by bert
Here is another transparent tactic used by on-air pundits of the right wing in order to mangle the truth and score points. I call it talk-radio taxidermy. What you do is after a story is dead and gone, you doctor up the corpse to represent some scene that never was.
This tactic is most useful when your right-wing smears could not adhere to the living truth at the time. But maybe later, when memories fade, you can fool your listeners by posing and grooming this dead story to reflect what it never meant. The Iraq War is one example. You will continue to hear this year a persistent subordinate clause that "Bush achieved victory".
This morning, Jay Weber on WISN-AM was, I guess, trying to tell us that Barack Obama doesn't care about soldiers. You see, the retiree George W. Bush traveled within his own state and without the press to visit Fort Hood over the weekend. Good for George Bush. You see, Obama has not yet visited.
Then came the doctored-up corpse. Weber said something today such as: remember when Obama was going to visit injured soldiers in Germany during his campaign and then called off the visit because reporters were not allowed to go along?
The more nuanced story is covered here with some integrity by the Talking Points Memo web site. The army changed its ground rules for the planned Obama visit to the Landstuhl base in the middle of Obama's European trip in the summer of 2008.
The Obama campaign seems to have concluded that to contest those changed rules or continue with the visit, if possible at all under the new rules, would send the wrong signals. If anything, the motive was to avoid politicizing such a visit. That's far from calling it off when they found they could not politicize it, which was what Weber wants the story to be.
The fact is that right-wingers relish the anger produced by the Fort Hood shootings. Because any pundit worth his or her salt should be able to find a means to refashion and redirect anger so that it aims toward blame of a democrat.
After this Fort Hood story also goes dormant, go back and tally the on-air minutes devoted to Obama -- who is sort of peripheral to this story -- versus the minutes devoted to Amy Krueger, Russell Seager, or Amber Bahr .
Showing posts with label WISN-AM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WISN-AM. Show all posts
Monday, November 09, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
WTMJ, WISN: Pimples of the GOP Party
by bert
Predictably -- and right-wing radio shows are always predictable – the talk shows of our local AM stations WTMJ and WISN spent last week hammering the White House’s criticism of Fox News.
What's provoked their push-back was that President Obama’s staff members said in interviews since last Sunday that we Americans, and especially other reporters, should all just stop pretending Fox is journalism.
Dan Peiffer, an Obama spokesman, said "we simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization.” Anita Dunn, another White House flak, stated the obvious when she said Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party.
If Fox’s defenders had an argument it was that you can’t confuse commentators in the evening such as Beck or Hannity with the serious, balanced journalism the Fox channel presents during the day. I had to laugh, recalling the teabagger protests last summer when Fox reporters were literally cheering on and pumping up the protesters. I also seem to recall that Hannity never makes those distinctions in declaring all media except Fox as inthetankforObama.
I think it is rich that the local radio is acting all shocked at such an accusation, that a news organization would carry water for a political party. Because I know what folks like Dunn would conclude if she listened to these stations around here. She would see very quickly that, while too insignificant nationally to be an arm of the GOP, WTMJ and WISN are at least pimples of the party.
When it comes to their competitor WTMJ and its supposed journalism, it's hard to know where to start. What contaminates any claim that WTMJ can make that it engages in actual news is the damage wrought by the influence at that company wielded by show-host Charlie Sykes, who is an open GOP operative and MC of GOP fund-raisers.
Like the tick on a rat, Sykes is the carrier of GOP infection afflicting WTMJ’s news. The exposé by former WTMJ news and programming guy Dan Shelley documented how Sykes would rant and throw his weight around. Here's an excerpt of Shelley's article:
Cianciola was fired from WTMJ recently, by the way.
Although Shelley claimed in this article there is a sort of church-state barrier at the station between news and talk, I see a lot of leakage. Routinely, the news portion runs sound bites from folks who had been “interviewed” by Sykes.
But the problem is that Sykes does not interview. His questions lovingly caress the likes of Dick Cheney, Scott Walker, or Jim Sensenbrenner. While, if the interviewee is an enemy, Sykes uses questions to bludgeon them. For example, while interviewing then County Chair Karen Ordinans, Sykes attacked with interjections such as “I mean, hello??!!”
A print reporter would not run as a quote for an article about Taco Bell the line “think outside the bun” -- or quote "you're in good hands with All-State" while writing about insurance -- as if those quotes came from an interview with company executives. So why should WTMJ news re-run supposed interview bites that in fact were situated within the 3.5-hour commercial for the GOP that Sykes orchestrates every weekday?
So, no, I’m sorry, the White House is obviously correct here about even more than the Fox News they were talking about. And so they shouldn't back down.
Predictably -- and right-wing radio shows are always predictable – the talk shows of our local AM stations WTMJ and WISN spent last week hammering the White House’s criticism of Fox News.
What's provoked their push-back was that President Obama’s staff members said in interviews since last Sunday that we Americans, and especially other reporters, should all just stop pretending Fox is journalism.
Dan Peiffer, an Obama spokesman, said "we simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization.” Anita Dunn, another White House flak, stated the obvious when she said Fox News is an arm of the Republican Party.
If Fox’s defenders had an argument it was that you can’t confuse commentators in the evening such as Beck or Hannity with the serious, balanced journalism the Fox channel presents during the day. I had to laugh, recalling the teabagger protests last summer when Fox reporters were literally cheering on and pumping up the protesters. I also seem to recall that Hannity never makes those distinctions in declaring all media except Fox as inthetankforObama.
I think it is rich that the local radio is acting all shocked at such an accusation, that a news organization would carry water for a political party. Because I know what folks like Dunn would conclude if she listened to these stations around here. She would see very quickly that, while too insignificant nationally to be an arm of the GOP, WTMJ and WISN are at least pimples of the party.
The local stations, like Fox, pretend they have “news departments” apart from their talk shows. At WISN in the morning the straight news guy is Ken Herrera. True, many times Herrera will just deliver a straight news story, say the spillage of animal offal on the freeway.
But at other times you'll see him serving as the sort of Ed McMahon to talk-show-host Jay Weber. I remember Herrera, for example, gushing his enthusiasm for Sarah Palin, agreeing with an equally aroused Weber about how awesome she was going to be on the day Palin was announced as John McCain’s V.P. candidate a good year ago.
Even worse is another WISN fill-in Nick Reed, who does both straight news and fills in for other hosts. One afternoon Reed is going off forever against Doyle or Pelosi, blah, blah, blah. Then the next day he’ll be the guy reading a story at the top of the hour about state government.
When it comes to their competitor WTMJ and its supposed journalism, it's hard to know where to start. What contaminates any claim that WTMJ can make that it engages in actual news is the damage wrought by the influence at that company wielded by show-host Charlie Sykes, who is an open GOP operative and MC of GOP fund-raisers.
Like the tick on a rat, Sykes is the carrier of GOP infection afflicting WTMJ’s news. The exposé by former WTMJ news and programming guy Dan Shelley documented how Sykes would rant and throw his weight around. Here's an excerpt of Shelley's article:
Another tense moment arose when the Harley-Davidson 100th anniversary was captivating the community – and our on-air coverage – in 2003, but Charlie
wanted to talk about school choice for seemingly the 100,000th time. He literally threw a fit, off the air and on, belittling other hosts, the news department and station management for devoting resources to Harley’s 100th coverage. “The Green House” newsman Phil Cianciola countered that afternoon with a joke about Charlie riding a Harley wearing loafers. Charlie complained to management about Phil and wouldn’t speak civilly about him in my presence again.
Cianciola was fired from WTMJ recently, by the way.
Although Shelley claimed in this article there is a sort of church-state barrier at the station between news and talk, I see a lot of leakage. Routinely, the news portion runs sound bites from folks who had been “interviewed” by Sykes.
But the problem is that Sykes does not interview. His questions lovingly caress the likes of Dick Cheney, Scott Walker, or Jim Sensenbrenner. While, if the interviewee is an enemy, Sykes uses questions to bludgeon them. For example, while interviewing then County Chair Karen Ordinans, Sykes attacked with interjections such as “I mean, hello??!!”
A print reporter would not run as a quote for an article about Taco Bell the line “think outside the bun” -- or quote "you're in good hands with All-State" while writing about insurance -- as if those quotes came from an interview with company executives. So why should WTMJ news re-run supposed interview bites that in fact were situated within the 3.5-hour commercial for the GOP that Sykes orchestrates every weekday?
So, no, I’m sorry, the White House is obviously correct here about even more than the Fox News they were talking about. And so they shouldn't back down.
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