CNN Wants Its Viewers to Be Misinformed
Steve Hayes is not what you would call a reliable source of information. His first book, The Connection: How al Qaeda’s Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public about the subject at hand. Based on his willingness to lie on behalf of the conservative movement, he secured the position of court biographer to Dick Cheney, and duly produced the required hagiography. To the best of my knowledge, Hayes has never made a single good analytic point on any subject, or introduced any useful new information into the public debate. Nobody outside the deepest recesses of the conservative cocoon has ever been impressed by a Stephen F. Hayes article.
Naturally enough, CNN, which obviously has contempt for its audience and for the concept of journalism, sent out this press release yesterday: “Stephen F. Hayes Joins CNN’s Best Political Team on Television”:
“Steve is a well-respected and knowledgeable journalist who already has become a natural part of CNN’s political coverage,” said Sam Feist, CNN’s political director. “As part of the ‘Best Political Team on Television,’ Steve will help CNN in its commitment to go beyond political spin and present viewers with the most in-depth and bipartisan insights.”
I would be fascinated to hear Feist explain by what standard Hayes is well-respected. Perhaps he could identify some people who respect Hayes?
62 Responses to “CNN Wants Its Viewers to Be Misinformed”
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November 3rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
“Perhaps he could identify some people who respect Hayes?”
That’s easy. It’s the same group of people that still think Bush is a great president. Someone has to appeal to that crowd, and Hayes can do it.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Clearly in this time of obviously liberal bias (as I read from the Washington Post’s Deborah Howell and various right-wing linked “studies”), we need to double down on having proven right wing hacks and liars fill up our airwaves and print inches, so as to protect the American people from the people they’re likely to vote in, who are likely to be partisan Democrats which is evil and biased.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:37 pm
It’s about time the hacks of the Right are called to account for what they are, which is venal and stupid. Hayes is a good place to start. If he wants to be a public figure, he deserves the vilification that attaches to being a venal and stupid public figure.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm
And after their big weekend special, “view from the right.”
Man, f CNN. What will everyone be watching tomorrow?
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I don’t mind so much that these right-wing mouthpieces get precious air-time or column-inches, though there is most certainly a profound imbalance of right-wing voices over left-wing voices; my issue is that the ones who get this media space are almost all full of shit, 100% of the time.
Stephen Hayes included. Doesn’t the right-wing have any pundits who aren’t just peddling the Big Lie 24/7???
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
That Stephen Hayes sure looks like an elitist to me.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I always hate it when right-wingers refer to the “liberal media bias” in any of its inane phrases. That said, as a free-market small-government type myself, I must express considerable displeasure that nearly every “conservative” pundit is of the Brooks/Kristol/Rove big government- and/or neo-conservative mold. There are still those of us who can intelligently articulate ideas from the right that don’t take the position that we must simply form the government’s list of meddling programs better than the left.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I’m sure that whenever they add to the “Best Political Team on Television” there are many “qualified” people who provide “glowing” recommendations.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
A continuation in the Left’s obsession with keeping people who have unsuitable views out of the media. (And we won’t get into the lies which Matthew deployes in this pursuit here)
What’s up with this? Why is DeLong always calling for reporters to be fired? Why the creepy totalitarianism?
There are many many similarities between Rightist partisans and Lefist partisans in America, but this is one area where the Left is practically unique. I don’t think the Right is this obsessed with purging dissenting voices?
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Rightards do nothing but lie.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
(And we won’t get into the lies which Matthew deployes in this pursuit here)
LOL, of course not. We’ll just accept baseless allegation as fact and proceed from there.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm
“I don’t think the Right is this obsessed with purging dissenting voices”
What color is YOUR world?
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Stephen Hayes and Bill Kristol should start their own network.
The we have been wrong all the time. Always. Forever. Network.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:57 pm
That Stephen Hayes sure looks like an elitist to me.
he looks like the guy in that wingnut comic, “Day By Day”.
I don’t think the Right is this obsessed with purging dissenting voices?
go ask Kathleen Parker about that.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
oh for fuck’s sake, a. that is so pathetic.
do you want to tell us about bill o’reilly’s call the other day to have tim burton arrested?
how about coulter’s desire to have the new york times destroyed by a terrorist bomb?
look, peddle your ignorance to the rubes where you live. you can’t survive a second on the web.
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I guess now we know the answer to the question: “Who could be worse than Glenn Beck?”
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Christopher Buckley endorses Obama, hundreds of readers express outrage, he offers resignation, National Review accepts
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
And Matthew isn’t saying Stephen Hayes should be canned for disagreeing with liberals, he’s saying Hayse should be canned for always, always being wrong.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
CNN seems to be following the same model the nytimes adopted when they hired William Kristol to write a weekly op-ed column. Like Hayes, Kristol is consistently wrong about everything. The two also seem to share a passion for not only being wrong, but also steering the country to adopt their wrongly held beliefes. But i guess because they are both proponents of using our military to invade countries and kill people, regardless of any factual rationale for doing so, they are by default deemed be considered “respected” and “knowledgable”. It is absurd that either of these two clowns have any respectable platform to spew their garbage, and cnn and nytimes giving them freedom to dangerously decieve the public is a disgrace. Has anyone read Kristol’s column lately? He doesn’t write well, adds no interesting analysis, and he is always wrong. Literally always wrong…
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Sarah Palin says some Americans aren’t really part of America
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
“Why the creepy totalitarianism?”
You said it. I don’t know what the effect on our First Amendment rights will be, if people keep criticizing the media.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Hayes once said, on national television, that “we need more dick cheney’s in the world.”
for the life of me, i don’t understand why CNN doesn’t tell people he thinks that everytime they have him on. it’s indicative of just how far out of the mainstream this guy is and i don’t think CNN gives their viewers pertinent information regarding who this guy is and where he’s coming from unless they mention (along with the other stuff on his resume) that he thinks what the world needs is more dick cheneys.
he’s a complete wackjob. and now he works for “the most trusted name in news.”
that’s reassuring.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Absolutely perfect choice for the Crisis News Network. Their cadre of political hacks are well-positioned to create faux debate over feeble cultural war tropes throughout the coming administration’s first term. This is a potential profit center that CNN is unwilling to allow Fox, MSNBC and the rest to horde any longer.
Hayes is a hack pure and simple. Matt pretty much lays it down so there’s not much more to add but I do think the parallel with Kristol at the Times is a pathetic kowtow to those who believe that subjective balance in journalism is more important than factual accuracy.
For the record, I have sworn off CNN for quite a while as I do not trust them to objectively report on events without editorialization, as personified most egregiously by Anderson Cooper. While not for everyone, I highly recommend trying to go a whole month without CNN and see what happens. The world will continue to spin and your head will be filled with far less at the same time.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
The people who should be outraged are sane right wingers. Don’t you get it? Your being rolled. The NY Times and CNN pick conservative pundits who are such obviously bat shit insane liars that their view points get easily discredited:-)
Heck even Fox doesn’t get away with having an endless stream of Ward Curchill and Code Pink on to represent liberals thoguh I’m sure they’d love to try.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
i think the mentally handicapped like hayes and kristol (not to be confused with those suffering from real disabilties) should be able to secure jobs. it’s important that the public always be aware that these kind of people do exist, and be aware of the insane/dangerous things they are thinking. they “snuck-up” on america once. it can’t be allowed to happen again. keep ‘em out in plain site.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
To commenter “a”:
Is that you Stephen?
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
The thing is, like NYT hiring Bill Kristol, in one sense it’s actually bad for the conservative ideology when all these people hired to somehow “represent” them are actually Republican party hacks and flacks. There’s a huge difference between arguing for and standing up for a coherence set of principles and reflexively defending a political party.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
The people who should be outraged are sane right wingers. Don’t you get it? Your being rolled. The NY Times and CNN pick conservative pundits who are such obviously bat shit insane liars that their view points get easily discredited:-)
eric k made my point more clearly and umm, colorfully
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
At least CNN gives a contact name at the bottom of the press release. I can’t call from where I am, but I will write an email.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Clearly they’ve put him in there to showcase the crazy “side” of the Republican/Conservative position. It’s a brilliant strategy really if you seek to define the party as a bunch of ill informed loons (which to a great extent is what we are today).
God forbid they put someone like me, or some of the individuals that I used to work with as analysts (the realists). That might make conservatives look reasonable and informed (at least when it comes to Foreign Affairs)…and CNN wouldn’t want that.
Let’s be honest, the media does have a left bend. But something that “conservatives” ought to be honest about is that it doesn’t seem to matter to the American people. Folks aren’t stupid about this, they just hate the Republicans and would like to punish them. Frankly, I don’t blame them.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“Why the creepy totalitarianism?”
If criticizing journalists is totalitarianisn, then American conservatism is the Khmer Rouge.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Tim,
Exactly, exactly, exactly. This is the strategy. What the left needs to do is demand that these people not be given the stage on which to preach their garbage.
Right now, it isn’t a bad idea for the left (given how much people hate the neocons) to put the loons out there…But what happens if there’s another terrorist attack? That’s where the neocons get a second chance, because they’re the only one’s that can tap into the rage that people feel and exploit it to their own ends (Iraq).
I think that this is what Biden was talking about. The chances that Israel goes after Iran are increasing everyday. Should that happen it is more likely that the American people will support a joint operation (especially if Iran strikes back). We need to make certain that the United States does NOT go down that path. The only way to do that is to get these guys out of the public sphere…and the only way to do that is to ensure that Republican realists have the ability to publicly support the Obama administration (should they decide to step back from the precipice).
Anything less will cripple an Obama administration out of the gate.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Christopher Buckley endorses Obama, hundreds of readers express outrage, he offers resignation, National Review accepts
I enjoy that in left-wing-world, somebody offering his resignation = purge.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Steve Hayes is a lying motherfucker who’s cheerfully helped fuck up the country.
CNN has the right to hire him, but they don’t have the right to claim, at the same time and with a straight face, that they have any remaining journalistic integrity.
It’s their choice.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Wingnut hagiographers need a place to land, too.
Beyond that, the Right is already sharpening its knives to do to a President Obama what they did to Clinton — ‘Death Of A Thousand Cuts’.
The GOP will adopt its policy of smiling and cackling about “bipatrisanship” in public, while operating against Obama and the Democratic majority whenever possible. This makes them nothing less than a Fifth Column against the interests of the nation as a whole.
And by rebranding Hayes as a “bipatrisan”, CNN wants to ensure it can corner part of that action. Hayes is an opportunistic hack whose career rests on glorifying torture, abridgment of civil rights, and a dictatorial Presidency as national policy.
To have CNN position Hayes as a ‘neutral journalist’ is disgusting — but considering the arc of the MSM’s devolution since 1994, really unsurprising.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
How about coining a term – Mylroie-Truther. That’s someone who believes that there is a massive conspiracy by the U.S. government to cover up Sadam Hussein’s responsibility for 9/11.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Now mention of Stephen Fuckwit Hayes is complete without reference to Jon Stewart’s extended demolition of The Connection.
That he came back to plug his Cheney hagiography just shows how shameless a wingnut welfare hack he is.
I enjoy that in left-wing-world, somebody offering his resignation = purge.
I enjoy that Al remains reliably full of shit. Buckley’s account makes clear that Rich ‘We’re Winning’ Lowry took about a femtosecond to accept, it having been made clear that the NatRev’s supply of wingnut welfare monies was in danger:
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Is anyone following the new hirings in the most influential mainstream media? It might be fun to see what the ideological bent of the new hires is in general.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I relate the collapse of American TV Journalism in these (loosely-described) steps:
Late ’80s – Early ’90s Lawrence Tisch guts the CBS News division, informs them that they must make money just like any other division. Thus, accuracy has been supplanted by ratings. NBC & ABC do likewise, and “infotainment” takes over from the Huntley/Brinkley/Severeid/Cronkite tradition.
Early ’90s CNN’s growing dominance and omnipresence means that the news has been reported already, so the emphasis is put on analysis or “spin”. Thus begins the ascendacy of the TV pundits.
Late ’90s – early ’00s FOX News’ correct calculation that there was a right to hard-right audience core to play to generates strong ratings very quickly. CNN & MSNBC, panicking as they see their ratings drop, incorrectly surmise that moving to the right will win their audience back. Stupid, as you cannot out-fox FOX, which does not care about accuracy; and short-sighted, as it destroyed CNN’s reputation. Amazingly, this has persisted all the way to 2008, when MSNBC discovered the ratings of “Countdown” and tried a second liberal show with Rachel Maddow. Of course, the rest of the MSNBC programming schedule remains tilted to the right, because they apparently still think this is the best way to get ratings.
Early ’00s The explosion of the internet and the immediacy of news destroys any shred of journalistic integrity by TV Newshounds. Long gone is the concept of double-checking sources, or even single-checking information. It is more important to get the news out first, rather than it to be accurate. And since the truth cannot be determined in such a short period of time, it is replaced with a concocted “balance”, by taking the views of both sides, assuming the truth is somewhere in the middle. Thus, any damaging fact can be blunted merely by stating the opposite on television, regardless of the truth — the muddy water concept.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I agree with renato (#5) that there has got to be a few individuals on the right who could be effective pundits without peddling BS. What potential would there be for his/her media career path? As an example, I’ll rehash a reply to a post from back in September, where I pontificated:
“About 15 years ago, KCRW (NPR-affiliate, Santa Monica, CA) decided to go outside the box and give David Horowitz his own call-in show. As you might imagine, the lines were flooded with callers taking violent exception to his opinions. After many, many shoot from the hip calls, someone finally took the time to calmly and clearly object to David’s doctrinaire stance on whatever the topic was.”
“His response was that if you caught him in a coffee shop, you’d get a much more nuanced discussion, but that his purpose on the air was to stimulate debate by holding rigidly to a particular line of reasoning.”
“I wish to Holy God that any of these assholes crowding the airwaves today would be that honest. But, I have to remind myself that most of these people are just better dressed Billy Mays, and they’re paid well to sell the party line. David could afford honesty, because he knew his gig at KCRW was an experiment, not the money maker.”
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:45 pm
A little more thought brings to mind the atmosphere and pacing of the discussion on PBS’ News Hour. The guests don’t talk over each other, and ideas are aired out and challenged. It’s not as fun as, say, Crossfire, but a viewer has the opportunity to come out knowing more than when s/he went in.
I imagine that the show producers set their expectation for the overall tone: civil discourse, time given to expand on a pov, outright untruths will be noted.
But, they’re just a bunch of pinko simps, so who cares?
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
It’s pretty hard to get left wing voices “fired” from TV, since there aren’t any.
But if rightists want to claim that Hayes really does represent the best they’ve got, I’m not going to argue.
November 3rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Hiring idiots like this Hayes liar will just continue to lose the MSM viewers. The American people have basically had it with CNN and their ilk. We know there is nothing remaining in the notion of journalistic integrity and so, more and more, we get our information either directly or indirectly from a plethora of online sources. Its as if the NY Times and CNN want to hasten their demise by hiring such fools as Hayes and Kristol. The American people are a center left people, and the MSM is a center right/right group. This has meant a lot of alienation between the people and our news. People “watch” the news the same way they “listen” to top-40 radio: as background noise that they don’t necessarily like, but it provides a faint reminder of a once-vibrant cultural dialogue.
The reason guys like O’Reilly and Olbermann are getting better ratings numbers than anyone else is because people believe (rightly or wrongly) they are not completely full of shit, and are at least saying what they feel. Guys like Hannity and Anderson Cooper (to name two in a sea of idiots) come across as pretty dumb, and people know it.
As one last analogy, I would say the average American views the news the way they view assertions made by the McCain campaign — they’ve lied, gotten it wrong and distorted so much we just don’t believe them anymore.
As my wife likes to say, if you like your news weak and watery, CNN is your man.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
This is a deeply depressing development.
It continues a trend in the media to reach over responsible conservatives into the ranks of the discredited to promote some abstract “balance” in coverage. In the process journalistic standards are discarded and objective analysis abandoned.
CNN has sunk to a new low.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
If CNN were smart, which they are not, they’d bring on an intelligent, non-hack young conservative like Daniel Larison of Americn Conservative or Conor Friedersdorf at Culture 11. They’re everything that Hayes is not.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
“Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin’s critics as ‘cocktail party conservatives’ who ‘give aid and comfort to the enemy’. He told The Sunday Telegraph: ‘There’s going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party.’”
Given the multiple off-the-top-of-our-heads examples in this thread, I’m really starting to wonder what your definition of a “purge” is. I do not think it means what you think it means.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:48 pm
One of the problems here is that Hayes, on paper, without reading any of his work, looks very good. He has an extensive list of publications (yes, mostly in wingnut land but also in, oh, Salon), academic credentials, and, for years, a academic sponsor, Georgetown. He was the director of the odious Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown for years.
If you haven’t read him, or you’ve just glanced at an article here or there, you could, plausibly think that he’s, well, controversial and controversy isnt’ all bad. I mean, how could he have taught, indeed run a whole program, for years at Georgetown and be a liar? Surely, a credible university can’t tolerate an out and out liar, right? (Yeah, I know, I know, Georgetown, but Georgetown is hardly the worst or only offender, plenty of other schools shelter political operatives of various stripes.)
I’m not sure what the solution is but if Hayes was in almost any other academic field, he would have been shown the door years ago. You can be a terrible writer and still be an Sociology prof. You can be a wingnut and a biology professor. But, if you lie about your research, make up your data, and twist your conclusions in those fields, you lose your job. Apparently, it doesn’t work that way at conservative institutions attached to otherwise fairly rigorous academic institutions.
Media Matters, etc. are useful tools to counter guys like Hayes but it seems to me that various academic journalists and institutions should make a point of discrediting members of their profession that lie. When you can’t find anyone to publish your papers or give you a recommendation in, oh, biology, it’s hard to find an academic sponsor. You can still do biology, of course, but you have to find a private sponsor or just do it on your own.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
There are many many similarities between Rightist partisans and Lefist partisans in America, but this is one area where the Left is practically unique. I don’t think the Right is this obsessed with purging dissenting voices?
On the other hand, the left doesn’t engage in anywhere near the amount of projection that the right does.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Easy:
Richard Bruce Cheney; Mrs RB Cheney; Lynn Cheney & spouse; Mary Cheney & significant other; David Addington; I “Scooter” Libby; Mary Matalin [though not her spouse]; Louis Dobbs; Glenn Beck; Glenn Reynolds; William Kristol & spouse; Paul Wolfowitz & main squeeze; David Frum; Byron York & whatever; John Bolton & nibelungen; Fouglas Deith…
I could go on.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
This actually makes sense to me. Folks like those who post here – or even know of this website’s existence – are going to follow the election results on line – or on PBS – or on MSNBC to see if Pat Buchanan’s head explodes before Chris Matthews makes his third consecutive supremely moronic, or to watch Gene Robinson boogie with Rachel Maddow, or both.
So CNN is after the coveted Moron demographic, and is gambling on those folks getting too freaked out with all the on screen back-stabbing, Doocey-dancing and hara kiri on FoxNews. Hayes will arrive at the CNN set with a nice, long, complicated, one-size-fits-all-in-the-Base narrative, and deliver his observations with more or less the same degree of psychopathy as Grover Nordquist.
The only why that might become interesting is if they put him beside Ed Rollins, just to watch how long Ed can hold his tongue before the word “idiot” escapes.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Hayes is leagues better than that snarky-out of context moron Rachel Maddow. If she’s your standard bearer, the next 4 years will be a blast!!!
her and Olbermann — so perfectly caricatured by Ben Affleck on SNL – wonderful examples of journalistic probity!
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Matt: “Perhaps he could identify some people who respect Hayes?”
Matt should be forgiven, due to his lack of experience in the real world, for not comprehending that those people would of course be the people who own CNN and who therefore want Obama to lose.
“Fouglas Deith…” Groves wins the thread.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Hayes is leagues better than that snarky-out of context moron Rachel Maddow. If she’s your standard bearer, the next 4 years will be a blast!!!
The thing is, I don’t think MSNBC was trying to sell Rachel Maddow as a journalist with “bipartisan insight”. In other words, they are not being dishonest like CNN is in the case of Hayes – you know exactly what you are getting with Olbermann and Maddow, and it’s not bipartisan insight.
I don’t have a problem with people with obviously partisan ideas being on tv – hey, I even enjoy Fox News once in a while – as long as they are honest about it. Trying to sell a party hack as a straight journalist is just too much.
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