WHAT WE DIDN’T SEE

WHY WE DIDN’T SEE IT

MICHAEL MOORE CHEERED

BOSTON JULY 28: 11:48 A.M. Sorry I am so late posting this morning but I have been covering a Michael Moore event that I will tell you more about later.

BOSTON July 28: 8:A.M. As I was leaving the Democratic Convention at the Fleet Center last night, Congress member Jesse Jackson Jr. was telling me how ecstatic he was about the inspiring keynote address of Barrack Obama, the young Kenyan-Kansan American who may be on his way to the US Senate From Illinois. If he wins, he will be the first black male Senator since Massachusetts Edwin Brooke, whose name graces a federal court house just up the street from where we were chatting.

Obama’s inaugural oration was a stunning personal and political coming out party — my partner now thinks of him as a possible first black president as a result of his dynamic presentation. Jesse Jr. said he deliberately watched the speech of the night on TV set, not on the Convention floor, because he wanted to see how it was going over in America’s living rooms. His take resonated with mine: a ?star was born.’

THE BIG BUTT

But — and this was the BIG BUT (or should it be BUTT?) — this event staged by for the media, presented at great expense to maximize production values and reach out to the nation at large, a made for TV spectacle designed to take advantage of the free airtime, was not on the networks that reach the largest audience. And Why?

Our biggest media outlets were in effect boycotting this big media event. What’s the sound of one hand clapping, or a tree falling in an empty forest? That’s what the Democratic Convention sounded like last night in most of America’s living rooms.

ALL DRESSED UP BUT NOWHERE TO GO

This is not to say that the networks were not set up to cover it. Oh, no! They were all there, at great expense, loaded up with the latest gizmos, their gear overflowing into trailers. Their satellites were at the ready, engineers and reporters in position. There was a multi-camera feed they could just plug in to. But they turned that switch off and kept their big screen dark.

I hung out next to Ted Koppel and Sam Donaldson at the ABC News compound right outside the Fleet Center. I chatted with NBC’s top producer, and even ran into CBS’s Dan Rather. They were all on the scene, but to paraphrase a comment I heard earlier about Florida in 2000, “if I had one of those yellow ribbons, I would have draped the whole state with a sign saying “CRIME SCENE.”

Boston was a media crime scene last night, and the network heavies knew it.

BUT LOOK AT THE RATINGS…

They had a good rationalization for their decision. Opening night had been a ratings disaster. Together the networks only recorded a l0 rating, which one ABC executive I spoke to spoke of as a clear “vindication” of our decision. It was a small audience in TV terms, but still many times bigger than any of the cable news outlets or C-SPAN. Nevertheless the nets argued that this was “the proof” they needed that the American people were not interested.

An ABC exec who spoke of “vindication” rationalized that those viewers who wanted to see the event had many choices including a new digital channel that ABC News cranked up for the event shown on the digital tier on Time Warner Cable, and available on the internet. Never mind that practically no one knows its there.

This is a heroin peddler’s argument: “we just give the people what they want.” Often, people are not interested because politics is not made interesting. The familiar templates of sound byte driven TV coverage and horse race polling turn the process into a sports event where whose winning is all that matters. The stories of the people who are debating and organizing and battling in the trenches has been pronounced not news worthy. If our major political events are not interesting, what is? Maybe another state funeral for a dead Republican? (Ronald Reagan’s son spoke last night and his talk was not broadcast either!) Were we given a choice about watching that?

I spoke by phone with Max Robins of Broadcasting an Cable. The leading trade mag and he said he was going to editorially challenge the network arguments. And he is in an industry serving publication so you know there is plenty of debate on this one in the business.

NBC NEWS GIVES IT AWAY TO “MS”

NBC’s top gun said his network was giving away their whole effort to MSNBC, one of America’s least watched news networks and not only during the convention. (Internally, they call the channel “MS” as if they want to distance NBC from it.)<>CBS’s Dan Rather told me outside his 6th floor anchor booth that he had done all the broadcasting he was gonna do — and this was before Teddy Kennedy gave a powerful speech denouncing the failures of the Bush Administration. Now, he told me, he was just going to watch “the windfest.” My namesake Dan is the MAN for most colorful turn of phrase, his daily speciality of da house.

AM I TOO IDEALISTIC?

So there you have it with some regrets or not — no network coverage! My partner Rory think I am too sentimental for the bygone era of gave to gavel coverage because there are no surprises at this convention which is set up to “get the American people to know about John Kerry” — and support him, of course.

But that’s what conventions are, aren’t they? Advocacy events. Parties for the parties. What’s so wrong with that? Isn’t the idea to maximize political turnout, to encourage Americans to care and to vote in our democracy. Or am I being too idealistic again in these cynical times?

CRITICS ON THE RIGHT AND LEFT

I asked as many big names as I could about this decision, and most were disgusted. Carol Mosely Braum, the ex-Senator turned ex-candidate shook her head. “The networks. The networks…” she muttered. “They are just corporations.” ‘Nuff said.

To my surprise, former Republican aide to Richard Nixon, John McLauglin, the loud mouth TV host of his widely seen weekly program (The cumulative rating is an 8.5, he boasts) ran into us at a party afterwards thrown by GQ magazine which has an article in the current issue graced by a Halle Berry cover claiming that W was on a top-secret secret mission in Vietnam the year he was supposedly AWOL from that base in Alabama.

This packed party was thrown for Gavin Newsom, the marrying mayor of San Francisco, and attracted all the beautiful people. The pols were at the function at the junction for Obama or the Ziggy Marley song fest at the Aquarium.) As the rains began to fall, I was forced to consume the Conde Nast supplied wine and sushi.

Anyway, McLaughlin, who, believe it or not, once asked me to consider producing his TV show (as did John Kerry himself) denounced the network boycott. “This is the most important political election in recent history,” he said. “And it should be covered. Full stop. Period. And he’s on the right and knows a thing or two about attracting people to watch political debates, however formularized!

MIKE THE MEDIA MAN

The halls were alive last night with the sound of Michael Moore fans cheering for the capped one when he strolled into the building and was quickly surrounded by every camera crew in sight. He is now an A-list celebrity and rates more coverage than the people he covers. Politicians like Maxine Waters and John Lewis looked on in amazement as the baseball capped political party of one was making news, while they were not, at their own convention. How unconventional! I didn’t get close enough to hear what he was saying.

Lest you think I was only media focused last night I did imbibe the political debate that spilled into the corridors. I liked Teddy Kennedy comparing George W to George the Third and quoting FDR’s line that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. He added: “The only thing we have to fear is 4 more years of George Bush. That got a laugh line and a big cheer. So did Howard Dean’s insistence the party must allow diverse views.

I watched Larry King hold forth on the floor with, among others David Gergan, a Republican who also served the Clinton white house and later said hello to me. I did meet a minister who has joined the DNC to run a new outreach campaign to people of faith including the Christian rightists whose passion for Bush almost equals their fidelity to their lord and savior. There were still rumors flying about Cheney stepping down and speculation that Bush will tap McCain or Condi Rice to outflank them liberals out to get him.

KEERY AS A SPERM

I did scan the press coverage. The prize for the biggest putdown went to the New York Post which carried a photo of him in a space outfit that in their worldview made him look like a sperm in a scene from the Woody Allen movie “Everything you were afraid to ask about sex but were afraid to ask” and compared him to Michael Dukakis in that tank photo. The Democrats responded by releasing a photo of President Bush picking his nose. (I finally saw Dukakis, now a non-person in party circles, giving interviews outside the Hall. His wife Kitty looked great as she watched his long awaited moment in the sun of media attention.)

On the way to the convention, I dropped in at the official protest zone which looked like a cage at Guantanamo Bay. Maybe this was there as the ultimate warning to dissenters. It was DISGUSTING, wrapped in concertina razor wire and festooned with signs denouncing it as an affront to freedom of the speech. Real protesters were boycotting the place. When I was there, a small group of ultra-right crazies were screaming at about ten onlookers in a scene that even Fellini could not have imagined. John Ashcroft’s America was on display for all to see!

My film WMD was playing at Simmons College as part of the Boston political film festival and I dropped in at the screening. A conference on Vietnam was happening across the hall and the one vet I met in the hall kept mumbling “bull shit” after peeking his head into my screening but never really watching it. He was as arrogant as he was uninformed. Later after we traded barbs, he came back and watched some more, and the whispered to me “Oh this is about the media, not just the military.” (Next screening: Thursday at 6 at the West End Library.)

Duh!

IN THE EMAIL

Jackie Newberry is watching what there is to watch in Houston: “What is all this “people need to know Kerry?” Geez! We know he is not perfect and has baggage. After all, he is a politician. But this constant mantra as if there is so much about him that is so like George Bush that the two are twins except for minor tweaks is getting to be nauseating. I see it more as a theme of media perpetuation. He does seem to have something along the line of that “V”alue word that the right wing things it has a corner on. He does seem grounded and steady…or rather…I don’t think that he would sit there reading “My Pet Goat” for another 7 minutes on 9/11 as did George Bush. He does seem to be intelligent, focused, and studied. Of course, when the 9/11 Commission Report came out, George Bush’s first response was that he would study it, but Kerry said that if nothing was done about it by the time he became president, he would call an emergency session to carry out what needed to be done that was called for to correct the deficiencies cited by the Commission.

“Kerry’s not splashy and flashy. He doesn’t have the quick ever ready witty, sarcastic, flippant, frequently recycled, despite-the-context comment so often heard from the lips of the current Commander in Chief. I consider the Bushisms a result of his life-time practice of avoidance of knowing nothing deeply with any complexity of study or attention or interest or without deciphering or interpretation by someone else.

“Oh, we know George Bush all right. We see how he has destabilized the planet politically and environmentally. And this administration’s consistent practice of secrecy, hostility, isolationism, lying, deception, scandal, coverup, and manipulation to the American people, to the press, and to the rest of the world sets it apart from administrations in the past as well as John Kerry. The huge gap between the two men is obvious. That is certainly what people need to know.”

ON THE BOSTON SOCIAL FORUM

Michael Eisenmenger comments on the discussion I have been sharing about the impact and content of the Boston Social Forum:

As for alternative media, it’s interesting that in a moment of high profile blockbuster docs and top down online happenings, that we (the media movement) could overlook the most important aspects; building and strengthening a social process for making media that’s parallel to and in step with the social movements around the world. Treating communities as target audiences and building constituencies solely for the sake of short-term political campaigns are ?their’ strategies ? not ours. This isn’t participatory network building, it’s media management of the worst sort. MoveOn has received upwards of 6 million (from donors like Soros) to finance their PSA’s and web happenings ? but once a democrat is in office will they simply MoveOver?…

THE VIEW FROM BEAN TOWN

Kathleen Clementi says; “Welcome to Boston and my alma mata UMass Boston. You are correct, very few African Americans attending yet Dorchester and Roxbury so very close and yet so far. The situation with the demonstrators being forced to remain behind almost prison like fences is inexcusable. And I-93 the the road I have to use to enter Boston is closed from 4:00PM until 1:00AM in the morning for security purposes??

“My god, the citizens who live in this state cannot even use our own roadways, the excuse being “security”? During the rush hour commute us poor souls have lost one of precious lanes from the south shore, so that the delegates can have a whole lane to themselves so they will not be late to the convention!!…

“Us Massachusetts taxpayers are having to make major sacrifices for this convention so that the downtown businesses, i.e, restaurants, hotels, etc. can make oodles of profits. Sorry for my cynicism but thank goodness I am leaving the state! Anyway Danny I cannot wait to hear your views of the convention when I get to New Mexico. I am interested to hear what Bill Richardson’s opening address will be, as he will be my new governor (his wife comes from MA). Have a great time, and BTW feed them and they will come! There was a whole segment on TV here about all the great free food the news media was rewarded with at the convention!!”

A LETTER TO PETER JENNINGS

L. Lynn LeSueur, Ph.D. writes: “I’m copying you folks on this letter I just wrote to Peter Jennings, after having watched a panel discussion at the Kennedy School among Jim Lehrer, Jennings, Rather, Brokaw, and Judy Woodruff. Al Franken was in the audience; Eric Alterman asked one question, but was essentially dissed by the director. Otherwise, the questions from the audience were quite good, and the answers from these guys were pretty limp.

“But, as my letter suggests, Jennings really irked me, more than once. And his smug response to the question of whether the networks felt they could have done a better job really made me ill. I knew I’d never really liked him much, and now I have a better sense of where my intuitions came from.:

” Dear Mr. Jennings,

“I have just finished watching the HU Kennedy School discussion that included you amongst other representative news anchors. It was most revealing.

“What struck me most intensely was your claim, after others on the panel had admitted lapse of vigilance in the run-up to our invasion of Iraq, that you felt you and ABC had in fact applied vigilance in your reporting. On its face, your choice to beat your drum compares poorly with those who were willing to admit imperfections in their coverage.

“But allow me to draw this additional observation to your attention: Within a night or two of our attacks on that country, you introduced a filler story by a reporter whose name escapes me, in which an expert on war history was interviewed in an academic setting. The expert described in vivid detail the historical precedents for shock and awe, which your staff augmented nicely with footage… of the German blitzkrieg, as well as their accelerated invasion of France.

“This segment was most informative, and neatly done, but this is what struck me: Neither you, nor the reporter doing the piece, nor the expert, even thought to comment on the bizarre fact that our invasion tactics were being compared to NAZI aggressions! Of course you could not find other examples; there are NONE that could compare our actions with a NON-aggressive military strategy!!

“So the disturbing facts are these: One, you failed utterly and completely to even recognize that damning comparison, much less make comment on it at the time. And two, you continue to fail utterly and completely to recognize how blind you can be to the deeper truths of the news as presented to you. Unfortunately, in this and altogether too many other cases, your sources are this administration, whose word you apparently accept without even adequate question. Have you totally lost sight of your responsibility to scrutinize any power that might mislead or dominate us? A democracy absolutely depends on this.

“You and your colleagues should feel nothing short of utter shame at what you have done to contribute to the desperate decline of our nation and its international reputation in just three short years. You seem to have thoroughly lost sight of your responsibility to the public that you serve. Perhaps you need to be reminded of Julius Streicher, the only non-military, non-government person to be hanged at Nuremberg. His crime? The jurors condemned his exploitation of the paper he owned for fomentation of the lies and hatred necessary for the Nazis to perpetrate their atrocities.

“You and your colleagues have been sliding on a slippery and very steep slope. Please wake up, before it is to late to awaken the citizenry!”

Joan Mabry writes: “Hi, I’d like to buy a copy of the film. Is that possible yet? I’m in Hollywood, Florida & could possibly hold ascreening in my home.”

Thanks for asking Joan and all of the other readers who are asking. We hope to have the film available in the next few weeks. I will offer details as soon as I have them

Thanks for joining me in Boston, I am doing more reporting than dissecting here — and hope you find it of value. My partner Rory O’Connor is also blogging on Mediachannel, all part of our Media for Democracy commitment. Join up if you haven’t. You can reach me at dissector@mediachannel.org