Last night Olby went Kujo on Ted Koppel. Koppel? That nice old news man who once did that dry and somber news show called Nightline? Yep. That Ted Koppel.

In case you missed it, this past Sunday the Washington Post gave the former ABC News anchor a chunk of its Op-Ed page to get something off his chest. Koppel wrote about what’s happened to television news in the last decade or so and what he thinks it means for the country. Playing off the suspension a week earlier of MSNBC’s lefty pitbull Keith Olbermann for giving campaign donations to Democratic candidates, Koppel painted a larger picture of how the opinion-driven cable news networks are bad for democracy. Me and about a thousand other pundit/blogger/experts have said the same thing. He also lamented some golden mythical bygone era of television news as a font of objective, important journalism. Yeah that Camel Caravan sure was a great news program.

But here’s the bit that probably most got under Olby’s skin:

We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly – individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.

Olbermann truly believes that he is different from the likes of Beck and his archnemesis O’Reilly — that he is a journalist digging for truth as opposed to their slinging pure propaganda for their corporate paymaster. Here’s what KO said last night (OK, here’s some of what he said last night since he thought this subject deserved 12 minutes of airtime — I’ve chosen the more salient points):

The great change about which Mr. Koppel wrings his hands is not partisanship nor tone nor analysis. The great change was the creation of the sanitized image of what men like Cronkite and Murrow, and Kaltenborn  and Davis and Daly and Baukhage and Smith and Sevareid and Rather and Jennings and Polk and Koppel did. These were not glorified stenographers. These were not neutral men. These were men who did, in their day, what the best of journalists still try to do in this one, evaluate, analyze, unscramble, assess, put together a coherent picture or a challenging question, using only the facts as they can be best discerned, plus their own honesty and conscience.

——

Insist long enough that the driving principle behind the great journalism of the television era was neutrality and objectivity and not subjective choices and often dangerous evaluations and even commentary, and you will eventually leave the door open to pointless worship at the temple of a false god.

——

But, as long as there are two men, as long as they are fair and balanced, is not the news consumer entranced by the screaming and the fact that his man eventually and always outscreams the other? Is not he convinced that he has seen true journalism, true balance, true objectivity?

I have read and heard much of late including from Mr. Koppel in the Washington Post yesterday about how those who succeeded his grand era of false objectivity are only in it for the money or the fame or the chance to push a political party. Mr. Koppel also implied as others have that the men behind this network saw in the success of Fox News, a business opportunity to duplicate the style but change that content. Mr. Koppel implied that yesterday.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, and the very kind of fact-driven journalism Mr. Koppel seems to be claiming he represents and I fail, would not stand for his sloppy assumptions and his false equivalence of “both sides do it.”

We do not make up facts here and when we make mistakes we correct them.

Demonstrably so as I have noted repeatedly in this blog. Legions of people watch Olbermann looking for mistakes and a few of them write blog dedicated to that pursuit. Look them over and you’ll find precious little those critics can point to that Olbermann gets wrong factually. But the absence of objective error does not, in Mr. Olbermann’s own construct, mean his show represents an honest reporting of stories. Anyone can align a series of carefully curated facts into an argument. That’s what attorneys do every day. But that doesn’t make them journalists and it doesn’t make the stories they tell true.

In beating up Mr. Koppel Olby goes for the low hanging fruit. The old broadcast news model is dead. I gave a college lecture last night and said the very same thing. I’ve been saying it for a couple of years. The audience is literally dying off as younger people (charitably defined as those under 50 in this case) get their information elsewhere. The problem lies in Olbermann’s belief that MSNBC represents the phoenix rising from the ashes of that old news world. Listen to how he defines what lies before us:

To equate this network with Fox, as Mr. Koppel did, to accuse us of having our own facts is another manifestation of a dangerously simplified understanding of modern news.

In the end Olbermann is simply delusional. Look at his final point:

I may ultimately be judged to have been wrong in what I am doing. Mr. Koppel does not have to wait. The kind of television journalism he eulogizes failed this country because when truth was needed, all we got were facts most of which were lies anyway. The journalism failed, and those who practiced it failed, and Mr. Koppel failed.

I don’t know that I’m doing it exactly right here. I’m trying. I have to. Because whatever that television news was before we now have to fix it. Good night and good luck.

Of course Olbermann worships at the alter of Murrow (“Good night and good luck”) but to equate what he does each night — sifting through facts and cherrypicking those that support the Olbermann world view — with Murrow’s crowning achievements is pure fantasy. Murrow didn’t come to his interviews with one set of facts to the exclusion of all others. His was great journalism because Murrow interviewed people, confronted them with facts and asked them to explain. If people were exposed as fools, knaves or worse, it was with their own words this was accomplished. When was the last time Keith Olbermann had on anyone with whom he disagrees?

Hell isn’t freezing over any time soon methinks.

Keith Olbermann

The kerfuffle over MSNBC’s “indefinite suspension” of Keith Olbermann for giving contributions to three Congressional candidates is hilarious in one respect: That MSNBC’s brass thinks of Olbermann as a journalist and their own network as a “news” network. Puh-leeeze.

The rules at NBC News about political contributions by employees are not only sound, they are pretty standard throughout the world of journalism. Most news organizations think it’s important that the reporters, editors and producers who are responsible to telling fair and balanced stories don’t create the appearance of bias by working for a party or candidate or giving money to a campaign. In the case of NBC News there’s an exception with management approval. That seems totally reasonable and fair for journalists.

When I was a political reporter I never would have dreamed of giving money to a candidate. One colleague didn’t even register to vote fearing that the very act of making a private political choice would make him seem less impartial. That used to matter — in journalism — to journalists.

But who would mistake Olbermann — or any member of MSNBC’s prime-time liberal cabal — for a journalist? The only reason each has a show is because he or she has strong political biases and expresses those opinions with gusto and glee (OK, that Ed guy doesn’t seem very gleeful but the rest of them generally have fun). MSNBC in prime time is no more a network of journalism than is Fox. Both play flip sides of the same record. They fill hours and hours of airtime with bombastic, one-note hosts who “interview” (“jerk off” would be more accurate in most cases but I wouldn’t want to suggest that the supremely “manly” and homophobic hosts at Fox are in any way promoting the “gay lifestyle”) like-minded guests about issues and stories without ever bothering to acknowledge inconvenient facts. In this regard Olbermann goes toe-to-toe with his nemesis Bill O’Reilly every night — a mirror image echo chamber for liberal America. The New York Times got it right when it called KO the “anchor of…’The Democratic Nightly News’.”

Of course that’s not what the masters at Fox and MSNBC want the audience to think. These profitable networks promote the notion that what they peddle 24/7 is news and journalism. Despite the fact that Fox has insisted there’s a bright line between opinion and news, that seems awfully far-fetched when the network considers it’s latest blond star, Megyn Kelly, to be a “news” anchor and her bilious, hilariously hypocritcal show to be a “news” program. And so it is at MSNBC where NBC News personnel mix and mingle with their cable colleagues in sometimes uncomfortable ways. Uncomfortable at least for the journalists who believe their jobs in the Fourth Estate are actually important to the functioning operation of a democracy. Not that the audience would know the difference. But at least that tension exists at MSNBC. At Fox, news programming decisions appear to be made by the Republican National Committee and nobody bats an eye (partial props to Shep Smith here for being the only one at Fox to have the guts to at least try to report more than one side of an issue).

And so, back to Olbermann. MSNBC’s boss, Phil Griffin, had to act. Years ago local WNBC anchor Chuck Scarborough gave money to a favored Republican candidate and earned a slap on the wrist, but no suspension. But that was local TV news — hardly the place of high journalistic standards (Google “ratings sweeps TV news stories”). Had Brian Williams given money to those candidates suspension would have been warranted. But for Olbermann? It’s just silly.

Rachel Maddow waved the company flag Friday night, and bless her heart, it was almost convincing: “We are not a political operation. Fox is. We are a news operation. And the rules around here are part of how you know that.” That is, of course, poppycock. I fear Rachel’s been drinking a bit too much of the Kool Aid in the commissary. Sure, Maddow is the only host in prime time on MSNBC to work hard at bringing in guests who disagree with her on issues. And for that she deserves a lot of credit. In the vast sea of flabby reasoning, ridiculous lies and adversion to fact that is prime time cable “news”, Maddow is a beacon of reason. But she’s not a journalist and her network is not a “news operation.” MSNBC, like Fox, is in the business of entertaining political junkies. Their shows are acts in a circus. And to suspend the ringmaster for feeding the lions seems pretty absurd.

The problem with Eliot Spitzer being given the seat at CNN in prime time is not that he hired a hooker. Or liked to have sex with his long black dress socks on. It’s that he basically abused his authority as Governor the same way Richard Nixon did as President.

Remember Troopergate? Spitzer’s Administration directed the state police to spy on his archnemesis, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. When it came to light Spitzer said he took “full responsibility” for the actions of his staff while proclaiming he knew nothing about what they’d done. Only after he’d resigned with his tail firmly between his legs did it become apparent that he lied.

He’s never answered for that. He’s never allowed himself to be grilled. I think as an act of courage he should bring NY Post Albany bureau chief (and tormentor of Governors) Fred Dicker on the new show as a guest. That would be some great TV.

(Video is in the box to the right.)

Rupe and His Fox-Funding Terrorist

While I’m an equal opportunity critic of cable “news” I can’t pass up this opportunity to share a clip that offers compelling evidence that Fox is, at times, in the business of completely and utterly lying for the sake of pushing a partisan agenda. Journalism by any standard other than that of Chairman Mao, Josef Stalin, or Big Brother is simply not practiced much of the time at Fox “News”. As I wrote last week, the Not-at-Ground-Zero-not-a-Mosque pseudo controversy  is yet another case of cable “news” and its taboid breathren beating a dead horse in the dog days of August. (Wow! That was a tortured metaphor. But I digress.) This time, though, it’s even worse than you might have imagined.

Of course hypocrisy at Fox or MSNBC or occasionally CNN is nothing new. But in this case it exposes a dangerous pathology most closely resembling pure political propaganda.

Fox viewers are told that certain individuals are akin to dangerous enemies of the state but NOT that these same individuals are also funders of the network. How is that different from the way the Chinese government treats viewers of Chinese state television? How is it different from Big Brother employing Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth to create a history that serves The Party, not the people?

This is a cancer that is killing our democracy. How can we ever solve any of the incredibly difficult problems we face if our information is served up by craven liars posing as journalists? Fox and its ilk have managed the unthinkable — sowing a level of distrust in the free press never before seen. In Gallup’s annual poll on how Americans think of our major institutions, TV news now falls below banks. Banks! It has been a precipitous slide since 2003 — coincidentally about the time Fox “News” began to take off in the ratings.

Americans aren’t stupid (generally, anyway). We don’t trust the press because so much of it has chased Fox down the rabbit hole of invective and opinion dressed in news drag. MSNBC jettisoned any pretense of being a part of NBC News when it turned to opinion in prime time. CNN, needing to compete, tolerated Lou Dobbs for years and is now pinning its revival on Eliot Spitzer (!?!?). Even the “real” news shows on the networks have fallen victim to fashion, dressing up their evening newscasts and shows like Nightline with breathless cable-style hyperbole and “edge”. And the audience? Vanishing.

As I pointed out last post and many times before, the audience for news on television (let alone newspapers) is disappearing — or dying if you read the stats another way. Every blogger (um…like me), analyst, columnist, seer and critic has poured out reasons why and fixes for the problem. But is is really a problem? Isn’t the real issue journalism and facts versus propaganda and lies?

This isn’t someone else’s problem to fix. If you eat crap everyday it will make you sick (or worse) as Morgan Spurlock so brilliantly demonstrated in Super Size Me. It follows that if you fill your brain with crap everyday it will make you sick as well — sick with the disease of illogical, uninformed, inchoate anger. So STOP watching this shit. If you really want to be a good flag-waving chest-thumping American, do just the tiniest bit of work and QUESTION WHAT THESE BASTARDS ARE TELLING YOU! Sometimes they’re reporting facts. Sometimes not. Don’t be a passive slug.

First off sorry about the verrrrry long lapse in postings. As I recently explained to a follower of Get Real, the whole point of this blog was not just to spout off but to bring facts to bear on the issues and arguments we often are drowning in. That means it can take a few hours to write each post and frankly, I haven’t had the time lately. I gotta make a living and running a media production company is more than a full-time job. (Obvious plug opportunity: Please visit us at dedappermedia.com and check out our new service at vidlab101.com). But then the news bug bites so hard I can’t resist. So for this fleeting moment I am back.

This whole “debate” about the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan had me recalling (not so fondly) what has become an annual rite of August. In my business August was always a slow news month in which producers yearned for a big story to rescue them from their torpor. At some point though news producers stopped waiting and hoping and began acting. We’ll find a dead horse and beat it.

Who can forget the summer of 2001 when Chandra Levy dominated the news — and not just cable news? Her story was a mainstay of the nightly network newscasts and even received significant coverage in the New York Times and Washington Post (where it was, at least, arguably a local story). Then there was the summer of 2003. The swiftboating of John Kerry was that August’s main course lead by Fox News but then picked up by everyone else. Last summer was all about the death panels coccooned deep within the heath care reform bill. And now we have the “Ground Zero Mosque.”

What’s become increasingly apparent with each passing August is that cable news networks should no longer be referred to as “news” networks. News used to mean a measured reporting of facts — because once upon a time back in the Age of Reason western civilization recognized that facts actually mattered. No more.

Now instead of having journalists go dig and interview and report, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day is filled with “experts” — a term now loosely applied to anyone who is reasonably telegenic, able to spit out invective on cue, and lacking any doubt in his or her righteousness. So rather than having journalists uncover the fact that Congressman Gary Condit apparently did NOT kill Chandra Levy, or that the Swift Boat ads were wholly untrue, or that there was no provision to off grandma in the health care bill, or that the “Ground Zero Mosque” is neither at ground zero nor a mosque, the cable “news” networks simple repeat lies as often as necessary to fill their vast voids of time.

Calling Fox or MSNBC a “news” network is about as accurate as calling whole grain Pringles (check ‘em out!) a health food. Any resemblance to the real thing is pure fantasy.

Further, this particular story is an especially egregious example of how partisan political narrative is hijacking just about everything in this country. Start wit the obvious FACTS:

1. It is not a mosque — it is an Islamic Center. See no difference? I guess you think a Catholic school is a church then.

2. It’s not at Ground Zero — it is two blocks away. For those of you unfamiliar with Lower Manhattan two blocks can be a different neighborhood entirely. For instance there’s a dirty sex club two blocks from Ground Zero.

3. Islam did not bring down the World Trade Center or fly a plane into the Pentagon. Terrorists did. Yes, they were Muslim but so what? Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist who happened to be Christian. Should we ban any Christian church from anywhere near the Oklahoma City bombing site? (Full disclosure: I am a family member of a OKC victim.) Or maybe since James Knopp killed Dr. Bernard Slepian in a fit of rage motivated by Knopp’s radical Christian beliefs any Christian church proposed for construction around Buffalo should be prevented. Let’s be honest about this: Opposition using this argument is quite simply anti-Muslim. I’m guessing hypersensitive Catholic Bill O’Reilly might devote a segment or two to me as an anti-Christian zealot if I opposed a church in Oklahoma City.

4. Who cares if “the families” don’t want it built? Seriously.

This is where we tread on delicate soil. From the start the families of victims have been given a lot of deference at every stage of the recovery, design and rebuilding processes. And for good reason. Their pain is by definition more acute than those of us who were there, or watched on TV. But they aren’t a “they.” I covered lots of stories with family angles while working at WNBC for a eight years after 9/11 and I’ve talked to a lot of family members. A couple of things you should know.

First, the ones who talk on camera and to reporters may represent the sentiments of some faction of families but not all. Second, many of those who put themselves out front have political motives (“It was Clinton’s fault! It was Bush’s fault! Giuliani is a hero! Giuliani is a goat!). Third the vast majority of the people who lost relatives do not speak to reporters and have not been polled in any real sense. They have moved on. Finally think about how many family members there are.

About 2800 people died in the towers and on the two planes that brought them down. If each victim had an average of three direct family members that’s almost 9000 family members right there. But add in the in-laws, parents, grandchildren who are sometimes speak to the media as family members and you’ve got tens of thousands of people who might legitimately be called family members of the victims. They are not a bloc. They do not share a single common goal or belief structure. I imagine if you could poll them you’d find a pretty similar pattern of belief about any given issue as you would the general population of the tri-state area.

So why should all of these peoples’ opinions be more important than those of, say, the tens of thousands of workers who have to walk through, around, or past Ground Zero every business day? Or the residents of Tribeca, Lower Manhattan and Battery Park City? The crutch of finding one or two people who lost a loved one on 9/11 who happen to share the ideological bent of the storyline as presented by Fox or MS is really old and dishonest. But honesty, like facts, have largely vanished from the cable “news” world.

Recently I was talking to someone about these networks and the idea that what is presented is not in any way, shape or form news. He, like many others outside the business, didn’t recognize that neither Fox nor MSNBC air actual reports any more. Television news was once the place where journalists went to locations to find facts, interview people with local expertise, and then write a report that helped viewers better understand a piece of their world through narrative. No longer. Not on cable.

Now reporters — when they appear at all — pop up in front of a camera to talk. Maybe you’ll get some video or a sound bite but not a carefully reported and crafted report that is the product of experience, time and effort. Not on your life. That costs money. Sending out a reporter, photographer and producer in order to create a 2 or 3 minute taped piece long ago was left to the nightly network shows. Cable won’t spend that kind of money. Sticking people in front of cameras and then sparking an argument fills far more time far more cheaply. That facts are not a part of most of these “discussions” doesn’t seem to bother the bosses or the relatively small audiences that tune in to Fox or MS all day long.

(Yes, they are small. Ratings are all relative so when you hear about Fox winning big it still means they have fewer than a million people watching at any given hour during the daytime. Prime time is a bit different but the biggest show still only gets about 3 million on a good night. Low-rated teen dramadies on the CW do better.)

I left out CNN only because with their huge staff of journalists around the world along with international channels the network does try and work in actual stories during the day. Not as many as they used to and the producers there love a chat fest as much as their competitors but at least CNN still sort of tries. Nonetheless the “mosque” story has been covered ad naseum at CNN as well and without much more regard for facts.

And so here we are with the Fourth Estate that our Founders saw as a critical watchdog against tyranny, instead being as venal and petty as the politicians they seek to demonize. Cravenly serving up whatever mindless nonsense that will draw in a few hundred thousand retirees with free time on their hands.

We deserve better. But until we demand it, we get what we pay for: August bullshit.

Lost amidst the appropriately non-stop coverage of the failed car-bombing in Times Square, the predictably masturbatory coverage of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner (“Morning Joe” was particularly nauseating), and the other news of Obama’s first visit to the burgeoning enviro-cataclysm on the Gulf Coast, was Saturday afternoon’s commencement address by the President.

Obama, like others before him, chose to use the address not only to speak to a group of graduating college seniors, but to the rest of us as well. His topic was the media and his focus was one very close to this blog’s heart (can a blog have a heart? if it can have an oft-vented spleen, then why not…) — the vanishing importance of facts in journalism and in America.

Get Real has been, from the start, an attempt to separate the wheat (facts) from the chaff (opinion) when it comes to mainstream media reporting. We’ve taken on the NY Times and the NY Post — MSNBC and Fox News Channel. The point has not been to simply point fingers and move on but to get people to start thinking about the consequences of a media filled with people talking about the news instead of reporting the news. The distinction is important because without the reporting, the often expensive and painstaking work of gathering facts, highlighting mistruths, and giving the rest of us a baseline understanding of what’s actually going on, there will be no actual news left to talk about. The scary thing is how quickly we’ve moved in that direction.

And so on Saturday afternoon Obama chose to discuss this very topic.

Today’s 24/7 echo-chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before.  And it’s also, however, given us unprecedented choice.  Whereas most Americans used to get their news from the same three networks over dinner, or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows.  And this can have both a good and bad development for democracy.  For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we become more polarized, more set in our ways.  That will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country.

Of course Obama has a political motive to talk about this. He won as the “uniter” by appealing to independents who told pollsters they didn’t like the tone in Washington. A year later the tone is uglier than ever and Obama knows he will never succeed by jumping into the swamp. But it was interesting the see the reaction to his speech of those around me. I was with a die-hard conservative and seated near some people who’d loudly talked about how they’d wished the university had picked someone other than “that socialist” to give the commencement. What did they think of all this? Obama continued.

If we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from. Now, this requires us to agree on a certain set of facts to debate from.  That’s why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads. That’s why we need an educated citizenry that values hard evidence and not just assertion. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously once said, “Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

That last bit had everyone, including the conservatives around me, clapping their hands and shaking their heads in agreement. So Kumbaya, right? If only life were so easy. Without resorting to an instant polling session (made impractical by the fact that the ceremony continued on for another hour) I couldn’t find out if everyone really in agreement or just agreeing that the other side should stick to the “facts” more. It would be great if the former was true but I fear it’s more likely the latter.

Several polls (notably the Pew Poll) have shown a deepening of the partisan news divide and an increase in American’s dependence on cable news networks for information. Since two of the three major cable news networks have abandoned almost any sense of objectivity (that afternoon a Fox News anchor teased an upcoming segment, “A new move to ban toys in Happy Meals: Is this another example of the nanny state? A fair and balanced debate next!”) it’s fair to say that more and more of us are seeing less and less actual journalism. The result, like that following our move towards a fat and sugar-laden fast food diet, is obesity — in this case an intellectual obesity in which people have no hunger for, nor interest in, anything they aren’t already consuming.

Obama’s plea for a healthier news diet was truly non-partisan because many liberals seem just as righteous in their certitude as conservatives (compare the Daily Kos with Red State and you’ll see what I mean). But will anybody actually act on the good doctor’s advice? Will the media actually spend a second to reflect on its responsibility for any of this? And if this is really so serious, shouldn’t Obama have repeated this address (or at least the substance of it) later Saturday when he flew back to Washington to speak at the White House Correspondents Dinner instead of giving a predictable, mildly amusing, totally inside-the-beltway dinner speech? That certainly would have garnered some headlines.

Instead it’s Monday, and everyone’s returned to their roles. On the kooky Fox and Friends co-anchor Brian Kilmeade looked at the surveillance video released by the NYPD showing the suspect in the Times Square car bomb attempt and said, “What I was surprised at is that right away they say he’s a forty-ish white guy…. I don’t know if they’re just placating the public but that doesn’t look like a white guy necessarily.” Check out the travesty here.

This morning all of our smartphones and email inboxes were filled with alerts from the papers — the economy is growing and the recession really seems to be over. Of course it “officially” ended six months ago but we long ago lost any belief in economists or their data. But note what the stories this morning said — consumer spending led the charge. Look at the Wall Street Journal’s lead graph:

The U.S. economy’s expansion slowed at the start of 2010, but the rise in consumer spending which drove it bodes well for the future.

If consumers are spending more they are by definition feeling better about the economy and that generally translates into feeling better about the current people in power. Not always, but generally and that bodes well for the Dems. Not that you’d know it from the news. While we can fully expect Maddow and Olbermann to point this out it’s unlikely we’ll be hearing anything from Fox or CNN any time soon about this because it doesn’t fit their narrative.

The political spin cycle now runs 24/7 and the cable nets have become video versions of the blogosphere — fast, furious and fundamentally useless as sources of journalism. Unless by journalism you mean the minute-by-minute chronicling of the rumor mill. So the storyline for now is set — the Democrats are headed for disaster in November, Obama is on a roll (until he isn’t), the Republicans are having an existential crisis and the Tea Party brigade holds all the cards. Nice story if any of it held water. Like much of what passes for news on these “news” networks, this story has shreds of truth that have been repurposed to build a simplistic, almost fictional, tale of political intrigue. The problem is people actually believe it’s based on reporting and facts, when it’s pretty clear it is not.

For junkies it’s fun to get caught up in the daily drama but let’s see what all these polls say in September. If the jobs picture is improving then as the GDP is now (and jobs are almost always a lagging indicator of economic conditions), history indicates that Democrats will probably lose seats in Congress, but not control over either or both chambers. So instead of watching the blowhards on cable, check in each month with the jobs report. It’ll tell you way more about what November holds than the ferocity of the Tea Baggers.

Are Americans too uninformed to be part of the process? OK that’s a little over the top but after the last year it’s really difficult for someone who’s spent a career trying to find the facts and then report them to watch the media, the pollsters, and the people follow each other down the rabbit hole into a world where every opinion is valid while every fact is either suspect or not worth our time.

Let’s ponder the polls on health care reform from just the last three frenzied weeks. It says a lot about what we’ve become.

Fox News’s last poll had some interesting wording:

Some Americans choose not to buy health insurance even though they can afford it. The president’s plan requires all Americans who can afford it to have some form of health insurance or else pay a penalty. Failure to pay the penalty would result in an even larger fine, a jail sentence of up to one year, or both. Do you think the government should be able to require all Americans who can afford it to have health insurance or pay a penalty, or not?

Yes                     29%

No                      68%

That was the sixth question Fox asked after the generic approve/disapprove and better/worse queries. I would have liked to see them follow with the same question but substituting “auto insurance” for “health insurance”. Alas that kind of thing was not on Fox’s agenda. For instance check out this one:

Some people think President Obama is showing strong leadership in his efforts to pass health care legislation by staying the course even in the face of opposition, while other people think he is showing stubbornness by ignoring opposition to the health care proposals and moving ahead anyway. Which is closer to your view?

Stubborn? Love that. Nowhere did Fox ask if people knew any facts about the bill. Not on the agenda.

I like this from CBS:

Do you feel you have a good understanding of how the current health care reform bill would affect you and your family, or is it confusing to you?

Good Understanding                       42%

Confusing                                        54%

So where’s the follow-up? Something like, “Why are you confused?” or “Who do you think made you confused?” or “Have you read anything other than headlines about the bill?” I guess it would have been too easy to ask if people thought the news media had done a good job of making the bill clear.

On the other hand CBS got an odd answer to this question:

Do you think Democrats who have been trying to pass the current health care bill have done so mainly because they believe it is good policy for the country, or mainly for political reasons?

Good Policy                                   35%

Political Reasons                           57%

Really? I guess the news that this is “political suicide” for Democrats hasn’t penetrated despite it becoming almost overnight conventional wisdom from the New York Times to Fox News.

The best poll by far was the one done by a health policy organization. The Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll not only asked probing questions about what Americans think about the health care bill but also importantly what they know about it. Here are two:

As far as you know, has the independent Congressional Budget Office which analyzes the cost of legislation said the health reform legislation currently being discussed in Congress will increase the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, decrease the deficit over the next ten years, or is it not expected to have much impact on the deficit?

As far as you know, if Congress and the president did pass a health care reform bill, would most people who currently get health insurance coverage through their employers keep their existing health insurance arrangements or would most people have to change their existing health insurance arrangements?

On the first one 55% got it wrong and 15% got it right. (The CBO said it would decrease the deficit) while 48% got the second one right and 41% got it wrong (the bill would be unlikely to have much impact on people with company plans). Neither result is particularly reassuring that Americans know very much about what they are being asked to opine on.

Another interesting question came from the AP-GFK poll early in March. This one pointed up the childlike unfocused unhappiness of many Americans when it comes to health care (and I would argue a lot of other things but we’ll save that for another day):

How much, if at all, should the health care system in the United States be CHANGED? Would you say it should be changed a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all?

Great Deal                                  31%

A Lot                                           19%

Moderate Amount                       32%

A Little                                         13%

Not at All                                       4%

So 50% think the system needs significant change and 82% think it needs to change at least some. But how? AP didn’t ask. Probably because the leading answer would have been, “I don’t know but in some way that makes everyone happy.”

Instead we got some real gems like this one from CNN/Opinion Research Corp asked of those who said they oppose the final bill:

Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach toward health care is too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough?

Liberal? The bill is a lot of things but “conservative” or “liberal” it is not. Those political terms are almost meaningless when you’re talking about politicians let alone a huge and complex reworking of one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy. If you disagree then answer this: Is Medicare a “liberal” or “conservative” program? I’m gonna bet you wouldn’t get many of those aging Tea Party folks to say it’s “liberal” since most of them seem to be old enough to be getting their health care through Medicare.

Of course the pollsters don’t really deserve as much blame as their clients since that’s who pays the bills and signs off on how many questions will be asked. The fact that none of these news organizations was interested in finding out what, if anything, Americans knew about the health care reforms that will change a huge part of our economy and social system is a damning indictment on their failure to report both about the bill and the public’s failure to be responsible citizens.

Lest you think this is all much ado about nothing watch this video from an anti-health reform rally in Washington last week:

I’ve asked literally tens of thousands of questions to people over the years about what they think of political and policy decisions and this is not rare. This isn’t a conservative, liberal, rural, urban, racial, or anything else problem. This is an American problem. Everyone’s got an opinion but almost no one has an intelligent opinion yet all are treated equally. Everyone deserves to be heard. Right? Well, no.

What does it say about us as a country that both the pollsters and the polled appear appear to be completely and totally divorced from the “reality-based” world, and doesn’t care?

Can I Get a Pink Slip?

At the end of the day there is simply nothing more stunning about the Conan-Leno-NBC meltdown than this: Jeff Zucker still has a job.

Zucker-bashing has been a tried-and-true sport among entertainment reporters, business analysts, and Hollywood insiders for years. No one, the storyline goes, has done so much to destroy something so valuable and been rewarded so handsomely in the process. I won’t pile on lest I get a nosebleed on the way up….

But at the risk of further angering the guy who works for GE Medical in the UK who recently took exception with some of my thoughts about the Comcast-NBC deal and suggested I ought not write about things I don’t understand (because surely the business geniuses who have led GE’s stock price to decline by 2/3 since they took over do have valuable thoughts), I plunge ahead.

Having worked at NBC for 11 years and having been part of one of the many many waves of staff cuts I can’t help but admire Conan for doing the right thing and taking the high road — for the most part. Leno’s been shit on by the peacock more times than he can count but he’s grinned and beared it. Not Conan.

Conan tore into NBC brass in his hilarious Monday night monologue and then released a statement Tuesday in which he said he wouldn’t go along with the network’s embarrassing about-face. Whether it really has to do with his not wanting to participate in the “destruction” of a storied show (dude, it’s a TV show not the Magna Carta) is beside the point. He’s doing what thousands of former NBC staffers wish they could have done.

To be fair,  as Conan said in his statement, I have nothing to complain about. NBC paid me very well for a long time to do a job that I loved so much it didn’t really seem like work. It’s all the people who don’t have Conan’s stature — the legions of behind-the-scenes people who have been treated even more shabbily than the red-haired goofball — that are cheering him on. Television has always been a nasty business filled with mercurial egocentric madmen (and madwomen) but Jeff Zucker’s tenure sets a new standard for passive-aggressive slash-and-burn business demolition.

Conan is simply speaking truth to that misused power. Sadly, however, if he does leave NBC he will end up solving one of Zucker’s big problems. NBC can’t really use four (let’s not forget Carson Daly!) late night hosts and Conan has arguably shown the least promise. How ironic that Conan could help Zucker partially fix the mess of Zucker’s own making. Let’s not forget this total devaluation of a prized and profitable piece of TV real estate began back in 2004 when the fair-haired CEO convinced his boss, GE chief Jeff Immelt, that instead of fixing what was broke (no new hits in primetime during Zucker’s entire tenure) he needed to fix what wasn’t: late night. But then who’s gonna argue with the smartest guy in the room?

I’ll never forget the “town hall” meeting in 2008 in which the head of the “Local Media Division” (the then-new name for what used to be a collection of the most profitable local TV stations in America), John Wallace, waxed poetic about how he was outsmarting the competition by following the “Blue Ocean Strategy”. I chuckled under my breath. I knew the book.

Many of the people who then worked at WNBC gathered in the legendary Studio 6B where Jack Paar had invented “The Tonight Show” and where Channel 4 had broadcast the local news for three decades. We had been called together to hear about the big changes coming to our station and others across the division. At the time Wallace had been in charge for nine months but had made almost no appearances at the stations so this was his big coming out. Unfortunately there was no way for him to sugar coat the decisions he had made up in his office suite on the 52nd floor.

Wallace talked about how the business was changing — people were watching less broadcast TV, ad revenues were falling, and the high costs had to come down. What to do? Wallace said NBC needed to leave the red ocean and sail into a blue ocean — shorthand for a hot-at-the-time economic theory propagated by two economists who got a lot of space in the influential Harvard Business Review before compiling their new economic dreamscape in a best-selling book released in 2005. Their bottom line was relatively simple: leave the “red ocean” of battling known competitors in existing markets and sail to the “blue ocean” of unknown markets where competition is scarce or non-existent. Best of all a company can radically cut costs but still maintain big profits. Sounds good, no?

At NBC that meant giving up competing in the broadcast television space at the local level and instead repositioning as a “content provider” across numerous “platforms”. New websites! New workflows! Video screens on the PATH train! Monitors at gas pumps! And, oh yeah, half the staff. It’s worked out pretty well if going from the #1 brand to irrelevant was the goal.

I tell this story because Wallace is a favorite of Zucker. The “we’re-smarter-than-everybody-else” attitude is pervasive in the network’s executive suites. No matter that the authors of the Blue Ocean Strategy have been unable to show a single company that followed the plan and was successful. That the idea you could radically cut costs by giving up on a known business and still be just as profitable in an unknown (and perhaps non-existent) business sure sounded good in the boardroom!

The late-night fiasco is more of the same. Don’t compete at 10pm with ABC and CBS. Just give up and set sail for the blue ocean. Unfortunately there is no blue ocean in primetime. Just a blood-red ocean filled with giant icebergs — the sea in which the once proud and impregnable Titanic of broadcasting floats, dead in the water, and listing heavily. Yet the captain and his corporate masters act like he’s a genius. Please let me fail like that in a future life!

Tuesday’s review of Diane Sawyer’s debut in Tuesday’s NY Post is a case in point. Kyle Smith goes on a spleen dump and gets almost everything comically wrong. He’s one the the paper’s TV writers but you wouldn’t know it from his lack of knowledge, writing ability, or research acumen.

First let me say for the record that I don’t have strong feelings about Diane Sawyer one way or another. It’s good that two of the three big seats of TV journalism are filled with women (finally) but I kinda prefer Katie. Nonetheless I don’t watch any of the nightly newscasts regularly (I’m decidedly under the age of 63) so I don’t particularly care.

Second, it pays to remember here that the Post and Fox News are Rupert Murdoch’s one-two partisan political punchers — media outlets that feed off of one another to help create news-like events that do the boss’s bidding (see: Tea Partys). Once you get that it makes all the sense in the world why Mr. Smith would go to Cuckooland in talking about FNC competitor ABC News.

Smith takes Sawyer to task for interviewing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week, holding the “get” until this week, and then not really grilling him. That’s all fair. TV news has always been about the “show” as much as the journalism and lining up big interviews so that the promotions department can tease the crap out of it is SOP on all the networks including Kyle’s beloved FNC. Remember Fox’s Sarah Palin week? A sharper bulb might have used ABC’s reliance on this old skool technique to point out how all the network news divisions have turned their nightly 22 minutes into shows about their anchors rather than about the news.

Instead Smith goes on to note that ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl did a piece on health care that was, according to Kyle, insufficiently like one Glenn Beck would do. He notes with derision that the story was filled with “last week’s” news about the deals made to get various Senators to back the bill. The same reports that fill his own paper’s coverage today. I’m pretty sure the intrepid Mr. Smith has not taken his complaints about the Post’s coverage to his boss Col Allen. Probably because the story is still developing….

Then there’s this:

A story on the dropping crime rate cited FBI statistics that showed, for instance, murder down 10 percent from January to June. Wait: you’re giving us news that became available July 1? Is this ABC or The History Channel?

Hahahaha. Oh that Kyle. So clever! But wait: it take the FBI six months to collect crime stats from the hundreds of cities and towns and law enforcement agencies across the country. So the FBI report was released…wait for it…yesterday. The day ABC (and everyone else including the NY Times, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, and 686 other news sites according to Google) reported on it. Apparently fact-checking is not a strong suit of either Mr. Smith or his paper. Maybe I can help. Here’s the press release from the FBI.

Smith digs Sawyer and her show as a “stale plate of info-leftovers for shut-ins, news for people who aren’t all that interested in news” without noting that the three network newscasts still get at least four times as many viewers as all of the prime-time cable clowns combined. I admit I’m not one of either group but if Smith’s colorful description of Sawyer’s show is accurate I can’t wait for him to let his quick wit loose on the shows of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann all of which traffic in talking about days-old stories (forget about reporting anything) to audiences that are even older (and presumably more shut in) than the network newscasts.

Finally Smith shows his true colors when he derisively points out that the Sawyer broadcast spent 27 seconds on the death of actress Brittany Murphy as compared with 42 seconds on Obama delivering cookies to kids. I’m not sure either deserved that much time but what do I know? Unlike Kyle Smith I don’t work for a “news”  organization that devoted more back-to-back covers to Tiger Woods sex life than it did to the September 11th attacks in which almost 3000 Americans died.