Letters to the Editor
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A more complicated 'truth'?
Steve W wrote:
"The simple truth is that these people are putting out what their corporate masters are telling them to say."
I doubt that it's that blatant, with some exceptions like the fellow who wrote "Blinded by the Right". I think conservative-leaning news organizations tend to hire and promote reporters whose biases they like. By the time someone climbs to the White House press corps beat, or to 'pundit' status, they've been screened many times for ideological acceptability. Further, by the time they've climbed that high, their pay and perks strongly reinforce thinking like a Republican. Back in the 1930's and 1940's, when journalists sought to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" (at least in hazy rose-tinted historical memories) those reporters probably struggled to put groceries on their own tables. These days most national-level reporting is done by people who are well paid and privileged.
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David broder
Broder is a perfect example of how the MSN has lost it's way and stopped functioning as a government watchdog. His belief is that the Beltway, government and Beltway media alike, is an exclusive club with decorum and tradition. The most important thing is to maintain the decorum and no member of the club should ever make waves or question the integrity or intentions of other club members. To Broder, the club should accept into its ranks only true insiders-that's why he rejected the Clintons even before the 1993 inauguration. To him they were outsiders who didn't belong. Club members should get along and never attack each other, even when some commit crimes, like Bush/Cheney/Rove and their cronies obviously have, because the club and its selective membership is above everything else.
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@pantanal
“Chris Matthews knows very well that unless he criticizes the Democrats immediately after questioning the Iraq war, he would be out of a job.”
Then what about MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann who is not careful how he criticizes the Repugs and doesn’t worry about balancing both sides of an issue? Simple, his ratings are now higher than any other news network show during his time period and he has the integrity to report things as he, not corporate sees them.
I think this balancing of both views at the same time that is the hallmark of PBS and many other news shows, gets out of whack because of who is selected. Personalities and ability to create a ruckus often overshadow the accuracy and quality of the information presented. It gets back to coverage being a spectator sport, particularly when sex can be thrown into the mix. Just because two sides are represented doesn’t mean balanced reporting when infotainment and ratings score much higher than journalism.
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The Rovian Myth Cycle
This really is a major national scandal. It reveals more than anything the national political media's lack of any core beliefs. I am also more than a little sick of the "Karl Rove is a genius" meme. The grand sum total of Rove's "genius" is his total amorality and willingness to do absolutely anything to win combined with the insight that normal, decent folks who play by the rules are large incapable of imagining that anyone would do what he routinely does and thus are unable to respond effectively in a timely manner. This is always the true sociopath's ultimate advantage over his victims.
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@Glenn re: GE and Disney
The word "conspiracy", although it is legitimate as a definition, is often used to poison the well of anyone who argues that a social system is rigged to preserve the interests of those people who control it. Things that get named conspiracy, don't always happen in secret or as a result of direct personal communications. Sometimes it's just day-to-day normative behavior on the parts of people who intend to preserve their interests by any means possible.
Anyway, here's a little something on GE and Disney from 2004:
Officially, GE (NBC’s parent company) chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt has yet to publicly declare himself politically. But anyone who spends time with him knows which way he blows. “He’s as right-wing as they come,” an insider tells L.A. Weekly. “Just as bad as Bob Wright.”
Wright, now GE’s vice chairman but also NBC’s long-term boss, never tried to hide his Republican partisanship because he never had to. For seemingly eons, his mentor and Immelt’s predecessor, Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger. Welch used to boast openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and Tim Russert into neocons. And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would prove once and for all whether Welch in 2000 ordered his network and cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead of Gore that election night.
As for Immelt, he uses all the Republican buzzwords with obvious ease. Complain about GE’s job outsourcing and he labels it “class warfare.” And he declared to Fox News’ business anchor, Neil Cavuto, that he wished his own network’s MSNBC talk TV could be “as interesting and edgy as you guys are. I think the standard right now is Fox.” MSNBC and increasingly CNBC as well are Fox News clones.
In return, Immelt is beginning to bag Republican perks, like appointment to President Bush’s Commission on Social Security. Besides all those lucrative U.S. defense contracts, his GE has snagged $450 million of orders in Iraq alone in 2003, and an apparent $3 billion more over the next few years. Plus, more than half of Iraq’s power grid is GE technology. Even before the fighting there started, Immelt told CNBC it was a GE business opportunity. “We built about a billion-dollar security business that’s going to be growing by 20 percent a year, so we’ve been able to play into that.”
Nor does it hurt that GE recently installed Anna Perez, a former Bush adviser to W and Condi who also served as press secretary to former first lady Barbara Bush, as NBC Universal’s executive vice president of communications.
Then there’s Disney’s Michael Eisner. As the longtime chairman and CEO, Eisner was never in the league of MCA/Universal’s Lew Wasserman, inarguably the most active Democratic activist of the media-mogul crowd. In contrast to Wasserman’s huge effort to get Hollywood-wide support for Jimmy Carter back in 1976, Eisner, while a Democrat, made just a small personal effort on behalf of the primary campaigns for his buddies Bob Kerry and Bill Bradley.
But that was then and this is now. Disney has turned most of ABC’s extensive radio network and owned-and-operated stations into a 24/7 orgy of right-wing talk. Disney’s chief lobbyist, Preston Padden, is not only one of Washington, D.C.’s most infamous Republican lobbyists, but he used to work for Rupert Murdoch. And Padden was set to use all of his considerable influence in Congress and the White House on Disney’s behalf if that big bad Goliath, Comcast, really tried to gobble up the Mouse House. As a result, no one thought it just coincidental when W pleaded just days after 9/11 for Americans “to return to the kind of lives we were leading before [that], especially air travel. Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Go down to Disney World in Florida; take your families and enjoy life the way we want it to be enjoyed.” It was as close to a White House commercial for Disney as any corporation could dare hope.
Then Bush followed that up weeks later with a PR visit to Orlando, Florida, where the Magic Kingdom had suffered a 25 percent drop in ticket sales, where a national photo showed the theme park’s deserted entrance. And since then, in addition to the usual tax breaks from W’s brother, Jeb, Disney World has benefited from special security measures, including extra protection and a federally declared “no flyover zone.”
Given all of the above, when Eisner was replaced as chairman by former Democratic Senator George Mitchell, nobody seemed perturbed, not even when Mitchell sounded off in Kerry’s corner during the Boston convention this summer. And why should they since Mitchell is at best a short-timer? And let’s not forget that Eisner had already given the Bushies the biggest gift of all: pulling the distribution plug on Fahrenheit 9/11 even though stockholders were starving for movie-division profits after everything else on Disney’s slate in the first half of 2004 fell flat.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-14.htm