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http://www.consortiumnews.com/050701a.html
Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.consortiumnews.com/050701a.html";>The
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-----
A Quisling Press Corps
By Robert Parry
May 7, 2001
After years of denial, The Washington Post has acknowledged the existence of
the Right-Wing Machine.
Post national political correspondent John Harris came to this epiphany
grudgingly, never using those exact words. But in a Sunday article in the
Outlook section, Harris recognized that U.S. conservatives have built a
powerful and well-financed apparatus that can dictate the tone of the
political discourse in Washington. The article observed that there is no
countervailing apparatus on the liberal side of national politics.
In his article, Harris concedes that he�d still like to deny this. Harris
writes that his initial reaction to Democratic complaints about the fawning
press coverage of George W. Bush was to dismiss the griping as �self-pity,�
characteristic of President Clinton and his allies.
Nevertheless, Harris does ask the question: �Are the national news media soft
on Bush?�
�The instinctive response of any reporter is to deny it,� Harris writes,
unintentionally revealing how widespread this press corps� defensiveness is.
�But my rebuttals lately have been wobbly. The truth is, this new president h
as done things with relative impunity that would have been huge uproars if
they had occurred under Clinton.�
After ticking off a few innocuous reasons why the news media might have gone
a little soft, Harris then acknowledges that �there is one big reason for
Bush�s easy ride. There is no well-coordinated corps of aggrieved and
methodical people who start each day looking for ways to expose and undermine
a new president.
�There was such a gang ready for Clinton in 1993. Conservative interest
groups, commentators and congressional investigators waged a remorseless
campaign that they hoped would make life miserable for Clinton and vault
themselves to power. They succeeded in many ways.� [WP, May 6, 2001]
As we have reported at Consortiumnews.com since we went online in fall 1995,
this Right-Wing Machine indeed has succeeded in many ways. Beyond coloring
the immediate political environment, the Machine has altered the nation�s
understanding of its own recent history, creating a mythology for the past
quarter century. This has occurred with the acquiescence of the national news
media and some leading Democrats.
The mythology also is not something of the past. It continues to cost the
nation dearly, from the hugely expensive plans to construct Ronald Reagan�s
Star Wars dream to rejection of environmental alarms about global warming.
Nixon & Vietnam
The Machine�s origins can be traced back about a quarter century, to the
mid-1970s and to two key elements of conservative dogma. One founding myth
was the belief that a �liberal� press lost the Vietnam War for the United
States. The second was that an innocent Richard Nixon was hounded out of
office through a bogus scandal called Watergate.
As it turned out, neither point was true. Historical studies by the U.S. Army
concluded that poor strategy, high casualties and overly optimistic
battlefield reports were the chief culprits in losing the Vietnam War.
Nixon�s own words on the Watergate tapes make clear that he was guilty,
guilty, guilty of gross abuses of power during his reign in the White House.
Nevertheless, these twin articles of faith convinced the conservative
movement that it needed its own institutions � think tanks, news media and
activist groups � to counter the perceived �liberal� bias that had led the
public to see the Vietnam War as a terrible mistake and to view Nixon as a
corrupt politician.
In the late 1970s, with the coordination of Nixon�s Treasury Secretary Bill
Simon, conservative foundations began funneling millions of dollars to think
tanks, media outlets and attack organizations that would become the spearhead
of the Right-Wing Machine.
With Ronald Reagan�s election in 1980, the power of the federal bureaucracy
was thrown behind this effort. Reagan authorized what was called a �public
diplomacy� apparatus that spread propaganda domestically and targeted
journalists who reported information that undermined the prescribed �themes.�
Also, in the early 1980s, Rev. Sun Myung Moon began pouring in hundreds of
millions of dollars a year from mysterious sources in South America and Asia.
He used the money to build expensive media outlets, such as The Washington
Times daily newspaper, and to sponsor lavish conferences for conservative
activists. Though members of Moon�s inner circle admitted that the Moon
organization was laundering money in from overseas to finance his operations,
few questions were asked about the source of the cash.
Wobbly Press
During the 1980s, major news organizations began to buckle under the pressure
� from The New York Times and Newsweek to National Public Radio and the
national TV networks.
Reporters who wrote straightforwardly about U.S. military adventures in
Central America, for instance, found themselves under harsh attack from the
Right-Wing Machine and from the Reagan-Bush administration. Gradually, these
journalists were weeded out of the national news media, leaving behind a
residue of journalistic quislings who won high-profile spots both in the news
columns and on the pundit shows.
Yet, since these journalists had grabbed the high-salaried jobs at the
expense of honest reporters who were targeted by the Machine, this new
journalistic elite had a powerful self-interest in denying the existence of
the Machine. To admit its influence would amount to a self-condemnation.
So, over the years, this caste of top journalists evolved into a bunch of
sneering loudmouths who often moved as a pack and would tear apart victims a
lready bloodied by the Machine. Conversely, these journalists and pundits
instinctively understood the danger of taking on allies of the Machine. A few
conservatives might overreach so much that they became vulnerable but they
had a far greater measure of protection.
During the Reagan-Bush years, the Right-Wing Machine mostly worked as a
defensive mechanism, protecting Ronald Reagan, George Bush and their
subordinates during such crises as the Iran-contra scandal or disclosures of
cocaine trafficking by Reagan�s Nicaraguan �freedom fighters.� Even, lifelong
Republican conservatives, such as Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence
Walsh, came under withering attack when they dared to press for the truth
about Reagan-era scandals.
[For a more detailed summary of this history, see Democrats' Dilemma or
Robert Parry's Lost History.]�
The Clinton Switch
After Bill Clinton�s election in 1992, the Right-Wing Machine switched from
playing defense to playing offense.
The national media elite switched, too, eagerly joining in the attacks
against Clinton for relatively minor indiscretions, such as the Travel Office
firings and ill-timed haircuts. The quisling journalists saw their
opportunity to attack Clinton as especially liberating because it was a way
to free themselves from the conservative label of �liberal media.�
As Clinton�s eight years rolled on, the mainstream press corps increasingly
merged with the right-wing apparatus. Both elements obsessed on every Clinton
indiscretion, invading his personal life in ways that have never been seen
before in U.S. history.
In the early days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, First Lady Hillary Clinton
complained about what she called a �vast right-wing conspiracy.� Her comment
provoked howls of laughter and knee-slapping in the punditocracy. If a
�right-wing conspiracy� existed, surely the Washington press corps would have
written about it.
Yet, the behind-the-scenes story of the assault on the Clinton Presidency
remained a non-story, explained only at Web sites like this one, at Salon.com
and in books, such as The Hunting of the President by Gene Lyons and Joe
Conason.
While going 24/7 on tales of Bill Clinton�s sex life, the mainstream and
conservative press joined in ignoring or pooh-poohing convincing new evidence
of major Reagan-Bush crimes. The press corps barely noted in 1998 when the
CIA itself admitted that scores of Nicaragua contra units were implicated in
cocaine trafficking and that the Reagan-Bush administration had hidden the
evidence.
These two journalistic standards existed simultaneously, side by side: one
protective of the right�s friends and one destructive of the right�s enemies.
Through it all, the mainstream press insisted that it was behaving with
professional objectivity.
Campaign 2000
The parallel double standards continued through the 2000 campaign. While Al
Gore was called to account for every perceived misstatement � even some
manufactured by leading newspapers � George W. Bush and his running mate,
Dick Cheney, largely got free passes for lies, distortions and hypocrisy.
For instance, while Gore got hammered for allegedly puffing up his resume,
Cheney dodged any significant criticism when he insisted during a vice
presidential debate that he received no help from the federal government in
his business career at Halliburton Co. In fact, the giant oil services firm
had benefited from Cheney-arranged government loan guarantees and juicy
Pentagon contracts
.
While avoiding criticism for this deception about his business dealings,
Cheney was allowed to lead the attack on Gore for alleged petty lies about
his achievements. The news media made no mention of the hypocrisy.
This double standard was crucial in enabling the Bush-Cheney campaign to
remain competitive in the election. Their campaign lost by only about half a
million votes nationally and snuck into office when five conservatives on the
U.S. Supreme Court effectively awarded Bush 25 electoral votes from Florida.
Legitimacy
Though gaining the White House as the first popular vote loser in more than a
century and the first to reach the presidency through the intervention of
allies on the Supreme Court, Bush found the Washington news media eager to
grant him a mantle of legitimacy.
In doing so, the press corps oohed and aahed over what might have seemed like
serious bungles, such as his handling of a downed U.S. spy plane on a Chinese
island.
As Harris noted in his Washington Post article, the reaction would have been
quite different if Clinton was the one who claimed the crew members were not
hostages and then sent a non-apology letter saying �very sorry� twice to win
their release.
�What is being hailed as Bush�s shrewd diplomacy would have been savaged as
�Slick Willie� contortions,� Harris noted.
Similarly, Bush is allowed to reward his rich donors by granting them
closed-door meetings with top administration officials, elimination of
regulations and giveaways in his budget. By contrast, Clinton faced months of
hearings and screaming headlines over White House coffees and sleep-overs in
the Lincoln Bedroom.
Harris ends his Washington Post article with a positive spin. He writes that
it is �good for Washington in giving a new president a break at the start.
And those people eager to see this president face scrutiny can rest assured:
The opposition is sure to awaken.�
But there is little reason to think that Harris is right. He may be pleased
that the Washington press corps has been generous toward Bush � as the press
was to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and was not to Clinton and Gore.
Harris might not be disturbed by the lack of professional evenhandedness that
is supposedly the hallmark of American journalism.
Change?
It is harder to understand why anyone would expect this pattern to change.
Why will the balmy breeze that has so far puffed out George W.�s sails stop
blowing? For nearly a quarter century, the national news media has been
drifting in the same direction.
Virtually all the top news executives are products of this system. Almost all
have been rewarded handsomely by it. Why would they suddenly change course,
challenge the right, and risk their careers?
Only a determined effort by Americans who recognize the threat to democracy
that this quisling media now represents can change the direction.
Possibly, the only hope is to build an entirely new news media dedicated to
the real journalistic principles of honesty and fairness. That will not be
easy and will not be cheap. But it should now be clear what the costs are of
doing nothing.
Robert Parry is an investigative reporter who broke many of the Iran-contra
stories in the 1980s for The Associated Press and Newsweek.
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