Letters to the Editor
bloomsbury
Published Letters: 365 Editor's Choice: 5
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Whittaker and Baxter
[Read the article: What happened to McCain the reformer?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's interesting to go back to the roots of PR and spin in US politics. The firm of Whittaker and Baxter dominated this field from 1933 to 1951. In 1949 W&B offered their services to the American Medical Association to block Harry Truman's health insurance program. They won. In fact in sixty elections and referendums W&B won 55. The people usually lost but that was never a consideration for them; they operated in the moral universe of a skilled lawyer who goes all out to win a case. They had some guidelines for how to win an election:
1.They believed an attack campaign was always the best campaign.
2.An enemy had to be created against whom the voters needed to be warned.
3. Issues would be few but must be clearly stated and should confront the voter with an emotional decision. In other words, feel, don't think.
4. The independent vote is critical in a close election and once the party is captured by a nomination,the independent must be the target of all suasion and PR.
5. W&B also believed that a campaign must have an inner rhythm, a pace and a timing that would capture the attention of all news systems, both print and electronics.
For the right money W&B could craft a tailor made campaign for anyone and for any cause and they almost always won. The surface may have been clinical and professional but day to day the underbelly could be very ugly. In the 1964 campaign where Nelson Rockefeller ran against Barry Goldwater, Rockefeller described,'...rough stuff. I mean this, you know, I mean everything from having acid put in the punch at a reception, to having bomb threats almost every night, phone calls, (Democrat)workers, women workers in the party driven off the road in their cars at night and so forth. This is a rough business.' The Republicans used California's largest newspapers, all owned by Republicans, to reach the voters. All these newspapers were treated as if they were an arm of the party. Obviously that tendency has only grown with time until it's turned from improper influence into outright corruption. On balance the viciousness remains but is expressed in a more cunning way. I don't think anyone's put acid in the punch for quite some time. Clearly McCain stands on the shoulders of moral midgets.
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what a real journalist does
[Read the article: Tim Russert, one of the good guys]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There was a moment during the election here in 2007 when one of our best journalists, Kerry O'Brien, who works for the equivalent of the BBC, forced Prime Minister John Howard to admit that he intended to resign and retire after the election. He achieved this by aggressive and dogged questioning and the outcome was that from that moment on the whole impetus of the election shifted in favour of the opposition because Howard's admission meant he wouldn't be around and his treasurer (a man loathed by the voters) would be handed the Prime Ministership on a platter without ever going to the people. There were a lot of other factors, of course, but that moment where Howard actually told the truth under intense questioning from a fearlessly independent journalist could NEVER HAPPEN on 'Meet the Press'- and it changed the whole dynamic of the election. Blaming Russert won't achieve anything. The fact is, your media has been bought off. The day Russert went to court and admitted that he didn't apply the blowtorch to Cheney over the Valerie Plame affair because he 'wouldn't get access' if he did so was the day he admitted he was just pretending to be a journalist.
Maybe he was a good catholic. Maybe he was a nice, happy person. Maybe at one stage he had a social conscience but it's amazing how a large salary can put a social conscience to sleep. Am I cruel to say that a recently dead man didn't do his job? Fine. Then I'm cruel. But which is crueller: to criticize a man who didn't live up to his own standards or to be what he was: a highly paid part of a disinformation system which has allowed business to pay workers $5 an hour in the richest country in the world and to refuse health care even to children, while climate change is denied and ridiculed and the arms industry and companies like Halliburton and Lockheed Martin are supported in their desire to fight endless and futile wars thereby plunging millions of people into death or disability or statelessness? I think the answer's obvious. The biggest indictment of the world's media, not just yours, is its refusal to expose 9/11 for what it was and to admit that the 'War on Terror' is at the very least a manipulation of the truth. The truth is trickling out, but the world's media will fight the truth to their last gasp because it reveals what they've become. More children die every day from water-borne diseases than from aids; in other words they die because they're poor. You might be interested to know that Lockheed Martin has been engaged by Bush and friends to look into getting hold of the world's water supplies. This company will rove the world taking water (by force if necessary) for America because America in the end won't be destroyed by terrorists, it will be destroyed by it's climate and its unsustainable economic and political model.One of the biggest man made lakes in America only has twelve years of water left. We've already had the oil war (thanks to people like Russert) and the next war will be the water war. Here's a clue: you won't see any of this on 'Meet the Press', whoever is in the anchor's chair.