Robert Scheer (born 1936) is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist who writes a
liberalLiberalism is the belief in the importance of individual freedom. This belief is widely accepted today throughout the world, and was recognized as an important value by many philosophers throughout history...
op-edEditorials are featured in many newspapers and magazines, usually written by the senior editorial staff or publisher of the publication. Additionally, most print publications feature an editorial, or letter from the editor, sometimes followed by a Letters to the Editor section...
column for
TruthdigTruthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
which is nationally syndicated in publications such as the
San Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireSan Francisco Chronicle is Northern California's largest newspaper, and one of the largest in the United States, serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area, but distributed throughout...
and
The NationThe Nation is a weekly United States periodical devoted to politics and culture, self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865 at the start of Reconstruction as a supporter of the victorious North in the American Civil War, it is the oldest continuously published weekly...
. He teaches communications as a professor at the
University of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California is a private, nonsectarian, research university located in the University Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, USA...
and is Editor in Chief for the
online magazineAn online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control...
TruthdigTruthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
.
Beginnings through Vietnam
Scheer was born to immigrant parents. His mother, a Russian Jew and his father, a German, both worked in the
garment industryTextile manufacture is a major industry. It is based in the conversion of three types of fibre into yarn, then fabric, then textiles. These are then fabricated into clothes or other artifacts. Cotton remains the most important natural fibre, so is treated in depth...
. After graduating from
City College of New YorkThe City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
with a degree in
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, he studied as a fellow at the
Maxwell SchoolThe Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, as a graduate school at Syracuse University, offers degrees in the social sciences and public and international affairs . According to U.S. News & World Report, the Maxwell School is the leading public policy school offering master degrees in...
of
Syracuse UniversitySyracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, U.S.A.. It was founded as a university in 1870, but its roots can be traced back to a seminary founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832 which eventually became Genesee College...
, and then did further economics graduate work at the Center for Chinese Studies at UC Berkeley. Scheer has also been a Poynter fellow at
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
, and was a fellow in
arms controlArms control is an umbrella term for restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation, and usage of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction...
at Stanford, the same post once held by
Secretary of StateSecretary of State is a commonly used title for a member of government. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the government.In many countries, a Secretary of State is a mid-level post...
Condoleezza RiceCondoleezza Rice is a professor, diplomat, author, and national security expert. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and the second to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
.
While working at City Lights Books in San Francisco, Scheer co-authored the book,
Cuba, an American tragedy (1964), with Maurice Zeitlin. Between 1964 and 1969, he served, variously, as the
VietnamThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
correspondent,
managing editorA managing editor is a senior member of a publication's management team. The title also applies to the evening televised newscasts on ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC and the FOX News Channel. The anchors of these newscasts also work as the managing editor of their newscasts.In the United States, a managing...
and
editor-in-chiefEditing is the process of selecting and preparing language, images, sound, video, or film through processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media...
of
Ramparts magazine. He reported from
CambodiaThe Kingdom of Cambodia , formerly known as Kampuchea , is a country in South East Asia with a population of over 14 million people. The kingdom's capital and largest city is Phnom Penh...
,
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
,
North KoreaNorth Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer area between North Korea and South Korea...
,
RussiaRussia , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia . It is a semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
,
Latin AmericaLatin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,501 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
and the
Middle EastThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East...
(including the
Six-Day WarThe Six-Day War of June 5-10, 1967 was a war between the Israel army and the armies of the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The Arab states of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria also contributed troops and arms. At the war's end, Israel had gained control of the...
), as well as on
national securityNational security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the nation-state through the use of economic, military and political power and the exercise of diplomacy.Measures taken to ensure national security include:...
matters in the United States. While in Cuba, where he interviewed
Fidel CastroFidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban politician, one of the primary leaders of the Cuban Revolution, the Prime Minister of Cuba from February 1959 to December 1976, and then the President of the Council of State of Cuba until his resignation from the office in February 2008...
, Scheer obtained an introduction by the Cuban leader for the diary of
Che GuevaraErnesto "Che" Guevara commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, military theorist, and major figure of the Cuban Revolution...
— which Scheer had already obtained, with the assistance of French journalist Michele Ray, for publication in
Ramparts and by
Bantam BooksBantam Books is an American publishing house owned by Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
.
During this period Scheer made a bid for elective office as one of the first anti-
Vietnam WarThe Vietnam War or the Second Indochina War was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975...
candidates. He challenged U.S. Representative Jeffrey Cohelan in the 1966 Democratic primary. Cohelan was a liberal, but like most Democratic officeholders at that time, he supported the Vietnam War. Scheer lost, but won over 45% of the vote (and carried Berkeley), a strong showing against an incumbent that demonstrated the rising strength of
New LeftThe New Left were the left-wing movements in different countries in the 1960s and 1970s that, unlike the earlier leftist focus on union activism, instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The U.S...
Sixties radicalism.
In July 1970, Scheer accompanied as a journalist a
Black Panther PartyThe Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary organization established to promote Black Power, and by extension self-defense for blacks. It was active in the United States from the mid-1960s into the 1970s...
delegation, led by
Eldridge CleaverEldridge Cleaver was an influential writer, social critic and radical intellectual and the author of Soul on Ice, Post-Prison Writings and Speeches and Target Zero...
, to
North KoreaNorth Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer area between North Korea and South Korea...
, China, and Vietnam. The delegation also contained people from the San Francisco Red Guard, the women's liberation movement, the Peace and Freedom Party, Newsreel, and the Movement for a Democratic Military. The purpose of the delegation was to "express solidarity with the struggles of the Koreans" and to "bring back to Babylon information about their communist society and their fight against U.S. imperialism," according to the Black Panthers' publication.
After Vietnam
After several years freelancing for magazines, including
New TimesNew Times is the album released in 1994 by Violent Femmes. It was the first Femmes' record not to feature original drummer Victor DeLorenzo on drums, who had been replaced by Guy Hoffman. "Breakin' Up," a song lead singer Gordon Gano had written years before, was the lead single...
and
PlayboyPlayboy is an American men's magazine, founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with a presence in nearly every medium. Playboy is one of the world's best...
, Scheer joined the
Los Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California since 1881. It is distributed throughout the Western United States. It is the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States and the fourth-most widely distributed newspaper in the United States...
in 1976 as a reporter. There he met Narda Zacchino, a reporter whom he later wed in the paper's news room. As a national correspondent for 17 years at the Times, he wrote articles and series on such diverse topics as the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
during
glasnostwas the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of 1980s....
, the Jews of Los Angeles, arms control, urban crises, national politics and the military, as well as covering several presidential elections. The Times entered Scheer's work for the
Pulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by Hungarian-American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City....
11 times, and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer national reporting award for a series on the television industry.
After Scheer left the
Times in 1993, the paper granted him a weekly op-ed column which ran every Tuesday for the next 12 years until it was canceled in 2005. The column now appears in the
San Francisco Chronicle and is distributed nationally by
Creators SyndicateCreators Syndicate is an independent distributor of comic strips and syndicated columns for daily newspapers. It was founded in 1987 by Richard S. Newcombe, and is based in Los Angeles. Creators was one of the first syndicates to allow its clients to maintain creative control of their material...
. He is also a
contributing editorA contributing editor is a magazine job title that varies in responsibilities. Most often, a contributing editor is a freelancer who has proven ability and readership draw. The contributing editor regularly "contributes" articles to the publication, but does not actually edit articles, and the...
for the
Nation magazine.
Scheer can be heard weekly on the nationally syndicated political analysis radio program "
Left, Right & CenterLeft, Right, & Center is a weekly half-hour public radio program that provides a "civilized yet provocative antidote to the screaming talking heads that dominate political debate"...
" produced at
KCRWKCRW is a public radio station broadcasting from the campus of Santa Monica College in Santa Monica, California, carrying a mix of National Public Radio news, talk radio and freeform music format. A network of repeaters and broadcast translators allows the station to serve the Los Angeles...
in Santa Monica and syndicated by
Public Radio InternationalPublic Radio International is a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI's tagline is "Hear a different voice." PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources...
.
Scheer has interviewed every president from
Richard NixonRichard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States and is the only president to resign the office. He was also the 36th Vice President of the United States ....
through
Bill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He was the third-youngest president; only Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were younger when entering office...
. He conducted the noted 1976
PlayboyPlayboy is an American men's magazine, founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with a presence in nearly every medium. Playboy is one of the world's best...
interview with
Jimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981 and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
, in which the then-presidential candidate admitted to having "lusted" in his heart. In an interview with George H.W. Bush, the future president and then presidential candidate revealed that he believed nuclear war was "winnable." Scheer has profiled politicians from Californians
Jerry BrownEdmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. He is a former governor of the State of California and the current Attorney General...
and Willie Brown to Washington insiders like
Henry KissingerHenry Alfred Kissinger , is a German-born American political scientist, diplomat, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration....
and
Zbigniew BrzezinskiZbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski is an American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981...
, as well as entertainment figures like actor
Tom CruiseThomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known by his screen name of Tom Cruise, is an American actor and film producer. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity in 2006. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won three Golden Globe Awards...
.
Scheer has written seven books, including a collection entitled
Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, and
America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals. In 2004, Scheer published
The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq and made it to the
Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. It was co-authored by his oldest son,
Christopher ScheerChristopher Scheer is the co-author, with Robert Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq published in 2003 in the U.S., England and Australia...
, and Lakshmi Chaudhry, senior editor at
AlternetAlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month....
.
In 2006 Scheer published
Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton - and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush. His latest book is
The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (2008).
Scheer has also taught courses at
Antioch CollegeAntioch College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, United States. It was the founder and flagship institution of the six campus Antioch University system. Founded in 1852 by the Christian Connection, the college began operating in 1853 with Horace Mann as its...
, New York City College, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Berkeley. He is now a
senior lecturerLecturer is a term of academic rank. In the United Kingdom lecturer is the name given to those who teach in their first permanent university position. That is, lecturers are academics early in their careers, who lead research groups and supervise postgraduate students as well as lecture courses...
at the
University of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California is a private, nonsectarian, research university located in the University Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, USA...
's
Annenberg School for CommunicationThere are two schools named Annenberg School for Communication.*USC Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California*Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania...
, where he teaches two courses each semester on media and society.
Scheer was the 1998 honoree of the
Shelter Partnership, an organization of Los Angeles downtown businesses, and the USC School of Social Work's Los Amigos award recipient. He won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his writing in the
Los Angeles Times and
The Nation about the case of nuclear scientist
Wen Ho LeeWen Ho Lee is a Taiwan-born Chinese American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. A federal grand jury indicted him of stealing secrets about U.S...
. He has also received awards and citations from
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university located in Stanford, California, United States...
, the Moscow Academy of Sciences, the
University of California, San DiegoThe University of California, San Diego is a public research university located in La Jolla, San Diego, California, United States...
, and
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
.
Scheer and his son were creative script consultants on the
Oliver StoneWilliam Oliver Stone is an American film director and screenwriter. Stone came to prominence as a director with a series of films about the Vietnam War, in which he had participated as an American infantry soldier, and his work continues to focus frequently on contemporary political and cultural...
film,
NixonNixon is a 1995 American biographical film directed by Oliver Stone for Cinergi Pictures that tells the story of the political and personal life of former US President Richard Nixon, played by Anthony Hopkins. The film portrays Nixon as a complex and, in many respects, an admirable person, though...
, which was nominated for an
Academy AwardThe Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is...
for best original screenplay. He has appeared in small speaking roles as a journalist in several feature films, including
The SiegeThe Siege is a 1998 Action-thriller-drama film about a fictional situation where terrorist cells have made several attacks on New York City. It was directed by Edward Zwick and stars Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Tony Shalhoub, and Bruce Willis....
and
BulworthBulworth is a 1998 Academy Award-nominated American film which was co-written, co-produced and directed by the film's star, Warren Beatty. The film co-stars Halle Berry, Oliver Platt, Don Cheadle, Paul Sorvino, Jack Warden, and Isaiah Washington...
. In 2005, the
Mill Valley Film FestivalThe Mill Valley Film Festival is an annual, non-competitive film festival presented by the California Film Institute. Known as a filmmakers’ festival, the annual Mill Valley Film Festival offers a non-competitive environment for exhibiting independent and world cinema.Founded in 1978 by MVFF...
premiered a documentary on the activist and philanthropist Stanley Sheinbaum which Scheer co-produced.
Iraq War
In an August 6, 2002, article, he wrote that "a consensus of experts" informed the Senate that the Iraqi weapons arsenal was “almost totally destroyed during eight years of inspections.” On June 3, 2003, Scheer concluded that White House justifications for the war were a "big lie." On November 4, 2003, he penned an article in favor of withdrawal from Iraq.
End of Times relationship
Scheer has often expressed highly controversial thoughts. For example, on February 15, 2005, Scheer wrote an article entitled "
What We Don't Know About 9/11 Hurts Us" for the LA Times. In it, he asked, "Would George W. Bush have been reelected president if the public understood how much responsibility his administration bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?" After running his column for more than 12 years, the
Los Angeles Times, ended the relationship in November 2005, citing the need to cut costs. Conservative editorial cartoonist
Michael RamirezMichael Patrick Ramirez is a two-time American Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist. His cartoons typically present conservative viewpoints....
was also dismissed. Scheer said in an interview with "
Democracy Now!Democracy Now! is a syndicated program of news, analysis, and opinion aired by more than 700 radio and television, satellite and cable TV networks in North America...
" that the paper's owner, the
Tribune CompanyThe Tribune Company is a large, employee-owned, American multimedia corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. It is the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, responsible for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Baltimore Sun...
, currently owns a newspaper and a television station in the same market, which is illegal, and may have fired Scheer in an attempt to make it easier to obtain a waiver permitting the dual ownership from the FCC. He also commented during a November 14, 2005, appearance on
Democracy Now!Democracy Now! is a syndicated program of news, analysis, and opinion aired by more than 700 radio and television, satellite and cable TV networks in North America...
that,
"What happened is that I had been the subject of vicious attacks by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh…. I was a punching bag for those guys. I'm still standing, and the people who run the paper collapsed."
In a posting at the Huffington Post, Scheer wrote:
- "The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. Fortunately 60 percent of Americans now get the point but only after tens of thousand of Americans and Iraqis have been killed and maimed as the carnage spirals out of control. My only regret is that my pen was not sharper and my words tougher."
An estimated 300 people protested Scheer's firing outside the Times downtown office, and many readers, including actress
Barbra Streisand Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, film and theatre actress. She has also achieved note as a composer, liberal political activist, film producer, and film director. She has won two Academy Awards, ten Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, and a Peabody all by the age of...
, publicly announced the cancellation of their subscriptions to the
Times. Within a few days of his column being retired by the
Times, the
San Francisco Chronicle offered itself as the new home paper of Scheer's syndicated column, which now runs on Wednesdays there and elsewhere. On November 29, 2005, he co-launched, as editor in chief, a new online magazine called
TruthdigTruthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
. In 2007,
Truthdig was a finalist for three
Webby AwardsThe Webby Awards is an international paid-entry-exclusive award honoring excellence on the Internet, including websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile web sites, presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences since 1996...
, in the news, blog (political), and political categories; the site won both the People's Choice and professional jury prizes in the
Political BlogA political blog is a common type of blog that comments on politics. In liberal democracies the right to criticize the government without interference is considered an important element of free speech...
category.
External links