In the great 1974 film Godfather II.
There’s a scene about halfway through where Hyman Roth and
Michael Corleone and all the American gangsters are
gathered in a patio in Havana and it’s Hyman Roth’s 67th birthday,
and he’s giving a slice of cake to each gangster got -
Louis from Chicago you run the Copacabana, Frankie you get
the prostitutes, he’s dividing up the island among all the
American gangsters and appropriately enough the birthday cake has an outline
of Cuba on it, he’s giving them a slice of Cuba. And while
Hyman Roth is doing this he says: “Isn’t it great to be in
a country with a government that respects private
enterprise?” And that’s how media policies have been done
in the United States for the past 50 years and it’s
increasing in the last 20 years. Extraordinarily powerful
lobbyists duke it out behind closed doors for the biggest
slice of the cake. The public knows nothing about it, it
doesn’t participate.
And that’s the problem we face.
Media is the nervous system of a democracy. If it’s not
functioning well, the democracy can’t functioning. We’re
heading towards an election where most people are never
going to be in a room with Kerry or Bush. What they learn
about the candidates is what the media shows them or tells
them. Decides not to show, not to tell.
People are faced with critical choices about the future of
the country when they go into the voting booth.
And I go in. And I have been, through the course of a
campaign cycle subject to false, distorted, caricaturing,
And I may not even know where it’s coming from because
often there’s an echo effect off places like cable and like
radio and those wrong pieces of information are repeated and
repeated, by the time it reaches me, I don’t even know what
the source was.
This is the environment we’re living in and it’s really,
it’s fundamentally undermining democracy which is based on
knowing some good and solid information so I can make an
informed choice.
When you see the properties Rupert Murdoch owns around the
world, the strong, conservative point-of-view that those
properties often reflect, it’s different than ABC or CBS or NBC. Sure, they reflect
a point-of-view but not nearly as strong or consistently
strong from one ideological perspective.
Murdoch actually bought the station in 1985.
And actually left us alone for at least the first three
years of his ownership, partly because we were so successful and prosperous that there
was no reason to monkey with us.
At WTTG our success insulated us to a certain degree.
And it was kind of like being in an office and seeing
people come down with the flu around you. We knew the flu
eventually might reach us, but we were hoping if we took
enough vitamins that we’d never catch the flu.
It was clear during those years that Murdoch, who had
absolutely adored Ronald Reagan, adored him, had a lot of admiration
for the group of Republicans that controlled Congress
and certainly on Capitol Hill.
We received an order from one of Murdoch’s apparatchiks, if
you will, that we should cut away from our newscast
and start carrying a fawning tribute to Ronald Reagan that was airing at the Republican
Convention. We were stunned because up until that point
we were allowed to do legitimate news. And suddenly
we were ordered, from the top, to carry propaganda; carry
Republican right-wing propaganda.
There was a cultural underpinning to what Murdoch wanted.
Race issues, AIDS. I constantly remember complaints that
there was too much being done on AIDS. He also couldn’t stand the Kennedy’s.
Ted Kennedy, who was a long-time opponent of Rupert
Murdoch, and, and one celebrated occasion, we were ordered
to run a long uncut piece from A Current Affair that was rehashing
the whole matter of Chappaquiddick.
It had zero news value. We were told, ‘you had to run this
thing uncut’. You could not even edit it down and just run
a snippet of it. I think they evolved in later years and especially
after Roger Ailes took over and, and really got
the Fox News Channel up and running into a far more sophisticated
kind of operation. What we saw, in my era, was,
was really the, the birth of this sort of thing and the roots
of what came later.
I’d just like to say how delighted I am that we’ve now
reached this moment, when we can firmly announce the
starting of a Fox News Channel and a much greater effort on
a build up of Fox News in every area.
We’d like to be premier journalists. We’d like to restore
objectivity where we find it lacking and ah, certainly there could be that interpretation
because of my background but I left politics a number of
years ago and have running this organization for the last
two years. So we just expect to do fine, balanced journalism.
I was a Fox employee for 3 years. I worked in the News.
On air or behind the camera?
I’d rather not answer that. I think I’d rather keep
myself anonymous. You’ll disguise my voice right?
Larry Johnson Former Fox News Contributor I’ve heard directly from folks, both as
correspondents and as bookers, who have expressed very grave
reservations, almost as if they’re being monitored by
a Stalinist system, afraid to be seen talking to the wrong person
or having the wrong kind of email exchange.
You’re either one of us or one of them, and in leaving Fox
News, for example, there were a number of people at the
organization, at the head of the organization, tried to
ruin my career simply because I was leaving, because I
didn’t leave on their terms, because I refused to sign a
confidentiality agreement, that was another reason for them
Americans Trust only One. The Only Place. American’s Newsroom. Fox
News.”
It’s very much a, an environment of fear.
It was made very clear to us that our activities were being
monitored and if someone wasn’t watching it live they were
at least recording it and they would review it after the
fact to see what we did.
We weren't necessarily, as it was told to us, a news
gathering organization so much as we were a proponent of a
point-of-view.
Anonymous 2 Former Fox News Reporter Fox has already been successful in sort of
branding me as somebody who can't be trusted. And as a result,
I'm already sort of on thin ice regarding my current
employer.
I’d been warned by people. There were a number of people
who pulled me inside and said, “Look, you know, I don’t
know, I mean, I know that you want to work and I know that
you need a job, but you might want to think twice about
taking this job because, really, it is a very conservative
news network.”
Now that I’ve learned comedy writing at the Fox News
Channel I guess I should be doing stand up in the clubs.’
I think that if you don’t go along with the mindset of the
hierarchy in New York, if you challenge them on their
attitudes about things, you’re history.
I suspect your research has discovered, the memoranda that
were written by John Moody and by Roger in terms of setting the tone for
the day. The message of the day is a very political device.
Date: 5/9/2003 From: Moody Let spend a good deal of time on the battle
over judicial nominations, which the President will address
this morning. Nominees who both sides admit are qualified
are being held up because of their POSSIBLE, not demonstrated
views on one issue – abortion. This should be a trademark
issue for FNC today and in days to come.
There was nothing covert about the way the managing editors
in New York or Washington operated. They made it perfectly
clear what they expected from us.
The so-called 9/11 commission has already been meeting.
In fact, this is its eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both former and current
Bush administration officials are testifying gives
it a certain tension, but this is not, “what did he know
and when did he know it” stuff. Don’t turn this into Watergate.
Every morning there was a detailed list of subjects to talk
about and not talk about.
Kerry’s speech on the economy at Georgetown is likely to
move onto the topic of Iraq. We should take the beginning
of Kerry’s speech, see if it contains new information (aside from a promise to create
10 million jobs)and see if other news at that time is
more compelling. It is not required to take it start to finish.
They were just actually issuing edicts to the reporters to
control what they could say and how they could say it.
Let’s refer to the US marines we see in the foreground as
“sharpshooters” no snipers, which carries a negative
connotation.
When Headquarters sent the memo every morning and said, “we
want to touch on the following issues, we want to cover the
following stories, we want to do them in this particular
way”, our job and our objective then was to execute the
plan.
The pictures from Abu Graib prison are disturbing. Today
we have a picture – aired on Al Arabiyn – of an American
hostage being held with a scarf over his eyes, clearly
against his will. Who’s outraged on his behalf?
The real revolutionary breakthrough of Fox has been its
eliminative journalism. That’s the thing to understand.
What Fox News Channel has done is it’s stripped out any
notion of journalism as we’ve traditionally understood it
from its product. There is no journalism at the Fox News
Channel.
O’REILLY: Quiet!
Cut his mic.
Chad, stop, stop, stop, stop. Let me finish. Let me finish.
Chad.
I want to test if you’re an honest individual.
I’m sorry cut you off I know we’re in some
controversial stuff here but my religion didn’t teach me
that. But thank you very much for being here. It’s not fair. I know it’s a right-wing
network and you don’t want to hear this stuff.
It’s not about the kids, it’s about you Jamie.
I’m doing, I’m doing…
Thank you Jamie. Thank you. Good night. Thank you Jamie. Good night.
Don’t take your cheap little pathetic shot. I am
telling you that that’s what it is. You’re taking cheap little
pathetic shots. I’m trying to tell you what the truth is.
I’m just giving you his record. No you’re misrepresenting his record.
I’m telling the truth, Sir. That’s the truth
about his record. I understand what your position is but it’s
not correct. It’s probably why you’re on
satellite radio? I’d like to hear one single,
one single… Because you can’t get on regular radio.
Bill, if you are so concerned about public figures being bad role models for children
please stop rudely interrupting your guest and telling
them to shut up!
Well the “shut up” line has happened only once in six years, Miss Evans…
I think that asking a student to stay in the closet in order to go to school…
I’m asking you to shut up about sex…
Shut up. Shut up. Father killed at WTC. Jeremy M Glick
You want to know what I was doing. Please don’t
tell me to shut up. As respect. As respect…
Why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn’t have any trouble reading,
why didn’t you just shut up?
What Jimmy Carter should do it privately give Mr. Bush his opinion and shut up publicly.
That would be best for the country.
And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up
once the fighting begins.
Once the war against Saddam begins we expect every American to support our military and
if they can’t do that – to shut up.
All he’s got in 6 and a half years, is that I
misspoke, that I labeled a Poke Award a Peabody. He writes
it in his book, tries to make me out to be a
Hey shut up. You had your thirty five minutes. Shut up.
Jeff Cohen, Former MSNBC/Fox News Contributor The techniques of odd, odd polling and odd
graphics of democrats and weird banners in the lower third
of your screen, these are all pretty sophisticated techniques
and they work
in collaboration
with the most genius
marketing slogan in history
which is fair and balanced.
So if you’re the graphics department and you can put up a
liberal flip flopper as the chyron, hey that’s great, because
the next time the graphics department has a discussion with
management, management say yeah you guys have been doing a
great job.
Graphics are always moving in the background. They’ve sort of pioneered the
use of the American flag as an icon of your news broadcast.
Anonymous 2 Former Fox News Reporter So there’s a lot of stuff that people come
up with on their own, which in other news organizations you
would never think of coming up with some of the stuff, much less even
putting it on the air.
But at Fox News they’re sort of a, that you’re rewarded for
pushing the envelope.
The problem comes if you try to push the envelope or, God
forbid, should put in some sort of similar sort of style or
approach to Republican, then you get yourself in trouble.
Probably 1999 I created the Fox News Alert.
We were striving to accomplish a sense of urgency. Urgency in the sense that
what was about to be delivered after the Fox News Alert was
very important. Quote, unquote, shocking news.
Specifically Columbine. And all the other important news stories of that time
but now, looking back, now that I’m not there
I find it interesting that I’ve seen the Fox News Alert
used for stories like “Bennifer” J-Lo and Ben’s
relationship. I mean this, compared to a school shooting,
and there’s really no relationship to me and I don’t
understand why, based on what we originally created it for,
ah, why they would choose to use it for a news story like
that. Cause the sound and the visuals is associated, or
originally was associated, with things that were much more
important.
Martha Stewart Leaves Fed CT After Probation Meeting
And this is a Fox News Alert. A very busy day for
Martha Stewart. Earlier today she met with her parole
officer…
No, they deliberately blur it and, I find it very
hard to believe, you know, there’s no separation between
Bill O’Reilly the Interviewer and Bill O’Reilly with his
Talking Points. I mean, there’s just no separation at all.
Jimmy Carter is making yet another mistake and
this time, there’s no excuse for it. And that’s the memo.
Now for the top story tonight. Another view on this.
Jeff Cohen Former MSNBC/Fox News Contributor It’s very hard on Fox News to separate news
from commentary because it all blends together. That’s what
makes it so ridiculous, that slogan “We report you decide”,
because there’s no TV news channel in history that’s ever reported
less.
For example, a Brit Hume newscast, um, which is presented
as a newscast, um, I think you see a lot of attitude and
opinion, both from the anchor and the reports.
Welcome to Washington. I’m Brit Hume. There was further evidence today that President
Bush’s days of absorbing John Kerry’s attacks without counter-attack
are over.
Fox blurs the line between using commentary all over the
place. We are to believe that Brit Hume is the
anchor of a news outlet, he doesn’t bring strong politics
to it, he just happens to anchor the news cast like Peter
Jennings. On Sundays, Brit Hume turns into a rather
caustic right-wing pundit.
Look, this goes to Murdoch too. He doesn’t believe in
objectivity. He doesn’t believe, he has contempt for
journalism, I think, I mean, they wanted all news
to be a matter of opinion, ‘cause opinion can't be proven
false. And I think that’s very dangerous because
if people don’t have a set of facts that they can agree on,
I think it’s difficult to reach a consensus on, you know,
what’s correct public policy. I think it’s very dangerous
for elections as well.
It wasn’t so much a scripted design that promoted the offthe-
cuff ad-libs that you see so often on Fox News Channel,
it was sort of a reinforcement.
John Kerry is Jane Fonda with a Burberry scarf tied around his neck.
Any ad lib that made the Democrats look stupid and made the
Republicans look smart would get an ‘attaboy’, also a pat
on the back, a wink or a nod.
There’s an old pizza expression, you’ve tried all
the rest, now try the best. Some people say, especially on
that panel there, those commissioners, that Condoleezza
Rice might be the best and we haven’t heard from her
publicly yet on this point. Are you saying that the commission’s cheesy?
You wouldn’t say that. They’re crusty on the
panel.
John Kerry has Kim Jong Il on his side. Barbra Streisand. What could go wrong?
North Korea loves John Kerry. Really?
There’s no sense of integrity as far as having a
line that can't be crossed.
Not having that sort of line becomes very tempting for
somebody to self-promote by crossing the line, saying
something funny that you would never dare say if you were
stepping back and looking at it from the sense of a
journalism school and is this the right thing for
journalism? It would never happen.
Other journalists use phrases like “some people say” or
“officials say” when they’re trying to insert anonymously
information in a story that sort of advances the storyline.
Fox does it a different way. ‘Some people say’ is Fox’s cue
that “I’m pretending to be an anchor, so I can’t say
this is my opinion, or this is Roger Ailes’ opinion but
‘some people say.’” Some people say it would be a pretty good
choice…bring in the Hispanic vote.
Some people say, “nah, he’s posturing”.
Some people say, and excuse me I’ll get to you Joe
in a minute, but some people say that you may be setting up
to be running against Hilary in 2006 in the Senate.
Journalistically it’s a very peculiar technique because the
idea behind journalism is that you’re sourcing who you’re
referring to. This is just sort of a clever way
of inserting political opinion when you know it probably
shouldn’t be there.
Some people say that this might undermine what the
US troops are doing there
Some people say John Kerry has some similarities to
an earlier Massachusetts’s politician. Some people say in light of what happened
to the oil for food program.
Some people say, ‘supported by Iran.” Some say, I’ve heard a couple of people
say… Some say “it’s a sour grapes book.”
Some people say… Some people say…
Some people say it’s just too violent. There’s too
much blood. Some people say
Some people say… Well, some people say…
Some people say.
Ah, some say. Some people say.
Some are saying… Some people say…
There are some people who say something, if not
has already happened. Those are his words.
Some people say it’s “exploitive”. What do you say
to that?
I was given a folder, a little binder, that had the names of all the Fox News consultants,
you know, the people who were paid to come on
the air to give their opinions.
Larry Johnson Former Fox News Contributor To be a Fox News contributor means you’re
under contract and are getting paid a set amount.
Joining us from D.C. is Larry Johnson, former CIA
Officer and Former Deputy Director to the State Departments
Office of Counter Terrorism.
My services were in great demand in December of 2001.
The contract expired in January of 2003.
And the first thing that I noticed was that I recognized
all of the conservatives who were in the roster. They were
very well known people who had come from, you know, talk
radio or from some sort of political background, and so I
knew all of those people, and they were very, very strong
people.
I came in and was always, I was going to call it
For example, the edict came down apparently to stop
referring to suicide bombings in Israel as suicide
bombings, to call them homicide bombings. I thought that
was stupid and I continued to call them suicide bombings
because every bombing that kills someone is a homicide
bombing.
But when I looked at the liberal roster, there was only one
person’s name who I recognize, which I recognized, and that
was Bob Shrum, who is a very well known speechwriter and
political consultant in Washington. The other ones,
though, were people I had never heard of. My
entire background was in politics and political journalism,
so I knew pretty much all the players in D.C. and I had
never heard of these people.
The question came up about the ability of the United States
to fight two wars simultaneously. Going into Iraq is going to divert resources
and attention that should be focused on.
And Sean Hannity, being the right-wing cheerleader that he
is, was just, you know, incensed that I was, had the
temerity to suggest that we couldn’t.
We do have the ability and the resources, we’re
able to walk and chew gum, we can handle the situation in
Iraq.
And we can still finish the job of protecting against and another attack.
What happens is when the resources end up getting
diverted and particularly the airlift assets required…
Facts don’t seem to have any effect upon him.
What was unusual is it was after that appearance that, even
though I was under contract to Fox for another 8 weeks
roughly, They stopped using me.
Your government failed you. Those entrusted with
protecting you, failed you. And I, failed you.
And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are
out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
When Richard Clarke emerged it was obvious this was a
danger to the Administration because he had worked at the
highest echelons of the Bush Administration and it was
almost like Fox News was working off the playbook coming
out of the White House – that he had to be torn down that
he had to be turned into a Democrat, a Liberal, a Kerryguy.
He is bringing this up in the heat of a Presidential campaign.
Can you assume, from what he’s saying, that he is now become a political
operative? Do you feel that there is a
political payback component to Mr. Clarke’s comments?
He is, as some have suggested, auditioning for a
job in the Kerry Administration. It is a fella who is sucking up to another
Administration with the hopes of being rewarded.
When he came to me to ask for my support with Tom
Ridge. He had been angling for a top job in the
Homeland Security department and did not get it.
See one of the things that Fox does and conservatives do is
they don’t have to win every argument but if they can muddy
the argument enough, if they can turn it into a draw, that
to them is a victory because it denies the other side a
victory.
Well Sean I, there is apparently two Dick Clarkes
here. Dick Clarke has been on three sides of a twosided
issue. He’s totally contradicted himself.
His statements are contradictory. But there is a lot of information that contradicts
Clarke and some.
But aren’t there sufficient contradictions. He has written a book. And he certainly
wants to go out there and promote that book. Is he just out to sell a book.
This is a fella who is out to sell his book.
Did he have a motive behind writing the book and going out on 60 Minutes and criticizing
the Bush Administration.
Obviously this guy’s hocking a book. Unveiling his book.
An appalling act of profiteering. This guy rakes Bush over the coals and gives
Clinton a pass. And the book gives Clinton a complete pass.
I’m struck by how easily Clarke treats the Bill Clinton era.
But there are still some real concerns about where
the truth lies in what Richard Clarke was saying.
They launched a major smear campaign. And in some ways it
worked,
I thought, number one, he was extremely melodramatic and he was intoning with great
pathos. I mean, I, it seemed, it almost seems like it
was a performance.
And it was just attack-politics on a TV channel. Usually
you leave attack-politics to a political campaign.
Carl Rove and Company are quite good at character assassination. You know they are all these
people, dozens of people in the White House paid for by you
and I. Paid for by our taxes, right, writing talking points,
calling up conservative columnists, calling up talk radio
hosts, telling them what to say. It’s interesting.
All the talk radio people, the right-wing talk radio people
all across the country, saying exactly the same thing.
Exactly the same words.
I noticed that. I was watching a 24 hour news network, and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence,
but they were saying, was remarkably similar to what
the White House was saying and I couldn’t help but thinking, “how funny
that was.”
We are bringing diversity of opinion. Ah, we are, there is diversity of opinion
on Fox News. You may disagree with that. We have many liberals
there, many liberals are invited, we have liberal commentators.
AS we have conservative ones.
Who are your liberal commentators? Alan Colmes for one.
Greta van Susteren. You know. It’s in the eye of the
beholder I guess.
What they’ll try to put on the appearance of being
balanced, but really kind of a mismatch. You’ll have a
Hannity And Colmes Show where Hannity is a really, a good-looking, kind of clean-cut
all-American kind of guy and, and his counterpart is a little squirrelly looking,
frankly. And you kind of say he’s the liberal? Well,
maybe he’s not so smart after all and it, and it, and it sends a subtle message, I think.
You’re a good Liberal. Good Liberal. Good Liberal.
A lot of the times the liberals that they get to appear on
are either, you know, faux-liberals, like, I would use
Susan Estrich as an example of that, a person who was
brought on, who essentially agrees with the person on the right in a lot
of cases. I am your biggest liberal friend. I do take
a little heat. People some times say to me,
“Do you really like Sean Hannity”.
What’s not to like? I thought I was Sean’s biggest liberal friend.
I love you all. Or they would just bring on people who were
very weak, you know, people who were not well-known people.
We can learn from history because if we don’t we’re condemned to repeat it.
You’re onto going to get the truth in a facts.
You’re going to get one guy, Clarke, accusing Bush saying,
“Clinton really” giving him a pass. Then you’re going to
get the Bush Administration attacking Clarke. You’re not
going to get the truth, Mary Ann. You weren’t there. You
don’t know. You’re probably right about that.
Even the people that are supposedly liberal in those panel discussions
they know that to challenge the guests and the other hosts
too forcefully, they’ll certainly find someone else to
stand in your place if that’s the case.
You’re spinning now. I’m not right-wing. I
believe in global warming.
We looked at “Special Reports” one-on-one interviews, their
once a day We studied 25 weeks of the one-on-one guest
who appeared on Special Report from late June through mid December of 2003.
Republicans appeared 5 times as often as Democrats on one-on-
one newsmakers interviews. That means that Republicans
made up 83% of the partisan guests while Democrats made up
just 17%. In addition the few Democrats that were interviewed for the show tended
to be centrists and conservative Democrats often brought on
to affirm Bush Administration policies. So what does this
all mean. Well if Fox were the bastion of fairness and
balance that it claims to be we’d see a lot more balance in
this prominent interview segment on the network’s most
prestigious show. Instead the numbers indicate that Brit
Hume and Special Report choose their guest based on
political considerations rather than news judgment.
That’s here, on the Fox News Channel. The Network
America trusts for Fair and Balanced News.
My criticism of Fox News isn’t that it’s a conservative
channel. It’s the consumer-fraud of ‘fair and balanced’.
It’s nothing of the sort.
Stories they Cover Stories they Ignore
You pitch a story in any given editorial meeting that didn’t meet the criteria that they
had explained to you, and you got a thumbs down.
When you have this Executive Vice President and those
around him, who are consistently saying, “no we’re not
gonna do that story, no this story’s bad, this story’s
good”, and it becomes very clear to all the Bureau Chiefs,
to everybody involved who have been there over a period of
years, there are certain kinds of stories, it’s not even
worth bringing up, there are other kinds of stories that
you know management’s gonna love.
Fox News Channel’s stated practice was to embarrass,
humiliate, challenge, or disrupt whatever Jesse Jackson did. We were told
on many occasions that he was one of our targets.
Anything we could do or say
that would embarrass him,
discredit him, we were encouraged to find the information
and we were encouraged to report the information.
I did a piece on immigration, and I thought it was poignant
to tell the stories of these people and all of the things that they had to go
through to get citizenship and how we take for granted how
really blessed we are, to be born with it. And the line that
I used in describing their efforts was, “folks seeking
citizenship earned, not born”, suggesting that hey they
really want citizenship because they’ve gotta go through
all these motions. Well, the Managing Editor was very
angry, says, “what have these people earned? They haven’t
earned a thing. They’re just here for a free ride,
they’re just here trying to take advantage of all of our,
freebies and, and”, I mean, it was just a, he just laid
waste to the idea that these people were hardworking.
It was very specifically said, we need to be fair to the
Bush Administration or to the Republicans than anybody else
in the media would be. But that was always there was
always understood a sort of a code for “lay off”.
I have firsthand knowledge of a reporter who was,
basically, yelled and screamed at by Executives because
because that reporter was asking tough questions of James
Baker at a news conference. It was a news conference that
was being carried live, and James Baker was saying, “we want to count every vote”
and the reporter was peppering with questions like, “well,
wait a second, if you want to count every vote, why not go
back and find the votes that were not counted because of
problems with the chad?” The reporters in New York thought
that this was a little too confrontational the style, never
mind that when Warren Christopher got up there for Gore,
the questions were equally tough, there were no
complaints about the questioning of Christopher, but
because the questions of James Baker were so tough
that reporter was pulled off the story and said, “we can't
trust you anymore, you didn’t handle this story very
well, go back to Washington.”
Ronald Reagan’s birthday was for Fox News Channel viewers,
something akin to a holy day. This was Ronald Reagan’s
birthday. So my assignment was to go to the Reagan
Presidential Library in Simi Valley California, and to do
live shots before dawn until dark. There weren’t very
many people at the Presidential Library
There wasn’t a celebration in any organized way going on.
You know there was a class of fourth graders who came to the library
that day to take the tour and they were lined up and they sang
happy birthday.
But that was pretty much the extent of the celebration.
They saw my first three or four live shots and Mr. Moody
called in to say
“What is he doing out there?” Apparently my live shots weren’t celebratory
enough.
And I was frankly at a bit of a loss as to what to say, or
do to make it seem like there was a big celebration.
Since dawn they’ve been streaming in from all over
the country and even parts of Canada and Mexico, admirers…
So I got in trouble for that one. I got in big trouble for
that one, in fact I was suspended.
What you will see, of course, is intensive discussion about
what we call “the wedge issues”. You’ll hear, you know,
Affirmative Action. You’ll hear Abortion. You’ll hear
certainly Gay Rights, God in, in Separation of Church and
State issues will be on television every single day.
I think this gay marriage thing is going to be an enormous
presidential issue. But there again, we have to be fair and balanced. We can’t run with
that.
The stampede of same sex couples to the altar has
accelerated.
President Bush says he’s ‘deeply troubled by the hundreds
of…
2000 same-sex couples…
2300 and counting that’s the number…
Same sex couples hoping to get married…
Same sex couples wanting to…
Same sex marriage.
Their job, which is what the right wing Republicans want to
do, is to divide America up, ignore the important economic
health care and environmental issues and they do that
extremely successfully.
They did start it up on gay marriage but I think that they
got sort of blindsided. They all of a sudden couldn’t show the usual footage they used
to show, because they used to love to show the footage, of
course, the parades and the black leather and, you know,
the drag queens. Then they had, you know, very kind
of normal looking, dumpy, middle age couples getting
married and smooching on the steps of City Hall. So I,
I’ve noticed a certain kind of zest going out of the gay
marriage thing. But that, the opposite, of where they’ve
picked up the slack, is on anything to do with religion,
anything to do with the 10 Commandments, anything to do with
God.
Why is Jesus so popular right now? Well I think it depends on
who you talk to. I think a lot of people would say that
one of the reason that he’s very popular is that Mel
Gibson’s movie has come out. George W Bush, because of all this, he wants
to see it, and I’m sure they’ll set up a special
screening at the White House.
Oh sure. He is a devout Christian. Apparently he prays daily.
” Did they think it’s about just a movie,
just entertainment, or do they think that there’s
something bigger at work?
Well I think they think there is something bigger at work. September
11th threatened
people and people looked to Jesus for comfort. But number
2, a line was drawn around the world between two kinds of
religions. Two kinds of societies.
Freedom is not this country’s gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty’s gift
to every man and woman in this world.
Boy, couldn’t you see the elite media tremble over that one.
The President knows evoking the Deity will anger the
secular media – he doesn’t care. Talking points applauded.
They’re gonna push God very, very hard, particularly going
up into Bush’s re-election.
All of us, working together, can change American, on
soul at a time.
The Christian fundamentalist movement believes in “we’re
right, you’re wrong, no matter what.” And I saw a lot of that at
Fox, “we’re right, you’re wrong, no matter what.”
The O’Reilly factor is probably the perfect example of
everything that’s wrong with Fox news channel. They have stories that
are selected primarily to upset liberals and Democrats and
prop up Republican Party. You have a hostility towards
guests that disagree with the host and you have a host who
in service of his conservative politics will distort facts,
will misrepresent things, and will in some cases, just
fabricate.
In a personal story segment tonight we were surprised to
find out that an American who lost his father in the World
Trade Center attack had signed an anti-war advertisement that accused the US
itself of terrorism.
Jeremy Glick is the son of a Port Authority worker who died
in 9/11 and he had signed an anti-war petition and O’Reilly
had to have him on.
And they were so persistent about getting me on the
O’Reilly show, because they found out I was on the advisory
board and signed a statement that was against the war and
that I was directly impacted by 9/11. The
success that I had on the O’Reilly show had to do with
just practice and preparation. I taped the shows, and what
I did I took a stopwatch that I used for running sprints in
high school and I would see when he has a hostile guest
and I would time how long it takes for him to cut them off.
I was surprised and the reason I was surprised is
that this ad equate the United States with the terrorist.
I said “I’m shocked that you’re surprised.” And basically
just made the only point that I wanted to make.
Our current President now inherited a legacy from
his father, and inherited a political legacy that’s
responsible for training, militarily, economically and
situating geo-politically the parties involved in the
alleged assassination and murder of my father and countless
of thousand of others. So I don’t see why you think it’s
surprising for you to think that I would come back and want
to support ..
It is surprising and I’ll tell you why it’s surprising. You are mouthing a far-left position
that is a…
It was extremely intimidating sitting down in the studio because he’s really tall.
He lords over you.
You see. I’m sure your beliefs are sincere but
what upsets me is I don’t think your father would be
approving of this. Well my father thought that Bush’s presidency
was illegitimate.
Maybe he did but I don’t think he’d be equating
this country as a terrorist nation. Well I wasn’t saying it was necessarily
like that. Yes you were. You signed and it absolutely
said that.
Jeremy was pretty cool during it uh, and he was giving
his political views which were very to the left of
O’Reilly’s.
And he said, “I don’t really care what you think
politically.” I said, “Obviously you do care because A,
you brought me on your show and B, I’ve told him that he
uses 9/11 and sympathy with the 9/11 families and the lives
lost to rationalize his narrow right-wing agenda.
You evoke sympathy with the 9/11 families so…
That’s a bunch of crap. I’ve done more for the
9/11 families, by their own admission, I’ve done more for
them than you will ever hope to do. So you keep your mouth
shut when you say that I’m exploiting them… You don’t represent me.
And I’d never represent you, you know why? Because you have a warped view of this world
and this country.
Let me give you I don’t want to debate this with you.
Let me give you an example of parallel experience. September 14th.
Here’s a record. You didn’t support the action
against Afghanistan to remove the Taliban. You were
against it. Why would I want to brutalize and further
punish the people in Afghanistan?
Who killed your father. Who killed your father. The people in Afghanistan didn’t kill my
father. Sure they did. The people were trained there.
The people? What about the Afghans? I’m more angry about it than you are.
And what about George Bush? What about George Bush? He had nothing to
do with it.
The Director, Senior, as Director of the CIA. He had nothing to do with it.
So the person who trained 100,000 Muhad Jadine I hope your Mom isn’t watching this. I hope
your mother is not watching this.
It was unfair for O’Reilly to evoke both my mom and my father in the interview, especially
when I wasn’t. My mom is a grieving widow prematurely
for a violent, horrific turn in their lives. My
dad was only 55. They were working people, working class, middle
class. They were not retiring for a while and their
life is basically destroyed. Their life together is
destroyed and destroyed in circumstances that I wouldn’t
wish on my worst enemy, including Bill O’Reilly.
Because you. That’s it, I’m not going to say any
more. In respect for your father… September 14th. Do you want to know what I
was doing?
Shut up. Shut up. Please don’t tell me to shut up.
In respect for your father who was a port authority worker. A fine American who got
killed unnecessarily by barbarians.
By radical extremist who were trained by this government.
Respect for him. Not the people of America, the people, the
ruling class. The small minority.
Cut his mic. I’m not going to dress you down any
more. Out of respect for your father.
Are we done? We’re done.
You see him gesturing to security guards and then came the
after film performance.
After they were off the air, [ he said to the kid something to the affect,
“Get out of my studio before I f**king tear you to pieces!”
So Jeremy, and I’ve talked to him since, went, actually
went to the green room to get a cup of coffee.
And the executive producer and the assistant encouraged me
to leave the building because they were quote “concerned
that if O’Reilly ran into me in the hallway that he would
end up in jail”.
The next day…
This is our house here. If somebody comes to
your house and begins spitting on the floor, you’d remove
them. Glick was out of control and spewing hatred for this
program and his country using vile propaganda.
The next day I just turned on and watched the follow up and
saw my views totally distorted. Next thing I know was
saying Bush planned 9/11.
Glick was saying without a shred of evidence that
President Bush and Bush the Elder were directly responsible
for 9/11. Now that kind of stuff is not only loony, it’s
defamation.
That paints me as a fringe conspiracy nut.
This kid said nothing, nothing about President Bush and his father, Bush
the elder, orchestrating the attack on their own country.
So O’Reilly is just lying here.
He came on this program and accused President Bush of knowing about 9/11 and murdering his
own father.
Glick said, “Can I sue him?” And so I called the lawyer
who was in my case of, “Fox versus Dutton and Franken”, and
he says, “Well, the kid has to prove that O’Reilly knew he
was lying, and O’Reilly is so crazy, he lies so
pathologically, that’s it’s harder to prove that O’Reilly
knew he was lying.” So oddly enough, if someone has a
record of crazily lying it is harder to sue them
for defamation.
“Your plane is hijacked by terrorists.”
“You’re caught in a dirty bomb attack”
An anthrax vaccine for 25 million…
“you’re face-to-face with a suicide bomber”
: Don’t be inhaling. Don’t be ingesting.
Don’t be sucking particles into your body that could get the
radiation inside.
First your advice is Stay inside. Don’t drink or
eat anything…
Many of the themes that are emoted on the Fox News Channel
have to do with generating fear. Whether that’s fear of
immigration, a fear of racial difference.
When you pander to fear, it’s a great motivator and
organizer. You’ve got to keep people alarmed.
They really love this sense of fear and danger even when
it’s not there. And so when something is actually
dangerous, some things are, they go completely overboard
and all sense of perspective is lost. So that anthrax
which, I guess, affected four or five people, adversely, no question about
it, is far more dangerous that, you know, the poisoning of our air.
The way we deal with them is the way President Bush is dealing with them
You cordon the area, you search for them and you shoot
them.
Larry Johnson Former Fox News Contributor The motivator is fear and then the pay-off
is, you know, “we’re going to go out and kill the bad
guys.” And, you know, it’s a very simple black and white
world that they, ah, paint and portray.
Terrorism has become the all-purpose fear weapon because now everything
is converted into terrorism. And, of course,
if you have a constant sense of unease then you’re gonna look to the Government
to protect you. You’re gonna look to strong government.
We’ve removed from power enemies of this country. We
have made America more secure.
There are these enemies out there and it’s an ill-defined
enemy, but as long as we’re fighting them and killing them
and he’s looking presidential, then nothing else, again, is discussed.
What was interesting is in the climate of the Bush
Administration that much of that fear, the emotion was
purposefully misdirected by the right-wing, ah, into, ah,
the war in Iraq.
The type of coverage Fox offers and all of them offer but
Fox is probably the most pristine version is completely
consistent with Bush’s, um, with the strategy of the Bush
Administration. A, to, ah, prevent discussion of things
that are not going well, like, for instance, the economy or
the Medicare Bill.
There’s not doubt the war against Iraq, a country that did
not attack us, could only proceed based on fear.
Tonight It’s a special 2 hour block.
“War is my last choice…
But the risk of doing nothing is even a worse option as far as I’m concerned.
The President’s War on Terror. When will his military
plans get put into action.
No Spin on Iraq. Depend on “The Factor” for the trust
about the impending war with Iraq. We hope you depend on us for the truth, because
we’re going to report the situation in Iraq without an
agenda or any ideological prejudice.
That you gotta take what comes. Not that we hate
you Martin Sheen, but that we may not want to watch your
television Program anymore, because we’re identifying you with being
against what we believe in.
Once the war begins, I’ll consider those who actively
work against our military once war is underway to be enemies
of the state. Americans, and indeed our allies who actively
work against our military once the war is under way will be
considered enemies of the state by me.
But first, are the Americans, who went over the
Baghdad to act as human shields, well, are they more than
just protesters, are they traitors?
Harry Belafonte, he’s at it again, he says “the Bush Administration is possessed of
evil.” Has the “Calypso King” gone bonkers?
You have a right to say what you want, but we have a right not to buy your records.
Anyone who hurts this country at a time like this will be spotlighted.
Just fair warning to you Barbra Streisand and
others who see the world as you do. We don’t want to
demonize anyone but anyone who hurts this country in a time
like this, well, let’s just say you will be spotlighted.
Certainly television, and perhaps to an extent, my station, was intimidated by the administration
and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did in fact,
put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my
view, in terms of, of, of the kind of broadcast work we did.
Bob McChesney Founder of Free Press/Author of
“The Problem of the Media” First rule of being a great propaganda system
and why our system is vastly superior to anything in the
old Soviet Union, is not that people think they’re
being subject to propaganda. If people don’t think that,
they aren’t looking for that, they’re much easier to
propagandize. And that’s the genius of our media system; a
system of ideology, of control compared to an authoritarian
system.
Look we’re making good progress in Iraq. Sometimes
it’s hard to tell it when you listen to the filter.
Tremendous progress in Iraq. The kids are back at school, 10% more than when Saddam
Hussein was there. There’s 100% more fresh water.
It’s a fresh start for Iraqi athletes. So far 2500 schools have been renovated.
Are Iraquis better off than they were a year ago?
Yes they are definitely better off. And these brave athletes look forward to making
Olympic gold.
There are so many positive developments.
Fox has made a decision to present the Iraq war as a
success and as an ongoing success. Fox Report Iraqis get a welcome diversion
at the race track
The Baghdad equestrian club is open for business. And yes, you can play these ponies.
It’s the Iraq you don’t hear about. Falling unemployment.
Rising wages. Interest rates down, foreign investment up.
Life for 95% of the Iraqis
is already immeasurably better than
it was under the decades of Saddam’s rule, there’s no question
about that. And that’s what’s the least reported story
over there. You go to the markets, they’re thriving. Big
fat fish coming out of the Tigris and Euphrates River.
Young men in Baghdad blowing off steam with their cars. The guys gathered to
put their wheels through the paces about once a week,
something they say they were not allowed to do under the
The Senior Producer told the two or three writers for
her news hour, she told us, ‘now just keep in mind, it’s all good.
This is such a fair and balanced issue.
Don’t write about the number of dead or troops being under
fire or under attack. Not that somebody might have died,
you know, keep it positive. We’ve got to emphasize
all the good that we’re doing.’
She, at that point, made a reference to rebuilding schools, bringing
democracy to Iraq, and then she said, ‘See.
Big progress. Yoo hoo for us.’ Things were actually, at that point, going
quite
badly.
Many more American soldiers were dying each day and
God knows how many Iraqis.
277 US soldiers have now died in Iraq which means
that statistically speaking US soldiers have less of a
chance of dying from all causes in Iraq than citizens have
of being murdered in California which is roughly the same
geographical size.
The PIPA survey is interesting because you’re looking at questions of, of basic
true-false kind of factual nature.
“Did we find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?”
These are very simple questions with very simple answers and what the survey
found was that the more likely you were to watch Fox New
Channel the more likely you were
to have completely incorrect assumptions about these
things.
All the research shows a very high correlation in the case of Fox News with people
watching it with having a very confused notion of the
world on one hand, especially with Foreign policy and the
Middle East and also being strongly supportive of the
Government and power.
And this is an extraordinarily disturbing trend for the
media I mean for any self-respecting journalist.
If you’re told, the more people consume your media, the less
they’ll know about the subject and the more they’ll support
government policy, then that’s, that’s exactly the
worst thing any journalist would ever want to hear, or should
want to hear.
In terms of Fox overall I, I think we have got to appreciate,
and when we look at them is to understand that this
is an adjunct of the Republican Party.
What Fox specializes in, is punditry. Basically getting
marching orders from the Republican National Committee or
some political operative and then having people pontificate
about it, have guests come on to talk about it, have pseudo
experts come on and discuss it.
Their main allegiance is, I’m talking about the people at
the top, is to the Republican Party.
Murdoch is, absolutely to his core, a partisan, and ah, he
makes no secret about that.
George W Bush sat for an interview in Austin with
Fox News Channel’s Carl Cameron, who joins us now with
highlights. Hello Carl. Hi Brent
It was well known in the summer of 2000 that Fox’s lead political correspondent covering
the Bush Campaign, that his wife was campaigning for Bush.
Tell me when you’re ready guys. And things are good. Your family?
Very well. My wife has been hanging out with your
sister.
Yeah good. My county…
Dorothy has been all over the state campaigning and Pauline’s been constantly with her.
Um Yeah Doro’s a good person.
Oh, she’s been terrific. I mean, to hear Pauline
tell it. When she first started campaigning for you she
was a little bit nervous. She getting her stride.
Now she’s up there. She doesn’t need notes. She’s going to crowds and she’s got the
whole riff down.
She’s a good soul. She’s having fun too.
She’s a really good soul.
And in any other news organization, in fact, in CNN that
very summer there was a producer whose husband was a lawyer
for the Gore team. And this was a producer who would’ve
naturally covered Gore, who was immediately told you’re not
to have anything to do with campaign coverage, either
covering Bush or covering Gore because of the possible
conflict of interest, or the perception of a conflict of
interest. At Fox, they didn’t care. The fact that the,
you know, the senior political reporter, his wife, is
actually campaigning for the Bush Campaign at a time when
this guy is covering them, that didn’t even register. It
never would’ve occurred.
Ok you guys ready. That’s great.
See, it’s the little things that get disclosed. I like that.
Thanks for joining us sir. Yes, sir, thanks Carl, it’s good to see
you again.
That’s their lack of having some sort of basic journalistic
integrity that is just missing from that organization.
First person who made the call to say that George W. Bush
had been elected President of the United States was the
person who was in charge of Fox News’ election analysis
division, the people who crunch the exit polling numbers.
That person was a gentleman named John Ellis and he is
George W. Bush’s first cousin.
At around 2 in the morning, on election night, the, a new
set of data had come in and it was complex data from
precincts all over Florida. The proper answer in analyzing that data unquestioningly was:
you couldn’t’ tell, it was too close to call, there was
simply no clear winner. Instead, John Ellis called it as a
clear win for George Bush. Fox News then interrupted its
ongoing election coverage and announced that George
Bush had been elected President of the United States.
Fox news now projects George W. Bush as the winner in Florida and
thus it appears the winner of the Presidency of the United
States. Now what’s significant about that is not
the intervention of the President’s cousin to declare his
relative the new President of the United States it was the
fact that within minutes, ABC, NBC and CBS also fell right
in line calling Bush as the winner.
George Bush is the President Elect of the United
States
Bush wins ABC News is now going to project that Florida
goes to Mr. Bush.
There’s no way that they could have crunched the data in
that time to come to that conclusion. In fact quite the opposite. They should have
come to the conclusion with the Associated Press came
to which was that you couldn’t make the call.
When Fox made the call, that Bush had won, and the other networks followed on, that created
the perception that Bush was the winner, when
in fact he wasn’t. But that perception was
what really held for the next 37 days and I would suggest
to you that that call on election night had more to do with making George Bush president
than any recount or ballot design issue.
We gave our audience bad information. Our lengthy,
critical self-examination shows that we let our viewers
down. I apologize for making those bad projections that
night. It will not happen again.
In the old Soviet Union you’d hearing about the party-line
shifting 180 degrees. Watching Fox News at the end of
Clinton, where it was all attack mode where they were just
vicious watchdogs, and then Bush takes power and they’re
like little lap dogs. It was like night and day and it’s a party-line
shift. The President has the direction and the
vision to take us into the future boldly and
with, with courage and optimism.
He is an extraordinarily straight forward leader.
He says what he is going to do and he does it.
The President stands for steady leadership during a time of enormous change.
But the President is on Air Force One and the
plane has now touched down in New Mexico.
This is as strong a pro-national security conservative President as I have ever seen.
This is a guy who says what he means and means what he says.
But the President is a gentleman. He set a different tone for his campaign.
Super Tuesday lived up to its word. And this was a super
night for our candidate John Kerry and a super night for
the Democratic Party. He’s a super nominee.
I believe, I believe, that in 2004 one united Democratic Party we can, and we will win this
election.
What would you say would be Senator Kerry’s one
or two major weak points that could be exploited?
The Presidential hopeful, John Kerry has missed every one of the 22 role call votes in the
Senate this year but hasn’t missed a paycheck.
He talks about trying to protect the taxpayers every single day and here he is fleecing the
taxpayers out of $150,000 a year
So do you think he should step down, Dominic, when
he’s running for President?
The controversy and his Vietnam war medals has
just gotten worse. He said he never suggested he threw them away but
videotape does not lie. Ribbons or medals? Which did John Kerry throw
away after he returned from Vietnam? This may become
an issue for him today. His perceived disrespect
for the military could be more damaging to the candidate than questions
about his actions in uniform.
Many are angry over Kerry’s post-war protest.
The bigger issue here: is Kerry’s involvement in a
group that’s inherent inherently violent.
Presumptive Democratic nominee was scaring old
people, as usual, with the predictable Democratic line
He said, “President Bush will cut off their entitlement checks. It isn’t
true but the lie has worked well for Democrats in the past.
Assuming that the unthinkable happens, and that
Senator Kerry becomes President…
You’re watching Fox News. Real journalism. Fair & Balanced.
James Wolcott Former Staff Writer for the New
Yorker/Cultural Critic for Vanity Fair They will give you the, almost the full Bush
stump speech no matter where it is and no matter how many
times they’ve shown it.
They’ll cut live to these campaign rallies
as if there was gonna be real news
in them, as if Bush was gonna say anything, you know, earth shattering.
And your, ah, ability to make good decisions like,
marrying your wife Carolyn.
Fox portrays his every action as a heroic move.
As, you know, something dramatic and significant.
I imagine it’s pretty hard for the Fox producers. Some
days George Bush doesn’t do anything interesting and yet,
they’ve got to find something that makes him heroic that
day.
Most people just started waking up and saying, “oh you mean
we don’t have the Fairness Doctrine anymore?” I can't tell
you how many times, when I was a political candidate
running for office, I would have somebody come up to me on
the street and say, “now I saw your opponent on TV the
other day. Aren't they supposed to give you equal time?”
And I didn’t even know for years that we lost that in the
Reagan Era, that for years we haven't had the ability to
expect both sides to be adequately covered.
Clearly on the Republican side what we do know is that for
years they have coordinated what they call their “Message
of the Day”. So you’ll hear on the floor of the House,
you’ll hear on Rush Limbaugh, you’ll hear on Fox and Rupert
Murdoch’s Network, “The Issue Of The Day”, which they will
pound away at, which then creates The Echo Chamber, which
resonates through America.
Here’s what he said, “I actually did vote for the 87
billion before I voted against it.”
Senator Kerry recently said, quote, “I actually did
vote for the 87 billion dollar before I voted against it.”
End Quote Kerry, starting to feel the heat for his flipflop
voting record, is in West Virginia.
Is President Bush doing a good job of defining Kerry as a ‘flip-flopper’…
And you’re saying he flip-flopped on the issue of this.
And he does seem to agonize and flip-flop over and
over and over again.
He’s flip-flopped on all these issues… Beneath Kerry’s flip-flopping
He’s an opportunistic flip-flopper You’re talking flip-flops
A new brand of summer footwear: John Kerry flipflops.
They say that he flip-flops a lot.
And he’s flip-flopped now on every major issue.
Would those be the flip-flops. ‘Cause he’s flip-flopped on everything
else.
Is Senator Kerry guilty of flip-flopping on the
issues? He flip-flops like crazy.
First of all flip-flop… You’ve seen him flip-flop on a whole variety
of issues.
An opportunistic flip-flopper who doesn’t have any
principles. Is that a little harsh?
I think um, it shows one thing. The weakness of
John Kerry.
You’re watching Fox News. Real journalism. Fair & Balanced.
Just 263 days until you get to cast your vote and
decide George W Bush deserves a second term.
John Kerry may wish he’d taken off his microphone before trashing the GOP.
his coarse description of his opponents has cast a lurid
glow over the campaign.
Presidential hopefully, John Kerry, got caught on
tape in some candid remarks that he didn’t want everybody
to hear. But we did.
John Kerry has been lashing out at President Bush and by extension Republicans for a long
time. Nothing new there.
You see a picture of George Bush and you expect to see,
hear organ music that would come out of a church, swelling,
the backlit head, the Madonna look
and John Kerry flashes and you hear the devil’s voice, “This is the devil. He
is evil.”
Is it true the reports that we’re seeing? Did John Kerry on the slopes cursed out a
Secret Service Agent? Is that true?
I think Kerry needed this vacation. He was showing some fatigue.
Only 217 days and counting until Bush is reelected. They’re saying John Kerry looks French.
John Kerry looks French. John Kerry, the man who would be America’s
first French president.
When you’re at war, there are the two models. You have the Churchill, Reagan, Thatcher,
Tony Blair, George Bush model. Or you have the
McGovern, Jimmy Carter, French, John Kerry model.
Are the Republicans effectively going to be able to make John Kerry French?
Good afternoon every body or as John Kerry would say,
“Bonjour”.
French are thinkers. And that doesn’t go into the code of
the American presidency. I mean, you know the French
are the thinker, Le Pont Rodin. I mean, they think,
they think, they think and they never do anything with
their thinking. I believe that Mr. Kerry has to get away of
this image if he wants to win.
Right now, he is not in the American archetype. Why? He’s on vacation.
If the archetype is to take action and you are taking
vacation, I mean you are definitely not, you don’t fit the code. You are “of-code”
Mr. Rapaille? Yes.
Thank you very much. You are hereby invited back.
Every week there’s so many ways you can play the economic
story. At Fox news it’s only the upbeat. They select
statistics that prove the economy’s moving up and thank God
for President Bush for doing it.
The economy of course shaping up to be one of the
hot button issues in this Presidential Campaign.
Polls show the economy shaping up to be a major issue of the Presidential Campaign.
They’re all amazed at the strength of the economy
and how it’s picking up day by day.
I think the economy is growing and ah, I think it’s
going to get stronger.
The economy is very, very strong right now, it
continues to get stronger.
The latest reading on the Nation’s Gross Domestic Product confirming it rose at a healthy
4.1%
Sales of existing homes up 2% last month.
The economy is behaving like it’s on steroids at
the moment.
The fact is that the economy is improving.
The economy will roar in ’04. Roar in ’04. That sounds like a Bush slogan.
204 days until George W. Bush is re-elected.
We’re creating jobs. Good, high-paying jobs for the
American citizens.
The President goes to Charlotte to talk about job training.
Buoyed by the 300K job figure last week, he can boast his
policies are working.
Job grew last months at the fastest rate in four
years.
I would say the news this morning, 308 thousand new
jobs were created last month, they’re drinking the Malox
right out of the gallon bucket at the Kerry campaign.
What this Kerry plan will do is punish successful companies and that’s bad.
If you want to destroy jobs in this country – you
raise taxes.
John Kerry’s plan to bring millions of jobs back to
America well some one here says, “watch out. Kerry’s plan
will end up killing more jobs instead.”
I said previously that the market was neutral on John Kerry, I think that was utterly wrong,
I think the market is down on John Kerry.
When the market goes down one of the things you often hear
is the market is worried about a Kerry victory.
Then out comes a poll showing Kerry with a 4
or 5 point lead, down goes the market big time.
And how they know that the market went down because
everybody had Kerry on their mind, as opposed to everyone
was worried about interest rates, or everyone looked at the earnings figures and
thought they weren't as good as projected. But they love
to pretend that they’re Carnac The Magnificent and
they can read the mind of the market.
Terror threats, gas prices sky high, but Forbes says, “the economy is still strong and getting
stronger every day.”
There you have it. 196 Days till we reelected George W.
Wait, the election’s over? LAUGHS
Thanks for letting me know. We’re almost there.
I think Fox News, of all our subsidiaries, had
the best increase in profits.
What makes Murdoch particularly dangerous is that he’s
foremost a politician and he will use his immense media
power to shape the content and especially the news that
furthers his interest and those of his allies, including
the conservative Republican community. After all, Fox News
is nothing more than a 24/7 political ad for the GOP.
Jeff Cohen Former MSNBC/Fox News Contributor At MSNBC I worked as a Senior Producer on
the Donahue, Phil Donahue Prime Time Show. From the beginning
they were saying to us we have to be balanced. Giving them
instructions not to be too confrontational. Don’t be too
partisan. Don’t be too angry.
Now by the end, of out ten year balance wasn’t
enough. And this is the “Fox Effect”. They mandated that any time we
had, if we had two left-wing guests, we had to have three
right-wing guests. If we had to had one anti-war guest,
we had to have two pro-war guests. And that’s how
we ended the show. So, we’re trying to outfox Fox. You cannot
outfox Fox. But MSNBC and the others have tried. CNBC
has tried to outfox Fox. Since the corporate structures,
corporate ownership of the other channels did not allow
anyone to counter-program against Fox, you know, in
television the inclination is imitation.
I think the standard right now is Fox. And I want to be as
interesting and as edgy as you guys are.
It’s influencing its competitors. Ah, that’s why, you
know, MSNBC hired Joe Scarborough. That’s why CNN in
recent weeks has taken to reporting pretty much anything
the Bush White House tells it to report.
There is a sense now
there is money in the flag.
And Fox knows that and its competitors know that Fox is
onto something.
Today news business is geared towards entertainment. It’s
geared toward, in some cases, propaganda. It’s geared
toward, ultimately, the bottom line of the big corporations
that owns the station that owns the news operation.
It’s called the news business for a reason. Ah, it is news
but it’s a business.
They don’t like to spend money doing serious stories. They
like to do cheap, easy stories that will get a gutreaction.
I think the thing that distresses me more than anything
else is that, a lot of the news content is not coming
straight out of the newsrooms, particularly in television,
um, but out of the promotion department.
It’s expensive to spend time exploring the issues. It’s
cheap. And everything now is a question of money.
If you go to the National Association of Black Journalists,
or you go to National Association of Hispanic Journalists,
you talk to Asian-American journalists who are on-air, you
talk to Native-American journalists; you’re seeing a
diminution in the number of journalists that are locally based
because in order to save money and in order to get
economy of scale and scope, a lot of the broadcasters are
shrinking their employee pool and they’re shrinking in the
news section, sectors of their stations. So, a lot of the
young, vibrant people who are getting experience as on-air
talent in small towns, are seeing those opportunities increasingly diminish.
When you let a small number of companies have this much
concentrated power, they will always abuse it, it’s simply
unacceptable in a free society. And if you don’t change
the system we can be having this conversation for the next
50 years and be talking about Rupert Murdoch the third.
Just as health care and the economy and the environment are
political issues that people are familiar with, corporate
control over the media is also a major political issue.
When you have one network that is so powerful and so intent
upon warping the dialogue, it limits that discourse. It
actually influences it to be a narrower discourse and
that’s what I think citizens should be up in arms about.
We can’t accept this anymore. If we do accept it, we’re
handing onto our children, and our grandchildren a less
Democracy than we inherited. And that’s the one thing we
don’t have a right to do.
It’s ironic that it’s been, what, 30 years since Paddy
Chayevsky wrote Network but I really believe that those
prophetic words that were spoken by Peter Finch when he
finally got out of the chair and said: “It’s time. Go to
the window, shake your fist and say I’m mad as hell. I’m
not going to take it anymore.” I think those are resonant
words today. I think people are genuinely upset.
Get off your rear end and become an activist. And if you
see things that are biased, complain to the outlet and say
you won’t be watching anymore.
Content has to change. Power has to shift. And I think
the only way we can shift power is the only way we’ve ever
been able to shift power; directly confronting those who
hold it and taking it back.
Policies have been made behind closed doors by very
powerful special interest without any public involvement or
participation. And what we’ve learned in the last few
years is when the public gets aware of this and they start
organizing, we can change these policies and we can make a
system that actually responds to the needs of the people of
this country.
Exec. Dir. Of Center for Digital Democracy America’s digital destiny is hanging in
the balance now. With the right activism, public outcry, we
can shape a media environment so that in every community
there are channels that will serve the public interest.
If you are a citizen, at home right now, when you turn on
Talk Radio all you hear is one right-wing nut, or another
right-wing nut, why don’t you go to the radio station and
say, “I’m sick and tired of this. There are progressive
voices out there. We want a balance.”
If a Fox TV station in your town is broadcasting reports
that you know to be inaccurate, that you know to be warping
the news. You, as citizens, have power.
Groups like Code Pink and other have actually demonstrated outside
television stations and have made noise about it.
We need to basically play the Paul Revere role. You know
kind of,ride out into the night, alerting people that, ah,
there’s something bad going on here and something needs to
be done about it.
Here’s what I’d love to have happen. Family from Nebraska
goes to Washington for their family vacation. We’re going
to visit the Air and Space Museum. We’re going to visit
the Mall. We’re going to visit the Vietnam Memorial. And
we’re going to visit the FCC to see a Commissioner or two
to tell them about what we care about. When that happens,
we might start to see a little more attention. But, you
know, it aint gonna happen if you don’t try.
We can actually win here. The whole strength of the
system’s based on people being apathetic and not thinking
they can do anything about it. As soon as we rise up it
collapses like a house of cards. That’s the extraordinary
development of the last few years.
It’s not an issue of the right or left. It is a populist
issue about people finally saying it’s their democracy and
they aren’t going to let five companies control the
airwaves for corporate convenience at the expense of public
necessity.
I come from a community in the State of Maine that’s mostly
fishing towns, small coastal communities and for many years
we were served by one radio station that everybody listened
to
I mean, it was local radio. Every time I debated an
opponent when I was running for office, everybody would
tune it in their cars or their home radio and they would
hear what we were feeling differently about and when Clear Channel
bought it, that was the end. You couldn’t even count on
somebody looking out the window and telling you if it was a
good day or a bad day or if the fog was coming in.
But what was really interesting to me was that people got
angry, there was a local group that organized and attempted
to get low-power FM radio license.
They had a hard battle, Clear Channel opposed them, and
they actually won and now there’s a little radio station
operated out of a garage in that town, all volunteers,
anybody can play the music that they want, but at 5 o’clock
every day, they tune into the dialogue of what’s going on
in that community.
What we’ve been doing over the last decade is to create
alternative infrastructure so we now have an online audience of 10,00
unique visitors per day to our home page, plus the over the
air audience of our new low power FM radio station, and
very soon we’re going to have public access TV
in this community. So we’ve got three legs of a stool here
of an alternative media infrastructure that gives us a means of communicating among
ourselves and not just relying on the occasional Letter
to the Editor in a corporate newspaper or
almost no coverage in the broadcast media because they’re all owned by clear channel
and Sinclair and Fox.
And when the News Media Council started, one of our first
projects was to recruit unorganized youth of color, teenagers. And
have them study the Fox Affiliate station in the Bay Area.
When we did the study we were able to do an editorial
meeting. It was the first time, in probably ten or fifteen
years, that a constituency group locally had actually
ever came and demanded anything from them. They just
get to do whatever they want, nobody cares, nobody understands
that they can demand anything. So it was a pretty
momentous moment for us you know to both demand something and get
it from a Fox Affiliate. But also to be one of
the first, you know, folks to come forward and that, that’s
something that I think is a trend that we’re trying to
start now. Marginalized people
don’t have any concept that they can go to an editor in
groups and demand something.