Phil Donahue on Media Consolidation and Being Taken Off the Air for Opposing Iraq Invasion

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Phil Donahue on Media Consolidation and Being Taken Off the Air for Opposing Iraq Invasion

By Heather

December 11, 2010 04:20 PM

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/phil-donahue-media-consolidation-and-being



Phil Donahue joined Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker to discuss his long career as a talk show host, the dangers of media consolidation and his ouster from MSNBC during the run up to the invasion of Iraq for daring to speak out opposing it. You generally don't find too many conversations like this one on cable news since I'm sure their bosses wouldn't want to shine a light too brightly on the need to bust these companies up. Every once in a while one slips through like this one though.

SPITZER: I want to raise something then that we weren't going to raise, which is that you were pushed off the air because you opposed it.

DONAHUE: I opposed the war.

SPITZER: And is that one of the reasons they pushed you off?

DONAHUE: Read the memo published by the "New York Times," "Donahue's anti-war voice is not going to work against the flag waving on the other station." Donahue and any anti-war voice in 2002, remember, they're all doing what I did now. The whole channel is now. You could not criticize this war four months before the invasion. It was not good for business.

You had -- General electric had no interest in featuring an old talk show host who was against the president's war. It was -- it was unpopular. You weren't American. This is what you get with corporate media. It's going to happen again.

[wtmusic]

1. Of course, Limbaugh and Beck are the bastard offspring of Phil Donahue.

What a joke.