Paul Weyrich
Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2004

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  Recently Jim and I have had a running argument. It is one I want to lose. Jim is convinced that questions raised by Vietnam vets about Senator Kerry’s service in Vietnam and his anti-war efforts afterwards will be enough to cause many Americans to conclude that Kerry is unfit to be commander in chief. Jim thinks that the record and the contradictions are so troubling that even though a lot of voters apparently want to make a change, they will think twice about trading their current commander in chief for someone whose views seem to change with the time of day and the group to which he is speaking.

Jim and I have gone back and forth about this for the past month or more. He knew the allegations against Kerry were coming before it became a public issue. He has a lot of military connections to this day. His father was a prominent military figure.

Anyway, I have told Jim over and over that these charges won’t be an issue because the so-called mainstream media refuse to pursue them. They have an agenda. The agenda is to bring down George Bush. If they really made these charges a burning issue, Kerry would go down in flames. Because they refuse to make these matters an issue, they won’t be. Ah, says Jim, but the book, Unfit For Command, which details the charges and other allegations is all over talk radio and the Internet. There it is truly a burning issue. But the sum total of talk radio audiences and the Internet reach about 40 percent of the electorate. Many of those are already in the President’s corner. Rush Limbaugh, the king of talk radio, has a cumulative audience of over 20 million.

Don’t get me wrong. We have never had anything like it. The EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) network has something like 615 stations so that it is possible to drive from one end of the country to the other and still hear Rush if you know where to look. And Rush does reach new people all the time…and in many cases wins them over. I am not in any way downgrading the impact he has had. Were it not the case, there wouldn’t be the attempt to shut him down as there is ongoing in the liberal community. Without talk radio and the Internet we wouldn’t even be competitive.

Like it or not, however, it is a fact that the major media, especially television, still is where a majority of Americans gets their news. I have argued otherwise only to have been shot down by reality. When I got into broadcasting 44 years ago 70 percent of Americans got their news about politics and government from daily newspapers and news magazines. Today 75 percent of Americans get news of government and politics from talk radio and television. The Fox News Channel is outpolling its competitors by a long shot. Still, it is only reaching a fraction of the electorate.

Even though NBC, CBS and ABC’s share of the audience declines as each rating book is issued the truth is that at this moment in time the combination of the three still reaches a majority of the electorate.

It does matter what they do. While the veterans’ story has received a great deal of coverage from print media, the networks have all but ignored it. What little they have covered it, has largely been from the Kerry perspective, which is to say that only the veterans who were actually in Kerry’s boat are telling the truth. The other 250 veterans, many of whom were right along side Kerry in another boat (they traveled with four or more boats together) are all lying or have a political agenda.

The fellow who gets most of the coverage is named Rassman. He was rescued by Kerry. Although he says he had not been in touch with Kerry for 30 years, he called up and volunteered to campaign in Iowa, where Kerry seemed about to go down the drain. It turns out he knew Kerry for only one day over there. The media was afraid of Howard Dean, even though they agreed with much of his platform. Dean was unpredictable. He said things that got him into trouble. So the media, which had built him up as the savior of the Democrat Party and eventually the nation, did a number on Dean using his own words and he sunk big time and fast. They quickly built up Kerry as someone who projected stability. Without the push the media gave to Kerry in the week before the Iowa vote it is doubtful that he would have pulled it off. He was the “Comeback Kerry.”

Things have gone along well now for the media’s agenda. They continue to present a highly negative view of the President while presenting a positive view of his challenger.

It is working. The Kerry campaign believes it has the election in the bag. Oh, sure there are those debates and yes, something could happen which would cause people to rally around the President, but the Kerry people are right according to a panel of campaign experts assembled by the Free Congress Foundation last week. Across the political spectrum from Bob Novak to Anna Greenberg and several in between, these experts agreed that the President is in trouble and if the election were held today Kerry would win. So with things going this well, the major media will not make the questions about Kerry’s claims while in Vietnam an issue. The President can’t really do so himself. Other Republicans fear a backlash so they won’t touch the issue.

Jim Hyde is convinced that these questions are so serious and so troubling that the media will, in the end be forced to give them attention. I think that by saying that the guys who were on the boat with him are all supporting Kerry, and the rest just don’t know what they are talking about gives them the cover they need to ignore the story. As I said, this is an argument I want to lose. I surely hope that the majority of Americans who rely on the “mainstream media” for their political information will be given a true picture of John Kerry and his service to his country and not a picture manufactured for the moment. If they do get a true picture, I have little doubt as to what they will do. If they don’t, then their actions will be totally predictable.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.