‘Freedom Of The Press Is Guaranteed Only ...’Sampling The Networks' Hillary Committee Aftermath

Liebling was right, and his famous quotation is never more apt than when applied to politics on broadcast TV...

[flip broadcast TV — ON]

Charlie Rose, who is I assume a Republican (at least he married in succession two wealthy women), hosted... two Republicans and John Grisham, probably not a Republican (he is on the board of The Innocence Project, and GOPers seldom think anyone is innocent). Three-to-one R-to-D on the set. They weren't shy about it, either. 

[flip]

A local knockoff of The View; five people on set. I don't know the ratio, but one unabashedly partisan Republican woman dominated the conversation monologue.

[flip]

A major broadcast network's morning national news. A "political analyst" spins the Hillary testimony. In this case, "political analyst" meant "paid Republican hack."

[flip]

Another major broadcast network's morning national news. Carly Fiorina, not pitted against any Democrat, ranting derogatory crap about Hillary, with no one on set to defend Mrs. Clinton. You can just imagine... it was as if Fiorina had been given a free ad spot.

[flip — OFF]

There's not even an attempt to be subtle about it. Many Republicans hate Hillary so much that I am worried that if they can't stop her by legitimate means, one or more of them may assault her. But whatever they want to say is OK with me, as long as there is someone on set to present an opposing viewpoint. Somehow, there seldom if ever is such a person.

Regular readers know I am a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders, and I wish to goodness it was his year, but as much as I personally enjoy supporting a genuine progressive, I think Bernie is the proverbial snowball in Hell in the race for President. It ain't gonna happen.

When Bernie departs the race, I will revert to type: I am a strategic voter, and as distasteful as I find big-money politics, I plan to vote for Hillary... no matter what stupid (and utterly false) scandals the Rethugs toss at her. Hey, she's gotta be better than The Donald (admittedly not a very high standard).

As to who will win, I have no idea. With the broadcast networks wholly owned by right-wing nut-jobs (even PBS news shows are dominated by executive directors who lean right), the public never has a fair chance to see any other views. (A colleague of mine with whom I carpooled many years ago, a well-educated wing-nut but nonetheless a wing-nut, used to rant about the "liberal media." I can only wish...)

From Buckley v. Valeo (1976) forward, the "spending-is-speech" crowd, themselves mostly wealthy Republicans, have effectively owned US politics. If we want our democracy back, I don't know how in Hell we're going to get it. It's sad, when you think about it. <sigh />

RNC: We Decide What News Networks Shall Program; CNN: Like Hell You Do

Reince Priebus has made another baldfaced royal proclamation on behalf of The Party That Runs The Show:

Try Ex-Lax, Reince!

Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus on Monday called on both NBC and CNN to drop their planned film productions of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or face losing their partnerships with the RNC for 2016 presidential primary debates.

CNN, at least, had something to say about that:

Madame Secretary

Puzzled over what they say would be a "premature" decision to pull several 2016 presidential primary debates should a documentary on Hillary Clinton go forward, CNN on Monday called on the RNC to "reserve judgment" before committing what they call the "ultimate disservice to voters."

A party whose national committee chair has a name reminiscent of European royalty really should think twice before behaving toward one or more of the major television networks as if the party were, in fact, royalty who could dictate to the networks what they could or could not broadcast. I mean, really: in the 2000 presidential selection, it was the CEO of ABC who called the election for GeeDubya Bush. I think the power of the networks to run the show on election night is well-established, whatever Republican royalty (or ordinary citizens) may think of that.

Apparent Undercover Charlotte Cops Threaten, Search FDL, TruthOut Journalists

It is with genuine sadness that I report this. FDL reporter Kevin Gosztola and TruthOut's Steve Horn, both credentialed journalists at the Convention, were photographing "four burly middle-aged white males" in the street during a protest march. The four males, dressed as protesters but later identifying themselves as cops, were themselves photographing undocumented immigrants in the march. The undocumenteds were urging President Obama to make good on his 2008 campaign promise to facilitate some sort of solution to the ongoing problem faced by farmworkers without papers, other than the brutal approach in effect now for many decades, which is getting worse in border states. The cops threatened the journalists, one saying he would punch Gosztola in the teeth, another dragging Horn away from his story to a street corner. Gosztola deleted all his photos rather than turn them over to a cop.

Oh, hell. Just go read it. I'm weary and tired of this shit. It is an old, old story with echoes of Chicago 1968, and it is no more acceptable at a Democratic convention than a Republican one. As Jane Hamsher said,

“There’s nothing illegal about photographing people on the street” says Jane Hamsher, publisher of Firedoglake. “There was absolutely no provocation that could have possibly justified the thuggery and bullying by law enforcement agents of journalists who were legitimately covering a public event. It was an outrageous abridgement not only of freedom of the press, but of individual civil liberties.”

But that is where we are in 2012. Civil liberties, especially for journalists and news photographers, are infringed daily, and cops take sides in matters that are not rightfully theirs to resolve, absent violence. Things are different now, but not in a good way. Freedom of the press is in grave danger in America today.

'Are Americans Any Better Off Today Than They Were Four Years Ago?'

Dean Baker tackles that inane question, which was recently asked by George Stephanopoulos (my spell checker complains about the Greek family name and suggests "postmenopausal") of David Plouffe:

...

... Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, "is the house in better shape than when you got here?"

...

Newspaper

No doubt the same hypothetical reporter will seek out a family member whose house has been damaged and ask "How do you feel?" It is symptomatic of today's media that every line of questioning they pursue is either without substance or insulting both to the interviewee and the reader or viewer as well. I'll continue getting my news from the web, thank you.

As to the question, of course the real question is simpler: "Are Americans better off today than they would have been if John McCain had become president instead of Barack Obama?" Of course it is impossible, starting from such a counter-factual, to answer such a question definitively, but I'll make a best guess: Americans would only have been better off with McCain if you consider only people with incomes upward of, say, $500,000 a year. But such an answer contains no "gotcha," only a best estimate of the facts. So no reporter ever asks it.

Can we please, please have a better news media? or at least one not bought and paid for by the Party of the Wealthy?

ASIDE to younger readers: the graphic above depicts a "newspaper," a once-common news medium now quickly vanishing in today's electronic age. Newspapers had many advantages. You could spread them out on a table, or hold them in front of your face as you rode the bus to work (or as you sat in the bathroom), or, perhaps the best and most appropriate use of all, when you were done reading them, you could spread them in the bottom of a birdcage, where they would receive still more of the substance with which they were frequently already covered.

Journalism Outsourced, Pseudonymized

This story is all over the place. Well, no, it's not in "hyperlocal" sections of local newspapers, and it isn't under fake bylines; that would be telling on itself. The practice is the outsourcing of local news by local publications; the company, Journatic, is used by some major large-city dailies including Chicago Tribune and yes, to my regret, the Houston Chronicle. Here's Mark Coddington of Harvard's Nieman Journalism Center:, to pick one of hundreds of articles, mostly because it has good links:

...

The Chicago Tribune just outsourced its hyperlocal TribLocal sections to Journatic, and it began investigating Journatic’s work for fake bylines. The Chicago Sun-Times, Houston Chronicle, and San Francisco Chronicle also reported fake bylines on Journatic stories in their papers, and the Sun-Times and the newspaper chain GateHouse ended their contracts with Journatic, though GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram reported that those contracts expired before the fake-byline story came out. Journatic’s CEO sent a memo rallying the troops and declaring that its aliases would be discontinued.

The revelations pointed toward a larger discussion over how to do the tough work of making local journalism sustainable, summarized well by NPR’s David Folkenflik. Northeastern journalism professor Dan Kennedy said operations like Journatic’s “pink slime journalism” are a function of the fact that local journalism is difficult and expensive to do well, though the solution will ultimately come from the bottom up, not from cookie-cutter approaches. Free Press, meanwhile, urged us to demand better out of local news.

...

Coddington goes on to quote people who actually think this is a good thing, or inevitable given the economics of the news business, or some other claptrap. Personally, I think it's just plain dishonest. If they're going to outsource local news to nonlocal writers, and pseudonymize the purported journalists' bylines, how are they any better than a thorough and careful blogger, that "evil" [/snark] individual whom mainstream journalists are always condemning?

Blogs And 'Professional' News Organizations

Among the MSM org's that reported early on the Affordable Care Act decision, CNN fucked it, Fox fucked it, and MSNBC got it right. That's one of three who reported quickly who also got it right... not a very good record.

On the other hand, SCOTUSblog got it right.

The next time some aged, alcohol-and-tobacco-pickled mainstream media reporter goes on a rant about how awful blogs are, quietly remind them of this fact. Next time, I... on my lowly blog, having no primary sources at my disposal... I shall go with SCOTUSblog.