culture industry - Ailes edition

1. NYT article on Roger Ailes and his pernicious influence. ("Fox chief at the pinnacle of news and politics") Good Perlstein quote that provides good hook to use in culture war II week.

2. Also, Digby writes about the Post ombudsman finally addressing the paper's outsourcing of content to the right-wing Peterson group Fiscal Times. Opening section:

The Washington Post ombudsman finally responded to the complaints about the paper's inappropriate relationship with Pete Peterson and his new "news" operation the Fiscal Times. He says there's nothing wrong with it because Peterson has hired good reporters and the stories will be edited by the paper's staff.

Dean Baker wonders if he would say the same thing if the paper contacted with the NRAs "Firearms Gazette" or the tobacco industry's "Smoking Today." After all, he seems to think that theFiscal (End) Times can be trusted, with safeguards, to write unbiased copy. But here's the rub:

Can anyone imagine the Peterson Foundation putting a story showing how much the failure of the Fed to combat the housing bubble added to country's debt? How about a piece that showed that the U.S. deficit problem is driven entirely by our broken health care system?

No, these pieces, or many others like them, are not going to run in the Fiscal Times, because that is not what Peter Peterson wants to buy with his millions. And, the very good reporters who have signed up to work for the Fiscal Times know very well what the boss wants, even if he does not intervene directly in their reporting.

Culture industry meets culture war! Good for the last weeks.

3. Glen Greenwald on the new court gossip book that's dominated news the last few days. First two grafs suffice:

No event in recent memory has stimulated the excitment and interest of Washington political reporters like the release of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's new book,Game Change, and that reaction tells you all you need to know about our press corps. By all accounts (including a long, miserable excerpt they released), the book is filled with the type of petty, catty, gossipy, trashy sniping that is the staple of sleazy tabloids and reality TV shows, and it has been assembled through anonymous gossip, accountability-free attributions, and contrived melodramatic dialogue masquerading as "reporting." And yet -- or, really, therefore -- Washington's journalist class is pouring over, studying, and analyzing its contents as though it is the Dead Sea Scrolls, lavishing praise on its authors as though they committed some profound act of journalism, and displaying a level of genuine fascination and giddiness that stands in stark contrast to the boredom and above-it-all indifference they project in those rare instances when forced to talk about anything that actually matters.

This reaction has nicely illuminated what our press corps is. The book is little more than royal court gossip, churned out by the leading practitioner of painfully sycophantic, Drudge-mimicking cattiness: Time's Mark Halperin. And all of the courtiers, courtesans, court spokespeople (i.e., "journalists") and hangers-on who populate our decadent littleVersailles on the Potomac can barely contain their glee over the opportunity to revel in this self-absorbed sleaze. Virtually every "political news" TV show is hyping it. D.C. reporters are boasting that they obtained early previews and are excitedly touting howintensively they're studying its pages in order to identify the most crucial revelations. Just try to contemplate how things would be if even a fraction of this media energy and interest level were devoted to scrutinizing the non-trivial things political leaders do.

As he notes in closing: The people who brought you two years of Bill Clinton's penis haven't gone anywhere. They've only gotten stronger.