[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: [usgp-dx] Sam Smith: The glass wall of media coverage of dissent (Progressive Review)

[Paul Etxeberri]

>
>
>UNDERNEWS
>JUN 21, 2005
>FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
>EDITED BY SAM SMITH
>http://prorev.com
>http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm
>
>
>THE GLASS WALL OF MEDIA COVERAGE
>
>Sam Smith
>
>Dana Milbank's snotty attack on critics of White
>House behavior as revealed in the Downing Street
>memos illuminates a carefully concealed truth
>about the media: its definition of objectivity
>stops at the edge of anything left of center.
>Standard Democratic policy is okay, even a
>liberal quote or two, but anything further to the
>left is simply excluded from coverage unless - as
>in Milbank's case - it is there to ridicule.
>
>Milbank's dislike for the left began long ago and
>writes of it in a style that might be called
>unmaturated preppie. For example, in September
>2000 the Washington Post reporter said one of the
>presidential candidates, Ralph Nader, that his
>"only enemy is the corporation." Skull & Bonesman
>Milbank also described Greens as "radical
>activists in sandals." Since your editor was soon
>to speak with Nader at an event in Washington, I
>brought along a pair of sandals so Milbank's
>description would not be totally false. Of
>course, he didn't show up because Nader and the
>Greens fell into that classic media category:
>important enough to scorn but not important
>enough to cover.
>
>Being among the last progressive journalists in
>the capital I am conscious of the massive
>disinterest of the rest of the media in anything
>left of center. When I started in 1964, my work
>was appealing enough to mainstream journalism to
>be offered jobs at the New York Times and the
>Washington Post. I was frequently called by
>journalists wanting to know what was going on in
>the civil rights or anti-war movement. These
>calls were seldom hostile: the left was a reality
>that needed to be covered and even the Post had
>some good reporters on the case. I tried, then as
>now, to serve as an helpful interpreter rather
>than as a rhetorical advocate and even developed
>a few friends along the way.
>
>But these days I rarely get calls from the
>conventional media. Jim Ridgeway of the Village
>Voice, down the hall from my office, reports a
>similar phenomenon. Two guys with decades of
>history and background about progressive politics
>that is considered totally irrelevant by
>establishment Washington. The left, progressive
>movements, and social change are simply not
>thought to be worthy subjects by the corporate
>media - or by NPR for that matter.
>
>Being a stat freak, I have some proof of this. I
>keep a record of every interview or call from a
>journalist. In the early 1990s the number of
>these calls began to increase, peaking in 1998 at
>98 for the year. The following year, the calls
>dropped by a third, in part, I suspect, because I
>had been included (among a number of others) in
>the Clinton do-not-call list given to friendly
>reporters. (I had already been blacklisted by
>CSPAN and banned from the local NPR morning
>show). By 2001 - with the inauguration of a GOP
>president - the calls were down two-thirds from
>three years earlier, dropping to a mere 16 last
>year.
>
>This is only a minor example of a major
>phenomenon. Every day, for example, I check about
>75 websites. From the NY Times to Wonkette, the
>left is considered just not worth mentioning.
>
>Worse, the exception is that it is generally
>presumed amongst the media that progressive are
>fair targets for mockery. In a recent article in
>the faux hip Vanity Fair on Jeff Gannon, David
>Margolik and Richard Gooding offered as a
>positive that Gannon "balanced off some of the
>left-wingers in the room such as Russell
>Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter,
>and a Naderite, who once asked McCellan whether,
>given the administration's support for the public
>display of the Ten commandments, President Bush
>believed that the commandment 'Thou shalt not
>kill' applied to the U.S. invasion of Iraq."
>
>The fact that the authors considered that a
>stupid question tells much about the sorry state
>of Washington journalism. Further, Russell
>Mokhiber often tells more important truths in one
>column than Vanity Fair does in a whole issue.
>
>The trend is also confirmed by Harry Jaffe of the
>
>Washingtonian who has published a list of a score
>of political blogs that DC journalists like. Not
>one is to the left of Democratic Party
>liberalism, which these days means saying, "right
>on" to whatever conservative Democrat is in
>charge. Of the 20 sites, only two are on my list
>- the libertarian Hit & Run and the poll-heavy
>Real Politics. The common characteristic of many
>of the others is their utter predictability.
>
>Put simply, the media doesn't like the left,
>social change, Greens, or progressive thought. It
>deals with them by ignoring them or mocking them,
>in either case excluding them from its own
>perverted definition of objectivity.
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand