The Time Has Come to Create a Real 'Liberal Media'
Tom Davos
The Time Has Come to Create a Real 'Liberal Media'
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on November 21, 2008, Printed on November 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/108019/
Having spent more than three decades in Washington, Ive seen enough
mistakes made and opportunities missed for a lifetime. So, at this
turning point in American history, Im venturing beyond my normal role as
reporter to offer a few ideas about what must be done now.
For one, the progressive side of American politics must invest much more
in media and do so immediately.
Looking back over the past three decades, the cost of the Lefts
complacency on media i.e. its failure to create a reliable way to get
important facts to the public and to counter the Rights propaganda
machine has been almost beyond calculation.
Americas right-leaning media imbalance was a big reason why George W.
Bush was able to misgovern the United States for eight years, leaving the
nation in two bloody wars and wallowing in the worst financial crisis
since World War II. Hundreds of thousands are dead and millions may soon
be out of work.
Despite Barack Obamas election victory, this media asymmetry will not go
away. Indeed, it is almost certain to limit his ability to bring about
significant change and could tilt the country back in the direction of the
Republicans in the not-too-distant future.
It is a pattern I have seen often since 1977 when I arrived in Washington
as a reporter for the Associated Press.
During that time, while the American Left has been largely absent from the
national media landscape, wealthy right-wingers (from foundations like
Olin and Scaife to media moguls like Sun Myung Moon and Rupert Murdoch)
have poured tens of billions of dollars into media.
Over those years, the Right built a towering and vertically integrated
media structure reaching from newspapers, magazines and books to talk
radio, cable TV and the Internet, an apparatus concentrated in the power
centers of New York and Washington.
The Right also invested money in attack groups to go after mainstream
journalists who dared dig up information that put right-wing policies or
politicians in a negative light. Offending journalists were accused of
liberal bias and often found themselves hounded from the national press
corps.
Over time, this imbalance had a spillover effect. Many right-wing and
neoconservative pundits landed prime spots on mainstream TV news shows and
the Op-Ed pages of leading newspapers, such as the New York Times and the
Washington Post.
Even the most dangerous of right-wing ideas such as free-market
absolutism at home and neoconservative imperialism abroad got respectful
if not reverential treatment across the mainstream-to-right-wing media
spectrum, the news outlets that most Americans read, heard and watched.
Lefts Miscalculation
The Rights bullying was made more effective by the fact that the
progressive side of American politics chose also starting in the
mid-to-late 1970s to withdraw from any serious commitment to national
media.
One of the Lefts favorite slogans became think globally, act locally.
In practice, that meant favoring local activism (such as direct
philanthropic spending on projects like feeding the poor or buying up
endangered wetlands) over national media (i.e. building the kind of
informational infrastructure that the Right had).
So, it was not so much that the Left lost the war of ideas to the Right
over the past three decades; it was more that the Left abandoned the
battlefield.
The Lefts neglect of media proved disastrous. The Right, with its
three-decade project of building media and controlling the federal
government, showed it could create far more poor people than well-meaning
progressives could feed and put more wetlands at risk than could ever be
bought up.
Another result of the Lefts media miscalculation has been that even when
moderately progressive politicians have managed to claw their way to power
as Bill Clinton did in 1993 and the congressional Democrats did in 2007
they must operate within a hostile environment, fighting relentless
media assaults and often scaling back plans.
It has been no accident that the last three decades have been dominated by
three Republican presidents who have held the White House for a combined
20 years. At each step, the media played a pivotal role, most notably in
promoting the incompetent George W. Bush over the well-qualified Al Gore.
Only in the last few years has there been a modest pushback from the Left.
Adding to a few earlier media standbys such as Amy Goodmans Democracy
Now! radio/TV program and some liberal magazines there were these new
developments:
--Often operating on a shoestring, Internet sites rose up to challenge
both Bush and the fawning coverage he was getting from the major news
media.
--In 2004, a poorly funded Air America took flight with the goal of
putting at least a few liberal voices on AM talk radio.
--Progressives got an unexpected boost with Comedy Centrals surprise hit,
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and a spin-off, The Colbert Report
with Stephen Colbert.
--MSNBC, after trying for years to out-fox Fox News with flag-waving
jingoism, took a different tack when it elevated former sportscaster Keith
Olbermann to a prime-time broadcast called Countdown, which made a point
of mocking Bill OReilly and other right-wing blowhards on Fox.
--When profit-obsessed MSNBC executives realized that Olbermann was
boosting their ratings, they hired Air America host Rachel Maddow to put
on a show that follows Countdown, creating a four-hour block of
relatively progressive news content.
The Obama Movement
Though still operating at a fraction of the budgets available to
right-wing media, this combination grassroots Internet sites, a
struggling radio network and a few toeholds inside corporate media
helped create a climate that permitted the growth of Barack Obamas
political movement and his election on Nov. 4.
But this new media ecology is very fragile.
There is also the reality that a generation of mainstream journalists has
learned the lesson that tilting stories rightward protects your precious
career. They have seen what happens even to media icons, like CBS News
anchor Dan Rather, when the Rights ire is stirred.
So what must be done now?
If Americas media imbalance is to be corrected, progressives both
individuals and liberal foundations must invest heavily in a media
infrastructure that is national but focused on the news centers of
Washington and New York.
This investment should have both micro and macro components.
Financial support is needed for the gutsy Web sites that stood up to Bush
like our own Consortiumnews.com but money also should go to larger
media institutions, which can then help publicize stories that are
generated by the smaller outlets.
For instance, a properly capitalized and well managed Air America could
not only improve the radio networks programming but could place ads at
Web sites with links back to Air America so listeners can click on
Webcasts and get information about local Air America affiliates.
That way Air America could grow; its affiliates would be strengthened; and
ad money could help keep Internet news sites afloat. They, in turn, could
provide the radio network with original content for shows, rather than
having Air America hosts rely on warmed-over conventional wisdom from
mainstream outlets like Newsweek.
There are plenty of other examples of how cooperation could work within
this loose confederation of independent journalism. At Consortiumnews.com,
for instance, we produce our own original articles, but we also serve as a
portal to the independent video news site, TheRealNews.com.
Another example is how media critic Norman Solomons Institute for Public
Accuracy, through the work of the indefatigable Sam Husseini, supplies
broadcast outlets with the names of off-the-beaten-path experts, including
independent journalists, to provide fuller context for news than what
often is heard in the mainstream press.
Needed: A Leader
This strategy for building independent media would be most effective if
someone with access to plentiful resources took the lead, much like former
Treasury Secretary Bill Simon did for the Right in the late 1970s. Simon
used his perch at the Olin Foundation to coordinate with other right-wing
foundations on media funding.
Bill Moyers, who has run the Schumann Foundation and knows his way around
New York/Washington media circles, would be an ideal candidate for such a
role now.
Other possible leaders would be major directors/producers from Hollywood,
given their expertise in producing media content.
If Hollywood did take the lead, my nominee for coordinating this
infrastructure work would be Stuart Sender, an Oscar-nominated documentary
filmmaker based in Los Angeles who understands the rigors of investigative
journalism and the value of multi-media formats (or someone like him).
But the bottom line is, as they say, the bottom line. Without an
investment of serious money in a timely fashion, even a well-conceived
plan and the involvement of well-qualified people wont go anywhere.
As Martin Luther King Jr. once said in the context of opposing the Vietnam
War (and Barack Obama frequently reiterated during his campaign), there is
at crucial moments the fierce urgency of now. There is such a thing as
being too late.
Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty
from Watergate to Iraq."
) 2008 Consortium News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/108019/