A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Will the Oligarchs Who Own the U.S. Media Save Democracy? Don't Bet on
It.

The case of its abruptly resigned leader highlights its dependence on
big money from the Gulf.

Ever since CNN's new overlords at Warner Bros. Discovery chose to
replace the corrupt, dishonest Jeff Zucker with the former talk show
producer Chris Licht in its top job, the network has pushed the story
line, begun by its principal investor, John Malone, that it is moving
"back to the center" and away, as this overly gullible Guardian
article

argues, from its alleged leftist orientation. Its author quotes Licht
saying, "We are truth-tellers, focused on informing, not alarming our
viewers."

Among the myriad problems with this viewpoint is the fact that the
"truth" these days is in itself decidedly alarming, as one of
America's two major parties is seeking to destroy democracy and
replace it with the leader of a fascist cult. Licht and Malone seek to
move CNN closer to "the center" between one party that is a
coalition of liberals, moderates, and few conservatives-and is
therefore more conservative across the board than any other allegedly
left-of-center party among industrial democracies-and one that has
remade itself into a politically empowered lunatic asylum.

There are two primary reasons for this PR push. The first, as always, is
money. According to The Guardian, CNN earned $1.8 billion last year.
Meanwhile, Fox News enjoyed revenues of $12.3 billion during the same
period. Warner Bros. Discovery is carrying about $59 billion in debt and
is accordingly desperate to boost CNN's audience with prejudiced
people who like to be lied to-that is, Fox viewers. The Guardian
notes, "Rumors have been circulating this week that more outspoken
left-leaning anchors and contributors at CNN could soon be dropped."
By "left-leaning," we can assume that the new bosses mean pundits
who embrace only some crazy conspiracy theories, rather than all of
them. Those who stick explicitly to reality are likely those on the
alleged left-wing "extreme" whom Licht was criticizing to potential
advertisers
.
(It is not remotely true, as this Times headline would have it, that the
GOP is a "party torn between truth and Trump
."
It is a party where truth-tellers are banished to the political
equivalent of Siberia.)

It should come as no surprise that the fellow who is driving this effort
by CNN, John Malone, is both a billionaire and a right-wing ideologue.
(He may also be the largest landowner in America
.)
He's on the board of directors of the Cato Institute
and not only
donated $250,000 to Donald Trump's inauguration, but his companies
donated another $250,000
.
He told an interviewer: "Look, I think a lot of the things Trump has
tried to do
-identifying
problems and trying to solve them-has been great," though he voiced
skepticism as to whether Trump was "the right guy to do it." This
position tracks closely with that of Elon Musk, who, poised to take over
Twitter, and vastly overpaying for the privilege, recently said that he
was leaning toward supporting Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis
for
president; a politician who, as a Republican consultant quoted by the
Journal puts it, has "all the benefits of Trump without the
baggage." Musk, according to the Journal, explained that his support
for Republicans was based on the "scrutiny from some Democrats against
him and his companies, Tesla and rocket company SpaceX."

Malone's closest competition as America's biggest landowner business
is Jeff Bezos, the rabidly anti-union owner of The Washington Post
,
who is, coincidentally, also in competition with Musk for the crown of
wealthiest guy in the world. Having a bad year but still active in the
mega-billionaire posse is Mark Zuckerberg, principal owner of Facebook,
who has also made repeatedly clear his fealty to pro-Trump Republicans

and his reliance on the likes of billionaire pro-Trump right-wing
ideologue Peter Thiel. And let's not forget Rupert Murdoch
,
yet another rapacious billionaire who is possibly more responsible than
any other person on the planet for purveying the baseless conspiracy
theories that continue to poison not just our politics but those of the
U.K., Australia, and many other nations (and who, if justice is to be
done, might just be forced to pay for a tiny part of it
).
And, oh, great news, there's this TikTok guy
,
too, who apparently fits the mold perfectly.

Do you think we can expect that a mainstream media largely owned and
operated by right-wing billionaires is going to save our democracy from
the people who pursue the policies that ensure that they remain
billionaires and pay virtually no taxes in doing so?

I don't. My guess is that the properties they own will keep talking
about "the center" as they move that center further and further into
territory where someone like DeSantis

begins to sound relatively reasonable. Just look at the MSM hero worship
for hero

and "proud" admirer of the man who cheered his proposed hanging, but
with whom he nevertheless "parted amicably," Mike Pence
. And not to
alarm anyone, but the media is awash in Trump coverage-again
-so
we can expect more "straight" reporting of lies, conspiracy
theories, violent incitement, sexism, racism, antisemitism, and
Islamophobia, with CNN and company striving to cover "both sides" of
these pressing questions. Remember what ex-CBS chair Les Moonves (like
Trump, a credibly accused serial sexual assaulter
)
said about Trump's 2016 campaign: "It may not be good for America,
but it's damn good for CBS
."

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The Gannett Company has announced that it is getting rid of editorial
pages in its newspaper chain, including the flagship, USA Today, and
"cutting back opinion pages to a few days a week while refocusing what
opinion is still published to community dialogue
."
This is a move to address a real problem but probably not the right one
to make. I have long campaigned against newspaper editorial endorsements
.
Sure, they make the people who get to give them feel important, and in
some cases, they can sway local races. But survey after survey has
demonstrated that few people are aware of any distinction between
"news" and "editorial" in their newspapers (or newspaper
websites). What they do know is that Democrats tend to get presidential
endorsements more than Republicans because newspapers care (at least a
little) about truth, while to be successful in the modern (even
pre-Trump) Republican Party, one has to constantly lie. They therefore
equate these endorsements with the dreaded "liberal bias" they
mistakenly believe to be afflicting the entire MSM. What would be ideal
is if everybody just published (or spoke) what they understood to be the
truth and offered their accompanying evidence, adding, whenever
possible, why alleged alternative views were not as compelling. That
would mean doing away entirely with the distinction between "straight
news" and "opinion." Good luck to me, however, on that ...

Henry Kissinger has a new book out. The dude is 99 years old, so good
for him. On the other hand, literally millions of people never got to
grow old thanks in significant measure to his actions. Fortunately, this
review

does a fine job of avoiding that pitfall and walks the reader through a
bunch of them. Here is one more drawn from my 2020 book, Lying in State:
Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
:

Nixon's original hope had been to withdraw all US troops by the end of
1971. Kissinger, however, warned that doing so could result in a period
of instability (or worse) in Saigon right around the time of the 1972
presidential election. He therefore recommended that they delay the
withdrawal until at least the autumn of 1972-"so that if any bad
results follow they will be too late to affect the election." Nixon
and Kissinger required "a fairly reasonable interval," as Kissinger
explained it to Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, between the time the
United States withdrew its troops and North Vietnam overran South
Vietnam. This cynical strategy, presidential biographer Robert Dallek
sardonically noted, "had nothing to say about the American lives that
would be lost in the service of Nixon's reelection," or about the
American prisoners of war who would continue their needless suffering if
they prolonged the war. Its goal was merely to allow Nixon and Kissinger
to evade responsibility for losing the war once the North finally
conquered the South. Naturally, Kissinger lied about this when asked by
a journalist, insisting that "there is no hidden agreement with North
Vietnam for any specific interval after which we would no longer care if
they marched in and took over South Vietnam." Nixon termed
Kissinger's handling of the Paris Accords to be "a brilliant game we
are playing," as "Henry really bamboozled the bastards." In this
case, the "bastards" were those Americans who believed their
president when he said he was honestly seeking to end the war.

Oh, and I always like this quote of David Halberstam's from his
otherwise not-so-great 2001 book, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton,
and the Generals: "The singular strength of Kissinger was not just his
skill at dissembling when necessary, his unusual ability to tell ten
different people ten completely different stories about what he was
doing on a given issue-and remember which version of the story he had
told to which person."

One last Kissinger quote, from my forthcoming We Are Not One: A History
of America's Fight Over Israel
.
Here, he explains his sympathy for antisemitism: "Any people who has
been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong
."

Odds and Ends

Do you ever get a little bit sad for no reason? I do. Here
is part one and here
is part two of the best pick-me-up I
know, and one of the greatest performances of any kind I've ever seen.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

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