The mighty windbags
Thirty years ago, conservatives embarked on a plan to subvert journalism and skew America to the right. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

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By David Brock

May 11, 2004 | Since defecting from the Republican Party in the latter half of the 1990s and publishing a confessional memoir in 2002, I've discussed my right-wing past with politicians, political activists and strategists, academic scholars, student groups, fellow writers, and hundreds of readers of my book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative." I'm rarely asked anymore why I changed, or about the baroque intricacies of the anti-Clinton movement, which I once participated in and then renounced and exposed. After a presidential election decided by the Supreme Court, the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the war with Iraq, politics has moved to a different place.

Nowadays, when I talk about "Blinded by the Right," people want to know not how I was blinded by the Right, but how so much of the country seems to be in that position. For the first time since 1929, the Republican Party controls all three branches of government. Fewer people identify with the Democratic Party today than at any time since the New Deal. Conservatism seems the prevailing political and intellectual current, while liberalism seems a fringe dispensation of a few aging professors and Hollywood celebrities. People ask me, a former insider, how the Republican Right has won political and ideological power with such seeming ease and why Democrats, despite winning the most votes in the last three presidential elections, seem to be caught in a downward spiral, still able to win at the ballot box but steadily losing the battle for hearts and minds.

While it is not the only answer, my answer is: It's the media, stupid.

When I say this, in a more respectful way, to folks outside the right wing, I usually get either of two responses. Those who receive their news from the New York Times and National Public Radio give me blank stares. They are living in a rarefied media culture -- one that prizes accuracy, fairness, and civility -- that is no longer representative of the media as a whole. Those who have heard snippets of Rush Limbaugh's radio show, have caught a glimpse of Bill O'Reilly's temper tantrums on the FOX News Channel, or occasionally peruse the editorials in the Wall Street Journal think I'm a Cassandra. They view this media as self-discrediting and therefore irrelevant. They are living in a vacuum of denial.

Those who understand what I mean are either members of the media itself, have read media-criticism books or Internet sites devoted to the subject, or are in the political trenches every day dealing with the media. The gap between those who recognize right-wing media power for what it is and those who don't is wide and deep, as if they inhabit parallel universes. The gap is dangerous to democracy and needs to be closed.

When I came to Washington fresh out of college in 1986, I got a job at the Washington Times, the right-wing newspaper bankrolled by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Korean-born leader of a religious cult called the Unification Church. Though Moon's paper was said to be read in the Reagan White House, nobody paid much attention to it. We were the proverbial voice in the wilderness. Considering that the paper was governed by a calculatedly unfair political bias and that its journalistic ethics were close to nil, this was a good thing. That was eighteen years ago. Today, the most important sectors of the political media -- most of cable TV news, the majority of popular op-ed columns, almost all of talk radio, a substantial chunk of the book market, and many of the most highly trafficked Web sites -- reflect more closely the political and journalistic values of the Washington Times than those of the New York Times. That is, they are powerful propaganda organs of the Republican Party. For our politics, this development in the media represents a structural change: a structural advantage for the GOP and conservatism, and, I believe, the greatest structural obstacle facing opponents of the right wing. I therefore think it is one of the most important political stories of the era. I have sought to tell this story in "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy."

I know there is a Republican Noise Machine because I was once part of it. From the Washington Times, to a stint as a "research fellow" at the Heritage Foundation (the Right's premier think tank), to a position as an "investigative writer" at the muckraking magazine The American Spectator, and as the author of a best-selling right-wing book, I forwarded the right-wing agenda not as an open political operative or advocate but under the guise of journalism and punditry, fueled by huge sums of money from right-wing billionaires, foundations, and self-interested corporations.

By the time I said good-bye to the right wing in 1997, what was once a voice in the wilderness was drowning out competing voices across all media channels. The most influential political commentator in America, Rush Limbaugh, and his hundreds of imitators saturated every media market in the country, providing 22 percent of Americans -- not only conservatives but independent swing voters -- with their primary source of news. Conservatives had changed the face of the cable news business with the establishment of the top-rated FOX News Channel, a slicker broadcast version of the Moonie Washington Times. Pundit Ann Coulter and her fanatical ilk topped the best-seller lists, becoming superstars in the world of political punditry. The Spectator juggernaut -- which had a circulation of three hundred thousand per month at its height in the early 1990s -- had been replaced by Internet gossip Matt Drudge, who gets more than 6.5 million visitors to his site every day. Although enormous subsidies were still being pumped into right-wing media that did not turn a profit, right-wing media also had become a multibillion-dollar business, a development that powerfully affected all other commercial media.

The lies, smears, and vicious caricatures leveled against Bill and Hillary Clinton by this right-wing media, and then repeated in virtually every media venue in the country, have now been well documented, not least in "Blinded by the Right." In that book, I compared the anti-Clinton propaganda to a virus as it seeped off the pages of the Spectator into the minds of every sentient American. My memoir ended in 2000; what I did not fully comprehend then, but what is apparent to me now as I have watched the politics of the last few years unfold, is that the virus was not Clinton-specific. In fact, it had nothing to do with the Clintons per se; rather, in different strains, it would afflict any and every political opponent of the right wing, including Al Gore, Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, and the mourners of Senator Paul Wellstone, every major Democrat seeking the presidency in 2004, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org. What we have here, as a criminal investigator might say, is a pattern.

In the 2000 presidential campaign, the Republican Noise Machine, which worked for years to convince Americans that the Clintons were criminally minded, used the same techniques of character assassination to turn the Democratic standard-bearer, Al Gore, for many years seen as an overly earnest Boy Scout, into a liar. When Republican National Committee polling showed that the Republicans would lose the election to the Democrats on the issues, a "skillful and sustained 18-month campaign by Republicans to portray the vice president as flawed and untrustworthy" was adopted, the New York Times reported. Republicans accused Gore of saying things he never said -- most infamously, that he "invented" the Internet, a claim he never made that was first attributed to him in a GOP press release before it coursed through the media. Actually, Gore had said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," a claim that even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich verified as true.

The right-wing media broadcast this attack and similar attacks relentlessly, in effect giving the GOP countless hours of free political advertising every day for months leading up to the election. "Albert Arnold Gore Jr. is a habitual liar," William Bennett, a Cabinet secretary in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, announced in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. "... Gore lies because he can't help himself," neoconservative pamphleteer David Horowitz wrote. "LIAR, LIAR," screamed Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. The conservative columnist George F. Will pointed to Gore's "serial mendacity" and warned that he is a "dangerous man." "Gore may be quietly going nuts," National Review's Byron York concluded. The Washington Times agreed: "The real question is how to react to Mr. Gore's increasingly bizarre utterings. Webster's New World Dictionary defines 'delusion' thusly: 'The apparent perception, in a nervous or mental disorder, of some thing external that is not actually present ... a belief in something that is contrary to fact or reality, resulting from deception, misconception, or a mental disorder.'"

This impugning of Gore's character and the questioning of his mental fitness soon surfaced in the regular media. The New York Times ran an article headlined "Tendency to embellish fact snags Gore," while the Boston Globe weighed in with "Gore seen as 'misleading.'" On ABC's "This Week," former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos referred to Gore's "Pinocchio problem." For National Journal's Stuart Taylor, the issue was "the Clintonization of Al Gore, who increasingly apes his boss in fictionalizing his life story and mangling the truth for political gain." Washington Post editor Bob Woodward raised the question of whether Gore "could comprehend reality," while MSNBC's Chris Matthews compared Gore to "Zelig" and insisted, "Isn't it getting to be delusionary?"

The well-orchestrated media cacophony had its intended effect: The election was far more competitive than it should have been -- and, indeed, was decided before the Supreme Court stepped in -- because of negative voter perceptions of Gore's honesty and trustworthiness. In the final polls before the election and in exit polls on Election Day, voters said they favored Gore's program over George W. Bush's. Gore won substantial majorities not only for his position on most specific issues but also for his overall thrust. The conservative Bush theme of tax cuts and small government was rejected by voters in favor of the more liberal Gore theme of extending prosperity more broadly and standing up to corporate interests. Yet while Bush shaded the truth and misstated facts throughout the campaign on everything from the size of Gore's federal spending proposals to his own record as governor of Texas, by substantial margins voters thought Bush was more truthful than Gore. According to an ABC exit poll, of personal qualities that mattered most to voters, 24 percent ranked "honest/trustworthy" first -- and they went for Bush over Gore by a margin of 80 percent to 15 percent. Seventy-four percent of voters said "Gore would say anything," while 58 percent thought Bush would. Among white, college-educated, male voters, Gore's "untruthfulness" was cited overwhelmingly as a reason not to vote for him, far more than any other reason.

Two years after the election, Gore gave an extraordinary interview to the New York Observer that could be read as an explanation of what happened to his presidential campaign. Gore charged that conservatives in the media, operating under journalistic cover, are loyal not to the standards and conventions of journalism but, rather, to politics and party. Gore said:

"The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party. Fox News Network, the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh -- there's a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media.... Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this Fifth Column in their ranks -- that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what's objective as stated by the news media as a whole....

Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, the Washington Times and the others. And then they'll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they all start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they've pushed into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these RNC talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist...."

True to form, the right-wing media greeted this factual description with yet another frenzy of repetitive messaging portraying Gore as crazy. Speaking of Gore on FOX News, The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes said, "This is nutty. This is along the lines with, you know, President Bush killed Paul Wellstone, and the White House knew before 9/11 that the attacks were going to happen. This is -- I mean, this is conspiratorial stuff." Also on FOX, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said of Gore, "I'm a psychiatrist. I don't usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there's a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help." "It could be he's just nuts," Rush Limbaugh said of Gore. "Tipper Gore's issue is what? Mental health. Right? It could be closer to home than we know." "He [Gore] said it's a conspiracy," Tucker Carlson said on CNN's "Crossfire." "I actually think he's coming a little unhinged," The Weekly Standard's David Brooks, now at the New York Times, said of Gore on PBS.

As Gore's experience demonstrated, Democrats ignore these attacks at their peril: Not only do such attacks confirm the preconceptions of Republicans but they shape the thinking of undecided voters and even of Democrats. One of the most frightening experiences I have had in recent years in talking with rank-and-file Democrats is the extent to which they unconsciously internalize right-wing propaganda. To add insult to injury, too many Democrats have a tendency to blame the victims of these smears -- their own leaders -- rather than addressing the root of the problem. For instance, when Senator Daschle made the factual statement that "failed" diplomacy had led to war with Iraq, right-wing media accused him of siding with Saddam Hussein. The ensuing controversy caused many Democrats to think Daschle had put his foot in his mouth.

With the right-wing media now a seemingly permanent and defining feature of the media landscape, if Democrats cut through the propaganda and win back the White House in 2004, they still face the prospect of being brutally slammed and systematically slandered in such a way that will make governing exceedingly difficult. There should be no doubt that the right-wing media's wildings of 1993 -- which led to Clinton's impeachment four years later -- will be replayed over and over again until its capacities to spread filth are somehow eradicated.

Ironically, though not coincidentally, this radical transformation of the media has been obscured by conservative charges of "liberal media bias" that are believed by the vast majority of the public, including about half of Democrats. I'm all too familiar with the claim. From my very first days at the Washington Times, I was schooled to invoke "liberal bias" to deflect attention from my own biases and journalistic lapses and as a rationale to justify my presence in the mainstream media conversation in the name of providing "balance" or "the other side." We sold a lot of books and magazines and commanded lavish attention for our propaganda outside the right wing by using this cover story. As I showed in "Blinded by the Right," the truth was that my work as a right-wing journalist and commentator -- in particular, my American Spectator exposés on Anita Hill and the Clintons -- did not deserve the attention they received. I was delivering a truckload of nonfacts, half-truths, and innuendos, not "balance" or "the other side." What I show in "The Republican Noise Machine" is that my experience was not the exception but the rule.

The "liberal media" mantra aside, if one looks and listens closely to what the right wing says when it thinks others may not be paying attention, there should be no doubt that it has made potent political gains not despite the media but through it. Rush Limbaugh says his program has "redefined the media" and refers to the "Limbaugh echo chamber syndrome," by which messaging originating on his show drives the twenty-four-hour news cycle. "The radical Left," he says, "is furious that liberals no longer set the agenda in the national media." "'New media' outlets pound establishment," the Washington Times announced in an op-ed by right-wing publicist Craig Shirley. In a column explaining why the "outing" in the press of the identity of a covert CIA operative by senior Bush administration officials -- a possibly criminal act committed to harm a Bush critic -- did not spark a major political scandal, Tod Lindberg of the Hoover Institution explained in the Washington Times, "The media culture has changed. Conservatives and GOP partisans now have more than adequate means to offer an exculpatory counter-narrative." When CBS announced the cancellation of a biopic that was deemed unflattering toward the Reagans, Matt Drudge appeared on MSNBC, on a show hosted by a former Republican member of Congress, to announce the "beginning of a second media century .... It was the Internet, it was talk radio, it was cable that put pressure on CBS, and heretofore, there's never been this kind of pressure applied to one of the big titans, one of the big three." Brian C. Anderson, writing on OpinionJournal.com, a right-wing Web site published by the Wall Street Journal, in late 2003, informed conservatives, "[w]e're not losing anymore" and attributed this fact to a media "revolution." "Everything has changed," he wrote.

In a syndicated column titled "Culture War Signals," John Leo of U.S. News & World Report argued that "a corner has been turned" in the "culture wars" with the "rise of a large crop of commentators the left has not been able to match" and "conservative gains in new media" like the FOX News Channel. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks has written that the conservative media have "cohered to form a dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out." MSNBC's Matthews, interviewing Bernard Goldberg, the author of an attack book on the "liberal media" titled "Bias," got the author to agree with his view that the cable news industry -- whose total news audience is growing while that of the traditional broadcast news networks is declining -- is biased all right, though in favor of the right wing. According to Bill O'Reilly, "For decades, [liberals] controlled the agenda on TV news. That's over." In an interview with PBS, Tony Blankley, the former Newt Gingrich flack turned editorial page editor of the Washington Times and "McLaughlin Group" panelist, said:

"Starting in 1994, with the Republican election of Congress, I think Limbaugh made the difference in electing the Republican majority. In the following three elections, he made the difference holding the majority. And in 2000, in the presidential race in Florida, he was the difference between Gore and Bush winning Florida, and thus the presidency."

Commenting on the media while interviewing Ann Coulter about her book "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism," right-wing radio host Sean Hannity crowed, "We've basically taken over!" Coulter, who has made millions off the charge of "liberal media bias" while maintaining a career as perhaps the most biased right-wing voice in the media, laughed in agreement. A young writer for Rupert Murdoch's neoconservative Weekly Standard named Matt Labash -- whom I hired into right-wing journalism at The American Spectator -- was probably laughing, too, when he was interviewed by Columbia Journalism Review partner Web site JournalismJobs.com. The interviewer asked, "Why have conservative media outlets like The Weekly Standard and FOX News Channel become more popular in recent years?" In his answer, Labash conceded that conservatives reject in their own media the standards of fairness, accuracy, and unbiased coverage that they demand from the "liberal media." He unmasked the hypocrisy at the heart of these endeavors:

"Because they feed the rage. We bring pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly but it's true somewhat ... While these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media like to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective ... It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket."

Matt Labash's "great little racket" is the subject of "The Republican Noise Machine." This is a book about the explicitly right-wing media and about how mainstream media, sometimes under the direction of executives who are conservative Republicans, has succumbed to an undue conservative influence and tilt. It is about the right-wing media's history, its reach, its appeal, its practices, its methods, and its financing. It is also about the beliefs of those who populate right-wing media and the beliefs that people derive from it. My conclusion is that right-wing media is a massive fraud, victimizing its own audience and corrupting the broader political dialogue with the tacit permission of established media authorities who should, and probably do, know better.

I argue, moreover, that the creation of right-wing media, and of the strategies by which the right wing has penetrated, pressured, co-opted, and subdued the mainstream media into accommodating conservatism, was not an accident. Once upon a time, right-wing strategists, operatives, and financiers believed that they could never win political hegemony in the United States unless they won domination of the country's political discourse. Toward this end, a deliberate, well-financed, and expressly acknowledged communications and deregulatory plan was pursued by the right wing for more than thirty years -- in close coordination with Republican Party leaders -- to subvert and subsume journalism and reshape the national consciousness through the media, with the intention of skewing American politics sharply to the right. The plan has succeeded spectacularly.

The implications of this right-wing media incursion extend well beyond particular political outcomes to the heart of our democracy. Democracy depends on an informed citizenry. The conscious effort by the right wing to misinform the American citizenry -- to collapse the distinction between journalism and propaganda -- is thus an assault on democracy itself.

The problem is really not so much one of "bias," to use the Right's favored terminology, as it is where bias leads: In the biased right-wing media, among biased right-wing commentators, and in a mainstream media susceptible to right-wing scripting, it leads to verifiable journalistic malpractice, to the publication of misinformation, and to ethical malfeasance. At a deeper level, the existence and influence of the right-wing media as presently constituted is an affront to logic, rationality, and the maintenance of a shared knowledge base from which political consensus and correct public policy choices can be forged. While the right wing cleverly has achieved its greatest gains in mainstream media sectors that ostensibly present opinion -- columns, TV punditry, talk radio, and books -- this opinion is predicated on a raft of distortions, misrepresentations, and outright lies presented to readers and viewers as fact. To further confuse the picture, the right wing has funded an array of its own media institutions, including newspapers, magazines, Internet sites, and a cable news channel, that produce a large volume of "news" that is not only offensive and unfair but misleading and often false.

Because technological advances and the race for ratings and sales have made the wall between right-wing media and the rest of the media permeable, the American media as a whole has become a powerful conveyor belt for conservative-generated "news," commentary, story lines, jargon, and spin. It is now possible to watch a lie move from a disreputable right-wing Web site onto the afternoon talk radio shows, to several cable chat shows throughout the evening, and into the next morning's Washington Post -- all in twenty-four hours. This media food chain moves phony information and GOP talking points -- manufactured by and for conservatives, often bought and paid for by conservative political interests, and disseminated through an unabashedly biased right-wing media apparatus that follows no rules or professional norms -- into every family dining room, every workplace, and every Internet chat room in America.

Equally troubling is that the cable and radio talkers who shape the national political conversation have the ability to censor news that does not serve the interests of the right wing. Every day, professional news organizations, primarily in the prestige print press, report facts, across a broad range of subjects, that are essential to an informed view of politics and policy. More often than not, these stories die on the page and never reach most Americans, owing to right-wing command of the new media "echo chamber."

The right-wing drive for media power must also be understood as an overturning of the First Amendment, which posits that good information will drive out bad information given diversity in the marketplace of ideas. As I will show, the Right's premeditated undermining of the media as a public trust in favor of crass commercial values, its coordinated attacks on noncommercial media, and the Republican-led drive for greater consolidation of media ownership have all but wiped out liberal and left-wing views and voices in entire sectors of the American media. Perhaps most ominous, right-wing verbal brownshirts of late have used their mighty media platforms to chill the free speech of their political adversaries and to neuter aggressive journalistic fact-finding that threatens Republican power.

My view is that unchecked right-wing media power means that in the United States today, no issue can be honestly debated and no election can be fairly decided. If California voters recall their governor in the belief that the state budget deficit is four times higher than it actually is, if Americans think Saddam Hussein was behind September 11 before hearing any evidence, if 19 percent of the public thinks it is in the top 1 percent tax bracket, if Americans view criticism of the government's national security policies as tantamount to treason -- thank the right-wing media and those who abet it.

Excerpted with permission from "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy" by David Brock. Published by Crown Books.

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About the writer
David Brock's latest book is "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy." He is also the author of "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/05...e/index_np.html

Reading the Script
By PAUL KRUGMAN

A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.

For example, last summer, when growth briefly broke into a gallop, cable news decided that the economy was booming. The gallop soon slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. But judging from the mail I recently got after writing about the slowing economy, the script never changed; many readers angrily insisted that my numbers disagreed with everything they had seen on TV.

If you really want to see cable news scripts in action, look at the coverage of the Democratic convention.

Commercial broadcast TV covered only one hour a night. We'll see whether the Republicans get equal treatment. C-Span, on the other hand, provided comprehensive, commentary-free coverage. But many people watched the convention on cable news channels - and what they saw was shaped by a script portraying Democrats as angry Bush-haters who disdain the military.

If that sounds like a script written by the Republicans, it is. As the movie "Outfoxed" makes clear, Fox News is for all practical purposes a G.O.P. propaganda agency. A now-famous poll showed that Fox viewers were more likely than those who get their news elsewhere to believe that evidence of Saddam-Qaeda links has been found, that W.M.D. had been located and that most of the world supported the Iraq war.

CNN used to be different, but Campaign Desk, which is run by The Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies." Seconds after John Kerry's speech, CNN gave Ed Gillespie, the Republican Party's chairman, the opportunity to bash the candidate. Will Terry McAuliffe be given the same opportunity right after President Bush speaks?

Commentators worked hard to spin scenes that didn't fit the script. Some simply saw what they wanted to see. On Fox, Michael Barone asserted that conventioneers cheered when Mr. Kerry criticized President Bush but were silent when he called for military strength. Check out the video clips at Media Matters; there was tumultuous cheering when Mr. Kerry talked about a strong America.

Another technique, pervasive on both Fox and CNN, was to echo Republican claims of an "extreme makeover" - the assertion that what viewers were seeing wasn't the true face of the party. (Apparently all those admirals, generals and decorated veterans were ringers.)

It will probably be easier to make a comparable case in New York, where the Republicans are expected to feature an array of moderate, pro-choice speakers and keep Rick Santorum and Tom DeLay under wraps. But in Boston, it took creativity to portray the delegates as being out of the mainstream. For example, Bill Schneider at CNN claimed that according to a New York Times/CBS News poll, 75 percent of the delegates favor "abortion on demand" - which exaggerated the poll's real finding, which is that 75 percent opposed stricter limits than we now have.

But the real power of a script is the way it can retroactively change the story about what happened.

On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well.

But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week. Although there is now a long history of alerts with remarkably convenient political timing, and Tom Ridge politicized the announcement by using the occasion to praise "the president's leadership in the war against terror," this one may be based on real information. Regardless, it gives the usual suspects a breathing space; once calm returns, don't be surprised if some of those same commentators begin describing the ineffective speech they expected (and hoped) to see, not the one they actually saw.

Luckily, in this age of the Internet it's possible to bypass the filter. At c-span.org, you can find transcripts and videos of all the speeches. I'd urge everyone to watch Mr. Kerry and others for yourself, and make your own judgment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/03/opinion/03krug.html?th

Sandy Berger cleared. But shhh! It's a media secret

How quickly the press forgets. Just two weeks ago the cable news channels were flooded with anxious chatter over news that President Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Berger was under investigation for improperly removing classified terrorism documents from a secure reading room at the National Archives during preparations for this year's Sept. 11 commission hearings. The Beltway's biggest mini-scandal of the season, the episode was fanned by partisan Republican charges, launched by House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, that Berger may have been trying to hide embarrassing information from the 9/11 commission. At the time, Democrats noted news of the investigation, which had begun nine months earlier, was leaked to the press just two days before the release of the 9/11 commission, which was expected to be critical of the Bush administration's handling of some anti-terrorism and intelligence measures.

Last Friday the Wall Street Journal uncovered some actual news and shot down a key flank of the Republican talking points on the Berger controversy. The paper reported that National Archive officials looking into the Berger affair had determined "no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks." The Journal report continued, "Daniel Marcus, general counsel of the 9/11 Commission, said the panel had been assured twice by the Justice Department that no originals were missing and that all of the material Mr. Berger had access to had been turned over to the commission. 'We are told that the Justice Department is satisfied that we've seen everything that the archives saw,' and 'nothing was missing,' he said."

The Department of Justice is still investigating the fact that Berger breached policy by removing copies of a classified "after-action report" that he had ordered to study the Clinton administration's handling of terrorist threats at the time of the millennium. Berger, who admitted the removal and returned some copies after being contacted by government officials, has said it was unintentional.

But if you think the press rushed in to follow-up the Journal's report about Berger being cleared by the 9/11 commission, guess again; the press' subsequent silence has been deafening. "Ever since they invented ink and paper, charges have got more space than the truth," says Joe Lockhart, the former Clinton press secretary who has been acting as Berger's spokesman. "Am I disappointed more people haven't picked this up? Yes. Am I surprised? Absolutely not." Not one major newspaper, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, or Washington Post, has reported on the Journal's 9/11 commission findings. And in the four days since the Journal report, CNN has aired just 6 very brief mentions of the development. None of CNN's reports lasted more than 60 seconds, and none involved CNN interviewing experts to get their take on the news. Stitched together the six mentions totaled maybe four minutes of TV time. Compare that to two weeks ago when the Berger story was first leaked and CNN aired more than 40 in-depth segments, covering hours and hours of airtime.

Then again, CNN's six mentions is five more than the NBC/MSNBC/CNBC news team has managed to date. That, compared to the 22 Berger segments it ran. Fox News has not reported the Journal's finding, despite the fact it ran more than a dozen Berger stories/segments two weeks ago.

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html

The Republican Noise Machine
David Brock, the reformed conservative noise-maker, on how the Right has sabotaged journalism, democracy, and truth.

Bradford Plumer
September 01 , 2004

As a young journalist in the 1990s, David Brock was a key cog the Republican noise machine. Writing for the American Spectator, a conservative magazine funded by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, Brock gained fame for his attack pieces on Anita Hill and President Bill Clinton. Then, in 2002, Brock came clean. In his memoir, Blinded by the Right, Brock admitted that his work was based on lies and distortion, and part of a coordinated smear campaign funded by wealthy right wing groups to discredit Clinton and confuse the public.

Since then, Brock has continued to expose the conservative media onslaught. In his newest book, The Republican Noise Machine, Brock documents how right-wing groups pressure the media and spread misinformation to the public. It's easy to see how this is done. Fringe conspiracies and stories will be kept alive by outlets like Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times, and the Drudge Report, until they finally break into the mainstream media. Well-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation overwhelm news reporters with distorted statistics and conservative spin. Mainstream cable news channels employ staunchly rightwing pundits -- like Pat Buchanan and Sean Hannity -- to twist facts and echo Republican talking points, all under the rubric of "balance." Meanwhile, media groups like Brent Bozell's Media Research Center have spent 30 years convincing the public that the media is, in fact, liberal. As Brock says, it's all a sham: "I have seen, and I know firsthand, indeed from my own pen, how the organized Right has sabotaged not only journalism but also democracy and truth."

Not content to merely complain, Brock launched Media Matters for America in May, a media watchdog organization devoted to exposing rightwing distortions in the news, and to chart undue conservative influence in the media.

Brock recently chatted with MotherJones.com about Media Matters, Swift Boat Vets, convention coverage, and the conservative stranglehold on the media.

MotherJones.com: What's your impression of the campaign coverage so far?

David Brock: I've been interested in watching the level of conservative misinformation that circulates through the media. Now before Media Matters launched, I talked for quite some time in my book about the last election, where certain messages and themes would start in the Republican Party and then get into the media. The Republicans knew they couldn't win on the issues in 2000, so they developed an explicit strategy to attack Gore's character -- and that ultimately seemed to have worked. If you looked at the exit polls from 2000 you see that on all the issues -- even on taxes -- voters preferred Gore and his policies, but the election was lost on the issues of trust and integrity. So it has always been my working theory that the same thing would happen this year, no matter who the candidate was.

MJ.com: So when did the "Republican noise machine" start attacking John Kerry?

DB: Well, it seemed to me that, in the first few months leading up to the Democratic National Convention, the conservative attack machine was very busy trying to shore up President Bush and hadn't really turned its guns on John Kerry. Then during the spring, after it was clear that Kerry would be the nominee, I think they were still throwing various things at him and kind of hoping that something would stick and didn't really find anything.

MJ.com: And with the Swift Boat story, they've finally found something.

DB: Right. I think the dynamic that has unfolded for the last three weeks is one that is very familiar to me, resembling the worst of the anti-Clinton activities that I was involved in. Back then, we were able to create a so-called story that had a lot of political motivation behind it, had partisan money behind it, and we were able to take that and get a lot of attention for it in explicitly conservative media -- on radio talk shows, on internet sites like the Drudge Report. Eventually the story would spill over into the regular media.

I think the exact same thing has happened in the last three weeks, whereby a supposedly outside group, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, had been working as early as the spring, through a rather small ad buy and book published by Regnery --a publisher, note, that has the worst record in terms of putting out books filled with falsehoods. Then the group was able to get a lot of free media time for it -- first starting on the internet and radio, then moving to cable shows like Fox, and finally getting into the New York Times and NBC News. And so you have something that has very little basis in fact spreading like a virus, and it's creating doubt about Kerry's character that didn't seem to be there in the polls until very recently.

MJ.com: Now to me, it seems like some of the newspapers -- the New York Times, the Washington Post -- have actually been dissecting some of these claims. Does it seem like the mainstream media is no longer willing to follow conservative talking points quite so blindly?

DB: Well more so in this case than in the case of Gore, when there were either quotes made up and put in his mouth that he never said or quotes taken out of context like his Internet remarks. And it's nothing like the coverage in the mainstream media of Whitewater. So it does seem in this case that the regular media has been trying to play the role of adjudicator of fact. Unfortunately, that didn't really come about until the Swift Boat Vets had the conservative media echo chamber to themselves for about 10 days.

So when the newspapers finally got around to it, they found that by and large the charges don't check out. But it seems like a losing battle in the sense that there's so much noise about all this. You get to a point where the factual adjudication doesn't matter because there are all these other outlets that are far less responsible, all talking about the ad, some of which have a political reason for promoting it.

MJ.com: So it's no longer about who's right, but who can scream the loudest?

DB: Sure. You can't fault some of the reporting in the major papers. But there are so many sources and information, particularly with the internet, that stories like the Swift Boat ads take on a life of their own. The New York Times has much less authority nowadays when they say we don't find the charges valid. So that's the effect of what the conservatives have built up in terms of their ability to communicate a message that they want out there.

Part of it comes from this phony notion of balance -- that we need to hear all sides of a story, and that everyone's entitled to express their opinion. Conservatives have tried to write all this off by saying who can be against their right to say what they want to say? Of course, nobody's against their right to say they don't think John Kerry would be fit to command. But to make specific allegations and then have no records to back them up is a significant problem. And the viewer and casual radio listener may not be reading the 7000-word dissection in the Washington Post. So you've got two medias going on. And I know from my involvement in the anti-Clinton stuff that often the goal is just to confuse people, and to take the political opponent off his or her game, and to not let them talk about what they want to talk about. All those things seemed to have been achieved here. Even if at the end of the day the whole thing is viewed as a hoax, by the time we get there, the election may be over.

MJ.com: Turning to the Republican convention, what will Media Matters be paying attention to?

DB: We're tracking TV coverage, for one. We did a study of cable coverage of the Democratic Convention and found that CNN and MSNBC made close to the same decisions about how much time they would devote to the speeches, while Fox decided to hold less live coverage. We're eager to see whether Fox will allot the same time for Republicans, or whether they decide to devote more time because of the ideological composition of their audience.

MJ.com: I noticed Media Matters was wondering whether CNN would have a Democratic operative to speak on TV after each Republican speaker.

DB: Right, during the Democratic Convention, after Senator Edwards spoke, they switched to Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. And right after John Kerry spoke, they went to Ed Gillespie, [chairman of the Republican National Committee]. So we're looking to see whether CNN will give time to Terry McAuliffe or another Democratic operative to come on and rebut Bush after he speaks.

MJ.com: Do you think that the Kerry campaign might not be as adept at using the media to its advantage?

DB: I do think you have to hand it to the Republicans in terms of their ability to work the media and to get the media to do what they want it to do. That ranges from having a more disciplined delivery system to actually voicing complaints about the media. As you may have noticed, former president Bush was bashing the New York Times in an interview on Monday, and Rudy Giuliani disparaged the media in his speech.

The Democrats seem to shy away from taking on the media in that way. If the Republicans were in Kerry's position, facing a smear ad being given free airtime and uncritical coverage, they would be kicking and screaming about holding the media accountable. That doesn't go on with the Democrats, I think partly because they have subconsciously accepted this critique that the media's liberal. So maybe they feel that they're going to get a fair shake. But in reality, there are a lot of biases in the media that trump whatever ideology reporters may hold. In the Swift Boat Case, the media is biased towards airing a dramatic story -- and in this case, you've got a bunch of angry veterans, some dramatic accusations. It makes for good TV.

MJ.com: In addition to the Republican party, you've talked about a lot of well-financed conservative groups -- think-tanks, media advocacy firms -- that can influence media coverage. What role are they going to play in this election?

DB: Well, the conservative Media Research Center is planning to spend $2.8 million in an advertising campaign before the election, basically to attack the so-called liberal media. Their goal is to bully and intimidate the media, and it's been very effective, because in a lot of newsrooms there's concern shading into fear of being seen as liberal, and these reporters end up accommodating conservatism. It was particularly noticeable after 9/11 when the Media Research Center had a direct mail campaign promising to target network anchors and producers who were deemed insufficiently supportive of Bush's aims in the war on terror. Those kinds of activities do end up coloring the coverage, and partly explains why questions about the war in Iraq weren't asked at the time. There was a symposium of network anchors at Harvard back in July, and a panel was discussing rightwing pressure on the media, and how it causes people to think twice or not be as aggressive as their journalistic integrity would otherwise lead them to be.

So part of the idea behind Media Matters was to try to balance that criticism and pressure from the progressive side. You simply can't have 90 percent of email and phone and fax traffic coming into a newspaper ombudsman from just one ideological perspective. That will inevitably change the culture of the institutions over time. So if we could empower progressives to voice their own concerns about what they're seeing, over time you might get a 50-50 balance in terms of pressure, and that would give us a better product.

MJ.com: What sort of impact do you expect Media Matters will have on the media?

DB: I'll tell you about one short-term effect we've had. One of the central ideas behind the organization was to capture the content of the top talk radio show hosts in the country. Radio content is never captured and catalogued in a systematic way, so there's no way to hold radio show hosts accountable for their words. But on the week we launched, the Abu Ghraib prison photos were released, and we had our system in place to record and professionally transcribe Rush Limbaugh's reaction. So we were able to catch a whole string of comments in which he said that torture was a brilliant maneuver and compared the abuse to a college fraternity prank. It was offensive across the board, and showed how out of the mainstream Limbaugh is. That got a lot of attention, Limbaugh spent time defending himself, and in the end, there was legislation introduced in the Senate because of it. Basically, Limbaugh broadcasts on Armed Forces Radio and Television Services -- which is a taxpayer funded service -- and he's the only partisan host to get a full hour of time. So we started a position to get him pulled off the air and stop propagandizing our troops, and the new legislation that passed in the Senate will at least force the broadcasts to offer opposing points of view.

We have other goals that might be harder to measure. One of the things that conservatives have successfully done over the years is to anesthetize people to the fact that they are extreme. Limbaugh has engaged in a process of mainstreaming himself, to the point where during the November 2002 election, NBC News had Limbaugh on as an election night analyst. But when we monitor his show, we find that he's the same old Limbaugh, making racist and sexist comments on his program every day. It's possible that NBC doesn't even know what goes on in his show, so by hiring him, everybody just accepts the fact that he's a leading conservative and he should be on mainstream television. We want to reverse that mainstreaming process and let people understand exactly who these conservative pundits really are.

Also, when we correct misinformation that's out there, we make an effort to deliver these corrections to people debating on TV. For example, we did some original research on the co-author of the Swift Boat book, Jerome Corsi, and we found that he had made all these bigoted postings to a rightwing website. So we try to deliver that to people, let people know that's out there, and in this case we saw a lot of pundits who were debating the book and saying maybe that's something we should consider when we're weighing the credibility of the book. So that has an impact.

In the longer term, we want to ask whether its possible for those people we're monitoring to be more responsible. Take the case of Bill O'Reilly, who probably has the highest rate of false statements of anybody that we monitor in the media. O'Reilly was on Tim Russert's show with Paul Krugman a few weeks ago. Krugman was able to go to our website, get transcripts of O'Reilly's radio show, and hold O'Reilly accountable for things he had previously said. O'Reilly knew exactly where those transcripts came from, because we're the only ones who are doing that, and he blew his top. Now the question is, if O'Reilly knows he's being monitored, will that induce him to be more careful? Right now, we're too young to really know. Our role is to let his listeners know that they're getting information that is incorrect. Over time we're trying to reduce the impact of the false information on people who are making decisions about what policies and candidates they support.

MJ.com: What do you think viewers of the convention should be watching out for?

DB: The main thing is to look for the susceptibility of the mainstream media to adapt storylines that are advancing the agenda of the conservatives. For example, one of the emerging themes from the Republican camp seems to be that, because Kerry talked about his Vietnam record at his convention, somehow he induced or invited people to make up lies about him. Over time this is how conventional wisdom gels in the media, and before you know it, it will have been Kerry's fault that he was the subject of a vicious and false attack. Those are the kinds of things people should be looking for and be very careful and concerned about.

Bradford Plumer is an editorial intern at MotherJones.com

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/09/09_400.html

DAILY EXPRESS
Forge Ahead
by Telis Demos
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 09.15.04

Being a media critic this week has been pretty easy. The bloggers and pundits who studied kerning, superscripting, and IBM typewriters have been vindicated: Dan Rather and CBS most likely presented forged documents alleging that George W. Bush did not honorably complete his National Guard duties. From there, conservative critics have drawn their conclusions pretty easily: Stanley Kurtz of National Review Online argued that Rather violated journalistic ethics in order "to save the faltering Kerry campaign." In The Christian Science Monitor, Michael Caputo writes: "Only smart politics and hard work can recover a campaign in disarray. Somehow, John Kerry's allies forgot this rule. So did Dan Rather." In other words, Rather and CBS were doing exactly what Fox News, The Washington Times, and the rest of the right-wing shadow media do: advocating for their side under the guise of reporting the news.

But not all bad journalism is created equal. Dan Rather may have indeed been duped, but even if that is the case, his mistake was far less problematic than the offenses against journalism perpetrated daily by Fox News and other unabashedly conservative media outlets. CBS News may be many things, but it is not the left-wing equivalent of Fox News. And we ought to be much more concerned about the willful journalistic contortions of the latter than the alleged sloppiness of the former.

Let's start by taking as a given what conservatives have long assumed about Dan Rather: that he's a partisan Democrat whose political beliefs infect his journalism. Under these circumstances, Rather could be guilty of a particular kind of bias--namely, not vetting sources that supported his inclinations as closely as he would have vetted sources that contradicted them. At worst, Rather is guilty of sloppily fact-checking the veracity of forged documents because of his political views--and of therefore reporting lies as truth.

If this last offense sounds familiar, it's because the right-wing media does it all the time. In February 2004, for instance, Fox News broadcasters Brit Hume, Sean Hannity, and John Gibson all showed a photo of John Kerry standing next to Jane Fonda on a podium at an anti-Vietnam War rally in the 1970s. It turns out the photo was fake. Did hordes of media critics demand retractions from Hume, Hannity, and Gibson? Of course not. As a result, it seems likely that plenty of voters continue to believe the picture was real. Another example: Hannity, on May 18, said, "The only thing [John Kerry has] been consistent about in his entire career is raising taxes, because he supported tax increases 350 times." Hannity was using a number produced by the Bush campaign that was arrived at by allowing votes against tax cuts to count as support of a tax increase, and by double-, triple-, or quadruple-counting tax votes in budget bills with multiple parts. Hannity, of course, declined to present this contextual information.

Why did Fox News get away with presenting a forgery? Why does Hannity get away with recycling Bush talking points that don't stand up to any measure of intellectual honesty? Because Fox reporters hide behind the conceit that they are opinion journalists, and media critics therefore hold them to a lower standard--as if being in the business of opinion journalism frees Fox from the obligation to deal in facts.

And that's why Fox's particular brand of bias is so much more dangerous than Rather's: The (unfortunate) conventions of opinion journalism don't demand that they stick scrupulously to truth; nor are they expected to apologize when they report blatant falsehoods. And so the record as reported by Fox News goes uncorrected in the public's mind, and talking points enter our discourse with a pretense of truth. Let's concede, for argument's sake, that most Fox viewers know they are watching opinion journalism. Does this really lessen their expectation that the opinions presented will be based on evidence that is basically true? Of course not. Viewers watching "60 Minutes," of course, also expect that the reporting they see is true. The difference is that viewers of "60 Minutes" may soon hear a correction. And even if CBS doesn't offer a correction, media critics will let Americans know if they were entitled to one.

Rather's critics might say that his transgressions are worse than Hannity's because CBS presents itself as practicing news journalism, while Hannity does not. But Rather didn't offer on-air opinions. He presented possibly forged documents--and presenting forged documents is unacceptable whether you're a news journalist or an opinion journalist. In fact it's equally unacceptable in both cases.

It should be clear from this week's torrent of commentary that Rather is held to very high standards by his critics, which have included not only the blogosphere but The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, and NBC--in other words, everyone else in the mainstream media. No one at the Post, the Times, ABC, or NBC is doing the same for Fox's journalists. That, in the end, is the biggest distinction between CBS and Fox. It's also why, even if you believe the worst about Dan Rather, he's ultimately less of a threat to journalistic integrity than Sean Hannity.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=demos091504

Bill of Goods
by Tom Frank
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 09.28.04

For those who've been complaining that George W. Bush doesn't grant enough interviews, the president's decision to appear on "The O'Reilly Factor" and "Dr. Phil" this week has proven that he's prepared to undergo the sort of grilling rarely seen since Leonardo DiCaprio took off the gloves with Bill Clinton in 2000. (President Clinton: "Just by changing the lighting in this whole building [the White House] we lowered our electric bills by $100,000 a year." DiCaprio: "Wow.") There was always the chance, however, that Bill O'Reilly--who despite a reputation for toeing the Fox News party line (not that there is one, of course) considers himself "one of those independent men"--might actually ask a couple of hard questions and even follow them up. But with Fox News having aired about one third of O'Reilly's interview with Bush last night--the rest is on the way tonight and tomorrow--it's pretty clear that hopes for a genuinely tough interview must now rest with Dr. Phil.

At first, O'Reilly seemed a bit awed by the occasion and jabbered a bit: "I've got 15 questions for you. If they're dumb, tell me they're dumb. Because the audience will like that. If they're dumb questions, say, 'Look, O'Reilly, that's just dumb.'" (Bush seemed amused but did not reciprocate the invitation.) Then the first question: "According to a poll taken by the Coalition Authority last spring, only 5 percent of the Iraqi people see the United States as liberators. Are you surprised they don't appreciate the American sacrifice more?" Well, okay, this was a decent start, even if the emphasis on Iraqi ingratitude was a trifle unseemly. (Hey, it is Fox.) Bush answered with a standard riff about things being "tougher than heck right now," but progress, he said, was being made, and one day Iraqis will "look back and say, 'Thank God for America.'"

And, to be fair, O'Reilly's follow up was solid, too: "But can they vote when people are being blown up, and these guys are threatening them?" To which Bush replied, "That's when you're supposed to vote"--an unwelcome surprise to voters who still rely on more traditional means of marking election dates.

But then the tough talk stopped. O'Reilly--who once declared: "If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean. He has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again"--evidently feels it would be unwise to rush to any conclusions. The exchange with Bush on the subject of WMD in Iraq went as follows:

O'REILLY: What happened to Saddam's chemical arsenal, do you know?

BUSH: No. I don't. We thought we'd have stockpiles. Uh, we do know he had the capability of making weapons. And that capability could have been passed on to terrorists, and that was a risk, after 9/11, we could not afford to take.

O'REILLY: No I understand that. But you, to this day, don't know what happened to his chemical weapons. He didn't tell us, and, and....

BUSH: No. Not yet.

O'REILLY: He hasn't given us much, has he?

BUSH: No ...

And Bush went on to agree that, true enough, Saddam Hussein has provided us with no information on the missing weapons and that Saddam will continue to be uncooperative, since he has no incentive to tell the truth. What soon became obvious, unfortunately, was that this sort of exchange would characterize the entire interview. O'Reilly's thorniest questions had a curious habit of morphing into marshmallows:

O'REILLY: The mission-accomplished statement in May 2003, if you had to do it all over again, would you not have done it?

BUSH: Uh, well first of all, the statement said, thank you for be--serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, thank you for being on one of the largest, longest cruises in our nation's history. Thank you for serving our country, and we've still got tough work in Iraq. Now I'm, I'm going to go and thank our troops every chance I get.

Here a conscientious interviewer might have pointed out that--even accounting for tricks of memory--such a statement would have been a bit lengthy for a two-word banner. O'Reilly, however, took a different path:

O'REILLY: But the press spinned it, you know how they spinned it.

BUSH: Well, they spin everything.

So there it was: The press had once again victimized the president, a gentle naïf in a world of spin.

Most impressive of all was O'Reilly's follow-up technique, which consisted of sternly--very sternly (O'Reilly runs a "no spin" zone, after all)--asking the president if he was sure. Call it the "You sure? Okay" method:

O'REILLY: Do you think the Iraqis are going to fight for their freedom?

BUSH: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: You do.

BUSH: No question in my mind, they will, you bet. [Bush elaborates.]

O'REILLY: Okay.

Or, on the subject of Bush's landing on the aircraft carrier:

O'REILLY: Would you do it again?

BUSH: You mean have the sign up there?

O'REILLY: No, no, but go in there with the flight jacket.

BUSH: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: You would.

BUSH: Of course. [Bush elaborates.]

O'REILLY: Okay.

And so on. O'Reilly did manage to squeeze an assurance out of Bush that Iran would not be permitted to build a nuclear weapon, but where the host truly regained his nerve was on the topic of the greatest concern to Americans--well, greatest concern after the economy, terrorism, health care, Iraq, taxes, the deficit, foreign affairs, the environment, and corporate corruption, according to a February 2004 Gallup poll. We speak, naturally, of illegal immigrants. O'Reilly remained persistent on this subject. When Bush asserted, for instance, that the "long-term solution for this issue on our border is for Mexico to grow a middle class--that's why I believe in NAFTA," O'Reilly responded with, "We'll be in the grave."

That part one of Fox's three-part Bush-O'Reilly special--neatly cut out of a single encounter to make the pleasure last--happened to conclude with a lengthy back-and-forth about Mexican immigrants was, of course, slightly surreal in the context of a world faced with difficulties such as arms proliferation and Islamic radicalism. Nor was it any less weird that O'Reilly's pessimistic forecast for the growth of Mexico's middle class could come from the same man who once theorized that postwar Iraq would be "easier than Afghanistan because there is a middle class in Iraq." Then again, as little as O'Reilly knows about Mexico, he knows even less about Iraq. And in this, he probably isn't so different from Bush. Would either man admit as much? We'll be in the grave.



Tom Frank is a reporter-researcher at TNR.

The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Network)

09-17-2004

O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly. In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, he is the darling of the television critics, the host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, and now has a book called "America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction" -- 'inaction,' one word. Welcome, Jon Stewart, to the no spin zone, everyone.

JON STEWART, "THE DAILY SHOW": How are you, sir?

O'REILLY: OK. You know what's really frightening?

STEWART: Uh oh.

O'REILLY: You know what's really frightening?

STEWART: You've been reading my diary.

O'REILLY: You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary.

STEWART: If that were so, that would be quite frightening.

O'REILLY: But it is. It's true. I mean, you've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, OK, and they can vote.

STEWART: Yeah.

O'REILLY: You can't stop them.

STEWART: Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers.

O'REILLY: Yeah, it just depends if they have to go out that day.

STEWART: What am I, a Cheech and Chong movie? Stoned slackers?

O'REILLY: Come on, you do the research, you know the research on your program.

STEWART: No, we don't.

O'REILLY: Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it.

You didn't see that?

STEWART: No, I didn't realize that.

O'REILLY: Yeah, we have that there.

STEWART: We come on right after, I believe, puppets that make crank calls...

O'REILLY: Yeah.

STEWART: ... so we are, I think, the appropriate follow up...

O'REILLY: Yeah, and that's a great lead-in for you.

STEWART: It's a wonderful show, by the way.

O'REILLY: Puppets can't vote, but these dopey kids who watch you can.

STEWART: They actually can -- in Florida, they can.

O'REILLY: Puppets can vote in Florida.

STEWART: As long as they vote Republican.

O'REILLY: And they haven't committed a felony.

STEWART: And they haven't committed a felony, that's exactly right.

O'REILLY: But you do have some influence. Now, how do you see that?

You have influence. John Kerry bypassed me and went right over to you.

You're only four blocks away. He said, "O'Reilly, I don't think so.

Stewart, I'm going to go talk to you." STEWART: Well, I have to tell you -- and again, I mean no disrespect, but the snack selection backstage, quite frankly...

O'REILLY: Yeah, it's...

(CROSSTALK) STEWART: You know, I don't want to shake Guantanamo Bay, but it's a little sparer back there.

O'REILLY: It's close, it's close. We want people to be hungry when they come out.

STEWART: I think that's wise. We have, what I like to call, snack- size Three Musketeers, some Snickers, some Milky Ways. If I were a presidential candidate and I had to choose, I think a place that had an energy pick-me-up might be the place I would go.

O'REILLY: Do you think that Kerry does himself any good talking to you? Because I think most of your audience is going to vote for him anyway, aren't they?

STEWART: If I thought...

O'REILLY: The stoned slackers.

STEWART: If I thought honestly that their strategy hinged upon his coming and talking to me, I would suggest that they were in some deep trouble. I don't know. I feel like, you know, we don't have an agenda of influence. If we have influence, it is peripheral. And I don't imagine that people who watch the show are watching it to make up their minds in terms of who they think would best prosecute the war on terror. I think they watch to see who would maybe have the best jokes on the war on terror.

O'REILLY: No, here's what I think. I've been on the show a couple of times. I mean, you obviously make fun of everybody. You know, I'm making fun of your show now. But you get everybody.

STEWART: We are, in fact, crass and immature.

O'REILLY: But you are a show that your target audience is younger, left leaning, so you have to play to the choir sometimes.

STEWART: But the real estate is younger, just because it's Comedy Central.

O'REILLY: And it's at 11 o'clock at night.

STEWART: I don't know if it's left leaning. I mean, would you suggest that -- you know that blue collar TV show that does all the -- like Foxworthy and all that? You'd consider that a red state show -- you know, Foxworthy and -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

O'REILLY: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

STEWART: OK. They're our lead-in on Monday nights, and there's really no difference between...

O'REILLY: But even so, younger people tend to be a little bit more, you know...

STEWART: When you say younger, are you talking 9, 10? What are you talking here?

O'REILLY: No, I'm talking 18 to 25, you know. The people who are on your intellectual level.

STEWART: Thank you.

O'REILLY: They seek that.

STEWART: Yes.

(CROSSTALK) O'REILLY: You ask some serious questions too.

STEWART: Very rarely. Every now and again.

O'REILLY: Well, you asked me why I was such a bad person, didn't you, or something like that? Wasn't that a serious question?

STEWART: Did I ask you why you were a bad person?

O'REILLY: Yeah, I think so.

STEWART: No, I wouldn't have done that.

O'REILLY: ... "scum of the earth, O'Reilly," I think that's the way you put it.

STEWART: No, I wouldn't have put it that way. I think it would have been, why do you have such je ne sai qua?

O'REILLY: Yeah, some French. We're boycotting France, so I couldn't answer...

STEWART: By the way, I couldn't agree with you more about the French thing. They are such an important country, and I think really deserve a boycott.

O'REILLY: Yeah, they do.

STEWART: Because of the influence they wield in the world.

(CROSSTALK) O'REILLY: Well, you know, I know you don't agree with...

STEWART: They have a variety of cheeses, and...

O'REILLY: I was just going to say, you have to have your brie before you go on.

STEWART: Do you really believe France is, in any way, worthy of a boycott?

O'REILLY: I do. I think France has really hurt the USA, to be...

STEWART: Really?

O'REILLY: Yes, I do.

STEWART: More than like Saudi Arabia? You would advocate a boycott...

O'REILLY: No, I'm not going to say more than Saudi Arabia. But I'm saying we do a lot...

STEWART: So why not boycott them?

O'REILLY: France is supposed to be our friend. Saudi Arabia is...

STEWART: Since when?

(CROSSTALK) STEWART: Since the revolution they haven't been our friend.

O'REILLY: OK, when you get a guy like Kerry on...

STEWART: Yes.

O'REILLY: ... and again, he bypassed me, so I took it personally, he went over to talk to you...

STEWART: But you and I are not competitors, let's be frank about it.

O'REILLY: Well, we're on our second rerun on THE FACTOR -- is now at 11 o'clock.

STEWART: I don't mean in terms of -- we're not competitors in terms of content. You're a news show, and we are a comedy show.

O'REILLY: That's true. But what do you want the audience to get out of your discussion with Kerry? Just yucks, or anything else?

STEWART: First of all, I shall rarely refer to it as yucks, and I think you should reconsider.

O'REILLY: OK, I'm sorry about that arcane term.

STEWART: "Shnicks," we call it shnicks -- shnicks and giggles.

O'REILLY: Thank you.

STEWART: All right. I am very uncomfortable going more than a couple of minutes without a laugh, because the same weakness that drove me into comedy also informs my show. So that same, what we call, neediness, neuroses...

O'REILLY: If you're not hearing the audience laugh, you're getting a little nervous.

STEWART: That would be exactly correct, because it is, at heart, a comedy show. But it's a comedy show about things we care about. So naturally, it's informed by relevant issues and important information.

O'REILLY: What do you think Kerry wants to get out of coming on your show?

STEWART: He wants to get what any politician does: access to a new constituency. He wants to get...

O'REILLY: The stoned slackers.

STEWART: ... that's exactly right, because the stoned slackers, this election is going to rely on the undecided. Who is more undecided than...

O'REILLY: Than the stoned slacker, right.

STEWART: ... the people who are high. Right now, they're thinking to themselves, ice cream or pretzels, ice cream or pretzels.

O'REILLY: Don't you think that these guys want to be hip, when McCain was on with you -- Bush hasn't been on with you, right? You would remember that...

STEWART: George Bush?

O'REILLY: Yeah.

STEWART: I don't recall the president stopping by the program.

O'REILLY: But McCain's been on.

STEWART: Yes.

O'REILLY: OK. Kerry's been on, as we mentioned.

STEWART: Yes.

O'REILLY: I've been on. So you've had the three most powerful people beside him on.

STEWART: That's probably right.

O'REILLY: What do you think Kerry wanted to get out of it?

STEWART: A hug -- just a sweet hug. I'm sure what he wants out of it is, again, that access -- it's the same thing that Budweiser wants out of it. It's the same thing that Dell computers...

(CROSSTALK) STEWART: No, it's access to this market that may be untapped, an untapped potential, a reserve, an ANWAR, if you will. He wants to drill in an area that has previously been un-drilled. And don't make a dirty remark about that, because I see it coming.

O'REILLY: All right, your book is...

STEWART: But what do you think he wants out of it?

O'REILLY: I think he wants to be hip. I do. I think going on your show is a cache, and he's considered the hipper candidate than the square.

STEWART: So you think he's not looking for votes. This is middle- aged crisis?

O'REILLY: No...

STEWART: This is a mid-life crisis...

O'REILLY: No, he just wants to get that tag...

STEWART: ... buying a Corvette.

O'REILLY: ... that he's with it, that's all. And he probably wants to get hair tips from you. Look at that hair. It's great. All right, Jon Stewart, buy his book, here he is. And I'll see you on your show in a couple of weeks.

STEWART: You will see me on my show.

O'REILLY: Right back with Dan Rather -- how can you not watch it -- in a moment.

Personal Story: O'Reilly Interviews Bill Maher



The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Network); 9/2/2004; Bill O'Reilly


The O'Reilly Factor (Fox News Network)

09-02-2004

O'REILLY: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly, reporting from the Republican Convention, where President Bush is coming up in a little while. And in the second PERSONAL STORY segment tonight, I promised you I would cover the Republican Convention the same way I covered the Democratic Convention in Boston, and I believe I've kept my word.

Before John Kerry's speech, I interviewed one of his harshest critics, Boston journalist Howie Carr. You may remember that. Tonight, we have the same scenario. Comedian Bill Maher, whose program "Real Time," can be seen on HBO Friday evenings, has been a persistent critic of President Bush, and I talked with Mr. Maher a few days ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) O'REILLY: So Maher, a girlfriend of yours told me you're going to vote for President Bush. I was surprised to hear that.

BILL MAHER, "REAL TIME": Who told you that?

O'REILLY: A girl named Lola, Sunset Boulevard... I don't know. She said Maher is a big Bush fan. Is that wrong?

MAHER: I get it. You're doing Whoopi Goldberg's act.

O'REILLY: Why don't you run down the strengths and weaknesses of the Republican Party as you see them.

MAHER: Well, obviously, the strength is their ability to turn mistruth into something people would believe -- the way they can turn anything into a wash, like they're doing now with Kerry's military record.

I mean, Bush has a pretty indefensible military record, especially for someone who's running as a war president.

But they're able to muck up John Kerry's record, spin it, tarnish it to the point where people go, "Hey, you know what? There's some crazy stuff about Bush in the war, and there's some crazy stuff about Kerry.

It's a wash." That's what they do well.

O'REILLY: Don't you see the same kind of smear tactics being used by the left? Come on...

MAHER: No.

O'REILLY: ... the Sorros Web sites have, for a year, for a year smeared every guy and gal with whom they disagree, and I'm one of them, so I know what I'm talking about here. Isn't the tactic mud, and we're just going to fling it as much as we can -- Michael Moore, Stuart Smalley, whoever it is flinging the mud, hope it sticks?

MAHER: You've refused to actually even use his name, Al Franken.

He's Stuart Smalley.

O'REILLY: He is, indeed.

MAHER: Well, you know what? No, I don't think so. I think the Republicans are better at it, that's why they win. I honestly don't believe that the majority of the country is in line with the philosophy -- certainly, the hard right philosophy of this administration. And yet, they win election after election, because they're better at selling the product.

O'REILLY: Look, you know as well as I do that all of these politicians are self-serving. Most of them are looking out for themselves.

If you look at Bill Clinton's record on the draft, on Vietnam, on education spending, on all of this, and you look at George Bush's record, they're pretty much the same, are they not?

MAHER: No. I don't think Bill Clinton really ever lied about anything important. We all know what he did lie about. But I don't recall anything that was substantive that he told me a lie that I was like, "Wow, he really did a turnaround on that one. He campaigned on this, and he became that." O'REILLY: Well, how about welfare reform? He was against that and turned 180 degrees around and supported it.

MAHER: Yeah. I don't remember him being in the campaign against welfare reform to that degree.

O'REILLY: All I'm here to do is provide perspective to you, Bill Maher, who need it desperately. Because you seem to be taking the side of the Democrats, when I'm telling you there's very little difference between them. There's no difference between Kerry and Bush on Iraq. There's no difference at all. There's no difference between Kerry and Bush on education spending, on prescription drug spending. There's no difference at all. They're the same guy.

MAHER: Well, there is less difference than a lot of us would like.

O'REILLY: There's no difference. They're going to be agreeing with each other on the debates.

MAHER: Well, again, I don't think that John Kerry is going to give tax breaks to the rich people like...

O'REILLY: Tax breaks to what rich people? The rich people carry all of the federal income tax in this country. You know that, because you're rich. You pay it.

MAHER: Yeah, I pay it, and I would gladly give it back.

(CROSSTALK) O'REILLY: Whoa, you can give it back. I'll send you the form. You can give as much back as you want. I'll send you the form. You want to give it back? Give it back.

MAHER: Bill, you can't honestly be telling me that you think that George Bush's tax cuts, or the tax cuts that any other politician, probably of either party, would have enacted, and you can't deny that most of the money has gone back to people who don't need it, at the expense of people who do.

O'REILLY: Wait a minute.

MAHER: You can't deny this. This president...

O'REILLY: All Americans got the tax cut.

MAHER: All Americans got a little piece of it.

O'REILLY: That's because they don't pay any taxes. That's why they got a little piece of it. I pay huge taxes. That's why I got a bigger piece. Percentage wise, I got a smaller piece.

MAHER: But what you're saying is that it doesn't matter what choice we make in giving taxes back. That's ridiculous. Of course, every tax is unfair. Nobody wants to pay taxes.

O'REILLY: I do. I'll pay taxes. I don't mind it. But if I'm not going to carry the whole ball...

MAHER: The wealthy would not be wealthy if they didn't live in a country that offered them the opportunity to make the kind of money they've been able to make.

O'REILLY: All right.

MAHER: They should be giving back a lot more. Are you kidding?

(CROSSTALK) O'REILLY: Let me, let me give you one thing...

MAHER: That's why this economic program has not worked, is because you're giving money back to people who are not going to spend it, because they don't need to spend it.

O'REILLY: Listen. You are then saying that you believe in income redistribution, because you have...

MAHER: Well, that's what taxes are.

O'REILLY: Well, no, wait. You believe that because you have a lot, Bill Maher, and I have a lot, Bill O'Reilly, we're successful guys, that the government has the right...

MAHER: Two wild and crazy guys...

O'REILLY: That the government has a right to come into our homes, to come into our homes and say, you know, "Bill and Bill, you guys have really made it on your own." I don't think you had any uncle in the business, Maher. You just were obnoxious and hit it big, just like me. We're in the same pot, all right.

So you're saying to me, Maher, that the federal government has the right to come in, take our stuff, our property, and say, "Give it to somebody else." That's not what the country was founded on.

MAHER: Well, Bill, can I give you a little memo here? The country is not -- the country, in general, is not what the country was founded on. As a matter of fact, there was an interesting essay written some time ago that pointed out that the United States has adopted the 1908 socialist platform, and we have. We are essentially a semi-socialist country.

O'REILLY: And I'm fighting against that, Maher, and you should be on my side. Let me ask you this. There was a report in Massachusetts -- in addition to the form I'm going to send you so you can send some of your money to the federal government, which I know they're going to like -- there's a form in Massachusetts where you can check a box to pay the higher income tax that was lowered, OK, a couple years ago.

Well, the reports are that John Kerry didn't check the box, even though he's one of the richest guys in the country, with the alliance with his wife. So don't tell me that there's a difference between the Republican fat cats and the Democrat fat cats. There isn't any difference.

MAHER: Yes, that's true. Years ago, I said that the difference between the two parties is that the Republicans are bought off by a slightly more scary group of special interests.

O'REILLY: I think Michael Moore is pretty scary, and so is George Sorros, man.

MAHER: You know what? I think oil companies and mining companies are a little scarier than the teachers union.

O'REILLY: Last question.

MAHER: OK.

O'REILLY: All right, last question.

MAHER: Iraq... what?

O'REILLY: Why are you going to vote for Bush? Can I talk you out of this?

MAHER: I'm not voting for Bush.

O'REILLY: Your girlfriend told me you're voting for Bush.

MAHER: What girlfriend? I don't know what you're talking...

O'REILLY: Lola.

MAHER: Who's Lola?

O'REILLY: You're breaking her heart, man. You're breaking the woman's heart.

MAHER: There's no Lola in my little black book, I promise you, Bill.

(END VIDEOTAPE) O'REILLY: All right, well, you'll never see that on Larry King. And up next, a preview of the president's speech coming up from a guy who helped shape it. And THE FACTOR will be back with that as we continue from Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Reality-based reporting
Ron Suskind, who exposed the ruthless internal operations of Team Bush, tells Salon that many Republicans, too, are frightened by the White House's "kill-or-be-killed desire to undermine public debate based on fact."

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Eric Boehlert

Oct. 20, 2004 | Believe it or not, Bush aides once welcomed reporter Ron Suskind into the West Wing, invited him to attend some meetings, gave him lengthy interviews and even found him his own desk to work at inside the White House. That was back in early 2002, when Suskind, who had won a Pulitzer Prize while working for the Wall Street Journal, was profiling Karen Hughes for Esquire magazine.

Today, Suskind may rank near the top of the administration's enemies list of least favorite journalists. Through a series of revealing magazine profiles as well as a bestselling book, "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill" (published earlier this year), Suskind has pulled back the White House curtain perhaps more effectively than any other reporter. And the portraits Suskind has painted of Bush and his advisors are not at all flattering, though they are reality-based.

Suskind's latest article, "Without a Doubt," appeared in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, and it is arguably the most damning of all. It made headlines when the Kerry campaign seized upon a remark Bush reportedly made to top donors, quoted in the article, during a closed-door lunch in September, promising that after his swearing in in January he would "come out strong with ... privatizing of Social Security." The Bush campaign denied the quote, labeled it a fabrication, accused the Times of practicing "Kitty Kelley journalism" and attacked Suskind as a partisan hack, even including his picture and voter registration information in an e-mail blasted to the national press corps as a combination of preemptive intimidation and inoculation.

"Without a Doubt," which relies upon mostly Republican sources, examines the extraordinary degree to which Bush and his senior aides are "faith based" in their decision making, and disdain those who are "reality based." It also discusses how Bush allegedly sends special symbolic signals to his evangelical constituency of "faith-based" true believers.

Suskind's White House reporting began with the 2002 profile of Karen Hughes, Bush's then chief of communications, who was just departing her position. Suskind included quotes from chief of staff Andrew Card about Bush's being "in denial" about Hughes' leaving and Card's nervousness over the need to find somebody new inside the inner circle to "balance" Karl Rove's ideological and hard-edged political agenda. Conservative columnist Robert Novak subsequently reported that President Bush was "unhappy" with Card for talking to Suskind.

Next for Suskind was an Esquire profile of Rove, which featured John DiIulio's "star turn," as Suskind calls it. Dilulio served briefly as director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In a seven-page memo to Suskind about his resignation, he detailed how the White House suffered "a complete lack of a policy apparatus," how everything is "being run by the political arm" -- in a notable turn of phrase, "the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

DiIulio, under pressure from the White House, abjectly apologized, asserting his charges were false. "That was an overreach," says Suskind. "And that caused great reaction in the media community. People just said, What was that? Why would somebody like John DiIulio, such a proud member of the public dialogue, why would he say his own experiences were baseless and groundless?"

One month later Suskind met Paul O'Neill, Bush's former treasury secretary, and their conversation turned to DiIulio. Suskind recalls the meeting: "O'Neill says, 'Goodness gracious. Why would a guy like that say his own comments were baseless and groundless?' And then he says, 'These people have very long memories and they're as nasty as they come, and I've met them all. And John DiIulio is a young guy and I guess he had to make some tough decisions about whether he could afford a 50-year struggle with them professionally and personally. And I guess he decided he couldn't, so he pled for mercy.' And then O'Neill says the key thing, 'But here's the difference: I'm an old guy, I'm really rich and there's nothing they can do to hurt me.'" Suskind's book featuring O'Neill depicted Bush as remarkably incurious and as a puppet of those around him, especially Vice President Cheney.

Finally, this past Sunday, Suskind published the latest chapter in his revelations about the Bush White House. I spoke to him by telephone on Tuesday.

What did you suspect would be the reaction to the Times article, and did the whole Social Security privatization flap surprise you?

I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting Bush's quote -- "I'm going to be real positive while I keep on John Kerry's throat" -- to create a lot of heat and light. I was surprised the privatization quote got so much play. I think it was largely because Kerry focused on it.

Did that then force the Bush campaign to deny the quote and call it fabricated and "Kitty Kelley journalism"?

Of course. At this point, with two weeks to go until the election, it is regrettable but expected that either side, frankly, will do just about anything. It's regrettable that both sides have jumped onto the little rowboat of that one word [privatize]. But the fact is, that's what Bush said.

As well, the president said, "I'm going to have an opportunity to name somebody to the Supreme Court right after my swearing in." That certainly suggests to me a quid pro quo, that there's been at least a passing of communication, if you will, between someone on the Supreme Court and the White House that immediately after the president's swearing in he'll have his first of what he considers, as he said at the luncheon, the first of four spots that he's expected to [be able to name] in his second term.

Were you surprised to see your picture included in a Republican National Committee e-mail?

At this point, not surprised, but troubled. I've been doing this for a long time. I've been a reporter for more than 20 years, and I grew up in an era when there was a justified respect for what journalists of all political affiliations did, which is act as honest brokers. It is part of our professional creed to be open to searching for the modest truths we're able to know in life and to render them effectively in what we write and what we say. That is a long and venerable tradition in this country.

What's happened to that respect today?

In some ways my reputation has, in large measure, never been stronger because people read what I write. And as they ever more turn to that, they see clearly that the news strategies of those in power are really born of a dark corner of the American ideal, which is kill or be killed, which is to rely on assertion rather than authenticity and to use power as best you can to get to the agreed-upon ends. That's what this is about.

Do you think there's a coordinated attempt to knock journalists down so that what they have to say is taken less seriously?

There is a varied, national, forceful, coordinated campaign to do that, to try to create doubt about the long-held and long-respected work of the mainstream media. Absolutely. So that Americans believe that what we do and say, what the mainstream media offer, is not of value, is not honest, is not factually accurate. And [that we are] not in any way connected to strong traditions of American public dialogue, that we've been co-opted, that we're not objective, and that essentially we are carrying forward an agenda.

I fiercely disagree with that. I talk to more Republicans now than Democrats [for my stories]. This is not simply the effort of a single party [of people criticizing Bush]. It's the effort of a group within a single party. There are many, many conservatives and libertarians and Republicans who believe ardently in the value of public dialogue based on fact. Paul O'Neill is one of them. There are lots of Republicans who are troubled by this tactical force, this kill-or-be-killed desire to essentially undermine public debate based on fact.

Do you think the attack on the press is a way to eliminate a national point of reference on facts?

Absolutely! That's the whole idea, to somehow sweep away the community of honest brokers in America -- both Republicans and Democrats and members of the mainstream press -- sweep them away so we'll be left with a culture and public dialogue based on assertion rather than authenticity, on claim rather than fact. Because when you arrive at that place, then all you have to rely on is perception. And perception as the handmaiden of forceful executed power is the great combination that we're seeing now in the American polity.

So what are you left with? Perception and, increasingly, faith. Think about faith. Try to anchor that in the traditional public dialogue of informed consent in America, which has in large measure at least been based on discernible reality and on facts that can be proven -- not only facts coming out of the government but facts people feel in their own lives.

It is one devil of a challenge. One man's conversation with God guides the globe and human affairs. How exactly do you frame that inside the secular writ of informed consent based on facts? I think those who are forcefully running the White House electoral machine -- and the soul of this machine is an extraordinary operation -- understand this with great alacrity.

What grade would give the mainstream press in covering Bush?

Oh, God. Let me just say that I think we have the most skillful and most energetic press corps on the planet. What they've had to wrestle with is a very evolved and eloquent operation to undercut what they do. Without giving them a letter grade, I think that everybody in the fourth estate realizes that the White House has won most victories, especially after 9/11, when they then had that to use as part of their tool kit.

I think there's been a reaction in the past year among the major publications, certainly the Washington Post and the New York Times, to say, "Let's stop and think about who we are and what is our charge." I think certainly in this last year I'd give the national press corps an A for effort if not necessarily an A for the outcome.

I am curious about the outcome grade, though.

I'll back off that one.

Fair enough. You seem to have luck with Republican sources, and specifically with those from Bush's faith-based community and his advisors. Do you think they're among the most disillusioned?

Absolutely. They're among the most disillusioned because it comes from a direct, personal experience with the president of the United States.

So they thought there was a connection with Bush. They thought there would be a follow-through, that he meant what he said during the 2000 campaign?

They thought a whole variety of things, and then they saw what "is" is. And some of them were troubled by it, and some of them have been, frankly, frightened by it. These are Republicans who in significant numbers have been coming to my office. One of the jokes is that my office is now the government in exile for Republicans. They come because they're concerned -- not as members of a political party but as American citizens. That's what they say over and over. And they take not insubstantial risks to come.

I talked to Roger Porter Monday, who's someone I talk to not infrequently. He was the domestic policy chief for Bush 41, and he's now a Harvard professor in American government. He is part of the tribe of old rock-ribbed Republicans, many of whom have served presidents over the past 30, 40 years. And Porter says a key distinction [between the Bush administration and previous ones] is that in other administrations, key officials and members of the Cabinet -- people of consequences and expertise -- were brought into the conversation.

Every president, he says, wants his administration to stay on message. The difference here is that other presidents have allowed top officials, experts, men who run parts of the government to be involved in writing the song sheet. This president decided very early on that this was not going to happen. [But if] the president does not hear a wide array of alternatives, that can create significant dangers and bad outcomes.

I don't talk to Democrats; I know what they're going to say. I'm talking to Republicans who have personal experience with the president or with his innermost circle. Those are my sources. And the fact is, many of them have been calling over the last few days to say thank you for writing this story.

In the Times story and your Esquire work, as well as in the O'Neill book, you paint a portrait of the president that's very different from that provided by the rest of the press corps that has been covering him for four years. In fact, after one of the Esquire flaps, there was a quote in the Washington Post from someone at the White House saying incredulously, "This town is filled with journalists covering Bush and somehow Suskind supposedly gets these people to talk?" Why does your portrait of Bush come through so different?

To tell you the truth, it's two things. What I've been able to report over the last two or three years are things that many people in the Washington press corps suspected but have been unable to confirm or to get people to talk about. That I've been able to get them to talk about it is in some measure a function of preparation meets opportunity, a lucky break. With the first piece, on Karen Hughes, I spent time in the West Wing and had serious conversations. And they got to know me. After that story came out the White House's reaction was so angry, it sent a kind of tone where I stumbled onto something. That was the first little crack in the dome of silence. After that it just evolved, that's all.

There are many reporters in town who are as good as or better than I am. Many of my friends in town I consider to be heroes in the cause of trying to report on this White House when what they're literally having to do is run into a brick wall every single morning. That early crack, that break if you will -- and the fact that I can step back and don't have to worry about issues of access day to day and can dig 10 or 20 feet below the crust -- has allowed this thing to evolve over three years. And it has clearly evolved rather strikingly.

Who's going to win the election?

My betting line right now is, and has been since midsummer, to stick with Bush. There was something very interesting from that [September] luncheon, where Bush spoke for 65 minutes in a very open and freewheeling way to his top contributors. He said, "I'll be criticized and there will be a lot of who won, who lost. And just prepare yourself for [the fact that] I will not necessarily be at my best. But after that, during the final three weeks, that's when the real campaign will resume." That means an extraordinary electoral machine targeted at energizing the base, largely the faith-based core of the base. And that machine is kicking up now, and I think you're seeing it in the poll data.

It's like two great machines racing across the horizon. I think the Bush machine, with its support from the powers of the executive, is a machine that's hard to beat. Having said that, I think the Kerry machine is certainly the most forceful, energetic and well-running machine the Democrats have ever created. But the Republican machine is also best of breed for Republicans. At the end of the day, it's not just the man but the machine he sits on, and I think Bush sits on a slightly more pointed and efficient machine -- one that Karl Rove has been building and oiling and calibrating the gears on for four years. That's why, right now, it looks to me at least, like Bush.

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About the writer
Eric Boehlert is a senior writer at Salon.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/...kind/index.html

Don't Mind Me. I'm Just Doing My Job

By Paul Farhi

Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page B02

Reporters who cover the White House are accustomed to being spun by administration officials. The modern presidential toolbox includes carefully rationed press conferences, say-nothing spokesmen, dead-of-night releases of unfavorable news, and phony "town hall" meetings composed solely of sycophantic supporters. More recently, government agencies have issued fake-news videos and secretly contracted with two pundits to promote the administration's policies on education and marriage.

But now the art of press handling has evolved into actual manhandling. The Bush team has expanded the use of "minders," employees or volunteers who escort journalists from interview to interview within a venue or at a newsworthy event.

It's not an entirely new phenomenon -- the Clinton administration baby-sat reporters from time to time -- but the president's inaugural committee took it to new levels of silliness during the various presidential balls. Several reporters covering the balls were surprised to find themselves being monitored by young "escorts," who followed them from hors d'oeuvres table to dance floor and even to the bathroom.

I was among those who was assigned a little friend. Or to be precise, I was monitored for about half of the inaugural party I was covering for The Post. For the first couple of hours of the Independence Ball, I roamed the vast width and length of the Washington Convention Center hall dangerously unescorted.

I had arrived early to get a head start on mingling among the roughly 6,000 people eating and dancing to celebrate the president's reelection. Unaware of the new escort policy (it wasn't in place during the official parties following the 2001 inauguration), I blithely assumed that in the world's freest nation, I was free to walk around at will and ask the happy partygoers such national security-jeopardizing questions as, "Are you having a good time?"

Big mistake. After cruising by the media pen -- a sectioned-off area apparently designed for corralling journalists -- a sharp-eyed volunteer spotted my media badge. "You're not supposed to go out there without an escort," she said.

I replied that I had been doing just fine without one, and walked over to a quiet corner of the hall to phone in some anecdotes to The Post's Style desk.

As I was dictating from my notes, something flashed across my face and neatly snatched my cell phone from of my hand. I looked up to confront a middle-aged woman, her face afire with rage. "You ignored the rules, and I'm throwing you out!" she barked, snapping my phone shut. "You told that girl you didn't need an escort. That's a lie! You're out of here!"

With the First Amendment on the line, my natural wit did not fail me. "Huh?" I answered.

Recovering quickly, I explained that I had been unaware of the escort policy. She was unbending and ordered a couple of security guards to hustle me out. I appealed to them, saying that I was more than happy to follow whatever ground rules had been laid down. They shrugged, and deposited me back in the media pen.

There I was assigned a pair of attractive young women, who, for the next hour or so, took turns following close at my heels. I thought about trying to ditch them in the increasingly crowded hall, just for the sport of it, but realized it was pointless. They never interfered with my work. I found I was able to go wherever I wanted, and to talk to whomever I desired. The minders just hovered nearby, saying nothing. They were polite but disciplined, refusing even to disclose their full names or details about themselves. (My Style colleague, Peter Carlson, inquired of his minder, "How did you get to be an escort? Do you work for an escort service?")

Their civility didn't ease my suspicions. At one point, one of my escorts -- Amy -- told me we needed to return to the media pen. Aha, I thought, I must have seen something or talked to someone I shouldn't have. In fact, Amy apologized and explained that she just needed to find a relief minder because her feet were sore from all the walking around.

By about 10:15 p.m., long after President Bush and Vice President Cheney had made their perfunctory appearances, a supervisor waved off the escorts and told them to go home.

Free at last! Feeling like a citizen of some newly liberated country, I immediately walked across the room to confront my cell phone snatcher. I told her what I thought of her media management skills -- at which point she ordered me thrown out again. I talked my way out of that, too.

I know: It's hard to work up a lot of sympathy for reporters trying to cover a party. I don't feel particularly sorry for me, either. But this isn't really about me. It's about . . . you.

Consider that the escorts weren't there to provide security; all of us had already been through two checkpoints and one metal detector. They weren't there to keep me away from, Heaven forbid, a Democrat or a protester; those folks were kept safely behind rings of fences and concrete barriers. Nor were the escorts there to admonish me for asking a rude question of the partying faithful, or to protect the paying customers from the prying media.

Their real purpose only occurred to me after I had gone home for the night, when I remembered a brief conversation with a woman I was interviewing. During the middle of our otherwise innocuous encounter, she suddenly noticed the presence of my minder. She stopped for a moment, glanced past me, then resumed talking.

No, the minders weren't there to monitor me. They were there to let the guests, my sources on inaugural night, know that any complaint, any unguarded statement, any off-the-reservation political observation, might be noted. But maybe someday they'll be monitoring something more important than an inaugural ball, and the source could be you.

So I have a suggestion: If I must have an escort, let me choose my own. My wife would be delighted to help her country.

Author's e-mail: farhip@washpost.com

Paul Farhi is a reporter for The Post's Style section.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2005Jan29.html

The Liberal Media
One network set out a year ago this month to make the mtyh a reality. could it survive in the cutthroat business of broadcasting?
Robert Chappell

Remember that guy on "Saturday Night Live?" The one with the lisp who always said, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." That was Stuart Smalley, a character that helped turn Al Franken from a recognizable face into a household name. While some SNL alumni go on to film careers and some other celebrities leverage their fame in the aid of charitable causes, the undeniably intelligent and articulate Franken became the smirking poster child of the political left with books like Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. On the heels of the books' success, he looked into battling conservative pundits like Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly (whom Franken calls Bill O'Lie-ly) on their home turf - talk radio.

The trouble was getting on the air. While Franken probably could have used his star power to get a show produced, syndicating it would be a different matter.

"I was sort of looking at the idea of syndicating a show," Franken recalls. "The more I investigated it, the more it looked like that was the wrong way to go, because political talk radio had really become synonymous with right-wing talk radio. For me to syndicate a show, sort of by its very nature, I would have to go between like Rush and [conservative talker Sean] Hannity or something like that. And radio's all about format. So that would be like going from country to hip-hop to country. And that doesn't work."

Meanwhile, through 2002 and 2003, President Bush's approval ratings began a steady downward slide from the sky-high pinnacle they reached after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Lefty voices like those of Randi Rhodes, Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller began to make noise, but only in local markets. A few of them, along with other high-profile liberals, developed what seemed like an impossible dream - a nationwide radio network, a 24-hour home for the half of the country who didn't vote for Dubya. But an enterprise like that isn't cheap. Enter Anita and Shelly Drobny of Chicago.

The Drobnys are among a group of what have become regarded as a contradiction in terms over the past two decades: wealthy liberals. They fronted some money and gathered a handful of friends to pitch in and formed Progress Media, a company with one product: Air America Radio.

The network went on the air in just a half-dozen cities one year ago this month with a lineup that included celebrities like Franken, Liz Winstead (of "The Daily Show" fame), rapper Chuck D, comedian Mark Marins and actress Janine Garofolo, as well as Rhodes (recruited to move to New York from South Florida), political scholar Rachel Maddow, and a handful of lesser-known radio veterans. On the first day, Rhodes berated Ralph Nader, whom she blamed for stealing votes from Al Gore in the 2000 election, so harshly that he hung up on her. Franken hosted a three-hour show with the snarky title "The O'Franken Factor," a stab at O'Reilly's Fox News show with a similar name. (Franken's show later changed its name to the less dicey "The Al Franken Show"). Garofolo, with bow-tie-wearing co-host Sam Seder, started lobbing insults at the administration, and the fight was on.

A year on, listeners still hear Bush-bashing of the first order. Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress and conservative-cum-liberal writer David Brock are near-daily guests on Franken's show, as is Franken's college roommate (and die-hard Republican) Mark Luther. Luther is Franken's "Resident Ditto-head," charged with defending Rush Limbaugh sound bites that may or may not contain half-truths and fibs. Callers can play Franken's game show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Lie To Me," in which they must identify quotes from the news as truth, lie, or "weasel words." Morning listeners hear "Ambrosia Sings the News," in which sultry jazz vocalist Ambrosia Parsley renders her three-verse version of the day's events. Guests and callers make a full-contact sport of trying to get a word in edgewise on The Randi Rhodes Show, and evening host Mike Malloy routinely refers to the president's kin as "the Bush crime family."

In a world where big corporations own most of the radio stations in the country, that kind of thing couldn't possibly survive, could it? No radio stations would sign on as affiliates to that, would they? After all, big corporations are all in bed with the NeoCons, aren't they?

Whether they are or they aren't, it turns out that their first priority is their own bottom line. Media conglomerates surprised more than a few people by letting local stations sign on for some or all of Air America's lineup, tolerating the potshots at the corporate-friendly right wing, as long as those local stations delivered audience and the resulting ad sales. And deliver they did - a test run in Portland took a station from the cellar to number three in three months, and the station now sits at number two in the market. That meager handful of stations at the start has grown to 50 in just a year, in addition to two channels on satellite radio. It's back on the air in LA and recently landed in Bush's backyard - Corpus Christi, Texas. By the time Bush was inaugurated for his second term, AAR had 40 percent of the nation's airwaves covered (projected to approach 50 percent by the time this article goes to press) and millions more sets of ears listening online. It has been the fastest launch in radio network history. And at least a share - a healthy share - of the credit goes to a former TV weatherman in Madison, Wisconsin.

Terry Kelly cuts an imposing figure, tall enough to stand in an NBA huddle and not look short. He speaks with the confidence you'd expect of a CEO, but tempers his no-nonsense approach to business with a grinning affability. He's a politically active Democrat by his birthright - his father wrote speeches for Harry Truman's successful reelection campaign in 1948. "I grew up in a household where ideas were discussed vigorously," he says. Born in New York City, Kelly spent parts of his childhood in Illinois and Santa Barbara and headed off to Harvard after high school. After a year, he transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Once I got here, I loved it so much, I never wanted to leave," he says. "Pretty typical story about Madison."

The rest of the story is anything but typical. He took a bachelor's degree in meteorology in 1971, with dreams of a career as a TV weatherman - a dream that came true shortly after graduation as he joined the forecasting team at Channel 27, where he worked as chief meteorologist from 1974 until 1986. While giving on-air forecasts on Channel 27 - using magnets on a board to represent high and low pressure systems and, later, weather maps drawn with magic marker - he and a few colleagues developed radar technology and software to help them better predict (not to mention present) the weather. Soon, other television stations wanted what Kelly had. In 1974, just three years out of school, Kelly co-founded Weather Central to sell his computerized prognostication equipment. By 1980, the company was selling the first weather animation system, and in 1986 Kelly left the daily newscast to run Weather Central full-time. Meanwhile, he watched the similarly meteoric rise of Terry Shockley from WKOW ad salesman to president of Shockley Communications Corporation (SCC) and owner of more than a dozen broadcast media outlets - including WKOW. Kelly credits Shockley's openness to technology for the success of Weather Central - success that led to Kelly's rise to the top of SCC's television division in 1995, where he stayed until the company sold off its assets in 2001.

That success also led to Kelly accumulating a significant amount of money in the bank, but it did not cause him to abandon his liberal political views. Therefore, when the Drobnys of Chicago approached him in November 2003 seeking investment in their wild idea - a nationwide, 24-hour liberal talk radio network - he and wife Mary signed on.

Kelly acknowledges it's strange to go from predicting tomorrow's high temperature to helping start a liberal radio enterprise. But he has a sound-bite of his own to answer any question along those lines: As a meteorologist, he could only observe the weather, not change it. "So now," he says, "I'm trying to change the climate on the airwaves."

He admits that Mary was the driving force behind his investment. "We've always looked for something we might do together," he says. "She is a passionate progressive. She's been the fire behind what we do [with Air America]. It is a labor of love for both of us."

The early experience of Air America recalls something you might remember from Business 101 - most businesses, even ones based on great ideas, fail.

Terry Kelly recalls that when he and Mary invested in fall 2003, "We had been told there had been $30 million equity raised. Less than a month after the company went on the air, we got a call that there was no more cash. We found that the two fellas who had founded it in New York had not put in the cash they said they would." Complicating matters, CEO Mark Walsh (who had accompanied the Drobnys when they pitched the idea to the Kellys) and programming executive Dave Logan had already left amid a lawsuit that led to the Chicago and Santa Monica stations going off the air.

While some might have written off their losses, investors in Air America had not only a financial interest, but a mission. The remaining investors, most of whom had never met, got together in New York to pick up the pieces.

The two fellas in question, chairman Evan Cohen and vice-chair Rex Sorenson, have since become the subject of speculation of the tinfoil-hat variety - were they really Republican operatives intent on stopping the liberal network before it started? Or were they really just bad businessmen? In either case, they were "excused from the company," in Kelly's understated words, and the remaining investors each put in more money to buy what was left of Progress Media. Renamed Piquant LLC, the company was to be led by new CEO Doug Kreeger and Kelly as chairman of the board, drawing on his experience as a Shockley executive. (RealNetworks CEO Rob Glazer has since succeeded Kelly as chair, and Kelly now leads the finance committee.) The name Piquant, incidentally, means "spicy." (Think picante sauce.) "Our programming is spicy and the issues we go through are certainly hot," Kelly says. "There is a tongue-in-cheek meaning to it."

At the time, Kelly says, two things became clear: the remaining investors would have to run the company, and they'd have to raise money in a hurry. (Around the same time, the