[Media-watch] Pundits Race to the Bottom

[Antony Wright]

Pundits Race to the Bottom


          By Eric Alterman, The Nation
          http://www.alternet.org/story/20999/

While often annoying, punditry is an honorable and necessary corollary 
to media in search of the holy grail of objectivity. But the business 
has fallen into a pathetic state in recent times, as is clear from three 
scandals, the reactions to which are no less indicative of how low we 
now go.

The first and best-known of these transgressions is that involving 
Robert Novak, who, alone among professional journalists, proved willing 
to play patsy for the Bush administration and endanger U.S. national 
security by deliberately revealing the identity of CIA agent Valerie 
Plame, wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson. Shameful as they 
were, Novak's actions were nevertheless predictable in a career defined 
by his eagerness to serve right-wing politicians and causes. While he 
occasionally exploited his political connections for personal financial 
gain – in the form of high-priced, off-the-record briefings for wealthy 
executives featuring high-profile Republican officials – Novak mostly 
exploits his access for fame. /Washington Post/ editors and CNN 
executives allow him his transgressions, and the Washington 
establishment continues to embrace him because he is so embedded in the 
city's corrupt journalistic/political culture that he can no longer be 
separated from it. Even the spectacle of two journalists, /Time/'s 
Matthew Cooper and /The New York Times/'s Judith Miller, facing prison 
in the Plame case when it is clearly Novak who is at fault seems to have 
done nothing to shake his employers' confidence.

Ironically, although CNN has parted company with Tucker Carlson and has 
announced that it will cancel /Crossfire/, with its new chief, Jonathan 
Klein, endorsing Jon Stewart's now-famous indictment that the show's 
"partisan hackery ... is hurting America," the far more offensive Novak 
remains in Klein's good graces. Carlson is a talented conservative 
journalist who, like almost every other television pundit, has allowed 
himself to become a sitcom-style caricature as fame and 
(Washington-level) riches beckoned. A moderate right-winger by 
contemporary standards, Carlson complained that he was often expected to 
take the administration's position even when he disagreed with it, 
demonstrating the fundamental dishonesty of the entire setup.

It is not an accident that the two sides on /Crossfire/ were divided 
between political professionals on one side and hack journalists on the 
other. In the far-right-dominated culture of cable TV, no liberal 
journalist has been invited to rise to the level of a Carlson or a 
Novak, an O'Reilly, a Limbaugh, a Scarborough, etc. Even PBS has largely 
thrown in the towel on inviting liberals on the air, cutting back the 
post-Bill Moyers /NOW/ to a half-hour and following it with a show for 
Carlson and another for the extremist, self-described "wild men" of the 
/Wall Street Journal/ editorial pages. Carlson is about to get his own 
show on MSNBC, where, like Scarborough and CNBC's hapless Dennis Miller 
(rating, 0.1), he will chase the O'Reillys and the Hannitys of Fox for a 
part of the right-wing-audience pie. The mercy killing of /Crossfire/, 
while welcome on many levels, removes just about the only opportunity 
for cable viewers to hear the liberal perspective at all. On Fox and 
MSNBC, viewers are given only Alan Colmes-type faux liberals. On the 
Sunday shows like /Meet the Press/, the split is most often between the 
fire-breathers like Novak or William Safire and center-right 
conservatives like David Broder. Liberals need not apply.

If you were wondering where the line that cannot be crossed by 
conservative pundits doing the administration's bidding is, Armstrong 
Williams, a 45-year-old black conservative who is a favorite on all 
these shows, discovered it. As /USA Today/ reported, Armstrong accepted 
payments totaling nearly a quarter-million dollars to pimp the 
administration's position on the No Child Left Behind law on both radio 
and TV. The arrangement, which came at taxpayer expense, throws into 
sharp relief just how closely entwined conservative pundits have become 
with this administration and with the conservative movement in 
particular. ("The conservative press is self-consciously conservative 
and self-consciously part of the team," Grover Norquist explains. "The 
liberal press is ... conflicted. Sometimes it thinks it needs to be 
critical of both sides.")

Washing the $240,000 through a public relations firm in which he is a 
partner, Armstrong put his newspaper column and his TV and radio 
appearances at the service of the administration. The contract 
stipulated that a public relations firm hired by the Education 
Department would "arrange for Mr. Williams to regularly comment on 
N.C.L.B. during the course of his broadcasts," that "Secretary Paige and 
other department officials shall have the option of appearing from time 
to time as studio guests" and that "Mr. Williams shall utilize his 
long-term working relationships with 'America's Black Forum'" – a black 
news program – "to encourage the producers to periodically address the 
No Child Left Behind Act." Williams explained that while he knew he was 
in rough waters journalistically, he took the cash because the law "is 
something I believe in." (Memo to Mr. Rove: For a cool mill, I'll 
believe you found Saddam's WMDs.)

Williams has been fired by Tribune Media Services, which distributed his 
column, but I'd be surprised if he's kept off the cable networks very 
long. MSNBC has invited a known plagiarist, Mike Barnicle, to host a 
show there. Pat Robertson agreed with Jerry Falwell that America got 
what it deserved on 9/11, but CNN still uses him as an expert 
commentator on Middle East affairs.

The Williams episode also raises the question of how many other 
conservative propagandists are on the receiving end of administration 
payola. We know that local TV stations have shown the administration's 
fake news reports, distributed by CNN and featuring Karen Ryan, to 
promote its lousy new Medicare law. The Office of National Drug Control 
Policy used the same tactic to help stations fool viewers with illegal 
"covert propaganda" programs, according to the GAO. The revelation of 
these tactics forced CNN to change its policies to disallow their use. 
Good for them. And good for them for canning /Crossfire/. But what, for 
goodness' sake, Mr. Klein, about Novak?