Owing Their Souls
by digby
Yesterday, I wrote about a fascinating article on Huff Po regarding the revolving door between government and the financial industry. But that's not the only revolving door that devastates our democratic system. That door between the Treasury and Wall Street works congress. The other one works us.
The following excerpt is from a great article in The Nation by Sebastian Jones called The Media-Lobbying Complex:
For lobbyists, PR firms and corporate officials, going on cable television is a chance to promote clients and their interests on the most widely cited source of news in the United States. These appearances also generate good will and access to major players inside the Democratic and Republican parties. For their part, the cable networks, eager to fill time and afraid of upsetting the political elite, have often looked the other way. At times, the networks have even disregarded their own written ethics guidelines. Just about everyone involved is heavily invested in maintaining the current system, with the exception of the viewer.
While lobbyists and PR flacks have long tried to spin the press, the launch of Fox News and MSNBC in 1996 and the Clinton impeachment saga that followed helped create the caldron of twenty-four-hour political analysis that so many influence peddlers call home. Since then, guests with serious conflicts of interest have popped up with alarming regularity on every network. Just examine their presence in coverage of the economic crash and the healthcare reform debate, two recent issues that have engendered massive cable coverage.
As the recession slammed the country in late 2008 and government bailouts followed, lobbyists and PR flacks took to the air with troubling regularity, advocating on behalf of clients and their interests while masquerading as neutral analysts. One was Bernard Whitman, president of Whitman Insight Strategies, a communications firm that specializes in helping "guide successful lobbying, communications and information campaigns through targeted research." Whitman's clients have included lobbying firms like BGR Group and marketing/PR firms like Ogilvy & Mather, which in turn have numerous corporate clients with a vested interest in shaping federal policies. Whitman is a veteran of the Clinton era and when making television appearances continues to be identified for work he did almost a decade earlier.
According to its website, Whitman Insight Strategies has worked for AIG to "develop, test, launch, and enhance their consumer brand," and continues to assist the insurance giant "as it responds to ongoing marketplace developments." Whitman Strategies has also posted more than 100 clips of Bernard Whitman's television appearances on a YouTube account. During a September 18, 2008, Fox News appearance to discuss Sarah Palin, Whitman proceeded to lambaste John McCain for proposing to "let AIG fail," saying that this demonstrated "just how little he understands the global economy today."
On March 25, 2009, in the midst of a scandal over AIG's executive bonuses, Whitman appeared on Fox News again. "The American people were understandably outraged about AIG," he began. "Having said that, we need to move beyond anger, frustration and hysteria to really get down to the brass tacks of solving this economy," he advised the public. In neither instance was Whitman's ongoing work for AIG mentioned.
This is how "conventional wisdom" and village talking points are formed.
The business community, for whom so many of these people work, will work or have worked, needs to market its agenda to the people so that they will accept what the politicians they have in their pockets are selling and keep them in office. They use the credibility of those who've worked in government to do it. So, business and financial interests give huge contributions to politicians, hire the people who work in the government to lobby those politicians and provides the 24/7 cable media with PR people who pretend to be Republican or Democratic partisans to sell business friendly policies to the public.
One once would have expected the press to take up the slack for the people, but nowadays most people get their news from TV, much of which is presented in a he said/she said format by these same PR pros --- or people who someday hope to be hired into those jobs. It's a feedback loop that creates fake partisan battles and faux hissy fits, but never delves too deeply into the real problems.
It's quite a racket. And it's a bargain compared to what the Big Money Boyz spend on direct advertising.
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