WEEKEND OUTRAGE
ABC NEWS SUSPENDS PRODUCER FOR WRITING PERSONAL ANTI-BUSH E-MAIL

Readers of my current Mediachannel piece on the unbrave world of media will note that I referenced a DRUDGE REPORT “expose” of a private e-mail sent by an ABC GMA producer expressing his personal disgust with our President’s way of communicating.

Read it–and then read this item in Today’s Saturday Washington Post. The ABC producer in question, John Green, has been suspended and forced to make a groveling apology to the White House, a gesture that sounds straight outta Stalinist Russia.

Talk about a chilling effect on personal expressions by any and all network producers. You can’t even have a personal opinion and work in news anymore. Note to Kerry Marash, a former colleague I once admired and who as an ABC Exec did the dirty deed of dissing Green: employees are entitled to personal opinions and being open-minded doesn’t mean being empty-minded. You shouldn’t lose your right to free speech when you go to work for a network. (Although his views have yet to be represented with any frequency on the air). Walter Cronkite speaks about this in a statement on Mediachannel.org. He says: “Journalists shouldn’t have to check their consciences at the door when they go to work for a media company. It ought to be just the reverse.”

When the anti-war and media activists recently sought to meet at ABC to discuss war coverage, the request was referred to Kerry’s office. SHE DID NOT CALL BACK, to my dismay even though we have always been cordial. ABC REFUSED TO HAVE AN OFF THE RECORD MEETING. Now I understand, even more, deeply how corporate environments corrupt, almost by osmosis.

This is so ironic because her husband Dave Marash, a great journalist who I once worked alongside, was not rehired by ABC when Ted Koppel retired, only to have his program, Nightline, replaced by “Nightline-lite.” He has now joined AlJAzeera International. I am sure he has sent many an email to his wife about his dismay at working at ABC. I expressed mine in the book, “The More You Watch, The Less You Know.”

Here’s Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post today on the great e-mail threat to the integrity the Republic and ABC News, whose president of News, former corporate lawyer David Westin admitted publicly that ABC News was “not critical enough” in its coverage of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

“We let the American people down,” he said.

Now, he’s let the cause of free speech down. Read all about this petty act of corporate ass-covering and pay-back with disgust:

ABC Suspends Producer Over Bush-Bashing E-Mail

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 1, 2006; C01

ABC News suspended the executive producer of the weekend edition of “Good Morning America” yesterday over a pair of leaked e-mails in which he used inflammatory language to slam President Bush and Madeleine Albright.

John Green, whose unpaid suspension will last one month, apologized to the White House in a call to communications director Nicolle Wallace, while two ABC executives called the former secretary of state to apologize.

“No one is sorrier than John for the embarrassment that these albeit private e-mails caused to his colleagues and to the people who were the subjects of those comments,” said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. “John would be the first to say this has been a real lesson to him. John is abjectly sorry for all the comments that have come to light, and that’s appropriate.”

In one of the e-mails, written during the first presidential debate in 2004 and leaked to the Drudge Report, Green wrote to a colleague on his BlackBerry: “Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the ‘mixed messages’ line one more time, I’m going to puke.”

Green, who was not made available for comment yesterday, wrote his colleagues after that leak to say “how much I regret the embarrassment that this story causes ABC. It was an inappropriate thing to say, and I’m deeply sorry.”

Wallace said yesterday that she “appreciated the call and the apology.”

The second leaked e-mail surfaced Thursday on the New York Post’s gossipy Page Six. In that note, Green wrote that Albright should not be booked on the show because “Albright has Jew shame.”

Albright, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, acknowledged her Jewish heritage in 1997 after it was discovered by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs in the course of researching a book.

Green wrote in that note that “she hates us anyway because she says we promised her five minutes and only gave her two . . . I do not like her.” An ABC insider said Green was reacting to a heated dispute between Albright and a network producer.

The Albright Group, a global strategy firm founded by the former Clinton cabinet member, took the diplomatic route. “Secretary Albright has always had an excellent relationship with ‘GMA’ and with ABC and she still does,” her office said in a statement. “In fact, she looks forward to appearing on ‘GMA’ on May 2 in connection with the release of her book on U.S. foreign policy and the importance of religious tolerance.”

Both e-mails were disclosed at a time when public distrust of news organizations and their ability to be fair are at or near an all-time high.

The suspension was ordered by Kerry Marash, senior vice president for editorial standards, and approved by ABC News President David Westin.

Green, who got his job in 2004 as the Saturday and Sunday editions of the morning show were being launched, has worked for ABC for 12 years. He is highly regarded by many of his colleagues, and the show is in second place on Saturdays, trailing NBC’s “Weekend Today,” but is in third place on Sundays, when “CBS Sunday Morning” is No. 1.

It is widely believed at ABC News that the e-mails were leaked by a former employee who has a vendetta against Green.

“Everyone who works at ABC News is unhappy with the situation because it reflects on all of us,” Schneider said. But, he said, “I don’t think the e-mails tell us anything about the show John Green was putting on the air every Saturday and Sunday, which is fair and balanced and down the middle.”

News VP Schneider appears briefly in my film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception” insisting that ABC News played it “straight down the middle” in its coverage of Iraq. His boss David Westin would later contradict him.

“CONVERSATION STARTERS”

Also in the Post yesterday was story by Ann Hornaday on documentaries that mentions me in the lead paragraph:

“Inspired by the satirical essays of Michael Moore, a relatively unknown crop of filmmakers — such as Robert Greenwald (”Unprecedented,” “Uncovered,” “Outfoxed”), Danny Schechter (”Weapons of Mass Deception”) and Mark Achbar (”Manufacturing Consent,” “The Corporation”) — has decided to make films not as conventional popcorn spectacles but as conversation starters.”

First of all, the Post never spoke to me. Second, I was not inspired by Michael Moore to make films. My first film was made in l968. (He was 14 at the time.) Third, I am not “unknown,” relatively or otherwise, to the Washington Post because it reviewed WMD, leaving out the fact, natch, that it criticizes the Washington Post’s unbalanced Iraq coverage quoting the paper’s then omsbudsman and ex-WAPO editor Michael Getler. Getler has since left for similar duties at PBS.”

My film WMD is evidently not a “conversation starter” for the Post which doesn’t have many converations with critics. The newspaper has not reviewed or mentioned my book “WHEN NEWS LIES” that details my concerns with its coverage and discusses my film including the Post’s put-down. Another DC outlet, C-SPAN considers it worthy of Book TV coverage. The article puts down political films as “pamphlets” unaware perhaps that I have written THREE books on the media and the “war on terror” and upteen articles and essays.

Maybe we need more pamphlets these days and fewer uninformed journalists.

Ann: Check out Tom Paine’s Common Sense and read what your paper is missing.

FRIDAY’S BLOG

WHY IRAQ IS BEING DOWNPLAYED
REMEMBERING ARGENTINA’S DICTATORSHIP
PROGRESSIVE MEDIA NEWS

Once again last night, for the umpteenth time, I watched my film with with a large group of people, this time in my own neighborhood in Chelsea at a screening organized by a neighborhood anti-war group which has been holding weekly vigils in the streets for 40 months. I passed by one week and offered to give them a copy of the film. They welcomed the idea and have now packed a community room for a lively screening.

Even a blind 92 year old liked it.

Yet as I watched it again, I realized that I never thought the war would still be going on and on or that in 2006, I would still be touring with the film. And also, I naively believed that the media coverage would change and that journalists would revolt against a role of carrying the Administrations water. I underestimated the stutifying conformity induced within corporate media outlets and the conservative ideologies and “market logic” that guides them.

Isn’t it obvious what a disaster this was and is? There was an optimistic feeling in many media outlets yesterday because of the release of the Christian Science Monitors Jill Carroll. (Perhaps after this ordeal, that paper will give her a real job so she doesn’t have to freelance anymore.) We are thrilled that she is alive and free.

At the same time I came across one article that seems to share my own disgust with the media response overall but with a special take worth reading.

William Powers asks in the Atlantic: “why is the war not an Alpha Story for the media?”

THE FAULT DEAR BRUTUS, IS NOT IN THE STARS…

Alpha story?

Powers explains what he means:

“…as everyone in this post-O.J. age knows, some news stories get absolute top billing day after day after day. September 11 did. Hurricane Katrina did. The Clinton-Lewinsky story was huge for so long, it became a way of life.

“Each of these was what you might call an Alpha Story, one that effectively blots out the rest of existence. And each retained that status until the crisis or scandal that created it had definitively subsided. When the Katrina story shifted to rebuilding, it dropped down several pegs. When the impeachment vote was over, Clinton-Lewinsky faded.

“Given how grave things still are in Iraq, an obvious question arises: Why is the war not an Alpha? It certainly was during the invasion, when all of those American reporters were embedded with U.S. troops. But over time, the story has morphed into something less. Often it’s a Beta, and occasionally a Gamma or a Delta. Even the Academy Awards coverage felt bigger for a day or two.”

What a good question, and what a tough one to answer simplistically because Iraq is being covered every night and the media is turning more critical and making a continuing commitment but not at earlier levels. What’s the problem?

Here’s his response:

“The gap is emotional, and it’s at the Washington end of things. When Washington reporters are truly hot on a story, nothing can stop them from playing it large. In the Clinton-Lewinsky period, even when polls showed that much of the public was fed up with the story, the media drumbeat continued. After all, the press argued—persuasively, in my opinion—the president of the United States was in a terrible mess. That
implicitly mattered.

“….Iraq is a thousand times more significant than Clinton’s worst scandal. Yet the pitch of the Washington war coverage doesn’t approach that of the Clinton impeachment. The press corps seems weary and beaten down…. it became clear that if the journalists don’t realize this, nonjournalists do.

“Once upon a time, journalists told the people which stories mattered most. Now, the people are leading the media”.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200603u/nj_po

ON TO SOME NEWS NOT IN THE NEWS:

Will The U.S. Nuke Iran? Professor of Physics Highlights The Dangers

”New US policy to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries has been officially formulated in two US government documents Nuclear Posture Review delivered to Congress in December 2001 and Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations dated March 15, 2005

.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12569.htm

JACK BE NIMBLE…..

Mr Abramoff Goes to Washington

Abramoff’s testimony threatens not only the most senior politicians in the country but it is also exposing the corrosive influence of lobbyists’ money on American democracy. Video and Transcript

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12560.htm

LEST WE FORGET

Marie Trigona of International Relations Center (IRC) reminds us that this March has been a very special anniversary in Argentina:

”This March 24, Argentines commemorated the 30 year anniversary of the nation’s 1976 military coup and the brutal nightmare of state terror that followed. Throughout the week, human rights groups remembered the 30,000 people who were disappeared with a series of rallies and cultural events.

“Without a doubt, anniversary commemorations were much larger this year than in the past. Massive crowds could barely squeeze into the Plaza de Mayo and tens of thousands spilled over into the connecting avenues during the demonstration on March 24. Along with the masses that returned to the streets for the first time in decades, polemic debate among human rights groups accompanied this year’s commemorations.

“The military coup took power at exactly 3:20 a.m. on March 24, 1976. The military dictatorship immediately released an ultimatum warning that if military or civil police witnessed any suspicious subversive activity they would administer the “shoot to kill” policy. In the days leading up to the coup, representatives from the Catholic Church met with leaders of Argentina’s armed forced and witnesses report they left each of these meetings smiling.

“Two days after the coup then-U.S. Secretary Henry Kissinger ordered his subordinates to “encourage” the new regime by providing financial support, according to newly declassified U.S. cables and transcripts relating to the coup. Washington approved $50 million in military aid to the junta the following month. During Jorge Rafael Videla’s official visit to Washington in 1977 President Jimmy Carter expressed his hope for Argentina’s military government. Kissinger praised Videla in a television interview.