CNBC Capital Report - Transcript

CNBC News Transcripts

SHOW: Capital Report (7:00 PM ET) - CNBC

February 27, 2004 Friday

HEADLINE: Indecency on the airwaves and gay marriage

ANCHORS: ALAN MURRAY; GLORIA BORGER

BODY:
ALAN MURRAY, co-host:

Indecency on the airwaves is one of two big cultural issues that have boiled up this week. The other, of course, is gay marriage.

GLORIA BORGER, co-host:

And we've gathered three panelists for our Friday Mixer to talk about these controversial issues and much more. Lawrence O'Donnell is senior political analyst for MSNBC, and he joins us from LA. MSNBC's Pat Buchanan is here in Washington along with Republican Congressman Dave Dreier of California, who is, of course, the chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Let me start with you, Lawrence. This Washington attack on indecency, trying to regulate the airwaves, is this is a good idea?

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL (MSNBC Senior Political Analyst): Well, if it's an attack, it's not a good idea. If it's trying to maintain standards in broadcast arenas that have traditionally been controlled by that, then it makes a certain sense. It has gone over the top already. You know, the week after Janet Jackson's exposure, "ER," as you know, had to-NBC decided to cut out a scene where, in the emergency room, you saw for a billionth of a second a portion of an 80-year-old breast on a woman who was being pulled in for emergency surgery. And "ER," over the 10 years of the show, they've shown all sorts of different body parts and different angles for seconds here and there in the rush of the action and all that, and no one has ever complained about it before.

MURRAY: Yeah.

O'DONNELL: So, yeah, there's a certain kind of overreaction going on. That will calm down after a while...

MURRAY: Well, let's...

O'DONNELL: ...and most everything will get back to normal.

MURRAY: ...ask David Dreier about that. Is Congress overreacting to this, and is it going to calm down after awhile?

Representative DAVID DREIER (Republican, California): Well, I know that a lot of people were very angry following the Super Bowl. I was surprised. And the thing that really offended me was the prospect of a five-, six-, seven-, eight-year-old child watching the Super Bowl and that entire halftime program was pretty raunchy. I mean, you can see it late night on MTV or someplace else, and so that really created a level of anger among my colleagues.

I think Lawrence is right that this will calm down. And one of the things that I always believe we need to be careful with is we need to be very careful in doing anything that undermines First Amendment to the Constitution. We want freedom of expression. I come from Los Angeles. I'm the lone Republican who represents the Hollywood area, and I don't want to, in any way, jeopardize that right to expression, but I do think that it's correct. They're public airwaves, and I think that at least some kind of warning, which has been utilized in the past, is appropriate when these kinds of programs are going to come on.

BORGER: Well, Pat Buchanan, what are the rules here, though? I mean, are there any rules?

PAT BUCHANAN (MSNBC Political Analyst): Well, the rules have been breached and broken and have been falling down, but, you know, I agree sort of with Larry O'Donnell on this. You got to have a rule of reason here if you're dealing with "ER" and something like that happens in an emergency room as opposed to the in-your-face which you got there at the Super Bowl and, frankly, which Howard Stern does. I mean, these licenses are licenses to print money. And when you're given these licenses, there ought to be minimal standards of decency which the American people demand which are not too much.

MURRAY: So you think Howard Stern should have been kicked?

BUCHANAN: Well, I think the Clear Channel-I didn't hear what he said, but, apparently, it was really an outrageous slur, a racial and sexual slur.

Rep. DREIER: Pat, everything he says is pretty outrageous.

MURRAY: Right. This is nothing new here.

BUCHANAN: Well, then, look, his Clear Channel took him off the air before-they got their own problems with him. I can understand that. I do think the FCC can set certain standards. And if these guys are going to go right up to the line and over it, they ought to pay a price...

BORGER: Well...

BUCHANAN: ...the same price, Alan, you and I pay if we're doing 65 or 70 miles an hour in a 40-mile zone.

BORGER: But, Lawrence O'Donnell, what about the spectacle of all of these television and radio executives falling on their swords in front of members of Congress and saying, 'Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm embarrassed. I promise you, we will never do it again'? And, you know, are they telling the truth here?

O'DONNELL: Oh, please, they've made tremendous amounts of money pushing the edge of this stuff...

MURRAY: Yeah.

O'DONNELL: ...and Clear Channel and the radio owners have made tremendous amounts of money, millions and millions of dollars, on Howard Stern's back. And what Howard did the other day that provoked Clear Channel was a joke. It was nothing. It was a word uttered by someone who called up the show. The show has said much crazier and wilder stuff over the years. And everybody involved, all the giant corporations involved, have been thrilled with it as they rake in huge amounts of money that Howard was making for them at virtually no cost.

MURRAY: Well, let's-I mean, speaking of spectacles, David Dreier, the other spectacle, of course, is in San Francisco this week where you have literally thousands of gay couples getting married and the president responding to that by calling for a constitutional amendment. Now as I understand it, any constitutional amendment has got to start in your committee in the House. Is that going to happen any time soon?

Rep. DREIER: Well, let me just first say that with Lawrence and me on the program-we're from Los Angeles. The whole notion of Pat Buchanan and Alan Murray being these road-rage speeders as he described is something I have a difficult time fathoming. But let me say that it actually-a constitutional amendment would begin in the Judiciary Committee, but as you know, everything comes through the committee that I'm privileged to chair. And I have-you know, I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman and I supported DOMA. I just believe that amending the...

MURRAY: DOMA's the Defense of Marriage Act.

Rep. DREIER: Yeah, excuse me, the Defense of Marriage Act. I clearly believe that-by the way, the CNBC audience knows that, Alan. You should know that.

MURRAY: Just trying to help.

Rep. DREIER: Yeah, they're so educated.

BORGER: They're always defending marriage, right.

Rep. DREIER: Yeah. But let me say that it will, if it does move, come to our committee. And I've said that if the speaker of the House tells me that he wants to move it to the floor, I won't stand in the way. But I believe that amending the US Constitution should be the absolute last resort in this issue. I mean, the only amendment to the Constitution that I right now support is repeal of the 22nd Amendment which Ronald Reagan had as his number one priority when he left the White House in January of 1989, and that's the one that has term limits on the presidency.

BORGER: Well, OK. Pat Buchanan, was the president, A, smart in doing this, and, B, will a constitutional amendment ever happen?

BUCHANAN: I think, yes, politically, the president was smart in doing it because his hand was forced. It was forced by Massachusetts. It was forced by the spectacle of what's going on in San Francisco. I think the president's probably got some concerns about a constitutional amendment as do all of us, because I think this could be done a lot easier. Congress has passed a Defense of Marriage Act which says if Massachusetts legalizes marriage, they can't force on it Connecticut. All they need to do is repass it with an amendment which says the Supreme Court has no right of judicial review of this law. I think that ought to be tried first.

MURRAY: Yeah.

BUCHANAN: Will a constitutional amendment eventually pass? My guess is, if you're talking about two-thirds of both houses of Congress, the committees first, then the two-thirds, then the three-fourths of the state, my guess is it won't happen.

MURRAY: Yeah.

BORGER: Right.

MURRAY: All right. Quick last question for our two Hollywood guests. What's going to happen next week, that big Disney meeting, to Michael Eisner? Is he going to stay, or is he going to go? Lawrence, you first.

O'DONNELL: We've never seen anything quite like it here. I don't know how to predict it. He's got serious troubles. They just leaked a letter in the LA Times the other day that he wrote to Michael Ovitz years ago. It's a big campaign against him, but he's the strongest CEO in Hollywood. I would expect him to be able to hang on.

MURRAY: Dave Dreier, you probably raised money from the guy, right? Admit it. Come on.

Rep. DREIER: They've been supportive. I will acknowledge that.

BORGER: All right. No comment then. No comment.

Rep. DREIER: No comment.

BORGER: Total conflict of interest.

Rep. DREIER: I will tell with you, though, with that 30 percent survey, it's pretty close to a vote of no confidence even if he does survive. I mean, there's a lot of controversy, as Lawrence says, surrounding it.

BORGER: OK. Thanks.

BUCHANAN: Bring back Walt Disney.

Rep. DREIER: Yeah, that'd be great.

BORGER: Bring back Mickey Mouse. Thanks so much, Lawrence O'Donnell, Pat Buchanan and David Dreier.

Rep. DREIER: Is this Friday Mixer a happy hour, too?

MURRAY: Yeah, sure...

BORGER: It is happy hour.

MURRAY: ...after you go off the air.

Rep. DREIER: OK. Just want to make sure.

MURRAY: Not on the air.

BORGER: The drinks out in the lobby, Congressman.

Rep. DREIER: Good. OK, Good.

BUCHANAN: Thank you.

BORGER: OK. Thanks a lot.

MURRAY: We're a decent show. We don't drink on the air.

Boy, that Disney meeting next week is going to be something that is very closely watched. For a big iconic company like Disney to be going through what it's going through is very interesting.

BORGER: You know-and it's really interesting, because the people in the news division, I think, have visions of the days when Cap Cities ran the ABC News division, and they liked it. And of course, the Burkes were there. The elder Burke was there. And so I think there are some people in the news division who are thinking, 'Gee, this might be good for us.'

MURRAY: And, you know, it's interesting here in Washington how all these issues of sort of media consolidation and the issue of media indecency have somehow gotten mixed together. It's kind of one big stew of questions about the media that are being raised.

BORGER: About whether the media is controlled by too few.

MURRAY: Yeah.

BORGER: And I think, you know, that's the issue obviously the FCC has been dealing with.

MURRAY: Right. Right.