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Thursday May 29, 2008 06:03 EDT
CNN/MSNBC reporter: Corporate executives forced pro-Bush, pro-war narrative
(updated below - Update II)
Jessica Yellin -- currently a CNN correspondent who covered the White
House for ABC News and MSNBC in 2002 and 2003 -- was on with Anderson
Cooper last night discussing Scott McClellan's book, and made one of
the most significant admissions heard on television in quite some time:
JESSICA
YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps
dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the
press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives,
frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way
that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the
president's high approval ratings.
And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the
president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news
executives -- and I was not at this network at the time -- but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.
I think, over time...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?
YELLIN: Not in that exact -- they wouldn't say it in that way, but
they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.
The video of that exchange is here. As noted in Update II below, Yellin today said that she was referring to her time at MSNBC.
Yellin's admission is but the latest in a growing mountain of evidence
demonstrating that corporate executives forced their news reporters to
propagandize in favor of the Bush administration and the war, and
censored stories that were critical of the Government. Katie Couric yesterday said that threats from the White House and accusations of being unpatriotic
coerced the media into suppressing its questioning of the war. But last
September, Couric revealed even more specifically the type of pressure that was put on her by NBC executives to refrain
from criticizing the administration, after she conducted a "tough
interview" with Condoleezza Rice:
After the interview,
Couric said she received an email from an NBC exec "forwarded without
explanation" from a viewer who wrote that she had been "unnecessarily
confrontational."
"I think there was a lot of undercurrent of pressure not to rock the boat for a variety of reasons, where it was corporate reasons or other considerations," she said in an interview with former journalist and author Marvin Kalb
during "The Kalb Report" forum at the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C.
In April of 2003, then-MSNBC star Ashleigh Banfield delivered a speech at Kansas State University and said that American news coverage of the
Iraq war attracted high ratings but "wasn't journalism," because "there
are horrors that were completely left out of this war." She added,
echoing Couric:
The other thing is that so many voices were
silent in this war. We all know what happened to Susan Sarandon for
speaking out, and her husband, and we all know that this is not the way
Americans truly want to be. Free speech is a wonderful thing, it's what
we fight for, but the minute it's unpalatable we fight against it for
some reason.
That just seems to be a trend of late, and l am worried that it may be a reflection of what the news was and how the news coverage was coming across.
. . . I think there were a lot of dissenting voices before this war
about the horrors of war, but I'm very concerned about this three-week
TV show and how it may have changed people's opinions. It was very
sanitized.
Shortly thereafter, Banfield was demoted, then fired altogether, and -- as Digby put it in her great analysis of Banfield's speech -- "she's now a co-anchor on a Court TV show."
At the same time, MSNBC fired the only real war opponent it had, Phil Donahue, despite very healthy ratings (the highest of any show on MSNBC, including "Hardball"). When interviewed for Bill Moyers' truly superb 2007 documentary on press behavior in the run-up to the war, Donahue reported much the same thing as Yellin, Couric, and Banfield revealed:
BILL MOYERS: You had Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector. Who was saying that if we invade, it will be a historic blunder.
PHIL DONOHUE: You didn't have him alone. He had to be there with
someone else who supported the war. In other words, you couldn't have
Scott Ritter alone. You could have Richard Perle alone.
BILL MOYERS: You could have the conservative.
PHIL DONOHUE: You could have the supporters of the President
alone. And they would say why this war is important. You couldn't have
a dissenter alone. Our producers were instructed to feature two
conservatives for every liberal.
BILL MOYERS: You're kidding.
PHIL DONOHUE: No this is absolutely true.
BILL MOYERS: Instructed from above?
PHIL DONOHUE: Yes. I was counted as two liberals.
A leaked memo from NBC executives at the time of his firing made clear that Donahue was fired for ideological reasons, not due to ratings.....(more)
The news was cancelled. Now you know...
