The latest regular on Meet the Press

September 7, 2007

Media Matters reported this afternoon that David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network will be offering insights and analysis on Sunday, marking the third time in as many months that Brody will be seated in one of the venerated chairs of the nation’s most-watched Sunday morning show.

Now, I occasionally check in on Brody’s blog, which isn’t a bad site. It clearly leans to the right, but I wouldn’t describe it as reflexively conservative. Given the presidential candidates’ interest in wooing evangelical Christian voters, Brody even gets some very high-profile national figures to speak with him.

But let’s not lose sight of the context here. Brody is employed by CBN, TV preacher Pat Robertson’s “news” network. Brody offers political coverage on The 700 Club, most of which is a broadcast featuring a greedy, crazed televangelist offering hate-filled tirades against anyone who doesn’t think like he does. (On Sept. 13, 2001, 48 hours after the Twin Towers fell, viewers of The 700 Club got to hear why Americans “deserved” to be attacked.)

Meet the Press, by making Brody a regular, is treating the Christian Broadcasting Network as a legitimate outlet. That is, for lack of a better word, crazy.

Consider this description from the Columbia Journalism Review. (via digby)

Evangelical news looks and sounds much like its secular counterpart, but it homes in on issues of concern to believers and filters events through a conservative lens. In some cases this simply means giving greater weight to the conservative side of the ledger than most media do. In other instances, it amounts to disguising a partisan agenda as news. Likewise, most guests on Christian political talk shows are drawn from a fixed pool of culture warriors and Republican politicians. Even those shows that focus on non-political topics — such as finance, health, or family issues — often weave in political messages. Many evangelical programs and networks are, in fact, linked to conservative Christian political or legal organizations, which use broadcasts to help generate funding and mobilize their base supporters, who are tuning in en masse. Ninety-six percent of evangelicals consume some form of Christian media each month, according to the Barna Research Group….

CBN’s founder, Pat Robertson, who started this trend in the late 1970s by converting the 700 Club into a 60 Minutes-style magazine, says he originally considered making it a music showcase. But he decided news and talk would bring more viewers. “News provides the crossover between religious and secular, and it bridges the age gap,” he explains. Robertson continues to see news and current affairs as a means to an end. “If you buy a diamond from Tiffany’s the setting is very important,” he says. “To us, the jewel is the message of Jesus Christ. We see news as a setting for what’s most important.” …

Many Christian broadcasters attribute the success of their news operations to the biblical perspective that underpins their reporting in a world made wobbly by terrorist threats and moral relativism. “We don’t just tell them what the news is,” explains Wright of the NRB. “We tell them what it means. And that’s appealing to people, especially in moments of cultural instability.”

Robertson pays Brody to tell “them what it means,” as part of a broader evangelistic enterprise. What’s wrong with that? Nothing in particular. CBN exists to evangelize, convert, raise a lot of money from Robertson’s fans, and give a demagogue a platform to spread nonsense.

But now, apparently, Meet the Press wants to treat CBN as just another network. It’s mystifying.

Does The 700 Club have so many viewers that its political correspondent demands recognition? Not really; ratings wise, the show has a fairly small audience. Does Brody’s blog have so many visitors that he’s become a major political player? No, as of earlier this summer, the Brody File was drawing about 75,000 visits a month. I know of several dozen liberal political bloggers who have far, far more traffic, none of whom will ever be invited onto a Sunday morning show.

I guess that’s really the bottom line here. Meet the Press has a cadre of regulars, which apparently now includes Pat Robertson’s political correspondent. All the while, progressive voices have been locked out of the Sunday-show circuit altogether.

It’s enough to make one wonder why there’s so much whining about a “liberal media.”

“Meet the Press, by making Brody a regular, is treating the Christian Broadcasting Network as a legitimate outlet. That is, for lack of a better word, crazy.”

What are you saying, CB? Asking God to knock off Hugo Chavez isn’t real news?

“CBN’s founder, Pat Robertson, who started this trend in the late 1970s by converting the 700 Club into a 60 Minutes-style magazine, says he originally considered making it a music showcase. ”

The Old Time Gospel Hour meets Hee Haw. What made him think that wouldn’t work?

  • Where’s the regular correspondent from The Atheist Times?

    Ever notice how many of the guests on Hardball are Roman Catholic? Same thing going on. Religious views on politics are now de rigeur.

  • The idea that the ownership of the media outlets don’t influence their content is total hogwash. In Russert’s case in particular, this piece about Jack Welch, ex-CEO of GE/NBC, is quite revealing:
    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 MSNBC’s 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.

  • “Russert was now an especially obedient and model employee in whom the company could take pride.”

    This must somehow fit in with his “journalistic” practice of waiting for sources to call him rather than actively seeking out the facts.

  • They’ve said “liberalmedia” so many times that the two words have become inseparable. And every good propagandist knows that if you repeat a lie often enough, everyone starts to believe it.

    I have no idea why Meet the Press wants a full-time evangelist as a regular commentator. Perhaps they hope to prove that they aren’t liberal, but “fair and balanced” instead.

    Does anyone think that this will make the right wing stop saying “liberalmedia?” It’s been an effective tactic for them, as this triumph with Brody proves, and it reinforces their message to ignore reality, because reality is brought to you by… the liberalmedia.

  • I also wonder if any of this has to do with the inability of such shows to gain viewership from younger audiences. I would bet most younger audiences (under 35??) are very tech savvy and tend to get what they need from the internet. I would bet a significant portion of us over 35 also have pretty much given up on being regular viewers of the crap dished up by corporate owned legacy media aand now tend to get what we need from the internet. This leaves only certain groups from which corporate media shows can troll for viewers, with their internal polls and research showing evangelicals underperforming or underviewing, on a pro-rata basis, shows such as MTP.

  • Point well-taken CB…

    But let’s not forget the baseline dynamics of this war:
    Christian soldiers are in Messopotamia again…

    We got Muslims
    (Freethinkers who believe the babbling of an epileptic)
    versus…
    Christians
    (Freethinkers who accept the proclamations of a tribe that lived 1500-2000 years ago).

    Given that…

    It seems only fair that the Christian media owners would put up in a prominent time slot a suitable evangelical to promulgate their brand of vanilla.

    I mean… isn’t that what the chocolate media owners in Messopotamia do?

    Meanwhile… back on planet earth:

    Wildfires are flaring bigger and hotter in Alaska, the northern Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. Bighorn sheep, mountain goats and grizzly bears in Glacier National Park, along with deer and marsh rabbits in the Florida Keys, face a housing crisis.
    Glacier’s alpine meadows are disappearing, sea levels are rising in the Keys and other federal lands are feeling the heat from global warming — and the government is not doing much about it, congressional investigators said in a report Thursday.
    Climate change, however, does have things looking up for heat-loving pests like beetles, grasshoppers and fungi. Spruce bark beetles are chewing their way through 1,560 square miles of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, including 620 square miles of spruce trees in Chugach National Forest. Southern pine beetles are on the march in red-spruce forests of the Southeast.

    He he…
    Ha ha…
    Ho ho…

  • The thing about including these so called-religious figures in political discussion is that their word is all too often taken as gospel (pun intended). Once they interject some religious notion into the debate, all meaningful discussion ceases — how can you argue logic or reason with someone who’s entire outlook is based on something that ignores logic and reason? And heaven forbid if you actually called them on it!

  • All the more reason to cultivate an ever-widening email list of people—of all ages—who are interested in politics. Share with them the best stories and commentary from the internet, like many from this very blog, and teach them about blogs and the best sites you know for news. Once they get involved they too will be weaned away from the big-media tube. I’ve got a regular politics mailing list with people from 20 to 97 years old on it, and they get regular doses of “The Best of C.B.” on almost a daily basis. And they appreciate it! We have to migrate away as many as possible, and hopefully succeed in the net neutrality fight. It is our backroom printing press, the only tool we have against the corporate media machine. And so far it’s a pretty cool tool.

  • “how can you argue logic or reason with someone who’s entire outlook is based on something that ignores logic and reason? And heaven forbid if you actually called them on it!”

    Exactly. And that is their point/purpose make no mistake–they effectively bring it in just to cut off debate, becasue if you call them on it you are then hit not with rational and logical and factual debate but with accusations of anti-christian, anti-semite, infidel, etc.

  • I read this whole thing thinking you were talking about David Broder. I was sitting here going, man, how did I miss that Broder worked for CBN? That scumbag.

    Oh well, they both sound like idiots.

    Homer

  • The MSM had a”big” story on climate change today – all about glaciers melting in Greenland. So far, so good. Then the anchor said something about a big religious summit – in Greenland. Yep, the world’s “prominent” religious leaders got together on a melting glacier in Greenland today – not to make some sort of stand against fossil fuel burning, not to advocate for alternative energy, but to PRAY. Yes, PRAY. Surely God will get clean up the atmosphere! God will make the effluvium coming out of our tailpipes all sweet and rosy-smelling!

    This is what passes for news these days. Some religious looney farts and the MSM wafts it around, raving about how good it smells, while the real world burns.

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