Nutcases

Full disclosure: I’ve never watched more than a snippet of Bill O’Reilly’s cable news program, The O’Reilly Factor. Fox is a channel I skip past on those rare occasions when I have sovereignty over the remote control. I’m one of those people who believe that Fox epitomizes all that is wrong with the corporate-dominated American news media.

Last weekend in Minneapolis, 3,500 other folks who share my belief gathered at the National Conference for Media Reform, a group spurred into being a few years ago by Robert McChesney and John Nichols – names most Americans have never heard of – a fact which illustrates one problem with the American media.

Conference attendees heard from Amy Goodman, Phil Donahue, Naomi Klein and keynote speaker, Bill Moyers. That’s a fairly impressive line-up of people, particularly Bill Moyers, who has been one of the most thoughtful voices in American television for almost half a century. While it’s true that all these folks lean left politically, they share in common the belief that a free, independent news media is essential for a healthy Democracy, and a deep concern that the American media has moved in the opposite direction as a result of corporate consolidation and Federal Communications Commission policy.

Along comes the O’Reilly Factor in the person of the show’s producer, Porter Barry, who ambushed Bill Moyers in a corridor and badgered him to appear on Mr. O’Reilly’s show. An onlooker had the presence of mind to record this verbal mugging. I heard it on KPFK. The piece was introduced with a clip from the O’Reilly Factor in which Mr. O’Reilly ridiculed the Media Reform Conference in general and its participants in particular, calling them all “far-left nutcases” or words to that effect.

Think about that for a minute: nutcases for believing that a Democracy cannot flourish without a free, independent media that challenges the powers-that-be and the status quo? nutcases for asserting that the American people were ill-served in the run-up to the Iraq invasion by a media machine that echoed power rather than confronting power? nutcases for advocating for reform of a system of ownership and control that can no longer be said to serve the people?

If so, count me among the nuts.

Does Bill O’Reilly honestly believe that the American news media does a good job of informing the people, or of using the publicly owned airwaves in the best interests of the people? When O’Reilly looks across the media landscape does he see diversity of opinion? Does he hear reasoned debate that elevates people’s understanding of the critical issues we face?

I wonder what he sees and hears.

The American news media is remarkable, not for the information it illuminates but for the stories and events it keeps in the dark, for the stories it highlights and those it downplays. You can bet the American Occupation of Iraq looks different in Britain or France or Spain than it does here.

Unlike Bill Moyers, Bill O’Reilly is not a journalist – he’s a propagandist for a point of view that has made him wealthy, powerful and largely untouchable. The powerful and privileged never give up their perquisites without a fight, so it’s understandable that O’Reilly would dismiss any movement for reform as “Liberal” or “Leftist” nonsense rather than confronting the issue with intellectual rigor or honesty.

And Bill Moyers never resorted to ridiculing his guests. Moyers even lets his guests speak.