THE MEMO – SILENCE IN THE DARKNESS
The Bushies have proved themselves experts at spinning a hapless, cowed Washington press corps. The various media performers who "cover" the White House will do anything not to be left standing on the outside of Air Force One the next time Junior takes off to rake in another two million for his re-election. The precious few that have raised a voice or, god help us, a question about any Bush policy, action or lie have been treated with lead hammers, picked up with molten tongs and dipped into the Vat of No Forgiveness, never to be heard from again. While it is only one that suffers the pain, it is dozens that get The Message.
As the Bushies continue to manipulate and spin, there is no greater success than suffocating a painful story in its crib. You don’t have to spin, make excuses or lie about a story that no one ever hears. The commentariat and the rest of the media did the Bushies and their friends at Fox News a great favor when they refused to make a Big Deal out of The Memo.
Last week, Poynter Online, an excellent media web-site edited by Milwaukee native Jim Romenesko, published an astonishing letter from Charlie Reina, who worked for six years at the Bushies’ favorite propaganda organ, Fox News. (The two links above are my first attempt to hyperlink! Hope it works...) In the letter he offers advice, if he wants it, to Chris Wallace, son of legend Mike Wallace and a heretofore respected television journalist (an oxymoron? perhaps...), who is about to jump into the ooze and slime of FNC for a spot anchoring the rudest and most doctrinaire Sunday morning talk show in history (name any Democrat that is allowed to finish a sentence on that show without being interrupted by the ponderously smug Brit Hume. Give up? Well, maybe Lieberman...).
In the letter, Reina drops the bombshell that, every morning, FNC’s newsroom chief circulates The Memo, "suggesting" (read: imposing) the line of the day and the spin to be applied to certain news stories. Putting the lie to Fox’s laughable claim of "fair and balanced" coverage – as if the coverage didn’t speak enough for itself – The Memo reads like something out of Karl Rove’s hard drive. And don’t think it isn’t:
"But the roots of FNC's day-to-day on-air bias are actual and direct. They come in the form of an executive memo distributed electronically each morning, addressing what stories will be covered and, often, suggesting how they should be covered. To the newsroom personnel responsible for the channel's daytime programming, The Memo is the bible. If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it."
Imagine, if you will, a similar attempt at overt manipulation being discovered at the New York Times or Washington Post; CBS or ABC. It would generate a major shitstorm, leading the news for a week and various heads would roll in each organization. The wing-nut radio and cable commentariat – not to mention the anointed op-ed Voices of Reason – would literally talk the organization to death. Ombudsmen would speak darkly about mistakes made and structures erected to make sure it didn’t happen again.
Well, we may never know how Fox News would react to that kind of reaction because, in classic "liberal media" fashion, the right-wingers get a pass. Although Romenesko linked the letter at to top of his well-read (in the journalistic community) page on the same day he posted the letter, the staggering news was apparently greeted with a collective yawn by the rest of the media. The closest it got to big-time media exposure was in this LA Times media column. Other than that – nothing. To the extent they were asked to respond to it at all, Fox News did the pathetically predictable – attacking Reina and his letter as "the rantings of a bitter, disgruntled former employee." As for the substance of the letter, the Fox flack said Roger Ailes "is not addressing this". Well. I guess that’s the end of that.
The state of journalism in Washington is so pathetic. You’d think that the next legitimate Journalist that ran into any Fox pretend-journalist in the press room would shun, make faces, drum them out of the corps, etc. But you know, instead, that they are just all competitors for the same show biz glare. All’s fair in this game – and it’s a lot more fun when you don’t have to worry such inconveniences as standards, impartiality and the truth. So, screw it. Let’s go have a beer.
10:46:40 PM 
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