"That's why we heard so little dissent during the run-up to the Iraq War and the destruction of our economy." (Image by Rotem Danzig.)

Like many people who are intensely interested in politics, I refuse to watch almost everything about politics on TV. I think my breaking point was watching Candy Crowley interview someone from the Bush Administration, being told one bald-faced lie after another and not asking follow-up questions that might annoy her guest–and provide illumination. That’s not to pick on Crowley. She seems like a very good, smart person, and she was really only doing what she was paid to do: Provide a facade of serious political analysis and nothing deeper. That’s what political interviewers do on television. No one says anything that is truly challenging, guests move from one chair to another and everyone keeps getting paid. No one forces the clown car of American journalism off the road. It’s motion without progress.

Equally abhorrent is the of air of “objectivity” provided by news anchors who are quietly complicit in maintaining a status quo power structure in America. That’s why we heard so little dissent during the run-up to the Iraq War and the destruction of our economy. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent essay on the latter topic on Salon, using an interview that Bob Schieffer of CBS conducted with Ron Paul to present his case. The opening:

“CBS News‘s Bob Schieffer is the classic American establishment TV journalist: unfailingly deferential to the politically powerful personalities who parade before him, and religiously devoted to what he considers his own ‘objectivity,’ which ostensibly requires that he never let his personal opinions affect or be revealed by his journalism. Watch how thoroughly and even proudly he dispenses with both of those traits when interviewing Ron Paul last Sunday on Face the Nation regarding Paul’s foreign policy views. In this 7-minute clip, Schieffer repeatedly mocks, scoffs at, and displays his obvious contempt for, two claims of Paul’s which virtually no prominent politician of either party would dare express: (1) American interference and aggression in the Muslim world fuels anti-American sentiment and was thus part of the motivation for the 9/11 attack; and (2) American hostility and aggression toward Iran (in the form of sanctions and covert attacks) are more likely to exacerbate problems and lead to war than lead to peaceful resolution, which only dialogue with the Iranians can bring about.

You actually believe 9/11 was America’s fault? Your plan to deal with the Iranian nuclear program is to be nicer to Iran? This interview is worth highlighting because it is a vivid case underscoring several points about the real meaning of the much-vaunted ‘journalistic objectivity.'”