Media O.D.

And Clinton's retaliation for the bombings was dismissed as "wagging the dog."

But that was also because of the political game the Republicans were playing, namely suggesting that there's a domestic motive for fighting against terrorists. There's a political corruption here, too. Of course, if the Democrats tried that this year, they'd be creamed for it.

Do conservative viewpoints come off better than liberal ones on TV?

Yes, and on the radio, too.

Why is this the case? And is that why Fox News is so popular?

Some of the argument is made by Jeffrey Scheuer in his book "The Sound Bite Society." What plays best on television is melodrama, what I call "percussive punditry," in which the point is to pound and to stir resounding reverberations. That's easier done when you have polarized positions and simple, moralistic declarations. The right is better at that than the left. The right isn't interested in nuance. Rush Limbaugh's people proudly call themselves Dittoheads. The left has many sins, but people on the left tend to be looser and more uncomfortable with flat moralistic declarations. This imbalance gives an advantage to the right.

Also, there's the fact that Rupert Murdoch or his equivalents in other enterprises are obviously far more comfortable with right-wing fanaticism than left-wing fanaticism for obvious ideological reasons. But the barking head phenomenon -- the Sunday morning CNN, post-McLaughlin inspired approach -- is better suited to a sort of hypermasculine aggressiveness. This aggressiveness somehow finds it more comfortable to beat up on elected politicians than on corporate types.

And this is partly because of the liberality, the tolerant social attitudes of the pundits and the news executives. They're actually bending over backward to demonstrate that they don't have it in for Republicans. This bend-over-backward effect has been in play since Reagan. You have to ask why it is that people who are rather tolerant and anti-repressive on social issues are actually kind to Reagan, to people around Bush Sr., to James Baker, to the Bush operation in Florida and now, to Cheney and Ashcroft. They're at pains to demonstrate that they are rugged Americans and not pussies.

What do you think about the popularity of Fox News, and what kind of effect do you think it will have on network news in general?

Something interesting is going on. The latest figures about cable news in general are quite striking because there's been a big upset since Sept. 11 in the aggregate of the three cable news operations. Up through 2000, the total audience during the course of a day during normal times was under a million. Now it's a million and a half and bumping up toward 2 million. And Fox seems to be the major beneficiary of this.

People like Fox better than CNN. They like Bill O'Reilly's kick-ass style. CNN is the unchromed, stripped-down truck and Fox is some sort of snazzy, rattling muffler sports car. That's one factor. Secondly, a war mood brings out an aggressive devotion to simplification. CNN is scared of its shadow on this score, going back to the Gulf War when Peter Arnett was excoriated for staying in Baghdad and accused of virtual treason by Alan K. Simpson, the former senator from Wyoming, and others. [Simpson called Arnett an Iraqi sympathizer but later apologized.]

Today, we have Fox News executives ... I've seen in-house memos, this remarkable e-mail that was sent out in the fall. This is a message from a Fox News senior vice president to staff, dated November 28, 2001:

"Let's not get sidetracked worrying about the plight of Afghans this winter, or how many children are undernourished. We can help that country as soon as they cough up the guys who killed 5,000 Americans. When in doubt, take a look at the WTC collapsing."

It shouldn't be surprising, but it's hard not to be a little shocked when you actually hear something like that. And do you think that networks will follow this lead?

Ideologically? The question is how strong are the counterpressures. You could make commercial arguments for counterpressures by saying that Fox will corral the yahoos so [other networks should try to] to corral the non-yahoos. That's product-differentiation logic rather than journalistic principle.

The discouraging thing about CNN is how ready they were before Sept. 11 to turn into a news-magazine fluff network, which is, after all, where the news magazines have gone. That's where Walter Isaacson, chairman and CEO of the CNN News Group, comes from. There was that famous memo from Isaacson, after he took over at CNN, saying that it was time to do more soft news. He was also running around cultivating Trent Lott and others in Washington. Then they had to fling some reporters into Pakistan and other places from which they were planning to retreat. I suspect that as they flounder about looking for a mission ... I don't think they're going to be looking for left-of-center counterparts to Robert Novak.

An interesting passage in "Media Unlimited" was about your experience with NBC news. They manipulated your opinions about the Gulf War, and some of your friends and colleagues were pretty angry about it. The episode basically drove home that these news shows have their stories written long before they do the interviews.

I was living in Berkeley, sometime in 1988, and ABC did a "Person of the Week" on Tom Hayden. I guess Tom was a delegate to the Democratic Convention at the time. It was clear to me when the producer called that the line of the piece was "this is where '60s activists have gone." On the phone, I said that I thought that was one thing that was going on but that there were other things going on, too. I wasn't included in the piece. What I said was too complicated. It's extremely common. I'm frequently called by reporters for comments on this or that and not always, but half the time, I know what I'm expected to say. I'm being cast for a part.

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