🚀 go-pugleaf

THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY  
   December 2003
   http://makethemaccountable.com/coverup/index.htm
   By David Podvin
   According to a source whose previous information has proven to be
   accurate, the Consortium of news organizations that recounted the
   presidential votes in the 2000 Florida election was shocked to find
   that former Vice President Al Gore decisively won the state, and it is
   now concealing the news of Gores victory from the American people.
   The source is a former media executive who previously revealed
   information that the Bush administration was lying about Clinton
   staffers having vandalized the White House. That information led me to
   accuse Karl Rove of manufacturing the crime. My accusation appeared in
   an article that was posted by Buzzflash.com on January 28, 2001, and
   it was confirmed by a General Accounting Office investigative report
   several months later.
   Having previously established credibility as a well-informed and
   accurate conduit of information, the executive now claims the
   Consortium is deliberately hiding the results of its recount because
   Gore was the indisputable winner.
   Originally, the Consortium believed that there were three potential
   outcomes of the recount, any of which would have been acceptable to
   the participating news conglomerates. The first was a Bush win, which
   would have resolved the issue. The second was a dead heat/inconclusive
   result, which would have maintained the status quo. The third was a
   narrow Gore victory, which would have given die hard Democrats a
   debate point, but would have simply been another photo finish recount
   that most Americans would have disregarded as being currently
   irrelevant.
   The Consortium was stunned to discover that the recount revealed Gore
   won a clear victory. Even after casting aside the controversial
   butterfly ballots and discarding ballots that were iffy, Gore
   decisively won the recount. While the precise numbers are still
   unavailable, a New York Times journalist who was involved in the
   project told one of his former companions that Gore won by a
   sufficient margin to create major trouble for the Bush presidency if
   this ever gets out.
   Gores victory was large enough that it became apparent he would win
   prior to the Consortium recount being fully completed. And contrary to
   a recent claim by the New York Times, the terrorism of September 11
   was not the crucial factor that determined whether to release the
   results to the American people. Prior to that time, the de facto
   majority shareholders in the publicly traded New York Times Company
   reportedly intervened on the side of quashing the recount results and
   convinced the other participants to shelve the story. The executive
   claims that the most important decisions at the Times are made by the
   influential money center banks that exercise actual voting control of
   a majority of stock. These banks are extremely pro-Bush. In addition
   to their control of the Times, they have substantial financial clout
   with the Washington Post Company, Dow Jones and Company, and the
   Tribune Company. As a result, the banks exert tremendous influence on
   a majority of the Consortium.
   The story of Gores victory has been spiked at the highest levels of
   the media conglomerates that are involved, rather than at the cosmetic
   steering committee level of the recount project. The Consortium
   reportedly has received intense pressure from members of the Bush
   inner circle both in and out of government, but has not been lobbied
   by representatives of Gore.
   The huge disparity between the original recount and the Consortium
   recount stems from the G.O.P. tactics in Florida. Their strategy was
   to aggressively contest every pro-Gore ballot, even the obviously
   valid ones. The Republicans then accused the vote counters of being
   biased because most of the challenges were resolved in favor of Gore.
   By using this approach, the Bush partisans successfully intimidated
   the counters into bending over backwards to show fairness, resulting
   in thousands of legitimate Gore votes being disqualified or relegated
   to a pile of disputed ballots.
   It was the old baseball managers trick of crying about every call in
   order to pressure the umpire to give you more than your fair share,
   said the executive. And it worked in Florida. However, in the relative
   calm of the Consortium recount - absent the pressure tactics - the
   Bush total remained basically consistent with the original count,
   while the Gore total shot way up.
   As for what will happen next, the executive said, Once the dominant
   pro-Gore trend became apparent, the Consortium was never going to
   release the results; the pressure from the big money boys was too
   great. Terrorism just provided a better excuse for withholding the
   information than the technical difficulties stalling tactic that was
   otherwise going to be used. The Consortium is determined to make sure
   that the original results of their recount will never see the light of
   day.

   THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY
   PART TWO: THE DECEIT OF THE CONSORTIUM
   By David Podvin and Carolyn Kay
   The Consortium of media organizations that has delayed announcing the
   results of the Florida presidential election ballot study contends
   that it had absolutely no idea who was going to win that recount. The
   Consortium further contends that the ballots have not yet been
   tabulated, making it impossible for anyone to know the outcome. It
   also states that the results of the ballot study would have been
   released to the American people if not for the terrorist attack on
   September 11.
   The Consortium is engaging in sophistry. It is deliberately seeking to
   deceive the public with incomplete and misleading information. This
   dishonesty is entirely consistent with the mainstream medias pattern
   of lying that recurred throughout the presidential campaign.
   Part two in this series deals with the Consortiums lack of candor as
   it has sought to advance its own financial interests by concealing Al
   Gores clear victory in Florida and refusing to acknowledge that he was
   the rightful winner in the 2000 presidential election.
   It is important to emphasize that we do not allege the conglomerates
   that control the American mainstream media have engaged in a
   conspiracy, only that they have damaged American democracy by
   conducting themselves with unpatriotic self interest and all consuming
   greed.
   On January 9, 2001, eight media organizations announced their
   intention to form the Consortium that would examine and classify the
   votes in the Florida presidential election. The eight news
   organizations were The New York Times, The Washington Post, Dow Jones
   and Company (The Wall Street Journal), the Associated Press, The
   Tribune Company (The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, among
   others), The Palm Beach Post, The St. Petersburg Times, and CNN (which
   later dropped out).
   The Consortium sought to gain credibility for the integrity of its
   recount by hiring the not-for-profit National Opinion Research Center
   to perform the actual ballot handling tasks and to compile the
   relevant information. NORC was assigned to provide the raw data to
   each of the members of the Consortium. It would then be up to the
   individual media outlets to decide how they would interpret and report
   the data to the American people.
   All of this was to be completed by April, 2001.
   At the time that the Consortium announced its plans to categorize the
   votes, some national public opinion polls showed that over a third of
   Americans considered George W. Bush to be an illegitimate president.
   Several prominent syndicated columnists had written that Gore was
   fortunate to lose, because the poisonous atmosphere in the aftermath
   of the controversial election guaranteed that the new president was
   destined to one term of bitterness and gridlock.
   The perception of the mainstream political and media analysts was that
   there were only three possible outcomes of the ballot study:
   Bush could win in a photo finish, as he had in each previous recount.
   It could turn out to be a dead heat.
   Gore could win in a photo finish.
   Two thirds of Americans surveyed said that they were ready to move on.
   They believed that it was basically an even election; they might never
   be completely sure who actually won, but someone had to be president,
   and Bush won the recounts and the Supreme Court verdict. For most
   Americans, regardless of who literally won an election that was too
   close to call, it was time to get on with life.
   Against this backdrop, any of the three results of the ballot study
   that were considered possible would not be harmful to Bush. If the
   ballot study showed he won, then that would confirm he was the
   legitimate president. If it were a tie, then he would be no worse off
   than before the study was released. If Gore won a squeaker, then the
   most diehard of the Democrats might challenge the legitimacy of a Bush
   administration, but the GOP had prepared for that possibility by
   assigning party activists to every Florida county for the specific
   purpose of screaming fraud. Another very close vote accompanied by
   frenzied controversy would make the Consortium ballot study just a
   tiresome repeat of the soap opera that most of election-weary America
   had already seen and turned off.
   If the establishment deep thinkers were right, then the only possible
   results from the Consortium study could help legitimize Bush, but
   could not harm his legitimacy among those Americans who had gotten
   over it.
   There was, however, a potential complication that had been discounted
   by the corporations that were financing this venture:
   What would happen if the Consortium recount revealed that Gore had won
   decisively?
   The NORCs examination of the ballots began in February.
   MakeThemAccountable has spoken with several participants who were in
   the NORC coding rooms where the ballots of the Florida presidential
   election were reviewed. These people did not know each other and were
   in different counties within Florida. Each of them independently
   stated that, based on their personal observation, Al Gore was winning
   at least two thirds of those disputed ballots that NORC coders were
   recording. These were ballots that had not been included in previous
   recounts.
   The Consortium has stated that it cannot possibly have known the
   outcome of the ballot coding because NORC did not generate a final
   tabulation. The Consortium even contends that, because the ballots
   were not delivered to the media organizations until mid-September, and
   because those organizations have been completely preoccupied with
   covering the war against terrorism, the result of the recount is still
   a complete mystery to them.
   The Consortium is lying about this, as well as other things.
   Our sources within the recount made a commitment of confidentiality to
   NORC, pledging that they would not go public with what they saw during
   the process. This pact was faithfully honored until after September
   11, when some participants became alarmed that the Consortium was
   going to violate its commitment to inform the American public about
   the truth of the actual results.
   The ballot examination process, or coding process, had teams
   consisting of an NORC employee supervising three coders. It was the
   job of the coders to identify the characteristics of any expression of
   voter intent on the ballots. Their observations were entered into a
   computer database so that the media organizations comprising the
   Consortium could later evaluate the data to determine the winner. The
   ballots showed only numbers and not the names of candidates, so NORC
   assumed that those who were evaluating the ballots did not know which
   candidate was getting which votes. . The supervisors were responsible
   for comparing the pattern of vote tabulation by each coder, to further
   insure that bias would not enter the process.
   In an interview with MakeThemAccountable, NORC Public Information
   Officer Julie Antelman confirmed that, if someone knew which number
   applied to which candidate, then they could tell if there was a trend.
   To those who were carefully observing the coding, and who had enough
   knowledge of Florida county ballot configurations and precinct voting
   patterns to figure out which number represented Bush and which
   represented Gore, it was clear exactly how the vote categorization was
   going. Specifically, they saw the inclusion of many disputed ballots
   that had been successfully excluded from previous recounts because of
   pressure tactics by the Bush campaign. In the objective, professional
   setting of the NORC coding process, the winner of the overwhelming
   number of previously disputed ballots was Al Gore.
   From the first day of the NORC process, there was a visible presence
   of pro-Bush demonstrators outside the coding rooms. What has not been
   widely reported is that there was also a constant Bush presence inside
   the coding rooms. The NORC had a policy that allowed for a
   representative of either party to observe the process. In counties
   like Hernando, observers could pay in order to actually sit at the
   coding tables. The observer was not allowed to comment, intrude, or
   interact with the coders, or in any way seek to influence the ballot
   study.
   There is no evidence that the partisan observers corrupted the process
   of coding ballots, but their presence certainly destroys the myth of
   an unknowable result. Inside the rooms of the NORC coding process,
   politically experienced G.O.P. operatives carefully watched for
   trends.
   They saw bad news for Bush. For example, in Republican Lake County,
   election officials had disqualified six hundred ballots because voters
   put a pencil mark in the circle by a candidate's name and also wrote
   the same candidate's name on another part of the ballot. According to
   the G.O.P., this made it impossible to discern the voters intent.
   The coders perceived that someone who checked a candidates name and
   also wrote in the same candidates name probably meant to vote for that
   candidate.
   The Republicans screamed that no one could possibly know for certain
   which candidate the voter meant to choose in these instances unless
   they were psychic. They decried the NORCs pathetic attempts at mind
   reading.
   The G.O.P.s high decibel cries of persecution had successfully
   intimidated officials at the previous Florida recounts, but the rules
   of the NORC coding session prohibited observers from emoting inside
   the rooms. The indignant Republicans had to go outside to vent. The
   net result was a gain of one hundred thirty votes for Gore using
   previously uncounted ballots in just one Republican county.
   George W. Bush had a widespread presence of people actively looking
   after his interests. There were Republican protesters outside the
   coding rooms and Republican observers inside the coding rooms in every
   county.
   The Gore organization had already disbanded.
   As during the election and the recounts, the Republicans were fighting
   as hard as they could no holds barred while the Democrats defaulted.
   Even so, during the Consortium ballot study the coders just found too
   many Gore votes for the G.O.P. to be able to win again by invoking
   invisible crimes and decrying nonexistent conspiracies.
   It is simply false for the Consortium to claim people were unaware
   that the results were developing in a way that would be highly
   embarrassing, at best, for George W. Bush. The Republican observers
   saw the strong pro-Gore trend and responded with typical aplomb. A
   G.O.P. activist accused one NORC coder of being drunk on the job, a
   lie that was later disproven. Even so, Republican operatives
   reportedly pressured another coder to confirm the phony allegation.
   The Republicans yelled about the quality of the coders, screamed about
   the treachery of the process, and threw temper tantrums about the
   unfairness of it all. Of course, they offered no proof of their
   slanderous charges. Though the G.O.P. observers were publicly
   panicking as the trend continued strongly against them, the Consortium
   observers in the very same rooms claim to be completely unaware of who
   was winning.
   The members of the Consortium have a sufficient interest in this
   matter that they collectively have paid millions of dollars to
   subsidize the ballot study. The media organizations that comprise the
   Consortium employ hundreds of experienced journalists who possess
   expertise in gathering information. A number of their most able
   journalists were eyewitnesses to what was happening in the coding
   rooms. And yet, the Consortium pleads total ignorance of who was
   gaining votes during the NORC coding process.
   Dan Keating was the Washington Post on-site editor for the ballot
   study. In an interview with MakeThemAccountable, he said, We
   intentionally blinded ourselves to the information.
   Some coders knew enough about Florida county ballot configuration to
   be able to tell which numerical code represented Bush and which
   identified Gore. The same was true of supervisors, private citizens
   who viewed the study, and the increasingly hysterical Republican
   observers. Non-Consortium journalists were not exactly clueless,
   either:
   The media are finding more ballots meant for Gore. In election-speak:
   Even though final statewide results aren't in, early returns favor
   Gore.
   Palm Beach Post
   http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/news/election2000_media.html
   The outrageous contention by the Consortium that they could not
   possibly have known the outcome of the ballot study is just one of the
   blatant lies they have told in their continuing effort to finesse a
   pro-Gore result that they didnt anticipate, that runs counter to their
   financial interests, and that they had apparently chosen to
   indefinitely delay even before the terrorist attack on September 11.
   Next Part Three: More Consortium Dishonesty, which will be followed by
   an examination of the mainstream medias financial motivations in lying
   for Bush. We will look at the concerns of some that the current delay
   in releasing the results foreshadows another convoluted attempt by the
   mainstream media to award Bush the victory that was denied him by the
   voters. We will also reveal which famed captain of industry mobilized
   the media elite to rally behind Bush in 2000.

   THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY
   PART THREE: HITTING THE JACKPOT
   By Carolyn Kay and David Podvin
   In 2001, the natural gas industry enjoyed the spectacular benefits
   that resulted from both deregulation and the passive consent of a
   president who was an uncritical bystander as gas companies gouged the
   consumers of California for over twenty billion dollars in coerced
   lucre. It was the ultimate dream come true for every greedy business
   executive who had ever contributed to a presidential campaign. Kenneth
   Lay, chairman of the natural gas giant Enron and George W. Bushs
   single biggest financial supporter, converted political donations of
   hundreds of thousands of dollars into unregulated windfall profits of
   billions of dollars. He did it by buying the allegiance of an elected
   official who was supposed to be looking out for the public good.
   Lay was so convinced of his ownership rights in the Bush
   administration that he personally called the new chairman of the
   Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who told The New York Times that
   Mr. Lay, a close friend of President Bush's, offered him a deal: If he
   changed his views on electricity deregulation, Enron would continue to
   support him in his new job. This appointee has since resigned. As
   calculated by the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org),
   the return on investment for energy companies for supporting Bush has
   been 52,200 percent ($36,352,000,000 in tax breaks and subsidies
   divided by $69,500,000 in campaign contributions).
   Not a bad return at all.
   Lay was not the only corporate executive who ingratiated himself to
   George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign with the intention of riding
   the deregulation gravy train once Bush was in office.
   You are the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation. All of your
   training and your experience climbing the ladder of success has taught
   you that the only measure of that success is net worthyour companys,
   and your own. Your compensation package is structured so that
   significant increases in your companys net worth result in significant
   increases in your personal net worth.
   Your career is dependent on constantly improving the bottom line. Your
   personal net worth is a measure of your power and your importance.
   It is early in the year 2000, and it is becoming apparent that the two
   major candidates for president will be Al Gore, currently Vice
   President of the United States, and George W. Bush, currently the
   governor of Texas. The multi-billion dollar corporation you head owns
   a significant media subsidiary.
   You know that George W. Bush, son of a former president and a graduate
   of Yale University and the Harvard Business School, is running on the
   most pro-business platform since Calvin Coolidge. As governor of
   Texas, he kept the costs of polluters down with a program of voluntary
   compliance with environmental rules, and he made certain that
   regulatory agencies gave favorable treatment to his campaign
   contributors. He also cut taxes drastically, both for businesses and
   for wealthy individuals. Your confidence in him is greatly enhanced by
   the knowledge that, in every situation that contrasted the interests
   of big business with the common good, Bush sided with corporations.
   You have been advised of the people Bush will appoint to key
   governmental positions like the Federal Communications Commission, and
   you know that they will reduce regulations that now keep you from
   expanding your media empire, thereby creating great predatory
   opportunities for your company and yourself.
   You have every reason to believe that George W. Bush, if elected
   president, will implement policies that will greatly enhance the value
   of the corporation you run. There will be spectacular profits to be
   made just by eliminating the rule that prohibited corporations from
   owning both newspapers and TV stations in the same market. Under Bush,
   your ability to increase the size and power of your media holdings
   will be accompanied by the pricing leverage that can only come with
   monopolizing an essential service in a geographic area.
   Al Gore, on the other hand, is the son of a wealthy tobacco farmer and
   U.S. Senator. He has rather anti-business views. Known as a fairly
   deep thinker and an energetic doer, though somewhat stiff and formal
   in situations where he feels uncomfortable, he wrote a book that
   identified him as a passionate environmentalist. Gore believes in
   governmental regulation to protect workers, to force businesses to pay
   a minimum wage, and to protect the environment His social conscience
   would cost businesses like yours a great deal of money.
   You are aware that Gore opposes deregulation of the communications
   industry. You know he believes that the federal government should have
   an active role in protecting the public against actions by your
   company that might be profitable for you but harmful to society. He
   steadfastly opposed concentrating media power in just a few hands,
   including yours.
   You consider your media subsidiaries to be like any other aspect of
   your enterprise They exist to maximize your profits.
   As a corporate executive for a huge media conglomerate, you are
   confronted with a stark choice: Huge profits under a Bush
   Administration, or lesser revenues under Gore.
   Using our 20-20 hindsight, let us look at a few of the actions and
   proposals made by the Bush administration, after only nine months in
   office, that will benefit you and your corporation.
   Cabinet appointments and lower level staffers who are generally
   businesspeople, and often opponents of the objectives of the very
   agency they have been chosen to head. Your company will profit by
   reduction in government oversight over its activities.
   A bankruptcy bill that makes it harder for ordinary people to go
   bankrupt, even if their burden of debt was caused by loss of a job or
   huge medical bills due to catastrophic illness. Your company, if it
   does any lending, will profit. GE, for example, owns both NBC and the
   GE Financial Network.
   Repeal of workplace ergonomic rules that would keep workers from
   suffering repetitive-stress injuries. Your company will profit by not
   having to buy special furniture or design special workspaces for
   workers.
   Killing the rules that allowed government officials to consider
   whether a business has broken the law in the past, before awarding it
   a government contract. Your company will profit if you consider
   breaking the law, and paying fines if you are caught, merely a cost of
   doing business. Companies like GE, for example, about whom GE Workers
   United wrote, It is not surprising that the Project on Government
   Oversight has cited GE as having defrauded the U.S. government 16
   times in the 1990s, by far the largest number of any company.
   Proposing to partially privatize Social Security. Your company will
   presumably profit (no specifics have yet been proposed) by paying a
   reduced employer portion to FICA. If you are GE, you will benefit
   further since privatization is expected to be a bonanza for mutual
   funds. GE Capital Services is one of your subsidiaries.
   Giving a tax cut to the very richest Americans, even though the cut
   may endanger the Social Security pensions of the Baby Boomers. You,
   who are most likely paid tens of millions of dollars a year, will
   personally profit considerably.
   A proposal to reduce the capital gains tax. Since most of your
   compensation consists of stock options, you will pay much less tax on
   the money you gain from selling your stock.
   Because you run a media company, however, probably the most important
   action taken by the Bush administration was the appointment of Michael
   Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, as head of the Federal
   Communications Commission (FCC). Powell has never seen a merger that
   he doesnt like. As a commissioner of the FCC, he participated in the
   decision to allow the AOL/Time Warner merger, even though he had a
   conflict of interest because his father was a member of the AOL Board
   of Directors at the time, and holder of a significant number AOL stock
   options. Commenting on a rule that a single company may not own
   stations that reach more than 35% of households, Powell said, There is
   something offensive to First Amendment values about that limitation.
   Never mind the offenses to the First Amendment committed by the
   concentrated media we see today, where heads of news divisions are
   indistinguishable from the suits in the home office, and where the
   bottom line is all that matters.
   Even though six companies already own half of all communication media,
   you see many more lucrative outlets that you want to acquire. With
   further deregulation, your company can make billions more dollars by
   mergers and acquisitions. You dont even have to do the hard work of
   creating new lines of business. You can just buy them. You can reduce
   costs by centralizing certain functions. And the more media products
   you have, the more easily you can cross promote them.
   Mel Karmazin of Viacom/CBS has been the master of cross promotion of
   products throughout his company: The top songs on an Viacom subsidiary
   Infinity radio station playlist dovetail with what is being shown on
   Viacom subsidiary MTV, which coincides with what songs appear on
   Viacom subsidiary Paramount movie soundtracks, which parallels the
   singers that are profiled on Viacom subsidiary CBS news and
   entertainment programs. This omnipresent cross promotion creates
   media-as-perpetual-commercial, public interest be damned, with the
   multiplier effect increasing as the conglomerate expands.
   Under Bush, the pace of the hugely profitable cross promotion movement
   would be allowed to greatly accelerate.
   If your company has broadcast outlets, deregulation is even more
   important to you.
   Freedom from public service requirements would allow you to
   broadcast only those programs that make the most money. Forget
   childrens programming. Forget giving time to political candidates. An
   added benefit of giving political candidates less airtime is that you
   force them to buy more advertising, thereby adding to your profits.
   Freedom from language, sex, or violence restrictions would enable
   you to air any programming that earns ratings, now matter how vile,
   without fear of being fined. Karmazins golden goose Howard Stern would
   have no restrictions whatever on his language or his actions.
   Freedom from restrictions on ownership of news dissemination outlets
   in one city would allow you to promote your political point of view in
   entire markets, without any competition for those views.
   As a media executive, your concern is not the disadvantages that
   deregulation would inure to the general public. The pursuit of profits
   at the expense of journalistic integrity and editorial quality has had
   certain consequences for them, as well.
   Staff reductions in the service of ever more profits have resulted
   in less investigative reporting, and lower quality of the reporting
   that does exist. Reporters and editors rely more on press releases as
   sources of information, but lack the resources to check the facts
   asserted in them.
   A mentality of caring for ratings above all cheapens news reporting,
   dumbs it down, and causes an increase in reporting on celebrities.
   Advertisers are king in this environment. If they do not like a
   topic, that topic is not published or aired, even if it is something
   the public needs to understand in order to make informed decisions at
   the polls.
   The more concentrated the industry, the less likely news outlets are
   to initiate investigative reports about one another. And your news
   division does not investigate other subsidiaries of your conglomerate.
   Editors know that they have to be careful how they report on certain
   people because you socialize with the people your journalists cover.
   Reportedly, Katherine Graham once kept a story critical of Henry
   Kissinger from being published in her newspaper, the Washington Post,
   until after she had hosted a dinner party in his honor.
   According to Jerold M. Starr, writing on the website TomPaine.com,
   famed retired broadcaster Walter Cronkite has complained that news
   executives are helpless when top management demands an increase in
   ratings to protect profits. No wonder Americans are watching and
   reading mainstream media less and less.
   You do not have to tell the reporters and editors who work for your
   media empire how to report the news the way you want to see it. You
   are much more subtle than that. If you are Jack Welch, CEO of GE
   during this time, you make examples of certain people. Tim Russert,
   for example, pleases you. He calls the Bush campaigns opposition
   research team every few days to find out what dirt they have invented
   about Al Gore lately. And he reports their lies as fact. You publicly
   praise Russert. You make certain that everyone knows you have
   personally rewarded him with a multi-million dollar contract.. He is a
   daily reminder to his colleagues of the benefits of being an obedient
   employee.
   Claire Shipman is another story, however. You are not happy with her.
   Her assignment is to cover the Gore campaign, but in your opinion her
   reporting is too favorable to the Vice President. You chew her out
   publicly. Her departure from your newsroom sends a powerful message to
   those who remain.
   Without issuing a memo or giving verbal commands, you have insured
   that your journalist employees have gotten the message about how they
   should cover the campaign.
   Still assuming that you are Jack Welch, you met with Bush at the
   beginning of his administration to give him your advice regarding
   economic policy. You had input into an energy policy that recommends
   use of nuclear power, and building of nuclear plants, one of your
   companys lines of business. Bush even nominated Francis S. Blake,
   formerly your Senior Vice President for Corporate Business
   Development, as Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy.
   George Bush supported your bid to merge with the large European
   computer company Honeywell. The deal did not go through only because
   it was stopped by the EEU.
   The Bush administration has ordered a cleanup of the Hudson River, to
   be paid for by GE. But before the election GE had every reason to
   believe it would not be forced to pay the $460 million cost of the
   cleanup. According to the CNN AllPolitics website, GE thought it had a
   deal, says an industry lobbyist. After all, James Connaughton, a
   lawyer who represented GE in Superfund legal fights, was appointed by
   Bush to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
   Welchs reaction: GE is paying the price for Kyoto and arsenic. He
   understood that Bush wanted to come through for GE, but political
   pressure from those in his own party, including the governor of New
   York, prevented it. Still, the former GE chairman is ecstatic about
   his favorite politicians performance thus far: President Bush has done
   a great job, said Welch. Hes even exceeded the expectations of those
   of us who supported him.
   That support was in part financial. According to GE Workers United, GE
   uses its enormous political war chest to lobby for greater corporate
   welfare and fewer benefits for ordinary American citizens. The Center
   for Responsive Politics reported that GE contributed almost a million
   dollars to the GOP in 2000. However, a far more valuable contribution
   was the fawning pro-Bush coverage on NBC News. This began with NBC
   dutifully repeating Bush campaign slurs against John McCain in the
   Republican primaries, and continued nonstop through the post-election
   Florida contest when Tim Russert demanded that Al Gore concede even
   before the votes were recounted.
   You, the CEO of a huge diversified conglomerate that owns a media
   conglomerate, had a tremendous financial interest in seeing that
   George Bush was elected president. You had every reason to believe
   that his administration would provide great benefits to you and to
   your company. Bush has begun to follow through. The decision by the
   FCC to eliminate the rule that limited concentrated corporate
   ownership of the media will, by itself, make your commitment to the
   Bush campaign one of the great investments in American corporate
   history.
   You have already hit the jackpot, and theres more to come. If FCC
   Chairman Michael Powell follows through on his promise to deregulate
   your industry as much as possible, then extraordinary wealth awaits
   the media giants who supported George W. Bush in 2000.
   In business, wise decisions are defined as those that create wealth.
   It does not matter in the least to a hardheaded businessperson that
   the majority of those who voted in the 2000 presidential campaign
   voted for Al Gore. It does not matter that the issues Al Gore
   supported are the issues supported by large majorities of the American
   people. It does not matter that the views of the majority are
   increasingly unrepresented in the mainstream media.
   As A. J. Liebling once observed, Freedom of the press is guaranteed to
   anyone who owns one.
   You have done everything in your power to put George W. Bush in the
   White House. He has given your company huge monetary benefits in
   return. Your industry has demonstrated a willingness to do what is
   necessary to keep Bush politically healthy, sometimes in spite of
   himself. It is so important to your financial interests that he
   remains popular enough to effectively promote your agenda that nothing
   he says or does merits the pummeling you applied to his uncooperative
   predecessor. Looking at the coverage of Bush that you and your fellow
   media titans provide to the American people, no one would ever suspect
   that your favorite politician has been at the helm of a nine month
   transformation from peace and prosperity to war and recession.
   If your company is a member of the Consortium of newspapers that
   commissioned the National Opinion Research Center of the University of
   Chicago to perform the definitive study of all uncounted ballots in
   the Florida 2000 presidential election, then your reporters in Florida
   have witnessed the decisive pro-Gore trend of that study. Your
   corporation has a tremendous financial incentive to keep the accurate
   results of that study from becoming public, given that the results
   will delegitimize the politician who is promoting your business
   interests.
   The media conglomerates chose sides in the 2000 election based on the
   one and only thing that matters to multinational corporations profit.
   They accurately determined that George W. Bush was the candidate who
   would best allow them to maximize that profit. They have a huge
   financial stake in the political well being of Bush. And now, they
   have the results of a ballot study in Florida that unexpectedly shows
   a decisive victory for Al Gore.
   Journalistic integrity dictates that they release the accurate results
   of that study to the public.
   Financial self-interest dictates that they do not.
   Unless public pressure causes the media elite to decide that failing
   to release the accurate results of the ballot study would do them more
   harm than good, it is likely that financial self interest will trump
   journalistic integrity.
   As usual.

   Sources
   Janine Jackson, Their Man in Washington, Fairness and Accuracy in
   Media, October 2001
   Jerold M. Starr, Needed: An Independent Public Broadcasting Service,
   TomPaine.com, October 5, 2001
   GE Workers United, General Electric and Corporate Political Influence,
   geworkersunited.org, June 2001
   Jeffrey Kluger, Here comes the dredge, CNN.com, undated
   Media Research Center, NBC News Cheering for Gore, August 28, 2001
   Danny Schechter, Where Have All The Muckrakers Gone?,
   mediachannel.org, October 3, 2001
   Martin Lewis, This May Be a Pre-Mortem of the 2000 Campaign, Time,
   Nov. 03, 2000
   Media Whores Online, The Welch-Russert Connection, undated

   THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY
   PART FOUR: DEMOCRACY, GENERAL ELECTRIC STYLE
   By David Podvin and Carolyn Kay
   Shortly after George W. Bush declared his candidacy for president in
   June of 1999, General Electric Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
   Jack Welch was contacted by Bush political advisor Karl Rove. Welch
   later informed associates that Rove told him a Bush administration
   would initiate comprehensive deregulation of the broadcast industry.
   Rove guaranteed that deregulation would be implemented in a way that
   would create phenomenal profits for conglomerates with significant
   media holdings, like GE. Rove forcefully argued that General Electric
   and the other media giants had a compelling financial interest to see
   Bush become president.
   Welch told several people at GE that the conversation with Rove
   convinced him that a Bush presidency would ultimately result in
   billions of dollars of additional profits for General Electric. Welch
   believed that it was his responsibility to operate in the best
   interest of GE shareholders, and that now meant using the full power
   of the worlds biggest corporation to get Bush into the White House.
   Toward that end, Welch said that he would finally deal with a
   longstanding grievance of his: the ludicrous idea that news
   organizations should be allowed to operate in conflict with the best
   interests of the corporations that own them.
   Since the beginning of the country, it has been considered appropriate
   for the business community to exercise its right to aggressively
   support the candidate that best represented its interests. The new
   dimension that Welch introduced was the concept that the mainstream
   media should aggressively advance the political agenda of the
   corporations that own it. He did not see any difference between
   corporate journalism and corporate manufacturing or corporate service
   industries. Business was business, and the difference between winners
   and losers was profit, whether you were selling nuclear power or ads
   on the network news. From Welchs perspective, it was insanity, not to
   mention bad business practice, for the corporate owners of the
   mainstream media to restrain themselves from using all of their assets
   to promote their financial well being.
   In general, he saw corporate news organizations as untapped political
   resources that should be freed from the burden of objectivity.
   Specifically, NBC News was an asset owned by the shareholders of
   General Electric. It existed to make profits and to serve the
   interests of those who owned GE stock. Period.
   Anything else, Welch told associates, was liberal bullshit.
   In 1988, NBC News president Lawrence Grossman insisted to Welch that
   news was a public trust and should not be subjected to the same
   pressure to make profits that was applied to other GE units. Welch
   fired him.
   In 1999, the GE chairman decided that it was no longer good enough for
   NBC News to just be profitable. Seven years of a frequently
   uncooperative Democratic Administration, combined with the
   Rove-inspired vision of spectacular profits through deregulation, now
   motivated Welch to take action.
   He began to aggressively, but very discreetly, evangelize the gospel
   of corporate media as corporate lobbying tool. It was not a new
   concept; in the opinion of many, it was already the status quo. But
   from Welchs point of view, the corporate news organizations were not
   living up to their potential.
   The mainstream media could make George W. Bush president.
   That would be good for Americans who believed in free markets and the
   merit system, Welch said.
   Better yet, it would help to make General Electric even more
   successful and dominant, which had been Welchs obsession for decades.
   Jack Welch believed that, despite earning millions annually in salary
   and bonuses, he was the most underpaid employee at GE. From the time
   he started running the company in 1981 to the end of 1999, the stock's
   total return (price appreciation and dividends) had been seven
   thousand percent. Given the brilliance of that performance, how could
   he possibly be overpaid, or even fairly paid? From Welchs perspective,
   it was the pennies-per-hour workers in General Electrics Asian
   sweatshops who were overpaid, because their individual contributions
   to the big picture were so meager.
   The philosopher Ayn Rand wrote, The actual performance of men in
   society is a constant, fierce, undefined struggle between the genius
   and the parasite
   To Welch, although George W. Bush might not be a genius, his policies
   would encourage those who were geniuses to be even more innovative and
   productive. Fewer government regulations and lower corporate taxes
   would create technological advancement, thereby benefiting society
   more than all of the do-gooder social programs combined ever could.
   The country would be run for the benefit of the A people who achieved
   great things, not the C people who merely existed. In such a laissez
   faire environment, the powerful would be unshackled to become even
   more powerful, and no corporation in the world was more powerful than
   General Electric.
   By contrast, Welch viewed Al Gore as the candidate of the parasites.
   Gore voters were not the generators of wealth; they were the consumers
   of taxes. Welch privately described the typical Gore voter as someone
   who needs all these goddamned social programs because shes too
   goddamned dumb to keep her legs crossed and too goddamned lazy to get
   an abortion.
   This view of the world led Welch to implore associates at GE that
   doing whatever it took to get George W. Bush into the presidency was
   not only good for General Electric, it was good for America.
   Having satisfied himself that his cause was just, Welch focused on
   putting his candidate in the White House with the tireless
   determination of a man whom Business Week described as having an
   unbridled passion for winning.
   He had previously personally reviewed the launch of CNBC. He now
   turned his attention to reforming the editorial content of NBC News.
   Welch had already secured his place as one of the business titans of
   the twentieth century. He expressed few regrets to confidantes, but he
   was wistful about his belief that GE would have made even more money
   if NBC News had just been tougher on a politically vulnerable Arkansas
   governor in 1992. With only about two years left prior to his
   mandatory retirement, one of Jack Welchs last significant
   contributions would be to permanently eliminate the irrational belief
   that corporate journalists should ever be allowed to act in a way that
   damaged the corporate balance sheet.
   For public consumption, he said the obligatory things about GEs
   commitment to journalistic integrity and independence. Privately, he
   saw only two differences between his employees who reported the news
   and those who made toasters: one, the toaster makers were less full of
   shit, and, two, the journalists were not working in the best interests
   of the GE team.
   This second point infuriated him. It galled Welch to hear what he
   considered to be holier-than-thou pronouncements of personal moral
   superiority coming from journalists whom he viewed to be inferior to
   himself in just about every conceivable way. GE signed their
   paychecks, and then in the name of journalistic integrity and
   independence, they reported things that damaged the company. NBC News
   had even publicized that the federal government caught a GE defense
   subsidiary stealing massive amounts of taxpayer money. From the Welch
   perspective, tolerating this kind of insubordination was crazy. He did
   not view reporters as guardians of the truth or gatekeepers of
   democracy; for the most part, he saw them as leftist slackasses.
   Welch was absolutely determined to make his employees at NBC News
   finally genuflect to the most sacred words in his vocabulary: GE
   bottom line.
   He perceived that there was a widely believed American myth of
   well-intended journalists selflessly seeking the truth, and that there
   would be hell to pay if a business leader like him were to overtly
   force reporters to be good corporate soldiers. So, being a very bright
   guy, he largely left the journalists at NBC alone.
   Publicly.
   In private, Welch was proud to have personally cultivated Tim Russert
   from a lefty to a responsible representative of GE interests. Welch
   sincerely believed that all liberals were phonies. He took great
   pleasure in buying their leftist souls, watching in satisfaction as
   former Democrats like Russert and MSNBCs Chris Matthews eagerly
   discarded the baggage of their former progressive beliefs in exchange
   for cold hard GE cash. Russert was now an especially obedient and
   model employee in whom the company could take pride.
   ''It's a double-edged sword to be under Jack's detailed look,'' one GE
   executive told Fortune Magazine. ''If you do well, it's great. If you
   don't, it's bad news.
   It was bad news for NBC correspondent Claire Shipman, who made the
   mistake of offering a positive opinion of Al Gore on the air. Jack
   Welch, chairman and chief executive officer of a $350 billion
   conglomerate, responsible for overseeing the highly diversified
   activities of hundreds of thousands of employees working in over one
   hundred countries, was so incensed by her disobedience that he took
   time out of his busy schedule to personally confront her about it.
   She no longer works for NBC. And her managing editor, Tom Brokaw, did
   not stand up for her right to journalistic independence from the
   corporate lord.
   I think Jack Welchs the smartest boss Ive ever had and he signs my
   paychecks, said Brokaw, exhibiting a profound understanding of the
   situation.
   Over the years, Welch had occasionally interfered with NBC News.
   During the 1987 stock market crash, he ordered Grossman to forbid his
   journalists from using the term Black Monday out of concern that a
   panic by investors would depress GE stock.
   Welch has an explosive temper. When the chairman exploded at Shipman,
   Brokaw knew that, from the standpoint of journalistic integrity, the
   managing editor was obligated to rush to his reporters defense. Brokaw
   also knew that, from the standpoint of self-preservation, it was wise
   for the managing editor to obediently defer to the man who signed his
   paychecks.
   The Welch mission was to tame the rest of them at NBC News, and to do
   so in a way that did not cause any journalistic prima donnas to
   attract unwanted public attention by openly revolting. Beyond that,
   Welch hoped to quietly convince other media conglomerates that the
   great visionary (himself) was once again in the vanguard of an
   exciting and highly profitable corporate trend: the total destruction
   of any wall that separated the newsroom from the boardroom.
   Welch decided that the key factor in bringing the corporate newsrooms
   into line would be to change the process through which journalists
   were compensated and promoted. When he took over at GE, Welch believed
   that the way in which people were being advanced rewarded mediocrity.
   The unworthy candidates were being weeded out, but so were the most
   worthy. As in many companies, managers were hesitant to promote highly
   gifted subordinates who could later become rivals.
   Welch has repeatedly been named the most admired executive in America,
   an assessment that he considered to be valid years before anyone
   outside GE had heard of him. His supreme self-confidence allowed him
   to demand that the best and the brightest be promoted, secure in the
   knowledge that no one could possibly be better or brighter than Jack
   Welch. As a result of aggressive management training that cost
   hundreds of millions of dollars, GE developed the strongest stable of
   managers in corporate America.
   Welch believed that the promotion practices at NBC News encouraged
   disloyalty to General Electric. It was his observation that
   journalistic excellence seemed to be the flimsy, intangible standard
   for getting ahead in the news division. He decided that the criteria
   had to be changed to encourage loyal contributions to the employer,
   which was GE. The crucial step that Welch took was to make it well
   known throughout NBC News that the standard for the promotion of
   journalists would be the same as it was for every other employee in
   the corporation: outstanding contribution to the financial well being
   of General Electric.
   The journalists who had their paychecks signed by Welch knew that
   favorable coverage of George W. Bush would be considered an
   outstanding contribution to the financial well being of General
   Electric.
   In fairness, it should be noted that Jack Welch did not believe he was
   doing anything wrong by covertly maneuvering news coverage in favor of
   Bush. Apparently, Jack Welch has never believed that he was doing
   anything wrong.
   Author William Greider documented the criminal and civil record of
   General Electric during the late 1980s and early nineties. Over a five
   year period, Jack Welchs company attempted to pay a $1.25 million
   bribe to a Puerto Rican official for a $92 million dollar power plant
   contract and three GE executives were imprisoned as a result; GE
   defrauded the army on a $254 million contract for battlefield
   computers and paid tens of millions of dollars in fines; GE allegedly
   overcharged the army for battle tank parts and paid a $900,000
   settlement; GE paid a $32 million settlement for discriminating
   against women and minorities; GE defrauded the air force on a missile
   contract and paid $1 million in fines; GE was identified as being
   responsible for at least 47 Superfund toxic cleanup sites; GE paid a
   $3 million settlement for allegedly altering labor vouchers in order
   to overcharge the Pentagon on jet engine contracts; and GE paid an
   undisclosed amount for knowingly selling defective nuclear reactor
   parts.
   The scandals for Welch and General Electric continued through this
   year. Since 1992, GE has been forced to pay hundreds of millions of
   dollars in court judgments and fines for endangering Americans by
   illegally and repeatedly dumping toxic waste and chemicals, stealing
   from the military, operating unsafe workplaces, engaging in deceptive
   advertising, contaminating the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers, selling
   defective nuclear reactor parts (again), allowing safety violations at
   a fuel fabrication plant, polluting the air and contaminating the soil
   and groundwater in several states, creating asbestos-related health
   hazards in England, contaminating drinking water in Puerto Rico and
   bribing the Puerto Rico Water Resources Authority, polluting several
   northeastern states with PCBs, overcharging on mortgage insurance,
   practicing money laundering and unfair debt collection, bribing a
   foreign government, and knowingly broadcasting a phony news story. The
   company also had to admit that it invented three hundred fifty million
   dollars in nonexistent profits.
   This is a partial list of the illegal activities perpetrated by
   General Electric under the leadership of Jack Welch. Mr. Welch claimed
   that the quickest way for a GE employee to get fired was to commit an
   integrity violation. Employees who committed the integrity violation
   of missing an earnings target usually did get fired; those who
   committed the integrity violations listed in the preceding two
   paragraphs rarely got fired.
   Americas most admired executive prided himself on knowing every aspect
   of his company, but he also passionately declared that he was ignorant
   of all wrongdoing by his company. The leader who micromanaged GE to
   the point of insisting on reviewing the scripts for refrigerator
   commercials contends that he only learned after the fact that General
   Electric was constantly committing serious crimes.
   Following the conversation with Rove, Welch instructed a subordinate
   to impress on senior NBC executives that the news division would now
   be expected to show the same unqualified devotion to General Electric
   that was required of every other unit. He was unusually circumspect
   because he realized that Clinton appointees in the Federal
   Communications Commission would have taken a dim view of his
   activities. Welch knew from his companys countless run-ins with the
   law that the authorities could be outmaneuvered if things were handled
   with finesse.
   He quietly began to dramatically change the way that things were done
   at NBC News. A link was established between the producers of the
   Sunday morning program Meet The Press and the opposition research team
   of the Republican Party. Delighted G.O.P. operatives were soon
   boasting that Tim Russert would go on the air just minutes after
   receiving their allegations of wrongdoing by Al Gore, and would repeat
   their charges verbatim. Russert was not functioning as a journalist;
   he had crossed the Rubicon and was acting as a mouthpiece for General
   Electrics favorite political party.
   Welch greatly appreciated Russert, whose multi-million dollar contract
   he personally negotiated. The message circulated throughout NBC News
   that Russert was an excellent role model for reporters who wanted to
   succeed in the organization. Reporters at NBC News did not have to be
   verbally instructed on how to get ahead; they clearly saw that the
   Russert approach was handsomely rewarded by top management.
   Reporter Andrea Mitchell of NBC Nightly News was married to Federal
   Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was a longtime Republican
   and protigi of Ayn Rand. Mitchell was a Welch favorite because he
   liked her objectivity, which meant that she never had a positive word
   to say about Democrats. After the election, it was Mitchell who
   repeatedly lied when reporting that Clinton aides had vandalized the
   White House and stolen from Air Force One. Bush operatives were later
   quoted as saying that the phony vandalism story was a big help in
   creating the desired contrast between the sleazy Clinton years and the
   breath of fresh air that George W. Bush wanted to represent. Mitchell
   never retracted or apologized when the Government Accounting Office
   proved that she had been dishonest, and she was never disciplined.
   There is also no evidence of Mitchell ever being angrily confronted by
   Jack Welch.
   Welch told associates that he enlisted two members of the GE board to
   assist him in shaping the coverage of the election by other news
   organizations. Robert Wright had previously been appointed by Welch to
   run NBC. Welch assigned him and his fellow GE board member, money
   center bank executive Sandy Warner, to use their contacts in
   broadcasting and finance. They quietly encouraged the executives of
   the mainstream media organizations to rethink the relationship between
   news divisions and business objectives.
   Wright offered the carrot. Usually through underlings, he contacted
   the executives of Americas most influential media conglomerates. Bush
   held a huge post-impeachment lead over Gore in the early presidential
   polls. The executives were told that Bush was going to have a massive
   advantage in campaign finances, and that he was almost certainly going
   to be elected president. Under a Bush administration, the big media
   outfits would be free to prosper as never before, because the federal
   government would cease to put limitations on their operations and
   expansion. A Bush administration would mean untold riches for the
   industry.
   Wright was also the former chief executive of GE Capital, a money
   center powerhouse that contributes more than a third of GEs profits,
   and would be the nations twentieth largest corporation as a
   stand-alone company. He knew that General Electric would win big, even
   when it was not directly involved in the inevitable media mega-mergers
   that were certain to be approved by a Bush administration. According
   to Fortune Magazine, Capital's growth comes in many forms, but nothing
   equals the bottom-line boost of a big acquisition. GE would make huge
   profits by purchasing media conglomerates and by financing the deals
   of others.
   Warner and his associates wielded the stick. As chairman of banking
   institution J.P. Morgan, he had great credibility when he argued that
   the key to winning the media competition in a laissez faire Bush era
   would be access to investment capital for the purpose of acquiring
   competitors. Those who had the best relationships with the big
   international banks, brokerage houses, and investment banking firms
   would be the predators; those who had trouble raising money would be
   the prey.
   There were never any explicit threats, but the implication was
   unavoidable: Bush is going to win, so you can join the team now or you
   can be on the outside looking in later. The only thing that will be
   affected is your livelihood.
   They did not have to use pressure tactics to convince Mel Karmazin of
   Viacom/CBS. Karmazin had always viewed news as an underprofitable
   millstone around the neck of the entertainment division. His vision
   was to make Viacom a vast network of interlocking media interests that
   would cross promote their products in order to maximize profit. Though
   CBS News had a reputation for being more liberal than its
   counterparts, Karmazins only political objective was to expand his
   business. The prospect of having an administration that would allow
   him to build an empire without interference was compelling.
   Karmazin was also excited by assurances that Bush would appoint an
   ineffectual lackey to head the Federal Communications Commission.
   Karmazins Infinity Broadcasting had been acquired by CBS in the deal
   that gave him operational control of the entire network. Over the
   years, the FCC had fined Infinity millions of dollars because of the
   profane and lewd behavior of Karmazins most profitable broadcaster,
   Howard Stern. The Stern broadcasts generated massive profits and
   wonderful cross promotion, so the fines could have been viewed as the
   cost of doing a phenomenally profitable business. However, the painful
   aspect to Karmazin were the delays in approving broadcast mergers that
   occurred because FCC commissioners were alienated by Sterns scornful
   defiance of them. Karmazin seethed at being harangued by the federal
   government just because his meal ticket spewed profane and racist
   epithets over the public airwaves, and performed social services like
   arranging for a high school boy to attend his prom with a porn star
   whose claim to fame was having intercourse with five hundred men in
   one day.
   Millions of Americans supported Bush because they believed he would
   promote family values; Karmazin threw the support of CBS News behind
   Bush on the basis that family values were a campaign mirage, and that
   Bush had no intention of implementing them into public policy. While
   Bush has been president, Stern has continued to shout the same
   vulgarities and peddle the same sleaze over the air, but the intense
   pressure that was applied by the FCC during the Democratic era has not
   continued during the family values administration.
   Karmazin personally contributed a thousand dollars each to the
   presidential campaigns of Vice President Al Gore and John McCain, who
   was the Senate chairman of the Commerce Committee before which Viacom
   would have to do business.
   The contribution that George W. Bush received from Mel Karmazin was
   infinitely more valuable: uncritical coverage by CBS News. When Bush
   stumbled and lost the New Hampshire primary, and when he repeatedly
   tripped over his invented facts in the first debate, and even when he
   staggered at the very end of the campaign after having been caught
   lying about his drunk driving arrest, the adjective that CBS News
   reporters most frequently used to describe him was likeable.
   The attitude at ABC was an extension of the personality of Disney
   Chairman Michael Eisner. Eisner does not like those who make waves, as
   the host of Politically Incorrect recently learned. After Bill Maher
   said that it was cowardly of America to fight battles by launching
   missiles from a safe distance, Eisner went out of his way to very
   publicly slap Maher down. This episode provided outsiders with a rare
   glimpse inside the corporate culture of the happy company that Mickey
   Mouse built: do not rock the boat or youre in trouble. Eisner will
   always stand up for principle, no matter what the cost, says a former
   Disney executive, as long as that principle involves increasing his
   personal compensation.
   As a result, the candidate who held out the prospect of fabulous
   wealth for the broadcast industry got favorable coverage from ABC
   News. 
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