$4.95 October 2014 Vol. 27, No.

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GOPs Latest Poverty Scam
NYT Fails Torture Test
Targeting James Risen
Spotl ight on Racism
in Ferguson
Josmar Trujillo Janine Jackson Malkia
Extra!
The Magazine of FAIRThe Media Watch Group
Public TVs 1 Percent Rulers: A FAIR Study
2 u October 2014 Extra!
EDITOR Jim Naureckas
PUBLISHER Deborah Thomas
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Columnists
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The Magazine of FAIRThe Media Watch Group
3 SoundBites
RACE LENS
4 #FTP Film Tha Police
Communities of color use media to protect themselves
by Josmar Trujillo
5 Michael Brown Had a Father
But will Ferguson shift media ideas on fixing black men?
by Janine Jackson
COUNTERSPIN INTERVIEW
7 The Black Voice Is in Jeopardy
Malkia Cyril on Ferguson
9 Both Sides Now
Plans to ease poverty dont have to workso long as theyre bipartisan
by Neil deMause
10 NYT Fails First Test of New Torture Policy
Paper says it will call it what it iswhen it reports on it at all
by Peter Hart
12 Official Sources May Be the Only Sources
Risen case tests reporters power to reveal government wrongdoing
by Lauren McCauley
FAIR STUDY
14 Who Rules Public TV?
Corporate sector overwhelmingly dominates public TV governing boards
by Aldo Guerrero
Volume 27, Number 9 October 2014
Contents
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism
of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment
by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices
that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an anti-cen-
sorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and defend working journal-
ists when they are muzzled. As a progressive group, we believe that structural reform
is needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent pub-
lic broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.
Extra! October 2014 u 3
Labor Leaders Left Out
FAIR (Media Advisory, 8/28/14) looked
at how often labor leaders appeared
on the networks Sunday morning
chat showsand couldnt find a
single one, from the beginning of
2014 through late August.
Thats not to say that labor issues
werent discussedwe found Repub-
lican lawmakers talking about the
need to send a message to teachers
unions, for example. But worker
representatives werent invited to
the conversation.
Meanwhile, CEOs made a dozen
appearances on the Sunday shows,
including the current or former heads
of Apple, AOL, Starbucks and FedEx.
Former Hewlett Packard CEO and
Republican candidate Carly Fiorina
alone appeared four times.
It wasnt a total shutout for labor,
though. An ABC quiz segment
(3/2/14) asked which American presi-
dent was once head of a labor union;
the answer was Ronald Reagan. Yes,
the only labor leader mentioned on a
Sunday chat show was the famously
anti-labor president.
All in a Days Work
When journalists at SportsIllustrated
.com, part of the Time Inc. magazine
group, were facing layoffs, manage-
ment ranked them on various quali-
ties on a scale from 2 to 10. Along
with such journalistic criteria as
quality of writing and impact of
stories/newsworthiness, the journal-
ists were judged on whether or not
he or she produces content that is
beneficial to advertiser relationship
(Gawker, 8/18/14). Apparently thats
seen as part of a reporters job at
magazines like Time Inc.s where
editors are supervised by the busi-
ness staff (FAIR Blog, 1/2/14).
OReillys
Selective Statistics
Over the weekend, the New York
Times called for the USA to legalize
marijuana all over the place, Fox
News Bill OReilly (7/28/14) fulmi-
nated. No surprise, that papers far
left on its editorial page, so its stance
is predictable. (Legalizing marijuana
is a far-left stance taken by a
majority of AmericansGallup,
10/22/13.)
OReilly disdainfully quoted a line
from the Times editorial (7/27/14)
The result is racist, falling dispropor-
tionately on young black men, ruining
their lives and creating new genera-
tions of career criminalsand then
attempted to set the record straight:
According to the US Sentencing
Commission, about 5,000 crimi-
nals were sentenced for marijua-
na offenses in 2013 at the federal
level...and here is the kicker; 63
percent of those convicted on the
federal level were Hispanic. Just
11 percent black.
Typically, OReillys statistics were
deceptive: Just before that quoted
sentence, the Times noted that
there were 658,000 arrests for mari-
juana possession in 2012over-
whelmingly at the state and local
level. And as the ACLU (6/13) pointed
out, Marijuana use is roughly equal
among blacks and whites, yet blacks
are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested
for marijuana possession.
Its about race, not drugs,
said OReilly. Thats the one part he
got right.
Sources Secret CIA Ties
Revelations from former NSA con-
tract worker Edward Snowden
harmed national security. Thats the
claim an NPR report by Dina Temple-
Raston (Morning Edition, 8/1/14) put
forthciting not just anonymous US
government officials but a new
report...by big data firm Recorded
Future as well.
The reports evidence is flimsy
basically, its that militant groups
changed their software after
Snowdens revelations, though the
reports own timeline shows these
changes started before Snowden
went public (FAIR Blog, 8/13/14).
But even fishier is NPRs lack of
disclosure: Recorded Future, as
listeners were not told, is a project
launched with the financial backing of
the CIA and is a registered vendor for
the NSA itself (Intercept, 8/12/14).
Traditional Pot
vs. Social Kettle
Social Media Silences Debate,
declared a New York Times headline
(8/26/14), over a story reporting that
outlets like Facebook and Twitter
are tamping down diversity of opin-
ion and stifling debate about public
affairs. As opposed to the diverse
opinion and free-wheeling debate to
be had in asocial media like the
Times, presumably.
The counterintuitive claim that
social media repress discussion is
based on a study that looked at
whether people shared political views
with their family and friends, using
just one topic as a case study: NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden. Yes,
researchers found that people are
more reluctant to use the Internet to
discuss disturbing revelations about
government surveillanceand for
that the Times blames social media,
not government surveillance. n
So u n d Bi t e s
Bill OReilly
Carly Fiorina
Correction:
The September 2014 issue of
Extra! published the wrong
diagram to illustrate the Turing
test. This is the correct diagram.
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Telling Blows Against Hamas: How the New York Times (8/22/14)
framed a photo from Gaza of relatives of three Palestinian children who
medics said were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Get the latest blog posts
and Action Alerts
at fair.org
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R A C E L E N S
Communities of color use media to protect themselves
#FTP Film Tha Police
by Josmar Trujillo
T
he arrest of Ramsey Orta in August on
gun charges would have barely regis-
tered on the daily crime blotter in New
York City had he not been at the center
of the most controversial police-related
death in the citys recent memory.
Police choking Eric Garner to death dur-
ing a routine arrest on Staten Island made
national news in July. Orta, a local resident,
filmed the entire encounter, and the video
became the rallying point for a renewed
push against police brutality.
Shortly thereafter, the police shooting
death of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri, brought mainstream media out by
the truckloads to cover the ensuing protests
and the heavy-handed, militarized police
response to that communitys outrage.
In the case of Orta, who says he was set up
by police as retribution for the Garner video
(Daily News, 8/4/14), the decision to film the
encounter is representative of a growing trend
of copwatchingwhich is exactly what it
sounds like: filming cops. Even as traditional
media cover the Ferguson police through
clouds of teargas, communities of color are
learning to rely on themselves to report on
what happens around them and to them.
A
s Malkia Cyril pointed out recently on
CounterSpin (8/22/14see page 7), the
decentralized nature of the Internet
allowed for democratized coverage of the
Ferguson protests. In contrast to corporate
media, bewildered when a Midwestern
police department resembled Egyptian
national policeThis doesnt make any
sense, CNNs Jake Tapper declared (FAIR
Blog, 8/19/14)street reporters recognize
police aggression as part of a pattern theyve
had to confront in order to document.
Citizen journalism is a potentially inspir-
ing development in bursting the corporate
media bubble overall, but particularly for
cases of police brutality, both at the individ-
ual (Brown) and community (protesters)
levels. The Web plays a crucial role for mar-
ginalized communities, black and Latino in
particular, by disseminating incidents media
wont coveror wont stop spinning.
Somewhere in America during the
time it takes to read this column, therell
likely be an incident of police harassment
of the black and brown. Whether or not
the incident is a story media cant ignore
(involving a fatal encounter, say, or a
public figure like Harvard professor Skip
Gates), these encounters are the context
that surrounds high-profile incidents like
the ones in Staten Island and Ferguson. This
includes racial profiling, mass incarceration
and the long history of systemic brutality.
C
opwatching videos, disseminated initial-
ly through decentralized Internet media
like Black Twitter, can bring those expe-
riences to the national dialogue. And videos
that dont make national news can still make
the rounds on the Internet via sites focused
on street culture, like World Star Hip Hop,
or dedicated to police videos, like the Free
Thought Project or Photography Is Not a
Crimewhich are best described as inver-
sions of the long-running show Cops, show-
casing police encounters through the eyes of
the public.
The idea is that everyday people with
camera phones and access to the Internet
can put police aggression and misconduct
on blastwith the hope of influencing opin-
ion and politics. But there are at least two
factors in traditional media coverage that
make public perceptions of police difficult
to move, even amid an avalanche of disturb-
ing amateur police videos.
One is the traditional role of not just
media in general, but criminal justice media
(reporters and outlets that focus on policing
and crime) specifically. When hip-hop artist
Talib Kweli criticized CNNs Don Lemon
(Politico, 8/21/14) for failing to represent
his and other protesters experiences, he
couldve added the critique emanating from
social media that traditional media were
adding to the criminalization of black men
by their choice of pictures used on air (Al
Jazeera America, 8/14/14).
These distortions happen often at the
local level as well, culminating in media
coverage that favors official narratives over
community input (FAIR Blog, 6/19/14).
Likely a result of the well-known tendency
to favor power-holders in order to preserve
access, bias in criminal justice media can
deeply prejudice public opinion.
T
he other factor affects media as a
whole: the issue of diversity. White
reporters covering a police scandal,
especially one in which race is key, are like-
ly less equipped by experience to under-
stand the situation. We use all sorts of
experts in other fields to add depth into sto-
ries they may have insight into. So why do
we send white reporters into communities of
color to cover police brutality?
Polls find whites have a generally favor-
able perception of police (Pew, 8/25/14;
Huffington Post, 8/21/14)and rarely live
in overpoliced communities. The urgency
and proximity to the issue of police brutali-
ty is one that residents of communities of
color are best suited to document. Which is
why copwatching, as an invaluable media
tool at their disposal, is here to stay. n
Ramsey Orta (left), who recorded the NYPD choking Eric
Garner to death.
DC police officer preventing a citizen from using the First
Amendment (Photography Is Not a Crime, 9/7/14).
A
ny effort to improve the lives of black
men that meets with the hearty
approval of Bill OReilly ought to set
off a few alarm bells. But My Brothers
Keeper, an initiative announced by Barack
Obama in February, was received benignly
by the corporate press, with the closest thing
to criticism being Should he have acted
earlier? (ABC This Week, 3/2/14).
Reports displayed a telling vagueness.
MBK was described as a program aimed at
giving young men of color a shot at success
(NBC Nightly News, 2/27/14), an effort to
reverse underachievement among young
black and Hispanic males (AP, 2/27/14)
and as commitments from foundations and
businesses to help keep young minority men
in the classroom and out of prison
(Washington Post, 2/28/14). ABCs Diane
Sawyer (2/27/14) called it a plan to help
kids succeed, even when theyre angry and
have made mistakes.
Serious sounds were made about the
problem George Stephanopoulos (This
Week, 3/2/14) presented as the fact that
young black men are more likely than other
Americans to drop out of school, be sent to
prison or end up murdered, but with little
interest in ascertaining just how MBK, with
its focus on mentoring, or high standards
and up-close motivation (CBS Evening
News, 2/27/14), would address it.
M
yriad deeper questions were left to big
medias margins. USA Today (3/3/14)
ran Tavis Smileys critique that what
these young brothers really need is not so
much to be kept, but to have their human-
ity and dignity respected. A Chicago Tri-
bune source (2/28/14) likened the plan to a
band-aid on a gunshot wound.
The New York Times (3/12/14) noted
such core concerns as MBKs exclusion of
women and girls, its reinforcement of patri-
archal norms and its reliance on philan-
thropic noblesse oblige over government
action, but consigned them to its Room for
Debate feature.
Independent media gave critics more
space. The Nations Mychal Denzel
Smith (2/28/14), for example, sug-
gested that despite some admirable
aspects, MBK
ignores the root problem. We can
turn every black and brown boy
into a respectable citizen. But
the moment we do, the rules for
what constitutes respectable
will change. Thats how racism
works.
At Salon (3/6/14), Brittney
Cooper called out the proposals
male-only focus, given that black
women and girls fare as poorly and
even worse in some ways, includ-
ing the fact that single black women have
the lowest net wealth of any group, with
research showing a median wealth of $100.
B
ut its not surprising that corporate
reporters, in the main, saw little to ques-
tion in the idea that entrenched socio-
economic disparities could be meaningfully
addressed without systemic change or even
new resources, that the fundamental prob-
lem facing men of color is broken fami-
lies in need of a dominant male, and that a
proper point of emphasis is that, as Brian
Williams (NBC Nightly News, 2/27/14)
explained, they cannot blame the circum-
stances of their birth.
These media have a long, inglorious his-
tory of singling out black males as super-
predators (Extra!, 1/98) and shiftless grifters,
and in some ways the uniquely endan-
gered black male is a variant rather than an
antidote to that pathological depiction. The
narrative may start by talking about hur-
dles black men face, but on examination it
generally locates those obstacles within
black men themselves, including those who,
as Stephanopoulos put it, end up murdered.
W
hen Michael Brownwith a father in
his life and accepted to collegewas
shot dead in the street in Ferguson,
Missouri, by a white police officer, corporate
media had a chance to revisit the assumption
that what black men need most is a mentor.
But rather than question the analysis theyd
embraced, media instead found everything
new. Suddenly we learned that US police
forces are militarized! Some police disre-
spect black people! Different communities
have different experiences!
Thats not to belittle media coverage,
which was better than it might have been.
There was the predictable culture-blaming,
from the predictable quarters. (See MBK
booster Bill OReilly8/26/14who dis-
missed protesters concerns because the idea
of white privilege is a big lie, expounded
by race hustlers.) But when you can find
a column headlined In Defense of Looting
in the Daily Mississippian (8/26/14), you
know its not quite business as usual.
USA Today (8/15/14) reported on the
incidence of killings by police (at least 400
a year) and decried the lack of reliable data.
The Christian Science Monitor (8/21/14)
explored the damage inflicted by St. Louis
segregation and white flight. The New
Republic (8/20/14) explained the particu-
lars of self defense laws in Missouri and
elsewhere that, combined with entrenched
racial and occupational biases make homi-
cide convictions of police officers like
Fergusons Darren Wilson basically
Extra! October 2014 u 5
C O V E R S T O R Y
But will Ferguson shift media ideas on fixing black men?
Michael Brown Had a Father
by Janine Jackson
The presence of two parents in Michael Browns life (Michael Brown, Sr.,
left, and Lesley McSpadden) did not shake the prevailing media assump-
tion that what young black men need is a man in their lives.
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impossible. All of this helpfully moves the
conversation from black peoples feelings
to demonstrable facts.
B
ut big media dont really have them-
selves to credit for the elevation of
Browns murder beyond lamentable anec-
dote. They were largely reacting to the vig-
orous public outcry, and to the Ferguson
Police Departments especially heavy-hand-
ed response, including assaults on reporters
themselves. And they were struggling to keep
up, as those following the story turned
instead to Black Twitter and other online
sources for news and perspective. (See next
page.)
Now mainstream media are asking
whether Ferguson will be a moment or a
movement for black activists, but they
might more appropriately ask the same of their
own engagement with the issues Ferguson
puts on the table. As Salons Cooper
(8/26/14) put it, real progress would entail
a real commitment to due process, pro-
tection of voting rights, a livable wage,
the dissolution of the prison/industrial
complex, funding of good public edu-
cation at both K-12 and college levels,
a serious commitment to affirmative
action, food security and full reproduc-
tive justice for all women. Those are
the kinds of conditions under which
black communities, and all communi-
ties, could thrive.
A failure to see things on that scale, to
treat what were now calling Ferguson not
as aberrant but as reflective of US social
systems and institutions, risks setting us
back to appeals to individual betterment, the
pull up your pants logic critics see in
MBK.
A
nd not insignificantly, a focus on the
individual over the structural tells white
people that racism is a personal thing
they just dont understand and therefore
cant fight, that progress is a zero-sum game
in which theres nothing people of con-
science can do together. Recognition of the
irreducibility (beyond class, culture, cloth-
ing or family structure) of anti-black racism
is laudable and overdue. But it need not
erase the non-black anti-racists who could
be engaged in resisting policies and prac-
tices that overwhelmingly hurt people of
color, like, for just one example, the practice
of funding police departments with low-
level warrants that target the pooras spot-
lighted by the Daily Beasts Michael Daly
(8/22/14), who is white.
Ferguson could be a turning point for
media coverage of racism. But should cor-
porate media forget what they now sug-
gest they are learningas they have after
previous moments (Extra!, 7/92, 8/06)
the good news is that every day more peo-
ple are talking around them, and moving
forward without them. n
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Extra! October 2014 u 7
marginalized in mainstream media. The
numbers of black journalists able to work in
mainstream media has decreased over the
last 10 years significantly.
And what we find is that both these jour-
nalists, and the community journalists that
were talking about on Twitter, have found
social media to be an outlet, to be a way to
share their work in a way that wasnt able to
happen on CNN, MSNBC or any of the
other cable news outlets. Because cable is
owned by mega-corporations and doesnt
allow for the kind of independent voice that
a more social platform on the Internet
allows for.
So Black Twitterreminiscent of and
reflecting the black blog, an independent
black voicethats what really brought the
story of Ferguson to the majority of black
audiences.
CS: On the one hand, you want to say that
its not the technology thats key. I mean,
media and other powers could have tried to
listen to black people if they were writing
on parchment, you know? But at the same
time, the technology and the kind of com-
munication that it makes possible is some-
thing different, isnt it?
MC: Absolutely. The decentralized nature
of the Internet allows for a level of democ-
ratized voice that weve never seen. I mean,
the Internetas a platform, as a vehicle for
voice in black communitieshas become
one of the most powerful ways to bypass the
exclusionary and discriminatory main-
stream media. And because of that, because
of its decentralized and democratized
nature, black people are very conscious of
the need to fight to maintain their online and
digital voice.
CS: Lets talk about that fight. We know that
for corporate media, this story is going to go
away. Every racist act in corporate media is
an anecdote. Were told that things raise
questions when they might more appropri-
ately be said to answer them. We hear,
Gosh, this doesnt look like America,
when it looks exactly like America.
And Ta-Nehisi Coates [Atlantic, 8/15/14]
wrote recently about the politics of chang-
ing the subject. You know: Lets talk about
black folks killing each other.
All of this is why, even when decent
coverage happens, it feels like reinventing
the wheel, and it points up the need for a
sustained space to have a conversation that
doesnt just serve as corrective of that dom-
inant narrative and stop there, but moves
forward. So what is the state of play on the
fight to have the Internet be that sort of
space?
MC: Right now, as the people of Ferguson
are on the front lines demanding justice for
yet another murder of a young black man
unarmedblack people are also on the front
lines to maintain the right to speak online
about the rampant police brutality in our
communities.
And one of the front lines that black peo-
ple are fighting on is the fight for the open
Internet. Black communities across this
country are saying loud and clear that they
want to keep the Internet open. We under-
stand that the only way, that the court in
Verizon v. FCC said very clearly that the
only way the Federal Communications
Commission can enforce non-discrimina-
tion rules online is to reclassify broadband
as a Title II common carrier service.
There likely would have been media cover-
age of the Ferguson, Missouri, police killing
of Michael Brown and the public protests
that followed. But its hard to imagine that
the tone of that coverage would be the same
with stories validating black peoples
anger, questioning the militarization of
police, and challenging medias criminaliza-
tion of people of colorwere it not for the
forceful intervention of black social media,
where so-called mainstream perspectives
werent just called out but circumvented.
Many people will tell you they didnt
learn what was happening in Ferguson
much less why it matteredfrom the paper
or the TV at all. The implications of that fact
inform the work of Malkia Cyril, executive
director of the Center for Media Justice,
which is also home to the Media Action
Grassroots Network (MAG-Net). Counter-
Spins Janine Jackson talked to her by
phone from the Bay Area.
CounterSpin: Whats happening in Ferguson
isnt a story about the Internet, of course,
but it has put in high relief the need for
black people to tell our own stories in our
own voices, and not to wait until somebody
else decides the storys important. Before
we talk about the threats to that space whose
power were just discovering, lets talk for a
minute about that power. I was sort of tick-
led to see David Carr at the New York
Times [8/18/14] credit Twitter, per se, for
showing that something significant was
underway in Ferguson. Lets put a finer
point on it: It was particular folks using
Twitter and other tools to tell this story,
wasnt it?
Malkia Cyril: Yes, I mean, the lingo Black
Twitter isnt about the company at all. Its
about the hundreds of black blogs, inde-
pendent black blogs and black bloggers,
websites, individual pundits that used the
social media platform to microblog and talk
about what they see as the primary issues
affecting black communities.
And one of the reasons that is so impor-
tant is because these journalistsblack
journalistshave been slowly excluded and
Malkia Cyril on Ferguson
The Black Voice Is in Jeopardy
C O U N T E R S P I N I N T E R V I E W
Malkia Cyril: The Internetas a platform, as a vehicle for
voice in black communitieshas become one of the most
powerful ways to bypass the exclusionary and discriminato-
ry mainstream media.
8 u October 2014 Extra!
MC: It was never a meaningful separation,
and civil rights activists in the 1960s knew
that very well when they took television
news station WLBT to task for their failure
to cover segregation in the South. And in
fact, that casethe case of WLBT
became the defining case that allowed for
public comment in media policy processes.
So civil rights organizations have long been
an advocate for media as a civil rights issue.
Its only as media and telecommunica-
tions have become so lucrative, its only as
telecommunications companies have used
the buyouts of our communities as a public
relations strategy, that these issues have
become technocratic, wonky and separate
from the core issues of social justice.
What we know, what Ferguson shows
us, what it shows me, is that in fact there is
no path to victory, to change, without the
visibility and representation that media pro-
vides. And that as long as that media is
Now, let me explain that for a minute,
because people say, Well, what is Title II?
Title II simply means that the Internet
should be treated as a public utility, it
should be regulated like a public utility.
Some organizations are concerned that if we
regulate the Internet as a public utility, itll
kill innovation. But what black communi-
ties know very well is, two things: One,
public utilitieswhen they are truly pub-
licare secure and reliable. So thats num-
ber one. We want a reliable platform for
independent voices, and treating it like a
utility, regulating it as such, makes it a civil
right that we can access publicly. So thats
number one.
Number two, some organizations and
individuals have been concerned that if we
treat the Internet like a public utility, that a
future FCC, that a future Congress will
come along and take that away. And to that,
I think black communities are very clear.
When we fought against segregation in
education, we did not accept anything less
than the ruling in Brown v. Board of
Education. There were rulings prior to that.
There were court cases for more than a
decade prior to that victory. We didnt
accept any piecemeal, half-baked legisla-
tion. We only took what was morally right
and just. And that was an end to segregation
in education. And thats what were talking
about right now.
Ultimately, reclassifying broadband
would ensure no segregation online, that all
voices would be able to join the public con-
versation, and that black voices in particular
would be able to be raised around issues
like police brutality, like the incident in
Ferguson. And thats what were fighting
for.
CS: Used to be when you told someone that
you were working with media policy, they
would come back with, Oh, well, I do real
activism. Im in the street, and media is
somehow an ancillary issue. That days over,
isnt it? I mean, not everyone can work on
every issue, but the separation of media pol-
icy issues from other issues that we care
about is not a meaningful separation.
owned, operated and controlled by the
largest Internet service providers, the largest
cable companies, the largest private fami-
lies, the black voice is in jeopardy. And if
the black voice is in jeopardy, black free-
dom is in jeopardy.
And thats what were fighting for.
Were not fighting for some back-end, tech-
nical, technocratic issue. Were fighting for
the cause of black freedom. Were fighting
for the same cause that all the black newspa-
pers right after slavery were fighting for.
Were fighting for an end to any kind of sys-
tem that violates or limits our voice. And
that is what were talking about here today.
Its not about media policy. Its about real
justice. n
Malkia Cyrils recent article, Thank You
Black Internet for Bringing #Ferguson to
Me, appeared on the Huffington Post
(8/15/14), among other outlets.
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Extra! October 2014 u 9
R
ep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wisc.) has made a
career of proposing to reform US
poverty programs mainly by trying to
eliminate them: calling for savings in
spending on the poor (ThinkProgress,
5/8/12), declaring that top-down anti-
poverty programs have failed and should
be eliminated (TheNation.com, 10/26/12)
and, this spring, proposing a budget that
would have cut an estimated $150 billion
from food stamps over the next decade
(MSNBC, 4/1/14).
Ryans latest poverty plan, though, pre-
sented on July 24 in a speech to the conser-
vative American Enterprise Institute, was
widely portrayed as different. Voxs Ezra
Klein (7/24/14) touted Ryans Expanding
Opportunity in America plan as a sharp
break with his previous budget-slashing
proposals, saying it should, in theory, offer
much more opportunity for common ground
with Democrats.
Slate columnist Reihan Salam (7/24/14)
praised the Ryan plan for acknowledging that
a safety net in good working order is crucial
to a healthy economy, and wanting to shift
government spending to targeted efforts to
lift people out of poverty for good.
In the New York Times new data-driv-
en Upshot section (7/24/14), meanwhile,
Neil Irwin wrote that Ryans latest proposal
feels different from his previous efforts to
overhaul the system of support for the poor,
while the New Republics Danny Vinik
(7/24/14) called Ryans proposed increase
in the Earned Income Tax Credit his best
idea evera place where in a rational pol-
icy world, Democrats and Republicans would
probably be able to find common ground.
S
o what was new about Ryans plan? As
many news outlets noted, it does include
increased funding for anti-poverty pro-
grams that he and other conservatives sup-
portmostly the EITC and other programs
to aid the working pooralbeit by diverting
the money from existing programs he called
ineffective, including helping poor fami-
lies buy farmers market produce.
Its centerpiece, though, was something
else entirely. Under Ryans plan, states
would be allowed to entirely eliminate food
stamps, federal housing aid and numerous
other programs, replacing them with a sin-
gle Opportunity Grant that local lawmak-
ers could spend on whatever poverty pro-
grams they choose. The New York Times
(7/25/14) described this as intended to
largely [shift] antipoverty efforts from the
federal government to the states, stressing
that there would be no change in overall
spending levels.
In fact, there was nothing new about this
element of the plan: Ryan has been calling
for replacing food stamps and other pro-
grams with a lump-sum block grant since at
least 2011 (CBPP, 4/8/11). (The Times ack-
nowledged only that the Opportunity Grants
would resemble block grants, without
describing how they worked.)
T
his is precisely what was done to cash
assistance to the poor under the 1996
welfare reform law, with disastrous
results: According to calculations by the
Center on Budget Policy and Priorities
(8/7/12), more than $12 billion a year in
welfare spending now goes to plug state
funding holes for such services as pre-K pro-
grams, child welfare administration and teen
pregnancy preventionmore than is spent
each year on actual cash aid to the poor.
Do I think funding child welfare is
important? Yes, says CBPP vice president
Donna Pavetti:
What Ryan did in his comments is to
say they cant use it for roads and
bridges, it has to be used for poor peo-
ple. But that doesnt mean it has to be
used for food, [or] it has to be used for
housing. States could take the whole
thing and say, We want to provide pre-
Kdivert it there.
And while Ryans plan wouldnt cut
poverty spending immediately, noted for-
mer White House economist Jared Bern-
stein (Washington Post, 7/24/14), replac-
ing entitlements like food stamps with fixed
grants would actually represent a huge cut if
the economy were to take another nosedive:
Under the current system, SNAP (food
stamps) responds to increased need by
automatically increasing. That would
largely not be the case here, as spend-
ing would be held at some baseline
level.
At the same time, Ryans grants would
only be flexible up to a point: Unlike the
entitlements that would be eliminated under
Ryans plan, Opportunity Grant funds would
be newly subject to work requirements and
time limits (Reuters, 7/24/14), just like wel-
fare cash aid. Food stamps, federal housing
aid, utilities assistance and more dont have
work requirementsthis would essentially
mandate that states opting for the
Opportunity Grantimplement work require-
ments, wrote the National Review on its
blog (7/24/14)something that the blogs
editor, Reihan Salam, chose not to mention at
all in his column for the less-partisan Slate.
B
ut then, the actual mechanics of how
Ryans poverty plan would affect the poor
didnt interest many media commentators
as much as its authors shift in tone: Instead
of stressing cuts to poverty programs as a
way to balance the budget, Ryan was now
Plans to ease poverty dont have to workso long as theyre bipartisan
Both Sides Now
by Neil deMause
Whether or not Paul Ryans plan would help the poor was
not as important to the media as the fact that it would help
Republicans appear bipartisan.
10 u October 2014 Extra!
pushing them as a way to tackle poverty.
This, in the eyes of many news outlets, was a
welcome shift toward bipartisanship.
Ryans poverty plan mixes parties
ideas, trumpeted the Milwaukee Journal-
Sentinel (7/24/14), saying its combination
of EITC hikes with block grants aspires to
find some common ground between right
and left. Creative ideas are rare in Wash-
ington, asserted a Boston Herald editorial
(7/28/14), adding that Ryans approach
destroys the Democratic narrative that
Republicans want to permanently dismantle
the safety net.
In fact, Ryans plan was deemed so
bipartisan that some worried aloud that it
could hurt his standing with Republicans.
Washington Post columnist Melinda Henne-
berger (7/24/14), citing Ryans statements
that he wanted to talk about how we can
repair the safety net and have the govern-
ment provide resources to poor people,
questioned whether it meant Ryan was giv-
ing up on seeking the 2016 Republican pres-
idential nomination.
And L.A. Times columnist Doyle
McManus (7/27/14), under the headline
Has the GOP Gone Soft?, singled out
Ryan for proposing policies that may face
their toughest audience inside the GOP.
F
or the media to evaluate economic poli-
cies based on whether they please both
Democrats and Republicans is nothing
new, as weve witnessed on battles over
everything from the stimulus plan (FAIR
Blog, 2/2/09) to the debt ceiling (FAIR
Blog, 7/15/11). In fact, during the battles
over welfare reform itself back in 1996,
coverage largely focused on which bills
could win the support of both parties lead-
ershipwith the San Francisco Chronicle
editorial board (7/27/96) writing approving-
ly that Congress had whipped itself into a
fair frenzy of bipartisanship with welfare
reform and other bills.
The problem with bipartisanship as a
moral touchstone should be obvious: Not
only does it define sensible policies as being
whatever the leadership of the Democrats and
Republicans can agree on, but it allows one
party to shift the debate by moving its own
goalposts, and thus what counts as bipartisan.
While the Washington Post editorial
board (7/24/14) singled out shifting money to
EITC as the most bipartisan part of Mr.
Ryans plan, the Times Irwin (7/24/14)
acknowledged that it was hardly a new one
for conservatives: What was once a conser-
vative idea, created in the Gerald Ford admin-
istration and expanded by President Reagan
and both presidents Bush, is now more con-
troversial on the right, since it would elimi-
nate income taxes for more poor Americans,
making them what the Wall Street Journal
(11/20/02) once derided as lucky duckies.
I
f the nations media were actually con-
cerned about finding programs that help
the poor, its not hard. For one, theres the
food stamp program that Ryan wants to
eliminate, which has low overhead95 per-
cent of spending goes directly to benefits
and which by itself lifts nearly 5 million
people out of poverty every year (New
Republic, 8/16/13).
Or, as the Center for Economic and
Policy Researchs Shawn Fremstad (The
Hill, 7/22/14) noted, if Ryan truly wanted to
boost the earnings of the working poor,
instead of work requirements and EITC
hikes, he could accomplish the same thing
by raising the federal minimum wage, some-
thing that is supported by 80 percent of
Americans, including a majority of Repub-
licans (Hart Research, 7/23/13)a biparti-
san plan if ever there was one.
But then, helping the poor, or even pursu-
ing poverty policies that most Americans can
agree on, isnt really the point for Ryans
supporters. Giving people money really
does make them better-off: Its better to have
more money to buy groceries and other basic
necessities than less, admitted Salam. But
getting more money from the government
doesnt really make you less poor.
In the world of punditry, then, its not
about helping the poor afford groceries; its
about making sure that theyve earned the
right to deserve groceries. That may be bipar-
tisanin the halls of Congress, anyway
but that doesnt make it smart policy. n
I
ts not often that a media outlets decision
to recalibrate its language attracts much
attention. But when its the New York
Times, and the shift is about what to call
torture in the Newspaper of Record, such
changes matter.
In August 2014, 10 years after the initial
revelations that made US torture an interna-
tional news story, Times executive editor
Dean Baquet wrote a short piece for the
Times website (8/7/14) stating that the word
torture would be used to describe inci-
dents in which we know for sure that inter-
rogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an
effort to get information.
In other words, the newspaper is now
accepting the reality that the term can be
accurately applied to some actions of the
United States. Ten years ago, when it was
revealed that the CIA was torturing War on
Terror prisoners, criticsincluding
FAIRwere asking the Times to call US
torture by its name (FAIR Action Alert,
5/14/04). The paper had, officially or not,
carved out an exception for the US govern-
ment, whereby torture would be described
euphemistically as enhanced or harsh
interrogations.
So this shift, if it is to be considered at all
significant, comes a decade too late. But
thats the just the start. Baquets reasoning is
revealing. He writes that the Times resisted
the label for so long because the situation
was murky, and that the Justice Depart-
ment insisted that the techniques did not rise
to the legal definition of torture. Surely
most countries that practice torture would
resist prosecuting themselves, so its hardly
a reasonable standard for a media outlet.
Perhaps most illuminating, though, was
Baquets admission that the Justice
Departments decision not to prosecute US
torturers motivated the papers shift. The
government
has made clear that it will not prosecute
in connection with the interrogation
program. The result is that today, the
Paper says it will call it what it is
when it reports on it at all
NYT Fails First Test of
New Torture Policy
by Peter Hart
Extra! October 2014 u 11
debate is focused less on whether the
methods violated a statute or treaty
provision and more on whether they
worked.
So the Times will call torture by its
name now that no one is likely to be prose-
cuted, and because the debate eventually
became focused on its practical benefits.
Thus, allegations of torture that are walled
off from legal accountability are safe
assuming the paper even covers them at all.
T
he first test of the New York Times new
policy came with the release of an
August 11 Amnesty International report
on torture in Afghanistan. Its a test the
Times failed.
The report covered 10 discrete episodes
of torture and brutality that killed dozens of
Afghan civilians. But the most explosive
stories concern the actions of a US Special
Operations unit that was linked to torture,
killings and disappearances between
November 2012 and February 2013. The
evidence gathered by Amnesty strongly
suggests that US personnel were intimately
involved. In one especially harrowing
account, an Afghan man named
Naimatullah talks about a raid on his fami-
lys home by US Special Forces:
Naimatullah said that the Americans
brought two of his brothers,
Esmatullah and Siddiqullah, into two
separate rooms, and started beating
them. They also beat Hekmatullah in
the yard. I could hear them beating the
others, Naimatullah said, and when I
saw them they were in terrible shape.
Hekmattullah told Amnesty
International that the Special Forces
operatives dragged me from my room
by the back of my collar, and then
threw me down the stairs. While I fell
my shoulder and buttocks were frac-
tured. Even now I have problem walk-
ing: it is painful and I cant stand
straight.
According to Amnestys report, US
forces then took Naimatullahs three broth-
ers away. Only Hekmattullah was ever seen
again.
Amnesty reports that several of the fam-
ilies that were able to recover the remains of
the missing reported that the bodies showed
signs of torture, from what appeared to be
acid burns on clothing to gruesome injuries.
The report received attention from other
outlets like the LA Times and Washington
Post, but was not featured in the New York
Times. A FAIR Action Alert (8/18/14) noted
the disconnect between the Times new tor-
ture policy and its silence on the Amnesty
report. Times public editor Margaret
Sullivan (8/19/14) seemed to agree with
FAIRs take, writing that Amnesty pulled
together a great deal of informationespe-
cially about the role of the American mili-
taryin a comprehensive and forceful way
that would have benefited Times readers.
But others at the Times didnt see why
they should have bothered. Foreign editor
Joseph Kahn told Sullivan that Amnestys
findings appeared to be recycled and did
not add much to what we have already, on
many occasions, reported.
Its true that the Times has reported on
the allegations of torture in Afghanistan.
But theres one clear lesson one can draw
from that reporting: As the evidence of US
culpability grew, the paper got less interest-
ed.
O
n February 25, 2013, the New York
Times reported that the Afghan govern-
ment had barred elite American forces
from operating in a strategic province
adjoining Kabul on Sunday, citing com-
plaints that Afghans working for American
Special Operations forces had tortured and
killed villagers in the area.
The Times emphasized the damage this
could do to the US mission: The move
would effectively exclude the American
militarys main source of offensive firepow-
er from the area.
A month later, the Times (3/21/13)
reported that the Afghan government was
compromising on its exclusion of US
troops, breaking an increasingly acrimo-
nious impasse. The paper reminded readers
that the source of the dispute was com-
plaints related to abuses by American forces
and accompanying Afghan men during
night raids in the province, accusations the
coalition has denied. The paper added that
certain Afghan and Western officials
blamed the deaths and torture on local insur-
gents.
Almost two months later (5/13/13) came
the headline Afghans Say an American
Tortured Civilians. But this was not about
American military personnel; the American
in question was identified as Zakaria
Kandahari, an Afghan-American who was
working as an interpreter for the Special
Forces unit. The Times included a comment
from a US officialspeaking on the condi-
tion of anonymity in line with official poli-
cywho insisted the US had no role: We
have done three investigations down there,
and all absolve ISAF [International Security
Assistance Force] forces and Special Forces
of all wrongdoing.
Some might find such denials unpersua-
sive; as the Times reported (5/13/13),
Afghan officials had a video of at least one
torture session, and the remains of the vic-
tims were turning up just outside the US
base.
T
he Times (5/22/13) reminded readers
days later that there has been no testi-
mony directly tying American soldiers to
the abuse or killing of those detainees. The
paper added that the American military has
described Mr. Kandahari as a freelance
interpreter who had volunteered to help the
American Special Forces, who allowed him
to live at their base in exchange.
Weeks later, the Times (6/5/13) was
reporting the discovery of more bodies just
outside the US baseand that Afghan and
US governments were in sharp disagree-
ment about who is responsible.
The story made the paper once again on
July 8, with the news that Kandahari had
been arrested. The papers account again
reiterated US claims that it had nothing to
do with the torture, but Heather Barr of
Human Rights Watch offered a dissenting
view:
The US said they investigated thoroughly,
theres nothing there, so everyone should
go away and accept their word that they
checked and did nothing wrong? I dont
think that ends the discussion. Theres a
lot more explaining that needs to be done
that hasnt happened yet.
New York Times Dean Baquet: We can call it torture now
that its clear no one will be punished for it.
I
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That explaining would have to happen
elsewhere, though. The New York Times
ran just one more story that mentioned the
controversy, a July 23 dispatch that once
again stated that US officials have cleared
their troops of responsibility in any torture
or killing.
The paper added that government offi-
cials have refused to offer further explana-
tion of what might have happened to the
dead men. One would think the arrest of
the principal suspect might inspire new
reporting.
A
nd it didjust not in the New York
Times. A major investigation by Rolling
Stones Matthieu Aikins (11/6/13) raised
serious doubts about the US denials about
Kandahari and the unit. Many of the men
who disappeared in Nerkh were rounded up
by the Americans in broad daylight, in front
of dozens of witnesses, Aikins reported. He
added that over five months,
Rolling Stone has interviewed more
than two dozen eyewitnesses and vic-
tims families whove provided consis-
tent and detailed allegations of the
involvement of American forces in the
disappearance of the 10 men, and has
talked to Afghan and Western officials
who were familiar with confidential
Afghan-government, UN and Red
Cross investigations that found the
allegations credible.
Aikins even tracked down Kandahari for
a prison interview; unsurprisingly, he
denied responsibility for the killings. The
US argument that a rogue interpreter carried
out an extensive campaign of torture is not
only far-fetched; Aikins wrote that it is
in a certain sense, irrelevant. Under the
well-established legal principle of
command responsibility, military offi-
cials who knowingly allow their subor-
dinates to commit war crimes are them-
selves criminally responsible.
To Aikins, these stories would amount
to some of the gravest war crimes perpetrat-
ed by American forces since 2001. But
they remained obscure to readers of the
New York Times, even after the Amnesty
report corroborated his charges.
But the Times didnt entirely ignore Rol-
ling Stones reporting; on February 16, 2014,
the Times mentioned that Aikins expos
had received a George Polk Award. n
N
ew York Times investigative reporter
James Risen is taking a stand. Despite
being hounded by both the Bush and
Obama administrations to reveal his
sources, he has vowed to go to jail rather
than abandon his pledge of confidentiality.
As fellow journalists and journalism
advocacy groups rush to his side, many fear
that the US Department of Justice within the
self-proclaimed most transparent adminis-
tration in history is preparing to deliver a
body blow to the First Amendments prom-
ise of press freedom.
This case is the closest weve come to
the edge of the precipice, to reporter/source
privilege being banned, said Jesselyn
Radack, director of national security and
human rights for the Government Account-
ability Project, in a phone interview.
R
isen, a Pulitzer Prizewinning reporter,
has been ordered by the DoJ to testify in
the prosecution of former CIA employee
Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused of leaking
information about a botched Clinton-era
CIA mission to give Iran phony nuclear
informationwhich ended up giving Iran
real information on how to build a bomb.
Risen wrote about the failed operation in his
2006 book State of War.
Risen was initially subpoenaed by the
Bush administration in 2008, but the order
expired as the reporter fought against it
through the courts. To the surprise of many,
the subpoena was renewed under President
Obama in 2010despite repeated calls to
drop the pursuit.
Risen informed the public about the
dangerous stupidity of a CIA operation and
seriously embarrassed the agency in the
process, said Norman Solomon, a longtime
FAIR associate and co-founder of
RootsAction.org, an online advocacy group,
in an email exchange. Evidently a pair of
unforgivable sins in the eyes of both the
Bush and Obama administrations.
I
f the government does uphold its subpoe-
na and Risen is punished for taking his
stand, journalists and free press advocates
say that this would set a dangerous prece-
dent for the interpretation of press freedom
under the First Amendment.
Functionally, a reporter will no longer
be able to promise source confidentiality,
Radack explained. This will impact people
who want to disclose wrongdoing, she
said. Whistleblowers disclosing fraud,
waste, abuse and illegality will no longer go
to the press.
Robust investigative journalism has
already suffered from budget cuts and wan-
ing interest in long-form journalism, and
this chilling effect on sources will provide
the final nail in the coffin of the free press
as we know it, Radack added.
I
n 2011, a federal District Court ruled that
Risen could not be compelled by the gov-
ernment to reveal his sources. A criminal
trial subpoena is not a free pass for the gov-
ernment to rifle through a reporters note-
book, wrote District Court Judge Leonie
Brinkema, adding that Risen was protected
by a limited reporters privilege under the
First Amendment.
The government challenged that deci-
sion, and in 2013, the US Court of Appeals
for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond,
Virginia, reinstated the subpoena, arguing
that the First Amendment did not protect
Risen from being forced to testify against
his source.
In June 2014, Risens legal battle
reached an insurmountable barrier when the
US Supreme Court refused to take up his
case, affirming the lower court ruling. Now
Risen will have to testify or face contempt
of court charges, which can lead to either
imprisonment or up to $1,000 a day in fines.
After the high court passed on the case,
Risens attorney, Joel Kurtzberg, told the
Committee to Protect Journalists (6/2/14)
12 u October 2014 Extra!
Risen case tests reporters power to reveal
government wrongdoing
Official Sources May
Be the Only Sources
by Lauren McCauley
Extra! October 2014 u 13
that he hopes the government wont hold
Risen in contempt for doing nothing other
than reporting the news and keeping his
promise to his source. He noted that the
ball is now in the governments court.
O
n August 14, a coalition of journalists,
media advocacy groups and independent
media outlets delivered over 100,000
signatures to the Department of Justice,
calling on the Obama administration to drop
its subpoena.
The petitionorganized by Roots
Action along with FAIR, the Center for
Media and Democracy, Freedom of the
Press Foundation, The Nation Institute and
The Progressiveargues that without
confidentiality, journalism would be
reduced to official storiesa situation anti-
thetical to the First Amendment.
On the day the petition was turned in,
Risen was joined by a number of free press
advocates, including Radack and Solomon,
at a press conference at the National Press
Club in Washington, DC. Speaking before
the roomful of reporters, Risen said, The
real reason Im doing this is for the future of
journalism.
Freedom of the press is the most impor-
tant freedom, agreed Delphine Halgand,
director of Reporters Without Borders Wash-
ington office, who also spoke at the press
conference. It is the freedom that allows us
to verify the existence of all other freedoms.
W
hen asked about the Risen case at a
closed-door meeting with a group of
journalists, Attorney General Eric
Holder (New York Times, 5/28/14) report-
edly declared, As long as Im attorney gen-
eral, no reporter who is doing his job is
going to go to jail.
Despite this pronouncement, the prose-
cution of whistleblowers has become a
mainstay of Obamas presidency
(Extra!, 9/11; FAIR Media
Advisory, 8/27/13). During his
time in office, the DoJ has pur-
sued eight prosecutions of leakers
under the Espionage Act, more
than double the total number of
such prosecutions since the law
was enacted.
McClatchy News (6/20/13)
also revealed the existence of a
government employee tattletale
program. By having government
employees spying and reporting
on each other, the Obama initia-
tive, dubbed Insider Threat, aims
to thwart future leakers.
According to the Reporters Without Bor-
ders annual Press Freedom Index (2/12/14),
the US dropped 13 positions from 2013 to
2014, and now ranks 46th worldwide. The
report notes:
In the US, the hunt for leaks and
whistleblowers serves as a warning to
those thinking of satisfying a public
interest need for information about the
imperial prerogatives assumed by the
worlds leading power.
Advocates say to ensure the protection
of journalists in this post-9/11 surveillance
state, it is critical to pass a federal shield
law that will protect reporters from being
forced to disclose confidential information
or sources in court. (Most states have some
sort of law or protection in place.)
There is a shield bill currently making
its way through CongressS. 987, known
as the Free Flow of Information Act
though there is concern that the legislation
has too many loopholes that allow the gov-
ernment to claim broad national security
exceptions and leave some whistleblowers
without protection (Dissenter, 5/12/14).
The New York Times James Risen at the Roots Action Press Conference
at the National Press Club in Washington, DC: The real reason Im doing
this is for the future of journalism.
NYT Has Benefitted From Leakers
but Not Vice Versa
A
s the Department of Justice doggedly pursues Pulitzer Prizewinner James Risen, the New York
Times has been forced to enter the fray of the governments so-called war on information.
The Times, like many mainstream publications, has openly acknowledged its practice of seek-
ing government approval for sensitive stories (2/6/13), and often serves as a government mouthpiece by
publishing sanctioned leaks of information.
And although the Times has benefitted enormously from actual leaks of government secrets that
were vital for the public to know, it has historically maintained a cautiousif not skepticaldistance
from those who risked their careers and liberty to reveal such truths.
Despite publishing the invaluable Pentagon Papers, which exposed government deceptions about the
Vietnam War, the Times refused to provide leaker Daniel Ellsberg with any help in his criminal case.
According to Ellsberg, thenexecutive editor Abe Rosenthal told the whistleblower that the paper had no
policy for supporting a source who is being prosecuted for leaking information.
The Times, Ellsberg explained, thinks of leakers, wrongly, as having clearly broken the law.
The paper has given even less support to Chelsea Manning, despite having partnered with Wikileaks
in July 2010 to release important revelations from the hun-
dreds of thousands of classified war logs and State
Department cables revealed by Manning.
In addition to disparaging her character and questioning
her motives in a Bill Keller column (3/11/13), the Times treat-
ed Mannings trial as a noneventnot sending a single
reporter, and only running one AP wire story (12/30/12) on it.
Later, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan
(5/12/12) wrote that the paper had missed the boat by not
covering Mannings pretrial testimony.
The paper did run an editorial (1/1/14) supporting NSA
whistleblower Edward Snowden; however, that was months
after an earlier editorial (8/6/13) essentially calling for Snowden to be extradited for prosecution.
In a January 2013 column about the prosecution of Chelsea Manning, journalist Glenn Greenwald
warned corporate media that they might want to take a serious interest in the case and marshal oppo-
sition to what is being done to Bradley Manning.
He continued: If not out of concern for the injustices to which he is being subjected, then out of self-
interest, to ensure that their reporters and their past and future whistleblowing sources cannot be simi-
larly persecuted.
It seems that time has come.L.McC.
Daniel Ellsberg: The New York Times thinks
of leakers, wrongly, as having clearly broken
the law.
I
n a recent interview with Times colleague
Maureen Dowd (8/17/14), Risen refer-
enced Obamas most transparent admin-
istration claim.
Its hypocritical, Risen said. A lot of
people...dont want to believe that Obama
wants to crack down on the press and
whistleblowers. But he does. Hes the great-
est enemy to press freedom in a generation.
Among those who have come to Risens
defense are 21 fellow Pulitzer Prizewin-
ning reporters, who each signed the Roots
Action petition and issued personal state-
ments on his behalf.
Included in the testimonies is one from
Risens New York Times colleague Barry
Bearak, who wrote that Risen is carrying
the banner for every American journalist.
If he goes to jail, Bearak continued, a
good bit of our nations freedom will be
locked away with him. n
Lauren McCauley is an assistant editor at
the website Common Dreams and a docu-
mentary producer; her most recent film is
Mississippi Messiah, about civil rights
leader James Meredith.
14 u October 2014 Extra!
Corporate sector overwhelmingly dominates public TV governing boards
Who Rules Public TV?
by Aldo Guerrero
T
he corporate and financial sectors have
an overwhelming presence on the gov-
erning boards of major public televi-
sion stations, a new FAIR study finds.
The study looked at the occupations of
the current trustees of WNET (New York
City/Newark), WGBH (Boston), WETA
(Washington, DC), WTTW (Chicago) and
KCET (Los Angeles).
Out of these boards 182 total members,
152or 84 percenthave corporate back-
grounds, including 138 who are executives
at elite businesses. Another 14 members
appear to be on the board because of their
families corporate-derived wealth, often
with a primary affiliation as an officer of a
family charitable foundation.
Many board members are affiliated with
major corporations like Boeing, Wells Fargo
and Citigroup. Seventy-five board mem-
bers, nearly half of all those with corporate
ties, are financial industry executives.
Another 24 are corporate lawyers.
P
ublic TV board members without corpo-
rate ties were few and far between. Of
these, nine are categorized as academics,
while six are affiliated with nonprofit groups
(not counting family grant-making founda-
tions). There are three former government
officials, two non-corporate lawyers, two
journalists, one religious educator and a for-
mer principal of a magnet school. Six board
members are station insiders.
WNET, WGBHand WETAare consid-
ered to be the big three PBS affiliates,
producing a large share of programming for
PBS nationally. WTTW and KCET were
included because they serve two of the
largest US metropolitan areas. Four of these
stations are affiliated with PBS; KCET dis-
affiliated in 2010, but remains a prominent
regional public television station.
The boards range in size from WTTWs
63 members to KCETs 20. WTTW and
WNET have the most corporate representa-
tion on their boards, each at 92 percent.
KCETs board is 80 percent corporate-affil-
iated, while DCs WETA is at 73 percent.
Corporate-tied board members were least
common at WGBH, where they still made
up two-thirds of the board.
One hundred sixteen members (64 per-
cent) are male. It was not possible to do a
breakdown of board members ethnicities.
L
ast year, the issue of corporate influence
over public television was thrust into the
spotlight when the film Park Avenue:
Money, Power and the American Dreamwas
broadcast by PBS affiliate WNET (New
Yorker, 5/27/13; FAIR Blog, 5/21/13). The
film examined the concentration of wealth
and power in the United States by looking at
the super-rich residents of 740 Park
Avenuewho included then-WNET board
member and major station donor David
Koch, a billionaire industrialist well known
for his donations to right-wing causes.
WNET president Neil Shapiro was said
to be concerned about a film critical of
one of his biggest funders. WNET ended up
not receiving a large donation from Koch
potentially in the seven-figure range
because Park Avenue was broadcast, the
New Yorkers Jane Mayer reported.
PBS then preemptively pulled the plug
on Citizen Koch, another film that examined
the Koch familys political influence
apparently practicing self-censorship in an
attempt to placate a wealthy donor. Koch
would eventually resign from the WNET
board of trustees. Since then, a campaign
has been launched demanding that Koch
also resign from the board of Bostons
WGBH, where he is still a trustee.
High-powered executives likes David Koch overwhelmingly
dominate the boards of trustees at public TV stations.
This documentary caused trouble when it aired on WNET
because of the money and power on the PBS affiliates
board.
Extra! October 2014 u 15
P
ublic television stations depend on
underwriting from the corporate sector,
which is undoubtedly why executives
and their families so dominate public TVs
boards. Over the years, FAIR has found
public TV displaying bias and favoritism
towards corporations (Press Release,
10/19/10; Action Alert, 4/23/12).
Some individuals within public TV
acknowledge the problem of such influence.
In a leaked farewell address, former PBS
producer Sam Topperoff (Gawker, 5/24/10)
was scathing about the state of New York
public television, including WNET:
I see our general programming for the
wider public as elitist and offensive in
the extreme.... But, of course, when
stations run on very rich peoples and
corporate money, how could it be oth-
erwise? And when the corporation is
directed by those very clever and very
ambitious fellows whose careers will
float them to good places no matter
what, what else could we reasonably
expect?
Controlling the board means wielding
ultimate power over the direction and char-
acter of a public television station. Boards
have the power to elect top executives
(presidents, CEOs, CFOs, etc.), manage the
stations finances and, of course, oversee
the programming that their stations produce.
To join a public television board, an
individual must be elected by existing
board members. What sort of people are
these business-dominated boards likely to
select? They will likely perpetuate the cor-
porate culture, rendering the public in
Public Broadcasting Service an ironic
anachronism. n
CounterSpin is FAIRs weekly
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and Peter Hart. Its heard on
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