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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40123)	7/31/2007 11:28:41 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 541795

The NYT's New Pro-War Propaganda By Robert Parry July 30, 2007 consortiumnews.com No need to wait until September. It’s already obvious how George W. Bush and his still-influential supporters in Washington will sell an open-ended U.S. military occupation of Iraq – just the way they always have: the war finally has turned the corner and withdrawal now would betray the troops by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. At one time, the Iraq story line was how many schoolrooms had been painted or how well the government security forces were doing. Now there are new silver linings being detected that will justify a positive progress report in September – and the U.S. news media is again ready to play its credulous part. President Bush signaled the happy-news judgment of his hand-picked commander, Gen. David Petraeus, in a round of confident public appearances over the past two weeks. With his effusive praise of “David,” as Bush called the general at a White House news conference, the President acted like a smug student arriving for a test with the answers tucked in his pocket. Another key element of the coming propaganda campaign was previewed on the op-ed page of the New York Times on July 30 as Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution portrayed themselves as tough critics of the Bush administration who, after a visit to Iraq, now must face the facts: Bush’s “surge” is working. “As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory’ but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with,” O’Hanlon and Pollack wrote in an article entitled “A War We Just Might Win.” Yet the authors – and the New York Times – failed to tell readers the full story about these supposed skeptics: far from grizzled peaceniks, O’Hanlon and Pollack have been longtime cheerleaders for a larger U.S. military occupying force in Iraq. Indeed, Pollack, a former CIA analyst, was a leading advocate for invading Iraq in the first place. He published The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq in September 2002, just as the Bush administration was gearing up its marketing push for going to war. British journalist Robert Fisk called Pollack’s book the “most meretricious contribution to this utterly fraudulent [war] ‘debate’ in the United States.” (Meretricious, by the way, refers to something that is based on pretense, deception or insincerity.) Neocon ‘Full Monte’ Pollack’s influential book offered the “full monte” neoconservative vision for remaking the Middle East, with the Iraq invasion as only the first step in the transformation. Ousting Saddam Hussein “would sever the ‘linkage’ between the Iraq issue and the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Pollack wrote. “It would remove an important source of anti-Americanism.” But Pollack was wrong in his predictions. If anything, the Iraq War has deepened Arab-Israeli animosities while enflaming the region’s anti-Americanism. Also, in Fisk’s view, “Pollack’s argument for war was breathtakingly amoral. War would be the right decision, it seemed, not because it was morally necessary but because we would win. War was now a viable and potentially successful policy option. “It would free up Washington’s ‘foreign policy agenda,’ presumably allowing it to invade another country or two where American vital interests would be discovered. [Pollack’s] narrative – in essence an Israeli one – is quite simple: deprived of the support of one of the Arab world’s most powerful nations, the Palestinians would be further weakened in their struggle against Israeli occupation.” [See Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization] After the U.S. invasion of Iraq failed to locate the promised weapons of mass destruction – and a stubborn Iraqi insurgency emerged – Pollack offered an apology for his high-profile role in promoting the war. In fall 2004, Pollack told an interviewer for the New York Times magazine, “I made a mistake based on faulty intelligence. Of course, I feel guilty about it. I feel awful. … I’m sorry; I’m sorry!” [NYT Magazine, Oct. 24, 2004] But now Pollack – having re-positioned himself from war booster to war critic – can reinvent himself again as a grudging convert to the wisdom of Bush’s war strategy, without either him or the Times editors alerting readers to this reverse metamorphosis. This idea of a critic reluctantly admitting the wisdom of a neoconservative strategy has long been one of the neocons’ favorite propaganda tactics dating back to the Cold War days of the 1980s. Then, a common neocon refrain was that “even the liberal New Republic” supported the Nicaraguan contra rebels. That endorsement supposedly lent the contra cause greater weight because the New Republic had a historic reputation as a leftist magazine. In reality, however, the New Republic had been taken over by neocon Martin Peretz in the 1970s, and he had turned it into a home for neocon and right-wing pundits, such as Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes. Yet, if Americans didn’t know those details, they could be influenced by an out-of-date impression, much as many people still recall Brookings as a “liberal” think tank, an image that Brookings has worked quietly to shed since it started moving rightward in the 1980s, bringing in more centrist, center-right and neoconservative analysts. Surge Backer In 2002-03, Pollack’s Brookings colleague, O’Hanlon, was more skeptical about the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq than Pollack was. For instance, O’Hanlon correctly doubted the evidence of links between Hussein’s secular government and the Islamic extremists of al-Qaeda. But O’Hanlon carefully covered all his bases, arguing that “there is a case for overthrowing Mr. Hussein if we cannot re-establish and improve the inspections and disarmament process in Iraq. But it has more to do with the region’s security than with any unlikely Hussein-al-Qaeda link.” [Baltimore Sun, Sept. 26, 2002] Since the failure to find WMD stockpiles and the stumbling occupation, O’Hanlon and Pollack have constructed reputations as critics of Bush’s war strategy not by objecting to its imperial impulses or the immorality of invading a country at peace but by hitting the administration for an inadequate commitment of troops and resources. In other words, they have fit themselves in with many Washington insiders who still maintain that the invasion was a fine and noble idea; the only problem was the incompetent occupation. Along those lines in early 2007, O’Hanlon emerged as a defender of Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq. On Jan. 14, he published a Washington Post op-ed entitled, “A Skeptic's Case For the Surge.” O’Hanlon’s chief pro-surge argument was to hoist Iraq War opponents on their own petard – their supposed complaint that Bush’s failure was in not sending enough troops and not giving the military the necessary tools. “On the military surge itself, critics of the administration’s Iraq policy have consistently argued that the United States never deployed enough soldiers and Marines to Iraq,” O’Hanlon wrote. “Now Bush has essentially conceded his critics’ point … It would … be counterintuitive for the president’s critics to prevent him from carrying out the very policy they have collectively recommended.” While perhaps a clever debating point, O’Hanlon’s argument is disingenuous. It is not accurate to say that war critics “collectively” wanted Bush to invade with a larger army and then to throttle Iraq with a bigger occupation force. Many – indeed probably most – war critics opposed any invasion and any occupation, basing their objections on legal and moral grounds, noting that international law prohibits aggressive wars and that Iraq was not threatening the United States. It’s also disingenuous today for O’Hanlon and Pollack to present themselves as harsh critics of Bush’s Iraq War when, in fact, they either advocated the invasion (in Pollack’s case) or eagerly promoted the surge (as O’Hanlon did). At minimum, they should have given a fuller accounting of their past positions. To read their op-ed in the New York Times, an unsuspecting reader would get the impression that these two hard-boiled anti-war skeptics have finally been won over to Bush’s wisdom by the strength of the evidence. That simply isn’t the case; they were predisposed to Bush’s position to begin with. The reality appears to be that these two on-and-off war supporters were given an administration-sponsored tour of Iraq with the expectation that they would return to Washington with glowing reports about the war’s progress, made all the more believable by them playing up – or puffing up – their credentials as war critics. In that case, Mission Accomplished. [For other examples of the U.S. press corps’ misleading coverage of Iraq, see our new book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.] While one might yawn about the predictability of the Bush administration and its mouthpieces misleading the public once again, readers of the New York Times might reasonably expect that – given the newspaper’s role aiding and abetting the march into this disastrous war five years ago – that the editors at least might insist on a more accurate ID for these two “experts.” Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40123)	7/31/2007 11:30:51 AM
From: $Mogul	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541795

Exactly the point. Dems will oppose and will go hard at the throat to stop this, if indeed the Bancrofts agree, which still does not seem 100% at this hour.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40123)	7/31/2007 12:12:57 PM
From: Paul Kern	Respond to of 541795

Want to bet that the Fox name will be gone and it will something like "Wall Street Journal TV"?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (40123)	8/1/2007 12:48:48 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541795

I don't see how anyone could make an anti-trust case against Murdoch's acquisition of the WSJ. With him in control, there is going to be more, not less, competition at the national level. We all know that Murdoch is willing to absorb lots of red ink. The NYT in particular should be worried. Guessing Murdoch’s Strategy for The Journal August 1, 2007 News Analysis By RICHARD SIKLOS So now what? Since the News Corporation’s offer for Dow Jones & Company was made public three months ago, Rupert Murdoch’s business career, character and motives have been dissected in an effort to predict what he might do as the owner of The Wall Street Journal. Despite how long Mr. Murdoch has wanted The Journal, he may not have a set playbook, according to interviews and more recent conversations with several people in Mr. Murdoch’s camp, who spoke on the condition they not be identified. “There’s a very low probability that there’s a grand plan,” said one person close to Mr. Murdoch. But based on his history, there is little doubt that Mr. Murdoch will directly aim at luring both readers and advertising away from The New York Times and The Financial Times, The Journal’s closest rivals. His strategy will probably include aggressively undercutting advertising and investing heavily in editorial content — particularly in Washington and international news — absorbing losses at first to win the longer-term war. At its most ambitious, Mr. Murdoch’s vision for Dow Jones would establish The Journal as the rival to The Times in setting the daily news agenda of the country. The vision has a business corollary: by broadening The Journal’s influence beyond pure business readers, Mr. Murdoch wants to reposition it as not just the world’s leading financial newspaper, but the world’s leading business journalism source for consumers. The paper has already tried this with softer service features and its Saturday edition. Reorienting the newspaper further for consumers would fit with two other aspirations Mr. Murdoch has. One is to build his nascent Fox Business Network, which begins in 30 million United States homes this October, into a viable contender with Bloomberg Television and CNBC, which have much larger subscriber bases both at home and abroad. The Journal already has a deal to provide news content exclusively to CNBC, an agreement that the News Corporation discovered is ironclad until 2012. Any move to tie The Journal to the new Fox business channel will require disentanglement. In the meantime, the business channel, which is scheduled to begin operation on Oct. 15 under the direction of the Fox News chief executive and chairman, Roger Ailes, is being readied on the presumption that it is a stand-alone business. Mr. Murdoch’s second and overarching vision is to resurrect the newspaper industry by integrating print and video online and building brands around the world. Part of that involves tapping into Dow Jones’s Web properties — it owns not just The Journal but also the investing weekly Barron’s, Dow Jones Newswires and the consumer-focused Web service MarketWatch.com — to create an online platform for all of the company’s newsgathering operations around the world. Another part would be using the company’s Fox and Sky News video outlets as sources of video content on the new sites. Mr. Murdoch has shown in the past that he is willing to experiment, even knock over some sacred cows. In an interview with The Times earlier this year, Mr. Murdoch mused aloud about The Journal, saying, for instance, that he did not have time to read longer articles during the week and might like to swap out the paper’s Pursuits section on Saturdays with a glossy magazine. More recently, he told Time magazine that he was not sure about the offbeat front-page stories known internally as “A-Heds” that are a plum for reporters to write. A more immediate change might be felt on the Web side, where The Journal has stood out among newspapers by commanding more than 900,000 paid subscribers. Executives at the News Corporation are keen to explore whether more of that content ought to be offered free online to increase the audience and attract advertising, while keeping subscribers by offering more premium services. A more open WSJ.com would be able to attract more advertising, but also potentially distribute that advertising across the News Corporation’s online footprint. Mr. Murdoch’s purchase could mean more immediate changes on the business side of Dow Jones. When he repurchased The New York Post in 1993, he focused on raising the paper’s circulation by cutting the cover price of the paper several times and handing out copies free. “If he hadn’t come in, there wouldn’t have been a New York Post,” said Jerry Fragetti, senior vice president for media and operations at Newspaper National Network, who worked as chief financial officer of The Post in the 1980s and as an executive for the News Corporation in the early 1990s. Mr. Murdoch believed that expanding the readership would allow him to take away advertisers from The New York Times and The Daily News. (He fought hard for readers on the news side, as well, turning the paper into a gossipy must-read for people on Wall Street, in fashion and in the media business.) And as The Post grew in circulation, Mr. Murdoch did not always increase the price of ads in the paper, say advertising executives who bought newspaper ads in the 1990s. Advertising executives say The Post pursues ad sales as aggressively as Mr. Murdoch has pursued a purchase of Dow Jones. The Post’s advertising department started offering more creative packaging of ads, like opportunities for advertisers in the paper to also be involved in events and promotions, and featured in fliers in the paper, said Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch, an advertising agency that is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The paper’s advertising team is still known to be one of the more persistent in the newspaper business. “The DNA of the people they hire tends to be a little higher octane in terms of aggressiveness and energy,” said Jason E. Klein, president and chief executive of Newspaper National Network, which sells ads on behalf of a variety of newspapers across the country. “They’re kind of standouts in terms of how hungry they are, which I think for some people is actually quite refreshing,” Mr. Klein said. Several ad executives said it might be appealing to have a one-stop place to buy ads in The Wall Street Journal, its Web site and the News Corporation’s television network about business. “I want to go nuts on that channel,” Mr. Gardiner of Deutsch said. Mr. Murdoch absorbed heavy start-up costs when he introduced the Fox News Channel in 1996, entering a market where critics said there was no room for a new entrant. While his rivals complain that Mr. Murdoch has succeeded through flash, tone and slant, today the network is profitable and has overtaken CNN in the ratings. When it comes to his newspapers, he can be especially deep-pocketed and patient, running up considerable losses for years so long as other branches of his media empire are churning out enough profits. The Australian, a national newspaper that Mr. Murdoch founded in 1964, took more than two decades to record its first profit. The Times of London is expected by News Corporation executives to make a profit next year, its first since it was acquired in 1982. The New York Post has also lost money since the company acquired it for the second time in 1993. Over all, despite the losses at these high-profile titles, the company’s 110 newspapers, anchored by Mr. Murdoch’s money-spinning tabloids in Britain and Australia, produced solid profit margins of nearly 14 percent in the nine months that ended March 31, far higher than The Journal’s margins in the low single digits. With both The Times of London and The Post, Mr. Murdoch engaged in long cover price wars with their chief competitors, The Daily Telegraph in London and The Daily News in New York, which helped increase the sales of both Murdoch titles markedly. Mr. Murdoch has not said whether he would try to change the price of The Journal, which recently increased its newsstand price, as did The New York Times and The Financial Times. And while changes atop Dow Jones may not be imminent, they would not be surprising. People close to Mr. Murdoch have speculated that he will find a senior role at Dow Jones for Robert Thomson, the current editor of The Times of London. Mr. Thomson has been an adviser in the pursuit of The Journal. Also, it has been bruited by some within the News Corporation that buying Dow Jones could set the stage for the eventual move of Mr. Murdoch’s son James to the United States to oversee the company’s print, television and online network businesses, with Mr. Ailes playing a senior role. Both Mr. Thomson and James Murdoch, who is the chief executive of BSkyB in London, have said they had no immediate plans to leave their current posts. At The Journal, Mr. Murdoch has agreed to a series of measures intended to protect the paper’s editorial independence from corporate interference, something the media billionaire has been known to engage in over the years at other newspapers he owns. Top editorial executives cannot be removed or added without the approval of a new oversight board, but Mr. Murdoch can make changes on the business side. For now, he has voiced his support for the new managing editor, Marcus W. Brauchli, and said he does not plan to replace the chief executive, Richard F. Zannino, or the publisher, L. Gordon Crovitz. One person close to Mr. Murdoch said it was his style to see how things worked out before making any judgments. One major marker is going to be how Mr. Zannino approaches The Journal brand internationally. The company has scaled back its European and Asian editions in recent years and they did not figure prominently in the growth plan Mr. Zannino put in place when he became chief executive last year. Mr. Murdoch, however, is keen to turn up the heat on The Financial Times. “He will give the management there the confidence to put up some of the plans they had in the past and didn’t have resources for and see how they run,” the person close to Mr. Murdoch said. Louise Story contributed reporting. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company nytimes.com