Media Matters Daily Summary

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. Quick Fact: NY Post's Goodwin falsely claimed Bush had "a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11" In his January 6 New York Post column, Michael Goodwin advanced the false claim that former President George W. Bush had "a record of zero successful attacks on America after 9/11." Read More Fox & Friends funnels Exxon-funded NCPPR press release claiming CIA is "spying on icebergs instead of terrorists" Attacking a CIA program providing climate data to scientists, Fox & Friends accused the Obama administration of "[s]pying on icebergs instead of terrorists" and "[t]racking climate change instead of Al-Qaeda," which echoes a press release from the conservative and ExxonMobil-funded National Center for Public Policy Research that claimed the program "diverts intelligence assets to climate research." In fact, federal officials have reportedly said that the program, which allows the scientific community to gather data from CIA equipment, "has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering." Read More Fox News ties Dem retirements to Obama's "radical" agenda, ignoring similar number of GOP retirements Following news that Senate Democrats Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan will retire in 2010, Fox News personalities have repeatedly tied theirs and other congressional Democrats' retirements to President Obama's "radical" agenda. In doing so, Fox ignored that a similar number of Republicans in Congress have announced that they also will not seek re-election. Read More Beck baselessly attacks Democratic senators for purported alcohol abuse In the past week, Glenn Beck has repeatedly attacked Democratic senators for their purported alcohol abuse, citing little or no evidence. Specifically, Beck echoed the right wing's discredited, baseless claim that Max Baucus had been "hammered" on the Senate floor, and claimed that Chris Dodd had decided not to run for re-election because "there are a few bars [he hasn't] hit in Connecticut." Read More Quick Fact: Doocy agreed with guest who falsely claimed "there is no warming going on" On January 7, Fox & Friends hosted global warming critic Lord Nigel Lawson who asserted that "mind you, there is no warming going on. There's been no warming so far this century at all, as the figures show." Co-host Steve Doocy replied, "That's right." Read More Despite past correction, NY Times again claims "ex-detainees return to terror" The print headline of a January 7 New York Times article reads "Many Ex-Detainees Return To Terror, Pentagon Says" [emphasis added] -- a claim not supported by the article itself, which does not assert that the detainees in question had previously engaged in terrorist acts but only that a Pentagon report finds that "about one in five" of former Guantánamo detainees that have been released subsequently "has engaged in, or is suspected of engaging in, terrorism or militant activity." The Times previously corrected a May 2009 article which originally reported that "74 prisoners released from Guantánamo have returned to terrorism," noting that the "premise" that detainees had previously engaged in terrorism "remains unproven." Read More Quick Fact: Beck falsely claims "SEIU" is "number-one visitor to the White House" On January 7, Glenn Beck falsely suggested that Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andy Stern is the "number-one visitor to the White House." Politifact has rated Beck's prior claim that Stern was "the most frequent visitor at the White House" as "false." Read More Wash. Times revives myth that health reform is unconstitutional In a January 7 editorial, The Washington Times took a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report out of context to revive the myth that the individual mandate included in the health reform legislation is unconstitutional. In fact, CRS does not conclude that the mandate is unconstitutional, and numerous legal experts have debunked the claim. Read More Mark Halperin wants a prom king, not a president Reading Mark Halperin's assessment of Barack Obama's first year in office, one thing is immediately clear: The silliness of his criteria is matched only by his inability to properly apply them. The problem isn't just that Halperin assesses Obama's attainment of Halperin's remarkably shallow goals; it's also that the Time editor-at-large has no idea what he's talking about. Read More Big global warming misinformation from Breitbart's BigJournalism.com A post on Andrew Breitbart's new website, BigJournalism.com, listed global warming as the top "faux media scares of the past decade," asserting that the threat of global warming "works, except the planet is actually cooling." In fact, while conservatives ceaselessly promote this myth, scientists overwhelmingly reject the charge that the Earth is cooling. Read More Conservatives suggest county prison escape bodes ill for Guantánamo detainee move to IL Supermax Conservative media figures, including Rush Limbaugh and Jim Hoft, have suggested that the recent escape of three prisoners from the privately managed Tri-County Detention Center in Illinois demonstrates that Guantánamo detainees should not be moved to Illinois' Thomson Correctional Center, as the Obama administration has proposed. But federal officials have stated their intention to enhance the Thomson facility's security to levels exceeding that of the Supermax prison in Colorado, which currently holds numerous terrorists and from which there has never been an escape; moreover, a 2001 Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) study found that privately managed prisons have higher escape rates than federal prisons. Read More You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.