Mark Halperin's flip-flop at ABC News

By Eric Boehlert
Created Nov 8 2006 - 9:14am

Conservatives forever braying about a liberal bias in the press received a
big boost last month when Mark Halperin, director of ABC's political unit,
took to the airwaves with the reddest of Bush partisans -- talkers Sean
Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Hugh Hewitt [0] -- to voice his heated agreement
[0] that the mainstream press treats Republicans unfairly.

Confirming their longstanding fears, Halperin insisted that reporters are
"overwhelmingly liberal," they "hate the military," are "blind" to their
bias, and should use the closing weeks of the campaign season to "prove"
their worth to right-wingers. Suddenly, instead of conservatives working the
refs -- badgering journalists with complaints of bias in hopes they would
get the benefit of the doubt next time there was a close call in the
newsroom -- it was one of the refs (Halperin) working the refs.

Keep in mind, this wasn't Bernard Goldberg, the disgruntled former CBS lifer
who wrote Bias, a book claiming that network news leans left. This was Mark
Halperin, the public face of ABC's political news team and founder of The
Note, the influential online Beltway tip sheet. Halperin's words carry real
weight.

And that's why within days, Halperin's verbal darts were being used on Fox
News by Brit Hume to provide context as to why, in Hume's view, the
mainstream press had not given Sen. John Kerry's "botched joke" adequate
attention. (By the way, Fox News mentioned Kerry's name approximately 900
times on the air during "botched joke" week, according to TVEyes.com.)

Note that 48 months earlier there was no chance Hume or anybody else at Fox
News would have quoted Halperin approvingly. In fact, they were attacking
him because of his perceived anti-Bush bias.

And that's what's so peculiar about Halperin's misguided offensive against
the press; it completely contradicts what he was instructing his staff at
ABC News to do during the 2004 campaign, when he specifically urged them to
have to courage to report on the Bush team's habit of using blatant
distortions to attack his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry.

How can the same Mark Halperin who today parades around on right-wing radio
shows bemoaning the "outrageous" behavior of liberally biased reporters who
are out to get Bush and Rove, be the same Mark Halperin who in an October 5,
2004, memo wrote, "I'm sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up
Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their
efforts to get away with as much as possible with. the stepped-up, renewed
efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly
through distortions."

Clearly Halperin has flip-flopped. But why?

I think the answers are pretty obvious. First, he's out shilling a new Karl
Rove-is-a-genius book, The Way to Win, which means Halperin has a vested
interest -- a financial incentive -- in seeing Rove's Republicans to do well
(i.e., a GOP win would reinforce the friendly premise of his book).

And secondly, Halperin's 2004 memo sparked a riot among angry, pitchfork
conservatives who, fresh off their victory over Dan Rather and CBS' botched
Texas Air National Guard report, were looking for another mainstream media
target. Convinced Halperin's memo was the proof they needed, they called for
his ouster.

Watching his professional life flash before his eyes, it seems Halperin
decided he'd never leave himself open to that kind of political attack
again. And he hasn't. In 2005 he quickly tacked right (that's when The Note
became truly sycophantic [0]) and scored a high-profile book deal to
chronicle the political brilliance of Bush and Rove.

In other words, follow the money. Note this key quote from Halperin's recent
appearance on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor. It pretty much lays bare the
motivation behind the kowtowing:

As an economic model, if you want to thrive like Fox News Channel -- [if]
you want to have a future -- you better make sure conservatives find your
product appealing. [Emphasis added.]

This is about moving product, not producing good journalism.

It's interesting to note that early on in The Way to Win's marketing blitz,
Halperin wasn't panhandling conservatives, making broad accusations about
"overwhelming" liberal bias in the press. For instance, he sat for a
one-hour interview on the October 5 edition of PBS' Charlie Rose, and the
allegation of a "liberal media" was never made. It was not until the last
week of October, after The Way to Win had failed to crack the best-seller
list, that the feel-good conservative talking points about the biased press
began to leap out of Halperin's mouth.

I'm sure the frustrating part for Halperin is that even his public
genuflection to the right wing, confirming every dark fantasy they have
about the press, has not been enough to boost book sales. Indeed, I cannot
recall a recent book that received such blanket, mainstream media notice as
The Way to Win has and still been unable to translate that exposure into
substantial sales. Since the book's release in October, Halperin has been
invited onto The Diane Rehm Show, Charlie Rose, The O'Reilly Factor, Glenn
Beck, Reliable Sources, Late Edition, Imus in the Morning, Good Morning
America, Lou Dobbs Tonight, The Sean Hannity Show, The Jim Bohannon Show,
The Colbert Report,

Washington Journal, Washington Week, and The Michael Medved Show, as well
welcomed into the pages of Slate [0], Newsweek.com, and The Washington Post,
just to name a few. (The Drudge Report also hyped [0] the book.)

In book publishing, it's almost physically impossible to garner that much
press attention -- especially national TV exposure -- and not score a
best-seller. Yet Halperin has managed to defy the odds.

Nonetheless, it's been a sad and bewildering spectacle to watch someone of
Halperin's professional stature grovel before conservatives while he
denigrates fellow journalists in the process. I've written a lot this year
about Halperin. In fact I devoted an entire chapter to The Note in my book
about Bush and the press [0], and I wrote a lengthy analysis [0] of The Way
to Win, which he co-wrote with John Harris from The Washington Post. The
reason for the attention is that I think Halperin so perfectly captures
what's wrong with much of the Beltway press. And his recent behavior is
indicative of a larger trend taking place within the uppermost echelons of
the elite media: a borderline obsession to "prove" to conservatives that the
press can play fair. Corporate journalists have developed an acute case of
rabbit ears, becoming preoccupied with the catcalls from the right, and have
decided, for increasingly selfish and personal reasons, to make nice with
the right-wing crowd, even if it means trampling journalistic standards in
the process.

Can you think of a single other reason why Katie Couric invited Rush
Limbaugh to tape a commentary on CBS for an Evening News forum that's
supposed to advance "civic discourse"? Can you think of a single other
reason why ABC commissioned a right-wing partisan to rewrite the history of
9-11 [0] and douse it with an anti-Clinton spin?

And consider this: If someone like Halperin feels comfortable publicly
bemoaning how the press "hates the military" and how reporters are incapable
of covering a whole host of issues honestly, I assume he's speaking for lots
of other journalists. Indeed, if Halperin's well-publicized comments were
considered to be beyond the pale, his colleagues -- both in and out of ABC
News -- would have condemned them. Instead, the silence from the Beltway has
been deafening.

Halperin signs off on right-wing press conspiracies

Here are some of the Rush Limbaugh-like talking points Halperin echoed
during his appearances on conservative outlets:

a.. "I think we've got a chance in these last two weeks to prove to
conservatives that we understand their grievances."
a.. "The reality of how [liberal bias] affects media coverage is
outrageous."
a.. "[T]he Mary Mapes' of the world are ruining it for the rest of us, and
they are the dominant majority."
a.. "Most of my colleagues, as you know, are in denial about [liberal
bias], or blind to it."
a.. "The old system was biased against conservatives; there's no doubt
about it."
"There's no doubt about it," said Halperin, who then offers little proof to
back up his assertions. In contrast, I'll pick three media examples out of a
hat that disprove Halperin's hollow point about the press being "biased
against conservatives":

a.. In February 2003 alone, the supposedly liberal Washington Post
editorialized in favor of Bush's war with Iraq nine times. Between September
2002 and February 2003, the paper editorialized 26 times in favor of the
war.
a.. In December 2005, supposedly liberal network anchors Tom Brokaw and
Ted Koppel both agreed that if Bill Clinton had been president on 9-11, he
too would have ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, just like Bush did.
a.. Separately, supposedly liberal CBS anchor Bob Schieffer agreed,
insisting "there was no other choice for the president [Bush] to make," but
to invade Iraq. No other choice.
The most troubling part is I assume Halperin knows the truth about the
press, which brings us to his dramatic flip-flop.

Back during the closing weeks of the 2004 presidential run, Halperin sparked
a frenzied outcry from conservative press critics after Halperin wrote a
memo to the ABC staff urging everyone to hold both Kerry and Bush
accountable for their misstatements. He emphasized that ABC should not feel
constrained, in the name of balance, to simply report they're both doing it.
Halperin suggested, correctly, that Bush's campaign was using misstatements
as a cornerstone to its re-election push and had gone "way beyond what Kerry
has done."

After the memo was leaked [0] to the Drudge Report, members of the
conservative media echo chamber set upon Halperin, demanding ABC fire him
for his obvious bias. (Conservatives pretended that orders from an ABC
editor to accurately report on the presidential campaign somehow pulled back
the curtain on the mainstream media's liberal tilt.) The New York Post
labeled his memo the "smoking gun" of media dishonesty. Most of the attacks
were quick to draw parallels between the ABC memo and CBS' 2004 botched
report on Bush and the Texas Air National Guard; a press scandal that cost
anchorman Rather his job.

Some on the radical right went even further, also smearing Halperin's father
[0], Morton Halperin, who worked for Henry Kissinger on the National
Security Council (and as President Richard Nixon's assistant for national
security affairs) but quit in 1970 to protest the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.
Twenty-two years later, when President Clinton nominated Halperin to the new
position of assistant secretary of defense for democracy and peacekeeping,
conservatives, still angry about the Vietnam War, orchestrated a nasty,
personal campaign to defeat Halperin's appointment and to ruin his
reputation, suggesting the CIA had a secret dossier on Halperin and hinted
he was a traitor.

In short, the 2004 attacks got ugly. And what conservatives did to Mark
Halperin's father in the 1990s they were threatening to do to him: bury his
career. Throughout the 2004 controversy, though, Halperin refused to
publicly defend the logical contents of his campaign memo. Instead, he
shoved The Note even further to the right, adopting an openly
Republican-pleasing perspective heading into 2005.

His retreat intensified in 2006. As Halperin readied the release of his
book, he seemed to lose independent perspective. In January, he was so
bowled over by Bush's rhetorical flourish that he announced [0], "That is
the kind of answer and vision that will get a man's approval rating back
over 53%% any day now." (Raise your hand if you think Bush will ever again
reach a job approval rating of 53 percent.)

In June, Halperin was warning Democrats about their bleak prospects for
electoral gains this year: "If I were them, I'd be scared to death about
November's elections," he announced. When the forecast turned gloomy for
Republicans in the fall, Halperin, channeling the right wing, lashed out at
the press. From the October 23 edition of The Note:

How the (liberal) Old Media plans to cover the last two weeks of the
election:

1. Glowingly profile Speaker-Inevitable Nancy Pelosi, with loving mentions
of her grandmotherly steel (see last night's 60 Minutes), and fail to
describe her as "ultra liberal" or "an extreme liberal," which would mirror
the way Gingrich was painted twelve years ago.

2. Look at every attempt by the President to define the race on his terms
as deluded and desperate; increasingly quote Republican strategists saying
that the President is hurting the party whenever he enters the fray.

3. Refuse to join the daily morning Ken Mehlman-Rush Limbaugh conference
calls, despite repeated invitations.

4. Imbue every Democratic candidate for whom Bill Clinton campaigns with a
golden halo.

The list went on and on, all the way down to No. 12. (Bill O'Reilly
applauded Halperin's "tough piece of analysis.") Notice that Halperin didn't
hide behind a third-person voice, or suggest this was what Republicans were
afraid might happen, or this was how the coverage would appear to
conservatives. Halperin, affirming a vast right-wing conspiracy theory,
matter-of-factly announced the press was going to deliberately skew its
campaign coverage.

Halperin's proof of this "overwhelming" liberal bias? Beyond CBS' National
Guard miscue, he doesn't point to much, which explains why he has to
fabricate some of his proof. For instance, in assuring [0] Sean Hannity
there were "lots" of "examples" of bias, Halperin cited the 2004
presidential race and pointed to America Coming Together (ACT), a
progressive 527 group that worked to get Kerry elected. Halperin said the
group's existence should have caused an uproar in the press, and that if
Republican forces had banded together like the ones that made up ACT, "The
old media would have said this is completely unacceptable. And yet the Kerry
group, the Democratic group, was celebrated." [Emphasis added.]

Halperin continued: "Now, people say to me, 'Well, you work at ABC News --
why didn't you do anything about that?' I did. ABC covered that story
fairly. But the overall old liberal media covered that [ACT] story in such
an unfair way, and I think anybody who denies that just isn't paying
attention."

"Isn't paying attention"? First, Halperin suggested that Democrats teaming
up and spending millions to defeat Bush in 2004 was somehow a campaign
anomaly, never bothering to mention that it was a 527 group with close White
House ties that backed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth crusade against
Kerry. Secondly, a warning to conservatives who go back in search of ABC's
exposes about ACT, you're going to be disappointed because the tough pieces
Halperin hints at do not exist. In fact, ABC News barely mentioned ACT
during the entire 2004 campaign. Yet now in 2006, Halperin, eager to
advertise his conservative bona fides, has concocted a convenient cover
story about how ABC, alone amidst the liberally biased media, told the truth
about ACT.

In a sense it's fitting; Halperin, like his newfound conservative allies,
has a tough time backing up his claim of a left-wing media conspiracy.
_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson