Liberal media cowardice

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Sun, 22 Jan 2006 05:14:53 -0800 (PST)

Liberal media cowardice

 

 

Liberal media cowardice

 

Original article is at http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/01/1724103.php

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Liberal media cowardice

by Joe Bageant Thursday, Jan. 19, 2006 at 12:49 PM

bageantjb 540-72202834

 

 

How NPR and PBS dissed Mark Crispin Miller because of his new book.

 

GOODBYE TERRY GROSS, WE NIVER KNEW YE

-on liberal media denial

 

By Joe Bageant

 

Having come to understand that mainstream media are in the business of

selling fried chicken and cars, giving Wall Street head, and stealing

bandwidth from the public's airwaves, none of us expect them to

question anything afoot in the empire. We quite understand they cannot

be wasting profitable air time on a nation whose collective memory is

30 seconds long.

 

So we watch them pull their punches and wait for the commercials,

which are their whole point anyway. If, god forbid, you are the pointy

headed type interested in details, turn on NPR. And if you consider

yourself hipper than the couch taters out here in Budland, go onto the

net and visit Salon. Or if you are so worldly and hip you are a

downright commie, then to Mother Jones. That's the way it

used to be.

 

But now we are seeing what were once considered the more intelligent

and in some cases more principled media such as NPR, Salon and Mother

Jones distance themselves from meaningful controversy -- -pulling the

few wimpy punches they have. (Bullshit controversy, however, is still

in fashion.) We are talking about Mark Crispin Miller's new book,

Fooled Again -- How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll

Steal the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them). Miller has become a

known and respected progressive figure, one of the few in-your-face

bespectacled lefty author types with any credibility. But when it

comes to promoting Fooled, the guy can't even get arrested. No

interviews, nothing. In fact, these days even his cash bounces

-- -Miller can't even buy a spot on National Public Radio for his book.

 

Now you may be saying to yourself: " Public Radio doesn't sell

advertising. "

 

Which would make you one of those delusional souls who believe that

shameless brand hawking by the oil companies and the financial

establishment on NPR is not advertising. I mean, after all, ADM and

Wal-Mart?

 

NPR has sales people out chasing these sponsors. They sell these

damned announcements. The only difference between NPR's " paid

sponsorships " and the puke jock shows' commercial radio ads is that

the NPR folks don't have a real rate card. Which is either stupid or

brilliant, I'm not sure.

 

Anyway, when it comes to NPR and PBS, and especially Philadelphia's

WHYY, Miller can't buy a date. As in the past, he attempted to

sponsor spots on behalf of his newest book. And WHYY accepted the

sponsorship. But then aaaaaaaaagh! There came the sweaty excuse ridden

attempts to back out on their end. Various excuses included that the

book was too old (it was out two months) and that it was a paid

political ad, (it supports no candidate.)

 

Ultimately NPR and PBS have pretty much told Miller to go to hell.

 

It is safe to say that WHYY and the rest of the public media gang is

purely are simply scared to death of uttering the book's title on the

airwaves.

 

They know that the neocons will jump up all over their asses claiming

liberal bias. Maybe even launch one of their infamous letter writing

campaigns. The Republican game plan of unrelenting bullshit, that

steady grinding away day in day out . it works. They have managed to

wear down those media they don't already control from the top, make

them either doubt themselves or make them damned afraid of

repercussions. We can well imagine what the GOP assault on public

radio and television has created around places like WHYY. Hell, if

they can get Bill Moyer they can get anybody. Right?

 

WHYY would not accept Miller's sponsorship on behalf of Fooled on the

grounds that it was a paid political message. By golly, it was a

matter of principle! That's what it was! We won't take just anybody's

money. Yeah, right. If you've ever suffered through a pledge drive you

know that the brass at NPR would put Terry Gross and Nina Totenberg

out on the street as workin' girls if they thought could it would

bring in another couple of hundred. But honestly speaking, the facts

are as WHYY claims.

 

The station does not accept political ads. It only accepts paid

advertisements for commercial products. Which is exactly what the

sponsorship of Miller's book is.

 

Then there is that charge of it being old news. Hell, maybe the

evolving corruption of our voting system is old news in a nation with

said 30-second memory. Maybe the subversion of our government by an

organized syndicate is not worthy of more than a few days media

attention. Maybe that's why the book is not getting reviewed. But

besides treading lightly around the neocon pit bulls, there is also

that nagging issue of denial. To admit that two national elections

were rigged shakes us to the bone.

 

Right now, between the Bush junta's bloody cry for an inquisition or

at least universal surveillance and torture, and the Christian right's

demented hallucinations of Kofi Annan as the anti-Christ Honest to

god, just look in the Left Behind books) we live in that bizarro

world that often precedes fascism -- -that bizarro world in which

every topic imaginable is politicized, and even not to speak

represents taking a political stand.

 

Along with the passive denial of NPR, there is the active denial. We

find characters like Salon's Farhad Manjoo who've lit into Fooled

Again with a suspicious vengeance. In a way it is to be expected.

Manjoo has practically made a career of writing in liberal venues

that there is no odor of polecats in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere.

 

Sometimes I think Salon keeps that boy around so the goppers can't cry

bias. Hell, his first act was jumping Greg Palast for his

groundbreaking exposure of the Republican election fraud in that first

crooked election.

 

At any rate, here's a guy, Miller, with all the establishment

credentials that NPR just eats up when they interview Heritage

Foundation " experts. " In fact, Mark Crispin Miller does a helluva job

documenting his facts.

 

Certainly as good as any of the aging Heritage Foundation gasbags NPR

is so fond of for analysis. As in: Well Scott, actually this is not

the first president to be caught pissing off the White House Portico

and throwing empty liquor bottles at the passing public. In 1832

Presidentpresident Andrew Jackson But for now Mark Crispin Miller can

go sit in the corner with the other non grata folks like Howard Zinn

and Gore Vidal.

 

As one radio host put it, " Miller is too angry. It doesn't make for

good radio. "

 

Some listeners feel that NPR " does the best it can in this best of all

possible worlds. Sometimes they're still pretty damn good. " True

enough. But in these times, being " sometimes good " is not good enough

-- -not when the goddam republic is burning down. They too need to

carry water buckets with the rest of us and quit imitating corporate

media. But then, NPR and PBS are themselves big corporate media. They

are big, they are a corporation and they are media. So much so that

they run soppy feel good material worthy of the Rush Limbaugh or the

Paul Harvey show. Material like " This I Believe " series. Tell you what

I believe. I believe two national elections were rigged in this

country. Millions of others believe the same. Tens of millions in

fact. But most are in denial of what they deeply suspect and do not

want to see verified.

 

Our national denial comes easily when everything converges to support it.

First we had John Kerry's quick concession of the election, lest a

fellow Skull 'n Boner accuse him of sour grapes. And looking about,

none of our neighbors or colleagues seems worried about it. We are

above all a mimicking species. Then there is the traditional press,

from whom we've heard scarcely a chirp. Rather counter-intuitively,

denial is especially easy for news reporters who can always fall back

on " the facts " and the need for absolute proof. Proof being that

someone is criminally charged with the very election fraud everyone is

afraid to acknowledge because it is the death knell for any precious

notions we've ever entertained about our system -- -the one system

among all the troubled and grievously offensive governments on this

planet, we have been told all our lives, that " works. " Acknowledging

that it no longer works would mean fixing it, and fixing it calls for

more strength and political will than Americans have ever shown. In

fact, to be honest, when in your lifetime did ordinary Americans ever

rise up together to stamp down or even point out corruption? I dare

say never.

 

It has always been the duty of the press or a few spectacularly brave

individuals to call attention to such things. And on rare occasions

the press has done just that. But this is not one of those occasions.

Not for CBS, PBS or NPR. Especially not for NPR. Given that the

Republicans have them by the nose hairs, it is easier, not to mention

far safer, for everyone to deny that criminals operate within our

political system and have established what amounts to a

corporate/political underworld. We can smell it at every turn, and

have seen its very reflection in those exit poll results.

 

Big corporate sponsors do nothing that does not yield a return on

investment, nothing that doesn't buy some desired result. Thus, denial

and distraction are what those sponsorships from HewlettHewlitt

Packard and Monsanto really buys. At the same time the denial is all

but spotlighted with the fluff and slop that replaces real coverage

and demonstrates cooperation to the administration and sponsors.

 

Stuff like " This I Believe. " Or that overt sop, Marketplace, where

happy jock stockbroker types Kai Ryssdal, and that hyperactive airhead

in Texas (I forget his name) play pocket pool with each other over the

day's market numbers, happily promoting the liberal capitalist notion

that the second law of thermodynamics is false and that growth and

consumption can be infinite in a world of diminishing resources.

 

NPR's own ombudsman admits that NPR, like the Fox and all the rest,

skews towards conservative spokesmen. In fact, NPR so resembles the

mainstream ditch these days that at least two of its major

correspondents slipped comfortably enough right over into Fox News and

were openly congratulated for it by fellow NPR broadcasters.

 

PBS increasingly depends on the teat of corporate underwriters.

Consequently, we can expect to be force fed even more of the three

tenors, the Lawrence Welk trio of the white middle class boomer

generation.

 

Meanwhile, as NPR whines under the table for scraps from the big dogs'

plates, the Heritage Foundation spends $30 million a year priming the

info pumps of Fox and the other big guys.

 

All of which still leaves those crooked elections lingering as the

backdrop to, or perhaps harbinger of, the 2008 elections, despite the

lack of reporting on it. Reporters may perhaps be bound by a duty to

refrain from assumptions. But I sure as hell ain't. And I'm assuming

that if the Bush junta got away with it the first time, they will keep

right on doing it until somebody breaks their goddamned legs. People

like Katherine Harris, Karl Rove and Republican Ohio Secretary of

State Kenneth Blackwell haven't climbed to the top of the GOP dung

heap because of their morals and restraint. They are big time

Republicans precisely because they are willing to steal chickens and

lie to the sheriff.

 

At some deep national level we all know, George W. Bush has no right

to be farting into the Oval Roomoval room desk chair. Even the few

genuinely moderate Republicans not driven into hiding by the

Brownshirts look sheepish when you bring up Florida and Ohio. Yet

Americans go on pretending that everything is OK. The people pretend

along with the media that George W. Bush belongs in that chair.

Pretend that his is the face of a man capable of deep and serious

thought, that the smirk is not really a smirk and that he really gives

a rat's ass about those coffins at Dover or those black people

in New Orleans. They pretend that it was not farcical when he told the

nation this week that despite the city being soaked in petro-toxins

and defined mainly by bulldozed piles of rotting timbers, clothing and

sewerage, overturned cars and botulism filled refrigerators, " New

Orleans is still a great place to bring the family and have fun. "

 

They pretend that strange nationwide spider web of bitter GOP

operatives could not possibly have worked together in Ohio and

Florida and heaven only knows where else.

 

Everything is OK.

 

As Helen Caldicott recently put it: " What's to become of us? Ask any

experienced mental health practitioner what happens to a person who

constructs and tries to maintain a life based on denial of fundamental

reality. It can be done for a while, in spite of occasional outbursts

of behavioral oddities (remember Dr. Strangelove's disobedient arm

that was always popping up in an embarrassing Nazi salute). But how

long can such a pretense be maintained, even when the pretender is

surrounded by the best handlers money can buy? "

 

Apparently Helen, a damned long time. At least eight years.