news DISTORT
Who Makes The News and for Whose Benefit?
by Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole
One of the features of “retirement” is that you have more time to read new books and review old books.
I pulled out a 1971 book, probably little read, called Don’t Blame the People – How the news media use bias, distortion and censorship to manipulate public opinion, by Robert Cirino. I don’t think it was well distributed because I found on the first page a note from the author that asked that if I wrote about the book, please list the box number where it could be purchased since he was unable to get a publisher to distributed it.
The book’s title and content express a valuable lesson. People are not given the kind of information needed to make proper decisions in a democratic society.
Cirino asked early in the book a simple question that is revealing about the news media, its power and for whom it isn’t used.
“Could America have ignored the hungry if the poor had had their own ABC, NBC or CBS?” he wrote.
You could extend that question to almost every problem we face – from proper health care to poverty to our creaky justice system. The problem is that the news media don’t look at power institutions or the society in general from the viewpoint of the disadvantaged, the discriminated against or victims of the society.
At the beginning of each chapter, Cirino quotes some historical or distinguished person. One is Edward P. Morgan of ABC News, now a forgotten name. Morgan said: “There is an instrument of devastating effectiveness which we have only superficially, often hypocritically employed. It is called the power of the press. Let’s face it. We in the trade use the power more frequently to fix a traffic ticket or get a ticket to a ball game than to keep the doors of an open society open and swinging, by encouraging honest controversy, or, if you’ll pardon the term, crusading for truth and justice.”
That struck me when observing coverage of President George Bush’s media coup when he recently visited Cleveland to open the Children’s Games in Democratic Cleveland.
He glowed in enjoying media attention at a Cleveland Browns practice session, an enviable backdrop to his political campaigning in Ohio, the state everyone seems to believe is a key to a 2004 election victory.
Of all “reporters,” probably the easiest bought off are sports writers. They’re tough on players who seem greedy, soft as mush with owners who only seem to practice greed.
No one noted of Bush’s PR achievement that the Browns are owned by the Lerner family of MBNA Corp., a credit card company that has been anxious for favorable legislation to the extreme detriment of most customers. Our Pinocchio President is the President of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. Therefore, he’s very welcomed by the Lerner family.
It is noteworthy to mention that thus far in 2004 MBNA sources already have given President Bush $345,250, seventh high among businesses, and for the entire campaign cycle, $585,925, fourth highest among corporations. In soft money, MBNA has given Republicans $540,594 and the Democrats $100,000 in 2004. (Figures from Opensecrets.org, a guide to election campaign contributions. You can look up what those in your zip code gave to candidates.)
In 2000, MBNA was a top donor to Bush with $1,035,905. Hey, let’s toss the Prez some free exposure, too.
Thus, it’s no surprise that Bush could enjoy Randy Lerner’s team and exposure impossible to buy.
Don’t you think it should be reported as an “in kind” contribution to the Bush campaign?
Why wouldn’t Lerner want to be cozy with Bush and the Republicans? He’s wealthy (his dad was worth $4 billion before he died) and the tax cuts he has received and will from Bush are considerable.
Lerner, MBNA chairman succeeding the late Al Lerner, recently picked up 56,952 shares of MBNA on stock options at $2.83 or less. On the same day, he sold them at $21.92. That means he paid no more than $1.6 million then sold them at $12.4 million. That suggest to me he made a cool $10 million with a bit of paper shuffling on a single day.
I also took a quick look at Lerner’s Browns charity where he says his primary goal is “to help meet the needs of the disadvantaged youth and inner city youth in the Northeast Ohio area from childhood through teenage years.
Such a considerate family, the Lerners.
However, what I found struck me as a bit uncaring.
You have probably read about some of the Cleveland Browns events for the charity. Golf, luncheons and other measures to raise money for all those unprivileged youth – the same ones the late Al Lerner worked to take from their schools by getting a total tax exemption for the Browns Stadium, which pays no property taxes, 60 percent of which would go to the Cleveland schools. That alone might be enough to fund high school football.
Anyway, the Browns charity runs a “Draft Day Party,” which in 2002, latest IRS figures available, LOST $61,180 of the charity’s money. It cost $73,010 for the party, which brought in only $11,830, according to Browns statement.
Oh, too bad kids. Surely all the reporters – Jim Donovan, Tony Grossi and others in the media – had a fun time. Bet the food and drink was good.
The Browns also had one of those charity golf outings, too. The charity events get all that publicity for the good works for the kids. It collected $113,570. Great! Oh wait, the Browns expensed $190,931. Therefore, it lost $77,361 of the charity’s money. Oh, too bad kids. Maybe next time.
The famous luncheon? Certainly good for publicity and reporters filling themselves. That lost $27,749.
Touchdown Run – another event – lost $78,111. It didn’t raise anything. All was lost.
In fact, all the events operated by the Browns charity LOST in 2002 a net $240,000, even thought the statement to the IRS say these events “were the primary fund-raising sources for funding the programs of the foundation.”
Advertising and public relations – Now, why would they need public relations with reporters fawning all over them all the time – cost $211,659. Another $60,000 went to former U. S. Federal Judge George White for working 20 hours each week, the Browns stated, for the charity. Well...
With the aim of the Browns charity being to help the disadvantaged kids of our area one wonders why Lerner used $100,000 that year for the Hero Fund for the families of a police officer and a firefighter who died during the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Did they think the money came from him personally?
No doubt, a worthy cause, but why wouldn’t Lerner take it from his bulging pocket rather than from disadvantaged children here in the Cleveland area, the supposed recipients of the money.
Now the charity did have other funds and contributed $369,302 to more than 90 organizations in $1,000 to $5,000 donations. Gross receipts, however, were reported at $1,279,728, or three times more than the charity dispensed.
More Doling Dough Out
Now why would anti-abortion, rabid Republican Ned Whelan, a PR guy and pompous sometimes pundit on Dick Feagler’s TV show, who loves the rich, give $2,000 to John Edwards, former Democratic candidate for President and now John Kerry’s running mate? Very curious. If I were a suspicious guy, I might think that Whelan was shuffling a campaign contribution from a friend or business client, a Democratic client.
Who sez there aren’t any black Democrats? You can’t prove it by the $2,000 contribution to President George Bush by Nate Gray, boss of Etna Parking and once close associate of Mayor Michael White in his heydays.
Minorities Have Trouble With Big Law Firms
A listing of partners of city law firms in Crain’s Cleveland Business reveals the miserable job major law firms here do in elevating minorities.
Of the top ten firms with 682 partners, only 19 are listed as minorities, or 2.7 percent. Women do a little better at 15 percent.
Although Fred Nance, an African-American, heads Squire, Sanders & Dempsey’s Cleveland office, his firm doesn’t rate that well with 70 partners and only three minorities, or 4.2 percent.
There are factors that make this poor record highly egregious for Squire-Sanders.
First, Squire-Sanders does significant public business. Certainly, Nance himself made his name in town representing former Mayor Michael White in public business, particularly during the Save the Browns campaign and construction of the Stadium.
However, there’s a historic factor, too. The famed Squire-Sanders leader in the 1960s, James C. Davis - referred to by former Council President George Forbes as the Great White Father (of course, Davis helped Forbes get legal business) – made a haughty speech to the Bar Association in 1967 chastising white ethnics and blaming them for all the city’s racial problems.
Davis had reprints spread around town in the thousands.
“Let us, as lawyers, stop wasting our time in criticism and flagellation of the crop of office-holders at the City Hall. Let us rather give our attention to the political soil from which they grow. Let us direct ourselves to the solution of Cleveland’s White Problem.” Of course, by Cleveland’s White Problem he excused himself and the legal and business community.
It is therefore disturbing that 37 years later his law firm, Squire Sanders, has such a miserable record in elevating minorities as partners.
Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole can be reached at Roldo@Adelphia.net
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