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Agendas and Smokescreens

The late newspaper columnist Drew Pearson is one of those personalities who were widely known in their time, but after their demise, dropped quickly from the national radar screen.

Today, few people remember him. But from the 1920s until his death in 1969, Pearson was a noted newsman and commentator and a genuine celebrity with a devoted audience.

Throughout his career, Pearson was committed to liberal and leftist causes. He had the talent and the charisma for the job, and for many years, he was a tireless reporter, fiercely committed to keeping the politicians honest.

But over time, he crossed the line. He developed the unfortunate habit, à la Senator Joe McCarthy, of attacking his opponents in ways that depended more on innuendo than on facts.

He probably thought of himself as a dedicated journalist on a mission, doing whatever it takes. But to achieve his goals, he stooped to using unfair tactics, including smears and character attacks. He evolved into a crusader. A showman. A grave disappointment.

During World War II, Pearson wanted the Allies to open a second front in Europe to help the Soviet Union fight Nazi Germany. When that didn’t happen, Pearson lit into various State Department officials personally in a series of vitriolic columns. President Roosevelt angrily called him “a chronic liar.”

During and after the war, Pearson made a series of allegations about Defense Secretary James Forrestal, a former Wall Street insider and avowed anti-communist. Pearson charged at various times, without providing evidence, that Forrestal was corrupt, paranoid, and cowardly.

One example; in 1949, Pearson reported on a 1937 incident in which Forrestal’s wife was the victim of a holdup. Pearson implied — speculating in the absence of evidence to the contrary — that Forrestal ran from the scene, leaving the wife to fend for herself.

Through his column “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Pearson often attacked his targets by reporting salacious rumors. In 1967, trying to damage California Governor Ronald Reagan’s chances of getting the Republican presidential nomination, Pearson claimed that a cabal of homosexuals operated behind the scenes in Reagan’s office.

Pearson had plenty of critics over the years. But at the time of his death, his column was syndicated in over 650 newspapers, and he had 60 million readers — double the readership of any other columnist in the country.

Do I disapprove of Drew Pearson and his methods? You bet I do. I have a degree in Journalism. I consider the news business to be a truly important profession. And in my book, no journalist worthy of the name has an agenda.

A professional journalist cannot have an agenda. Journalists have a duty to present the facts to the public and tell the truth, regardless of their own opinions.

Drew Pearson was smart, driven, and talented, and he excelled at wielding influence and achieving his goals. But in the end, he was no more a journalist than Rush Limbaugh.

Being a journalism guy, I’ve paid close attention to the news business over the years. And I’ve seen the business change in significant ways.

There is no question that the ranks of the Drew Pearsons and the Rush Limbaughs have swollen dramatically, while the number of true journalists — the Murrows and the Cronkites — has dwindled to a disheartening degree.

Journalism isn’t dead yet. Some genuine reporters, e.g., Richard Engel, are still out there. But we live in the era of the Fox-News-and-conservative-radio propaganda machine. And the sad truth is, right-wing faux news has inherited Drew Pearson’s distasteful legacy.

The conservative “news” apparatus has become a huge and hugely influential operation that pretends to be journalism, misleads millions, and blocks the country from solving a wide range of national problems.

It’s true that I am an unabashed lefty, and it pains me greatly that the right-wingers have been so successful. But the conservatives have achieved their success by using distortions, smokescreens, and lies. That’s a fact, not liberal bias.

Examples abound of calculated right-wing distortion. But they don’t get better than the furor the right-wing created late last year about President Obama’s reading of the Gettysburg Address.

As you may recall, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, filmmaker Ken Burns created a website, Learntheaddress.org, where people could post videos of themselves reciting the speech.

The website was a great success, and many celebrities, President Obama among them, participated.

Conservative faux news soon cooked up an angle and pounced. Typical was this statement on a conservative blog:

Curiously enough, in his version of the speech, President Barack Obama’s delivery contained an omission — in a line that every other celebrity delivered as “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” the President left out the words “under God.”

Another said this:

After five years of tearing down religious liberty, it is neither surprising nor unexpected that President Obama disregarded “under God” when reciting the Gettysburg Address. He has certainly failed to acknowledge God and Biblical values throughout his presidency.

The accusation that the President callously and cynically omitted “under God,” quickly spread through the conservative media. In perfect Drew Pearson style, they hammered the President with all the outrage they could muster.

Real journalists, of course, stepped forward to report that the omission wasn’t an omission at all. At Burns’ request, Obama read the Nicolay version of the speech. It is one of five in Lincoln’s handwriting known to exist, and it does not include the words “under God.”

In the normal world, where logic and reason mean something, that explanation ended the matter. But little changed in right-wing propaganda world.

In most cases, the explanation was conveniently ignored, and the hammering continued. In a few cases, the explanation was acknowledged — but when it was, the story evolved into the claim that it didn’t matter, because the President takes every opportunity to avoid mentioning God anyway.

An example:

The practice of eliding references to God from America’s Founding documents has become a habit for President Obama, who has dropped the word “Creator” or other references to God from the Declaration of Independence on numerous occasions. He is believed to be the first president to issue a Thanksgiving address without mentioning God. He has often skipped writing an Easter proclamation altogether.

That accusation is a cynical and outrageous crock of completely manufactured, pants-on-fire baloney.

Easter proclamation? To commemorate Easter, presidents host prayer breakfasts, issue statements, etc. Obama does it every year. But no president in history has ever issued an “Easter proclamation.” Look it up.

It might be unfair to say that Drew Pearson would be proud of all this. But unquestionably, today’s right-wing propaganda apparatus is heir to his legacy.

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In spite of Drew Pearson’s methods and the damage he caused, there was one occasion when he stepped forward and accomplished something hugely worthwhile.

I’m referring to the public movement he organized after World War II to deliver food to devastated European war survivors. Ironically, that achievement, like Pearson himself, is barely remembered today.

More on that in my next post.

Andrew R. “Drew” Pearson, 1897-1969.