hot off the press...for the "sound impaired" ...the complete transcript of the report on this last night...
OLBERMANN: The telegram is part of American history. The U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor in 898 and the infamous yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst, Orson Wells‘ model for Citizen Kane, immediately had his newspapers pin the blame on Cuba‘s Spanish masters. Hearst and the Hearst papers insisted this country should attack Spain and anticipating the conflict, the publishing giant sent the famous illustrator Frederic Remington to Cuba to draw the pictures of the battles there.
From Havana Remington telegraphed Hearst that he couldn‘t find any war in Cuba. You furnish the pictures, Hearst telegraphed back. I‘ll furnish the war.
In our third story in the COUNTDOWN tonight, imagine if William Randolph Hearst had owned a cable television network. The first admission from the evil overlord of Fox, Rupert Murdoch, that his news operation tried to lead America into the war in Iraq. Mr. Murdoch‘s remarkable confession coming at last month‘s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, in Switzerland.
First, Murdoch bemoaning how big media has lost much of its power to set agendas, to things like blogs and news sites on the Internet, then panel moderator Charlie Rose, following up with a question about whether News Corp had managed to shape the agenda on the war in Iraq, to which Mr. Murdoch answered, quote, “no, I don‘t think so. We tried.” Follow up answer, “we basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East, but we have been very critical of his execution.”
Time now to call in Rachel Maddow, the host of the conveniently named Rachel Maddow show on Air America Radio. Good evening, welcome.
RACHEL MADDOW, “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW”: Hi Keith, thanks for having me.
OLBERMANN: Many will, no doubt, react to our doing this segment by saying, and this is news why? But is there ambiguity here. I mean, we don‘t get access to the actual tape of what he said for a couple weeks, but the print reporting simply says, he was asked if his company managed to shape the agenda about Iraq and he said, no, I don‘t think so, we tried. Is there more than one way to interpret that?
MADDOW: I don‘ think so. It seems to me to be a fairly unambiguous statement, which wouldn‘t be a problem if he was talking about a PR firm, or if he was talking about some sort of ideological think tank with an axe to grind. The problem is that Fox News Channel bills itself as the thing that‘s trying to unspin America. Right, the thing that‘s fair and balanced. It‘s trying to spin Americans away from the supposedly biased, agenda driven news that the mainstream news gives us, and we can only trust Fox, because they don‘t have an agenda.
Now he‘s admitting they have an agenda. So, either they need to change their tag line or he has to back down from that in a much more serious way than he already has.
OLBERMANN: Well, It‘s a sales pitch phrase, I mean, it‘s a catch phrase. It doesn‘t mean anything. It‘s just fair and balanced. It might as well be green and purple. But if the meaning is as obvious as that, why on Earth would Murdoch ever admit it.
MADDOW: To me that‘s the most interesting question here. I don‘t think that he‘s out of it enough at this point that he thinks, oh, I said it in Switzerland. Nobody will know about it in America. I don‘t think it‘s that. I wonder—
OLBERMANN: Ask Eason Jordan about that in particular.
MADDOW: Yes, exactly. I wonder if there is a certain fatalism and a certain kind of flippancy, born of fatalism, among a lot of the really big deal people, like Rupert Murdoch, who did bang the drum so loudly for this war. Nobody in the world thinks this war is going well anymore except for the Cheney family. And people like Rupert Murdoch, who have to know how responsible they were for ginning up the support for it, I just wonder if he is a little bit self-destructive and flippant on this issue, because he feels fatalist.
How else would you feel, were you in his position? He has got to be carrying at least some guilt if he‘s a human being.
OLBERMANN: Well, presumably, there could be some spin forward to the follow-up. Because the follow up that he said was, we basically supported the Bush policy in the Middle East, but we have been very critical of its execution. Is he talking about one of his British newspapers? Is he trying to get people to feel that there has been some criticism of the war. Because I don‘t know of anybody at Fox Noise that would admit they have been very critical of the Bush policy in Iraq.
MADDOW: No, and they continue to be incredibly critical of real reporters. They continue to be incredibly critical of real mainstream media. They continue to be unbelievably critical, and personally attacking toward people who have been critical of the Bush administration.
OLBERMANN: Hi, hello, how are you?
MADDOW: Yes, exactly. I mean, that‘s the thing that we can all document every day that they do. And so the idea that they‘ve somehow come to their senses and yes, they supported the war as a good idea, but they‘ve seen, just like the rest of us, how poorly it‘s been executed. It‘s a farce, and they can try to spin that, but it‘s an absolute farce. And that‘s why I don‘t even that Murdoch could try to gin that up. I like to think of it as kind of a psychological disillusion on the issue.
OLBERMANN: It would be nice to think that. It would also be nice to think that large numbers of his viewers and his readers would hear about what he said and say, well, I‘ve been had. But that‘s not likely to happen. But does it suggest maybe that the trend of the TV ratings—they are not adding viewers. They are not holding their younger viewers— suggests that the fair and balanced claim and all the rest of the promotional stuff, is now rejected in advance by new viewers in the same way that the tobacco claims, tobacco company‘s claim that you can smoke safely are automatically rejected?
MADDOW: Well, they‘re certainly not attracting new and younger viewers. And, I mean, I think there is a reason why Fox News Channel did get giant ratings at one point, and does continues to get some good ratings, because, I think, there is a feel good factor to jingoism. There is something about Father Coughlin style demagogy that quickens your blood, that is enticing, and that is appealing in a populist sort of way.
The problem is that the American public is past that point with this war and that‘s going to be their signature issue. Murdoch, I think knows it‘s their signature issue, that they, more than anybody, helped gin up the case for the war and beat the drums for it. You know, it may feel good to go along with that stuff, but ultimately, you get sick of it.
OLBERMANN: Remember the Maine, William Randolph Hearst learned, probably later on, that it was actually just an accident. Rachel Maddow, the host of, what else, the Rachel Maddow Show on Air America, a pleasure to have you on the show.
MADDOW: Thank you Keith.
