this week on "moyers & company" -- >> it's all about combat. if every political issue is the combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other. and you have an audience that hasn't a clue, at the end of the story, which is why you'll hear, "well, we'll have to leave it there." well, than

leave it there. >> and how the ghost of joe mccarthy is back to haunt america. >> they shouldn't be called democrats, they should be referred to properly as the funding is provided by carnegie corporation of new york celebrating 1200 years of philanthropy and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. the kolberg foundation. with support from the partridge foundation, a john and poly guff charitable fund. the cle meant foundation, park foundation, dedicated to heightening awareness of critical issues. the herb alpert foundation. the bernard and audrey rap pa port foundation. more information at

macfound.org. and the betty and jesse foundation. the hkh foundation. barbara g. flashman and by our corporate sponsor, mutual of america. welcome. this is pledge time for public television. when we remind you that there are programs here unlike anything else on tv, such as this one. sometimes the truth reveals itself in the darnedest places. in an old movie, for example -- one you saw some years ago, forgot, and then, by chance, happen on it again to discover that times have changed, and movies, too. but certain things never change. they just cost more. here's what i mean. remember eddie murphy 20 years ago in "the distinguished gentleman?" that's the term by which members of congress address each other, no matter how disreputable their conduct.

murphy, a con man disguised as a waiter, is about to fleece the host of a swanky party, when he overhears this conversation between a big-time energy executive and a veteran congressman who wants to retire. >> yeah, well, look, jeff. you can't retire. >> if i retire this year i get to keep $1.3 million that's left in my campaign fund. and it's called the grandfather loophole. >> all right, jeff. i got it. come here. there's a small software company that's about to go through the roof. now what you do is buy a few thousand dollars' worth of stock options. it's going to bring in a half a million, easy. and that's just for our winners. >> if you put it like that, i suppose i have a duty to continue my career in public service. >> duty. >> fate intervenes, the congressman dies of a heart attack, and murphy gets himself elected in his place.

at a washington dinner for freshmen members of congress, he begins to learn the ropes from the lobbyist terry corrigan. >> say, could i host a welcome-to-washington fund-raiser for you down at my law firm on k street? >> absolutely! >> at $500 a head, you could pick up 20, 25 grand to help you get started. >> and how much of that are you going to get? >> it doesn't come off the top. down the road, i'll bill each of 'em $500 an hour whenever i take you to lunch. >> you know, terry, you and i are going to be so close. >> soon, he's making a beeline for the honey pot. >> i'd like to do more money for you, but first i've gotta get your positions on a few issues. now where are you on sugar price supports? >> sugar price supports. where should i be, terry? >> it makes no difference to me. if you're for 'em, i got money for you from my sugar producers in louisiana and hawaii.

if you're against 'em, i got money for you from the candy manufacturers. >> you pick. terry, tell me something. with all this money coming in from both sides, how could anything possibly ever get done? >> it doesn't! that's the geniusf the system! >> now in the good graces of a powerful committee chairman, he joins the shakedown of a corporate executive who wants a favor from congress. >> seven figures? i suppose $1 million isn't too much to insure against losing $5 billion. >> now you talking. >> but how can i funnel this kind of money to you? >> if that's what you want, we can find a loophole. no one will see your fingerprints. >> no one will know? >> no one will know. >> olaf's just making a contribution as a patriotic citizen. and in return for that, he's getting -- >> good government. >> exactly. a lot reminds you how the move

reends in case you want to see it your seven. but i can assure you -- the revelations ring as true today as they did then. and no one knows this better than my next guest who wrote "the distinguished gentlemen." marty kaplan majored in molecular biology at harvard, got a ph.d. in literature from stanford and went to work for u.s. commissioner of education ernest boyer and then with vice president walter mondale after washington he joined the walt disney company as a writer/producer on such diverse projects as that eddie murphy satire and the peter bogdanovich adaptation of "noises off." after becoming a dean at the annenberg school for communication and journalism at the university of southern california, he founded and heads the norman lear center, which studies politics, entertainment, and commerce and their impact on us. he's an expert on how big money and big media have coupled to create a disney world of democracy. marty, welcome. >> thanks, bill. >> you wrote "the distinguished gentleman" 20 years ago. could you write it today?

>> oh god, it still is the same. all you have to do is add a couple of zeros to the amount of money. and the same laws still apply. it is fabulous and miserable at the same time. >> was washington then, and is it now, the biggest con game going? >> it is the biggest con game going. and the stakes are enormous. and the effort to regulate them is hopeless, because the very people who are in charge of regulating them are the same people who are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the lobbies that run them. >> i have it on very good authority that a prominent washington senator recently told a group of lobbyists in washington, a room full of lobbyists, that they are the lifeblood of the city. and i thought, "kaplan has to do a vampire movie now." right? >> exactly. the connection between the legislators and the lobbyists is so intimate that it's not even

embarrassing for a senator to say that in front of a room. the culture is so hermetically sealed from the rest of the country that it doesn't occur to them that there is something deeply outrageous and offensive and corrosive of democracy to admit that the money side of politics and the elected side of politics belong to each other. >> you wrestle with this, you and your colleagues at the norman lear center, and all the time, on how, on what the system is doing to us. so let me ask you, "how did this happen in america? how did our political system become the problem instead of the answer?" >> part of it is the nexus of media, money, and special interest politics. the citizens have given the airwaves to the station. we own the electromagnetic spectrum and for free we give out licenses to television stations.

those stations, in turn, use that spectrum to get enormous amounts of money from special interests and from members of congress in order to send these ads back to us to influence us. so we lose it in both ways. the other day, the president of cbs, les moonves, was reported by bloomberg to have said, "super pacs may be bad for america, but they're good for cbs." i mean, there it is. this is a windfall every election season, which seems not to even stop ever, for the broadcast industry. so not only are they raking it in, they're also creating a toxic environment for civic discourse. people don't hear about issues. they hear these negative charges, which only turn them off more. the more negative stuff you hear, the less interested you are in going out to vote.

and so they're being turned off, the stations are raking it in, and the people who are chortling all the way to washington and the bank are the ones who get to keep their hands on the levers of power. so one of the big reasons that things are at the pass they are is that the founders never could have anticipated that a small group of people, a financial enterprise and the technology could create this environment in which facts, truth, accountability, that stuff just isn't entertaining. so because it's not entertaining, because the stations think it's ratings poison, they don't cover it on the news. >> they don't cover the news. >> they don't cover politics and government in the sense of issues. they're happy occasionally to cover horse race and scandal and personality and crime and that aspect of politics. but if you look at a typical

half hour of news, local news, because local news is one of the most important sources of news for americans about campaigns. a lot -- >> you and your colleagues have done a lot of research on local news. >> yes, we've been studying it now since 1998. and each year it gets more depressing and it's hard to believe. we, not long ago, did a study of the los angeles media market. we looked at every station airing news and every news broadcast they aired 'round the clock. and we put together a composite half hour of news. and if you ask, "how much in that half hour was about transportation, education law enforcement, ordinances, tax policy?" everything involving locals, from city to county. the answer is, in a half hour, 22 seconds. >> twenty-two seconds devoted to what one would think are the serious issues of democracy, right? >> yes. whereas, in fact, there are

three minutes about crime, and two and a half minutes about the ugliest dog contest, and two minutes about entertainment. there's plenty of room for stuff that the stations believe will keep people from changing the dial. >> what is the irony to me is that these very same stations that are giving 22 seconds out of a half hour to serious news, are raking -- and not covering politics, are raking in money from the ads that the politicians and their contributors are spending on those same papers. >> yes, they're earning hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars from the ads that they are being paid to run. and not even risking running a minute of news, which might actually check on the accuracy of an ad. truth watches, they're almost invisible now. >> so they will tell you, however, that they're in the entertainment business. that they're in the business to amuse the public, to entertain the public. and if they do these serious

stories about the schools or about the highways or about this or that, the public tunes out. that the clicks begin to register as -- >> it's one of the great lies about broadcasting now. there are consultants who go all around the country and they tell the general managers and the news directors, "it is only at your peril that you cover this stuff." but one of the things that we do is, the lear center gives out the walter cronkite award for excellence in television political journalism every two years. and we get amazing entries from all over the country of stations large and small of reporters under these horrendous odds doing brilliant pieces and series of pieces, which prove that you can not only do these pieces on a limited budget, but you can still be the market leader. >> what do they say when you say, "but look, you have this public franchise. you've been given this hotdog stand in your neighborhood to sell all the hotdogs you want to.

in return, we'd just like more attention to serious issues and to take politics seriously." what do they say? >> well, some of them say, "you're right. we're going to do it. and hold us accountable." that's the miracle. if their management and ownership says, "you have to do it," they do it. and they can do an amazing job of it. the problem is that management like that is few and far between. >> so what is driving it? >> well, what's really driving it, if you think of this as a symptom and not a cause, i think what's really driving it is the absolute demonization of any kind of idea of public interest as embodied by government. and at the same time, a kind of corporate triumphalism, in which the corporations, the oligarchs, the plutocrats, running this country want to hold onto absolute power absolutely. and it's an irritant to them to have the accountability that news once used to play.

>> what do you mean by that? news challenges their assumptions, challenges their power? >> it used to be that the news programs that aired, believe it or not, had news on them. they had investigative stories. but then somewhere in the 1980s, when "60 minutes" started making a profit, cbs put the news division inside the entertainment division. and then everyone followed suit. so ever since then, news has been a branch of entertainment and infotainment, at best. but there was a time in which the press, the print press, news on television and radio, were speaking truth to power, people paid attention, and it made a difference. the -- i don't think the watergate trials would have happened, the senate hearings, had there not been the kind of commitment from the news to cover the news rather than cutting away to aruba and a

kidnapping. >> what is the basic consequence of taking the news out of the journalism box and putting it over into the entertainment box? >> people are left on their own to fend for themselves. and the problem is that there's not that much information out there, if you're an ordinary citizen, that comes to you. you can ferret it out. but it oughtn't be like that in a democracy. education and journalism were supposed to, according to our founders, inform our public and to make democracy work. you can't do it unless we're smart. and so the consequence is that we're not smart. and you can see it in one study after another. some americans think that climate change is a hoax cooked up by scientists, that there's no consensus about it. this kind of view could not survive in a news environment, which said, "this is true and that's false."

instead we have an environment in which you have special interest groups manipulating their way onto shows and playing the system, gaming the notion that he said she said is basically the way in which politics is now covered. it's all about combat. if every political issue is the combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other. and you have an audience that hasn't a clue, at the end of the story, which is why you'll hear, "well, we'll have to leave it there." well, thank you very much. leave it there. >> you have talked and written about "the straightjacket of objectivity." right? what is that? >> well, the problem with telling the truth is that in this postmodern world, there's not supposed to be something as truth anymore. so all you can do if you are a journalist is to say, "some

people say." maybe you can report a poll. maybe you can quote somebody. but objectivity is only this phony notion of balance, rather than fact-checking. there are some gallant and valiant efforts, like politifact and flackcheck.org that are trying to hold ads and news reports accountable. but by and large, that's not what you're getting. instead the real straightjacket is entertainment. that's what all these sources are being forced to be. walter lippmann in the 1920s had a concept called "spectator democracy" in which he said that the public was a herd that needed steering by the elites. now he thought that people just didn't have the capacity to understand all these complicated issues and had to delegate it to experts of various kinds.

but since then, the notion of spectator democracy has, i think, extended to include the need to divert the country from the master narrative, which is the influence and importance and imperviousness to accountability of large corporations and the increasing impotence of the public through its agency, the government, to do anything about it. so the more diversion and the more entertainment, the less news, the less you focus on that story, the better off it is. >> are you saying that the people who run this political media business, the people who fund it, want to divert the public's attention from their economic power? is that what you're saying? >> yes. let us fight about you know, whether this circus or that circus is better than each other, but please don't focus on

the big change which has happened in this country, which is the absolute triumph of these large, unaccountable corporations. this is about as dismal and effective a conspiracy, out in plain sight, as there possibly could be. so i don't say that this is going to be solved or taken care of. what i do say is the first step toward it is at least acknowledging how toxic the situation has become. >> you watched the republican primaries, right? >> yes. >> what did you see? >> i saw the most amazing effort to brand the entities that sponsored the debates. >> this is the abc news. >> this is the nbc news. >> i mean, every big network and every brand was out in order to sell their brand to the public. the content of the debate was almost laughable. >> entertaining. >> yes. >> but it's fun. >> yes.

>> you against fun? >> i'm for herman cain. >> this economy is on life support, that's why my 9-9-9 plan is a bold solution. >> when you take the 9-9-9 plan and turn it upside down, i think the devil is in the details. >> i'm for michele bachmann as entertainers. but american politics shouldn't only be a reality show. and that's what it's become. >> but aren't we suckers for melodrama? don't we like the soap opera up and down, in and out quality of the political race today? >> we are programmed to love stories. that is in our genes. our wiring says that when you say, "once upon a time," i am hooked. when you show me conflict between two people, i want to know who's going to win. that's how it's always been. and it happens that politics is now the substance and television is now the medium in which to bedazzle us, to enthrall us, which means enslave us just as

it has been all through human history. >> this is pledge time for public television. some stations with be stepping away from us briefly to ask for your support. for thet esof you, we will resume in just a moment. we now continue with "moyers & company." >> what struck me in those republican debates is that they'd get into 15 to 20, maybe 30 minutes of an exchange, and then the moderator would say, "hold it right there. we'll be back after a commercial." >> "we have to go to a break. when we come back we'll talk foreclosure. we'll talk about foreign policy." >> i kept thinking of the great debates between lincoln and douglass, "wait a moment, mr. lincoln, before you take up the issue of slavery, we have a commercial for you." they have taken over the process, in that regard. you can't play unless you play on their turf, which is governed by the rules of commerce. >> the league of women voters doesn't have a chance anymore.

>> they used to be the sponsors of the presidential debates. >> exactly. instead, the purpose of these debates is in order to have commercials. the suspense and coming back, those are devices deployed, in order to have people watch what happens in between. these are moneymaking propositions. they give bragging rights for those that get high ratings. they have nothing to do with the content. because if they did have to do with the content, then the moderators would have to spend all their time saying, "i can't believe you just said that. that is so wrong. how can you say that?" instead they say, "well, governor perry, what do you think of what congressman bachmann just said?" that's what happens. that's what passes for journalism. and that's what gets us to watch the ads for soap. >> what you're saying is that the political square is now a commercial enterprise, owned and operated for the benefit of the

brand, cnn, fox, all of those, right? >> that's correct. >> how did it happen? how did we sell what belonged to everyone? >> by believing that what is, is what always has been and what should be. the notion that what goes on is actually made by people, changes through time, represents the deployment of political power. that notion has gone away. we think it's always been this way. people now watching these cnn and fox. they think this is how it works. they don't have a sense of history. the amnesia, which has been cultivated by journalism, by entertainment in this country, helps prevent people from saying, "wait a minute, that's the wrong path to be on." >> amnesia, forgetfulness? you say that they're cultivating forgetfulness? >> absolutely. >> deliberately? >> look at the way in which it -- the march toward war in iran, if that's what's going to

happen, is being -- >> or slithering toward war. >> well, it -- when we get there we may feel as though the serpent bit us, no matter how we got to that point. but iran should be covered through the prism of what happened in iraq. all of the neoconservatives and right-wingers, who called for us to go into iraq because of wmds and because saddam was bad. there is a history there. that history is within living memory of a lot of grownups in this country. and unless people are willing to do the hard work of presenting the history and holding people accountable for the past, we will be condemned as it's been said, to repeat it first in tragedy and then in farce. >> here's something i wrestle with and a lot of journalists wrestle with it. that i'd like for you to address. we sometimes bend ourselves into

euphemistic pretzels in order not to call a spade a spade or a lie a lie. for example, when rick santorum's opponents took his words out of context to make him say something he clearly had not intended to say. >> on the economy, rick santorum says -- >> i don't care what the unemployment rate is going to be. >> i didn't hear any prestige journalist speak up and say, "you know, that's a lie." >> no, what you heard instead was, isn't that something? what a deft maneuver. what a great political thing that they have done. how shrewd it was to change the focus. how merciless toward their opponents this move has been. there is admiration for playing the game brilliantly. no one is appalled. no one is shocked anymore. no one is able to say, wait a minute, that's not true. that's inappropriate. that's wrong.

'cause if a reporter does do that, they're completely playing into the hands of the candidate, as we saw over and over in the republican debate. george stephanopoulos asks a question about contraception and the candidates come down on him like a ton of bricks. >> i don't know whether the state has the right to ban contraception. no state wants to. i mean the idea of you putting forward things that states might want to do, that no state wants to do, and asking me whether they can do it or not is kind of a silly thing i think. >> "how dare you do this? that's just the liberal media." they have this trope of the liberal media, which they use in order to demonize anybody who is willing to enforce standards of accuracy. >> you once proposed that political ads be accompanied by a disclaimer. and it was this disclaimer, "the scary music, photoshopped pictures, and misleading sound bites in this ad are tricks intended to manipulate you in

ways of which you are not consciously aware. voting for this candidate is unlikely to improve how awful things are." when i read that, i thought, "fat chance." >> yeah, fat chance. but at least we're talking about it. at least front and center is the notion that these ads are so powerful, because they are mini movies. they are dazzling dramas. they are full of conflict and story. we love paying attention to that stuff. we are suckered into them. >> do you think these ads make us stupid? >> we start stupid. the brain is wired to be entertained. we don't pay attention to the words. we pay attention to the pictures and the drama and the story. if it's pretty, if it's exciting, if it's violent, if it's fast, that's where we are. so the fact that these mini dramas are being used to get us to vote for one person or

another is just like what we all learned propaganda was used for and thought we learned our lessons from in world war ii. they are propaganda. and propaganda is irresistible. if it were resistible, people wouldn't do it. >> it's why people smoke. it's why they go to war often. >> exactly. and that's why even in the case of cigarettes, there is now an effort to add pictures to the packs. because those warnings don't quite do it. you've got to see an image of what your lungs look like, in order to make you not reach for it. >> and it's why when you see a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug, the picture's lovely even though the words are horrifying. >> common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain. >> severe liver problems, some fatal, were reported. >> shortness of breath, swelling of your tongue or throat may occur, and in rare cases may be fatal. >> imagine after seeing that saying to your doctor, "you want to write me a script for that? i think it'll be good for me." and the reason is because what we're seeing is this lovely ry