It’s a White, White, White, White Media World

Who got to preview and review President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address?

To answer that question, I channel-surfed across ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and cable news channels CNBC, CNN, Fox and MSNBC. That’s a lot of surfing for one TV, so I may have missed a few faces. But by my conscientious but unscientific count, 76 American talking heads and three foreigners (seasoned correspondents interviewed on ABC Nightline).

Of the 76 Americans, 72 were white, one was an Arab-American and three were African Americans. That’s 95 percent white, five percent “other.”

As a group, the white talking heads were far more eager for war than white America as a whole (see polling data below). As for the Arab American and three African Americans, they didn’t begin to reflect the unease in their respective communities.

A word on my methodology: If someone appeared on more than one network or channel, I counted once for each network/channel he or she appeared on. I also counted anchors and hosts, who may be the most important talking heads of all, because they influence or determine outright who gets to pontificate. All of these crucial “gatekeeper” positions were reserved for whites. I did not count as “talking heads” the cross-section of ordinary Americans who gathered in the NBC and MSNBC studios and got to spit out some brief soundbites. Someone else might wish to investigate why Tom Brokaw (who now turns to Rush Limbaugh for election-night analysis) deems it appropriate to use Frank Luntz — a rightwing, highly partisan Republican pollster — to organize and moderate NBC’s “voice of the people” segments

The talking-heads roll call

CNBC: Larry Kudlow, Jim Cramer (Krauthammer admirer who represents “the left” on Kudlow & Cramer show), Ron Insana, Alan Murray, Ed Gillespie, Martha MacCallum, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell, Howard Fineman

NBC: Tom Brokaw, Tim Russert, Frank Luntz (Republican pollster), Ted Kennedy

Fox: Brit Hume, Tony Snow, Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke, Juan Williams, Cece Connolly, Jim Angle, Bill O’Reilly, DeeDee Myers, Michael Waldman, Bill Bennett, Peggy Noonan, Sean Hannity, Allen Colmes, Jon Corzine, Kay Bailey Hutchison

MSNBC: Chris Matthews, Peggy Noonan, Pat Caddell, Donna Brazile, Dick Armey, Norman Schwarzkopf, Barbara Boxer, Howard Fineman, Rahm Emanuel, John Warner, Dianne Feinstein

CNN: Larry King, John McCain, John Warner, Dianne Feinstein, Bill Frist, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Aaron Brown, Christiane Amanpour, Judith Miller (New York Times reporter), Kevin Peraino (Newsweek reporter), former senators Alan Simpson and George McGovern

ABC: Peter Jennings, George Will, Cokie Roberts

ABC Nightline: Ted Koppel, David Gergen, John Podesta (I think); foreign journalists Justin Webb of the BBC, Tom Buhrow of ARD German TV, Said Arikat of Arab daily Al Quds

CBS: Dan Rather, Fouad Ajami

PBS: Jim Lehrer, Mark Shields, David Brooks

PBS Charlie Rose: Joe Lieberman, Fred Thompson, Alan Brinkley, Roger Cohen, David Brooks, David Frum, Jim Hoagland, Michael Kinsley

Saw the face and heard the voice, but not sure which channel: Harold Ford, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu (three very hawkish Democrats who support Bush’s Iraq policy)

Pro-War Trumps Anti-War

Before and after Bush’s address and the lame Democratic response, I saw lots of hardline rightwingers and mainstream conservatives. I saw quite a few Democrats who are moderately liberal on domestic issues but generally right-of-center and hawkish on international issues, including Iraq.

I saw very few strong, capable opponents of war. Barbara Boxer was one, and Chris Matthews and Pat Caddell had their moments. I missed the soundbites of Ted Kennedy, who has emerged as a stellar opponent of the looming war, and George McGovern, a World War II vet who can be counted on to reach fence-sitters in the heartland.

The sharpest skeptics were a trio of mainstream foreign journalists who appeared on ABC’s Nightline. They pointed out that Bush presented no evidence, which is precisely what Europe and the Arab world were waiting to see. These foreign reporters with no axe to grind were far more skeptical about the CONTENT of Bush’s speech (as opposed to the irrelevant matter of how well he recited the deceit-laden script) than were most of the talking heads put on the air for the express purpose of challenging Bush! The Arab journalist, Said Arikat, reflected the view of most of the Arab world when he said (this is a very rough paraphrase) that war simply isn’t required to resolve this hyped-up crisis over Iraq.

Minority Misrepresentation

As noted above, of the 76 American talking heads who got to comment on the speech, 72 were white. Not one was Hispanic, Native American or Asian, though the Democrats did select Washington state’s Gary Locke, the nation’s first Chinese-American governor, to deliver their rebuttal. While Bush delivered a dishonest, manipulative speech to suck America into war, the Democratic response touched on Iraq just long enough to congratulate Bush for being on the right track. (See below for links to analyses of Bush’s dishonesty and chicanery on Iraq.)

Here’s a brief look at the four non-white talking heads who participated in pre- and post-speech commentary:

Fouad Ajami: A regular commentator on CBS, Ajami is widely regarded as the last man on earth Arab-Americans would select as their sole media spokesperson. He is about as far-removed from the thinking of the Arab or Arab-American “street” as Dan Rather.

Rep. Harold Ford: The Tennessee Democrat and media darling plays it down the center on domestic issues, but runs hard to his right on international issues and backs Bush on Iraq.

Donna Brazile: The director of Al Gore’s Y2K presidential bid is a self-described “moderate. She has liberal tendencies on domestic issues, conventional-wisdom center-establishment tendencies on foreign policy. Possessing neither the knowledge nor inclination to make a strong anti-war case, she’ll happily go along if the U.S. is able to strongarm and bribe the U.N. to authorize an attack.

Juan Williams: The versatile Williams plays two roles on Fox — token liberal and token black. I didn’t hear his views on this occasion, but he’s likely near the bottom of the list of who blacks, liberals and black liberals wish to see amid the sea of white conservative Fox jingoists.

African Americans are the strongest anti-war demographic in the country. On the night of the State of the Union address, they were under-represented both in number and in strength of anti-war conviction.

Polls Prove TV Shortchanges Pro-Peace Public

The range of views of the 76 talking heads didn’t come close to reflecting the thinking of the public at large. According to the latest Newsweek poll ( http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/013003C.nswk.poll.htm):

“About four out of five polled (81 percent) want the United States to join its major allies and get full U.N. support before possibly attacking Iraq, and a majority approve of giving U.N. weapons inspectors more time to search for banned weapons.

“MORE THAN THREE-QUARTERS (77 percent) of those polled agree that Americans would be safer and more secure if Saddam were no longer in power in Iraq. But by a more than two-to-one margin, Americans prefer to take more time to try and achieve U.S. goals in Iraq by non-military means than to move forward quickly with military action. Sixty-six percent think it's more important to allow more time, while 32 percent say moving forward quickly with military action is the only way to effectively deal with Iraq.”

Just as the 76 gasbags, as a group, don’t come close to reflecting America’s racial diversity, they likewise don’t reflect the public’s preference for a peaceful solution. The gasbags would be even more out of touch if Newsweek’s polls didn’t include countless people who believe — falsely — that Iraq has nuclear weapons and Saddam was involved in 9-11. That deluded segment of the public has been misled by news media that pass along outlandish lies by U.S. officials as either fact or as still-to-be-proved assertions by distinguished public servants with a reputation for truth telling. The very same news media shield viewers from competent critics who would puncture the lies.

A Call For Competent Critics

Are major-media gatekeepers interested in presenting competent critics of Bush’s rush to war — men and women who aren’t afraid to call a lying president a liar? Critics who can show viewers precisely how the president lied — how he twisted, omitted or invented facts — and why he did so? Critics such as political scientist Stephen Zunes, who demonstrates in this devastating “annotated overview” ( http://commondreams.org/views03/0129-09.htm) that Bush delivered a fundamentally dishonest speech?

If the news media were a meritocracy, where people were promoted based on their proven ability to unearth unpleasant truths that governments and corporations prefer to keep hidden, rank-and-file reporters at places like NBC and CNN would have documented Bush’s verbal trickery IMMEDIATELY. Then the commentators would be brought in to discuss what should be done about a president who lies to the American people to gain their support for war.

Then again, if our news media were a meritocracy, Americans would never have heard of Tom Brokaw or Jim Lehrer. Charlie Rose would be a high school basketball coach and Wolf Blitzer a minor functionary in the Pentagon’s PR department.

The news media CAN do better. The question is: Do they want to?

APPENDIX:

Some names that news media anchors, hosts and producers should add to their Iraq policy rolodex and regularly put on the air:

Centrists such as former U.S. chief of mission in Iraq Edward Peck, defense expert Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, retired general Anthony Zinni, other retired generals at the Center for Defense Information.

Liberals and progressives such as Dennis Kucinich, Sheila Jackson Lee, Stephen Zunes, John Conyers, Charles Rangel, Jesse Jackson Jr., Russ Feingold, Pete Stark, Barbara Lee, Jeff Cohen, Phyllis Bennis, Rashid Khalidi, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Joe Conason and Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Bio: Dennis Hans is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, National Post (Canada) and online at TomPaine.com, Slate and The Black World Today (tbwt.com), among other outlets. He has taught courses in mass communications and American foreign policy at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, and can be reached at HANS_D@popmail.firn.edu.

©2003 by Dennis Hans

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