I saw Sean Hannity interviewing Donald Trump Jr. Hoping to get in the shot, I wandered back and forth, phone in hand as though I were on a call. I wasn’t. When they began talking about the videos, I moseyed over to get in on the conversation, which I barely managed to do. If the shot looked half as awkward as it felt, it will probably make someone’s blooper reel.
Then the really awkward part began. I and the others strolled around the red carpet taking questions from the literally hundreds of media gathered there. To be more specific, the others took questions. I just strolled around looking stupid. There were only a few of us, including the Trump family, walking on that red carpet. There were hundreds of flashing cameras and scores of reporters with their arms extended. This scene looked like something out of an old Hollywood movie like King Kong.
Laura, our social media specialist, was watching from afar. “Why aren’t you talking to people?” she texted me. The real question, I asked, was why were they not talking to me? I suspect they were unwilling to give our cause any more airtime than they absolutely had to. From their perspective, no question they might ask would result in a politically useful answer, so better not to ask any questions at all.
Here I was with the hottest video in America, one that the president addressed during the debate, one that all the anchors talked about that evening, and the reporters treated me as though I had head lice. As I passed, some of them looked down, some looked away. Remember the friendly Norwegian guy who interviewed me on the plane and wrote a story about it? Even he acted as if he did not know me.
Although no one spoke to me, I noticed this one slight little guy checking me out. At first I thought he was some blogger. He looked young enough and nervous enough as he repeatedly zoomed in his camera on me. Then it dawned on me who he was: Bradley Beychok, president of Media Matters. Upon reflection, I suspect he was terrified of what he might have said on tape to “Charles Roth,” our undercover rich guy who had recorded video of him in his office. Once Creamer learned he had been busted, he must have told Beychok. The last few days had to have been a nightmare for him as he waited for the videos to drop. Boss David Brock would not be happy. As squirrely as they are, I have a certain odd respect for Beychok and Brock. Unlike their media colleagues, they were at least open about their role as propagandists.
The award for best post-debate question went to Megyn Kelly, then still with Fox News. She was interviewing DNC head Donna Brazile.14 For most of the ten minutes, Brazile ducked and dodged as best she could, but Kelly kept nailing her. The best exchange was this one:
BRAZILE
When you have a convicted criminal sneaking around your office . . .
KELLY
Are you referring to Bob Creamer, head of Democracy Partners?
Later in the interview, Brazile tried to claim the tapes were falsified. After all, she insisted, “Mr. O’Keefe enjoys falsifying records.” She actually said that. If the tapes were fake, Kelly asked, why was it that the Democrats “fired” two staffers?
“Stepped aside,” said Brazile. “Stepped aside.” Brazile later admitted, in her book, Hacks, about the exchange: “I was not fast on my feet that day. I didn’t have my usual wry smile and quick capacity to turn the subject around.”
Days after the election, I ran into Brazile in the elevator of a Florida hotel. We gave each other that “Are you who I think you are?” look. She saw me reaching to turn on my iTalk recording device and said, “Before you reach for your recording device, let me just say that I am so pissed off with all that happened and especially Debbie Wasserman Schultz and all of it.”
Wow! This opening gambit threw my game off altogether. Upon leaving the elevator, we talked. She asked if I was “filming” her, a reasonable question. I honestly told her I was not. She did not ask if I was recording her on audio. That I was. Brazile was surprisingly charming and pleasant in person compared to her media persona. This made me question the artifice that surrounds many of these personalities on television. For a moment, I almost let my guard down. It would not have mattered. I had nothing unethical to confess.
Brazile’s interest in speaking to me was to find out whether we bugged the DNC offices. “That’s illegal,” I told her. I reassured her we never do anything illegal. I may have even convinced her. As to the fate of Foval and Creamer, she told me, “I did what I had to do.”
“Which is firing?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “I made sure that happened.” So much for the “stepped aside” bit. The public side of these people can be so much different from their private side.
The circus left Las Vegas that Wednesday night, but not without a final walk on the high wire. At an impromptu press conference on Hillary’s campaign plane before its departure, a female Fox News reporter sneaked in a question about the violence at Trump rallies. Hillary interrupted her in mid-question. “I know nothing about this. I can’t deal with every one of [Trump’s] conspiracy theories,” she said dismissively, “but I hope you all have something to eat and something to drink on the way back to New York.”15 With that Hillary turned her back on the reporters and walked away. No one would ask her about the campaign violence again.
The following morning the New York Times had another story up. To be fair, the news-gatherers at the Times feel more responsibility to history than do those at CNN. Times men and women, after all, consider the Times to be the paper of record. On October 20, reporters Steve Eder and Jonathan Martin noted that 8 million people had already seen the two “Rigging” videos.16 Although they did not say as much, the “paper of record” no longer had the option to slight a story millions had seen and Donald Trump had discussed before millions more.
After rehashing the various Democratic denials and disclaimers, the reporters conceded: “The videos were an embarrassment for Mrs. Clinton at a moment when she is trying to frame Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged election as nothing more than the fevered dreams of a conspiracy theorist.” The DNC offered a new evasion, claiming it had contracted with Creamer only to provide “bracketing,” the term of art for staging an alternative event to distract from the opposition’s planned event. The reporters, however, weren’t quite buying. “The tactics described went far beyond mere distraction,” they acknowledged.
In the way of follow-up, the reporters contacted Shirley Teter, the sixty-nine-year-old woman tethered to an oxygen tank who was knocked down during a Trump rally. Foval claimed he trained her. Of course, Teter denied it. As mentioned earlier, this case was later thrown out of court. “The last thing in the world I want to see is Trump getting elected to be our president,” she told the Times. “It is the first time in years that my heart actually ached, and I felt I had to do it.” And that’s how the article ended. Still, we had broken through, proving once again that even in the land of the blind, content is king.
In the major media bubble, none of this was significant enough to be held against Robert Creamer. Within a few months after the election, all was forgotten. Creamer was able to sit in the front row of President Obama’s farewell speech without media comment. So he had to leave the campaign in disgrace. So he had already served a prison sentence for bank fraud. Creamer did his dirty work and kept his mouth shut. That was apparently enough for the media to forgive and mostly forget. They never questioned the propriety of his sitting there so prominently.
Operatives like Creamer are hard to shame, even harder to subdue. They always seem to reemerge in some new incarnation, if not unscathed, then close to it. Their resilience troubles the sane half of America. When I do speaking engagements, my audiences ask how to deal with a force that refuses to die or to stay dead. I respond by saying, “More of what we’ve already done.”
Marcus Luttrell gets it. The Lone Survivor author understands what it takes. I had the good fortune of seeing Luttrell speak at the Republican National Convention in 2016. His voice shaking, Luttrell ignored the
words on the teleprompter and said from his heart, “To the next generation, this is for you. Your war is here.” He reaffirmed what I had been sensing around the country, “Your people are afraid.”
Luttrell did not stop there. He delivered a powerful and moving call to action: “Who among you will love something more than you love yourself? Who among you will step up and take the fight to the enemy because it is here?”17 When I tell you the enemy is on our own soil and not in a desert overseas, don’t take my word; take the word of Navy Cross–decorated Marcus Luttrell.
Anticipating Hillary
Fearful as they are of lawsuits, media companies have even more reason to fear the federal government. Radio and TV stations all require government licenses to operate. The government must also approve all mergers and acquisitions. If anything, large and growing media corporations are more vulnerable to government harassment than small stable ones. This is the inverse of the way federal regulation usually works. Typically, the big guys can afford the cost of it, and the little guys suffer. But in the media world, the FCC more or less owns the airwaves. The more waves a company acquires, the more beholden it is to the owner.
Media executives expected Hillary Clinton to be elected president in 2016. Just about everyone did. Once sworn in, she would control the appointment to the Federal Communications Commission. A media executive did not have to be paranoid to believe that an extremely damaging story on Hillary would lead to the imposition of regulatory obstacles at the federal level. Sinclair had benefited from the FCC during the Bush and Obama years as the agency remained largely apolitical. Under a Hillary Clinton administration, Sinclair management did not expect to fare quite so well.
Sinclair was on an ambitious growth curve. In the fall of 2016, it is likely that management already had its eye on Tribune Media, for which it would make a $3.9 billion bid in May 2017.1 The fact that some Republicans held prominent positions in Sinclair’s hierarchy was trouble enough. Had Sinclair broken a story from Project Veritas, a group that most Democrats considered reckless and borderline criminal, company brass knew they could face reprisals.
Executives had to choose between running a story that required what Herman and Chomsky would describe as “careful checking and costly research,” or spiking the story. The prudent decision was to put the bottom line first, avoid making enemies, and spike it. In retrospect, I am surprised we had come as close as we did to having it released.
Although American libel law favors the journalist, the judicial process favors those with the money to see the process through. In the 1990s, the process got more complicated as news agencies sacrificed their independence to merge with corporations larger than themselves.
The most celebrated of these internal conflicts unfolded in 1995. At the time, CBS’s storied 60 Minutes was prepared to air a candid interview with Jeffrey Wigand, a former vice president at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.2 Wigand was a reluctant witness. He had been prodded to come forward by veteran CBS producer Lowell Bergman. The story Wigand had to tell was explosive. He accused Brown & Williamson CEO Thomas E. Sandefur Jr. of lying to Congress when Sandefur claimed to have been unaware of nicotine’s addictive power.
Before the Wigand interview could air, however, CBS “corporate” got to 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt. The lawyers warned him that Brown & Williamson could sue CBS for billions if 60 Minutes followed through with the Wigand interview. CBS execs did not expect to lose the suit, but they were looking at a potential sale of the network to Westinghouse. They reportedly did not want to hang a billion-dollar albatross around their necks while the network was on the market.
Al Pacino played Bergman in the 1999 film The Insider. What follows is the section of dialogue in which Bergman comes to grips with the deep-sixing of his story.3 Eric Kluster was the president of CBS News at the time. Laurence Tisch was the CEO of the CBS network. Mike Wallace, of course, was the legendary CBS newsman. If you get a chance, watch the movie. With few exceptions, visuals, even dramatizations, have more emotional power than the printed word.
BERGMAN
If Tisch can unload CBS for $81 a share to Westinghouse and then is suddenly threatened with a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Brown & Williamson, that could screw up the sale, could it not?
KLUSTER
And what are you implying?
BERGMAN
I’m not implying. I’m quoting. More vested interests . . .
(reading from SEC filing)
“Persons Who Will Profit From This Merger . . . Ms. Helen Caperelli, General Counsel of CBS News, 3.9 million. Mr. Eric Kluster, President of CBS News, 1.4 million . . .”
HEWITT
Are you suggesting that she and Eric are influenced by money?
BERGMAN
Oh, no, of course they’re not influenced by money. They work for free. And you are a Volunteer Executive Producer.
HEWITT
CBS does not do that. And, you’re questioning our journalistic integrity?!
BERGMAN
No, I’m questioning your hearing! You hear “reasonable” and “tortious interference.” I hear, “potential Brown & Williamson lawsuit jeopardizing the sale of CBS to Westinghouse.” I hear, “Shut the segment down. Cut Wigand loose. Obey orders. And fuck off!” That’s what I hear.
HEWITT
You’re exaggerating!
BERGMAN
I am? You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. He violates his own fucking confidentiality agreement. And he’s only the key witness in the biggest public health reform issue, maybe the biggest, most-expensive corporate-malfeasance case in U.S. history. And Jeffrey Wigand, who’s out on a limb, does he go on television and tell the truth? Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he’s not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth. That’s why we’re not going to air it. And the more truth he tells, the worse it gets!
I cannot tell you how many times I have watched that scene. For me, it speaks like no other to the paralyzing force of corporate media inertia. That is the reality that Bergman faced in 1995 the year he coaxed Wigand forward. There were only 16 million internet users worldwide, less than half of 1 percent of the world’s population. If CBS did not air Wigand’s interview, no one would. The government did not need to control America’s corporations. Those corporations more or less controlled each other.
The problem Bergman faced many others had faced before him. In his 2012 memoir They’re Going to Murder You: My Life at the News Front, legendary local reporter Clarence Jones described his attempt to report the truth about railroad influence in Jacksonville, Florida. The problem was that both the local newspapers, the Times-Union and the Journal, were lobbying tools for the railroads. So tight was the railroads’ control of the media that the running joke was, “In North Florida, trains don’t hit cars. Cars hit trains.”
As a twenty-five-year-old reporter, Jones got it into his head that if he put together an air-tight exposé of a government official, his paper, the Journal, would be forced to run it. So he and a friendly editor set up a dummy corporation. Soliciting bids through the corporation, they learned what a certain microfilming process cost. It was one-fourth what a former city commissioner was charging Jacksonville. They submitted the story about the commissioner’s scam to the executive editor who sat on it for weeks. Finally, he called Jones and his partner in. The newspaper’s politically wired attorney had convinced the executive editor to spike the story.4
“Those who make the final money decision in media conglomerates have no grasp of journalistic ethics or the original concepts that gave the press Constitutional protection,” wrote Clarence Jones. “They have abandoned the old persistent, righteous indignation that throws bad guys and business moguls out of of
fice and into jail.”5
That opinion seems widespread in the industry. “They only give a shit about their bottom line,” one of the top journalists at Fox News told me. “These higher-ups, well, I don’t know what the fuck they are. I don’t know what the fuck they want.”6
This is the reality that journalists face. As the major media corporations consolidate, those who work within those companies, even the best of them like Sinclair and Fox, can expect to see their toughest stories spiked, not because they lack truth but because they have too much of it. Those of us who work outside the major media must stay vigilant lest we become the very people we warn our staffs about, the inverse of what Clarence Jones called “bosses with balls.”
Fleeing Philly
Go! Go! Go!” I told Gio, my “transporter,” as I hustled into our Chevy rental. “The lady’s coming after us.” A veteran street racer, Gio did not need much prompting. He gunned the engine and roared down the street, treating stop signs like yield signs and red lights like yellows.
The lady in question was a formidable and very angry election worker named Sarah. As far as I could tell, she ran the show at the polling station from which we were speeding away. Minutes earlier, armed with a button camera and dressed as a bum, I had wandered into her station and asked for help in deciding on a candidate. She readily obliged.
“Can I get this man some literature so he knows who he’s voting for?” she asked her colleagues. Not waiting around for an answer, Sarah headed outside and got me some “literature.” I looked at it and smiled. It read “Official Democratic Ballot.” Looking for voter fraud in North Philadelphia was like shooting fish in a barrel—no, not fish, dolphins. Only problem was, in Philly, you never knew when the dolphins were going to shoot back.
American Pravda Page 21