Well, the cat is finally out of the bag and guess who let him out?  None other than Morning Joe’s own resident heartthrob, Mika Brzezinski.  In an interview with TV Newser’s Julie Menin, promoting her new book, All Things At Once, the daughter of Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor had this to say about the mainstream media:

I’ve worked in the mainstream media for all the networks and I will say what people aren’t saying. It’s got a liberal world view. There are great people working at the networks, and they’re mostly Democrats, ok?

I think honestly what needs to happen, is we need to stop pretending about who we are and every journalist should tell us what their political affiliation is, who they voted for,  and we go from there.

mika

I hate the polarizing extremes that we’re seeing on cable where there’s these sort of “Think my way or you’re evil” kind of subliminal message or cartoonish type characters on the right and the left. I think we try and break a lot of those barriers on Morning Joe.

The reason why we’ve got these extremes is a reaction to the “objective” mainstream media that is so not objective when you have most of them being Democrats or liberals running it. Ok, that’s why we have FOX. Because it [the mainstream media] wasn’t honest and because there was reaction out there to this and now what I’m saying is let’s pull it all back together and let’s start from a base of honesty and then work toward fairness and objectivity and maybe we’ll cut against these polarizing extremes that we are seeing on television that are drawing people and galvanizing them in ways that are not all constructive.

Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post’s media critic who somehow has no conflict of interest whatsoever in his other role as the host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, has weighed in with these observations:

I have a bit more confidence than Mika in the ability of many (but not all) of my colleagues to keep their opinions out of their work. And her argument that this lack of transparency has fueled the extreme movements on both sides isn’t terribly persuasive. (”That’s why we have Fox,” she says. And MSNBC prime time?)

But it’s an interesting argument nonetheless. I bet Joe Scarborough will agree.

So thanks to Mika for finally admitting what we’ve known all along.  You see, we on the Right are not so dumb.  We knew Major Hasan was a terrorist the minute we a) heard his name and b) learned that he’d shouted “Allahu Akbar!” just before opening fire on the American soldiers at Fort Hood; you see, we can put two and two together.

We knew that the National Intelligence Estimate so trumpeted by the New York Times back in 2007 – you remember, the one that said with “high confidence” that Iran had stopped its nuclear program in 2003 — was a) complete baloney and b) most likely a disinformation campaign waged within the bowels of an overstaffed and underbrained “intelligence community,” and designed to affect the 2008 election by raising the echoes of the Iraq “weapons of mass destruction” meme.  And what do you know — it looks like we were right!


You can watch the entire interview with Mika here:

And here is a partial transcript:

Mika Brzezinski: I’ve worked in the mainstream media for all the networks and I will say what people aren’t saying. It’s got a liberal world view. There are great people working at the networks, and they’re mostly Democrats, ok? They try really hard to be objective, really hard and they do a great job at it, but the balance is not there within the objective mainstream media. It’s not, It is not and I’m not sure how we fix that. I hate the polarizing extremes that we’re seeing on cable where there’s these sort of “Think my way or you’re evil” kind of subliminal message or cartoonish type characters on the right and the left. I think we try and break a lot of those barriers on Morning Joe. I think we try and be transparent about who we are and where we come from and what our world view is and what our knowledge base is on every issue…We are not trying to be anything more than what we are, and that is extremely honest. I think honestly what needs to happen, is we need to stop pretending about who we are and every journalist should tell us what their political affiliation is, who they voted for,  and we go from there. Because come on, are you telling me that a reporter for a great news organization does not have opinions and does not have a world view and did not vote for a presidential candidate?

Julie Menin: But do you think then that on the broadcast news that those personal views are seeping into the news coverage?

Mika Brzezinski: Of course they are which is why we have got to be honest.

Julie Menin: And you think that by disclosing the party affiliation…

Mika Brzezinski: We can’t sanitize it. We can’t say this reporter has somehow, you know, taken a bath in alcohol, rubbing alcohol and therefore the news is clean. No. Every reporter, every anchor, every human being that is a personality on television has opinions, and has a world view, and has a slant. You know I think what we have to do is know that the viewer is smart about that and if you are fair and you are looking for the truth you can be trusted and you’ve got to be honest.

Julie Menin: But why is it important, for example, to know who Wolf Blitzer voted for?

Mika Brzezinski: It seems strange and backward or you know way too “out there” but I know who…I mean look, when you are watching these anchors on straight news talk shows do they have no brains? Do they just absolutely positively have no opinions? Come on. We know they do, but even more so I really think it’s important to know and for television executives as they move into the future to understand, that the viewer knows and the viewer needs to be treated like an intelligent person and not sort of duped… I think it’s great to know someone’s world view. That doesn’t mean I don’t think they’re fair. I think it’s great to know who someone voted for I still want to hear what they have to say in terms of what the news is… So I just think as we move forward there needs to be a whole new phase and push for transparency. That will cut through these extremes were seeing. The reason why we’ve got these extremes is a reaction to the “objective” mainstream media that is so not objective when you have most of them being Democrats or liberals running it. Ok, that’s why we have FOX. Because it [mainstream media] wasn’t honest and because there was reaction out there to this and now what I’m saying is let’s pull it all back together and let’s start from a base of honesty and then work toward fairness and objectivity and maybe we’ll cut against these polarizing extremes that we are seeing on television that are drawing people and galvanizing them in ways that are not all constructive.