TIM ROBINS: WHAT BROADCASTERS SHOULD BE DOING!


THAT DISGRACEFUL DEBATE ON ABC NEWS
MOVEON ORGANIZES PETITION TO PROTEST
MORE WRITE DOWN$ ON THE STREET

BOSTON: I must be a blogaholic, because here I am “scribbling” away, an hour or so before my talk at the historic Old South Meeting House, a revered home to revolution and dissent (now flanked by Borders and statues honoring the victims of the Irish potato famine.) I am blogging here on Boston’s “freedom trail” at Breuegers, the bagel joint that offers free WIFI. I am not sure if anyone will show up (See Below) because the Red Sox are playing tonight.

All I have been listening to today has been radio discussions on the debate last night. First. Amy Goodman played excerpts between coughs live from Stanford Universoty—early in the AM there and then had Ralph Naders’s “presumptive” VP Matt Gonzalez respond, an unsatisfying point –counter point with a few occasions about whether he and Ralph can win, a dream from some other planet.

Here in Boston, rightwing talk radio, spiced with a few liberals—have been reworking that sham exercise and takking it far more seriously than it deserved. Believe me it will be no more than a footnote. Obama was uninspired but fending off character assassinations like that stupid question by George—I am a big journalist now Stephanopolis—asking if he thought Reverend Wright loved America as much as he did….a new low in a media that has now descended into the sub-basement, if not the sewer of democracy.

(And, of course, the debate had a large audience. Why? Because it was on a network (ie “free” TV) not a lesser watched cable outfit. ABC News managed to dumb it down like they do with their principal “product” every day.)

Amy Good man didn’t really do more than offer one line on the horrible media performance that has had ABC skewered first in the hall and then in newspaper columns across the country. There was in many outlets with more angry, if embarrassed, commentary on the media role.

MOVE-ON ANNOUCES PETITION

The coverage was so shocking to many that it seems to have woken up MoveON which has downplayed most media reform activism. They issued this letter to their members:

“If you missed the Democratic presidential debate on ABC last night, Editor & Publisher called it “perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.”

Moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson spent the first 50 minutes obsessed with distractions that only political insiders care about—verbal gaffes, polling numbers, the stale Rev. Wright story, and the old-news Bosnia story. And, channeling Karl Rove, they directed a video question to Barack Obama asking if he loves the American flag or not. Seriously.

Enough is enough. The public needs the media to stop hurting the national dialogue in this important election year. Can you sign the petition to ABC and other media outlets and pass it on to friends who are also fed up? Click here for our must-see video with excerpts from last night—and to sign the petition:

WHAT THE PUBLIC SAID

David Bauder (AP) ”By midafternoon Thursday, more than 15,600 comments were posted on ABC News’ Web site, the tone overwhelmingly negative. A prominent TV critic, Tom Shales of The Washington Post, said Gibson and Stephanopoulos “turned in shoddy, despicable performances.”

ABC was not only not paying attention to what the people are saying about what matters to them, but are unlikely to respond unless some of the tens of thousands of people activated by this campaign start surrounding their studios and getting in their out of touch and arrogant faces. I mean this. I spent 8 year at ABC News and I know they don’t respond unless pressured to do so. (See my book The More You Watch The Less You Know for more about my experiences as a member of the ABC News staff/army.) The approach we saw at the debate is all too typical

I am not the only one who feels this way. How about you?

CRITICS CRITICAL

Mike Hoyt, Columbia Journalism Review

“A person who would pay close enough attention to all the debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to rate them in some precise way is a person who needs a couple of nights of Jeopardy! and a long walk. Still, I put forward the proposition that this debate was among the worst, if not the bottom of the lot. And that this is largely the fault of ABC News.”

CAMPAIGN DESK: The Kicker

“The Most Startlingly Tabloid Debate Yet” per Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, moments after the ABC-sponsored Democratic debate concluded….

Maybe Olbermann’s just peeved that ABC is restricting his use of clips?

Actually, Olbermann’s characterization sounds about right to me. It was pretty much all gotcha or gaffe from debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for the first hour.

Put another way: “[B]asically debate by gotcha line with basically no discussion of any of the big questions the election is turning on,” writes Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall.

And there’s even this from Jonah Goldberg over at National Review’s The Corner blog:

“I’m no leftwing blogger, but I can only imagine how furious they must be with the debate so far. Nothing on any issues. Just a lot of box-checking on how the candidates will respond to various Republican talking points come the fall. Now I think a lot of those Republican talking points are valid and legitimate. But if I were a “fighting Dem” who thinks all of these topics are despicable distractions from the “real issues,” I would find this debate to be nothing but Republican water-carrying.

PHILADELPHIA BLOG: OPEN LETTER TO THIS GRUESOME TWOSOME

With your performance tonight — your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane “issue” questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters — you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it’s even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to “export democracy,” and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, “no thank you.” Because that was no way to promote democracy.

NEWS HOUNDS: SEAN HANNITY OF FOX INFLUENCED GEORGIE BOY

It looks as though George Stephanopoulos didn’t come up with those debate questions for Barack Obama about former 60’s radical William Ayers on his own but was coached by none other than Sean Hannity. The day before he co-hosted the Obama/Clinton debate, Stephanopoulos appeared on Hannity’s radio show. According to Democratic Underground, Stephanopoulos said he was taking notes while Hannity fed him conservative talking points with which to attack question Obama. If Obama’s relationship with Ayers is so significant, Stephanopoulos should also ask Hannity about HIS relationship with Neo-Nazi/white supremacist Hal Turner.

Unlike Obama’s insubstantial tie to Ayers, Hannity’s relationship to Turner had real substance. Turner was invited to the set of Hannity & Colmes, the two men spoke off the air and Turner had the “back door” phone number to the studio at WABC.

HUFFINGTON POST: YUK

Reflecting what seemed to be the main consensus of the night - that ABC botched this debate, big time - Charlie Gibson tells the crowd there will be one more, superfluous commercial break of the night and is subsequently jeered.

“OH…” he declares, hands raised in defense. “The crowd is turning on me, the crowd is turning on me.”

Off camera, observers let out their frustrations.

Visitors to ABC’s site weren’t much kinder. Here’s a sampling on page 1:

…This is AWFUL. Thank goodness for Jon Stewart and Comedy Central. He does a better job of interviewing and asking relevant questions of his guests in 5 minutes than these 2 yahoos have in more than an hour. ABC should be ashamed. George should be ashamed. Charlie should be ashamed. This isn’t a debate. This is a hit job.

THE NATION: “ABC’s top news commentators, tried their best to out-FOX each other.”

WHAT GEORGE SAYS; ALL THE CRITICS ARE WRONG AND I AM RIGHT

Despite criticism, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos defended his performance in last night’s Democratic debate, which he co-moderated with Charles Gibson.

“We asked tough but appropriate questions,” Stephanopoulos told me by phone this afternoon.

When I asked whether questions about flag pins or Bosnia are actually relevant to voters, he replied: “Absolutely.”

“The vote for the president,” Stephanopoulos said, “is one of the most personal” decisions that someone makes.

“When people make that choice, they take into account how candidates stand on the issues,” he said, but also are concerned with “experience, character [and] credibility.”

“You can’t find a presidential election where those issues didn’t come into play,” he said.

What’s funny is that this guy still has a reputation as a Democrat. Forget that.

The media performance in our elections has become the biggest threat to our democracy.

WHO LIKED ABC’s HANDLING OF THE DEBATE? NY TIMES CONSERVATIVE DAVID BROOKS (OF COURSE)

QUESTIIONS NOT ASKED

Hillary,where is your flag pin?

WHAT WAS NOT DISCUSSED?

The World Food Crisis!

Why Did She Bash Obama?

Jerry Policoff, Pa Activist: “I think it is now all but certain that Hillary will not get the nomination, and she certainly knows that because she “is not stupid.” The best she can hope to achieve is to damage Obama so severely that a third choice is opted for at the convention. The more negative she goes at this point the more she insures that she will be denied the crown, and again she knows it.

Given all of this I think there is no other conclusion to be drawn than that Hillary has adopted a strategy that seeks to so much damage to Obama that he will lose to McCain and she will have four years to resurrect her reputation and go for it again against a non-incumbent since McCain is likely not to run in 2012 due to age. Stephanopoulis is in on it too. We know he is close to the Clintons, and his performance last night was so partisan that it had to have been a deliberate attempt to damage Obama. As for the Times, the fact that Nagourney could not find it in him to even hint at the ABC bias speaks for itself because no one could have watched that debate and not seen it for what it was.

OTHER NEWS: WILL KARL TESTIFY?

Glyn Wilson reports House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat, and Committee Members Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Artur Davis (D-AL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) announced three critical actions today in the Committee’s investigation into allegations of selective or poltiically-motivated prosecution in the Justice Department.

The Members today invited Karl Rove to testify before the committee, urged the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate those allegations and demanded that Attorney General Michael Mukasey provide additional documents in the case.

THE BIG NEWS

NYT: South Africa Joins Call for Release of Zimbabwe Vote

In a change of tone, South Africa urged Zimbabwe’s government on Thursday to release results from the disputed March 29 presidential election.

GARETH PORTER: WHAT PETRAEUS DIDN’T SAY

WASHINGTON, Apr 17 (IPS) - In testimony before Congressional committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus portrayed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s late March offensive in Basra as a poorly planned effort that departed from what U.S. officials had expected.

What Petraeus did not reveal is that al-Maliki was deliberately upsetting a Petraeus plan to put U.S. and British forces into Basra for a months-long operation to eliminate the Mahdi Army from the city.

Petraeus referred to a plan for an operation to be carried out in Basra that he and his staff had developed with the head of the Basra Operational Command, Gen. Mohan al-Furayji. But Petraeus carefully dodged a question from Sen. Hillary Clinton about what resources he was planning to deploy to Basra and over what length of time.

SAM GARDINER: BUSH MORE BELLICOSE ON IRAN

At the press conference with Prime Minister Brown this afternoon, the President reiterated the United States red line on Iran. The President said Iran cannot be allowed to have the knowledge to enrich. He carefully selected the words he used. By this argument, Iran has already reached the dangerous point without reference to any weapons program.

This knowledge argument was first stated by the Israeli Foreign Minister. The President first used it about 18 months ago

ECONOMIC NEWS

NYT: Merrill Posts a Loss and Plans to Cut 2,900 More Jobs

The bank’s earnings were worse than expected for the first quarter, with $6.5 billion in write-downs and a drop in revenue of 69 percent from a year ago.

Lehman sued for charging minority homeowners more - Yahoo! News

SPIEGEL: THE MADNESS OF BEN BERNANKE

This article compares Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to Seigfried and Roy. Fascinating.

MICHAEL BLOMQUIST ON “SEWAGE” “I don’t know if you saw this petition, but we really should do something about the massive bail outs.

Like I predicted, the stimulus package now has the flood gates open at FHA, Fannie & Freddie. Toxic debt and rebate checks are flowing like sewage.”

ICELAND SINKING

Soros says euro cannot replace dollar as top currency

CRISIS SCREWING STUDENTS WITH LOANS

CONGRESS PROBES CREDIT CARDS

GRAIN SPECULATION?

Bradley Laing now isn’t so sure: “—Danny, one of my favorite writers, Crane Brinton, went out of his way to explain to his readers that during revolutions there are so many things
happening at once that effect each other, that trying to find cause-and-effect is impossible. Instead it is multiple causes and multiple effects doing a 30 car pile up on the free way with each other, at the same time.

I’m caught between two opposite ideas: that there is a grain speculation bubble, done by capitalists who are going to make the rest of us pay for their mistakes, and that the world is in a situation where fears of grain speculatorsand actual grain speculation are both as inevitable.”

FOOD RIOTS DELIVER APOCALYPTIC WARNING

THE SPECIFICS OF HOW ENERGY IS AFFECTING FOOD PRICES

MORE ON FINANCIAL SPECULATION AND FOOD PRICES–From Nouriel Roubini’s RGE Monitor:

The commodities boom has spread to agriculturals, particularly key grains such as corn, wheat, soybeans and rice. Seeking higher returns, inflation hedges and shelter from turmoil in other asset classes, speculators jumped on this latest bandwagon put in motion by fundamentals: demand growth from biofuel production and emerging markets – where incomes and protein demand are rising – and supply tightness due to poor weather and public planning. Wheat has trebled in price since February last year, while other softs like soybeans and cocoa went parabolic to hit all-time high nominal prices this year. As land is diverted to more profitable cash crops like wheat and soybeans, the ‘turf war’ - the battle for acreage among competing agricultural commodities - exacerbates the supply tightness of losers, e.g. rice, corn and potatoes in the U.S.

The agricultural price boom takes its human toll on those who can least afford it – food shortages have cropped up in developing countries – but also impacts the wealthiest populations in the world: Eurozone core inflation has risen on processed foods, of which grains are a major component. Read: “Agriculturals: Best in Commodities Class. Bubble or Supercycle?” and “World’s New Crisis: Soaring Food Prices”

YOUR LETTERS

Jerry Policoff writes from PA:

Congressman John Conyers’ House Judiciary Committee today issued a report on its continuing investigation into “allegations of selective prosecution in our Federal Criminal Justice System” by Republican United States Attorneys. The report “ focused particularly on three cases where concerns about politically-motivated prosecutions have been especially intense: the Georgia Thompson case in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the prosecution of the Democratic former Governor of Alabama Don Siegelman, and the criminal prosecution of Allegheny County coroner Cyril Wecht in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” Of the three, the one that has drawn the least national media attention is that of Cyril Wecht who also happens to be a long-time personal friend of mine (as well as a fellow critic of the Warren Commission)…

Ada Ling wrotes:

Obama’s unfortunate remarks that small-towners hurt by the economy tend to cling to guns and tradition highlights a problem with all political strategy. It’s based on stereotypes. It’s based on categories used to predict voter behavior, categories that are pretty insulting, but are needed by any politician who wants to know whom he represents.

It works like this: “Gun owners vote this way, but tree huggers vote this way.” But if you are both a gun owner and a tree-hugger, there is no place for you in the political spectrum. It also works like this, “Conservatives vote against taxes, but conservatives support the Iraq War.” If you are a conservative who eschews both taxes and a costly war, there is no place for you in the political spectrum.

The political strategist’s process of corralling voters into voting blocks freezes a good deal of us out of the process. The strategist would reply that when you are looking at a map and trying to determine who will vote for your guy (or gal), then you don’t have time for subtleties. They need to look at gun owners as a voting block that would sooner die than vote Democrat, even though such a characterization is insulting. A strategist must look at the big picture. Nowhere is this more true than an Obama strategist who must take into considerations the Bradley Effect, or Dinkins Effect, where one acknowledges that about 5 percent of the voters will not honestly tell a pollster that they have no intention of voting for a black man, and will publicly give a thumbs-up to Obama so as not to appear racist. Such a calculation is terribly insulting to the voting public, but it is a calculation that any strategist worth his salt must consider.

Even though he fell prey to foot-in-mouth stereotyping last week, Obama has done a good deal to break down the notion of voters’ blocks, of the categorizations that are used to divide us as a nation. Ever since his 2004 Red State/Blue State speech, he’s had his ear out for church-goers that are also a liberal, union activists who are ready to recognize that some sjobs are gone for good, and rural voters who don’t just fall back on the traditional comforts of guns and patriotism, but will embrace solutions instead of sentiment. But the man is running for President, so arranging our nation into cookie-cutter pieces and identifying those likely to go his way in November, is something that Obama the candidate needs to do. Hopefully, Obama can for the most part avoid the crude categorizations that lead politicians to pander to their base and forget the rest of us.. We’ll just have to see if he’s learned his lesson.

FRIDAY MORNING–A LETTER ON MY SPEECH LAST NIGHT:

We had a good turnout at the Ford Hall Form, including, I am happy to say some of my colleagues from WBCN–(Sam Kopper, Deborah Ullman, Tim Montgomery and David Bieber and a few interns. I was told Charles Laquidara was in town but he’s heard enough from me over the years. My old civil rights colleague and a veteran TV reporter in Boston, Sarah Ann Shaw, very graciously introduced me. Thanks to Hartley Pleshaw for helping to arrange the talk and for videotaping it. Thanks to the Forum for having me.

Blogger Michaek Horan writes about it from Stoughton MA, a town with a zoo I used to bring my daughter to:

Inspiring talk tonight in Boston. If anything, too short–the stories about the good ol’ days of indie media were genuinely funny, quirky, and really served to highlight some of the nefarious effects of media consolidation that have transpired since. Just want you to know that no matter what the size of the audience, you and the others who come out to speak to and with us are adressing a “fit audience, though few,” and god knows we need all the encouragement we can get, and we know how to stretch it, too.

Question-time ended before I got a chance, but I would have asked you this: we all have our favorites–who are your top five recommended journalists these days, those folks whose articles and books you feel compelled to read, and those whom you think manage to retain a pretty wide readership in the face of corporate media pressure? (My own: Naomi Klein, Pilger, Fiske, Cockburn, Greider, Schechter, Roy, Goodman …all of whom have earned their stripes). Care to give readers your picks?

Meanwhile, you’ll find my own rough synopsis of your talk tonight, along with with my own take on that “debate-thing” that transpired Wednesday, here. Feel free to share the link with your own audience:

You get a well-deserved boost at the end.

Thanks again for making the drive, and for putting together a lively program, and my own genuinely heartfelt best wishes in regard to your Dad. (Sad, yes–but the part about watching “Stormtracker” had me laughing out loud). I know how it feels.

Thank you so much Michael and all those who came including the one angry former listener who has held on to his bitter hostility towards my coverage of Vietnam since the mid 1970’s and ventilated at me as a “scum” and worse, a reminder of the angry debates of the “good old days.”

I guess I wasn’t the only one blogging last night!

His site again:

HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH STREET MEETING HOUSE WHERE I SPOKE

I have often argued that Americans of all people should be against the occupation of other lands and peoples, if only because of what was done the founders/fighters for this country. Here’s one reason from our own history back in the days of the British occupation of Boston. I sensed that connection last night and commented upon it.

“Old South’s reputation as a patriot meeting place had dire consequences for the building during the American Revolution. When war broke out in April of 1775 with the battles of Lexington and Concord, the British retreated to Boston and occupied the town. The Continental Army besieged Boston for nearly a year. While patriots fled the city, British troops destroyed and vandalized visible symbols of the patriotic cause. The “Redcoats” gutted the interior of the Old South Meeting House. They tore down the pews, the pulpit, and the galleries and burned them for fuel. Hundreds of loads of dirt and gravel were spread on the floor, and a bar was erected so the men could practice jumping their horses. In the east galleries, the officers enjoyed drinks while they watched the feats of horsemanship below. The British left the Old South congregation with a building unfit for occupancy. It took nearly 8 years for the congregation to raise the funds and restore the interior.”

Sound familiar?

History should not be a mystery.

Had he been around, I am sure George S would have many ponderous and urgent questions like: ‘Did the pastor of the Old South Meeting House, the one making all those inflammatory revolutionary speeches, love Britain as much as he shoud have?’ Was he wearing a pin with the Union Jack? When he got the Sunday Show on ABC–not for his journalistic achievements, to be sure, he was called “King George” by some media outlets. Ironic?

And then, “Charlie” — notice all the first name familiarity the candidates had with these famous for being famous knuckleheads–would add questions about throwing all that tea in the harbor. It was against the law, you know……A waste of good tea…tsk, tsk.

(The only “Charlie” I care about in this town is the guy still trapped riding on Boston’s MTA (from the song by The Kingston Trio–now that’s a dated reference!)

You can only imagine what ABC’s other George, the always objective George Will would say? It’s a good thing that ABC’s other mentor of political correctness and righteousnes, John Stossel, was apparently was too busy to add a politically correct libertarian polemic to the mix.

Pathetic!

Comments welcome to dissector@mediachannel.org