selling war : bill moyers

Excerpts of a transcript that is at the link below.

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link: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/transcript1.html

Bill Moyers Journal

APRIL 25, 2007: “Buying the War”

BILL MOYERS: FOUR YEARS AGO THIS SPRING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION TOOK LEAVE OF REALITY AND PLUNGED OUR COUNTRY INTO A WAR ….. BUT THEY COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT ON THEIR OWN; THEY NEEDED A COMPLIANT PRESS, TO PASS ON THEIR PROPAGANDA AS NEWS ….
….. WE LOOK BACK AT THOSE MONTHS LEADING UP TO THE INVASION, WHEN OUR PRESS LARGELY SURRENDERED ITS INDEPENDENCE AND SKEPTICISM TO JOIN WITH OUR GOVERNMENT IN MARCHING TO WAR.

ANNOUNCER (March 6, 2003): Ladies and Gentlemen: the President of the United States

PRESIDENT BUSH: Good evening, I’m pleased to take your questions tonight.

BILL MOYERS: TWO WEEKS BEFORE HE WILL ORDER AMERICA TO WAR, PRESIDENT BUSH CALLS A PRESS CONFERENCE TO MAKE THE CASE FOR DISARMING SADDAM HUSSEIN.

BILL MOYERS: OUR STORY BEGINS WITH THE HORROR OF 9/11….
…..

…..DAN RATHER (on LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, 9/17/01): George Bush is the President, he makes the decisions and you know, as just one American wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where. ….

….AARON BROWN (CNN Live 9/14/01): One of the things that seems to be binding all Americans these days no matter their backgrounds, in the aftermath of this tragedy, is a renewed sense of patriotism.

BRENT BOZELL: (Fox News Channel, HANNITY AND COLMES 9/28/01) … To see so many reporters just wearing a little American flag on the lapels, to see Tim Russert on MEET THE PRESS. ….
……

….BILL MOYERS: We interviewed a former reporter at CNN who had been there through that period. And this reporter said this quote, “Everybody on staff just sort of knew not to push too hard to do stories critical of the Bush Administration.”

WALTER ISAACSON: Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don’t get that critical of a government that’s leading us in war time. SOLDIER: Move out!

BILL MOYERS: WHEN AMERICAN FORCES WENT AFTER THE TERRORIST BASES IN AFGHANISTAN, NETWORK AND CABLE NEWS REPORTED THE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.THE PATRIOT POLICE CAME KNOCKING.

WALTER ISAACSON: We’d put it on the air and by nature of a 24-hour TV network, it was replaying over and over again. So, you would get phone calls. You would get advertisers. You would get the Administration.

BILL MOYERS: You said pressure from advertisers?
WALTER ISAACSON: Not direct pressure from advertisers, but big people in corporations were calling up and saying, “You’re being anti-American here.”

BILL MOYERS: SO ISAACSON SENT HIS STAFF A MEMO, LEAKED TO THE WASHINGTON POST: “IT SEEMS PERVERSE” HE SAID, “TO FOCUS TOO MUCH ON THE CASUALTIES OR HARDSHIP IN AFGHANISTAN.”

REPORTER: There’s a body up here.

BILL MOYERS: AND HE ORDERED HIS REPORTERS AND ANCHORS TO BALANCE THE IMAGES OF CIVILIAN DEVASTATION WITH REMINDERS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH.

WALTER ISAACSON: I felt if we put into context, we could alleviate the pressure of people saying, “Don’t even show what’s happening in Afghanistan.” …
….
…..BILL MOYERS: NO ONE GOT MORE AIR TIME FROM AN ARM CHAIR THAN BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR OF THE WEEKLY STANDARD AND A MEDIA SAVVY REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST. …
….
….BILL MOYERS: BUT THERE WAS LITTLE APPETITE INSIDE THE NETWORKS FOR TAKING ON A POPULAR, WAR-TIME PRESIDENT. SO SIMON DECIDED TO WRAP HIS STORY INSIDE A MORE BENIGN ACCOUNT OF HOW THE WHITE HOUSE WAS MARKETING THE WAR.

BOB SIMON (60 MINUTES 12/8/02): It’s not the first time a president has mounted a sales campaign to sell a war.

BOB SIMON: And, I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it in a way almost light. If that doesn’t seem ridiculous.

BILL MOYERS: GOING TO WAR, ALMOST LIGHT.

BOB SIMON: Not to present it as a frontal attack on the Administration’s claims. Which would have been not only premature, but we didn’t have the ammunition to do it at the time. We did not know then that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

We only knew that the connection the Administration was making between Saddam and Al Qaeda was very tenuous at best and that the argument it was making over the aluminum tubes seemed highly dubious. We knew these things. And therefore we could present the Madison Avenue campaign on these things, which was a sort of softer, less confrontational way of doing it.

BILL MOYERS: Did you go to any of the brass at CBS, even at 60 MINUTES, and say, “Look, we gotta dig deeper. We gotta connect the dots. This isn’t right.”

BOB SIMON: No in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas, I’ve done a few stories in Iraq. But, nope I don’t think we followed up on this….
……
…..PRESIDENT BUSH: The regime has long standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations.

BOB SIMON: Just repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. Repeat Al Qaeda, Iraq. Al Qaeda, Iraq. Al Qaeda, Iraq. Just keep it going. Keep that drum beat going. And it was effective because long after it was well established that there was no link between Al Qaeda and the government of Iraq and the Saddam regime, the polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans believed that Al Qaeda… that Iraq was responsible for September 11th. …
…..
…..BILL MOYERS: HOWARD KURTZ IS THE WASHINGTON POST MEDIA CRITIC.

HOWARD KURTZ: I went back and did the math. From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in THE WASHINGTON POST making the Administration’s case for war.
It was, “The President said yesterday.” “The Vice President said yesterday.” The Pentagon said yesterday.” Well, that’s part of our job. Those people want to speak. We have to provide them a platform. I don’t have anything wrong with that. But there was only a handful – a handful – of stories that ran on the front page. Some more that ran inside the pages of the paper that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions.

Was this really true? What was the level of proof? Did the CIA really know? What were those aluminum tubes? Those stories, and some reporters worked hard on them, had a harder time getting on the front page. Why because they weren’t definitive. …..
…..
….NORM SOLOMEN: It’s a truism that individual journalists, and in fact the top rank media outlets they work for, really want to be ahead of the curve but not out on a limb. And, if you took seriously the warning flags that were profuse before the invasion of Iraq, that the Administration’s story was a bunch of nonsense about WMDs, you would not just be ahead of the curve a little, you would have been way out on a limb. …

…..DAN RATHER: We weren’t smart enough, we were alert enough, we didn’t dig enough, and, we shouldn’t have been fooled in this way.

BILL MOYERS: EVEN OPRAH GOT IN ON THE ACT, FEATURING IN OCTOBER 2002 NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER JUDITH MILLER.

JUDITH MILLER: (OPRAH 10/9/02) The US intelligence community believes that Saddam Hussein has deadly stocks of anthrax, of botulinum toxin, which is one of the most virulent poisons known to man.

BILL MOYERS: LIBERAL HAWK KENNETH POLLAK.

KENNETH POLLAK: And what we know for a fact from a number of defectors who’ve come out of Iraq over the years is that Saddam Hussein is absolutely determined to acquire nuclear weapons and is building them as fast as he can.

BILL MOYERS: AND THE RIGHT HAND MAN TO AHMED CHALABI.

OPRAH: And so do the Iraqi people want the American people to liberate them?

QUANBAR: Absolutely. In 1991 the Iraqi people were….
WOMAN: I hope it doesn’t offend you…

BILL MOYERS: WHEN ONE GUEST DARED TO EXPRESS DOUBT OPRAH WOULD HAVE NONE OF IT

WOMAN: I just don’t know what to believe with the media and..

OPRAH: Oh, we’re not trying to propaganda– show you propaganda. ..We’re just showing you what is.

WOMAN: I understand that, I understand that.
OPRAH: OK, but Ok. You have a right to your opinion.

…..ERIC BOEHLERT: Fox news and talk radio and the conservative bloggers, I mean, they were bangin’ those drums very loud. And, everyone in the press could hear it. Not only was it just liberal bias, it was an anti-American bias, an unpatriotic bias and that these journalists were really not part of America.

DAN RATHER: And every journalist knew it. They had and they have a very effective slam machine. The way it works is you either report the news the way we want it reported or we’re going to hang a sign around your neck.

BILL O’REILLY (2/27/03): I will call those who publicly criticize their country in a time of military crisis, which this is, bad Americans. …

….
….BILL MOYERS: ON HIS NEW MSNBC TALK SHOW PHIL DONAHUE, DISCOVERED JUST WHAT COULD HAPPEN WHEN YOU STEPPED OUT OF LINE.

PHIL DONAHUE (MSNBC, 1/13/03): Tonight: Anti-war protestors taking on the government, is there a place for them in this post 9/11 world or are they just downright unpatriotic.

PHIL DONOHUE: And I just felt, you know, what would be wrong with having one show a night, you know, say, “Hold it. Wait a minute. Can we afford this? Do we have enough troops? And what about General Shinseki? And where are all– you know, what is Guantanamo?” I mean, “What’s wrong with this?”

I thought people who didn’t like my message would watch me. Because no one else was doing it. That’s why, I couldn’t get over the unanimity of opinion on cable. The drum was beating. Everybody wanted to bomb somebody. And I’m thinking, “Wait a minute.” So here I go, I mean fool that I am, I rushed in.

PHIL DONOHUE: Scott Ritter is here and so is Ambassador…

BILL MOYERS: You had Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector. Who was saying that if we invade, it will be a historic blunder.

PHIL DONOHUE: You didn’t have him alone. He had to be there with someone else who supported the war. In other words, you couldn’t have Scott Ritter alone. You could have Richard Perle alone.

BILL MOYERS: You could have the conservative.

PHIL DONOHUE: You could have the supporters of the President alone. And they would say why this war is important. You couldn’t have a dissenter alone. Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal.

BILL MOYERS: You’re kidding.

PHIL DONOHUE: No this is absolutely true.

BILL MOYERS: Instructed from above?

PHIL DONOHUE: Yes. I was counted as two liberals.

BILL MOYERS: They’re under-selling you. (laughter)

PHIL DONOHUE: I had to have two… there’s just a terrible fear. And I think that’s the right word.

BILL MOYERS: Eric Sorenson, who was the president of MSNBC, told the NEW YORK TIMES quote: “Any misstep and you can get into trouble with these guys and have the patriotism police hunt you down.”

PHIL DONOHUE: He’s the management guy. So his phone would ring. Nobody’s going to call Donahue and tell him to shut up and support the war. Nobody’s that foolish. It’s a lot more subtle than that.

MICHAEL MASSING: I think that what happened in the months leading up to the war is that there was a sort of acceptable mainstream opinion that got set. And I think that people who were seen as outside, that mainstream were viewed as sort of fringe, and they were marginalized….
…..

….DAN RATHER: This is journalism on the cheap if it’s journalism at all. Just pick up the phone, call an expert, bring an expert into the studio. Easy. Not time consuming. Doesn’t take resources. And if you’re lucky and good with your list of people, you get an articulate person who will kind of spark up the broadcast. …

…..BILL MOYERS: Twenty two days before the invasion, your show was canceled.

PHIL DONOHUE: It should be said that we did fairly well in the ratings. We did not burn the town down. Nobody on MSNBC did. But we were certainly as good as anybody else on the network. And often we led the network.

BILL MOYERS: IN DUMPING DONAHUE, NBC CITED RATINGS. BUT A BLOGGER GOT HIS HANDS ON AN INTERNAL MEMO AND THE PRESS PICKED IT UP.

BILL MOYERS: Now that memo said, “Donohue presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.” Did you know about that memo at the time?

PHIL DONOHUE: No. No. I didn’t know about that till I read about it in The NEW YORK TIMES.

BILL MOYERS: What did you think? What does that say to you? That dissent is unpatriotic?

PHIL DONOHUE: Well, not only unpatriotic, but it’s not good for business.

ANNOUNCER (MSNBC): Tonight, the case for war!
ANNOUNCER: Showdown Iraq with Wolf Blitzer.

NORM SOLOMAN I think these executives were terrified of being called soft on terrorism. They absolutely knew that the winds were blowing at hurricane force politically and socially in the United States. And rather than stand up for journalism, they just blew with the wind. And Dan Rather and others who say, yeah, you know. I was carried away back then. Well, sure. That’s when it matters. When it matters most is when you can make a difference as a journalist.

DAN RATHER: Fear is in every newsroom in the country. And fear of what? Well, it’s the fear it’s a combination of: if you don’t go along to get along, you’re going to get the reputation of being a troublemaker. There’s also the fear that, you know, particularly in networks, they’ve become huge, international conglomerates. They have big needs, legislative needs, repertory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that’s the case.

You know. And that puts a seed in your mind; of well, if you stick your neck out, if you take the risk of going against the grain with your reporting, is anybody going to back you up?

BILL MOYERS: WE WANTED TO TALK TO SOME OTHERS IN THE MEDIA ABOUT THEIR ROLE IN THE RUN UP TO WAR…. JUDITH MILLER, WHO LEFT THE TIMES AFTER BECOMING EMBROILED IN A WHITE HOUSE LEAK SCANDAL, DECLINED OUR REQUEST ON LEGAL GROUNDS.
THE TIMES’ LIBERAL HAWK THOMAS FRIEDMAN ALSO SAID NO. SO DID BILL SAFIRE, WHO HAD PREDICTED IRAQ WOULD NOW BE LEADING THE ARAB WORLD TO DEMOCRACY. PRESIDENT BUSH RECENTLY AWARDED HIM THE MEDAL OF FREEDOM.

THE WASHINGTON POST’S CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER ALSO TURNED US DOWN. SO DID ROGER AILES THE MAN IN CHARGE OF FOX NEWS.. HE DECLINED BECAUSE, AN ASSISTANT TOLD US, HE’S WRITING A BOOK ON HOW FOX HAS CHANGED THE FACE OF AMERICAN BROADCASTING AND DOESN’T WANT TO SCOOP HIMSELF.
WILLIAM KRISTOL LED THE MARCH TO BAGHDAD BEHIND A BATTERY OF WASHINGTON MICROPHONES. HE HAS NOT RESPONDED TO ANY OF OUR REQUESTS FOR AN INTERVIEW, BUT HE STILL SHOWS UP ON TV AS AN EXPERT, MOST OFTEN ON FOX NEWS….

…..BILL MOYERS: And remember this brilliant line?
PRESIDENT BUSH: We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

BILL MOYERS: THE MAN WHO CAME UP WITH IT WAS MICHAEL GERSON. PRESIDENT BUSH’S TOP SPEECHWRITER. HE HAS LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE AND HAS BEEN HIRED BY THE WASHINGTON POST AS A COLUMNIST.
THE AMERICAN NUMBER OF TROOPS KILLED IN IRAQ NOW EXCEEDS THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS ON 9/11. WE HAVE BEEN FIGHTING THERE LONGER THAN IT TOOK US TO DEFEAT THE NAZIS IN WORLD WAR II. THE COST OF THE WAR ARE RECKONED AT ONE TRILLION DOLLARS AND COUNTING. THE NUMBER OF IRAQIS KILLED – OVER 35,000 LAST YEAR ALONE – IS HARD TO PIN DOWN. THE COUNTRY I