That is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "MSNBC's Boldest Lie" from November 7, 2010. And this is from David Swanson's War Is A Crime:
The Limits of MSNBC
By David Swanson
Michael Arria's new book Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC
is a nice summary of how a liberal corporate or liberal partisan
television network falls short -- something of an update from Jeff
Cohen's Cable News Confidential and the bad old days when MSNBC
dumped Cohen and Phil Donahue for being anti-war. It turns out the good
new days of MSNBC-gone-liberal are seriously flawed as well.
The flaws do a disservice to a large section of the population, many
majority perspectives, and large numbers of people whose opinions would
improve if their information did.
Yes, of course, it's nice to have a 24/7 channel that everybody
receives making fun of Republicans. But the Comedy Channel (Comedy
Central) does that too. The comedy fake news shows also make fun of
Democrats and anyone else they can identify; they build cynicism and
disgust without offering any better course of action than a mass
Rally-for-Nothing to give people too smart to attend other rallies a
chance to rally ironically.
But what does MSNBC offer? Beyond its mocking of Republicans, it
gives a significant pass to Democrats, resulting in dishonest
presentations of facts and a proposed course of action that's doomed to
fail. There are many exceptions, of course, and MSNBC easily soars over
the low bar of producing more honest and useful commentary than CNN or
Fox. In fact, a book that collected the highlights of MSNBC would be
quite interesting as well. It would feature a good bit of Chris Hayes,
of honesty about climate, even a bit of reckoning with Israel. (In
fact, I make no claim to know what all it would include, which is why
I'd find it useful.) Such a collection might encourage networks,
including MSNBC, to realize what can be done without the sky falling.
But the lowlights, and the lines of limitation that are not crossed
without corporate penalty are crucial and are the focus of Arria's book.
MSNBC gives voice to one side in a series of narrow debates, the side previously represented by the likes of Alan Colmes. But the change is basically one to a larger microphone, rather than to a wider range of opinion. The debate remains framed within the same limitations. A prime example is war and militarism. MSNBC is in favor of wars with a different wrapper, rather than of eliminating wars from U.S. foreign policy.
Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, Chris Hayes (not at first, but he came around), and other MSNBC voices were all in favor of bombing Libya, and as far as I know are not particularly focused on the horrendous results.
Maddow declares Iran a dictatorship, and dates that dictatorship to 1979, never 1953. She's lied that Ahmadinejad was known for publicly defending Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons." And she grotesquely distorts the history of Palestine and Israel, claiming that Israel innocently declared independence and was attacked the next day by five nations. As Obama pushed for missile strikes on Syria, Maddow did a story on how many nations she believed a President John McCain would have attacked.
Ezra Klein finally turned against the war on Iraq, years too late,
because "the odds were high we couldn't do it right" -- using "we" in
the usual way for a media outlet that identifies with the government,
and maintaining the important pretense that attacking foreign nations
can be done correctly or incorrectly.
Touré defended the drone murder of Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki. Martin Bashir insisted that a guest not doubt the integrity of "a senior military officer." Adam Serwer demanded that "service members" all be "supported" "unconditionally."
Are these unfairly handpicked examples of military-worship on MSNBC? I doubt it. When Chris Hayes questioned whether every dead U.S. soldier is necessarily a hero, he was then apparently faced with the choice of taking a stand and losing his job or doing what he did instead: apologize for the outburst of honesty. Cenk Uygur, in contrast, took a stand for critical coverage of the Obama administration and was fired by MSNBC President Phil Griffin, who told him, "We're insiders. We're the establishment."
Was Hayes right to apologize in order to maintain his voice on the
air, a voice that's better than some of the other ones? I don't have a
strong opinion on that question. My interest here is in pointing out,
along with Arria, that a voice willing to question whether every hired
killer in every popular and unpopular and illegal war is without
question a hero is not permitted on MSNBC.
When I say that the best of MSNBC is its coverage of Republicans, I don't mean to give a blanket endorsement to all such coverage. The over-obsession with the right wing gives prominence to much that would better be treated with silence -- silence that instead is reserved for the left.
MSNBC follows the lead of the party and politicians it has given its loyalty to. And it doesn't just follow their lead. MSNBC has hired Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod, among others who can bring the Obama line straight to the viewers of a network that has more than once debated whether Obama should be added to Mount Rushmore. "My President Obama? Is he your President too?" Ed Schultz demanded of a guest while insisting that Libya be bombed as Obama desired.
Schultz even ignorantly claimed that Obama couldn't have been elected
if he'd campaigned on increasing troops in Afghanistan -- as of course
Obama had very prominently done. But think about Schultz's defense of
Obama, rather than his ignorance of basic facts. Schultz is claiming
that Obama lied about ending a war in order to get elected, and then
escalated the war once in office. That's the good Obama of
Schultz's imagination. That's Obama on the model of Wilson and
Roosevelt. There's a reason Bill Clinton calls MSNBC "our version of
Fox."
I said MSNBC promotes a program of action that Comedy Central does
not. But its program of action is not principled issue-based nonviolent
engagement; it's voting for one political party as a path to progress.
Anything else is unrealistic, MSNBC ridiculously maintains. Melissa
Harris-Perry claims that supporting Obama despite any failings is
"realist." She says that critics of Obama from the left are, in fact,
not just unrealistic but racist. She dismissed the Chicago teachers'
strike and proposed that they solve their problems by voting in public
elections. She also insisted that Edward Snowden should have worked
within the system. How realistic is that, exactly?
The MSNBC worldview generally pretends that everything was good in
1999 and easily can be again. Says Rachel Maddow: "I'm in almost total
agreement with the Eisenhower-Era Republican Party platform." So, maybe a
bit earlier than 1999.
The perspective that MSNBC believes its viewers hold, and which it
relentlessly instructs them to hold was exemplified by a recent comment
that Chris Hayes made to Glenn Greenwald: "People feel they have to
choose between Barack Obama and Glenn Greenwald and there are millions
of people in this country who are like if that is a choice I choose
Barack Obama." Hayes then gave reasons to choose Obama. No doubt Hayes
believes he was simply articulating the spontaneously generated view of
the masses, of which a good organizer must be aware for better or
worse. But he never suggested the slightest critique of the way of
thinking that he was in fact modeling on national TV. He demanded that
Greenwald alter his "tone" to accommodate such a idiotic perspective,
but he never hinted at the possibility that people might alter their
idiocy, that they might stop choosing between personalities and deal
with facts, that they might vote for politicians and simultaneously
critique their failings, that they might view elected officials as
representatives rather than deities.
Of course, Hayes wasn't just referring to the unknown unwashed masses
when he claimed that millions of people place loyalty to a president
above their duty to know what their government is doing and hold it
accountable for its abuses; he was referring to his colleagues and the
official policy of his employer. And that is the limit of a partisan,
corporate, insider media outlet of any flavor.
Now, we have alternatives, including Democracy Now, Free Speech TV,
Dennis Trainor, the RealNews.com, RT, Youtube, etc., and the written
word. We may manage to replace MSNBC or circumvent it. We may manage
to come up with media outlet(s) that will produce an Occupy movement and
sustain it. But I think it's an open question whether improving MSNBC
would actually be bad for its profitability. For years, TV executives
seemed to believe that creating a Democratic Fox would not succeed as
well as creating a second lesser Fox. They eventually proved themselves
wrong. Now, they are clearly convinced that creating an independent
populist challenge to a government that 80% of the country believes is
broken wouldn't succeed outside of Comedy Central.
It's possible they're wrong. It's possible that going where the
majority is on corporate trade pacts and single-payer healthcare and
wars would increase viewership. It's possible that access to such
viewers would attract politicians and advertisers as well or nearly as
well as softball interviews and corporate friendly views. We'll never
know unless someone gives it a try.
--
David Swansons wants you to declare peace at http://WorldBeyondWar.org His new book is War No More: The Case for Abolition. He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
Sign up for occasional important activist alerts here http://davidswanson.org/signup
Sign up for articles or press releases here http://davidswanson.org/lists
This email may be unlawfully
collected, held, and read by the NSA which violates our freedoms using
the justification of immoral, illegal wars absurdly described as being
somehow for freedom.
