« Huckabee Versus Freedom | Main | Who's Commute? Which Traffic Flow? » Pressure from Corporate Executives29 May 2008 03:01 pm [Matt] Jessica Yellin talks about "pressure from corporate executives" to slant coverage in a pro-war direction. But of course we're not supposed to talk about this, anymore than we're supposed to talk about why Phil Donohue got fired or why Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan both had fierce anti-war positions off air that they avoided expressing on camera. Comments (27)
I don't know why anybody would expect the corproate media to accurately report uncomfortable truths abouth themselves. It will never happen. 
To be complex does not mean to be fragmented. This is the paradox and the genius of our Canadian civilization.
Or Ashleigh Banfield.
Think I'll go out to Alberta--weather's good there in the fall. Got some friends that I could go to working for. Uh oh, I'm showing symptoms. Better go get tested.
I agree with Matt's genera point; but it is not true that Chris Matthews avoided expressing his anti-war views on camera. He did make fun of hippies, and he did gush over Bush Jr's macho image; but he was strongly against invading Iraq and was not at all shy about saying so.
..(explain)why Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan both had fierce anti-war positions off air that they avoided expressing on camera. If you look at the facts, Matthews was his media cheerleader whore self back in 2002-2003 boosting the war on terror. Buchanan, however, back then, opposed the Iraq War as an Isolationist and member of Reagan "Paleocon" faction that opposed the Neocons and their effort to remake the Middle East "more Israel-friendly". Buchanan wrote and lectured constantly that the Iraq adventure was a mistake back then, saying that Bush I did not march onto Baghdad for a host of good reasons after kicking Saddam out of Kuwait. If you wish to use a "wayback" time machine to see war supporters who promoted the war as media or voted for it in Congress - then became ferverent anti-War pacifists when the adventure soured, look at the liberals sucking up to fearful soccer moms at the time and "rah-rah" media sorts that flip on a dime any issue to be what they see as on the "winning side" of the argument. Especially Jewish-Americans. Who cheered going into Iraq, then had political or media career convenient "major regrets" and who covered themselves reversing positions by saying their 180 flip-flops were justified by "lack of WMD". Folks like Schumer, Wexler, Feinstein, Andrea Mitchell, Kerry, Judith Miller, the Washington Post and NY Times Mgmt - seduced by neocons. Who then reacted to adversity & pretended they never supported the War and were it's cheerleaders. Plus stalwart gentile liberals like Tom Harkin, the Clintons, Edwards, Bob Woodward. Who all later "flipped" against the War when Bush bungled dealing with AQ and the insurgents. Whereas, you may disagree with their principled stances - but Levin, Buchanan, Lieberman, and Russ Feingold took risky politically "inconvenient" positions given their constituencies, and stuck to them.
Of course, we're also not supposed to talk about how unbelievably biased in favor of Obama the media has been. Now that has been scientifically proven once again. Matthew, of course, will continue living in his faith-based fantasy world where the press is friendly to McCain, despite being scientifically proven false. But for people like Matthew, science is irrelevant if the science conflicts with their faith-based views.
I think there's a big difference between the various cases Matt mentions, and his comment downplays the significance of this story. Buchanan is a pundit who is brought on with the expectation of representing a certain camp's view. Matthews ostensibly moderates talk show that attempts to present various sides. Telling him to keep his personal opinions under his hat while serving this role is different from muzzling a news reporter and hiding the facts.
Wow, chris ford, while I didn't agree with every point, your post was interesting and coherent. Are you ok?
Oh goody, we're going to have another bout of Al seeing how many times he can repeat the word "scientifically" in a comment in the hope that that will magically make it so. This prompted by another study released by the same outfit that was roundly debunked last time Al tried to assert its scientific credentials by repeating the word "scientifically" ad nauseam. Note the study's own authors do not describe its findings in anything like the terms that Al does.
Matthew, of course, will continue living in his faith-based fantasy world where the press is friendly to McCain, despite being scientifically proven false. But for people like Matthew, science is irrelevant if the science conflicts with their faith-based views. Oh, yes, bow down before the undeniable SCIENCE of media criticism studies. Who can deny the cold hard facts produced by those folks in the white coats up at Columbia Journalism School, where they are able to test their theories of favorable narratives (and reproduce their experiments!) with their vast cages of reporter mice and their brand-new their electron-scanning bias-o-scope! Yes, who on earth could contest the findings of this SCIENCE of media studies? It's not as though any of the findings of the study that Al links to could be refuted by pointing out that a) Obama is a newcomer, thus earning more bio stories that are on the whole more favorable b) he's been winning a lot, which has the unfortunate tendency to produce favorable analysis of his campaign c) McCain has been a shift, opportunistic candidate whose own cynical attempts to appeal to the party's base was the source of the negative narratives, not some inherent bias of reporters.
See again Bill Moyer's documentary "Selling the War". Donohue lost his show for trying to find the truth. How many people promoting falsehoods have suffered any career damage? There are two major questions not asked here: Question one: Why do we allow the news corporations to lie to us with our own airwaves and with our own communications infrastructure?And to make huge profits doing so? Why do ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and FOX even exist still? Question Two: Why do you think they're telling us the truth today? Why do you think that they will not lie to us again --today or in the future?
Al, I know, I know, I should have known it would be the case before I even followed it.
Wait a minute, does anyone have any links to a ferverent Buchanan rallying against the war before it started? I recall Buchanan being a strong Bush supporter all the way through the 2004 elections. Heck I remember him on McLaughlin group and he didn't say this or that about the war. Shit, crazy old John still though in October that Bush would reveal found WMDs to spoil the election. Ooops.
Um, Chris Ford seems to have the most trenchant observation on the thread so far.
Al - Matthew, of course, will continue living in his faith-based fantasy world where the press is friendly to McCain, despite being scientifically proven false. I don't know what "science" you are referring to. Perhaps creationism "science"? The truth may be that they will likely favor their Black Messiah over McCain, but during the Republican primaries, their bias towards McCain and Huckabee (seen as being the person who would divide and spoil the conservative vote and allow McCain his "comeback") - were blatant and obvious. Romney, Rudy, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul were unrelentingly dissed by the media. Fred Thompson was boosted as long as he was seen as an ally of his "good Senate friend" the Hero McCain, then discarded after he and Huckabee and the media "flip-flopper!!! flip-flopper!!" campaign against Romney crippled him in California and gave the nomination to the King of flip-flopping Backroom Senate deal-making, "Come Back Kid!" McCain. (One of the more nauseating media cliches is the regular description of 60-year old Hillary, and 71 year old McCain as "The Come Back Kid!!")
Especially Jewish-Americans. Who cheered going into Iraq, Can you show opinion polls or any kind of actual facts to support that claim? Or was this just an impression in your unprejudiced imagination?
Re freddiemac's comment "Wait a minute, does anyone have any links to a ferverent Buchanan rallying against the war before it started? " Pat Buchanan wrote some of the most scathing denunciations of the Iraq War at a time when everybody else in Washington DC had their noses buried three feet up William Kristol's ass. See, e.g, his March 2003 column "Whose War?" "We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity. Not in our lifetimes has America been so isolated from old friends. Far worse, President Bush is being lured into a trap baited for him by these neocons that could cost him his office and cause America to forfeit years of peace won for us by the sacrifices of two generations in the Cold War. They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. False. The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a “passionate attachment” to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America... ...Let us conclude. The Israeli people are America’s friends and have a right to peace and secure borders. We should help them secure these rights. As a nation, we have made a moral commitment, endorsed by half a dozen presidents, which Americans wish to honor, not to permit these people who have suffered much to see their country overrun and destroyed. And we must honor this commitment. But U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical. They often collide, and when they do, U.S. interests must prevail. Moreover, we do not view the Sharon regime as “America’s best friend.”... ...Though we have said repeatedly that we admire much of what this president has done, he will not deserve re-election if he does not jettison the neoconservatives’ agenda of endless wars on the Islamic world that serve only the interests of a country other than the one he was elected to preserve and protect. Ref: http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html You rarely even SAW Pat on TV after that because he was shunned by the networks for pointing out Bush and the Neocons had no clothes. Only his friend John McLaughlin gave Pat airtime on PBS. More recently, Keith Olbermann's had Pat on. Rachel Maddow also likes Pat -- because , as she noted, he's so far to the right that he bumps into her whenever she moves to the left.
In October 2007, Pat Buchanan gave this prescient warning of where an invasion of Iraq would lead: "Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.” So wrote British historian A.J.P. Taylor in 1961. All the 20th century empires forgot the lesson and all perished of wounds suffered in Great Wars: the Ottoman, Russian Austro-Hungarian and German empires in World War I, the Japanese in World War II, the French and British the morning after. Comes now the turn of the Americans. Guided through the Cold War by conservative statesmen like Eisenhower and Reagan, America rejected Churchillian romanticism and, even in the face of horrors like the butchery in Budapest in 1956, refused to risk the Great War. But now a triumphalist America has begun to behave like all the rest. If Providence does not intrude, we will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the “On-to-Berlin!” bravado with which French poilus and British Tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict. More likely, it will be the “bloody mess” of which Tony Cordesman warns. ... To destroy Saddam’s weapons, to democratize, defend and hold Iraq together, U.S. troops will be tied down for decades. Yet, terrorist attacks in liberated Iraq seem as certain as in liberated Afghanistan. For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world. With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavor at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. Twelve years ago, this writer predicted that George Bush’s Gulf War would be “the first Arab-American War.” The coming war will not be the last. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."
Correction: The above warning was in October 2002.
On September 26, 2001, Pat Buchanan warned --in this USA Today column --that the Neocons were trying to manipulate the war on Al Qaeda into a war on Israel's enemies. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2001-09-27-ncguest1.htm An excerpt: What must Bush do to retain their support? Target Hezbollah for destruction and retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to cut all ties to Hezbollah and move militarily to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Failure to attack Iraq, the neocons warn Bush, "will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism." ... If America wishes truly to be isolated, it will follow the neoconservative line. Conservatives should stand squarely with President Bush — and Gen. Powell."
"Rachel Maddow also likes Pat -- because , as she noted, he's so far to the right that he bumps into her whenever she moves to the left." This is true. Whatever one thinks of Buchanan's general views on whatever, he's been a critic of the Iraq war right along. His columns show up on Antiwar.com often. He's also concerned about the upcoming war on Iran. Unlike Matt, he can comment on that since he has balls.
I admire Pat Buchanan for his consistent opposition to the war but there are no heros here. Fear is what drove so many people who should have known better to support this horrible mistake. The American people by a 6 to 4 margin backed this war at the beginning, afraid of another September 11th (how ridiculous that seams now). For the various pundits (Hitchins, Sullivan etc) it was a fear of being on the losing side of an argument. For Democratic Senators and House Members, it was a fear of a repeat of Gulf War I where most Democrats opposed it and ended up looking weak after that war was such a big success. As for the MSM, as Scott McClellan's book illustrates, they were cowered by Bush's (at the time) high popularity. Bush himself was probably afraid of not looking tough enough if he kept it to one (largely indecisive) war. The truth is, after September 11th, the United States, the last remaining super power, the biggest baddest country of all time was a country full of pussy-wimps eager to prove they were tough by doing the stupidest thing they possibly could have done. Now it's a land of people pointing fingers at each other. How our founding fathers would be proud.
You have to love Cooper's "shocked, shocked" tone when asking Yellin if she really got pressure from executives to give the Administration positive coverage.
Matthews was very antsy in the lead up to the war. He openly questioned why we were rushing in without a real conversation about the consequences. I don't remember him railing against the war before we invaded, but he was no cheerleader, and his trepidation was clear to anyone who watched.
READ LAST PARAGRAPH:
Hail and farewell Chris Matthews Washington -- For 15 years, I have been among the grand and lucky few to write a newspaper column. It's something I had wanted for a long time, something I owe to one bloke: Larry Kramer. In June 1987, I lingered with him over lunch and several carafes of house white in a South of Market restaurant. My sister-in-law Ann was about to get married at the Metropolitan Club, and I was just checking in with an old friend. Larry had been metro editor of the Washington Post and was now executive editor of the Examiner. (He's now chairman and CEO of MarketWatch. com.) He asked if I wanted to write a column. I said, as if kneeling at the altar of my life, "I do," and it has made all the difference. I can't remember not wanting to be a columnist. When I was in college, my hero was Joe McGinnis. Just 25, he was already writing three times a week in the Philadelphia Inquirer. At Chapel Hill in grad school, I'd pore over the page of the Raleigh News & Observer across from the editorials, what I'd later learn to call the "op-ed page." That's where I came across that crusty Dixiecrat, James J. Kilpatrick, and began my lifelong homage to him and other great newspaper columnists. When I got to Washington, I learned the crackle of the Washington Post, just then beginning its Watergate heyday. At the bottom of the Style section -- Ben Bradlee's child -- I discovered the inimitable Nicholas von Hoffman. A political son of Chicago firebrand Saul Alinsky, Nick did just as much as Woodward and Bernstein to rip away the Nixon cover-up. I will never forget his portrait of aide Ron Ziegler trooping mechanically in and out of the White House press room like a figure in a Schwarzwald clock. What von Hoffman could do from the left, George F. Will soon matched from the right. I watched Will join the masters of the universe: David Broder, Joseph Kraft, Bob Novak, Jimmy Breslin, Murray Kempton and Jack Newfield. I remember having dinner in Belfast on the eve of the Good Friday peace referendum. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Mary McGrory of the Washington Post, Mike Barnicle of the Boston Globe and I all sat around the table. We all had our roots in Ireland, and I loved it. But I can't kid myself. I never made their world. They were the best writers in the business. When I see this final column in The Chronicle, I will continue to worship these people from below. Even after a decade and a half of trying, I don't know how they do it: the endless flow of news ideas, the ever- surprising settings, the out-the-blue insights, the fine and faultless language. And yes, I hunger still for the imagined thrill of walking into a dark big- city bar and having some guy look up from his drink and either knock me or love me for something I've written that day. But this is my last column. The wisdom of middle age has taught me I can't have -- or do -- it all. I remember Sen. Ed Muskie the night he won his last election back in 1976. He'd had some vodka, which I sensed he'd drunk fast -- like a Russian against the winter. He said: "The only reason to be in politics is to be out there all alone and then be proven right." So I'll say it: I hate this war that's coming in Iraq. I don't think we'll be proud of it. Oppose this war because it will create a millennium of hatred and the suicidal terrorism that comes with it. You talk about Bush trying to avenge his father. What about the tens of millions of Arab sons who will want to finish a fight we start next spring in Baghdad? Well, that's it for now. You know where I stand.
Comments closed June 12, 2008. |
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Heads in the Sand
It is the craziest of conspiracy theories for an employee to suggest that her or his employer might have some sort of substantial influence over what she or he does. That's just crazy talk.
Posted by El Cid | May 29, 2008 3:19 PM