The Time Has Come to Create a Real 'Liberal Media'

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted November 21, 2008.

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 network’s 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 Solomon’s 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 won’t 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.”

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Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

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