we'll be sure that all sides continue to be heard right here on msnbc. good night from san diego. which have these stories will you be talking about tomorrow? new tax cut compromise. if the president okays multi-year extension of all bush tax cuts, the republicans will agree. wait a minute, what the hell kind of compromise is that? >> if the president wants to compromise on a two or three-year extension, what's important here, chris, is that

businesses know what their tax rates are going to be over the next few years so they can plan growth and plan to add people. >> because the bush tax cuts got those businesses to add so many jobs in the last ten years. >> what if we moved it up to $1 million? everybody below $1 million will get a tax cut, but the millionaires and billionaires won't. >> why the democrats keep negotiating against themselves with howard fineman. how do we pay for any cuts anyway with ezra klein. the revitalists versus the survivalists. the two factions that have cut this white house stuck for 22 months. richard wolf inside the split. the martian chronicles. the the solution on how to get there, don't try to get back? >> you might be going to mars, you know! >> fixing the filibuster, ending the earmark. mcconnell caves to the tea party. and the real death of news. ted koppel, false equivalence, and the failure of television news, 2001, 2005. my special comment.

all the news and commentary now on "countdown." good evening from new york, this is monday, november 15th, 722 days until the 2012 presidential elections. with the lame duck session of congress now under way, there is one word that has and will be tossed around repeatedly. a word that must be probed, scoured for authenticity, particularly of the white house and congressional democrats and republicans all coalesce around an understanding of it that may very well represent a collective deception. the word is compromise. the collective deception, that a temporary extension of all the bush tax cuts, maybe for a couple of years constitutes compromise. president obama has once again objected to extending the bush tax cuts for the wealthiest americans, quoting what i've said is that i believe it is a mistake for us to borrow $700 billion to make tax cuts permanent for millionaires and billionaires. it won't significantly boost the

economy and it's hugely expensive, so we can't afford it. and when david axelrod was asked if the white house would support a temporary extension of all the bush tax cut, he avoided a direct answer. again, pay close attention to the word permanent. >> are you open to compromise? >> there's no bend on the permanent extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest americans. >> and, once again -- >> we cannot afford to go the additional step and permanently raise -- permanently cut taxes, primarily for millionaires and billionaires at a cost of $700 billion for the next ten years alone. >> meantime, you may have seen the words republican and compromise in this formulation. a two or three-year extension of all the bush tax cuts as if that actually represents compromise. republicans apparently successful so far in advancing such a fallacy. senator jim demint. >> i hope we can get a permanent extension, but if the president wants to compromise on a two or three-year extension.

what's important is businesses know what their tax cuts are going to be over the next few years so they can plan growth and plan to add people. if we keep things in a state of flux, i'm afraid we're going to continue to have a jobs problem. >> right. the certainty that businesses got from ten years of those bush tax cuts worked out brilliantly. back to the tax cut compromise. tea party favorite, senator-elect rand paul also signing on to the temporary extension of all the bush tax cuts with caveats. >> if that's all we can get, that's better than nothing. but i think the more permanent, the better. and then what we need to do as republicans, if we're serious about the debt is, keep the tax cuts permanent, but then come in and say here's several hundred billion dollars we'll save by having spending reduction bills immediately introduced in congress. >> and just in case there's any remaining doubt that a grand charade is under way, michelle bauchmann is also willing to support such a compromise.

an extension of all the bush tax cuts for a few years. meantime, one democratic leader is suggesting that a proposal that might be legitimately called a compromise. senator chuck schumer. >> i think there is a compromise in the making. democrats had originally called for tax cuts for people below $250,000. republicans for everybody. what if we moved it up to $1 million. everybody below $1 million will get a tax cut, but the millionaires and billionaires won't. >> let's turn first to "washington post" staff writer, "newsweek" columnist ezra klein. good evening. >> good evening, keith. >> if the bush tax cuts are extended for two or three years, nothing has changed. it is -- >> no. >> it is mere procrastination with deficit-producing, underperforming tax cuts staying exactly as it is, isn't it? is there some magic elixir in middle of this we're not seeing? >> you had a nice segment of folks saying, no, don't throw me back into the briar patch. the thing about extending tax

cuts every two or three years, those tax cuts become permanent. people become used to them. and the justifications get stranger and stranger. we passed them originally to get rid of a surplus, then it went to recession, so now we need them for stimulus. and as jim demint says certainty even though obama would create ten years of certainty by just doing the middle class ones. things have gotten a little wild here on the just physics for them. but the basic idea, if you keep them all together, if you don't de-couple, they'll be easier to keep extending into the future. >> when you move the goal posts like this, the field tends to move with it to some degree. assume for argument's sake that a proposal like the one we heard from senator schumer gained traction. no extension of tax cuts for above $1 million in income. that might have some appeal and would be better than the current compromise, which is a cave-in looks like. is even that good policy? >> i don't understand why they're doing this. i really don't. it is bad policy.

we know we have a massive deficit problem, we have the deficit commission talking right now about how to fix it. we know that tax cuts for folks over $250,000 in income are not particularly popular. we know they're not stimulative. so why move back to $1 million? these tax cuts don't get extended if a president doesn't sign them, if the senate doesn't vote for them. and right now, when we're going to do them, the house, senate, and white house are all controlled by democrats. what exactly leverage are democrats getting knocked back on their heels by? i can't figure out where the republican power over this issue is coming from. >> well, and that leads to an even broader conclusion here is the democrats have screwed this up strategically and from a policy standpoint. is there chance, you know, as the line from dr. johnson, that when a man knows he's going to be hanged in the morning, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. when the democrats realize they lose the house in terms of formal control in this lame duck session, is it possible for them to concentrate long enough to correct course? >> there are three things they need out of this.

number one is unemployment extension. in the next month, we need unemployment insurance extension or people lose benefits. number two, we're going to need to raise the debt ceiling in the next couple of months. republicans are loving this. jim demint says he wanted to use it to repeal the health care bill, cut spending massively. if republicans want to blow up the deficit by extending tax cuts, they need to stand shoulder to shoulder on the debt ceiling. if i were the democrats, i would not do the tax cuts without doing the debt ceiling at the same time. number three, senator conrad said it should only be possible in the context of tax reform. we can extend these for a couple of years, but if you don't do tax reform, it's an automatic snap to clinton 1999 rates. republicans want it and nobody wants a big tax increase. but the big fear i'm hearing from people on the hill is the democrats are going to give this away for nothing. and it's not clear why they're doing it that way. >> is there any lawmaker to your knowledge, even one of the lame ducks who is willing to suggest, you know what, it isn't a good idea to extend any of these tax

cuts? >> actually it's george voinovich, the republican from ohio. >> of course, it is. >> besides him, there's been little on it. to be fair in the next couple of years for folks not making much money, we need any kind of stimulus you can get and keeping taxes low for people who make less than $250,000 is an ineffective but still present type of stimulus. but going forward and for folks above that, it doesn't make sense right now. >> and comes at the price of bribing the rich. great thanks, ezra. >> thank you. let's turn to the senior editor at the "huffington post" msnbc political analyst, howard fine man. good evening. >> hi, keith. >> temporarily extending the bush tax cuts is not a real compromise, it is as i suggested before a cave on the part of the democrats, just accepting a position that the republicans had advanced for a long time just for a shorter period of time. and they get nothing back. so why does it sound like the white house is very carefully giving itself room to arrive at this point in which it gives away the store for nothing? >> well, keith, i've been listening to you and ezra talk

and i've been trying to figure out based on my reporting today what reasonable answer i can give to the question of why the democrats are doing this. and based on the people i talked to today, it's a couple of things. first of all, they have lost faith if they ever had any in the idea that they could control the narrative and control the debate. and they're afraid that if they get into some kind of real confrontation with the republicans over taxes -- in other words, the president maybe even vetoing some kind of bill or standing in the way of what the republicans want to do, that either the veto will be overridden or it won't be and all the tax cuts will go away. and the white house and the democrats -- some of them -- are afraid to try to deal with the consequences of that. they don't really think they can convince the american people that the reason why all the tax cuts have gone away is not president obama, but republican

intransigents. in other words, they lost their nerve in feeling they have the ability to control the debate. that's the best answer i can give to you and ezra on that point. >> don't they take any heart from the fact that democrats have successfully negotiated against democrats? that they beat the democrats into a pulp already? shouldn't they see the ability? if you can hit yourself hard enough in the head to knock yourself out cold, certainly you can direct the punch in a different direction, can't you? >> one would think so. but one of the interesting things to watch here and talking to democrats is this, both the caucuses are meeting tomorrow, both the house and senate side. and it's not clear what the defeated democrats are going to do. one might think that a lot of defeated democrats and house seats and even senate seats would say the heck with it. i tried to replay the game of mollifying the republicans, now they're out of there, i'm going to vote against tax breaks for the rich and screw it. but that -- we don't know whether that's going to happen. and the people i talked to think

it's doubtful because a lot of those same democrats either have to go back to those districts or they might want to go into business or they might want to be lobbyists or this and that, you never know. and they were impressed if not intimidated by the fact that the democrats won plus 60 and the republicans won plus 60 in the house and seem to have the political momentum. so this would seem to be an opportunity in the lame duck for defeated democrats to be brave. but it's not even clear that's going to happen. we'll wait and see what happens in the caucuses tomorrow. but the betting i hear is they're not going to be that way. >> what about the notion ezra raised about linking the bush tax cuts to republican concessions on extending the 99ers, the unemployment insurance for the americans who get sucked into that black hole in the middle of the month? >> that's a great idea in theory. but the democrats, especially in the senate, aren't convinced they have the votes to defeat attempts to remove such things from being attached to the bill.

basically harry reid and his leadership aren't convinced that they can get anything out of the senate, which is one reason why the house members, including those defeated democrats who might want to vote to not allow the tax cuts to continue for the rich don't want to take the first vote. they want to make the senate vote first. >> this again. >> this again. to see if the senate has the cajones to do anything. if the senate doesn't, even the house democrats aren't going to do it gwen either. >> "huffington post" senior editor howard fineman. as always, big thanks, howard. >> thank you. richard wolf's new book "revival" describing competing groups inside the obama administration, idealists revivalists over survivalists. versus clinton leftover survivalists. some lyrics and a couple of numbers and you've got "west side story." richard wolf next on "countdown."

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if you got the sense the white house was driven into two crowds, richard wolf's new book indicates you were right. a new cheap way to explore mars. go there and stay over at his house. as some senators discuss neutering the filibuster, he gets neutered by the tea party on earmarks. and nothing like being told you've helped to destroy tv news by one of the men who at the time his nation needed him to be a real journalist utterly failed at it. special comment ahead. uh! cut! when you're a stunt woman, work can be pretty unpredictable,

from knowing when my next job will be... to what i'll actually be doing. so in the rest of my life i like control, especially in my finances. that's why i have slate with blueprint. i can make a plan to pay off everyday things and avoid interest. or pay down my balance faster on the big stuff. that saves money. with slate from chase i have everything under control... financially. debit card control... credit card flexibility. get both with slate. speaking with reporters, following his trip to asia, president obama reflecting on the first half of his presidency while offering a preview of what he thinks comes next.

and in our fourth story, while the president hints at obama 2.0, we gain new insight into the struggles and victories of the original flavor. a result of a white house divided revivalists versus survivalists in a team of rivals without very much team. the man reporting from the front lines, richard wolf joins me in a moment. mr. obama, once again shouldering the blame for his administration's perceived failures. this time pointing to his obsessive focus on policy for neglecting things that matter to people. hinting in the next two years he will not be legislatively focused. instead compromised of more outreach to the public. and yes, more calls for bipartisanship. "my expectation when i sit down with mitch mcconnell and john boehner this week there are a set of things that need to get done during the lame duck and they are not just going to want to just obstruct but they're going to want to engage constructively. good times, great oldies. joining me, author of the new book "revival" richard wolf.

>> good evening, keith. >> the reason you did this was to discover what, if anything, had changed with the entire obama team during the first 20 plus months. what was the answer? and was it a surprise to you? >> well, it was a surprise. it surprised me that such a relatively simple question would be out there unresolved for so long. and the fact that it'd begun before the campaign was over. i told the story about john podesta, the former clinton chief of staff, gets into a heated exchange with the campaign people before election day, saying, you know the promise you made about not having lobbyists, we have to get around that. now the campaign people said this wasn't a minor thing. you know, this is what the candidate, the president-elect really believes in. and, of course, they watered it down one way or the other. he says well, he was really just hedging where the president wanted to hedge. but that debate about whether you should stick to the revivalist spirit of the campaign or govern and -- and mold yourself to washington, that has been the fault line running through this white house for the last three years.

>> if it's obama loyalists, revivalists, valerie jarrett, that crowd, the veterans with him from the beginning versus the old-hand clintonists. the survivalists. if the president had repeatedly rejected this clinton model for his presidency, why were there any survivalists? and why were they seemingly in charge? >> well, that's a great question. and there were some obama loyalists on the survivalist side as well. it's not a clear obama/clinton divide here. but that framework from the primaries does set up what happens after. remember, in the final stretch in iowa, he goes up and gives a speech crystallizing the debate between the two where he says you cannot at once say you're the master of the broken system in washington and offer yourself as the person to change it. my argument is based on my research, my sources, he's got a foot in both camps. he wanted to try to do both. and it was as untenable for him in year one and two as it was for clinton in the primaries. >> is this why we've gotten the bipartisan needle stuck in the

same record for the last two years? even now the president talking about the next two years he's going to try to be more bipartisan. is there some connection as he has that it sometimes to eclipse the idea he's also the president of people who voted for him? >> well, there is that self-image there, you're right. this is the guy who said he would unite red and blue america, so he's going to try and do that. there was also a late dawning belief, a realization among these people that, in fact, there were no reasonable republicans out there. that this republican party no longer had a bob dole figure. and at the other side, while they were trying to govern carried on campaigning. and that was a -- a really simple mistake that many of the campaign people said, hey, guys, the other side hasn't stopped the election. took them a long time to realize that. >> and you're right that the scott brown victory in massachusetts in january was the real wake-up call that knocked the president out of his complacency. but what changed?

and if something did change, why ten months later is there still this -- this attitude that we saw during the run-up to the midterms? and even know, this kind of serra serra. >> scott brown happened, everyone said this president is dead, finished, two months later he gets health care. so there's a repeated pattern here of people writing this guy off saying he's finished. there was new hampshire, texas and ohio, pennsylvania, this guy was supposed to be done a long time ago and he bounces back. that's number one to keep in mind. of course, you don't know, he's always going to bounce back. there's a repeated pattern there. secondly, they have come to understand that you've got to reach out to independents. they're the people who have lost. but, in fact, can you get republicans? they're under no illusions. they come into this a little more realistic and also come into it knowing that how much damage they have suffered by going into this governing, washington mode when really, the country left and right, still wants reform. >> the lead survivalist

announced for mayor of chicago on saturday. formally out of the picture. does that change the picture for the next two years? or does the change in control of the house neuter any effect that that might have towards what a lot of people thought this white house was going to look like? >> well, it does change in the sense that there are people close to the president who realize that instead of emanuel adapting to the ways of the campaign, he, in their own words, sort of undermine it. there's an argument to be made, that this is exactly the time you want rahm emanuel. someone who can lock horns and be the party's figure and maybe early on was not the time you wanted him. but hindsight is a not a perfect thing, of course. >> richard wolffe, we're grateful you came to talk about "revival" here first. it's a good word. thanks, great to see you. >> thank you, keith. the good news, you're going to mars. the bad news, you're not coming back. ahead on "countdown." 's kissed .

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how do you explore other planets at half the price? it's simple, go there and don't come back. that modest proposal ahead. first the sanity break and the tweet of the day and it's from may b. i'd like to remind you all that beck is slang for pot in portuguese. actually the online brazilian slang to english says beck means marijuana cigarette. mo importantly, my god, there is an online brazilian slang to english translating dictionary.

let's play "oddball." we begin in the united kingdom. >> maria holland has broken the record for radio broadcasters under water. radio station that caters to a key demographic, people staying at the hospital. she was on the air under water for 4 hours and 4 1/2 minutes breaking the previous record by nearly one hour. besides playing music, she also had a bowling competition and a spirited game of darts. but many people think it was all a ploy to salvage her sinking ratings, which have clearly gone into the tank. internet, where we find the eternal struggle of the wild. a group of alligators versus a cat. here kitty, kitty. the gator returns with reenforcements. kitty holds its ground taking

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two scientists think they've solved the twin problems of getting a man on mars, cost and time. in our third story, it's very simple, really. don't bother bringing him back. you heard me, a ticket to mars, a one-way ticket to mars. this is the rather stark proposal offered by two scientists writing in the mars special edition of the journal of cosmology. they suggest it wasn't that much more harsh than the first settlers who left for america. except for the fact they knew there was air here. the main point is getting mars exploration moving.

go right to colonizing, two men at a time, each ship bringing more supplies. they think older astronauts would make sense. 60 and up. see, radiation would damage the reproductive system, which is why you shouldn't send up any young adults or women. it's going to be a hell of a colony, isn't it? the scientists suggest if this is too one-way for nasa, the public could step in. what we need is an eccentric billionaire. don't tell republicans this could be their solution to long-term unemployment. we will discuss this idea tomorrow. chris hayes next on reforming earmarks and the filibuster, then the special comment. may be possible. in pursuit of this goal, lexus developed the world's most advanced driving simulator, where a real driver in a real car can react to real situations without real consequences. the breakthroughs we innovate here may someday make all cars safer. this is the pursuit of tomorrow. this is the pursuit of perfection.

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tell points please? 250,000. calculating... ooh! answer: five fifty! 550 bucks?! 5 dollar, 50 cents. minus redeeming charge. leaving 50 cents. say what? happy time! what kind of program is this? want better rewards? switch to discover. america's number 1 cash rewards program. it pays to discover. you wouldn't know it by the way he's down played the earmark issue, but senator mitch mcconnell is responsible for more pork than a jimmy dean's sausage factory. according to taxpayers for common sense, during the past three years, the kentucky senator has requested several earmarks. mcconnell caved in to his new tea party overlords.

>> i know the good that has come from the projects that i've helped support throughout my state. i don't apologize for them, but there is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused americans to view it as symbol of the waste and out of control spending that every republican in washington is determined to fight. >> meanwhile, democrats are leading a movement to reform the filibuster process. according to the hill, senator tom udall says he will force a motion to have biden adopt new rules for the session and he will seek consensus among both parties to lower the 60-vote threshold for procedural motions. the goal to end the ability of the party in the minority to obstruct the majority party's agenda from reaching the floor, cloture votes have skyrocketed. you can see the trend, it is gridlock in graphic form.

udall admits he currently does not have the votes to change the senate rules but across the aisle last week, senator-elect dan coats admitted, we need to remove the 60 vote rule for bringing a bill. let's turn to chris, an msnbc contributor. >> good evening, keith. >> start with filibuster. if they don't take care of it, it will be done to them if republicans take over in two years, is there going to be a larger democratic ground swell to try to reform the filibuster process? >> well, a ground swell i haven't seen yet. you have seen some movement, you definitely saw it during health care. one of the things i think that's problematic is that there was a real ground swell around health care because people got a very colorful illustration of the problems of the filibuster and sort of everybody dealing from the 60th vote. and that created a real mass consensus around the fact this had to be changed. i think as we've gotten further

away from that, there's been an ebbing in the amount of pressure there is on the issue. and i think that's problematic. but i do think you see senator udall, harkin, there are other people if you go through the record, there's probably about 15, 20, 25 senators who have said something on the record about their openness to filibuster reform. so i really hope that the senator does push the issue because it's important even if it doesn't work at the opening of this new congress to get everybody on the record. >> is this one of those political party offense/defense questions? the democrats want to play defense, they'll let reform on this die so the republicans have no chance of being free from the filibuster if they gain the majority in 2012, but if the democrats want to play offense, they should push this, so that what they could get done over the next two years would make holding on to the senate easier? >> i think there's a cultural distinction between the republican and democratic caucus. republicans tend to be maximalists and democrats tend

to be minimalists. we've seen this since 1994 and going through and the way the different senators conduct themselves, particularly on the senate side. so i think that's one issue. i think the point you made in the first question is really important to hammer home. for all the democrats that are uneasy about filibuster reform that are thinking to themselves, well, we don't want to be in the situation where we can't block things where we're in the minority. you should think long and hard about whether you think the republicans are going to preserve the filibuster if they're in the majority. because remember, they thought it was such a threat to the republic that judges were getting filibustered, they were ready to blow the thing up a few years ago. and now, judges are getting filibustered routinely and everybody heard of shrugs and it's business as usual. >> it is about the senate as an institution operating more fairly, effectively, and democratically. and yet all the talk of doing this is from incumbent democrats. where are some of those tea party don't tread on me fair is fair voice of the people guys? >> well, i think it's important to -- to remember, the

filibuster is even though it's sort of viewpoint neutral, right? i mean it can be evoked by minorities of either party. it fundamentally has played a reactionary role in american politics. if you look at the history of it in the 20th century, it's been invoked primarily against labor law reform and against civil rights. and now it's become so casually sort of invoked by the sort of republican obstructionists. there is a nature to the filibuster which is fundamentally, i think, conservative. so i'm not surprised you're not seeing tea party candidates clamor to get a change. >> and back to earmarks. mcconnell changing, flipping here. is that the tea party eating the establishment? or is it some sort of shrewd move from mcconnell to coopt the tea party platform? >> well, i think it's shrewd. here's what i would say. this is the very beginning of what's going to be a long relationship. there's a lot of things the newt gingrich congress did and they petered out.

so let's check back in in a few years and see if rand paul isn't sneaking some appropriations into the bills. to the degree you think the current economy of influence in congress and the status quo is fundamentally corrupt, which i do think. and i don't think earmarkers are at all the center of that corruption, but you could make an argument that they're sort of a symptom of it. i do think it's encouraging to see that status quo disrupted. even if it's for a distraction, even if earmarks aren't the problem. i'm heartened by the fact that mcconnell buckled in this instance. it's hard to be on the side of mitch mcconnell. and to the extent that things actually changed because of an election, i guess i'm so desperate to see the political system react to voter input that i'm actually encouraged by it.

>> chris hayes of the nation and msnbc, thank you, chris. >> putting it on my business card. thank you, keith. >> thank you, sir. pardon me, mr. koppel, but who killed tv news? special comment next. [ j. weissman ] it was 1975. my professor at berkeley asked me if i wanted to change the world. i said "sure." "well, let's grow some algae." and that's what started it. exxonmobil and synthetic genomics have built a new facility to identify the most productive strains of algae. algae are amazing little critters. they secrete oil, which we could turn into biofuels. they also absorb co2. we're hoping to supplement the fuels that we use in our vehicles, and to do this at a large enough scale to someday help meet the world's energy demands.

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finally tonight as promised, a special comment about ted koppel's op-ed piece in the "washington post" yesterday entitled olbermann, o'reilly, and the death of tv news. i apologize for the heavy self-reference. i hope you will agree this is important. when walter cronkite died 16 months ago, he was lionized by the impact he effected on television news. he was praised for his utter objectivity and impartiality and implicitly and, in some cases, explicitly. there was wailing this had died with him. and invariably the few clips were shown with each obituary. it was the night he dedicated 14 minutes of the 30-minute long

"cbs evening news" to a remarkable report on watergate which devastated the nixon administration. one so strong that the administration pressured cbs merely to shorten the next night's follow-up to just eight minutes. it was the extraordinary broadcast from vietnam from 4 1/2 years earlier in which he insisted that nothing better than stalemate was possible and that america should negotiate its way out, not as victors, but as an honorable people that lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could. all that newscast did was convince the 36th president of the united states to not seek re-election. the deserved and heart-felt sadness at the loss of the journalist and man turned into a metaphor to the loss of a style of utterly uninvolved neutral "objective" reporting. most of the highlights of the man's career had been those moments when he correctly and fearlessly threw off those shackles and said what was true and not merely what was factual. it has been the same with edward r. murrow.

their creator is offered as a paragon of straight reporting. never mentioned that cbs was pressured to stop those seering explosions of truth from london. because our political leaders at the time believed they would unfairly influence americans to side with the british when the nation was still officially neutral and the republican party was still completely convinced that there was a deal to be made with the nazis. president roosevelt did not invite him to the white house to congratulate him on his london reports because they were fair and balanced. similarly, the journalism students of now seven different decades have studied the murrow broadcasts about senator joe mccarthy from 1954. these are now lotted as some of the greatest moments in the history of america. the story is told that a cowering profit-hungry press stood idly by or rode mccarthy's

paranoia for circulation and ratings, while the blacklist and fear grew. and then murrow slayed the dragon. always left out, sadly, is the truth. within hours of speaking truths based on fact, murrow was attacked as a partisan. the republicans and conservative newspapers and broadcasters described in what they would have insisted was neutral, objective, unbiassed factual that he was a democrat, a liberal, socialist, marxist, communist, a traitor. always left out, sadly, is the fact that these attacks worked. within 12 months, his see-it-now program has been reduced from once a week to once a month. within 18 months it had been shifted from every tuesday night at 10:30 to once in a while on sunday afternoons at 5:00. become as one cbs producer put it, "see it now and then." mr. koppel does not mention, nobody ever does, that the year in which he helped save this democracy by including his own

editorial judgment in the news was the last year of his life, throughout which he appeared on a regular prime-time newscast. he would be eased out of cbs entirely in seven years and dead in 11. the great change about which mr. koppel wrings his hands is not analysis, the great change was the creation of the sanitized image of what men like cronkite and davis and daly and smith and rather and jennings, polk, and koppel did. these were not glorified stenographers. these were not neutral men. these were men who did in their day what the best of journalists still try to do in this one, evaluate, analyze, assess, put together a coherent picture or challenging question, using only the facts as they can be best discerned. and if the result this story over here is the presidential chief of staff taking some pretty low-octane bribes, you judge all the facts and say so.

and if the result is the other story over there is not just a third rate burglary at a political office but the tip of an iceberg meant to sink the two-party system in this country, you judge all the facts and scream so. insists long enough that the driving principle behind the greatdownalism of the television era was neutrality and objective and not subjective choices and often dangerous evaluations and even commentary, you will eventually leave the door open to pointless worship at the t l temple of a false god. and once you've got a false god, you're going to get false priests. and sooner rather than later in a world where subjective analysis is labeled evil and dangerous, some political mount bank is going to ease is catechism of that false god. words like objective and neutral and two-sided and fair and balanced. and he will pervert them into a catch phrase, a brand name. and he can create something that is no more journalism than two men screaming at each other as a musical duet.

but as long as there are two men, as long as they are fair and balanced, is not the news consumer entranced by the screaming and the fact that his man eventually and always outscreams the other? is not he convinced he's seen true journalism, true balance, true objectivity? i have read and heard much of late including from mr. koppel in the "washington post" yesterday about those who succeeded his grand era of false objectivity are only in it for the money or the fame or the chance to push a political party. mr. koppel also implied as others have that the men behind this network saw in the success of fox news a business opportunity to duplicate that style but change the content. mr. koppel implied that yesterday. in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. and the very kind of fact-driven journalism mr. koppel seems to be claiming he represents and i fail would not stand for his sloppy assumptions and false equivalence of both sides do it. we do not make up facts here. and when we make mistakes, we correct them.

friday night i found, as we rehearsed its presentation, that a segment implying former president bush had lifted parts of autobiography was largely based on excerpts that mostly required heavy editing and still produced only weak evidence. we killed the segment. would fox have? would cnn have? ten days ago anderson cooper 360 presented a political story in the most cataclysmic of tones. there were three guests, a magazine editor and a staunch liberal and a staunch conservative and they were in agreement. the story just wasn't that big a deal. the segment ran anyway. moreover, while fox may be such, >> we are not doctrinaire. i criticize president obama more in the last week than fox's prime time hosts criticized president bush in eight years. to equate this network with fox as mr. koppel did, to accuse us of having our own facts is another manifestation of a dangerously simplified understanding of modern news.

this man says the moon is a planetary fragment orbiting the earth, this guy says it's the body of the late vince foster. have them both on and let them debate. it's fair and balanced. and to the charge, i have been here for every moment of this network's evolution. it began in 2003 when slowly one fact at a time we began to challenge the government's rationalization for the war in iraq. a year later i was told by the former president of this network he did not want me or us to be a liberal answer to fox news. the man whose hour followed mine then was a conservative ex-congressman. the year after that, i offered evidence that there seemed to be a disturbing juxtaposition with political bumps in the road for the republican party. the woman whose hour followed mine then had been hired by us away from fox. the year after that, i did the first of these special comments and i fully expected i might be fired after it. the year after that, i had to spend urging my employers to give my guest host her own show.

now there are three shows in prime time in which the content usually lines up with the small "l" liberal point of view even as it needles and prods and sometimes pole axes the democrats. and that conservative ex-congressman is on the air here every day and he has as much time as the three of us at night do put together. if this was a business plan, it was not as good as the one at the nearest kid's lemonade stand. and therein lies the final irony to what mr. koppel wrote yesterday. we got here organically, in large part because of mr. koppel. his prominence, you will recall came on abc news and sports president roone arlitch, who never permitted business or show business to interfere in his pledge of allegiance. he made the subjective and correct decision that the hostile crisis in tehran merited half an hour or more each night of the network's time in 1979.

this was not the no-brainer that retrospect may suggest. cbs and nbc and pbs certainly did not do it. even when cnn signed on in the middle of the next year, it did not do it. he made his decision just four days after the hostages were seized and stuck with the story until it ended, defying the conventional wisdom of television and constantly pressing the government and questioning the official line. even after those hostages were freed more than a year later, the half an hour of news, now renamed "nightline" continued. and each night for 26 years mr. koppel and his producers and employers subjectively selected which, out of a million stories, would get the attention of his slice of american television for as much as half an hour at a time. which story would be elevated and amplyified and which piles upon piles of stories would be postponed or tabled or discarded or ignored. just as the story of his career emphasizes mccarthy but not the

fact that the aftermath of the mccarthy broadcast buried his career, the stories of mr. koppel's career will emphasize the light he so admirably shown on the iran hostages. those stories, though, will probably not emphasize that in 2002 and 2003 and 2004 and 2005, mr. koppel did not shine that same light on the decreasingly coherent excuses presented by the government of this nation for the war in iraq. 14 consecutive months of nightly half hours on the travesty and tragedy of 52 hostages in iran. but the utter falsehood and dishonesty of the process by which this country was committed to the wrong war, by which this country was committed to dishonesty, by which this country was committed to torture, about that, mr. koppel and everybody else in the dead, objective television news business he so laments, about that, mr. koppel could not be bothered to speak out. where were they?

worshipping before the false god of utter objectivity. the bitter irony that must occur to koppel and others of his time was their choice not to look too deeply into iraq before or after the war began was itself just as an litically based, just as subjective as anything i say or do here each night. i may be judged to have been wrong in what i'm doing. mr. koppel does not have to wait. the kind of television journalism he eulogizes, failed this country because when truth was needed, all we got were facts. most of which were lies anyway. the journalism failed and those who practiced it failed, and mr. koppel failed. i don't know that i'm doing it exactly right here. i'm trying. i have to. because whatever that television news was before, we now have to fix it. good night. and good luck.