McClellan and The Oklahoman

When a former right-wing White House press secretary starts talking about the “deferential” corporate media abdicating its responsibility in the run-up to the Iraq occupation, then we know just how silly the liberal media myth has become even in conservative circles.

Locally, it makes your wonder where The Oklahoman fits into the new working rubric of the conservative, ultra-conservative and extreme, right-wing propagandistic corporate media. (Answer: It helps define the propagandistic category.)

Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan, who worked in the Bush administration, has published a book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. In the book, he criticizes the administration’s “propaganda campaign” in the months before the Iraq invasion. He also claims he was misled by Bush officials in the Valerie Plame controversy.

But as Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald and others have pointed out the most damaging part of the book is the criticism leveled at the corporate media, the “deferential, complicit enablers” of the Bush propaganda campaign to invade Iraq. This is really nothing new, of course, but the fact a famous Republican political operative has acknowledged the obvious is worth noting.

It should always be stressed that people throughout the country and world noted the White House lies and deceptions about the Iraq before the invasion and spoke out at great risk to their careers. Unfortunately, this did not include the country’s leading corporate media outlets, which include all the major television networks, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

McClellan’s views were so disturbing to the elite media bigwigs that all three major news anchors, Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams, appeared together on a recent Today show to discuss the issue. Couric, to her credit, admitted the media failed to do its job, but Gibson and Williams followed the corporate mantra. Bush loyalists, of course, launched a typical smear campaign against McCellan, but it didn’t stick.

All this follows recent revelations about how the Bush Pentagon had a program to encourage retired military generals to support the invasion and occupation on television news shows. This was first reported by The Times. Greenwald has led the way in showing how this propaganda deception was helped along by the networks.

At some point this country needs to conduct a painful but necessary investigation of all the Imperial Bush lies and how the corporate media not only disseminated these lies but also aided and abetted in some cases one of the biggest deceptions ever perpetuated on the American people. I think of the disgraced Judith Miller, who printed false accusations about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction in the The Times. All this needs to be vetted and brought to light for the sake of the country’s democratic structures.

But I want to take the furor over McClellan and the Iraq occupation and look at it briefly from a local level. Most people today have lost trust in the corporate media for good reason. The Oklahoman, considered the most right-wing metropolitan newspaper in the country, is a publication that not only participated in disseminating Bush lies about Iraq but relentlessly supported these lies year after year on its ultra-conservative editorial page. It continues to do so. Here is a critique of one of its pro-occupation editorials. Here is a critique of its right-wing blogger Kevin Calvey.

This is important for several reasons. The Oklahoman is the largest newspaper in the state. Many state news outlets, including television stations, follow its lead in covering local and even national stories. The owners of the newspaper, the Gaylord family, are influential state power brokers who influence political decisions here on a regular basis. Even the football stadium at the University of Oklahoma—Gaylord Family Stadium—is named after the family who has printed and supported lie after lie of the Imperial Bush, even adding their own lies about the worth of the Iraq occupation.

Now, remember, McClellan is a right-winger exposing the so-called “liberal media” for how it helped the Imperial Bush deceive the American people. In essence, McClellan argues there is no such thing as a liberal corporate media, which is absolutely true. It has always been a silly myth promoted by right-wing radio hosts, think tanks and the Republican Party. So, then, how conservative does that make The Oklahoman? Can it even fit into a definition, given McClellan’s claims, of a “conservative newspaper”? I think not. The newspaper’s political coverage is truly and absolutely propaganda, not just in a name-calling sense, and Oklahomans have slogged through it for decades.

And, yes, there is an “art” to propaganda, and, in this sense, The Oklahoman is a great triumph. It has shifted the definition of political centrist so far to the right and has allowed its disingenuous Washington, D.C. “correspondents” to lie about the national political scene for so long that its deceptive rhetorical structure has become ingrained in the state’s psyche and history. The paper’s editorial page never allows full dissenting views to its constant stream of lies. McClellan’s book, on a local level, shows just how far out of the mainstream The Oklahoman remains despite its new look.

As I have mentioned before, The Oklahoman would make a great case study in the technique of contemporary American propaganda. Maybe some enterprising journalism scholars at the University of Oklahoman could write a book about it. The only problem is they work at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The family, see, has even bought off those who might fully critique its media empire for the constant deceptions it tries to pass off as mainstream conservatism.