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Richard Wolffe returned to Countdown this week, absent from MSNBC airwaves for only a month after Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his full time employer was no longer Newsweek, but a lobbying firm:

Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program -- or serving as an almost daily "political analyst" -- is exactly tantamount to MSNBC's just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist. Wolffe's role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover. Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and "political analyst" on one of its prime-time political shows. What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this.

This is a conflict so severe that it's incurable by disclosure: who wouldn't realize that you can't present paid corporate hacks as objective political commentators? But the fact that they don't even bother to disclose that just serves to illustrate how non-existent is the line between corporate interests and "news reporting" in the United States. Then again, Wolffe himself -- when it was previously revealed that he was exploiting his position as a Newsweek reporter covering the Obama campaign to leverage access to Obama in order to write a glowing book about him -- said this:

And [Wolffe] suggested he’s not that different from other reporters in an era in which the business and the profession of journalism have gotten closer and closer.

"The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what's going on. Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers," he said, recalling that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers.

"You tell me where the line is between business and journalism," he said.

And yet, he's back...with nary a word about his absence, still as an MSNBC political analyst.

Don't get me wrong, I like Richard Wolffe in general, and appreciated his appearances on Countdown in the past, but to name him as a "Senior Strategist at Public Strategies" is truly the sparest way to describe him as a lobbyist and really blurs the lines between journalism and promotion/propaganda beyond what should be acceptable. How can we ever know if Wolffe's analysis is truly what he believes or if it's what he's been paid to promote by a client?

And frankly, I'm tired of the insular nature of these broadcasts, when the same predictable people show up day after day after day. To be fair to Keith, Olbermann is not the only news anchor with a retinue of guests they stick with over and over. They all do it. Even Rachel Maddow brings on "Uncle Pat" Buchanan, whose views are generally factually wrong or so far outside the mainstream, you can't but wonder why he's still on television. Wolffe isn't like that. But as I've documented before on media balance and biases, so much critical information is withheld from we viewers already that we generally don't get a fair view of the issues of the day, I really do have to ask if there are no other voices that Olbermann can turn to that he has to bring back a DC lobbyist?

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Continuing his Anita Dunn jihad -- in fact, he devoted nearly his entire hour yesterday to attacking Dunn speciously -- Glenn Beck featured a segment with an anonymous "Concerned Parent" who actually attended the high-school commencement ceremony at which Dunn delivered her now-notorious "Mao" remarks. To protect his identity from the evil White House thugs who no doubt would brutalize the poor fellow, they altered his voice and showed him only in silhouette.

But John Aravosis noted a particular family resemblance between this silhouette and a familiar profile at Fox News"

Well, today America's favorite sociopath had a super duper double secret "anonymous" parent on to complain about a graduation speech that Ms. Dunn gave a while back. The thing is, when you look at the alleged parent, who was speaking from FOX's Washington, DC bureau, he sure looks an awful lot like FOX's own Chris Wallace. Check out the screen capture above from the TV. I posted a normal photo of Wallace to the left, and one in which I scrunched his head to the right (since the anonymous parent looks like they scrunched the video of his head, to further disguise him). Is it just me, or are those trademark ears and helmet-head hair just a little too similar to Chris Wallace's?

That's always fun speculation. But then Richard Wolffe of Newsweek went on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night and pointed out that there was more than just a resemblance:

Wolffe: Look at how this video has just popped up about Anita Dunn and her graduation ceremony of her own son. You know, this video, which was not available for public record, happened to pop up on the Glenn Beck show. And it's the same school where Chris Wallace spoke the year before because his kids also went there.

Was that coincidence, or is Fox determined to take this to another level? That's not about news, it's about personal attacks. Look, they may enjoy it for all sorts of commercial reasons. But it goes way beyond the commercial aspect here. There is an unholy jihad going on.

Someone needs to ask Chris Wallace if he is Beck's "Concerned Parent." Just, you know, to clear things up.

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George Stephanopoulos with Hillary Clinton this morning:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said President Barack Obama has "absolutely" answered questions she posed during the Democratic campaign about his lack of experience and ability to handle an international crisis.

In her first Sunday show interview since her presidential bid ended a year ago, I asked Clinton if Obama answered the questions she raised in her campaign's "3a.m." ad.

"Absolutely," Clinton told me in an exclusive "This Week" Sunday show interview-- her first as secretary of state.

"And, you know, the president in his public actions and demeanor, and certainly in private with me and with the national security team, has been strong, thoughtful, decisive, I think he is doing a terrific job," she said, "And it's an honor to serve with him."

Obama told Richard Wolffe that he had decided to offer State to Clinton during their primary battle. That came as a surprise to her.

"I never had any -- any dream, let alone inkling that I would end up in President Obama's cabinet," she told me.

"I was looking forward to going back to the Senate and, frankly, going back to my life and representing New York, which I love. And I had no idea that he had a different plan in mind."

Clinton also deflected Obama's first pass.

"When he called and asked me to come see him, and we had our first conversation I said, 'you know, I really don't think I'm the person to do this, I want to go back to my life. I really feel like I owe it to the people of New York,'" Clinton said.

"And I gave him a bunch of other names of people who I thought would be great secretaries of state. But he was quite persistent and very persuasive. And, you know, ultimately it came down to my feeling that, number one, when your president asks you to do something for your country, you really need a good reason not to do it."

"Number two, if I had won and I had asked him to please help me serve our country, I would have hoped he would say yes," Clinton said, "And finally, I looked around our world and I thought, you know, we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out."

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This is incredible but not surprising news. Robert Windrem, who covered terrorism for NBC, reports:

*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection. *The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible. *Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees...read on

Read the entire story. What this report says is that the Bush administration took an active role in how torture was being used and their purposes were purely political and not to keep America safe. Richard Wolffe says the same thing to Nora on MSNBC.

Cheney and his band of inquisitors wanted to find something that could justify the Iraq war to the American people after all the lies were uncovered for us to see. And there was nothing. NO WMD's in Iraq and no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Cheney willingly promoted the use of torture for his own political gains. Wow. He should be prosecuted just for that action because he even violated the CIA torture memo guidelines.

Cheney knows this information is going to come out so he's taking to the airwaves to try and turn the discussion all around. Lawrence Wilkerson has come out and said this:

Lawrence Wilkerson essentially confirmed this today.

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

Did you notices that there was very little media coverage if any on al-Libi's suicide? It's like he never even existed for the Villagers.

I posted this last night.

Why wouldn't Gregory just say that the right wing blogosphere attacks him everyday and that's what bugs him? Simple, right? Will Bill O'Reilly stop spreading lies about David if he plays nice with Tony at this function? Not likely. Tony Snow hates us because we call him out when he spreads propaganda or stonewalls. Instead of generalizing your complaints---please be specific. They can't even be honest about what their problems are with the blogosphere. And then we come to Richard Wolffe.

...the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards and covering politics in general."

As I said yesterday, they certainly helped to deliver propaganda for the White House that led to the Iraq war. Great job guys. Greenwald has the score card on Wolffe's performance leading up to the war.

The reality, of course, is that most media-criticizing bloggers do not want journalists to be "political advocates." They want them to do what journalists are supposed to do -- which is not, contrary to Wolffe's belief, sit around with their good, trustworthy, nice-guy friends in the White House and simply "ask questions" and "get information," but instead to scrutinize that information, treat it with doubt, investigate it before passing it along to determine whether it's true....read on

Starring: Tony Snow, David Gregory and Richard Wolffe. Mmmm, them bloggers are just darn mean and hateful.

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Gregory: ...Because it- it's the Internet, and the blogs, that have really used this White House press conference to somehow support positions out in America- political views- and they- and they- uh- they will clip, and digitize portions of these briefings to fit into their particular argument and I think people try to divine motives of the questioners and- and certainly draw conclusions about, uh, the answers, or- or non-answers, uh, based on their, their, their own political views.

Snow: I'll- I'll occasionally punch it up and it's amazing, you get this wonderful imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out, and, I think one of the, the, the, maybe one of the, the most important takeaways is, it's the classic old line "not only should you not believe your own press you probably shouldn't believe your opposition blogs either". What do you think, Richard?

Wolffe: ...I think the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards in covering politics in general. And the, um, the interesting thing in, in looking at the political coverage as people try to guess what we do is, is that they want us to play a role that really isn't our role. Our- our role is to ask questions and get information. But it- the press briefing isn't Prime Minister's question time.

What WATB's. Hey, we can take it. It's not like us bloggers rolled over while the White House started a war in the middle east or nothing,,.As for Richard's contention that we want them to be ideologues. No----we want the press to do their jobs. Nothing more and nothing less. Is that acceptable?

(h/t Phil for the full transcript below the fold)

Continue reading »

Staged Mia Culpa?

Steve Soto found a photo of what Richard Wolffe alluded to in my earlier post.

Keith Olbermann covered the fake biological laboratories that Dick Cheney and George Bush trumpeted up after it was revealed that:
WaPo: "On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction." The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true."

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Richard Wolffe of Newsweek does the analysis.

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The Washington Post manged to bury this at the bottom of their story, but MSNBC happened to notice this little data nugget out of its latest national poll:

There is a warning sign for the GOP in the new poll: 21 percent of those surveyed said they identify as Republicans, the fewest to do so in a Post-ABC poll in more than 25 years. Last fall, Democrats outnumbered Republicans at the polls by the biggest margin in network exit polls going back to the 1982 midterms.

David Shuster and Richard Wolffe discussed it first, then Norah O'Donnell got the Republican perspective from Michelle Bernard.

Shuster and Wolffe note that the exodus has not benefited Democrats, but rather has swollen the ranks of Independents, which is fairly normal. However, Wolffe offers this appraisal:

Wolffe: So people are not self-identifying as Republicans. And for the party to rebuild, that means they've got speak to people beyond the base, the people who may have been at those teabag parties. They've got to reach the people who identify themselves now as Independents. They don't like partisan politics.

I think he's got this completely backwards. Wasn't Wolffe listening to the people at the tea parties? Doesn't he ever watch Glenn Beck? Those people are the new Independents. They're leaving the Republican Party because it isn't far enough to the right.

Bernard, in contrast, actually makes a good deal of sense:

Bernard: Here's the question: Is the Republican Party going to be a Big Tent party, or is it going to be reduced to a geographic area that is made up primarily of evangelical Christians? That's something that the party has to determine. If you want to win elections, the Republican Party as it is today is going to be a party that is very limited and cannot reach national elections until they can get the message of free markets and limited government out. They need to have a new message and find a way to appeal to African Americans, Hispanics, and young voters.

There's that portion of the party, though, that, you know, they don't care. There is a litmus test, and they are not going to change the coalition the way that it stands. And, you know, they've got to find a leader.

In reality, the seeming exodus of the Glenn Beck-style wingnut element from the GOP is a terrific opportunity for smart, sensible Republicans like Bernard. It means they might actually have a chance to really change the Republican Party back into something resembling a sane and serious political party and not an Asylum For the Criminally Insane.

You have to wish them luck. But I'm not holding my breath, either.