"If [Berlusconi] is elected, he will indirectly oversee all mainstream Italian television — his own three Mediaset channels and the rival channels of pubcaster RAI. That would be like having Rupert Murdoch in charge of CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox, as well as at the helm of the government."
— "Can Silvio Keep His Empire," By Cecilia Zecchinelli, Daily Variety, May 7, 2001

Media moguls and politicians are morphing into each other. Each wants to take on the other's job. Silvio Berlusconi, the heavy-handed and oft-indicted "duce" of Italian megamedia, owner of all three of the country's private TV stations and many other media outlets, is poised to become that country's next prime minister, a position he once held briefly. In New York City, former bond booster turned media billionaire Michael Bloomberg has thrown his gilded hat into the mayor's race after abandoning a lifetime of democratic politricks to embrace the Grand Old Party in power.

It's like the children's game musical chairs: Who will be sitting where when the music stops? The shuffle from political office to media presence goes both ways. Already CNN is trying to recruit former President Bill Clinton to host a talk show (while dropping Jesse Jackson after his "love child" scandal). Former Vice President Al Gore, a former journalist, is now teaching journalism. His predecessor, former Vice President Dan Quayle, comes from a newspaper dynasty. Jerry Springer used to be mayor of Cincinnati. NBC's Tim Russert worked for former New York Governor Mario Cuomo before NBC News. Cable yakster Chris Mathews speech-wrote for President Carter and Representative Tip O'Neill. George Stephanopolis went from the house of Clinton to the house of Disney. And U.S. News and World Report editor David Gergan will go in and out of Democratic and Republican houses alike. America's airwaves are littered with pols turned pundits even as many media mavens at a higher level lust to be legitimized by elected or appointed office.

What gives? Is it that no one is satisfied with just one career anymore? Or is it that the proverbial grass is always greener on the other side of the microphone? What is it about political office that seems so seductive to those with financial clout, aside from access to the big piggy bank of tax revenues? Or is there something else going on, something far darker and more insidious?

Media execs and politicos operate from on high. Both have handlers and operatives in a media-political culture run by and for specialists and special interests, as MediaChannel editor Aliza Dichter puts it. Increasingly, they all come from the same class background and uphold the same interests irrespective of their competitive companies or even racial and cultural backgrounds. Most buy into the same media logic and represent a narrow world view in which what constitutes politics is narrowed to quarrels between Democrats and Republicans who have more in common than most pundits and politicians acknowledge.

Codependent In Their Lust For Power
We know that the media and political elites are both addicted to the spotlight that only the electronic gaze of the TV camera can bring. The way things are now, most elections couldn't happen without intense media attention. It appears as if broadcasters feel compelled to cover politics to keep their broadcast licenses or credibility with the establishment. Certain pols also shamelessly use their platforms when they can. Both "sides" lust after celebrity. Perhaps that's why the media increasingly covers politics with much the same approach it brings to its adulation of Hollywood. Even Time magazine spoke of the presidential election coverage the last time out as "electotainment."

The recent annual dinner of Washington correspondents once again symbolized the ways in which politicians and the journos who cover them inhabit the same subculture with the same values and outlook. Reported Phil McCombs in The Washington Post's Style section: "President Bush drew cheerful laughter from 3,000 journalists, government bigs, tycoons, Hollywood types and others. ... The black tie event had kicked off with a series of 'pre-parties' hosted by ABC, Gannett, U.S. News & World Report and other organizations ... Indeed, the grand old man of the conservative movement, editor [of the National Review] and writer William F. Buckley Jr., seemed in his element. 'I was delighted to meet Katherine Harris [the Florida Secretary of State who many think helped Bush steal the election],' he grinned. 'I told her to do it again four years from now. She promised she would.'"

Only joking? I don't think so.

This mirth and camaraderie between the president and the press is not even surprising and is barely commented upon. It reminds me of an insight by Theodore White, whose books on the coverage of campaigns were bestsellers. "The talk of the corps of correspondents who follow the candidates is not simply gossip," he wrote in "The Making of the President" (Buccaneer Books,1960). "Gossip is only its surface form. It is consensus — it is the tired emotional measuring of judgments among men whom the weeks on the road have made into a Brotherhood that only they understand." It is this consensus that remains so sickening, and was so evident in the mostly positive media assessments of how well Bush managed his first 100 days. Most presidents do get this media honeymoon, although, as I recall, Clinton was the target of attack from his first days in town.

Since politicians and mediatricians are so close, they often feel a bit interchangeable. Sure, each side of this closing divide is perennially annoyed about how poorly the other side does its job. Pols think the media is a pain; journos consider politicians a shame. It's like a fussing and fighting in a family in which ideology often takes a back seat to shifting alliances and private resentments. Novelist Norman Mailer likes this family analogy as a way to understand power relationships. "The American political body had evolved into a highly controlled and powerfully manipulated democracy overseen by a new species of aristocracy formed at the junction of four Royal Families — the ten-thousand-dollar suits of the mega-corporations, the titans of the media, the high ogres of Congress and the upper lords of the White House," he wrote in an essay in his anthology "The Time of Our Time." All of these families are allied with each other as often as they go to war.

The Toxin Of "Mediaocracy"
Making politicians into celebrities is the toxin of what I call our mediaocracy (See Mediaocracy 2000, MediaChannel's new book on the coverage of the 2000 U.S. presidential elections). Everyone knows that ambition and upward mobility are facilitated through regular TV exposure. The politicians pay for it with TV ad money and press secretaries who suck up to big journalists for interviews and Sunday talk-show appearances, even as they fear that the exposure will destroy them. Think of poor Bob Kerrey, the wounded Vietnam War veteran who parlayed his "hero" status into a governor's job, a seat in the U.S. Senate and, recently, the presidency of a major university.

For years Kerrey was a media fave, in part because he dated actress Debra Winger. Now, thanks to some hard-hitting investigative reporting by Gregory Vistica for The New York Times Magazine and "60 Minutes 2," the real story has come out. A skillful on-air interrogation by CBS's Dan Rather exposed Kerrey as a war criminal. He now admits to having committed a Vietnam "atrocity" when the Navy SEAL hit squad he commanded in 1969 savagely wiped out 20 innocent civilians, including women and children, in the hamlet of Than Phong. As a media-seasoned pol and practiced sound-bite artist, he waffled about whether those murders should constitute a war crime or not. Most following the story wondered how Kerrey kept this slaughter a secret for 32 years. Sadly, no one asked why the news media hadn't exposed him earlier, although Newsweek had parts of this story years ago. (For what was left out of this coverage, see Alexander Cockburn's column this week in New York Press).

War crimes are at least a recognized form of criminality, even if the U.S. maintains a clear double standard, demanding punishment for the likes of Slobodon Milosovic but never for Americans who break international law with impunity. At a recent talk at New York City's New School, the university Kerrey heads, Chris Mathews of CNBC's "Hardball" called his crime a "mistake," asking: "What should we do, put the whole Vietnam War on trial?" Not a bad idea, but I would argue that many media execs should be in the dock too, at least before the court of public opinion. Hats off to "60 Minutes" for rerunning on May 6 its story on two U.S. servicemen who rescued Vietnamese during the My Lai massacre and who called for a U.S. apology to Vietnam and an admission that war crimes were committed.

Media crimes are still not recognized by anyone in power or in the judiciary, and they never will be once media moguls move into positions of state power. Half of Europe is outraged that a ruthless businessman like Berlusconi, who was convicted of bribery and other crimes, will waltz into office thanks to his demagoguery and dollars (well, lira) In New York, it is not surprising that among Michael Bloomberg's biggest boosters is Abe Hirschfeld, a wannabe media mogul who briefly owned The New York Post until a strike by its journalists forced him to sell it. He is now in jail for threatening to kill a business partner.

From behind bars, Abe says of Mike: "His accomplishments are tremendous. He runs such an efficient organization. If he runs the city, he will do it the same way. Do I support him? Absolutely 100 percent." Hirschfeld then told The Village Voice, which calls Bloomberg an "ego candidate," "A rich man only has success. What he can do for himself, he can do for others." That's the same logic that propels the candidacy of the patrone-turned-pol Berlusconi in a country that still remembers that Mussolini, the infamous fascist leader, was also known for "efficiency," i.e. making the trains run on time. That may have been true, but Benito's perfect society ended up looking like a train wreck."

Newspapers and magazines across Europe of all political perspectives have warned that Berlusconi is dangerous. England's conservative Economist cited his record of business irregularities and said his election represents a dark day for Italian democracy and the rule of law. France's Le Monde links him to racist and fascist groups. Some public figures in Italy have rushed to his defense, rejecting comparisons to the election of far rightists Joerg Haider in Austria.

Back In The Big Apple
Back in the Big Apple, Bloomberg, like many businessmen, is targeting Giuliani voters with his message. He has gone from packaging financial news to packaging himself as a newsmaker. His late-in-the-day conversion to the right prompted former New York governor Mario Cuomo to say; "Bloomberg dramatizes all of the easing of ideological lines. He comes out unabashedly saying it really doesn't matter what you call yourself."

It may be, rather, that it just plain "doesn't really matter," period! At least not to most U.S. voters. Their estrangement is deep. Disenchantment has grown dramatically since a 1995 New York Times/CBS News poll reported 59 percent saying that there was "not a single elected official they admired"; 79 percent ("the largest figure in several decades") that government was "pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves"; and 58 percent that people "like themselves had little to say about what the government did."

So it is it any wonder the country seems to be asleep in its response to Bush's ascendancy to the presidency? Is it any wonder that many don't seem to care if media moguls run their countries because to many it appears as if they do anyway.

Bloomberg and Berlusconi are men who run institutions from the top down, supposedly with some semblance of public responsibility. But do they really care about the people they serve? To most of their ilk, the bottom line is the only line. The overlords of media empires get away with practically anything. Clearly, that's not the ethic we need from leaders in democratic societies. That's why media owners should be barred from public office, just as politicians are not allowed in most countries to own their own media companies. While wealthy people usually put their stocks in blind trusts for the duration of their public service, they still use their positions to wheel and deal and set themselves up for their return to the business world. That's a conflict if there ever was one, and countries like Italy are not known for strict enforcement of what laws there may be governing real or potential conflicts. Berlusconi has agreed to appoint a joint German, English and American panel to consider how he should handle these conflicts of interest. Rumor has it that he may sell parts of his media empire to Rupert Murdoch, but most of the main Italian news organization believe Berlusconi's own money will be used for the purchase, leaving him and his children in control.

Rupert For Ruler
But maybe I am just too radical or old-fashioned to think that the wall between media and politics should be raised higher. If I am, then perhaps I will just have to get with it, move on and cop to the new realities. 2004 is just around the corner. How about it, Rupert. Are you tired of masterminding politicians from the shadows? How about stepping forward?

You heard it here first. If you hate Murdoch or love him, could he do much more damage to the White House than the current occupant? May this News Dissector be the first to nominate the mogul you love to hate. Rupert Murdoch for President. "Let THE MAN become your man." Other slogans welcome.

— MediaChannel Executive Editor Danny Schechter explains the mediaocracy in more detail in the new e-book, "Hail to the Thief: How the Media Stole the 2000 Presidential Election," just published by Electron Press.com.

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

The Media Channel is a not-for-profit project of OneWorld and The Global Center, and is produced by Globalvision New Media.

Media monopolist plays the populist

Berlusconi controls public opinion through his media empire