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Culture > November 10, 2004 > Web Only

Too Little, Too Late

By Robert Parry

George W. Bush’s electoral victory is chilling proof that conservatives have achieved dominance over the flow of information to the American people and that even a well-run Democratic campaign stands virtually no chance for national success without major changes in how the news media operates.

It is not an exaggeration to say today that the most powerful nation on earth is in the grip of an ideological administration—backed by a vast network of right-wing think tanks, media outlets and attack groups—that can neutralize any political enemy with smears, such as the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry’s war record, or persuade large numbers of people that clearly false notions are true, like Saddam Hussein’s link to the 9/11 attacks.

The outcome of the 2004 election also highlights perhaps the greatest failure of the Democratic-liberal side in American politics: a refusal to invest in the development of a comparable system for distributing information that can counter the right’s potent media infrastructure. Democrats and liberals have refused to learn from the lessons of the Republican-conservative success.

The history is this: For the past quarter century, the right has spent billions of dollars to build a vertically integrated media apparatus—reaching from the powerhouse Fox News cable network through hard-line conservative newspapers and magazines to talk radio networks, book publishing, well-funded Internet operations and right-wing bloggers.

Using this infrastructure, the conservatives can put any number of “themes” into play that will instantaneously reach tens of millions of Americans through a variety of outlets, whose messages then reinforce each other in the public’s mind.

Beyond putting opposing politicians on the defensive, this right-wing machine intimidates mainstream journalists and news executives who will bend over backward and cater to the conservative side, do almost anything to avoid being tagged with the career-threatening tag of “liberal.”

Liberal resistance

In contrast to the right’s media juggernaut, the left relies largely on a scattered network of cash-strapped Web sites, a few struggling magazines and a couple of hand-to-mouth satellite TV networks.

Plus, the evidence is that wealthy progressives still don’t “get it.” Even with the election looming, Air America, a promising AM radio network founded to challenge Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing talk radio monopoly, was hobbled by the refusal of rich liberals to invest in the venture.

In a new book, Road to Air America, Sheldon Drobny, one of the network’s founders, describes his frustrating appeals to East and West Coast “limousine liberals” who didn’t want to engage in the project. I have encountered similar rebuffs dating back to the early ’90s, after my experiences as a mainstream investigative journalist for the Associated Press and Newsweek convinced me that the biggest threat to American democracy was the growing imbalance in the national news media.

Yet even as conservative foundations were pouring tens of millions of dollars into building hard-edged conservative media outlets, liberal foundations kept repeating the refrain: “We don’t do media.” One key liberal foundation explicitly forbade even submitting funding requests that related to media projects.

What I saw on the left during this pivotal period was an ostrich-like avoidance of the growing threat from the right’s rapidly developing news media infrastructure.

Right-wing money

As the liberals stayed on the sidelines in the ’80s and ’90s, the conservative media gained powerful momentum from foreign sources of money, particularly from South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Moon alone invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the Washington Times and other conservative outlets, while gaining protection for his dubious money operations from Republican defenders inside the U.S. government.

The right also made clear that its plan was to wage the “war of ideas,” which conservatives did not mean in a metaphorical sense. The right’s goal has been to destroy or at least marginalize its enemies through various kinds of information warfare. To reverse Prussian military strategist Karl von Clausewitz’s famous dictum, one might say that for conservatives the “war of ideas” is merely the continuation of violent conflict by other means, including the use of propaganda and disinformation.

Yet, instead of joining this ideological battle, the liberal-Democratic side largely divided up its money between do-good projects, such as buying up threatened wetlands, and spending on activism, such as voter registration and get-out-the vote drives. While there’s nothing wrong with these activities, the election’s outcome has demonstrated again that in an age of media saturation, street-level activism isn’t enough.

Even when liberal money is earmarked for media, the funds are usually controlled and spent by political activists. For instance, Campaign 2004’s “Media Fund,” run by former Clinton administration official Harold Ickes, spent millions of dollars from liberal donors on TV ads placed with mainstream media outlets. Little, if anything, was spent on building year-in-year-out media, like the conservatives have done.

That means that at the end of a campaign, nothing of permanence is left behind. The liberals wait until the next election cycle to gin up their operations again, while the conservatives spend the next four years, every day, pitching their arguments to the American people and making their political base even stronger.

The end result of this imbalance has been that American democracy has been diminished. Indeed, the great American experiment with a democratic republic may be on the verge of becoming meaningless, since much of the information distributed through the conservative echo chamber is either wrong or wildly misleading—and since the mainstream press has been so thoroughly housebroken.

No birthright

Yet, while it’s certainly true that the Bush administration and its allies have shown little regard for truthful information, it’s also a legitimate criticism of the Democrats and progressives that they haven’t fought nearly as hard as they should for honest information, the oxygen of any healthy democracy.

While many Americans see information as a birthright that is supposed to be delivered to them by the press like a newspaper thumping on the front doorstep, it is really a right that must be fought for like any other important right.

As George W. Bush celebrates his historic victory, the Democrats, left-of-center foundations and wealthy American liberals should finally recognize that their long pattern of starving honest, independent media has contributed to putting the nation—and the planet—on the edge of catastrophe.

John Kerry’s well-fought campaign—and the youthful energy that surrounded it—may have been an encouraging sign, but the hard truth is: It was too little, too late.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the '80s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His books, including Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush and Secrecy and Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered here. This article originally appeared on Consortium News.

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  • Reader Comments

    I LOVE reading your looney articles!! You on the left have had for 40 or more years ABC CBS NBC. The universities the “main stream” press CNN. OH and don’t forget Dan Rather bias who helped you to lose by lying about Bush.You have had all these media mouths whining and lying for you for decades. Then comes FOX and you flip and FOX IS fairer than Danny Rather anyday. Then you get Rush who really flips you out. That is the problem with liberals they don’t understand that people are dying to hear information that does not have your liberqal bias.
    These little stories you write on In These Times is great. It proves once again that you don’t get it and never will. You have to put your ideas into ring and let people hear other sides and make their own decisions. You just can’t handle that you no longer have a monopoly on information any longer. Now you have embarrassed yourselves immensely by calling anyone who does not agree with your liberal ideology stupid!
    Keep up the good work that you are doing and next time the only votes Dems get will be college professors, “news” reporters and a few old hags from my favorite hate group the National Orginization for bitchy Women..

    Posted by redstate on Nov 10, 2004 at 10:55 AM

    The article is right on target. I hope the Democrats that have the funds will take a good hard look and get off their wallets.

    Insanity is doing the same things the same ways, always expecting a different result. The main stream media is controlled by large corporations. They in turn have a great deal at stake in front of the FCC and other government agencies. So they do what they are told. We need a progressive agenda put forth using all the tools available everyday. We’ve got to show Joe beer can, that he has been voting against his own interest.

    Posted by Walter Purvis on Nov 10, 2004 at 11:12 AM

    Great article.

    While I would never take my hat off to the chain of right-wing propagandists who are heinously using our public airwaves like their own personal crapper, it’s impressive to stand back and look at the iron grip they’re closing on every means of information dissemination in America.  I agree, the (fast becoming marginalized) “reality-based” community needs to take some serious notes and divert attention (serious cash) to correcting the imbalance.

    Posted by Jeff Parke on Nov 10, 2004 at 11:40 AM

    redstate-
    Your horrible grammer aside, you fail to address any of the points made in the article.  I would venture to guess that you are part of the 60% of Americans that still believe that Saddam was in league with Al Qaeda and was responsible for 9/11.  By all means- don’t get distracted with the facts and only tune into media outlets that tell you what you want to hear.  I am curious, what does the word ‘liberal’ mean to you?  Also, what do you believe is the roll of the media?

    Posted by Christopher on Nov 10, 2004 at 12:13 PM

    The contemptuousness of “redstate” is a fine example of the neo-con language that appeals to the public’s reptilian brain. The right wing has done its homework. They understand both the basics and the subtleties of marketing. They use this understanding to frame their message and to pound it into the heads of a vulnerable public whose critical thinking faculties are rapidly atrophying.  People who are pining for easy, one-syllable answers find this kind of uninformed derisiveness compelling.

    Progressives need to consider seriously two questions: (1) what is so appealing about this smart-assed attitude, and (2) how can the Progressive message be couched in similar terms when aimed at those who need simplistic answers? The data used by the right wing to accomplish their goals isn’t secret. Any graduate student in market research can describe the principles and their application.

    Progressives have been paying too much attention to the message, and not nearly enough attention to tailoring its language to the audiences it needs to reach. Progressives need to get busy and use all this education the right wing loves to accuse them of having, to take back the hearts and medullas oblongata of the voters. I think we might look to Michael Moore for some indication of what needs to be done a lot more of.

    Posted by Gayle Osborne on Nov 10, 2004 at 12:16 PM

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