Giant of TV talk Phil Donahue passed away at age 88 last month. I can't say I ever watched his shows, but I do remember one thing about him. He certainly proved that TV cable news does not have a liberal bias.
Today there is widespread belief that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake, even among many conservatives. American support for the invasion was in excess of 70% when the war started. Five years later, that support had fallen by half.
In early 2003 Phil Donahue had the highest rated show on the young MSNBC network. George W. Bush had told a whole series of lies to gin up an illegal invasion of Iraq. Donahue invited anti-war voices on his show. For this, Donahue was fired.
Amy Goodman, producer of the news podcast Democracy Now! has described what happened at MSNBC: "In 2003, Phil Donahue was fired from his primetime MSNBC talk show during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It was the most popular talk show on MSNBC at the time. The problem wasn’t Phil’s ratings, but rather his views. An internal MSNBC memo warned Donahue was a, quote, “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” providing a, quote, “home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity,” unquote."
Phil's own description of the situation: "I think what happened to me, the biggest lesson, I think, is the — how
corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. This was a
decision — my decision — the decision to release me came from far above.
This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me
from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an
overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General
Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel
that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer. So, by the way, I
had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. I could have
Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn’t have Dennis Kucinich on alone. I
was considered two liberals. It really is funny almost, when you look
back on how — how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice.
We were scolds. We weren’t patriotic. American people disagreed with us.
And we weren’t good for business."
Jeff Cohen, senior producer of Donahue's show, has described the situation at the network in 2003 in similar terms, "But “the suits” ruined our show when they took control and actually
mandated a quota system favoring the right wing: If we had booked one
guest who was antiwar, we needed to book two that were pro-war. If we
had one guest on the left, we needed two on the right. When a producer
suggested booking Michael Moore—known to oppose the pending Iraq war—she
was told she’d need to book three rightwingers for political balance."
I'm glad Phil Donahue lived long enough to see the lies and and warmongering politics of George W. Bush be completely discredited. And also that he lived long enough to see MSNBC come to its senses and hire great progressive journalists like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes. MSNBC isn't perfect, but perhaps it has recognized that in America, if the news seems a bit too "liberal" it's because (as Stephen Colbert once said), "Reality has a well-known liberal bias".
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