Guest Column
by Roger Shuler

Is there hope for Alabama’s largest newspaper?

The Birmingham News opines today about the Justice Department report issued this week showing political considerations played a role in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys. The firings were “weird,” the News determines. No, it seems clear, the firings were corrupt. But our local metro daily doesn’t want to go there.

Where else does the News not want to go? To “Don Siegelman Has Been Right-All-Along-Land.”

The News acknowledges — and it appears to pain them — that the report raises questions not only about the unlawful treatment of some prosecutors but also about the treatment of those who were prosecuted. That would include Siegelman, Alabama’s former Democratic governor who was prosecuted and convicted in a case that was dripping with conflicts of interest and political motivations from those in the Bush Justice Department:

Consider: If some U.S. attorneys were fired for not prosecuting people that suited Republican interests, were other U.S. attorneys able to keep their jobs by prosecuting the “right people”?

There were U.S. attorneys who were considered “mediocre” who didn’t end up on the firing list, apparently because they had political favor. That begs the question: What kind of cases did they bring that kept them in good standing with the party? Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman would certainly love to argue that U.S. Attorney Leura Canary kept her job in Montgomery by prosecuting him.

Were some U.S. attorneys able to keep their jobs by prosecuting the “right people?” The News, laughably, seems to be pondering this question for the first time today. Where have you been folks?

And the paper doesn’t want to mention that the entire Justice Department scandal, to a great extent, has its roots in Alabama, not only because of biased and unqualified U.S. attorneys Leura Canary in Montgomery and Alice Martin in Birmingham but because of Karl Rove’s deep connections to Alabama, which started with his campaign efforts in state-court races in the 1990s.

Finally, the News would have us believe that Siegelman is fighting a lonely battle to show that Canary kept her job in Montgomery because of her willingness to bring a bogus case against him. In fact, Siegelman hasn’t been lonely at all. Harper’s magazine, The New York Times, 60 Minutes, and Time magazine are just a few of the media outlets that have reported extensively on the issue. And the U.S. House Judiciary Committee has spent considerable effort investigating the case, issuing a subpoena for Rove to testify about his possible role in the Siegelman prosecution — a subpoena with which Rove steadily has refused to comply.

Will the News get off its collective duff and start investigating a story that is right under its nose? We won’t hold our breath. But today’s editorial indicates the blinders might be loosening just a little:

It’s true, U.S. attorneys are political appointees and can be fired at will. But their job is to serve the public’s interest, not a political party’s interest. If they can be fired because they don’t prosecute people of the opposite party, or because they prosecute people of their own party, how can the public really trust that cases are being brought or are being dropped for the right reasons?

“For department officials to recommend the removal of U.S. attorneys even in part because they do or do not have political support undermines the public’s confidence that Department of Justice prosecutive decisions are based on the facts and the law and not on political considerations,” the report said.

Simply put, U.S. attorneys can’t play favorites with the cases that come into their offices and expect to have any credibility with the public. The same rule applies to the Justice Department.

Are scales beginning to fall from a few eyes down on Fourth Avenue North in Birmingham?

Originally published in the Legal Schnauzer Website under the headline:
Will The Birmingham News Remain Clueless to the End?

by Glynn Wilson

Editor’s Note: Why is it that in the United States of America, where free speech is part of our national psyche as well as the Constitution, and the most successful style of democracy in the history of the world was created, the debate on TV and in the nation’s news media seems so limited and fake about the current economic meltdown and President Bush’s bailout of Wall Street banks and insurance companies?

Noam Chomsky and other scholars have discussed this problem in the past in obscure academic texts most citizens have never heard about. But what if blogging software could provide a forum to bring this debate to the masses and go beyond the sound bites and actually foster a real debate on the past and future of American capitalism?

Are privatized free markets really better for people than government institutions?

As Chomsky once said, “In a totalitarian state, it doesn’t matter what people think, since the government can control people by force using a bludgeon. But when you can’t control people by force, you have to control what people think, and the standard way to do this is via propaganda (manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusions), marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy of some fashion.”

He has also said, “It’s the primary function of the mass media in the United States to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector.”

Of course he is right, and we could point to a number of national and local examples, including the coverage of the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in the Alabama press, or the coverage of the state of the economy by any number of U.S. news outlets.

But what I have found interesting over the past few days is the language creeping into mainstream news outlets questioning American-style capitalism. Here are a few examples.

“It’s a bitter pill for all those to claim that unfettered free markets were the best, that we don’t need regulation,” said Dan Seiver, finance professor at San Diego State University. “But perhaps this idea that unfettered capitalism is the way to go has finally been put to rest.”

“While Wall Street celebrates, the man in the street should be crying in his beer,” said Seiver. “It’s socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.”

Was that reported in some obscure leftist magazine? No, it was reported by Reuters, the conservative financial wire service started in Great Britain.

Bush Bailout A Bitter Pill for Free Market Capitalists

Yes, some alternative online news sites have found writers to take on this same theme. At AlterNet.org, here’s one recent headline.

“Free-market extremists brought us this needless economic collapse. Here’s a rundown of the mistakes we’ve made and the reforms we need now.”

The current carnage on Wall Street, with dire spillover effects on Main Street, is the result of a failed ideology — the idea that financial markets could regulate themselves. Serial deregulation fed on itself. Deliberate repeal of regulations became entangled with failure to carry out laws still on the books. Corruption mingled with simple incompetence. And though the ideology was largely Republican, it was abetted by Wall Street Democrats.

Only a Roosevelt-Scale Counterrevolution Can Prevent Another Depression

But even Newsweek, owned by the Washington Post company, published a special edition on this issue.

“Does the crisis on Wall Street mean that the American style of capitalism is no longer the model for the world?”

American Style Capitalism Called Into Question

The German magazine Der Spiegel, hardly a left-wing rag, reported this.

In fact, it really does look as if the foundations of US capitalism have shattered. Since 1864, American banking has been split into commercial banks and investment banks. But now that’s changing. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch — overnight, some of the biggest names on Wall Street have disappeared into thin air. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the only giants left standing. Despite tolerable quarterly results, even they have been hurt by mysterious slumps in prices and — at least in Morgan Stanley’s case — have prepared themselves for the end.

“Nothing will be like it was before,” said James Allroy, a broker who was brooding over his chailatte at a Starbucks on Wall Street. “The world as we know it is going down.”

Many are drawing comparisons with the Great Depression, the national trauma that has been the benchmark for everything since. “I think it has the chance to be the worst period of time since 1929,” financing legend Donald Trump told CNN.

Depression: Foundations of US Capitalism Shattered?

The Political Economy of the Mass Media, a book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, first published in 1988, presents an analysis its authors call the “propaganda model.”

The book argues that since mass media news outlets are now run by large corporations, they are under the same competitive pressures as other corporations.

The pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported.

This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized.

The book further points out issues with the dependency of mass media news outlets upon major sources of news, particularly the government. If a particular outlet is in disfavor with a government, it can be subtly “shut out” and other outlets given preferential treatment. (This has been particularly true in Bush’s two terms as president).

Since this results in a loss in news leadership, it can also result in a loss of readership/viewership. That can itself result in a loss of advertising revenue, which is the primary income for most of the mass media (newspapers, magazines, television).

To minimize the possibilities of lost revenue, therefore, outlets will tend to report news in a tone more favorable to government and business, and giving unfavorable news about government and business less emphasis.

So we have asked several scholars who know something about these issues to join us in a discussion here that we hope can go beyond the sound bites and start a more informed discussion around this country about how our economy should be structured in this democratic republic.

As I have reported before, the $700 billion Bush is about to spend on bailing out the Wall Street financial firms would be enough money to provide free health care and a free college education to every man, woman and child in this country. And we would be a smarter and more healthy country as a result.

But the key question is this: Is it even possible to discuss national health care or public college education in this country when any plan will just be dismissed as “socialism?”

According to my own training in political science, I learned that this country is in fact a socialist-democracy. We have Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and other safety-net programs that actually prop up the weak end of our society and allow the rest of the private economy to function.

And every time the banks get into trouble, the federal government bails them out anyway. That could hardly be called “free-market capitalism,” since in a true free market, a business that can’t make enough profit to survive is allowed to fail and go out of business. But that’s what we continue to call it anyway in what is obviously a serious distortion of the truth — for propaganda purposes.

Other relevant recent columns:
America Needs a New Pill, Not Corporate Welfare
Media Bashing 501
Workers of the World Unite!

This discussion will continue in the comments section. Please feel free to join us…

If it’s good enough for the mainstream media, it’s good enough for us (sang to the tune of “If It’s Good Enough For Jesus, It’s good enough for me.”)

We figure if the mainstream media believes it is necessary to cover “Faith” as news, why not engage in a little Biblical scholarship of our own on this Sunday when the CBS News magazine show will air on the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. I mean Richard Scrushy had his own religious TV show.

And after all, that’s the life-long goal of University of Alabama journalism historian and professor David Sloan, who may be as responsible for our religious news media as any man alive. It’s a remarkable achievement, putting the University of Alabama’s fine journalism program into heated competition with the Baptist Samford University in Birmingham - for who could produce the most reporters to take care of the internship needs of the Alabama Baptist newspaper for generations to come. And occasionally, slip one in over at the Birmingham News and Fox News 6.

Since I was steeped in the Bible myself in my Birmingham upbringing, an experience that took many years to wear off in my own writing, I say with some chagrin, I figure I’ve got as much right as anyone else.

Since most of the religious people involved in American and Alabama politics I confront seem to use the Bible in ways that indicates they do not have “an ear to hear,” as it says in “Revelations,” and maybe they’ve never really sat down and read the entire thing themselves.

When I was in junior high, a coach and Sunday school teacher set our championship basketball team on a path of reading for the year. We would read the entire King James version of the Holy Bible. In one year.

So we did, and we won, every single game through the state and national championships. And I’m happy to say I only strayed from the reading a few times, during all them begets and such in the Old Testament.

I’ve often thought of those words, since I embarked on a more scientific academic path, perhaps not unlike E.O. Wilson, the Harvard professor from Alabama who has tried to start a movement to get Southern Baptists to embrace the cause of nature as “God’s creation.”

But there is something about the soil here, and the way the words are used, that is not only troubling. Who or what is it going to take to reach the great religious masses of the South and turn them away from hatred and violence?

Where is the newspaper editor who will send up a sharp warning on an editorial page somewhere, begging these people to “stop the killing!”

There were a few newspaper editors who had the guts to do that during the great Civil War, who called on their citizens to stop the killing.

In the early 20th century, there were a few newspaper editors who stood up against the Ku Klux Klan. Some of them lived to tell about it. Some didn’t.

During the Civil Rights struggle in the 1950s and ’60s in Alabama, there were a few courageous newspaper editors who got out front on covering race, but not many. There were crusading liberal lawyers in those days, and a few brave preachers, like the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who is now being treated in a Birmingham hospital.

Where are those voices today? Buried in the antiseptic cubicles of professional drudgery at the last vestiges of newsrooms in America’s cities? Or out there in wild blogland, the dot dot dot wilderness, where e-mails sometimes obliterate communication rather than fostering it - at breakneck speed.

We are looking for those voices and linking to them here, trying with 110 percent, the same as the effort required for winning basketball, to show you the way to the promised land of the best information on the Web. It’s an evil world out there, with all kinds of hacks and hackers, full of evil men who will play both sides against the middle for a dollar all day long every day.

But we know, and you know, that The Word is good. And God is THE WORD!

The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow

See you after the show…

We’ll have the embargoed transcript up at 7 p.m.

Here’s the blurb:

IS DON SIEGELMAN IN PRISON BECAUSE HE’S A CRIMINAL OR BECAUSE HE BELONGED TO THE WRONG POLITICAL PARTY IN ALABAMA? SIEGELMAN IS THE FORMER GOVERNOR OF ALABAMA, AND HE WAS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRAT IN THAT REPUBLICAN STATE. BUT WHILE HE WAS GOVERNOR, THE U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LAUNCHED MULTIPLE INVESTIGATIONS THAT WENT ON YEAR AFTER YEAR UNTIL, FINALLY, A JURY CONVICTED SIEGELMAN OF BRIBERY.

NOW, MANY DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS HAVE BECOME SUSPICIOUS OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S MOTIVATIONS. FIFTY-TWO FORMER STATE ATTORNEYS-GENERAL HAVE ASKED CONGRESS TO INVESTIGATE WHETHER THE PROSECUTION OF DON SIEGELMAN WAS PURSUED NOT BECAUSE OF A CRIME BUT BECAUSE OF POLITICS.

Jill Simpson will also be on MSNBC Monday and CNN soon, so watch for details as they come in…

Other Links

A Primer on 60 Minutes Story

And oh yea, lest we forget, that snowy screed of desperation out of Montgomery:

Judge, Conduct of Siegelman Trial Defended

As always, we welcome any comments after the show, and editor and publisher Glynn Wilson will answer questions about the case based on his coverage and other inside info – now that the show is finally out. It’s been a long wait…

“Centrist” Democrats are urging the party to forego investigations of the Bush administration if Democrats win control of one or more houses of Congress in November. But the idea of helping Republicans sweep scandals under the rug was tried before, by President Bill Clinton, and it didn’t work out very well, either for the American people or the Democrats.

For the full story of how some Democrats show their limited regard for the truth, read the full story at the independent ConsortiumNews.Com.