politics | heigh ho, the US corporate media: (Reply)

CNN dives headfirst into televison payola

In the wake of the Richard Wolffe brouhaha, some may still insist that its rare for television networks to promote corporate spokespeople as disinterested, nonpartisan "political analysts." If you are one of those people, check this out - it gives you a good sense that this happens all the time:
Longtime CNN political analyst Bill Schneider has joined, Third Way, a think tank that bills itself as advancing "the next generation of moderate policy ideas." Schneider, who will continue his on-air political analysis at CNN, will be the organization's first Distinguished Senior Fellow & Resident Scholar.
You may recall that "Third Way" is one of the most notorious corporate front groups in Washington, most recently working to destroy health care reform:MORE

Getting each other's backs

CNN can run programming claiming that Obama is an illegal alien and employ "consultants" who call Hillary Clinton a bitch and call it "analysis." They can defame any politician, celebrity or ordinary citizen with total impunity under the first amendment.

But don't even think of taking on a wealthy CEO. That's where they draw the line:

What on earth is going on at CNN?

The network — already taking criticism for declining to run an ad criticizing Lou Dobbs — is now refusing to run an ad nationally criticizing the insurance industry, the group that tried to place the ad tells me.

CNN’s reason: The ad “unnecessarily” singles out a top insurance industry executive by name for criticism.MORe

GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe

The New York Times this morning has a remarkable story, and incredibly, the article's author, Brian Stelter, doesn't even acknowledge, let alone examine, what makes the story so significant. In essence, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), Jeffrey Immelt, and the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), Rupert Murdoch, were brought into a room at a "summit meeting" for CEOs in May, where Charlie Rose tried to engineer an end to the "feud" between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly. According to the NYT, both CEOs agreed that the dispute was bad for the interests of the corporate parents, and thus agreed to order their news employees to cease attacking each other's news organizations and employees.

Most notably, the deal wasn't engineered because of a perception that it was hurting either Olbermann or O'Reilly's show, or even that it was hurting MSNBC. To the contrary, as Olbermann himself has acknowledged, his battles with O'Reilly have substantially boosted his ratings. The agreement of the corporate CEOs to cease criticizing each other was motivated by the belief that such criticism was hurting the unrelated corporate interests of GE and News Corp:MORe

The scope -- and dangers -- of GE's control of NBC and MSNBC

...Look at this smug, creepy quote from GE executive spokesman Gary Sheffer explaining in The New York Times why GE issued its gag order preventing Olbermann from criticizing Fox and O'Reilly, all but mocking NBC and MSNBC journalists as nothing more than GE's office of corporate spokespeople:
"We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion," Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. "We’re happy that has happened."

Why is GE even speaking for MSNBC's editorial decisions at all? Needless to say, GE doesn't care in the slightest about "civility" in general. Mika Brzezinski can spout that people who dislike Sarah Palin aren't "real Americans" and Chris Matthews can say about George Bush that "everybody sort of likes the president, except for the real whack-jobs," and GE executives won't (and didn't) bat an eye. What they mean by "civility" is: "thou shalt not criticize anyone who can harm GE's business interests or who will report on our actions." Thus: GE's journalists will stop reporting critically on Fox and its top assets because Fox can expose actions of GE that we want to keep concealed.
Does anyone need it explained to them why it is so dangerous and destructive to have our political debates controlled by GE executives, sitting in their offices censoring the journalism of our leading media outlets in the name of "civility," code for: you will respect those who can harm us? Our entire political culture is already designed to ensure corporate control of our political institutions. Their lobbyists literally write the laws enacted by Congress and control their implementation. The reason the journalism industry insisted for so long on the ludicrous fiction that corporate parents never violated the sanctity of journalistic independence is precisely because everyone understood why that would be so dangerous. Apparently, they no longer feel a need to maintain that fiction.
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More facts behind the GE/Fox deal and a new Olbermann statement

Today, after I told Olbermann that his on-air denial last night had made it appear that what I wrote was untrue, when we both knew it was entirely accurate, Olbermann issued the following on-the-record statement to me about this matter (emphasis added):
I honor Mr. Greenwald's insight into the coverage of GE/NewsCorp talks, and have found nothing materially factually inaccurate about it. Fox and NewsCorp have continued a strategy of threat and blackmail by Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, and Bill O'Reilly since at least 2004. But no matter what might have been reported by others besides Mr. Greenwald, and no matter what might have been thought around this industry, there's no "deal." I would never consent, and, fortunately, MSNBC and NBC News would never ask me to.

I certainly believe that Olbermann is telling the truth when he says he was never a party to any deal and that nobody at GE or MSNBC asked him to consent. That's because GE executives didn't care in the least if Olbermann consented and didn't need his consent. They weren't requesting that Olbermann agree to anything, and nobody -- including the NYT's Stelter -- ever claimed that Olbermann had agreed to any deal. What actually happened is exactly what I wrote: GE executives issued an order that Olbermann must refrain from criticizing O'Reilly, and Olbermann complied with that edict. That is why he stopped mentioning O'Reilly as of June 1.MORE