This is a story of one gay man's slow but steady retreat from mass media into the arms of the "populistic" Internet blog community. The latest possible casualty: public radio, my mainstay since shortly after I became
persona politica in 1988. My concern: am I insulating myself too much? Am I cutting myself off from the "popular" (read: common) take on things because it's not "populist" enough? Is my rejection of mass media the ultimate Ivory Tower reaction of a snobby "librul" elitist know-it-all queer - someone who is already not exactly tuned in to middle America? Read on, kossians, and let me know.
I can't remember I time when I habitually watched local news - you know, the 5:00 or 6:00pm local news with the older distinguished (sometimes graying) gentleman and the younger, good-looking, striking woman co-anchor. First, local news usually meant nothing to me. I grew up in rural Western New York (the Finger Lakes region), where local news came from Rochester (1 hour away) or Buffalo (two hours away) if the antenna was particularly resourceful.
As for network news - my Dad watched Brokaw religiously, but I never much cared. They weren't speaking to me, and I would rather read a book than watch TV. Then, I graduated from high school and went to college. I didn't have a TV, but I "came out" and became Big Fag On Campus, became involved in campus gay issues and county-wide and state-wide Democratic politics. My media of choice: newspapers. Monroe County (or at least the City of Rochester proper) is pretty conservative if reliably Democratic, so the Democrat & Chronicle (am paper) and the Times-Union (pm paper) were fairly left (they're both Gannett papers) even if piss-poor examples of journalism compared to the NYTimes and WaPo. I even wrote letters to the editor, and they published my very own "Op-Ed" in 1992.
When I moved off campus ('91), CNN Headline News was my media of choice for news. I skipped the networks entirely, at least until they got their own cable channels. 1992 was the height of my activist-fag period - I had just graduated, we were fighting to get ROTC recruiters off campus and out of public schools, and trying to get the NYS Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act passed (it finally passed last year, 11 years later!). I discovered National Public Radio and have been listening ever since.
From 1993-1995 (I was in Southern California by then), I got all my news from public radio. My commute was at least an hour, and it was NPR the whole time. In 1995, I moved to DC for law school, so I added WaPo to public radio and I thought I was in heaven. All politics, all the time. TV (when I had it, which wasn't all the time) was for entertainment, not news. Back in LA in 1998, I went a year without TV, and again relied on public radio. I started reading WaPo and NYTimes online and CNN.com/allpolitics/. During election years (1998, 2000, 2002), I read LA Times political coverage as well (as pathetic as it was).
- , the media's GORE-ing of Al. At first I didn't blame it on the media, was making excuses for them. I thought Bush was such a poor politician that Al's bad media coverage didn't matter. Then Bush won. I was stunned. I was in denial about the media's complicity in the election and coronation. Having a legal background, I followed with interest the legal wrangling in Florida with interest - the Republicans always came off looking so much better. Was this because the Dem talking heads were so much worse, or was media playing a role in it. I didn't mind - the court's would see through it, right? Wrong. The election over, I bought the Sunday paper for the coupons and got my news from public radio and CNN.com.
- , election season. In addition to NPR, I got my news from online (NYTimes, WaPo, Roll Call, The Hill, cnn.com/allpolitics/). My LATimes subscription kept coming. I was optimistic, but I chalked up the Dems losses to a very bad message and an even worse delivery.
- Roll Call is subscription only, but I buy it anyway. Still read The Hill online, and get NYTimes and WaPo headlines delivered to my in-box every morning. As it has for the past three years, public radio plays in my office all day long. I discovered Blog for America and, through it, dailyKos and other left-leaning blogs. Suddenly, reading the WaPo and NYTimes seems so much more....unnecessary. I have limited time anyway, so I skim the morning WaPo and NYTimes e-mailed headlines, click when necessary, and rely on the blogs.
Late 2003/early 2004: I've stopped reading WaPo and and NYTimes because their coverage of the Democratic primary sucks. The GORE-ing of Howard Dean begins. Public radio gets in on the action. Here in LA, we have a syndicated public radio program called Left, Right and Center: Robert Scheer, Matt Miller, Arianna Huffington, and David Frum (ick) duke it out in a civilized manner. I get sick of Frum's Repub talking points and Miller's lack of backbone that I can't listen to the show without shouting and would turn it off except for Arianna and Bob. Another syndicated public radio show produced locally, "To The Point," interviews guests from the left and right on topics of the day. The guests from the right spout their nonsense unchallenged by the usually fair host. Over the last two months, our favorite Howard Dean memes are featured prominently - he's angry, he's unelectable, he's unqualified. Even NPR's new show, "Day to Day," starts in on Dean and the "Rebel Yell," playing a remix of it. Have you ever heard a remix of any of Bush's mangling of the English language? No. Today I turned off To The Point after the guest from the right repeated Republican Talking Point on Dean #137 and the host let it slide. For the first time in years, the radio in my office is off. Apart from public radio's talk shows, NPR's coverage is no better. "Left Right and Center" is on in 10 minutes; Iowa Caucuses and the "Rebel Yell" are sure to be featured prominently.
If I give up on public radio, I'm left with the blog world for news unless I want my blood pressure to rise. What to do? Have others given up on mass media? (Yeah, I know NPR isn't exactly mass media and appeals more-or-less to a certain segment of the population that isn't middle America, but it's my last semblance of connection to the "real" world.) Is the blog world to narrow a focus to get national news? Are we too insulated, removed from the world where people like my Dad watch Fox News and Brokaw and read US Today and believe every word that's spouted? Can we, as Dems, be a successful national party if we ignore the so-called-liberal mass media because it's....well, inadequate, but still powerful? I'm looking for answers here, people.