America works best when it receives a roughly equal infusion of ideas from the right and the left. For nearly two decades, this balance has been tilting sharply. Today, society is out of kilter, the right in full cry, the left defeated and listless. Most new programs and initiatives come from the right. The left has had little to do with setting the country's agenda and seems unable to mount any sort of effective resistance to the conservative juggernaut.
To fight the right, progressives must organize an opposition to the current system that challenges the status quo and brings popular progressive ideas into mainstream debates.. . .
Progressives also need to create local and national media watchdog organizations that can apply pressure on the mainstream media. Refusing to allow the center-right media to be defined as "liberal" and pressuring reporters to include progressive ideas will have a ripple effect: politicians will pay attention to what the media are focusing on, and the public will support progressive ideas when they have an opportunity to hear them.
Progressives can't depend on the mainstream media to represent the ideas of the left. Instead, progressives need to create their own print, broadcast, and Internet media.. . .
Investigative reporter Robert Parry, who worked at the Associated Press and Newsweek, noted that "mainstream journalists lived with a constant career dread of being labeled 'liberal.' To be so branded opened a journalist to relentless attack by well-funded right-wing media 'watchdog' groups and other conservative operatives. AIM, for example, succeeded in having New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner removed from his Central America beat after he wrote about massacres by U.S.-supported troops. Many years later, UN excavations found that his reports were completely accurate." On the rare occasions when the media reveal the truth, they almost inevitably face condemnation from the far right for "liberal bias."
The money of the right wing buys more than just these well-financed "watchdog" groups to promote the myth of the liberal media. The conservative funding also finances right-wing think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, which provide easy jobs for conservatives who produce the sound bites and op-eds to fill up the mainstream news stories and editorial pages. According to a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), more than half the think tanks cited in the Lexis-Nexis database of media coverage each year are right leaning (51 percent in 1999). About one-third (35 percent in 1999) are centrist think tanks such as the Brookings Institution (which is headed by a Republican), but far fewer (13 percent in 1999) represent progressive perspectives. Because the ideology behind the conservative think tanks is rarely identified by reporters, the conservative bias of sources goes unnoticed. Although many progressive think tanks exist (including the Economic Policy Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the World Policy Institute), media professionals don't like to use them. . . .
p73
The worst part of our corrupt campaign finance system is not the bribery but the apathy. The American people see a government that does not belong to them. When something is not yours, indifference is the consequence. The principal reason for public disgust with our government is the belief that our politicians are bought and sold by special interests with huge amounts of money. The only way to restore confidence in our government is not by sanctimonious, cliché-filled speeches urging greater public interest in elections but by altering the system that gives wealthy private interests so much control over our government.. . .
From: How the Left Can Win Arguments and Influence People
by John K. Wilson
New York University Press, 2001
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Political_Reform/HowLeftCanWinArguments.htmlThere's quite a bit more on that page, excerpts from the book. What do you think of that?
I think the writer nailed it, and the change recommended isn't going to occur overnight. It may take us decades to catch up, especially if our actions are not well-coordinated.
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