Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s death yesterday brought waves of mostly flattering coverage of the divisive right-wing leader. It was striking to see the parallels between the way Thatcher was covered on the PBS NewsHour and Fox News Channel‘s most popular show, the O’Reilly Factor. Though some people like to think that PBS and Fox couldn’t be further apart, they were basically singing the same tune.
The main Thatcher segment on the PBS newscast was a discussion with two former Republican secretaries of State, George Shultz and James Baker. Of course, both were big fans of Thatcher’s foreign policy (which was closely aligned with their own priorities during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush years). It was more than that, too; as Baker put it, Thatcher “emphasized the private sector and got rid of the oppressive influence of the trade unions.” And Shultz explained that Thatcher “was a very attractive woman. So you were certainly aware of that.”
PBS had one other guest: former Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, who cheered both Thatcher’s defeat of unions but also her humanity: “It’s kind of touching to be reminded of what a lovely woman she was.”
On the O’Reilly show, the host paid tribute to Thatcher’s leadership, contrasting it with Barack Obama’s tenure. As O’Reilly declared:
Her accomplishments are many, but she was always a very controversial figure in her own country and here in America, because the British press and the American media are liberal and always have been.
Later in the show, he was joined by conservatives Brit Hume and Bernard Goldberg; ironically, the latter segment focused on the alleged hostility to Thatcher in the mainstream media. So the guest line-ups were more alike than different. But so was some of the reporting. On Fox, Thatcher rescued Britain from the clutches of an oppressive union movement, and the record speaks for itself. As O’Reilly put it:
In Britain, 13 percent unemployment…. That’s a catastrophe, 13 percent, all right. When she leaves office eight years later, 5.8 percent unemployment. But if the unemployment rate drops 7 percent, which means all those millions of people are working under this woman, give her some credit.
And he put it a different way:
In 1982, about two and a half years into her term, unemployment in Great Britain was 13 percent. It’s chaos, absolute chaos there. When she left office in 1990, she was the longest serving prime minister in British history. It was at 5.8 percent.
On PBS, meanwhile, reporter Margaret Warner declared that Thatcher “brought a free market revolution to Britain, lowering taxes and privatizing state industries…. Britain’s economy rebounded from her tough medicine.”
Neither report gives viewers a good sense of Thatcher’s economic policy. (The wording in the PBS segment about rebounding from medicine is difficult to comprehend.) The Guardian compiled a list of economic indicators during Thatcher’s tenure; the short story is that inequality increased, and so did poverty–from 13.4 percent in 1979 to 22.2 percent in 1990.
O’Reilly is correct that unemployment dropped during part of Thatcher’s time in office; it also skyrocketed the first two years. When she left office in 1990, it was, according to the Guardian‘s figures, higher than when she took office. If that’s the record, then one would imagine it would be reflected somewhere–perhaps not at Fox News, for ideological reasons. But PBS is supposed to be about giving us the views that we’re not getting from the commercial media.
There is a distinct difference between PBS and FOX.
We get a bill for the excrement served us from the former.
Doug, does this mean you’re stealing cable?!
Peter, considering the fare extant, a strong case could be made that the cable cabal is stealing from us.
Well, not me, as a few years back I came to the conclusion I couldn’t justify shelling out scarce shekels for the drek hurled against my TV screen, and my set has sat idle since.
But the point is that we have a choice in that instance. Ponying up for the putridity of the Petroleum (or Plutocratic, take your pick) Broadcasting Service is, of course, just one of the joys of tax time, isn’t it?
So what motivated this response, and yet silence in regard to my earlier attempt at engagement?
(If you prefer to reply off forum, you have my email add.)
O’Reilly’s numbers are simply wrong.
Here are the actual historic unemployment figures for the UK:
May 1979 (Thatcher comes into office): 5.3%
Mid-1984 (height of unemployment): 11.9%
Nov. 1990 (Thatcher resigns): 7.3%
So the best anyone can reasonably say is that Thatcher “only” left 2% more unemployed when she left office (and unemployment continued to rise under her successor, John Major). Unemployment was not to go under 5% until there was a Labour government, during Tony Blair’s term (of whom I am no fan, but lets get the numbers reasonably right).
PBS is still a better deal. At least at PBS, they’re not complaining that the media are too liberal to say anything positive about Margaret Thatcher. Instead, they do their darndest to prove FOX wrong by bending over backward to be charitable to her.
I think we need to look critically at where PBS gets its funding, just as we would look at any commercial broadcaster. The individual “contributions from viewers like us” don’t seem to have the same impact as the corporate ones, do they? Or perhaps they do, but the lion’s share of them comes from precisely the upper-income, purportedly union-hating class that PBS is explicitly catering to.
Yet again, excellent. As the US MSM continues to compete to discredit themselves, FAIR continues in its ascendancy.
Aside some occasionally fine documentaries, especially, Frontline, there is little difference in the news content and slant between PBS and commercial TV. And, yes, The Guardian has been rather dispassionate in its analysis of the Thatcher legacy.
Earlier today, Dame Glenda Jackson in her Parliamentary contribution did lay bare in stark and depressing terms the human cost of Thatcher’s policies. And did so splendidly. And without a teleprompter. Here, a better video of her complete intervention:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-watch-glenda-1822905
Aside opposition to the Grenada invasion and her recognition of climate change, the Iron Lady was an unmitigated disaster to British society, of which she famously said, ‘And, you know, there’s no such thing as society.’
Charon, the boatman, has already received his obolus. And a Bitcoin, just in case.
The art of running a corporation, or government run by corporate types, is like being a shepherd: Shear too closely and the sheep will die in the cold; leave too much wool on the sheep and…Why would a shepherd ever do that?
Austerity is analogous to a corporate lockout: after much deprivation workers will be grateful to come back to work for less.
So much disorder is created by the corporate and government lockouts, by taking too much from the workers. But listen to the aforementioned complain about the inconvenience of a strike. Their shamelessness is astounding.
My God, O’Reilly is an idiot. Thatcher? Ding dong, the witch is dead!
The day I accept PBS as a legitimate news outlet is the day they start sounding like Democracy Now!
As a conservative I deal with this every day. Reagan wrecked this country ,and Thatcher wrecked England.Wow what a re write of history and the impact they had on both countries.If you did not live in England and the Us during that time(I did) I suppose you Could believe whatever you read.I encourage you to read more.
Ps /////could you imagine people parading here when Ted Kennedy died…..Or when Obama breaths his last?Especially 30 years after the fact?
Then again, PBS does get its money from people who worship Thatcher and Reagan so it s not surprising that they fell in line to keep their funding.
“PBS had one other guest: former Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, who cheered both Thatcher’s defeat of unions but also her humanity.”
That’s a laugh. Campbell was PM for about six months after succeeding Thatcher-lover Brian Mulroney. Her catastrophic election defeat — taking the Conservatives from 169 to 2 (two!) seats — was mostly due to the despised Mulroney and the rise of Reform, an early Canadian version of the Tea Party (which now rules Canada). Campbell’s own contribution was to say that serious political issues can’t be discussed in an election campaign.
I stopped listening to PBS and NPR for over a year now. I cannot stand to hear their smug attitudes like they really believe they are the last word in fair and balanced reporting. The only place these days where one can find real news is on Democracy Now, or the internet and YouTube.
P.S. for appropriate and entertaining British assessments of Thatcher, look for Labour MP (and former actress) Glenda Jackson’s ‘tribute’ in the House of Commons and George Galloway on his internet TV show.