Moyers On PBS

Fenian - I agree with you. I just wonder what you attribute the sheep-like attitude of the press to. Was it an insecurity that made them print stories that they thought people would like (and thus like them)? Was it laziness? An incapacity for original thought? Bribes? Were Bush / Cheney et al just too smart for them to deal with? What was the cause for this epidemic of clueless journalists in the run-up to the Iraq war? Has the epidemic ceased to be or has the opinion polls just masked the symptoms by allowing the sheep to take 180 degree positions to what they were a couple years ago?

 

George Tenet seems to be off the reservation.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/25/60minutes/main2728375.shtml

I guess a Presidential Medal of Freedom doesn't buy as much of a person's soul as it used to.
Let us believe, for a moment, that Chris is being sincere -- he's not, but he's not good enough with irony to pull it off -- is the question being posed, well, the press was wrong then, so are they being wrong now?
No, I think it's become fairly clear on the ground that the war in Iraq was a really bad idea, sold dishonestly, and that the wrong people listened to the wrong people, and hell has followed after them. I also believe that there were outlets you could find in 2002-03 in which the right people listening to the right people. These included the BBC, several British newspapers, Walter Pincus in the WaPo and, of course, the KR Washington guys.

 

My PBS station isn't going to be rebroadcasting it.
I just got off the phone with them and they said normally they show it again at 6 a.m. the next morning. In this case they did not and I was one of hundreds who have called and asked on when it will be shown again, but they don't have any plans to do so.
Of course they'll show Austin City Limits like 12 times during the week, but something like this, they won't even show again.
In my market Bill Moyers' Journal will be aired this Friday night and it will feature Jon Stewart and the impact of The Daily Show on news habits.

 

Fenian - as you point out the Moyers show was a devastating expose on how bad the media was on even getting the basics of the situation in Iraq correct. Now you seem to be saying that things will be different now. Isn't that insane to expect that? I mean Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.

You seem to have a predisposed position on most things - are you just waiting for most media outlets to match up with your viewpoint are are you really concerned about the truth? Because to me the Moyers show pointed out a lot of problems but I don't see how any of those problems have been addressed or fixed.

 

Does this have anything to do with a perceived lowering of journalistic standards. Everyone's so keen to be first with the big story, they don't make sure what they're being fed by their sources they neglect to check it's true.

Just accept it and print it.

 

Chris has shown that the fenian has no clothes.

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa on this Donahue "scandal." I haven't seen the Moyers program (yet), but if he paints Donahue's cancellation as all about an anti-war stance and not about ratings, that's just a crock.

I was still at NBC at the time when Donahue started up in the summer of '02...in close enough proximity that his loud staffers were constantly interrupting my work. After a "decent" start in the ratings, his audience plummeted and the internal "death watch" began. You can read stories yourself from August '02 about how bad the show was doing. I know because I had announced my departure for November '02 and I had a running joke with colleagues that Donahue will be out of here before I will (didn't quite happen, but close) and everyone will get some peace and quiet.

The fact that he may have had MSNBC's highest ratings meant next to nothing on a network where ratings flatlined like a corpse. He had the best time slot and was making BY FAR the most money. His ratings did not even come close to justifying his paycheck. He also had an extremely hard time getting guests as time went on because the word was out that he did the old "bait and switch" on promised topics of discussion. And I know this too because I constantly heard his loudmouth bookers on the phone practically begging people to come on.

Although I was gone by that time, I'm confident that whatever memo may have suggested he was being canned for anything other than not earning his keep was nothing but a cover for the truth.

 

But why would Moyers try to spin the story that Donahue was fired for his stance on the run-up to war? What possible reason would Bill Moyers have to intentionally mislead the audience in a story about the media misleading the audience?

 

LOL. Here's some more truth...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/852130/posts

 

Its a valid question. Really PBS and Bill Moyers pride themselves as being A-political. They do not have an agenda.

 

Yeah, and I see now from the Moyers transcript that the exact same media being trashed got the internal memo from a BLOGGER. Perhaps that should be investigated. NBC denied it (link above); Donahue never saw it (Moyers transcript). The fact is, friggin' Connie Chung was DOUBLING Donahue when he got canned, and *she* ended up getting canned for low ratings too. Donahue's comment that "we did fairly well in the ratings" is a joke. Only if you compare it to the other corpses on MSNBC. I was there and I'm telling you the internal death watch began no more than six weeks after he went on the air. They even tried the gimmick of a studio audience to get viewers and moving his show into Manhattan from Secaucus because no guests would come to Secaucus.

I'm in the midst of watching the Moyers program and I think it's pretty good overall, but let me scream one thing from the rooftop...combined with his million dollar contract, RATINGS, AND RATINGS ONLY, LED TO DONAHUE'S DEMISE!

 

By the way, I just did a little digging myself, and a *few* papers picked up the info from the AP story below, citing a highly shaky source for this (rather famous, as Fenian puts it) memo, although I don't find the NYT being one of them, as Donahue describes.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/852725/posts