The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Friday, September 30, 2005
Steyn and Hewitt on the State of the Media
Radio Blogger has his weekly transcript of the Hugh Hewitt/Mark Steyn interview, and this week the cross-hairs are appropriately targeted directed at big media:
HH: Joined now by Mark Steyn, columnist to the world. All of his material available at Steynonline.com. Mark, I've had the strangest day. I've been over taping at PBS, the News Hour, a segment about what the media did, or didn't do in New Orleans. I've been going back and forth with the editor of CBS' Public Eye over their ridiculous attempt to list journo-bloggers, and my slashing of his young cub reporter. And I think American media is in a meltdown. I really do. What do you think?
MS: Well, I think to quote that great panjandrum, Dan Rather, the other day he was on TV, and he hailed the coverage of Katrina, because he said they'd done what journalists are there to do, and that is to speak truth to power. That's actually what they didn't to. In fact, they just took these ludicrous statements from Mayor Nagin, and his police chief in New Orleans, 10,000 dead, there's babies being raped, there's people being tortured and murdered, and they just put it all out on TV without bothering to check whether any of it was correct or not. And one thing I've learned since September 11th, is that a lot of things that 90% of journalists claim as fact are not fact. I mean, it started on about September the 12th, when people said we couldn't invade Afghanistan, because of the quote brutal Afghan winter...
HH: Right.
MS: ...end quote. They were going to have American troops bogged down in temperatures of 60 below Fahrenheit, as their eyebrows froze and all the rest of it. And in fact, Afghanistan's winters are a lot wilder and milder than the northern half of the United States, and the whole of Canada. And in fact, milder than southern England, in large parts. I mean, there are just things...you have to say to yourself that the herd mentality of American journalists now is way out of control, and we don't need a 9/11 commission, or a Louisiana hurricane commission or anything. I think there's something to be said for a commission investigating the media.
HH: Well, I think they've gone into the movie making business. That the facts don't matter. That the pictures all matter, and the story matters. And as a result, what they retailed out of the convention center, the seven year old with the slashed throat, the freezer full of bodies, just shows everything that American media can marshall and throw at a story, it threw at Katrina, and it got it wrong. What's that tell us about what they're reporting from Iraq, much less the Afghan winter, which is at least in a Farmer's Almanac?
MS: Well, you know, I think what's happening in Iraq is that they're all sitting around in the hotel bar in the Green Zone, and they're all talking to each other. They're all being supplied...a lot of people don't understand the media works. If you're in a country like Iraq, there aren't a lot of people whose Arabic is very good. So when you get to Iraq, you're supplied generally with a translator. The big news organizations have translators. Who are those translators? The ones that CNN and ABC and a lot of the big newspapers are using are actually the old Baath party translators. And there's not actually a lot...one of the great things about the situation in Iraq is that there are a lot of military bloggers, and there's quite a few freelance bloggers and Iraqi bloggers out there who are in these various towns, giving you a quite different picture. But the herd mentality of journalism, the group think of journalism...I mean, I'm always...I was once, a couple of years back, I was talking to a couple of journalists in New York, and they were asking whether I was going to be back in town for something. I said I wouldn't be able to, because I was going hunting. And they were stunned. Their jaws hit the floor.
HH: Yes, stunned.
MS: Now millions of Americans own guns. Millions of Americans are evangelical or Christian. Millions of Americans oppose abortion. But how many of those millions of Americans would find kindred spirits in the average New York Times or Washington Post or CBS Newsrooms?
HH: Exactly. When I was at the Columbia School of Journalism last week, I quizzed a group of students, sixteen, how many owned a gun? None. How many had been to church in the last month? Three. How many voted for Kerry? All but three who were not American citizens. It is an intake valve that is permanently stuck on left of center. And as a result, that's what happens to the media. I've got to move to a couple of other things. The Delay story...talk about your herd mentality. I have never seen as big a non-event reported as extensively as this, because he's still running the House Caucus, Mark Steyn. Does anyone doubt that? Don't they know that?
MS: Well, I think the Democrats for years now have made the mistake of...because they're not great issues people, and they make the mistake of, as they say in English soccer, playing the man, not the ball. And so, they're very good at actually practicing the politics of personal destruction on various Congressional functionaries that most of the American people haven't heard of.
HH: Right.
MS: And they get rid of the guy, and some other guy nobody's ever heard of takes over, and life goes on, and the ideas, which is what's important about conservatism, those ideas stay strong. And until Democrats learn to stop wasting their time trying to do a...take a contract out on some peripheral political figure and actually attack the ideas, they're always going to be losing elections.
HH: But I think there's...AOL right now is running a double box with pictures of Delay and Frist, that says it's a bad week for Republicans. I'm laughing because John Roberts just got confirmed 78-22, and Chuck Schumer is knee deep in trying to rifle the files of a black Lt. Governor in Maryland.
MS: Yeah.
HH: I live on a different planet than these people.
MS: That's a great example of the media group think, because they essentially buy into...what we saw in the vote today is that there's actually 22 votes for abortion absolutism in the United States Congress, that in fact, that is the losing side. And yet, when Chuck Schumer says oh, we require the president to nominate a judge who's in the mainstream, nobody in the media stops to think, well, heck what he means by mainstream. It's the side that keeps losing elections. It's a preposterous definition of mainstream.
HH: And 22. It's less than a quarter of the Senate believes this. And yet, their influence on their caucus is predominant.
MS: Yes, and if you look at that 22, they're tightly confined to a very limited geographic fringe of the country. Basically, the part of the country that are near large bodies of waters, like oceans and great lakes.
HH: Yeah.
MS: It's a very unrepresentative geographical corner that the liberal Democrats are being backed into. And as long as they are the tail that's wagging the dog, the Democrats are never going to be a 51% governing party again.
HH: Now let's turn to the October 15th election. From what you read, the people you've talked to, do you think this Constitution will pass?
MS: Yes, I think it will. And I think, you know, in New York state, after the American revolution, a majority of the population, actually, moved up north to Ontario. They're still known as the United Empire loyalists up in Canada. And by those standards, the consensus achieved in Iraq is remarkable. Consensus doesn't mean you're going to get 100% of the people. The Sunni Arabs are less than 20% of the population of Iraq. And if four tenths of that less than 20% are on board with this Constitution, that comes to enormous approval for the United States Constitution, certainly more for the Iraqi Constitution. Certainly more than the U.S. had at the time.
HH: You know, a car bomb went off today, killed five American soldiers. A terrible thing. We also had three car bombs kill forty or fifty Iraqis. A terrible thing. What do you think the average Iraqi Sunni is thinking? Do they want to have another year of this? Or are they going to say oh, you betcha, we're not going to vote for it, and then go in and pull the lever yes?
MS: Well, I think the interesting thing about that is that when you look at this guy they got the other day, he's Zarqawi's deputy...
HH: Right.
MS: He was turned in by a tip. The tip led the security forces to the exact apartment number of his in the high rise.
HH: Right.
MS: That's a very good level of information, and I think that tells you what a lot of Iraqis feel about these insurgents. They're not the Iraqi people. They don't represent the Iraqi people. They're a ragtag of crazy Baathist dead-enders, and foreign jihadi, and they have no strategy. Sure, they can blow up large numbers of people, mostly Muslims is what..they're mostly blowing up their fellow Muslims. But there's no long-term gain in doing that, except with these ninnies in the American media, and the Democratic Party.
HH: And the people who were on the Mall on Sunday and the pathetic crowd on Monday at the White House. As anti-war protests go, Mark, it's a very underwhelming group of people.
MS: Yes, it's a very small group of people, and I would disagree with you, Hugh, in that I don't think they're ani-war. I think you saw a lot of banners there actively cheering on the other side.
HH: You're right.
MS: That's what's so squalid and discreditable about this. Cindy Sheehan is still getting passed off as this archetypal Army mom by the media. She's not. She's someone who talks about getting the troops out of occupied New Orleans. She is a fruitcake by anybody's...I'm very sorry she lost her son. Her son died very bravely. And I think it's disgusting what his mother is doing, going around dishonoring his memory. But she does not represent any broad body of opinion in the United States.
HH: Black Five, the military blogger, likes to remind people to read Casey Sheehan's story, since we don't want to dishonor him. Thirty seconds, Mark Steyn. What do you think the president does with his next SCOTUS pick?
MS: I think he looks for someone that is actually going to be in the tradition of interpreting the Constitution as the founders originally meant it to be interpreted. And I don't think he's going to do any affirmative action appointment or anything of that. He'll go with the right guy.
HH: Gosh, I hope you're right. No round heels would be great. Mark Steyn, always a pleasure.
HH: Joined now by Mark Steyn, columnist to the world. All of his material available at Steynonline.com. Mark, I've had the strangest day. I've been over taping at PBS, the News Hour, a segment about what the media did, or didn't do in New Orleans. I've been going back and forth with the editor of CBS' Public Eye over their ridiculous attempt to list journo-bloggers, and my slashing of his young cub reporter. And I think American media is in a meltdown. I really do. What do you think?
MS: Well, I think to quote that great panjandrum, Dan Rather, the other day he was on TV, and he hailed the coverage of Katrina, because he said they'd done what journalists are there to do, and that is to speak truth to power. That's actually what they didn't to. In fact, they just took these ludicrous statements from Mayor Nagin, and his police chief in New Orleans, 10,000 dead, there's babies being raped, there's people being tortured and murdered, and they just put it all out on TV without bothering to check whether any of it was correct or not. And one thing I've learned since September 11th, is that a lot of things that 90% of journalists claim as fact are not fact. I mean, it started on about September the 12th, when people said we couldn't invade Afghanistan, because of the quote brutal Afghan winter...
HH: Right.
MS: ...end quote. They were going to have American troops bogged down in temperatures of 60 below Fahrenheit, as their eyebrows froze and all the rest of it. And in fact, Afghanistan's winters are a lot wilder and milder than the northern half of the United States, and the whole of Canada. And in fact, milder than southern England, in large parts. I mean, there are just things...you have to say to yourself that the herd mentality of American journalists now is way out of control, and we don't need a 9/11 commission, or a Louisiana hurricane commission or anything. I think there's something to be said for a commission investigating the media.
HH: Well, I think they've gone into the movie making business. That the facts don't matter. That the pictures all matter, and the story matters. And as a result, what they retailed out of the convention center, the seven year old with the slashed throat, the freezer full of bodies, just shows everything that American media can marshall and throw at a story, it threw at Katrina, and it got it wrong. What's that tell us about what they're reporting from Iraq, much less the Afghan winter, which is at least in a Farmer's Almanac?
MS: Well, you know, I think what's happening in Iraq is that they're all sitting around in the hotel bar in the Green Zone, and they're all talking to each other. They're all being supplied...a lot of people don't understand the media works. If you're in a country like Iraq, there aren't a lot of people whose Arabic is very good. So when you get to Iraq, you're supplied generally with a translator. The big news organizations have translators. Who are those translators? The ones that CNN and ABC and a lot of the big newspapers are using are actually the old Baath party translators. And there's not actually a lot...one of the great things about the situation in Iraq is that there are a lot of military bloggers, and there's quite a few freelance bloggers and Iraqi bloggers out there who are in these various towns, giving you a quite different picture. But the herd mentality of journalism, the group think of journalism...I mean, I'm always...I was once, a couple of years back, I was talking to a couple of journalists in New York, and they were asking whether I was going to be back in town for something. I said I wouldn't be able to, because I was going hunting. And they were stunned. Their jaws hit the floor.
HH: Yes, stunned.
MS: Now millions of Americans own guns. Millions of Americans are evangelical or Christian. Millions of Americans oppose abortion. But how many of those millions of Americans would find kindred spirits in the average New York Times or Washington Post or CBS Newsrooms?
HH: Exactly. When I was at the Columbia School of Journalism last week, I quizzed a group of students, sixteen, how many owned a gun? None. How many had been to church in the last month? Three. How many voted for Kerry? All but three who were not American citizens. It is an intake valve that is permanently stuck on left of center. And as a result, that's what happens to the media. I've got to move to a couple of other things. The Delay story...talk about your herd mentality. I have never seen as big a non-event reported as extensively as this, because he's still running the House Caucus, Mark Steyn. Does anyone doubt that? Don't they know that?
MS: Well, I think the Democrats for years now have made the mistake of...because they're not great issues people, and they make the mistake of, as they say in English soccer, playing the man, not the ball. And so, they're very good at actually practicing the politics of personal destruction on various Congressional functionaries that most of the American people haven't heard of.
HH: Right.
MS: And they get rid of the guy, and some other guy nobody's ever heard of takes over, and life goes on, and the ideas, which is what's important about conservatism, those ideas stay strong. And until Democrats learn to stop wasting their time trying to do a...take a contract out on some peripheral political figure and actually attack the ideas, they're always going to be losing elections.
HH: But I think there's...AOL right now is running a double box with pictures of Delay and Frist, that says it's a bad week for Republicans. I'm laughing because John Roberts just got confirmed 78-22, and Chuck Schumer is knee deep in trying to rifle the files of a black Lt. Governor in Maryland.
MS: Yeah.
HH: I live on a different planet than these people.
MS: That's a great example of the media group think, because they essentially buy into...what we saw in the vote today is that there's actually 22 votes for abortion absolutism in the United States Congress, that in fact, that is the losing side. And yet, when Chuck Schumer says oh, we require the president to nominate a judge who's in the mainstream, nobody in the media stops to think, well, heck what he means by mainstream. It's the side that keeps losing elections. It's a preposterous definition of mainstream.
HH: And 22. It's less than a quarter of the Senate believes this. And yet, their influence on their caucus is predominant.
MS: Yes, and if you look at that 22, they're tightly confined to a very limited geographic fringe of the country. Basically, the part of the country that are near large bodies of waters, like oceans and great lakes.
HH: Yeah.
MS: It's a very unrepresentative geographical corner that the liberal Democrats are being backed into. And as long as they are the tail that's wagging the dog, the Democrats are never going to be a 51% governing party again.
HH: Now let's turn to the October 15th election. From what you read, the people you've talked to, do you think this Constitution will pass?
MS: Yes, I think it will. And I think, you know, in New York state, after the American revolution, a majority of the population, actually, moved up north to Ontario. They're still known as the United Empire loyalists up in Canada. And by those standards, the consensus achieved in Iraq is remarkable. Consensus doesn't mean you're going to get 100% of the people. The Sunni Arabs are less than 20% of the population of Iraq. And if four tenths of that less than 20% are on board with this Constitution, that comes to enormous approval for the United States Constitution, certainly more for the Iraqi Constitution. Certainly more than the U.S. had at the time.
HH: You know, a car bomb went off today, killed five American soldiers. A terrible thing. We also had three car bombs kill forty or fifty Iraqis. A terrible thing. What do you think the average Iraqi Sunni is thinking? Do they want to have another year of this? Or are they going to say oh, you betcha, we're not going to vote for it, and then go in and pull the lever yes?
MS: Well, I think the interesting thing about that is that when you look at this guy they got the other day, he's Zarqawi's deputy...
HH: Right.
MS: He was turned in by a tip. The tip led the security forces to the exact apartment number of his in the high rise.
HH: Right.
MS: That's a very good level of information, and I think that tells you what a lot of Iraqis feel about these insurgents. They're not the Iraqi people. They don't represent the Iraqi people. They're a ragtag of crazy Baathist dead-enders, and foreign jihadi, and they have no strategy. Sure, they can blow up large numbers of people, mostly Muslims is what..they're mostly blowing up their fellow Muslims. But there's no long-term gain in doing that, except with these ninnies in the American media, and the Democratic Party.
HH: And the people who were on the Mall on Sunday and the pathetic crowd on Monday at the White House. As anti-war protests go, Mark, it's a very underwhelming group of people.
MS: Yes, it's a very small group of people, and I would disagree with you, Hugh, in that I don't think they're ani-war. I think you saw a lot of banners there actively cheering on the other side.
HH: You're right.
MS: That's what's so squalid and discreditable about this. Cindy Sheehan is still getting passed off as this archetypal Army mom by the media. She's not. She's someone who talks about getting the troops out of occupied New Orleans. She is a fruitcake by anybody's...I'm very sorry she lost her son. Her son died very bravely. And I think it's disgusting what his mother is doing, going around dishonoring his memory. But she does not represent any broad body of opinion in the United States.
HH: Black Five, the military blogger, likes to remind people to read Casey Sheehan's story, since we don't want to dishonor him. Thirty seconds, Mark Steyn. What do you think the president does with his next SCOTUS pick?
MS: I think he looks for someone that is actually going to be in the tradition of interpreting the Constitution as the founders originally meant it to be interpreted. And I don't think he's going to do any affirmative action appointment or anything of that. He'll go with the right guy.
HH: Gosh, I hope you're right. No round heels would be great. Mark Steyn, always a pleasure.
