TV news veteran Ted Koppel has done two pieces on NBC‘s Rock Center that attempt to critique the partisanship of today’s media system. But what the reports really illustrate is that some people aren’t very good at playing media critic—especially when they feel obligated to suggest that “both sides” are equally at fault.
Koppel’s first report (9/13/12) looked at right and left watchdogs, “an industry out there on both sides monitoring and recording anything that could hurt the political opposition.” That “industry” consists of the liberal Media Matters for America and the right-wing Media Research Center.
As Koppel explains, “You got people sitting there with headsets…waiting for someone to make a misstep.” He goes on to wonder whether the groups on both sides are “feeding the sausage machine.”
But his argument starts to fall apart right away, as he begins to tell the story of Georgetown law student and women’s health advocate Sandra Fluke.
Koppel explains that radio host Rush Limbaugh’s famous remarks about Fluke—in which he called Fluke, among other things, a “slut”—seemed to be inspired by a column published by the Media Research Center. (The piece in question ran under the subtle headline “Sex-Crazed Co-Eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control, Student Tells Pelosi Hearing Touting Freebie Mandate.”)
Limbaugh’s comments provoked an outcry, which Koppel explained this way:
Bingo. Limbaugh had committed the kind of gaffe that fuels an entire industry, and he gave the Obama White House a gift that keeps on giving.
Well, maybe. Or he’s a sexist creep who said exactly what he wanted to convey to his audience—which isn’t really a “gaffe” at all.
Koppel explains that a “counter-gaffe” came soon thereafter, when CNN pundit Hilary Rosen said that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann “has actually never worked a day in her life.”
“I mean, this is a two-sided fistfight,” anchor Brian Williams explained as the segment closed. But it’s hard to see how the two sides can be equated. One side published a nasty hit piece on an individual, which was echoed by the most powerful radio talk show host in the country. Apparently the offense on the liberal side was noticing Limbaugh’s sexist drivel. The other example consisted of a dopey comment from a relatively obscure TV liberal mostly known for doing corporate PR.
The second installment (9/20/12) was no better, as Koppel attempted to explain how the media make all of this even worse by giving a platform to combatants on both sides.
Williams set up the show with the expected riff on how both sides do it. The secret tape of Mitt Romney at a fundraiser talking about the “47 percent” was the first strike, but then came “the counterattack from the right—the tape of Barack Obama from 14 years ago saying he believes in redistribution.” Actually, the Obama tape was deceptively edited; the rest of that passage includes Obama talking about how to “decentralize delivery systems” in order to “foster competition” and “work in the marketplace.”
Koppel starts his argument by suggesting the media have gone from the likes of Walter Cronkite to the Fox News Channel‘s shouting conservative Bill O’Reilly (ignoring the flourishing of far-right broadcasters well before O’Reilly). Actually, Koppel argues that “the bar for civility on cable television and talk radio has fallen so low that by comparison, O’Reilly seems almost reasonable.”
Indeed, if the show was meant to be ironic, then it succeeded; much of it was Koppel allowing O’Reilly to hold forth on incivility and the coarsening of the political dialogue. O’Reilly, true to his character, turns the discussion back into a complaint about the forces arrayed against him: “I have been vilified to the extent that I have to have bodyguards almost everywhere I go.”
The Koppel segment wanted badly to show that “both sides” are contributing to this destructive cycle: “The partisan ranting is more widespread than ever,” he says. But for a supposedly two-sided problem, it seemed like they had trouble finding the left-leaning equivalent to far-right talk show hosts like Michael Savage and Mark Levin, save for a few fleeting clips from MSNBC.
The segment closed with a discussion that perfectly illustrated the problem with Koppel’s approach: Far-right shock pundit Ann Coulter posing as a media critic, alongside comedian Bill Maher—presumably a stand-in for the left. (“Smart, stubborn, and ideological opposites,” Koppel explained.)
Even though the pairing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Maher wound up making the most coherent observation by challenging one of Koppel’s statements:
KOPPEL: The bifurcation is really extreme. I mean, the left is further left and the right is further right.
MAHER: The left is not further left. The left is further right. See, this is the problem that the media makes. The left is not further left. The Republicans keep staking out this further and further ground to the right, and then demanding that the Democrats meet them in the center. Except it’s not the center anymore. It’s the center right. I mean, that’s what Obama is. Obama—to call him a socialist? He is not even a liberal.
But the segment wound up more or less where it started, pondering the effect of the polarizers of the left and right. When Williams asked Koppel at the end of the show, “Do you think any of this has splashed up against what we do for a living?,” Koppel agreed that it had.
But this notion of a media system newly corrupted by contact with ideologically driven pundits is a bit much. Especially from the likes of Koppel, who some viewers might recall that in 1992 Koppel’s Nightline gave right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh a platform to spout nonsense about ozone depletion. Seven years earlier, far-right TV evangelist Jerry Falwell was on the same show to talk about HIV/AIDS. The most frequent guests on Koppel’s Nightline, according to FAIR’s landmark study of the show, were conservatives like Henry Kissinger, Falwell and Elliott Abrams.
In what Koppel seems to think were the good old days, the supposedly neutral media made plenty of room for these voices on the right. (Kissinger is, according to Koppel, “an extraordinary man. This country has lost a lot by not having him in a position of influence and authority.”) Everyone was better behaved, and there wasn’t a cable channel that tried to push back against the right.
Was that really better?
When the so-called unbiased media outlets are so afraid to report that one side is way over the line, or clearly wrong on any issue – because THEY may be labelled as bias…then it doesn’t do any of us any good at all.
That’s the real shame – when you have a very loud source yelling over and over that mainstream media has a liberal agenda (which studies show is untrue btw) – it turns formally respected outlets into being worthless….I’ve noticed it on CNN particularly….always pointing out that “it happens on both sides” or allowing two sides of an issue…and, even if one of them is not factual, never challenging them on it. Bill Maher actually did say it best – at another point in the interview – “We’re not just screaming at each other,” Maher said. “One side is screaming facts and truth. One side is screaming their version of truth, which is religious-based nonsense.” ….and CNN and others are too damn afraid to point that out – shame on them!
I watched his second installment, and Koppel said he couldn’t get anyone from MSNBC to join him for this topic — and I agree, Bill Maher doesn’t count. But just because the whole balance/objectivity thing is largely b.s. and anachronistic, and just because he’s not particularly critical of his own industry, doesn’t mean Koppel is wrong. I’m kinda’ shocked, actually, how FAIR cherry picks from the segment — and Koppel’s entire career, apparently — to make him wrong about the fact there there are mean, destructive people on the left and right calling names, playing gotcha, taking words out of context and accusing the other guys of being stupid, evil, crazy, etc. We have a left wing noise machine (of which I am even occasionally a part) and it is hardly a force for good in our politics.
Good…but why do you feel the need to denigrate Hilary Rosen. What she said was absolutely true. Ann Romney hasn’t worked a day in her life. Go back and look at all of the statements by Willard Romney on his work requirement for single mothers. He was eloquent about how being forced to work …to get a job…was so valuable for their “self-esteem” etc.
We are all familiar with the formulation “working mother” vs. stay-at-home mother.
Hilary Rosen has children…she doesn’t think that raising children is a walk in the park.
But what she said is right.
to make him wrong about the fact there there are mean, destructive people on the left and right calling names, playing gotcha, taking words out of context and accusing the other guys of being stupid, evil, crazy, etc. – Annie
I think your incorrect in this, the article is not saying there isn’t extremes on both sides, it is that the Arguments presented are not equal in value and thus when comparing, you don’t get the real picture.
The right has managed to move the ‘right boundaries’ to such a point that even if you don’t actually move the ‘final left boundary’ the field in question is now weighted to the right in out look. We are thus told that we must ‘more to center’, but we are not, we are so far over what would have been center even 40 years ago, that the terms are really now meaningless in comparison to any place else in the world. We can’t even get the color right, because we have to be unique.
And since I have listened to KPFA and read FAIR now, for so long, I see many things I once thought would be ‘not possible’ coming to life in our country, points they made years ago. I can recall hearing phrases like “Corporate Welfare” coming from them, I think nearly a full decade before the rest of the media caught on…
What I have said from the early 90’s on is, to paraphrase from LOTR, That in spite of which party is “on the side of media, the Media is not entirely on anyone side, and most they are on no ones side.” They are out to make the money; that is the end of the story. If you try to attribute any real ‘humanity’ to the media itself, then your just fooling yourself.
They are always holding signs say “mostly hurrah for our side”.
Media Reform conference in Minneapolis: Criticism of the media, but a movement still in the orbit of the Democratic Party
…At its heart the perspective of the media reform movement is essentially untenable. The consolidation of media ownership in a few hands and all its attendant ills—the trivialization and commercialization of content, the debasement of news coverage, the absence of critical thought in mainstream radio and television—are the inevitable product of private ownership of the vast communications and media resources.
The emphasis on “grassroots” efforts and “local” organizing (of a vague and unspecific character), while it may be sincere on the part of some, is an evasion of the problem: capitalism. Those who go on at length about the crimes of the American establishment, but either remain silent about the Democrats or offer indirect, shamefaced support, are evading the central political issue in American political life: the need to break from this imperialist party and construct a party of the working population along socialist and internationalist lines…
…The concentration of media ownership, along with all the other characteristics of contemporary American and global capitalism, is not a subjective choice of Rupert Murdoch, Disney, Viacom, Verizon and their political representatives in Washington. These are tendencies inherent in the capitalist mode of production under conditions of a globally integrated economy. To demand the reduction or renewed national regulation of global corporate concentration, while retaining the profit system, is the most utopian and futile of perspectives…
Anticommunism, as opposed to socialist opposition to the Stalinist regimes in the USSR and elsewhere, became virtually a state religion in the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This resulted in the systematic elimination of left-wing opinion, its subsequent unavailability to the public. This was not simply a right-wing undertaking. American liberalism and the Democratic Party, in alliance with the state, settled accounts with their opponents on the left in the purges. The consequences of that process for political, social and cultural life have been disastrous…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/medi-j13.shtml
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/med2-j14.shtml
Oh Mr. Koppel:
I think you need another analogy. For example, let’s take football. If the reporters are like referees, then they really need to know the rules and look carefully at all that is said, and in terms of fact checking, they really need to check, but they also need to provide a public service that does that. If they don’t, then everything is he said/ she said forever.
I thnk journalists now are a lot like referees, but not very good ones at that. Look what happened to the NFL. If journalists a.k.a. referees don’t have the skills, you no longer have a political game, just ignorant chaos with a lot of bad calls.
If much of our country is moving to the right, then we can ask ourselves: “Why is this happening?”. Maybe, it is because simplistic extremism is easier to understand, for under-educated minds. Thank you.
In the 2004 debates, Dennis Kucinich handed Ted Koppel his ass when Koppel suggested Kucinich should get out of the race since he was a small fish.
Karl Radek(!) has it right: the great political victory of McCarthyism was to destroy the legitimacy of a geunine left–especially in the CIO- because the liberals feared that they were vulnerable in the new atmosphere for their “popular front” with lefties during New Deal and WW2 days .
We continue to suffer from the consequences of that victory in the arguments used to support Obama’s re election.
If Koppel thinks Kissinger was an ‘extraordinary’ man that is all that is necessary to realize he is too senile to be on TV. If the left tells the truth – then a lie by the right has to have the same media attention. There are opinions and there are facts. They are not the same.
it is probably impossible to write what I am about to without sounding uncivil… hell maybe I AM just uncivil… heh heh… anyway… // after being away from N. America/Europe, living in a strange little bubble for 10 years essentially, I now find all of this ‘stuff’ quite a bit more than mildly, myopically insane… which would be of little consequence if the parties involved didn’t possess the power to obliterate our species.. hell.. ALL species… I wonder… why is this article so tepid? … as such, it comes up completely LAME. Here’s the very straitforward and simple way to express what the article was (I presume) supposed to be saying ///
Hello people. Your media is completely controlled by power, the vast majority of which, lies in the hands of a handful of your citizens. In other words, ‘news’ is now ‘propaganda’. ‘Right wing’, ‘left wing’ as descriptors are now meaningless obfuscation, delivered in ‘business as usual’ ‘news’-casts or absurd ‘investigative journalism reports’ by reporters who are either bought off, frightened, not too bright, happy to comply with power, or possessing psychopathic tendancies… or worse. In other words, these people work for the Owners… the ones that own YOU… your job, your freedoms (most of which you appear to have blithely given away to the most absurb, indefensible pretexts… almost all of which you were warned about by your ‘founding fathers’). Your nightly newscasts are now truly ‘all the news that fits’ .. all the news that fits the needs/desires of your masters. And indeed, masters they are. ///
In the last 10 years alone, the change that I have found on returning is startling… beyond startling… bizarre, and most frightening of all, apparently unnoticed… you probably don’t agree… but.. if you have been here, the change is incremental… for me, it is a slap in the face, and most frightening of all… when I try to talk about it, I am greeted with either annoyance (if I continue past the level of ‘the usual bitching’ .. it’s OK to GRIPE… not OK to try to get into real depth) , or blank looks. Its like shouting ‘the house is on fire’ and have people get angry at being bothered, or argue that it’s under control, or stand weeping instead of responding… etc etc…
America is now a fascist state. This not rhetoric. Google ‘fascism’ or ‘fascist state’.
50% of the budget goes to the military. FIFTY PERCENT. Freedoms/rights have been revoked. Foreign countries are invade with impunity. The ‘president’ give himself power on a whim, essentially.. sits in his office and decides who (in a foreign country) to murder today…. on and on… stranger and stranger.
The media is OWNED by the Owners. If you work there, you do what your told… explicitly or implicitly.
Or you no longer work there.
The only person choice involved is whether to simply quit, or be fired.
… and yes, Karl Radek is correct to point out the ‘small corrections’ will not suffice. Implementing communism is not the only choice, either. The U.S. was conceived as states, united in common purpose to each others mutual benefit… the federal part of it was designed to be the LEAST powerful… the inverse is now true.
Centralization of power inevitably leads to corruption. This has been observed and noted … forever! … there’s no reason why that should suddenly change, just because you are Americans… indeed this kind of magical thinking is ALSO historically common in past empires.
I have to agree that the Media has become shell shocked by being call a “Liberal” Media by the Conservatives. They are afraid to identify which side is actually lying and misleading. The Left and the Right are not equally guilty of spinning the news. The Media ignores the lying and untruths by Romney and Ryan, probably because they don’t want to be called “Liberal” again by the Far Right.
Wow I loved this article and the comments.It so amazes me that their are so many people who think the majority of the media is in Mitts pocket.Fox is I would say.And the right wing Radio,and cable jocks are.All the rest I would argue lean the other way.The question is not why Mitts numbers are so high.He does not need press for that.It is just a reflection of the kickback against the state of things.Just as Obamas inauguration was 4 years ago.The question is how obama has any numbers …let alone parity.Only the press can cover up such a horrible record.And I do believe they are working hard at that.Of course Obamas campaign has spoken on the simple fact that they can “count” on the press to help them in their re election bid.They then point to Fox as deluded and biased,and a hinderance to that run.Ya think?That was why they were formed dummy.To be an answer to the liberal bias.Tou say “the press” does not point a finger strongly enough at what they see is wrong?Watch FOX.The reason the other side is so week kneed is because they dont have a leg to stand on……..And they know it.They cant push that throttle to 100%They would come out of their own smoke screen if they did.
I see this drivel “Koppel attempted to explain how the media make all of this even worse by giving a platform to combatants on both sides.” as the heart of Koppel’s complaint. As technology allows more and more voices to be heard it has diminished the “power” of all the Ted Koppel’s everywhere. He and his views have become all but irrelevant. This just a mouth full of sour grapes, that’s all.
Allan West really is “bat-shit crazy”.
Seems to me Koppel’s entrance was the beginning of the end of true investigative journalism, about the same time the League of Women Voters abandoned the dog and pony show that was to become the presidential debates. Substantive debate was replaced by lights, camera, action! Same goes for the world news under Koppel. Even this morning on the CBS Morning Show the trend continues with the “analysis” of former presidential debates, how they determine who wins and who loses. They were highlighting Reagan and Carter with the infamous and substance-less “There you go again!” Reagan used that quirk over and over instead of answering any questions or posing any real answers or solutions. Because of that nonsensical remark, the Morning Show pointed out that’s why Reagan won. Because Gore moved near Bush during their debates he was creepy. That’s why Bush won. In other words, nothing substantive whatsoever was involved in any of these debates. Only how much one sweats in front of a camera. If Americans are content to use this vehicle to choose their presidents there is simply no hope at all for this country. Ted Koppel supported that philosophy back then when he was on the air. Obviously he still supports it today! And praise from Kissinger is not a plus. Just ask the international war crimes tribunal who would love to get their hands on him.
I want to advert to only the last point in the article. Koppel must be insane if he thinks Kissinger is a great, or even a good man. He was Dr. Death, responsible for abetting the reactionary military regimes in Latin America commit well over a million murders of poor folk. And to what purpose? None whatsoever.
Kissinger always was a pig; Koppel thinks he can fly.
The mainstream media is there to make money. They are there to shield the American people from what is really going on in the government. NBC is owned by General Electric. They are one the top defense contractors in the Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon to be Iran wars. Do you really think they would be strongly against anything that would make them billions of dollars. Oh by the way Obama’s approval of spending Trillions of dollars, trasfering our wealth to the Federal Reserve and the Corporation. I call Corporatism or Corporate Fascism. You are going to get the same whether it’s a Republican or Democrat in office. This country has been sold down the river WAKE UP PEOPLE.
Bravo FAIR! Speaking truth to big media. Sometimes there’s not two sides to an issue but only the right side. Koppel’s assertion that Kissinger is “an extraordinary man. This country has lost a lot by not having him in a position of influence and authority,” is an embarrassment. Guess St. Ted hasn’t read Christopher Hitchens’s book, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.”
It is not the media who is in Mittens pocket; it is mittens who is tied to the media with strings that they pull when they damn well please. The Major corporate medias pretty much own everything there is; though they really want the last drop of the milkshake – i.e. Public non-commercial media. I recall when they tried to take KPFA off the air to sell it to a major media corporation; I thought it was a ‘skit’ or something at first.
But no, Mittens doesn’t own the media; he is the little puppet. being run by the big media who owe no one anything as far as they are concerned. But he doesn’t run the show. In fact from the power showing he has had, he is what bush was in the original Bush-Gore Race which Gore lost because he put too many people to sleep and they didn’t vote. Bush wasn’t supposed to win, he was supposed to go up and get his also-ran medal like a good little boy. Oops, some one screwed up. He got elected.
We are currently heading for another round of this and the media is out for it’s own; there is friends in this battle according to them. To much money is at stake and they need to deliever. Mittens should lose but that don’t mean they can’t mess this up again; right now they are trying to tire out the swing (Voters) so it don’t swing so easy anymore.
Koppel? A critic of tendentious media? You have got to be joking!
Koppel is not only on record as a friend of war criminal HK, but Koppel began that whole Nightline show merely as an excuse to keep the hostage issue alive and as the sole issue to feed public outrage night after night against Jimmy Carter. By elevating this diplomatic issue into a “crisis,” at the instigation of his buddy, HK, Koppel was instrumental as the PR warm-up arm of the October surprise that led to Reagan’s election and the massive-transfer-of-wealth-to-the-1% economy we’ve witnessed since the “Reagan Revolution.”
Koppel has a lot to answer for.
So basically you are admonishing the Right-Wing scandal-seeking while acquiescing the Left-Wing by utilizing a “relative filth” doctrine.
Your particular brand of intellectual poverty is fascinating.
Why? Because It doesn’t matter that the “journalist” on the “left” was “relatively obscure” because the assault line gained salience and momentum. It was used as an attack piece on Romney on a number of occasions.
Never mind that the woman raised five children while battling multiple sclerosis, an undertaking that is far more challenging than puff-puff-passing your offspring to a nanny while you pursue a career.
Sadly, morons such as yourself are all over the media nowadays. They admonish gun owners due some mystical, collective guilt they share in every homicide and suicide involving a firearm; while conveniently ignoring the thousands of children killed by direct military intervention and indirect aid to third party regimes…
You make me sick.