Interviewing `Time' Magazine's Managing Editor In The 1990s

Downtown spoke with Time magazine’s then-managing editor, Henry Muller, in 1990 about Newsweek’s criticism of his magazine’s June 11, 1990 Scott Turow cover story. Muller adamantly denied that Time magazine would ever use its cover to promote products being marketed by other Time Warner media institutions it owns.

“Newsweek only criticized us for not mentioning that Scott Turow’s first book was published by Warner—which we mentioned the next week,” Muller said. “It didn’t accuse us of using the cover story to promote the book and movie.”

Muller also declared that “One of the salient points of the Times’ article was that Newsweek was clearly engaged in intra-mural fighting. And that Newsweek’s motives for criticizing Time were dubious and self-serving.” (Of course, since the New York Times was a business partner with Time Warner in its Time Distributors operation in 1990, some cynics might also go so far as to argue that the Times article itself was self-serving).

Downtown asked Muller why Time magazine didn’t initially mention that the author it put on its cover was first published by another division of Time Warner. “Our policy is that we only mention Time Warner corporate connections in all business and press action stories. But not in our review or movie sections or in news stories. We have never mentioned corporate connections in our review columns,” answered Muller. “Before Time merged with Warner, this was our policy. Our long-standing policy was not to mention the corporate ownership of movies and books we review.”

Would Time magazine mention that Madonna records were produced and distributed by another division of Time Warner in 1990 if it decided to put Madonna on its cover? “If we do a `people’ item on Madonna—it depends. You have to see the actual story. It depends on the nature of the story. Is it a review? Or is it in-between?” Muller replied.

Downtown asked Muller what effect the Time Warner merger had on Time magazine’s editorial independence [during the early 1990s]. According to Muller, Time magazine’s editorial independence was “not in any way…affected by the merger. We’ve probably done 20 or 30 stories that have a corporate connection. And they all demonstrated our total independence in writing. We’ve written about Paretti [a 1990 business controversy involving Time Warner] and cable deals. We’ve got a 100 percent record of independence.”

In his 1988 Beyond Malice book, however, the former Time-Life broadcast chairman, Richard Clurman, wrote:

“Very few people or organizations are capable of ongoing public confessional or disclosures about themselves. When I covered the press for Time, my editors wanted intensive reporting and criticism of others. But it was taken for granted that when I had to write about some development at Time Inc., itself, I would shift to the spare repose of a corporate press release.”

Asked by Downtown whether it should be mentioned in Time magazine that the chairman of the Executive Committee of Time Warner’s corporate board in the early 1990s, J. Richard Munro, was also a member of the Mobil Corporation oil company’s board of directors, Muller answered:

“Why should it be? Let me give a more direct example. General Motors is a heavy advertiser in Time. Should we write that General Motors is an advertiser in Time every time we mention General Motors in a news story?”

When Downtown noted that there’s a difference between a company advertising in Time magazine and a company like Mobil having its director heading Time Warner, in terms of possible conflict of interest, Muller denied the possibility of any conflict of interest. “We’ve made our reputation on being independent. The only question that matters is `Does your product have integrity or doesn’t it? Nobody’s going to compromise with Time’s independence,” said Muller.

Downtown asked Muller whether there was any internal debate at Time magazine before it was decided to put the author of a Time Warner-published book on its front cover. “There was no internal debate. The judgment was made by our book reviewer that this merited a cover story. Everybody has standing instructions around here to pursue journalistic responsibilities without regard to corporate ownership,” Muller replied. “And today it is a point of view backed up by a `helluva’ track record. Except for that initial mistake [i.e. not publishing an article on the Time Warner merger the week it was announced], we haven’t done anything journalistically wrong in our coverage of Time Warner.”

The Time magazine Managing Editor vigorously denied that Time magazine would ever be influenced by Time Warner business considerations. “I don’t think Time people would put up with any kind of corporate interference. Nobody’s dumb enough to compromise on that. This is basic. My responsibility is to preserve the integrity of Time. It’s nutty to think that anyone at Time would start to try to interfere with Time’s editorial integrity for business reasons,” Muller insisted.

Muller claimed that the separation of the business side of Time from its editorial side “had probably strengthened since the merger. We’re more independent. I am passionate about this,” said Muller.

Asked whether he thought it was archaic to worry about one company owning both a newspaper and a television station in one city or both magazines and cable TV stations, Muller replied: “Whether the San Francisco Chronicle should be allowed to own a TV station, I’m not prepared to answer. My one job is to make sure the independence of our magazine is preserved. The only thing I can say with total confidence is that Time magazine is more independent than ever. We would never act as a catalog to market Time Warner products.”

Would Muller resist corporate pressure to make Time magazine a catalog? “I would—though there’s never been any pressure.”

When Downtown mentioned to Muller that perhaps omitting coverage of Time Warner business activities or omitting coverage of people who raised media monopolization issues was a more likely journalistic sin than publishing articles in response to Time Warner business needs, Muller said: “There’s no omission. We’ve printed articles on cable regulation and on the Time Warner-Paretti deal. You wouldn’t find a better story in Newsweek on Time Warner. We wrote about problems with Entertainment Today. We’re in nobody’s pocket.”

(Downtown 10/24/90)

But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting in the 21st-century for Time magazine to do more frequent cover-story articles about U.S. political prisoners, the number of Iraqi civilians actually killed as a result of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East since 2003 or the anti-war folks in the U.S. who have questioned the U.S. government’s official story of what actually happened on September 11, 2001 in Downtown Manhattan.


Next: 1968 Columbia Student Strike Leader Gilbert’s November 25, 2004 Statement

Time Warner and 1990s Media Monopolization

According to the March 27, 1989 issue of The Nation magazine, Time Inc.’s management initially told Time magazine’s business section editors and writers “not to cover the merger story” after Time Inc. purchased Warner Communications in 1989.

Henry Muller was the managing editor of Time magazine during the early 1990s. He graduated from Stanford University in 1968 [and also sat next to former Stanford University Provost Condi Rice on the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation board of trustees in the 1990s], after having worked for Time Inc.’s Life magazine as a student intern during the 1960s. According to Muller, “The Editor-in-Chief did not want to do a story” on the Time Warner merger only because of deadline considerations. “Our deadline is on a Saturday and the merger news was announced on a Saturday.” But he has told reporters that he was “mistaken” not to cover the Time Warner merger story.

Yet according to George Winslow, a freelance writer who writes about the mass media, “Time Inc. released the news on Saturday to avoid wide coverage” of the Time Warner merger and “Newsweek beat them to the punch. Time wasn’t critical with many aspects of the merger—even those aspects that affected Time Inc. stockholders.”

In The Nation magazine’s March 27, 1989 issue, writer Richard Pollack criticized the Time Inc.-Warner Communications mass media merger for expressing a business trend that “daily accelerates the country’s terminal homogenitization.” Pollack also noted that Ohio’s then-U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum “was concerned about the merger’s impact on media diversity” and had “asked the Justice Department to review the antitrust implications.”

Time Warner has sometimes been criticized for using Time magazine to promote the products being marketed by other Time Warner media institutions it owns. In its June 18, 1990 issue, for instance, the New York Times observed that:

“Newsweek magazine has taken Time magazine to task over Time’s cover story on novelist Scott Turow, whose paperback publisher is owned by Time Warner and whose first book was turned into a movie produced by Time Warner subsidiary Warner Brothers.”

Newsweek had reported the following in its “periscope section”:

“What responsibility does the magazine group of Time Warner have to let its readers know that a film it praises in a news story was produced by the movie part of the corporation? None, if you ask the company. Last week’s curious cover story in Time was about Presumed Innocent author Scott Turow, whose new book The Burden of Proof has received mixed reviews. The article offered lavish details about the upcoming movie version of Presumed Innocent but neglected to mention Warner Bros. made the movie. Time spokeswoman Jennifer Epstein said the magazine did not have a responsibility to report the corporate connection and denied there was a conflict of interest. She also said Time never identifies which movie company made a film.”

(Downtown 10/24/90)

Next: Interviewing Time Magazine’s Managing Editor In The 1990s

Time Warner/Time Inc.'s Historic Political Role

The late 1990 cheerleading role that Time magazine played in supporting the U.S. military build-up in Saudi Arabia [like its early 2003 cheerleading role in supporting the 21st-century U.S. military intervention in Iraq] is not inconsistent with Time Inc.’s historic role. In his The Powers That Be book, David Halberstam characterized the role that Time magazine played in generating support for the mid-1960s U.S. military build-up in Vietnam:

“Throughout the Vietnam War, Time did much of its heavy-duty advocacy through the Press section, attacking anyone critical of the war, praising anyone who liked it, and it was frequently and often brutally employed.”

Halberstam’s book also noted how the U.S. president who prolonged U.S. military intervention in Indochina after 1968—before being forced to resign over the “Watergate Affair” in 1974—was promoted by Time magazine in the 1950s:

“Certainly Time, during the crucial early years of Nixon’s career, took pain to portray him as the bright young fellow on the rise, filled with all the best of American virtues. `Fighting Quaker,’ Time typically titled an early cover story.”

Before Henry Luce died, there was some fear in Time Inc. management circles that the media corporation would have difficulty surviving without Luce’s autocratic leadership. For this reason, according to Halberstam’s book, news of Luce’s 1958 heart attack was suppressed by Time magazine “for fear that it would harm the Time Inc. stock.” But after Luce’s death in 1967, Time Inc. prospered and purchased Warner Communications in 1989 for $14 billion to form the Time Warner global media conglomerate.

(Downtown 10/24/90)

Next: Time Warner and 1990s Media Monopolization

Labor-Management Conflict At Time Warner/Time Inc. Historically

On June 2, 1976, 600 dissatisfied Time Inc. magazine staff and book publishing employees, led by the Newspaper Guild, went on strike. Time Inc. management had sought to reduce pay rates by reducing the minimum pay rates and the number of staff members who received mandatory percentage raises, while increasing the number of staff members whose pay rates could be increased only if individual Time Inc. managers decided they “deserved merit raises.” Newspaper Guild members, however, voted to end the strike after 18 days and accept an unfavorable new contract—after their strike failed to stop the publication of any Time Inc. publications.

(Downtown 10/24/90)

Next: Time Warner/Time Inc’s Historic Political Role

Time Warner/Time Inc.'s Historical Discrimination Record

According to David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be book, in the early 1940s Time magazine:

“did not hire Jews. Jews were very much a they, they were not yet in the mainstream of American letters, let alone Luceian letters; indeed, for another fifteen years it would be difficult for Jews to join the foreign staff of Time. They could be hired and they could work as stringers, but whether they could go on the masthead if their names were too Semitic was another thing. For the Luce publications, like Luce in those early days, were Waspy and old-school; until the very end of his life Luce was still capable of turning to a Jewish editor and asking, `And what do our Jewish friends think of that?’”

Luce’s Time Inc. employment police in relation to African-American and women journalists also left much to be desired in the 1950s and 1960s. As late as seven years after the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawed legal segregation, for instance, only about 2 percent of all employees at Time Inc. were African-American and not one of the 50 African-American employees at Time Inc. held a major editorial job. The Black Media Committee criticized a special 1970 Time magazine issue on “Black America” by describing it as “a ghettoized supplement.” As late as the early 1970s, African-Americans held only 1 percent of the jobs at Fortune magazine, only 2.5 percent of the jobs at Life magazine and Sports Illustrated and only 4 percent of the jobs at Time magazine.

In 1970 Time magazine’s research chief, Marylois Vega, had also confessed: “Any fair observer of Time over the past 25 years would admit that there has been a prejudice against women in the editorial department of this magazine…” Time Inc.’s practice since the 1920s had been to track the women it hired into the lower-paying clerical, secretarial and researcher jobs and to reserve the higher-paying writer or editor slots for the men it hired. Time magazine’s editor-in-chief in 1979, Henry Grunwald, had said in 1969: “I must add in candor that I have not met many women who seem to have the physical and mental energy required for Time senior editing.”

One-hundred-and-forty-seven women members of Time Inc.’s editorial staff subsequently signed a formal complaint of sex discrimination by Time Inc. management which was presented to the New York State Division of Human Rights. On May 4, 1970, New York State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz filed the complaint which specifically charged Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated and Time-Life Books with sex discrimination. The New York Civil Rights Bureau Chief also charged Time Inc. management with gender discrimination.

(Downtown 10/24/90)

Next: Labor-Management Conflict At Time Warner/Time Inc. Historically

`Non-Profit' IDA Paid IDA President $323,000 Annual Salary In 2002

Being the president of the Pentagon’s tax-exempt, “non-profit” weapons research think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA], is an even more lucrative job than being the president of the tax-exempt, “non-profit” Teachers College of Columbia University. Between Sept. 2004 and Sept. 2005, for instance, the then-Columbia University Teachers College President, Arthur Levine, was paid a $315,600 annual salary. Yet as early as 2002, the President of IDA, Retired U.S. Air Force General Larry Welch, was being paid an annual salary of $323,979, according to IDA’s Form 990 for the year beginning Sept. 29, 2001 and ending Sept. 27, 2002.

At least ten other IDA executives were also paid annual salaries of over $140,000 in 2002. For instance, the IDA Vice-President for Administration and Finance, Ruth Greenstein, was paid an annual salary of $261,212, while the IDA Vice-President for Planning and Evaluation was paid $212,554. Annual salaries of between $196,889 and $231,076 were also paid to the directors of IDA’s five weapons research divisions in 2002.

In addition, the chairman of the IDA board of trustees, former University of South Carolina President John Palms, was paid an additional $27,100 in 2002 by IDA for his work as IDA board chairman. MIT Professor Sheila Widnall, a former Clinton Administration Secretary of the Air Force, also was paid an additional $10,800 in 2002 by IDA for apparently representing MIT on IDA’s board of trustees in 2002.

Although IDA claims to be a “non-profit” and a “public charity”, from its Pentagon weapons research contracts in 2002 it earned total revenues of $145 million that were $4 million more than the $141 million it had to spend on its weapons research think-tank activity. According to IDA’s 2006 Annual Report, between 1996 and 2006, “Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom was examined” by IDA researchers “for lessons for future joint military operations and for operational test and evaluation programs.”

Next: Time Warner/Time Inc.’s Historical Discrimination Record

Hollywood Racism and Classism

Hollywood has never been eager to hire many African-American screenwriters and directors to help produce its movies. As The Urban Plantation: Racism & Colonialism in the Post-Civil Rights Era by Robert Staples noted as late as 1987, “of some 5,700 writers in the Writers Guild of America-West, only 70 are black” and “only 252 of the 6,672 members of the Directors Guild of America are members of minority groups.”

The same book also made the following observations about African-American-oriented radio stations in the United States:

“Most of the 400 black radio stations are owned by whites, some of whom have become millionaires through their control of the black communications media…A black owner seems to be no guarantee the black community’s needs will be met or even the job stability of black personnel at these stations. The son of Adam Clayton Powell purchased a black soul station in Oakland, California, converted it to an all-news format and replaced most of the black employees with whites…”

(Downtown 4/27/94)

Foreign transnational-owned Hollywood studios still make a lot of money distributing their films to audiences of U.S. working-class people. Yet Hollywood has long been accused of portraying both U.S. working-class people and their labor unions in a classist way.

In his 1953 book Film In The Battle Of Ideas, one of the blacklisted “Hollywood Ten” screenwriters, John Howard Lawson, for instance, argued that “workers and their families see films which urge them to…emulate the corrupt values of their enemies” and “the consistent presentation on the nation’s screens of the views that…workers who seek to protect their class interests are stupid, malicious or even treasonable” is what Hollywood engages in. Through Jaundiced Eyes: How The Media View Organized Labor by William Puette also observed during the 1980s:

“The real problem with Hollywood’s portrayal of unions is its blatant inaccuracy. Most unions, particularly the well-established ones, are shown as being connected in some way to organized crime. In fact, a 1982 presidential commission on organized crime found that fewer than 400 of the country’s 70,000 locals, less than one percent had been suspected of such influence. There is likely a parallel if not considerably higher incidence of crooked bankers, lawyers, doctors, and politicians as well. Yet no media portrayals of these professions would ever suggest endemic corruption.

“…The portrayal of unions in the media, particularly in movies, plays a major role in shaping the attitudes of Americans towards labor unions. With few exceptions, that portrayal has been both unrepresentative and virulently negative.”

(Downtown 2/2/94)

Next: “Non-Profit” IDA Paid IDA President $323,000 Annual Salary In 2002