Is The Progressive Party Over at MSNBC?

By Mark Karlin

As BuzzFlash noted yesterday, we have been pointing out -- among others -- for nearly 10 years the role of the few corporations who own our mass media, particularly television, in shaping public perceptions.  At this moment, for instance, the television networks, in particular, have so aligned themselves with the for-profit healthcare sector that Americans think healthcare reform will hurt them, while agreeing with its specific details!


Yesterday, I wrote about how MSNBC put a partial muzzle on Keith Olbermann pointing out what a Jackass Bill O'Reilly is in order to ensure that FOX and Roger Ailes wouldn't attack GE's overall business, including its role in the defense industry and nuclear power plants.


The Political Carnival website wrote how Glenn Greewald had exposed one of the guest hosts for Olbermann (who has been off a bit lately) as a paid member of a corporate public relations firm, Richard Wolffe. As Greenwald observes:

Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" --  is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist.  Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover.  Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows.  What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this.  

 

This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure:  who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators?  But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and "news reporting" in the United States.

And we're seeing more of the likes of Tom Tancredos show up on the MSNBC progressive programs, thus legitimizing the right wing fringe by giving them a forum.  These placements, we are sure, is coming out of corporate, as well as the continued retention of openly racist Pat Buchanan.


After all, the New York Times article I referenced yesterday noted that a noticeable of GE stockholders were upset that MSNBC was carrying programming that was revealing information that could endanger entrenched wealth and corporations with the truth.


Glenn Greenwald reminds us that NBC and MSNBC hired so-called neutral "military analysts" who were actually employed by defense contractors and other corporations -- and didn't disclose the inherent conflict of interest.


Greenwald also notes:

There are many reasons why our establishment press exists to do little other than serve the interests of the political and financial establishment and to mindlessly amplify government claims.  The virtual disapparance of the line between large corporate interests and journalism (as Richard Wolffe himself noted) is certainly one of the leading factors. 

UPDATE:  On Richard Wolffe's bio page at Public Strategies, Inc., the role he plays on MSNBC and NBC News is actually touted to the firm's corporate clients and potential clients:

In addition, Wolffe is an NBC political analyst. He provides political commentary on several MSNBC programs, Meet The Press, and TODAY.

They're basically telling their clients and prospective clients:  if you hire us to control and disseminate your political messaging, you'll have someone working for you -- Richard Wolffe -- who has a regular platform on MSNBC and NBC News, where he's presented as an independent "political analyst."  And this is how they describe what he does for the firm:  "Wolffe provides high-level counsel and insight to our clients on how to manage their reputations in a complex public environment."  How much more blatantly sleazy could that be?

BuzzFlash loves Rachel and Keith, and that is why we worry about what appears to be encroaching GE corporate intrusion.


BuzzFlash has always warned that our readers need to personally financially support sites such as BuzzFlash as insurance for democracy, because what may be the golden age of the brilliant Maddow and the acerbic and often eloquently derisive Oblermann may be short-lived. Already, it appears that their freedom has reached its limits.


From now on, it appears we are going to see more "corporate balance," which means the minority and fringe view will appear more in our beloved progressive television "beachhead."  This, in turn, will legitimatize kook thinking, as we have seen with the TV media coverage of the "birthers."


The parents of the corporate parent company trump the truth -- and the growing audience for progressive television programming.


Too much success for the likes of Rachel and Keith in the end are not in GE's interests.


It happened to Edward R. Murrow a half-century ago; it is likely to happen again.


BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG


IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. PELICAN BLOGS HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR ARE PELICAN BLOGS ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.


"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY NOT MATCH THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS.

Let The Sun Shine In......

GE Puts the Lid on Olbermann's Scathing Attacks on O'Reilly

Little Billy Can't Take As Good As He Gives. 

By Mark Karlin

For nearly 10 years, BuzzFlash has asked its readers for financial support because it doesn't accept advertising.


Now Keith Olbermann knows why.


In a deal between the head of GE (the owner of MSNBC) and Murdoch's FOX News reported in The New York Times, it was agreed that Olbermann would back off his chronic lacerating caricatures of Bill O'Reilly (although it can still be expected that he will go after O'Reilly and FOX, but much less frequently).


In return, FOX and O'Reilly, in particular, will stop attacking the business dealings of GE.  Are you getting the picture of how even MSNBC is affected by big corporate ownership?


A key indicator of what was threatening GE is buried in The New York Times article about the "peace agreement" (which amounts to a decrease in virulent exchanges between O'Reilly and Olbermann). Here are two points worthy of note to indicate that MSNBC talent may be kept on a shorter leash than progressive followers had hoped for:

The reconciliation — not acknowledged by the parties until now — showcased how a personal and commercial battle between two men could create real consequences for their parent corporations. A G.E. shareholders’ meeting, for instance, was overrun by critics of MSNBC (and one of Mr. O’Reilly’s producers) last April....

In late 2007, Mr. O’Reilly had a young producer, Jesse Watters, ambush Mr. Immelt and ask about G.E.’s business in Iran, which is legal, and which includes sales of energy and medical technology. G.E. says it no longer does business in Iran.

Mr. O’Reilly continued to pour pressure on its corporate leaders, even saying on one program last year that “If my child were killed in Iraq, I would blame the likes of Jeffrey Immelt.” The resulting e-mail to G.E. from Mr. O’Reilly’s viewers was scathing.

Like most of the feuds between the right wing media echo chamber and progressive critics, the publicity surrounding O'Reilly-Olbermann slugfest helped the ratings of both programs.


But when FOX started to go after the business dealings of the parent company of MSNBC, GE, television ratings took a second place to corporate interests.


This is just another example of why BuzzFlash relies only on its readers for financially supporting its progressive news and commentary.


BuzzFlash developed a closed-circle media model for progressives: buy progressive premiums that help support a progressive economy, upstart new generation companies that heal the world, and celebrate progressive culture.  In turn, net proceeds finance the news, commentary and advocacy of BuzzFlash. (We will be launching advocacy initiatives in the coming months that rely on grassroots involvement in social change, not petitions to Washington, D.C.)


BuzzFlash loves Keith Olbermann, but in the end he's an employee of GE, and MSNBC is dispensible to them.  They'll milk the progressive wave as long as it doesn't really threaten the entrenched status quo. In the end, their primary interests as a corporation include going nuclear, literally.  GE isn't going to let Keith or Rachel or Ed get in the way of that.


It's all just business to GE and Rupert Murdoch.  GE isn't about to slice its own throat.


Just remember that.


IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. PELICAN BLOGS HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR ARE PELICAN BLOGS ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.


"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY NOT MATCH THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS.

Let The Sun Shine In......

It’s not just Paul Krugman anymore.

A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror.

“Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Obama has been pilloried by a liberal TV icon who was one of President George W. Bush’s most vociferous critics, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

“During his run for the presidency, Barack Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, argued strongly against the Bush administration’s use of executive authority, including its self-justification, its rationalization of the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens,” Olbermann said on his show last week. “That was then. This is now. ... Welcome to change you cannot believe in — or sue over.”

Obama is also under withering attack from an attorney who was one of the most widely read critics of Bush’s legal strategy in the war on terror, Glenn Greenwald. He recently blasted Obama administration moves as “extremist” and “bizarre.” 

“Reading this brief from the Obama DOJ is so striking — and more than a little depressing — given how indistinguishable it is from everything that poured out of the Bush DOJ regarding secrecy powers in order to evade all legal accountability,” he wrote on Salon last week, before calling his fellow civil libertarians to rise up. “It is simply inexcusable for those who spent the last several years screaming when the Bush administration did exactly this to remain silent now or, worse, to search for excuses to justify this behavior,” he said. 

The new wave of criticism was triggered by two actions in recent weeks by the Justice Department.
First, earlier this month, the department presented an expansive series of arguments urging a federal court in San Francisco to throw out a lawsuit over warrantless surveillance first filed against Bush. The department’s brief not only asserted the state secrets privilege, which has long infuriated civil libertarians, but also made a sweeping assertion that Americans have no rights to challenge surveillance that violates the law unless the information is improperly released.

See Also

• 3 judge panel declares Franken winner
• Avast, ye pirates! The U.S. has won
• The battle over the absentee ballots

Then, on Friday, the department issued similarly broad arguments against a court ruling giving legal rights to some detainees held by the U.S. military at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The government motion said the decision could aid “enemies of the United States” by allowing them to use “the U.S. court system as a tactical weapon.” The filing led to a New York Times editorial Monday sharply criticizing Obama for positioning Bagram as “the next Guantanamo.”

Obama administration officials insist that critics are jumping the gun. A Justice Department official said some of the recent arguments are essentially intended to buy time for a review Obama has ordered of procedures and policies regarding detainees. 

The official, who asked not to be identified, said Obama deserves credit for announcing the closure of Guantanamo and banning the use of torture. The aide also pointed to Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement to CBS News last week that he soon expects to reverse the Bush administration assertion of the state secrets privilege in at least one case.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Former Cheney Aide Suggests That Hersh’s Account Of ‘Executive Assassination Ring’ Is ‘Certainly True’

Last month, The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh revealed in Minnesota that former vice president Cheney presided over an “executive assassination ring.” “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving,” Hersh explained.

Today, CNN interviewed Hersh and former Cheney national security aide John Hannah. Although he expressed regret for revealing the story (calling it a “dumb-dumb”), Hersh stood by his initial statements. “I’m sorry, Wolf, I have a lot of problems with it,” he said about the assassination scheme:

HERSH: I know for sure…the idea that we have a unit that goes around, without reporting to Congress… and has authority from the President to go into the country without telling the CIA station chief or the ambassador and whack somebody. … You’ve delegated authority to troops in the field to hit people on the basis of whatever intelligence they think is good.

Hannah replied that Hersh’s account of the assassination scheme “is not true.” Yet in the same breath, when asked about a “list” of assassination targets, Hannah echoed Hersh’s statements. Hannah said that “troops in the field” are given “authority” to “capture or kill certain individuals” who are perceived as a threat. “That’s certainly true,” he said:

Q: Is there a list of suspected terrorists out there who can be assassinated?

HANNAH: There’s clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process, interagency process…that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given to our troops in the field in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.

Hannah didn’t directly dispute Hersh’s claim that Congress wasn’t informed about the assassinations. “It is extremely hard for me to believe,” he said.





Speaking about the program to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean said, “It’s potentially a war crime, it‘s potentially just outright murder, and it could clearly be in violation of the Ford executive order” — referring to a 1976 Executive Order that said, “No employee of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in political assassination.”

Let The Sun Shine In......