If you thought that Matt Taibbi column that blamed Hitch’s anti-‘Fahrenheit’ piece on Microsoft was asinine, that was nothing compared to Richard Goldstein’s current Village Voice piece on the subject. Goldstein, taking a break from his usual ruminations on Bush and Kerry’s penises in order to write the “Press Clips” column while Cynthia Cotts is on sabbatical, singles out NBC and ABC’s news divisions for being especially tough on Moore’s movie, while he expresses surprise at Fox’s passivity. CBS, with its “traditional resistance to the right,” gets credit for letting Moore be.
Why, you ask, did certain networks give F-9/11 a tougher time than others? It’s all a corporate conspiracy, you see! ABC, which is owned by Disney, who dumped the film, obviously didn’t want it to succeed, while NBC is owned by General Electric, a defense contractor that obviously was pained by the film’s negative portrayal of defense contractors (even though it doesn’t mention GE. But of course! NBC has no tolerance for criticism of GE- except when Carson and Letterman used to do it every fuckin’ night!) And why did Fox lay off Moore? According to Goldstein, it’s because Rupert Murdoch is “hedging his bets in case John Kerry wins.” Obviously!
Left unexplained, of course, is any evidence at all that the corporate overlords of the networks actually influence the work of individual reporters- is Goldstein saying the higher-ups at GE dictated to highly respected reporter Lisa Myers how to handle her story? Or that Disney strong-armed George Stephanopoulos (George Stephanopoulos!) into tilting the coverage against Moore by raising questions about the veracity of the film? How does Goldstein explain away why NBC and ABC News generally slant their coverage in the other direction, while managing to avoid the corporate pressure that seems to only apply to Michael Moore? And does he really think Rupert Murdoch could be kissing up to John Kerry, when his network’s coverage tilts towards the Republican side the other 51 weeks of the year?
Has Goldstein maybe considered that Moore’s film does indeed have major credibility problems –as even his staunchest supporters all but admit- and that the reporters who bring this up are merely doing their job? Oh well, look on the bright side- at least Goldstein didn’t write a story about Moore’s package.