As early as one day after the March 11 tsunami sparked the (still ongoing) nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan’s government had advanced radiation fallout and atmospheric modeling showing the area most likely to be hit by fallout from the explosions and the ongoing seepage. The government allegedly concealed this information, to prevent mass panic, but the result may have been the evacuation of large numbers of people to the most dangerous zones.

According to the New York Times:

Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice.

The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima — and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that.

But the forecasts were left unpublicized by bureaucrats in Tokyo, operating in a culture that sought to avoid responsibility and, above all, criticism. Japan’s political leaders at first did not know about the system and later played down the data, apparently fearful of having to significantly enlarge the evacuation zone — and acknowledge the accident’s severity.

Officials of the Japanese government have admitted there was a pattern of concealing information, denying known facts, even of releasing data that were modified to achieve more politically expedient outcomes, even as the nation and the world were waiting for a thorough and serious crisis response. The government reportedly withheld crucial modeling projections from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information, also known as SPEEDI.

According to the Times, Seiki Soramoto, a former nuclear engineer who was asked for information by the prime minister, said “In the end, it was the prime minister’s office that hid the SPEEDI data, because they didn’t have the knowledge to know what the data meant, and thus they did not know what to say to the public, they thought only of their own safety, and decided it was easier just not to announce it.”

Though at least three of the six reactors were in meltdown, and were known to be, and the government was permitting the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) to dump huge volumes of radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean, the status of meltdown was repeatedly denied, and was not acknowledged for several months.

In June, it was revealed that tellurium 132, an isotope that indicates a meltdown has occurred, was detected on the second day of the crisis, but the readings were kept from the public for three months. It is not clear how the alleged campaign of distorted data and concealed modeling might have impacted the crisis response, but scientists and engineers have expressed concern that the nuclear emergency response was stunted by inadequate information and poor decisions.

There are also likely to be new investigations into the public health consequences of the concealed information.

TheHotSpring.net :: With the objectivity and commitment to fact of S&P now seriously in question, and allegations now revived that it and other rating agencies were paid to give AAA ratings to junk securities derivatives, it is clear that we need a 100% not-for-profit (NFP) cooperative bond rating agency. The independent NFP agency could be one of several, staffed by top economists, stakeholders and public servants, and standing somewhere between the public and the private sectors.

The role of such a new cooperative agency would be to take the profit motive and the complication of day to day financial dealings out of the rating agency portfolio. While Standard and Poors is owned by the publishing conglomerate McGraw Hill, its analysts have been accused of incestuous relationships with the entities they are tasked with rating, sometimes taking huge profits in financial services fees while evaluating risky products put out by their patrons.

A not-for-profit rating agency would allow for greater transparency, a more aggressive process of analysis, and more unbiased foundation for that analysis. It would allow for a wider-ranging and more flexible input of data to ensure that evaluations correspond in some clear way to genuine long-term value. It would, in short, ensure that private interests don’t interfere with the straightforward process of factual analysis.

It would also, maybe more than any other single factor, help to contribute to a virtuous cycle of transitioning back toward separation of interests, diversification of markets, and decentralization of financial sector influence and wealth creation. How would this benefit society at large? It would allow for a more democratic, more evidentiary, more pragmatic reading of bonds and other financial services products.

The first step is to remove the profit motive from the evaluation process. The reason for this is that the assumption that narrow profit motives somehow spark virtuous behavior, “efficiency” and “performance” loses relevance when the incentive to produce a given rating—like AAA on high-risk subprime mortgage-backed derivatives—conflicts with the evidence-based analysis, which indicates that there is no way that product can be a safe bet for most investors.

- – - A brief aside: The same can be true in reverse: a bond rating agency that made such catastrophically bad misjudgments when there was a conflicting interest in play could seek to be more aggressive, in a highly visible way, to restore its reputation for seriousness of purpose, when—by coincidence—there is no direct accounts receivable windfall in play.

There is enough room for doubt that on the first day of trading since S&P’s downgrade of US Treasury bonds, those same bonds have hit an all-time record for demand, as investors seek shelter in the very product that was just downgraded. That suggests the S&P evaluation was flawed, or was issued for mathematically inconsistent reasons, or simply that—as one analyst suggested today—their poor performance during the mortgage bubble has left them less relevant and less well regarded generally. 

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, wrote today that “they may be a prestigious organization for some reason, but their track record is ludicrously bad.” In fact, he is not the only prominent economist expressing concern that the Wall Street firms and the financial services sector more broadly are becoming perilously divorced from the wider economy. – - -

The American economic system has artfully grappled for generations with the problematic tension between narrow, well-funded interests, and the wider landscape of stakeholder interests. A strong regulatory system and vibrant democratic marketplace have been able, periodically, to rein in abusive behavior and make it visibly profitable for powerful interests driving economic behavior to line up their interests with those of the wider economy.

Some now believe that time may have passed. A generation’s worth of deregulation and financial experimentation have led to the widest wealth gap since before the Great Depression, and credible economic analysis suggests the stagnant economic trendlines are the result of having a post-Depression system, with meaningful checks and balances, and a Depression-era economic dynamism. In other words, we should be experiencing a depression, but we have deployed failsafe measures to make it less likely.

The stakeholder problem is a very real bone of economic contention, and very much worthy of close scrutiny. Where financial instruments are based on bad investments, then pitched as good investments, and tens of trillions of dollars in private wealth evaporate, even the most minute activities within the financial services sector have high-stakes consequences for people and institutions throughout the economy.

A genuinely useful, wholly relevant and economically optimally constructive rating system requires real independence. It requires a commitment to fact, and a commitment to economic balance and generalized prosperity. It requires a substantive, transparent measure of the major economic drivers that induce periods of “irrational exuberance” for bad investments, which by extension bring widespread economic hardship in their wake, when banks shut down many of their financial support services to the middle class and small businesses.

The proposed NFP cooperative bond rating agency would be:

• fully independent of ties to Wall Street firms;
• required to publish source material and white-paper reports detailing internal discussions;
• required to publish information regarding all meetings with any interested parties;
• focused on stakeholder interests across the economy;
• responsible for public comment fora, at least one per month, to gather anecdotal guidance;
• staffed with independent economists, former financial services professionals, public service veterans—each without active ties to interested parties;
• required to pay only base stipends, with no bonuses except for consistent accuracy over the long term;
• a model for similar NFP financial analysis projects.

The four central ideas motivating this new model, and which should then be emulated by competing institutions are:

1. eliminating professional conflict of interest;
2. comprehensive transparency of process, sourcing and aims;
3. focus on overall stakeholder interest;
4. reliable precision, based on health modeling, not profit forecasting.

The simplest way to institute a project on this scale, with this level of responsibility and in a visible enough way to give it active influence and long-term viability is, of course, a public-private partnership. It should be funded in part by the federal government, and in part by the financial services sector, and top schools of economics should hold competitions to bring on board some of the world’s most visionary, flexible and precise economic minds.

The process should begin this fall and winter, with the goal of holding public hearings for the creation of the first independent NFP cooperative rating agency in the spring and fall of 2012. The fully functional institution could be active by the end of 2012, in time to play a constructive role in the landscape of analysis surrounding the 2013 negotiations on the 2014 federal budget, and the financial planning of major banks, insurers, governments and industry.

In order to win support from radical Tea Party freshmen, most of whom voted against the legislation anyway, Congressional leaders imposed stiff new tax penalties on radiate students across the country. Specifically, subsidized loans for grad students were cut—the government provides all student loans, so this effectively eliminates funding for post-graduate education—and a tax credit for borrowers who repay student loans on time for 12 consecutive months was eliminated.

The tax credit eliminated costs far less than the massive subsidies going to oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power companies, yet the Tea Party freshmen, who have touted their opposition to any and every tax increase, did nothing to oppose the tax hikes on students. And while the tax credits may be much smaller than fossil fuel subsidies, or nuclear, eliminating them will cost far more.

Eliminating the on-time repayment credit will reduce the likelihood of on-time repayment significantly, potentially costing the government billions, over time, as well as subjecting more borrowers to fines and fees, depleting their personal economic footprint, and serving as a drag on growth.

The logic is simply astonishing: while the radical anti-tax Tea Partiers, backed by billionaire partisans, claim as an article of faith the absolute truth that any and all tax cuts incentivize the wealthy to create jobs—though we have ten years of evidence this is often not the case—, they reject the idea that a direct cash incentive for repayment will pay off—despite the evidence that it does.

In fact, the particular kind of tax increase the Tea Partiers have demanded and are supporting is more costly and will exacerbate not only budget shortfalls but also the negative economic trends whereby the American people are unnecessarily disadvantaged in the face of far more powerful economic forces.

Allegations that the so-called Tea Party caucus has degenerated into little more than a lobby for the wealthy interests that back them gain credibility when they support tax hikes on the vulnerable, and which will have a direct negative impact on the middle class. It should be well understood by all: the House Tea Party Republicans have pushed for and supported—the anti-student provisions in the failed Republican-only House bills were far worse—tax hikes that will make college more expensive and eat way at middle class wealth.

In a bizarre interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, House Speaker John Boehner appeared embattled, distracted and without a firm grip on any solution to the debt ceiling crisis. He seemed to be unable to speak about the debt ceiling crisis in any truthful manner, repeatedly attacking Pres. Obama for not being willing to make a deal, despite Obama offering far more than any president, Democratic or Republican, in debt and deficit reduction, in fact offering far more than Boehner himself was seeking.

Boehner seemed to be bound by certain hostile factions within his caucus, and insisted that he would not accept any plan that was not some variation of “cut, cap and balance.” He appeared frustrated, even shaken, by the failure the House Republican plan—crafted with no consultation with Democratic members of either chamber—failed to pass the Senate.

Wallace reminded him: “The Senate resoundingly tabled the idea of a balanced budget amendment; you’re not going to insist on that again, are you?” Boehner repeated, almost robotically, that he would insist, come what may, on a “framework” based on “cut, cap and balance”, Boehner refused to answer whether he would attempt to force a balanced budget amendment—which, incidentally, could not be made law by August 2 and would, in and of itself, do literally nothing to reduce debt or deficits—as part of a bipartisan framework.

The speaker insisted repeatedly that he was aiming to achieve a “bipartisan framework”, only to specify that his bipartisan framework would not and could not stray in any way from the Republican plan. There is no Democratic support for the so-called “cut, cap and balance” proposal, which has been evaluated as potentially exacerbating spending and deficits, making borrowing more costly in the future and making government spending more wasteful.

Chris Wallace reminded Boehner that he was willing to agree to $800 billion in new revenues, despite his pledge not to raise tax rates. Boehner claimed to know that with specific adjustments to the tax rates would yield $800 billion in new revenues without any tax increase. In fact, he seemed to indicate he was able to reduce expected government revenues by law to as much as $2.7 trillion, and yet take in as much as $800 billion in additional revenues, due to the economic viability of that new tax policy.

“There is considerable criticism among House Republicans”, said Wallace, that Boehner was too eager to make a “grand bargain” with Pres. Obama, and to raise taxes. Boehner seemed to indicate frustration with his own party, for the first and only time during the interview, explaining that his only aim was to do “what is right for the country.”

Boehner added: “I didn’t come here to be a Congressman; I came here to do something for my country… I’m going to do everything I can to do the right thing for our country.” Though he had indicated that he and Obama might be “from different planets”, he said “I always work with the glass half full. I’m always an optimist. It’s about finding common ground,” said Boehner.

Boehner’s commitment to “finding common ground” is now widely in question, as a result of his repeated walking out of talks, his insistence that “bipartisan” means Democrats must adopt a Republican plan, and his irrational claim that the president’s plan, the Gang of Six plan, the bipartisan Senate plan, the recommendations of the deficit commission, were not plans at all, and that only the House’s “cut, cap and balance” plan had any validity.

Ron Paul gave Fox News’ Neil Cavuto the latest in a series of Republican presidential campaign advertisements, posing as interview, today as the nation waited to see Congressional leaders gather with Pres. Obama in the White House Cabinet Room. While Cavuto labored to spin the issue toward a Tea Party interpretation of reality, Mr. Paul made the astonishing claim that the least damaging outcome of the debt ceiling negotiations would be a national default.

He then went on to claim that his view represents “American tradition”. While Paul is often a credible and passionate voice in the wilderness, defending individual liberties against the encroachment of modern government and corporate tendencies, his claim that great nations “always default” when they get to a place where default is possible, or that it is American tradition to let entire government agencies collapse, for failure to negotiate a responsible solution, is unfounded and reckless.

When Ron Paul attempted to explain that part of his appeal to independent voters is related to his revulsion to departures from American civil liberties traditions, such as the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, which enabled domestic spying and other constitutionally dubious security powers, Cavuto cut him off and said bluntly he didn’t want to discuss “those issues”.

Even as Fox News ran its “Fox Facts” at the lower right of the screen, revealing its people know and understan that 44% of all government bills will go unpaid, if the debt ceiling is not raised by August 2, Cavuto made the incredible statement that the wealthy “are already paying a lot”—they are paying historically low levels of taxes—and that they have no reason “to pay more for a lousy product”. The network that wrapped itself in the flag to promote war in Iraq, and the USA PATRIOT Act, now says the United States of America is “a lousy product”.

There is an undercurrent of reveling in what some perceive as the demise of a form of government, so-called “big government”, which they believe is a threat to American democracy. There is a trend among far-right conservative ideologues that favors advocating for and trying to bring about the sabotage of the American system of electoral government, on the grounds that it is dangerously “liberal” and that it somehow disregards “traditional” values.

Mr. Cavuto and Mr. Paul today showed themselves both to be guilty of the unfortunate—and one hopes unintentional—failure to recognize when extremist far-right euphemisms penetrate into their more moderate conservative rhetoric. This crossover has been happening for too long, and is an irresponsible attack on informed discourse. It mirrors the false claim that all issues of public controversy are just “opinion”, and radical, factually unfounded smears as legitimate as sincere dealing with circumstance.

In a subsequent interview, Cavuto immediately interrupted his interlocutor, when the consensus position that responsible debt and deficit reduction requires an upward adjustment of tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. Cavuto interrupted in order to shout that the wealthy are “already paying a lot”, then to state his “lousy product” blanket smear against the American government.

That there is intense logical incoherence in this method of reporting—where facts are brushed aside in favor of metaphor, hyperbole and counter-to-fact claims, designed to further a world view, not a solution—is obvious. That this logical incoherence matters to viewers or to editors is not so obvious. Mr. Cavuto’s deliberate manipulation of his interviews, to convey a biased, counter-to-fact line of argument, is indicative of the morally bankrupt tabloid culture promoted by Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids in the United Kingdom.

That is not to say Mr. Cavuto is himself so unworthy of respect, but he, like any other journalist or news analyst, must earn what respect is given, by dealing intelligently with the reality of the world before him. To refute the very facts everyone at the table agrees to, to argue that the failure of the US government to pay 44% of its bills would be of negligible importance, to invite collapse as somehow courageously patriotic, is irresponsible and suggests a lack of seriousness about the responsibility of the press to foster actual understanding of events.

Whether he has been directed, by Bill Sammon—whose emails instructing reporters to slant their reporting for ideological and partisan reasons have shocked and concerned media analysts, citizens and journalists—to slant his reporting, or whether he is voluntarily doing so in order to further the culture that prevails at his network is impossible to know, unless Mr. Cavuto chooses to express his genuine thinking.

Mr. Paul, for his part, must improve the way he manages the unwieldy set of passions that inform his rhetoric. If we were to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he believes honestly that the United States of America does not need its government, or most or much of it, then he would do better to learn specifics, and to explain what, precisely, he would eliminate and how, precisely, he would secure the same services and from whom.

The right-wing doctrine, for instance, that the EPA is some sort of hostile force with no productive value does not contemplate any means of any kind to protect the air and water the American people need to survive. No one argues that function should be militarized, and the very idea that there should be an actual police component to environmental regulation is anathema to the anti-EPA hardliners.

Yet those people need clean water and clean air, in order to avoid the literally thousands of carcinogenic chemicals and compounds that are released into the environment by American industry, all the time. Their children and grandchildren will be less able to live in a nation that has the health security to function as an advanced nation, if clean air and water services are not performed by any entity, with enforcement powers. Yet they profess it is patriotic to throw caution to the wind and allow industries whose entire methodology requires them to release these chemicals into the environment, unless otherwise constrained, to “regulate themselves”.

It is this kind of gap between Mr. Paul’s words and the real world that make him a less serious candidate than he might otherwise be. It is this kind of flippant, sometimes irrational, politicking that wins him the affection of passionate supporters, but not necessarily the respect of the wider electorate or the press and the parties.

In short, Mr. Paul again revealed himself to be more of a rhetorician than a leader, more a critic than a president. After so many years of presenting himself as eligible for the nation’s highest office, he has yet to communicate a credible vision for what he wants the United States of America to be. To get a grip on administrative specifics and how they affect real people’s lives, would go a long way to making his rhetoric more credible.

Saying that default is acceptable, or that it somehow represents “American tradition” is just an astonishing failure to reason with clarity.

Truth-First.com :: Today, the Speaker of the House of representatives abandoned debt ceiling negotiations, while putting the entire House on recess for the weekend. He did not return White House phone calls until after 5 pm, only to explain that he was now rejecting any plan of any kind that would raise taxes by any amount. After moving toward a credible compromise that would involve serious debt and deficit reduction, Boehner suddenly returned to the radical “starve the beast” anti-tax policy of Grover Norquist.

Shortly after 6 pm EDT, Pres. Obama addressed the press, and took questions, explaining his plan to get back to the negotiating table. Somewhat incredibly, CNN followed its analysis of the press conference by holding a phone interview with Grover Norquist, who acted as spokesperson for Speaker Boehner. Norquist explained that for seven months, it has been clear that Boehner was not willing—or empowered—to accept any tax increases.

The only “compromise”, according to Norquist, that Boehner would be able to accept—he did not clarify if this was from political pressure or due to Boehner holding views he was not making clear during the negotiations toward a “grand bargain”. Norquist all but admitted that the entire debt ceiling negotiation process is an electoral maneuver, designed to harm the Democratic party, possibly by harming the nation, to elect more Republicans to Congress and to take control of the White House.

When comedians are keeping watch over the deliberate falsehoods dispensed by “mainstream media”, there is something rotten in the culture of our free press. Not because comedians shouldn’t do that work—all citizens should—but because the mainstream media should be committed, at every level, to truth-telling and citizenship. Fox News, in light of the bribery, spying and coercion, scandal engulfing its parent company, has definitively shown how far from that mission its news operation is.

Despite engaging in radical, unfounded and coordinated ideologically-driven crusades against organizations that foster unbiased, non-partisan citizenship and service to the American people, despite its adopting tabloid-style tactics for TV news reporting, despite its relentless accusations, smears and borderline hate speech, against the nation’s chief executive, Fox News is now defending pervasive criminality at News Corp.’s UK tabloids and accusing unbiased media of “piling on” and blowing the scandal out of proportion.

For the record, the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, and his son, James, were called to testify before a select committee of the British Parliament, regarding mounting evidence of a pervasive campaign, over many years, at multiple News Corp. publications, to bribe public officials, illegally spy on innocent civilians, and harass and—according to some reports—intimidate members of the government.

That testimony was anomalous, in part because of the commitment to a free and independent press. But, it was necessary, because the information coming to light so far, throughout years of this developing scandal, suggest there has been a concerted effort to conceal information, kill investigations and use personal, political and commercial influence to obscure the truth. The prime minister of the United Kingdom was forced to extend the current session of Parliament, cut short a trip to Africa, and answer questions about his own personal and professional involvement with key figures involved in the tabloids’ illegal spying.

But Fox News, which has long established its faith-position that all media who do not devoutly, blindly and without remorse, uphold and promote specific tenets of right-wing ideology, are not “balanced” and are in fact part of a vile—use any adjective that fits the animus of the moment (“left-wing”, “communist”, “socialist”, “jihadist”, “terrorist”)—conspiracy to destroy America. Women who claim that women should have rights and privileges of citizenship equal to men are compared to Nazis; Democrats, and the tens of millions of voters that support them, are compared to terrorists and mass murderers.

The level of irrational vitriol and single-party bias at Fox News is now so legendary that around the world, including in tabloid-soaked Great Britain, there is an openly professed fear among public officials and journalists that something as insidious and corrosive as Fox News might emerge there. Laws designed to protect freedom of the press actually include specific provisions designed to reduce the likelihood of the kind of concentration-of-power and intimidation agenda that many believe is the corporate mission at Fox News.

But that aside, the issue of the Fox News reputation for purely biased news reporting aside, it is Fox News that has engaged in a coordinated, persistent and unfounded campaign to smear, undermine, defund and stamp out NPR, the nation’s only public radio service, calling it a socialist conspiracy, a “jihadist inquisition” and accusing it—despite serious analysis showing it to be the least biased radio service in the nation—of pervasive “liberal bias”.

Journalism experts and media analysts are increasingly looking at the anomalous view that there is a “liberal media bias”, which some extreme ideologues on the right have a hard time penetrating. And the clearest explanation emerging from a number of serious studies is literally the problem that extreme ideological conservatives face: that their world view does not correspond to reality, and so serious, credible, unbiased reporting often illustrates a landscape of reality which they cannot tolerate and within which they are not well equipped to debate workable policy solutions.

The Fox News game is a tabloid game—distort, smear, fabricate and exaggerate, remorselessly, and profit from the visceral, primal reaction of an audience which prefers such titillating distortions to information requiring growth, thought, and/or awareness that things can and should be made better in our society. It is the principle of entertaining the public, instead of empowering them. It is Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burned.

Another way to put this is that serious news reporting is about what is actually going on in the world, and though much of the facts to be reported are sad, even tragic, and may indicate extremely disheartening and negative trend-lines, they are reported with solemn respect for the tragedy of human failing. The Fox News tabloid style of reporting deliberately seeks out points of conflict that can be distorted into horrors and threats, and reports on them with glee, passion and hubris, as if to invite the destruction of others in society.

Jon Stewart is not so severe as to allege that Fox News rides an undercurrent of sadistic tendencies, but the absurdity and the tragedy of what the network devotes its airtime to speaks for itself: NPR is, if anything, so unbiased that all you can get there are facts, information and a view of the landscape—some would like to hear more passionate critique and analysis. It is absolutely, and in no way that anyone who is not a diagnosed psychotic could assert, a “jihadist inquisition”.

It is the very soul of what American media should be, if we are all to be citizens of a free republic.

The News Corp. phone-hacking scandal has already come ashore in the United States. The FBI is investigating allegations that News Corp. personnel tried to or did bribe police and/or spy on the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks. Whether there was any such illegal activity at Fox News is not known, and no such evidence has yet come to light. But it would be wiser to distance itself and all of its operations from Mr. Murdoch and those now in police custody than to defend the indefensible or make light of the perverse crime of spying on 9/11 victims.

Gordon Brown, the former UK prime minister and chancellor of the Exchequer denounces “the systematic criminality of News International”, accusing the media conglomerate of “lawbreaking on an industrial scale” and of abusing the rights of citizens, crime victims and the families of soldiers who lost their lives in war, for financial gain by the most cynical methods. He added that Murdoch’s UK tabloids had “brought the rats out of the sewer” and acted in league with the “criminal underworld” to attack the innocent and vulnerable.

Brown accused News International not only of using criminal activity to target and to persecute innocent and vulnerable citizens, but of attempting to engineer a systematic sabotage of the BBC, and to establish a de facto monopoly over British media and politics. He accused top News Corp. executives of using their influence and their personal relationships to intimidate public officials. He alleged there was constant resistance by News Corp. to Labour’s view that the UK needed a diverse media, including financially disinterested news sources, in order to have a free media.

Rupert Murdoch has, today, told a Parliamentary committee in London that he was “clearly” misled by unknown persons within News Corp. Several of the committee members have sought to clarify who may have been responsible for misleading him. His son James told the committee that “What happened at News of the World was wrong”, adding that “the company has admitted liability, and we have set up the appropriate compensation schemes”.

The first question was directed to the son, James Murdoch, who was asked what new information had come to light, since the time he had said, in 2008, that there was no apparent information relating to further illegal phone hacking. He prefaced his response with a brief explanation that he and his father were cooperating fully with police, that they took this matter extremely seriously and that they wanted to make sure that all evidence came to light.

Rupert Murdoch interjected, before his son’s response to the question, saying that he wanted to add “This is the most humble day of my life.” He was thanked by the minister asking the question, and the hearing continued.

When asked if he recognizes that as chief executive of News Corp. he is ultimately “responsible”, Rupert Murdoch said flatly “No.” The question was repeated, and Mr. Murdoch specified “The people I trusted, and the people they trusted.” He added “I have known Mr. Hinton for 52 years, and I would trust him with my life.”

Mr. Hinton resigned from News Corp. last week.

Rupert Murdoch also said the decision to close the 168-year-old newspaper News of the World was “far from” commercial in nature, and stemmed from his family’s being “ashamed” of what the paper had done.

When asked about payments made to victims of the illegal spying, James Murdoch said the legal settlements included payments that did not, in his estimation, require any approval from the global company or the board of directors.

James Murdoch was asked about what standards were in place to allow for hiring individuals who would file no invoices. He said he had no knowledge of any established practice for doing so, and said reporters and staff could use cash for such contacts but would normally have to report having done so.

He was also asked whether News Corp. had any practice in place allowing for other forms of remuneration, aside from cash, cheque or bank transfer. He said he had no knowledge of any.

His father said “reporters have no authority to make payments”, in cash or any other form, and that this authority rests with the managing editor.

Rupert Murdoch as asked if after having been raked over the coals in the UK press, he could think differently in future about using his news outlets to do the same to other, potentially innocent people. He declined to say whether he would change his practices, saying “it’s not deliberate” when his newspapers and news outlets cause harm or discomfort to subjects of their reporting.

Critics may bristle at this suggestion, given allegations that News Corp.’s tabloids not only spied on and/or harassed potentially thousands of individuals, but that there may be a tendency to report without evidence or even fabricate accusations, in order to pressure public figures or profit from unfounded gossip.

The elder Murdoch then added, tapping his hand repeatedly on the table, “This country does benefit greatly from having a free press, and so having a transparent society, though it may be inconvenient for some people.”

James Murdoch, when asked for a third time what the nature of the information was that he said came to light only after prior litigation was closed and police had closed their prior investigation, he said that he had been led to believe that there was no additional information to be sought.

He had testified earlier that three sources of information regarding the investigation into illegal phone hacking led News Corp.’s managerial executives, himself included, to conclude that there was no need for further investigation:

• The finding of police that no further evidence of wrongdoing was known to exist;
• The PCC finding that the situation had been properly dealt with;
• The conviction of two individuals for criminal phone hacking, with no evidence of further wrongdoing.

He also said that had he know then, in 2008, what he now knows, he would have supported further internal investigation by News Corp. He also repeatedly

He was asked yet again: “What do you know now that you did not know then?” Murdoch cited the civil litigations underway “at the end of 2010, which indicated to us that there was wider involvement”. He did not specify what information, aside from the fact that “there was wider involvement” of News Corp. media properties and personnel in illegal spying.

The question was posed to both Messrs. Murdoch what sort of coaching they had before testifying today. James Murdoch answered that they consulted counsel on the nature of such hearings, and what to expect, as they were new to the forum, and that they were eager to cooperate, to show that they take the allegations seriously and want to get to the bottom of what went on.

Rupert Murdoch was asked if he in fact had such a “hands off” approach to management as he had suggested in his earlier testimony. He responded that “hands off” was probably not the appropriate way to describe his style of management, but that he felt it was possible he had “lost sight of” some activities and developments at News of the World, “because it was such a small” part of the overall News Corp. business—roughly 1% of global revenues, according to some reports.

He denied speaking once or even twice daily, as has been alleged, to the editor of one or more of his UK newspapers.

There were probing questions regarding payouts to alleged victims of illegal spying activity. There was, for instance, a difference as wide as compensation paid in the amount of £20,000 and £600,000, for the same sort of illegal spying, according to the committee’s questioning.

James Murdoch was then asked to answer whether News Corp. paid the legal fees for Clive Goodman, who was convicted of criminal wrongdoing in the prior phone hacking investigations.

“I was very surprised to hear that the company had made contributions to certain legal fees.” When asked who authorized the payments, he answered that they were done in consultation with the firm’s legal officers, and “the management of the legal cases”.

Rupert Murdoch said “it could have been” Les Hinton, or “the chief legal officer”, and that whoever made the decision, “it would have been on the advice of the chief legal officer”.

Murdoch said it was “sad” that Les Hinton stepped down, after “52 years service”, and that Mr. Hinton resigned, saying that though he was not involved in what took place, he was in charge when it took place, and he felt it was better for him to step down.

He was asked how much “all of these characters”, including Mr. Hinton, Ms. Brooks and others who have resigned, received as compensation upon their resignation. He noted Mr. Hinton’s “would be considerable”, given his many decades of accumulated pension benefits, but said such information was “confidential”.

James Murdoch was again asked whether he could accept or believe that News Corp. was paying legal fees for an employee convicted of illegal phone hacking.

“These are serious litigations, and it was important for all of the evidence from all involved to get to the court at the right time.” He said the “strong advice” was that it was “customary” to cover costs for co-defendents, in order to ensure compliance with legal requirements.

Rupert Murdoch, when asked if was time to cut someone like Clive Goodman loose, to let the prosecution ‘do their worst’, said he “would like to do that”, but that he was not aware of the specifics of what News Corp. was in fact doing, with regard to Mr. Goodman’s legal fees or what the terms of his contract had been regarding such issues.

James Murdoch was again asked about the question of what is now known, specifically with regard to an outside legal review having written an opinion that there was no further evidence to be examined and no indication of further wrongdoing.

It is now known that several cubic meters’ worth of documents and evidence were not yet examined by Scotland Yard, at the time the police investigation, the PCC findings and the legal review were issued, suggesting that there was nothing further to look into. Critics have been pressing for information as to whether undue influence of some kind was used to secure those findings and ‘wipe the slate clean’, even before an exhaustive investigation had been concluded.

One of the questions asked regarded whether Rupert Murdoch had entered Number 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence, “through the back door”. He said he had, and that he had been asked by the prime minister or the prime minister’s staff to do so. The questioning was contentious, almost as if attempting to draw him out emotionally, as it was suggested that heads of state and others enter through the front door, and he was asked to enter through the back door.

He said he had made many visits to Number 10, during the tenures of various prime ministers, including Gordon Brown, where he had been asked to enter through the back door. It was unclear at first, whether the question was intended to bring to light suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of Prime Minister David Cameron or whether it was simply meant to embarrass Mr. Murdoch.

Nothing explicitly suggestive of wrongdoing was revealed in that line of questioning.

Much of the hearing was devoted to personnel issues: How did information become known to News Corp. management, regarding the involvement of various editors, executives and contractors, and when? Who was paid what, and when, and by what means? How was compensation calculated? Were internal investigations thwarted by an effort to mislead top executives? Is there evidence of lying or giving false evidence?

The most significant sticking point seemed to be, throughout the hearing, that a file with emails suggesting wider wrongdoing was given to the outside law firm Harbottle and Lewis. The Harbottle and Lewis file, repeatedly referred to as “the file” or “the emails” during today’s questioning, was reported by the BBC to be a “smoking gun” making evident that News Corp. was aware of wider criminal activity as early as 2007.

Neither Rupert nor James Murdoch seemed willing to reveal who at News Corp. had direct knowledge of the information contained in the Harbottle and Lewis file. The question was posed repeatedly throughout the hearing what information came to light that was not known to top executives in 2007 and 2008, and who might have been responsible for hiding that information. It was also repeatedly asked what the two top executives thought could explain how the outside law firm had issued a report finding no extant evidence, while in possession of this “smoking gun” bundle of documents.

Neither offered an explanation of how that would have happened, though they both said it was important to understand that News Corp. relied on the advice of Harbottle and Lewis as evidence that there was no further wrongdoing to look into.

Rupert Murdoch’s personal connection to the people at the top of his organization was evident, when he was asked whether the close relationships with top officers of the News Corp. family of media properties blinded him or his son to what they may have been doing. Mr. Murdoch was more animated in his response to that question than to any other and vigorously defended Les Hinton by name, saying he did not believe Mr. Hinton misled him or abused his trust in any way.

Asked if people under him might conceal information “in order to curry favor” with the boss, he said “not my trusted advisers”, but that such behavior would be human nature, and “it’s my responsibility to see through that.”

“No, I think it’s terribly wrong. There is no excuse for breaking the law at any time.” He added that it is legitimate for journalists and news outlets to campaign to change the law, but never to break it.

Rupert Murdoch said that he often had contact with prime ministers over the years, and that perhaps his closest relationship was with Gordon Brown, when he was chancellor of the exchequer. He lamented that his relationship with Brown was now so strained and broken, after news came to light News Corp. reporters had spied on Brown’s family. He said he hoped in time he could repair that friendship.

Brown gave an impassioned denunciation of the “sewer” culture that seemed to have taken over the tabloid publications of News International, Murdoch’s UK subsidiary.

UPDATE, 11:55 am EDT: At 4:52 local time, there was a disturbance that appeared to include an attempt, which caused a sudden reflex response from all present, to reach Rupert Murdoch. It is not clear whether something was thrown or whether an individual attempted to breach security and/or attack Mr. Murdoch. As the disturbance occurred, James Murdoch jumped to his feet to defend his father.

The hearing was immediately suspended, for 10 minutes, and cameras were pointed to the wall and/or ceiling, in keeping with protocol.

Security appear to have detained at least one individual, and the BBC reported that a “white substance” of some kind, now perhaps confirmed to be a “pie of foam” thrown at Murdoch. Twitter had come alive with comments regarding foam, a pie in the face attempt and Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng leaping to his defense, swatting at the protester.

UPDATE, 12:10 pm EDT: The BBC is now reporting the item thrown at Rupert Murdoch was “a plate of shaving foam”, or the like, and that the incident constitutes an extremely serious and improbable breach of security. A former volleyball player, Ms. Deng reportedly smacked her husband’s attacker and hurled the foam pie back at him.

According to the BBC, police detained, and cleaned up the assailant, then escorted him out of the building, taking him into custody.

The hearing resumed at 5:09 local time, with Rupert Murdoch no longer wearing the jacket that had been smeared with the foam from the assailant’s pie.

UPDATE, 12:26 pm EDT: The questioning was some of the toughest of the day, when it resumed. James Murdoch was asked whether settlements that cost News Corp. significantly more included non-disclosure clauses and whether that was an indication of an attempt by the corporation “to buy silence”. Murdoch said that suggestion would not be true.

Murdoch said the illegal hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler’s voicemail was “a total shock”. He said it was totally unacceptable and something News Corp. would not and cannot justify. He later added that “Illegal activity has no place in this company [and] that goes for the whole company.”

The allegation made by the actor Jude Law that his phone was hacked, while he was on American soil, was raised, as a possible indication that News Corp. employees may in fact have engaged in police bribery and/or illegal spying in order to gain access to private information of victims of the 9/11 attacks and their families.

Citing a litany of revelations about illegal and unethical activity by British tabloid journalists, including an admission by CNN’s Piers Morgan, who used to edit Murdoch’s News of the World, that he had, while working for the Daily Mirror, used phone hacking to win a scoop, the last minister to question the Murdoch’s asked, pointedly: ”Is it not the fact, is it not the truth of the matter, that journalists at the News of the World felt entitled to go out there and use blagging, deception and phone hacking, because that was part of the general culture of corruption in the British tabloid press, and that they didn’t kick it up the chain to you, because they felt they were entitled to use the same methods as everybody else.”

She then asked Rupert Murdoch whether or not he had considered suing Harbottle and Lewis for having failed to reveal evidence of serious criminal wrongdoing, allegedly in its possession. James Murdoch answered that they had not yet explored that possibility. When pressed as to why he had not read through the entire file containing evidence of widespread criminal wrongdoing, James Murdoch answered he had seen enough of it, but that he would “be happy to” read more, looking somewhat quizzical and disgruntled for the first time in the hearing.

Rupert Murdoch was asked, given his testimony that he was not a “hands off” chief executive, whether he had considered resigning. He said no, but that those who misled him, whose identity he did not know or would not reveal, should be the ones “to pay”. He added, “I think I am the best person to clean this up.”

UPDATE, 12:30 pm EDT: Rupert Murdoch made a closing statement, which the committee agreed to, apparently after Mr. Murdoch continued his appearance, despite the assault he underwent.

“At no time do I remember being as sickened as when I heard what the Dowler family had to endure.” He added that he wanted “to thank the Dowlers for graciously giving me the opportunity to apologize in person. I would like all the victims of phone hacking to know how deeply and personally sorry I am… the depth of my regret for the horrible invasion into their lives.”

He denounced paying police bribes and using illegal phone hacking as “wrong” and said they had no place in the company he runs. He added that “It is our duty not to prejudice the outcome of the legal process.” He also noted that he had been led to believe by executives at News International, and others, that with the convictions of Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire, in 2007, the phone hacking issue had been fully exposed and resolved.

In a shocking development, a former News of the World reporter and key whistleblower in the phone-hacking scandal now sweeping the News Corp. media empire and British political landscape has been found dead at his home in Watford, Hertfordshire, England. Sean Hoare was the first named journalist to have alleged that Andy Coulson, former News of the World editor and top media officer for Prime Minister David Cameron, knew of and openly encouraged illegal phone hacking and other corrupt practices.

The death is not, at present, being treated as suspicious. But, the investigation is ongoing, and police have yet to publicly confirm the identity of the deceased. A cause of death is not yet known. The news comes as Mr. Hoare’s testimony lends weight to several ongoing inquiries into alleged illegal spying and corruption, and just one day before Rupert Murdoch, his son and the former head of his UK newspaper operations, are scheduled to testify before Parliament.

According to the Guardian:

[Hoare] told the [New York Times] that not only did Coulson know of the phone hacking, but that he actively encouraged his staff to intercept the phone calls of celebrities in the pursuit of exclusives.

In a subsequent interview with the BBC he alleged that he was personally asked by his then-editor, Coulson, to tap into phones. In an interview with the PM programme he said Coulson’s insistence that he didn’t know about the practice was “a lie, it is simply a lie”.

Mr. Coulson was arrested on July 8, for questioning in connection with the alleged campaign of illegal hacking, bribery and attempted influence or intimidation of public officials. Specifically, Coulson was suspected of lying during previous inquiries into the alleged illegal activity at News International’s tabloid publications, under his management.

Rupert Murdoch, his son James, and his recently arrested protégée, Rebekah Brooks, are scheduled to testify before Parliament, tomorrow. With more than ten people now arrested on allegations of corruption and illegal hacking into private files, the scandal that closed the 168-year-old News of the World tabloid is now threatening to metastasize to the rest of the News Corp. news media properties, and to high-ranking public officials. For the second time in as many days, a top-ranking police official has stepped down, due to alleged connections to the News Corp. scandal.

John Yates, the London police commissioner, who was in charge of a 2006 investigation into the same alleged illegal activity, has resigned, as criticism mounts over his alleged intervention to end the investigation on the grounds that there was no evidence of further illegal activity. The arrest of Rebekah Brooks, who resigned last week, raised speculation there could be evidence of higher-level corruption, not yet revealed in the reporting on phone hacking allegations.

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

“The scandal is letting out a lot of anger that has been built up for years in the British public,” says Jasmine Birtles, who runs the Moneymagpie website in London. “Brooks has been arrested on the same day as the British public is hearing she told [Prime Minister] Cameron he had to hire Andy Coulson as chief press officer.”

Whether there was undue influence applied to Mr. Cameron to place Mr. Coulson at Number 10 Downing Street, or whether promises were made regarding access to information that might not otherwise change hands between the Prime Minister’s office and the tabloids, unless it were first made public, is an increasingly widely asked question both Mr. Cameron and Ms. Brooks will be expected to answer.

Cameron has been careful to side with the rest of the Parliament in expressing extreme revulsion at the crimes alleged to have been committed by the News of the World and other Murdoch tabloids. The files of just one private investigator used by the Murdoch tabloids to illegally hack into private phone accounts suggests nearly 4,000 people were targeted. There is at least one other investigator whose files police have not yet begun to parse, and so the possibility that many more people were targeted over what is thought to be at least a decade of illegal spying.

Mr. Yates was under increasing pressure, due to what is now thought to be the incredible claim that police did not have evidence of widespread illegal spying at News of the World and/or other Murdoch tabloids. As long ago as 2003, if not longer, police were aware of efforts by Murdoch employees to spy on the family of Gordon Brown, the eventual and now former prime minister. That information came to light as part of a wider investigation in which the names of some of the victims cited in the current investigation may have already been known to police.

Mr. Yates is not, so far, officially alleged to have engaged in wrongdoing. He says his resignation was necessary, because he had become the target of “inaccurate, uninformed and … malicious gossip”, and that he needed to step down to put a stop to the distraction from preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games. He was, however, to be suspended, and is now thought to have been “too close to” the journalists and editors he was to be investigating.

CNN International is reporting that for Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, their testimony before Parliament tomorrow may turn out to be the single most crucial moment of their entire careers in media. Lord John Prescott has said Murdoch “is responsible” and must be called to account for the alleged crimes committed by more than one of his publications. Others have alleged that the illegal spying may have been used to exert political pressure on key figures.

The Wall Street Journal is an historic and storied publication, known for top-quality journalism and meticulous reporting of facts relevant to financial markets and economic activity more broadly. It is a mainstay of American print media, and has long been known for honoring the bright line that must be drawn between editorial viewpoints and news reporting. Since 2007, however, it is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and not all of that legacy remains certain to everyone.

And Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is rapidly losing journalistic and commercial cachet, as the scandal over bribery and illegal phone hacking deepens. Now, at least three members of the Bancroft family, which sold the Wall Street Journal and other DowJones properties to Murdoch in 2007, say they would not have done so, were they aware of the corruption and illegal spying allegedly rampant at his UK-based tabloids.

According to ProPublica and the Guardian:

The downward spiral of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has deepened, as Rebekah Brooks, former editor of the News of the World tabloid, accused of bribery and illegal hacking of private phone messages and other documents, has now been arrested. Now, the multinational News Corp., which owns not only the now closed News of the World, and other British newspapers, but also Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, in the US, is facing criminal investigation in the UK and the US. There is mounting expectation that concrete evidence of police bribery will come to light, as the chief of the London Metropolitan Police, has now stepped down.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Late Sunday, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, known as Scotland Yard, resigned due largely to connections between the police and the phone-hacking scandal. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson cited intense media scrutiny and the hiring of a former News Corp. tabloid editor to advise police on public relations; that editor, Neil Wallis, was arrested in connection with the criminal investigation last week.

The arrest of Brooks is the most serious development to date in the ongoing investigation into alleged pervasive corruption and spying at Murdoch’s UK tabloids. She had been considered to be a “firewall” for the media boss, and he had pledged to protect her. The Scotsman is now reporting that Murdoch’s firewall has burned through.

Her arrest also makes the situation still more uncomfortable for Prime Minister David Cameron, whose former media director was also arrested in connection with the scandal. According to the Scotsman:

The arrest of somebody who was a personal friend of the Prime Minister David Cameron has also put the focus back on him. Mr Cameron met Brooks up to 14 times in the 14 months since he became Prime Minister, Downing Street revealed last week, including social occasions, private meals and two stays at his official country retreat, Chequers.

And the Tories yesterday had to deny reports that Brooks had told Mr Cameron to take on Andy Coulson, her successor at the News of the World, as his director of communications so that he would have a direct line into News international.

The New York Times has reported on the intense media fixation on Ms. Brooks’ arrest, as she has long been a figure of controversy, intensely criticized for the methods of the newspapers she edited:

The blogosphere was awash with taunts on Sunday for Ms. Brooks, who once edited The News of the World, a News International tabloid that has been accused of hacking into the phones of celebrities, politicians and others, including a 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was abducted and murdered. The paper was Britain’s best-selling Sunday tabloid until it closed last week.

“Rebekah Brooks will be allowed one phone call after her arrest. By rights, we should all be able to listen in on it,” Toby Hadoke, a British comedian, tweeted sardonically on Sunday. Some questioned whether the arrest, just two days before Ms. Brooks was scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee with Mr. Murdoch and his son James, was little more than a pretext to avoid being eviscerated in public.

The Independent is reporting that the arrest caught some by surprise, including Ms. Brooks herself, and appears to indicate that the fortunes of News Corp. generally might be steadily declining:

While she was still chief executive of News International and the “fifth daughter” of the Murdoch clan last week, Rebekah Brooks wrote to Scotland Yard offering to be interviewed as a witness in its intensifying investigation into the phone-hacking scandal.

The extent to which the fortunes of the former editor of The Sun and the News of the World have been transformed in the space of 72 hours was underlined at midday yesterday when she arrived at a London police station in the expectation that she would be helping police with their inquiries – only to find herself under arrest.

Brooks is the second top executive to step down in recent days who spent most of her life working for Rupert Murdoch. It had been widely considered crucial to Murdoch’s effort to contain the scandal to keep his top-ranking allies inside the corporation. On the outside, and now facing extreme legal pressure, Brooks, Hinton and others, are expected to provide more useful information about what is now widely perceived as a culture of routine corruption and illegal spying, at least across multiple News Corp. publications.

The resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Service chief, has led observers to speculate that police involvement in the scandal may be more widespread, and reach higher into the ranks, than was previously suspected. Stephenson was firm in his claim that this was not the case:

I have heard suggestions that we must have suspected the alleged involvement of Mr. Wallis in phone hacking. Let me say unequivocally that I did not and had no reason to have done so. I do not occupy a position in the world of journalism; I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice and the repugnant nature of the selection of victims that is now emerging; nor of its apparent reach into senior levels. I saw senior figures from News International providing evidence that the misbehavior was confined to a rogue few and not known about at the top.

One can only wonder about the motives of those within the newspaper industry or beyond, who now claim that they did know but kept quiet. Though mine and the Met’s current severe discomfort is a consequence of those few that did speak out, I am grateful to them for doing so, giving us the opportunity to right the wrong done to victims – and here I think most of those especially vulnerable people who deserved so much better from us all.

He took pains to make clear that he knows of nothing improper in a contractual business relationship with Neil Wallis, a former editor for News of the World, who some suspect of having been involved in the illegal hacking. Wallis was arrested last week in connection with the investigation, and there have been questions raised about the coincidence of Stephenson’s treatment at a spa where Wallis worked.

Murdoch has hired the public relations firm Edelman to manage “damage control” for News Corp., which is steadily losing ground both in terms of public reputation and the confidence of investors. There are allegations of illegal hacking and bribery in the United States, and calls from some to break up the media conglomerate. There are also questions about what the firm was hired to do, and whether this indicates a potential strategy aimed at limiting the release of facts about what took place at News Corp.’s publications.

News Corp., the New York-based multinational media conglomerate whose majority shareholder is the controversial billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is now facing an FBI investigation for illegal activity in news gathering. Long maligned by press advocacy groups as a leading source of biased and abusive media activity, and even of attacks on genuine news sources, News Corp. is now being accused of having authorized bribery and/or hacking activity to gain illegal access to the private files of victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Murdoch hacking scandal has been rapidly spreading across the Atlantic, since it was revealed last week in Britain that the News of the World tabloid had not only hacked into the private voicemail of a 13-year-old murder victim, but had deleted messages, interfering with criminal evidence and a police investigation. Some raised concerns that the illegal hacking was not only obstruction of justice, but that it may have made it more difficult to identify and mount an effective legal case against the murderer.

Since then, the scandal has widened, as news has come to light of investigations into illegal hacking at numerous News Corp. publications, going back to 2002. Prime Minister Cameron’s hand-picked (and now former) media director Andy Coulson, who had Murdoch’s UK operations, has been taken into custody. Several other employees of the media company have been arrested, and now Mr. Murdoch and his son will be required to give sworn testimony to the British Parliament, this coming week.

Rebekah Brooks, whom Murdoch had said he would protect, come what may, has now resigned, under significant pressure from inside the Murdoch family, from among her former staff and from Britain’s political elite. According to the Washington Post:

Newspapers in the UK and TV networks around the world are reporting that UK prime minister Gordon Brown says his bank accounts, property records, his children’s medical accounts and other private accounts, were illegally accessed by the Sun tabloid and/or the Sunday Times, another of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in Great Britain. The allegation appears to implicate one or more journalists in gaining private, privileged information relating to the personal health of at least one of Brown’s children, along with other private information.

The former prime minister was first warned of newspapers’ attempt to illegally access personal data regarding himself and his family, as long ago as 2003, raising suspicions of a decade-long campaign of illegal spying. A 2003 Plymouth police investigation, called Operation Reproof, uncovered evidence of the illegal attempts at data acquisition, allegedly an effort by at least one private investigator to purchase private information, on behalf of unnamed journalists.

According to the Guardian:

The purchaser of information on the three Labour politicians was Glen Lawson, another private detective in Newcastle upon Tyne, according to police records and court transcripts obtained by the Guardian.

Lawson, who still trades in Tyneside under the name Abbey Investigations, refuses to say which journalists contracted him to pursue Gordon Brown and other members of the Labour government. He told the Guardian at the weekend: “I am not going to make any comment”.

In September of last year, Wired magazine reported that reporters working under Andy Coulson, who was by then a top media adviser to PM David Cameron, had systematically and persistently sought to spy on hundreds of individuals. According to that report:

Although Coulson has long insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity, sources who worked at the tabloid told the N.Y. Times Coulson not only knew about it, he actively encouraged it. A dozen former reporters said the hacking was so pervasive at News of the World that everyone knew about it. “The office cat knew,” one longtime reporter said.

It all began to unravel in November 2005, when three aides to the royal family noticed that new voicemail messages received on their mobile phones were appearing in their mailboxes as if they’d already been listened to and saved. Then stories about Prince William began appearing in News of the World that made them think their phone accounts had been compromised.

Mr. Coulson was arrested, and his computer seized by investigators, last week, as information of a programmatic and pervasive conspiracy began to emerge, suggesting that News of the World had routinely flouted the law and spied on thousands of people over several years. It is alleged that “fewer than five” police officers implicated in the scandal may have been made more than £100,000 for their assistance in illegally accessing private information.

Among the alleged victims of the hacking campaign were: the British royal family, the former prime minister, a thirteen-year-old murder victim (whose voicemails were erased by reporters seeking to deny information to all other sources—they face possible obstruction of justice charges), British soldiers killed and wounded in war, victims of the tragic 7/7 terrorist attacks in London. It is now believed at least 4,000 people had their phones hacked by reporters and investigators working for Rupert Murdoch.

There are now allegations that Murdoch’s reporters may also have hacked into the accounts of victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The family of the young girl who was killed say they have had no communications of any kind from News of the World, News Corporation or any of its executives to apologize for the damage caused by its illegal spying on the murder victim.

The office of former British prime minister Gordon Brown has released the following statement:

Gordon Brown has now been informed of the scale of intrusion into his family’s life. The family has been shocked by the level of criminality and the unethical means by which personal details have been obtained. The matter is in police hands. The police have confirmed Mr Brown is on Glen Mulcaire’s list. And sometime ago Mr Brown passed all relevant evidence he had to the police.

(Mr. Mulcaire is the private detective accused of running an illegal campaign of spying on public officials, crime victims, and others, on behalf of one or more of Mr. Murdoch’s publications. He has been under investigation for months, relating to the allegations, before this scandal brought down the 168-year-old News of the World.)

The scandal continues to spread now, as Prime Minister David Cameron has denied knowing about some of the allegations regarding his media director Andy Coulson, despite the Guardian newspaper having provided that information to his top advisers. The leader of the Labour party, Ed Miliband suggested Cameron was not entirely truthful, saying his claim “does not add up”.

With evidence of illegal hacking, bribery and other crimes, now affecting multiple Murdoch publications, the top executives of News International (the UK subsidiary of NewsCorp) are now coming under closer scrutiny. A shareholder’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch and other top executives has now been revised to include misconduct relating to the phone-hacking scandal.

The suit had been alleging corporate misconduct relating to Mr. Murdoch’s having used $675 million of NewsCorp money to buy his daughter’s television network. The revision to the lawsuit now alleges “a culture run amok”, in which Mr. Murdoch routinely acted without any effective oversight from the board of directors. One of the plaintiffs alleges that Murdoch’s son, recently promoted to the third highest position in the global firm, is deeply implicated in the illegal spying scandal.

According to Reuters:

Back in May, Grant & Eisenhofer and Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann filed a consolidated Delaware Chancery Court complaint against the officers and directors of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWSA.O), claiming that the News Corp board fell down on the job when it approved the $615 million acquisition of a film and television production company wholly owned by Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth. “Enough is enough,” said the 51-page complaint.

Turns out enough wasn’t quite enough after all. Late Friday, facing a deadline to respond to News Corp’s motion to dismiss the case, the plaintiffs firms amended their complaint to add allegations based on last week’s revelations in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. Weighing in at 94 pages, the newly-amended complaint accuses the News Corp board of ignoring the tabloid’s “unlawful and reprehensible activity” even as the evidence of the scandal built.

Rupert Murdoch is now also facing the possibility of being denied the right to take over control of BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster of which he currently owns 39%. He had sought to prevent an investigation into the legality of the takeover, fearing an investigation could prevent the takeover. Now, he has floated a proposal to force an inquiry, in order to prevent political interests halting the takeover.

It is unclear whether an investigation will begin in the United States, after revelations reporters working for Murdoch’s multinational conglomerate may have illegally accessed private accounts of victims of the 9/11 attacks. The allegations relate to police information regarding attempts to buy information regarding 9/11 victims’ private accounts. An investigation in the United States could affect some of Mr. Murdoch’s most prestigious and powerful media properties.

National Public Radio is a resource that belongs to the American people. It is not government controlled, has no editorial bias in terms of ideology or party, and is the nation’s most extensive network of committed professional journalists delivering reliable information to American citizens, via the radio. Federal funding is a commitment to enabling the American people to benefit from the founding principle that a free and independent press makes us freer and more resilient to the challenges a democracy faces.

Far from wasteful spending, federal NPR funding is necessary to guarantee that the American people have an affordable way to counter for-profit corporate media, much of which filters information through editorial offices with political or corporate biases. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States specifies that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”. The legislation proposed by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives abridges the freedom of the American people to have their voice heard, and directly limits the freedom of journalists to deliver reliable information to the American people.

NPR is offensive to extremist conservatives and radical partisans with a corporate or right-wing ideological bias, because it tells the truth. When politicians lie, they are found out. When corporations cheat the government or the people, they are investigated. When mainstream for-profit media get even simple stories factually wrong, NPR gives the people depth of coverage and fact-based reporting.

In a political climate where the Republican party, in apparent absence of any constructive idea for how to govern —no useful ideas for climate destabilization, no useful ideas for energy innovation, no useful ideas for job creation, no useful ideas for ending the foreclosure binge, no useful ideas for safeguarding or expanding the middle class—, seeks to establish and to capitalize from flagrantly biased media —like Fox News—, which help the party organize and advertise and which report flat-out falsehoods to further the party interest… an attack on NPR is clearly an attack on the people’s right to know the truth.

Because ordinary people can access public radio, build community centered programming, and use federal funds to make sure the information in their community is not biased, NPR looks to wealthy corporate interests —and to those unfortunate partisans who rely on wealthy corporate interests to help them persuade the people their service might be worth something— like a threat to their campaign of biased, interested information.

The people of the United States actually do need NPR, because there is no other national network of truly independent journalists committed to doing straightforward professional reporting of fact and context. NPR receives donations from listeners, but, like PBS, requires federal funding to allow radio stations in less affluent, less media-rich corners of the country to fund the production of professional quality content and/or licensing of NPR national content.

A radio network does not maintain itself, and a public radio network not funded by corporate commercial advertising does not aim to turn a profit, clearly. The mission of NPR is to make sure the fabric of American news media includes at least one standard of top-quality professional news reporting and radio broadcasting. We have a right to keep that best manifestation of a free and independent press, and no politician serious about the quality of our media or our democracy, could argue otherwise.

As a measure of how serious the individuals pushing this legislation are about —well, about pretty much anything—, when the United States is involved in two wars in Asia, with pressure to intervene militarily in Libya, with communities across the country experiencing a rash of foreclosures and the gutting of funds for their educational systems, food and fuel prices soaring, unstable countries being further destabilized, and an allied monarchy in Bahrain using extreme violence against pro-democracy demontrators… with the 3rd largest economy on Earth having suffered simultaneously the 5th worst earthquake in history, a catastrophic tsunami that has taken thousands of lives and destroyed and entire region and what is already the 2nd worst nuclear disaster in world history, they called an “emergency meeting” to force through legislation barring federal funding to NPR.

The callous and shamefully partisan nature of this proposal is glaringly obvious and should be deeply offensive to any American who cares about democracy as such. If we want to have a real and functioning democracy, we need to have media that tell us the truth, without seeking profit or party gain. NPR is that medium, and what NPR does, its journalists do to make sure we have the truth at our disposal and so can be fully free citizens of a truly open society.

A report from the American Medical Association finds the US is not prepared to deal with the public health crisis that would ensue from a major nuclear accident. There is also evidence suggesting that aging nuclear plants are less stable and less secure than the public is led to believe. Indeed, radiation releases are surprisingly and disturbingly common.

Christian Parenti, author of the book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, told MSNBC tonight that at least two aging nuclear plants in the northeast —one in Vermont and one in New York— are presently leaking radiation. And as many as 180,000 gallons of radioactive tritium-laced water may have leaked into ground water in one incident.

According to the study, titled State-Level Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities:

The extent of planning for epidemiology and surveillance for the human health effects of radiation was assessed for 5 types: syndromic surveillance, clinician reporting, crisis-phase epidemiology, recovery-phase epidemiology, and other types of statistical surveillance (Table 1). A range between 70% and 84% of states reported minimal to no planning completed on the potential human effects of radiation among any of these 5 types of surveillance.

States reported only slightly better planning for providing advice on exposure assessment and environmental sampling combined (42%–50% reporting none to minimal planning) and little planning to provide advice for biological sampling (14% have none and 60% have minimal). Seventy-four percent of states reported having minimal (53%) or no (21%) plans to conduct population-based exposure monitoring.

In response to accidental release of radiation:

Twenty (53%) states reported having a finalized radiation-specific written response plan (Table 5). Four (20%) of the 20 states did not have a nuclear power plant (data not shown). For unintentional releases, half of the states had written or detailed operations plans for all scenarios except for a waterways incident, for which only 6 (15%) states reported having a written or detailed operations plan.

On just one day in April 2010, two different nuclear plants in New Jersey were visited by nuclear inspectors, to deal with possible radiation seepage. According to New Jersey Newsroom, “State and federal inspectors Friday were searching for the cause of a leak of radioactive water into catch basins at the Salem 2 nuclear power plant in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County.”

Then, shortly after the Salem 2 release was made public:

the state Department of Environmental Protection announced that it had been notified by Exelon, owner of Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in Lacey, Ocean County, that a monitor that measures radiation emissions from the facility was discovered to be inoperable. It is unknown how long the monitor has been out of service.

Exelon, the operator of that Ocean County plant, was forced to pay for clean-up of an estimated 180,000 gallons of radioactive tritium-laced water that leaked from the plant on 9 April 2009. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection reportedly found evidence that water with contamination levels 50 times legal limits may have reached the Cohansey Aquifer, an important drinking-water source for southern New Jersey.

On Wednesday evening Chris Jansing reported for MSNBC that a report has found that 25% of all nuclear plants in the United States have leaked or are presently leaking radioactive waste.

According to a report from The New York Times, the underregulated practice of hydraulic fracturing (hydro-fracking) is releasing not only high quantities of minerals into the water supply, but also radioactive materials. Regulators are not acting to halt such releases or require full reprocessing of waste water from the drilling sites.

Nuclear power plants, like the one at Fukushima Daiichi, contain 1,000 times more radioactivity to leak than the Hiroshima bomb. Nuclear scientists estimate 1,000,000 people would be killed or injured in a major accident, were one to occur at the San Onofre plant in southern California. But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Monday compared the risk to a bridge collapse or a plane crash.

Alexander literally suggested that the scale by which the people of the United States should measure the potential risk of a catastrophic nuclear disaster should be according to their fear of a highway bridge collapse. A highway collapse could kill people, and is and would be tragic, but it would be very unlikely to kill more than a few dozen people. It would be tragic to lose those lives, but such a tragedy is not comparable in scale to death or severe long-term injury to a million people.

It is one of the most astonishing examples of pathological ignorance displayed by any public official in this country for years. It is a sign that Sen. Alexander is willing to put his allegiance to industry ahead of his service to the people and the nation he has sworn to serve. Only a very cynical and corrupt mind could dare to make such a comparison or be so willing to mock the tragedy experienced by victims of radiation fallout.

Sen. Alexander may have made some astonishingly ignorant remarks in the past, or he may not. By comparison, it hardly seems to matter now. He has gone on the record telling American citizens he would be as concerned about the grave need for nuclear security as he would be about highway construction.

It should be so far beyond the acceptable limit for politically motivated misstatements for any public servant to make a remark of the kind Sen. Alexander has seen fit to interject into the debate about nuclear power that no intelligent adult would ever make such an irresponsible and flagrantly offensive statement. But it is not.

Sen. Alexander clearly holds one of two views: either he views the American people as so hopelessly benighted that there will be no political backlash whatsoever to his manipulative and grossly negligent lie, or he actually is ignorant enough to believe what he said, that a nuclear catastrophe is no worse than a highway accident.

Either way, it would seem the people of Tennessee have some thinking to do about how they plan to replace this senator with an individual who is willing to use genuine intellect and moral conscience to serve the better interests of the people of his state.

Tennessee deserves better, and the people of the United States deserve better, than a senator so deeply in league with a private, for-profit interest that makes its living on taxpayer subsidies, that he would suggest the public should not have a serious discussion about whether it is safe to put the most dangerous scientific process known to man in our communities.

FOX News has begun to escalate what appears to be a partisan campaign against the people of the state of Wisconsin. The network was caught yesterday using fake footage, stock footage of another protest, in Florida, at another time, where there were physical scuffles going on, while reporting that this was taking place in Wisconsin. A FOX News reporter also repeatedly reported that protesters’ eyes were visibly “filled with hate”, seeking to paint the peaceful demonstrations as dangerous, violent and anti-American.

FOX News’ stepped up reporting of flagrant fabrications comes as the Republican governor of Wisconsin is rapidly forfeiting popularity in the polls, both inside the state and nationally, and Republican governors have diverted millions of dollars in campaign funding to run ads supporting Gov. Walker.

The network has long been accused of fabricating controversies and reporting non-stories to distract attention from real issues of public controversy. This week’s reporting seems to confirm that the network is committed to systematically fabricating fake news and to using its position in the national media to promote Republican party ideology and the radical agenda of politicians like Gov. Walker.

The fake FOX News reports are also being issued at the same time as the governor of Wisconsin —who they claim is waging a patriotic battle against America hating radicals— has ordered the closing of the state capitol, the ejection of protesters and is now attempting to commandeer the state police to arrest “with or without force” any Democratic official who has been absent from the state Senate.

It has been suggested Walker may be in violation of state and federal law for his alleged private discussion of plans to use paid thugs to cause trouble and break up the protests outside the capitol, as well as his alleged consideration of deploying the National Guard to disperse the protesters by force.

FOX is not reporting that Gov. Walker is being accused of abuse of office for his repeated use of coercive threats to ram his agenda through the state legislature, sending police to harass the families of state legislators who have fled the state to deprive his party of a quorum, and threatening to lay off thousands of workers unless the Democratic senators come back to pass his proposal.

FOX News’ Shepard Smith has shocked the radical right-wing by telling the truth about Wisconsin. He explained on air that the motivation for Wisconsin’s governor was clearly not economic or budgetary. He explained that there is in fact no fiscal crisis in Wisconsin. The projected budget deficit is far smaller than what the governor claims.

Smith said he was “I’m not taking a side on this. I’m telling you the story… Facts at times are troublesome things. The Koch brothers have been organizing to bust the unions… This is political.”  He went on to say that ”To pretend that this is about a fiscal crisis in the state of Wisconsin is melarky. It’s duck feathers.”

Smith added that “The really problematic thing is: they were promised this; they worked for this; they were given this in a contract that both sides signed.” He knew he would be offending radical partisans and those who view the cause of breaking labor unions as more important than honoring contracts written into law and the Constitutional principle of basic rights and equality before the law.

He offended the extreme right by telling the truth. It marks a moment of existential self-examination for FOX. Will they defend truth-telling, or will they give credit to the lies and vitriol being aimed by extremists at one of their own?

What is democracy? That is the first question that is always asked by pro-regime elements, whether in 18th-century Britain or France or 21st-century Egypt or Bahrain, because their aim is to muddy the waters and oppose the spread of democratic freedom. Free and open access to factual information is the cornerstone right of all citizens of a free society. Journalists are the “Fourth Estate” —in the words attributed to Edmund Burke, by Thomas Carlyle—, the watchdogs of the people’s access to truth.

The three estates were the “Lords Spiritual” (bishops of the Church of England), the “Lords Temporal” (the House of Lords) and the Commons. The members of the “Fourth Estate” sat in the reporter’s gallery of the parliament and were, by their influence as writers, researchers, editors and publishers, the most significant of the four groups in terms of their ability to move public opinion and channel the influence of popular sentiment into the decision-making of the government.

In other words, the press are the necessary foundation of political influence for the people. It is through the press and what it does for the dissemination of evidence and of fact-based independent analysis that the citizens of a free republic are able to monitor, judge and influence the actions of their government. It is through the press that the governed are able to ensure they are governed only in line with their informed consent.

Since the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, the war on journalists has escalated across the world. The chaos in Iraq and the attitudes of hardline regimes like that led by Vladimir Putin during his years as president of the Russian Federation, have led to the expanding of violent persecution of journalists across the world.

In the last 10 years, the spread of the Internet, and its open transfer of information across the world, has put authoritarian regimes on the defensive, and they have responded by lashing out at print reporters, bloggers and human rights activists. In high profile cases across the Caucasus, Russian operatives and pro-Russian regimes have assassinated journalists with impunity.

Most of those cases remain unsolved. Investigations have been curtailed, and human rights advocates involved in the investigations have been targeted. In Iraq, in Colombia, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, journalists have been targeted for abduction, arrest, abuse, and even death. In Iran, China, Egypt, Libya, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere, journalists are routinely detained, accused of spying, and used as props to make it seem the regime in question is combatting foreign infiltrators.

In all of these cases, it is understood that the methodology is intended to intimidate witnesses of all kinds, whether ordinary civilians, potential defectors or journalists and human rights advocates.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has been diligently tracking aggression against the press in nations with rising pro-democracy movements and mass demonstrations calling for change. They reported on Friday:

The regime of Hosni Mubarak, in its violent quest to cling to power, engaged in what many observers described as an “unprecedented” and coordinated attack on journalists across the nation, beating and detaining foreign journalists, falsely accusing them of being “infiltrators” or Israeli and/or Iranian “spies”.

The violent and “sustained” sexual assault on Lara Logan, a CBS reporter working in Cairo, on the day Mubarak resigned from power, has been blamed by some on the paramilitary “thugs” the regime hired to attack journalists. Sexual assault was reportedly a routine tactic used by Mubarak’s paramilitary mercenaries to attack women who were seen as critics or opponents of the regime.

While Mubarak was still in power, NPR reported that “reports of sexual abuse, harassment, and assault against women by government security forces are rampant”. The connection between abject corruption, attacks on the press, impunity and the brutalization of the civilian population, is clear.

We need to celebrate the committed and courageous work of the world’s truth-tellers, journalists who take the serious personal risk of entering into the dark, threatening corners of the world, or dare to lift the cloak that covers up political corruption, who risk their lives just for the opportunity to report facts to whomever might read or hear their words, as heroic defenders of democratic freedoms.

Their work, performed with no weapons, no legal power, no prosecutorial authority, often at great personal risk, is the necessary underpinning for any informed and widespread resistance to arbitrary power and abuse of whole populations. When the free and independent, and now international, press is heard explaining and denouncing illegitimate power grabs and pervasive abuses, it motivates the human conscience generally to reject those responsible and move forward independent of their corrupting methods and aims.

That is an heroic achievement, and a gift to the rest of us, given by human beings willing to stand between the truth and a lie, defining the difference with their own human dignity.

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: Public broadcasting in the United States is not like state-run television in other countries, where the ruling party often influences the editorial stance and the quality of reporting. In the United States, there is an absolute wall of separation between politicians for elective office and the editorial process that shapes what is produced by public broadcasting.

We are all familiar with the conservative complaint about “liberal media bias”, which stems from a survey of voting habits that found many newspaper reporters were more liberal than the average American voter. There was never any evidence shown, however, that this influenced their reporting. Reporters, as a profession, are duty bound to report fact; it is editorialists, the kind of commentators that rule cable news networks and talk radio, that tend to infuse their “informational programming” with political bias.

There is, also, to the chagrin of many social conservatives, another problem with the “politics” of mainstream media: to many, who long for a world of yesteryear, it is disconcerting that our contemporary world is different in so many ways from what they long for. When media report on these facts, some hardline conservatives view those facts as “biased”, when they are really just the world we live in.

The American democratic quest for justice and equality, for protecting our own freedom by making sure that of others is not eroded or infringed, has made women and minorities more equal before the law and before the social conscience of younger generations, than ever before. Gay and lesbian Americans are now seen first as members of society and later as having a unique quality that puts them in a group subject to habitual marginalization.

These are facts. They do not arise from any media bias, and they are not the result of any journalists voting for Democrats. It’s just the way we, as a free and independent society of democratic republicans, have evolved, in our effort to foster a more just and humane future.

Public broadcasting is in many ways the most unbiased media we have. Editorializing is limited to specific cases regarding specific issues, and whether it’s PBS or NPR, the “editorializing” tends to lay out an historical argument that viewers themselves can interpret. When facts contradict one’s worldview, the informational environment can be a source of great frustration, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean anyone is trying to bias the world for ideological purposes.

In fact, the only time in recent memory when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting saw any attempt at political manipulation, it was with the appointment of a pro-Republican political operative who attempted to alter the programming and content of PBS to promote conservative ideology. There was an ethics inquiry, an investigation and a resignation.

Politics is the only good reason for trying to shut down public broadcasting in the United States, and common-sense independents know a valuable public service when they see one. In many communities, PBS and NPR are the only serious sources of news, information and quality children’s programming, other than the corporate television networks.

Sheltering young children from the intense commercialization of our public space, at least for the early years, almost requires PBS, as no other television format allows for so little commercial content or commentary on the nature of our reality. PBS provides educational programming, including college courses, documentaries about cutting edge science, and some of the most serious, unwavering and prize-winning investigative reporting in the world.

The First Amendment to the United States reads, in part: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” We are all familiar with this ideal, but we don’t often think very hard about how deeply relevant the language of the First Amendment is to the functioning of our democracy.

In order to “de-fund” the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a project some hardline conservatives seek to carry out in order to further specifically partisan and ideological aims, it would be necessary for Congress to make a law abridging (restricting) one of the only truly independent press outlets in the United States. This would be an infringement on all Americans’ rights, even those who long for times gone by or to hear only voices under the editorial control of private interest on air.

Right now, we get our information from as many or as few sources as we see fit. Right now, we have a committed corps of independent journalists working to get the truth to the American people, their work supported by unconditional funding from the people of the United States, in support of their model of free and independent inquiry and investigation.

Public broadcasting makes us free, helps to shore up our right to good information from reporters not beholden to private interests or to government authority. We cannot allow such a backslide on our First Amendment rights; we cannot allow a politically motivated coup take over such a vital segment of our informational spectrum.

On a day of joy for the people of Egypt, Republican presidential hopeful, Gov. Tim Pawlenty shamed himself and his nation by criticizing Pres. Barack Obama for siding with Egypt’s pro-democracy movement, and suggested that from his point of view, the dictator Mubarak is “our friend”. He also said “with bullies, might makes right”, and suggested US foreign policy should degenerate into the adolescent dysfunction of the bullies.

Pawlenty’s remarks are shocking and ill-timed, to say the least, a recipe for generating worldwide chaos, if he were elected, at the worst. The suggestion that the United States is somehow ill-served by any foreign policy that does not include naked aggression and bully tactics, or that is so trite and unreasoned as to argue that tyrants always do what they are told by bigger bullies, is a betrayal of the very ideals of democracy and a commitment to the ideology of violence and hate.

What’s more, on this historic day, when the entire world is celebrating the single most visible and closely watched democratic revolution in history, inspired by ideals on which this nation itself was founded, Tim Pawlenty threw in his lot with the torturer, the murderer, the kleptocrat, Mubarak, suggesting the United States owed him more time, more trust, more support in his efforts to put down the peaceful democratic protest movement of so many courageous souls.

That Pawlenty is lost in the wilderness, intellectually, is obvious; that he is willing to abandon all moral sensibility to make unconscionable statements designed to do nothing but to smear the US president, apparently in the absence of any substantive ideas of his own, is evident; that his political future is in doubt is not so clear.

The Republican party is currently searching for a leader, and with no clear frontrunner in the popularity contest for likely 2012 nominee, and Pawlenty’s shameful departure from the logic and language of democracy, his praise for hardline militarism and a policy of naked aggression, is an attempt to play into the lust for “red meat” for hardline conservatives.

But the Republican party might do better, politically, to start taking seriously how dangerous such rhetoric is, and to cultivate a more serious, more respectful, more imaginative and diverse primary electoral base. The narrowness of that base will allow Pres. Obama to straddle the vast American political center, while working to move his progressive agenda forward.

Tim Pawlenty owes a high-profile, formal apology to the people of the United States and to the the people of Egypt. His flippant defamation of the US president and his alignment with the ousted dictator has no place in American political discourse and should be viewed by all morally or intellectually serious conservatives and all Republicans and an intolerable stain on their character. There is no justification for not immediately disavowing his remarks.

Keith Olbermann, who shocked the media world last month when he stepped down from his post at MSNBC, where he was the network’s most visible and successful primetime host, will be joining Current TV, where he will host a 1-hour nightly primetime show and serve as the network’s chief news officer.

Olbermann reportedly told a conference call with reporters that “nothing is more vital to a free America than a free media,” adding that “nothing is more vital to my concept of a free media than news that is produced independently of corporate interference.” He called Current’s viewer-centered editorial process “the model truth seeking entity” in television media today.

Olbermann said the opportunity to host his own show on Current is “the most exciting event” of his career in television, and expressed great optimism about the contribution Current TV can make to revitalizing and revolutionizing the media environment for cable news and the hard work of truth-telling in such a hostile and perspective-driven environment.

Olbermann also called Current the only truly independent source for “independent news and information” on television in the United States. His program is expected to begin airing in late spring, perhaps sooner than 6 months after his departure from MSNBC. Current’s open format and privileging of independent journalism should allow Olbermann more editorial freedom than he previously had and to be a still more forceful voice for liberal priorities.

Speculation has already begun as to what time-slot Olbermann will take, and which former MSNBC colleague he will find himself competing against for viewership. The network is signing up interested viewers for email updates on Olbermann’s schedule and programming.

It has recently become fashionable to say the US is not expressing a consistent policy on Egypt, that the policy has been changing every day or is noncommittal. This is patently untrue and distorts the very consistent message of support for the pro-democracy movement coming from the White House. Pres. Obama and his administration have consistently supported the just cause of the demonstrators, while urging the Egyptian government to take substantive reforms without delay.

Stability has become a dirty word, because it has been used by the Mubarak regime for the last 30 years and throughout this crisis to justify brutal repression of dissent. Bu the demonstrators themselves have sought to show they are in fact the conscience of the nation, and it is the regime that sows chaos and violence. Hosni Mubarak has sustained an incredibly narrow regime, enriching himself and those close to him, by dividing all possible futures into stability defined by his rule and chaos induced automatically by anything else.

The press have been missing the nuance and complexity that allow for pro-democracy demonstrators to co-opt Mubarak on stability, just as they are missing the nuance and complexity that allow Pres. Barack Obama to take the most responsible position possible —that of supporting the demonstrators without posing as their leader— while gradually shepherding the US-Egyptian diplomatic relationship through the practical and psychological paces of the coming transition.

A recent Onion satire of cable news journalism ended with an announcement that after a commercial break they would follow a police chase from a helicopter “and free associate about what’s going on”. The satire works because it comments not only on cable news methodology, but also on a basic intellectual vice of the human mind: the desire to define circumstances even when the moment does not allow for it.

The world press have been courageous and responsible in telling the story from Cairo, despite great and perhaps mounting personal risk, but those writing at a distance have to be careful not to attempt to achieve the same heightened sense of danger by misreading the political landscape or sensationalizing isolated words or phrases.

The perception that Barack Obama or his administration have been “dithering” is a distortion that stems from media wanting to read the whole story into one or two enigmatic phrases. Such commentary ignores the crux of the problem, that events like this are not decided in one moment or by the words of one individual; they are fluid. The whole of the distortion is of course often propped up by the cynical assumption that the only US government interest in Egypt is Israel and that the interest of that ally can only be served by the US backing hardliners or manipulating political dynamics.

That analysis is reflexive and mirrors the worst distortions of the Mubarak regime, which has spread such rumors in the past to stoke nationalist unity and to neutralize domestic critics, and the political manipulations of those who have relied on such distortions to drive a wedge between Mubarak and his allies abroad. In the current crisis, it appears pro-Mubarak paramilitaries stole several US embassy vehicles, using one to plow through a crowd of civilians the other day, in an attempt to create a distraction and drive a wedge between the demonstrators and the west.

But all of this ignores a fundamental truth about the diplomatic vision of Barack Obama and his administration, which has worked to cultivate a respect for the value of a vibrant and open civil society. On 20 January 2009, in his inaugural address, before a crowd of more than 2 million people gathered to usher in a period of democratic reform, Pres. Obama told the authoritarian regimes of the world that if they would unclench their fists at home, they would find a hand extended abroad.

Many viewed it as a signal specifically to Iran, but the “3D diplomacy” of Sec. Clinton’s State Dept. has shown the Obama administration is working across the world to foster democratic processes, transparency and the rule of law, whether seeking justice for victims of rape in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, supporting the right of the people of South Sudan to escape their attackers, or moving swiftly to answer the call to assist neighbors in quake-ravaged Haiti.

In the case of Egypt, the Obama administration urged the regime from the outset to refrain from violence and worked to expand the space for hearing protesters’ grievances. They prudently took up the just cause, while careful not to look like they were engineering the events taking place. That last point is a vital component of recognizing the genuine right to self-determination of the people of Egypt. Pres. Obama has never wavered on this point.

He has, however, been criticized for acting like a civics professor trying to educate Egypt’s leaders on the process of elective government —a criticism that originated in the halls of Mubarak’s own government, of course—, then criticized for not doing so forcefully enough. The wavering of latest-trend analysis from ideologically varied press with varying degrees of depth of analysis, has led some to see wavering where it has not been shown, and that is a poor foundation on which to base any serious political analysis.

Behind the scenes, we know the Obama administration has been pressuring Mubarak to resign and to turn over power to an interim government, which Obama has said both publicly and privately must be made up of a broad coalition of opposition parties. Impatience with Mubarak has been transferred, however, by some in the media to Obama, as if it were within the reach of the president of the United States simply to dictate a date and hour of departure for the Egyptian leader.

That has, of course, infamously, been tried in other times in other places, and it often works out poorly, because there is no real control there, no direct connection between the will of one nation’s leader and the fate of that of another. There are complexities, and most of all, there are people involved.

To honor the cause of the pro-democracy movement in Tahrir Square, that “embryo” of a free Cairo, as one witness called it, is to honor the right and the capacity of the people who have bravely organized and perpetuated this movement, to guide the process and to get it right.

There is no more firm champion of their cause among world leaders, but as a political leader with a responsibility to foster peace and security as well as the rights of ordinary people, Pres. Obama has a responsibility to behave responsibly and not to frame his role as one of foreign sponsor of a colonial government. His role is to lead by example, to foster civility by calling for and by exhibiting it, to consistently urge that legitimate grievances be heard, and he has done that and the focus, inside Egypt as well as outside, is now on how to best achieve that fundamental political transition.

It is disingenuous at best and propagandist at worst to suggest that what Pres. Obama has been doing over the last two weeks is “dithering” or wandering aimlessly in an unclear policy environment. What needs to be reported, what is most significant about the Obama response to the uprising of the Egyptian people, is how psychologically prepared he and his diplomatic leadership were to deal with the sudden upheaval and how appropriate and on-target has been the response: calling for change, calling for non-violence, demanding prisoners be freed, demanding reform.

Power, if such a thing really exists for any one individual to wield, is not best used when thrown into a fit of bluster or aggression; it is best used when it defers to those best suited to do the best work and to achieve the best result, to the betterment of humankind and to the reduction of harm generally. That approach is difficult to get right and fraught with many pitfalls —like the false accusation that one is not decisive enough—, but it is the right approach.

Pres. Obama has shown both the depth of his character and the heart of his culture, by honoring in the purest and most consistent terms the rights of the Egyptian people and the obligations of those who seek to provide them with a government. He has artfully channeled the vast complexity of world opinion into a sound strategy for peaceful transition, in which the nonviolent pro-democracy movement is allowed to oversee a process of democratization.

Whether people around the president have expressed specific desires to see Mubarak depart sooner or later is immaterial to the thrust of the US message: this is an Egyptian revolution, and Pres. Obama has consistently expressed support for the cause, support for the civility and organization of it, for the ideals and the right to have just grievances addressed by a transition to a new form of government.

We all have an obligation not to privilege the distortions that emerge from a totalitarian state’s manipulations over the facts in evidence. We have an obligation to report the policies as they stand, not as our worst selves would have them appear to be, for the sake of applying pressure or inflaming emotions.

With that said, the Obama administration has a basic responsibility, to the American people, to the ideals of open democracy, and to the people of the region and the world, to keep moving the discourse of officially recognized political transition toward the position of true justice: no Mubarak insiders, no one involved in torture or abuse, allowed to serve in any interim or future government.

There should be prosecutions of those responsible for crimes against the democratic rights of the people of Egypt, but that must be a process decided by the will of the Egyptian people, as measured through a legitimate democratic process. It was 2004, before Spain officially banned fascist demonstrations, 29 years after the death of the dictator Franco and 26 years after the establishment of the current constitution.

In Chile, the last two presidents before Piñera were individuals who had been detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime, but neither one sought revenge for Pinochet’s crimes; instead they threw their weight, and the conscience of their country, fully behind building a legitimate system of due process and letting that system evaluate the options for prosecution based on standing law, prior law and the evidence available.

Both nations are thriving, and both are strong and committed democracies. It will be for the Egyptian people to decide what course they take and how they go about formalizing the end of the dark period of the Mubarak government. So far, the Obama administration has consistently sought to move the discourse of transition toward the end of Mubarak’s rule and the beginning of a real democracy in Egypt; that trend should continue, and should move toward barring all Mubarak insiders involved in abuses from any future office.

Glenn Beck has once more taken extremist hate-speech to a new extreme, calling for the murder of liberals and progressives, whom he alleges are revolutionaries who are plotting an armed struggle to overthrow the United States government. It is the most unfounded and absurd of his conspiracy theories to date, and is clearly aimed at inciting a violent emotional reaction from people who are susceptible to the language of combat and armed intervention in the political realm.

MediaMatters has published a transcript of the program, which includes the following:

You’ve been using them? They believe in communism. They believe and have called for a revolution. You’re going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning, they may shoot you.

They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind. And if they feel you have lied to them — they’re revolutionaries. Nancy Pelosi, those are the people you should be worried about.

Here is my advice when you’re dealing with people who believe in something that strongly — you take them seriously. You listen to their words and you believe that they will follow up with what they say.

Glenn Beck’s extremist rhetoric has always been too extreme for television, too extreme for paid cable, too extreme for any society in which decent people seek to live free of the tyranny and oppression of small minds and evil ideas. But with his deliberate call for the violent assassination of liberals, be they politicians or civilians, he has crossed a line into the language of incitement to violence.

Given what we now know about how Glenn Beck’s violent and obsessive rants affect the minds of a small number of his viewers, we know that Mr. Beck has been made aware that his words are leading to actual plots and actual violent acts. More than once, his incitements have led to violent plots. FOX News has seen the same evidence.

It is time for the free and independent media in our free society to exercise their discretion and remove Glenn Beck from our media discourse. He should be investigated both for whether there has been a deliberate intent to instigate violent acts, and for ties to the Republican candidates whose cause he has sought to serve by calling for violence or intimidation of opponents and their supporters.

In October, MediaMatters published the following list of specific cases where Beck used radical distortions together with violent imagery, apparently to foment visceral hatred of liberal politicians and liberal voters:

Beck pours gasoline on “average American,” asks, “President Obama, why don’t you just set us on fire?” On his television show, Beck claimed to be imitating Obama while pouring liquid from a gasoline can — which he later stated was water — on an actor portraying the “average American.” Beck said during his demonstration: “President Obama, why don’t you just set us on fire? … We didn’t vote to lose the republic.” [Fox News' Glenn Beck, 4/9/09]

Quoting Jefferson, Beck warns about “rivers of blood.” On his Fox News show, Beck quoted a letter by Thomas Jefferson warning that ” ‘if they lose freedom’ — he’s speaking of us, future generations — ‘if they lose freedom, there will be rivers of blood.’ ” Beck continued in his own words, “Boy, I hope that’s not true, but I can tell you there will be rivers of blood if we don’t have values and principles.” [Glenn Beck, 5/14/10]

Ranting that gov’t under Nixon “wasn’t as corrupt as it is now,” Beck suggests Obama admin might kill “10 percent” of population. On his June 10 show, Beck warned that “anarchists, Marxists, communists, revolutionaries, Maoists” have to “eliminate 10 percent of the U.S. population” in order to “gain control.” They couldn’t achieve such a goal when Richard Nixon was president, Beck stated, because “the family was together” and the government under Nixon “wasn’t as corrupt as it is now.” Beck added: “Now they can. Now they can.”

Beck later played a clip of an FBI agent who infiltrated the Weather Underground and warned about extremists who want to kill people. Beck responded to the clip by stating: “These are the same people that are everywhere in our government and our education system. Please, please. Learn from history. Please.”

Beck portrays Obama, Democrats as vampires, suggests “driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers.” On his March 30, 2009, Fox News show, Beck aired a graphic portraying Obama and Democrats as vampires and said: “The government is full of vampires, and they are trying to suck the lifeblood out of the economy.” Beck then suggested “driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers.” Beck returned to that imagery on his January 19 radio show, warning listeners that progressives are “vampires” who now have a “taste of blood” and are “gonna start getting more and more violent.”

Beck talks about “put[ting] poison” in Pelosi’s wine. In 2009, Beck’s Fox News show featured a segment in which Beck said the following to a woman wearing a mask of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

BECK: So, Speaker Pelosi, I just wanted to — you gonna drink your wine? Are you blind? Do those eyes not work? There you — I want you to drink it now. Drink it. Drink it. Drink it.

I really just wanted to thank you for having me over here to wine country. You know, to be invited, I thought I had to be a major Democratic donor or a longtime friend of yours, which I’m not.

By the way, I put poison in your — no, I — I look forward to all the policy discussions that we’re supposed to have — you know, on health care, energy reform, and the economy. [Glenn Beck, 8/6/09]

Beck: “Grab a torch.” Asserting that politicians are addicted to spending, Beck stated: “When do we ever run those who are bankrupting our country and literally stealing our children’s future out of town? Grab a torch.” [Glenn Beck, 1/6/10]

Beck suggests that progressives support “armed insurrection.” After President Obama signed health care reform legislation into law, Beck suggested that progressives support “armed insurrection” and asked, “Why would the president take up immigration right away, after he’s just punched you in the face with health care?” [Glenn Beck, 3/23/10]

Beck suggests Pelosi and Obama support “pick[ing] up a gun” to advance “revolution.” During the same edition of his Fox News show, Beck said that “violence is the wrong way to go,” but asked his viewers: “You’d pick up a gun? Have you ever thought of that?” He then pointed to several pictures, including images of Obama and Pelosi, and stated: “These people have. Because possibly, maybe the question should be asked, maybe they’re tired of evolution, and maybe they are waiting for revolution.” Beck also said: “Haven’t we just been spanked? Hasn’t most of the country — doesn’t most of the country feel like they’ve been spanked over health care? You bet. I do, you do. A lot of people do.” [Glenn Beck, 3/23/10]

Beck suggests Obama administration may kill him. Also on that same edition of his Fox News program, Beck said: “For those of you in the administration, who are coming after me … remember, you’ve broken three [of the 10 Commandments], let’s not make it four; thou shalt not kill.” [Glenn Beck, 3/23/10]

Beck: “The revolution of 1776 was a picnic compared to what the revolutionaries of today would like to do. … Usually, millions of people die.” On June 9, while discussing “radicals” in the country, Beck told his audience: “Here’s what you’ll learn. The revolution of 1776 was a picnic compared to what the revolutionaries of today would like to do. It’s not a lot of fun. Usually, millions of people die.”

After Williams’ arrest, Beck has continued to frequently use violent rhetoric on Fox News

Beck suggests progressive coalition will become violent and riot “a year from now.” On his Fox News program, while discussing how progressives are supposedly trying to “nudge” the United States towards “global governance,” Beck said that “violence is a part of the overall strategy.” While discussing a coalition of unions and progressive groups that are planning a march in Washington, D.C., Beck said that he believes the march will be “peaceful,” but suggested that “a year from now” there may be violence and riots “when the cuts take place.” Beck also proclaimed that the Democrats have been “infected with the tree of revolution” and “radicals” who are a “danger to our republic.” [Glenn Beck, 9/14/10]

Beck connects U.S. progressives to the Holocaust, says they “have not changed their viewpoint.” Beck announced that “if you don’t know your history, you are doomed to repeat it.” During the segment, Beck linked several U.S. progressives to eugenics and the Holocaust and proceeded to say that progressives “have not changed their viewpoint; they’ve only changed their language.” [Glenn Beck, 8/3/10]

Beck: After election, “our streets will not be peaceful” due to progressives “agitating.” Discussing the upcoming elections, Beck told his viewers “activists” “are about to go back to agitating, because once they lose control of the House, they have to.” After encouraging people to vote, Beck said that after the election, “our streets will not be peaceful. They will start protesting and agitating again.” [Glenn Beck, 9/30/10]

“Violence will come”: Beck also uses his radio program and other outlets to engage in violent fearmongering

Though Williams indicated he did not listen to Beck’s radio program, Beck frequently employs violent rhetoric during his radio program, often warning of eventual violence from “the left.”

Beck: “To the day I die, I am going to be a progressive hunter.” Telling his listeners that they “are going to learn so much on Friday,” Beck compared himself to “Israeli Nazi hunters” and commented: “I’m telling you, I’m going to find these big progressives and, to the day I die, I’m going to be a progressive hunter.” He added:

BECK: I’m going to find these people that have done this to our — you know, to our country, and expose them. I don’t care where — I don’t care if they’re in nursing homes. I’m going to expose what they have done and make sure that the people understand, because our Constitution, our republic — if it survives — it will only survive because the people are waking up and through the grace of God, because we are that close to losing our republic. [The Glenn Beck Program, 1/20/10]

Beck warns that “in the end, in revolutions, real dangerous killers show up when things start to fall apart.” Discussing how the government is “growing out of control,” Beck attacked former White House green jobs adviser Van Jones and “the government” for using “fear tactics.” Beck told listeners that he “told you this would happen” and added that “I told you just last week that I believe these are the most dangerous two years of our republic. Because in the end, in revolutions, the real dangerous killers show up when things start to fall apart. When the nudge moves to shove, and the shove doesn’t work, the killers show up. It happens every time. That’s why we must be united for peace, we must be united with love, we must be united with God.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/27/10]

Beck: “Violence will come. And violence will come from the left. Violence is part of the plan.” Beck warned listeners that “if you don’t think violence is coming, I’m going to share some audio of Frances Fox Piven that will boggle your mind.” Beck said that “they don’t mind violence. Violence will come. And violence will come from the left. Violence is part of the plan. Not mine, not yours.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/13/10]

Beck on progressives: When the “soft revolution” fails, they “just start shooting people.” Beck claimed that progressives are engaging in a “soft revolution” designed to silence voices like his. He added: “If somebody starts to turn on them, or they can’t get everyone to silence, that’s when the arrests come, or that’s when they start a hard revolution. That’s when they start just shooting people. I hope we don’t get to that point. I pray that we don’t get to that point, but I never thought this country would get to the point where we are today.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 5/27/10]

Beck warns of violence: “Trouble” by the “most violent” progressives “is coming.” Beck suggested that Obama would respond to potential GOP victories in November elections by “going right directly” to the “most progressive, most violent, the worst of the worst on the left and stir ‘em up. ‘Get out into the streets. Cause trouble.’ It’s what’s coming. It’s what’s coming.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/24/10]

Beck: “Violence is coming” and “the left will blame me.” Beck said that people need to “wake up” and see “what is coming,” which Beck described as “violence.” He added that “the left will blame me.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/2/10]

Beck: “God will wash this nation with blood if he has to, but he doesn’t have to.” Referencing Lincoln’s second inaugural address, Beck said that “God will wash this nation with blood if he has to, but he doesn’t have to.” Beck added that “we are passing all of the exits. Gang, there is one exit left. There is one exit left, and it is God. Everything that is coming our way is too big to handle on our own. If we do not put God at the center of our own personal lives and the center of our country, we will not survive. The country will be washed with blood and then someone will have to start over, and God only knows how long that takes.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/25/10]

Beck warns of “revolutionaries” who will “set our streets on fire.” Urging people to vote in the November elections, Beck said that “in the short term” this election is “going to make things worse” because “revolutionaries” are going to “rise up” and “set our streets on fire.” He added that “our future is at stake right now.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/16/10]

Beck: “The army … of the extreme left is gathering” and they are saying “cops are bad, kill the cops.” On his radio show, Beck discussed riots in Oakland, stating: “The army, if you will, of the extreme left is gathering, and they are coming to the conclusion of cops are bad, kill the cops, they’re the oppressors. It’s all the 1960s, you know, pig stuff. It’s the same stuff.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 7/12/10]

Beck: “This game is for keeps”; “[Y]ou can shoot me in the head … but there will be 10 others that line up.” Asking his audience to “pray for protection,” Beck claimed that “the most powerful people on the planet on the left” were “not going to go away easy” because “[t]his game is for keeps. This is who controls the United States of America and its destiny.” He asked his listeners to “please keep me in your prayers, keep my staff in your prayers, for safety, for wisdom,” adding, “Just pray for protection, please.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/8/09]

Later in the same program, Beck said:

BECK: You can try to put the lid on this group of people, but you will never silence us. You will never — you can shoot me in the head, you can shoot the next guy in the head, but there will be 10 others that line up. And it may not happen today, it may not happen next week, but freedom will be restored in this land. Period. And no matter what you want to call it, it is a totalitarian state that you’re headed towards. [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/8/09]

Beck speaks for one-third of the nation: “[Y]ou will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun” and “before I acquiesce and be silent.” Beck has warned “ACORN, GE, Obama, SEIU” that “you are awakening a sleeping giant, and I have nothing to do with it,” and that “America is waking up. You know the American Revolution took place with 12 percent of the population? Twelve. Are you telling me there is not 30 percent of this population that you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I let somebody into my house to tell me how to raise my children; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun; you will have to shoot me in the forehead before I acquiesce and be silent.” Beck further stated:

BECK: They cannot move on these things, because they are building a machine that will crush the entrepreneurial sprit and the freedom that our Founding Fathers designed. This machine, whatever it is they are building, will crush it. Do not let them build another piece.

So while I turn away, I want to make sure that I have at least 10 million eyes watching — watching every single move they are making.

[...]

We know why they’re doing what they’re doing. You need to do what you need to do, and as long as that is peaceful, we will save our country. [The Glenn Beck Program, 7/30/09]

Beck suggests Obama is “trying to destroy the country” and is pushing America toward civil war. While discussing the ongoing controversy over Arizona’s immigration law, Beck told his listeners that “we are being pushed” toward civil war and that Obama is “trying to destroy the country.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 5/19/10]

Beck: “There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America.” Beck has claimed that “there is a revolution, and they think they can get away with it quietly,” adding: “At this point, gang, I’m not sure, they may be able to because they are so far ahead of us. They know what they’re dealing against; most of America does not yet. Most of America doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going on. There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America, and the way it is done, it has been done through the — the guise of an election, but they lied to us the entire time.” He also said, “And they’re gonna say, ‘we did it democratically,’ and they are going to grab power every way they can. And God help us in an emergency.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/31/09]

Beck: “[T]hat’s not begging for World War III; that’s called giving you the facts.” Referencing a speech he had given the previous weekend in Alaska, Beck discussed how he told the audience that “you are Fort Knox.” He explained that if the economy collapses, Alaskans must “grab your guns” because “the Russians, the Chinese — everyone is coming to Alaska, because that’s where the money is. Now, that’s not begging for World War III; that’s called giving you the facts. But see, there are those people that really want this to collapse, and they are planning on violence. They’re planning on it — we’ve already shown you. We’ve already seen it with SEIU. We’ve shown it to you over in Europe.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/13/10]

Beck says his audience contains “the leaders of tomorrow” who will save you from “camps, maybe literally.” Referencing an event he appeared at the previous weekend with Sarah Palin, Beck said that they have “30 million people in our footprint.” Beck explained that “this 10 percent is going to be the shelter for the other 90 percent.” He added: “This is the group, this 10 percent will be the ones that when all hell goes to handbasket, and everybody on the left and the right are yelling and arguing and trying to pull you into camps, maybe literally, pull you into camps. You’re gonna say ‘Don’t go, don’t go, everything’s fine. Don’t worry, we can take care of each other. We’ve got each other, we’re Americans, we’re better than this.’ ” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/13/10]

Beck: “They’re trying to beat it out of you slowly. Boil you, basically, like a frog.” After agreeing with a caller who suggested we should “collapse the Federal Reserve” and “build it back up,” Beck said that the government already “started planning for the next phase, and the next phase is a global governance sort of situation.” Discussing how people should prepare for a global collapse, Beck added that “people are not going to go peacefully into the night if it is a quick collapse.” Beck said that “the fear here is that they already have the structure to box you in. They don’t come with the jackbooted thugs on the first day. They come and take away your sugary sweets. They come and take away your right to go to the beach and dig in the sand. They come and they watch your credit cards. … They’re trying to beat it out of you slowly. Boil you, basically, like a frog. I think we win. I think we win if things remain stable, but a power grab is a possibility in this crazy upside-down America that we live in.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/21/10]

Beck: “I don’t know how much time each of us has. I don’t know how much time the country has.” Beck “beg[ged]” his listeners to “please give me the benefit of the doubt,” and said: “I’m begging you to get back down on your knees. I’m begging you to be the person that you were and you promised yourself you would be on September 11th and 12th. I’m begging you to get down on your knees. What is coming is not good. I don’t know how things end. I should rephrase that. I do know how things end. But I know how things end after a long struggle. I don’t know how that struggle is gonna work out. I don’t know how much time each of us has. I don’t know how much time the country has.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/25/10]

Beck: Obama administration is “poking” at “people who have a record of violence” and “stirring up trouble.” Discussing how Obama had criticized people on the left on the same day that cuts were announced to food stamp programs, Beck speculated that the administration was “poking” the left the same way that he “poked” the tea parties. He added that this “makes Barack Obama look like he’s more centrist. But also, you’re poking people who have a record of violence and taking to the streets and stirring up trouble. Hmm. I wonder if there’s anything there.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/11/10]

Beck invokes Holocaust while discussing soda machines: “First they came for the sugary beverages, and I said nothing.” Beck linked a report about city officials in Boston limiting the sale of sodas in city buildings to the Holocaust, saying “First they came for the sugary beverages, and I said nothing.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 9/21/10]

Beck’s advice to Liberty grads: “Shoot to kill.” During his May 15 commencement speech at Liberty University, Beck told graduates that they “have a responsibility” to speak out, or “blood … will be on our hands.” His advice for graduates (as well as his daughter) included “shoot to kill.”

Beck: “I fear a Reichstag moment, a — God forbid — another 9-11, something that will turn this machine on.” During an interview with Newsmax.com in which he discussed opposition to Obama’s Federal Communications Commission policies, Beck said: “I fear an event. I fear a Reichstag moment, a — God forbid — another 9-11, something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced. God help us all.” [Newsmax.com, 10/7/09]

Mixed message: Beck implores his audience to “reject violence”

Though Beck frequently employs overtly violent rhetoric, he regularly urges his audience to “reject violence.” As reported by John Hamilton, Williams said that “Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. … But he’ll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need.’

Beck warns his audience not to “pick up a gun” or “cause any violence.” Beck addressed his audience on his Fox News show, saying: “Let me tell you something right now. Let me make this very clear for anybody on the left, the right or the middle: If you pick up a gun, if you cause any violence, if you are engaged in a riot, let me promise you now, the republic will be over. Over. Because they need you to do that.” [Glenn Beck, 7/26/10]

Beck: “Reject violence every step of the way.” On his radio program, Beck told his listeners that they were “winning” against “a well-coordinated attack” and that their opponents “need you to become violent.” He continued:

BECK: The minute you become violent, which you’re not going to do — hear me clearly, for the record. Violence will destroy the republic. The person that picks up a gun, a bomb, anything, a knife, a rope, they will destroy the republic. Reject violence every step of the way. You make the first call to the police if you see anyone who you think is plotting, planning, thinking crazy thoughts. You turn them in to police immediately. You will destroy the republic if you do not. Now, could I be any clearer than that? Write it down in your diary because it will be erased in history. [The Glenn Beck Program, 7/26/10]

Beck: “We need to really view ourselves as non-armed, non-violent cells.” On the same broadcast of his radio show, Beck stated: “If they take me down, you have to be standing. And if they take you down, somebody else has to be standing. So we need to really view ourselves as non-armed, non-violent cells.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 7/26/10]

Beck: “The only weapon in our arsenal that we need is God.” Beck has suggested that the government is “poking and prodding” the “crazy teabaggers” in order to incite them to violence. “They need you to be violent,” he said. “They are begging for it. You are being set up. Do not give them what they want.” Then, referring to a report that some congressmen had received death threats after voting in favor of health care reform, Beck implored his viewers, “Do not become them. … It’s exactly what they want.” He concluded by saying that “the only weapon in our arsenal that we need is God.” [Glenn Beck, 3/24/10]

Beck: “You must always be a people of peace.” The same day on the radio, Beck cautioned his listeners: “Let me warn you now, in no uncertain terms. You must always be a people of peace. Always. Unless your life is being threatened. In no uncertain terms, you must always be a people of peace.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 3/24/10]

Beck: “How many times do I have to say ‘peaceful’?” In the middle of comparing himself to Martin Luther King Jr., Beck said to his radio listeners: “These are the times when you stand up — when you can stand up peacefully, because if you don’t stand up as you are losing those rights, as the government is growing in power, then, unfortunately, it becomes too late to stand up peacefully. How many times do I have to say ‘peaceful’?” [The Glenn Beck Program, 11/25/09]

Beck: Go to town hall meetings armed with something — “not with guns but with facts.” While suggesting that the Obama administration is trying to destroy him, Beck told his listeners that “there is evil at play” and warned that “unless you come to these town hall meetings armed with something, you’re too easily dismissed.” He later clarified: “By arming you every day, by arming you not with guns but with facts, and you walking into these places armed with facts, the biggest stick you can carry.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/24/09]

Beck: “It is not time to pick up guns” or “blow anything up.” Beck warned his radio audience that “the American way of life is being systematically dismantled and destroyed,” “the republic is in danger,” and “we are entering the most dangerous time in American history.” He then said, “My fellow American, it is not time to pick up guns. It is not time. It is not time to blow anything up.” [The Glenn Beck Program, 8/5/09]

Beck: “If anyone thinks that it would be a good idea to turn violent, think again.” Beck issued a “warning” to his television audience: “If anyone thinks that it would be a good idea to turn violent, think again. It would destroy the republic.” He stated that “just one lunatic, like Timothy McVeigh, could ruin everything that everyone has worked so hard for” and instructed his audience that it was their “patriotic duty” to stop anyone they heard thinking about becoming violent. [Glenn Beck, 8/3/09]

The list is as astonishing as it is disturbing, especially when it so clearly illustrates that Beck appeared entirely unfazed by the fact that his words, specifically, had been the direct cause of an assassination plot involving workers for non-profit charitable organizations. That Beck has not ceased to use this incendiary —and flagrantly false— rhetoric would seem to indicate a total disregard for even the most basic ethical standards.

No decent American, no one who values our freedom for its potential to allow for the best expression of who Americans are as human individuals and as a community of moral citizens, can pretend, in the face of so much evidence, that there is any constructive role for Mr. Beck to play in our democracy.

He abuses the privilege of his media perch; he abuses the freedom given to media in our society, to degrade and debauch the minds of those who listen; he seems more interested in degrading and corroding the intellectual ability of his audience than he does in being part of anything even resembling a constructive and civil debate in the American public square; his presence on air defames and diminishes the entire media landscape.

The American people should take a stand, and stand with all those who love the true founding principles of this nation —freedom from lies, freedom from tyranny, freedom from the deranged manipulations of powerful figures intent on enriching themselves through lies— and band together, across the political spectrum to represent democracy, to demand a better media, and boycott FOX News and any media outlet that continues to permit Mr. Beck to air his vile and rancorous threats of violence.

There is no place in the media landscape for someone who uses his position to foment violent attacks, hatred and falsehood. Anyone with an ounce of common decency knows this.

Liberal cable news powerhouse Keith Olbermann, one of the staunchest and most successful critics of the Republican party’s politics, has abruptly resigned from his show Countdown, on MSNBC. Olbermann’s success had driven MSNBC, which had dismissed then top-rated host Phil Donohue for criticizing the Iraq war effort, to re-orient its editorial stance toward the more progressive end of the political spectrum.

In the words of one Huffington Post report:

It was Olbermann’s principled and sincere outrage at the warmongering and lies coming from the George W. Bush administration as it pushed the nation into war and recession that established his “brand.” But the fact that Olbermann was a “brand” in the first place points to the intrinsic limitations of corporate media.

That Comcast, which has pushed both as a corporation funding political campaigns and through its programming, a decidedly pro-Republican agenda, was aiming to get rid of Olbermann had long been a source of controversy regarding the cable service’s planned takeover of NBC Universal. Everyone from Forbes to Wired to NewsBusters is speculating about whether it was Comcast driving for a more right-wing network that led to Olbermann’s ouster.

Any media observer can’t help but feel that this incident, the second in as many months involving an MSNBC decision to remove Olbermann, during the controversial merger negotiations with Comcast, reads like the bad old days of one-party, one-wing dominance of the national media, roughly from 2001 through 2005, or rather, spanning the gap between the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the debacle of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

Jeff Bercovici, writing for Forbes, puts it this way:

Comcast has its own calculations. An intrinsically conservative corporation, it’s not overly friendly to congenital boat-rockers like Olbermann. In fact, one such individual, a former employee named Barry Nolan, sued Comcast last year, saying the cable operator fired him in order to protect its relationship with News Corp., which owns the Fox News Channel. Nolan had publicly protested an award given to Bill O’Reilly, Fox News’s biggest star. Noting that Olbermann has also frequently feuded with O’Reilly, media critic Dan Kennedy predicted last year, “Keith Olbermann may prove to be Barry Nolan writ large.”

With so many voices already making the correlation between Comcast’s takeover of NBC Universal and the departure of Keith Olbermann, there are really three major questions we need to ask as a society whose individual liberties and democratic sovereignty depend largely on the functioning of a free and independent press:

1. Is the Comcast takeover partly about neutralizing liberal voices?
2. Does the Olbermann cancellation suggest a campaign of harder-line corporate decisions to “balance” the MSNBC brand, or rather, to move the mainstream media deliberately to the right?
3. When corporate interests like Comcast and NewCorp so clearly demonstrate a bias for news presenters that lie, distort and obscure facts on air, are any of us really free?

Free thought in a free society relies on the free flow of information. Comcast’s behavior over the last several years is suggestive of a corporate interest that views ordinary people’s free and open access to information as contrary to its bottom-line interest. Whether it’s the desire to overthrow network neutrality rules (which means, to take over the public’s media space), its own programming decisions, negotiations to box out content competitors, or the NBC Universal takeover process, Comcast seems to privilege its own control of our information more than it does its quality of service as a service provider to the free and independent press.

The New York Post is reporting that Olbermann will be paid the full amount remaining on his 4-year $30 million-dollar contract and that he will likely be required to refrain from hosting any new show in competition with MSNBC for at least 6 months. Comcast denies any involvement in the decision to buy out Olbermann’s contract. Comcast spokesperson Sena Fitzmaurice issued the following statement:

Comcast has not closed the transaction for NBC Universal and has no operational control at any of its properties including MSNBC. We pledged from the day the deal was announced that we would not interfere with NBC Universal’s news operations. We have not and we will not.

Critics charge that Comcast has been pressuring MSNBC throughout the negotiations and that GE, the parent company of NBC Universal, has been sympathetic to Comcast’s editorial inclinations. Media observers have compared the question of Comcast’s editorial bent to pledges by NewsCorp not to shift the Wall Street Journal’s news division closer to its notoriously right-wing editorial pages: the Wall Street Journal has since undergone a dramatic shift in news content, with far more editorial and tabloid-like reporting than before the NewsCorp takeover.

According to the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism:

In the first three months of Murdoch’s stewardship, the Journal’s front page has clearly shifted focus, de-emphasizing business coverage that was the franchise, while placing much more emphasis on domestic politics and devoting more attention to international issues. But it is not, at least not yet, as broad as the New York Times on the same days.

Under the Murdoch regime, the single biggest change in front-page coverage occurred with politics and the presidential campaign. From Dec. 13, 2007 through March 13, 2008, coverage more than tripled, jumping to 18% of the newshole compared with 5% in the four months before the ownership change.

The Journal’s coverage of key issues relevant to Democratic party leadership on the economy, such as the state of healthcare and the costs of transportation (seen as a failing of Bush-era policies) was reduced almost to zero, while campaign coverage favorable to the Republican party was dramatically increased. Again, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism:

One clear example of the changing news agenda was the Journal’s front page on April 21 [2008], a day before the Pennsylvania primary. The paper led with a package of two campaign stories under the headline, “Latest Attacks Roil Democrats.” One story recalled Barack Obama’s political education as a Chicago politician and the other chronicled the growing concerns of Democratic Party leaders about the bitter primary battle.

The changes were both subtle and dramatic. Any reader inclined to favor Republican-party policies might not notice the shift, because the connection between the financial sector and Republican party interests in free-market ideology remained to some degree harmonious, but the editorializing inherent in the news decisions relating to front-page coverage and campaign analysis were clear to any neutral observer.

There was a clear inclination to privilege stories, issues, headlines and commentary, closer in tenor and focus to the ideology of the Republican party, the FOX News channel and the corporate directors of NewsCorp, the new parent company. In the days leading up to the takeover of DowJones, watchdog groups had warned about indirect manipulation of the news content, through a “culture” that would make news executives worry about the career consequences of not shifting the paper’s news division to a more ideological focus.

According to Politco:

On air, Olbermann hinted that he had just learned of the end of his show Friday, and suggested his departure was not voluntary. “I think the same fantasy popped into the head of everybody in my business who has ever been told what I have been told: this will be the last edition of your show,” he said.

“You go to the scene from the movie ‘Network,’ complete with the pajamas and the raincoat, and go off on a verbal journey of unutterable vision and you insist upon Peter Finch’s gutteral resonance and you will the viewer to go to the window, open it, stick out his head and yell,” he continued. “You know the rest. In the mundane world of television goodbyes, reality is laughably uncooperative.”

His final sign-off was his signature homage to Edward R. Murrow, a simple “Good night, and good luck.”

The suggestion that Olbermann had been informed only at the last minute of the now disturbingly more common “frogmarch” corporate dismissal —you’re out and we’ll escort you from the building, etc.— of long-time, valuable employees, raises serious questions about the ethical integrity of the corporate management of the network, and of course about whether anyone, at any level, has been applying pressure to lean in the direction of Comcast’s well-known corporate ideology.

At the very least, the snap decision, given the timing, should raise enough suspicion to warrant a rethinking of the FCC’s approval of the Comcast takeover of NBC Universal. Too many figures inside and outside the process seem to be perceiving the same trend: a deliberate targetting of the network’s most successful presenter, escalating in concert with the calendar of the merger.

The decision to permit the deal should be immediately suspended, while a thorough investigation is undertaken. Some media observers say Comcast and other access providers are too big and need to be charged with anti-trust violations and broken up. At the very least, the Olbermann affair should put the merger on indefinite hold, until legally binding guarantees can be won from Comcast that its corporate board will never engage in editorial or programming decisions.

UPDATE, 2:34 pm EST: The New  Yorker has joined in speculation Keith Olbermann would either turn up at one of MSNBC’s chief rivals —CNN or FOX News Channel— or possibly use the funds he has gained in the buyout of his contract to launch a new media venture of his own. There is certainly an appetite for something like that on the liberal side of the political spectrum, and speculation has already begun regarding which publications, online media or cable channels might join an Olbermann-led venture.

Slate.com, an MSNBC publication, is reporting:

Without warning, Keith Olbermann ended his MSNBC news show with a six-minute farewell sign-off declaring it would be his last Countdown. Olbermann hinted the decision wasn’t mutual, noting he had been “told” it would be his last show. The announcement came out of the blue, even surprising Talking Point Memo’s Josh Marshall who was a guest at the beginning of the show and says he didn’t detect anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t the only one. The decision was kept so quiet that many in the network didn’t know and MSNBC was still running promos for Olbermann an hour after he said goodbye.

There have been reports there were ongoing “severance” negotiations for several weeks, leading up to the decision. But the hint that Olbermann was not in agreement with the decision to end his tenure at MSNBC continue to raise doubts about the motivations for the move and whether personal or political animus drove NBC Universal executives to move to end his contract for Countdown, the media franchise he built and which revived the flagging ratings of the MSNBC network.

UPDATE, 2:48 pm EST: The Gothamist reports on vitriolic rhetoric of New York Post, owned by FOX News’ parent company, which celebrated the removal of one of FOX News’ most successful critics. The tabloid rag once more exemplified the sordid underbelly of gossip journalism, stooping to publishing ad hominem insults like: “broadcast blowhard,” “pontificating pundit,” “unemployed Uberdork,” and “garrulous gasbag”.

Reports have also surfaced suggesting that intensely pro-Republican Comcast chairman Brian Roberts chose to use the language of armed combat, when asked what would happen if Olbermann, while working for Comcast-owned NBC Universal, continued to vehemently criticize Republicans in Congress. Roberts reportedly said: “Let’s have that conversation in 12 months, when we’re playing with live ammo”, suggesting either a planned attack on Olbermann or a deliberate escalation of tensions, aimed at helping Republicans.

There are growing concerns that the Olbermann affair is just one of a series of incidents hinting at a new era of corporate media censorship and biased news reporting. One recent case was comedienne Joan Rivers, who says she was barred from appearing on FOX News after saying of Sarah Palin: “They’re right to blame Sarah for the shootings,” adding: “Go look at her website… This woman is just stupid and a threat.”

Whether the FOX News network was retaliating against Rivers for criticizing one of its media stars, or because the network itself has actively encouraged the use of extreme rhetoric, even going as far as to fund and help organize rallies promoting the so-called Tea Party and spreading partisan smears against Democratic policies, is not known.

The media storm surrounding the personal story of Julian Assange, reputed founder of WikiLeaks, is in many ways a sad commentary on the state of our security policy. The malice directed at Assange, and the coincidental pursuit of him on accusation of sexual assault in Sweden, appear to fit into a campaign designed to dissuade the general public from taking seriously anything produced by WikiLeaks. The fact is: there would be no use for WikiLeaks and no controversy whatsoever, if democratic governments did not rely so heavily on secrecy.

It is often said that secrecy is required for any meetings where people relay information to executives of the government, because without secrecy there could be no “candor”. Candor is certainly, in most settings, a virtue, but it stretches the imagination to come up with a circumstance where candid analysis of a problematic situation would be so shameful in nature as to warrant blanket secrecy for ALL such encounters. It is well understood that analytical understanding and participation in wrongdoing are not the same thing.

Top advisors on energy policy, security policy, and diplomatic outreach, may have problems bridging the divide between their own government’s intentions and those of a foreign power, but then, that’s what diplomacy is, and everyone understands it as such. Using official secrecy powers to cover up malicious accusations, or even evidence of wrongdoing, is wrong-headed, and contrary to basic democratic values. The people have a right to know what their government is doing and on the basis of what information.

Julian Assange is being made into a synonym for WikiLeaks by global media hype. This is not only disingenuous, it also poses a grave disservice to the reading public. WikiLeaks is a very logical step in the digital media revolution. If it weren’t Assange, it would be someone else. It might not be a site so explicitly devoted to the anti-secrecy cause, but it could be any number of sites that simply post documents that would otherwise have been kept secret.

The innovation is not WikiLeaks at all, or Julian Assange, but as Todd Gitlin points out in an “Entanglements” post for the New Republic, the database. The database is a major functional foundation of the digital age, helping to structure and administer everything from everyman blogs to travel websites, to Google and the work of government itself. That a given webpage, an article in an online newspaper, for instance, is not just a computer file, but a portal that links back to numerous other files and databases, is a major feature of the web today.

WikiLeaks is a logical next step in transparency. Now, maybe there are key psychological drivers related to the life and tastes of Julian Assange that have made WikiLeaks the comprehensive document dump that it is, but even critics have to admit that WikiLeaks has been somewhat more selective in its release of documents that most media reports suggest.

Yes, it is a major achievement to have access to so many hundreds of thousands of documents, and to share them with major newspapers, but that is not the same as putting everything willy-nilly into the public domain. This is a test-case for modern democracy: can we survive major releases of information that our elected leaders wish to keep concealed, without those leaders asking us to cede more power to them? Can we remain democratic, despite the embarrassment of our elected leaders?

I’ve chosen phrasing that makes it seem absurdly childish to consider the alternative: that we cede power to leaders who would request we become less free in order that they suffer less embarrassment. In part, I chose these words because what is patently absurd is never necessarily avoidable. Everything depends on what people are willing to accept. All too often, we do accept the patently absurd from major institutions, especially where not doing so would make us aware of our own responsibility in society.

WikiLeaks may not be the most convenient fact of life for people wishing to do business in government offices that rely on discretion and cooperation for efficacy. But does that inconvenience mean it is an evil to the public good? Does it mean we should forfeit our sacred liberties, like the freedom to know about our government, its deliberations and its actions? Does the problem posed by WikiLeaks mean a free society should make itself less free to prevent such discomfort? It seems doing so would only worsen the problem.

And then there’s the question as to whether any of this really impacts national security. As WikiLeaks and its defenders have many times pointed out, not one official from any agency has yet come forward with any incident in which any person or persons were harmed as a result of information WikiLeaks released into the public domain. But beyond that, we have the question of just how precarious is a security policy that relies so heavily on secrecy?

“Sources and methods” is thrown around a lot as a term of art: secrecy is about protecting “sources and methods” for intelligence gathering. Intelligence gathering is harder if specific sources and methods are compromised, because defensive action can be taken to prevent the use of those particular sources and methods to gain access to specific information. This is very true, and very relevant. But, intelligence gathering that relies entirely on having the upper-hand yielded by surprise attack is not really all that effective.

The state of any art develops, and as it does, methods and techniques are engineered and reverse engineered and re-engineered. Everyone is trying to achieve the same set of goals with more or less the same tactical limitations (except where technology and/or size make a difference). It is not true that all ideas about how to gather intelligence or specific results emerging from specific intelligence gathering techniques need to be kept secret in order to protect the usefulness of specific sources or even the secret existence of specific methods.

If intelligence works, it should be understood to have worked. If official release of documents is in some ways counterproductive (leaking sources to harm individuals or leaking information to achieve a performative difference in some component of the story), the unauthorized acquisition of leaked documents by non official sources (journalists) can be highly constructive. Exposing methods, ideas or biases, that might be embarrassing can lead to improved methods, ideas and perspectives that replace outmoded or inefficient precursors.

We cannot, in good conscience, as citizens of a free country, accept the excuse from policy-makers that only in an atmosphere of official secrecy can they do the difficult work of maintaining good strategic relations and of keeping our nation and our allies safe. The only real grounds for that argument is the proposition that they are not equipped to do it any other way. We should demand, however optimistic it may seem, that our public servants actually achieve the standards we expect of them, so that their work is not an embarrassment so much as a demonstration of heroic devotion to a mind-bendingly difficult art.

There are reports online that suggest the US Dept. of State may be seeking to suppress the use of data and information emerging from WikiLeaks document releases, telling possible recruits that all such information remains “classified”, i.e. secret, and that any use of such data, including reposting of links to the leaks themselves or to WikiLeaks generally, will disqualify them from serving at the Dept. of State. Critics say this is an attempt to avoid facing reality and an undemocratic demand against the the right to free and open debate.

The argument for not prosecuting government officials who careful and strategically leak secret information that has been approved, if unofficially, for release is that once released, the information pertains to the public domain and the impact has been calculated to be of use to those in office or to official policy aims. That the debate and contemplation of new information now widely disseminated throughout the public domain, across the world, should be considered tantamount to a prohibited act flies in the face of basic reason.

Whether or not those in power want to admit it, the information is out there. The substance of private conversations is now known, back-channel diplomacy has been released into public view, and people are, rightly, embarrassed by some of what was said. But it really is not too far fetched to imagine that what citizens want of their government, given these details, is for those in positions of influence to address the problem, not to try to suppress free and open debate of the substance of policy revelations.

The leaks have been generated, the information is out there. There may be a feeling there is a need to shut down the publication making the information available, before what has not yet been released is released, but there are serious legal impediments to doing that, and WikiLeaks has famously build itself an “insurance policy”. The insurance, against aggressive action to shut down the site or imprison its founder, Julian Assange, is reportedly an encrypted file, already downloaded to computers across the world, that allegedly contains ultra sensitive information, which would be released if certain lines are crossed.

Tactically, this makes real action to suppress debate at least very problematic. But beyond that, there’s the issue of democracy itself: the United States government exists within a strict Constitutional framework that, in theory, requires it to honor the work of journalists who seek to uncover information that would otherwise be kept secret, whether inside the halls of power or out among the people or in foreign lands. The freedom of the press is primordial to the institutions of a true democratic system of government, and the United States cannot simultaneously serve that interest and take action to silence a media outlet.

The Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), whose students were allegedly the targets of one State Dept. official’s apparently rogue gag order, has apparently refined its position on the WikiLeaks blackout. The dean of SIPA has said that students “have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena … without fear of adverse consequences”.

The initial warning reportedly came from a SIPA alumnus, employed by the State Dept., by way of the Career Services office at SIPA. The school has since retracted the warning, saying that it does not seek to silence debate or to control what information students research or discuss in their pursuit of a thorough education in global politics.

John Coatsworth, dean of SIPA, issued an email, obtained by Wired, which called the Career Services warning “guidance”, and which reads in part:

Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution. Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.  The WikiLeaks documents are accessible to SIPA students (and everyone else) from a wide variety of respected sources, as are multiple means of discussion and debate both in and outside of the classroom.

Columbia appears to have put to rest the issue of whether it would censor its students at the direction of one State Dept. official, but it remains unclear, despite State Dept. objections, what motivated the alleged lone censor to seek to suppress debate at one of the nation’s most prestigious schools of international politics.

MSNBC anchor and news analyst Keith Olbermann will be back on the air on Tuesday evening, after being indefinitely suspended, and thus missing his Friday and Monday programming. MSNBC president Phil Griffin had suspended Olbermann, alleging that three campaign donations violated the ethics rules for journalists employed by NBC News. The suspension had appeared to many to be politically motivated, given Comcast’s plans to take over the network, and the likely incoming president’s staunchly pro-Bush views and past fundraising activity.

The suspension of Olbermann —in a media climate where MSNBC rival FOX News has literally and very explicitly set itself up as an arm of the Republican electoral campaign, inviting candidates to come on air to fundraise and actively promoting those candidates it interviews, while news anchors attend fundraisers to draw donors and actively donate themselves, and where MSNBC has permitted various Republican commentators to be both employed by the network and actively involved in GOP politics and fundraising— raised the suspicion and the ire of progressives across the country.

A nationwide grassroots campaign to demand Olbermann’s reinstatement began almost immediately, and as of this morning, the news had broken that Olbermann would be back on the air by Tuesday evening. It is clear the outpouring of criticism and the intensifying accusations of political motivations put pressure on MSNBC to end the suspension. Almost overnight, the network lost its credibility as an open and critical political voice where progressives could be heard to one where this seemed to be some kind of fluke whose days were doomed as a corporate takeover approached.

The damage may be done, considering how difficult it has been for progressive press and civil rights groups to get clear information from NBC/Universal about the nature of the decision to suspend Olbermann. There have been sporadic calls for investigations into the motivations of the executives involved in the decision to suspend the journalist, even as the network alleges there were clear violations of the company’s journalistic ethics rules.

There has been a clamoring from the right and from corporate front groups that lobby to oppose pro-consumer and public-health reforms to steer the mainstream media toward a kind of corporate-right doctrine, where markets are sacrosanct and criticism of corporate institutions is considered counterproductive and un-American. FOX News has modeled itself after this doctrine, and has actively sought ad dollars (donations?) from the very entities that push this doctrine of media bias.

In the wake of the Republican victory in the midterm elections, conservative politicians have been crying foul that there remain any dissent or any opposition to their views, in politics, in the mainstream media, or across the nation. There is mounting controversy over the leadership push by right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who once promised she would use a leadership role in the House of Representatives to investigate members of Congress for holding “un-American” views, essentially a bludgeon designed to stamp out dissent and persecute anyone who opposes the Republican agenda.

The media are struggling to understand the meaning of a “wave” election that comes just two years after the historic landslide victory and Pres. Obama’s record vote numbers (Obama won fully 60% more votes in 2008 than Ronald Reagan in 1980). In fact, the story is very simple: in 2008, Pres. Obama won nearly 70 million votes, more than 26 million more than Ronald Reagain in 1980, and by far the most ever received by any candidate for president. In 2010, most of the presidential electorate of 2008 did not participate, making the electorate demographically more conservative and more Republican.

The majority of Democratic candidates who lost were “conservative Democrats” or DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) who actively opposed Pres. Obama and helped the Republicans spread unsubstantiated smears of the president’s major reform agenda. They did not, however, lose because they were conservative or because they criticized the president; they lost because they had put the political maneuvering for their own re-election above the truth and above the interests of the people: neither Democrats nor Republicans have any reason to support such people, and of course, the devil who betrays you is worse than the devil who hasn’t yet turned on his or her principles for cheap political advantage.

Will the Olbermann suspension be the first in a wave of corporate attempts to manipulate the media, dampen criticism of Congressional Republicans or undermine the free press in the United States? First things first: it is not the first case. The real question is: can the media, made up of actual people, whose profession is journalism, do the research and privilege the facts, and be relentlessly critical of those who seek to mislead, so that the press remains a powerful defender of American freedoms and political and corporate interests cannot take over?

Olbermann will likely be emboldened by this attack on his character and on his freedom to make decisions of conscience in how he carries out his duties as a journalist and as a citizen. He will likely have tough words for anyone in politics or in the media who opposes the free press, and he should, we can expect, continue to push the idea that ending net neutrality is a threat to our democracy and a violation of the First Amendment (he reported on this the very week he was suspended, by the way). Maybe the suspension will raise the profile of the issue of press freedom, and cause more citizens to stand up and be counted as favoring the First Amendment over the corporate echo-chamber.