Most people think of the news media differently than the participants in it think of themselves. While most people think that the job of newspapers, news radio stations and television newscasts is to report on events, those on the other end of the wire, the printing press and the cable, think that their job is not to report, but to advocate.
The high cost of producing a widely read newspaper, a television station or a radio station, has traditionally limited ownership and injected the owner’s biases into the outlet. But the rise of a professional media class in America has made the owner’s views almost redundant, in the same way that unions have ensured that every business they work for will be used to serve the interests of the Democratic party. While some reporters may still report, overwhelmingly the members of the professional media class do not report, they advocate.
That is why the rise of the internet has only accelerated media bias, as advocacy journalists are less worried about owners and working for a single outlet, and instead focus on maintaining political solidarity with their professional colleagues. A journalist no longer thinks in terms of working for the same newspaper for 20 or 30 years. He knows that by then there probably won’t even be any newspapers. A month from now he’ll be in a different outlet. Two months from that, he might be printed in three others, one of them a media blog. Three months from now he may be doing video blogs for Time Magazine. The unstable nature of the market means that the journalist is less concerned with the owners, and much more with his professional standing with the colleagues who will hire him or recommend him for jobs. And today professional standing means political reliability, just as it did in the Soviet Union.
Jornolist is only one of the more public revelations about that private political solidarity, which these days determines the content of the news we are allowed to read. That boys and girls media club serves as an unofficial union in an unstable marketplace that is bounded not by accomplishment or educational credentials, but by pulling together for a common political cause. Whether it was plotting to bring down Bush or raise up Obama, to push nationalization of health care or internationalization of national security– that unofficial fraternity and sorority of advocacy journalists has turned media bias into their reason for being. They have turned into the definition of what a journalist should be.
The difference between a reporter and an advocate, is that the former reports on events, while the latter uses events as props in his message. Where a reporter tries to learn what happened, the advocate tries to understand how he can use that event in his narrative. The advocate has less in common with the reporter, than he does with an ad executive.
PR Week publishes monthly editions in addition to its other news services and the July issue is devoted to “The most powerful people in PR.” All industries have their major players, so there is nothing surprising that public relations would also have its heavy hitters, but there are some interesting insights to be gleaned from the list of the twenty-five chosen.
I have plied the magic arts and crafts of public relations since the 1970s when I gave up the notion of ever making a decent living as a journalist. Journalism offers tons of ego satisfaction, but the pay was bad back then and, by comparison with other professions, not much better today.
The major players are, not surprisingly, the ones in charge of projecting and protecting a corporate “image”, otherwise known as perception. Number one on the list is Katie Cotton, the VP of worldwide corporate communications for Apple. She is teamed with Steve Jobs its cofounder and CEO because, together, they are the dynamic due of PR for a company that is testimony to American innovation and enterprise. It’s a very good choice.
Corporate PR folk on the list include Leslie Dach, VP for Wal-Mart; Jon Iwata, VP for IBM; Ed Skyler, Executive VP for Citigroup; Sally Susman, Senior VP for Pfizer; Chris Hassell fpr Procter & Gamble; Gary Sheffer, VP for GE; Bill Margaritis, VP for FedEx; Rachel Whetstone, VP for Google, Julie Hamp, Senior VP for PepsiCo; and Teri Everett, SVP of News Corporation.
One thing should particularly be obvious and which continues throughout the list is the role of women at very high levels, even if men continue to dominate these positions. Of particular interest is the inclusion of Stephanie Cutter among the “most powerful” as an Assistant to the President for Special Projects. That is president as in President of the United States of America. While Robert Gibbs is in the spotlight as Obama’s spokesperson, Cutter played an essential role in his campaign and now in his administration.
Of the top twenty-five named, nine were women. That’s progress.
Among the other “power principals”, there are the expected CEOs of major agencies such as Richard Edelman of Edelman; Harris Diamond, CEO of Shandwick Worldwide; Mark Penn, CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Paul Taaffe, CEO of Hill & Knowlton; and Margery Kraus, CEO of APCO Worldwide. It is worth noting that these public relations firms operate on a global basis.
In a recent public television documentary on George P. Schultz who served in many top posts, including Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan, he noted that while people think cabinet members have a lot of power, their primary power is the ability to persuade people to support their policies. I cite this because the U.S. government employs a small army of “communications” people whose job is to marshal support. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. probably has more PR agencies per square mile than any other city in the nation.
I attended the first two International Climate Change Conferences when they were held in New York City, but a change of venue to the hometown of The Heartland Institute, Chicago, was enough to discourage someone like myself who no longer enjoys travel of any kind for any reason.
The most recent Heartland conference was held May 16-18 and drew over 800 people from nearly thirty nations. I “attended” electronically, watching the proceedings that were broadcast by Pajamas Media via the Internet.
My friend, Joseph Bast, is the founder The Heartland Institute and, in a recent issue of The Heartlander, he wrote a revealing and insightful article, “There’s Nothing Mainstream About Old Media”, that says much about the state of journalism in America today.
“Heartland’s first international conference on Climate Change generated 124 print articles with a total circulation of nine million readers. It was covered by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, three of the four television networks, and dozens of publications outside the U.S.”
Though Bast did not say so, I can tell you that the bulk of the coverage was an effort to disparage the conference’s proceedings, devoted to debunking the global warming hoax.
The Fourth conference in May featured world-famous physicists from Russia and Israel, and the U.S..; two astronauts including one who walked on the moon…” Also addressing the attendees were the two men who exposed the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “hockey stick” fraud in which a deliberately fraudulent graph conveyed the notion of a rapidly warming planet.
The blogger who broke the Climategate story in November 2009 that revealed how IPCC “scientists” had deliberately distorted their “research” to further the global warming hoax was there along with eighty elected officials, and many others who have steadfastly questioned global warming claims, some for decades, until it finally began to die of its own dead weight.
Guess how many from the “mainstream media” covered the Fourth Conference? None!
This was and is literally a conspiracy of silence and, as Bast points out, “It is unethical for a reporter to refuse to report that so many prominent scientists and policy experts believe the fear of global warming is overblown. It is unethical to boycott an important event with major public policy importance.”
Keep in mind that the Obama administration’s desperate effort to push through Cap-and-Trade legislation, a huge tax on all energy use, is entirely based on global warming and the lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are “causing” it.
There have been many studies by journalism research centers that have long since established the liberal allegiance of the vast bulk of journalists working in the so-called mainstream media today, newspapers and news magazines, radio and television news outlets.
“This isn’t journalism,” wrote Bast. “It’s advocacy.” And it is advocacy of a global fraud called global warming. It is the deliberate deception of millions of Americans and others around the world to further the global warming fraud.
It is not too incredible to imagine that within a century, German, the language of Goethe, Schiller and Mann, may become a dead language. That is already the almost certain fate of the Swedish and Norwegian languages. French, Spanish and English will survive as the pidgin languages of distant colonies, but in their own capital cities, these languages are swiftly becoming transformed into dialects, crossbred with Middle Eastern and African intonations and jargon to become increasingly alien to their own origins.
In hardly two generations we have moved from a world dominated by Europe, to one in which the peoples that not too long ago formed its ruling civilization may become extinct. The nations of Europe are caught between the economic unsustainability of socialism and the political fortunes of its overlords, who have built entire economic castles of cards on government entitlements and guest workers. The European Union has been proven to be unworkable, even as an authoritarian organization. It may survive, but like all overly enthusiastic parasites, its survival would only serve to quicken its host’s doom.
The One-Worldism that once so animated European socialists is conceptually dead. The European Union is its last gasp, and the international organizations erected in desperate fits of optimism from the UN on down, have become a sham of a farce, unfit to do anything but promote the agendas of the most brutal and power hungry regimes. It was inevitable that European intellectuals, living in a cluster of nations with a long history of internal warfare, would try to embrace post-nationalism as the solution. But the hole in their One Worldism was the assumption that the rest of the world would be happy to follow suit, tossing national identities, religious ideals and all the usual dreams that come with them overboard, in order to be part of one big happy globe. That of course was not the case.
Nationalism did not doom Europe, post-nationalism did. WW2 would not have been the continent killer that it became, had Hitler and Mussolini not confronted an England and France who were no longer too sure about this fighting thing. It was not an excess of German nationalism that was the problem, but an excess of English pacifism, the cynical post-war poses which insisted that nothing was worth fighting for, and politicians who mirrored that horror of war by allowing Nazism and Communism to get away with murder, over and over again. Yet after WW2, the very same “thinkers” who had agitated against doing anything about Hitler, distributed the blame for the war equally to both sides, as if the SS and the SAS were moral equals.
If post-WW1 rejected of nationalism and embrace of anti-war cliches helped Hitler on his course, in the post-WW2 period they helped the USSR, and in the post-Cold War period, Islam. In each case, the aggressors who had not left behind an identity based will to power were rewarded with a compliant Europe.
The battle to replace Charlie Crist as Florida’s governor is heating up in the GOP primary.
Earlier this week, the Bill McCollum campaign released a new TV ad with Jeb Bush, the popular former governor, urging conservatives to back McCollum.
Former healthcare executive Rick Scott is waging a multimillion-dollar TV ad effort to wrest the GOP nomination from McCollum, the state’s attorney general.
On Saturday, McCollum’s campaign released a memo sharply criticizing Scott. It cited press reports from the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, which slammed Scott for his role running one of the nation’s largest hospital companies.
The newspaper reported: “It was and still is the biggest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history and ended with the hospital giant Columbia/HCA paying a record $1.7 billion in fines, penalties and damages. Now the guy who ran the company at the time wants a new job: Florida’s governor.”
The McCollum release follows:
Today, McCollum for Governor Campaign Manager Matt Williams issued the following statement on Rick Scott’s misleading attacks on Attorney General Bill McCollum regarding immigration:
“It’s sad but unsurprising that Rick Scott is so desperate to avoid questions about his own role in orchestrating the largest Medicare fraud scheme in American history that he is misleading Florida voters about Bill McCollum’s record on cracking down on illegal immigration.
“Rick Scott shamelessly distorts Attorney General McCollum’s record on cracking down on illegal immigration and opposing amnesty. This is just another case of fraud by a man whose company was forced to pay a record $1.7 billion in fines for defrauding taxpayers, before being forced out by his own board.
“We challenge Rick Scott to do what he has yet to do in more than a month of running millions in television ads – come before the press to clear his name. He won’t because he can’t. He’s a fraud.
“In August, Florida voters will have a clear choice between Bill McCollum, a candidate who has fought fraud as Florida’s Attorney General, and Rick Scott, a candidate who has committed it.”
BACKGROUND
Today, Rick Scott launched a massive statewide television ad buy attacking Attorney General McCollum, distorting his position and record on illegal immigration. It’s clear the Scott Campaign is desperately reaching to change the conversation from the headlines on his candidacy this week:
SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL: “It was and still is the biggest Medicare fraud case in U.S. history and ended with the hospital giant Columbia/HCA paying a record $1.7 billion in fines, penalties and damages. Now the guy who ran the company at the time wants a new job: Florida’s governor.” (SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL, 5/21/10)
SUN-SENTINEL: “Rick Scott was co-founder and CEO of Columbia/HCA in the 1990s, when the FBI launched a massive, multi-state investigation that led to the company pleading guilty to criminal charges of overbilling the government.” (SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL, 5/21/10)
SUN-SENTINEL: ““Among the fraudulent practices uncovered: billing Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary lab tests, creating false diagnoses to claim a higher reimbursement and charging for marketing and advertising costs that were disguised as community education.” (SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL, 5/21/10)
How can the government force you to purchase something? Many have been comparing the proposal of making health insurance a requirement to that of requiring auto insurance. This is an unfair comparison. If I don’t want to purchase car insurance then I have the option not to own a vehicle or not even have a driver’s license, and therefore wouldn’t need insurance. You can’t opt out of health care insurance in that same manner. If you choose not to purchase health insurance then the government will penalize you. That is the government forcing you to purchase something.
In my first blog I brought up the question “Is the proposed healthcare reform constitutional?” I submitted this question to a number of television and radio celebrities and one has finally addressed this question.
It appears as if I am not the only one asking the question. Bill O’Reilly states in this interview that he doesn’t believe it is constitutional. I’ve also read about a number of others, including lawyers, who do not believe Obamacare is constitutional and are already preparing for a court battle. So while the writers and supporters of the bill state this will not be an increase in taxes, then the bill itself would be unconstitutional.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press is one of the rights we must hang on to. Without those basic freedoms the country is in grave trouble. You may not like or agree with someone, but that does not give you the right to take away their freedom to speak.
Millions of people watch Glenn Beck. You may agree with him today and disagree with him tomorrow. You may watch his show and think he is great – or you may think he is some kind of nut. Either way, he has a right to speak his mind and you have a right to agree or disagree.
Although I do not watch the Glenn Beck show as I do not have cable TV, I watched a clip of the video that is raising such a controversy. Glenn was stating his opinion of the president and how he handled the situation involving a friend of his and the police department. His statements only reflected what many people have been thinking and they came to those conclusions by actions and statements made by the president himself! Glenn’s statements made on that show were less offensive than Nancy Pelosi calling all republicans who oppose the health care bill Nazis! But because Glenn is white and his comments are against an African-American, making these comments it is not acceptable. After all, how can a black man be racist!
The group putting pressure on removing the advertising is totally a racist group. They represent only the African-American population. Yet companies cower to their Chicago style tactics. How stupid can these companies get? The show is one of the top rated TV shows and because some racist organization coerced them they are removing advertising from the Glenn Beck show.
Where does this stop? Any company that pulled their advertising from the Glenn Beck show is not supporting our 1st amendment rights. Maybe we should ban them and any station or television show that supports their disrespect for our constitution!
No one forces you to watch television and you have the choice which shows you choose to watch. Starting censorship in television is a very dangerous road to travel. No organization should be allowed to have the power to encourage censorship. No company should allow these same organizations to dictate where to advertise. One day they may all find themselves on the wrong side of a censorship issue.
Anyone with any brains knows that the ads shown during a television show do not necessarily represent the views of those companies whose products are being advertised. Do we need to have a disclaimer run with every ad making that obvious statement? Is it wrong for them to want to get their advertising message out to as many people as possible?
The high cost of producing a widely read newspaper, a television station or a radio station, has traditionally limited ownership and injected the owner’s biases into the outlet. But the rise of a professional media class in America has made the owner’s views almost redundant, in the same way that unions have ensured that every business they work for will be used to serve the interests of the Democratic party. While some reporters may still report, overwhelmingly the members of the professional media class do not report, they advocate. 
PR Week publishes monthly editions in addition to its other news services and the July issue is devoted to “The most powerful people in PR.” All industries have their major players, so there is nothing surprising that public relations would also have its heavy hitters, but there are some interesting insights to be gleaned from the list of the twenty-five chosen. 
I attended the first two International Climate Change Conferences when they were held in New York City, but a change of venue to the hometown of 
