Building Progressive Media

As liberals and Democrats sort through what went wrong in Election 2004, they should put at the top of their list the dangerous imbalance that now exists in the national news media.

Over the past quarter century, the conservatives/Republicans have built a huge, permanent media machine – a vertically integrated structure that puts out the conservative message on TV, with newspapers, through magazines, over radio stations, in books and via the Internet.

Through all these forms of communication, in large cities and small towns, the right’s media is there for its listeners, readers and viewers every day, year round, not just during election cycles. Its impact is especially important in rural areas that don’t have easy access to the variety of media found in urban centers.

Indeed, the conservative media’s role in firming up rural America as a “red” Republican bastion is often overlooked. The incendiary rhetoric on conservative talk radio has been a major factor in convincing millions of these Americans that “liberals” are demons who hate their country and love killing babies.

Meanwhile, trying to position itself in the center, the mainstream or corporate media keeps tacking rightward to avoid offending conservatives, who aggressively trash individual reporters and news organizations if they are deemed to show any traces of liberalism.

Most notably, the major mainstream news outlets – including the New York Times and the Washington Post – bent to George W. Bush’s will when he was marching the country to war in Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003. But even earlier – during Bill Clinton’s administration in the 1990s and Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000 – the supposedly “liberal” mainstream press led the attacks on the Democrats.

Dangerous Inaction

Yet, as the conservatives were building their imposing media infrastructure, the Democratic or liberal side was doing next to nothing.

For various reasons, American liberals have opted against investments in media, favoring instead grassroots activism and various charitable endeavors. Some of the left’s thinking goes back to the early days of the labor movement when newspapers were seen as the domain of plutocrats that could only be countered by the organized masses.

What makes the liberal/Democratic strategy so dangerous today, however, is that media saturates every corner of this disparate American society. It has become the way for many millions of Americans to understand the world around them and to bond with political leaders and ideas.

Indeed, a great success of the Republican/conservative movement has been to use media to organize average Americans to vote for candidates whose platforms objectively harm those very same Americans. They’re ready to follow Rush Limbaugh because they have become comfortable with his daily message as they drive to work, go out on errands or jump into a cab.

Misinformation

On another front, one cannot explain the pervasive misinformation that is guiding much of the American population if the conservative media is not considered.

Millions of regular listeners to Fox News, for instance, base their judgments on verifiably false information, such as the Bush administration’s propaganda about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein collaborating with al Qaeda. Even after those claims were debunked, recent polls showed that the falsehoods were still accepted as articles of faith by large majorities of George W. Bush’s supporters.

Conservative outlets also cooperate with each other, achieving a “synergy” that some media corporations could only envy. When conservative talk radio and TV promote a book by a right wing author – think Ann Coulter – it’s almost sure to hit the best seller list and get a prime spot in book stores.