Punditocracy Three: Radio and Internet

excerpted from the book

What Liberal Media?

The Truth About Bias and the News

by Eric Alterman

Basic Books, 2003, paper

 

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Talk radio is a great deal more popular-and powerful-than most of us realize. Twenty-two percent of all Americans surveyed say they listen. In some major cities, the number is as high as 40 percent.' Conservative domination of the talk-radio airwaves is so extensive as to be undisputed, even by the usual suspects. There's not a single well-known liberal talk-show host in the nation and barely a host who does not at least lean well in the direction of the extreme right. The most popular shows are hosted by Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Oliver North, Sean Hannity, Armstrong Williams, Blanquita Collum, Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, Bob Grant, Bob Dornan, Michael Medved, Michael Reagan, Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Howard Stern, Don Imus, Michael Graham, Ken Hamblin, and Laura Ingraham. Every single one is a movement conservative with politics located at the extreme far-right end of the political spectrum. So far to the right is the general pack of talk-show hosts that, early in the Clinton Administration, G. Gordon Liddy felt empowered to instruct listeners on the best way to assassinate U.S. government officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms without receiving much in the way of censure from this community. (His exact words were "Head shots. Head shots.") Once, during a joint C-Span appearance with a right-wing talk-show host and activist, Paul Weyrich, I challenged him to condemn Liddy's statement and he refused, as he put it, to "criticize a brother talk-show host," even for advocating the murder of U.S. government officials. When Bill O'Reilly joined the ranks of radio talk-show hosts in the spring of 2002, he could legitimately claim to be a relative liberal in their midst. Even the Internet gossip Matt Drudge, no stranger to irresponsible right-wing rumor-mongering, says that when he has a story that is "playing among the wing nuts, this tells me it's going to be a huge talk-radio thing."

Indeed, because the radio business has become so centralized in recent years, it is easy for talk-show hosts to spread themselves across the dial with incredible speed. O'Reilly's show debuted in the spring of 2002 with 205 stations, ahead of Michael Medved's 130, Sean Hannity's 150 or so, and Laura Ingraham's nearly 200 markets. But O'Reilly was still way behind Limbaugh's market share, which has gone as high as 650 stations and anywhere from fifteen to twenty million listeners, depending on whose statistics you prefer. Few progressives are ever given shows, and efforts such as Gary Hart's and Mario Cuomo's haven't amounted to much. The left-wing Texas populist Jim Hightower appeared to be building a strong regional audience back in the mid-1990s, but he was highly critical of Disney and its owner, Michael Eisner. Not long after Disney bought the station, Hightower's show was abruptly canceled. KGO in San Francisco, perhaps alone in the country, boasts two liberal hosts, Bernie Ward and Ray Taliafero, whose shows appear at 10 PM. to 1 A.M. and 1 A.M. to 5 A.M.- not exactly primetime. The Washington Post's Paul Farhi notes, "The drought has gotten so bad that the talk industry is starting to manufacture its own outrage." A few months ago, Talkers magazine reported on the existence of an anonymous creature it termed the 'Lone Liberal,' who was eager to appear on radio talk shows to do battle with its legions of conservative hosts. Its publisher, Michael Harrison, reported that this exotic animal was "hot as a firecracker" on the circuit, averaging eight to nine talk-show bookings a week. In fact, the Lone Liberal was always a ruse, played by Harrison himself. "I'm far more conservative than the Lone Liberal," he explained. "I live in the real world."

Edward Monks, a Eugene, Oregon, attorney, calculates that in his city, conservatives enjoy a 4,000-to-zero hour advantage over liberals on the radio. He wrote in The Register-Guard: "Political opinions expressed on talk radio are approaching the level of uniformity that would normally be achieved only in a totalitarian society.... There is nothing fair, balanced or democratic about it." Monks noted that as recently as 1974, such domination would have been not only inconceivable, but illegal. Back then, the Federal Communications Commission was still demanding "strict adherence to the [1949] Fairness Doctrine as the single most important requirement of operation in the public interest-the sine qua non for grant for renewal of license." This view was ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 when it reaffirmed the people's right to a free exchange of opposing views, with roughly equal time given to all sides, if demanded, on the public airwaves. The doctrine was overturned by the Reagan-appointed FCC in 1987. The chairman then, Mark Fowler, made clear his view that "the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants." Meanwhile, media companies, together with cigarette and beer companies, working with Republican Senator Bob Packwood, set up the Freedom of Expression Foundation to fight the fairness doctrine in the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. The companies won in a 2-to-1 decision in which the two judges ruling in their favor happened to be Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia. President Reagan vetoed attempts by Congress to reinstate the doctrine, and the net result has been the complete far right domination of the nation's airwaves, owing entirely to what analysts call "marketplace realities."

The amazing career of Rush Limbaugh owes a great deal to that moment in history. It is testament to just how well success succeeds in the U.S. media, regardless of accuracy, fairness, or even common sense. Limbaugh's legendary lies and mythological meanderings have been rewarded not only with legions of listeners, but also with incredible riches-a contract said to be worth $250 million over seven years. It has also won him the respect of the media establishment. Limbaugh, for instance, has been treated to laudatory coverage in Time and Newsweek and was invited by host Tim Russert of Meet the Press to be a guest commentator on what is certainly the most influential political program on television. And yet Limbaugh is, to put it bluntly, deranged. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has published an entire book of Rushisms that have turned out to be false, unsubstantiated, or just plain wacko.

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Listening to Limbaugh, the idea that he enjoys genuine power in the political life of the nation leaves you shaking your head in awe and amazement. But it is impossible to ignore. Limbaugh's radio audience is the largest any program on the medium has enjoyed since the advent of television. President George H. W. Bush invited him for a White House sleepover, as well as to be his honored guest at his State of the Union address, seated next to Barbara Bush, in a demonstration of fealty and respect. Shortly thereafter, in 1993, National Review termed him "the leader of the opposition." William Bennett averred that Limbaugh "may be the most consequential person in political life at the moment." When the Republicans took the House back in 1994 in a profound and humiliating rebuke to President Clinton, Limbaugh's broadcast received a lion's share of the credit. Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz even defended nonsense like the above as "policy oriented." As Newt Gingrich's former press secretary Tony Blankley noted,

After Newt, Rush was the single most important person in securing a Republican majority in the House of Representatives after 40 years of Democratic Party rule. Rush's powerful voice was the indispensable factor, not only in winning in 1994, but in holding the House for the next three election cycles. At a time when almost the entire establishment media ignored or distorted our message of renewal, Rush carried (and of en improved) the message to the heartland. And where Rush led the other voices of talk radio followed.

This influence cannot be said to have diminished markedly during the past decade even after Limbaugh lost his most-favored targets when the Clintons left the White House. Much to his chagrin as a McCain supporter, William Kristol credits Limbaugh with rallying conservatives behind Bush during the 2000 presidential primaries. "He helped make it the orthodox conservative position that McCain was utterly unacceptable and also that Bush was fine, neither of which were intuitively obvious if you're a conservative," Kristol said. McCain's South Carolina political adviser, Richard M. Quinn, concurred, adding that the Arizona senator never recovered, in his opinion, from Limbaugh's repeated descriptions of the conservative Republican as a "liberal" in an extremely conservative state. "I never polled on the impact of Limbaugh," Quinn told the New York Times. "But anecdotally, I heard it all the time. You would hear on the street repetition of what Rush was saying about McCain. There was a general sense in the campaign that Limbaugh was definitely hurting us. Blankley put it bluntly: "Given the closeness of the election, but for Rush Limbaugh's broadcasts, we would now be led by President Al Gore."

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While the Net is economically dominated by a tiny number of large corporations, just like television and radio, the information that appears on it is not. Standards for established news services with a net presence have by and large been maintained; however, the true story of political news on the Net is with the small, right-wing sites that use the Web almost as effectively as they use talk radio. Web sites like the Drudge Report, NewsMax.com, WorldNetDaily.com, FreeRepublic.com, Townhall.com, Lucianne.com, JewishWorldReview.com, and National Review Online boast regular readers in the millions. What's more, they are dedicated readers and in many cases, like the Limbaugh audience, so far to the right as to tend toward outer space. For instance, Joseph Farah, a columnist for Worldnet, warned his readers in October 2002, "The Democrats-far too many of them-are evil, pure and simple. They have no redeeming social value. They are outright traitors themselves or apologists for treasonous behavior. They are enemies of the American people and the American way of life." On Lucianne.com, a number of posters celebrated the plane crash that killed Paul Wellstone, his wife, and daughter, in late October 2002 and expressed the hope that Ted Kennedy would meet a similar fate. Even further out in the right wing ozonosphere, is the site FreeRepublic.com. While posts terming Gore a "traitor" are commonplace, alongside the addresses and phone numbers of allegedly liberal politicians and judges, a UPI story unearthed one user who sympathized with Timothy McVeigh and another who called him a "modern-day Paul Revere." According to figures published in the New York Times, the average "Freeper" Web visit lasts an amazing five hours and fourteen minutes. It's not a hobby for these people, it's a life.

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Undoubtedly the biggest star of Net journalism-its Rush Limbaugh if you will-is the self-styled Walter Winchell-in-a-fedora, Matt Drudge, who claims more than 100 million visits a month to his bare-bones, next-to-no-graphics site. Like Limbaugh, Drudge professes nothing but contempt for the mainstream news establishment. Viewed, he crows, "daily not only by presidents and world leaders, CEOs, anchormen and top media editors," Drudge claims to be "powered" only by endless curiosity and a love of freedom. Of course with numbers like his, the media he disdains cannot help but celebrate him. Drudge was named one of Newsweek's new media stars and Peoples Twenty-Five Most Intriguing People. The American Journalism Review ran a cover story entitled, "Journalism in the Era of Drudge and Flynt," and the Columbia Journalism Review cited his outing of the Monica Lewinsky affair in 1998 as one of the ten key dates in the media history of the twentieth century.

Originally an amateur Hollywood gossip who picked through garbage cans to get his goods, Drudge became an overnight phenomenon as a kind of bulletin board for unsubstantiated political rumor and right-wing character attacks. Drudge describes his work habit as sitting in his apartment "petting the cat and watching the wires- that's all I do." But he also receives a great deal of e-mail. One of his favorite tactics is to steal a working journalist's story-leaked to him internally-and post its still-in the-works details on his Web site before the author can publish them. His big moment in media history consisted of little more than posting the purloined work of Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, while the magazine's editors sought further confirmation before publishing it. Drudge did it again when NBC News was trying to decide how to handle an unsubstantiated twenty-one-year-old accusation of sexual assault against President Clinton. Drudge rarely bothers to independently verify his stories, so he often appears prescient-when, in fact, he is simply overlooking what is widely understood to be the essence of journalism. Tim Russert learned this to his chagrin when Drudge posted three stories on his site about the Buffalo-born newsman's considering a run for governor of New York. "All three stories-they are just plain dead wrong," Russert complained. "And he never called me about them, never." The only surprising thing here is Russert's surprise.

Drudge is a self-described misfit with few social graces, and modesty is certainly not one of them. Drudge calls his apartment "the most dangerous newsroom in America." "If I'm not interesting, the world's not interesting," he writes. "And if I'm boring, you're boring." Despite his disdain for traditional news ethics, and a lack of any discernible effort in the areas of reporting or punditry, Drudge's impact is huge. He counts his hits in the millions and can single-handedly drive hundreds of thousands-sometimes millions-of readers to any story he posts on the Web. When he purloined and posted Isikoff's Lewinsky scoop, he jump-started a political meltdown that led to the only impeachment of an elected president in American history. When he then went on to post the story of Clinton's alleged mulatto "love child," he made a national fool of himself, but hurt no one, save those gullible and irresponsible media outlets-most notably Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times-who trusted him and reprinted it. But when he posted a malicious lie about Clinton adviser and ex- journalist Sidney Blumenthal having "a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up," replete with "court records of Blumenthal's violence against his wife," Drudge attacked an innocent man. But even this did not seem to hurt Drudge's reputation. Much of the media preferred Drudge to Blumenthal, whom many reporters resented for personal and professional reasons. In none of these cases did Drudge profess regret, though he did retract his false accusation against Blumenthal before the latter launched a libel suit against him. As for the Clinton "love child" concoction, Drudge bragged, "I'd do it again."

During the Lewinsky crisis, Drudge became so big the Internet could no longer contain him. He was given his own television program on Fox, where he was free to spout unconfirmed rumors with fellow conservative conspiracy nuts until he was informed by management that he would not be allowed to show a National Enquirer photo of a tiny hand emerging from the womb during a spina bifida operation on the fetus. Drudge wanted to use the photo as part of his campaign against legal abortion. When even the Fox executives found this idea not only repulsive but misleading, Drudge quit the show. Roger Ailes, whose brilliant idea it had been to hire Drudge after watching him spout baseless conspiracy theories on Russert's program, complained, "He wants to apply Internet standards, which are nonexistent, to journalism, and journalism has real standards. It can't work that way." It should come as no surprise to anyone that Drudge is also a successful force in radio, with a two-hour Sunday evening show hosted by ABC that is heard in all fifty states and literally hundreds of major markets.

Drudge also published a book-well, sort of a book. The tome was "written" with the assistance of the late Julia Phillips. Of the 247 pages contained in The Drudge Manifesto, the reader is treated to forty blank pages; thirty-one pages filled with fan mail; twenty-four pages of old Drudge Reports; a thirteen-page Q& A from Drudge's National Press Club speech; ten pages of titles and the like; six pages of quotes from various personalities like Ms. Lewinsky and Madonna; four pages of a chat transcript; and, well, a great deal more filler. That leaves the reader with just 112 pages or barely 45 percent of actual book. (And even nine of these are Drudge poetry.

But even with all the strikes any journalist could imagine and then some against him, Drudge still gets results for his combination of nasty innuendo and right-wing politics, often by planting items that would be picked up by allegedly respectable journalists in national newspapers. In the Arkansas Senate race of 2002, the Associated Press reported that Democrat Mark Pryor found himself forced to respond "to an item on the Drudge Report Web site of Internet gossip Matt Drudge" in a lightly sourced story that alleged the hiring of an illegal immigrant for housekeeping duties. (In fact the woman in question later signed a sworn affidavit testifying to the fact that she was a legal U.S. resident and had been paid to lie.)37 In May of the same year, for example, Drudge carried a report that ex-conservative journalist David Brock, whose Blinded by the Right embarrassed virtually the entire movement, had suffered a "breakdown" while writing the book and had to be hospitalized-something Brock reluctantly confirmed when contacted. Drudge did not mention on his site that he had considerable reason to hold a grudge against Brock, who had published in his book that he received an e-mail from the Internet snoop that said he wished the two could be "fuck buddies." (Brock is an open homosexual. Drudge is not.) As the gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile wrote, "You'd think that no respectable journalist would further the new Drudge sludge on Brock, at least not without a fuller explanation that included Drudge's possible motives." But in fact the Washington Post did publish it-or at least the parts Drudge wanted published, leaving out any discussion of his motives-and adding quotes from three conservatives who continued the character assassination of Brock that Drudge initiated. Nowhere in the Post item did the newspaper attempt to establish any journalistic relevance to the item, which is rather amazing when you consider the fact that its former publisher, the late Philip Graham, father of the current head of the Post Company, Donald Graham, was himself hospitalized for mental illness, before taking his own life. (Making this story even stranger, the Post's Howard Kuru reported in 1999 that Drudge's own mother had been hospitalized for schizophrenia.)

Just before Election Day 2002, Drudge and Limbaugh combined, together with Brit Hume of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to effect a smear against the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and, by extension, the late Senator Wellstone's re-election campaign. This episode too had all the trademarks of the conservative echo-chamber effect, including unproven innuendo, inaccuracy, repeated cavalier use of unchecked facts, all in the service of a clear political/ideological goal. As reported by Bryan Keefer of Spinsanity, DSA posted a pop-up advertisement on its site on October 9 seeking contributions to pay the cost of bringing young people to Minnesota, where same-day registration is legal, to help register Wellstone voters in what was certain to be a dose race. Shortly after the advertisement appeared, however, a local conservative organization sent out a press release in which it manipulated the original text to make it appear that DSA was planning to transport people not to register Minnesotans to vote, but to vote themselves, with the hopes of stealing the election.

Drudge saw the story in a local paper and headlined his site's line: "Socialists Sending People to MN to Illegally Vote for Wellstone." This apparently sent Limbaugh into action, as the radio host melodramatically informed his listeners, "DSA has been caught." With his typical respect for accuracy, Rush added, "You can go in there and register and vote and split the same day, you can go home, you don't even have to spend the night in Minnesota and freeze if you don't want to, you can go in there and vote and leave." Next up was Fox News's Brit Hume, who announced to that network's viewers, "The Democratic Socialists of America, which bill themselves as the largest socialist organization in the country, is raising tax-deductible money to send people to the state of Minnesota, where they can take advantage of same-day registration to vote for the liberal incumbent Paul Wellstone." These reports apparently inspired the Journal editors who-again, contrary to all available evidence-insisted, "The Democratic Socialists of America recently posted an ad on their Web site inviting tax-deductible contributions to 'bring young people to Minnesota' to vote in the close U.S. Senate race there." As Keefer noted, while the loosely worded ad did originally raise questions about whether tax-deductible funds were being properly used for issue advocacy-and hence was rewritten for clarifying purposes-never in any of its texts did it even imply, much less encourage, anyone but Minnesotans to pick their own senator. It is perfectly legal in that state to encourage people to vote and even to take them to the polls.

Of course, Wellstone's death made the effects of this story moot, but cases like the above demonstrate just how profoundly journalistic times are a-changing. And the result of these changes is yet another victory for conservatives and scandalmongers-and in Drudge and Limbaugh's cases, both at once-who seek to poison our political discourse with a combination of character assassination, ideological invective, and unverified misinformation. The resulting loss of credibility for phantom SCLM bespeaks not only the profession's misfortune, but democracy's as well.


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