News

Why the ‘Washington Post’ buried the story of Murdoch’s bid to buy US presidency

Carl Bernstein, of All the President’s Men fame, has a revealing commentary in the Guardian today, though revealing not entirely in a way he appears to understand. Bernstein highlights a story first disclosed earlier this month in the Washington Post by his former journalistic partner Bob Woodward that media mogul Rupert Murdoch tried to “buy the US presidency”.

A taped conversation shows that in early 2011 Murdoch sent Roger Ailes, the boss of his most important US media outlet, Fox News, to Afghanistan to persuade Gen David Petraeus, former commander of US forces, to run against Barack Obama as the Republican candidate in the 2012 presidential election. Murdoch promised to bankroll Petraeus’ campaign and commit Fox News to provide the general with wall-to-wall support.

Murdoch’s efforts to put his own man in the White House failed because Petraeus decided he did not want to run for office. “Tell [Ailes] if I ever ran,” Petraeus says in the recording, “but I won’t … but if I ever ran, I’d take him up on his offer.”

Bernstein is rightly appalled not just by this full-frontal attack on democracy but also by the fact that the Washington Post failed to splash with their world exclusive. Instead they buried it inside the paper’s lifestyle section, presenting it as what the section editor called “a buzzy media story that … didn’t have the broader import” that would justify a better showing in the paper.

In line with the Washington Post, most other major US news outlets either ignored the story or downplayed its significance.

We can probably assume that Bernstein wrote his piece at the bidding of Woodward, as a covert way for him to express his outrage at his newspaper’s wholesale failure to use the story to generate a much-deserved political scandal. The pair presumably expected the story to prompt congressional hearings into Murdoch’s misuse of power, parallel to investigations in the UK that have revealed Murdoch’s control of politicians and the police there.

As Bernstein observes: “The Murdoch story – his corruption of essential democratic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic – is one of the most important and far-reaching political/cultural stories of the past 30 years, an ongoing tale without equal.”

What Bernstein cannot understand is why his media masters don’t see things the way he does. He reserves his greatest dismay for “the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country’s political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch’s, Ailes’ and Fox’s contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process.”

But in truth neither of Bernstein’s explanations for this failure is convincing.

A far more likely reason for the US media’s aversion to the story is that it poses a danger to the Matrix-like wall of static interference generated by precisely the same media that successfully conceals the all-too-cosy relationship between the corporations (that own the media) and the country’s politicians.

The Petraeus story is disturbing to the media precisely because it tears away the façade of US democratic politics, an image carefully honed to persuade the American electorate that it chooses its presidents and ultimately decides the direction of the country’s political future.

Instead, the story reveals the charade of that electoral game, one in which powerful corporate elites manipulate the system through money and the media they own to restrict voters’ choice to two almost-identical candidates. Those candidates hold the same views on 80 per cent of the issues. Even where their policies differ, most of the differences are quickly ironed out behind the scenes by the power elites through the pressure they exert on the White House via lobby groups, the media and Wall Street.

The significance of Woodward’s story is not that it proves Rupert Murdoch is danger to democracy but rather that it reveals the absolute domination of the US political system by the global corporations that control what we hear and see. Those corporations include, of course, the owners of the Washington Post.

The saddest irony is that the journalists who work within the corporate media are incapable of seeing outside the parameters set for them by their media masters. And that includes even the most accomplished practitioners of the trade: Woodward and Bernstein.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).  His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

9 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

“I’d take him up on his offer.”

If sincere, it means Petraeus was willing to take advantage of such corruption.

A far more likely reason for the US media’s aversion to the story is that it poses a danger to the Matrix-like wall of static interference generated by precisely the same media that successfully conceals the all-too-cosy relationship between the corporations (that own the media) and the country’s politicians.

The Petraeus story is disturbing to the media precisely because it tears away the façade of US democratic politics, an image carefully honed to persuade the American electorate that it chooses its presidents and ultimately decides the direction of the country’s political future.

great read Jonathan Cook.

When BIGs control, they usually are not so brazen to desire (or allow) announcement of the fact. BIG-BANKS control the too-big-to-jail banks that are bringing EU to its knees. BIG-ARMS keep the USA’s empire going. BIG-ZION needs no introduction here. BIG-PHARMA & BIG-MED-INS spoiled Obamacare to a large extent. BIG-COAL/BIG-OIL are working to ensure the worst possible climate change.

Big-Zion donors to NYC Synagogues desire to suppress news of their suppression of opinion from rabbis and others. NPR & WNYC suppress news of the kind we read here at Mondoweiss, but will not admit that money talks (and silences).

The indispensable Harry Shearer played extended audio clips of Petraus on his “Le Show” a couple weeks ago. Creepy to listen to. Starts around 22:00

http://download.kcrw.com/audio/1284002/ls_2012-12-09-150002.6929.mp3

RE: “Bernstein is rightly appalled not just by this full-frontal attack on democracy but also by the fact that the Washington Post failed to splash with their world exclusive. Instead they buried it inside the paper’s lifestyle section . . .” ~ Jonathan Cook

SEE: “Amazing Story Of Why Washington Post Is So Weirdly Neocon”, By M.J. Rosenberg, TPM Cafe, 09/20/10

[EXCERPTS] Yesterday the Washington Post published Lally Weymouth’s interview with British Vice Prime Minister Nick Clegg which wasn’t too bad until she became prosecutor, not interviewer, when the subject of Israel came up. (Weymouth is the daughter of former Post publisher Katherine Graham and mother of current publisher and CEO, Katherine Weymouth).
I wondered how Lally Weymouth, the Post heir, became such a right-wing Zionist. . .
. . . this is an amazing story – http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/916/
. . . Sad that it is about her 42 year old boyfriend’s funeral
— he really was a tragic case. . .
. . . the problems of Weymouth’s boyfriend started when, as a Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, he was busted for a heroin purchase. But that did not stop him from being hired by Rupert Murdoch as editor of the New York Post or, in any way, slow his rise within the fanciest of bipartisan social and political circles. Nor did it affect his right-wing politics.
“After a period of rehabilitation, for his body, his psyche, and his reputation, Breindel signed on at the [N.Y.] Post’s editorial page in 1986. And immediately, he came out shooting bullets. Homeless people, poor people, gay people, the mentally ill, single mothers. All were subjected to Breindel’s uncharitable lashings. There were never even subtle shadings in his writing that indicated he was someone who knew what it was like to stumble, to give in to temptation, or simply to suffer from some common human failing…”
Favorite part, about the funeral itself. Even at the saddest of moments, Marty goes off.
“All of the speakers, even the pols, kept to the imposed three-to-four-minute time limit. Except Marty Peretz. Distraught over the loss of his friend and unhappy about sharing the moment, the Harvard professor and owner of The New Republic went on for nearly half an hour. . .

SOURCE – http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/20/amazing_story_of_why_washington_post_is_so_weirdly/