Monday Morning Media Quarterback

Did you know President Bush spoke to a key economic summit at the Australian Opera House in Sydney yesterday?  Did you know he launched a few of his ?

: “He’d only reached the third sentence of Friday’s speech to business leaders, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, when he committed his first gaffe.

“Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit,” Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.

Bush quickly corrected himself. “APEC summit,” he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).

The president’s next goof went uncorrected — by him anyway. Talking about Howard’s visit to Iraq last year to thank his country’s soldiers serving there, Bush called them “Austrian troops.”

You wouldn’t have learned this from CNN.COM, FOXNEWS.COM, or MSNBC.COM,  who are mostly concerned with the mother of a British 3-year old questioned in the girl’s disappearance,  an upcoming ’happy anniversary of September 11′ message from a newly-dyed (and undead) Osama Bin Ladin (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan), and nude pictures of someone named Vanessa Hudgins from High School Musical appearing on the Web.  (To their credit, ABCNEWS did run something on Bush’s confrontation with a Korean leader.)

Bush fatigue is palpable–but our media is doing a pathetic job of covering the President of the United States.

“Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford, Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. “  This CraigsList.org-like ad actually ran on the liberal Huffington Post.  The poster was war protestor Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq,  saying she was dumping her 5 acre ‘Camp Casey’ near George W. Bush’s ranch.  She ended up with $87,000.

Candy Crowley of CNN describes Sheehan as “the first recognizable face of the anti-war movement” but the left (and the media) eventually soured on her for saying George Bush is a bigger terrorist that Osama Bin Ladin, and that the U.S. is in danger of disintegrating into “a fascist corporate wasteland.” You can read her letter dropping out of the war protest here. 

Not only has no other popular spokesperson emerged for the anti-war movement, but Sheehan’s ‘garage sale’ shows that a broad peace movement has never really developed, even after more than four years of war. 

I was a child during Vietnam, and I remember watching rallies at the Capitol on television that were over 250,00 like this one on November 15, 1969.  Such demonstrations persuaded Lyndon Johnson not to run for re-election, and continued into the 1970’s until most U.S. soldiers were out of Vietnam.

By contrast, rallies against the war in Iraq peaked almost two years ago, when more than 100,000, including Sheehan, (organizers claimed 300,000) marched in Washington on September 24, 2005.   Back then, 1,911 U.S.  soldiers had been killed in the war.  By June 2007, over 3,500 had died in Iraq, and the number of troops in-country had actually risen with the surge.

Yet the protests have died down, and Cindy Sheehan gave up, ‘tired of being called an attention whore.’ 

Why are there so few other leaders and symbols of an anti-war movement? Why are demonstrations limited to fringe groups seemingly more interested in making a statement against the Republicans in September 2008 than trying to stop the war now? Are Americans selfish, apathetic, or do they actually support the war in Iraq, despite what the polls say?

The media may have helped in building Sheehan up and tearing her down, but the media is just a mirror to society.  Although I don’t agree with her on many issues, it’s hard not to sympathize with Sheehan’s pain and frustration, or to analyze the lack of protest without thinking of the selfishness of one generation or another. 

Were the Babyboomers selfishly demonstrating during the Vietnam War, out of fear of being drafted? Or are today’s young Americans the selfish ones, too inwardly directed on their iPods, cellphones and instant messaging to care?

It’s hard to motivate people to get out in the streets and away from their computers.  But it’s easy to understand why people (over) focus on Paris Hilton or American Idol, when the news from Iraq is this grim. 

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs is a ticking time bomb–and he’s starting to damage CNN’s credibility.  The New York Times, finally catching up with MondayMorningMediaQuarterback,  challenged Dobb’s reporting on immigrants bringing leprosy to the United States. 

Dobbs needed to back away from let-them-eat-cake remarks like “If we reported it, it’s a fact,” and respond with a brief statement like this.  “On a couple of things we’ve broadcast, I’ve got to admit our critics may have a point.  From this point forward we’ll make doubly sure everything we put on the air is accurate,  and while we’ll continue to advocate for the American worker, I apologize to those I may have given offense to.”

Instead, we get this 900-word rant, as swollen with ego as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float.  Here’s some quotes with our commentary.

• “Today’s New York Times column is primarily a personal attack on me.” The Times story is not about the issues.
• The non-factual leprosy quote is from “an ad-lib on the set of this broadcast uttered more than two years ago by Christine Romans.” Blaming others/not taking responsibility for his show.
• “I’m regularly attacked by the left wing — the Southern Poverty Law Center, The New York Times, The Nation, MALDEF and MEChA — for my opposition to illegal immigration…I’m regularly attacked by the right wing — the biggest business lobbyists in the country, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Bush administration — for my criticism of so-called free trade policies and outsourcing.” Dobbs is implying that he’s a centrist and his ‘truth’ lies in the middle. Interestingly, The National Association of Manufacturers, seemingly a natural ally for this ‘leading business reporter’, slams Dobbs’ relationship with the truth–which at the end of the day, is all a reporter has.
• “The fact is, I made a mistake” He buries what should be the lead 14 columns down in his rant.
• “Corporate power, expressed by lobbyists spending billions of dollars each year in Washington to influence both political parties and public policy, represents the greatest single threat to this nation’s middle class.”  Dobbs is using airtime provided by one of those corporations, Time Warner, which also pays his $4 million salary.  Commercial speech is different than free speech, as both Pink and Don Imus have learned.
• “Those attacks from the left and the right will continue. They perhaps may get even a little more energetic. And as long as they continue to do so, you and I can rest assured that we’re doing more right than wrong on this broadcast.”  Although they try to martyr him, Dobbs’ crusade cannot be deterred, even by critics like the Mayor of San Francisco who Dobbs says, ”Might as well work for Hermann Goering.”

My concern is that Dobbs will damage the CNN and Time Warner brand, devaluing an image of credibility and unbiased news built up painstakingly over 20 years.  In the past month, Time Warner has quickly fired the head of HBO and their leading African reporter, both for alleged offenses against women. 

With Dobbs, it may be a tougher call, as he has the ratings lead .  But if he doesn’t start acting less like Howard Beale and more like Anderson Cooper, Dobbs credibility, already in tatters, will disappear completely.

So the New York Times has finally caught up to Monday Morning Media Quarterback–three weeks after we posted questions about Lou Dobb’s claim on CNN that immigrants have brought 7000 cases of leprosy to the United States.

I warned Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons about  the downside when your news anchor goes demagogic.  He claimed Dobbs’ controversial remarks were all ‘opinion’, not news.  I hope he’s watching Dobbs’ rants–and remembering the Don Imus debacle.

On May 17  I attended the Time Warner annual meeting in Burbank.   CEO Richard Parsons gave a presentation, told us “we toil on your behalf” and said after years of “going sideways, we finally got some movement in the stock.”  He pointed to the board of directors, “I work for them, they work for you.”

He went over numbers and showed graphics like InStyle with Haile Berry, Bugs Bunny and CNN with Anderson Cooper, adding ”I’d like to salute publicly our journalists who put themselves in harm’s way.”

Befitting the Warner Brothers location, he showed a pair of film clips.  The latest Harry Potter looked vivid and great, while the new Hairspray left me wondering if John Travolta (in drag as the mom) has a speech impediment.  Parsons noted the studio won 10 Oscars in 2007, but I don’t see Travolta finally getting his for this.  Nonetheless, Parsons urged the audience to see the films “early and often.”

“Can old media exist in a digital world?” is the challenge for content creators, according to Parsons, and is something a writer like myself  struggles with every day.  “We’re in the content creation business; ink on paper, television, video.  Our challenge is to move our company into digital, whether you own it, rent it, watch it on an iPOD.”

Parsons is unflappable, as befits a man who says he’s a big fan of Happy Feet.  He also has a good sense of humor, staying calm while noted corporate gadfly John Chevvedden talked about Parson’s high ($22 million) compensation.  When another stockholder admonished Parsons for selling Google years ago, he said, “We could have done better, but no one has ever gone broke taking a profit.”

What’s Time Warner all about?  Parsons put it this way:

1. Make money for our shareholders.

2. Do some good in the world.

3. Have some fun doing it. 

From a media training point of view, couldn’t have said it better myself.

The MSM keeps clucking about Katie Couric’s (and that of CBS News) failure to win the evening news ratings race.  In fact, America’s sweetheart is mired in third place.

Linda Mason, CBS News senior VP of standards and special projects, said on CBS’ Public Eye site that the public “seems to prefer the news from white guys, and now that Charlie’s (Gibson’s) doing so well, from older white guys. I guess they want the reassurance of a Walter Cronkite.” 

In February, I attended a lecture where Anderson Cooper of CNN interviewed Walter Cronkite, who, yes, is still alive and still pretty lucid.  While it is reassuring to have someone like Cronkite (who doesn’t know who Paris Hilton is) deliver the news,  it’s Cronkite’s experience jumping out of planes in Normandy and Cooper’s street reporting in New Orleans that give them gravitas and credibility, not their white hair and male chromosome set.

Couric’s brand of perky doesn’t play.  I’m not sure who the major networks are fighting over on the national news; I can’t remember the last time I made “an appointment” to watch it.  Is it still on at 6:30PM?

Lou Dobbs and ratings-challenged CNN (I still miss Soledad O’Brian) have finished second again, as Lou Dobbs is only the runner-up (to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly) on Olbermann’s Worst Person in the World. 

One of the few tough questions Lesley Stahl asked in a softball 60 Minutes interview  with her new CBS colleague Dobb was about why his CNN show reported 7000 cases of leprosy in the last 3 years, with the implication that immigrants had brought leprosy with them. 

Olberman gave Dobbs his “worst person” nod for saying,  “If we reported it, it’s a fact.” Apparently, 7000 cases of leprosy have been reported in the past 30 years.

After public relations disasters like Don Imus and Janet Jackson, it’s interesting that CBS, once called “the Tiffany network” would take a chance on the increasingly demagogic Lou Dobbs.

Now CNN’s Dobbs has not one but two networks  to lash out on.  On 60 Minutes Lesley Stahl asked a couple of tough questions, but mostly was bowled over by her new colleague’s charm offensive.  He even played the card. 

Stahl and Lou wrapped up by driving a tractor together, on the 300-acre New Jersey farm owned by this voice of the middle-class.