sputnik. The paper wondered why such programming was airing in the area. “Money talks,” the board said. “Or maybe we should say rubles.”

These critiques are hard to argue with, as you’d be hard-pressed to find investigations of the Russian government or its business elite in such media. Government broadcasters, whether it’s VoA or Sputnik, are not meant to be fair and balanced newsrooms, but vehicles to convey official thinking about the news to the rest of the world.

But Ted Rall, the cartoonist and political commentator who co-hosted the Sputnik show Final Countdown, challenged the idea that Sputnik’s content was government-managed. “We were no one’s dupes,” he wrote in an email to FAIR explaining the end of the network’s airing in the US:

I have worked in print and broadcast journalism for most of my life in a variety of roles at a wide variety of outlets, and I cannot recall an organization that gave me as much freedom to say whatever I felt like about any topic whatsoever.

He said that his show offered “an incredibly interesting, intelligent roster of political analysts,” which he believed were on par with “the finest journalists at NPR, the major broadcast networks or anywhere else.”

‘Growing wave of threats’

The president of the US equivalent of Radio Sputnik said that its operations being shut down in Russia “shows that Moscow considers independent reporting to be ‘an existential threat’” (RFE/RL, (2/20/24). So what does the shutting down of Sputnik show?

Belendiuk, for his part, called Sputnik’s content “divisive.” That’s a term that could be applied to lots of US radio content, like right-wing talk shows and religious broadcasting that consigns nonbelievers to Hell. The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine has been gone for a while (Extra!, 1–2/05; Washington Post, 2/4/21). At FAIR,we have long documented that US corporate media serve a propaganda function for the US government, much of it false or deceptive.

But when official enemy states treat US-owned outlets the way the US is treating Russia’s, that’s considered an assault on a free press. When the US’s anti-Russia broadcaster, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (2/20/24), was put on a government watch list that “effectively bans RFE/RL from working in Russia and exposes anyone who cooperates with the outlet to potential prosecution,” the outlet reported that its president, Stephen Capus, responded that “the move shows that Moscow considers independent reporting to be ‘an existential threat.’”

And when Russia barred a VoA reporter from entering the country, the CEO of the government agency that runs both VoA and RFE/RL, Amanda Bennett, told VoA (3/14/24):

The Russian government’s decision to ban VoA national security correspondent Jeff Seldin from its country echoes a growing wave of threats to press freedom by authoritarian regimes.

That’s heavy stuff, but ultimately the US is doing the same thing. In the case of Sputnik, sanctions seemed to have crushed the network. RT America fell without overt government pressure, as it shut down its operations after “DirecTV, the largest US satellite TV operator, stopped carrying RT America…a decision based on Russia’s attack on Ukraine” (CNBC, 3/3/22).

And the US State Department (1/20/22) said:

RT and Sputnik’s role as disinformation and propaganda outlets is most obvious when they report on issues of political importance to the Kremlin. A prevalent example is Russia’s use of RT and Sputnik to attempt to change public opinions about Ukraine in Europe, the United States, and as far away as Latin America. When factual reporting on major foreign policy priorities is not favorable, Russia uses state-funded international media outlets to inject pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda into the information environment.

Harsh, but again, this is what state broadcasters have been doing for decades, and if we as Americans dislike American outlets being blocked abroad, then we are, at this point, getting a taste of our own medicine.

‘Begin with the least popular victim’

Reporters Without Borders dropped the US’s press freedom ranking in 2024, “thanks in part to consolidation that has gutted local news and forced corporations to prioritize profits over public service” (Axios, 5/7/24).

Actions like the moves against Sputnik are troubling, and not just as another sign of a roiling new Cold War. While the US prides itself on being a model of free expression, journalists here have been concerned for some time now about the nation’s decline in press freedom (Axios, 5/7/24; FAIR.org, 3/16/21).

“In this situation, journalists should be absolutely terrified that the US government will come after them next,” Rall said. “President Biden unilaterally killed a media outlet with the stroke of a pen. Yes, it’s a foreign outlet, but the First Amendment is supposed to protect those.”

For FAIR, the action against Sputnik seems no less dangerous than local government attempts to silence even small domestic outlets like the Marion County Record (FAIR.org, 8/14/23) and the Asheville Blade (FAIR.org, 6/8/23). For example, the New York Times (10/21/24) recently fretted that former President Donald Trump’s statement that “CBS should lose its license” was a sign that if he is elected, he would pressure the FCC to revoke licenses of major network affiliate stations. The recent news about Sputnik makes that idea far more possible.

Rall added that he didn’t believe that the US government would stop after taking action against Russian outlets.

“Any effort at censorship is going to begin with the least popular victim and then creep and spread after that,” he said.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 18, 2024

To Be a Media Expert on Economics, It Helps to Have the Right Politics

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” John Maynard Keynes made this observation in 1936, in his masterwork The General Theory. Nearly a century later, readers and viewers of corporate media face the same fate.

The fundamental problem confronted by these news consumers is not that corporate news outlets consult economists in their reporting; as experts in their field, economists often have important and worthwhile contributions to make. The problem is that these outlets consistently elevate the views of specific economists who serve particular ideological interests over the views of other economists, or even the academic profession as a whole.

The austerity gospel

Simon Wren-Lewis (LRB, 2/19/15): “‘Mediamacro’…prefers simple stories to more complex analysis. As part of this, it is fond of analogies between governments and individuals, even when those analogies are generally seen to be false by macroeconomists.”

Consider the case of the 2008 financial crisis and the austerity mania that followed. The British economist Simon Wren-Lewis (London Review of Books, 2/9/15) has documented how media depictions of austerity diverged sharply from professional economists’ understandings and textbooks’ explanations of macroeconomics. His term for the media’s unique understanding of macroeconomics is “mediamacro,” which is characterized by an obsession with cutting the deficit over and above all other concerns.

In the wake of the banking crisis that followed the collapse of the housing bubble in 2007-08, and then the onset of the Eurozone crisis in 2010, standard textbook macroeconomics dictated a runup in the deficit to stimulate the economy out of a downturn. Corporate media, however, bought the arguments of political conservatives and a fringe of academic economists (who nonetheless held positions at prestigious universities), who maintained that austerity, specifically through spending cuts, could return the economy to health.

In the most notorious instance, corporate media outlets opportunistically promoted the findings of a 2010 paper, written by two Harvard economists, that were later famously invalidated due to an Excel error. As Paul Krugman noted in 2013 (New York Times, 4/19/13), this paper was controversial among economists from the start, but this did not stop corporate media from citing it—and its flimsy assertion that there existed a tipping-point for government debt at 90% of GDP, beyond which this debt supposedly imposed a major drag on economic growth—as gospel:

For example, a Washington Post editorial earlier this year warned against any relaxation on the deficit front, because we are “dangerously near the 90% mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.” Notice the phrasing: “economists,” not “some economists,” let alone “some economists, vigorously disputed by other economists with equally good credentials,” which was the reality.

The view from finance

As Mark Copelovitch (SSRN, 10/27/17) has noted, “The single most important factor [in elevating falsehoods about austerity] has been the media’s willingness to embrace and promote these narratives, while largely ignoring the overwhelming empirical and historical evidence that austerity is deeply contractionary and counter-productive.”

In another instance recounted by Wren-Lewis (LRB, 2/9/15), after the return of some growth in 2013 in Britain following the election of a Conservative government committed to austerity in 2010, the Financial Times editorial board (9/10/13) declared the Conservatives victorious in their political argument for austerity. This despite the fact that “less than 20% of academic economists surveyed by the Financial Times thought that the recovery of 2013 vindicated austerity.”

Such false right-wing narratives about macroeconomic policy came to dominate media discourse, not merely because political elites adopted these false narratives and thus made them newsworthy, but because corporate media outlets were compliant messengers for elite views and prescriptions.

Why does the media adopt “mediamacro” as its approach to coverage of the economy? One reason proposed by Wren-Lewis (LRB, 2/9/15) is the influence of City of London (or, in the US case, Wall Street) economists, whose

views tend to reflect the economic arguments of those on the right: Regulation is bad, top rates of tax should be low, the state is too large, and budget deficits are a serious and immediate concern.

Moreover, the political leanings of corporate media outlets, whether or not they are made explicit, may encourage them to seek the expertise of economists of a particular ideological bent. These economists’ views may, in turn, be out of step with the academic mainstream on topics like austerity.

The inflation oracle

The corporate media’s tendency to elevate economists of a specific type hasn’t disappeared in the 2020s. With the onset of Covid and the spike in inflation that followed, media broke out their familiar playbook of consulting prominent economists with extreme, and business-friendly, positions.

The infamous example was the elevation of Larry Summers, who slammed Biden’s 2021 stimulus as “the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years” and warned stridently of inflation (Washington Post, 5/24/21). When inflation rose to a high of just over 9% the next year, Summers was hailed by the media as “an oracle: the man who saw it all coming,” as Jacobin editor Seth Ackerman (2/13/23) sarcastically put it.

In one sense, it was true that Summers had seen inflation as a strong possibility, and he did deserve some credit for that. Other economists, notably Paul Krugman, had downplayed the possibility of a jump in inflation and had to eat their words (New York Times, 7/21/22). But the fact that Summers had gotten this one point right, after an illustrious career of getting things wrong, did not exactly justify his skyrocketing status as the go-to voice on inflation, or the heaps of at times fawning media coverage thrown his way (Wall Street Journal, 6/27/22; Fortune, 9/23/22).

Did it justify, for example, Summers garnering six times as many mentions as Krugman on top cable news channels from 2021 through 2023? A Nobel laureate and widely respected commentator, Krugman also happened to be the most prominent proponent of a more dovish, less austere approach to inflation. Though he failed to foresee the initial rise in inflation, Krugman accurately predicted, in contrast to Summers, that the US economy could achieve a “soft landing,” a fall in inflation without a substantial rise in the unemployment rate (New York Times, 5/18/23).

Meanwhile, Summers capitalized on his new status as economic prophet to insist that extreme pain was required to tame inflation. By mid-2022, he confidently proclaimed (Bloomberg, 6/20/22):

We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation—in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment.

Cherry-picking expertise

Like the views of extreme austerity advocates in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Summers’ views in 2022 were acutely out of sync with the mainstream among academic economists, as becomes apparent from surveys of professional economists taken over the course of the inflationary outbreak.

Financial Times/Booth survey of macroeconomists (9/13/22)

One FT/Booth survey taken in the fall of 2022 is particularly informative. It found that most economists thought that the Federal Reserve was on track to contain inflation with its pace of interest rate hikes. Specifically, when asked to react to the statement “Futures markets now suggest the Fed will raise the federal funds rate to about 3.9% by the end of 2022,” only 36% of economists classified the Fed’s actions as “too little too late and insufficient to help keep inflation under control.” The rest either thought that this policy path was sufficient to contain inflation (55%) or thought that it was overkill (9%).

When asked about the toll Fed policy would take on the labor market, academic economists took a moderate stance. Most agreed that the unemployment rate would peak below 6% and that a recession would last for less than a year. Incidentally, only a small minority of economists seem to have foreseen the possibility of inflation returning to target without a recession and with unemployment rising no higher than 4.3%, which is what in fact has occurred. But notwithstanding their apparent excess of pessimism, economists generally agreed that inflation would come under control with nowhere near the punishment Summers was prescribing.

To be fair, these economists were not asked directly what would be sufficient to contain inflation, and if asked directly, it is likely that some segment would have been in Summers’ camp—after all, about a third of the economists surveyed thought that the Fed was doing “too little too late.” But those backing Summers’ full diagnosis would be a fraction of those taking this minority view. So the central point that Summers was in the minority, and likely in quite a small minority, among professional economists is undoubtedly true.

Yet with his quasi-divine status granted by corporate media, Summers could pontificate freely about the need for mass suffering without fear of marginalization for lack of evidence or credibility. So when he prescribed 5% unemployment for five years, all that an outlet like Bloomberg (6/20/22) did was report on his views, no skepticism necessary. And no warning label stating: This is completely out of step with the academic mainstream. In effect, corporate media decided to once again cherry-pick expertise to legitimize austerity policies.

‘Not sensible policy’

James K. Galbraith and Isabella Weber (Boston Globe, 8/22/24) : “Americans still have some common sense…. It shows that all of the efforts of free-market economists to beat it out of them have not yet worked.“

At the same time, alternatives to the dominant austerity paradigm have been treated with caution, if not outright hostility. The New York Times (8/15/24), for example, in a recent piece on Kamala Harris’s advocacy for anti-price-gouging legislation, did consult Isabella Weber, a progressive economist who has become well known for her work on profit-driven inflation. But her testimony was overshadowed in the piece by that of economists with more conservative takes on the issue.

Most notably, the Times relied heavily on the insights of Harvard economist Jason Furman, who helped lead the push for extreme austerity alongside Summers (Wall Street Journal, 9/7/22). His first quote in the article had a simple Econ 101 message: “Egg prices went up last year—it’s because there weren’t as many eggs, and it caused more egg production.” In other words, egg prices went up because of supply issues, and it’s good that prices went up because that spurred more egg production.

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t fit with the facts. Responding to this Furman quote, Weber and James Galbraith observed in a separate article (Boston Globe, 8/22/24):

In fact, US egg production peaked in 2019 and then fell slightly, through last year. Egg prices spiked from early 2022 to $4.82 a dozen on average in January 2023, before falling back again, with no gain in production. High prices did not stimulate America’s hens to greater effort. On these points, Furman laid an egg.

It might be assumed that the Times would engage in this sort of basic factchecking of its sources, and not leave it to two progressive economists writing in the Boston Globe to do that for them. But when the source is a Harvard economist who not too long ago was suggesting (wildly incorrectly) that unemployment would have to jump over 6% for two years to tame inflation (Wall Street Journal, 9/7/22), apparently skepticism is not in order.

Leaving little room to doubt the leanings of the Times reporters, the article ended with another quote from Furman, this time on Harris’s proposal to go after price gouging:

“This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality,” he said. “There’s no upside here, and there is some downside.”

Hand-picked by elites

Conor Smyth (FAIR.org, 2/14/24): “For media outlets owned by the wealthy, there’s obvious utility in directing the conversation away from inequality and toward other concerns.”

If one of the main functions of the media is agenda-setting—deeming certain topics, like government debt, newsworthy and others, like inequality, not so much (FAIR.org, 2/14/24)—another primary function is legitimization: letting audiences know who they should trust and who they should treat with skepticism. Over the course of the recent bout of inflation, corporate outlets have made it clear that those economists who erred on the side of far-reaching austerity were worth listening to. The ones who dissented most strongly from the austerity paradigm were, for the most part, sidelined or only tepidly consulted.

The result has been a constrained debate. Extreme pro-austerity positions have enjoyed high visibility, while progressives have been relegated to the background. This is not because of an imbalance in the evidence. If anything, the side that has been arguing for anti-austerity measures to fight inflation, like temporary price controls, has more evidence for their claims than the side that’s backed harsh monetary austerity. They, at least, haven’t been proven embarrassingly wrong by the experience of the past couple years.

What could help explain the imbalance in coverage is instead the background of different sets of economists. Before being legitimized by corporate media, extremists for austerity like Summers and Furman were legitimized by political status—Summers served in top roles under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and Furman served as a key adviser to Obama. Progressives like Isabella Weber have not enjoyed similar political standing.

Thus, we can see a sort of chain of legitimization that runs from a political system dominated by economic elites to a media ecosystem owned by economic elites. If you can secure a top post in politics, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an extremist with views contradicting the consensus among academic economists. Your views should be taken seriously. For progressives, who have largely been excluded from elite politics in recent decades, serious skepticism is in order.

On the face of it, this system makes some sense. But think a little deeper and you can see an insidious chain servicing the dominant players in American society. That chain needs to be broken. Media outlets need to listen to the evidence, not the false wisdom of economists hand-picked by American elites.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 18, 2024

Environmental Defence Hosts “Transit for Tomorrow” Summit

Public transit is at the nexus of solving Canada’s most pressing challenges. It is a solution to the rising cost of living. It helps us reduce carbon emissions. It is the most powerful method of tackling traffic congestion. It is the lifeblood of economic growth in our towns and cities. It enables building the kind of dense, sustainable and cost-efficient housing supply we need to tackle the housing crisis.

However, we have a big problem. Public transit systems across Canada are in a financial crisis. If this historic challenge isn’t overcome, we risk a future that is costlier, more polluting, and where gridlock holds people and goods back from their full potential.

Communities across the country face the threat of a public transit downward spiral where cuts to service only drive further losses in ridership and revenues. This creates a vicious cycle that only serves to increase carbon emissions, hurt the most vulnerable in our society and discourage the transit-oriented development projects we need to solve the housing crisis.

It is in this context that Environmental Defence is hosting the Transit for Tomorrow Summit in Ottawa on October 28th. We’re happy to announce the program and what you can expect from the event.

What is the “Transit for Tomorrow” summit about?

Public transit systems across Canada have a broken funding model. This summit is about how all levels of government, working together, can help fix it. It is a chance for public transit advocates to convene, communicate the urgency of action to policymakers, and highlight the crucial role of public transit in creating equitable cities, building a stronger economy and meeting Canada’s climate objectives.

Who should attend?

The summit welcomes all public transit advocates and allies, rider advocacy groups, transit riders and enthusiasts, environmentalists, federal, provincial, and municipal officials, mayors and city councillors, public transit agencies, associations, unions, the business community and other groups interested in better public transit and sustainable, equitable cities.

What to expect?

Activities include a full day of panels, presentations and speeches from policy experts, municipal leaders, transit stakeholders, transit rider advocates, and representatives from federal political parties, with lunch included. The event will be fully bilingual with simultaneous translation provided.

Event Program

9:00 am: Opening Remarks

Nate Wallace, Program Manager, Clean Transportation, Environmental Defence

9:05am: Keynote 1

David Miller, Managing Director, C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy. Former Mayor, City of Toronto.

9:20am: Panel: Fixing Public Transit’s Broken Funding Model

Moderator:

Joanne Chianello, Senior Advisor at StrategyCorp, formerly CBC Ottawa.

Panelists:

Éric Alan Caldwell, Chair of the Société de transport de Montréal (STM).
Sharon Fleming, Director of Calgary Transit.
Jamaal Myers, Chair of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC).
Mayor Brad West, Chair of TransLink’s Mayors’ Council on Regional Transportation.

10:20am: Coffee Break

10:30am: Keynote 2

To be announced

10:45am: Unlocking the Power of Public Transit to Cut Carbon Emissions

Nate Wallace, Clean Transportation Program Manager, Environmental Defence

Blandine Sebileau, Analyste, Mobilité durable, Équiterre.

11:00am: Keynote 3

Amarjeet Sohi, Mayor of Edmonton

11:15am: Panel: Building the Future of Transit and Housing

Moderator:

Marc-André Viau, Director of Government Relations at Équiterre

Panelists:

Christian Savard, General Manager of Vivre en Ville.
Sabrina Hamidullah, Director, Real Estate Development, TransLink.
Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, senior housing researcher at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities.

12:00pm: Networking and Lunch Break

12:30pm: Joint Declaration and Photo Opportunity

Media availability in a separate room. Lunch continues for attendees.

1:00pm: Keynote 4

Olivia Chow, Mayor of Toronto (Virtual)

1:15pm: Panel: How Public Transit can Build More Inclusive Communities

Moderator:

David Cooper, Principal, Leading Mobility Consulting

Panelists:

Steven Farber, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough and Project Director of Mobilizing Justice.
Apooyak’ii / Dr. Tiffany Hind Bull-Prete, assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge.
Dr. Léa Ravensbergen, Assistant Professor at McMaster University.

1:55pm: Political Speakers

MP representatives from federal political parties:

MP Taylor Bachrach (NDP)
MP Xavier Barsolou-Duval (Bloc)

2:25pm: Rider Stories Video

Environmental Defence presents the voices of transit riders and share insights from thousands of transit riders nationwide who support today’s declaration.

2:35pm: Panel: Why Transit Matters for People

Moderator:

Shelagh Pizey-Allen, Executive Director of TTC Riders

Panelists:

John Di Nino, President, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Canada.
Denis Agar, Executive Director, Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders.
Sally Thomas, Board Member, Ottawa Transit Riders, founding member of ParaParity.
David Beauchamp, Public Affairs and Communications Coordinator for Trajectoire Québec

3:20pm: Panel: Why Transit Matters for the Economy

Moderator:

Marco D’Angelo, President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association

Panelists:

Dr. Eric J. Miller, professor at the University of Toronto.
Jennifer McNeill, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for New Flyer and Motorcoach Industries

4:00pm: Political Speakers (Continued)

MP representatives from federal political parties:

MP Mike Morrice (Green)

4:10pm: Keynote 5

Valérie Plante, Mayor of Montréal (Virtual)

4:25pm: Closing Remarks

Tim Gray, Executive Director, Environmental Defence Canada

4:30pm: VIP Reception

Email engagement@environmentaldefence.ca to reserve your spot!

The post Environmental Defence Hosts “Transit for Tomorrow” Summit appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
October 18, 2024

Real Leadership is Knowing the Difference Between a Conspiracy and a Crisis

True leaders ought to know the difference between a conspiracy theory and a scientific fact.

Having said that, ask Alberta’s Premier about the scientific fact that climate change is real and increasing the severity of fires, floods and droughts in this province and she’ll dismiss you as a radical. Ask about chemtrails – a debunked conspiracy theory – and she’ll passively blame the US military, but promise to look into it.

According to an Edmonton Journal article, that happened at a recent Town Hall in our province’s capital. It’s hard to say which is more troubling: that the conspiracy wasn’t dismissed out of hand, or that climate change is so easily ignored.

What conspiracy theorists call chemtrails are actually line-shaped clouds of ice crystals caused by airplanes. These clouds are called contrails, which is short for condensation trails.

Photo by Brigitte Elsner via Unsplash

Unless you’re counting the many conspiracy theories around John F. Kennedy’s assassination, chemtrails are the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories. So, what’s going on here? Why does the Premier seemingly accept the possibility of chemtrails and not the science behind climate change and its impacts? If you said electoral politics, you win a prize.

While the Premier has managed to do the equivalent of letting a squirrel loose at the dog park with her vague statements about chemtrails, we have a real crisis on our hands, one that impacts every single Albertan – including those who refuse to believe the science behind it. Climate change has deepened the four-year drought we are experiencing and made wildfires over the last decade more aggressive, extensive and frequent. Floods, including the 2013 disaster are making 100-year events much more frequent occurrences.

The province of Alberta simultaneously drags its own feet, while holding the rest of the country hostage from desperately needed climate action.

Alberta is driving out investment in the province’s once booming renewable energy industry, and making no meaningful commitments to reducing its growing greenhouse gas pollution. At the same time the province is aiming to kill the federal carbon tax, the oil and gas emissions cap, the clean fuel standard and any other climate-related actions the federal government enacts.

The result is what investors call the “flight” of capital – money – out of Alberta, and into other provinces and countries that are more stable and less conspiracy-prone. More than $30 billion have already been lost, and that’s just the beginning. Investment in what was once the province with the fastest-growing renewable industry in Canada has flatlined.

The real impacts may be felt soon, as scientists around the world express a high degree of confidence that dangerous, and deadly weather events will worsen in the coming years. These are facts, tested against rigorous standards and validated using the scientific method.

They are reality, one that can be seen and felt every day.

But our leaders aren’t interested in reality. Instead, they are off chasing chemtrails, while here on earth, their constituents suffer the consequences.

Click here to send a clear message to Alberta’s political leaders that climate change, not chemtrails, is the real threat to life, prosperity and security in our province.

The post Real Leadership is Knowing the Difference Between a Conspiracy and a Crisis appeared first on Environmental Defence.

This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
October 16, 2024

60 Minutes Pushed Harris Right on Econ, Border, While Ignoring Other Vital Issues

With less than a month until Election Day, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat down for an interview with Bill Whitaker on CBS‘s 60 Minutes (10/7/24). (Donald Trump backed out of a similar interview.)

Aside from one televised debate (ABC, 9/10/24), both Harris and Trump have given corporate news outlets remarkably few opportunities to press them on important issues. While Whitaker didn’t offer Harris many softball questions—and included some sharp interrogation on the Middle East—his focus frequently started from right-wing talking points and assumptions, particularly over immigration and economic policy.

FAIR counted 29 questions, with 24 of them going to Harris. Those questions began with foreign policy, which also accounted for the most policy-related questions (7). Whitaker also asked her five questions about the economy, four about immigration, and one more generally about her changed positions on immigration, fracking and healthcare. Seven of Whitaker’s questions to Harris were unrelated to policies or governing; of the five questions to Walz, the only vaguely policy-oriented one asked him to respond to the charge that he was “dangerously liberal.”

‘How are you going to pay?’

A Pew survey (9/9/24) shows little correlation between what voters care about and what 60 Minutes (10/7/24) asked Kamala Harris about.

Economic issues are a top priority for many voters. But rather than ask Harris about whether and how her plan might help people economically, or formulate questions to help voters understand the differences between Harris’s and Trump’s plans, Whitaker focused on two long-standing media obsessions: the deficit and bipartisanship (or lack thereof).

Whitaker first asked Harris: “Groceries are 25% higher, and people are blaming you and Joe Biden for that. Are they wrong?” It’s not clear that people primarily blame the administration for inflation, actually; a Financial Times/Michigan Ross poll in March found that 63% of respondents blamed higher prices on “large corporations taking advantage of inflation,” while 38% blamed Democratic policies (CNBC, 3/12/24).

Whitaker went on to list some of Harris’s more progressive economic proposals: “expand the child tax credit…give tax breaks to first-time homebuyers…and people starting small businesses.”

These are all generally politically popular, but Whitaker framed his question about them not in terms of the impact on voters, but the impact on the federal deficit, citing a deficit hawk think tank:

But it is estimated by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that your economic plan would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. How are you going to pay for that?

There is a very popular assumption in corporate media that federal deficits are of critical importance—that is, when Democrats are proposing to provide aid and public services to people. When Republicans propose massive tax breaks for the wealthy and for corporations, the same media tend to forget their deficit obsession (FAIR.org, 1/25/21).

It is worth noting—since Whitaker did not—that the CRFB found that Trump’s plan, which follows that Republican playbook, would increase the debt by $7.5 trillion. One might also bear in mind that US GDP is projected to be more than $380 trillion over the next decade.

Dissatisfied with Harris’s rather oblique answer, Whitaker insisted: “But pardon me, Madam Vice President, the question was how are you going to pay for it?” When Harris responded that she intended to “make sure that the richest among us who can afford it pay their fair share of taxes,” Whitaker scoffed: “We’re dealing with the real world here. How are you going to get this through Congress?”

After Harris argued that congressmembers “know exactly what I’m talking about, ’cause their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about,” Whitaker shot back, “And Congress has shown no inclination to move in your direction.”

Sure, journalists shouldn’t let politicians make pie-in-the-sky promises, but it’s true that Harris’s proposals are supported by majorities of the public. Whitaker did viewers—and democracy—no favors by focusing his skepticism not on a corrupt system that benefits the wealthy, but on Harris’s critique of that system.

‘A historic flood’

Serious efforts to count the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States show little sign of the “flood” touted by 60 Minutes (Pew, 7/22/24).

Whitaker’s framing was even more right-wing on immigration. His first question, framed by a voiceover noting that “Republicans are convinced immigration is the vice president’s Achilles’ heel”:

You recently visited the southern border and embraced President Biden’s recent crackdown on asylum seekers, and that crackdown produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. If that’s the right answer now, why didn’t your administration take those steps in 2021?

Whitaker is referring to Biden’s tightening restrictions so that refugees cannot be granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. It’s certainly valid to question the new policies; the ACLU (6/12/24) has argued they are unconstitutional, for instance.

But Whitaker clearly wasn’t interested in constitutionality or human rights. His questioning started from the presumption that immigration is a problem, and used the dehumanizing language that is all too common in corporate media reporting on immigrants (FAIR.org, 8/23/23):

Whitaker: But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?

Harris: It’s a longstanding problem. And solutions are at hand. And from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions.

Whitaker: What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?

Harris: I think—the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem, OK? But the—

Whitaker: But the numbers did quadruple under your watch.

As others have pointed out, using flood metaphors paints immigrants as “natural disasters who should be dealt with in an inhumane fashion” (Critical Discourse Studies, 1/31/17).

But Whitaker is also using a right-wing talking point that’s entirely misleading. Border “encounters” increased sharply under Biden, but these encounters, as we have explained before (FAIR.org, 3/29/24),

are not a tally of how many people were able to enter the country without authorization; it’s a count of how many times people were stopped at the border by CBP agents. Many of these people had every right to seek entry, and a great number were turned away. Some of them were stopped more than once, and therefore were counted multiple times.

In fact, only roughly a third were actually released into the country (Factcheck.org, 2/27/24).

Whitaker used these misleading figures to paint undocumented immigration as a crisis, which has been a media theme since the beginning of the Biden administration (FAIR.org, 5/24/21). In fact, the percentage of the US population that is unauthorized has risen only slightly—from 3.2% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022, the latest year available—which is down from a peak of 4.0% in 2007 (Pew, 7/22/24).

‘Does the US have no sway?’

Internal controversy over Tony Dokoupil’s confrontational interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates (CBS Mornings, 9/30/24) may have given Bill Whitaker an opening to challenge Harris on whether she was too supportive of Israel.

Whitaker’s first questions to Harris, about the Middle East, represented a shift in tone from ABC‘s questioning at the September debate—where moderator David Muir asked Harris to respond to Trump’s charge that “you hate Israel.” Whitaker started his interview by pressing Harris about the United States’ continued support of Israel despite its recent escalations:

The events of the past few weeks have pushed us into the brink, if not into, an all-out regional war into the Middle East. What can Hthe US do at this point to prevent this from spinning out of control?

Harris repeated the Biden administration (and, frequently, media) line that Israel has a right to defend itself, while noting that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” and that “this war has to end.” Whitaker pushed back, pointing out that the United States is an active supporter of Israel’s military and, thus, military actions:

But we supply Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, and yet Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden/Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire, he has resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon, he went in anyway. Does the US have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?

Whitaker continued with two more brief questions about the relationship with Netanyahu. It’s possible that his line of questioning was influenced by the controversy within his network over CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil’s interview (9/30/24) with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, which pushed a pro-Israel line hard enough to prompt charges of unprofessionalism (FAIR.org, 10/4/24; Zeteo, 10/9/24).

The three other foreign policy questions concerned US support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Two of the three asked about ending the war: “What does success look like in ending the war in Ukraine?” and “Would you meet with President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a solution to the war in Ukraine?” The third asked whether Harris would “support the effort to expand NATO to include Ukraine.”

In contrast to the Middle East line of questioning, Whitaker did not push back against any of Harris’s answers, which expressed support for “Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked aggression,” and to “have a say” in determining the end of the war.

Crucial missing questions

The aftermath of two hurricanes supercharged by climate change didn’t prompt 60 Minutes to ask any questions about climate (CBS, 9/30/24).

Though Whitaker took time to ask Harris what kind of gun she owns and Walz whether he can be “trusted to tell the truth,” he didn’t ask a single question about abortion, other healthcare issues, the climate crisis or gun control. These are all remarkable omissions.

A Pew Research survey (9/9/24) found abortion was a “very important” issue to more than half of all voters, and to two-thirds of Harris supporters. But Whitaker asked no questions about what Harris and Walz would do to protect or restore reproductive rights across the US.

The healthcare system was another glaring omission by 60 Minutes, though it is voters’ second-most important issue, according to the same Pew Research survey; 65% of all voters, and 76% of Harris supporters, said that healthcare was “very important” to their vote.

Healthcare only came up as part of an accusation that “you have changed your position on so many things”: Along with shifts on immigration and fracking, Whittaker noted that “you were for Medicare for all, now you’re not,” with the result that “people don’t truly know what you believe or what you stand for.” Like a very similar question asked of Harris during the debate (FAIR.org, 9/13/24), it seemed crafted to press Harris on whether her conversion from left-liberal to centrist was genuine, rather than to elicit real solutions for a population with the highest healthcare costs and the lowest life expectancy of any wealthy nation.

At a moment when Hurricane Helene had just wreaked massive destruction across the Southeast and Hurricane Milton was already promising to deliver Florida its second devastating storm in two weeks, the lack of climate questions was striking. While voters tend to rank climate policy as a lower priority than issues like the economy or immigration, large majorities are concerned about it—and it’s an urgent issue with consequences that can’t be understated. Yet the only time climate was alluded to was in the flip-flop question, which included the preface, “You were against fracking, now you’re for it.”

Similarly, a mass shooting in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four people just over three weeks ago; as of this writing (10/15/24), the Gun Violence Archive reported that gun violence, excluding suicide, has killed 13,424 Americans this year. In 2019, the American Psychological Association reported that one-third of Americans said that fear of mass shootings stops them from going to certain places and events. In a Pew Research survey (4/11/24), 59% of public K-12 teachers said they are at least somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting at their school, and 23% have experienced a lockdown.

Yet the two questions Whitaker asked about guns had nothing to do with these realities or fears, or what a Harris/Walz administration would do about them. Instead, he asked Harris, “What kind of gun do you own, and when and why did you get it?” (Harris answered, “I have a Glock, and I have had it for quite some time.”) Whitaker followed up by asking Harris if she had ever fired it. (She said she had, at a shooting range.)

‘Out of step’

Walz was mostly asked non-policy questions, things like “Whether you can be trusted to tell the truth,” and why his calling Republicans “weird” has become a “rallying cry for Democrats.”

In keeping with the media’s preoccupation with pushing Democratic candidates to the right, the governor was asked to respond to charges that he was “dangerously liberal” and part of the “radical left“: “What do you say to that criticism, that rather than leading the way, you and Minnesota are actually out of step with the rest of the country?”

The right-wing framing of many of the questions asked, and the important issues ignored, might make CBS think about how in step it is with the country and its needs.

This post was originally published on FAIR.
October 14, 2024

What it means to fight for Indigenous people’s rights in Kenya

This letter was written by Loolasho, a coordinator at AJWS grantee partner Kenya Indigneous Youth Network, to mark Indigenous People’s Day on October 14. We’re proud to share his words with you here. My name is Loolasho, and I was born and raised in a small community in the Laikipia drylands forest. I am a …
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This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.