The Idiot Box

The Rot in TV News Starts at the Top and Trickles Down

Are Trump's attacks on the daughter of a judge presiding over one of his criminal cases just "a reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation”? The clip of NBC anchor Kristen Welker’s vapid remark is nauseating to watch. Against the backdrop of surging fascism, political violence and the insurrection, It was like reporting on John Wayne Gacy’s murder spree that, “this might be bad for clowns.” 

Political TV is a venal game. It is nominally designed to inform the public, but it is actually conceived, packaged and broadcast to ensure, first, eyeballs on the screen and second, continuing access to the gets, a combination with one goal - to maintain or increase profits. 

When the history of this era is written, the venality of TV and the soullessness of the execs will be recorded as the main enablers of the rise of fascism in America. 

Like Chuck Todd, who she replaced as Meet the Press moderator, Welker has been savaged by anti-MAGAs for softballing Trump’s fascism. But it’s unlikely her banal style bothers her bosses. On the contrary it’s exactly what she’s supposed to do. Like the bankers and big American corporations still financing Trump’s Republican Party, TV execs need to hedge their bets now, in case he wins.

Welker is not making gaffes. She is doing her job as a successful, established TV journalist who knows the rules. The first rule for women on political TV (journalist or candidate) is that your actual face, hair and skin, cannot, no matter what, be exposed to cameras. I’ve been there too: enthroned, queenly and queasy, in the Rock Center HMU chair, a hair stylist blasting away from the left with a blow dryer, a makeup pro wielding goopy brushes from the other side, spackling on foundation, sticky-ing up eyelashes with multiple layers of mascara and finishing the masterpiece with that final disgusting dab of lip gloss. All carried out in a state of semi-panic, as control room producers spew their countdown into the earpieces.

The second rule applies to anyone on camera, male or female, of all ethnicities. At NBC, everyone from Rachel Maddow to Chuck Todd and Welker to the bookers and the hair and makeup contractors work for a megacorporation, Comcast, run by corporate suits with one goal: to make money. To keep the profits rolling in, the cameras need access. 

That combination of money, cosmetically shellacked girls, hot lights, and cameras is of course, the noxious fume that has sustained Trump most of his adult life, from the beauty pageants to the political career. Odious reality producer Mark Burnett (second only to Rupert Murdoch as the most dangerous immigrant in America) used the magic of TV to remake the nepo-baby business failure as a successful executive whose cruelly delivered judgments on contestants fed the envious rabble’s appetite for seeing humiliated anyone with the looks, energy and ambition to get on TV.

NBC is hardly alone. In the last three months of 2015 Trump was already garnering more than a quarter of all coverage on the three network’s evening newscasts. By the end of the 2016 election cycle, including the cable news operations, he had sucked up $2 billion of free airtime. 

The rot in TV starts at the top of course, trickles down into anchors like Welker and emerges in the laziness and cynicism of the bookers, for whom the “gets” are all that count. 

For the bookers, it is all about access, gained at a bargain that includes what is and is not to be asked. Take a gander at this artifact, a clip of ABC’s George Stephanopoulos tossing friendly softballs at the Trump family on Good Morning America. 

Two weeks AFTER the Billy Bush hot mic was broadcast, and a mere twelve days before the 2016 election, George never mentioned the pussy grab, never asked Ivanka or Melania how they felt about husband and father’s admission of habitual sexual assault. 

Did George simply forget? Did he not want to hurt the tender feelings of the ladies? No way. It was part of the deal, cut long before the women teetered on set in their stilletos. 

The network teased the segment as the “Trump family opens up about the effects of the election.” There they are, siblings, including Tiffany, arrayed on the couch, Melania and Trump in his and hers chairs. “EXCLUSIVE: Sitting Down with the the Trump Family” reads the chyron, next to an election “countdown,” over a live shot of the family lined up for a ribbon-cutting at the Trump International hotel (soon to be a favor-seeking donor money intake valve).

“We spoke with the family, about the effects of the election and whether it’s been damaging to the company’s brand,” George says. “As Don Junior told me, it’s been a brutal process!” 

He starts off asking Don Junior if he might run for office, lets Ivanka robotically talk about her admiration for her “fawther” and doesn’t push back when Eric crows that the Trump brand “is the hottest in they world.” 

“Incredible interview!” a female anchor colleague at the desk says to George after it airs. “Such insight into the family!” 

Smiles all around.

Anchors like Stephanopoulos and Welker make easy targets, the off-cam execs in the suites are the ones calling the shots. The Apprentice was brought to TV by NBC honcho Jeff Zucker. By 2016, Zucker was CNN Worldwide chief. After Trump was elected, he called 2016 the “best year ever” for cable news. He openly took credit for catapulting Trump to TV stardom, although he denied that he had a role in making him the Republican nominee and ultimately president.

Trump brought in eyeballs. Aggregate primetime viewership rose 50 percent in 2016, and among adults 25-54 - prime advertising meat - viewership rose 55 percent. “I have had a unique relationship with Donald Trump. I’m the one who put him and The Apprentice on the air at NBC,” Zucker said at a Harvard University forum after the election. “I’ve known who he is and what he is for a long time.”

Zucker knew “who and what he is” but couldn’t be bothered to weigh sociopathy, demagoguery, and cryptofascism against the likely effect on the public good? That’s who he is.

In a glowing post-election piece in The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Zucker’s longstanding relationship with the real estate developer turned reality TV star helped him realize much earlier than did some of his news competitors what a good shot at success Trump had in politics. But he insisted CNN with its whole-hog approach to covering the candidate is not responsible for his GOP nomination.”

Zucker was forced out at CNN in 2022 because of a relationship he had with a fellow employee. He went straight off to another cushy gig, heading a concern called Redbird IMI, a consortium with hundreds of millions in funding from a UAE royal. Last year, Zucker tried applying some of the dirty-oil pelf to buy up two “center-right” British publications, Telegraph and Spectator, and bring them into America (because we don’t have enough right-wing fog in the media landscape). He was stymied by British rules about foreign media ownership. 

Zucker was not the only TV exec smirking in the counting-house over the rise of Trump. Former CBS CEO Les Moonves famously crowed during the 2016 election cycle that Trump’s candidacy "may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." He later walked it back, claiming "It was a joke! It was a joke!" but the network put fascist Steve Bannon on their broadcast a week after Trump’s election. (Moonves was out at CBS in 2018 after a half dozen women accused him of sexual harassment and it was revealed that the company had forked over millions to quietly settle some of the claims.)

All the networks and cables have periodically platformed scumbags - Corey Lewandowski, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon. Big Lie supporting former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel bagged a $600,000 two-year contract as the voice of Trumpism on NBC. The suits only rescinded the offer after outrage from working journalists at the company - most of whom have fielded death threats and dodged spittle and curses at MAGA rallies. McDaniel has retained a prominent media lawyer. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt went on Fox to explain the game plan. “Ronna is going to sue everyone who defamed her for breach of contract, for intentional infliction of mental distress,” Hewitt said. “They’re going to sue for the destruction of her business opportunities that come from being on TV.”

Mental distress. Because in Trump’s America, everyone who is anyone has a right to be on TV.