Presswatch: One Big Media
Corry, John
PRESSWATCH by John Corry One Big Media n retrospect, it almost seems quaint. The best minds in the media, not to mention the United States Senate, once worried that Rupert Murdoch might own...
...An MSNBC anchor would speak respectfully about a Times story, and then the reporter who wrote the story would appear on the all-news cable network, and talk about it...
...they only deal in facts...
...Last November, after the Times connection had ended, MSBNC and the Washington Post reached an agreement...
...Nonetheless cross-pollination has now taken a great step forward...
...The best minds said that would never do...
...The Times-MSNBC connection did not Cross-pollination generates the buzz you hear...
...The video is moderated by ABC's political director and the Times's Washington bureau chief...
...Stahl probably believed what she was saying...
...Apparently Channel 25 and the Herald would share the same viewpoint— Murdoch's conservative viewpoint, that is JOHN CORRY is the American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...As it turns out, most of what they talk about is politics...
...Superficially it would be dissimilar in its parts —the way the Times is a newspaper, and ABC is a network—although this would have only a marginal effect on how news is presented, and none at all on how news is defined...
...He gave Sam and Cokie his perspective on this, and while he did it intelligently and well, you wished he wasn't doing it...
...The best minds in the media, not to mention the United States Senate, once worried that Rupert Murdoch might own both a newspaper and a television station in Boston...
...Homogenization is being institutionalized, and by comparison the Post-Newsweek-MSNBC operation is no more than a mere vanity production...
...Reporters and columnists from the Post and its sister publication Newsweek were to appear regularly on the cable network and do analysis, discussion, and commentary...
...Dan Rather has said more or less the same thing, and it would be pointless to be bothered...
...It is unlikely that Klein, a staff writer for the New Yorker, or Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, has ever had anything nice to say, either...
...The arrangement between the two organizations covers only this year's political season, but it seems likely it will be extended and broadened...
...And, in fact, as far as one big media was concerned, she was telling the absolute truth...
...The Times and ABC News have come to a meeting of minds, and if you are not distressed by this, you should be...
...The American Spectator • April 2000 39...
...Some of them were on display when Mrs...
...It was something less than kosher that all four should be commenting, presumably objectively, on his electoral opponent...
...Sometimes this is entertaining, and even knowledgeable...
...It is hard to magine who makes up the audience for any of this besides other people who want to go on the talk shows...
...The story-teller was becoming as important as the story, and the Times, which once discouraged reporters from going on television, was now paying them to do so...
...38 April 2000 • The American Spectator last very long, although it made clear what lay ahead: the increasing homogenization of news, and the trend toward more celebrity reporters...
...One big media has rules all its own...
...We are at least halfway toward one big media now...
...However, they can relax in a time such as ours, and cross-pollination is now an approved practice for our big news organizations...
...Network correspondents, by definition, can have no opinions...
...On NBC's "Meet the Press" that day, Tim Russert interviewed a panel of journalists — Gail Collins, Bob Herbert, Joe Klein, and David Remnick—and asked them what they thought about this...
...Usually, however, it is only the distilling of conventional wisdom, although the idea on television is always to act as if it were authoritative and original...
...Ted Kennedy was particularly upset...
...Journal reporters would turn up on the cable network during daytime hours, and talk about mergers, acquisitions, and other business matters...
...The Times and ABC are co-producing a daily 15-minute video report on politics that appears on both their Websites...
...So what if all three newsmagazines put John McCain on their covers...
...The cross-pollination of print and television was unacceptable, and the Senate told Murdoch that if he wanted to buy Channel 25, he would have to get rid of the Herald...
...They said they wanted a hundred flowers to bloom, but that if Channel 25 and the Boston Herald both became Murdoch properties, diversity of opinion would be stifled in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...
...Adam Nagourney, a Times reporter, sat down with Sam and Cokie...
...Almost to a man, or a woman, those others move in prescribed boundaries, and their positions are known in advance...
...Virtually every time I've seen her perform, she has knocked my socks off...
...It is impossible to escape the thought now that we are in striking distance of having only one big media...
...First the Wall Street Journal and CNBC struck up a modest, and relatively benign, alliance...
...More or less Murdoch did—he sold it to an associate—and if this did not please everyone, at least it affirmed a principle: Newspapers and television stations were not to speak in the same voices, much less with the same personnel...
...and when they reported the news it would show...
...Dissidents are always welcome so there is the appearance of free debate, but no one's opinions ever change, and indeed if anyone's opinions were to change, he, or she, would give up the position of dissident, and not be invited again to participate...
...If you should think otherwise, however, then that's only your opinion...
...Covers aren't as important as they once were, anyway...
...Subsequently the Times and MSNBC made an arrangement...
...Meanwhile the Times is also supplying reports for ABC's "20/20" and "Good Morning America...
...They all seem to read the same publications, and when they talk, they talk loot so much to television viewers as they do to one another...
...The Times and ABC are ideologically compatible, and if the Times can do "20/20" today, it can do "World News Tonight" tomorrow...
...On the other hand, the Post-Newsweek people, the reporters anyway, if not the columnists, are more informative than the other people who regularly appear on the MSNBC talk shows...
...S ome aspects of this no doubt are harmless...
...Meet the Press," however, was observing one-big-media rules, and granting the four a dispensation: What they were expressing were facts, not opinion...
...The world of one big media was only getting closer...
...Collins and Herbert are New York Timescolumnists, and neither one has ever had anything nice to say about Rudy Giuliani...
...Clinton had been interviewed by the Times the day before, and Nagourney had written the story...
...The New York Times began to poll with CBS, and the Washington Post with ABC, and soon one thing led to another...
...So what if CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl tells the Philadelphia Inquirer she is "endlessly fascinated" by Hillary Clinton, and then adds: "She's so smart...
...Remnick seemed to show some wry awareness when he said, "Well, I live in the People's Republic of the Upper West Side...
...On the other hand, when Stahl went on cable's "The O'Reilly Factor" soon afterwards, and said, "I had my opinions surgically removed when I became a network correspondent," you should feel some alarm...
...the Reagan oppression was under way, and the best minds had to standguard...
...Its roots may be found in the joint polling operations conducted by newspapers and television networks...
...But that was way back in the grim 1980's...
...Clinton announced that, yes, she really was a New Yorker, and she was running for the Senate...
...Meanwhile on ABC's "This Week" that same day, cross-pollination took effect...
Vol. 33 • April 2000 • No. 3
