Sunday, October 07, 2012

TV: Jim Lehrer, notch below child molester

Jim Lehrer found a way to self-disgrace and disgrace his profession last week.   A lot of people miss the point.  Bob Somerby (Daily Howler) has been carrying on a multi-day freak-fest over Lehrer not fact checking in the midst of last week's debate while Seth Meyers used SNL's Weekend Update to hail Lehrer as a "loser" and for not making the candidates stick to a two-minute limit.  As long as you have those kind of idiotic critiques, don't expect the average intelligence of the nation to increase any.


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Who is Jim Lehrer?  A 78-year-old personality in the infotainment biz.  PBS explains Lehrer was briefly a reporter (seven years, 1959 to 1966) and then became a columnist and then left the newspaper biz for public television -- where he's remained for over forty years.  With at least 20 bad novels to his name, he's also been a big producer for landfills across the nation.  If Jackie Collins lacked talent and drive, she'd be Jim Lehrer.   In 1975, he began co-hosting The MacNeil - Lehrer Report which eventually morphed into The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and then The NewsHour (which is what it's known as today).

On The NewsHour, he doesn't report.  Again, he was only a reporter for seven years in his  fifty-years-plus career.  In fact, reporter was his first job after college and military service.  He used it as a stepping stone.  "A stepping stone," you understand, is something you use to get to where you really want to be.  It's become the employment equivalent of  a social climber's first marriage.  And that should make clear exactly what value Jim Lehrer assigns to reporting.

"My real concern, frankly, is less with the candidates than with the moderators," declared Aaron Sorkin at an event last week put on by Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center.  " Uh, because, uh, I-I-I don't think it should just be Professor [Kathleen Hall] Jamieson and her team, uh-uh, hulled away in a  hotel room, who are doing the fact checking.  We are being -- as a country -- We are being asphyxiated by an epidemic of simply bad information.  And I don't know who is to blame for it."


You don't know who is to blame for the state of debates?

Really, professional blowhard, you're that stupid.

We're no fans of Pig Sorkin but even we didn't realize he was that stupid.

He wasn't the only idiot.  Chuck Todd was on the same panel discussion and even this NBC reporter couldn't or wouldn't tell the truth.  Instead he offered this lie,  "I don't know why moderators don't fact check."

Chuck Todd knows exactly why. And would, in fact, reveal that shortly.

Wednesday, Democracy Now! featured Open Debates' George Farah. Excerpt.


GEORGE FARAH: The Commission on Presidential debates sounds like a government agency, it sounds like a nonpartisan entity, which is by design, is intended to deceive the American people. But, in reality, it is a private corporation financed by Anheuser-Busch and other major companies, that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties to seize control of the presidential debates from The League of Women Voters in 1987. Precisely as you said, Amy, every four years, this commission allows the major party campaigns to meet behind closed doors and draft a secret contract, a memorandum of understanding that dictates many of the terms. The reason for the commission’s creation is that the previous sponsor, The League of Women voters, was a genuine non-partisan entity, our voice, the voice of the American people in the negotiation room, and time and time again, The League had the courage to stand up to the Republican and Democratic campaigns to insist on challenging creative formats, to insist on the inclusion of independent candidates that the vast majority of American people wanted to see, and most importantly, to insist on transparency, so that any attempts by the Republican and Democratic parties to manipulate the presidential debates would result in and of enormous political price. And it’s precisely because the League... 


AMY GOODMAN: George, you have a lot of time here, so I really want you to lay out how this happened. Explain the moment when this was taken out of the hands of The League of Women Voters and this commission was formed. How was this justified? 


GEORGE FARAH: The best part of the history starts in 1980. In 1980, John B. Anderson, an independent candidate for president, runs against Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. President Jimmy Carter absolutely opposed independent candidate John Anderson’s participation in the presidential debates, and The League had a choice; do they support the independent candidate’s participation and defy the wishes of the President of the United States or do they capitulate to the demands of President Jimmy Carter? The league did the right thing, it stood to the President of the United States, invited John B. Anderson. The President refused to show up. The League went forward anyway and had a presidential debate that was watched by 55 million Americans. You fast forward four years later, Amy, and the Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan campaigns vetoed 80 of the moderators that The League of Women Voters had proposed for the debates. The were simply trying to get rid of... 


AMY GOODMAN: Eighty? 


GEORGE FARAH: Eighty. They were trying to get rid of difficult questions. 


AMY GOODMAN: Eight-zero? 



GEORGE FARAH: Eight-zero. Eighty. And The League didn’t just say, OK that’s fine we’ll allow you to select a moderator that’s going to ask softball questions, The League held a press conference and lambasted the campaigns for trying to get rid of the difficult questions. Of course there was a public outcry. So The League marshaled public support to criticize when they attempted to defy our democratic process and the result was fantastic. For the next debate, the campaigns were required to accept The League’s proposed moderators for fear of an additional public outcry. And you fast forward four more years later and you have the Michael Dukakis and the George Bush campaign’s drafting the first ever 12-page secret debate contract. They gave it to The League of Women Voters and said please implement this. The League said, are you kidding me? We are not going to implement a secret contract that dictates the terms of the format. Instead, they release the contract to the public and they held a press conference accusing the candidates of "perpetrating a fraud on the American people" and refusing to be "an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American people." 


Do you understand the above or are you such an immature adult that you want to continue to play dumb?


Now this is not breaking news.  A visit to Open Debate's website  will quickly demonstrate that in 2008, Farah explained this history on Washington Journal and Democracy Now!; in 2004, on CNN, Fox and Friends, MSNBC's Lester Holt Live, ABC's 20/20, CNNfn, MSNBC's Countdown, ABC's Nightline, CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, Washington Journal, ABC World News Tonight and NOW with Bill Moyers.  And Farah isn't the only who's addressed this issue.

So why the hell do we keep lying to ourselves every four years?

It is determined -- and written into legal contract -- what type of questions, who is invited and so much more.  Why is anyone surprised?


Because it's a lie a lot of people help along, year after year.   At the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy event last week, while Aaron Sorkin and Chuck Todd played dumb, Alex Jones stayed silent. 

Alex Jones knows better.  Doubt us?  This is from AP:



This format is more of an issue than Lehrer's approach, said Alex Jones, director of Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Jones praised Lehrer as a "superb" and responsible journalist who’s willing to take a tough stand: “Jim Lehrer was the most outspoken voice in television denouncing the networks’ decision not to carry the conventions more fully.”
He said the debates themselves scarcely deserve the name, given the lack of give-and-take, scripted responses and moderator’s weak role.
"The way they have stripped the role of the ability to challenge, follow or engage beyond simply asking questions, I think the moderator’s role is almost one you could phone in," he said.


 And should we take a moment to add the AP article is from . . . 2004.


It was hilarious to grasp that Aaron Sorkin was whining about politicians making false statements that a moderator didn't correct as Sorkin made false statements on a panel that moderator Alex Jones refused to correct. 


It is not that, as the always one-of-the-boys mannish Kathleen Hall Jamieson declared, it is expecting too much of one person to do all the fact checking, to be an expert on all the topics that might arise during the debate.


Her answer was a non-answer.  A distraction.  A lie.


And it's the lies that allow the deception to continue.  


But it's such garbage that even the liars get bored with the lies.  Chuck Todd did last week on the panel.  (We were bored too.  Aaron Sorkin never knows when to stop talking.)


Aaron Sorkin:  I agree with you there but we do have a campaign commission.  And they can compel candidates to -- that you have to 

Chuck Todd: Campaigns control the debate commission but we can have --  that's a whole separate issue.  We can have that discus --

Aaron Sorkin: That's probably that -- That's probably the problem.    Here's all I'm saying.  In Utopia, you wouldn't be able to run a false or misleading [. . .]


He continues to babble on about campaign commercials.  What an idiot.

Even when the truth came up, please note, even when Chuck Todd had reached his limit on Sorkin's uninformed never-ending babble, Aaron just steamrolls over him and does so because Sorkin is submerged in ignorance -- willfully and wantonly.


And the fact check.  Always to the fact check.  As if that's all that matters.  Here's a little clue, it's a debate.  If you are not able to hold your opponent accountable, you shouldn't get help from the moderator.  If you can't convincingly take on a lie, that says a great deal about what you lack as a candidate.



The Harvard panel was a joke.  Aaron Sorkin proved his DLC status yet again (Democratic Leadership Council which morphed into New Democrats in an attempt to escape their bad image).  There he was agreeing that the Simpson-Bowles Commission recommendations should be implemented.  Fawning over "awesome" Simpson, swearing that there needed to be multiple Simpsons so that he could be in the House and in the Senate and in the White House.  Maybe the two men bonded over the fact that they're both sexist pigs?  (Here for NOW on Simpson.)

It was so comical to watch the panel as, moments after Kathleen Hall Jamieson was blathering away about things that were "blatantly deceptive," Alan Simpson 'explained' that the Presidential Debate Commission -- which he sits on, "It's been there 25 years because the League of Women Voters decided to step out of the group.  So in came a bipartisan group. A very fine group.  Democrats and Republicans."

Not one person corrected Simpson, not one person questioned him.  Kathleen Hall Jamieson pretended to be studying her hands as if she'd discovered a new liver spot.


Which brings us back to TV personality Jim Lehrer.


Jim Lehrer wants desperately to be a novelist.  So desperately that he publishes one bad book after another.  If we were a TV personality with so few accomplishments, we'd wish we had another career too.


But Jim's worse than a TV personality famous solely for being on TV.


Jim's as damaging as pedophile.  He does that sort of damage on a national level every time he moderates a presidential 'debate.'  Please note, Lehrer  is infamous for being the 'dean of moderators.'  He is hailed as that.  And when did Lehrer start that career?

In 1988.  When the League of Women Voters controlled the debates and chose moderators, they had no interest in the likes of Jim Lehrer.  They wanted feisty, informed journalists who would ask tough questions -- not pre-screened ones, not ones given in advance -- and who could fact check during the debate.  In 1980, they had five moderators for the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan debate.  (The candidates had a hissy fit and only debated once.)  Repeating, they had no interest in the likes of Jim Lehrer.

 Now that the two major political parties control the debates, there's no journalism being done.  Candidates are asked what they know they'll be asked.  (In fact, Simpson was revealing, on the panel, the topics and how many questions on each topic -- such as the economy, before even the first debate had taken place.  Simpson could do that because, as a member of the commission, he's familiar with the contract the two parties iron out and insist the 'moderator' follow.)

It's a lie and it's a deception.

And when a Jim Lehrer (or Bob Schieffer or Martha Raddatz or Candy Crowley) provides cover to these shams by posing as a journalist, they're doing incredible damage to democracy and, again, they're as damaging as child molesters.  If they don't have any self-respect, their peers should at least hold them accountable.  Until that happens, nothing is going to change.