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by
Norman Solomon
Dissident
Voice
November 1, 2003
The
major news outlets are like walls with cracks. The confining structures of big
media loom large every day -- yet progressives have countless opportunities to
find, utilize and widen the cracks in the corporate media’s barriers to democratic
communication.
Steadily
worsening concentrations of ownership and the hefty clout of advertising
combine to severely limit the range of information and debate in news media.
Ongoing pressures -- economic, ideological and governmental --constrain the
work of mainline journalists, whose efforts routinely suffer from skewed
priorities and self-censorship. A profit-driven ideology of the “free market”
is in sync with the agendas of top management and advertisers.
In
recent years, progressive media projects have gained momentum. But the tilt
against truly independent media and wide-ranging discourse is extreme in the
United States. While no individual or single organization can take on more than
a fraction of the necessary endeavors, the overall work to create a democratic
media environment must run a gamut.
Sustained
challenges to the corporate media and support for alternative media outlets can
reinforce each other with continuous synergy -- to establish, sustain and
expand progressive media organizations; to spread deft criticism of rancid mass
media; to push for better reporting and much wider debate in mainstream media;
to fight for structural reform of agencies like the FCC; to lambast, debunk and
satirize the insidious junk that so often passes for journalism and cultural
uplift.
The
horrendous media problems are multifaceted. Our solutions must be, as well.
In
the long run, no campaign for basic media reform can succeed apart from a
broader progressive movement -- and vice versa. The degradation of journalism
and mass entertainment is entwined with pervasive corporate power that chokes
virtually every facet of this country’s political and social life.
Media
criticism becomes profoundly useful in combination with media activism. Too
often we’ve held onto theories about what is and is not possible. But analysis
and action become much more powerful when they constantly inform each other -- when
assessments shift because of on-the-ground experiences that benefit not only
from the results of trial and error but from insightful up-to-date analysis.
Along
with theory and practice that keep enhancing each other, we need a lot more
resources for the media tasks ahead. Many left-leaning foundations remain
hesitant or unwilling to fund media work, and the ones that do often are leery
of backing media endeavors that seem overly combative or ideological. Not so
the right-wing foundations and corporations that sink millions of dollars a
week into aggressive media-savvy propaganda outfits like the Heritage
Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute.
Likewise, intensely ideological media organs like the Murdoch-owned Weekly
Standard magazine are able to gain national prominence and maintain influence
thanks to large subsidies from right-wing backers.
As
a fundamental matter of social-change strategy, progressive media institutions
-- including groups that focus on improving mainstream media coverage as well
as on building radio, TV, video, print and Internet projects --merit support to
narrow the gaps between their skimpy resources and the huge budgets for
right-wing media. This is especially important because the left has to navigate
media terrain that’s appreciably less hospitable.
One
of the political right’s key advantages is the mass-media echo chamber. Many a
spun story and loopy canard bounces around the walls among outlets like the
Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, the Wall Street Journal editorial
page, the Weekly Standard and Fox News. Frequently, from there, the dubious
stories and simple-minded polemics flood into mainstream talk shows, daily
papers, slick magazines, broadcast news outlets and cable TV networks.
Progressives
have nothing comparable in terms of nationwide echo chambers. And the disparity
often makes a pivotal difference. It’s not nearly enough to put out a powerful
exposé or release a cogent analysis in a few print outlets or on some Web sites
or on a few dozen radio stations -- or to briefly surface in a large national
media venue. Such achievements, while important, are insufficient. They need to
draw strength from each other -- utilizing the best material available across
the progressive board -- while simultaneously finding ways to reach broader
audiences, including via mass media, where cracks in the corporate walls
beckon.
During
the last few years, progressive advocates and independent journalists have
learned a lot about how to realize “multiplier effects” among a wide array of
media. When astute strategizing and cooperation flourish, we’re finding ways to
reach many people -- sometimes millions or tens of millions -- with information
and analysis that otherwise would be confined to a relative few. The potential
for further developing such productive media synergy is enormous.
In
the process, what’s needed is to strengthen the many progressive media
organizations that have been developing skills, infrastructures and cooperative
spirit and to grasp what is clearly possible -- mutually supportive operations
that cross-pollinate across extensive media terrain and propagate resistance to
the status quo’s deadening and often deadly corporate priorities.
While
regularly affecting the content of major media outlets, the progressive media
movement needs counter-institutions that can inspire and sustain many people
for the challenges ahead. No one media project is a potential solution by
itself. No silver bullets need apply. At the same time, progressive funders
ought to provide long-term support for an array of media work. By now, there
are enough track records out there to supply empirical evidence of impressive
results.
We
urgently need to boost the resources and improve the coordination of
progressive media work. Sure, by definition, corporate media and their allies
inevitably have big bucks that dwarf the outlays of anti-corporate crusaders.
Extreme imbalances in funding come with the media territory. But in his fabled
confrontation with Goliath, even David needed a slingshot. Long-term progressive
media projects of all descriptions need at least minimal resources along with
savvy strategies to put up a strong fight and make appreciable headway.
Meanwhile,
our guiding ethos should be notably different than the right wing’s preferred
mode of top-down centralism. It should be possible for progressives to attain
the creative advantages of sharp analysis, institutional growth, coordinated
planning and agile cooperation while encouraging a decentralized, democratic,
grassroots approach to social action.
Along
the way, we should resist temptations to rely on a few left heroes on the
mass-media battlefields. In the mid-1990s, while working on the launch of the
Institute for Public Accuracy as a national consortium to get progressive
voices into media, I received some advice to concentrate on grooming a few
“superstars” to become regulars on national television. But the Institute opted
for a different approach: to develop a roster of many hundreds of policy
analysts -- including researchers, authors and other experts from academia,
public-interest groups and grassroots organizations -- representing a deep
reservoir of knowledge and insights that routinely go untapped in the mass
media.
This
approach doesn’t just move forward a few individuals and organizations; it
widens the bounds of media discussion on a regular basis, not merely on
occasion. Media outreach that successfully reflects the breadth and depth of
progressive constituencies is more effective at being persuasive -- and more
capable of withstanding the right wing’s demonizations of a few individuals or
accusations of elitism.
A
process already underway places scores of different progressives on national
television each season, along with hundreds of appearances on a variety of
radio programs. Best of all, many of those analysts remain in producer
Rolodexes, so their voices will be heard again and again. Clearly, a lot more
can be accomplished to move progressive advocates into mainstream media on a
regular basis.
Overall,
what’s needed in our society -- and what a progressive media movement should
strive for -- is a kind of media ecology that recognizes and promotes authentic
diversity. This diversity holds great promise: not because of any mechanistic
or PC concepts but because tremendous human capacities and insights, routinely
excluded from major media, are always present in the United States and the rest
of the world.
Right
now the cracks in the media walls are much too thin and much too scarce. The
long haul of our struggle involves bringing down the institutional barriers
that, in effect, soundproof much of the media world and muffle the First
Amendment in the process. We can chip away at those walls and replace them with
vibrant democratic discourse.
Norman
Solomon is Executive Director of the Institute for
Public Accuracy (www.accuracy.org) and a
syndicated columnist. His latest book is Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t
Tell You (Context Books, 2003) with Reese Erlich. Click here for an excerpt and other
information. Email: mediabeat@igc.org
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