Howard Kurtz is Full of Horse S**T: But The MSM Loves Him For Covering Their Rears

[McCamy Taylor]

Oh man! Where do I begin? I just saw Keith Olbermann, who should know better, interview Howard Kurtz, who has a theory about why the entire television news media in the U.S. went along with the Bush administration's lies about WMDs in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. Kurtz's theory? The corporate media was scared . They were afraid of the viewing public. They were petrified that U.S. audiences would get mad if the TV news was not patriotic enough, so that was why NBC had to fire Donahue, who wasn't getting behind the Iraq War and hire Olbermann. That was why NBC had to fire seasoned war correspondent Peter Arnett. That was why CBS had to keep Bill Bradley from reporting on the lies about WMDs before the 2004 election and why they had to crucify Dan Rather, who had 80% recognizability and 80% favorability---someone most news networks would consider money in the bank. That was why all the news networks had to suppress their Ohio exit polls and dutiful repeat the lie that Kerry was a waffler and report the Swift Boat Vets lies as if they were truth. That was why the MSM acted like Gore did not win in Florida and pretended that Enron did not price gouge California with Bush's help and Bush for sure never went AWOL. Because the American people would have objected if the corporate media had not done so and they would have turned off their TV sets. Maybe even thrown their sets out the window in angry protest at the massive disrespect the nation's television news stations were showing the administration.

Howard Kurtz is a idiot if he believes any of this. However, I watched his face as he delivered this fairy tale, and I don't believe that he believes a word of it. He wants to believe it. Keith really wants to believe it, bless his idealistic heart. I am sure that a lot of news media executives and self serving journalists are hoping that Americans will believe Kurtz's fairy tale, because the truth is too dark. Kurtz, in an ironic twist, is playing Marlowe from The Heart of Darkness and everyone of us is the other Kurtz's (of "The Horror! The Horror!" fame) Intended being told a great big fat whopper about how noble our dead fiance's intentions were.

There has to be a Marlowe for the Mainstream News Media at this time, in this place. If it wasn't Howard Kurtz, someone else would step up to the plate and take a swing. It sucks to be a journalist and know that the news company you work for would do something like write biased news and fire a journalist like Donahue and replace him because he wouldn't get on board the program, all for financial gain. It sucks to know that you were willing to turn a blind eye to the truth and goose step along with Colin Powell and Condi Rice, because your boss at ___ News told you to. It really sucks to be an executive at CBS and have a law suit by Dan Rather hanging over your head in which he is about to prove that you stabbed your star anchor in the back, because you needed some big favors from the Bush FCC.

The truth is that the corporate media sold its soul to the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2000 for business favors. Long before 9/11, "Gore is a liar" was fabricated

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5920188/the_press_vs_al_gore

so that Al Gore, notoriously strict when it came to media mergers, indefinite copyright protection and a host of other issues that affected the pocketbooks of the telecommunications industry, would lose. The corporate media also promoted the Nader campaign, repeating his celebrity supporters' lie that "W. is the same as Gore." The media ignored W.'s lies and gaffes during the campaign. All of this when there was nothing "patriotic" about Dumbya.

If got a lot easier for the MSM to wave that flag for Bush/Cheney and sing those slogans after 9/11. However, beating the drum to war with Iraq took balls of brass, with what is now McClatchy News reporting everyday about the inconsistencies in the Bush administration story. Anyone who read one of that family's newspapers or went online to read any one of a number of international news sources, knew that the MSM was feeding Americans a load of bull. Kurtz claims that TV news was afraid of appearing unpatriotic. Funny, the news in America has usually been more afraid of appearing inaccurate. Indeed, that has always been its number one concern. Patriotism got thrown out the window decades ago, with the satellite age. Everything now is about precision. Facts. Getting the story first and getting it right, before the competition. Funny that all those television news stations not only did not mind that they were getting it wrong, they had to fire the people who might actually get it right.

What Kurtz is offering is a pathetic excuse for a news industry that has been caught lying in order to trick a nation into war by several prominent, respectable journalists, most notably Bill Moyer. That last must have hurt. The nation's MSM reporters and executives must have huddled together and muttered "We have to get our stories straight. We didn't do it for money. We did it for---patriotism! Yeah! That's the ticket!"

The sad truth is that the Bush administration was handing out favors to the telecommunications industry during its first term the way that a pedophile hands out candy. Michael Powell made a administrative decree that Congress refused to pass that allowed media companies to own 45% of the nation's television, saving CBS and FOX News from outlaw status. I discuss that great moment in bribery here:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/62

The Tribune Company was allowed to own a television station in LA and the LA Times. Other news companies had their own wish lists, including longer and more strict copyright protection, bigger monopolies, less competition---all things that Bush/Cheney stood for.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/63

And were the carrot did not work, there was the stick. Today's revelations about Qwest, which refused to spy for Bush and paid a price for it as an example:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_5719566,00.html



Howard Kurtz claims that in 2005, the news networks suddenly lost the desire to be patriotic and this was why they began to report on negative stories about the war in Iraq and negative news about the White House. Does this make any sense? W. had just won re-election. As Karl Rove put it, he had a "mandate." The MSM had obligingly made sure that he would not be challenged before being sworn in, by refusing to release the Ohio exit polls, which unofficial reports said conflicted with the official tallies, raising the specter of election fraud in Republican precincts. If a president has been re-elected, the news media should assume that the public really likes him, the way they adored Reagan or Clinton, and they should be extra careful to treat him with respect. Correct?

Hell no. Michael Powell and the Bush administration promised NBC, CBS, FOX and the rest unlimited media expansions. And then, a couple of days after Bush got sworn in for a second term, in the pages of the Washington Post Powell went "Na, na, na, you got fooled. We never intended to keep that promise. Suckers!" Worse yet, NBC found out about the plan to invade Iran. A war which the Pentagon initially approved as a quick in and out had turned into a quagmire and was now about to turn into a quagmire-deluxe. And the corporate media got played for suckers.

NBC's tone changed as soon as Sy Hersch revealed the plans to invade Iran. The rest of the MSM, except FOX News, changed their tone over the course of the next few months, about the same time that the suit which the news networks took to the Supreme Court in an attempt to salvage those precious media mergers died a grisly death from lack of administrative attention. By the time Katrina hit, the news networks were ready for payback.

http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/060112.htm

This is not a tale of a nation's news networks that become blinded by patriotism on 9-11-2001. This a tale of a nation's corporate media that became blinded by greed all the way back in 2000. Howard Kurtz has done what he thinks is a valuable service for the gang, providing them an excuse for their inexcusable behavior.

For here is where his premise gets really sick and twisted---why did not Olbermann call him on this? So what if they did do it from an excess of patriotism? If a hundred thousand innocent Iraqis died, because a bunch of reporters were seized with a fit a nationalist zeal, and they decided that the best way to promote nationalism at home was to encourage the death of Iraqis abroad, does not that sound like grounds for some war crime tribunals?

My advice right now is do not waste money on Kurtz's book unless you are a corporate media journalist who has trouble sleeping at night from a guilty conscience, and you are afraid that pills might be too addicting. Anyone else who is interested in the media's role in creating the Iraq War, try "Weapons of Mass Deception" by Danny Schechter.

http://www.wmdthefilm.com/mambo/index.php

Pay attention to the sneaky look on the NBC executive's face when he describes how they fired Peter Arnett after a bunch of hate email arrived all from the same address. . We are supposed to believe that these guys were afraid of one person's spam? They were looking for an excuse. That is NBC, the network of Olbermann. Yes, they are on the side of goodness and light now, but sometimes I wish that Keith would stop being so "rah, rah, my team all the way" and admit that Jack Welch was an a-hole. 'Cause you know, times could change, and one day, it could be in his employers economic best interest to give him the ax just like old Phil.

[BootinUp]

1. I made it to the 3rd or 4th para before I decided

this was a weird conspiracy theory attempting to invade my brain.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. One tinfoil hat for you to keep the wierd rays out!

:tinfoilhat:

I write sci-fi, but sometimes I write true stuff, too.

[papau]

6. Excellent summary of the facts - GE/NBC/Jack owes the world an apology n/t

n/t

[tularetom]

3. So, what you are saying is the networks acted as they did because of

greed rather than because of fear?

Yeah, I can buy that.

But in a way aren't the two related? Could it be that they were afraid that they would be frozen out of news opportunities if they failed to get with the program?

They had their heads up their collective asses if they really believe we, the amurkin public, was sittin around trembling and crapping our pants because we were so afraid of another turrist attack. We were not afraid, they were, because they were fuckin stupid. They bought the WH fear mongering hook line and sinker.

Of course it was greed. What else motivates anyone in the good ol US of A?

[bhumikag]

4. crazy

i watch kurtz's CNN program Reliable Sources..most of the times he seems reasonable..but i don't agree with the way he handled dan rather suing CBS. on his theory media went along with the lies this admin floated to save themselves(and their bottom line)coz the people wanted to be fooled is kind of crazy..i honestly believe if media had told the truth, people would have accepted it and turned against the admin..but instead the media chose to be admin's lapdog



bhumika
politics desk,Voxant Newsroom

[McCamy Taylor]

7. Interesting point you raise. "Heart of Darkness" applies more than ever,

I am assuming everyone has read it. For those who have not basically it differs from "Apocalypse Now" in that Marlowe goes into the jungle, finds Kurtz whose dying words are "The Horror, the Horror." Marlowe goes back to Europe to see Kurtz's Intended (his fiance but she is always called that in the story). The climax comes when she is asking what happened and especially what her lover's last words were. She is an idealistic woman and Kurtz was supposed to have been some kind of great Christian missionary and reformer. Marlowe is torn. In the end, he can not bear to tell her the truth, so he lies and says that Kurtz's last words were the Intended's name. Even though he realizes that he has doomed her to a life of spinsterhood, because she will probably never marry, instead devoting herself to the memory of a great man who did not really exit and the colonial "mission" in Africa to save souls which Marlowe knows is all a sham and a ruse to disguise an enterprise that is only about greed. Had he told her the truth, she would have been free to make her own decisions and live her on life, but he thinks that the truth would have been "too dark" to bear, with the implication that it would have been too dark for him to bear. Conrad sets up the form of the story--Marlowe telling this tale to other sailors, asking them to agree that he did the right thing in lying to the young woman---almost as if he is a modern day Ancient Mariner who is forced to extirpate his guilt at not telling the truth when it mattered most by retelling the story over and over again all his days.

[bleever]

11. And thus if Howard Kurtz is damned to re-tell the tale of his own innocence,

Olbermann may be spared that fate by maintaining his own innocence by speaking the words, and telling the stories, that he sees with his own eyes, regardless of what he is told to see.

I'll keep my money on KO. Even though it's a tricky proposition, I think he knows what's up at this point.

(I say this, having just met a woman whose son was drafted by the NY Yankees, but chose to become a Green Beret instead because of 9/11. Hopefully, he's going to be a Yankee soon, having survived the courage of his convictions, which he soon came to see in a different light.)

[bleever]

5. I don't trust Howard Kurtz.

I do trust Keith Olbermann.

Though this is by no means the final version of this story, I'm glad we're digging down, and that the excuses to be dug beneath are being offered up so conveniently by the apologists for consolidated media.

And my personal money is on KO having put enough money away, on purpose, so that he knew that he could walk away if they started restricting him to the point he felt compromised, or worse, manipulated. He's seen the pressure on a lot of his colleagues, and he doesn't have an ambition that burns stronger than his sense of what's right.

That's my take.

[Berry Cool]

8. I think you're right, bleev,

and I also think Keith only had the jerk Kurtz on his show because his book is on a topic that fascinates Keith--namely, the network news. I don't know that he buys for a second his crap about how "the public" would have risen up in protest had the networks spoken out against the war in 2003 or 2004. KO knows he was subjected to pressure not to do things like question the heroic rescue story of Jessica Lynch or have "too many liberals" on his show, but I don't think he believes that this was because "the public" would have had a problem with it.

[bleever]

9. Not only did he have Kurtz on, he also related very honestly his own

experience about the flow and ebb of the political pressure, even when dealing with someone he might have reason to suspect was either less than honest, or less than conscious of all the forces really at play.

[Supersedeas]

15. completely untrustworthy -- never touches heart of the issue and always suggests the alibis and

excuses are just a plausible as facts

[rocktivity]

10. I wonder if Kurtz's book covers the role his employer CNN played

or why a group of military psychological operations specialists were allowed to work there as interns, and especially why he didn't speak out at the time!

:headbang:
rocknation

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. Basically, what Howard Kurtz has confirmed is that the only Americans

that the media gives a shit about are Republicans. Since they were the only ones banging the drums of war. They tuned everybody else out.

[ShortnFiery]

13. The American People now know that the M$M is just a mouthpiece for the investor classes. n/t.

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. This is true. Even middle class Republicans are getting it.

[placton]

16. Thanks for making me realize I was sane last nite!

I saaw the interview too, and wondered what Keith was thinking. Kurtz is clearly lying to protect the tattered shreds of confidence in the corporate media. Yeah, that's it, it was really not their fault - but our fault! We made the media do it! What bull.

[McCamy Taylor]

17. And don't forget, it was the DEMOCRATS fault, too. Kurtz made that point loud and clear.

Because presumably somewhere in the Constitution where it talks about the delegation of powers it says 1. Democrats will uphold the laws of the land and protect the people from injustice and make sure that the truth is defended and 2. Republicans will try to get their grubby little hands on as much filthy money as they can. And that is the way it is in the world according to the corporate media.

[roxnev]

18. B.S.

They was blinded by all the money and power, the rich inherit during a Republican administration