Moyers On PBS

Well, I can't argue with that.

One thing I noticed is that all but one of the press outlets that picked up and credited the blog story at the time called it an *internal* study or memo or report (at least one was smart enough to call it an "alleged" report). Now if you read that original blog story, there's nary a word about it being internal. It actually sounds external. That's a pretty important distinction. Was the blog changed later?

 

Just so I understand the facts - Fenian says it was a famous internal NBC memo but you are saying that the blog originally never said it was an internal memo. Now maybe Fenian said it was a famous internal NBC memo because Bill Moyers said it was so but I have a question - doesn't the memo issue hurt Moyers' credibility? And - for a guy who claim he knows the lay of the land - it seems that Fenian was pretty easily duped by Moyers in this case.

 

There's no way I can tell what the blog originally reported. I checked the Wayback Machine and the first entry was more than a month after the story ran, with no mention of internal by then. It could have been changed in the interim, or the press that picked it up could have been sloppy and made an assumption about it being internal. I don't know.

I will say I'm not here to execute a tag team on Fenian or Moyers. I agree with the major theme of the latter's program. I just think the Donahue scandal is a crock.

 

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I am willing to stipulate the the memo (and the study) are authentic, and, as JackS and I were discussing before the children came back inside, that the Donahue dismissal was a nasty confluence of factors that included bad ratings, big money, and ideological timidity. Which one was the final deal-breaker, I don't know. If Jack says it was the ratings and the big money, I'm willing to stipulate that. But, for the purposes of Moyers's program, the atmosphere that produced it is relevant to the topic under discussion -- namely, the prestige press turtling for the adminstration's agenda.
I am not willing to stipulate on the question of you-only-believes-what-conforms-to-your-ideology with an anyone who's proud that he still believes the Swift Boat guys. Sorry.

 

Good work by you, Ben. I didn't realize how far this traced back, and hadn't had the chance to go through the thread. Thanks for bringing this back up for the latecoming-to-the-thread me

 

Saying that you stipulate that they are authentic means you say they ARE TRUE. Why are you wasting JackS's time if you won't even acknowledge the facts he brings to the table regarding what you would have us believe was a famous internal NBC memo?

This is the same sort of head in the sand attitude that Dan Rather had with the supposed National Guard memos. And you wonder why readership is down and people don't trust the press?

You last complete sentence is also a fine piece of Clintonian parsing. You won't stipulate to me that you are a myopic partisan who only sees what he wants to see but you also don't deny that it is true. Anyone who has spent any time on this board knows that you are perhaps the most myopic partisan here. The first step to recovery is to acknowledge you have a problem.

 

Bill Moyers' Journal was excellent tonight.
Had Jon Stewart and the guy who does the Talking Points blog.
If you missed it set the Tivo, I think in most places it will be rebroadcast at 6 Saturday morning.

 

First fenen must decide what he needs to work on first- his white man's guilt or his myopic partisanship.

 

Are you really the guy who wants make lame jokes about people with problems who need to be in recovery?
Really?
Projection is no substitute for critical thinking.
I won't stipulate to you the time of day because you're ill-informed about most things and intellectually dishonest about everything you think you know except baseball. I need not answer to the voices in your own sad little head.
I will, one last time, attempt to explain to you what's going on here. The program was about how the elite press turtled on a war based on administration's lies and cheered on by some think-tank fantasts, tree-farming academics, and (lest we forget) a number of noisy minor bloggers who believed every word they said. I believe the program proved its point, in large part because I watched it happen in real time. I know what Russert allowed to happen. I know what Beinart wrote. I read the KR guys. I don't believe this because of what I believe politically. I believe the evidence of my own eyes.
Jack and I were having a discussion about the NBC study/memo, and we had come to an agreement that there were a number of reasons that Donahue was canned. (I believe that MSNBC's subsequent actions -- hiring Savage and Scarborough, throwing Banfield overboard -- show that the network at least in part was acting on ideological grounds and according to what it believed was the prevailing zeitgeist. Jack, I think, rather disagrees, and comes at it from a conventional television point of view. OK, then.) That discussion had progressed to the possibility that the study/memo might have been prepared for NBC by a consultant. This was an interesting possibility I hadn't considered. Until you came tromping in with TALKING POINT 1A -- Dan Rather! Dan Rather! Forgery! -- that was where the discussion lay. Since you still maintain faith in the Swift Boat guys -- and probably believed your favorite big, brave bloggers when they touted the notion that the Schiavo Talking Points were a Democratic forgery JUST LIKE THE RATHER MEMOS until that Republican hack from Florida 'fessed up -- I do not take accusations of ideological blindness from you seriously, but you really should try to stay on the topic at hand.
But, again, Boom thinks you're brilliant. That should be enough for one lifetime.

 

Fenian - the mention of the Swift Boat veterans and Terry Schiavo is pure misdirection on your part. I've come to expect misdirection and insults from you when in your heart of heart - you know you are wrong, but for once - can you please stick with the subject at hand?

You first say that the the evidence Moyers gave was a famous internal NBC memo and then you try to "stipulate the the memo (and the study) are authentic". JackS (who seems to have firsthand experience here) says that the memos were pure fiction along the lines of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Yet you still want to fit the square peg that Donahue was fired because of his political beliefs into the round hole of him having cable access level ratings. You may want to take a step back - take a break from attacking me on a personal level - and look at how silly your reaction, reasoning and behavior make you look.

The time slot Donahue had at MSNBC went briefly to Lester Holt and quickly and permanently to Keith Olbermann - who has been a constant critic of the Bush Administration from his first day at the network. Olbermann started his Countdown show in the same slot Donahue had in March of 2003 - Donahue's show was cancelled in February of 2003. Maybe you can come up with some sort of rationalization to explain how that could be that would still allow you to keep your fantasy.

 

Mr. Google points out that Michael Savage -- a true racist nut -- was hired on March 8, 2003, three weeks before Olbermann took over in the old Donahue spot. Ashleigh Banfield gave a speech right about the same time as that and she got canned shortly thereafter. This makes me believe that MSNBC was trying hard to ride the wave it perceived in the country. It had to since, as Jack correctly points out, it was a ratings landfill at the time. As for Olbermann being a"constant critic of the Bush Administration from his first day at the network," well, that's probably not true either, since the wingnut-welfare drones at the Media Research Center didn't get interested in him until 2005.
The memo/study is not a fake. (Jack didn't say that, either. He -- and NBC, through the link he provided -- said it wasn't the reason Phil was fired. He also seems to doubt the veracity of bloggers, which hardly makes him unique around here.) It may in fact be a consultant's report that NBC partially followed. (That's where Jack left the discussion.) If you've got a cite saying that the memo was a fake, not one that says it wasn't the reason that Donahue was fired, I'd like to see it. You have no proof. Luckily, you rarely need any. Hence the relevance, always, of the Swift Boat charmers whenever you accuse someone else of tailoring reality to suit ideological constructs. Projection is not critical thought.
You got played, dude. A bunch of liars took your country to war -- at least in part because the elite press fell down on the job -- and you stood on the sidelines and cheered. Live with your conscience and your politics, ill-formed as they are, on that one.