Erin Burnett, Outside Agitator
Todd Walther, a spokesperson for the Charlotte, N.C., police union, told CNN host Erin Burnett (OutFront, 9/22/16) that most of those protesting the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott came from outside North Carolina: “If you go back and look at some of the arrests that were made last night, I can about say probably 70 percent of those had out-of-state IDs. They’re not coming from Charlotte.” Rather than questioning this remarkable claim, Burnett passed it along to her 170,000 Twitter followers (9/22/16), along with Walther’s assertion that “these are not protesters, these are criminals.”
When the Charlotte Observer (9/23/16) did actual journalism, it found that roughly 21 percent of arrested protesters were from outside Charlotte, mostly from neighboring towns. Walther explained the
discrepancy: “I didn’t quote facts…. It’s speculation. That’s all it was.”
In the meantime, however, Burnett’s tweet had been picked up all over right-wing media, with headlines like “Charlotte Police: 70% of Rioters Arrested Are Out-of-State ‘Instigators’” (Fox News, 9/23/16) promoting conspiracy theories about “outside entities” coming in to stir up trouble.
Ugliness in the Eye of the Reporter
The videotaped killing of Keith Scott by Charlotte police.
The New York Times (9/20/16) reported that “about 16 police officers in Charlotte, N.C., were injured when a standoff between law enforcement and demonstrators turned ugly overnight after an officer fatally shot a black man on Tuesday afternoon.”
Some would say that the turn toward ugliness occurred in the afternoon, when Keith Scott was fatally shot by a police officer.
Berrying the Lead
Workers lack faces in the New York Times‘ slideshow on Driscoll’s berry farms. (photo: Jason Henry/NYT)
The New York Times (9/6/16) featured a profile of Driscoll’s, described by reporter Stephanie Strom as “the family-owned berry juggernaut.” “No other company in the world grows berries exactly like these,” readers were told, and that “Driscoll’s is betting that once consumers know why its berries are distinctive they will demand them by name.”
“The company’s YouTube channel will feature stories told by consumers about why berries make them happy.” “Driscoll’s strawberries trace their heritage to the late 1800s, when ‘Aunt Lou’ came home from a trip to Sweetbriar, California, carrying some plants that she swore produced the best strawberries she had ever eaten.” The genetic work they do “is the reason that growers want to grow for us and not someone else.” All of this, readers were told by the New York Times.
What readers weren’t told was that years of poverty wages, wage theft, and hostile and unhealthy conditions for farmworkers had made Driscoll’s berries the target of a high-profile international boycott. (A week after the Times story, Driscoll’s workers succeeded in ratifying a union and suspended the boycott—The Nation, 10/3/16—also with no coverage from the Times.)
Justice for Corporations—Not War Crime Victims
The Washington Post said it would create “a precedent other countries could easily turn against the United States.” (Seth Mcallister/AFP/Getty Images)
Influential newspapers editorialized against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a bill that makes it easier to sue Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 attacks. The Washington Post (9/15/16) said it would create “a precedent other countries could easily turn against the United States…given this country’s global use of intelligence agents, special
operations forces and drones, all of which could be construed as state-sponsored ‘terrorism’ when convenient.” USA Today (9/27/16) was worried about “opening the military and other US officials serving abroad to similar lawsuits from other countries filed in courts all over the world.” The New York Times (9/27/16) warned that “Americans could be subject to legal actions abroad” because “no country is more engaged in the world than the United States — with military bases, drone operations, intelligence missions and training programs.”
The irony is that these publications all support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that would permit corporations to sue governments, including the US, over regulations that undermine corporate profits. They have much less enthusiasm for allowing victims of war crimes to have legal recourse.
When Is Direct Military Intervention Not Direct Military Intervention?
A US warplane takes off from a US aircraft carrier to bomb targets in Syria. (cc photo: Alex King/US Navy)
“President Obama has long refused to approve direct military intervention in Syria,” the New York Times asserted in an editorial (9/29/16) about “Vladimir Putin’s Outlaw State.” That’s an odd claim, given that according to official Pentagon figures, the US has carried out 5,337 airstrikes in Syria since 2014. According to the monitoring group Airwars, these airstrikes (along with a few hundred strikes by US allies) have likely killed more than 800 Syrian civilians. The Times has routinely reported on this, along with US commando raids inside Syria (New York Times, 5/16/15) and US special forces being stationed there on an “open-ended mission” (New York Times, 10/30/15). Somehow, though, none of this qualifies as “direct military intervention in Syria.”
US Media Ignore Brazilian Coup Confession
The Intercept was the only media outlet who found this bombshell admission newsworthy. (photo: Leila Macor/AFP/Getty Images)
In a September 22 speech to an elite foreign policy group in New York City, the newly installed president of Brazil, Michel Temer, acknowledged that the elected president, Dilma Rousseff, had been ousted by Brazil’s congress because she refused to embrace an austerity plan (The Intercept, 9/23/16):
We suggested that the government should adopt the theses presented in that document called “A Bridge to the Future.” But, as that did not work out, the plan wasn’t adopted and a process was established which culminated with me being installed as president of the republic.
This was a bombshell admission, demolishing the pretense that Rousseff had been legitimately impeached over financial irregularities. But Temer’s remarkable confession was seen as newsworthy by virtually no one in US corporate media: A search of the Nexis news database turns up no stories that mentioned the speech in any US newspaper, magazine, broadcast or cable outlet.