In 2004, the United Church of Christ produced a television commercial promoting its inclusive approach to organized faith. The ad showed two nightclub-style bouncers guarding the rope line of a church as they denied entry to a gay male couple, several people of color, and a man in a wheelchair. By contrast, a white family of four had no problems getting through.
"Jesus didn't turn people away" was the ad's tagline, but CBS did, turning down the commercial which was intended for broadcast during that year's Super Bowl. The 30-second spot apparently violated the network's policy of "prohibiting advocacy ads, even ones that carry an 'implicit' endorsement for a side in a public debate."
In 2004, the United Church of Christ produced a television commercial promoting its inclusive approach to organized faith. The ad showed two nightclub-style bouncers guarding the rope line of a church as they denied entry to a gay male couple, several people of color, and a man in a wheelchair. By contrast, a white family of four had no problems getting through.
"Jesus didn't turn people away" was the ad's tagline, but CBS did, turning down the commercial which was intended for broadcast during that year's Super Bowl. The 30-second spot apparently violated the network's policy of "prohibiting advocacy ads, even ones that carry an 'implicit' endorsement for a side in a public debate."
After a decade-long slide into semi-irrelevance, it's now being announced that the major television broadcast networks are considering leaving behind the "free TV/advertiser supported" business model in order to turn themselves into something more closely resembling a cable operation; the idea being that they could create a second revenue stream from the same "subscriber fees" that are paid by cable and satellite operators to all the other channels those operators carry.
This has become necessary, according to the networks, partly because the market has become so fragmented...which, naturally, is cable's fault-and presumably the fault of the disloyal viewer, as well.
Another reason driving the change is related to the desire of the networks to have a source of revenue that's more reliable in times of economic downturn, when advertisers often try to husband scarce resources by cutting back on all their expenses, particularly advertising dollars.
Will this new change in the business model reverse the fortunes of the networks?
Is it possible that the networks are simply poor business managers?
And what about...Krystal Carey?
Tune in for the rest of the story-and we'll find out.
Back in May, the Pentagon told the press that 1 in 7 Guantanamo detainees "returned to terrorism or militant activity." The New York Times ran with this lead, without even requesting a definition of "returned to terrorism or militant activity." Weeks later, the New York Times had to run a correction, essentially blaming the whole confusion on not receiving documents from the Pentagon. This was, of course, a ridiculous excuse. The Pentagon responded to my request for documentation in a matter of hours, with a pdf that described, entirely, how they define whether or not someone is suspected of returning to the battle field:
• William Buckley
• Robert Novak
• Kate O'Beirne
• Nicholas Von Hoffman
• Tucker Carlson
• Pat Buchanan
• George Will
• Lou Dobbs
• Matt Drudge
• Robert Barkley
• Robert Kagan
• Fred Barnes
• William Kristol
• John Podhoretz
• David Brooks
• William Safire
• Bernard Goldberg
• Ann Coulter
• Andrew Sullivan
• Christopher Hitchens
• PJ O'Rourke
• Christopher Caldwell
• Elliot Abrams
• Charles Krauthammer
• William Bennett
• Rush Limbaugh
• Roger Ailes
If you said, "CBS considered them to sit in judgment of Dan Rather's story on Bush's special treatment by Texas Air National Guard", then you get a cookie! In the end, CBS went with former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who owed that title--the highest job he ever held--to George W. Bush's dad. So, CBS went with cronyism over wignut hackery. It was probably a good call, since as it turned out, many people actually believed that its "independent review" of Rather's report was legit. If they'd let Ann Coulter run it, probably not so much.
But eventually, Rather had had enough, after it became clear that CBS had shafted him. And so, in September 2007, Rather decided to sue. Last November, there was a rather interersting development, as the NY Observer reported:
In the past, Mr. Rather has criticized CBS's choice of panel members, alleging that Mr. Thornburgh's association with the Bush family (President George H. W. Bush appointed Mr. Thornburgh to his position as U.S. attorney general) undermined the panel's objectivity.
"Discovery to date reveals far more," Mr. Rather's legal team wrote this week. "Only conservative lawyers were considered for the Panel; their names were vetted by Viacom's Washington lobbyists (as well as with unnamed 'GOP folks')."
In a response to the judge dated Nov. 3, here's how CBS lawyers countered:
[A]s is clear from the deposition testimony, because of the perception that CBS News and Dan Rather had a liberal bias, CBS purposefully chose a Republican lawyer, not for any nefarious purpose, but to open itself up to its harshest conservative critics and to ensure that the Panel's findings would be found credible.
Apparently, CBS executives took their job of finding the harshest conservative critics very seriously.
In Exhitit J of the current filing, Mr. Rather's legal team include a list (turned up in discovery) which CBS executives apparently compiled in the fall of 2004, prior to settling on Mr. Thornburgh and Mr. Boccardi.
And that's where the list of rightwing hacks came from. Exhibit J.
In a logical turn of events, Barack Obama's recent appearance on Fox News, which while a good interview, was not an attempt to "take Fox on" as promised by an Obama surrogate on Greg Sargent's blog, has birthed much criticism. Many, including Chris and Kos, had hoped that Obama would in fact attack the network when asked inevitably irrelevant questions about the "scandals" around his campaign. Instead, it amounted to ironically Clintonian Triangulation, on issues such as abortion, taxes, regulation, and John Roberts. While he didn't "throw Kos under the bus" as claimed by many, he did use him as a point of distancing himself from "the Left." In a strange, though honestly predictable turn of events, many Obama supporters are refusing to criticize the move, and many are even defending it as a means by which to court more voters, with claims such as
regardless of whether WE think the questions were vacuous or stupid, as Wallace pointed out, there ARE a lot of voters to whom these things do matter, and this allows Obama to address them more directly than just hoping they will get a snippet of his stump speeches.
This comment is actually from a diary on Kos, with the intent of criticizing Kos for his criticism of Obama.
What I think is important to note, throughout this entire fiasco, is that this was not just a mistake in its treatment of us, the activists, but also a missed opportunity to attack the current structure of the media. Now, I've said on previous occasions that I'm not sure that it would have helped him in the short term to attack Fox on the network, as it would have simply solidified his already attained base, and pissed off conservative viewers of the network (I personally think he should not have gone on in the first place), but in my research of past events, it has become clear to me that going on and "taking Fox on" could actually have helped the breaking of the current creation of false media narratives, especially by the uberpower, Fox News. This is especially evident by viewing the Dan Rather interview of George H.W. Bush in January 1988, fairly early in the campaign for President. Bush's reaction, and the firestorm after the fact, lead to one of the most important turning points in American Media History in recent times. Follow me below the fold for the details.
As the media did their best Tuesday to ignore Dennis Kucinich's push to bring the impeachment of Dick Cheney to a vote (CNN didn't even have a story accesible on their website), they opted to go on the offensive yesterday, by attempting to frame it as a marginal and pointless position. As Dave Lindorff wrote:
Remember Couric's ridiculously positive reporting on Iraq? After getting pushback from viewers, prompted by Moveon, CBS apparently sent emails out to viewers who complained saying they had probably just heard misinformation from 'some blog'.
A reporter at WebProNews followed up to find out more about the squabble, and when he wrote that CBS attacked bloggers, got threatened with a lawsuit by Couric's PR department. Here's Jason Lee Miller:
A few minutes later, Ms. Farley, by telephone, insists that everything that was said yesterday was off the record, that CBS didn't even have a "no comment" because there was nothing to comment on, and if I printed that I could expect to hear from CBS's legal department. Very suddenly, then, she has turned my puff piece into a major story about a major network trying to bully a Web-publication with the threat of a SLAPP suit. And I am stunned by how she has transformed something routine into something newsworthy.
This sue-happy vicious culture comes from the top. The CEO of CBS, Les Moonves, filed a $500 million lawsuit against Howard Stern out of spite. He also employed Don Imus for years before being forced to fire him recently for racial and sexist slurs. Lovely organization you've got going, Mr. Moonves.
