Media News Roundup- Sunday Jul 8th to Sat Jul 14th

Keeping an eye on the failing Fourth Estate and looking for some TRUTH in journalism.

MSNBC's Tucker Carlson offers his expert journalistic opinion on Barak Obama--by calling him names. Media under reports damage of Bush's AIDS program on Africa. Bright spot of the week: On Democracy Now! Iraq War veterans describe "brutal techniques" used by U.S. military against Iraqi civilians.



MSNBC's Tucker Carlson "Name Calling" Problem with Obama

Tucker Carlson is a political analyst with his own television show described as "a fast paced, no-holds-barred conversation about the day’s developments in news, politics, world issues and pop culture." Too bad the best he can muster in the end is to resort to name calling. According to Media Matters, in the past two weeks Carlson has managed to refer to Barak Obama by a host of unflattering names. On July 3rd, Carlson claimed of Obama "He sounds like kind of a wuss." On the July 6th edition of his show, Carlson, in referring to a speech by Obama, stated "Well, he sounds like a pothead to me." On July 11th Carlson claimed Obama sounded "kind of wimpy," and by the 13th had come to question his gender with the comment, "Why has Barak Obama suddenly turned into Oprah?" Welcome to the new age of professional journalism.

Media Ignores Damage Bush's AIDS Program Inflicts on Africa

A popular theme in the media for the past few years has been Bush's AIDS program to Africa. Reports of increased funding to the continent have been repeatedly cited as a positive administration policy. Less publicized however, has been the voices of criticism highlighting the dangers Bush's conservative policies are having on Africa's AIDS crisis. In the American Prospect, Michelle Goldberg notes that "On July 5, Beatrice Were, the founder of Uganda's National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS, stood before hundreds of other HIV-positive women in Nairobi's vaulted city hall and denounced the Bush administration's AIDS policies." Mostly this denunciation has been because of failed abstinence-only policies that are seen as putting many more people at risk than any funding manages to save. Goldberg notes that Beatrice Were is not alone:

There were lots of voices like Were's in Nairobi last week, where the YWCA sponsored a massive international conference on women and HIV. Yet they rarely seem to break through in the United States, where the conventional wisdom holds that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is a bright spot in an otherwise execrable presidency, one that only the ideologically blinkered refuse to credit. Nick Kristof seems to repeat this notion in The New York Times every other week, and Bono affirmed it when he insisted on putting Bush on one of the 20 different covers that graced Vanity Fair's special Africa issue. "USA TODAY's Susan Page just got off the telephone with Bono. She says President Bush can count the rock star as a fan today," the newspaper's blog reported in late May. "The Grammy winner was singing the praises of the American president for his announcement today that he would propose spending an additional $30 billion over five years to fight AIDS in Africa, doubling the U.S. commitment."

For more, see the full article:

Media Ignores Damage Bush's AIDS Program Inflicts on Africa


Bright Spot of the Week

Democracy Now! Iraq War Veterans Speak of Violence Against Iraqi Civilians

The Nation magazine has published a startling new expose of fifty American combat veterans of the Iraq War who give vivid on-the-record accounts of the US military occupation in Iraq and describe a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts. The investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in one place to openly corroborate assertions of indiscriminate killings and other atrocities by the US military in Iraq. We speak with the article’s co-author, journalist Laila Al-Arian, and four Iraq veterans who came forward with their stories of war.

Read/Listen to Interview:

The Other War: Iraq Veterans Speak Out on Shocking Accounts of Attacks on Iraqi Civilians