Vol. 1 No. 7 (November 2002)
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of
comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
TALKING POINTS
Of all the disgruntled commentary, second-guessing, and wishful thinking to
come out of the 2002 elections, perhaps no interpretation is so misguided as to
suggest that the election was actually good for Democrats. The reasoning, in a
nutshell, is that Republicans will be held to account (to use of one President
Bush's favorite phrases) for the various bad things that will happen over the next
two years, and that this will position the Democrats for a successful run at
the Presidency, or for regaining Congressional seats, or both, in 2004.
Political observers and participants as well known as Robert Reich have been
putting forth variations of this theme for the last two weeks.
Right off the bat, this argument runs into problems on its supposed merits. In
the first place, by the time the next election comes around, it's quite
possible that the economy will have rebounded,
It must be remembered that - quite apart from whatever happens in 2004 - the
election was BAD for centrists and progressives, and more importantly for the
policies they embrace, because right-wing Republicans have become
well-positioned to enact even the more radical elements of their legislative
agenda.
Seemingly unrelenting in seeking political advantage, and in pursuing an
unbending ideological program, rightist conservatives now face few obstacles to
their efforts to stack the judiciary, to undermine worker protections, to
weaken envrionmental regulation, and to advance a militaristic approach to
geopolitical problems. To say that the election is a blessing-in-disguise for
progressives is to imply that we should hope for bad things to happen. Taken to
a logical extreme, it is to suggest that non-conservatives should never win
elections because the next one, the "successful one," is always just
around the corner - waiting, waiting.
So where do we go from here? How do we move forward? The only honorable and
practical answer, in our view, is to fight for principle, and for principled
policy. Those who disagree with the right-wing agenda, or who feel shunted
aside from the democratic process, need to feel that they are taking on an
adversary. Because they are! The instinct toward moderation, accommodation, and
good will is not a bad instinct - but in the current political climate it is a
formula for losing. What has made the ultra-conservatives unusually succesful
is their ideological forcefulness, their refusal to give an inch unless it's absolutely
necessary. Distasteful? Sure. But
it get results. Time to step up to the plate.
WIT AND WISDOM
"It was a big, huge, powerful win for the Republicans and now they're
saying that the Democrats could not articulate a message. You know you're in trouble
when you are out- articulated by President Bush." -- David Letterman
QUOTED!
"There's a certain sameness to the news on the Big Three [networks] and CNN. . . .
EYE ON THE RIGHT
You may already have your suspicions about the Fox News Channel. Perhaps
you've watched a rigged debate between the telegenic, forceful conservative
Sean Hannity and the hapless liberal Alan Colmes. Perhaps you've watched the
far-right host of a Fox talk show one day substitute for the regular news
anchor the next. Perhaps you've endured a Sunday morning roundtable whose
"liberal" voices are those of the moderates Mara Liasson and Juan
Williams.
Let there be no mistake: Fox News, launched in 1996 by the Australian media
magnate Rupert Murdoch, is the apotheosis of conservative messaging in American
culture. It is also the apotheosis of journalistic cynicism. Ostensibly founded
as a response to the "ideological" cast of the "liberal
media," Fox actually pursues a deeply ideological agenda while masking its
partisanship under the Orwellian slogans "Fair and Balanced" and
"We Report, You Decide." (For the most recent, and perhaps most
effective, analytical debunking of the liberal media myth, see Geoffrey
Nunberg's American Prospect article titled "Media: Label Whores"
and its on-line
followup).
So who are the "fair and balanced" people in charge of the reporting
for Fox News? It reads like the A-list for a Republican fundraiser.
Roger Ailes. Chairman. Former strategist to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W.
Bush.
David Asman. Daytime anchor. Former
writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the rightist
Manhattan Institute.
Tony Snow. Host of Fox News Sunday. Former speechwriter for George H. W. Bush.
Eric Breindel. Senior V.P. of News Corporation, Fox's parent company,
until his death in 1998. Former editorial page editor of the
conservative New York Post.
John Moody. Senior V.P., News and Editorial. Former Time correspondent known for his staunch right-wing
views.
Brit Hume. Managing Editor.
Contributor to the Weekly Standard and American
Spectator.
Fred Barnes. Contributor/talking head. Executive editor of the Weekly Standard. John
Podhoretz. Contributor/talking head. Editorial page editor of the New York Post and former
speechwriter for Ronald Reagan.
John Fund. Contributor/talking head. Member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Monica Crowley. Contributor/talking head. Former assistant to Richard Nixon.
Jim Pinkerton. Contributor/talking head. Former staffer for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
Nobody who has worked as a journalist or knows much about the industry will
claim that real objectivity is possible. Partly that's in the nature of
language itself, which can never be drained of human subjectivity. More to the
point, it's a matter of corporate ownership of the media. In a 2000 study by
the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, more than 40 percent
of the almost 300 print and broadcast journalists surveyed said they had
experienced pressure to avoid certain newsworthy stories or to tone down others
in order to benefit the interests of their news organizations - and had
succumbed to such pressure. What this market approach to news produces is
simpler, more sensational, less controversial coverage, with a narrower range
of viewpoints.
Nonetheless, professional standards dictate that the subjective dimension of
news coverage be reduced to a minimum and that conflicts of interest be openly
acknowledged where they may exist. That, at least, is the ideal.
What distingiushes Fox News is the aggressiveness of their slant and the
hypocrisy of their pretense to objectivity. Former employees have complained
about the unusually heavy hand of Fox management in shaping the news. That's
undoubtedly due to the fact that Murdoch individually owns 30 percent of the
stock of News Corporation, whereas the other major networks are owned by
widely-held public corporations and are therefore less ideological in their
approach.
Some Americans may be glad to have their values and attitudes reflected on the
Fox News Channel. The danger, however, is that people who are not aware of the
right-wing agenda driving the network's journalism may accept its reporting as
neutral and its positions as representative of the mainstream. Many of these
viewers, incidentally, represent a younger, more impressionable demographic,
which Fox has successfully cultivated through its flashier style, and which
advertisers actively target.
The challenge Fox News poses is formidable, given that it now tops the ratings,
but that's all the more reason to fight back.
First, several important policy changes need to be implemented. The two most
important are: 1) revising the antitrust laws to set stricter limits on media
ownership and conglomeration, and 2) using broadcast licensing fees to increase
funding for public radio and television, and public service programming.
Unfortunately, in light of the 2002 election, such policy changes seem increasingly
unlikely.
Second, serious journalists committed to journalistic integrity should not feel
prevented by professional courtesy from reporting on the goings-on at their
competitor network. The rightward tilt of Fox News is neither imaginary nor insignficant:
it is a legitimate story in itself, and needs to be reported as such.
Third, the public should apply more pressure against Fox News. This promises to
be a long-term, complicated undertaking, but it is never too early to start. At
a general level, that pressure should involve alerting friends, family, and
others to the network's ideological slant, with the goal of puncturing its
facade of journalistic objectivity and diminishing its reputation as a reliable
source of information. More pointedly, it might involve applying economic
pressure on the companies that regularly advertise with Fox News. We encourage
our readers to make these advertisers aware of the loss of good will that their
support of a deliberately misleading news organization can cause.
CHECK IT OUT
In keeping with the Commonweal Institute's interest in showing how the media
shape public attitudes and conventional wisdom, the Uncommon Denominator
encourages you to check out Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose
the Myth of a Free Press (Prometheus Books, 2002).
In this troubling collection, Kristina Borjesson (Editor) and Gore Vidal
(Foreword) provide a compelling collection of stories about the professional
and ethical compromises endemic to the corporate news business. The buzzsaw
"is what can rip through you when you try to investigate or expose
anything this country's large institutions - be they corporate or government -
want kept under wraps."
The book consists of 18 essays written by journalists or media observers. Among
the accounts: Greg Palast details the London Guardian's investigation of
voting irregularities in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, long before the
American press saw fit to report the story; Borjesson, an independent producer,
describes stymied efforts to disclose the cause of the explosion of TWA Flight
800 in New York in 1996; television reporter Jake Akre recounts the efforts of
dairy producers to thwart a report on the questionable quality of milk from
cows fed with growth hormones; and many others.
Writing on the media often runs to uncritical admiration or overly critical
denunciation. A more thoughtful collection, Into the Buzzsaw is an
eye-opener that's hard to close.
HAPPENINGS
The Commonweal Institute is proud to announce the unveiling of its new website. With an
improved design, a more focused presentation of our unique approach to
political matters, and an expanded range of contacts with other moderate and
progressive sites, the new CI website is attracting much more attention. In the
first two days, almost 2000 people visited the site, many of whom responded to
our call for financial contributions to help build the Commonweal Institute.
We extend the call to you personally. The most important goal at this stage is
to raise sufficient resources - a.k.a. money - to enable us to carry out our
programs and resist conservative dominance of the marktetplace of ideas.
If you'd like to help, please visit our website and either donate online or
print out the contribution form and send that in along with your contribution.
All contributions are tax deductible.
ENDORSEMENTS
"Right-wing Republicans are a political minority in
CLARIFICATION
In its October edition, the Uncommon Denominator stated that President
Bush promised during the 2000 presidential campaign to avoid tapping Social
Security except in cases of war, recession, or a national emergency. However,
both the Washington Post (July 2, 2002, page A13) and the New
Republic (May 8, 2002) have reported that no evidence exists of Bush making
such a statement, despite his repeated references to it during public speeches
(with the line that he never knew he would "hit the trifecta"), and
that it was actually Al Gore, before the campaign, who formulated such
conditions for deficit spending.
The implication of these reports is that Bush and his advisors have engaged in
some self-serving revisionist history in order to condition the public to
accept or embrace the significant budget deficits that the administration's
policies are sure to create.
© 2002 The Commonweal Institute
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