23. (Part 2)
JEWISH
INFLUENCE IN THE MASS
MEDIA
In 1985 Laurence
Tisch, Chairman of the
Board of New York University,
former President of
the Greater New York
United Jewish Appeal,
an active supporter
of Israel, and a man
of many other roles,
started buying stock
in the CBS television network through his
company, the Loews
Corporation. The
Tisch family, worth
an estimated 4 billion
dollars, has major interests
in hotels, an insurance
company, Bulova, movie
theatres, and Loliards,
the nation's fourth
largest tobacco company
(Kent, Newport, True
cigarettes). Brother
Andrew Tisch has served
as a Vice-President
for the UJA-Federation,
and as a member of the
United Jewish Appeal
national youth leadership
cabinet, the American
Jewish Committee, and
the American Israel
Political Action Committee,
among other Jewish organizations.
By September of 1986
Tisch's company owned
25% of the stock of
CBS and he became the
company's president.
And Tisch -- now the
most powerful man at
CBS -- had strong feelings about television,
Jews, and Israel. The
CBS news department began to live in
fear of being compromised
by their boss -- overtly,
or, more likely, by
intimidation towards
self-censorship -- concerning
these issues. "There
have been rumors in
New York for years,"
says J. J. Goldberg,
"that Tisch took over
CBS
in 1986 at least partly
out of a desire to do
something about media
bias against Israel."
[GOLDBERG, p. 297]
The powerful President
of a major American television
network dare not publicize
his own active bias in
favor of another country,
of course. That would
look bad, going against
the grain of the democratic
traditions, free speech,
and a presumed "fair"
mass media. And if it
ever became clear that
the CBS
news department was in
danger of turning into
an ad agency for Israel,
the resulting controversy
would probably defeat
Tisch's purpose in helping
them. But word leaked out, that CBS news under
Laurence Tisch lived in
fear of being ethically
compromised.
During the Palestinian
Intifada (the stone-throwing
revolt by Palestinian
Arabs against Israeli
military rule), a birthday
party was held by Jewish
TV personality Barbara
Walters and her husband
Merv Adelson for Jewish
Federal Reserve Board
Chairman Alan Greenspan.
Other invited Jewish guests
included former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger
and U.S. News and World
Report publisher,
Mortimer Zuckerman.
According to Roone
Arledge, the President
of ABC News, who was also
a guest at the party,
a long and heated debate
arose about television's
depiction of the Israeli
military's attempts to
crush Arab rioting. CBS
President Tisch argued
that TV should effectively
censor reports on what
was happening, that "television
ought to be banned in
the occupied territories
"because it portrayed
Israeli soldiers in a
bad light. Kissinger had
argued the same a few
weeks earlier, publicly
concerned that "TV cameras
incited riots and tarnished
Israel's reputation." Arledge vehemently argued that the media's
ethical stand should be
to be present and report
whatever was happening,
when and wherever possible.
Barbara
Walters and Mortimer Zuckerman
covered for Tisch and
they all denied that he
took such an irresponsibly
biased, and disturbing,
position.
According to (Jewish)
reporter Ken Auletta,
however, eight other people
at the party testified -- five to him personally -- that Tisch
did.
Jewish guests at
the party, led by Tisch,
also attacked Arledge's
ABC anchorman (who was
not present) Peter Jennings,
for being -- as they saw
it -- too "anti-Israel.
"Several guests," writes
Auletta, "came away deeply
distressed by Tisch's
behavior. What disturbed
them was that the President
of CBS seemed to say that the perceived
interests of Israel took
precedence over the interests
of CBS News. Tisch's reflex, they felt,
was to defend Israel,
not his network; he was
blaming Jennings and the
press for reporting Israel's
excesses, not Israel committing
them. " [AULETTA p. 488-490]
Tisch's strong
emotions about Israel
were exhibited in other
ways. After CBS's popular news program, 60 Minutes,
did a story about the
Jewish lobbying group
AIPAC (the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee),
Tisch was furious with
his employees because
the program made Jews,
to his eyes, look too
powerful. (Curiously,
long-time CBS
reporter, David Schoenburn,
notes that both 60
Minutes producer Don
Hewitt, and 60 Minutes
reporter, Mike Wallace
(both Jewish), "were personal
friends of Larry Tisch."
[SCHOENBURN, p. 6])
Tisch reportedly
even called the reporter
of the AIPAC story, Wallace,
a self-hating Jew. Tom
Wyman, the non-Jewish
CEO of CBS, joined in the fray, at another
party. He was reported
by Newsweek to
have complained "that
Tisch's enthusiasm for
'pro-Israel' causes and
charities might compromise
the independent reporting
of CBS
news."
[AULETTA, p. 164]
This attitude by powerful
Jewish media figures reflects
a certain tradition, and
recalls the case in the
late 1940s of Adolph Schwimmer
who "became the Jewish
state's prime [arms] smuggler
in America." Among his
close contacts was Herman
"Hank" Greenspun, the
publisher of the Las
Vegas Sun. Greenspun
once noted that he was
a Zionist "before I could
even identify a picture
of George Washington."
[RAVIV, p. 40] During
Israel's "War of Independence"
in 1948, Greenspun traveled
to "Mexico, the Dominican
Republic, Guatemala, and
Panama, where he organized
false documents, bank
guarantees, and arms shipments
to Israel." [RAVIV, p.
41] "Hank Greenspun,"
notes Alex Pelle,
"embarked on
an incredible odyssey,
plundering a naval depot
in
Hawaii, seizing
a private yacht at gunpoint
near Wilmington, California,
and posing in
Mexico as a confidential
agent of Generalissimo
Chiang
Kai-shek's government.
A single driving purpose
generated over the
span of seven
months all those seemingly
unrelated events: to fill
the
holds of a ship
... with six thousand
tons of contraband rifles,
machine
guns, howitzers,
cannons, and ammunition,
destined for the port
of
Haifa and Israel's
beleaguered Jews. In so
doing, Hank Greenspun
had violated
the United States' Neutrality
Act, the Export Control
Law, and Presidential
Proclamation 2776." Thanks
to Jewish lobbying
pressure, Greenspun
was pardoned by President
John F. Kennedy
in 1961. [GREENSPUN,
H., 1966, p. ix]
*********************************************
In 1989
the Time
Inc. corporate media
giant merged with Warner
Communications to
become Time-Warner Communications, the largest
media organization at
the time in the world.
(Sigmund Warburg, an internationally
renowned Jewish banker
who represented the London
Daily Mirror Group, then
the largest newspaper
company on earth, had
years earlier tried to
buy Time,
Inc., to no avail).
[CLURMAN, p. 31] When
the dust had settled this
time, Steve Ross, a Jewish
entrepreneur who started
out working for a funeral
home, sat astride the
monstrous merger, the
highest paid corporate
executive in America.
His $39.1 million in 1990
as co-CEO, sole chairman
and chief decision-maker,
was 1,363 per cent above
the corporate average.
[CLURMAN p. 304] The merger,
notes Richard Clurman,
"was the creation of the
biggest media empire,
the corporate interfaith
marriage of the sixty-seven-year-old
Time Inc., a WASPy blue-chip American
institution, for years
the largest combined magazine
and book publisher on
earth, to Steven J. Ross's
poker-chip Warner Communications, Inc., the pop
entertainment conglomerate
whose movies and sounds
of music ricochet around
the world." The Time
Inc. stable included
such venerable publishing
mainstays as Time,
Life, Fortune,
Sports Illustrated,
People, Money,
Time-Life Books,
the Little-Brown publishing
house, HBO (long time chief: Michael Fuchs),
the Book of the Month
Club, and television
stations. It even held
a 20.5% share in the ownership
of Turner
Broadcasting
(of CNN fame) and
10.5% voting power in
it. Warner contributed the likes of Lorimar Television, Atco-East/West Records, Atlantic Recording, Quincy Jones Entertainment, Elektra Communications, DC Comics, as well as the Batman
movie, Rod Stewart,
Madonna, Bugs Bunny, and
the rest of its vast movie-music
empire. (By 1997 Time-Warner even owned the rights to
the photographs, other
images, and words of Martin
Luther King, Jr.) In his
earlier years, Ross had
revitalized Warner-Seven
Arts by buying cable-TV
monopolies, as well as
major interests in the
Pittsburgh Pirates baseball
team, Ralph Lauren perfume
and cosmetics, and other
investments. A month after
the Time-Warner
merger, federal bank regulators
instituted new restrictions
to hinder such "highly
leveraged transactions."
[CLURMAN, p. 33]
Steve
Ross (whose father changed
his surname from Rechnitz,
and whose former stepfather,
William Paley, for decades
controlled CBS) was widely
known as a man of dubious
ethics and caused consternation
among many journalists
at Time
that such a man was about
to take them all over.
He
has been an "unindicted
co-conspirator" in a 1979
United States Justice
Department case investing
underworld money laundering
operation in suburban
New York City. His "top
lieutenant" at Warners
took the fall and admitted
guilt; likewise, Warners' assistant treasurer (who handled
Ross's personal accounts)
was also convicted of
fraud and perjury. [CLURMAN,
p. 29]
In earlier years
Ross had merged his funeral
home operation with a
parking lot company, Kinney National Service, which had
its own "unsavory reputation."
"There were rumors that
Kinney was mobbed up [i.e.,
tainted by organized crime],"
notes Fred Goodman, "Caesar
Kinney, Kinney's executive
vice president and original
owner of Kinney's parking
lot business, was the
son of Emmanuel Kinney,
a well-known New Jersey
gambler." [GOODMAN, p.
137-138] (In 1969 Ross
and the Kinney company
bought Warner-Seven Arts from Elliott Hyman
for $400 million. [Sam
Kinney had been head of
production; Benny Kalmensan
was the number two man.]
For his part, Hyman's
earlier company was Associated Artists Productions, which
had purchased the entire
pre-1948 Warners film
library in 1956. Associated Artists' chairman was Louis
Chesler, who, notes Andrew
Yule, was a man "with
established ties to Mafia
boss Meyer Lansky. Nor
was this AA's only shady
connection. Its vice-president,
Morris 'Mac' Schwebel,
would later be convicted
of criminal activity."
[YULE, p. 176])
The 1989 merger
of the two super companies,
Time and Warner, also raised issues of conflict
of interest. How could
Time, Fortune, and other magazines now be
expected to give honest
reviews and evaluations
of Warners movies, records, and other
enterprises? Richard Clurman
notes the fact, for instance,
that an August 1991 Fortune
article called "The
Deal Decade: Verdict of
the 80s" ... "sharply
criticized leveraged excesses
deal by deal, with the
names and numbers of the
dealmakers but it skipped
one of the highest profiles
of them all, the Time-Warners merger." [CLURMAN, p.
305]
Among the central
negotiators in the mega-merger
was the Jewish Vice-President
of Time,
Inc., Jerry Levin, "chief tactician
for Time's
merger with Warner," and
Ed Aboodi, an Israeli-born
"financial consultant"
for Warners. Aboodi's reputation, says
Clurman is that of a "shadowy
mystery man ... [He] was
an invisible mystery man
to the world outside Warners
until the Time-Warner
deal." Investigative reporter
Richard Clurman found
no listing in any telephone
directory for his Alpine
Capital Company, which
is housed in the Time-Warner building. "Aboodi says
he has no telephone listing
for Alpine because 'people
know me and they know
how to find me. I've never
thought about it." [CLURMAN,
p. 165] "Levin and Aboodi,"
says Clurman, "a Delphic-like
oracle and a Talmudic-like
exegetist, [are] quite
a combination for an intricate
modern business deal.
Levin even spoke of the
'thaumaturgic (i.e., mystical)
significance' of some
of their meetings." [CLURMAN,
p. 166]
"While his peers
have been unabashedly
striving to scale the
corporate ladder to attain
the personal perquisite
of power and wealth,"
notes Connie Bruck, "Levin
has long maintained that
he has been compelled
by something far less
mundane, almost mystical:
a sense of obligation
to bring to fruition the
'manifest destiny' of
Time,
Inc. and, now, Time
Warner." [BRUCK, p.
55] Ultimately, the Chief
Financial Officer, the
General Counsel, and Secretary
of the Board for the new
company were all to come
from Warners. [CLURMAN, p. 197-198] The
new company committed
up to $150 million to
a fund managed by Aboodi's
Alpine Capital company, as well as
providing him his $8 million
advisory fee.
By 1991 Time-Warner
announced a deal with
the largest of Japanese
venture capital trading
firms, C. Itoh, and Toshiba; this translated into a Japanese
investment of another
billion dollars. The massive
mega-company then hired
former Federal Communications
Commission chairman Dennis
R. Patrick and "two corporate
'image makers' who had
worked at the White House"
to help maneuver governmental
regulatory policies. Time-Warner "also had on retainer an
elegant pack of the most
connected Washington lobbyists."
[CLURMAN, p. 338] The
new Time-Warner
soon also acquired Sunset
magazine, Lane Publishing,
and 50% interest in Six
Flags Amusement Parks.
"Time-Warner," wrote Richard Clurman
in his book about the
subject in 1992, "is a
combination whose creations
(magazines, books, movies,
music, cable TV, and programming)
are now exposed to the
minds and emotions of
more people than those
of any other commercial
enterprise on earth ...
[CLURMAN, p. 33]
[Time-Warner
executives] frequently
predicted that one day
'5 or 6 media companies
would dominate the world.'"
[CLURMAN, p. 338]
After
the big merger, ruefully
notes Clurman, for twenty
years a journalist and
executive at Time,
Inc., "in a bicoastal,
cross-cultural anointing,
Time's house organ [had a column on new executive titles]
under the heading 'Honorable
Menschen"
[a Yiddish pun].
Within the same two weeks,
Nick Nicholas [the co-chairman
of Time-Warner,
eventually dumped
from that position], was
given a American-Jewish
Committee Human Relations
Award in Los Angeles and
Steve Ross was named Man
of the Year by the Entertainment
Division of the UJA [United
Jewish Appeal] in New
York." [CLURMAN, p. 314]
(Steve Ross was "one of
the role models" for Oskar
Schindler in Stephen Spielberg's
film Schindler's List.
"To prepare [actor Liam
Neeson] for the part,
the director reportedly
showed pictures of Ross
... a wheeler-dealer of
legendary proficiency."
[KELLMAN, p. 10] Schindler
was also likened to another
Jewish media mogul, Michael
Ovitz, "on top of the
mountain pulling strings
in every fiefdom down
below." [KELLMAN, p. 10]
When Steve Ross
subsequently died of cancer,
Gerald Levin replaced
him as head of Time-Warner after a struggle for power,
successfully firing presumed
heir, Nick Nicholas. (Levin's
son, Lee, is studying
to be a rabbi at the Jewish
Theological Seminary.
[BOXER, T., 5-26-01] Soon
Norman Pearlstine, formerly
the head of the Wall
Street Journal and
Jewish, was installed
as editor of Time magazine.
More recently, in
1995, Disney's
Jewish chairman Michael
Eisner announced the $19
billion acquisition of
Capital Cities-ABC to create an even
larger corporate media
monolith, relegating massive
Time-Warner to second size. Disney-ABC controls, aside from the
obvious, everything from
the Anaheim
Angels baseball team
and the Mighty Ducks hockey team to Miramax Films (co-chaired by the Jewish
Weinstein brothers, Harvey
and Bob) and the ESPN sports network (Jewish president
and CEO, Steven Bornstein).
Disney also owned
Fairchild
Publications which
included fashion magazine
Jane, W,
Supermarket News,
Women's Wear Daily,
Chilton Books, Los Angeles Magazine,
and numerous newspapers
and TV stations. Not to
be out-fattened, Gerald
Levin at the heal of Time-Warner soon absorbed Ted Turner's
media empire, Turner
Broadcasting, including
CNN. [BRUCK, p. 58] Turner was relegated
to second in command at
Time-Warner.
Head of the Turner
Broadcasting System
division in 1999? Brad
Siegel. The new chief
of CNN in 2001?
Also Jewish: Walter Isaacson,
formerly Time Inc.'s
editorial director.
And
this is how a Jewish
ethnic online magazine
described Brad Turrell,
number 12 in its 2001
"Fifty Most Influential
Jews in America":
"While
Turrell was the head
of communications for
the WB television
network, he
began
a religious odyssey
that transformed he
and his family into
observant
Jews.
Well, the Lord works
in mysterious ways.
In April, he was promoted
to
the top communication
slot for all of Turner
Broadcasting which
includes TNT,
TBS
Superstation, the
WB Network, Cartoon
Network, Turner
Classic Movies,
Turner
South and Boomerang,
the CNN News Group
Networks, which
includes
CNN/U.S.,
CNN Headline News,
CNNfn, Accent
Health, CNN Airport
Network,
College
Television Network (CTN),
CNN Radio Network,
CNN.com, CNNfn.com,
CNNfyi.com
and MyCNN.com
and Nascar.com.
With all the recent
claims [by
Jewish
lobbying organizations]
of CNN's alleged
media bias against Israel,
it will
be interesting to see
how Turrell handles
the position." [JEWSWEEK,
2001]
The
aforementioned Weinstein
brothers "run a company
[Miramax] that
released more movies
than any other in the
U.S. in the year 2000
and had the eighth-largest
box-office receipts."
"After Disney paid $60
million for Miramax
in 1993," notes New
York Magazine, "[Harvey]
Weinstein spent his
time buying his way
to the Oscar platform
and getting in touch
with his inner thug
by screwing over far
more delicate artistic
sorts ... But all the
legendary bad behavior
[by him] cannot obscure
an objective fact: Harvey
Weinstein is a cultural
good. Pulp Fiction,
Sex, Lies, and Videotape,
and Shakespeare in
Love have all become
a part of the national
narrative, framing the
way people dance, talk,
and fight ... [Weinstein]
is a pushcart peddler
who is more than happy
to put his thumb on
the scale when the old
woman is buying meat,'
says [fellow Jewish]
producer Saul Zaentz.
'He has not qualms about
it ... 'People say,
'Are you tough?' I say:
'Facing [Jewish Hollywood
moguls] Barry Diller,
Michael Eisner, Jeffrey
Katzenberg, David Geffen,
you know, Stephen Spielberg
... Why the hell would
you have to be tough
in this industry to
survive? Those guys
are just a walk in the
park?'" [CARR, D., 12-03-01]
(Among
Weinstein's most recent
projects -- like so
many Jewish moguls --
is one with a Holocaust
theme (this one based
on a piece of fiction
by Jewish novelist Leon
Uris, Mita 18.) "'I'm
preparing to direct
a movie about the Warsaw
Ghetto. About Jews kiling
fucking Germans in great
numbers,' he says with
enthusiasm.") [CARR,
D., 12-03-01]
"It makes no sense
at all to try to deny
the reality of Jewish
power and prominence in
popular culture," wrote
Jewish author, film critic,
and talk show host Michael
Medved in 1996,
"Any list of
the most influential production
executives at each of
the major movie
studios will produce a
heavy majority of recognizable
Jewish names."
[MEDVED, p. 1] ... Consider
the well-publicized
reshuffling
that recently rocked the
Walt
Disney Company,
involving
some of the
mightiest and most highly
paid media moguls. In
this game
of corporate
musical chairs, Disney
C.E.O. and Chairman
of the Board,
Michael Eisner
lost the services of his
movie production chief,
Jeffrey
Katzenberg,
who became part of the
much-heralded new "dream
team"
(formally incorporated
as DreamWorks
SKG) with Steven Spielberg
and David Geffen.
{[In 1990 Forbes
magazine called Geffen
-- a former
agent and record
producer -- the richest
man in Hollywood." [KOTKIN,
p. 62] The first
project out of
DreamWorks was also
by a Jewish
producer, Gary Goldberg,
whose earlier "gentle,
semi-autobiographical
look at a middle-class
Jewish family" lasted
35 episodes in 1991-92
on
CBS [CEROWE, p. F1]] Meanwhile, Eisner
created a new position
at
Disney for his
omnipotent super agent
Michael Ovitz and gave
broader
responsibilities
to his fair-haired boy,
Joe Roth, former head
of 20th
Century Fox
... These headlines underscored
the ironic fact that the
famous Disney
organization, founded
by a gentile Midwestern
who
allegedly harbored
anti-Semitic attitudes
now features Jewish personnel
in nearly all
its most powerful positions."
[MEDVED, p. 37]
Among these personnel
is also Michael Lynton,
appointed to be the head
of Disney's movie division in 1994. At
the very start of Eisner's
tenure at Disney, Katzenberg headed the Disney studios, fellow Jew Richard
Frank headed television,
and David Hoberman was
the chief at the film
division. [SCHWEIZER/SCHWEIZER,
p. 5] Joseph Shapiro became
a Disney Senior Vice President
in the 1990s. Steven Bornstein
is (2001) chairman of
Walt Disney Internet
Group, heading Disney's
commercial explorations
of the world wide web.
Even the president of
the Disney-founded California
Institute of the Arts
is Jewish, Steven Lavine.
In earlier years, during
Saul Steinberg's attempt
to lead a hostile takeover
of the famous WASP firm,
some observers were concerned
that the "take over battle
might be regarded as an
attempt by Jews to topple
one of the temples of
Protestant America." [TAYLOR,
J., p. ix]
At that time, when
Walt Disney's nephew,
Roy E. Disney, held the
largest individual stake
in the company, his lawyer
was also Jewish: Stanley
Gold. [TAYLOR, J., p.
3] Gold eventually became "a financial power through Roy Disney's
Shamrock
Holdings and one of
the largest foreign investors
in Israel." [TUGEND 10-22-99])
As Carl Hiaasen wrote,
in his 1998 volume Team
Rodent -- How Disney Devours
the World:
"In December 1997 Disney chairman
Michael D. Eisner exercised
company
stock options that brought
him $565 million in a
single swoop. The notion
of
attaching such a sum to
one man's job is both
obscene and hilarious
on its face,
yet it's pointless to
debate whether or not
Eisner deserves it. He
got the dough.
It happened in the same
month that Business
Week chose Disney's
board of
directors as the worst
in America. The reason:
Many seemed to have been
handpicked not so much
for their business expertise
as for their loyalty to
the
autocratic Eisner. Among
the company's directors
are his personal architect,
his
personal attorney, the
principal of his children's
elementary school, and
seven
current and former Disney
executives 'Fantastic'
is how Eisner has described
his
choices for the board.
But critics say it's a
meek and malleable group.
That's
precisely what was needed
to sit still for the ludicrous
$75 million platinum parachute
given to Michael Ovitz
[also Jewish] as compensation
for fourteen whole months
as president
of the Walt Disney Company." [Hiaasen,
C., 1998, p. 38-39]
In 1997, when Lilian
Disney (Walt's widow)
donated $50 million towards
building a Los Angeles
cultural center called
Disney Hall (named in
honor of her husband),
Variety noted lingering
(Jewish) animosity towards
him:
"So far [her
donation is] the only
notable sign of financial
support from
the film industry
or its players for the
new concert hall in downtown
Los
Angeles ... The fact
that the hall bears the
name of Disney [is] possibly
a
turnoff to other studios."
[JOHNSON, p. 11]
"Not everyone was
happy with the 'inevitable'
changes [resulting from
the arrival of Eisner
and his new management
at Disney
in the 1980s]," notes
Joe Flower, "Letters to
the Los Angeles Times,
homeland newspaper to
the company and the entertainment
industry, ran heavily
negative, complaining
of the compromise in quality
in Disney's Saturday morning cartoons,
the 'commercialism' of
the new management's projects
and the dilution of the
Disney name." [FLOWER,
p. 192] In 1985 Disney
announced that pop star
Madonna would star in
one of its films (she
eventually didn't) and
affiliates of the great
bastion of "family entertainment"
began to produce R-rated
films. The movie Pulp
Fiction (produced
by a Disney affiliate, Miramax) was decried by some for its
graphic and celebratory
violence. By 1987, when
Disney had a quarterly profit increase
of 159%, Chairman Eisner
got a $
