De Commerciele Massamedia 247

Kijkt u eens naar hoe een Amerikaanse journalist dwars door de nonsens van een gecorrumpeerde politicus heenprikt. Dit zult u nooit in Nederland zien, omdat de commerciele media hier te gecorrumpeerd zijn:

Dylan Ratigan (Newscom)Dylan Ratigan rants daily about government’s shortcomings and tears into guests with a vengeance. Lloyd Grove on where his outrage comes from—and why it’s working.

Having lunch with Dylan Ratigan is a bit like being sprayed with a fire hose. Actually, it’s a bit like watching his television program.

“At first, people were like: ‘Who is this guy?’ ” the host of MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show says as we sit outdoors at the Rock Center Café, where he has presented himself unshaven, sporting a beige turtleneck and jeans. “Then they were like: ‘Why is he yelling at everybody?’ Then they were like, ‘Hang on a second, I think he might be here to try and help with honest intent!’ I think we are at that point where people are realizing, however you may feel stylistically, that our intention is to end game-rigging in the government, using 21st century journalism!”

“Racists and talking points piss me off,” Ratigan says. “And I will flip out.”

Ratigan, of course, is yelling—his default mode of communication, ever since his days as a maniacal stock market host on Bloomberg Television and CNBC—and he’s waving his arms in a semaphore of alarm, attracting the anxious curiosity of diners at nearby tables. And despite his resemblance to a budding Howard Beale, the angry anchorman from Paddy Chayefsky’s Network, the 38-year-old Ratigan is appealingly self-aware, happy to acknowledge his hyper-intensity. “Well, it is true,” Ratigan admits. “But we need that guy from Network. At some point somebody has to walk in the room and be like, ‘None of you are solving the problem!’ ”

Often, on the air, he loses his cool. Sometimes he bullies his guests. He notoriously did both to Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz during a discussion of health-care reform last December. That train wreck of an interview (which took place on Morning Meeting, the predecessor to Ratigan’s 4 p.m. show) ended when he ranted at the shocked congresswoman that she was implicated in the rising share prices of health insurance companies, berated her for relying on “talking points,” then cut her off, muttering: “This is a waste of time!” A few days later he grudgingly apologized.

Watch Ratigan’s Interview with Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-17/dylan-ratigan-cable-tvs-angriest-anchorman/ “Nothing pisses me off more than somebody who has the audacity to come into the theater, if you will—which is what I consider that box to be—and be either intellectually dishonest or effectively just try to do talking points,” Ratigan tells me. “I apologized to Debbie not because of the talking points…I apologized to Debbie because I felt that my behavior was so abnormal for the medium, and was so upsetting to people, because people were like, ‘That guy just completely lost his temper on that congressperson!’ –which is true. I felt that while my anger and frustration were valid, it is not ultimately beneficial or appropriate for me to take it out on a particular politician—and so I regret losing my temper.”

On the other hand, Ratigan has no regrets about tossing Tea Party organizer Mark Williams off his show in March when Williams refused to repudiate “racists and Nazis.” "I don't want to continue with this, you're wasting valuable oxygen,” Ratigan informed Williams before pulling the plug.

Watch Ratigan Toss Off a Tea Partier Over lunch, Ratigan explains: “Racists and talking points piss me off. And I will flip out.”

This “caffeinated crusader” approach appears to be working: Since January, when The Dylan Ratigan Show debuted at 4 p.m., the audience has been growing, eyeball by eyeball. As of the May sweeps, he had 330,000 viewers—a 20 percent improvement over MSNBC’s performance a year ago in the same time slot. Although he trails both Fox News’ Neil Cavuto (1.3 million viewers) and CNN’s Rick Sanchez (543,000), Ratigan seems headed in the right direction.

He says he sees his mission as holding our political leaders’ feet to the fire—even if it means insulting and assaulting them. It’s hardly surprising that President Obama’s many spinmeisters—who are otherwise ubiquitous on MSNBC—are all but absent from Ratigan’s program.

“The White House is largely afraid to come on,” he says, adding that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and top presidential adviser Larry Summers “are afraid to come near me…Because I am so hard on them for their economic policies that I believe are destructive to our country long-term. I think they are dishonest.”

Ratigan goes on: “For me, it is not about the politics of Obama versus Bush or Democrat versus Republican. In my mind, I represent the taxpayer and fairness relative to the government. When the government solves problems in an explicitly unfair manner that doesn’t address the actual problem, I feel like it is my obligation professionally to explain that, and try to address it. But, to that end, the White House doesn’t like me.”