*DISSECTING THE RATHER INTERVIEW

*THE DUMPING OF DONAHUE

*VIRTUAL MARCH FLOODS DC

*A NOT SO BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

A SPECIAL FAREWELL

PBS Kids Show host Fred Rogers has left the neighborhood, as my friend Marc puts it. His was an honest voice and will be missed by the millions he soothed.

DISSECTING THE DAN MAN

Years ago, before Saddam became the devil incarnate, that role was played by the man who now stands accused of promoting him: Dan Rather. The far right has had a long hate-hate relationship with the iconic CBS anchor. Back in the early 80s, Southern fundamentalists threatened to buy CBS just to fire him. So, it was no surprise this morning when FOX news aimed its not so big guns at him and kicked him around a bit more, to suggest that his interview with Mr Evil For Every Season was not what it appeared to be.

WHITE HOUSE DEMANDS AIRTIME

First, we had Ari Fleisher in the White House suggesting that CBS should have offered “equal time”–as if the President goes out of his way to insure that his remarks are regularly balanced.

The Guardian reported: “‘This seems odd they wouldn’t let the White House have a voice,’ Ari Fleischer, President George Bush’s spokesman, told reporters yesterday, hours before CBS broadcast the Iraqi leader’s meeting with the veteran US news anchor Dan Rather. Mr Fleischer said CBS had refused to give a right of reply unless it came from Mr Bush in person, an offer the administration spurned ‘in the name of not making a moral equivalence between a dictator and a democracy.’

“But the network denied the charge, saying it had only refused an offer to have Mr Fleischer appear intermittently throughout the broadcast to counter President Saddam’s remarks.”

FOX CLARK BAITS RATHER

Fox’s question of the day asked if the interview was “Proper or Propaganda?” Their bombshell is that Rather & Co relied on former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark as his fixer. There was even the suggestion that had we been at war, and had Rather been a CIA asset, he would be ok to take out Saddam.

Earlier, the Moonie-owned Washington Times asked if Rather had been “duped” in scoring what the Hollywood Reporter called “the news scoop of the year.” They questioned its uniqueness in a put-down posing as news piece, “Mr. Rather’s interview is not as rare as it may seem: ABC’s Peter Jennings and NBC’s Tom Brokaw also tried to reach Saddam. All three were outfoxed by former British Labor leader and peace activist Tony Benn, who interviewed Saddam for Arab Television three weeks ago.”

A troubling similarity between these two interviews caught their ever vigilant eye: “Mr. Benn described Saddam as “courteous and forthcoming.” Mr. Rather also used personal observations, calling Saddam “a tall man…He walked a little stiffly. I think that may be because of these reports he has a bad back. But he was very calm.”

GUY TALK

Is that grounds for more character assassination, innuendo and intimations of treason? For his part, Rather, who is doing interviews about his interview on every show that will have him (He’s on CNN’s Larry King tonight) is happy about one thing. Bruce Willis, who was subbing for David Letterman last night asked such profound questions like “What kind of a GUY is he?” and wondered why Saddam called him “Mr. Rather.” Without missing a beat, Mr. Rather retorted that he was happy he hadn’t called him Dan because he would in a world of trouble because the right would suggest that thee was familiarity there. Actually Rather interviewed Saddam before and in the previous interview Saddam also sought out a TV debate with the American president – so that was not news!

There was an awful lot of pyschologizing by the US news networks about Saddam. No one wanted to deal with his political points. ABC News ran a story about his troubled childhood. In an interview on a “crackling cell phone” Rather came off less as a reporter and more as a shrink when he told the New York Observer:

“You can’t be around him and not understand that the key to him, his whole id, is survival,” said Mr. Rather, who last interviewed Mr. Hussein in 1990, right after Iraq invaded Kuwait. “He sees himself as that proverbial ultimate survivor: Whatever happens, he’s going to survive. When he talks, he’s a combination of sometimes the lion and sometimes the fox — but always with survival at the forefront of his mind.”

SHINKS WANTED

This is not new. In my book, News Dissector, I write about the frequent use of ‘the couch,” at CBS–which frequently prefers pop psychologizing to political analysis. I wrote: “If we are looking for pyschological motives here, why not turn the camera around? Rather has puzzled many an anchor-watcher over the years with his own strange lapses of behavior over the years.

What’s it all about Dan?

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

The early reports on Rather’s interview claimed that Saddam was insisting he would not destroy the missiles that the Hans Blix demands he agree to by Saturday. When I watched the interview, it seemed like he was waffling on the issue — and not ruling it out. Stratfor.com which follows all this closely says that impression is wrong:

“Reliable Stratfor sources within the Russian government say Hussein indeed has promised to cooperate with the inspectors’ demands –including that Baghdad scrap its al Samoud 2 missile program by March 1, an announcement that sources expect to be forthcoming within days.

“The importance of the meeting stretches much further, however. Sources say the Iraqi leader has agreed to a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin — previously discussed between Russian, French and German leaders — that Baghdad formally invite U.N. peacekeepers within the next 10 days or so to back up weapons inspectors. This, sources say, would show the world that Iraq will be unconditionally disarmed under strict and fully enforceable U.N. deadlines, with peacekeepers staying on in Iraq until the task is complete.”

If true, this is a bombshell that no one in the US media has picked up.

CRONKITE’S VIEW OF ALL THIS

Dan Rather, at age 70 is as much of a lion in the news business as the people he interviews. Note that CBS relaxed its retirement rules when it came to Rather while enforcing its policy of forcing retirement at age 65 for Walter Cronkite, the newscaster who most Americans still trust the most. Mediachannel advisor Cronkite shared his view on most of today’s TV network news “shows” with the Observer:

‘There’s too much inside-the-paper stuff: your pocketbook and mine, your health and mine, your garbage pail and mine. All of that is perhaps valuable material, but it doesn’t belong in a very crowded, or should-be-crowded, evening newscast. That’s where we should be getting the news.”

By the way, he thinks the nets may be out of the news biz before you know it: “I think it’s highly possible that they will drop news on the traditional networks. Perhaps when the percentage of cable homes has gotten a little bit higher.” Incidentally while Cronkite was pushed out, Don Hewitt, producer of 60 Minutes won a contract commitment until age 90.

Ramsey Clark’s role in helping reporters get access to Iraq is not new either. In l991, independent journalist Jon Alpert, then contributing regularly to NBC News, snuck into Iraq with Ramsey’s help and shot some powerful stories about civilian casualties of the first Gulf War. For his trouble, he was fired by then NBC President Michael Gartner because he had gone on Ramsey Clark trip. The piece never ran. Gartner claims he never would even watch it. Jon gave the story to Globalvision which got it aired on MTV for whom we were then functioning as Gulf War Bureau because the rest of the channel was covering the “Rock in Rio” festival.

(If you had a choice of going to Brazil or Baghdad, where would you go?)

DUMPING DONAHUE

For its part, NBC says it is stepping up its Iraq war coverage on its cable affiliate MSNBC–which featured more Rather-bashing on the disgusting Don Imus morning show. What’s worse is that MSNBC is dumping its lone liberal talk show host Phil Donahue–who after six months is being axed to make way for more run of the mill war coverage. Six months ago, his program began by asking if the US was going to make war on Iraq. Yes, his “ratings” were lower than his competitors, but as he noted Fox had three years to build ratings for Bill O’Reilly while he was only given six months.

Phil Donahue, whose show was actually #1 on the channel, has said that MSNBC was too quick to pull the trigger and that it might be trying to “out-fox Fox” with conservative voices. Fox gloated about this comment, this morning with an banner graphic that said “OUTFOXED” Ha Ha!

Rick Ellis who writes for AllyourTV.com says that the real reason for Donahue’s departure is his politics, not his ratings: “While Donahue does badly trail both O’Reilly and CNN’s Connie Chung in the ratings, those numbers have improved in recent weeks. So much so, that the program is the top-rated show on MSNBC, beating even thehighly promoted Hardball With Chris Matthews.

“Although Donahue didn’t know it at the time, his fate was sealed a number of weeks ago after NBC News executives received the results of a study commissioned to provide guidance on the future of the news channel.

“That report–shared with me by an NBC news insider–gives an excruciatingly painful assessment of the channel and its programming. Some of recommendations, such as dropping the “America’s News Channel,” have already been implemented. But the harshest criticism was leveled at Donahue, whom the authors of the study described as “a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace.”The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war……He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.”

The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Meanwhile, chief Fox O’Reilly was trashed by a reporter in Florida who accused him of ripping off his reporting. Jim Romanesko reports that the Tampa Tribune’sDaniel Ruth says

“Bill O’Reilly “has essentially ripped off eight years of reporting (on Prof. Sami Al-Arian) by The Tampa Tribune’s Michael Fechter while claiming to be some sort of moralist arbiter of professional ethics.” He adds: “This guy claiming to be a standard bearer of intellectual honesty is like Heidi Fleiss pretending to be a spokeswoman for virginity.”

THE VITUAL MARCH VIRTUALLY REPORTED

I was hoping to find out last night how “the virtual march on Washington” went. That was the effort to flood legislators with faxes emails and calls to urge them not to support war, and to stick with UN inspections. I didn’t even see it covered. The organizers say it was a big success:

“The outpouring of support for tough inspections to disarm Saddam Hussein, and against an invasion and occupation of Iraq got through loud and clear, said former Congressman Tom Andrews, National Director of Win Without War…’Well over one million phone calls were made in just eight hours by people from every state in the country. Every Senator’s office and the White House switchboard received at least two and often more calls per minute. Many callers had to settle for busy signals,’ he added.”

The antiwar protest is certainly affecting the Administration’s rhetoric. The President’s speech last night before the American Enterprise Institute (”The mother of all conservative groups, as Charlie Rose called it last night) justified war as the road to peace — and, of course, democracy in Iraq and the Middle East. He mildly criticized Israel–making noises about A Palestinian State as he did last June before dropping the issue until now.

(In what may have been a linked signal, Ariel Sharon dumped hard liner Benjamin Netanyahu as his foreign minister. [ed note: He dumped him because he doesn’t trust him.])

Bush’s speech was about his “vision” for the people in Iraq. His dream may become Afghanistan’s nightmare, as that country’s US imposed leader, Hamid Karzai, lobbies the White House today to urge that aid to his government not be cut back, as is likely, once the invasion of Iraq begins. The NY Times reports meanwhile that there is no sign of Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar…The New Yorker previewed the Administration’s plans, where a key planner, Stephen Carbone, admits what his boss doesn’t: “Things can also go badly.”

THE COVERAGE OF THOSE TERRORIST THREATS

The Media Lens group in England which monitors coverage there has noted a link between war coverage and reporting on sudden threats at home: “The ringing of Heathrow with tanks that preceded the latest report by Hans Blix, and the peace march, was said to be in response to increased terrorist ‘chatter’ warning intelligence services of an impending attack. The media failed to explore the one question that might have shed light on the credibility of these claims: did French and German intelligence services also report increased ‘chatter’”? Instead, the media obediently focused on the heightened ‘orange’ state of alert in that other founding member of the ‘coalition of the willing’ - the US.

“The media also somehow failed to notice that the threat suddenly vanished into thin air. The Guardian/Observer website records 37 mentions of articles containing the words ‘Heathrow and threat’ (as of February 23). The words ‘Gatwick and threat’ record 8 mentions. There is not one record of a news report mentioning a threat to Heathrow or Gatwick airports after February 14, the day of the Blix report and the day before the marches. Earlier that week, there had been a flood of reports with titles like, ‘Soldiers drafted in to increase Heathrow security’ (February 11), ‘UK on missile terror alert’ (February 12), ‘Minister - troop deployment is no stunt’ (February 12), ‘Huge hunt for missile smugglers’ (February 13), and so on.

“The media failed to notice that all of this came to an abrupt end for no discernible reason. No one dared suggest that the end of the crisis might have had more to do with the impact of a high-stakes propaganda tactic on the tourist industry, than it did on the negation of any threat.”

NOT SO EMBEDDED

US journalists are finally criticizing Pentagon rules on war coverage. Unfortunately, I had to go outside the country to discover this report in today’s Guardian:

“Senior US war reporters have launched a scathing attack on new rules issued by the Pentagon detailing how the media will be allowed to cover any conflict in Iraq. Veteran US war correspondents say that while the rules appear to offer unprecedented freedom to report the facts, on closer scrutiny the US military could enforce draconian restrictions on coverage of any operations in the region.

The Hartford Courant features a story on Media Channel affiliate Between the Lines on Bridgeport, Ct’s WPKN radio. John Jurgenson writes:

“In a mongrel studio at Bridgeport’s WPKN-FM, Scott Harris and his production crew compete for space with old televisions, record players, cardboard crates and even suitcases. For more than 10 years, this clubhouse of grass-roots radio has been the home of a weekly half-hour newsmagazine meant to provide “a platform for individuals and organizations generally ignored or marginalized in mainstream media.”

“Between the Lines,” created in 1991 by Harris and co-producer Denise Manzari as a response to the Gulf War, could soon mark another anniversary of sorts: the onset of a second war with Iraq. To its producers, the show’s mission is just as critical during this historical refrain. “Then, like now, the voices of dissent were being drowned out,” Harris said.

FCC MEETS IN RICHMOND

The FCC is holding a public hearing today in Richmond, Va to discuss its regulatory practices. The Center for the Creative Community will be testifying:

“A new programming oligopoly controlled by five media conglomerates has destroyed competition and eliminated voices and diversity of viewpoints in television, Jonathan Rintels, Executive Director of the Center for the Creative Community will testify…”The FCC must take action to restore competition and voices to television. Research shows many Americans receive their information regarding democracy, politics, news, values, history, and culture from television entertainment programming. Thus, the stakes for our nation are far higher than whether we will all be doomed to a future of bland television. At stake are America’s democracy, culture, and economy,” said Rintels.

CALL NEWS DESKS

Ian Brand writes about one way to encourage better news coverage of protests. “During the last protest on Feb 15, I brought the same sign I brought to DC in October. It says the following in large bold letters:

“ATTENTION CELL PHONE USERS!!

“PLEASE CALL THE NEW YORK TIMES!!(Times phone #)

“ASK THEM: DO YOU INTEND TO COVER THIS HISTORIC RALLY?AND ALSO: WILL YOU PUT IT ON THE FRONT PAGE?

“TELL THEM HOW MANY OF US SHOWED? PHONE NOW!!BE OUR THOUSANDTH CALLER!!

“As in October, the response was powerful. Many people called The Times. In DC, the person at the National desk said several hundred people had phoned in. I had three or four people calling at once. The same was true on F15….. We know that many people complained about the poor coverage–from many quarters including a FAIR media bulletin–and the Times was forced to write a more accurate story 3 days later.

“I believe many people felt empowered by this simple (on the ground) action. People always scream about the skewed numbers and the misinformation, but few people actually communicate their outrage to the media outlets in question.”

OOPS

David Traynier happily corrects an error commited in haste about allegations against A British TV personality: “Just as a point of clarification, Matthew Kelly is not (and to my knowledge never has been) a news anchor. He is a ‘celebrity’ host of various light entertainment shows which go out on our ITV network. He also does some stage work in pantomimes.”

A TOLSTOY MOMENT

Thanks Ian and to all who write and support us. We will have PayPal in place soon, as has been suggested, to seek donations to bring the staff back and end our current hiatus. My final thought this morning comes to us from the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy who wrote in 1896:

“The killed will be covered with earth and lime, and once more all the crowd of deluded men will be led on and on till those who have devised the project weary of it, or till those who thought to find it profitable receive their spoil. And so once more men will be made savage, fierce and brutal, and love will wane in the world… And so once more the men who reaped profit from it all will assert with assurance that since there has been a war there must needs have been one, and that other wars must follow, and they will again prepare future generations for a continuance of slaughter, depraving them from their childhood.”

Thanks for being here — and please tell you friends and colleagues about Mediachannel.org.

Funny how fast word spreads. After being interviewed on the BBC World Service and written up on the BBC Online site, an Atlanta radio station called for an interview. I loved that he BBC listed Mediachannel.org’s URL along with that of the State Department and Iraqi presidency. Share your comments by writing: dissector@mediachannel.org