A new media study has found that ABC, CBS, and NBC excluded the opinions of poor people from their coverage of poverty issues. “The study found that poor people’s opinions on the causes and solutions to poverty were absent in most coverage. Poor people were mainly included only to tell anecdotal stories of suffering, before the networks turned to “experts” who discussed what policies should be pursued to address the situation.”

During his high-profile, six-hour visit to Iraq, President Bush declared: “if the kind of success we are now seeing here continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces.”

The media latched on to this superficial remark as a “clear indication” and a “hint” that the President intended to redeploy troops from Iraq in the near future. CBS News called the trip a “dramatic move to steal the thunder from the Democratic Congress.”

Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, however, are skeptical. They’ve produced a new ad, nothing that we’ve heard exaggerated declarations of progress in Iraq and false promises of troop reductions from the Bush administrations before. They pose the question, “Do they really mean it this time?“:

For a reality-based assessment of the results of the surge, see BodyPolitik’s own “ActUp” report, “The Surge Has Failed, The Troops Must Come Home.”

According to media reports, President Bush is strongly considering replacing outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales with Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. While bloggers and media outlets have reviewed Chertoff’s failures before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina to demonstrate why he is unfit to become Attorney General, his role in covering up the torture of John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, has been overlooked.

In June 2002, Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, offered to drop conspiracy, terrorism, and attempted murder charges if Lindh would plead guilty to “providing assistance” to an “enemy of the U.S.” and to “carrying a weapon.” Chertoff dramatically reduced the charges in order to prevent Lindh from testifying in court and disclosing the president’s policy of torturing “Afghan and Al Qaeda captives at Bagram Air Base and other locations.”

To further ensure that Lindh wouldn’t disclose “weeks of torture at the hands of American forces,” Chertoff required Lindh to sign a statement “swearing he had ‘not been intentionally mistreated’ by his US captors and waiving any future right to claim mistreatment or torture.” In addition, Chertoff attached a “special administrative measure,” essentially a gag order, barring Lindh from talking about his experience for the duration of his sentence.”

During his confirmation hearings to the United States Court of Appeals and later as head of the Department of Homeland Security, Chertoff misled Congress about his involvement in the Lindh case. According to Jesselyn Radack, a former attorney in the ethics department of the Justice Department, Chertoff contradicted the public record and erroneously claimed that “the Ethics unit had never given an opinion about the interrogation of John Walker Lindh.”

In light of the consequences of Gonzales’ cronyism, “the DOJ and the country desperately need a completely outside figure who will ensure that the prosecutorial machinery operates independently.” Yet, Chertoff’s track record of covering up Bush’s abuse of power show he would simply be more of the same.

Media coverage of Alberto Gonzales’ resignation has ignored evidence that the administration used the Department of Justice to pursue ‘voter fraud’ and suppress minority votes.

While the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times alluded to the attorney general firing scandals in separate articles analyzing the embattled Attorney General’s scandal-ridden tenure, none mentioned the voting scandal. The media narrative focused on Gonzales‘ loyalty without ever explaining the substantive consequences of his cronyism.

As the PBS program NOW with David Brancaccio reported in July, the Republicans challenged hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters in 2004 by sending them test congratulations letters. “If a letter could not be delivered, the name was added to a list of people the Republicans planned to stop as they tried to vote.” The Republican Party has admitted to challenging voters, but has disputed charges that it illegally targeted minority voters and African American soldiers serving in Iraq. Congress is now investigating these allegations.

According to former New Mexcio Attorney General David Iglesias, the administration also used the Department of Justice to challenge voters. Iglesias alleges that he received emails “with memoranda attached to them in the fall of 2002, 2004 and then again in 2006…[which] admonished U.S. Attorneys to work closely with election officials to offer assistance and investigate and prosecute what appeared to be voter fraud cases.” Iglesias was fired after “his task force could not find a single case of voter fraud worth prosecuting.”

And while the 2004 Republican scheme to purge African Americans from the voter rolls in battle ground states was not directed by Gonzales, his resignation offers mainstream media outlets an important opportunity to re-examine previously underreported aspects of the Attorney General firing scandal.

But if early reports are any indication, mainstream media will rehash Gonzales’ background and well known allegiance to Bush in lue of critically reporting on the consequences of Gonzales’ tenure at the Department of Justice.