Moyers On PBS

EBCL -

Have you watched the program yet?

 

jgmacg - I've seen it twice.

Earlier I was going to ask you the same thing because you pestered Boom about him posting the quotes from Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. If you had watched the show - you would have known that those quotes were featured by Moyers.

 

"Jack Welsh has bllood on his hands" / Fenian Bastard.

 

God, you're lame.
Yeah, facts are hilarious. Try them sometime. Actual research is even tougher. This argument was pretty much won when you started throwing around "centerpiece," "pillar," and claiming the memo was "fake" with out proof. The numbers are just a victory lap. And your hilarious "internal/external" dodge -- by which, it should be pointed out, Arthur Andersen's work for Enron would not be "internal Enron documents" even after it was placed in the Enron files -- is tap-dancing like you'd see from Gene Kelly.

Donahue was fired for his bad ratings, his high salary, AND his antiwar views. The subsequent hires -- Scarborough, Savage, and Armey -- are a measure of the new direction MSNBC wanted to go, due to the pressure the network felt. That didn't start with Donahue, either, as this quote from the New York Times of 11/7/01, from Erik Sorenson, then-head of MSNBC, might indicate:

"'Any misstep and you can get into trouble with these guys and have the Patriotism Police hunt you down,’ said Erik Sorenson, President of MSNBC. ‘These are hard jobs. Just getting the facts straight is monumentally difficult. We don't want to have to wonder if we are saluting properly. Was I supposed to use the three-fingered salute today?’"

I believe that. And, again, I am truly sorry you didn't read enough of the people reporting the truth about your pet war to avoid being the sucker you plainly were.
And, just for fun, I'm done here.

 

Fenian - you are no longer becoming a cartoon character - Wile E Coyote status has been achieved. Congratulations.

You said it was a FAMOUS INTERNAL MEMO. That was and is not the case. Yeash - give it up.

You want to believe that Donahue was fired for his views - fine. But when you bring up subsequent MSNBC hirings - please note that it was left-wing darling Keith Olbermann who took Donahue's time slot. That fact doesn't jive with your predetermined mindset - so you ignore it.

Comparing a supposed internal memo brought to light by a blogger (which NBC denies ever existed) to external auditing by Aurthur Anderson in the ENRON case is the height of dishonesty and misdirection. This supposed memo that has been brought up time and again - has never been shown to exist at all. Can you link to a copy of this memo or are we supposed to take the word of a blogger that it exists? Tom Shales says the memo appeared in the NYT but this has been shown to be false.

God God - why is so important for you to cling to these fantasies?

 

JackS - Fenian has said that I have been "dishonest" regarding quoting you. Do you feel that I've misrepresented what you've said? Or has Fenian taken some liberties in portraying you as agreeing with him regarding the reasons behind Donahue's dismissal?

Thanks

 

Here is the blog in question:

http://www.allyourtv.com/0203season/news/02252003donahue.html

It was never described as an "internal memo." It apparently has been morphed into that since 2003.

If there is a link to NBC denying the existence of a study or report or memo or whatever, I couldn't find it. If anyone can, please post it.

 

Yes, I've seen it.

My point with Boom was this: why post those comments without context on a journalism thread? What's the point of highlighting them, except as a non sequitur to advance his political position?

Once asked, Boom then asserted that he believes part of the problem with the press coverage in the run-up to the war was the conflation of politics and journalism - a valid enough point, although not one I entirely agree with.

Here's an equally good example of non sequitur from the other side of the aisle:

ROBERT BYRD (Senate Floor 10/10/02): "And before we put this great nation on the track to war I want to see more evidence, hard evidence, not more presidential rhetoric…"

SENATOR TED KENNEDY (9/27/02): "I have heard no persuasive evidence that Saddam is on the threshold of acquiring the nuclear weapons he has sought for more than 20 years. And the administration has offered no persuasive evidence that Saddam would transfer chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda."

Offered without context, the comments don't mean much.

That the point of this program - the failure of the national press to perform its work with due diligence and requisite skepticism - has largely been lost on this thread in partisan bickering over who has what evidence to assert which tiny political advantage, strikes me as an apt enough model for a much larger problem.

World events are not an either/or proposition. Life, and news stories, are not merely binary: left/right, up/down, black/white, Republican/Democratic. Any objective truth almost always lies somewhere between two opposing poles of belief. Somehow the press has lost its sense of this. The problem didn't begin in 2000, either, or even 1980. Rather, the failure of the national media in 2002 to make sense of the drumbeat for war was merely the most recent example of an historic trend going back decades.

So, that's one take on this program. Feel free to disagree with it.

But rather than argue for political advantage, why don't we try to stick to the thread as F_B originally proposed it - a damning look at how our business failed in its fundamental responsibilities at a dire time in our nation's history.

And this last note - My admiration and thanks to Landay, Walcott and Strobel of Knight-Ridder, and to Hanley of the AP, and to Massing and Bamford, and Bob Simon of CBS - and Sy Hersh of the New Yorker, unmentioned in this program - for holding their responsibilities dear; for working in the best interest of their fellow citizens; and for doing our job as it was meant to be done.

 

I'm lost at this point. The two of you can parse my words however you wish. I don't care.

 

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are
confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course
to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities.
Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

 

Yet another cryptic non seqitur.

What's your point, Citizen Boom?

 

Jack - I am starting to think that both Bill Moyers and Fenian are mixing up Charles Grodin CNBC cancelation with that of Donahue.