Mainstream media is threatening our country's future
Published September 29, 2012
Editor's note: The following text is from a speech
delivered by Democratic pollster and Fox News contributor Patrick
Caddell on September 21. It was delivered at Accuracy in Media's
Conference: Obamanation: A Day of Truth. The title of the speech was “The Audacity of Corruption.” For more on Accuracy in Media, click here.
I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in
terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in
whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not. You know, when I
first started in politics – and for a long time before that – everyone
on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, despised the press commonly,
because they were SOBs to everybody. Which is exactly what they should
be. They were unrelenting. Whatever the biases were, they were
essentially equal-opportunity people.
That changed in 1980.
There are a lot of reasons for it. It changed—an important point in
the Dukakis-Bush election, when the press literally was trying to get
Dukakis elected by ignoring what was happening in Massachusetts, with a
candidate who was running on the platform of “He will do for America
what he did for Massachusetts”—while they were on the verge of
bankruptcy.
Also the change from evening news emphasis to morning news by the networks is another factor that’s been pointed out to me.
Most recently, what I call the nepotism that exists, where people get
jobs—they’re married to people who are in the administration, or in
politics, whatever.
But the overwhelming bias has become very real and very dangerous. We
have a First Amendment for one reason. We have a First Amendment not
because the Founding Fathers liked the press—they hated the press—but
they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free
country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press. That was
the job—so there was an implicit bargain in the First Amendment, the
press being the only institution, at that time, which was in our process
of which there was no checks and balances.
We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances.
The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done
under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect
the people from the government and the power by telling—somehow
allowing—people to have the truth. That is being abrogated as we speak,
and has been for some time. It is now creating the danger that I spoke
to.
This morning, just this morning, Gallup released
their latest poll
on the trust, how much trust [the American people have in the press]
—when it comes to reporting the news accurately, fairly, and fully, and
[the level of their distrust] it’s the highest in history. For the
first time, 60% of the people said they had “Not very much” or “None at
all.” Of course there was a partisan break: There were 40% who believed
it did, Democrats, 58% believed that it was fair and accurate,
Republicans were 26%, independents were 31%.
So there is this contempt for the media – or this belief—and there are many other polls that show it as well.
I want to just use a few examples, because I think we crossed the line the last few weeks that is terrifying.
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece which was called “
The Audacity of Cronyism”
in Breitbart, and my talk today is “The Audacity of Corruption.” What I
pointed out was, that it was appalling that Valerie Jarrett had a
Secret Service detail. A staff member in the White House who is a
senior aide and has a full Secret Service detail, even while on
vacation, and nobody in the press had asked why. That has become more
poignant, as I said, last week, when we discovered that we had an
American ambassador, on the anniversary of 9/11, who was without
adequate security—while she still has a Secret Service detail assigned
to her full-time, at a massive cost, and no one in the media has gone to
ask why.
The same thing: I raised the question of David Plouffe. David
Plouffe, who is the White House’s Senior Adviser—and was Obama’s
campaign manager last time, he and [David] Axelrod sort of switched out,
Axelrod going back to Chicago for the campaign—and just after it was
announced that he was coming, an Iranian front group in Nigeria gave him
$100,000 to give two speeches in Nigeria.
Now, let me tell you: There’s nobody that hands—no stranger gives you
$100,000 and doesn’t expect something in return, unless you live in a
world that I don’t. And no one has raised this in the mainstream
media.
He was on with George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, a couple of weeks ago,
and they were going through all these questions. No one asked him
whatsoever about that. He was not inquired. George Stephanopoulos, a
former advisor to Bill Clinton—who every morning, while Rahm Emmanuel
was Chief of Staff, had his call with Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville,
and the three of them have been doing it for years—and he is held out as
a journalist. He has two platforms. I mean, he’s a political hack
masquerading as a journalist. But when you don’t ask the questions you
need to ask of someone like David Plouffe, who’s going in the White
House—when we’re talking about Iran.
I just
finished surveys, some of you may have seen, with John McLaughlin this week, with
Secure America Now,
and found out just how strongly Americans are concerned with Iran, the
Muslim Brotherhood, what’s happening in the Middle East, and cuts in
defense spending.
This is not the place for that, but it strikes me as the American
people identify, in the polling we’ve done over the last year, Iran as
the single greatest danger to the United States. And here’s a man who’s
being paid by an already named front group for that—for a terrorist
regime, and is not asked about it, or queried about it!
The third thing I would say is that—then there’s of course [National
Security Advisor] Tom Donilon, who I know very well from years back, who
I caused a little bit of a stir over a few months ago when I said he
was the “leaker-in-chief.”
I mean this ridiculous running around—“How did these secrets get
out?”—when it is clear he has no credentials for foreign policy; who has
been in the White House; who was a political operative for Walter
Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and others; who was known to have, in my opinion,
to be just the most amoral person I know in politics; and who is using
and orchestrating national security. In Mr. [David] Sanger’s book [
Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power], as a reviewer at
[The New York Times]
said, “The hero of this book, and the clear source of it, is Tom
Donilon”—but let me just make a point. Neither does—and I would say
this to the Congressman—“You know, all the Republicans have to do”—you
know, I talk often about the “Corrupt Party” and the “Stupid Party,” but
the Stupid Party couldn’t be stupider when it comes to things like
this. They could have called Tom Donilon and other people down to the
Congress, put them under oath, and asked them if they had leaked.
Instead you have Eric Holder, who runs the most political Justice
Department since John Mitchell—only in John Mitchell’s administration
did we have Justice Departments that were so politicized and so
corrupted by politics—and he appoints someone who gave two people to do a
study on the leaks, sometime in the next century will come out, and one
of them is a, was a contributor to Barack Obama when he was a state
Senator. That’s a really unbiased source! And the press, of course,
won’t look into this.
It will not ask the question. But the Republicans could have called
them down. Yes, the president could have extended Executive Privilege,
but let him say “I will not answer that question, sir” on the question
of “Did you leak these secrets that Dianne Feinstein, the Chairman, the
Democratic Chairman, of the Senate Intelligence Committee said were
endangering national security and American lives?” As she
said when she read Sanger’s book, “My God, every page I turn I learn something that
I don’t know!” I mean, these are serious matters but in Washington they’re playful, and the press does not pursue any of them.
Peter Schweizer has done a study talking about corruption. Sixty percent or
80%—it’s
closer to 80% I think, now—of the money given under the stimulus to
green energy projects—the president and this administration’s great
project—has gone to people who are either bundlers or major contributors
to Barack Obama.
But nobody says a word.
Of course Republicans don’t raise it because in Washington, they
simply want to do it when they get back in power. And, of course, the
press doesn’t because they basically have taken themselves out of doing
their job.
When we see what happened this week in Libya—and when I said I was
more frightened than I’ve ever been, this is true, because I think it’s
one thing that, as they did in 2008, when the mainstream press, the
mainstream media and all the press, jumped on the Obama bandwagon and
made it a moral commitment on their part to help him get elected in a
way that has never happened, whatever the biases in the past.
To give you an example of the difference, I’ll just shortly tell you
this: In 1980, when [Jimmy] Carter was running for reelection, the
press—even though 80% of them, after the election, reporters said they
voted for Carter over [Ronald] Reagan, or 70% percent of them, a very
high percentage—they believed, so much, that the Carter campaign and the
Carter White House had abused the Rose Garden against [Ted] Kennedy
that they made a commitment, as they discussed, that they would not
serve as the attack dogs on Reagan for the Carter White House because
they thought it was unfair and they weren’t to be manipulated.
I totally disagree with their analysis, but that was when you
actually had a press corps. Whatever their own personal feelings, they
made judgments that were, “We’re not going to be manipulated.”
This press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and
president, led by people like Ezra Klein and JournoList, where they plot
the stories together. The problem here is that no one will name names.
But I want to talk about this Libyan thing, because we crossed some
lines here. It’s not about politics. First of all we’ve had nine day of
lies over what happened because they can’t dare say it’s a terrorist
attack, and the press won’t push this. Yesterday there was not a single
piece in
The New York Times over the question of Libya.
Twenty American embassies, yesterday, were under attack. None of
that is on the national news. None of it is being pressed in the
papers.
If a president of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy
Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W.
Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying
something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have
been crucified! It would have been—it should have been the equivalent,
for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s “flying over Katrina” moment. But
nothing was said at all, and nothing will be said.
It is one thing to bias the news, or have a biased view. It is
another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American
people information they have a right to know, and I choose right now,
openly, and this is—if I had more time I’d do all the names for it—but
The New York Times, The Washington Post,
or the most important papers that influence the networks, ABC, NBC,
and, to a lesser extent—because CBS has actually been on this story,
partly because the President of Libya appeared on [Bob Schieffer’s “
Face the Nation”]
and said, on Sunday, while [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.] Susan Rice was
out—the U.N. Ambassador has no portfolio on this matter—lying, said of
the Secretary—you know why, notice the Secretary of State wasn’t out
there doing this—was on national television, lying and promoting the
White House line while the Libyan President, the very same moment, is
saying “This is a premeditated attack.”
Nobody has asked that question. This morning—take a look at
The New York Times this morning, it’s a minor reference. Oh,
now we’ve decided that it was a terrorist incident. But this is—that would have changed, that
should change the politics.
This is not without accomplices, because the incompetence of the
[Mitt] Romney campaign, which I said a week ago is the—my God!—the worst
campaign in my lifetime, and the Republican establishment in general’s
inability to fight, has allowed these things to happen in part because
they don’t do it. But I want to go through two other quick points.
[Mohamed] Morsi and Egypt: The President of Egypt, we find out now,
that his whole agenda has been getting the “Blind Sheikh” [Omar
Abdel-Rahman], who’s responsible for the bombings of the World Trade
Center in 1993, out of jail. Prison. I’ve been told specifically, by a
member of the intelligence community that the White House and State
Department are negotiating that now.
They have now come out and denied it, but [Morsi] comes out, that
they ordered—he’s the head of the Muslim Brotherhood! The American
people know what they think of the Muslim Brotherhood: They are against
them eleven to one, all right? And he’s the president of the Muslim
Brotherhood, giving $2 billion to United States.
He tells them—we had advance warning because they had said they were
gonna do this, attack our embassy. The president—after the incident,
after 48 hours, Mr. Morsi does nothing and says nothing—picks up the
phone, calls him, and demands that they call it off.
On Friday—last Friday, a week ago today—there was supposed to be a
big demonstration. We thought that would be the big day—no, it
disappeared, because Morsi called it off. But no press person has
investigated this, just as no press person will go and ask the most
obvious questions, when there are really good stories here, good media
stories, and good news stories. They are in the tank and this is a
frightening thing.
Another example has been the polling, which everyone wants to talk to
me about. Look: There is no doubt that Romney is blowing an election
he could not lose, and has done everything he can to lose it.
But the bias, the polling, it’s very complicated. Some of it is
error, some of it is miscalculation, but some of it is deliberate, in my
opinion—to pump up the numbers using the 2008 base to give a sense of
momentum to the Obama campaign.
When I have polls that have the preference of Democrats over
Republicans higher than it was in 2008, which was a peak Democratic
year, I know I am dealing with a poll that shouldn’t be reported. And
yet they are being done, and they are being done with that knowledge and
with that basis for some people, and the answer, as I said, some of it
is incompetence, some of it is they just don’t know, really know, how to
handle it, and some of it is on purpose, and it’s purposeful.
But all of it is just to serve a basic point, just as JournoList was—Mr. Klein’s JournoList—but as I said there is no pushback.
We have a political campaign where, to put the best metaphor I can on
it, where the referees on the field are sacking the quarterback of one
team, tripping up their runners, throwing their bodies in front of
blockers, and nobody says anything. The Republicans don’t.
The reason you will lose this battle is for one reason. Despite
organizations like Accuracy In Media and others who are pointing this
out, and the fact that 60% of the American people are in on the secret
here—I mean, they’re no idiots—Republicans and those candidates who are
not the candidates of the press refuse to call them out.
If I were the Romney campaign I would’ve been doing this for months!
I’d have been looking at individual reporters! I would be telling the
American people, “They’re not trying to stop me; they’re trying to stop
you! And they are here to do this!” And I would have made the press
themselves an issue because, until you do, what happens is, they are
given the basic concession of authenticity and accuracy, or that they
are credible, by not doing that.
Now too many reporters, too many political people in the Republican
Party in this town, want to maintain their relationships with the
press. This is how Sarah Palin got handed over to Katie Couric and to
ABC before she was ready—because Steve Schmidt and others want to
preserve their view, their relationships with the press.
You know, people have their own agendas, and often it’s not
winning. But this not-pushing-back is a problem, and they don’t do it.
And, you know what this is a different era: The old argument of “You
don’t attack someone in the press”—or “You don’t get in a pissing match
with someone who buys ink by the barrel”—doesn’t apply anymore. There
are too many outlets, too many ways to do it, and the country doesn’t
have the confidence in the press that they once had.
But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental
danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense
of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and
protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from
organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and
decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is
not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but,
worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you
may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know,
they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy,
and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people.
And it is a threat to the very future of this country if we allow
this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide
on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked
about.
Delivered by Patrick Caddell on September 21 at Accuracy in Media's Conference --Obamanation: A Day of Truth.
