Extra!The Magazine of FAIR—The Media Watch Group
Sunday Climate TalkLeading Papers on TPPUkraine & Venezuela
U.S./CANADA $4.95 April 2014 Vol. 27, No. 4
Betty Yu on Comcast/Time Warner Cable Merger
Barack &theWeed Talk
by Peter Hart
2 u April 2014 Extra!
FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticismof media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendmentby advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practicesthat 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 reformis needed to break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent pub-lic broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of information.
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Extra!The Magazine of FAIR—The Media Watch Group
3 SoundBites
4 Letters
Gender Focus5 The War on Poor Women of Color
Abortion coverage slump matches class & ethnic shiftby Rania Khalek
6 Sunday Morning Snow JobBeltway talk shows’ flaky climate coverageby Miranda C. Spencer
8 Leading Papers’ Sources Tilt Toward TPPsparse, slanted coverage of corporate-friendly dealby Steve Rendall and Melanie Nakashiancover story
10 With Marijuana, the Obvious Is IncendiaryIt’s hard to argue pot is riskier than alcohol—but many pundits did by Peter Hart
11 Cable Monopoly’s Gain Is Community Media’s Losscomcast/time Warner cable merger threatens local voicesby Betty Yu
13 Good Protesters—and the Bad KindWhen Molotov cocktails are just a ‘boy’s adventure’by Peter Hart
14 On Homeland, Islam Means Terrortv’s one major Muslim character is a secret Al-Qaeda agentby Arun Kundnani
Cover art by Kym Balthazar
Volume 27, Number 4 April 2014
Contents
Extra! April 2014 u 3
USA Today ’s Cracked Crystal BallUnder the headline “1,000 Days Out:Calmer Landscape for ’16 Race,”USA Today’s Susan Page (2/10/14)noted that “the last time there wasan open race for the White House, in2008...the economy was sinking intothe worst crisis since the GreatDepression.” Whereas today, “amidearly jockeying for the 2016election—precisely 1,000 days awayas of Wednesday—presidentialhopefuls face what is shaping up tobe a very different landscape”:
The economy is recovering steadily,if slowly. Unemployment, while stilltroubling, is declining—to 6.6percent last month, the lowest sinceOctober 2008. The budget deficithas dropped from its peak by nearlytwo-thirds despite the failure toreach a long-sought Grand Bargain.
Of course, a thousand days beforethe 2008 election, the economiccrisis that started in 2007 hadn’thappened yet. Unemployment was at4.7 percent. The CongressionalBudget Office was projecting a 2006deficit of $337 billion—less than aquarter of what it would be in threeyears. That the actual circumstancesunder which candidates ran for office
in 2008 didn’t atall resemble thesituation in early2006 shows thefutility of trying topontificate aboutelections almostthree years before
they happen. But that isn’t going tostop the political press corps.
Bob Schieffer Is Tired of Your Fancy TalkFace the Nation host Bob Schieffer(2/16/14) with a classic example ofanti-populist populism:
You know, David, you went toHarvard, so you understand phraseslike “income inequality” and thingslike that. I would kind of like to hearpeople talk about jobs…and thingslike that, though.... I think that’s abetter way to go at it, myself, but....
(“David” is the New York Times’David Sanger, who hadn’t saidanything about income inequality—or anything else—at that point in theon-air conversation.)
Minimum Math: Triple =‘Just as Many’“If you want to make some newfriends and just as many enemies,”wrote Time’s Eliza Gray (3/10/14),“here’s a helpful shortcut: take aposition on raising the federalminimum wage.” Calling it “one ofthe most divisive issues inWashington,” Time contrastedliberals who want a wage hike “toaddress growing inequality” againstconservatives who argue it would“destroy jobs.” Then, in an aside, themagazine noted that a minimumwage increase is something that “76percent of Americans favor,according to Gallup.”
So according to the polling citedby Time, you’d make three times asmany friends taking a pro-increaseposition as coming out against one.That’s a peculiar way to use “just asmany.”
Future Asks: Why Didn’t You Drown Us Quicker?On Meet the Press (2/2/14), hostDavid Gregory and White Housecorrespondent Chuck Todd puzzledover President Barack Obama’sfailure to immediately endorse theclimate-destroying Keystone XL
pipeline. “I mean, I think the left canbe upset with the president,” saidGregory. “But there’s a real openingto say to Republicans: ‘Hey, you saythis is a priority? Well, I studied it,and I think it’s a priority, too. We’ll goahead and do it.’... It could be a bigmoment for him.”
Todd worried about the president’s“big-picture legacy thing”:
The president was electedon...changing politics as we know it in this town.... He’s given up ontrying to break the polarizationaddiction that this town has. Somewill say he added to it. But he’sgiven that up. And, to me, that’sgoing to be something that I thinkhistorians are going to be writingdown as the great disappointment of the Obama era.
It’s doubtful that historians living inan era when sea level is 40–70 feethigher than it is today (Phys.org,3/19/12), and many coastal cities areentirely underwater, will be looking atObama’s failure to make commoncause with Republicans to acceleratethe burning of fossil fuels as “thegreat disappointment of the Obamaera.”
Scarborough Softballs the BossMSNBC had hardly any coverage ofthe proposed merger of its parentcompany Comcast with TimeWarner Cable (see p. 11), but theFebruary 13 edition of Morning Joefeatured both sides: It had on theCEO of Comcast and the CEO ofTWC. Co-host Joe Scarborough
actually prefaced one question toComcast’s Brian Roberts with, “It’llsound like a softball question.” (Andit did: “Comcast seems to be doingeverything right over the past four orfive years. What’s working for yourcompany that’s not working for othercompanies?”)
Scarborough later observed, “Evenif I weren’t working here…I would besaying, ‘It’s a pretty stunning storyabout just how successful Comcastis right now.’” Concurred MSNBCbusiness pundit Donny Deutsch:“Everything they’ve done is right.”And they say it’s hard to get goodhelp these days. n
S o u n dB i t e s
Good News! $8 Billion Less Food Aid“Some relief for millions ofAmerican families facing adrastic cut in food stamps. After a two-year fight today, the Senate passed a farm billwhich cuts $8 billion from thefood stamp program. But that’sfar less than the $40 billionRepublicans wanted to cut.” —Diane Sawyer (ABC World News, 2/4/14)
Strange Superpowersof French Presidents“French presidents don’t so much govern as reign from thesplendors of the Élysée Palace.They have powers mostdemocratic leaders only dream of, able to deploy their military orcommand nuclear strikes withoutfirst consulting the nationallegislature.”—Time (2/17/14)
Get the latest blog postsand Action Alertsat fair.org
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus
Red indicates areas where future historianswill not be living.
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4 u April 2014 Extra!
L E T T E R T O T H E E D I T O R
Extra! in the Texas GulagGreetings from the texas gulag.I’m in superseg and withoutresources, so I hope you’llexcuse my means of writing.
you have generously beensending me Extra! for severalyears now, and I want you toknow you guys are my heroesand sheroes for the priceless
work you do. Genuine democ-racy is impossible without awell-informed constituency (it’salso impossible in a societycomprised of different classes,but we won’t go there!); youguys do all in your power toinform the public by sheddinglight on our institutionalizedmanufactured consent.
As I mentioned, I’m in super-seg: lock yourself in a largecloset, surround yourself withradical and progressive booksand periodicals (all donated, ofcourse), sit or lie on an incredi-bly lumpy mattress, and you’vebasically recreated the pastseven years of my life. I don’teven have a radio to ward offsensory deprivation, so yourdonation of Extra! is really abig deal!
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I have no idea how I’m goingto survive on the streets withoutresources (guess I can buymyself a pair of boot straps topull myself up by with my $100release check!), but I want youto know, if I’m able, I willalways be renewing my sub-scription to Extra! and promot-ing your priceless organization.
yours for a well-informedpublic,
richard ostranderhuntsville, tex.
More Latino Voices NeededAfter reading Josmar trujillo(Extra!, 3/14) on cable tv net-works turning to Ana navarroand Alex castellanos when“they need a latino voice,” Ilooked at your masthead forlatino names. there was one:Josmar trujillo. perhaps, astrujillo writes, “still, somemedia find it easier to simply toask their in-house latino punditfor answers.”
stephen hessWashington, d.c.
March 2014
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Acolossal wave of abortion restrictionshave battered reproductive rightsacross the nation, leaving in its wakethe greatest threat to choice in recent
memory. nevertheless, the corporate mediahave responded with a collective yawn, sug-gesting a deep-seated indifference towardthe people these anti-choice provisions willharm the most—poor women of color.
In the early 1970s, white women made upover two-thirds of abortion recipients,according to the Guttmacher Institute
(9/28/08), a think tank that focuses on repro-ductive health. today, white women accountfor just 36 percent of all abortions. Meanwhile,women of color are increasingly overrepre-sented, with black women being three times aslikely and latinas twice as likely as their whitecounterparts to have an abortion.
on top of that, abortions have becomeincreasingly concentrated among poorwomen. In 2008, 42 percent of abortionrecipients were women living below thepoverty line, up from 27 percent in 2000. Atthe same time, Guttmacher (12/13) recordeda 24 percent decline in the abortion rate forhigher-income women.
Guttmacher (5/23/11) attributed the dis-parity to cuts in publicly funded family-plan-ning services, leaving low-income womenwithout adequate access to effective contra-ception. Indeed, unintended pregnancy, themost common reason women have abor-tions, has risen 56 percent since 1994 amongwomen living below the poverty line.
These disparities, as glaring as they areabsent from the narrow confines of cor-porate media coverage, will almost cer-
tainly intensify, given the unprecedentedGop assault on abortion access.
over the last three years, republican-dominated state legislatures across thecountry have enacted 205 abortion restric-tions, more than were passed in the previous10 years combined (Guttmacher, 2013).
Worse still, the restrictions are some ofthe harshest on the books since before Roev. Wade, with the most devastating anti-choice legislation targeting abortionproviders through regulations that requireabsurd and expensive renovations, likewidening hallways, installing water foun-tains and expanding janitorial closets(Think Progress, 7/16/13).
the goal, of course, is to force abortionclinics to shut down, making legal and safeabortion services inaccessible to those whocan’t afford the necessary travel costs andtime off work to make it to the nearest clinic.
Unfortunately, these draconian provisionshave failed to reverse the decade-longdownward trend in abortion coverage at
the country’s two most influential newspa-pers, the New York Times and WashingtonPost (Extra!, 2/14).
even when abortion access makes head-lines, mainstream outlets tend to focusexclusively on the republican versus dem-ocrat paradigm, which prioritizes the politi-cal horse race while erasing poor women ofcolor from the narrative.
For example, when house republicanspassed the no taxpayer Funding forAbortion Act in an attempt to bar the newhealthcare exchange plans from coveringabortion procedures, many media outletsnoted that the hyde Amendment alreadyachieves this goal (Huffington Post,1/28/14; MSNBC, 1/28/14).
What they all failed to point out is thatthe hyde Amendment—a 1970s era abor-tion restriction that blocks federal dollarsfrom covering abortion services—dispro-portionately harms underprivileged womenwho rely on federal government programslike Medicaid for health care.
had media outlets reached out to peopleof color, they might have learned thatrepealing the hyde Amendment is a top pri-ority for certain groups, like the nationallatina Institute for reproductive health,
which also advocates for access to federallyfunded health care for immigrants, anotheraspect of the abortion debate missing fromthe corporate press.
But time and again, elite pundits are givenplatform to speak for all women. In alengthy New York Times rundown
(1/3/14) of abortion restrictions at the startof the year, all six women quoted werewhite and seemingly privileged as eitherwell-known legal experts or the heads ofmajor abortion-related nonprofits.
comprehensive and nuanced analysis ofabortion restrictions seem to be relegated toindependent and issue-specific media cor-ners of the Internet (Colorlines, 12/31/13;RH Reality Check, 7/10/13). perhaps it’sbecause independent outlets are willing tounpack the structural inequalities underly-ing the abortion gap.
By failing to tell the whole story, when itbothers to tell one at all, the corporate mediaare willing accomplices in the Gop war onpoor women of color. n
Extra! April 2014 u 5
Abortion coverage slump matches class & ethnic shift
The War on Poor Women of Colorby Rania Khalek
G E N D E R F O C U S
Unpacking the structural inequalities underlying the abor-tion gap.
Colorline
s/Mark Wilson
6 u April 2014 Extra!
As FAIr has documented (e.g., MediaAdvisory, 2/19/13; Extra!, 2/11, 7/07),climate change is rarely mentioned onthe network evening news or sunday
talkshows. Media Matters for Americarecently confirmed the phenomenon: ItsJanuary 16, 2014, report found that ABC’sThis Week, NBC’s Meet the Press andCBS’s Face the Nation devoted only 27minutes to the topic in 2013 (though thatwas up from eight minutes in 2012).
so it was remarkable that on February16, 2014, all three programs featured thetopic prominently, hooked to the nation’scrippling winter storms and devastatingdrought. In one day, they devoted more timeto climate than they had the entire previousyear—nearly 40 minutes.
unfortunately, quality didn’t match quan-tity, reflecting the “balance as bias” frame-work (Extra!, 11/04) of years past, with sci-entists debating nonscientists and facts vyingwith opinions and political platforms—sometimes to the point of incoherence.
online outlets (Politico, 2/16/14; Salon,2/19/14) have already excoriated the com-ments by these shows’ guests. But the hostsand producers bear ultimate responsibilityfor conceiving and guiding the discussionthat ensued.
Rightly coming in for the most heat wasNBC’s Meet the Press. After two seg-ments on the Winter olympics, the show
focused on what host david Gregory misla-beled “the politics of weather,” starting witha 13-and-a-half-minute “debate” on climate-change policy between bow-tied engineerand tv personality Bill nye the science Guyand rep. Marsha Blackburn (r.-tenn.).
Gregory began by acknowledging that“in the scientific community, this is not real-ly a debate about whether climate change isreal. the consensus is that it is.” But heappeared to suggest that who was responsi-ble was more controversial: “the majorityof those [scientists] believe, in fact, that it iscaused by humans. there are certainly somein the scientific community who don’tbelieve that’s the case and who are skeptical
about some of those conclusions.”In a taped clip, NBC weathercaster Al
roker echoed these doubts: “Is it a naturalcycle? Is it due to human interference orhuman conditions that we have created?that remains open to debate.”
Gregory’s framing of the issue likewiseemphasized conflict. talking about Britain’sflooding, he said: “the chief scientist ofuK’s national Weather service said all theevidence suggests climate change is toblame. skeptics say the forecasts of doomand gloom are overblown.”
to his credit, Gregory did push back onBlackburn’s string of denialist objections,trying to steer the discussion back to hisoriginal question: “Is the growing cost ofour recent weather disasters creating a newfocus on the need for action on climatechange?”
GREGORY: of the manyrepublican members of thecongress I know personally, the vastmajority do not reject the underlyingscience of global warming....
BLACKBURN: Well, I think thatwhat you have to do is look at whatthat warming is. And when you look at the fact that we have gone from320 parts [of carbon dioxide] permillion, 0.032 to 0.040, to 400 partsper million, what you do is realizeit’s very slight.
As nye later pointed out, the increase is 30percent—hardly slight. But how serious-ly are we to take climate-science analy-
ses from a legislator with a Bs in home eco-nomics anyway? or, for that matter, federalpolicy prescriptions from a celebrity sciencehost? When Gregory asked nye aboutwhether executive fiat is an appropriate wayto make climate policy, he rambled abouthis own patriotism and made the vague rec-ommendation that “it would be in every-body’s best interest to get going, to just do,as I like to say, everything all at once.”
the unhelpful debate was followed by a
roundtable (2/16/14) on the economic andpartisan hurdles to climate action inWashington. this time, the talkers weremainstream journalists (NBC political direc-tor chuck todd and APWhite house corre-spondent Julie pace) and politicos (formerBill clinton advisor david Axelrod and for-mer George W. Bush communications direc-tor nicolle Wallace). unfortunately, the chatwas marred by its own form of denial.
For example, Axelrod acknowledgedthat “something is happening out there andit’s serious,” but implied its causes are stillambiguous. And, according to todd: “thereare a lot of people that say okay, let’s notdebate who’s right, man-made or is it justnature…. It doesn’t matter.” rather, toddsaid, we should “table this debate” and startworking on adaptation.
All seemed to agree that partisan politicsprevent any useful climate action by theobama administration—especially since, asWallace stated, any sacrifices by America(“cut off both our arms, both our legs”)“might not make a dent in it” unless develop-ing nations join us. no one pointed out thatthe us is the world’s second-highest emitterof greenhouse gases (about 20 percent)—oneof those “irrelevant” underlying causes.
ABC’s This Week, with George stepha-nopoulos, put the climate and weathernexus at the top of the show. After a
clear explanation of current weather condi-tions by meteorologist Ginger Zee,stephanopoulos moved to the main topic.Again, the set-up to the talk raised a ficti-tious controversy, this time between twoscientists over whether “the extremes of oneyear [are] related to climate change.”(While it’s true we can’t say an isolatedevent was “caused by” climate change, bydefinition all kinds of weather are affectedin some way by excessive greenhouse gasesin the atmosphere.)
stephanopoulos’ leading questions—“Why so much extreme weather? how can wecope with the consequences and the costs?”—were a mashup of scientific, practical andfinancial considerations. the guests asked to
Beltway talk shows’ flaky climate coverage
Sunday Morning Snow Job
by Miranda C. Spencer
Extra! April 2014 u 7
“those that make policy will decide on howto deal with these issues. As a scientist, youknow, we try to report the peer-reviewed lit-erature.”
The concurrent segments were no coinci-dence. In January, congress’s climatehawks decided to address the chronic
omission of global warming from ourscreens. nine members of the newly formedclimate Action task Force, spearheaded bysen. Bernie sanders (I.-vt.) and BarbaraBoxer (d.-calif.), sent a letter (1/16/14) tothe networks demanding more coverage onboth the evening news and sundayshows. the task Force’s initiative was anearly salvo in its stated efforts to “wake upcongress” to pass strong new federal cli-mate legislation, among other goals.
the letter charged:
despite [scientific] warnings, there hasbeen shockingly little discussion on thesunday morning news shows…. thisis disturbing not only because the mil-lions of viewers who watch theseshows deserve to hear that discussion,but because the sunday shows oftenhave an impact on news coverage inother media throughout the week.
the letter requested that the networks“take action in the near term to correct thisoversight.”
the correspondence resulted in a sit-down meeting between sanders, sen. Brianschatz (d.-hawaii), and the head of CBS,david rhodes, according to sanders’ com-munications director, Michael Briggs.Although Briggs told Extra! that the taskForce had not yet received a direct responsefrom NBC and ABC, it seems clear thecomplaint made an impact.
The debate format and type ofguests were in line with thesunday shows’ “brand”—tussles
over politics and the meaning of cur-rent events. to be sure, there is muchto debate regarding climate change—in terms of solutions. But to have thatdebate in a meaningful way, it makessense to interview people about theirarea of expertise: scientists about sci-ence and politicians about policy.
then there is the conscious orunconscious catering to corporate
advertisers. For example, Meet the Press’ssponsors include the American petroleumInstitute and energy-services company Ge(Ad Age, 5/13/13). those organizationsbenefit from uncertainty about climatechange’s causes. this point was not lost onsanders et al., whose letter noted:
We are more than aware that major fos-sil fuel companies spend significantamount of money advertising on yournetworks. We hope this is not influenc-ing your decision about the subjectsdiscussed or the guests who appear onyour network programming.
still, the senator was gratified by thecoverage, his spokesperson told Extra!. (Ablurb on sanders’ website—2/16/14—waswryly headlined “network news noticesclimate change.”)
the next question: Were these showsone-off snow jobs, or the beginning of reg-ular discussion of climate science and poli-cy? stay tuned. n
Miranda C. Spencer is a long-time Extra!contributor who often writes aboutenvironmental issues. She blogs about oil andgas fracking at ShaleReporter.com.
parse it included north carolina Gov.pat Mccrory, los Angeles Mayor ericGarcetti, ABC business and economicscorrespondent rebecca Jarvis andClimate Central climatologist dr.heidi cullen—the only real climateexpert invited to any of the three net-work sunday shows that week(although she was the last asked to speakin her segment).
Most of the discussion centered onthe price tag and governing headachesof being buried under snow or parchedby drought, then moved to cullen’s welcomebreakdown of the underlying problem, “thebroader pattern.” namely, “climate change,burning fossil fuels, means that we’re going tosee more of these very expensive extremeweather events.... We’re already seeing those.”
the participants moved on to discussadaptation to this new reality—for example,what luxury fashion houses are doing toensure their supply chains can function“whether the weather is going crazy or it’s anormal weather pattern,” according toJarvis. (efforts to halt or slow climatechange by reducing greenhouse-gas emis-sions were never mentioned.)
cullen was even asked for her businessand government prescriptions. yet when shereturned to her own wheelhouse to explainhow real-world risks are amplified by cli-mate change, stephanopoulos turned toGovernor Mccrory: “do you accept thatargument?” he added, “you’ve said thatyou believe that this whole issue of climatechange is in God’s hands.”
CBS’s Face the Nation also led with cli-mate. In two one-on-one interviews, hostBob schieffer used appropriate sourcing,
drawing on Mccrory (again) to discuss thehuman and economic effects of the priorweek’s snowstorms on hard-hit northcarolina, and meteorology expert Marshallshepherd to explain the science behindthese weather patterns.
schieffer asked Mccrory about his“God’s hands” quote, an opening for thegovernor to again frame climate change as aleft/right issue and make the confusing andunchallenged claim that “the debate is real-ly how much of it is man-made.”
Fortunately, shepherd set the recordstraight on climate change and cold weath-er: “As I always say, weather is your mood,climate is your personality, so you have tolook beyond what’s happening right outsideyour window.” And when schieffer askedhim what should be done, he rightly noted:
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, NorthCarolina Gov. Pat McCrory, L. A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, ABCbusiness correspondent Rebecca Jarvis and ClimateCentral climatologist Dr. Heidi Cullen.
FAIR TVWeekly video report at fair.org
Recent Episodes: Pundits Want Social SecurityCuts, Troop Cut Panic, ‘Some Say’ ArizonaDiscrimination Coverage • Climate Change FalseBalance, MSNBC Cheers Comcast, Apology-FreeBill O’Reilly • Media Miss NC March, UselessCampaign Coverage, PBS’s Pension Problem
8 u April 2014 Extra!
implement unpopular policies that corpora-tions favor, like a provision that wouldimplement a large part of the stop onlinepiracy Act (sopA), which us activiststhought they’d defeated in 2012, when itdied in congress following massive publicopposition (CounterSpin, 2/21/14).
perhaps most devastatingly, if imple-mented in the manner indicated by draftchapters leaked over the past two years, sev-eral life-saving generic medicines would betoo expensive for millions who require themto stay alive (CounterSpin, 11/15/13).
With measures that would affect virtuallyevery citizen in the us and tpp mem-ber nations, you might expect leading
American newspapers to be keenly follow-ing tpp. But this hasn’t been the case. In theyear between Barack obama’s 2013 and2014 state of the union addresses (2/12/13–1/28/14), the New York Times and Wash-ington Post had a combined total of 18news reports discussing tpp, featuring 48sources.
tpp received a small fraction of theattention the papers devoted to stories ofmuch less import, such as the Benghazi andIrs stories portrayed as scandals by theright—without much of anything scandalousbehind them (FAIR Blog, 5/17/13, 6/25/13).Benghazi was mentioned in 618 stories inboth papers. using the search terms “Irs”and “conservative”—according to the Irs
Critics call it a corporate coup, an assaulton the public interest and a threat to dem-ocratic sovereignty. It’s the trans pacificpartnership (tpp), a commercial treaty
currently being negotiated in secret betweenthe us, nAFtA partners Mexico and canada,and nine more pacific rim countries:Australia, Brunei, chile, Japan, Malaysia,new Zealand, peru, singapore and vietnam.
though it sounds like a big story, it’snot—at least for us corporate media.
last month, Extra! (3/14) revealed thatnational tv news on ABC, CBS, NBC,CNN and Fox News simply ignored thestory. MSNBC’s Ed Show, hosted by edschultz, was the only exception, featuringmore than two dozen segments discussingthe treaty during the year.
now FAIr has studied tpp coverage intwo leading newspapers, the New YorkTimes and the Washington Post, findingthat on the rare occasions the papers cov-ered tpp over the last year, the sources theyquoted tilted heavily in favor of the treaty.
With the potential to deeply affect manyaspects of commerce, internationallyand domestically, tpp requires inten-
sive coverage. As lori Wallach of publiccitizen’s trade Watch (Democracy Now!,10/4/13) explained, tpp’s impact would bewide-ranging because only five of its 29chapters deal with trade; the other 24 “eitherhandcuff our domestic governments, limitingfood safety, environmental standards, finan-cial regulation, energy and climate policy, orestablishing new powers for corporations.”
the treaty, negotiated in secret with theinput of hundreds of corporate lobbyists,would promote job offshoring to lower-wage countries—for instance, prospectivesignatory vietnam, with a minimum wageof 28 cents per hour. It would give corpora-tions the right to enter signatory nations toextract natural resources—oil, gas and min-erals—without those governments’ approval.
the pact would serve as a back door to
scandal storyline, the agency singled outconservative groups for harassment—turnedup 444 stories.
In the two papers combined, sourcesfavoring tpp (31) outnumbered thoseopposing (14) by more than 2-to-1. threesources were expressly noncommittal. thePost presented an almost 3-to-1 ratio of sup-porters to opponents (16–6) with one non-committal source, while the Times featureda nearly 2-to-1 imbalance (15–8) with twononcommittal sources.
of the 48 total sources, 24 were us gov-ernment–affiliated, with about half speakingfor the office of the us trade representa-tive and nine representing congressionalperspectives. six sources came from privateus business interests. the most frequentlycited source was us trade representativeMichael Froman, who appeared eight times,accounting for one of every six sources.
public citizen’s Global trade Watch, thesierra club, the united steelworkers unionand the yale law school’s Media Freedom& Information Access clinic were the us-based anti-tpp groups appearing as sources.Articles debating whether Japan should jointhe deal (New York Times, 3/6/13, 3/15/13;Washington Post, 4/24/13, 10/3/13) includ-ed quotes from various agricultural co-ops,a citizen’s congress for opposing the tppand a former politician from an anti-tppdelegation.
Every editorial supported tpp, thoughsome, including all the Times’ editorials,insisted that certain environmental and
labor standards be included (e.g., 1/18/14)to “ease fears that freer trade would lead togreater environmental damage and sweat-shop conditions by giving businesses anincentive to ship production and jobs tocountries with lower standards.” (theTimes has a track record of offering condi-tional support for commercial deals andlater continuing to support them when theconditions are not met—Extra!, 7/98.)
Sparse, slanted coverage of corporate-friendly deal
Leading Papers’ Sources Tilt Toward TPP
by Steve Rendall and Melanie Nakashian
Glob
al Trade
Watch
Extra! April 2014 u 9
And while one Post editorial (3/15/13)quoted a letter signed by 43 democraticmembers of congress opposing tpp for the“economically harmful” practices of unreg-ulated trade, the editorial board was quick todismiss that point as “complaining,” and toassert the economic potential of tpp.
opposition to tpp was relegated to theop-ed page, where five out of nine columnsopposed the deal. Four of seven columns inthe Post opposed the treaty, three written byharold Meyerson, who, for instance,explained the detrimental effects of unregulat-ed trade on jobs (4/30/13). one of the Post’sthree columns supporting the tpp featuredPost editorial page editor Fred hiatt inter-viewing Japanese prime Minister shinzoAbe, also an ardent tpp supporter. the Timesran just two op-eds, one for and one against.then–nyc Mayor Michael Bloomberg(8/22/13) offered an endorsement, butexpressed reservations over the health impli-cations of tpp’s tobacco provisions. loriWallach and Ben Beachy of public citizen’sGlobal trade Watch authored the Times’ col-umn critical of the tpp (6/2/13).
Public opinion has grown increasinglyleery of commercial “free trade” treaties,with opposition to nAFtA, the north
American Free trade Agreement imple-mented 20 years ago, being one of the fewissues that unites Americans across partisanand regional lines (Eyes on Trade,2/13/14). It would be useful to be able tocompare the pro-tpp slant of the Times andPost sources with public opinion on tpp.however, as pew research Global Attitudesproject observed in 2013 (4/1/13), tpp
has received relatively little news cov-erage in the us. It is not a topic ofbroad public debate. And there havebeen no major public opinion polls thathave asked Americans specificallyabout the negotiations.
since then, public opinion pollsters hartresearch Associates and chesapeake Beachconsulting have published a poll (1/27/14)revealing 62 percent of Americans opposegranting the White house “fast track”authority on tpp, which would allow thepresident to rush the bill through congresswithout amendment or any real debate.opponents and proponents alike, includingpublic citizen’s Wallach and trade represen-tative Froman, say it is unlikely that tppcould get congressional approval withoutthe advantage of fast track.
If the public is not particularly sweet on thepact, and both sides agree that tpp couldnot survive an open congressional debate,
why isn’t there a larger, broader, more inclu-sive media debate? public citizen’s Wallachtold Extra! there are two answers.
Big companies with large advertisingbudgets can put an enormous amount ofpressure on newsrooms, resulting in a situa-tion where, Wallach said, “even if no one’stelling them ‘don’t cover the things that pissoff the sponsors,’” executives make it clearthat “this is not a winning topic.”
the second factor, according to Wallach,is that “newsrooms have been so decimatedthat there is no full-time trade coverage”:
tpp is like a smorgasbord of explosivestories with amazing pictures on everycurrent issue of our day. From climate tothe environment to food safety to medi-cine prices to Internet freedom to inequal-ity of income.... It’s like the beat that keepson giving. But no one’s assigned to it. n
Additional research by Lane Wollerton.
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Journalism in the Public Interest
10 u April 2014 Extra!
As 2014 marked the beginning of newmarijuana decriminalization laws incolorado and Washington state, a fewcomments from president Barack
obama became national news. Much of thecoverage, however, bore little resemblanceto what obama had actually said.
obama’s marijuana commentary camein a lengthy New Yorker profile (1/27/14)by david remnick. When asked to weigh inon legalization, obama said, “I view [mari-juana use] as a bad habit and a vice, not verydifferent from the cigarettes that I smoked...through a big chunk of my adult life.” headded that he told his daughters that “I thinkit’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not veryhealthy,” while acknowledging that “I don’tthink it is more dangerous than alcohol.”
he threw in a straw man about legaliza-tion proponents: “those who argue thatlegalizing marijuana is a panacea and itsolves all these social problems I think areprobably overstating the case.” And obamamade a slippery slope argument, musing onthe question of where society draws the line:
you do start getting into some difficultline-drawing issues. If marijuana isfully legalized and at some point folkssay, “Well, we can come up with anegotiated dose of cocaine that we canshow is not any more harmful thanvodka,” are we open to that?
one might say that obama managed totake every position on the issue. But muchof the conversation sparked by obama’swords focused on the idea that obama saidsomething especially controversial abouthow pot might not be so bad for you.
Given that obama was in no way endors-ing marijuana use, it might be hard toimagine there was much controversy at
all. Alcohol-related deaths are most certain-ly a more pressing public health concern
than marijuana, with excessive drinkingblamed for 88,000 us deaths per year by thecenters for disease control. In contrast, theBritish Medical Journal (9/18/03) report-ed that while “the use of cannabis is notharmless, the current knowledge base doesnot support the assertion that it has anynotable adverse public health impact in rela-tion to mortality.”
But the media were off to the races.CNN host Brooke Baldwin declared thealcohol/pot comparison was “the quote thathas really made news this week.” Formerdrug czar John Walters appeared on CNN’sThe Lead (1/22/14) to say:
I think the science over the last 50years has shown us this is more danger-ous, not less dangerous. he knowssome of this. If you read his autobiog-raphy, you can see when he does talkabout using marijuana, he basicallysays what we have known. Marijuanamakes you stupid.
(obama, of course, ended up at harvardlaw school; if he hadn’t smoked pot,maybe he could have gotten into yale?)
USA Today (1/20/14) told the story underthe headline “dangers of pot vs. Boozedebated: experts speak out After
obama remarks.” the first expert, stuartGitlow of the Mt. sinai school of Medicine,was blunt: “there’s no benefit to marijua-na.... It’s simply that people want the free-dom to be stoned.”
on Fox News Channel’s SpecialReport (1/20/14), reporter ed henry saidthat obama had “suggested rolling a mari-juana joint was not much different fromcigarettes,” which was apparently ironicsince “the president’s administration...based on a 1970 law, still classifies marijua-na as a schedule 1 controlled substance,with high potential for abuse.” henryrepeated that on the O’Reilly Factor(1/24/14), saying that obama “may run intomore trouble” over the pot/alcohol compar-ison, since “his own drug czar” still callsmarijuana “a very dangerous drug. Andthat’s contradictory.” MSNBC host chris Matthews (1/20/14)
said that obama’s message “departs fromwhat we’ve heard in administrations in thepast.” Matthews acknowledged that he’snormally a big obama backer, but
the fact is I don’t think he is right onthis one, because I think people haveaddictive personalities, and some peo-ple react to freedom differently thanothers. And we better be ready for it,because it’s coming now.
though it was a bit muddled, Matthews’point seemed to be that marijuana posed asimilar risk to alcohol—which does not con-tradict what obama said. “We all deal withour anecdotal experiences in life,” heexplained, adding that he has been “aroundguys who drank too much and after theydrank too much, we go look for dope,around midnight. so don’t tell me boozewasn’t a gateway to dope or to marijuana.”
It’s hard to argue pot is riskier than alcohol—but many pundits did
With Marijuana, the Obvious Is Incendiary
by Peter Hart
C O V E R S T O R Y
Extra! April 2014 u 11
Even before the interview was published,some in elite media were expressing theirdiscomfort with the news from colorado.
“For a little while in my teenage years, myfriends and I smoked marijuana,” wroteNew York Times columnist david Brooks(1/3/14) in a widely derided piece. Brooksrecalled that “one member of our cliquebecame a full-on stoner,” while the rest ofhis group “graduated to more satisfyingpleasures.” too much pot “seemed likely tocumulatively fragment a person’s deep cen-ter,” Brooks counseled, adding that legaliza-tion efforts were “nurturing a moral ecologyin which it is a bit harder to be the sort ofperson most of us want to be.”
on the same day (1/2/14), WashingtonPost columnist ruth Marcus—a liberal bycorporate media standards—wrote a similarconfessional:
Marijuana legalization may be the same-sex marriage of 2014—a trend thatreveals itself in the course of the year asobvious and inexorable. At the risk ofexposing myself as the fuddy-duddy Iseem to have become, I hope not.
Marcus admitted that she had “done[her] share of inhaling,” but given what shesees as the potential health risks, she con-cluded that “society will not be better offwith another legal mind-altering substance.”
And Meet the Press host david Gregory(1/5/14) offered this:
I think about it as a parent with youngkids.... there is a little bit of sentimen-tality, like, “Well, you know, if I triedpot, it’s not going to be so terrible.” Imean, there is medical issues with that.I don’t know all the science behind it,but then it’s a lot more potent now.
Watching pundits grasp for a reason tocriticize obama’s comments, ironical-ly enough, only underscored one of his
points: American society devotes significantresources to a punitive approach to one sub-stance, while fully legalizing and normaliz-ing other far more dangerous and addictivesubstances.
Indeed, stripped of the moralizing aboutwhat to tell children, obama’s most coher-ent statement about marijuana was about thedisproportionate prosecution of users:
Middle-class kids don’t get locked upfor smoking pot, and poor kids do....African-American kids and latino kids
are more likely to be poor and less like-ly to have the resources and the supportto avoid unduly harsh penalties.
the racial dimension of the govern-ment’s drug policies are clear: people ofcolor are less likely to use illegal drugs thanwhites, but far more likely to be arrested
and prosecuted (Huffington Post, 9/17/13). It’s not that this part of obama’s com-
ments went unmentioned. But a more ration-al media system might have focused less oncomparing marijuana to alcohol and more onthe havoc wreaked by the war on drugs—and what the racist dimensions of that warmight say about our “moral ecology.” n
In February, Comcast announced its pro-posal to merge with Time Warner Cablein a $45 billion deal between the top twous cable companies. If approved, this
unified media company would control amassive television and Internet market ofmore than 30 million subscribers across theus’s largest media markets, including newyork city, los Angeles, chicago, philadel-phia and Washington, d.c. this mergerwould lead to a single company controllingroughly two-thirds of the cable market, andbroadband access for more than one-third ofus consumers.
critics have rightly argued (BloombergView, 1/27/14) that if the merger isapproved, customers will experience lesschoice and higher cable bills as a result ofincreasing media monopolization. Whattends to fly under the radar in this debate arefurther dangers that disproportionatelyimpact underserved communities: the merg-er’s likely impact on media diversity andcommunity-based media infrastructures,and Comcast’s ongoing attack on organizedlabor (IBeW, 12/5/13).
Media consolidation has narrowed thealready limited access to the airwavesfor women and communities of color.
Women own less than 7 percent of all tv andradio station licenses despite being half of theus population. people of color make up over36 percent of the population but own justover 7 percent of radio licenses and 3 percentof tv licenses (Free press, 9/06). this affects
how the issues that we care about—labor,education, housing, immigration, healthcare,the environment—are covered.
We already know that Comcast has apoor record in keeping its promises ofmedia diversity and local programming. In2011, when Comcast merged with NBC, itexpanded its media empire by acquiringUniversal Studios, NBC, Telemundo,MSNBC and many other cable networks.
As Malkia cyril of the center for MediaJustice (Huffington Post, 2/14/14) remindsus:
As a condition of the merger, Com-cast/NBC agreed to increase localand spanish-language news programsfor five years and produce an addition-al 1,000 hours annually of originalnews programs for a number of its sta-tions. But they didn’t. Instead theyfudged their reports to get out of the
Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger threatens local voices
Cable Monopoly’s Gain Is Community Media’s Loss
by Betty Yu
Free
Press.ne
t
commitments they made to improveprogramming in local and spanish-speaking communities.
Another condition of the Comcast/NBCmerger was the promise to help bridge thedigital divide through their Internetessentials program, which was intended toprovide an affordable Internet option forlow-income families. Instead, the programfailed, as Comcast’s pre-conditions andlack of marketing all but ensured the programwould never be successful (Technical.lyPhilly, 12/21/11).
Since corporate media–backed “statefranchising” legislation was introducedin 2005, which strips local communities
of their ability to determine their own medianeeds, hundreds of community access tvcenters—also known as public educationaland Governmental Access (peG)—haveclosed in at least 100 communities acrossthe us. According to the 2011 “Analysis ofrecent peG Access center closures” pre-pared by the Alliance for communications
democracy, half of the 100 communitiesimpacted by station closings were inComcast markets. despite Comcast’sclaim (2/13/14) that it has “over-deliveredon our public interest commitments,” therecord speaks for itself.
the loss of peG stations to Comcastmay not be over. centers like PhillyCAMin philadelphia, St. Paul NeighborhoodNetwork in Minnesota and many others areslated for franchise renewal with Comcast.these stations provide a vital platform forlocal and diverse communities to have theirvoices heard on cable television. this merg-er would provide Comcast greater leverageto create obstacles in franchising negotia-tions for community access tv peGcenters.Comcast leverages its political muscle
in local, state and national politics, disrupt-ing community media and broadband accessin cities nationwide through its lobbyingand “philanthropy.” the Fcc file on 2011’sComcast merger with NBC Universalincluded endorsements for the merger from54 groups—such as the national council ofla raza and the national urban league—who received at least $8.6 million incomcast Foundation donations combinedover the previous decade. And of the 97members of congress who signed a letter tothe Fcc supporting that deal, 91 receivedcampaign contributions from Comcast’spAc or executives (New York Times,2/20/14).Comcast is a member and big supporter
(PR Watch, 2/13/14) of the Americanlegislative exchange council (Alec), aright-wing group that represents the inter-ests of big business and conservatives(Extra!, 5/10), lobbying for everythingfrom union-busting “right to work” legisla-tion to the “stand your Ground” laws thatprotected trayvon Martin’s killer. Comcast’s own lobbying machine spans
the united states, with more than 100 regis-tered lobbyists in Washington, d.c., alone(opensecrets.org). Comcast was the mainopponent to the philadelphia city councillegislation that would have given workersearned sick days (Philly.com, 5/1/13).
If approved, this merger would giveComcast tremendous control over ournation’s broadband market—at a time
when a recent court ruling striking down netneutrality protections casts doubt over thefuture of a truly open Internet.
Joe torres of Free press (Colorlines,2/24/14) explains:
While Comcast has to comply withnet neutrality merger conditions until2018, the company could start discrim-inating online once those conditionsexpire—and can do a lot even beforethen to mess with your Internet trafficin ways that those rules neveraddressed. Comcast has been clear thatthis is its vision for the future of theInternet. this will mean the voices ofcommunities of color and other mar-ginalized groups will have a hardertime being heard.
the stakes are high in this merger,extending beyond who you’ll pay yourcable bill to each month—and the size ofthat bill. the future of the Internet, commu-nity media, our ability to have our voicesreflected in our media system are just asmuch a part of this deal as the $45 billionprice tag. n
Betty Yu, a longtime social justice organizer,media activist, educator and filmmaker, is themembership organizer at the Center for MediaJustice. She coordinates the Media ActionGrassroots Network (MAG-Net), a nationalmovement building alliance of over 170 socialjustice, community, arts and culture organiza-tions working for media justice.
12 u April 2014 Extra!
CounterSpin is FAIR’s weeklyradio show, hosted by JanineJackson, Steve Rendall and Peter Hart. It’s heard onmore than 135 noncommercial stations across the UnitedStates and Canada.
CounterSpin provides a critical examinationof the major stories every week, and exposeswhat the mainstream media might havemissed in their own coverage.
Recent shows
• Shannon Young on ‘Mexican Moment’Ashley Gorski on NYPD Muslim Spying
• Lori Wallach on TPPGareth Porter on Iran
• Sue Sturgis on Moral March Toni Gilpin on Skills Gap Myth
• Joel Berg on Food StampsJules Boykoff on Olympics
• John Schmitt on State of the UnionDominique Apollon on Race & the Media
Listen online, visit our archives, or find a station near you—
please go to fair.org
Say No to This Merger
While the FCC reviews the merger,now is the time for the public totake action. A myriad of communi-
ties, media and social change groups aredoing just that. The Media ActionGrassroots Network (MAG-Net) a nationalmedia justicenetwork of over170 communitybased groups isopposing themerger—join them at www.mag-net.org.
To contact the FCC, write to:445 12th Street, SWWashington, DC 20554
Or email FCC Chair Tom Wheeler: [email protected]
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Get the latest blog postsand Action Alertsat fair.org
Extra! April 2014 u 13
It’s fair to say that the complex anti-gov-ernment protest movements in bothvenezuela and ukraine were boiled downby us corporate media to send a clear
message to their domestic audience: theseare the good guys.
In ukraine, the takeaway was that thereare two sides, and the people seeking to top-ple the government (successfully, as itturned out) wanted to be more like us. onNBC Nightly News (2/18/14), correspon-dent richard engel explained: “theukrainian government is backed by Mos-cow. the protesters want closer ties witheurope and the united states.”ABC World News correspondent terry
Moran (2/19/14) framed it this way:
Will this country of 46 million peopleturn West toward the us and europeand democracy, or turn east tovladimir putin and russia, whichruled here for centuries?”
And World News anchor diane sawyer(2/20/14) called it
an unremitting duel between protesterswho say they want Western freedomand police enforcing the alliance withrussia and russia’s president vladimirputin and all that he represents.
this casting of the conflict is obviouslysimplistic. there is a case to be made thatnow-deposed president viktor yanukovychspurned an economic deal with the europeanunion—one that he seemed inclined toaccept weeks earlier—because it was insuffi-cient to deal with the scale of the country’seconomic problems (Reuters, 12/19/13),which made putin’s offer more attractive.
that is not to suggest that anti-governmentprotesters did not have serious grievances withthe state of their country. likewise, it has tobe said that, for all the portraits of a move-ment that wants us-style freedoms, a sub-stantial minority of the protest movement isdrawn from fascist and neo-nazi factions(FAIR Blog, 3/7/14).
In venezuela, meanwhile, demonstratorsare similarly labeled. here’s MarianaAtencio on ABC World News (2/23/14):
It’s been 12 straight days of violentclashes here in venezuela. on one side,students and the middle class. on theother, police and pro-governmentgroups, followers of the party of anti-American president hugo chávez.
so it’s students versus people who sup-port the “anti-American” government—notdifficult to figure out whose side you’re sup-posed to take. nor did Newsweek (2/21/14)leave much doubt when it described protestleader leopoldo lópez this way:
With twinkling chocolate-colored eyesand high cheekbones, lópez seems tohave it all: an attractive and supportivewife, two children who get along witheach other and impossibly adorablelabrador puppies. he is charismatic,athletic and good-looking.
even government opponents whoembraced violent tactics received positivemedia spin. the New York Times (2/24/14)explained that one group in the oppositionstronghold of san cristóbal, one of whomwas described as “casually guarding a beercrate full of firebombs,” were “not yourordinary urban guerrillas.”
the next day (2/25/14), the same corre-spondent, William neumann, reported thatoppositionists “have a variety of homemadeweapons—mortars to lob small, noisy explo-sives, miniature firebombs, slingshots, clubsand nasty-looking things called Miguelitosmade from hoses festooned with nails.”
When one such armed group preparedfor an assault on a national Guard post, theTimes reporter remarked that “at times thewhole business has the naïve feel of a boy’sadventure tale”—though it’s hard toremember the hardy Boys ever throwingMolotov cocktails at police officers.
In the Washington Post (2/26/14), thevenezuelan protests were portrayed as a
reaction to the country’s “hangover from 14years of chávez rule: a country with notenough milk or sugar in the supermarketsand far too many carjackings and murders inthe streets.”
If that were the most important legacy ofthe past dozen years, you’d expect the entirecountry to be protesting—and it’d be hard tofathom how chávez and current presidentnicolas Maduro managed to win numerouselections. But in truth, by many indicators,life for poor venezuelans sharply improvedduring the chávez years (FAIr MediaAdvisory, 3/6/13), which explains their sup-port for his party.
But the lesson is these are protest move-ments—despite adopting militant and insome cases quite violent tactics—that usmedia by and large were cheering.
In the midst of these conflicts, a new reportfrom Amnesty International (2/27/14) onIsraeli violence in the West Bank “docu-
mented the killings of 22 palestinian civil-ians in the West Bank last year, at least 14 ofwhich were in the context of protests.” thereport received minimal coverage in the uspress, although—or perhaps because—itraised profound questions about how a closeus ally attacks protesters against militaryoccupation.
Would the us press champion the causeof palestinian demonstrators, or criticizeharsh Israeli response to dissent? how aboutactually cheering on violent palestinian resist-ance? It is simply unfathomable—palestin-ians are the wrong kind of protester. n
When Molotov cocktails are just a ‘boy’s adventure’
Good Protesters—and the Bad Kind
by Peter Hart
ABC News (2/23/14) suggests you should be againstVenezuelan protesters if you are opposed to a better life.
Mainstream popular culture in theperiod since 9/11 has remainedslavishly faithful to the officialnarratives of the war on terror.
While at the margins—for example, inunderground hip-hop—a radical critiquecan be found, a narrow and limited con-sensus has suffused the cultural centerground of the us and the uK.
spaces for questioning have beenmade available only on entirely pragmat-ic matters—for example, on whether tor-ture and war actually work as means forpreventing terrorism or whether they endup making the problem worse. Films suchas Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Britain’sChannel 4 production Complicit (2013)consider the use of torture an acceptabletopic of discussion—an indication thatthe terror war has permanently broken theearlier consensus that torture is anabsolute wrong.
the limits of acceptable discourse areillustrated even more starkly by consider-ing what passes for a “liberal” take inpopular cultural depictions. If 24 was thequintessential television drama of thewar’s early phase—with its ticking-time-bomb scenarios glorifying torture, its masskillings of us civilians by weapons of massdestruction, and its constant stream of one-dimensional terrorist enemies—Homelandis hailed as a liberal alternative, more appro-priate to the obama era, and its focus on thepsychology of radicalization. Indeed, theshow—broadcast on Showtime in the usand on Channel 4 in the uK—is said to bethe president’s favorite program.
Homeland’s key plot themes are the infil-tration of the us administration byMuslim extremists (a nod to Islamo-
phobic conspiracy theories); suspicion ofordinary Muslim Americans, especially con-verts; and the psychological turmoil of theleading Muslim character, who is caughtbetween his all-American family and thepull of extremist indoctrination.
nick Brody, a white American marine, iscaptured and held prisoner by Al-Qaeda in
Iraq (later this becomes the taliban inAfghanistan—the two are apparently inter-changeable) until he is freed eight yearslater. returning to the us as a war hero,Brody tries to maintain a normal family lifewhile hiding the fact that he has convertedto Islam. the cIA’s carrie Mathison, whosecharacter is reportedly based on an actualcIA analyst (who also inspired the lead inZero Dark Thirty), suspects Brody has beenwon over to the terrorist cause and begins arogue surveillance operation to prove hertheory; she also has an affair with her sub-ject.
his suicide mission to kill the vice pres-ident and a host of other government offi-cials is abandoned after a last-minute con-versation with his daughter. he then plots toget elected to congress and take a seniorrole in the administration in order to subvertus foreign policy.
Mathison induces Brody to confess dur-
ing an interrogation, and he agrees towork as a double agent. Meanwhile, Abunazir, the Al-Qaeda leader who recruitedhim, enters into an implausible alliancewith hezbollah to avenge an Israeli strikeon an Iranian nuclear facility by attackingthe us. nazir somehow manages to enterthe us with teams of heavily armed com-mandos, who engage in various con-frontations before kidnapping Mathisonand forcing Brody to kill the vice presi-dent. season two ends with a car bomb-ing at the cIA’s headquarters.
Brody’s character has more emotionaldepth than any other terrorist on ustelevision. And there is a strand to the
plot that tries to acknowledge the waysforeign policy decisions made inWashington can end up being counterpro-ductive. Brody’s indoctrination is pre-sented as bound up with his anger at a usdrone strike on a school that resulted inthe death of Issa, nazir’s son, whomBrody had taken under his wing.
these aspects of the show—whichpoint to terrorism as not a pure evil butrooted in psychological processes—are
the basis for its liberal credentials. they arealso consistent with the discourse of radical-ization that shapes the current phase of thewar on terror.
like official accounts, Homeland pres-ents radicalization as closely tied to Islamicculture and identity. All of the majorMuslim characters are terrorists: from con-vert Brody to roya hammad, a palestiniantelevision journalist based in Washingtonwho has easy access to the corridors ofpower and secretly plots on behalf of Al-Qaeda, to professor raqim Faisel and hisblond American wife, Aileen, who convert-ed to Islam while living in saudi Arabia as ateenager.
the series’ lack of concern for the differ-ences between hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, orbetween Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled withits ridiculous portrayal of Beirut as a terror-ist enclave, give an impression of terrorismas a general cultural problem in the Middle
14 u April 2014 Extra!
TV’s one major Muslim character is a secret Al-Qaeda agent
On Homeland, Islam Means Terror
by Arun Kundnani
Extra! April 2014 u 15
east disconnected from specific politi-cal contexts.
On multiple occasions in Homeland,terrorists struggle between an attrac-tion to Western culture and their
commitment to terrorism. A source ofintelligence on hezbollah shares infor-mation because of her love of Americanfilms. A saudi diplomat working for Al-Qaeda agrees to share intelligence sothat his daughter can receive the bene-fits of Western culture. Brody’s innerconflict between his love for his chil-dren and the pull of his indoctrination isdepicted as an identity crisis, a battlebetween American values (symbolized byhis family life) and Islamic values (present-ed as implying terrorism). Implicitly,Homeland is suggesting that the more cul-turally Muslim you are, the more likely youare to be a terrorist.
Brody is the only significant Muslimcharacter on any us television drama pro-gram. he also happens to be a terrorist.Aspects of Muslim life, such as praying andreading the Qur’an, receive one of their onlyportrayals in us television drama in a story-line that is all about whether a convert toIslam should be suspected of terrorism.
Brody’s wife, Jessica, for a whileembodies traditional American family val-ues in the series: upon Brody’s unexpectedreturn from captivity, she abandons her rela-tionship with his friend Mike for the sake ofher marriage vows, and thereafter strugglesagainst the odds to hold the family together.she reacts angrily when she discoversBrody is a Muslim, not because of thedeception but because “these are the peoplewho tortured you” and who would “stone”his daughter “to death in a soccer stadium.”
The true hero of Homeland is saulBerenson, Mathison’s thoughtful cIAmentor whose cultural knowledge and
fluency in Arabic are presented as enablinghim to pursue terrorist enemies by cultivat-ing reliable informants rather than launch-ing gung-ho missions. yet he also believesin racial profiling when necessary, on oneoccasion giving his team instructions onhow to conduct an investigation: “We prior-itize. First the dark-skinned ones.” At thispoint, we have already been reassured thathe has no problem with dark-skinned people.
Following the usual cliché, his careerwith the agency has wrecked his relationshipwith his wife, Mira, who is Indian. In otherwords, profiling is seen as necessary for
operational reasons and not the reflection ofan individual agent’s racial prejudice.
Galvez, a Muslim member of the cIAteam, has a negligible role until he is sus-pected by Mathison of working with Al-Qaeda, largely because of his religion. thusboth of the series’ cIA heroes find it neces-sary to profile on the basis of race or reli-gion, at least on occasion. racial discrimi-nation is presented as a regrettable butunderstandable tactic that even America’sbest agents are likely to succumb to wheninvestigating terrorist threats.
torture is not the universal solution itwas on 24, but it can still be an essential itemin Homeland’s counterterrorism tool kit, solong as it is used in conjunction withMathison’s soft skills. Brody is stabbedthrough the hand by an interrogator, but onlyso that Mathison can step in afterward andpresent herself as the good cop, using empa-thy rather than force to win his cooperation.
Us policies in Homeland are essentiallybenign but occasionally undermined byrogue cliques, who lead the government
astray into counterproductive excesses. theshow gives Mathison and Berenson multi-ple opportunities to voice their concernsabout such excesses from within the nation-al security system. But the only Muslimvoices raising political issues do so as ter-rorists. the show’s depictions of Muslimopposition to us foreign policy involvecharacters trying to justify terrorism, fromBrody’s martyrdom video to Mathison’sinterrogation of hammad to nazir’s angryexchange with Mathison during her kidnap-ping. In line with the official radicalizationnarrative, political dissent and terrorism arecollapsed into each other: the only Muslimvoice is the terrorist voice.
Indeed, Brody’s prominence as the kind
of Muslim who can make it to main-stream television is telling. the realitytelevision series All-American Muslim,which tried to portray the everydaylives of Arab-American families in dear-born, Michigan, was taken off the airafter conservatives pressured advertisersto pull their support. And for a numberof years until the launch of Al JazeeraAmerica in August 2013, deep opposi-tion prevented Al Jazeera’s english-language news channel from beingallowed access to us cable networks.
Welcome, then, to the latest stage ofthe war on terror. Muslim Americans
are not automatically to be considered ter-rorists, but their culture remains a source ofsuspicion for its radicalizing effects. theirvulnerability to radicalization is understoodas tied to identity conflicts and inner psy-chological processes that need to be trackedwith widely deployed surveillance and anintelligent understanding of cultural con-text. the hard power of overwhelming forceis complemented with soft-power tech-niques and cultural knowledge to securecooperation.
With a liberal gloss of nuance, the Waron terror continues to sustain Islamophobia,but in ways that are less susceptible to polit-ical challenge. occasional pragmatic criti-cism of individual us actions as counter-productive insulates the wider structures ofpolicy from substantial opposition. Aboveall, Muslim criticism of us policies is seenas no more than a precursor to terrorism,rendering absent any notion of Muslimpolitical dissent. n
Arun Kundnani is an adjunct professor ofmedia, culture and communication at NewYork University, and teaches terrorism studiesat John Jay College. This is an excerpt fromhis book the Muslims Are coming!: Islamo-phobia, extremism and the domestic War onterror (Verso).
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