Edward R. Murrow is one of my journalism heroes. I’ve read four books on him – two major biographies, a history (Murrow’s Boys) on his time organizing CBS News team in London during WWII, and the memoir Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control by producer Fred Friendly who was his partner. This latter has the most-detailed telling of their famous See It Now broadcast (the precursor of 60 Minutes) that documented the grave actions of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, devoting a full chapter to it. The show is considered one of the seminal steps in helping end McCarthyism by showing his reckless brutality for what it was. It is also part of the CBS legacy for high-end journalism. (In fact, when I was at Northwestern, I did a one-on-one independent study with a new professor, Sig Mickelson, who had been president of CBS News when Murrow was there. We never talked about the McCarthy broadcast, but did talk about Murrow, though only briefly. By the way, if you ever saw George Clooney’s movie, Good Night, and Good Luck, Sig was played by Jeff Daniels – who looks absolutely nothing like him. Rather, he looked a lot like the actor John Randolph, who you’d recognize. But I digress.) I didn’t watch Lesley Stahl’s interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene on 60 Minutes this past Sunday. I have my standards, and even at their lowest level, I'm afraid that ignorant, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-minded, Insurrectionist fascists aren't able to reach them. That, and I just didn’t have the stomach for it. As a result, I can’t comment on the specifics and won't. What I did see, though, was the promotion they did, and I know the show’s long history of promoting their segments. And when they have something controversial or that has conflict, they make sure to let the audience know. But when they’re doing more of a puff piece, they make that clear with friendly footage. This had warm footage of Lesley Stahl walking around the street with Greene with happy smiles. And the text wasn’t about how 60 Minutes was sitting down with one of the more divisive members of the House, but instead about her getting the “nickname” of MTG. (A particular warning light because she didn’t “get” the “nickname,” but gave it to herself out of jealously after seeing all the attention Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was receiving as AOC. While I hoped dearly that the broadcast would be an heir to the See It Now "Tiffany network" legacy of Murrow-like shredding of Joe McCarthy, I didn’t have those expectations. The show's promotion for this looked a whole lot closer to a puff piece than an insightful look at someone who was a divisive danger to the country. Further, I have since seen several articles on the Stahl-Greene segment and read comments from people who did watch. And like many things in the news, we often rely on what little we do know and what is reported by others we trust. And if it wasn’t my worst fear of a puff piece, it seems to have been a cousin dancing in the neighborhood. A good friend, who knew my concerns, wrote – “So I saw the 60 Minutes interview, and I thought that it was not good at all. She did hit Greene with quotes and debated her, but she let Greene get the last word which implies a logic and elevates her bullshit to a respectful level as you feared it would.” He later went into more detail when we spoke, and explained how Lesley Stahl would occasionally show footage of Greene, but not use it as the foundation for a more involved discussion, or not use video of Greene to contradict something disingenuous she tried to pass off as the truth. And that Stahl seemed to try to make the piece -- both out on the street walking among the people and when inside for the more direct interview -- charming, which ultimately humanized the anti-Semitic, fascist Greene. Stahl would also ask a hard question, but not follow-up with what was the obvious comeback you were waiting to hear. (For instance, when Greene responded to a challenging question about some reprehensible comment she posted on Twitter by saying she didn't write all of her tweets and that some of her staff did, Stahl left it there. Nothing more. As if that explanation was reasonable and the accepted final word. Left unasked and hanging in the air were such blatant, follow-up questions as -- Do you read the tweets posted under your name? And do you none-the-less agree with that tweet that was posted under your name? If not, why didn't you delete the tweet? Or why not publicly respond that a staffer posted that and explain what your real position was? And did you reprimand the staffer? Have they continued posting some of the other problematic things under your name that you don't agree with? And how do we know they were posted by a staffer and not by you, since after all they are under your own name? We just have your word for it with no evidence to suggest anyone else wrote it.) When Stahl asked Greene about her repugnant charge that Democrats were the "party of pedophiles," she not only doubled-down on the charge but even included President Biden in her weird, reprehensible definition that somehow involved the concepts of sexualizing children and transgender. Stahl's response was an almost-whispered, "Wow." While I'm sure to many, Greene's own incoherent words were damning, but it left uncertain viewers with her explanation as the final arbiter. Since this wasn't a live broadcast, and 60 Minutes could have put together the segment in as informative a manner as they wanted, perhaps editing in a brief interview with an expert in the field talking about how damaging such horrific mis-representations are might have been more pointed. And then there was a far-more damning tweet written by respected scholar Norman Ornstein, who wrote – “I have known Lesley Stahl for more than forty years, worked alongside her for many election weeks. She has been a great journalist, but this is a disgraceful, cringeworthy performance. Shameful to the max.” All the more shameful because Lesley Stahl is, as Ornstein noted, an excellent journalist with a long, admirable career. And shameful, too, because she seems to have ignored a story she's told on herself. It’s from the time she did what she thought was a blunt, critical 60 Minutes piece on President Ronald Reagan, which included footage of him giving a speech at Mount Rushmore surrounded by American flags. The next day, she got a call from a White House advisor she knew, and was sure he’d be screaming at her. Instead, though, he told how great he thought it was. She couldn’t understand why, she’d said such harsh things about Reagan. "Oh, Lesley,” the official told her, “the American people don't listen to what you say; they only see those great pictures of Ronald Reagan." As she wrote later, she realized it's all about the visuals. And so, there she was on Sunday, giving the lovely visuals of walking around, smiling with Marjorie Taylor Greene. As I said, I didn't have it in me to watch. So, the specifics are not as issue here. What is clear is that the show was not an exposé on Marjorie Taylor Greene, but an attempt to offer a balanced look at her. And at that, I don’t have a clue what 60 Minutes thought it was doing – and why? After all, they’re not idiots. They know who Marjorie Taylor Greene is. They know she helped enable the Insurrection to overthrow the government. They know she’s still enabling the GOP to undermine democracy. They know she’s a Q-Anon conspiracist. They know she’s ignorant and an anti-Semite, who pushed Rothschild-backed space lasers, among many other lunacies. They know all this – so, I have no idea what they were doing??? And that's the point. Even if they were trying to do a “balanced” piece, this isn’t a balanced person -- in more ways than one. This is a crazy, ignorant, divisive person who is a danger to democracy. And they know that. Balanced is good in journalism. But so it truth and accuracy. Sometimes, there are "both sides" to a story. The Murrow-McCarthy broadcast is a master class in journalism, showing how this kind of thing should be done, fairly and accurately, with meticulous research and video using Sen. McCarthy’s own words. And importantly, compared to what Lesley Stahl did with Greene, it wasn’t interview, but rather an exposé. My recollection is that Murrow and Friendly had no intention of inviting McCarthy on as a guest. (It’s possible they asked, and he refused, but I don’t think so. They kept it very secret, except from the top network executives. They didn’t want anything to leak, so that McCarthy could get out ahead of it. To be clear, Marjorie Taylor Greene is no Joseph McCarthy. Though – if she had a clue who he was, which I’m not certain of, other than him being a “name” she’s heard – she probably would love to be. And is divisive and dangerous and fascist on her own terms. Murrow and Friendly had been talking about doing the show on McCarthy for a while, but weren’t sure of the right now, or focus. They’d done a couple of shows that touched on McCarthy – one about an Air Force lieutenant, Milo Radulovich, who McCarthy tried to destroy because his immigrant father subscribed to several Yugoslavian newspapers to stay in touch with his homeland, one paper which was designated Communist, and another broadcast about a black woman named Annie Lee Moss, who was a low-level clerk at the Pentagon who McCarthy tried to paint as a national security threat. (When his mistakes surfaced, and the hearing turned into a disaster for McCarthy, he left the room and turned the rest of it over to his counsel – Roy Cohn, later Trump’s mentor.) But these shows about newsworthy miscarriages of justice were just precursors to the ultimate See It Now broadcast that focused solely on McCarthy, one which was long-planned as something debated internally for a while to do. As I noted, the broadcast was considered one of the first efforts to erode McCarthy’s power. CBS was very concerned with the broadcast and wouldn’t even take out ads for it. Murrow and Friendly had to take out their own ad in New York and pay for it themselves. Murrow and Friendly made an offer to McCarthy that he could respond on the show any way he wanted. A few weeks later, See It Now turned over their full 30 minutes to McCarthy, who sent them a half-hour film to air. There was a slight bit of criticism about the “reply” not being totally fair, since Murrow-Friendly were professional broadcasters who had all the technology at their disposal, while McCarthy just sat and talked to the camera for 30 minutes. In the end, though, McCarthy came across so badly in his response that that was almost as damaging to him as the Murrow-Friendly report. And then, to reinforce the difference between then and now, in a subsequent broadcast Murrow got the last word, correcting the lies and mistakes that McCarthy had tried to attack with. In fact, here is the way Murrow began his six-minute reply. Compare it to Lesley Stahl response of "Wow" after Marjorie Taylor Greene ranted about Democrats and President Biden being pedophiles. Murrow began this way -- and went on for another 5-1/2 minutes. (Which you can listen to here.) Last week, Senator McCarthy appeared on this program to correct any errors he might have thought we made in our report of March 9th. The larger point of all this is that knowing what CBS/60 Minutes/See It Now once did at its peak, that’s why it was all the more shameful the way the show and Leslie Stahl, an otherwise excellent journalist, didn’t come close to their legacy of how to deal with dangerous, divisive fascists. All she had to do was sit down in the CBS archives and watch how Edward R. Murrow did it. Not that she had to do it the same -- journalism has changed, and few people are like Edward R. Murrow, nor have the gravitas and public support he did to go up against someone so powerful. But she could have seen that you don't have to be ingratiating with the person you're interviewing, and you're allowed to ask follow-up questions and not let someone who is lying or just plain ignorant, racist and fascist get away with it. It's harmful to Lesley Stahl's legacy and to the high-end legacy of CBS and 60 Minutes, which got its start with See It Now. This is how you do it.
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The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, who has been covering the Dominion lawsuit against Fox “News.” That’s what he and Al talk about today, and as Al writes, it “Looks bad for FOX.”
I like the RawStory website, and as readers here have likely noticed, quote from it often. Though I do have a lot of quibbles with it. One is that they often promote something big in their headlines, and it turns out to be very minor in the article, or even on occasion, non-existent. The other is that they have terrible proofreading for a news publication and are filled with mistakes – usually typos, but not limited to that. To their credit, they have a link about corrections, and I use it a lot, and they’re very fast about fixing things. But they have so many mistakes, I’ve largely given up correcting most things.
(By the way, I know I have typos here, myself. But I write this for free, don't always have the patience to then spend more time proofreading, I'm not a professional news website, and don't have a paid proofreader.) Anyway, RawStory had one yesterday (which turned into two..) that I couldn’t ignore. In an article about the Manhattan D.A. case, they wrote about Ari Melber describing something as being "as close to 'you can't handle the truth' as you can come," and explaining that he was quoting a line from a John Grisham courtroom novel. Ack. So, I wrote and gave them the correct attribution, that the line is from the stage play and subsequent movie A Few Good Men, written by Aaron Sorkin. And as always, they sent a thank you and fixed it immediately. Except – they referred to it as being “the infamous scene.” I had to write back that the scene was the most “famous” scene from the movie, not infamous. To their credit, they fixed it within minutes… (Though they'd mentioned John Grisham in their original version, they left out noting that the quote is actually by Aaron Sorkin, and I like to give writers credit, most especially for movies, since far too many people seem to think the actors make it all up, or the directors do everything. But I'm just glad they got it right, and so I counted my victories, and didn't write back...) I’ve thought about putting in a voucher to them as a freelance proofreader. It would seem that if Fox is suggesting (as they are...) that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro et al are only "opinion hosts" and therefore not held to journalism standards, then Fox can't claim this is an attack on journalism 1st Amendment rights.
The problem is that if Fox does want to have those journalism rights, they must then be held to its standards, which they're trying to avoid. Rock meet hard place. Every once in a while things come along that I truly don’t understand why they were done – though that list is getting shorter. And another of those occurred on Monday when Tucker Carlson made his first presentation on Fox “News” since being given by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy 41,000+ hours of exclusive U.S. Capitol security footage – and he used it to, inexplicably, try to claim that the January 6 Insurrection riot where five people died and many more injured and close to 700 people have either been convicted or pled guilty…was just a peaceful gathering.
To be clear, I fully understand why Tucker Carlson being Tucker Carlson said this. Because he’s a little fascist provocateur, and it’s what he must do to breathe and feel good about himself. What I don’t understand though are two other things – Why would Fox executives, knowing that they’re in the middle about a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion for lying and knowing that private emails and other documents have been admitted into evidence showing that Fox “News” was 100% aware that they were lying to viewers about the election, would allow one of its hosts to go on the add and pour more evidence on the Dominion bonfire to show the network’s total and knowing disregard for the truth? And why would Tucker Carlson, who knows he was given 41,000+ hours of exclusive U.S. Capitol security footage and has a wide-open platform to edit is in any deceitful way he wants for airing over months in order to prove a non-existent point and knows five people died, over 1,000 people have been arrested, almost 700 people have been convicted or plead guilty and knows he himself saw footage of the violent break-in and fighting, and knows his private email lies have recently been exposed to destroy his credibility, use his very first airing of that video material in a way that was so insanely ludicrous and so easily disproved that his broadcast undermines all future broadcasts of that treasure trove of video material? Tucker Carlson showed footage of Insurrectionists calmly wandering around the U.S. Capitol (which, to be clear, is already illegal, since the building was closed to the public that day) and left it at that, showing none of the massive violence. It reminded me of perhaps my favorite passage from the old Mary Tyler Moore sitcom – News director Lou Grant found out that his incompetent nephew had a video camera and was at the site of a major fire. Excited that the station has a huge scoop over everyone else, he finds out that when the film is developed, the only thing his nephew filmed was a bug crawling along the sidewalk. Utterly bewildered, Lou asks why in the world he filmed that. The nephew answers that he wanted to show the irony that while a big fire was happening, just a few feet away, life goes on. Lou tries, but can’t contain himself and explodes – “Did it ever occur to you to shoot footage to show that while life was going on…only a few feet away THERE WAS A MASSIVE FIRE!!!!!!!” That was Tucker Carlson on Monday. Showing that a few feet away from people wandering around the U.S. Capitol – THERE WAS AN INSURRECTION!! Which most everyone in the world watching television at the time saw. One of Carlson’s big “scoops” was using footage to show that when Insurrectionist Josh Hawley (R-MO) was running away in fear down the Capitol halls, he wasn’t the only one doing so. This is one of those rare times when “Well, duh” is the only proper response. I not only suspect next to no one ever thought Hawley was the only person running for his life – indeed, there was other footage of people in Congress running – but the point of the media relentlessly showing Josh Hawley running was because earlier in the day he was on camera egging the Insurrectionists on. I would add, as well, that if the lying point you’re trying to make is that January 6 was peaceful, then showing many people inside the Capitol running for their lives is not a good way to make your lying point. (Most amusingly problematic for Carlson -- though his ardent supporters will find a way to overlook it or perhaps never even hear of it, since they pay no attention to actual news outside the Fox bubble -- is when he wrote in private emails about Trump that "I passionately hate him.") What I loved, too, was Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-AR) – who only last week complained that people kept calling her stupid – saying that, based on the footage Carlson showed, the “QAnon Shaman” should get a new trial. What this mental giant of Einsteinian proportion misses is that the “QAnon Shaman” pled guilty -- and that when he was shown the evidence prosecutors had, freely admitted to all the facts he was charged with!!! How bad was Tucker Carlson’s presentation? Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority Leader, said to reporters – “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that's completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks." And in regards to a memo sent by Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger which called the Carlson's depiction “offensive” and misleading,” McConnell also added, “With regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the Chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6.” And Minority Leader McConnell wasn’t alone. I don’t mean among all elected officials – since you only have to imagine what Democrats said, and you be right – I mean among Republicans “I was here. It was not peaceful. It was an abomination,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). “You’re entitled to believe what you want in America, but you can’t resort to violence to try to convince others of your point of view.” Republican Senator Tom Tillis (R-NC) was asked about Carlson calling January 6 “peaceful” and replied that “I think it’s bullsh*t.” He also told reporters, “I was here. I was down there” and spoke about “when you see police barricades breached, when you see police officers assaulted, all of that…” and called Tucker Carlson’s description “inexcusable.” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND told reporters “I think that breaking through glass windows and doors to get into the United States Capitol against the borders of police is a crime. I think particularly when you come into the chambers, when you start opening the members' desks, when you stand up in their balcony — to somehow put that in the same category as, you know, permitted peaceful protest is just a lie.” And then there’s Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) who said that the Insurrection on January 6 was a violent attack and that Carlson trying to “normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.” Adding that “The American people saw what happened on January 6, they’ve seen the people that got injured, they saw the damage to the building. You can’t hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on. It’s so absurd, it’s nonsense.” And again, that’s just from Republicans. Not all Republicans, to be sure. Many enabled the Insurrection so they’re likely all-in on Tucker Carlson calling the Insurrection to overthrow the government and democracy just “peaceful.” But when you get that many Republican officials – including the Senate Minority Leader – ripping Tucker Carlson in such blunt, often guttural language, you know it’s not good. The thing is, what’s important to make clear, and not let all hell rain down on Tucker Carlson and Fox “News,” is that the foundational criticism of shame here must be directed to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Because it was McCarthy alone who – without even checking with Capitol Police about security concerns – gave all that 41,000+ hours of security footage exclusively to Tucker Carlson. Still, for all the harsh criticism from both sides of the aisle, I suspect that the Dominion Voting Systems company is overjoyed by Carlson’s broadcast. After all the private emails from Fox – including from Tucker Carlson himself -- admitting they knew they were lying about election fraud and Dominion machines, there was Carlson on Monday putting a cherry on the sundae, and calling what he knew was a violent Insurrection where five people died, over 1,000 people have been arrested, almost 700 people have been convicted or plead guilty something that was just a ”peaceful” outing by “tourists.” And to a degree, even the public should be pleased, as well. That's because the now known-liar Tucker Carlson has pretty much discredited the remaining 41,000+ hours that he was hoping to manipulate ahead. And so, by egregiously, inexplicably, blatantly lying, he became a real-life Chicken Little trying to convince us that the sky is falling. In the end, it was only just a nut that fell. Cartoonist Scott Adams is critical of the Cleveland Plain Dealer which joined 77 other newspapers which had previously dropped carrying his comic strip “Dilbert.” The Plain Dealer’s action came after Adams (who has a long history of positions so extreme that many papers found problematic) went on a racist rant on his YouTube show. (One of those 77 other newspapers that had already cancelled Dilbert was the San Francisco Chronicle. “His strip went from being hilarious to being hurtful and mean,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the editor in chief of the Chronicle, said. “Very few readers noticed when we killed it, and we only had a handful of complaints.”) Adams got into his racist tirade after quoting a Rasmussen poll that said 27% of Black people did not agree with the statement “It’s okay to be white,” (to which is should be noted that 8% of White people didn’t agree with the statement either. Furthermore 66% of Black people polled did agree with the statement.) As a result, Adams dismissed all Black people (including that two-thirds who agreed that it was okay to be White), calling all Blacks a “hate group” and said, “I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people … because there is no fixing this.” I should add that before making his statement, he completely misquoted the poll results (as have newspaper articles taking his words as fact) by noting “nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with White people.” Never mind that “Do you hate White people” wasn’t at all what the poll asked, even more to the point is that 26% is not even close to “nearly half.” And 53% in support is over half. Pretty weird for what Adams calls a "hate group." (NOTE: The 21% who were not sure can't be added to the "disagree" side any more than they can be added to those who "agree.") Elon Musk just joined the fray in defense of Adams, and posted a Tweet asking “ “What exactly are they complaining about?” He later deleted this after someone seemingly told him, “Er, Elon, that’s a really bad look and is going to drive even more advertisers away.”) He also later Tweeted that “Adams’ comments weren’t good” (how deeply thoughtful of him…except for the part where he doesn’t say the comments were actually bad or racist), but added a qualifier that there is “an element of truth” to what Adams said. Unfortunately, Musk left out what he considers that “element of truth.” For instance, it’s true that Scott Adams doesn’t want to have anything to do with Black people. But that element doesn’t make the statements okay, it’s what makes them racist. Musk said as well (for reasons and logic known only to him) that the media was “racist against whites.” But given that Musk has let virulent racists back on Twitter after having been kicked off by the previous owners, it’s unclear if Musk meant this as a criticism, regardless of whether it’s true or not. Let’s be very clear. Scott Adams has free speech. He can make all the racist comments he wants. Elon Musk can, too, if he wants. Scott Adams wasn't arrested, he wasn’t put in jail. He can keep making even more racist comments. Elon Musk can restore Twitter privileges to every racist he wants. In fact, as far as free speech goes, Scott Adams still has his YouTube show, and he can fill that will all the racist comments his little heart desires. And he still has his comic strip running in many newspapers. But – no newspaper is required to pay him money to run his comic strip if the publishers think it reflects badly on their paper and could lose them subscribers for being associated with it. That’s free enterprise. That’s the law. That is free speech. Others have it, just like you do. No doubt there will be those who cry out in trying to convince others that this all is a part of “cancel culture.” Though as noted, Scott Adams is still being published, still has his YouTube show and still is allowed to be racist all day long. The larger reality is while people are allowed to do what they want, they are fools if they think others don’t have that same right. And that there aren’t consequences to our actions. Indeed, that’s what the editors of the Cleveland Plain Dealer said when explaining their actions. “No, this is a decision based on the principles of this news organization and the community we serve. We are not a home for those who espouse racism. We certainly do not want to provide them with financial support.” In the end, the words of Scott Adams himself speak loudly for himself. Now that he’s seen these poll results (and totally misquoted them), it told him all he needed to know to justify his racism. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” he said. What he left out noting was what he had done previously with Black people. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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