On April 6, 2009, the University of Colorado hosted the 61st Annual Conference on World Affairs, which included a panel presentation entitled Rebranding Republicans: Don't Misunderestimate Us, recorded by and broadcast on C-SPAN. Among the panelists was Robert G. Kaufman, author of In Defense of the Bush Doctrine: Moral Democratic Realism and American Grand Strategy, published in 2007. In a ten-minute presentation, Mr. Kaufman posited five "core principles" that Republicans must embrace if they are to succeed "when Obama fails." (emphasis suppied)
There is much to find disturbing in Mr. Kaufman's presentation, such as his assumption that Obama will fail and his assertion that "multiculturalism is a euphemism for the Balkanization of the United States". However, his "recommendation" that the GOP "acquire another television network" to disseminate its message in future elections is both an audacious proposal and a stunning admission.* (emphasis supplied)
Kaufman stated:
The fifth thing that Republicans have to do is understand the problem of communicating in a world where much of the television media, particularly, is hostile...If I had to recommend one single thing that the Republicans should be doing to help articulate the message, it is to acquire another television network so that there is not just FOX, but multiple sources of alternative information that will do a much better job than we did in 2008 to keep things honest.
(emphasis supplied)(The quote begins at roughly 19:15 in the C-SPAN program. UPDATE: Kossack tbetz was kind enough to embed here a portion of the video now on YouTube. Thanks, tbetz!)
Acquire? Another? Freudian slip or not, this statement is stunning for two reasons. First, there is the casualness with which a noted political scientist suggests that a political party should "own", a television network for purposes of disseminating a political message during elections. Second, it is predicated on the implicit assumption that the right already "owns" FOX. (It also suggests that we may have yet another channel around which to surf a wide berth in the future.)
FOX's blatant conservative bias is no secret, of course, but Kaufman goes still further. His unequivocal affirmation of the truth is gratifying. In 2004, film director Robert Greenwald produced his excellent documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, which revealed editorial Vice President John Moody craven machinations to alter news content. Through a series of internal editorial directives to news staff, Moody exerted top-down pressure to propagandize the news in favor of Republicans.
In 2005, Slate's Timothy Noah wrote:
The usually disciplined foot soldiers at Fox News have long maintained that their news organization is not biased in favor of conservatism. This charade is so important to Fox News that the company has actually sought to trademark the phrase "fair and balanced" (which is a bit like Richard Nixon trademarking the phrase "not a crook"). No fair-minded person actually believes that Fox News is unbiased, so pretending that it is calls for steely corporate resolve. On occasion, this vigilance pays off. Last year, for example, the Wall Street Journal actually ran a correction after its news pages described Fox News, accurately, as "a network sympathetic to the Bush cause and popular with Republicans."
Like the Moody memos and the WSJ's inital (accurate) statement, Kaufman's recognizes, by parapraxis or otherwise, what we've never questioned, that FOX "belongs to" the Republican party. This is not to say that Kaufman has admitted to some legal title or holding by the GOP, or to suggest that one exists. There's no need for such a relationship because, at the end of the day--or news cycle--the right "owns" FOX.
From the lips of Bush's Apologist-in-Chief to our ears, "FOX: a GOP 'acquisition' that should be replicated."
* Based on a comment below, I want to clarify that Kaufman does not, at least to my knowledge, have any "official" connection to the GOP. Rather, he is a Pepperdine University professor, writer and political scientist. His bio for the cited conference is here. His Pepperdine bio is here.
UPDATE: Since posting this diary, I've been doing periodic searches of its related terms to see if other sources pick it up. Thanks to what I assume are the efforts of Kossacks, Kaufman's comments and links to C-SPAN, this diary, and then YouTube clip are popping with increasing frequency.