THE PLANK AUGUST 5, 2009
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As Gabriel Sherman mentions in his piece, quite a kerfuffle has erupted over MSNBC's using Newsweek reporter turned corporate flack Richard Wolffe as a regular commentator--and this week as a guest host--on Keith Olbermann's show. The basic criticism is that Wolffe, now a member of Dan Bartlett's communications shop, is essentially if not technically a paid lobbyist and so cannot possibly serve as an objective analyst, much less a primetime host. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald energetically objected:
Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program--or serving as an almost daily
"political analyst"--is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an
hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance
the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations
with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and
Countdown cover. Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host
and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows. What makes
that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither
MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this.
This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure: who wouldn't
realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political
commentators?
Really? So beyond the pale that "it's incurable by disclosure?" I agree that MSNBC should have made clear Wolffe's potential conflicts. And if the network is still pretending Wolffe is a journalist, they should be slapped for misleading viewers. But, as impediments to "objective" political commentary go, is the Wolffe situation really so much more egregious than allowing Howard Dean to guest host? As former head of the DNC, Dean is by definition not politically objective. And he's certainly not a journalist.
Of course, many of the analysts used by the networks are professional political consultants and party mouthpieces peddling their own--or their team's--agenda. The major difference is that viewers are aware of these folks' raging biases. So if Wolffe and his MSNBC handlers come clean about his day job, I don't see why he'd be any more insidious than most of the other barkers out there.
--Michelle Cottle
2 comments
Pat Buchanan hosted Hardball occasionally in the past. Does ANYONE believe that he's objective?
And Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson both had evening shows on MSNBC. They're no more objective than Rachel Maddow (or Keith Olbermann for that matter).
- miceelf
August 5, 2009 at 2:26pm
In America there are almost always two narratives that run parallel to each other. The one on top focuses on the sort of arguments you see batted back and forth in here...arguments about "the issues". But underneath it you always have to follow the money. Damn near everything we do from day to day is examined by someone who is asking, "how can I make a buck out of this?"
Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm all for capitalism and role markets play in getting the sellers to the buyers and the buyers to the sellers. But it is always neccesary to keep it in mind when the folks who sell things come up with more and more ingenius [or down right fraudulent] ways to sell it to you....Or to me...Or to folks who really can't afford it...Or to children.
Let's be blunt: Many, many, many Americans have been shaped and molded into The Consumers From Hell.
And I second miceelf in exposing the illusion that "objectivity" can be achieved if only the talking heads at Fox and Msnbc would sit down and come up with a way to define what that is and how it should be more effectively communicated to the listening audiences.
Instead, what we need is what Michelle suggests: That everything should come to the surface with respect to potential conflicts of interest.
What the talking pundits tell us...the arguments they make...need the clarification that would come from knowing whether what they say is connected more to their bank accounts than to the integrity and the honesty needed to debate issues more "on their merit".
george walton
[annie/danny]
- iambiguous
August 5, 2009 at 3:30pm