"the brass had received a call from the Dick Cheney's office"

[KurtNYC]

I think this incident gives us a unique look into the way the MSM works now. The Today Show is the top source for news in the US. Watched by more people than the evening news and coming at the start of each day's news cycle, Today holds special power to influence what is and is not considered "newsworthy" and how things deemed newsworthy are framed in the minds of their vast audience.

Michael Moore told this story on July 28, 2004:
You know. I was on a, one of those morning talk shows and after we went to commercial, the person who was interviewing me said you know, you are right, I mean when the war started, it was very difficult here to book the people we wanted to book, ask the questions we wanted to ask. In fact, I got a memo about my tone of voice. And apparently the brass had received a call from the Dick Cheney's office is what – and said that he didn't like my tone of voice. And I got a memo on it to watch my tone of voice. Well you've got to tell that story! You've got to tell that story. I can't. Well why? They can't fire you.

You are like one of the most well-known people in America. And, you know, you've got to tell this story. If you don't tell it, I'm going to wait like maybe another week. What's today? Within the week, I will put this on my web site. I'll tell the whole story and I'll name who said it. So this person is unnoticed now and I am doing it in a friendly way. Because this is a good person. You know? Just that I think the people deserve the truth and they need to know how the decisions get made behind the curtain. Who is pulling the strings here? Who's calling the shots? It's like, coming from where I come from politically, we always are in this place of yeah, the man this and the man that and this corporation and this and that and there's probably a part of us that says oh, you know, it's really, there's, maybe it's not that bad. You want to believe it isn't that bad. You know? And then, they have made the mistake of giving me a peek behind this curtain and I've seen this happen and it's stunning to me,..

http://www.alternet.org/story/19385/

Moore seems to be referring to his appearance 5 weeks earlier on the Today Show (6/21/04). Like the interview she did this morning (4/20/06) with the cast of American Dreamz, Katie Couric voices the questions that the WH wants asked, no doubt being careful to use the "right tone of voice." Look at how Couric does not so much interview Moore as cross examine him like a prosecutor would:

COURIC: You use images of Iraq before the invasion. And if I recall, you have pictures of, film of children playing in playgrounds. You sort of hear the sounds of children laughing.

MOORE: Yeah.

COURIC: You have people eating in outdoor cafes. But even people, Michael, who are vehemently opposed to the war would tell you Saddam Hussein was a tyrannical despot—

MOORE: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: who killed people—

MOORE: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: for absolutely no reason.

MOORE: That’s correct.

COURIC: A murderer.

MOORE: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: And wouldn’t your movie have been better balanced if you had at least included some about Saddam Hussein’s own reputation?

MOORE: You guys did such a good job of telling us how tyrannical and horrible he was. You already did that. What—the question really should be posed to NBC News and all of the other news agencies: Why didn’t you show us that the people that we’re going to bomb in a few days are these people, human beings who are living normal lives, kids flying kites, people just trying to get by in their daily existence? And as the New York Times pointed out last week, out of the 50 air strikes in those initial days, the—we were zero for 50 hitting the target. We killed civilians and we don’t know how many thousands of civilians that we killed. And nobody covered that. And so for two hours, I’m going to cover it. I’m going to—out of four years of all of this propaganda, I’m going to give you two hours that says here’s the other side of the story.

Over at CBS, Dan Rather got fired essentially for saying that * ducked out of the TANG. His replacement is going to be someone who has proved herself to the guys in the VP's office who tell network brass what to do. Someone with the right tone of voice. Such is the state of the MSM in the USA today.

[0007]

1. Michael Moore is the greatest, just wish there were more like him.