Killer Politics

by Ed Schultz

  For once could we act before something becomes a crisis?

  CAN WE AGREE ON ONE THING?

  In this book there are some recurring themes—balance, for one. I also say that we should look for the things we can agree on as a nation. Balancing the budget is something I think all of us can get behind—with the exception of Dick Cheney, who said that deficits don’t matter. Maybe he was speaking literally, but I believe he was speaking in the political sense. But debt is like a growing tumor. You may not feel it for a while, but eventually it kills you.

  I don’t think we have to do it all overnight, but to rein in the debt, I do believe we need to raise the tax rates on those who benefit the most from our system. We needn’t be shy about claiming a percentage of those overseas profits that American corporations sock away while claiming a loss to the IRS. This international shell game has to stop.

  It’s important, too, that new expenditures and tax cuts be revenue neutral, meaning we have to find cuts or new income to balance them. This is nothing more than asking the government to live within its means just like average American citizens do.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  KICK THE MESSENGER

  Become a Wiser News Consumer and a Better Citizen

  WHAT IF YOU TOLD THE PARANOID WING NUTS IN THIS COUNTRY that a foreigner had seized control of an entire network and a publishing empire? They’d have a fit, wouldn’t they? Well, spaz away, teabaggers. Australian Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owns Fox, HarperCollins, the New York Post, the Weekly Standard, TV Guide, DirecTV, and thirty-five TV stations. He most recently purchased the Wall Street Journal.

  Where are the protests? I say this tongue-in-cheek, but when you think about it, isn’t this an issue worth addressing? Shouldn’t there be some limitation on foreign-based media ownership? But the larger concern is the monopolization of the media. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, but the net effect is the same. You end up with fewer independent voices and more control over existing voices.

  Personally, I think the loosening of FCC regulations to allow media consolidation is bad public policy. I don’t think any media group should have so much potential control of the message. It’s a tall order to break up these media empires, but we should. In the meantime, it’s important that news consumers gain some perspective. I’m a broadcaster; I think the open microphone is democracy in action. My radio show gives the opportunity for uncensored voices to speak to millions. MSNBC has given me a great deal of latitude to do what I believe is best on The Ed Show—and that has given me another platform to stick up for the middle class.

  But I also read newspapers and magazines, Internet sites, and every kind of credible information source I can find, and so should you. In fact, I am convinced that the more diverse your information sources are, the better the chances that you will reach many of the same conclusions I have about the world we live in. But you can’t have diversity if media corporations keep gobbling up the promising small sources.

  IN SEARCH OF OBJECTIVITY

  Do I think there are company memos circulated to every magazine editor at Time Warner to take certain political positions? No. But if editors are aware of ownership’s politics, it stands to reason they may be influenced to lean in that direction. Of course this can happen at a single mom-and-pop newspaper or radio station, and it does, but when it happens on a large scale, it becomes dangerous. It has the potential for a few powerful people to dramatically pervert the political process.

  There is evidence, however, that Fox News talking points come down from on high. A memo obtained by the Huffington Post in 2006, after Democrats secured control of both houses, includes bullet points indicating that the whole strategy of the network was to mute and discredit the Democratic election victory:

  “The elections and Rumsfeld’s resignations were a major event, but not the end of the world. The war on terror goes on without interruption.”

  “Let’s be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Demcontrolled Congress.”

  “The question of the day, and indeed for the rest of Bush’s term, is what’s the Dem plan for Iraq?”

  “We’ll continue to work the Hamas threat to the U.S. that came hours after the election results. Just because Dems won, the war on terror isn’t over.”

  If you watch any Fox News at all, you can see that the strategy to attack Democrats at every turn has not changed. These people couldn’t spell objectivity even if you waterboarded them and spotted them every letter but the Y.

  We report. You decide.…

  Fine, I’ve decided Fox News is completely full of shit.

  Let’s move on to one of the most obvious reasons for breaking up media monopolies. Clear Channel, which features Rush Limbaugh, dominates radio with more than nine hundred stations. If FCC deregulation had led to nine hundred stations broadcasting me, can you imagine the howls of protest? How in the world can we expect democracy to survive when the message is so consolidated and so many people can be duped at one time?

  Make no mistake. The right wing sound machine is alive and well and still dominant. The main reason the Democrats are in power is because the Bush-Cheney Corporation was so obviously inept and Barack Obama’s candidacy so brilliantly orchestrated. I’ll say this now: Unless the Democrats unite behind the president, grow some balls, and stand up to the right wing sound machine and their big money ownership, the conservatives will be back in power faster than Dick Cheney can steal candy from a baby.

  Phil Donahue told Democracy Now!, “We have more [TV] outlets now, but most of them sell the Bowflex machine. The rest of them are Jesus and jewelry. There really isn’t diversity in the media anymore. Dissent? Forget about it.”

  John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney and president of the Rutherford Institute, warns, “Truth is often lost when we fail to distinguish between opinion and fact, and that is the danger we now face as a society. Anyone who relies exclusively on television/cable news hosts and political commentators for actual knowledge of the world is making a serious mistake. Unfortunately, since Americans have by and large become non-readers, television has become their prime source of so-called news.”

  Fox News (We report. You fall for it.) has figured out that there is big money in cheerleading for conservatives. They understand that people like to hear a message that reinforces and validates their personal beliefs, no matter how misanthropic they may be. MSNBC went in the other direction with programming that largely speaks to moderates and liberals. Is any of this journalism? Not in any classic sense—especially at Fox News, where I truly find them to be propagandists for conservatism while intoning that they are “fair and balanced.” Yeah, and the pope is a Baptist. The thing is, they’re just so dishonest. Yes, dishonest, because the only other possibility is that they are deluded, and I just cannot believe that a whole network can be that crazy.

  Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review said, “It seems clear to me that Fox is engaged in a calculated and determined campaign to destroy the Obama presidency—a campaign that also happens to be good for its ratings. It’s true that, where Fox has a strong rightward tilt, MSNBC has a strong leftward one.” He concludes, “But the network [MSNBC] just doesn’t seem to feature the conspiratorial looniness or corrosive fear-mongering that pervades Fox.”

  THE NEED FOR DIVERSITY AND EDUCATION

  Clearly, one of the most important things we can do is to start breaking up the media monopolies. Once we have diversity of ownership, there will be diversity of programming, and I can damn sure tell you that will make for a better democracy. Monopolies can stagnate an economy every bit as much as socialism. Media monopolies are nothing short of dangerous.

  There was a time in the seventies—with Vietnam and Watergate and the Pentagon Papers—when good journalism was prevalent, we were all operating with the same facts, and I trusted my fellow Americans to come to logical conclusions. Sure, conservative and liberal philosophies may lea
d to different approaches to government, but in the end, I felt as if we all had the same motive, which was to help make America a better place. I just don’t see that much anymore.

  Many journalists approach their jobs with the same sense of integrity a member of the clergy might. However, there seem to be fewer journalists and more commentators in the profession with journalism backgrounds. Something that ought to be seriously considered is funding high school journalism programs at schools that cannot afford them, not necessarily with the mission of producing journalists, but the mission of producing better-educated news consumers who have an understanding of the traditional ethics of the profession. We teach government, but neglect the crucial Fourth Estate of Democracy—a free press.

  I’m one of those new voices in a new media frontier that is at its best advocacy journalism and at its worst propaganda. At MSNBC, I see us as advocacy journalists. At Fox News, I believe them to be willfully misleading and dishonest often enough to be called propagandists.

  I think it was healthy for the Obama administration to go on the offensive against Fox News and challenge their misinformation, because it drew attention to the severe slant and inherent dishonesty of the network. The hardcore right wing Fox viewers won’t be swayed by the White House offensive, but more independent minds might be jolted enough to at least reexamine the way Fox does business. Lawrence O’Donnell observed on MSNBC that it is typical for the relationship between media and politicians to be adversarial. Fox News, he said, has an adversarial relationship with the facts.

  In the last thirty years, conservatives have been eager to embrace propaganda techniques to discredit their enemies. The recipe is: Keep the message simple and repeat it often. It is no secret that in the eighties, conservatives began a whisper campaign about the “liberal media.” They repeated this so often, people came to accept it as fact. (As if conservatives were being banned from journalism schools.) The whole idea was to discredit what was largely a very credible messenger. The problem with conservatives is they view the facts as liberal!

  FOR BETTER OR WORSE, THE AGE OF ADVOCACY JOURNALISM

  I say if we’re going to do advocacy journalism, let’s admit it. But Fox News has morphed to all-out attack journalism against the Democrats while claiming to be fair and balanced. The only real exception to the rule is Bill O’Reilly, who does defend the Democrats sometimes when the attacks become too ridiculous.

  I have taken prominent Democrats to task objectively, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, but I have also unabashedly advocated strongly for national health care. I won’t call what I do journalism in the strictest sense of the word, but even so, that does not absolve me of responsibility as a broadcaster to be intellectually honest.

  Is it possible to advocate and also be credible? I think so. I have used a major cable network and a national radio show to advocate public policy. But here’s what separates me (and I believe most everyone at MSNBC) from the people at Fox News: I speak out the way I do because I believe in it, not because it is the party line. I have always spoken with my heart, and what I believe to be the truth, and it has cost me dearly sometimes.

  TOUGH LOVE FOR THE ONES YOU LOVE

  You think it’s fun to have Bill Clinton mad at you—or even longtime friends? It’s not. When I felt he was resorting to underhanded political innuendo, I told Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, “Bill Clinton is lying about Barack Obama‘s record when it comes to the war, and when it comes to this comment about Republicans and Reagan. [I felt Clinton misrepresented a comment Obama had made about Reagan.] And you know what Democrats are being reminded of when Clinton gets out on the stump? He lied ten years ago about Monica Lewinsky, and he’s lying about a very viable candidate and somebody who could really bring change in this country. He is embarrassing for Democrats.”

  The thing is I love and admire Bill Clinton, and I appreciate the loyalty he showed to Hillary (who would make a tremendous president in her own right), but he went too far, and I felt I had to challenge him. I was the guy with a microphone who said what many others were thinking, and since I have been a longtime supporter of Bill Clinton, my criticism had credibility. Of course, in politics, you can say, “he isn’t telling the truth,” or “his statement does not reflect the facts,” or other niceties, but if you say someone lied, those are fighting words.

  I’ve said many more positive things about Bill Clinton than negative, but I understand how hurtful my comment was to him. I hope he will get past it. He’s a complex, brilliant, and yes, flawed man. As a guy who has plenty of flaws myself, I wasn’t being holier than thou. I was serving my conscience, and hopefully the democratic process. Being committed to telling the truth means you have to be willing to burn some bridges. I’m no different than anyone else; I want to be liked. But I want to be able to look myself in the eye every morning. It’s about credibility. If that means I don’t get a Christmas card from Bill Clinton this year, so be it.

  By following my conscience instead of a party platform, I am liberated to say what’s on my mind. Everybody knows that’s the deal with me. I’m not always right, but my heart’s right. Integrity is how I got here, and it’s coming with me when they bounce my ass out on the street—and hey, let’s face it, it happens to everyone in this business.

  While conservative ownership and conservative programming continues to dominate, one can still find great journalists and great journalism at the big three networks and some cable and Internet venues. The fact that my national radio show was able to grow to one hundred stations in this environment should give you hope.

  And there is some real fresh air in media today. On the Internet, the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, FactCheck.org, Media Matters, and MoveOn.org are among several sites that provide a reality check to the right wing sound machine. On television, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert deliver truth, wickedly and ironically dissecting the day’s news. Sometimes a raised eyebrow from Jon Stewart says it all.

  WAITING FOR THE JOURNALISM ENLIGHTENMENT

  Just as campaign donations create conflict of interest and credibility issues, so does the media formula in which journalism is funded by advertising. While anyone who has worked in radio and television knows there has traditionally been a clear line between the editorial and the advertising departments, it’s only natural that news consumers might have suspicions about the integrity and autonomy of the news department. Indeed, news outlets have been compromised by bean counters in many ways. Few networks spend the money on foreign bureaus anymore because journalism has taken a backseat to stockholder profits. I understand better than anyone the importance of turning a profit with a show, but if you have to sell out your principles or core purpose, what have you accomplished?

  As a matter of credibility, Mother Jones magazine, one of the last bastions of fierce journalistic integrity, survives without ad revenue. They do seek donations for their watchdog journalism. The Nation, edited by my friend and frequent contributor to my shows Katrina vanden Heuvel, has a similar model. Public radio and television is funded by a combination of government dollars and donations. (Of course, those government dollars make it vulnerable to the political power of the day.)

  As a news consumer, would you pay for a subscription to a radio program, a television program, or a magazine if you were convinced you were getting objective journalism? If you get HBO or satellite radio, you are already paying a premium not to be interrupted by commercials. Isn’t that what TiVo is all about—the convenience of getting media without the intrusion of advertising?

  Perhaps the next step is for news consumers who lament the state of journalism to put their money where their democracy is and support subscriber-based journalism. This is the next frontier, and I believe you will see someone with deep pockets and a dedication to real journalism give this a try. Imagine if Ted Turner had created twenty-four-hour cable news based completely on subscriber revenues? What he did by launching CNN was revolutionary. Had he had the vision to make it subscr
iber-based only, it could have been transformational. I don’t intend to be unfair to Ted Turner by asking a visionary to be even more of a genius! I admire him a great deal, and what might work now may not have worked then.

  No matter what, the minute one of these subscriber-based, nocommercial publications or broadcasts becomes profitable, it will get imitators/competitors. Ideally, the competition will be to see who can be most objective. But, human nature being what it is, sensationalism might well creep in. While journalists are considered the watchdogs of society, who watches the media? You do.

  Turner, who once called Rupert Murdoch the most dangerous man in the world, doesn’t like what he sees. “The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much,” he says. “There’s really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It’s not healthy.”

  Some have cursed Turner’s invention of the 24/7 news cycle, but you cannot blame him for the inability of news consumers to keep up. The incredible number of news sources may seem overwhelming, but being an informed citizen is your responsibility. You have to determine how credible a news source is.

  A vote is an awesome responsibility. You ought to study for an election like it’s a test. Actually, it is. It is a test of democracy, and judging from the election of some goofballs like Representative Michele Bachmann (D-MN), who is a regular on The Ed Show segment entitled “Psycho Talk” for her bizarre rants, we need to hit the books a little harder. God help us if she and Glenn Beck ever have a love child. He will goosestep out of the womb and cry a lot.

  While we wait as if for Godot, for a new enlightenment in journalism, we should concentrate on breaking up the media monopolies. If we don’t open the airwaves to more owners and more diversity, the conservatives will exercise more control over the microphone, the press, the Internet, and the message itself.