NIGHTLINE AT RISK

THE ALTERNET DEBATE” AL VS DON

WALL STREET JOURNAL SILENT

IRANIAN HARRASSED

It is fight time for ABC’s Nightline. And that fight must not be theirs alone. The New York Times reports this Saturday morning that David Westin, the corporate lawyer turned President of ABC News was kept in the dark about parent company Disney’s plans to dump the long running award winning late night news program NIGHTLINE to lure David Letterman’s comedy show to ABC from CBS. “People at he network said he was ashen,” the newspaper reports on p. l. There was an uproar but Disney seems determined despite Letterman himself making noises of concern. “Disney executives were unflinching early yesterday. They insisted they would not let what they considered a sentimental attachment to an ageing news program to get in the way of righting the coprorate ship.”

There you have it, in one sentence, the whole story of what has been happening to information in the age of entertainment. Show business uber news business. Nightline has so far been silent. No word yet from Ted Koppel. Peter Jennings, who I once watched live via sattelite kow tow to a Disney share holders meeting at a time when Michael Eisener and Co. wanted to wrap their mickey mouse operation with some credibility, spoke up to support the Ted and the program. But without a critical word. Insiders at ABC News are not defending the program — so far– of the program are not defending it in terms of its role in aour culture but in terms of its financial success, revealing that it broght in $13.1 million to the company’s coffers last year, a figure some in the Mouse House say is inflated.

Sam Donaldson has spoken up in outfrage and one can safe;ly predict that the whole weight of whats left of guts in the news business is going to reign down on Disney, ABC brass and even wiseecracking Dave Letterman if he doesn’t speak up.

WILL YOU SPEAK UP TO SAVE NIGHTLINE?

This will not stand. I predict Disneyw will back down. But the controversy should open a window for the media reform movement to step in, even if they have to hold their nose at some of Ted Koppel’s programming some of the time. The point is that if Nightline falls, you can kiss any and attempts at quality news good bye. Also, This maneuver comes at a time when the FCC is getting ready to give media moguls a license to keep merging, and all public interest restraints may bite the dust.

We must raise our voices in defense of Nightline or forever hold our peace. This is the issue — and this is the time. The public can’t count on measely mouthed careerists inside the network. The public and our politicians have to start making some noise. I am sure some at ABC consider me a “disgruntled employee” because of the book I wrote, The More You Watch The Less You Know, revealing what it is like to work there. But I will bury whatever residual bitterness that may remain to stand with my former colleagues and speak out to save Nightline.

Will you join me? Write me: dissector@mediachannel.org and write or call Michael Eisner at his bunker in Burbank.

FRANK RICH: INFO-TAINMENT IS WINNING

It must be noted that this trend away from news of substance is very much in favor in this Administation, as the always perceptive Frank Rich writes in the Times today, also lashing out at ABC: “In an end run around ABC News, the Pentagon has joined with ABC Entertainment to present its own account of the war, a “reality” series produced by Jerry Bruckheimer of “Top Gun.” …

“For now at least the administration’s infotainment strategy may be working… the White House is betting, not incorrectly, that the overall news culture is swinging back to its pre-9/11 bias — which is resolutely in favor of fun. Gary is back. Monica is back. Even Bernard Goldberg, for all his public griping, is back from his gulag, working as a correspondent for HBO Sports. Only Daniel Pearl is gone.” You must read the rest which deals with many or the instances of Pentagon news management that we have been detailing, day in and day out.

CBS UNDER FIRE BY FAMILIES OF FIRE FIGHTERS

CBS is under fire from some of the families of firefighters and other victims of the World Trade Center disaster for planning to air a documentary shot by two French freelancers on the events there on September ll. They have scheduled it for the six month anniversary. The critics say that is too soon and are raising holy hell. CBS says it will not budge or be intimidated. This is one network critic who believes that it should air, and that a lousy precedent will be set if a small group can intimidate CBS. At the same time, let’s hope that he film which features powerful footage does offer some deeper perspective. I am not a totally disinterested party since I have a documentary film, WE ARE FAMILY, which opens at the Screening Room, the only open movie theater near Ground Zero on March 8. It too deals with the passions and issues raised by 9/11.

AL VS DON: ALTERNET’S ETHICS QUESTIONED

It is hard to be a man in the middle. What do you do as a Media Channel editor when your affiliates who you want to collaborate with each other are at war with each other. It’s not really war, but my old friend Al Giordano of the Narco News Network is pissed at Don Hazen of Alternet. He raises some issues that need to be addressed as far the treatmnt of freelancers goes. Dan Kennedy formerly at the Phoenix in Boston is a third party who dispassionately sets out the issues with some perspective:(Read http//:narconews.com for Al’s bill of attainder.) And then Don Hazen responds:

“FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2002 | Narco News Bulletin publisher Al Giordano, whose work and sheer ballsiness I admire greatly, has posted a withering attack on AlterNet.org, the wire service, as it were, of the alternative press. AlterNet has not yet responded, so for the moment Giordano has the floor to himself.

“I am in no position to judge the veracity of Giordano’s charges against AlterNet, but they’re doozies. Among his claims: that AlterNet has unethically withheld information about its relationship with a foundation that pays a “bounty” for each story AlterNet publishes on the “war on drugs”; that AlterNet has screwed freelance writers out of fees, including their rightful share of said foundation money; and that it “blacklists” writers — including Giordano — who have dared to criticize AlterNet executive director Don Hazen.

“Giordano and I worked together at the Boston Phoenix from 1993 to ‘96. I also covered a libel suit filed against him and Narco News by the Mexican banking giant Banamex, a suit that resulted in a landmark First Amendment decision in Giordano’s favor. I’ve had an occasional telephone and e-mail relationship with Hazen for about a decade that has, for the most part, been friendly and respectful. I am not going to take sides in this dispute, not because of any lack of guts on my part, but because I don’t have enough independent knowledge on which to base an opinion. Suffice it to say that this is an important dispute and it bears watching…” For the full article, see www.dankennedy.net.

DON HAZEN REPONDS:

Danny,

“Thank you for asking for a response regarding Al Giordano’sattack on AlterNet and me. Al has great skill at the art of propaganda writing -turn a positive into a negative; exaggerate facts beyond recognition; create conspiracies where there aren’t any. It’s virtually impossible to answer such an off the wall attack.

“I’m going to trust that my more than 30 years of activism, my style of speaking my mind and my support of many dozens of progressive causes means much more to any reader than this kind of senseless attack. I’m very confident in my relationships with thousands of writers, advocates, board members, colleagues, funders and friends. I know they trust my work, my values, and my judgement. They are lefties, liberals, progressives, radicals, but most of all they are independent thinkers and have no qualms about challenging my work, or my opinions, if they think it necessary. The people of this community are who I answer to, not Al Giordano.

“For the record, AlterNet has committed no ethical lapses. We have never knowingly used content without permission, nor have we or will we ever shortchange any agreement with a writer. We do not have a blacklist, but given our previous experience and attacks, have decided not to run material by Al Girodano. If anyone has any specific questions for me, based on what they have read, I’m happy to try and answer them. Please e mail me at Info@alternet.org

WALL STREET JOURNAL AND DANNY PEARL — DAY 3

Nothing new to report the story that I have been following on chargesthat the Wall Street Journal did not provide its slain reporter Danny Pearl with safety training and other support. I sent my story for a comment to the executives at the Journal in New York and Hong Kong. No response yet.

Meanwhile, on the Pearl front, from another continent, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian reports ‘”NELSON Mandela refused to make a public plea for the safety of The WallStreet Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl - kidnapped and decapitated byPakistani militants early this year - after his aide, Jakes Gerwel, advisedhim against it.

“There has been speculation that fear of renewed Muslim backlash was behindGerwel’s advice. However, Gerwel vehemently denied Muslim sensitivities hadanything to do with it. He said he advised Mandela not to mention Pearl byname and that a general call for the protection of the media was more”proper”.

The incident highlights Mandela’s ambiguous position as a world-respectedstatesman who has no formal government office in South Africa, and attemptsby both government leaders and his minders to manage his public utterances.”http://www.mg.co.za/mg/za/news.html

(CORRECTION, MEA CULPA. My editor seems to have disappeared. I misspelled. TV critic Aaron Barnhart writes to say: ” Hey Danny, I think you meant to identify him as G. Pascal ZACHARY in your weblog on Friday.” Of course. Apologies all around. Check out Aaron’s site for more on all of these issues. TV Barn: http://www.tvbarn.com. I am an amateur at this columnizing compared to him.The feisty journalist in question wrote in as well. I am doubly blessed: “Danny, thanks for the plug on my article, which appeared in last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle. I resigned from the WSJ on Feb. 8. Just before the Deluge, so to speak. Keep me posted. I am unfettered now, still writing for In These Times and elsewhere. By the way, I’m not Gregory, just Gregg.”

“PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT” ANYONE?

The war on terror is moving on many fronts at once, with reports that there ar US troops in the Phillipines, Yemen, and now the Republic of Georgia. The Pentagon has hired a professional PR firm to help sell its policies and practices. Jeff Stein writes about it on “A few years ago, Washington media consultant John Rendon was regaling an audience of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy with one of his favorite war stories. When victorious U.S. troops rolled into Kuwait City, he noted, they were greeted by hundreds of Kuwaitis waving American flags. The scene, flashed around the world again and again on CNN, left little doubt that the U.S. Marines were welcome in Kuwait.

“Did you ever stop to wonder,” he asked, “how the people of Kuwait City, after being held hostage for seven long and painful months, were able to get hand-held American, and for that matter, the flags of other coalition countries?” A ripple of knowing chuckles passed across Rendon‚Äôs military audience. “Well you now know the answer,” he said, “That was one of my jobs then.” And what a job it was. It was a global propaganda coup, especially in corners of the Arab world where even Saddam Hussein usually wins a popularity contest with Uncle Sam. From Cairo to Karachi, millions of people saw the American liberators welcomed to Kuwait — again and again.

“And that;s just one of the reasons that John Rendon, a beefy media wizard who started out in national politics scheduling campaign stops for Jimmy Carter, shuns the label of public relations flack in favor what he billed himself at the Air Force Academy: ‘an information warrior and a perception manager.’

“Rendon has had a lot of plum assignments since Desert Storm, including a $23 million propaganda campaign in 1991 aimed at undermining Saddam Hussein with smuggled leaflets and radio broadcasts beamed into Iraq.

And now Rendon has another plum — it was reported recently that he has been hired for $100,000 a month to help the Pentagon plant propaganda in the foreign media as part of the Bush administration’s War on Terrorism. ” See TomPaine.com for more.

AXIS OF EVIL: ARE IRANIANS BEING TARGETED?

Some years ago, in the early 80’s I taught a journalism course at New York’s New School. One of the students seemed strange, reluctant to speak, unable to laugh at my jokes, and very self absorrbed. After one class, I asked her if she was OK, and slowly, her story trickled out. She was Iranian, and had gone home in l979 to support the revolution to topple the US backed Shah. For her generations and millions of her people, he and his torture machine called the SAVAK were the Axis of Evil, an axis that was overthrown only to be replaced by a mullah-ocracy, the rule of Ayaytollas. That became the next target for many who cared about democracy. And the next victims , as well, for a government that claimed to take its orders from the Qaran. My student was among the many arrrested, imprisioned and tortured. Friends around her died; the sounds of torture and brutality surrounded her.

Finally, after what was to her an eternity, she was bribed out from behind bars, packed on a plane and fled to my classroom in New York.

Needless to say the transition was a difficult one. The experience had traumatized her not only because of what she experienced but tby he sense that the Americans she was thrown back in among were for the most part unaware, even uncaring, about what she went through. It was a case of post traumatic stress disorder if I ever saw it.

Over the years, she reintegrated, finished her courses but never got her degree because of some stupid bureaucratic snafu. Finally, time was up, jobless, she had to leave and return back to Iran where she stood out like a sore thumb, as a westernized woman in a male controlled society that kept women in chadors in a Talibanesqe manner before the Taliban was ever imagined. She was miserable for many years, and finally, just recently, found the money and the motivation to come back to the US. She had a green card but it needed to be renewed.

And that is what brought her yesterday to the American Embassy in Paris, where the INS reviews applicants such as hers. It was to have been a routine matter since her papers were in order But she is Iranian, and this is the age of the War on Terror, and Iran, despite its tilt in recent years towards the West and Washington, was castigated by our own Ayatollah as part of that axis of evil.

HAS MY STUDENT BECOME “THE ENEMY?”

Now she has become the enemy, and is forced to encounter some suspicious and stupid bureaucrat who can’t tell the difference between the Iranian calendar and our own, He decides unilaterally she is lying, seizes her documents and threatens her to leave the Embassy or else. Marines are summoned? What is her recourse? What can be done? To whom can she appeal when she is tossed into the street. No one it seems, and, visaless, she must now return to Teheran.

She calls me to tell me what happened because she wrote to say she was coming. Many Iranians are being treated this way because we are Iranians she tells me with an air of resignation. I can do nothing, she says. She described the humiliating experience she went through. It was abusive, and yes, it was even racist. And it made me sick to hear about. I was simply ashamed and enfuriated but like her without recourse.

WE NEED MORE COVERAGE OF STORIES LIKE THESE

And then I realized, who knows about incidents like this, and all the daily abuses and fears that refugess and people who would be immigrants or even visitors from countries we have determined to be evil. Who is watching? Was there a reporter from the International Herald Tribune there to observe all this? I doubt it. Would any media outlets be interested in the case of a human rights victim over there being victimized again over here, or by people acting in our name.

I was outraged by the story but it was just a small example of that WHY THEY HATE US theme. Here was someone who fought a million personal battles to get here, not out of hate but out of love for American culture, a film maker and artist, only to thrown back in to the raging sea like those of earlier eras who fled persecution only to find it on these shores, or never be permitted to enter. The power of the INS and other police agencies has been strengthened by this Administration without checks or any balances, and with few arenas for appeal. Especially when you come from THOSE counties, and are presumed guilty of some affiliation with evil and its axis. No wonder there is a revolt and hunger strike underway as I write at Guantanamo Bay with the media walled off from the protesters. No wonder there is a residue of hatred in the hearts of so many.

GEORGIA ON MY MIND

Years ago people used to ask “Why are we in Vietnam?” Now the question is: “Why are we in Georgia?” Our old frend Adam McConnel in Istanbul took it upon himself to offer some background: “Here’s a most likely foolish attempt at summarizing the situation as it stands in the Chechnya/Georgia region,” he writes.

“After 11 Sept, the Russian military saw a green light from the War On Terror‚ to increase the brutalization of the Chechen populace. However, the one place that they could not get to was Georgia‚s Pankisi Gorge, a rugged, 30-km long valley near the Chechen/Georgian border. Russia has long accused the Georgian government of allowing Chechen militants to shelter there; Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze finally admitted, in response to increasing Russian pressure after 11 Sept, that there were Chechen militants in Pankisi Gorge, but that the Georgian government didn‚t have the ability to do anything about it (possibly true given Georgia’s economic situation). Pankisi Gorge is also home to thousands of Chechen refugees, smugglers, organized crime, bandits, etc., so a humanitarian problem is also an issue.

“Add the Georgia/Abkhazia problem: Abkhazia is a small ethnic enclave on the Black Sea coast which wrested nominal autonomy from Georgia. The border between this enclave and the rest of Georgia was patrolled by Russian troops, acting as peace-keepers to keep the Georgians out; the Georgians want the patrol there to prevent militants‚ from getting into Georgia.

On top of this is the American-backed Baku-Ceyhan natural gas pipeline which was strongly opposed by the Russian government. The pipeline runs from Azerbaijan‚s capitol, through Georgia, to the Black Sea coast of Turkey. Russia opposes this pipeline because it will be a competitor to the gas which Russia is piping from the Caspian region (much of which runs right through Chechnya) to its ports on the Black Sea. In the last weeks Russia has shown more interest in allowing its gas conglomerates, especially LUKOil, to invest in the Baku-Ceyhan Project; possibly Russia is hedging its bets since Russia’s Deputy foreign Minister Viktor Kaluzhny recently expressed personal opposition to the pipeline and stated that “the Caspian belongs to the Russian market.” Some analysts suspect that Russia is interested in destabilizing Georgia completely so this pipeline cannot be built or maintained.

So here comes America: the US government and its oil company allies naturally do not want the Baku-Ceyhan line threatened. If there is Al-Quaeda in Pankisi Gorge, does it even matter? It’s the excuse that’s important. Putin said publicly that American military presence in Georgia was “no tragedy” but there ’s a strong possibility that he’s privately incensed. Stratfor said several days ago that the US military in Georgia was “Moscow’s nightmare scenario.”

“Personally, I wonder how much longer this claim of ‘Bin Laden is there’ or ‘Al-Qaeda is there’ will wash. How many more times can the State Department cry ‘Wolf!,’ and come up only with an American strategic victory? Too bad more of the world’s leaders didn’t grow up in the Western United States or they’d have recognized this game a long time ago”

JOHN Q; IS IT FOR YOU?

A week or so ago, I reported on informational leafletting that health care professionals did at a screening of the new movie John Q which dramatizes the lack of decent health care. I wondered what happened as I am always interested in activists who use the cultural sphere to raise political issues. Thelma Correl writes about what happened for Z Net: “The critics and the news media panned it. Variety went so far as to say, “A rare case of blatant political propaganda in a major Hollywood picture, John Q. is a shamelessly manipulative commercial on behalf of national health insurance.” True, the film graphically demonstrates how bad the health insurance situation is in this country and how urgently we need a solution — which is why it’s no surprise that John Q. wasn’t made in Hollywood after all.

“Is health care for everyone really possible in the U.S.? The day after viewing this remarkable film, the New York Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program and the Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign decided to go down to a Manhattan theater that was showing John Q and demonstrate that we think health care for all is possible here.

“About 30 of us stationed ourselves along the block in front of the theater and handed out leaflets echoing the need for national health care. There were doctors and nurses wearing their white coats, several trade unionists, and numerous health care advocates in the group. We were joined by Richard Gottfried, New York State Assembly Health Committee Chair, who helped in handing out our leaflets that stated, “Millions in N.Y. are ‘Health Care Hostages.’”

I am off now to keynote the Global Entertainment Summit, a trade show at the Hammerstein Auditorium on W 34th St with a wide range of views, products and people. It is running all day today and tomorrow.

Keep your emails flying. Write dissector@mediachannel.org