RUSH FLEES KITCHEN, CAN’T STAND HEAT

ASHCROFT ACCUSED OF CONFLICTS

CLARK ON “BACKWARD PLANNING”

THIS JUST IN:

Even though this is a MEDIA issue, The New York Times reports commentator Rush Limbaugh’s resignation on its SPORTS pages (below the baseball play-off scores):

Rush Limbaugh resigned last night from ESPN’s “Sunday NFL Countdown” three days after he made race-related comments about how the news media view the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.

On Sunday, Limbaugh elaborated on his belief that McNabb is overrated and that the Eagles’ defense has carried the team over the past few seasons. “What we have here is a little social concern in the N.F.L.,” he said. “The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback can do well - black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve.”

“My comments this past Sunday were directed at the media and were not racially motivated,” Limbaugh said in a statement issued at midnight yesterday. “I offered an opinion. This opinion has caused discomfort for the crew, which I regret. I love ‘NFL Sunday Countdown’ and do not want to be a distraction to the great work done by all who work on it. Therefore, I have decided to resign.” He will now become even more of a martyr to the we-hate-the-liberal-media crowd.

HOW CNN VIEWED IT

Here’s what I wrote last night before the Great One decided it was better to cut and run than to stay and fight.

Network positioning was on display last night in a news sermon delivered by that anchor preacher named Aaron Brown on his show of renown. The subject at hand was the controversy sparked by a radio relic named Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh double dipped on ESPN, another Disney network. (He is carried on ABC radio in New York.) TV viewers are probably not as used to Rush’s shtick as the agit-provocateur of the air waves. So when he made a racially loaded remark about a black quarterback in Philadelphia, the outrage button was pressed. Mr. Limbaugh’s opinion provoked the opinions of others, including Presidential candidate Wesley Clark, who opined that the big man should be de-miked and consigned to the Hall of Shame.

That was too much for our Mr. Brown, who took the opportunity before even offering the news via his “whip around” gimmick to attack both the left and the right for getting so upset. This was to remind us that he was safely in the sensible middle while others around him are losing their marbles. He did not anticipate that Rush would soon jump or be pushed. Relax, advised the always self-assured Aaron. It was only an OPINION. That’s what he gets paid for. This defense of his right to be wrong would be laudable if Brown knew anything about the way that Mr. Limbaugh’s onions dominate our radio waves, making it hard for others to get heard.

Limbaugh is on the air as an entertainer, not a commentator. He was there to spike the ratings, not make himself the story. ESPN was trading on his persona in hopes of bringing more of his ditto-heads to their channel. And they were succeeding, itself a commentary on our media culture.

Rush’s mistruths, lies and deceptions have been raked over the coals for years. His insensitivity and arrogance are well known. That didn’t stop ESPN from hiring him. Does CNN have nothing better to do than to align its hotshot anchor with his ravings? Please, Mr. Brown, get down from your pulpit and look at how the media system works to enhance and promote middle-of-the-road opinions such as yours and right-wing opinions such as Rush’s and freezes out the rest of us.

SPYGATE, DAY FOUR

Demands increase for an independent counsel to probe the White House’s CIA agent-naming scandal as the press reports on the closeness between Attorney General Ashcroft and the people he is supposedly investigating. White House reporters yesterday were asking about an 11-hour gap between the Justice Department’s initiation of the case and its request to White House officials to preserve all documents. The Times, always a weathervane on issues like this, played it this way: “Attorney General Is Closely Linked to Inquiry Figures: John Ashcroft’s ties to White House aides have come under scrutiny as the Justice Department’s investigation into the leak of the name of an undercover officer begins.” The Times is also defending those who published the leak, editorializing that the focus remain on the government, not the journalists.

Maureen Dowd was merciless, writing today that “The men who won the 2000 election by promising to restore honor and integrity to the White House spent yesterday doing a pretty good imitation of O. J. Simpson, looking for the culprit. You could just picture President Bush with his Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, magnifying glass and bloodhound Barney. Silly. The White House knows who did it. All Mr. Bush has to do is roll heads.”

THEY DELUDE. YOU DECIDE

And as if there were not enough right-wing programming and right-leaning channels, word comes from Planet Murdoch that Fox News Channel may soon sire offspring. Mediapost reports that “In a development that could send new shivers up the spines of the management at CNN, not to mention CNBC and maybe even the E! Entertainment Network, the Fox Entertainment Group is considering one or more spin-offs of its wildly successful Fox News Channel.”

NEWS AS A “REALITY GAME”

I guess news as entertainment is not explicit enough already because a game manufacturer is getting into the news game. This release just in:

Reality entertainment broke new ground today with the unveiling of “Reality Games” by new start up venture, Kuma Reality Games. Delivered through high-speed Internet connections to consumers’ PCs, Kuma will offer weekly episodic content that allows gamers to “play the news as it is reported.”

“Episodic gaming is the next logical step in the evolution of broadband entertainment and an exciting way for consumers to enjoy the new advancements in high-speed Internet services,” said Kuma Reality Games co-founder and chairman, Jeff Samberg. “With Kuma Games, news junkies and PC game players alike will be able to experience their passion in a whole new dimension.”

NEWS AND MISPERCEPTIONS

As this blurring of the lines between news biz and show biz makes it harder to extract meaning or stimulate concern, it seems that news operations actually have the effect of increasing the frequency of perceptions. Later today the Program on International Policy Attitude at the University of Maryland releases a study trying to understand why many people have opinions at odds with real information. (Aaron Brown, are you still with me?) They have been studying “The frequency of misperceptions and how these misperceptions have relatedto support for the war, including, among others, beliefs that: –evidence of links between al Qaeda and Iraq have been found, –WMD have been found in Iraq, –world public opinion favored the Iraq war.

Their report also speaks to:

–How the presence of such misperceptions has greatly varied according toAmericans’ primary news source, and which media outlet audiences (print,ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, PBS, NPR) had the highest and the lowestfrequency of misperceptions.

:–How greater exposure to news affects the frequency of misperceptions, andhow this varies according to primary news source.

–How respondents’ feelings about the President and party identificationrelate to the frequency of misperceptions.” You can read the study after noon at ().

FALSE PERCEPTIONS SURROUND US

Sometimes false perceptions are deliberately promoted, as in the case of that alleged uranium in Africa that has stirred what may yet become Bushgate. The Conservative Media Resource Center is freaking out about how the so-called “liberal press” is playing this story du jour. They hate this, explaining:

The networks entered full scandal mode on Monday with the evening shows leading for a second straight night with the news of an investigation into who in the administration back in July told columnist Bob Novak a CIA operative’s name, though stories conflicted on the operatives actual job duties, the source of the leak and, despite Joe Wilson on Monday morning having specifically admitted he went too far in accusing Karl Rove, both CBS and NBC relayed Wilson’s naming of Rove. NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski offered this warning: “If tried and convicted, the leakers could get ten years in prison. But the political fallout could be much worse for the White House whose credibility on Iraq is already on the line.” An excited Aaron Brown proposed at the top of Monday’s NewsNight on CNN: “It seems like the good old days, doesn’t it?”

IN THE COLONIES

Another three American soldiers killed in Iraq. 40 more incidents. Just another ho-hum day there. David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group seems to have come up empty handed in his search for WMDs. The Administration reports that his is only an “interim report.” To keep Mr. Kay in inspectors, the Administration is , according to the New York Times, seeking $600 Million keep the hunt alive. James Risen and Judith Miller report: “The money comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been spent on the weapons search, officials said.”

Meanwhile there has been another Saddam sighting in Tikrit. A specialized newsletter called Energy Security reports that the Iraqi oil, so coveted by the US and the centerpiece of the plan to sell Iraq to pay for all the damage the Coalition has inflicted, is hard to get. They write: “Hardly a day goes by without an attack on pipelines and refineries in the northern and southern parts of the country. These attacks affect Iraq’s export capability and create an inhospitable investment climate, deterring international oil companies from developing in Iraq the infrastructure required to make it a leading oil-exporting country.”

“BACKWARD PLANNING BACKWARD”

Wesley Clark is going for the intellectual crowd with a piece in the New York Review of Books on what went wrong in Iraq. Over the past months, he has waffled all over this issue, but his points in this piece about the flaws of the “war plan” that all the networks reported on adoringly at the time, deserve a read. He writes in part:

The second major criticism of the war plan-a profound flaw-concerned the endgame: it shortchanged postwar planning. Those who plan military operations for a war must take into account the aftermath. Four steps have to be considered: deployment; buildup; decisive combat; and postconflict operations. The destruction of enemy forces on the battlefield creates a necessary but not sufficient condition for victory. It is not just the defeat of the opposing army but success in the operations that follow that accomplishes the aims and intentions of the overall plan. In this case, the purposes, as enunciated by Secretary Rumsfeld, included ending the regime of Saddam Hussein, driving out and disrupting terrorist networks, finding and eliminating weapons of mass destruction, eliminating further terrorist activities, and establishing conditions for Iraq’s rapid transition to a representative government “that is not a threat to its neighbors.”

Victory requires backward planning, beginning with a definition of postwar success and then determining both the nature of the operations required and the necessary forces. Here the administration’s focus and determination on winning the war in military terms undermined the prospects for success once the country was occupied.

Yo, mine General, how about joining me in calling for some “backward assessments” or post mortem on how the media blew the story in the first place?

It looks like the Israeli settlers have won as Ariel Sharon agrees to build his fence/barrier/wall on more of the West Bank, setting the stage for more conflicts with Palestinians, Europe and the US. For an assessment, read Tony Judt’s thoughtful take in the New York Review of Books. His conclusion: “The Middle East peace process is finished. It did not die. It was killed…Israel’s behavior has been a disaster for American foreign policy.”

MEDIA NEWS NOW: BONJOUR CNN

The European Journalism Center reports that “a French 24-hour international news channel designed to rival BBC World and CNN should be on the air by late next year after state approval of apublic-private consortium to run the broadcaster. Bernard Brochand, mayor of Cannes (on the French Riviera), said it would be operational by ‘autumn or winter 2004.’ State financing for the television channel-whose annual budget for the first five years has been put at 70 million euros-would be fast-tracked, he said. Its programs would not be available to homes in France.”

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

“1010 WINS IN New York reports: The editor of El Diario-La Prensa, the city’s oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper, resigned when the paper’s owners told him to not to publish an opinion column written by Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Gerson Borrero, 52, who announced his resignation Monday, will return to his job as a full-time columnist for the paper.

Castro’s column, which was scheduled to appear in the paper’s opinion pages on Monday, focused on Cuba’s public education system. It had been promoted by the paper last Thursday and Friday.

“The column also said the embargo of the island by the United States and some European nations would not affect the spirit of the Cuban people, a source told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.”

In England the editor of the Daily Telegraph who has been waging war on the BBC has now resigned. The 145-year-old newspaper is in trouble….The Media Guardian reports that Italian MPs delayed a bill permitting President Silvio Berlusconi to expand his media empire.

YOUR LETTERS ARE HOT AND HEAVY

An old friend in Boston writes: “Thank you for sending the extraordinary letter from ‘Baghdad Burning.’ It’s letters like that that keep us going, isn’t it? What a wonderful response. I went to her blog and read a few entries and will continue to read her blog.” See the home page of the mediachannel.org.

DECORATOR-IN-CHIEF

Deni Hay comments on LB:

While every horrid event that could possibly have occurred in the world since the Bush Gang stole office has happened, Laura Bush has been busy decorating her new “West Wing White House” in Crawford, Texas for the past 3 years. After 9/11, she couldn’t wait to get back to Crawford to continue her decorating duties.

Never has she attended one funeral for any American soldier killed, thanks to her husband’s unjust war and except for every day of 9/11, she hasn’t even bothered to take any time to visit even one soldier who has suffered injuries as a result of her husband’s immoral attack on innocent human being in Iraq.

I guess when your mother-in-law, Barbara Bush is the heir to the Lady’s Home Magazine empire and a cousin to the Queen of England, you don’t have to give a damn about “middle or poor class Americans”. You can just continue to live in luxury and not give a damn about anyone but yourself, as Laura Bush as clearly demonstrated.

Since the so called “legitimate” news media gives the Bush Gang free passes, can someone get the pictures of this new West Wing White House? I’m sure your readers and the public would love to see what Mrs. Bush has been busying herself with for the past 3 years.

AN ITALIAN JOB?

Dan Cassidy asks if there may be a Berlusconi connection to the DC scandal:

Wilson’s mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a “con man.” This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

He wants us to look into who these Italian journalists are.

DIG WE MUST

Brian Tilley writes from Canada:

You have pointed out the anomaly of how long it has taken this story to become center stage. I have a theory…one that I believe is shared by others…and one that maybe someone with connections could do some digging…that what is really happening here is the fallout from Wilson’s wife being outed.

What if she is in fact not just an “analyst” or even an agent, but a case officer in charge of network(s) of spies. I find it interesting that her husband, an ambassador, might have actually been her cover allowing her to both recruit and access her network(s) in the countries where he was posted.

If this is true then there is a real possibility that one or more of her spies have been compromised and even killed. This is exactly what would get the CIA to make sure this story did not just sink below the surface, as just more of the usual Washington infighting and back-stabbing. They would consider it essential to make sure whoever was responsible is publicly identified and pilloried.

The CIA is completely dependent on its credibility…its abilty to preserve the identities of covert sources… to get the help of other intelligence agencies, and a blunder of this magnitude would make it extremely difficult to get the info they need to stop attacks against the US.

Just a thought….

MY HUNT ON THE WMD FRONT

May we all keep thinking and acting. I am busy making a new film on the media coverage of Iraq. I have very strong material, but so far pathetically little money. That’s a complaint you hear from independent filmmakers with increasing frequency these days. I am on the hunt for my own coalition of the willing, for funding, for an angel, for a distribution company for a gutsy channel, for a courageous funder. The subject couldn’t be timelier for what happened then and now… I turn to you. Any ideas to share? Specific suggestions? Prospects? There is a promo tape, a proposal, and a director with hat in hand. This weekend I am off to the Arab Media Summit in Dubai.

I will be speaking on the coverage of the war and for help in battling the weapons of mass deception. Back in this space tomorrow. Encourage your friends to subscribe to the blog. Write dissector@mediachannel.org.