Category Archives: Media watch

New York’s Schneiderman Accepts Red Cross’ “Trade Secrets” Excuse to Hide Sandy Spending

It’s not clear what to make of an attorney general who opens an investigation and then accepts lame excuses for maintaining secrecy from its target, in this case, the American Red Cross. We’re flagging this example because it exemplifies an effort by organizations to use “trade secrets” as a pretext for hiding more and more of their dealings with governments. This is absurd, since the premise of Federal and state Freedom of Information Act laws is that government records should be open to the public, and that includes records of entities doing business with government agencies. In other words, if you want to have government bodies as your customers, one of the costs of doing business is having your formal interactions with them subject to public review.

Read more...

New York Times Snipes at Neil Barofsky Yet Again

I was naive enough to think that the New York Times’ vendetta against former SIGTARP prosecutor Neil Barofsky was limited to bank propagandist Andrew Ross Sorkin and Administration mouthpiece Jackie Calmes, who penned a particularly ham-handed hit piece on Barofsky’s book Bailout.

It turns out the depth of loyalty of reporters at the New York Times is much deeper than I imagined. Ben Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg work hard to snigger and finger-wag at Barofsky for being about to land a plum assignment that will again make him a big bank nemesis: that of serving as monitor to miscreant Credit Suisse.

Read more...

Peter Van Buren: Taking Down the First Amendment in Post-Constitutional America

Van Buren continues his examination of what he calls the “post-Constitutional era”. He focuses on the steady erosion of freedom of speech, particularly in the media, including limits on the ability of journalists to protect sources to more self-censorship and increased antipathy towards reporting that involves the use of confidential material.

Read more...

CalPERS Told Obvious Big Lies in Its Response to Our Private Equity Investigation

Since readers have taken interest in the details of our ongoing litigation with the giant California public pension fund, CalPERS, I thought I’d tie off a thread from earlier in the month. By way of background, last September, we filed a Public Records Act request (California’s version of FOIA) for private equity return data that […]

Read more...

Joe Firestone: Is the MSM Blackout on Inequality, Plutocracy, and Oligarchy Ending?

Yves here. Although I like this piece, I believe Joe is not cynical enough about MSNBC, which has become a messaging apparatus of the Democratic party. The reason that MSNBC is now talking about inequality is Obama is pushing for a minimum wage increase, so wealth and income disparity are no longer verboten topics

Read more...