--by Peter Hart, originally published in FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting)
In October, the inevitable was announced: Struggling Newsweek magazine would be finished as a print publication as of the end of the year. But the last mass newsweekly left, Time, also made an announcement of sorts: It was out of the factchecking business.
The Washington Post's Bob Woodward obtained an audio recording of a conversation between David Petraeus, the general turned CIA Director who recently resigned in the midst of a sex scandal, and Fox News contributor Kathleen T. McFarland. The conversation took place in spring 2011 in Kabul, during the time that Petraeus was the commander of U.S. and coalition forces there. McFarland is a national security analyst for Fox News and has a long resume working for GOP administrations going back to Reagan.
Fox News was publicly skewered and filleted this week by one of their own guests, Thomas E. Ricks, an expert on military and defense policy and a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter. His interview was abruptly and unceremoniously ended after he calmly tagged Fox as "a wing of the Republican Party."
As a news hound and a mom, I have an early morning routine for catching up on developments while getting the kid ready for school. I head downstairs, snap on the radio, start making coffee, and packing a kid-friendly lunch. The kitchen radio is permanently tuned to 1670 AM WTDY's "Sly in the Morning" show because I know that Sly has been up since 4 a.m. reading half a dozen state and national newspapers, scanning the front pages and the classifieds for the critical, the controversial, the funny, and the obscure.
The Lucy Burns Institute (LBI) is a Madison-based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2006 and named after a significant leader of the women's suffrage movement. The organization sponsors three websites: Ballotpedia, which tracks elections and ballot measures at the state level; WikiFOIA, which provides Information on how to use Freedom of information laws at the state and local level; and Judgepedia, which provides information on the nation's judges and court systems.
I was reading Alexander Cockburn early this morning when I heard he had died.
As a kid growing up in the suburban wasteland of New Jersey, Cockburn's columns in the Nation introduced me to issues, wars, and corrupt politicians around the world I had never heard of.
Editor's note: The Center for Media and Democracy is pleased to publish this important investigative work about a new and far-reaching effort to spin news about state legislation, which has been examined by Media Matters for America's Joe Strupp. CMD recently published two related stories, one on the Franklin Center's operations and one about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Media Matters' original story is available here.
When Idaho state legislators proposed a seemingly uncontroversial bill to ban access to commercial tanning beds by minors earlier this year, IdahoReporter.com took up the issue with force.
CNN jumped the gun this morning when it erroneously announced that the Supreme Court had struck down the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate -- appearing to side with the court's most vocal critics of the healthcare overhaul.
At 10:11 EDT the CNN headline read "Mandate Struck Down" and opined "the ruling overturns requirement that Americans must buy health insurance. The decision will affect you, generations of Americans and this fall's presidential race."
If you listen to Milwaukee talk radio you have no doubt heard WTMJ's Charlie Sykes crying to high heaven about the outrageous, politically motivated witch hunt of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker being run out of the Milwaukee District Attorney's office. Milwaukee DA John Chisholm has been spearheading a secret "John Doe" criminal investigation of Walker's former staff and associates for two years now. Trials for four of Walker's associates are pending this fall.
According to Sykes, the DA's office is "leaking like a sieve" and is the source of a damaging article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- a serious charge, since people can be criminally prosecuted for violating the secrecy rules of the John Doe. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Dan Bice has broken most of the stories about the investigation, but has repeatedly denied that he is getting leaks from prosecutors.
It may not be uncommon to find fault with Politifact and its "Truth-O-Meter," (see update at bottom), but a recent rating by Politifact-Wisconsin was so far off we had to comment. The following letter was published in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on June 23:
Dear Editor:
PolitiFact recently rated "false" a claim that the Koch brothers gave twice as much to Gov. Scott Walker as Tom Barrett raised. It is PolitiFact that deserves the "false" rating. In rating the claim "false," PolitiFact wrote, "There is no proof of how much Americans for Prosperity, which gets money from the Kochs but also other sources, spent on Walker's behalf."
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