Journalist David Corn Tells it Like it Is

David Corn says he’s “more a journalist than I am an idealogue,” but separating the two is not somethng he’s likely to do as the liberal token on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor.” In fact, just as we began our telephone interview, Corn was defending himself in a written letter to that show’s contentious host, Bill O’Reilly, who had called Corn a “bottom-feeding sewer-dweller” on the radio, the day before. Welcome to the world of contemporary political commentary.

As part of the Payomet Performing Arts Center’s “Spoken Word” series, Corn presented “An Evening of Political Insight, Gossip & Outrage.” Asked what exactly that would entail, Corn responds easily: “telling it like it is.”

Corn is in the enviable position of being able to “tell it like it is” – or at least as he sees it, and to get paid for it. In addition to being a frequent guest on Fox News, Corn is The Nation’s Washinngton editor and also a popular liberal columnist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, as well as other print sources and his own Internet blog, www.davidcorn.com. He has also written books, including a bestselling novel, “Deep Background,” about a political scandal reminicent of the Clinton Administration’s Whitewater affair, as well as nonfiction works, such as The Lies of George W. Bush .

“I set my own limits in a lot of ways,” he says. “While I do this for my own reasons, some would say my own ego gratificiation, there is sort of a civic responsibility aspect ot it in terms of showing people that their ideas can be reflected in the major, mass media.”

Part of this role includes going on shows like the McLaughlin Group or the more extreme O’Reilly Factor, and participating in what seems to be more a verbal wrestling match than any sort of intelligent dialogue about the issues. For a journalist interested in maintaining some sort of credibility, going on such programs (the latter, in particular) could be seen as participation in a debased mode of political debate.

But Corn contends, “Cable news these days is more entertainment than it is informed debate and if I get on there and I can aggravate and irritate and perhaps even get a conservative to think differnetly for even a nanosecond, and be paid for that, my attitude is, why the heck not?…It’s already there. THe question is, ‘is the cable news circuit better without David Corn?’ I think not.”

Asked if being labeled specifically liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, is a problem for him, Corn is ambivalent.
“Well, I think they’re very, kind of narrow categories, but I don’t disavow therm – ‘progressive’, ‘lefty’, ‘liberal.’….I’m a journalist wiht a set of values that I state openly, unlike so-called ‘mainstream’ media people… if (you) wants to call me a liberal reporter, I won’t argue with that.”

Corn’s writing sometimes takes on the fallacy of strict philosophical and party line divisions. For example, in a recent article for The Nation, Corn explores the division within the Republican Party regarding stem cell research – a topic many average Americans see as Republican vs. Democrat. In the article, he cites Republicans as varied as Arlen Specter and Orin Hatch working to remove some of President Bush’s restrictions on this research. Things are not always black and white.

As an example of this media nearsightedness, Corn offers the example of the War in Iraq and the multitude of opinions about it, even amongst conservatives.

“There are a lot conservatives who don’t like the War in Iraq. And there are neo-conservatives who do…Most media follow the official agenda. It’s not that they’re leftist or rightist, they follow the official agenda. So the intellectual debate within conservative circles, which is different than partisan circles doesnt get as much attention.”

Is it a media plot to hide what’s “really going on” or is it a built-in inadequacy of having major media conglomerates? Corn’s explanation is that it is more a culture of journalism that values power over the complexities of any given issue.

“They (mainstream reporters) see themselves as kind of sports writers, you know, and they cover the major leagues….and so if there’s a fierce debate going on amongst the conservative foreign policy people, who don’t have power, then they don’t pay as much attention. They pay attention to the people who ahve offciaial power.”

It would seem that devoting this much of your life to the rather depressing world of American politics, but Corn’s manner reveals a person who has long ago learned to live with the imperfections of our system, and to focus on what’s really important to him in the end.

“I gotta pay my bills, I got a family to feed,” he says. “What we say at the magazine is ‘what’s bad for the nation is good for the Nation’.”