Another Lesson In How The Right Wing Message Machine Works

We'll start at the end and work backwards. Today in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review we find an editorial that begins thusly:

Eric Holder's coddling of terrorists -- during both the Clinton and Obama administrations -- makes him manifestly unfit to be U.S. attorney general.

At a National Press Club conference in Washington this week, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc., and speakers personally affected by terrorist beneficiaries of Mr. Holder's lax approach laid out his damning record.

When we head to the website for America's Survival Inc., we find this:

America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) President Cliff Kincaid, who also serves as the Director of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Center for Investigative Journalism, has announced a national conference in Washington, D.C. to examine Communist Cuba’s sponsorship of anti-American terrorism and harboring of fugitives from justice and the need to keep Cuba on the official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Evidence will also be presented of how Castro’s agents of influence continue subversive operations on American soil and how the Obama Administration’s expansion of travel to and from the communist island undermines American national security.

On June 29, the Trib's news division published this:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

Which then was reposted at the America's Survivial website here:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

And then finally editorialized this morning at the Tribune-Review.

Why the trail?

You guessed it. America's Survival's got some serious funding support from the foundations controlled by Trib owner, Richard Mellon Scaife.

• $200,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2010
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008
• $60,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007
• $110,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2007
• $100,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2006

That's about three-quarters of a million dollars worth of support from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Any mention of any of that in the coverage?

Nope. Not a peep. Even from the Trib's news division. It's one thing for the editorial page (which I am told has no connection with the news division) to want to cover for the boss, but it's another when the more or less straight news division does the same. It's an embarrassment all the way round.

And we didn't even get to the Scaife money used to support Kincaid's other employer, Accuracy in Media. According to the media transparency project (or whatever it's called) Scaife's supported AIM to the tune of $4.36 million dollars.

Why does all this matter? Think of it this way, if Scaife hadn't given all that money to America's Survival, then it probably wouldn't exist. And if it didn't exist, there probably wouldn't have been a conference/discussion about AG Eric Holder at the National Press Club. And if there wasn't a discussion of the AG, there wouldn't have been any news coverage of it in the Scaife owned Tribune-Review.

The fact that none of the financial ties that bind Kincaid to Scaife are mentioned in the Trib's coverage of ASI is another example of the journalistic conflict of interest that's defining the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's editorial page and has tainted the Trib's news division.

Craig Smith Report

It's amazing how, once you take the time to look for it, Richard Mellon Scaife's money just seems to show up at all the corners of the is with the vast right wing conspiracy.

Take, as yet another example, Craig Smith's interview this week. He usually finds a Scaife money recipient to interview for Scaife's "news" paper and this week is no exception.

Cliff Kincaid is president of America's Survival Inc., a U.N. watchdog group, and editor of Accuracy in Media's "AIM Report."

An investigative journalist who specializes in analyzing communist and terrorist movements, Kincaid went through a national journalism program headed by conservative author and journalist M. Stanton Evans. He was on the staff of Human Events newspaper and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at his Freedom Alliance educational foundation.

Ok, so we got America's Survival, Accuracy in Media and the Freedom Alliance. All beneficiaries of Scaife money:

• $885K from 1999 to 2009 for America's Survival
• $4.36 million from 1987 to 2005 for Accuracy in Media
• $125K from 1993 to 1998 for the Freedom Alliance

So when Kincaid shows up on the pages of Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper, he's representing about $5.37 million dollars of Scaife foundation money. Again no mention of that at all in Scaife's paper.

Regardless of the content of the interview (they could be talking yarn skeins for all I care) the fact that all that money changed hands with no mention of it being made on the page, is cause enough for criticism and ridicule.

Keith Olbermann got suspended for much much less. But then again MSNBC is a news organization and Richard Mellon Scaife's op-ed page - not so much. Obviously.

More On Scaife's Trib.

An astute reader pointed me in the direction of another Trib editorial:

The U.S. Senate must help America get to the bottom of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks.

The FBI hasn't produced convincing answers. It had to pay damages to former government scientist Dr. Stephen Hatfill for wrongly labeling him a "person of interest."

It can't convict the government scientist it now blames, Dr. Bruce Ivins, because he took his own life amid FBI hounding.

And a National Academy of Sciences review of FBI scientific evidence, which the FBI itself ordered, isn't finished.

Yet the Obama Justice Department says it's a closed case.

As Cliff Kincaid of America's Survival Inc. (usasurvival.org) notes, the FBI seems hellbent on exonerating al-Qaida. And left-leaning mainstream media have focused on domestic, preferably right-wing suspects -- despite evidence that al-Qaida strove to add anthrax to its arsenal.

So the Senate must follow the House's lead and require the intelligence inspector general to determine whether credible evidence exists of a link between a foreign entity and the anthrax attacks.

Mr. Kincaid chillingly points out that the FBI's handling of the case raises doubts about both its own practices and U.S. readiness for biological terror attacks. Without solid answers about the anthrax attacks, those doubts will only grow.

And my astute reader prodded me:

Look up America's Survival -- hell, look up Cliff Kincaid -- and you'll see what a RMS creation this study was.

Ok. Let's.

First the foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife:

• The Sarah Scaife Foundation granted $150,000 in 2008.
• The Sarah Scaife Foundation granted $60,000 in 2007.
• The Carthage Foundation granted $110,000 in 2007.
• The Carthage Foundation granted $60,000 in 2006.

That $380,000 right there.

Media Matters lists only five "funders" for America's Survival, Inc and "America's Survival":

• Armstrong Foundation
• Carthage Foundation
• Sarah Scaife Foundation
• Richard and Helen Devos Foundation

And of those, Armstrong and Devos only granted $11,000. The rest is from Scaife.

The circle-jerk continues.