How legit is Thom Hartmann?

[Celerity]

40. RT had no editorial control over his show. I've seen revisionism trying to falsely claim this for

some time now.

you said

I see RT's direct editorial influence in every single RT show he did.

Bollocks.

Your own video betrays that posisting. Hartmann rips the then FL governor, now US Senate thug, Rick Scott for climate change denialism, and correctly says he is backed the the RW Koch brothers disinfo funding machine. He also pounds Mitch McConnell and destroys the two RW shills, Scott Pruitt from Red State, and Gianno Caldwell from the right wing Project 21.

Also, the crawl on the bottom of the screen was just bog standard news. There was nothing nefarious, unless, in the only case (out of all the stories) of bad news about the US ($500m worth of weapons sent to Yemen were lost), you are also saying that the western major MSM was doing the same anti US agitprop thing.

for example:






Hartmann did not work for RT. He exchanged his show and labour for access to hundreds of millions of global homes, plus carriage and the studio/production. His show was syndicated and he earned money from his sponsors. He was not paid a salary by RT, as I have seen some others falsely claim (no, he was not paid a salary by Putin, another falsehood that a certain 'rightward-moved CNN of Licht/Zaslav/Malone'-loving person in particular had been trying to say/revive here for months, before that 'rainfront' left the DU environs) and again, most importantly, he had complete editorial control over his show.

If Hartmann was this crypto Putinite malevolent force for disingo and agitprop, as some try to keep inferring/implying, then why has this board's owners allowed him to remain a member in good standing f DU for years?

He has not had a show on RT for what will be 6 years this coming September:

https://www.facebook.com/ThomHartmannProgram/posts/thom-hartmann-will-be-leaving-the-big-picture-tv-show-on-rt-tv-and-free-speech-t/10155794661834448/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Hartmann

Hartmann hosted a one-hour daily TV show at 7 pm. ET Monday to Friday, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, which was editorially directed by his wife and was broadcast from the Washington, D.C., studios of the RT America news network. The show featured many conservative guests who routinely sparred with Hartmann. Hartmann co-produced the program with RT, who provided studio and carriage, while Hartmann retained full editorial control of his programming. The RT network aired the program via Dish Network, DirecTV, and on selected local-origination and public-access television cable TV channels globally. After hosting the program for seven years, Hartmann announced his departure as host on September 29, 2017.

more background

Broadcasting from the Belly of the Beast

https://prospect.org/culture/broadcasting-belly-beast/

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

snip

But despite that success, chances are that most of the influential people in his new hometown have barely heard of Hartmann. That's partly because his take on politics is less about the inside game and more about citizen empowerment. It's also because in the corridors of power, it's television that confers prestige, even if the audiences are relatively small, as they are for most cable shows. So when Hartmann had the chance in late 2010 to get his own TV show-even if it required an unusual arrangement with an upstart, foreign-owned network-he packed up his life in the gentler environs of Portland, Oregon, and moved to what he calls "the belly of the beast."

Hartmann starts each day at his radio studio, then hops across town to the television studios of RT, a network formerly known as Russia Today. The network began its U.S. operations by airing Russian programs for the immigrant community but has recently tried to turn itself into something like a version of Al Jazeera English, a true international news organization with lots of U.S.-centered content that just happens to be owned by the Russian government. Hartmann is a bit defensive about the fact that this is where his program airs, but he labors to make clear the particulars of his relationship with the network. He owns his program, and RT has no editorial say in its content. RT gets an hour of nightly programming from him, and Hartmann in turn gets his show on cable systems across the country. He also gets to use RT's Washington facilities to produce the show.

snip

Hartmann explains that when he was young, his father was an activist with the local Republican Party in Lansing, Michigan. "I went door to door with him in 1964-I was 13 years old-for Barry Goldwater." Hartman watched William F. Buckley on television with his father every week, and he thought Buckley's Firing Line "was the smartest show I had ever seen. It totally blew me away." His admiration for Buckley remains to this day, but by the time he was a teenager, "I had come to agree more with my grandfather, who was an old-fashioned 1930s socialist," and arguments in his house grew more intense. "The thing that I learned over the years was how to have those debates with my father and not get thrown out of the house, not have any blood on the floor." That experience carries over to his shows. "My goal in my conversations with conservatives is not to create a spectacle, and not to win the argument, not to prove that I'm the smartest guy in the room or that I'm the tough warrior and I can smack down people." The result is a rarity-discussions between people who disagree strongly but manage to avoid anger and shrillness. This may be why Hartmann has more good things to say about the Tea Party movement (its grassroots elements, at least) than most liberals. In fact, he sees the potential for a genuine alliance between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. The activist flavor of his show comes from both the guests and the host; he ends his program by telling viewers, "Don't forget, democracy begins with you. Get out there, get active. Tag, you're it."

Since the demise of Air America in 2010 (Hartmann was the network's headliner in its dying days, replacing Al Franken when the latter began his Senate run), the liberal establishment has turned its attention away from talk radio. Someone like Hartmann, who spent the last decade fielding calls from citizens all over the country, brings an outsider sensibility that fits uneasily in Washington. He may reach more people every day than some of his peers like Rachel Maddow, but it's going to take a lot of work for Hartmann to crack that top tier of media stardom. You can't do it without television, and you probably can't do it unless your show is carried on one of the major cable networks. At this point, most of the powerful Democrats in Washington probably have no idea that the country's top progressive radio host is broadcasting just blocks from Capitol Hill. Hartmann insists that he loves the control he gets from owning his own programs, being able to talk about whatever he wants and to ignore the insider Washington culture that is often so disconnected from people's lives. But he won't deny that he's ambitious. "If MSNBC came calling," he says, "I wouldn't say no."