Monday, June 13, 2011
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/06/10-most-influential-people-in.html
Many readers will expect to see Matt Drudge or Arianna Huffington on this list. Although they both indeed have leading Internet news websites that cover some fringe stories and report on systematic injustices more so than the mainstream media, they primarily aggregate mainline news. Therefore, they are excluded from our "alternative media" label.
The criteria we've chosen to base these rankings of the most influential alternative media figures are the following;
people that have the courage to seek the truth no matter where the information leads them;
those with the courage to question 9/11;
those who don't buy into the false left-right political paradigm;
those who are grounded in peace and liberty;
those with the communication skills and platform to affect real change.
Significantly, each of the people who made our list is clearly driven by unyielding passion. Despite some natural disagreements, they each provide a unique bridge to forbidden knowledge and they all deserve high praise for their efforts and commitment to inform the public. Sincerely, it is very encouraging to have so many talented voices leading the stampede for truth, liberty, justice, and peace.
With so many people doing great work in the real alternative media, we are sure that some deserving reporters will be left off the list. Although Activist Post has forged relationships with some of the people on this list, we've tried to remain as non-biased as possible in our observations. At the end, we've also included a list of those who deserve honorable mention for their tireless work and talent providing the truth.
10. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: Paul Craig Roberts is one of the most respected columnists in the alternative media. His syndicated articles can be seen on many leading alternative news websites including Lew Rockwell, Infowars, Counterpunch, InformationClearingHouse and countless others. Roberts scores huge points in the credibility department having been the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury under Reagan, and the editor of the Wall Street Journal -- among a long list of other accolades. His research is impeccable and his vision of how the world really operates is second to none. He knows why and when the global chess pieces are moving, and has the incredible talent to communicate difficult concepts to the general public. He has written several books including The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and How the Economy was Lost. His many interviews can be seen on Russia Today and Prison Planet TV. Roberts is also a recent contributor to Gerald Celente's esteemed Trends Journal. There is no one better at reporting the reality of geo-political events and the workings of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.
9. Gary Franchi: Franchi is a longtime researcher and liberty activist. His essays and reports have been published all over the Internet and in the book Songs of Freedom: Tales From the Revolution. He also the producer of several documentaries like Camp FEMA and Don't Tread on Me. Because of his tenacious work, he now has one of the best alternative media platforms on the Internet. His liberty social network, RTR.org (Restore the Republic) has over 32,000 members and is growing quickly. The quality of his Reality Report newscasts rival the multi-million dollar productions at any cable news outfit -- except he reports TRUTH news. Franchi does an excellent job aggregating the most important stories in the alternative news and presenting them in a concise and visually appealing newscast. We've found each of Franchi's recent Reality Reports to be must-see TV, and only expect this up-and-comer's influence to continue to grow.
8. Adam Kokesh: Kokesh is a former Iraq war veteran turned peace activist, a former Libertarian congressional candidate, and the current host of Russia Today's Adam Vs. The Man nightly cable TV show. He recently gained recognition when he was brutality arrested for silently dancing at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial with other activists. The video of the alarming arrest went absolutely viral and surely brought many new viewers to his TV show and to the truth movement. Kokesh is well-informed, well-spoken, committed to individual liberty and peace, and has the legitimacy of having served his country in combat. Kokesh recently received high praise from a fellow journalist who details his appeal here. Watch for Kokesh's influence to grow as more people become aware that a genuine truther has an entertaining and informative TV show. The establishment is in big trouble with the likes of Kokesh on the airwaves.
7. Stefan Molyneux: Stefan Molyneux may be perhaps the most eloquent "red pill" in the alternative media. A self-described philosopher, Molyneux has a strong knowledge of history and a core compass reading of freedom and non-violence. He hosts a popular radio broadcast on his FreedomainRadio; his Youtube uploads have been viewed over 6 million times on his channel alone, and his site claims over 25 million downloads making his ideas the "largest and most popular philosophical conversation in the world." His articles can be seen on mega-sites like Lew Rockwell and others; he has published several books on the philosophy of liberty and non-violence (many of which are offered FREE from his site) and how they apply in today's world, and he is a frequent guest on RT's Adam Vs. The Man and the Keiser Report. Despite his overwhelming knowledge of the corrupt system, Molyneux always remains optimistic in his presentation, which is quite refreshing among all the doom-and-gloom. Molyneux remains authentic in that he survives solely from donations and book sales --so please support his efforts. We expect Molyneux to end up as one of the most important voices of our time.
6. Max Keiser: Max Keiser is perhaps the fastest rising star in the alternative media. He is a literal boy genius having invented the virtual specialist technology / prediction markets, Hollywood Stock Exchange, Karmabanque, and PirateMyFilm. His economic and geo-political analysis has appeared on the BBC, in documentary movies, and on sites like Huffington Post and Zero Hedge. Traffic on his personal website, MaxKeiser.com, has nearly doubled since April according to Alexa. He is currently the host of the must-see Keiser Report on Russia Today in addition to several other projects. He is arguably the most powerful anti-bankster voice in the world, openly and relentlessly referring to them appropriately as "terrorists and rapists" and having helped drive silver purchases to new heights with his viral "Crash the Bankers" campaign. He is also emerging as a leading anti-austerity voice for global citizens, having visited and spoken to growing protest groups in Ireland, Egypt, and soon Greece. He has an uncanny ability to boil down complicated economic "problems" for easy consumption by the general public. In short, Max Keiser has deservedly become the most influential voice of the "Resistance" to bankster tyranny.
5. David Icke: David Icke is most appropriately called a researcher and presenter of knowledge. In addition to his voluminous writing of in-depth books, his main platform is his all-day stage performance that still leave audiences wanting more. These performances are regularly sold out in large venues across the planet. Significantly, he is the only presenter in the alternative media arena to consistently draw crowds in the thousands to hear him speak. His research goes "beyond the cutting edge" of the alternative news and his popular website has become a valuable news aggregator. Besides brilliantly dissecting the "5 sense reality", as he calls it, Icke also dives head first down the rabbit hole and provides historical evidence of some very bizarre and thought-provoking phenomena. In turn, this makes him one of the most courageous and interesting figures of our time. David Icke may be one of the most dangerous people to the establishment, because he has the ability to convince regular people of their immense power to affect positive change.
4. Jeff Rense: Jeff Rense has built a massive audience of those seeking the truth inside and outside of the Matrix. His website, Rense.com, has been by far the best news aggregator covering the Gulf oil disaster and the current Fukushima nuclear meltdown. His website is the 2101st most-viewed in the United States on Alexa -- a powerful ranking indeed. Agree with him or not, Rense deserves credit for venturing down the rabbit hole of reality which brings a unique perspective to alternative news. He is one of the only sources attempting to responsibly cover the metaphysical and extra-planetary nature of the Matrix. He is quietly building a strong radio presence with talented voices like Mike Rivero and Charlie McGrath being added to his network. Look for Rense's influence to continue to escalate as we have not heard the end of the Fukushima nuclear holocaust of the Northern Hemisphere which he's so brilliantly covering.
3. Lew Rockwell: Lew Rockwell is a liberty icon. Rockwell has immense credibility having served as Ron Paul's chief of staff and his presidential campaign manager, as a scholar of Austrian School of economics, and as the chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It's telling how powerful Rockwell's platform is when others on this list include being published at LewRockwell.com as a benchmark of their success. His website is visited by millions each month, his radio show contains high-brow intellectual discussions with other great minds, and his books The Left, The Right and The State and Speaking of Liberty are worth their weight in gold. As the 2012 presidential race approaches, look for Rockwell's loud megaphone to propel Ron Paul's message of peace, liberty and economic sanity to the masses. Rockwell brings much-needed legitimacy to controversial issues like ending the Fed, ending the wars, and bringing about a system of non-coercive Anarchy. He has indeed paved the way for many others, while also remaining a growing influence.
2. Mike Adams: Mike Adams, known as the "Health Ranger", is a consumer health advocate and independent journalist. Mike Adams is young, authentic, well-spoken, and a savvy businessman. He is the founder and editor of the very popular website NaturalNews.com (ranked 1,184 overall in the U.S.) and NaturalNews.TV. His articles have been republished all over the Internet, and his radio show and short films are viewed by millions. Through his unyielding passion, he has built a team of respected contributors to his flagship news site which offer some of the best natural health and freedom news on the Web. He never ceases to improve his platform for his expanding audience and knows how to monetize his business with products he genuinely believes in. The sky is the limit for the Health Ranger's influence in the alternative media.
1. Alex Jones: Love or hate his style, Alex Jones is the King of alternative news. His radio show reaches millions per day; his movies like Fall of the Republic and The Obama Deception have been seen by tens of millions the world over on Youtube and elsewhere; his website rankings for Infowars and PrisonPlanet are off the charts with many investigative articles frequently supported by Drudge, and many on his staff are nearly deserving of being in the top-10 in their own right. The quality of his production has improved every year and is easily the best in the alternative media. Jones gets the most informative expert guests who expose a wide variety of inconvenient truths. He is a pioneer in encouraging fans to make copies of his material and give them away for free to help awaken more minds. Anyone who follows Alex Jones knows that he is driven by intense passion for humanity and never stops working. It's hard to believe that Jones is still only in his thirties, given his 15 years of dedicated reporting.
There is one person that is not on this list, but should be a major footnote on all of the above media figures, as his work has pioneered much of what is discussed in today's alternative media: G. Edward Griffin. Griffin is widely considered one of the most brilliant researchers and writers of actual history. He exemplifies the notion of following the evidence no matter where it leads him. But he is so much more than that to the group above in terms of his philosophy of individual liberty and non-aggression. His book, The Creature From Jekyll Island is one of the most powerful indictments of the Federal Reserve and is still a bestseller. His many other books, websites at RealityZone.com and his foundation Freedom-Force.org, with movies like his recent documentary What in the World Are They Spraying are all ground-breaking in their own right. This is not meant to be a runner-up award, but more of a lifetime influence shout out to a true pioneer. We're all indebted to Griffin's hard work.
Honorable Mention
Many in this group are deserving of far more praise than this format allows, but we'd be remiss not to mention the following names. Here are some of the rising stars and the unsung heroes of the alternative media in no particular order:
Shepard Ambellas, Alex Thomas: True investigative reporters who share their knowledge at TheIntelHub.com They are fearless journalists who utilize the full range of the Internet to release their intel.
Cassandra Anderson: Writer and editor for MorphCity.com, as well as G. Edward Griffin's news editor and research assistant. She is one of the leading experts on Agenda 21 and the globalist plan of collectivization.
James Corbett: Terrific analyst, researcher, writer, web TV presenter and founder of CorbettReport.com
Rady Ananda: Brilliant investigative journalist and editor for blogs Food Freedom and COTO Report whose work has been published across the Internet on all major alternative media news sites.
Doug Owen: Oracle Radio personality and producer and operator of BlacklistedNews.com
Global Research: Michel Chossudovsky, Andrew Gavin Marshall and staff brilliantly report on global events and have a fast-growing Internet presence.
Bob Tuskin: Terrific interviewer and fearless investigator who has worked extensively with The Intel Hub, and has his own radio show and website at BobTuskin.com
Bill Ryan: His website and forum at Project Avalon are terrific resources, as well as his interviews with alternative media personalities and government insiders.
George Noory: Huge Internet presence and the most-listened-to overnight radio show in America at Coast to Coast AM.
Alan Watt: Consummate researcher into the history of elite control, and frequent guest on the Alex Jones Show. His website and his own radio show can be found at Cutting Through The Matrix.
Jim Marrs: Author of many books on conspiracy truth, and one of the foremost experts on the JFK assassination. His work can be found at JimMarrs.com and has influenced many of the above.
Showing posts with label Arianna Huffington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arianna Huffington. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Hard Lessons from the HuffPost Sale
Robert Parry
February 11, 2011
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/021111.html
U.S. progressive media has had a tough few weeks. First, Keith Olbermann, the pioneer for liberal programming during MSNBC’s evening hours, was sent packing. Then, Arianna Huffington allowed AOL to subsume her Huffington Post into AOL’s right-of-center content for the price tag of $315 million.
Leftist bloggers who had provided free content to Huffington Post, enabling it to become a valuable property, found themselves quite literally sold out, with Huffington pocketing $18 million while making clear that she won’t battle for the liberal banner inside AOL.
Huffington joined with her new boss, AOL Chairman Tim Armstrong, to declare that their focus will be on how many eyeballs can be drawn to AOL, not in pushing progressive causes.
"Arianna has the same interest we do, which is serving consumers' needs and going beyond the just straight political needs of people," Armstrong said.
For her part, Huffington noted that her Web site was already shedding its political identity, providing more celebrity news and scandal stories, including a new section devoted to divorces. While about half of the traffic was on politics a couple of years ago, she said, that is now down to about 15 percent with only one of two dozen “sections” centered on politics.
Huffington, who burst onto the national stage in the 1990s as a right-wing talker denouncing President Bill Clinton, indicated in the wake of the sale to AOL that she may be shifting her ideology again.
"It's time for all of us in journalism to move beyond left and right," Huffington told PBS's "NewsHour." "Truly, it is an obsolete way of looking at the problems America is facing."
As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank noted, Huffington used almost the same words when she changed her political colorations a decade ago. In 2000, she told Fox News, "The old distinctions of right and left, Democrat, Republican, are pretty obsolete."
Milbank wrote: “Anybody who expects her to continue as a reliable voice of the left is a poor student of Huffington history. I first came across Huffington in 1995, when she was working at [Newt] Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation, preaching social consciousness to fellow conservatives.
“She railed against ‘big government’ and pronounced: ‘We do our part and God meets us halfway. That's why I'm a conservative.’ That version of Huffington called for strict immigration restrictions. She favored Bill Clinton's resignation and floated the rumor that a former ambassador had been buried in Arlington because Clinton had slept with his wife.”
She thrived as a rightist talking-head during the height of the Clinton-bashing in the 1990s, decrying his marital infidelity even as her own marriage to Rep. Michael Huffington, R-California, had the look of a political arrangement. She divorced the multimillionaire Huffington in 1997, shortly before he disclosed that he was bisexual.
A Second Divorce
Emerging from the divorce with a sizeable settlement, Arianna Huffington also separated from her right-wing ideological family. She moved leftward, filling what turned out to be a lucrative void as an outspoken leader of Hollywood's liberal community.
While many on the Left embraced Huffington’s ideological transformation then – with some wealthy progressives contributing substantial sums to her liberal projects – others remained skeptical, in part, because she never fully explained the reasons for her political shift.
She spoke only generally about how the Right had "seduced, fooled, blinded, bamboozled" her. But some of her critics saw instead an opportunistic calculation in her chameleon-like approach to politics.
In 2005, Huffington founded Huffington Post, which operated with a business model that relied on activists, politicians and entertainers contributing free content. The Web site soon became an important center for progressives critical of George W. Bush’s presidency.
Over time, Huffington Post also featured gossipy articles about popular celebrities. Like other left-of-center sites, such as Salon.com, those stories often emerged as the best-read, encouraging a further drift in that direction as a means of securing advertising dollars.
The commercial success of Huffington Post – resulting from its low overhead due to the work of some 3,000 bloggers writing for free and from Huffington’s effective self-promotion – caught the eye of Wall Street investors and obviously AOL.
Though AOL generally provides right-of-center news content to subscribers – for instance, AOL joined in last week’s hagiography of Ronald Reagan – its management concluded that it could do business with Arianna Huffington.
The sale of Huffington Post to a corporation that positions itself in the right branch of the mainstream media – what many on the Left deride as the MSM – upset a number of the site’s bloggers, including some who vowed to withdraw their work.
A Twitter account, called #HUFFPUFF, urged “jammers, creatives and revolutionaries” to strike back at Huffington’s sell-out. “Arianna Huffington has betrayed us,” the message declared, “so let’s huff and puff her house down.”
The broadside continued: “Socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists. She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she's cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp.
“But the Huffington Post is not Arianna's to sell. It is ours: the lefty writers and readers, environmentalism activists and anti-corporate organizers who flooded the site with 25 million visits a month. So we're going to take it back. We'll stop going to her site. And we'll stop blogging for her too.”
In another big disappointment to progressives, Olbermann abruptly left MSNBC last month, announcing his departure in a brief signoff at the end his regular Friday broadcast of his “Countdown” program. Olbermann’s unceremonious push out the door would never have been matched by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing Fox News toward its media stars.
In that way, Olbermann’s treatment was a reminder to the surviving liberal hosts on MSNBC – the likes of Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz – that they are expendable, too, and that MSNBC experimented with liberal-oriented programming only after its attempts to out-Fox Fox had failed.
In his nearly eight years at “Countdown,” Olbermann was the brave soul who charted the course for other mainstream media types to even mildly criticize Bush. More typical of NBC Universal’s cable shows was the fawning treatment that Chris Matthews afforded Bush in 2003 during the heady days of what was viewed as the victorious invasion of Iraq.
Fish to Fry
NBC’s owner, General Electric, was a charter member of the military-industrial complex and – as a major international conglomerate – had more corporate fish to fry than the modestly higher ratings that Olbermann provided MSNBC. Comcast, the cable giant which is assuming a majority stake in NBC Universal, similarly has more lucrative interests amid the regulatory world of Washington.
This week, Olbermann announced that he would become “chief news officer” at former Vice President Al Gore’s “Current Media,” a struggling media operation that is available mostly over the Internet and in households with digital cable connections.
“Nothing is more vital to a free America than a free media, and nothing is more vital to my concept of a free media than news produced independently of corporate interference,” Olbermann told reporters. “In Current Media, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt have created the model truth-seeking entity.”
Though Olbermann may draw new attention and more viewers to Current, the overall impact of his departure from MSNBC is that far fewer Americans will have access to Olbermann’s influential commentaries which were important in rallying progressives especially during the peak of Bush’s power.
A lesson for progressives from AOL’s purchase of Huffington Post may be that they should be a bit more leery of converts from the Right, especially those who don’t explain adequately what led to their ideological switch.
While liberals seem especially eager to reward ex-conservatives by lavishing them with financial and other support, progressives might consider showing their generosity more to people who have proven their commitment to worthy causes or honest journalism with years of hard work.
All these points, however, go back to the overall weakness of progressives in the field of media. If a powerful liberal cable network did exist, MSNBC might have had second thoughts about treating someone like Olbermann so high-handedly, since he could jump to a competing channel that could badly dent MSNBC’s ratings.
Similarly, progressives behaved in an overly credulous manner toward Arianna Huffington, thrilled that someone with such an outsized media profile – gained from her service as a foot soldier in the right-wing war on Clinton – would turn the bright light of her celebrity on liberal causes and create a home for progressive content.
Having suffered these recent painful reminders of where they really stand in the thinking of corporate media, progressives may want to rethink their own media strategies, forgoing shortcuts and returning to the difficult work of building an effective media infrastructure.
For more on these topics, see Robert Parry’s Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege, which are now available with Neck Deep, in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.
February 11, 2011
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/021111.html
U.S. progressive media has had a tough few weeks. First, Keith Olbermann, the pioneer for liberal programming during MSNBC’s evening hours, was sent packing. Then, Arianna Huffington allowed AOL to subsume her Huffington Post into AOL’s right-of-center content for the price tag of $315 million.
Leftist bloggers who had provided free content to Huffington Post, enabling it to become a valuable property, found themselves quite literally sold out, with Huffington pocketing $18 million while making clear that she won’t battle for the liberal banner inside AOL.
Huffington joined with her new boss, AOL Chairman Tim Armstrong, to declare that their focus will be on how many eyeballs can be drawn to AOL, not in pushing progressive causes.
"Arianna has the same interest we do, which is serving consumers' needs and going beyond the just straight political needs of people," Armstrong said.
For her part, Huffington noted that her Web site was already shedding its political identity, providing more celebrity news and scandal stories, including a new section devoted to divorces. While about half of the traffic was on politics a couple of years ago, she said, that is now down to about 15 percent with only one of two dozen “sections” centered on politics.
Huffington, who burst onto the national stage in the 1990s as a right-wing talker denouncing President Bill Clinton, indicated in the wake of the sale to AOL that she may be shifting her ideology again.
"It's time for all of us in journalism to move beyond left and right," Huffington told PBS's "NewsHour." "Truly, it is an obsolete way of looking at the problems America is facing."
As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank noted, Huffington used almost the same words when she changed her political colorations a decade ago. In 2000, she told Fox News, "The old distinctions of right and left, Democrat, Republican, are pretty obsolete."
Milbank wrote: “Anybody who expects her to continue as a reliable voice of the left is a poor student of Huffington history. I first came across Huffington in 1995, when she was working at [Newt] Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation, preaching social consciousness to fellow conservatives.
“She railed against ‘big government’ and pronounced: ‘We do our part and God meets us halfway. That's why I'm a conservative.’ That version of Huffington called for strict immigration restrictions. She favored Bill Clinton's resignation and floated the rumor that a former ambassador had been buried in Arlington because Clinton had slept with his wife.”
She thrived as a rightist talking-head during the height of the Clinton-bashing in the 1990s, decrying his marital infidelity even as her own marriage to Rep. Michael Huffington, R-California, had the look of a political arrangement. She divorced the multimillionaire Huffington in 1997, shortly before he disclosed that he was bisexual.
A Second Divorce
Emerging from the divorce with a sizeable settlement, Arianna Huffington also separated from her right-wing ideological family. She moved leftward, filling what turned out to be a lucrative void as an outspoken leader of Hollywood's liberal community.
While many on the Left embraced Huffington’s ideological transformation then – with some wealthy progressives contributing substantial sums to her liberal projects – others remained skeptical, in part, because she never fully explained the reasons for her political shift.
She spoke only generally about how the Right had "seduced, fooled, blinded, bamboozled" her. But some of her critics saw instead an opportunistic calculation in her chameleon-like approach to politics.
In 2005, Huffington founded Huffington Post, which operated with a business model that relied on activists, politicians and entertainers contributing free content. The Web site soon became an important center for progressives critical of George W. Bush’s presidency.
Over time, Huffington Post also featured gossipy articles about popular celebrities. Like other left-of-center sites, such as Salon.com, those stories often emerged as the best-read, encouraging a further drift in that direction as a means of securing advertising dollars.
The commercial success of Huffington Post – resulting from its low overhead due to the work of some 3,000 bloggers writing for free and from Huffington’s effective self-promotion – caught the eye of Wall Street investors and obviously AOL.
Though AOL generally provides right-of-center news content to subscribers – for instance, AOL joined in last week’s hagiography of Ronald Reagan – its management concluded that it could do business with Arianna Huffington.
The sale of Huffington Post to a corporation that positions itself in the right branch of the mainstream media – what many on the Left deride as the MSM – upset a number of the site’s bloggers, including some who vowed to withdraw their work.
A Twitter account, called #HUFFPUFF, urged “jammers, creatives and revolutionaries” to strike back at Huffington’s sell-out. “Arianna Huffington has betrayed us,” the message declared, “so let’s huff and puff her house down.”
The broadside continued: “Socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists. She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she's cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp.
“But the Huffington Post is not Arianna's to sell. It is ours: the lefty writers and readers, environmentalism activists and anti-corporate organizers who flooded the site with 25 million visits a month. So we're going to take it back. We'll stop going to her site. And we'll stop blogging for her too.”
In another big disappointment to progressives, Olbermann abruptly left MSNBC last month, announcing his departure in a brief signoff at the end his regular Friday broadcast of his “Countdown” program. Olbermann’s unceremonious push out the door would never have been matched by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing Fox News toward its media stars.
In that way, Olbermann’s treatment was a reminder to the surviving liberal hosts on MSNBC – the likes of Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz – that they are expendable, too, and that MSNBC experimented with liberal-oriented programming only after its attempts to out-Fox Fox had failed.
In his nearly eight years at “Countdown,” Olbermann was the brave soul who charted the course for other mainstream media types to even mildly criticize Bush. More typical of NBC Universal’s cable shows was the fawning treatment that Chris Matthews afforded Bush in 2003 during the heady days of what was viewed as the victorious invasion of Iraq.
Fish to Fry
NBC’s owner, General Electric, was a charter member of the military-industrial complex and – as a major international conglomerate – had more corporate fish to fry than the modestly higher ratings that Olbermann provided MSNBC. Comcast, the cable giant which is assuming a majority stake in NBC Universal, similarly has more lucrative interests amid the regulatory world of Washington.
This week, Olbermann announced that he would become “chief news officer” at former Vice President Al Gore’s “Current Media,” a struggling media operation that is available mostly over the Internet and in households with digital cable connections.
“Nothing is more vital to a free America than a free media, and nothing is more vital to my concept of a free media than news produced independently of corporate interference,” Olbermann told reporters. “In Current Media, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt have created the model truth-seeking entity.”
Though Olbermann may draw new attention and more viewers to Current, the overall impact of his departure from MSNBC is that far fewer Americans will have access to Olbermann’s influential commentaries which were important in rallying progressives especially during the peak of Bush’s power.
A lesson for progressives from AOL’s purchase of Huffington Post may be that they should be a bit more leery of converts from the Right, especially those who don’t explain adequately what led to their ideological switch.
While liberals seem especially eager to reward ex-conservatives by lavishing them with financial and other support, progressives might consider showing their generosity more to people who have proven their commitment to worthy causes or honest journalism with years of hard work.
All these points, however, go back to the overall weakness of progressives in the field of media. If a powerful liberal cable network did exist, MSNBC might have had second thoughts about treating someone like Olbermann so high-handedly, since he could jump to a competing channel that could badly dent MSNBC’s ratings.
Similarly, progressives behaved in an overly credulous manner toward Arianna Huffington, thrilled that someone with such an outsized media profile – gained from her service as a foot soldier in the right-wing war on Clinton – would turn the bright light of her celebrity on liberal causes and create a home for progressive content.
Having suffered these recent painful reminders of where they really stand in the thinking of corporate media, progressives may want to rethink their own media strategies, forgoing shortcuts and returning to the difficult work of building an effective media infrastructure.
For more on these topics, see Robert Parry’s Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege, which are now available with Neck Deep, in a three-book set for the discount price of only $29.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
AOL & Huffington Post: BFF
AOL has paid $315 million to buy the Huffington Post. I know this because there's hundreds of posts on HuffPo linking to real news articles reporting the fact.
The yuppie-friendly liberal blog was snapped up, in a strategy similar to the merger of Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Arianna Huffington will be named editor-in-chief of the merged company's media group. Maybe this one will work out better than AOL's last great combo.
How will this change journalism? As noted by Tim Rutten of the L.A. Times, "To grasp the Huffington Post's business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates." In other words, not much.
What will AOL-Huffington Post merger mean?
Bryony Jones
February 7, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/02/07/huffington.post.aol.merger
AOL Hearts HuffPo. The loser? Journalism
Tim Rutten
February 9, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten-column-huffington-aol-20110209,0,2992862.column
The yuppie-friendly liberal blog was snapped up, in a strategy similar to the merger of Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Arianna Huffington will be named editor-in-chief of the merged company's media group. Maybe this one will work out better than AOL's last great combo.
How will this change journalism? As noted by Tim Rutten of the L.A. Times, "To grasp the Huffington Post's business model, picture a galley rowed by slaves and commanded by pirates." In other words, not much.
What will AOL-Huffington Post merger mean?
Bryony Jones
February 7, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/02/07/huffington.post.aol.merger
AOL Hearts HuffPo. The loser? Journalism
Tim Rutten
February 9, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten-column-huffington-aol-20110209,0,2992862.column
Thursday, July 19, 2007
McCain's Fall a Warning to All GOP Candidates
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/mccains-fall-a-warning-t_b_56291.html
Arianna Huffington
McCain's Fall a Warning to All GOP Candidates: Support the War at Your Own Risk
Posted July 15, 2007
Read More: Breaking Politics News, John McCain, U.S. Republican Party, Arianna Huffington, Hillary Rodham Clinton, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Phil Spector, U.S. Senate
John McCain's cratering campaign is an object lesson in how to kill a candidacy in three simple steps: 1) locate the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history 2) embrace it 3) implode. (Bonus step: spend money like you are Paul Bremmer).
McCain's fate should be a warning to all Republicans seeking office in 2008: continue to back the president's war policy at your own risk.
McCain's fall has been precipitous -- tumbling from establishment GOP front-runner to single-digit also-ran.
Through much of 2005 and 2006 he was widely regarded as the presumptive Republican nominee. Hypothetical 2008 matchups regularly had him beating presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in December 2006 had him beating Hillary by 14 points -- 50% to 36%.
That's when he decided to go all-in on Iraq, anointing himself head cheerleader for the surge.
On January 5, 2007 -- less than three weeks after that poll had him trouncing Hillary -- McCain gave a widely-covered speech at the American Enterprise Institute in which he advocated a "substantial" and "sustained" escalation in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, tying himself to President Bush and his delusion-driven New Way Forward.
The effect was similar to tying an anchor to his poll numbers and throwing them overboard. Although McCain's support had been eroding since 2006, as more and more independent voters -- always a key chunk of his fan base -- turned against the war, January 2007 marked the beginning of a nose dive.
As this pollster.com chart shows, since making himself the face of the surge, McCain's national support has dropped from nearly 25 percent to just over 15 percent. And his fall in key early primary states has been even more dramatic, dropping from around 35 percent to around 17 percent in South Carolina, from 28 percent to 18 percent in New Hampshire, and from the mid-20s to just under 10 percent in Iowa. And a pair of recent Mason-Dixon polls shows him dropping even further: to 7 percent in South Carolina and 6 percent in Iowa. This should not be a surprising result given that 42 percent of Republicans are now against the war.
McCain's main competitors have clearly taken note. A story this week in the LA Times claimed that the three leading GOP presidential contenders "have been quietly backing away from any commitment to continuing" the surge.
Mitt Romney has said that if Gen. Petraeus' September assessment finds the surge isn't working, "we'll have to take alternative strategies." Fred Thompson said that Iraq policy had to be considered "on a day-to-day basis." And Rudy Giuliani said he had "a lot of questions" about the troop surge strategy. Conversely, McCain ended the week by traveling to New Hampshire, site of his greatest electoral victory in 2000, and offering a full-throated defense of the war.
The coup de grace for McCain's chances might have come with his infamous stroll through a Baghdad market, which he claimed was proof you could "walk freely" through parts of the city. The subsequent reveal that he'd been accompanied on his stroll by 100 armed U.S. soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships, proved beyond a doubt that he had traded his signature straight talk for deceptive triumphalist blather.
McCain's biggest red flag used to be his temper; now it's his sanity. His claims on Iraq have become more and more delusional, and now have the same level of credibility as Phil Spector's dating tips.
It's gotten so bad, he's reverted to the desperate ploy of pretending that the only people opposing the war belong to -- as he put it on the Senate floor -- "the liberal left." As opposed to the conservative left, Senator? Are we to believe that those 42 percent of Republicans in favor of ending the war have joined "the liberal left"?
The final bit of evidence of McCain's growing disconnect from reality (another way he's aligned himself with Bush) came with the news that two of his top campaign aides had quit. Faced with questions over whether his campaign was falling apart, McCain insisted, "I am very happy with where the campaign is."
Given his latest poll numbers, he might be the only one who is.
Arianna Huffington
McCain's Fall a Warning to All GOP Candidates: Support the War at Your Own Risk
Posted July 15, 2007
Read More: Breaking Politics News, John McCain, U.S. Republican Party, Arianna Huffington, Hillary Rodham Clinton, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Phil Spector, U.S. Senate
John McCain's cratering campaign is an object lesson in how to kill a candidacy in three simple steps: 1) locate the biggest foreign policy disaster in U.S. history 2) embrace it 3) implode. (Bonus step: spend money like you are Paul Bremmer).
McCain's fate should be a warning to all Republicans seeking office in 2008: continue to back the president's war policy at your own risk.
McCain's fall has been precipitous -- tumbling from establishment GOP front-runner to single-digit also-ran.
Through much of 2005 and 2006 he was widely regarded as the presumptive Republican nominee. Hypothetical 2008 matchups regularly had him beating presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in December 2006 had him beating Hillary by 14 points -- 50% to 36%.
That's when he decided to go all-in on Iraq, anointing himself head cheerleader for the surge.
On January 5, 2007 -- less than three weeks after that poll had him trouncing Hillary -- McCain gave a widely-covered speech at the American Enterprise Institute in which he advocated a "substantial" and "sustained" escalation in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, tying himself to President Bush and his delusion-driven New Way Forward.
The effect was similar to tying an anchor to his poll numbers and throwing them overboard. Although McCain's support had been eroding since 2006, as more and more independent voters -- always a key chunk of his fan base -- turned against the war, January 2007 marked the beginning of a nose dive.
As this pollster.com chart shows, since making himself the face of the surge, McCain's national support has dropped from nearly 25 percent to just over 15 percent. And his fall in key early primary states has been even more dramatic, dropping from around 35 percent to around 17 percent in South Carolina, from 28 percent to 18 percent in New Hampshire, and from the mid-20s to just under 10 percent in Iowa. And a pair of recent Mason-Dixon polls shows him dropping even further: to 7 percent in South Carolina and 6 percent in Iowa. This should not be a surprising result given that 42 percent of Republicans are now against the war.
McCain's main competitors have clearly taken note. A story this week in the LA Times claimed that the three leading GOP presidential contenders "have been quietly backing away from any commitment to continuing" the surge.
Mitt Romney has said that if Gen. Petraeus' September assessment finds the surge isn't working, "we'll have to take alternative strategies." Fred Thompson said that Iraq policy had to be considered "on a day-to-day basis." And Rudy Giuliani said he had "a lot of questions" about the troop surge strategy. Conversely, McCain ended the week by traveling to New Hampshire, site of his greatest electoral victory in 2000, and offering a full-throated defense of the war.
The coup de grace for McCain's chances might have come with his infamous stroll through a Baghdad market, which he claimed was proof you could "walk freely" through parts of the city. The subsequent reveal that he'd been accompanied on his stroll by 100 armed U.S. soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships, proved beyond a doubt that he had traded his signature straight talk for deceptive triumphalist blather.
McCain's biggest red flag used to be his temper; now it's his sanity. His claims on Iraq have become more and more delusional, and now have the same level of credibility as Phil Spector's dating tips.
It's gotten so bad, he's reverted to the desperate ploy of pretending that the only people opposing the war belong to -- as he put it on the Senate floor -- "the liberal left." As opposed to the conservative left, Senator? Are we to believe that those 42 percent of Republicans in favor of ending the war have joined "the liberal left"?
The final bit of evidence of McCain's growing disconnect from reality (another way he's aligned himself with Bush) came with the news that two of his top campaign aides had quit. Faced with questions over whether his campaign was falling apart, McCain insisted, "I am very happy with where the campaign is."
Given his latest poll numbers, he might be the only one who is.
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