The public needs free and easy access an unbiased source of news and to a range of opinion that even includes liberal views. This presents a great opportunity here for progressive activists who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do some work.
There is a widespread understanding among informed
progressives that, through media consolidation and through massive spending and
outright intimidation, the right wing has succeeded in taking effective control
of the mass news media in the United
States. There has been little discussion of the notion that right-wing
philosophy may have invaded entertainment as well as news and commentary,
but it would be surprising if this opportunity to influence the public
were overlooked.
It is also clear that programs like 24 and NYPD Blue disguise some troubling messages.
The right-wing viewpoint is broadcast every day, not just
through FOX news, but through ABC, NBC, CBS and increasingly through PBS and
CNN. As a result, the public is often
not even aware of liberal or even moderate points of view. The viewpoint of labor is virtually never
aired. Air America has offered an alternative
to some who are looking for an alternative, but much of the public is not even conscious
of the pervading bias of the media. Incredibly, many are still under the illusion that the media actually
has a liberal bias.
Progressive opinion still has a few outlets.
There are magazines like The Nation and Mother Jones.
There are numerous good books published every
month and as noted before, there is Air
America. There is also Pacifica
Radio and various independent radio and TV stations, but unfortunately these
alternative voices are not pervasive throughout the country.
For example, I live in rural Maine and
the only Air America
station that I can hear comes in so poorly that I just do not listen to
it. Of course Pacifica Radio is not
available here, and the only independent station I can receive is onsatellite TV.
But, there is the internet.
Through the internet I can read newspapers from around the world.
I can read Buzzflash,
Alternet, OpEd
News, Consortium News, just to
name a few. I can also listen to radio
programs from Air America,
from Pacifica and
from various independent radio stations.
There are great programs freely available on the internet which I
download and listen to at my leisure.
There are problems with the internet for spreading the
progressive word, however. One is that Congress,
compliant to the wishes of the giant media corporations, is challenging the
notion of network neutrality. This is an
early hint of a series of attacks that are sure to be made on the internet by
corporate forces. If successful these
attacks could mean that the web will not remain open for the continued
expression of free speech that we currently enjoy.
Another problem is that the web is not
pervasive the way that TV and radio are.
A large proportion of the country still does not have internet access
and even those who do access the internet often use only a dial-up connection.
A good broadband connection is necessary for most of the
audio programming available on the internet and broadband is an expense that
many people must do without.
Unfortunately, these same people are the natural base for the
progressive movement, but the media available to them remains primarily the
broadcast media that the right wing now owns and therefore controls.
It is not surprising that so many of these
people are so often persuaded to vote against their own interests.
The public at large needs free and easy access to
progressive opinion and even to an unbiased source of news.
This presents a great opportunity here for
progressive activists who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do some
work. Let me suggest some things that can
easily be done at relatively little cost.
- Read
progressive news and opinion on the internet.
When you find a particularly interesting article, print out several
copies and drop them off some place where the public can pick them up.
Good places are retail shops in
working-class neighborhoods, but doctor's offices and libraries are other
possibilities.
- If
you are particularly ambitious, you might turn this idea into a regularly
published newspaper, adding your own content to content drawn from the
internet.
- It
is not necessary to spend $500 for an IPOD to listen to .MP3 files downloaded
from the internet. There are perfectly
functional players available for $20 and there are similarly inexpensive CD
players that play .MP3 files that are burned on CD's.
Many people already have these devices, and
others would be willing to buy them if there were good programming easily
available for them.
These observations
suggest a couple possibilities:
- Publish CD
digests of good progressive programming which you download from the internet
and distribute these CDs in much the same way as suggested above for
printed articles. Most inexpensive
players are designed to start over at the beginning of a file after they are
turned off, so programming should be broken up into short segments of about
five or ten minutes each.
- A
more ambitious program would be to burn such programming to .MP3 players and
offer them in an exchange program for people to listen to (or, if the chosen
.MP3 player used memory cards, just the memory cards could be exchanged).
Since this is much like the public library
model, it might be worth approaching your local public library to offer running
such a program.
- Consider
starting your own low-power radio station to broadcast progressive media.The
Independent Media Center in Urbana/Champaign can give you some guidance in
undertaking a project like this.
Although most producers of progressive media are looking only
for wider distribution, you should be alert to the possibility of infringing on
a copyright in carrying out any of these suggestions.
This is particularly the case for programming
from Air America
Let me end with a short list (in no particular order) of
some of my own favorite sources for alternative audio programming.
The Inside Scoop,
The Monitor,
Media Matters,
Mother Jones Radio,
Flashpoints,
Left, Right and Center,
Ian Masters,
The Progressive Radio
Show,
Radio
Nation,
Blast the
Right, Counterspin,
Ring of Fire,
Democracy Now,
Thom Hartmann.