There is no media
By Mike Hersh, May 1, 2003
What masquerades as a free press is largely the propaganda arm of the right wing of the Republican Party. Few brave souls still present the news in a balanced way. Most of them are "opinion" writers like Paul Krugman, Joe Conason and Molly Ivins.
Few liberals get to speak out on television - where most Americans get their "news." When they do, it's on "roundtable shows" where right wingers shout down their comments. Bill O'Reilly, Joe Scarborough and other rabid right wingers pontificate without any counterbalance.
The Mass Media Serves the Right Wing Agenda
Who can forget the spectacle of a U.S. soldier scaling a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad? Reuters news service's David Morgan quoted Harper's magazine publisher John MacArthur revealing "It was absolutely a photo-op created for (U.S. President George W.) Bush's re-election campaign commercials." And, "CNN, MSNBC and Fox swallowed it whole."
MacArthur, author of "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War," added, "The concept of a self-governing American republic has been crippled by this propaganda." And, "The whole idea that we can govern ourselves and have an intelligent debate, free of cant, free of disinformation, I think it's dead."
Reuters described "Second Front" as "a withering critique of government and media actions that [MacArthur] says misled the public after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait." Morgan reports, "In MacArthur's opinion, little has changed during the latest Iraq war, prompting him to begin work on an updated edition of 'Second Front.' U.S. government public relations specialists are still concocting bogus stories to serve government interests, he says, and credulous journalists stand ready to scarf up the baloney."
Morgan adds, "On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, Americans were asked to believe that Iraqi soldiers tossed Kuwaiti infants from hospital incubators, leaving them to die. Not true, [MacArthur] says."
According to Morgan and MacArthur, not much has changed as "the Bush administration made false claims about Iraqi nuclear weapons, charging Baghdad was trying to import aluminum tubes to make enriched uranium and that the country was six months from building a warhead."
MacArthur notes, "a supposed IAEA report, on which the White House based claims about Iraqi weapons-making ability, did not exist." That's not to say nothing is different: "What's changed is that there's no shame anymore in doing it directly," Reuters quotes MacArthur regarding, "blatant White House and Pentagon propaganda campaigns."
See Critic Accuses Media of Aiding U.S. War Propaganda by David Morgan, Reuters, May 1, 2003: http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=2667151
So how do they get away with it?
The mass media embrace right wing propaganda efforts, and actively promote that agenda. Ian Masters, the host of "Background Briefing" on KPFK-FM (90.7) in Los Angeles explained this shift from free media to right wing propaganda machine in a recent commentary for the L.A. Times:
"If information is the oxygen of democracy, the United States has just been gassed, not by weapons of mass destruction but by a weapon of mass distraction,' Masters writes, "we may be moving toward a coronation instead of a reelection in 2004. "
Masters notes that, "Rupert Murdoch's unilateral anointment of Bush as the winner in the early hours of the morning after the undecided 2000 election that led Al Gore to foolishly concede, because he and the other networks believed what they saw on Fox Television."
Masters traces, "The transformation of active citizens into passive consumers was enabled by the Federal Communications Commission under Ronald Reagan's Mark Fowler, who declared 'the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.'"
How did this happen? Masters says, "TV's Fox could not get away with its shameless shilling for the White House if the Fairness Doctrine were still in place, and radio's Clear Channel monopoly would not be able to impose wall-to-wall Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage, etc., on the public if broadcasters were accountable to public opinion rather than the dictates of plutocrats."
"How did a born-again, family-values administration [the Bush Occupation] get in bed with a purveyor of misogyny and mayhem, trash and titillation [Murdoch's Fox]?" According to Masters, "The common thread, for all the public piety, has to be the late Lee Atwater, who was friend, mentor and role model to George W., Karl Rove and [Reagan propogandist] Roger Ailes, the head hound in the Fox pound of junkyard attack-dog journalism."
These trends and media-right wing links actually go back further, even before the Nixon Era "Southern Strategy" designed and employed by Atwater's mentors including Strom Thurmond. When then-Senate Leader Trent Lott lauded Thurmond, he voiced Republican fealty to racist politics dating back decades.
Masters writes: "Totalitarian regimes don't tolerate any distinction between journalism and propaganda, but in most democracies it is unprecedented for the free press to abandon Joseph Pulitzer for the methods of Joseph Goebbels."
And, "This undemocratic confluence of politics and propaganda has long been in the making as corporate media have been incrementally empowered while public influence, input and 'interest' have been eliminated."
How bad are things getting?
Masters says, "Dissent has not gone away; it has just been marginalized by monopolies and relegated to the interstices of the Internet. But the hammer is about to drop on the Internet too. The head of the FCC, Michael Powell, wants to give away what's left of the store to the broadband cable and satellite providers and make them gatekeepers or tollbooths on the information highway."
Masters notes, "Obviously you can't expect the Limbaughs, O'Reillys and their bosses or their president in the White House to give them talking points on preserving diversity of opinion while there is a tax cut to sell."
The commentary concludes: "So speak up, America: It's your country, they're your airwaves. Maybe you can pursue the American dream while you are asleep, but it will be too late to reclaim your country's freedom when you wake up."
See Media Monopolies Have Muzzled Dissent, by Ian Masters, Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2003: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-masters1may01,1,4769591.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions
Greg Dyke, the BBC's director general and editor-in-chief decried what he calls the "unquestioning" US news media. According to the UK Guardian, Dyke expressed shock at the "committed political position" in favor of the Bush administration by American media conglomerates.
The Guardian quoted Dyke, "We are genuinely shocked when we discover that the largest radio group in the United States was using its airwaves to organise pro-war rallies," a reference to "the global media giant Clear Channel, which owns 1,225 radio stations in the US." Dyke also specifically chastised Fox News for its unflagging support of Bush and the right wing.
"Maybe it was always like this and the requirements of impartiality in the UK were always different to those in the USA, but that's not how I remember it," this top British media executive says, "Personally, I was shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during this war."
See: Dyke strikes out at US media, by Matt Wells, The Guardian, 25 April 2003: http://media.guardian.co.uk/iraqandthemedia/story/0,12823,943107,00.html
There should be no such shock because there is no real news media in the United States today. This right wing tilt in the news is hardly news. It's no accident either. If there once was a liberal media, those days are gone.
As the Australian Sunday News reports: "FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) showed that 'over half (53 per cent) of quotes broadcast by the media came from right-wing thinktanks' against only 16 per cent from the Left. This disparity has grown under the latest Bush administration."
Indeed, "It is not only an influence, it's a reinforcement, really, of the directions which this administration has taken in most of its conservative agenda," the Sunday News quotes political scientist Stephen Wayne of Georgetown University, "citing the war against Iraq, the 'war on terror' and also the economy."
The truth from down under continues: "[Analyist Jeff] Krehely, a member of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, noted that right-wing thinktanks can also rely on more generous, and numerous, benefactors than their left-wing counterparts."
See: Right-wing think tanks rule DC, Sunday Times (Australia) b2 May 03: http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,6371051%5E401,00.html
How Did the Right Wing Take Over the Media?
The effort began in the mid-70's. Richard Nixon's dishonesty brought down his administration. The Vietnam War ended in failure. These two events disgraced, even traumatized right wingers. They insisted Nixon was innocent and beleived our national security depended on winning in Vietnam.
As usual, the right wingers refused to take responsibility for their heroes' recklessness and crimes. They blamed liberals instead. They cursed the campus radicals and mainstream media who proved them wrong.
Nixon's former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon felt frustrated by progress in economics, science and learning he considered "socialist" advancement. Inspired by a Joe McCarthy-style certainty that liberals were really communists in league with Moscow, infuriated by news reports unfavorable to right wing business and political aims, Simon went on the attack. He called for a "crusade" against those he claimed were trying to destroy America.
High powered elite right wingers answered Simon's call to arms. They organized their immense financial power and political connections to remake America in their right wing image -- claiming they were retaking America from perceived socialists in academia, the media and business boardrooms.
Conspiracy Theory? Simon Wrote the Book on it.
In his book A Time For Truth, Simon called upon the wealthy and powerful to "mobilize" against what he called the "dominant socialist-statist-collectivist orthodoxy which prevails in much of the media, in most of our large universities, among many of our politicians and, tragically, among not a few of our top business executives."
Simon asked, "What, then, will this crusade or this mobilization involve?" and then answered, listing a point-by-point order of battle as follows:
1. Funds generated by business (by which I mean profits, funds in business foundations and contributions from individual businessmen) must rush by multimillions to the aid of liberty, in the many places where it is beleaguered. Foundations imbued with the philosophy of freedom (rather than encharged with experimental dabbling in socialist utopian ideas or the funding of outright revolution) must take pains to funnel desperately needed funds to scholars, social scientists, writers and journalists who understand the relationship between political and economic liberty and whose work will supplement and inspire and enhance the understanding and the work of others still to come. This philanthropy must not capitulate to soft-minded pleas for the support of "dissent."
Simon explained exactly what he meant by "liberty." Unencumbered elitism and unabashed hostility to "egalitarianism" -- equal rights, equal protection, and equal opportunity:
One does not work from "within" the egalitarian world to change it; one can only work from without-and this absurd financing of one's philosophical enemies must not be tolerated in the new foundations. On the contrary, they must serve explicitly as intellectual refuges for the non-egalitarian scholars and writers in our society who today work largely alone in the face of overwhelming indifference or hostility. They must be given grants, grants and more grants in exchange for books, books and more books.
Simon's prejudice against academic freedom matched his narrow view of acceptable thought. He wrote in the late 70's:
2. Business must cease the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of economics, government, politics and history are hostile to capitalism and whose faculties will not hire scholars whose views are otherwise. Again, the essence of this is a recognition of the fact that in the universities of which I speak, capitalism is no longer the dominant orthodoxy. That has important implications. There was a time, 40 or 50 years ago, when capitalism was the dominant orthodoxy, not just in government and in the marketplace but in our universities as well.
Leaving aside the fact that Simon is clearly wrong accusing colleges and universities of intolerance. His definition of tolerance is faulty as it allows support for only those with the "orthodox" views Simon claims dominant socialists suppress.
Simon's version of history is at least as bizarre. He blames academics -- rather than bank closures, massive unemployment, and years of dark Depression -- for sparking widespread demands for a more robust, balanced and egalitarian economic system!
Simon blames "departments of economics, government, politics and history" which he declared "hostile to capitalism" for the loss of faith in the failed laissez-faire doctrine.
Perhaps Simon thinks unorthodox academics rather than the massive failures of "orthodox" capitalism caused the Great Depression? Once more, note the right wing tendency to scapegoat their rivals rather than owning up to their own failures? Simon spells out his views and vision:
Indeed, it is through the very generosity and tolerance of capitalism that the enemies of capitalism have come to dominate our campuses today. However, now that they have achieved dominance, there is no longer any reason for capitalism to support them....
In sum, America's major universities are today churning out young collectivists by legions, and it is irrational for businessmen to support them. Conversely, business money must flow generously to those colleges and universities which do offer their students an opportunity to become well educated not only in collectivist theory but in conservative and Libertarian principles as well.
If Simon and those who adhere to his "orthodox" views really believed in supporting diverse viewpoints, I would agree with him when he claimed, "This is no interference with the First Amendment rights of the intellectuals presently working in our universities. They remain free as the wind to express the views they choose."
However Simon contradicts himself in the very next line when he explains his aim: "It merely ensures that the citadels of anti-capitalist thought will be deprived of the funds generated by a system they consider to be corrupt and unjust." Emphasis in original.
Simon exhorted "any businessman with the slightest impulse for survival" to join his "crusade" against "anticapitalist groups, the collectivists, and the advocates of centralized planning," and many did.
They now impose their narrow views on colleges and universities, punishing "unorthodox" professors and institutions by depriving them of funds. They also support revisionists who blame their colleagues for causing the failures they merely report.
Simon succeeded in the academic arena, but was far more influential leading his "mobilization" against the free press which he described as follows:
3. Finally, business money must flow away from the media which serve as megaphones for anticapitalist opinion and to media which are either pro-freedom or, if not necessarily "pro-business," at least professionally capable of a fair and accurate treatment of procapitalist ideas, values and arguments. The judgment of this fairness is to be made by businessmen alone-it is their money that they are investing.
Simon demands a "pro-business" or "fair" media, and he makes these terms synonymous proclaiming business will define fairness. But is his definition of "fairness" anything other than rigid censorship? Simon equates any criticism of any corporate action -- pollution, unfair labor practices, hazardous products -- with attempts to "destroy him" and efforts to "assault the capitalist system" itself:
If a newspaper or magazine or broadcasting station wishes to serve as a voluntary public relations agency for those who assault the capitalist system, it should be entirely free to do so. Without capitalist money. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and of the press from governmental intervention. It does not require that any citizen finance those that seek to destroy him.
Simon's unabashed bias and his demand that the media echo his bias could not be more plain. However he continues explaining in detail what he planned and what he and fellow right wing millionaires and billionaires accomplished, the silencing of any media criticism of any business activity.
This tortured history and histrionic -- nearly paranoid -- ranting energized the elite right wing. For a strong Republican rebuttal to Simon's revisionist economic history, see Kevin Phillips' books below.
Simon's extremism -- taken up by a legion of media magnates -- seeks to protect any and all corporate and right wing political activity from any scrutiny -- including criminal, even deadly practices. It brands as despotic any efforts to balance power in society using alarmist terms we hear over and over from the increasingly power-hungry but never satiated right wing.
Projecting onto others his own lust for control, Simon summarizes his blue print for America: "These are the three fronts on which to act aggressively if we are to create a sophisticated counter-force to the rising despotism" by which he refers to bullying and buying foundations, universities and the media to suppress "unorthodox" dissent and impose control.
Simon proposed, and the wealthy right imposed a "restriction placed on the beneficiaries of the new foundations" including colleges and universities which found themselves in philosophical straight jackets imposed by restrictions on grants. All Simon quotations from pp. 230-233, Simon, William E., A Time For Truth, Reader's Digest Press: New York, 1978.
Led by Simon, right wing plutocrats decided if they couldn't beat the free press, they'd buy it. If they couldn't outdebate or out-reason university experts, they'd attack their funding and create a system of "new foundations" and "think tanks" beholden to the right wing agenda. This was the evolution of "right-wing thinktanks" and their generous, and numerous, benefactors" discussed in the Sunday News article, Right-wing think tanks rule DC.
Working through direct media ownership, leverage as advertisers, and supported by the well-financed "think tank" network, the right wing controls and censors information and thought in the United States.
This effort began during Watergate. Nixon's allies tried to get Richard M. Scaife, the Clinton-hater behind the infamous "Arkansas Project" to buy the Washington Post. If he had, the cover-up would have worked. Nixon would have remained in office, his crimes never brought to light.
This is exactly what happened during the 80's when halfhearted efforts by a bought off media predictably failed to expose massive crimes by the Reagan administration. Again, this was no accident.
The Reagan administration relaxed regulations which protected us against monopolization and abuse. Right wingers -- including Simon, the king of junk bonds and leveraged buyouts -- quickly cashed in. They used their $billions and Reagan's lax or purposely weak enforcement to expand their monopolization of the media.
Continued in part two: Note the Bias.
Republican Rebuttal to William Simon by Kevin Phillips
Amazon review: Most American conservatives take it as an article of faith that the less governmental involvement in affairs of the market and pocketbook the better. The rich do not, whatever they might say--for much of their wealth comes from the "power and preferment of government." So writes Kevin Phillips, the accomplished historian and one-time Washington insider, in this extraordinary survey of plutocracy, excess, and reform.
"Laissez-faire is a pretense," he argues; as the wealth of the rich has grown, so has its control over government, making politics a hostage of money. Examining cycles of economic growth and decline from the founding days of the republic to the recent collapse of technology stocks, Phillips dispels notions of trickle-down wealth creation, pricks holes in speculative bubbles, and decries the ever-increasing "financialization" of the economy--all of which, he argues, have served to reduce the well-being of ordinary Americans and government alike.
------------------------------------
Paperback edition: 290 pages, Publisher: Little Brown & Co (Oct. 1995)
From Publishers Weekly: Decrying the influence of political and financial elites, veteran pundit Phillips (The Emerging Republican Majority) here attempts to channel the dissatisfactions of the general populace, as evinced on radio talk shows, into national reform. "Capitals rot first," he declares, drawing briefly on such historical analogues as Hapsburg Spain and 18th-century Holland to buttress his argument that the current centers of American power, Washington and Wall Street, have sunk into decadence.
------------------------------------
From Publishers Weekly: Blending economic analysis and historical comparisons, Phillips (Mediacracy) proposes that the legacy of Reagan's presidency includes an enormous concentration of wealth at the top, intensifying pain and inequality for the poor, a massive, mounting debt, and foreigners gobbling up large chunks of America.
The losers in this economic polarization include women, racial minorities, young people, single-parent families. Phillips demonstrates that deregulation has especially hurt organized labor, poorer city neighborhoods, people in small towns and rural areas. His analysis linking Reaganism to America's global loss of economic power is compelling.
© Copyright 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 by MikeHersh.com and identified authors. MikeHersh.com invites you to broadcast any material at this site, provided you identify the source as MikeHersh.com. All print, Internet, email and other summaries, excerpts or other written reproductions must include this blurb and a link to http://www.MikeHersh.com.