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• Paper disappears some inaccurate reporting
• Contact the New York Times and ask it to investigate and explain the editing of the January 5 front-page article, and to correct both misleading assertions about Iran and nuclear weapons.
• How the Media Is Taking Us Toward War With Iran

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

In two articles yesterday (1/5/12), the New York Times (NYT) misled readers about the state of Iran's nuclear program.

On the front page, the Times' Steven Erlanger reported this:

The threats from Iran, aimed both at the West and at Israel, combined with a recent assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran's nuclear program has a military objective, is becoming an important issue in the American presidential campaign.

There is no such International Atomic Energy Agency assessment.

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How the Media Is Taking Us Toward War With Iran, davidswanson, War Is a Crime .org

• Media lies and the onset of war.
• Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget.
• Robert Parry | Slip-Sliding to War with Iran
   

• As the US and Iranian governments escalate tensions in the already volatile Straits of Hormuz, and China and Russia begin openly questioning Washington's interference in their internal politics, the world remains on a knife-edge of military tension. Far from being a dispassionate observer of these developments, however, the media has in fact been central to increasing those tensions and preparing the public to expect a military confrontation. But as the online media rises to displace the traditional forms by which the public forms its understanding of the world, many are now beginning to see first hand how the media lies the public into war.
• Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War

James Corbett, Global Research

As the drums of war begin to beat once again in Iran, Syria, the South China Sea, and other potential hotspots and flashpoints around the globe, concerned citizens are asking how a world so sick of bloodshed and a population so tired of conflict could be led to this spot once again.

To understand this seeming paradox, we must first understand the centuries-long history of how media has been used to whip the nation into wartime frenzy, dehumanize the supposed enemies, and even to manipulate the public into believing in causes for war that, decades later, were admitted to be completely fictitious.

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Video | Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War, James Corbett, Global Research
The centuries-long history of how media has been used to whip the nation into wartime frenzy, dehumanize the supposed enemies, and even to manipulate the public into believing in causes for war that, decades later, were admitted to be completely fictitious.
 

• The Pentagon’s self-exonerating report, by contrast, suggests that media sock puppets may become a modus operandi.
• Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
• How the Media Is Taking Us Toward War With Iran

Scott Horton, Harpers

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A Pentagon Campaign Retired officers have been used to shape terrorism coverage from inside the TV and radio networks.

An internal Department of Defense review has concluded that a Rumsfeld-era program under which retired military officers who appeared on American broadcast media were given special briefings and access was consistent with Pentagon rules. The New York Times reports:

The inquiry found that from 2002 to 2008, Mr. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon organized 147 events for 74 military analysts. These included 22 meetings at the Pentagon, 114 conference calls with generals and senior Pentagon officials and 11 Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Twenty of the events, according to a 35-page report of the inquiry’s findings, involved Mr. Rumsfeld or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or both. One retired officer, the report said, recalled Mr. Rumsfeld telling him: “You guys influence a wide range of people. We’d like to be sure you have the facts.”

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Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, David Barstow, New York (NY) Times
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

How the Media Is Taking Us Toward War With Iran, davidswanson, War Is a Crime .org

• Media lies and the onset of war.
• Iraq. Began with big lies. Ending with big lies. Never forget.
• Robert Parry | Slip-Sliding to War with Iran
   

• Don’t be surprised if the “religious freedom” argument finds its way into conservative arguments about “big government” in 2012. It’s not just for the religious right anymore.
• Protest against Cardinal George Gay Rights-KKK Comparison planned
• Catholic bishops assault health and religious freedom

Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of readers like you. Thank you!

Archbishop Timothy Dolan spreads incense.

Four days before Christmas, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops paid for a full-page advertisement in the Washington (DC) Post, co-signed by dozens of leaders of Catholic institutions. But the ad offered no holiday cheer. Instead, it aggressively highlighted the Bishops’ pointed confrontation with the Obama administration: either amend a regulation requiring employer health insurance plans to provide contraception without a co-pay, or stand accused of religious discrimination.


The Bishops’ opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services rule—which they describe as mandating “preventive services” (scare quotes in original)—was to date the most public salvo from their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. That effort was launched last June because, in USCCB president Timothy Dolan’s ominous words, “never before have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith and as a service provider. If we do not act now, the consequence will be grave.” At the Bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore this past November, Dolan took his charges into conspiratorial territory, telling reporters that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were attempting to “push religion back into the sacristy.”

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Protest against Cardinal George Gay Rights-KKK Comparison planned, Kate Sosin, Windy City (Chicago, IL) Times

• George has reiterated his controversial re marks (that compared the gay liberation movement to the Ku Klux Klan) twice since the initial comment.
• LGBT Activists To Protest Cardinal George Over KKK Comparison

Catholic bishops assault health and religious freedom, Scott Dibble, Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune

• Official Catholic positions say that abortion is impermissible even in cases of rape and incest; that stem cell research to help cure and treat debilitating illnesses is unacceptable, and that all artificial contraception and sterilization methods, including birth-control pills, vasectomies and condoms, are a violation.
• The Catholic bishops' efforts blatantly undermine religious freedom in our country.