In a recent journal, I suggested that “Edward R. Murrow was no Edward R. Murrow.” A statement like this is nonsensical in its face. In an essay it is meant to make the reader 1) object and then 2) try to think of a case in which the impossible could be possible. If Edward R. Murrow is both an individual and a platonic ideal then the statement can be true, since people seldom live up to their legends. We are used to hearing that “So and so is no Edward R. Murrow” by which we mean that “So and so” does not reveal the truth about powerful public figures without fear of repercussions to himself or those around him irregardless of the great disparity of power between “So and so” and the public figures he criticizes. Edward R. Murrow, the platonic ideal is always courageous and selfless. Everyone else, including Edward R. Murrow the man, thinks about his career and consequences before he speaks.
However, the American corporate media
wants us to believe that Edward R. Murrow achieved his own platonic ideal. That is why the mythology of the man does not include the fact that his nemesis, Sen. Joe McCarthy made the fateful mistake of going after military men, generals, at a time when the newly elected president was a former general, Eisenhower. It was one thing to attack anonymous people who worked as clerks, accountants, scriptwriters---they were all fair game. The generals at the Pentagon were not. So, CBS turned Edward R. Murrow loose. And the corporate news media in the United States proclaimed that he—and the news media which he represented---- had saved the American people.
The Watergate investigation done by
Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein has gone down in history as one of journalism’s finest moments. WaPo owner, Katharine Graham was personally threatened by Attorney General John Mitchell who said "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." However, what made the gamble pay off was John Dean’s revelation of a list of VIP’s whom the White House planned to “screw”.
Watergate is, indeed, a deviation from past practice, not so much in scale or in principle as in the choice of targets. The targets now include the rich and respectable, spokesmen for official ideology, men who are expected to share power, to design social policy, and to mold popular opinion. Such people are not fair game for persecution at the hands of the state.
Watergate: A Skeptical View
Noam Chomsky
The New York Review of Books, September 20, 1973
This made it the best story in town, worthy of daily media coverage and full Congressional hearings----though police beatings, mass arrests, illegal trials and even murders of leftists, civil rights activists, war protesters and union members continued to be ignored or treated as “their fault.” The fact that the Watergate story broke and was covered in minute detail and was written about from every different angle meant that the press had saved democracy---for people like Paul Newman and Charles Dyson and Katharine Graham whom the upstart Nixon had the temerity to lump in with the traditional enemies of the state.
In 2002, the Pentagon was a willing participant in the invasion of Iraq. It enlisted the aid of its favorite corporate media partners, NBC and MSNBC, both owned by General Electric, one of the largest beneficiaries of military contracts. Under Tom Brokaw, NBC lead the march to war. Here you can find NBC’s special war theme song (along with war music used by all the other networks)
http://www.slate.com/id/2081608/Here you can find the lengths that MSNBC was willing to go to in order to run a patriotic operation. (Question: Do you know why it is called
Countdown? I didn’t until I read this. )
http://www.theava.com/03/08-13-warpimps.html Here's a story that sums up how the networks sought to commercialize the Iraq war and profit from the invasion just like the oil companies. On the eve of the war, MSNBC fired talk show host Phil Donahue. They replaced the Donahue show with a running segment called Countdown: Iraq, featuring the usual nightly coterie of retired generals, security flaks and spin doctors. The network's executives blamed the cancellation on sagging ratings. In fact, during its run Donahue's show attracted more viewers than any other program on the network. The real reason for the pre-emptive strike on Donahue was spelled out in an internal memo from anxious executives at NBC. Donahue, the memo said, offered "a difficult face for NBC in a time of war...He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives."
The memo warned that Donahue's show risked tarring MSNBC as an unpatriotic network, "a home for liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." So, with scarcely a second thought, the honchos at MSNBC gave Donahue the boot and hoisted the battle flag.
It's war that sells.
A Confidence Game on IraqWar Pimps
by Jeffrey St. Clair
August 13, 2003
Here is more on “Countdown: Iraq”:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=afall02msnbccountdowniraq&scale=0#afall02msnbccountdowniraq “The biggest villain here is not Rumsfeld nor the Pentagon,” Cohen writes. “It’s the TV networks. In the land of the First Amendment, it was their choice to shut down debate and journalism. No government agency forced MSNBC to repeatedly feature the hawkish generals unopposed. Or fire Phil Donahue. Or smear weapons expert Scott Ritter. Or blacklist former attorney general Ramsey Clark. It was top NBC/MSNBC execs, not the Feds, who imposed a quota system on the Donahue staff requiring two pro-war guests if we booked one anti-war advocate—affirmative action for hawks.… he major TV networks… were not hoodwinked by a Pentagon propaganda scheme. They were willingly complicit, and have been for decades.”
So, if an ex-NBC employee says that the network was in the business of spinning propaganda for the White House and Pentagon in 2002-2003, I would say she is telling the truth.
People in the U.S. have been accused of having short memories. It might be true. Maybe this is why we forget that NBC was gung ho on the invasion of Iraq. That was five years ago. Three years ago, something happened. The Bush administration and the Pentagon had a falling out. The NeoCons decided to proceed to stage two of their plan for world oil dominance, the invasion of Iran. The Pentagon replied “You and what army?”
Most corporate media empires are dependent upon the political party which occupies the executive branch, because the FCC controls their fortunes. General Electric is dependent upon the Pentagon for its livelihood. When the White House made an enemy of the military, it made an enemy of General Electric and its media holdings. We saw the results one evening in January, 2005 when MSNBC assembled a cast including Pat Buchanan to tell the world what a disaster an invasion of Iran would be. They have been telling us the same thing ever since.
They have also turned Keith Olbermann loose on the Bush administration, since a weakened White House is in no position to invade any more middle eastern countries. Chris Matthews has informed the world that everyone knew that there were no WMDs in much the same way that Big Brother told the world of
1984 “We have always been at war with Oceana” Progressive journalists who once would have been relegated to panel discussions on PBS, like Rachel Maddow have become regular fixtures on the GE network.
General Electric and its media holdings NBC and MSNBC did not have an epiphany. Keith Olbermann did not make them see the light or teach them the error of their ways. Bush and Cheney got into a shoving match with the Pentagon and the Pentagon shoved back. Those who have set MSNBC up on a pedestal, claiming that the network is somehow more progressive or more “Democratic” or more pacifist because it is opposed to
this endless war for oil in the middle east miss the point. This is the
same MSNBC which fired Donahue because he would not get behind the Pentagon’s push for the invasion of Iraq. And if the Pentagon says “We like McCain”, then damn it, NBC likes McCain.
The press loves to celebrate its heroes, but for every David vs. Goliath, there have been Pontius Pilates. At the request of the FBI under J Edgar Hoover, the NYTs published oppo about Dr. King that reduced him to tears. Then there was the ongoing atrocity of Judy Miller, followed by Michael Gordon, the world’s first voice activated human tape recorder. The Washington Post gave us “The Good Lie” and “Pelosi Knew” but I am still waiting for national press to admit that Gore won in Florida. Now
that would show some spine. CBS sank the career of Dan Rather because he dared to produce a true story about W.’s AWOL before the 2004 election with only one detail in doubt (though it did not change the substance of the story). Viacom’s news network did this because they were afraid that they would be forced to divest some of their media holdings. So much for Murrows’ old employer. ABC gave us the never ending atrocity of “America Held Hostage” which gave us the Reagan era. And NBC, which people tout as some kind of liberal mecca, sat on its Ohio exit polls in late 2004 just like all the other news networks, presumably because they believed the Bush Administration line that they were going to relax federal media ownership rules (and Kerry wasn’t).
We can not expect any representative of the corporate media to speak for us or to free us, because all of them have been bought by the system which oppresses us. The three cases I describe above in which
very powerful people have been challenged by the press are actually examples of internal feuds among the rich and powerful. Pentagon and the executive branch versus Congress. Rich Democrats versus the executive branch. Pentagon versus the executive branch.
Some voices within the system may be more authentic than others, but be careful. When those voices get too authentic, they are likely to be snuffed out by the industries for which they work. If we want to give voice to our own cause, we need to do it ourselves, with our own news that is free from the corrupting influence of money and sponsors. That it is why we need a free, fully funded and independent multichannel public broadcasting network that will have room for a 24 hour news network, a children's network, adult programming---the equivalent of the BBC. In the meantime, instead of looking out for more Edward R. Murrows, we should be looking for more Daniel Ellsberg (the real hero of Watergate), Sy Hersch , Bill Moyer and Thomas Paines.
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Thomas Paine
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- But I too have said it over and over:
