MEDIA WHORES
by Joel M. Skousen, World Affairs Brief
The establishment never misses an opportunity to brag about their journalistic "independence" and "neutrality." However, they are every bit the unprincipled yesmen and paid-for hacks that plague the corporate environment they so despise as "mercenary." On very rare occasions a media personality slips and exposes the hypocrisy of journalistic integrity. One such admission was revealed by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino as she kept evading attempts by a White House reporter to get her to admit that the dollar was being weakened by the massive US bailout of Wall Street. The reporter was perplexed at Perino’s refusal to admit what "everybody knows." In order to stop the conversation, Perino blurted out: "I’m under strict orders not to talk about the dollar. I’m not going to get fired just to answer your question." Journalists are no different. They buckle under the threat of being demoted, sidelined or let go.
While we rarely get such admissions from mainstream reporters, the media has a telling habit of incessantly quoting official sources, parroting the official government line with nary a contrary opinion. When someone does speak in opposition, it is always a person they select who predictably can be depended upon to limit his or her comments to mild challenges to details or side issues, but who will never attack the major government doctrine or premise.
Norman Solomon documents plainly the media’s uniform approval for the war agenda: "While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter's voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: ‘There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen.’ Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the US media establishment. In the ‘War Made Easy’ documentary film, I put it this way: ‘If you're pro-war, you're objective. But if you're antiwar, you're biased. And often, a news anchor will get no flak at all for making statements that are supportive of a war and wouldn't dream of making a statement that's against a war.’
"So it goes at NPR News, where - on ‘Morning Edition’ as well as the evening program ‘All Things Considered’ -- the sense and sensibilities tend to be neatly aligned with the outlooks of official Washington. The critical aspects of reporting largely amount to complaints about policy shortcomings that are tactical; the underlying and shared assumptions are imperial. Washington's prerogatives are evident when the media window on the world is tinted red, white and blue."
But from the Left we do get a good book once in a while that tracks the collusion of the media with the government. Greg Mitchell tracked a key issue in his book, So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President——Failed on Iraq. Of course, it’s always billed as a failure—not collusion or conspiracy, so you’ll have to apply your own analysis as you read about this pattern of collusion. Here are a few excerpts from Amy Goodman’s interview with Greg Mitchell, editor of the longtime trade journal Editor & Publisher.
AMY GOODMAN: "We’re moving into the sixth year of this war. What’s so interesting about your book is that you start from the beginning, and it’s almost like a diary, a journal, of how the foundation was built, the justifications were built, for war... Talk about the pre-invasion period and what you felt was most— how the media was most successful in laying the false foundation.
GREG MITCHELL: "Well, as you said, it really was the mainstream media that, starting early on, relayed the false information that came from the administration——as we know, the New York Times and the Washington Post, among the worst in that——and it not only was putting forth the false information, but also the placement of it, putting it on the front page. So it wasn’t just a matter of carrying the information. So it had tremendous impact on everyone, including Democrats in Congress, who were afraid to speak out...
AMY GOODMAN: "Talk about the ‘Iraq Follies,’ and you’ve summarized this in a recent piece you did, the eighteen things we’ve already forgotten about the media’s flawed coverage of Iraq.
GREG MITCHELL: "Well, it’s really going back to the run-up and past the run-up, all the various commentators, like Chris Matthews or Bill O’Reilly or David Brooks and Tom Friedman—people like to poke fun at Tom Friedman [NY Times] for the so-called ‘Friedman Unit,’ where he continually every six months would say, ‘Let’s give the war another six months,’ and that went on for four years... . But that was actually sort of a majority position.
AMY GOODMAN: "You have, number one, the day before the invasion, Bill O’Reilly said, ‘If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it’s clean, he has nothing [no WMD], I will apologize to the nation; I will not trust the Bush administration again, all right?’
GREG MITCHELL: "Right. Well, that didn’t quite happen. He did have a brief period when there were all those polls came out that showed that the Iraqis, the majority of Iraqis, were in favor of shooting at Americans, and that kind of threw him off his game for about a week, and he said, ‘Well, if they don’t want us there, let’s get out.’ But then he——you know, he kind of settled down [kept supporting the administration, and no one called him on his prior commitments].
AMY GOODMAN: "After the fall of Baghdad, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declares, ‘We’re all neocons now.’
GREG MITCHELL: "Well, Chris likes to think of himself as being antiwar now, but he was a cheerleader as much as anyone back then, and that might surprise a few people.
AMY GOODMAN: "But there was someone else at MSNBC: Phil Donahue.
GREG MITCHELL: "Right. Well, yeah, Phil was really their star before the war. And he actually took the radical position of occasionally having antiwar people on, maybe even yourself, occasionally. And because of that, he was accused of being insufficiently patriotic, and so he was, shortly thereafter, was let go at the network, even though his ratings were higher than anyone else ——that says we can’t have our flagship show having these antiwar voices."
AMY GOODMAN: "Now, the White House Correspondents Dinner each year, you talk about one of them right at the time of the invasion.
GREG MITCHELL: "Right. Well, it was actually a similar dinner, Radio and TV Correspondents, same idea. But, you know, the usual thing is for the——they poke fun at the President, and sometimes the President shows up and pokes fun at himself. And this was, you know, three or four years ago, and it was really one of the—I would call it one of the worst, disgraceful moments in the history of the presidency, where President Bush appeared and showed a video, or actually a slide show, of him sort of looking around the White House and looking under desks and looking under chairs, and he kept saying, ‘Where are those missing WMDs? I can’t find those missing WMDs. Are they over here? Or are they over there?’ And the media laughed like crazy about it. They thought it was one of the funniest things they’d seen. And even afterwards, there was very few——very little criticism. "David Corn was one who did raise some criticism, but there was very little criticism from the media. And I don’t know which was more disgraceful, the President’s actions or the media’s lack of response [protecting the president].
AMY GOODMAN: "Well, let’s go to Stephen Colbert. This was later. This was April 2006. Of course, Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s fake news program, The Colbert Report, mocking the press for its failings in a blistering routine at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in May of 2006. He was the featured speaker of the night. He addressed a packed crowd that very significantly included President Bush, also a number of cabinet members, most of the country’s most recognizable TV anchors and correspondents. This is some of what Stephen Colbert had to say.
STEPHEN COLBERT: "And as excited as I am to be here with the President, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the President’s side, and the Vice President’s side. But the rest of you, what are you thinking? Reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they’re super-depressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew. But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works. The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction! [brilliant satire!]"
AMY GOODMAN: "His performance was one of the most talked-about topics on the internet the next day. But the corporate media? Ignored him. According to the media watch group Media Matters, subsequent press coverage focused only on President Bush’s short speech, while omitting mention of Stephen Colbert. All three major TV networks played clips of Bush’s routine on their morning shows but ignored Colbert entirely. CNN’s American Morning did the same. New York Times’s initial coverage of the night omitted any reference to Colbert.
GREG MITCHELL: "Well, it was obvious that the media—if he had just poked fun at the President, he might have gotten away with it. But the fact that he was just as critical of the media is—the clip you just showed is actually included in my book. They kind of kicked back. I remember Dana Milbank and other people appearing on TV and saying, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that funny’.... But really, they were kind of reeling. They’re not used to getting that kind of mockery to their faces.
AMY GOODMAN: "I wanted to go back in time to this excerpt of the documentary War Made Easy that features the mediate critic Norman Solomon. It relates to the media’s response to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech at the United Nations, making the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
COLIN POWELL: Saddam Hussein’s intentions have never changed. He is not developing the missiles for self-defense. These are missiles that Iraq wants in order to project power, to threaten and to deliver chemical, biological and, if we let him, nuclear warheads. AARON BROWN: Today, Secretary of State Powell brought the United Nations Security Council, the administration’s best evidence so far. NORMAN SOLOMON: After Colin Powell’s speech to the UN, immediately the US press applauded with great enthusiasm. AARON BROWN: Did Colin Powell close the deal today, in your mind, for anyone who has yet objectively to make up their mind? HENRY KISSINGER: I think for anybody who analyzes the situation, he has closed the deal. SEAN HANNITY: This irrefutable, undeniable, incontrovertible evidence today, Colin Powell brilliantly delivered that smoking gun today. Colin Powell was outstanding today. I mean, it was lockstep——it was so compelling, I don’t see how anybody, at this point, cannot support this effort. ALAN COLMES: He made a wonderful presentation. I thought he made a great case for the purpose of disarmament. MORT KONDRACKE: It was devastating, I mean, and overwhelming. Overwhelming abundance of the evidence. Point after point after point with—he just flooded the terrain with data. CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It’s the end of the argument phase. America has made its case. FOX NEWS: The Powell speech has moved the ball. CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I think the case is closed [none of these news leaders made any apologies after the Powell speech was discredited].
GREG MITCHELL: "Right. Well, actually, that clip is a little misleading, in that all the people in it——The Washington Post, the New York Times and those people just bought into it, just as much as you saw on Fox News.... if you think of February 15, the massive protests in the streets—millions rocked the world in protest. Where were those people in these corporate network studios? [failing to interview any of the significant war protestors before the invasion]. It’ incredible. We interviewed Daniel Ellsberg, and we interviewed Norman Solomon, and we interviewed Arianna Huffington and people like that. They were certainly available."
There you have it—managed news by selective omissions.