October, 19 2010, 08:15am EDT
Major FAIR Expose of PBS: Taking the 'Public' Out of Public TV
PBS Fare Differs Little from Commercial TV
NEW YORK
A multi-part FAIR expose of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs
programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to
its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give
voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see
America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's
founding document.
In a special November issue of studies and analyses of PBS's major
public affairs shows, FAIR's magazine Extra! shows that "public
television" features guestlists strongly dominated by white, male and
elite sources, who are far more likely to represent corporations and
war makers than environmentalists or peace advocates. And both funding
and ownership of these shows is increasingly corporate, further eroding
the distinction between "public" and corporate television. There is
precious little "public" left in "public television."
FAIR undertook the examination following news last fall that PBS was
canceling Now and that Bill Moyers was retiring from Bill Moyers
Journal. PBS announced that it was replacing the two shows, which
exemplified the public broadcasting mission, with Need to Know, a news
magazine launched in May and anchored by two journalists from the
corporate media world.
FAIR's findings reveal:
Need to Know. FAIR's study of the first three months of Need to
Know's guestlist and segments finds that its "record so far provides
little encouragement that it will ever serve as an adequate replacement
for Now and the Bill Moyers Journal."
The program's heavily white (78 percent) and male (70 percent) guestlist
failed to "break out of the narrow corporate media box." Corporate
representatives outnumbered activists 20 to 12. And black people
appeared overwhelmingly on stories on drugs and prisons.
PBS NewsHour. If PBS's signature news show is any indication, the
system is doing little to help us "see America whole, in all its
diversity."
-- The NewsHour's guestlist was 80 percent male and 82 percent white,
with a pronounced tilt toward elites who rarely "go unheard," like
current and former government and military officials, corporate
representatives and journalists (74 percent). Since 2006, appearances
by women of color actually decreased by a third, to only 4 percent of
U.S. sources.-- Women and people of color were far more likely to appear as "people
on the street" providing brief, often reactive soundbites, than in more
authoritative roles in live interviews.-- Viewers were five times as likely to see guests representing
corporations (10 percent v. 2 percent) than representatives of public
interest groups who might counterweigh such moneyed interests--labor,
consumer and environmental organizations.-- While Democratic guests outnumbered Republican guests nearly 2-to-1
in overall sources, Republicans dominated by more than 3-to-2 in the
program's longer format, live segments. (FAIR's 2006 NewsHour study,
which examined a period when Republicans controlled the White House and
Congress, showed Republican guests outnumbering Democrats in both
categories: 2-to-1 among all sources, 3-to-2 in the longer live
interviews.)-- On segments about the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the most frequent
story of the study period, viewers were four times as likely to see
representatives hailing from the oil industry (13 percent of guests) as
representatives of environmental concerns (3 percent).-- On segments focusing on the Afghan War, though polls show consistent
majorities of Americans have opposed the war for more than a year, not
a single NewsHour guest represented an antiwar group or expressed
antiwar views. Similarly, no representative of a human rights or
humanitarian organization appeared on the NewsHour during the study
period.
The NewsHour, "public TV's nightly newscast," is actually privately
owned. For-profit conglomerate Liberty Media has held a controlling
stake in the NewsHour since 1994. The company is run by industry
bigfoot John Malone, who has declared that "nobody wants to go out and
invent something and invest hundreds of millions of dollars of risk
capital for the public interest." Public dollars still support the
NewsHour, and former PBS president Ervin Duggan declared the show "ours
and ours alone," but Liberty CEO Greg Maffei refers to the program as
"not our largest holding," but "one we're very proud of."
And it's not just the NewsHour. The Nightly Business Report was sold
earlier this year by public station WPBT to a private company. The
details of the deal-- which shifts the most-watched daily business show
on television into private hands-- are mostly unknown.
The Charlie Rose Show--a show produced outside the PBS system but
widely carried on public television stations--boasts a remarkably
narrow guestlist. FAIR found the most common guests (37 percent) were
reporters from major media outlets, and corporate guests, well-known
academics and government officials also made frequent appearances. Of
the 132 guest appearances, just two represented the public interest
voices that public television is supposed to highlight (equaling the
number of celebrity chefs who appeared). Eighty-five percent of guests
were male, and U.S. guests were 92 percent white.
Washington Week, the longest-running public affairs show on public
television, suffers from similar problems--which would seem to be by
design, given the show's inside-the-Beltway focus. In four months of
programs (May-August 2010), Washington Week presented 29 [64] reporter
guests; only one did not represent a corporate-owned outlet. Only four
of 64 appearances by guests were by non-white panelists (6 percent),
and the guestlist was 61 percent male.
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.
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Supreme Court Urged to 'Rule Quickly' After Trump Immunity Arguments
"It'd be a travesty for justices to delay matters further," said one legal expert.
Apr 25, 2024
After about three hours of oral arguments Thursday on former President Donald Trump's immunity claims, legal experts and democracy defenders urged the U.S. Supreme Court to rule swiftly, with just over six months until the November election.
Trump—the presumptive Republican candidate to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden, despite his 88 felony charges in four ongoing criminal cases—is arguing that presidential immunity should protect him from federal charges for trying to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Justices across the ideological spectrum didn't seem inclined to support Trump's broad immunity claims—which critics have said "reflect a misreading of constitutional text and history as well as this court's precedent." However, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) shared examples of what it would mean if they did.
"Trump could sell pardons, ambassadorships, and other official benefits to his wealthy donors, members of his clubs, or cronies who helped him commit other crimes," CREW warned. "Trump could sell nuclear codes and government secrets to help pay back crippling debts."
"But this isn't just about what Donald Trump could do. It's really about how total immunity for the president would threaten our democratic system of checks and balances," the group continued. "The president could order the military to assassinate activists, political opponents, members of Congress, or even Supreme Court justices, so long as he claimed it related to some official act."
After warning that a president could also order the occupation or closure of the Capitol or high court to prevent actions against him, CREW concluded that "the Supreme Court never should have taken this appeal up in the first place. They should rule quickly and shut these ludicrous claims down for good."
The organization was far from alone in demanding a quick decision from the nation's highest court.
"In the name of accountability, the court must not delay its decision," the Brennan Center for Justice said Thursday evening. "The Supreme Court's time is up. It needs to let the prosecution move forward. The court decided Bush v. Gore in three days—it should act with similar alacrity in deciding Trump v. U.S."
In Bush v. Gore, the case that decided the 2000 election, the high court issued a related stay on December 9, heard oral arguments on December 11, and issued a final decision on December 12.
On Thursday, the arguments "got away from the central question: Is a former president immune from criminal prosecution if he tried to overthrow a presidential election, using private means and the power of his office to do so?" the Brennan Center noted. "The answer is simple: No."
"It is not an 'official act' to try to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power or the Constitution, even if you conspire with other government officials to do it or use the Oval Office phone," the center said. "Trump's attorney was pushing the court to come up with a sea change in the law. That's unnecessary and a delay tactic that will hurt the pursuit of justice in this case."
In a departure from previous claims, Trump's attorney, D. John Sauer, "appeared to agree with Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, that there are some allegations in the indictment that do not involve 'official acts' of the president," NBC Newsreported, noting questions from liberal Justice Elena Kagan and conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee.
Barrett summarized various allegations from the indictment and in three cases—involving dishonest election claims, false allegations of fraud, and fake electors—Sauer conceded that Trump's alleged conduct sounded private, suggesting that a more narrow case against the ex-president that excluded any potential official acts could proceed.
Due to Trump attorney's concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there's now a very clear path for DOJ's case to go forward.\n\nIt'd be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further.\n\nJustice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.\u2b07\ufe0f— (@)
According to NBC:
Matthew Seligman, a lawyer and a fellow at the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School who filed a brief backing prosecutors, said Sauer's concessions highlight that Trump is "not immune for the vast majority of the conduct alleged in the indictment."
Ultimately, he said, the case will go to trial "absent some external intervention—like Trump ordering [the Justice Department] to drop the charges" after having won the election.
At the same time, Sauer's backtracking might have little consequence from an electoral perspective. Further delay in a trial, which Sauer is close to achieving, is a form of victory in itself.
Slate's Mark Joseph Stern pointed out that when Barrett similarly questioned Michael Dreeben, the U.S. Department of Justice lawyer arguing the case for Smith, it seemed like they "were trying to work out some compromise wherein the trial court could distinguish between official and unofficial acts, then instruct the jury not to impose criminal liability on the former."
"It was fascinating to watch Barrett nodding along as Dreeben pitched a compromise that would largely preserve Smith's January 6 prosecution but limit what the jury could hear, or at least consider," Stern added. "That, though, would take months to suss out in the trial court. More delays!"
Stern and other experts signaled that the decision likely comes down to Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts, with the three liberals seemingly supporting the prosecution of Trump and the other four conservatives suggesting it is unconstitutional.
People for the American Way president Svante Myrick said in a statement that "today's argument brought both good and bad news. It was chilling to hear Donald Trump's lawyer say that staging a military coup could be considered part of a president's official duties."
"Thankfully, the majority of the court, including conservative justices, did not seem to buy that very broad Trump argument that a former president is absolutely immune from prosecution under any circumstances," Myrick added. "On the other hand, it's not clear that there is a majority on this court that will quickly reject the immunity arguments and let the case go forward in time for a trial before the election. That's a huge concern."
Trump was not at the Supreme Court on Thursday; he was at his trial in New York, where he faces 34 counts for allegedly falsifying business records related to hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 election cycle. The are two other cases: a federal one for mishandling classified material and another in Georgia for interfering with the last presidential contest.
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Protest organizers—who include Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change, Planet over Profit, and Stop the Money Pipeline—said 53 activists were arrested over two days of demonstrations, which included blocking the entrance to Citigroup's headquarters, to "demand that the bank stop funding fossil fuels."
Organizers said this week's demonstrations "were just the beginning" of what they're calling a "Summer of Heat" targeting big banks for their role in the climate emergency and for "polluting our land, air, and water, and threatening the health of children, families, and our planet." Citigroup is the world's second-largest fossil fuel financier.
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Jonathan Westin, executive director of Climate Defenders, asserted that "Citigroup's racist funding of oil, coal, and gas is creating climate chaos that's devastating communities of color across the country."
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"We're going to keep organizing and taking direct action until Citi listens to us," he vowed.
Stop the Money Pipeline co-director Alec Connon said: "To have any chance of reigning in the climate crisis, we must stop investing in fossil fuel expansion. Yet, Citibank is pumping billions of dollars into new coal, oil, and gas projects."
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According to the protest organizers:
Citi has provided $668 million in funding to Formosa Plastics between 2001-2021, which is trying to build a $9.4 billion plastics facility in a majority Black community in the heart of Cancer Alley in Louisiana.
Citigroup is also one of the biggest funders of state-run oil and gas companies in the Amazon basin, pumping in over $40 billion between 2016-2020, and a major backer of Petroperú, which has been involved in oil spills and Indigenous rights violations.
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During a Thursday U.S. State Department press conference in Washington, D.C., a reporter noted Gaza officials' claim that mass grave victims "including children were tortured before being killed" and that "some even showed signs of being buried alive, along with other crimes against humanity."
"What's wrong with an independent, scientific, forensic investigation?"
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Palestinian news outlet al-Quds who asked about the mass graves.
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