Forum; Alexander Cockburn: Columnist, Nation Magazine and Wall Street Journal

Thank you. What is the real task of the mainstream media or the state-influenced corporate media? It's to set the agenda of discussion and not let those bonds get too widened out. This week on forum, columnist Alexander Coburn. There is not one syndicated columnist in this country that I know, regularly syndicated in the mainstream press, this is a socialist. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, welcome

to forum, I'm Olive Graham. Look at the coverage of Cuba. You know, if there's one demon state in the mind of the mainstream media, it's Cuba. You know, yet, people always go on about Cuba and they say, you know, it's just a basket case held together by the Russians. You know, actually, if you look at Cuba with a degree of dispassionate, Puerto Rico gets five times per capita more aid from the United States than Cuba does in the Soviet Union. Yet, you know, half of the people in Puerto Rico aren't food stamps. You know, you've lost a third of their population to the United States since the early 50s. The place is in scene of economic ruin. Alexander Coburn, columnist for the Nation magazine. The guest on forum today has some very strong opinions about American national media.

Alexander Coburn writes regularly for many publications that reach a vast number of American readers, but he finds fault with some of those very same avenues of information. He writes for the Nation magazine and the Wall Street Journal and has a syndicated column in the LA Weekly that is distributed to many city-weeklies throughout the country. Mr. Coburn notes that our national media is in the hands of, are owned by approximately 27 corporations, Alexander Coburn. For better or for worse, then when people talk about national media, they're talking about the corporate media, and they're really, then I think you want to look at what the major sort of pace setters are of these. And I think actually it comes down to the New York Times and the Washington Post. For the reason that the New York Times is in the communications capital of the world, of the United States, and the Washington Post is in the political capital, Washington. And they lay the line down in terms of what is the agenda of discussion. I think basically in deference to the state, people talk about a state influenced or state

control press. We have a state influenced press. And I think the two papers influence of the Washington Post and the New York Times and they affect the networks. They I think are the ones that actually if you look and people talk about a reaction, a conservative press, very often most, a lot of papers are on the country aren't, but when you look at the Washington Post and the New York Times, they are because they are the ones that are, if you like, the newspapers are record. They see themselves in that role. And if you're a network producer for the, let's say, which afterwards, how most Americans get their major news, their headline news, they are influenced tremendously by those two papers, much more than any other paper. Seems like the electronic media is often accused of being quite liberal. Do you see them being diametrically opposed to some things that the print media has to say? No, the electronic media aren't liberal at all. I mean, not in any sense of the word that I understand the word liberalism.

If you basically follow a number of issues, let's take Central America and you look at the performance of ABC, CBS, and NBC, they have generally not departed too far from the agenda of the administration, I'm going to give you a couple of examples, the discussion of the Aryas Plan, the Central American Peace Plan. Now, the Reagan administration basically kept saying, can the Nicaragua be trusted? Everything was said in terms of the performance of Nicaragua, whereas, of course, in real terms, the essence of the Aryas Plan was simultaneity that every country in the region had to be doing a number of things at the same time, like producing freedom of the press, or refugees, reconciliation, whatever it was. But if you start looking in Guatemala, or El Salvador, or Honduras, and saying, where is the evidence of activity there, it wasn't there, but the press never departed too much.

The electronic press, because you asked me about that, from the Reagan administration line. I mean, actually, we look at it from the other end. Is it likely that, let's say, NBC, which is owned by General Electric, which is the, I think, the second largest defense contractor in the United States? Is it seriously likely, if you ask yourself that, NBC, is going to be departing too far from the agenda of its parent company? And is it seriously likely that the parent company is going to be doing much, which will endanger its central area of commercial activity, which is military arms spending? I think, in the case of electronic media, though, it's more difficult to assign an editorial policy and sift it all the way down to your line producers. You're right there, but it's marvellous how quickly they pick up the message. You know, I'll give you any correspondent in the field. I mean, I watched, I'm not a fanatic, or TV viewer, and you get, correspondents are a

little bit better, and correspondents are a lot worse. I mean, this got Peter Collins of ABC is a real, I mean, tremendously, Reaganite in his, his reporting from Central America and my judgment. So you'll get, you'll get another guy's on, you know, on as bad as that. But it's like a newspaper, you know, like, let's take the New York Times, Stephen Kinzer or James Lemoyne of the New York Times, they're aware of the political situation between them and their paper. What is it? What are the limits of what they can report? I mean, can you imagine if a producer or a reporter went out and said, you know, we went into the field today, because I mean, you know, the Nicaragua's health program, you know, we discovered that in a certain village, whereas previously infant mortality had been such and such, it's now vastly improved. It seems to have been improved by the network of local health collectives that, you know, little health clinics have been established, too bad, of course, there aren't more of them, but then the contras have been blowing them up with your tax dollars. Then we went and examined the agricultural situation and we found very often the land

just redistribution had produced a beneficial effect on productivity and started saying something gay on Nicaragua, how long do you think this person's going to last about 10 minutes? Maybe one piece we're getting, that's about it. You know, look at the coverage of Cuba. You know, if there's one demon state in the mind of the main corporate media, it's Cuba. You know, yet people always go on about Cuba and they say, you know, it's just a basket case held together by the Russians. You know, actually, if you look at Cuba with a degree of dispassion, Puerto Rico gets five times per capita more aid from the United States than Cuba does in the Soviet Union. Yet, you know, half the people in Puerto Rico are on food stamps. You know, they've lost a third of their population to the United States since the early 50s. The place is a scene of economic ruin. Whereas in Cuba, you know, you have, you know, full employment. You have, you know, vastly increased productivity. Why? Why is this the case? I've never seen a producer for many mainstream media in this country that ever asked that question. In 30 years.

Not even Barbara Walters, when she... Not even Barbara Walters. I mean, you know, you've got the problem right there. I mean, look at... Moias. Moias is reckoned. You know, everyone goes on, Bill Moias. Bill Moias, there's Bill Moias. That Bill Moias isn't so great. It's only because actually the overall scene is so appalling in terms of any kind of intelligent reporting that occasionally a Moias, you know, will appear to have wrought some miracle. I mean, he did that PBS thing on the... Walking through the 20th century. Yeah, not that one. I was seeing the more recent one when we did COVID action and he did, you know, it wasn't a bad thing at all. A documentary. Yeah. People said, amazing. You know, well, after all, it's all there in the book. You don't have to be a brilliant human being to look up Guatemala and see why Guatemala was ever thrown in 1954. If you look across the... But Moias himself has done some pretty deplorable things. So when you look at this, the way this whole...you ask me about the mainstream media, what is the real task of the mainstream media or the state influence corporate media? It's to set the agenda of discussion and not let those bands get too widened out.

I mean, ask yourselves. So how many times, you know, do you see someone on, let's say, the... These venues of public debate, such as the other they have, what are they? The Brinkly Show. Let's talk about Network TV, the Brinkly Show. Meet the press. Meet the press. Meet the Niel Lara Show, face the nation, the Ted Coppall Show, probably more than any other, the Ted Coppall Show. And then ask yourself, how many times do you see someone, you know, I'm not talking about the left hand side, the middle of the road, somewhere to the left of Scoop Jackson, the late Henry, Senator Henry Jackson? Never. I'll give you an example. I mean, I often mention it. No, I'm Chomsky. Major intellectual in this country. Never light on these things. They talk about not letting Russians on the... how many times do you see Chomsky on there? Actually, he shows up on C-Span. For it, I've never seen him on any of the venues that I mentioned, actually, ever. It's mainly to exclude. A lot of it's to exclude. I mean, how many times do you see a really militant trade unionist, labor leader on that? I mean, you see Kirkland goes on once in a while.

Usually about the time they all go to Bauer Harbour for that, and you'll jam- I don't think anybody's looking for them this election year, are they? They're looking for trade union people? Well, how would you put it? Here's Jesse Jackson. He's been doing extremely well. What's Jackson doing? He's talking about economic empowerment, economic violence. He's talking about national health. He's talking about runaway shops. He's talking about the minimum wage. Now, these are all issues with which organized labor, which is not, for whatever they say, totally dead in this country. So, we're talking about... So, where is... Where is on the TV? God knows you see enough of these evangelists on the... Why don't we see Bill Wimpersinger, you know? An active, active trading in shop leaders. You never see him on. I mean, it's profoundly undemocratic. Profoundly undemocratic, the way they behave. You're a syndicated columnist. Do you find that that body of reporters and observers is also constrained somehow? Not so much, but I'll tell you what I'm syndicated to. I have a column once every three weeks. I mean, I'm a pretty left-wing fellow. It's true.

So, what do I have? I have a column in the Wall Street Journal once every three weeks, you know? Which the journal very nicely offered me in 1980. I guess they... Every three weeks, you know, they're readers, they hear the cook, you know? I'm the token cook. And the other papers I have is syndicated to my regular buy. I write in the nation every two weeks. Then I have a column syndicated through the LA Weekly, which goes to in these times, Ismas, you know, these city papers around the country, which are pretty good. These are not mainstream papers. To a greater or lesser degree, though, they're critical papers. Usually, well, the LA Weekly is a circulation of 150,000, but, you know, or sometimes they have 30,000. So... But what about people like David Broder, William Sapphire? What about it? William Raspberry. I mean, these are people who show up on a regular basis and... Yeah, well, they're mostly pretty conservative. It is not one syndicated columnist in this country that I know, regularly syndicated in the mainstream press, this is a socialist.

Now, most people say, well, so why? Well, after all, socialism is a political philosophy that has attracted quite a lot of adherence down the years. In Europe, you know, there are many journalists in the mainstream who are socialist social democrats. There is not one. Six, how many papers are in this country? 1,600? I mean, how many times do you open up your newspaper and read a person talking about socialised meds? You know, there's come up too much. I mean, really about, you know, well, a bit about the environment. You know, but compared with what's actually going on in terms of toxic in the environment, you know, it's absolutely nothing. Some of these things, though, I think, have regional slashes of interest. They're very interested in the environment and these parts, for instance. Oh, for sure. You know, I go, you know, around that about the time we're speaking, they've just licensed this nuclear power station to go up and there'll be opposition. But, I mean, toxic in the environment is not a regional issue in my judgment, you know, you go anywhere you go in the country. You'll find it is one of the hot issues, you know, that every local paper will have something

about environmental pollution. Because it's a thing that concerns the mainstream for America. It's the hottest issue there is. But candidates tend not to walk around being that specific about what they intend to do and maybe can't. Well, I don't know. I mean, Jackson to revert to Jackson. Again, I've heard him being pretty specific about health. I've heard him being pretty specific about drugs. I've heard him being specific. He's always called I'd man out. Well, OK, maybe he's I'd man out because he's specific. You know, I mean, personally, I think the Jackson campaigns are terrific thing. I think it's pulled the whole campaign to the left. I mean, the terms in which the Jackson campaign has been discussed by the mainstream press is another horrific incident of racism and ignorance. You know, most of it. You just see the way it's discussed. What does he want? They keep saying, what does he want? You know, then I'd say to Al Gore, what do you want? They probably know that Al Gore wouldn't know what he wants. You know, but Jesse Jackson is, you know, he's produced clear proposals on a large number of issues. He said he wants to speak up for a whole section

of the people that have no form of empowerment. It's probably there's no candidate in the field today who is articulated more clearly what he wants. Yet these idiot reporters, they keep saying, you know, what does he want? It's got to racist text to it, actually. It's what does he want? He wants to hit you on the head, probably, is what it really gut level is what they're trying to say. I mean, I was reading, you know, Miami Herald, I had a headline which said, no real flair and fire in this year's campaign. You thought, well, the one thing you can say about Jackson, he's got a certain amount of flair and fire. Now, the one time Jackson is mentioned in this Miami Herald piece is, you know, aside from Jackson, you know, three words. I mean, here's a person who's ahead in the popular vote in the dollar, in the primaries. He's actually ahead of DuCockers, you know, he's running number two way ahead of Gore, and he's always dismissed, aside from Jackson. I mean, can you imagine? Then they say, but wait a minute, wait a minute. He's not really getting enough white support to be president, you know.

Now, supposing you said, I don't know, in the early 19th century, you know what abolitionism, the end of slavery, it's not really catching on as a major issue. Now, anyone, you know, the people in favor of that aren't getting real majorities. You know, what's this meant to be? You know, the more someone, the whole point of politics is to put things on the agenda, the whole point of the mainstream corporate meters to keep them off the agenda. Actually, I think it's amazing that, you know, the voters are way ahead of the press, you know. If you go around and you see where people are voting for what Jackson's saying, it's like a little light has gone oh wow, this guy is saying something that addresses itself to us. I was talking to a stockbroker the other day and I said, you know, in Wall Street and I said, is it any candidate that frightens you? frightens Wall Street, he said no. Apart from Jackson, he said, if Jackson got anywhere, the market would drop by 400 points because they know that he's serious. But the other ones, God, you carcass. Yeah, I feel safe regardless. Of course. Yeah, they're not going to hurt anything. They're just a little oil in the machine, a little sand in the machine, doesn't matter.

Jackson represents a real threat. What's the center of it? You know, if you look at the Wall Street Journal, recently had a, you know, who's lost and who's gained over the last 10 years? You know, the top 20% have done real well. And the bottom 80% haven't. Jackson speaks up for that. Let me ask you, how you feel that foreign issues, foreign policy issues have been treated in this campaign by the candidates or by the press? You know, issues have had a way of forcing themselves on the candidates who probably would dearly like half of them to go away. I mean, the obvious one, I mean, there are two obvious ones, of course, which are Central America and the Middle East. Now, it's interesting to me, I think, that all the Democrats basically have come out against them. To a greater or lesser extent, they are in favor of the peace plan in Central America. Some of them can't bring themselves again to say they're against all contrary. But it's clear that they're not saying, let's give the country's nuclear weapons and let's blast their way into them. And now you know that there is no so far as I know.

Any really, really right-wing position being between Gore, Ducarcus, and obviously Jackson. There's no one really saying, let's get rid of the Santanistas. That's just not true. All the Republicans are, of course, on the other side. On the Middle East, now everybody knows it. No US politician will dare say anything that might get them into trouble with the American Israeli lobby, because it's so important in terms of funding and all the rest of the other thing. But the fact that day after day you've had these scenes from the West Bank has actually forced them. But even so, they have not said anything substantive apart from Jackson again. But all of the American Jews are not supportive of some of the things that they say. Oh, very far from it. Very far from it. I think there's been a tremendous amount of anguish in the American Jewish community. And a lot of them, I know many, many of you say, you know, a West Bank state, let's have it. Let's get this issue down. I don't know how much, to what extent. They are the people controlling the funding. I mean, there was a meeting described in one of the papers

when Shamir was saying, you know, I thought it was an incredible statement, actually, you know, to an American audience, a Jewish American audience. Now, you should all be on board for Israel, every one of you, you know, basically saying, you know, your loyalty should be to Israel, whatever it does. And there was some dissent. It wasn't a very powerful dissent. Some people dig it up and say, you know, when we have every right to say what we think that there should be a set of peaceful settlement. But when he says that we're the ones who have to live with whatever peace or decision gets made, he's saying, stay out of it. We have to deal with it. Well, we're not staying out of it. Exactly. It's sending them $3 billion a year. Oh, yeah, they want the money. They can't stay out of it. The dollars are there. But I'm seeing, on either side, a certain amount of intransigence that's going to be locked in, and it's going to stay there for generations. Well, I mean, let's see, yeah, this intransions, a lot of Palestinians who probably, you know, they do want their land bank. And if you really got them in a corner and he said,

do you want to throw these Jews into the sea, they probably say yes. You know, just as there are a lot of Jews who want to throw the Arabs into the sea. I mean, I come from Ireland, you know, I'm well aware of the powers of, you know, irredentist emotion, and that's not kid-around. But Arafat has said clearly, you know, he recognizes two for two. He wouldn't, you know, peace for land. He said it, by the way, Shameer does not say that. He does not say that as the Secretary of former State, Secretary of State, Vance had letter in the Times the other day saying, two for two, you know, implied an exchange of land for peace, the occupied territories. But Shameer doesn't say that. Israel does not recognize two for two. But so far as in the PLO, I've said it, I wish they'd say it more. They say, you know, we want a peaceful settlement. We will exchange, you know, we recognize Israel. We want to be recognized. We want a West Bank state, which, you know, falls very far short originally what they had. But I think they're willing to deal.

Obviously, there are a lot of madmen who would like to kill anybody who came to a settlement. That's true, too. Something that hasn't landed on the plate of many of the candidates, Jesse Jackson, notwithstanding, is South Africa. Yeah, South Africa is interesting. I mean, I think the issue, it's a case actually where censorship, I think, worked to keep it off the front burner. That, you know, the day the South African government said no more, you know, more TV film of this and that, just the same as the, as well as would, I'm sure, dearly love to do that. It is true that if you don't have those scenes, you're going out on, you know, TV sets all over the United States, you know, day after day of, you know, in, well, in the case of South Africa, you know, people being beaten by the public. The issue tends to go off the, off the front burner, but I think also, in a way, the South African issue exposes the sort of, the limits of liberalism to a certain extent, because, you know,

what is anti-apartite, I mean, apartheid, rather, in South Africa, is integral to that system of economic exploitation in South Africa. To oppose apartheid in any really root and branch way, you have to analyze the economic system in South Africa. When, that's not men's words here, it's a, you know, particularly corrupted and vicious form of capitalist exploitation. It's a first world country, right? Right, and you have to say, look, this is how the, this is how the profits are maintained. This is how the labor is exploited. This is how racism, you know, is, is, is, is penetrated every pore of the society. And I think the red baiting of the ANC had a lot to do with it, too. You know, the, the, the Afroids, everybody knows, you know, the, the Communist Party in South Africa with enormous courage, has pursued, you know, a task of opposing the South African regime and has, you know, been part and parcel of the African National Congress. Good luck to them, you know. They were there when others weren't. But, you know, even people like Anthony Lewis, he was a, you know, probably the most,

in mainstream press, the most liberal of all the columnists, has said, you know, this is a tremendous problem. The Communist presence within the ANC. Tremendous problem to who? Maybe to Anthony Lewis, but not a tremendous problem to people, you know, change. But I think also a problem to people here who don't want to hear a divestment, for instance, and any kind of solution that would encourage the ANC to be a participant in any of this. Yeah, it's also like, you know, I thought Sam Donaldson actually was, he raised a pretty good question in one of those White House press companies. And Mr. President, when are you going to send money to the Freedom Fighters in South Africa? You know, to the ANC. I mean, there's so far to go. I mean, it's like this, there's so far to go in trying to alter the terms of debate. This is what I mean about the corporate media, you know, always like in, let's go back to that contra vote, you know, march the third, with the democratic alternative, the one that got defeated, you know,

complicated shifts in which way, and so, you know, it's even impossible to get the more to say, we don't want any contrary. They kept saying, you know, they have to have some here, they have to have some there, because the terms are always, we hate the sound in Easter's butt. And they're still talking about non-military. And non-military. I mean, what is, I mean, you know, well, I always forget, military, then there's non-lethalade, that means you know that you get the back end of the bullet. The non-lethalade of the bullet, the one that doesn't hit you first, you know? And then humanitarian aid, which means, you know, is sort of, oh, it means, in the democratic bill, it meant planes, it meant communications equipment, it meant clothes, so people could go and fight communications equipment, so they could say, you know, which health clinic they wanted to bomb the day after tomorrow, you know? It's a lot of hoey. And I think actually, American public, if you look at the polls, think it's a lot of hoey. It's a real case where people are way out front, you know, because you look at the polls, 60%. Time after time. I pose any form of contrary. I was in spoke hand the other day, you know?

How many people here have been to Central America? Nicaragua. You know, 65 people put up their hands, you know? Now, these are people from the mainstream, from labor, from teaching, and they go back, they go down, they see that, you know, the sound of the nieces haven't got three heads, come back and report the news that they haven't got three heads, and then another bunch of people go down. Pretty quickly, you've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of, well, 10 scores of thousands of people who've been to Central America, and seeing that what they're reading in the mainstream press is lies. These are people who vote. I think it's important. But these are not people who are demanding to hear something else from their media. How much pressure? Well, what can you do? I think you can, you can call up, and you say, look, I saw McNeill here again, the other way. You have Ali Abrams down again for the 14th time in 10 days, you know? Why don't you get someone up against him who knows what they're talking about? You can do that. You can write to your local newspaper editor. You can hassle your, the right wing, by the way, know how to do this, and good luck to them. They've, they've known you can, you can hassle. You can cause pressure, and there are organizations like for accuracy and reporting, which is the liberal opponent, really, of accuracy and media aim,

which is the right wing one, that you can, you can make pressure. There's a long way to go. I mean, you know, look at the ground that public TV, which is originally meant to be a venue for people within no other voice. Now, it's a corporate channel. You know, all you see is IBM and Xerox. But, you know, people can fight back. You could start with media criticism groups. You can do call-ins. You can start your own little paper. You know, it's a pleasure to be done. And you can find an ear out there, some place, the perspective position. Oh, I think it's better. Yeah, I think there's bags of people who want to read different stuff. But will you make money doing it? Well, corporate media drives out smaller efforts far too often. Yeah, you mean, will you make, if you're a little journal? Well, that might be tough, but I think, I'm a great fan of the computer, but I think some of these things have got easier now than from the 50s, where you cranked out your little paper, and, you know, I have stones weekly. They always talk about I have stones. Well, the real hero in here was Mrs. Stone who used to write the address, you know, little chits on every one of them. Well, she did a lot of, there's a lot of dog's body labor there.

No, I think with this new technology, you know, this desktop publishing, that is easier. I think, you know, there are things that have become easier, you know, video, cable access. You know, when the cable company is strung up American cities, they, to get people to accept this, they gave public access channels, which very often people aren't using. Use them or lose them, you know? The technology is there to do this stuff. There's a huge fetish about, you know, production values in TV and video. You know, I've seen an excellent, excellent video, which goes out on these things. That's probably there to be done. Somehow or other though, some of these voices single, sometimes small and different, a lot of the time, don't, don't go here, somehow don't coalesce into a voice, unless they find a candidate. I'm not sure the Jackson is. I think they can't, I don't know how far Jackson will go. But I think that that candidate does represent. I mean, look at the measure of this guy's success, you know? I mean, Vermont is not noted

for being a major black Southern state. So far as I know, unless the Bureau of the Census have been lying to us all these years, or Alaska, or, I mean, these places, Kansas, why are these people voting for Jackson? I think this is a, you know, is this a question the corporate media has answered? No, of course not. You see, they're used to dealing with right-wing populist campaigns, like George Wallace and all that kind of thing. Well, here we have a left-wing populist campaign, which is obviously, I mean, I haven't laid, you know, where Wallace did well next to where Jackson did well, but, you know, if you read the corporate media back then, you'd think Wallace is one of the most important political phenomena in the country. They wrote him up all the time. But Jackson, they write down all the time, but Jackson's gone further, said more and done more. It's a left-wing populist message. I think the corporate media are frightened of it, actually. They will do anything to, anything to, you know, to produce Jackson, and to ignore him if possible. Alexander Coburn, writer for the Nation magazine and the Wall Street Journal, is the author of Corruptions of Empire, published by Barrow.

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