Month: March 2012

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Free Speech Is Real Loser in Rush Kerfuffle

Is it appropriate to defend free speech even when it’s harsh or degrading?  Whatever their political views, do people have a right to express them?  Not for the first time, such questions are being debated in the court of public opinion.

The proximate reason for the debate, this month, is some nasty things said about a law student by Rush Limbaugh, a man who – like Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Ed Schultz, Michael Savage, and Bill Maher – makes his living by saying provocative and sometimes ugly things through the media of TV, film, or radio.

For those who believe in freedom of speech, there’s a little bit of good news amid the bad in the Limbaugh kerfuffle, but a couple things demand to be acknowledged right from the start: Neither Rush, nor any of the other on-air opinionmeisters, are scholars, statesmen, or intellectuals.  They are, instead, political entertainers whose appeal reaches as far as those who share their political views, and not one inch further.

This, and one other thing: The coordinated attacks on Limbaugh and his show’s advertisers is the product of the calculated strategy of a group – Media Matters for America (MMA) – that was created precisely to try to silence, by whatever means, right-leaning organizations and individuals.

The bad news in the Limbaugh affair is that while some people are recommending that the FCC take him off the air (Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem), or think he should be prosecuted (Gloria Allred), and after a number of his advertisers have been cowed into dropping his show, most of the media and journalism organizations one might expect to defend him have remained silent.

From the professional journalism societies to the university-based journalism reviews and the legacy “First Amendment” groups, virtually nothing has been issued in opposition to MMA’s tactics of intimidation.

It could, of course, be argued that MMA is merely exercising its own free speech rights, and that is certainly true, but that fact need not strike dumb those people who, exercising their free speech rights, could and should criticize MMA’s tactics.

According to an AP story, the next step in the war against Limbaugh is a radio ad campaign in eight cities, using as a template MMA’s earlier campaign against Glenn Beck.  Meanwhile, the head of Media Matters, David Brock, is gloating about the negative impact his organization’s efforts are having on Limbaugh’s advertisers.

In a piece published in Politico, titled “Ad exodus dooms Limbaugh’s model,” Brock says he is confident, “seeing the reaction over the previous two weeks, that sponsors will take their ad dollars elsewhere.”  He also says, in a sentence sure to be admired by fanatics and totalitarians everywhere, that MMA “along with numerous other groups, have begun to educate (emphasis added) advertisers about the damage their financial support of Limbaugh’s program can do to their brands.”

Looking beyond the campaign against Limbaugh per se,one can see that if this kind of thing persists it won’t end well for freedom of speech.  Already, for instance, a piece in the American Spectator calls for Rush admirers to contact those of Limbaugh’s advertisers who have dropped his show, the kind of thing that, along with campaigns like MMA’s, may in time have the practical effect of moving advertisers out of radio altogether.

In addition, there’s the distinct possibility that conservative groups will ape the tactics used against Limbaugh, and begin themselves to use advertiser intimidation and/or government policy to effectively shut down speech they don’t like.  Just last week Brent Bozell, head of the conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center, which has used both tactics in the past, said of the MMA campaign: “We all have free speech.”

As mentioned at the outset, there’s a little bit of light breaking through the gloom of this matter.  Though he doesn’t reference the Limbaugh affair, liberal law professor Jonathan Turley penned a piece in the Los Angeles Times this month titled “Free speech under fire,” in which he bemoans the fact that “Western nations appear to have fallen out of love with free speech and are criminalizing more and more kinds of speech through the passage of laws banning hate speech, blasphemy, and discriminatory language.”

At about the same time, liberal icon Michael Kinsley wrote a piece for Bloomberg titled “Case Against Case Against Rush Limbaugh.”  Among other poignant observations, Kinsley says this:

Do we want conservatives organizing boycotts of advertisers on MSNBC, or either side boycotting companies that do business with other companies who advertise on Limbaugh’s show, or Rachel Maddow’s?…

As we all know, Limbaugh’s First Amendment rights aren’t involved here – freedom of speech means freedom from interference by the government.  But the spirit of the First Amendment, which is that suppressing speech is bad, still applies.  If you don’t care for something Rush Limbaugh has said, say why and say it better.

In a perfect world, one wouldn’t need to be a policy wonk or a constitutional expert to understand the wisdom in this. But in this world, who knows?                                             

                                               

This piece was first published in TVNewsCheck on March 26, 2012. The views expressed above are those of the writer and not those of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Koch Brothers’ Designs on Cato

Political gift giving, whether in support of candidates for public office or ideologically active nonprofit organizations, is fraught with the risk that activists of a different stripe (or journalists who are themselves of a different stripe) may take offense and retaliate. 

Such has been the experience of the wealthy Koch brothers, Charles and David, two long-time funders of libertarian policies, politicians, and organizations who have been attacked without surcease by activists and journalists for about two years.  

In part, of course, attacks on them have happened because they’re easy targets.  As politically active billionaires, the Kochs quite naturally attract attention, and for all its intellectual strengths, libertarianism is a long way from being the “people’s choice.” 

Additionally, the Kochs have borne some of the brunt of the criticism that’s accompanied the Supreme Court’s correct undoing, in its Citizens United decision, of aspects of the McCain-Feingold Act.  From that time to this, advocates of campaign finance “reform” have been shrilly condemning  PACs, and particularly those, like the Koch-controlled Americans for Prosperity, that favor Republicans.

The motives of their critics aside, there have long been aspects of the Kochs’ philanthropy that are tiresome.  Take, for instance, Koch Industries’ and the Koch Foundation’s embrace of what they call “Market-Based Management,” a management philosophy developed by Charles Koch, and one that, it’s claimed, “can provide great value to non-profit organizations.”

A thing of some complexity – MBM features 10 “Principles” and five “Dimensions” – it can seem like about nine principles and four dimensions too many when pushed on grantees.

Now, though, comes the remarkable news that the Kochs have filed a lawsuit against the venerable Cato Institute, something that goes beyond the merely annoying to the virtually incomprehensible.  In a word, they want to take over Cato and fire its president and co-founder, Ed Crane.

To be fair, the Kochs have an important history with Cato.  Like Crane, Charles Koch was also a founder of the think tank, and the Koch Foundation has given millions to Cato over the years.  So if this were simply a management issue – that they wanted to replace Crane with someone else, or put new people on the Board – they’d clearly have the right to propose the idea, and whatever the merits of it, it wouldn’t be seen as an impossibly chowderheaded scheme.

Alas, issues with management are not the apparent reason for their lawsuit.  Instead, the Kochs’ designs on Cato seem to be a desire to more closely align the think tank’s policy analyses with the Kochs’ partisan political efforts, through such as Americans for Prosperity.

Taking advantage of the unusual fact that the nonprofit Cato has “shareholders” with the authority to select members of Cato’s board, the Kochs have lately been attempting to gain a majority among the directors (they already have seven of 16).

In a blog published on the Volokh Conspiracy on March 3, a senior fellow at Cato provided some background by revealing what was said at a meeting in November of last year between a Koch delegation and the chairman of Cato, Bob Levy:

They told Bob that they intended to use their board majority to remove Ed Crane from Cato and transform our Institute into an intellectual ammo-shop for Americans for Prosperity….  They’ve frequently complained … that Cato wasn’t doing enough to defeat President Obama in November and that we weren’t working closely enough with grass roots activists like those at AFP.

During a recent interview, Crane expressed contempt for those of the Kochs’ critics whose motive is political or ideological, even as he spoke of the “insanity” in the Kochs’ attempt to turn Cato into a partisan outfit.  “Were they to do it,” he said, “it would undo overnight 35 years of work and hard-won respect.”

Even though he personally would be a certain casualty if the Kochs succeed in their takeover attempt, Crane betrays little concern about that aspect of the battle at hand.  One might suspect that this is because, after 35 years at the helm of Cato, he’s had a good run, or because, like many of us, he’s reached an age where, professionally speaking, he can see the tunnel at the end of the light.  Or maybe he’s just confident that the Kochs won’t prevail.

Whatever, a few things are clear.  It’s been on Crane’s watch that Cato has grown into a leading U.S. think tank, along the way becoming one of the stoutest defenders of free speech in the country.  And none of that would have been possible if Cato had been perceived as a political front group.

One of Market-Based Management’s "Principles" is humility, described this way: “Practice humility and intellectual honesty.  Constantly seek to understand and constructively deal with reality to create value and achieve personal improvement.”

One wonders how much the Kochs thought about this Principle before they embarked on such an intellectually dishonest and destructive campaign.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Republican Criticism of the Media (and Why It’s Ignored)

Imagine that you’re the head of a consumer products company, and it’s revealed to you that about half the people in the country don’t like some aspect of your product.  Is there any chance that you wouldn’t try to address that problem?

It is, of course, a rhetorical question.  So what, then, explains why the CEOs of the parent companies of the so-called mainstream media (MSM) – whose news operations are seen by Republicans as politically biased – do nothing about it?  

Several theories come to mind: It’s not a new problem; the “firewall” that separates the editorial side of media companies from the business side dissuades and/or impedes editorial reforms that issue from corporate management; the people who run the business side of these companies approve of their news departments, whatever Republicans think of them.

Taking them in order, it’s indeed true that rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives have seen bias in the mainstream media for many years.  But in earlier times this antipathy wasn’t as great as it is today, and for all their unhappiness there was no other place for them to go.  Pretty much the whole of the news business nationally was the province of the Big Three TV networks, the wire services, the newsweeklies, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

These days, though, according to a Gallup survey released last September, 75 percent of Republicans think the media are too liberal, and all the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have expressed similar criticism, some with brio and to roaring approval. Moreover, there are many places – from talk radio to FOX News to Republican or conservative websites – where they can, and do, go for news and commentary more to their liking these days.

The editorial firewall, a useful convention that prevents the wholesale marketing of news to advertisers, is a better explanation, though still not compelling.  Publishers, after all, have dominion over editors, not the other way around.

Then there’s the discomfiting idea that media company CEOs like the editorial slant that Republicans believe is biased against them, either because they don’t share the Republicans’ political views, or because they believe that the Republican/conservative criticism is without foundation.

Though this may play a role with some of the MSM, it too seems too farfetched to be a controlling factor.  After all, the MSM are for-profit companies, most all of which are publicly owned and traded.  It would be strange indeed if the CEOs of these companies would put their own political views ahead of their companies’ profitability.

So what, then, explains it?  The view from here is that it may be a little bit of all these things, but that it’s primarily something else.

The lugubrious truth about the MSM these days is that all of them are suffering, to one degree or another, from lost readership/viewership and diminished advertising revenue.  And that, in a nutshell, may be why journalism per se is not front and center in the thinking of media company CEOs.

In the face of threats like that posed by the ad-grabbing tactics of Google, and the ubiquity and popularity of the social media, it’s likely that the CEOs of the legacy media don’t have much appetite for involving themselves in what – especially because of the editorial firewall – would be a contentious and quite possibly futile effort in any case.

So that, perhaps, is an explanation, though almost certainly not enough of one to satisfy Republican critics.  Plus ca change, plus c’est pareil.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.