Liberals Need Their Own Media Machine

by Randolph T. Holhut

"It was because of our coverage that it all happened," said Hume. "We've become so influential now that people watch us and take their electoral cues from us. No one should doubt the influence of Fox News in these matters."

If you look at the raw numbers, Fox News draws a fraction of the audience that ABC, NBC and CBS draws for their nightly news programs. The big three networks still draw a combined 25 million households each night. Fox News draws about 1.5 million.

But Fox News has something that the big three doesn't, namely a point of view and an attitude.

Writing in the Dec. 9 issue of New York magazine, media critic Michael Wolff pointed out something that liberals miss in their criticism of Fox News.

"Fox isn't in any conventional sense ideological media," wrote Wolff. "It's just that being anti-Democrat, anti-Clinton, anti-yuppie, anti-wonk turns out to be great television."

In Wolff's view, the Fox formula is simple. It's all about "tweaking Democrats and boomer culture." The blueprint for the tweaking is just as simple. "Pull their strings. Push their buttons. Build the straw man, knock it down. Night after night. Always attack, never defend. And have fun doing it."

And this approach plays into the political views of the audience that watches Fox News and faithfully listens to talk radio, an audience that's mostly white and male and votes Republican.

Only 40 percent of the nation's voters bothered to go to the polls last month. Having a motivated base of true believers helped the GOP win. That's the power of Fox News, talk radio and the rest of the conservative media.

If you look at the Democratic Party's failure in the midterm elections, one thing stands out. The conservatives have a media apparatus that provides ideological cohesion and is devoted to the advancement the cause. Liberals have nothing that is comparable.

Fox News, which promotes itself as "fair and balanced," has been a cheerleader for the GOP since its founding. Talk radio is overwhelmingly conservative and hostile to anything that remotely smacks of liberalism.

Throw in newspapers like the New York Post, The Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Don't forget the Internet and news and rant sites such as TownHall.com, FreeRepublic.com, NewsMax.com and WorldNetDaily.com.

Add in publishing houses like Regnery and The Free Press, magazines like The Weekly Standard, and think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. Put it together and what you get is a media home for conservatives that addresses their interests, shares their goals and works tirelessly to promote conservative policies.

This is the result of a conscious decision that the conservative movement made back in the 1970s to build a media machine to advance their ideas and influence public policy. While liberals did nothing, hundreds of millions of dollars were poured into creating an ideological cohesive media that has transformed the political landscape.

It's not that conservatives had to work hard at it. The mainstream press has always been conservative, given its natural inclination to preserve the status quo. The fastest way to kill your journalism career is to be accused of having a "liberal" bias. Reporters and editors that don't produce stories that fit this template quickly find themselves on the outs, so most go along with the prevailing political winds.

It's an interesting double-standard. Conservatives have lots of opportunities on television and the op-ed pages and are encouraged to be as provocative as possible. When liberals enter that arena, they have to play down their politics and be as neutral as possible unless they're there to serve as chew toys for pit bulls like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

I have no problem with Fox News' right-wing bias or the preponderance of conservative talk shows or the conservative tilt of most newspapers' op-ed pages. I'd just like to see a liberal equivalent.

There is no liberal daily newspaper in the U.S. that's equivalent to British newspapers such as the Guardian and the Independent (and don't tell me that The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times fill that niche). And for all the talk about how "liberal" the news operations at ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN are, they are hardly mouthpieces for the Democratic Party. Just ask Bill Clinton or Al Gore.

The Internet has been a godsend for liberals, especially since the 2000 election. Sites such as Common Dreams, Working For Change, Cursor, Truthout and Media Whores Online have done great work in spreading around progressive news and opinions that usually get ignored by the mainstream media. But the audience for these sites is relatively small. Likewise for the liberal journals of news and opinion such as The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times and The Progressive Populist.

As long as Fox News' model of attacking liberals for fun and profit is the dominant one in the mainstream media, it's going to be nearly impossible to mount an effective challenge to conservatism. So, the answer is to build our own counter-media, something will be able to survive in the marketplace. Since most people get their news from television, that's the direction to go.

Creating a cable network that's merely a liberal copy of Fox won't do it. Instead of sticking to the phony objectivity of having one guy from "A" arguing with another guy from "B," how about also bringing in people from "C," "D," and "E" to discuss an issue. We know that white males dominate the media landscape at the expense of women, environmentalists, left-of-center political activists and academics, labor and virtually every ethnic group. A channel that offers interesting programming to these folks without pandering or tokenism just might work.

Imagine a media outlet that treats the Bush administration with the skepticism it deserves, that covers the whole world and not just places that Americans happen to be interested in, that allows a liberal to present ideas without being ripped to shreds and that is rock-solid journalistically and devoted to the truth rather than merely scoring political points.

Instead of complaining about how conservatives dominate the airwaves, liberals need to get into the game. Conservative foundations have poured millions of dollars into media. Where are the liberal foundations or the liberal multimillionaire equivalents to Richard Mellon Sciafe or Rupert Murdoch that are willing to pour millions into developing a counter-media?

Developing their own dedicated media machine has given conservatives a huge strategic advantage in getting out their ideas. Liberals must do the same and get started on it right away, or keep facing defeat after defeat at the hands of the conservatives.