Grant no quarter
Yes, progressives nationwide won a resounding victory on November 7. But let’s not forget that there is still much more work to be done, particularly with the media. Here’s Media Matters on that:
Progressives must…insist on fair and accurate treatment from the media. When media get something wrong, or sneeringly dismiss progressives and their goals, they have to hear about it, loudly and from every direction. From every direction….They must join in; they must make clear to news organizations that they won’t be pushed around and marginalized. The American people have spoken, they prefer progressive policies and leaders, and it’s damn well time the pundits and journalists start internalizing that.
Now, Media Matters is speaking here of the national media, but the same is true at the local level. Too often, I hear people dismiss the Democrat and Chronicle as a right-wing rag (it isn’t) and laud the City paper as a progressive voice (which it is but only up to a certain point). It doesn’t matter whether we like a media source or a reporter — what matters is whether their coverage is fair. Channel 13 may be owned by Clear Channel (and run by a right-leaning station manager), but it showed a lot of guts in running that story on robocalls on the eve of the election. I see eye-to-eye with the City paper in terms of political philosophy and I like Krestia DeGeorge’s reporting, but the City deserves to be criticized when it advocates silly “reform” write-in campaigns. It’s terrific that that the D&C employs a solid political reporter (Joe Spector), but it’s sad that their political endorsements are so often ridiculous.
My point is this: Tom Edsall, whose recent book Building Red America provides a fascinating look at how the right has gained power, writes that the right-wing’s attacks on the media and the media’s weak response “has made the press overly anxious, and inclined to lean over backwards not to offend critics from the right. In many respects, the campaign against the media has been more than a victory: it has turned the press into an unwilling, and often unknowing, ally of the right.”
This is why the D&C has to endorse Pirro and write nice things about “judge” Dan Doyle — to “prove” that they’re not part of the “liberal media.” It’s why the City paper has to resort to “pox on both your houses” boilerplate in its pieces on New York State government, when everyone knows that the best chance for real reform in Albany (at least in terms of redistricting) is for Democrats to take the Senate (note: this isn’t to say that State Democrats don’t deserve a pox on their house, they most certainly do).
All of this will only change when the media is just as afraid of criticism from the left as it is of criticism from the right. And that will only happen when we start providing that (fair, substantive) criticism.
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Great post. Wondering if one of the “What should RT do next” choices should be an organized “Rapid Response”.
Hmmm. . . Can progressives and hippies actually keep up with the shrill pitch of The Right? Probably not: no one does the wounded maiden quite like Tony Blankley. Still, especially locally we can do much to brow-beat the media into providing better coverage of the Left side of the issue. It has to be persistant letter-writing and commenting campaigns.
We could never be as shrill as the Fox News crowd. But we can be just as persistent. And, unlike them, we can have the facts on our side.