Family boss Rupert Murdoch recently dispatched his PR Enforcer, Gary Ginsberg, to deliver a message to the New York Times. Murdoch was irked by a series of articles that exposed the way he and News Corp manipulated the media and politicians on behalf of his business interests. Unfortunately for Murdoch, his messenger was ambushed by an astute Clark Hoyt, the Times’ public editor.

Ginsberg wrote to Hoyt objecting to the series and alleging that the Times’ hidden intention was to throw a monkey wrench into Murdoch’s plans to acquire Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. Ironically, Murdoch and Ginsberg had no such complaints about a similar story published by the Journal itself. Contrast Ginsberg’s assessments of each paper’s efforts:

Ginsberg on the NY Times: “the primary motivation for doing such an extensive investigation … was in the end self-serving and commercial.”

Ginsberg on the Journal: “a very fair, objective piece.”

Why were Ginsberg’s views at such variance when both stories came to essentially the same conclusions? As Hoyt keenly reminds us…

“Murdoch is going to extraordinary lengths to reassure The Journal’s newsroom that he will not interfere with its independence, as a long and well-documented record indicates he has elsewhere.”

In other words, it would have been unwise to criticize the Journal because that would confirm everyone’s worst fears about Murdoch’s egocentric ambitions. However, the truth is that by gaming the system with praise for one paper and scorn for the other when there was so little difference between them, Murdoch is demonstrating his compulsion to manipulate perceptions in his own favor.

Ginsberg had a laundry list of complaints about the Times’ story that Hoyt shot down in rapid succession. It almost seemed to easy. For instance, the Times reported on a firm that lobbied on behalf of News Corp. for tax breaks. Ginsberg objected saying that there was no such firm. Hoyt responded by simply naming the firm (Hogan & Hartson) and the fees they received.

In another example, Ginsberg thought that reporting that News Corp. paid lobbyists to influence regulatory and legislative matters was unfair because other media companies did so as well. Again, Hoyt easily defends the paper by pointing out that the existence of other firms engaging in lobbying activities does nothing diminish such activities by News Corp. Hoyt might have gone even further by observing that the other media company’s lobbying efforts were, for the most part, in concert with News Corp. and were seeking the same redress.

It is encouraging that Hoyt has made such a thorough and aggressive defense of a well-written expose of News Corp. and Murdoch. But it is disturbing that Murdoch’s henchman steps into the fray with a litany of lies and misrepresentations. And the fact that these complaints were directed at the Times should not give solace to the directors and employees of the Wall Street Journal. They are getting a panoramic view of what life under Murdoch would be like. And the best single piece of advice I can extend is to … be afraid!

When George W. Bush wants to assure himself that he’s exposed to a well-rounded assortment of views, he boldly reaches out to a diverse assembly of independent media professionals. He did so last Friday by calling in a group of pundits that would surely stimulate a healthy debate. Invited to this exclusive affair were:

• Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard
• Larry Kudlow of Kudlow & Co. on CNBC
• Michael Barone, senior writer for U.S. News and World Report
• Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Post and Weekly Standard columnist
• Kathleen Parker, syndicated conservative columnist.

This is the right-wing’s right-wing. Larry Kudlow was overjoyed to learn that he was in with the In Crowd. The Chicago Tribune describes Kudlow’s gleeful anticipation of the gathering:

“Kudlow says he is looking forward to his meeting with Bush for, if nothing else, a mood-check on how the guy is faring.”

Now that’s a real journalist. He’s not looking forward to the mundane tasks of asking questions on behalf of his audience, nor to delve into the complexities of the President’s policies and plans. Kudlow is much more interested in Georgie’s feelings and how he is holding up under the strain. But is it the strain of being widely considered the worst president in history; the strain of sending other people’s children to their doom? It must be so hard on him.

Meanwhile, Barnes reported Bush’s perspective on how best to persuade the nation that his “unpopular war” was still a really good idea. He said the President didn’t view talking about success as the “most useful tool.” Barnes writes that…

“Instead, Bush said, the most compelling case for persevering in Iraq is ‘what failure will look like.’“

Perhaps talking about success is not so useful when there is such a dirth of it in Iraq. Talking about failure is much more consistent with this administration’s history of hammering fear into an anxious populace.

Barnes also quotes Bush making one of the most hilariously hypocritical statements yet to emerge from a president who has already set records in hypocrisy:

“‘There are lots of talkers in Washington,’ he said. But he’s not one of them. ‘I’m not on the phone chatting with the people who write those stories,'” the president insisted.

No, he’s chatting with them in the White House. He is actually chatting with the people that write the stories as he tells them that he doesn’t chat with them. Could anything be more absurd? Well, yes. How about Fred Barnes reporting that he learned in a chat with the President that the President doesn’t engage in chats with folks like himself?

It’s a twisted brand of logic – don’t hurt yourself trying to figure it out. It’s the same twisted behavior that accounts for the President spending precious moments with a cabal of columnists that are already on board the sinking ship of Bush’s state. What could they possibly hope to gain by entertaining these hacks? Their opinions are already squarely aligned with the administration. Their audience consists of the 26 percenters that believe Bush was ordained by God to lead us into the Apocalypse.

This isn’t even good propaganda. It is, however, reminiscent of the Radio Day Bush hosted on the North Lawn of the White House last October, a few days before the mid-term elections. About three dozen mostly conservative radio gabbers took up residence in a tent (insert circus jokes here) to interview the likes of Rice, Rumsfeld, Rove, etc.

As the President’s myopia further constricts his vision, you have to wonder what inspires these foolish media fanfests. The only explanation is that Bush is desperately lonely and he can’t find anyone else that will talk to him. He’s been abandoned by voters, and Republicans in Congress are peeling away like a bad sunburn. He may have reached the point where all he does have is Laura and Barney – and I wouldn’t be too sure of Barney.

Update: The Pentagon’s doing it too.

Pastor Fred Phelps, of “God Hates Fags” fame has condemned Bill O’Reilly to Hell. Not that O’Reilly needed any help getting there. Phelps labels O’Reilly the “spin doctor for his father the devil” in a nearly incoherent rant that cites numerous bible verses. Heed thee the word of the Lord and get thee behind me Bill-O…

Until now I hadn’t realized just how much O’Reilly and Phelps have in common. They both…

• rant incoherently.
• promote traditional values.
• possess the one and only truth.
• expose and denounce evil secularists.
• lament the persecution of Christians.
• believe in their own infallibility.
• accuse the media of a personal bias.
• preach to a congregation of mindless disciples.

Phelps, of course, is a joke whose ramblings, while repulsive, will have little impact on society. O’Reilly, on the other hand, broadcasts his dementia into millions of homes where the naive and uninformed are susceptible to the hatred and divisiveness he employs to incite the worst in people. He is a 21st century Father Coughlin and we cannot be rid of him too soon.

Bill O’Reilly: Propaganda Pimp
In a roomful of egomaniacal bloviating pundits, Bill O’Reilly would stand out as a towering infernal display of delusional demagoguery. Almost any random sampling of The O’Reilly Fester will reveal a man obsessed with his own righteousness.


Click the link above to experience an interactive portrait of O’Reilly that puts his unique abuse of language on display.

Eleven months ago, I wrote about plans for the renovation of the White House Press Briefing Room. It was originally projected to take a month, then three months, then nine months. So today’s announcement that the new facility is finally opening means that they were only two months or ten months over schedule depending on which projection you use.

But this ribbon cutting ceremony for the new hub of Official Mendacity has already set the symbolic course for a future of coloring and/or dodging the truth.

First, as the AP reports, the entire affair was a sham that excluded much of the press for whom it was intended.

“Bush’s appearance was timed for network morning shows, though media attendance in the room was severely limited to make space for White House staff and construction workers.”

Then, in this room where the White House is expected to answer reporter’s questions, the President appeared briefly and flippantly refused to answer any questions:

“I’ll, like, listen, internalize, play like I’m going to answer the question, and then smile at you and just say, gosh thanks, thanks for such a solid, sound question.”

That’s a pretty good start, and tells us much about what we might expect to take place here in the future.

Ever since 9/11, much of the media has engaged in a brand of journalism that more closely resembled stenography. It consisted mainly of uncritically regurgitating White House misrepresentations of foreign policy and terrorist threats. This failure on the part of the fourth estate resulted in such travesties as the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the buttressing of an ever more imperious executive branch that brazenly ignored the Congress, the people, and the law. While some of the worst offenders later issued mea culpas, they obviously didn’t learn very much.

In recent weeks, many of the same news organizations have been repeating administration assertions that the Iraqi insurgency is predominantly an Al Qaeda operation. Neither the President nor the press have bothered to supply verifiable support for the claim.

Enter Clark Hoyt, the New York Times public editor, who’s latest column criticizes the laziness of “Seeing Al Qaeda Around Every Corner.” His analysis of the paper’s performance is a crushing blow to the reporters who suck up to official Washington purveyors of spin. Some excerpts:

“Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground.

But these are stories you haven’t been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq – and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.”

[…]

“While a president running out of time and policy options may want to talk about a single enemy that Americans hate and fear in the hope of uniting the country behind him, journalists have the obligation to ask tough questions about the accuracy of his statements.”

Hoyt actually did the work that the reporters were supposed to have done. He interviewed Middle East experts to get an informed evaluation of the administration’s dubious assertions. One such expert, Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor of Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, summarized the problem for the Times as well as the press more broadly:

“I have been noticing – not just your paper – all papers have fallen into this reporting.” The administration, he added, “made a strategic decision” to play up Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq, “and the press went along with it.”

Hoyt went on to blast stories that referenced militant links to Al Qaeda “with little or no attribution – and no supporting evidence…” However, Dean Baquet, the Times’ Washington bureau chief, and Susan Chira, the foreign editor, both defended the paper. But Chira, at least, acknowledged that the paper had used “excessive shorthand” when referring to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and admitted that, “We’ve been sloppy.”

As the new public editor for the Times, Hoyt deserves credit for writing a clear and honest appraisal of his colleagues and their work. He was recently recruited from the well-respected McClatchy newsroom (formally Knight Ridder) where he was the Washington editor. With just a handful of columns published since he arrived, he is building credibility for a paper that has harbored journalistic disgraces like Judith Miller and Michael Gordon (who is still there and still slanting stories to propound an aggressive militarism, this time directed at Iran).

I can’t help but wonder what influence Hoyt may have had in the Times’ recent, but long overdue, editorial calling for the U.S. to leave Iraq. It is one of the best summations from a mainstream media source for why we must end this debacle. It has more in common with the above par reporting of Knight Ridder than it does with anything the Times has published in the past two years. And it was published less than a month and a half after Hoyt’s hiring.

It remains to be seen if this is a prelude to responsible reporting at the Times or an aberration that, like Hoyt, could be ignored or discarded. But it is encouraging to see an article like this hold the media to a higher standard. The article closes with Hoyt quoting an old maxim of war:

“Military experts will tell you that failing to understand your enemy is a prescription for broader failure.”

Failing to understand the media could have similarly dire consequences. And, indeed, it has. That’s why it is so important for this type of authentic self-examination to be undertaken and observed.

The airwaves were burning up yesterday with the news that WJFK in our nation’s capital dropped Bill O’Reilly’s show and replaced it with a sports-talk program. The O’Reilly Fester apparently underwhelmed the Washington radio audience. But he wasn’t the only one:

Cool Reception for Conservative Radio…

“With the exception of Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk-radio hosts have struggled for years to find a wide audience on the local dial. While Limbaugh’s afternoon program remains popular on WMAL (630 AM), not many other conservatives’ programs have.”

In addition to Limbaugh, WMAL carries Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge, Larry Elder, and other rightist blowhards. Chris Berry, president and general manager of WMAL, commenting on O’Reilly’s dismissal from the competing station, said that…

“…people in D.C. are smarter” than talk audiences in other towns […] In D.C., people really do know the issues.”

Setting aside the arrogant conceit of that statement, it does explain nicely why conservatives like O’Reilly are failing in the market. I can appreciate how difficult it must be to sell the fact-free Republicanism of right wing squawkers to listeners who actually know something about current affairs. And with the expulsion of O’Reilly from DC there is probably also a measurable increase in the region’s intelligence.