by Alan Colmes
And from the people who brought us TIPS came the "Information Awareness Office." Doesn't this sound like a section of the Politburo? Did you even know that your supposedly "conservative" government, with your taxpayer dollars, was considering funding an "Information Awareness Project"? The plan was to gather information about your personal life and make it available to the federal government, a conservative one that claims it wants government out of our lives.
In his important November 14, 2002, column in the New York Times, titled "You Are a Suspect," William Safire had this to say about yet another Republican movement toward bigger, more intrusive government:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend—all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
Irony of ironies, the head of the Information Awareness Office was John Poindexter, the man who helped bring us Iran-Contra, whose idea it was to secretly sell arms to Iran to free American hostages and give the proceeds to the Contras in Nicaragua, and who thought it wise not to tell the person who was elected to make such decisions. Yes, the very same John Poindexter who lied to the United States Congress that barred aid to the Contras, and who defended his actions by saying he "made a very deliberate decision not to ask the president so that I could insulate him from the decision and provide some future deniability if it ever leaked out." Poindexter ignominiously resigned from the Bush 43 administration when it was revealed that he had planned an online futures market where wagers could be made on when terrorist attacks were likely to happen. Why did this man have a position of responsibility in the first place? Maybe, in government, no punishable deed goes unrewarded.
Is This What Our Forefathers Had in Mind?
If we're fighting for the values embodied in our Constitution, why throw them away? Why should we become more like the people we're fighting? As a country that considers itself a beacon of freedom, we should be judged by how we treat civil liberties when it's difficult to uphold them, not when it's easy to do so. My good friend and Fox News colleague, the brilliant Judge Andrew Napolitano, put it beautifully in his October 15, 2001, article, "Don't Tread on Freedom," in the New Jersey Law Journal: "Without due process, of which probable cause is one step, the government becomes a monster: Whom will it incarcerate or deport? Mexican busboys who look like Arabs, Middle Eastern chemical engineering students who don't wear American flags, political radicals who hate all war?" He went on to pose some crucial questions: "What is the value of security if the freedoms within it are subject to the government's unchecked will? What freedoms are we defending if, in the name of freedom, the government can take them away because of a person's appearance or nationality? Who will decide—and under what standards— whose freedom stays and whose freedom goes?"
One night, after I expressed similar sentiments on Hannity
From: bigdog
Sent: Monday, January 21,2002 9:49PM
To: colmes
Subject: YOU NEED
YOU NEED ATRAGEDYTO HAPPEN TO YOUR FAMILY LIKE THE 4,000 IN NEWYORK BEFORE YOU CAN EVER SEETHE LIGHT SORRY TO SAY.
P.S. IN CASE YOU ALREADY FORGOT THE 4,000 AMERICANS DIED BY TERRORISTS THAT YOU WOULD SAY HAD MORE RIGHTS THAN THE INNOCENT VICTIMS.
From: colmes
Sent: Monday,January 21,2002 10:05 PM
To: bigdog
Subject: RE:YOU NEED
Thank you for wishing a tragedy on my family.You're a true American.
Since, if you had your way, bigdog, I would already be dead by the time you read this, I'll let Judge Napolitano respond on my behalf: "In a democracy, personal liberties are rarely diminished overnight. Rather, they are lost gradually, by the acts of well-meaning people, with good intentions, amid public approval. But the subtle loss of freedom is never recognized until the crisis is over and we look back in horror. And then it is too late."
From: Dave P.
Sent: Friday, November 15,2002 2:03 PM
To: colmes
Subject: RE: Homeland Security measures
I have no problem with the government looking into any aspect of my life. I have nothing to hide. Believe me, if you live a lawful, honorable lifestyle, you have nothing to worry about... Only those with something to hide holler about ABSOLUTE privacy. What are you afraid of? I would be looking very hard at you and yours.
Sincerely,
Dave P
Denver, CO
Some conservatives claim that we shouldn't be concerned if we truly have nothing to hide. This argument, which I've heard often from non-civil libertarians, goes against the grain of our Bill of Rights. Our forefathers were prescient enough to realize that we American citizens should always be protected from an overreaching government, and they made such protections a bedrock of our Constitution. How many times must one endure a 3 a.m. knock on the door from a governmental "authority" lacking a search warrant before realizing that our lives should not be open to government inspection on demand?
Unfortunately, we have a government that shrouds its own actions in secrecy while caring less about privacy rights for its citizens. It restricts the availability of presidential records that would inform us about its past actions, while invoking executive privilege to curtail our ability to know its present ones. Just as our government tries to ensure that we know less about them, it is constantly seeking ways to know more about us. And good Americans who cry out for self-examination are vilified by the louder voices of those who try to shame them into silence.
But not to speak up would mean not to exercise our American rights. A German pastor, the Reverend Martin Niemoller, crystallized this concept in 1945 in a now-famous passage:
In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was nobody left to speak up.
FOUR
The Myth of the Liberal Media
Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media.
—NOAM CHOMSKY
The media is conservative. Not liberal. Conservatives have said * the phrase "liberal media" so often, they've convinced people that the media has a liberal bent. They're wrong, although it's a useful technique to repeat something so often that it becomes part of the Zeitgeist. Worked beautifully for Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's information minister. Consider who owns the media: is it a bunch of raving lefties? Or is it a bunch of corporations more concerned with corporate welfare than national health care? In a January 2002 piece in the liberal magazine The Nation, Mark Crispan Miller wrote that in 1996 "the national TV news appeared to be a tidy tetrarchy: two network news divisions owned by large appliance makers/weapons manufacturers (CBS by Westinghouse, NBC by General Electric), and the other two bought lately by the nation's top purveyors of Big Fun (ABC by Disney, CNN by Time Warner)."
Miller went on to chronicle the rise of Fox News and the unsuccessful attempts by other channels to clone what Fox has accomplished. On what basis do conservatives rant and rave about the liberal bias of the three network nightly newscasts? You'd think, listening to them, that it's the "NBC Liberal News" or ABC's "Liberal News Tonight." Is it the way Peter Jennings raises his eyebrow that proves his leanings?
The fact is, conservatives try to preserve the status quo, and liberals are more comfortable with progress. When news reporting tells us that things are not staying the same, this disturbs the conver-sative sense of stasis. Conservatives love to pine about the way things used to be.
Liberals love to dream about the way things can be.
Listening to the right, you'd think they have only a small piece of the media pie, the piece the liberals don't want; you'd believe that only liberals (the ones who supposedly control the media) lie; you'd discount any piece of information believed to come from what is perceived as a "liberal source," and you'd believe that their side is far more victimized by the press than liberals are. But a look at talk radio, talk television, syndicated columnists, and the national best-seller lists would indicate a very different picture from the ones conservatives portray. Even if you believe that liberals did control the media until conservatives staked their claim, you have to consider what Stanley Kurtz says in the January 11, 2002, National Review Online, when he writes of the left, "its stranglehold on the cultural life of the country now appears to have been definitively broken. The Internet and cable are at last enabling conservatives to do an end run around the media elite. The system will never be the same."
Conservatives have done a wonderful job of using the media for positioning purposes by playing the aggrieved group that is victimized by the "liberal press." But it was Jeff Gerth in the purportedly "liberal" New York Times that broke the Whitewater scandal on March 8, 1992, and it was the supposedly "liberal" Washington Post that, on March 14, 1992, first questioned the relationship between the Rose Law firm that employed Hillary Clinton, and the State of Arkansas, whose governor was Bill Clinton.
Conservatives know they're just positioning when they use the phrase "liberal media." William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, famously said, "I admit it: the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." And Pat Buchanan, during his 1996 run for president, acknowledged: "The truth is, I've gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive. I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage—all we could have asked. For heaven sakes, we kid about the liberal media, but every Republican on earth does that."
When a liberal does appear on prime-time television, it doesn't sit well with some people:
From: Veronica101
Sent: Wednesday, June 26,2002 9:31 PM
To: colmes
Subject: YOU MAKE MY HEAD EXPLODE! ! ! ! ! !
TONIGHT I HAD TO LEAVE THE ROOM. (USUALLY I JUST WANTTO RIP OUT THAT EYEBROW) YOU ARE THE DEVIL, WHY DONTYOU JUST GETAJOBWITHTHEA.C.LU.? BETTER YET-WHY DONTYOU JUST GO TO A SOCIALIST FREAKIN COUNTRY? I REALLYWANTTO PROJECTILE VOMIT.YOU SUCUBUS.
SINCERELY.
Veronica10
Anniston, AL
From: colmes
Sent: Wednesday, June 27,2002 8:02 AM
To:Veronica101
Subject: RE: YOU MAKE MY HEAD EXPLODE
Thanks for the kind e-mail. I love you, too.
Alan
Mouth versus Ear
Certain media platforms lean right and others lean left. Control and ownership leans right, even if many journalists in newsrooms tend to be on the left. The real question is whether those making editorial decisions do so on the basis of their own personal biases. How a particular media brand is perceived depends, to large extent, on where the perceiver is coming from ideologically. The great radio personality Dick Summer used to play "Mouth versus Ear" on his show. This most entertaining feature proved that what is said is often not what is heard. When conservatives refer to "the liberal media," what they're really saying is, "Everything this media outlet says is a lie." To them, the word liberal might as well not contain the "b", "r", "a", or "l." Here are some other buzzwords and phrases:
When a Liberal Says
What the Conservative Hears
Democrat
Communist
Liberal
Anti-American
Left Wing
Wants to overthrow the country
Homosexual
Pedophile
Rockefeller Republican
See "Democrat"
Environmentalist
Tree-hugger
Pro-Choice
Baby killer
Union member
Socialist
Antiwar
Traitor
Liberal publication
Lying Communist rag
Conservatives have been very good at playing the poor little, ignored souls, hardly able to get their message out in the "mainstream media." How is it, then, that all branches of government are now conservative? Is it because conservatives aren't being heard? It may be true that at one time conservatives were marginalized and their views not well represented, but now they are the mainstream media, and their strong voices are being heard, as evidenced by the rightward swing of the federal government over the last decade or so. Truth is, they've played the media as skillfully as Yehudi Menuhin plays the violin.
Breaking It Down
The media world today consists of talk radio, cable television, and the more traditional news sources like newspapers, magazines, and the broadcast television network. E. J. Dionne nicely laid this out in the Washington Post in his December 6, 2002, column: "Two of these three major institutions tilt well to the right, and the third is under constant pressure to avoid even the pale hint of liberalism," wrote Dionne. And Dionne was correct to point out that the media has shown "a preference for the values of the educated, professional class—which, surprise, surprise, is roughly the class position of most journalists." And, so, the media has slanted left socially and culturally, but right economically, cheerleading free trade and balanced budgets—not exactly the underpinnings of Marxism.
Maybe many of those who work in newsrooms are liberal. And maybe it's for the same reason teachers tend to be liberal: they're educated. Conservatives love to whine about how Tim Russert once worked for a Democrat, Senator Pat Moynihan. But can they honestly claim that he shows bias one way or the other on Meet the Press? And why aren't the liberals bellyaching about Diane Sawyer because she used to work for Richard Nixon? That's right, you don't have an answer. That's because liberals don't complain about Diane Sawyer. They support people having jobs, even if those jobs are for Republicans.
Conservatives love to cite the fact that liberals in newsrooms outnumber conservatives in newsrooms, as proof of media bias. But all those liberals running around newsrooms don't make the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, or the Washington Times liberal newspapers. That's because all those horrible liberals on the loose in newsrooms don't set the newspapers' policies. It's usually a newspaper's executives who decide what editorial positions to take on key issues.
Just before the 2000 election, the industry's trade publication, Editor and Publisher magazine, found a strong pro-Bush bias in its survey of two hundred editors and publishers. In its November 6, 2000, issue, E&P reported "the survey revealed that the nation's newspapers have endorsed Bush over Gore by a better than 2-1 margin." EirFs partner, the TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, which conducted the poll, added: "The Editor & Publisher/ TIPP poll also asked who the editors and publishers plan to vote for themselves next week. In another surprise, those willing to reveal their vote named Bush by a 2-1 margin. Publishers will vote for Bush at a 3-1 ratio, with editors favoring the Texas Governor by a narrow margin."
Henry Waxman, the Democratic congressman from California, claimed that on election night 2000, the chief executive of General Electric, NBC's parent company, showed his political bias in full view of his news organization. Waxman alleged that Jack Welch came into the newsroom that night and asked the man running the show, Sheldon Gawiser, "how much would I have to pay you to call the race for Bush?" Although it was said in jest, NBC had an interesting response to the charge. The network's spokesperson, Cory Shields, issued a statement saying, "Congressman Waxman comes up with the shocking revelation that Jack Welch was interested in the results of what was perhaps the most riveting night in the history of presidential elections and that he supported Geo
rge W. Bush. Not exactly a news flash." So NBC basically admitted it happened. But can you imagine what would have resulted if a network chief went into the newsroom and revealed how much he wanted Gore to win? Do you think conservatives would have stayed quiet about it? I think not.
Talking Right
Conservatives do better in the talk media. Talk radio has become a conservative bastion. Opinion shows almost always favor the conservative. That's because they often see things in black and white, and that is more palatable to a mass audience. Further, many conservatives are great moralists who like to tell others how to live (as long as they don't have to live by those rules themselves). Some of the conservatives who spent the '90s trying to run Bill Clinton out of office, such as former Louisiana congressman Bob Livingston, have had their own personal misdeeds exposed. How is it we heard so much about the Clinton scandal? Could it be because stories about it appeared day after day, month after month, year after year in the "liberal media"?
