Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media | Jeff Cohen | Talks at Google

Plug for the book Cable News Confidential that Jeff Cohen wrote. And with that, I think I'll just go ahead and dive it in. I'll leave that up there if you want to kind of reference that. So thank you very much for coming.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's great to meet the Google people. Googlers. How many saw Scott Ritter when he was in town? Scott and I are doing a lecture tour around Southern California, just as we did a short while ago in Northern California on Iran, Iraq and the media. And I was able to meet Larry Page when I was up in the Bay Area on that last tour with Scott Ritter. As I told him, google, you've provided a great service to the world, but sometimes I think the kids get annoyed at you because like in the old days, parents would say when they get constant questions from their kids, I don't know honey, why don't you ask your mom? But now I always tell my kids, I don't know, honey, just Google it. I flew here, as did Scott Ritter from the east coast yesterday, and I'm watching CNN in the airport and they break away from their regular program for five minutes of a live car chase, a police chase. And I was really annoyed, I've got to be honest, because there were so many important stories that the American public needed to hear during that five minutes about Anna Nicole Smith that they just couldn't get when following a car chase. I've spent a lot of time inside the media and outside as a media critic, and you begin to wonder if the owners of the half a dozen corporations that control the media, you begin to wonder when you look at them very closely, if they'd be happier if we were a nation of mindless consumers rather than a nation of informed, active citizens. At Google, you're providing tools so people can become active citizens and get the information and the knowledge that they seek. But the owners of the mainstream corporate media, you sometimes wonder what their motives are. I started the nonprofit media watch group fair 20 years ago and I was a proud, self respecting media critic. But as I describe in the book, through a series of flukes, it was almost like an Alice in Wonderland slow motion nightmare. I ended up embedded inside the mainstream media. Today there are these half a dozen media conglomerates that I say are sitting on the windpipe of the First Amendment, restricting the flow of information, restricting a full spectrum of viewpoints on the important issues that face our country and our world. When I talk about these half a dozen corporations, I did take paychecks from three of them. So I know a little bit about them. I was an on air pundit on all three cable news channels, cnn, Fox News and msnbc. My career on television ended, I describe it in detail in the book, when I was terminated for political reasons three weeks before the invasion of Iraq. I started my career on CNN decades ago. How many people ever saw the CNN show? It was the biggest, most raucous debate show on TV called Crossfire. That's where I started as a regular guest. And people used to say, why do you go on a show where you can't finish a sentence? And I had a stock answer that, well, I go on that show because the more respectable shows just don't invite me. They're not interested in my brand of media criticism. And two, I never found anywhere else you could be seated in a chair for 30 minutes without moving. And at the end of the half hour, just from the shouting, you'd had a complete aerobic workout. Never found anywhere. Now I left cnn. They tested me to be the co host of that show. I didn't get the job, but my TV career was salvaged by, of all people, Rupert Murdoch and the Fox News Channel, which was just starting in 96, 97. I was hired to be on the weekend on their media criticism show. I appeared there every week for five years and people always ask me, I describe it, I discuss it heavily in the book, do people who work there at Fox really believe the fair and balanced slogan? And I've got to tell you that they don't. It's a joke. Everyone knows that the Hannity and Combs show is very much a joke. How many people have seen Hannity and Combs? That's a show set up to feature the right wing point of view, but it's in the guise of a debate show. Hannity is the forceful, telegenic right winger and he's up against Alan Combs, who's a constantly backpedaling moderate liberal. And that's how the show is set up and everyone knows it. At our media watch group Fair, we used to describe Alan Combs as the Washington Generals. That's the team that's sent out every night to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters. You learn when you're at Fox News as long as I was there that these kinds of things are not by accident, they are by design. What does it say about TV news today that the two most important programs of news and politics are on the Comedy channel? I'm talking about Colbert and the Daily Show. It's really a commentary on TV news. If you live in other countries, you can watch TV news, which is usually public, the biggest shows on tv, and they're often cutting edge, very independent, very adversarial with those in power. You just don't see that in United States television unless you turn on the Comedy channel. I worked with some very good people in mainstream media, even at Fox News, where I was for five years. But these are usually low level and mid level journalists, very energetic, very conscientious, but ultimately powerless, and especially powerless in times of war. Mainstream news outlets are strict corporate hierarchies where the power is at the top. At a place like msnbc, the power is possessed by the conservative corporate owner General Electric, which profits quite handsomely from weapons systems and from warfare. In our country, it's common to hear people across the spectrum, but especially conservatives, say that they favor a meritocracy where you advance according to your individual ability and achievement. But what I found in the mainstream media is the exact opposite of that. The dictionary has a word for it. It literally means rule by the worst. It's called kakistocracy, where the people who are least principled, least qualified, rise to the top. I saw that in the mainstream media, especially during the run up to the war in Iraq. And I assume Scott Ritter talked to you a little about that period. Those of us who were on the air forcefully challenging what passed for evidence that Iraq was somehow a threat to our national security. Those of us who warned of the implications of invading that country, in other words, those of us who acted properly and journalistically and skeptically, for the most part, we've been now banished from the system. But if you echoed the official deceptions coming from the White House, whether out of gullibility or ideology, you've largely seen your career flourish. I'm not aware of a single TV news executive or host or pundit or so called expert who lost their job for getting such a huge story, perhaps the biggest story in our country for 20 years, getting that huge story in the run up to the Iraq War. So totally wrong. And as almost all of them did. There was one guy who did lose his show. I describe him in my book at msnbc, One of the real hawkish cheerleaders for invading Iraq. He did lose his show. That's because he's kicked upstairs. He's now the general manager of msnbc. Those who rise to the top in the mainstream media are often very good at corporate politics. Not rocking the boat, not offending people in power, especially not offending a corporate advertiser in the summer of 2002, I was at MSNBC as a pundit. I debated and opposed the Iraq war week after week. The rule was I couldn't get on tv. And this is true my whole career I couldn't get on TV without being balanced by at least one fire breathing right winger. But as the war neared, I lost my airtime and I was replaced by non debate segments that featured former generals and former colonels and former CIA officers passing themselves off as weapons experts. And these people never had to appear in debates or be balanced. And almost everything these people said turned out to be wrong. But they were presented as independent, objective experts who needed no balance. Over at CNN, the news president, he went on CNN's air and he boasted that he had gotten prior government approval for these former generals and colonels. Now it's one of the most sacred things in our society is the First Amendment, which really sanctifies the separation of press and state. But here's what the head of CNN News said on the air. He said, look, I went to the Pentagon several times before the war and I met with important people there. And I said, here are the generals we're thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war. We got a big thumbs up on all of them. That was important, unquote. After no weapons were found, it was interesting to see what these experts were saying as their excuse. And I have some of these quotes in the book. One of the regulars on TV was a former CIA official, Ken Pollack. He's with the Brookings Institution. He went on show after show pushing relentlessly for an invasion of Iraq. He said that not only was Saddam a threat to the region, he went on Oprah's program, the huge viewership, and said that Saddam could attack us in our own homeland Here in the 48 states with weapons of mass destruction. And afterwards he was asked, how did you get it so wrong? And he said his comment is, that was not me making that claim, that was me parroting the claims of the so called experts, unquote. But he was introduced on show after show as the expert and that's the role he played. Has Pollack suffered any consequences for pushing us into a war? No. He's quoted regularly in the New York Times today on how we can't withdraw any troops from Iraq. In other words, the more off you are factually, the more on you are on the air. In the mainstream media during the run up to the war, there were some journalists that tried hard to get these questions, tough questions asked and Answered at msnbc, I was a pundit, but I also was a senior producer. And there's two chapters in the book about this. I was the senior producer on primetime Phil Donahue show. And remember what I said? We were working hard to put dissenting views on. We worked hard to get Scott Ritter on the air. But remember what I said about the strict corporate hierarchies in these media outlets? In the last months of Donahue, we were ordered by top management. Every time we booked one guest who was anti war, we had to book two guests that were pro war. If we booked two guests on the left, we were ordered to book three on the right. At one meeting, a producer said she was thinking about booking Michael Moore, and she was told that for balance, she would need three right wingers. Not weight. Balance. Political balance. I privately thought about proposing Noam Chomsky as a guest, but our stage couldn't accommodate the 38 right wingers we would have needed. Now, weeks before the invasion, I made my final appearance on msnbc. I describe it in the book. I was there to debate Frank Gaffney. Gaffney is a neocon. He was in Reagan's Defense Department. He'd convinced someone at MSNBC to put him on the air to give yet one more reason why we had to invade Iraq and invade fast. And the reason was that not only was Saddam Hussein, according to Gaffney, behind 9 11, but that Iraq was somehow behind Tim McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. I swear to God. Now, it wasn't my proudest moment as a TV pundit when I called his claims garbage and I said on the air that he was in need of psychiatric care. I do believe he is in need of psychiatric care. It wasn't like, you know, the drama that you see on tv, the overhype. Now, no matter what, as I say, that was my last appearance on cable news as a pundit. But no matter what the Frank Gaffneys say, no matter what the Ann Coulter say, no matter what the Reverend Jerry Falwell say, no matter how inaccurate or outlandish their comments, these people live on tv. They have virtually no meaningful existence apart from television. And as I say, the more wrong you are factually, the more on the air you are. And it's what I was getting at when I mentioned the kakistocracy that operates in media, the opposite of a meritocracy. Many media voices who were totally wrong about Iraq and pushing us to war are now using their platforms to push for a confrontation with Iran. How many People have watched the CNN Headline News primetime show hosted by Glenn Beck. I'm glad it's not a huge crowd here. Glenn Beck was one of these talk radio screamers. Every night on TV he's pushing for confrontation with Iran. He knows nothing about foreign policy. He knows about as much about foreign policy as Jeff Cohen knows about search engines, but he's on the air. I mean, Google would never hire Jeff Cohen to develop software for search engines, but this guy's on TV every night blowing smoke at Iran. During the Iraq time, he was a Clear Channel. You know, Clear Channel owns more than 1200 radio stations. He was a clear channel talk radio screamer. He was on the air wishing for the violent death of Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Wishing for the violent death, he fantasizing about strangling Michael Moore to death. He said on the air that Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, is the big prostitute. And having said all of those things, CNN hires Glenn Beck and gives him a primetime show. No one hired Scott Ritter, who was proven right by the events in Iraq. No one hires Amy Goodman from Democracy now for a primetime show, but they hire the Glenn beck's. In late 2002 on the Donahue show, when we would talk about booking Scott Ritter, almost like clockwork, as a guest on Donahue, almost like Clockwork, we would hear this smear. Oh, we hear that he's secretly, he's a recipient of COVID funds from Saddam Hussein. And you know, I'd say, where is this coming from? Give me some documentation. It was a false smear aimed at getting a very articulate critic, a former Marine, a weapons expert, off of the air. And the irony for me is I learned a couple years later that one of the right wingers I would debate regularly on MSNBC and before that at Fox, one of those right wing pundits was in fact receiving covert government funds. The COVID government funder was the Bush administration. I used to debate Armstrong Williams, who received a quarter million dollars to promote the no Child Left behind program for Bush's Department of Education. I don't think after hearing me talk for 15 minutes, you have any mystery why I wasn't included in that no Pundit Left behind program of the Bush administration. Now, dissenting voices didn't just have trouble getting heard on cable news, they had trouble getting heard on the big broadcast outlets. Fair, the media watch group I started did a study of the four biggest newscasts. There's some people that get almost all of their news and international and national news from these broadcasts. Cbs, NBC, abc, and pbs, so called public TV and FAIR did a study who got to speak about Iraq on those shows in the crucial two week period, one week before Colin Powell's bellicose speech to the United nations in February 03, and one week after a speech that was full of inaccuracies, full of exaggerations in media all over the world, these exaggerations were exposed within hours in our media. 393 people were interviewed on these big news shows. Only three of them were anti war advocates. You could watch TV news and the biggest shows and not have a clue that there was something wrong with Colin Powell's speech. That the percentage of people that were anti invading Iraq was less than 1%. When you've been in the media as long as me, you're always looking for silver linings. So the only silver lining I could find with that study was, well, at least there was more debate than they had on Soviet TV before the Soviet Union went and invaded Afghanistan and that country's disastrous invasion. Now, when Donaghy was terminated on the eve of the Iraq War, it was the most watched program on msnbc. So when I hear about Keith Olbermann and how he's untouchable because he's the only guy who hosts a show on cable news where he really goes after the President. He's untouchable because of his ratings. We had the biggest ratings when we were canceled three weeks before the war. And then a memo leaked out. Thank God for whistleblowers. An internal NBC memo that described why we were being muzzled. And it said that Donohue represents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. I'm quoting from the memo. He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti war, anti Bush, and skeptical of the administration's motives. And the memo goes on to describe NBC's nightmare scenario where Donahue becomes, quote, a home for the liberal anti war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity. Unquote. What I saw inside the main. And what was NBC's solution? Fire Donohue, Fire Jeff Cohen. Pick up the flag. When journalists are so busy waving flags and cheering on invasions, they don't have the energy to do their jobs, which is to ask tough questions before our young men and women are sent overseas to kill or be killed. As Donahue was being terminated as a difficult public face for NBC, they were hiring the talk radio bigot, Michael Savage. How many people have ever heard Savage's show? Not a lot of you. Savage is a guy who goes on the air, and he says women should have been denied the right to vote. He says that Latinos breed like rabbits. He called for anti war leaders to be arrested in the advent of an invasion of Iraq. He called the Million Moms March for gun control, the Million Dykes March. So they fired Donahue and hire Savage. To me, it says, all you need to know about the myth of the liberal media. More than dozens of books could tell you. The irony for me is working at MSNBC during that period, right before I was terminated, they hire Savage, and then five days later, everyone at MSNBC gets a memo from the president of the company saying that we have to come to mandatory diversity workshops. And I politely declined to attend on the basis that I thought I could learn their true feelings about diversity by just listening to their last hire talk about dykes and ghetto slime, which is what he does week after week on the air. I want to finish because I want to give you guys a chance to talk and question, but I want to finish with the good news in the mainstream media, because the book is really an optimistic book, and I'm really optimistic about the future. I'm optimistic that while the corporate media is worse than it's ever been, that the independent media are absolutely booming and it's not a disconnect. Those two events are intimately related. That as corporate media gets more ridiculous, with Anna Nicole Smith, I mean, I guess the virtue of Anna Nicole Smith coverage, as you say, as I've told you, I'm always looking for silver linings. At least it got rid of the story of the astronaut love triangle and the woman who drove 900 miles wearing the diaper. I mean, I almost preferred Anna Nicole Smith, but, I mean, you know, as the corporate media are sinking, independent media are booming. These independent blogs like Daily Coase and Tom Tomorrow, the great cartoonist, he's got this modernworld.com and Atrios, millions of people are looking at these blogs. Independent websites like Common Dreams.org and Alternet.org are booming. Community radio is booming. Democracy now, hosted by Amy Goodman, is booming. You know, the joke at the Nation magazine, which is also booming, is George Bush may be horrible for the country, but he's been great for the Nation, meaning their magazine. And what they're talking about isn't George Bush's extremist policy so much booming, the circulation of the nation. It's George Bush's extremist policies and. And the role that the mainstream media have played in enabling those policies. And of course, the Internet has been the key to the growth of independent media. How many people have seen any of Robert Greenwald's movies? He did Outfoxed. He distributes his movies through the Internet in grassroots groups that have big Internet followings. He finances his movies. If you're a member of Move on, you're going to get a three minute movie today from Greenwald about how Fox News has been covering Barack Obama. Three minute mini video, viral video. And the importance is that right wing demagogues can dominate talk TV and talk radio, and they dominate it today. Oberman's one of the few exceptions. And they do that because demagoguery is really almost an intimate part of a medium where the few talk to the many, where Limbaugh talks to the many and the many call him and say, ditto rush or Bill O'Reilly talks to the many. Never has to document anything. There's never a legitimate debate. But the ethic of the Internet, and especially the ethic of bloggers, is if you attack someone, you link to what it is you're attacking, and then they can attack you back. And anyone who comes to that debate, it's a small d democratic ethic in the Internet, anyone can then join that debate. And in a debate that's real, instead of the few talking to the many. But in the Internet, where it's many talking to the many, it really foments democratic discourse. And it's an involving medium. And those who can debate and justify their positions will be heard. And it's truly a thrilling thing. The media reform movement is something else that's booming and it's very encouraging. I attended last month in Memphis the National Media Reform Conference put on by Free press. There were 3,700 media activists there. This is the movement that in 2003 used the Internet to block the FCC's rules changes that would have allowed the media titans, the half dozen of them, the clear channels, the Murdochs, that media titans would be allowed to get even more Titanic. And it's also that movement that's fighting hard today to preserve the Internet from the clutches of big phone and big cable companies. So 20 years ago, when I started Fair and I lived in Venice, California, when I started it, we had a slogan that sounded a little quixotic, but, you know, given all these great things happening in independent media, it's not that quixotic anymore. Our slogan was don't take the mainstream media lying down. And I think a lot of people are really getting active about their media choices. And thankfully, they're creating their own media, which is even better. I'll stop now and open it up for questions and comments.

So, folks, I've got. Just for the folks in Mountain View, I've got a hand mic for the questions here. We'll take a couple questions here and then if anyone in Mountain View has questions and I'll give you guys a chance. Any questions? Are there any stations at all that you would recommend watching?

Are there any stations that I recommend watching? I recommend every night, Monday through Thursday night, that you watch the Daily show and the Colbert Report. And I mean that for news in other countries, you can watch mainstream news on tv, public tv, which are often the biggest channels, especially in northern Europe. And you'll see them not in a comedic sense, but often making fun of the powers that be and pointing out that here's what the prime minister said today, but here's what he said last week. And the only way you get that is by watching those two shows in American tv. So there's really nowhere you can go unless you have satellite.

BBC.

BBC? Oh, yeah, I encourage people. I mean, BBC, by the way, was booming in the run up to the Iraq war, as people knew they couldn't trust the jingoism and the drum beating for war in American TV networks. BBC isn't great, but it was a real alternative to what we had. I just, I think the comedy channel is key. And then if you have satellite, there's something called Link tv. How many people have ever seen that channel? It's on both satellite systems, Direct and Dish, and then on Dish they have something that's more activist. It's a great channel called Free Speech tv. Those are your alternatives.

On that subject. What about npr?

I feel that they generally tend to be more balanced than most other news.

Stations, but I was pretty disappointed with their Iraq war coverage also.

It's a great question. NPR is a little bit more balanced than the normal coverage, but it was very disappointing in the run up to the war. Year by year, it becomes increasingly disappointing. We don't have truly public broadcasting like every other advanced industrial country does. There's books written about why our system failed. I mean, in our system you have big corporations that come in and determine what shows get on the air and what don't. When you and I donate $100 to public radio or public TV, it goes to paying the staff and keeping the electricity on. But when the corporations come into the public system, they say, well, I like this business show, or I like this show about stocks, or I like this show hosted by the right winger Bill Buckley, or the right winger John McLaughlin and their millions of dollars decide what shows go on and what don't, especially on PBS and. And a little bit on npr. If we had a true public broadcasting system, it would have completely insulated funds that the politicians could not turn on and off every year or two. And they wouldn't allow corporate money. There's enough corporate media and corporate sponsorship of the other shows. And there's now, again, because of the strength of the media reform movement, because there's been a change in Congress, there now is going to be a fight to try to create something new in our country, genuine public media, genuine public broadcasting, where there's sufficient funds so the best journalists in society can work for public broadcasting, say what they want, and not worry that the politicians will turn off the money because there'll be permanent insulated funding. Bill Moyers is one of the real heroes of public broadcasting. He's in a sense, been marginalized year by year from public tv. But he describes how the system was almost stillborn. It was killed in infancy when they had a great plan for setting up public tv. It went to the White House. Johnson was explaining it at a White House meeting to one of these Southern Democrats who then really ran Congress. And the Southern Democrat is at the meeting, says, wait a second, you mean we're not going to be able to appropriate the money? Forget it. And they change the plan right at the beginning, and the system has gone. I mean, if you watch Fox News at night, you'll see the people that are allegedly giving you independent reporting on NPR during the day. Marla Liasson, Juan Williams. I mean, public TV and public radio has become a joke. They call NPR National Pentagon Radio. They just did not do the kind of independent reporting saying, where is the evidence why Iraq is such an imminent threat? It just didn't happen, and it tends to get worse every year. That's why we need to reconstitute public broadcasting on a new footing.

So, Mountain View, I'll give you guys a chance to ask a question. Anyone with a question there? Hi.

I was living in Northern Europe and I was able to watch CNN International Religion, and it was actually fairly balanced. And since moving to the United States, I've been quite disappointed that I can't seem to find it anywhere with the explosion of digital channels and the like. Do you see this being allowed to be broadcast to the American people?

Yeah, that's a great question. Anyone who's watched CNN overseas and then watches CNN that is sort of dumbed down, made more nationalistic, more chauvinistic more jingoistic for American consumers, has noticed the difference. And I mean, I remember I was in Brazil at an international conference heavily about media and watching CNN and saying, God, this is truly amazing. And it just took me a half hour to realize that they didn't allow those stories to be seen in a US Audience. So yeah, on digital cable you can see some of these programs, but not a lot. I've been up in channel 1/ hundreds and 2/ hundreds on my time Warner digital cable system and it's hard to get CNN International and it is vastly different. And it's telling that the US Feels the US CNN who go to the Pentagon to get prior government approval of their on air experts feels the need to give us something that's just. It's always more jingoistic than what they get overseas. I mean, the Internet and other media have brought. The world has shrunk the world. We're tinier and tinier. But you just don't get that sense if you watch US Media, you don't get that sense it's us against them.

I have a question as well.

What's your opinion on Al Jazeera? English, the same vein as CNN International? Yeah. Again, I've seen a little bit of Al Jazeera. You can go on the website and get Al Jazeera in English. To me it's just a case study. And you know, there may be hundreds and hundreds of channels, but if there's these half a dozen corporations that are the gatekeepers, it really matters what those half a dozen corporations decide. And they've decided that they're not going to let us, even on digital cable, have access to Al Jazeera in English. Al Jazeera is one of the most maligned news operations in the world. The people that are at the leadership in Al Jazeera, many of them came from the BBC, Al Jazeera in English. The two main figures. One is Dave Marish who spent years at abc and he was a cut above the rest of the people at abc. And then there's a woman who came from BBC, but the Time Warners who control cable, Comcast, these systems, they just won't put Al Jazeera as one of the hundreds of channels that they let the American people have access to. In the book, I describe an effort that originated in Toronto. It grew out of the invasion of Iraq by journalists at the cbc. And they came and they met people like us who were sort of refugees from television in our own country. And they said, let's put together the first global independent network funded, like MoveOn and the Dean Campaign by $50 and $100 donations from thousands of people across the globe. And so that project is moving forward. It's called the Real News, or you can find it on the web. Independent World Television. That's moving forward. But we will have this hurdle. Will Comcast, will Time Warner allow us on their systems? Even as these systems have hundreds of channels, will they allow any competition to cnn, MSNBC and Fox News? Questions over here.

So you've brought up small Internet media outlets as a growing alternative to the mainstream media. But these outlets tend to have reputation problems regarding reliability and accuracy. How can these be fixed?

Yeah, in terms of accuracy and credibility with some of these partisan bloggers. That's what you're thinking about, right?

Well, specifically, I follow science a lot more than politics.

I see.

And one of the things that recently swept all these science outlets was a, was a supposed conspiracy to suppress research into dichloralamine as a cancer treatment. And eventually it turned out that if you follow these back, it all was like a game of telephone to this one researcher who had some of his grants denied and that was picked up from this one place to another place to another place to another place.

Yeah, it's a problem.

And no one was actually going to any cancer researchers. And the few blogs that actually did go to their local universities and asked a cancer researcher about it was told that this was all nonsense, but it just swept the thing for like, how.

Long Is this a big mess? Yeah, I think this is a good question. I guess I have faith that because it's many to many communication and because there's an ethic that if you talk about something, you have to link to it that I mean, I found that independent bloggers in the political world within sometimes 10 or 8 hours have uncovered something that the mainstream media, in unison, completely got wrong. And a lot of times it's a collective effort where one blogger will get something on the air very fast, others will work using search engines and they'll piece together what really happened and they get it out fast. I mean, my faith is I was at MSNBC where it's this top down thing where you're told who can be on the air and in what quantities and it's just so different. Clearly you have to worry on the Internet with partisanship and people grinding their ideological axes. But I have confidence that because it is a full debate and fully small d democratic medium, that over time the truth will win out. And I think that's been the case. And the Other thing about bloggers is they will often tell you what their bias is from the beginning. They don't tell you that at msnbc. They don't tell you that at cnn. They certainly don't tell you that at Fox News, where every hour they're saying fair and balanced. But the important thing about bloggers is they will often let you know, here's where my bias is. I have a lot of faith that in the last few years, things have really turned around because of the Internet and because so many people are creating their own media. I have a question here.

Go ahead, go ahead.

One thing that comes to mind here at Google is what can we do to help? In particular, I'm actually an engineer on the blogger team. What kind of tools could Google provide to help people create their own? I wish I was more of a techno geek. Sorry, people. But I mean, it just. It strikes me that in the goo, you know, I talked with your boss about. So I don't know how far along there are things that you guys could be doing in making sure that opposing points of view are heard and people that are talked about in news stories are heard. I think, I mean, to many of us, Google and the Internet, it's just a. It's almost equalized the footing. I mean, I remember when fair, when we were trying to compete, we knew that mainstream media were getting many things factually wrong about international affairs. This is before Google. And the only way you could compete factually with mainstream media and correct them is if you had Nexus, which for a nonprofit group like ours was hugely expensive. And when we got Nexus, we could begin to compete. I mean, I think just keep developing Google because that's what everyone is using to be able to wage a factual, a fight over facts with the mainstream. And I guess I must say that the advance in technology has helped us in the margins among the millions of active consumers. What it hasn't helped us with is that other problem I described in 20 minutes, which is the half a dozen media conglomerates that are sitting on the windpipe of the First Amendment as it applies to millions of people who still get most of their news from television and radio. So what would I encourage Google to do to compete with them? Buy your own media. I would love it if Google started its own TV network. I would love it if Google bought one of these failing newspapers as a way of keeping some journalists on staff who could generate content that could then go into the Internet. I mean, the thing about bloggers is, and it's not necessarily a cliche Since I know a lot of these bloggers about working in your pajamas and, you know, never leaving your home, a lot of them are like that. But to dig up a lot of stories you have to get out. And journalists need to be paid well to actually do first hand reporting, original reporting, and for that kind of thing. I would love it if corporations that had a social conscience tried to compete with the Rupert Murdochs and the General Electrics and the Time Warners that have demonstrated absolutely no social conscience and a social conscience that if anything, shrinks over time.

So question I have. You know, I think that anyone in this room will agree that over time will become easier for us to have more diverse perspectives and have other options. But I guess my. So and it's annoying that it's not happening faster, but my question is more on the other side. So, you know, it's one thing if the main news networks get things wrong or are sort of mouthpieces of politicians and et cetera, but a lot of what they do is responding to what their audience wants. And so my question for you is, is it, you know, while I'm not interested in Anna Nicole Smith nor the astronaut thing, a lot of Americans are, right?

That's a great question. Let me get to it because I've been debating TV news executives about this issue for decades. What I learned when I was on the inside. By the way, if you work in television, it's all about visuals. You know, what's your video? What video do you have? I mean, there are so many stories over the years that I've gone to television with visuals that just will never get on the air because of the content. What I think we have to understand is that if half of the news, which are blockbuster stories, often about the misdeeds of these corporations that have so much power over the media, if those cannot be told because of political censorship, the only thing you have that can get ratings is Anna Nicole Smith. For example, I live right along the Hudson river in Woodstock, New York. The Hudson river, the mighty Hudson was destroyed, contaminated for years by General Electric. It's a story that's a blockbuster story for television. Not only did they contaminate the river, General Electric then used its political power in Albany, New York, the State Capitol and Washington to stall a cleanup that has never happened to this day. You still have to throw the fish back. This contamination started in the 60s and 70s. That's a blockbuster story. It's got what we call the three V's that TV news executives used to lecture me. Jeff, we need the visuals. We need the victims and we need the villain. Well, they've got the visuals because people are still throwing the fish back. They've got the victims because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of, of small business operators, fisheries, mom and papa are gone. Now everyone knows it wiped out the river community and we have the villain. Who's the villain? General Electric, which owns a chunk of the media and is a big advertiser in the rest of the media. So everyone in TV news knows that's a non starter. ABC News is famous for its hidden cameras and sometimes they do actually some good journalism. A lot of times it's tabloid, but sometimes it's good. ABC News knows if you're a producer there, you know that the last thing that will help your career is if you go into say a sweatshop in Honduras or Haiti where 14 year old girls are working 14 hour days producing products that go into the Disney stores. That's not going to help your career. It'll be great visuals, you will have great victims. The problem is who's the villain. So in my what I've learned is there are so many who are the profiteers from war, General Electric, who are the profiteers from our sweatshop system. In some of these developing countries it's often Disney, it's Time Warner who's the beneficiary of some of these trade policies. So when you look at the big blockbuster stories that could be told in really engaging ways, I've learned that the people who run the media know that, wow, I'm not worried about this story because it won't get ratings. I'm worried about this story because perhaps too many people will see it. So my point is you have half of the point right. There are millions of people that will watch Anna Nicole Smith and they'll watch it round the clock. But if they were, there's ways of getting ratings the other way that are blocked, I believe by political censorship. At the top there are journalists that want to do these stories. At cbs there's this famous woman, Roberta Baskin, who talked about the sweatshops in Vietnam behind Nike and really did some amazing reporting and then was told she shouldn't do anymore. Why? Because Nike with CBS was the sponsor of the Olympics and yet even CBS News guys wearing the Nike swoosh, which is outrageous on their parkas as they're covering the Olympics, there's that corporate bottleneck at the top that blocks a lot of news stories that would get huge ratings. So what does that leave you? The tabloid. You'll Never offend anyone by covering Britney Spears haircut or her lack of panties. Who's that going to offend? What sponsor's going to run away from that? So there are certain stories that are harmless to cover and they're cheap to cover. When you have Anna Nicole Smith, you just bring up the same lawyers who were there for the O.J. simpson case. They were there for the Lewinsky case. They'll come on the air for free. You don't have to pay them. They'll pontificate for hours on end again. I write a lot about it in here because it's almost self parody. I was on Fox News once on their media criticism show and this is during Gary Condit. Does anyone remember that story? All they discussed for four months up till 911 was Gary Condit's sex life. He had nothing to do with the woman disappearing. We knew that from day one. And every day I would go out, every week I would go on Fox News say, this is outrageous. There are important stories the American people need and all we're doing is exploiting this guy's sex life for our ratings. And you know, they bring me out for five minutes and then they do four more hours of coverage of Gary Condit's sex life. But I remember being on the air once and I said, I don't know. They're bringing all these experts back from O.J. simpson case and the Lewinsky case. I'm not going to be happy until Tonya Harding. How many people remember her until they bring Tonya Harding to talk about Gary Condit? I mention it in the book because about a week later I'm watching Larry King, swear to God, and he interviews Tonya Harding about what advice she would give Gary Condit. So it's like beyond parody when the Anna Nicole things, you know. My friend arianna Huffington runs thehuffingtonpost.com and it just started for one hour. I knew she was in Washington covering the Libby trial, so I sent her and a few friends an email. Breaking NewsNM Anna Nicole Smith dead. That part of it was true. Then I started wandering. My next bullet was Gary Condit being accused again. John Mark Carr confesses again. Everything was more ridiculous. Astronaut love triangle may be linked. And then I wrote Dominic Dunn and Officer Furman rushing to the scene. Now Ariana emails me back BlackBerry and says, can we post this? I said, sure, go ahead. No sooner had she posted it than I heard Furman and Dominic Dunn on CNN in live interviews. What was their opinion? It's the same people saying the Same thing. It's completely. It's not journalism, but it's cheap to produce, won't ever offend anyone in power. It won't get Bush investigating you. It won't get a corporation to leave and threaten to take away their advertising. Those stories are win wins from a perspective of these irresponsible corporations. So I think you got it. It's half right. It's partly demand, but it's also supply.

So I think we have time for just one more quick question. We can fit that in. Anyone with a quick question? Maybe not. I'm having questions.

Did you have a question?

Yeah.

I'm sitting here.

I'm thinking how much of the perspective that you have today is a function of like the last 20 years, maybe since the Reagan administration. And if we looked farther back in history in the 1950s and 1940s, would we find the same problems in the media then as we do today?

That's a great question. I've read all the history of broadcasting books and the history of the media books. We've always had a problem where quirky media owners determined what happened. You know about Annenberg and the Philadelphia dailies. He wouldn't allow Ralph Nader's name to be mentioned in his newspapers. And we know about William Randolph Hearst and the movie Citizen Kane. Historically, you've always had quirky owners who made demands and pushed reporters to cover this and don't cover that. The difference is that in the old days, like a city of New York had 12 to 15 dailies. So there were owners that had various clerks, but they were often competing clerks, and they'd often break out into what were called newspaper wars where this newspaper would cover all of the skeletons in the closet of that owner. And, you know, it was because there was so much the ease of entry back then. It was business people, but it was often business people that had something to say wherever they were on the spectrum. Today, it's not people who care about informing the public that own the media. Today it's five entertainment conglomerates and General Electric, a military contractor. And I don't really think that even with the quirks of the owners that used to dominate media, there was at least a commitment to information and journalism. The good news again, what's opened everything up is the Internet, because that's a different kind of medium communication than we ever had going back beyond Citizen Kane. But remember, I mean, in Jacksonian democracy, there's books about every period of media history. Jacksonian democracy, it was unheard of. The amount of people that had Their points of view heard in little newspapers. And what did our country do to make sure that our government do? Subsidized the post office, made sure the telegraph was common carrier. You know, there were all sorts of policy things that were implemented by the government to ferment multiplicity of viewpoints. And what happened in the media is that began to change 50, 60 years ago, and especially since Reagan, the corporations took control of the regulation. They own, the FCC. Up until the insurrection of 2003 against the FCC rules, it was the most corrupt policy making, just year by year taking more power and putting it in the hands of the few corporations. So the good news is now at least we can fight media policy because we can mobilize on the Internet to tell people what's happening. You know, when they were trying to give the game away, give the store away in 2003, and the head of the FCC was Michael Powell, Colin Powell's son, and they're trying to make these whales even fatter. And the word gets out through MoveOn and Fair.org, which is the group I started, that these same media companies that have pushed us into this war are now going to get even more stations. And millions of people sent emails to the FCC and locked up their computers. On one day, there were so many thousands of people calling Capitol Hill complaining that the phone systems were knocked down again. That kind of ability to mobilize has really changed the terms of some of these debates. The savetheinternet.com which is where the nonprofits are going to try to save the Internet and net neutrality. That's a movement we couldn't have dreamt of in its scope on any other media policy issue years earlier because we didn't have the Internet to mobilize. But yeah, there's some great books, by the way, on media history. The one interesting thing is from the beginning, and you look at the founding fathers, before the country was formed, they always were thinking, what kind of policy can we implement that will add to diversity of voices? And that system really broke down. Started breaking down in the 50s, but really broke down from the beginning of Reagan, continued through Clinton. The worst media concentration in history happened under Clinton Gore with the telecommunications reform bill of 1996. That created clear Channel, that created Sinclair Broadcasting. Clear channel had about 50 radio stations within a year or two, and it was predictable. And Clinton Gore knew it. They had 1,200 radio stations.

So on that happy note, I'd like to thank you again, John, thank you for coming out. And everybody give applause for taping these competitions.