Robert Scheer
Robert Scheer
Robert Scheeris an American journalist who writes a column for Truthdig that is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate in publications such as The Huffington Post and The Nation. He is a clinical professor of communications at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California and co-hosts the weekly political radio program Left, Right & Center on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, California. Scheer is editor-in-chief for the Webby Award-winning online...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth14 April 1936
CountryUnited States of America
I was able to do something that people can't do these days, which is to have quality time with the guys who were trying to be president and a number of them who got the job.
That means presenting the issues in certain ways that will appeal to those people and then becoming a prisoner of your own language and thought process. That has always happened - it's just been intensified.
They know that the column resonates in the community. They know that people like it, and yet they don't have room for one column once week that consistently got it right.
So this guy, Jeff Johnson, who is an accountant who cares nothing at all about a free press and cares nothing about journalism, he's a right winger who supported the war, you know, who two years ago told people he couldn't stand a word that I wrote.
We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers.
And new people come in, and it doesn't go along with their politics, and they fire me, end the column, silence a voice in Los Angeles. They can't silence it nationally, but they are able to do it there.
I was able to do something that people cant do these days, which is to have quality time with the guys who were trying to be president and a number of them who got the job.
What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.
What they are interested in at the L.A. Times is profits, and then when it's convenient to them, they wave the flag of free press.
The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative.
I talked to Reagan for about six hours all told. and Reagan was willing to go along with it. He didn't look at his watch, and he didn't allow his campaign aides to cut it off.
Well, what happened is that I had been the subject of vicious attacks by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
The decision came from the publisher. It certainly was cleared by Chicago. And then they come out with these fine sounding words about relation to readers and their obligation. It has nothing to do with that.
And the big issue here, I think, is that the publisher took over the editorial pages, a guy named Jeff Johnson. He's an accountant from Chicago, doesn't know anything about what newspapers are supposed to be about, and he made a decision to get rid of the column.