I have no particuar special insight into Keith Olbermann's departure from MSNBC. Given the way it's been handled, I'm not sure that anyone else does either. But a few things seem pretty obvious--not about the inner dynamics of what went on between Olbermann and MSNBC, but about the larger dynamics of the mediasphere.
First off, regardless of whose initiative it was, it seems clear that MSNBC wasn't terribly eager to hold on to Olbermann. There's nothing particularly unique about this. It's not just that MSNBC fired Donohue, too. That can be written off as simple cowardice and/or mindless jingoism in the run-up to war. That was before. This is after. And Olbermann is one the highest-profile people who was proven essentially correct. Living in Los Angeles, I'm extremely aware of another high-profile person who was proven correct, and was subsequently fired: columnist Robert Scheer, formerly of the LA Times, now of his own TruthDig.org. The Times didn't even bother trying to replace Scheer. They loaded up with even more off-the-shelf rightwingers than they had before.
Of course, the Times has been in general self-destruct mode for quite some time now--it gets significantly worse, then it semi-stabilizes a bit, then there's another major collapse, and so it goes. But that's true of American media in general. And it's been going on for a very long time now.
In short,this is political--if not in its precise details, which we don't know yet--then in the entire setting in which it takes place. After Olbermann's temporary suspension, Robert Parry--a former award-winning mainstream news reporter (AP, Newsweek, etc.) who broke the first major story about Iran/Contra a full six months before other Versailles media picked it up--wrote this:
The Left's primary media outlet is now the evening programming at MSNBC, which is currently owned by General Electric, a major defense contractor, and which will soon be transferred to Comcast that - like GE - has other corporate priorities in Washington that Republicans can either aid or obstruct.
The recent suspension and humiliation of MSNBC's biggest star, Keith Olbermann, for making three personal donations to Democratic candidates without first getting corporate approval, indicates the true pecking order within NBC and GE.
Olbermann and the other liberal hosts are essentially on borrowed time, much the way Phil Donahue was before getting axed in the run-up to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, when MSNBC wanted to position itself as a "patriotic" war booster.
Unlike News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, who stands solidly behind the right-wing propaganda on Fox News, the corporate owners of MSNBC have no similar commitment to the work of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz.
For the suits at headquarters, it's just a balancing act between the ratings that those shows get and the trouble they cause as Republicans reclaim control of Washington.
Because of the magnitude and intensity of the Right's media, Republicans can confidently sell a wide variety of propaganda themes to the American people. The themes might not make much sense, but they develop a ring of truth because they get repeated so often.
The imbalance has been made appreciably worse by the Left's neglect of media, an attitude that can be traced to the 1970s when progressives dismantled much of the Vietnam War era's "underground press" and downplayed the role of national think tanks in favor of local organizing under the banner, "think globally, act locally."
UK Guardian Reports That Murdoch's Newspapers Have Thousands Of Illegal Wiretaps On Public Figures.
The UK Guardian is reporting that employees of Rupert Murdoch's newspaper NewsWorld have illegally tapped thousands of private telephones of public officials, sports figures, and others, in England, and have paid hush-money to try to cover up their crimes.
A smaller version of this story originally surfaced several years ago when it was discovered that some NewsWorld associates had hacked into phones of some staff of the Royal Family. At the time, several investigations were conducted but concluded that these were "Lone Hackers," that they had acted without the knowledge of anyone higher up at NewsWorld. NewsWorld denied any involvement. That was a lie.
In addition to illegally wiretapping the phones of public officials, the employees of Murdoch's news corporation were also hacking phones of sports figures and heads of sports organizations. A little gambling action on the side, perhaps? Talk about inside information -- knowing the state of mind of key players, or even details of strategy, could lead to a fortune in sports gambling. Or, of course, knowing what politicians intend to do could give someone the ability to make billions in advance by using insider information not available to others. Let's hope England digs a little deeper this time and gets not just a list of who was bugged, but also delves into the question of the purpose of the secret wiretaps. It was more likely done for financial gain, than just for gossip.
"Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims."
"Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories."
"The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures to gain unlawful access to personal data, including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills.
Cabinet ministers, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators."
[The newly-discovered evidence] "may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them. The evidence also poses difficult questions for"
• "Conservative leader David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts.
• "Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public."
• "The Metropolitan police, which did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel."
• "The Press Complaints Commission, which claimed to have conducted an investigation, but failed to uncover any evidence of illegal activity."
"The suppressed legal cases are linked to the jailing in January 2007 of a News of the World reporter, Clive Goodman, for hacking into the mobile phones of three royal staff, an offence under the Regulation of Powers Act. At the time, News International said it knew of no other journalist who was involved in hacking phones and that Goodman had acted without their knowledge."
"But one senior source at the Met told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones. Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at "two or three thousand" mobiles. They suggest that from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets."
".... "Several famous figures in football are among those whose messages were intercepted."
"The paperwork from the Information Commission revealed the names of 31 journalists working for the News of the World and the Sun, together with the details of government agencies, banks, phone companies and others who were conned into handing over confidential information."
[When sued in one case and presented with evidence of these crimes] "News International ... started offering huge cash payments to settle the case out of court, and finally paid out £700,000 in legal costs and damages on the condition that [the person who sued] signed a gagging clause to prevent him speaking about the case. The payment is believed to have included more than £400,000 in damages. News Group then persuaded the court to seal the file on Taylor's case to prevent all public access, even though it contained prima facie evidence of criminal activity."
"Former Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil described the story last night as 'one of the most significant media stories of modern times'. 'It suggests that rather than being a one-off journalist or rogue private investigator, it was systemic throughout the News of the World, and to a lesser extent the Sun,' he said. Particularly in the News of the World, this was a newsroom out of control." To which I would add: Well, yes. Rupert Murdoch's empire is a "newsroom" out of control. They lie, deceive, defraud, cover-up, conspire, promote fascism and hatred and racism and sexism and everything which is intended to destroy our democracy.
And now it turns out they wiretap sports figures and politicians, breaking the law, covering up their illegal activities, paying hush money to people to silence them, getting courts to "seal" files to keep the truth from the public. How about if our corrupt politicians get off their lazy asses and investigate this guy, break up his "Empire Of Evil," then deport him.
Was Murdoch illegally wiretapping Democrats, then turning that over to Bush-Cheney? We know Bush-Cheney was illegally wiretapping whoever they wanted, presumably for political purposes, and they got away with it because Congress refuses to hold them accountable, passed a special law to prohibit lawsuits against the telephone/utility companies which would have allowed discovery of the names of every person who was illegally wiretapped. Congress has acted to cover up this crime, prevent the public from finding out the truth, protect Bush-Cheney above all else. But why?
We know that Murdoch's Whorehouse at Fox was on the phone every morning with the propaganda wing of the white house dictating to them what story, what lies they should spread that day. Were they acting together -- Murdoch in the private sphere, Bush-Cheney using the offices of the government -- to get illegal wiretaps on every single Democrat in the country?
The most obvious benefit from wiretapping politicians and sports figures is the ability to use secret information for personal gain. If the politicians say they will vote for a new weapon, for example, buy stock in the weapon-maker's company before the public is told that the new weapon will be funded by the government. And of course knowing the inside details of sports players' physical and mental condition before games is an enormous boost in trying to figure out which team to bet on. Is it likely the Murdoch paper and its people risked being thrown in prison just to get some silly gossip about who was sleeping with whom? I'd look for money.
Should we expect an investigation, hearings, perhaps prosecutions in our country about whether Murdoch has been illegally wiretapping our Democratic politicians? How about the baseball players, football, basketball?
Our politicians, so many on the payroll of Murdoch, will probably do nothing, pretend this has nothing to do with us. Under the No Change administration of Obama, the public is entitled to know nothing, everything must be covered-up, information is even more secret and classified than it was under Bush-Cheney, and the looting of our country, and the wars of aggression, must continue unabated. So I would expect nothing.
Don't expect media coverage of this in the U.S. After all, Murdoch owns most of the media in the U.S., and he won't cover it. And "Our" Democratic Congress refuses to enforce the laws to bust up Murdoch's monopoly control of the media, order him to divest himself from this massive ownership of the media which makes our public more stupid and mean every day.
How many U.S. politicians were wiretapped in their home, office, cell phones, by Murdoch and by the criminal wiretapping program run by the Bush-Cheney administration. Is it likely Murdoch would do it in England but not in the U.S.?
Why is it AG Eric Holder refused to admit to Senator Feingold that the warrentless wiretapping program run by Bush-Cheney was illegal? Is it because too many Democrats are being blackmailed by information obtained by the right-wing by illegal wiretaps? Is this how the right-wing continues to control our country? Are they blackmailing every single Democrat in national government? Is that why the Democrats refused to prosecute the financial criminals from Wall Street, refuse to prosecute the Bush-Cheney insiders for international war crimes?
Or is this just wistful thinking? Is everything so desperate that I prefer to think "our" Democrats are victims of a heinous crime involving blackmail, rather than just seeing them as corrupt sleazy sell-outs?
This post from Kate Purdy at United Hollywood makes connections between big media, consolidation, the FCC, and net neutrality.
Because it is choking our thoughts, our voice, and our rights as a society. If they control all the media, they control how our collective unconscious is shaped. For the few uber-rich and incredibly powerful, it behooves them to keep us in the dark - to keep us stupid...
Right now the Internet is still a place for democratic participation. This is because of a little thing called Net Neutrality. But, even that is under fire by big media corporations who want to control the web by gutting Net Neutrality.
It's fascinating how the right to express ourselves and connect to one another is so fundamental to this strike. It's as if net neutrality and a powerful activist and progressive FCC is the 21st century equivalent of strong labor laws and the first amendment rolled into one.
UPDATE: Crooks and Liars clipped this amazingly stupid segment from Howard Kurtz and Michael Medved in which Kurtz wonders why Jon Stewart doesn't just do more interviews and expresses disappointment that such a funny guy needs to have writers. It's just hard to fathom that this man is paid to be on my teevee and tell me things.
Like many of us, I'm intrigued by the notion of political influence, how systemic changes get made through the political system. As one example of how this question is debated, right-wing blogger Patrick Ruffini is making the argument that the traffic of Dailykos is overstated, with the implication that the liberal blogs aren't as important as they are treated. As for the specifics, traffic patterns across the blogosphere are in flux, with growth concentrated in new emergent systems like Facebook. The question of influence, though, is not tied to traffic, and so Ruffini's attack will fail, as plenty of other attacks on liberal bloggers have failed before.
But the question of influence versus reach works both ways. Take the latest episode of Rush Limbaugh and the flame war with VoteVets over the 'phony soldier' flap. The RNC sent out an email to its list on Rush Limbaugh, as did the DNC. The DNC had something on the order of twenty times the response rate, and yet, the email from Republican Eric Cantor did something that VoteVets, Moveon, and nearly every Democrat did not. It made a policy ask. Cantor asked RNC recipients to sign a petition to kill any attempt to resurrect the fairness doctrine regulating talk radio. Only Wes Clark on our side made an ask related to the controversy which would change the nature of the system itself: remove Rush Limbaugh from Armed Forces radio. Cantor's request was echoed by every Republican echo chamber, so that a minimally resonant minority view was translated into policy momentum for something promoting right-wing values.
So while traffic patterns are important in understanding leverage, they are not dominant. In fact, one of the characteristics of modern global politics is how organized minority factions are able to overwhelm majority views (something Steve Clemons noted in a session I attended a few days ago). From the settlers in Israel to hardliners in America or Iran to Al Qaeda in Iraq, minority factions are able to overcome views, sometimes even powerfully held views by a majority. The problem is fractal. Bush/Cheney controls American foreign policy and pushes for a war with Iran, McConnell controls the Republicans in Congress and pushes against SCHIP, Blue Dogs control the Democrats in Congress, Mark Penn steers the Clinton campaign, and right-wing business elites control the US Chamber of Commerce or the AMA. In every case, the leader of the group represents the minority view of the constituent group. Hardliners control small institutions that control larger institutions that control most relevant national instruments of power.
Breaking through this pattern is vitally necessary to build a progressive economy. It's not just that America is run by lunatics, it's that changing Congress did not alter our governing coalition because of this odd characteristic of modern political architecture. Our efforts weren't in vain, but there's no doubt that our strategic understanding of the political system as a two party fight with power passing back and forth between then is inadequate.
Here's how I'm beginning to think through a new framework for political strategy, based on Eric Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth. Politics is a nonlinear dynamic system, not a traditional closed system. Nonlinearity means that change doesn't happen in a steady fashion, but comes in violent clumps. Much of our political leadership doesn't think this way. Steny Hoyer thinks that Democrats will be in control of the House, and then that Republicans will be in control of the House, that there is a balanced oscillation. Choice, labor rights, environment - these are the 'issues' upon which one must take the correct 'positions' according to polling data. And yet, the assumptions here is that the electorate doesn't change its mind very quickly, that new problems won't arise, that pollsters tell the truth, and that priorities or intensity of feelings don't change. We'll push back and forth over certain bills, and compromise will be the result. The political system's contours are considered static, and linear.
This is true throughout the activist single issue world as well. NARAL based its strategy on the idea that electing pro-choice Democratic women in swing districts would gradually lead to an increase in abortion rights, just as labor orients its strategies around the Employee Free Choice Act. This is a closed strategy model.
And yet, this model doesn't work. How does NARAL deal with terrorism? It doesn't, because terrorism is 'not their issue'. And yet, 9/11 unleashed a dramatic change in our constitutional fabric, one that cannot be explained by a two party model of politics and one that has significantly changed the Supreme Court in a way that will negatively impact abortion rights for generations. The disjarring nonlinear change unleashed by 9/11, the dynamic shifts in popular opinion, were just not captured by the Democratic party establishment or its substantial infrastructure. By contrast, terrorism allowed the conservative movement to push through everything from increased executive power to tax cuts to rollbacks in consumer and worker safety, most of which were tangential to terrorism. Indeed, the war in Iraq was completely tangential to terrorism. I believe this lack or surfeit of adaptive capacity explains both the rise of the networked or 'open left' and the success of the right-wing in its dominance of the American political scene.
Conservatives see politics as a nonlinear dynamic system, not as a two party system. They take advantage of crisis moments, as Naomi Klein points out in the Shock Doctrine, or even foment them, to create positive feedback loops for conservative ideas. Media consolidation under such institutions as GE and the gutting of antitrust create a dishonest media system that allows the country to go to war. War allows companies like GE to make money from selling weapons. Tax breaks for churches that become an arm of the GOP, creating corruption in government as a way to attack the concept of government, etc. These are all positive feedback loops for conservatives. The evisceration of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s by conservative Republicans allowed the rise of Rush Limbaugh, who then promoted more conservative Republican policies such as further media consolidation to spread Rush to more channels across the board, along with increased capital to fund more right-wing talk radio. Defending Rush is about defending this positive conservative feedback loop, just as attacking the structure of media would change the feedback loop to a more progressive direction. Less Rush means less conservative media ownership structures which means increasingly less Rush.
Because of these feedback loops and the nonlinear nature of change, complex adaptive systems are very hard to understand and are full of uncertainty. In such systems, there is a strong sensitivity to initial conditions, and accepting that means accepting our lack of explicit control over political change. Were Al Gore in the White House on 9/11, the world would look very different; the attack on America could have come a year earlier, but it didn't, which is a random and seemingly small shift in time lapses with large consequences over which we had no control. And path dependency, or history, matters. The argument Eric Cantor used about the Fairness Doctrine builds upon an argument that has already been made for forty years, but if Iraq had not happened, it's likely that he would be able to make a much more credible claim about an attack on Rush being an attack by the 'liberal' media.
All of this is a way to say that our movement, which really is an emergent phenomenon, should begin to prepare for small shifts that produce outsized effects with discrete asks to change the contours of the system. The Rush Limbaugh controversy was used by the right to further drive a stake into the heart of the Fairness Doctrine. And yet, there is a fight at the FCC later this year on media consolidation, on who owns the media. Commissioner Adelstein wants a 'independent, bipartisan panel, representing broadcasters, female and minority owners, investors, advertisers, and the public to investigate ways to have a more diverse ownership of the airwaves. This is the change in the system we want. Rush Limbaugh can be taken down, but we must take advantage of nonlinear events such as the Imus controversy, any number of Limbaugh scandals, the Fox News controversy, the Wall Street Journal takeover by Murdoch, or the Judy Miller scandal to push for this change. Why aren't antiwar vets given a chance to respond to Rush? The answer is that the FCC allows Clear Channel to make money through regulatory decisions denying it to them. That's the leverage point.
There's a generic issue here, which is that we must tie our policy asks to the media moments. Hurting Limbaugh was a media fight, but the Steny Hoyer's delay of the FISA expansion was an internal Congressional and activist fight. The point is that there are leverage points everywhere in our political system, once you stop seeing the fight as a fight between two teams and begin to consider politics as a dynamic system with regular nonlinear events that can be used for the institutionalization of our values.
Anyway, I don't have an answer as to why right-wing minorities are controlling larger entities right now, but I think that their capacity to work within an adaptive framework and push for their values consistently, to see the totality of the system instead of barriers they must not cross, is a key part of it.
Tomorrow marks a depressing day for fans of Internet radio stations and alternative newsmagazines of any political stripe. Corporate interests have successfully shepherded through bad business plans designed to choke off independent voices using the power of the purse.
STATE BLOGS
