Why the Left Has No Answer to the Right-Wing Lie Machine

[Are_grits_groceries]

An Uneven Contest:
What if there were a great debate concerning the nature and future of American society, and only one side showed up?

That approximately describes the condition of the U. S. media today.

The right wing is operating a super-charged carnival of hype, hysteria and hoopla, while the left struggles along with a pipsqueek sideshow: a few magazines like The Nation, Mother Jones and The American Prospect, with minuscule circulation among the already converted, some tolerated columnists like Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and Frank Rich, and of course there’s Shultz, Olbermann and Maddow on MSNBC.

Meanwhile, one by one, the lights are going out: in January, Air America Radio fell silent, and last month David Broncoccio’s outstanding investigative program, NOW, closed shop. Last Friday, Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS broadcast its final program. Shultz-Olbermann-Maddow remain on MSNBC at the sufferance of the owners and managers of NBC and MicroSoft, while Comcast is attempting a takeover of NBC. If successful, how long will this lone outpost of progressive cable-TV commentary remain?
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The regressive bias of the corporate media is starkly revealed by the coverage, and the non-coverage, of the public demonstrations of last month. When a couple of thousand tea-party or gun-rights enthusiasts show up on the Mall in Washington, or across the Potomac in Virginia, the mainstream media is there to cover them en masse. But when up to ten thousand protesters gather on Wall Street, or fifty thousand jam downtown Los Angeles to protest the Arizona “show your papers” law, these events might just as well have taken place on the far side of the moon.

If the MSM takes any notice of progressive talk radio or cable TV, it is usually to portray a false equivalence with the bloviators on the right, as an implied excuse for the latter’s rhetorical excesses and outright lies. Amazingly, that false equivalence was repeated last week by the President himself, at his University of Michigan commencement address.

There is no equivalence. When Olbermann or Maddow make a trivial errors of pronunciation, attribution, or date of an event, etc. they make on-air corrections as soon as these slip-ups are brought to their attention. But when O’Reilly, Beck, Hannity, et al, tell flat-out demonstrable lies, they do so without fear of consequence and therefore without public correction. And their fearlessness is justified, for no one in the mainstream media is likely to hold them to account. To be sure, Ed Shultz calls them out in his “Psycho Talk,” and Keith Olbermann in his “Worst Persons,” and Rachel Maddow does not hesitate to call a liar a liar, but when they do the regressive talksters and the MSM take little notice, which only further demonstrates the insignificance of progressive media commentary.
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The scope and power of regressive propaganda now at work is enormous and profoundly discouraging to those who would oppose it. But, in the final analysis, the progressives have a formidable and invincible ally: reality. Facts, as John Adams observed, “are stubborn things.” And the scientists will continue to discover and validate stubborn facts, regardless of what the right would prefer them to disclose regarding evolution, global climate, or whatever. In addition, the majority of Americans are facing each day the brutal reality of regressive economic policies as they lose their jobs, their homes, adequate health care, and the prospect of sending their children to college and on to rewarding careers. No amount of high-volume propaganda and media dominance can obscure these hard facts.

Even so, this much remains compellingly clear: unless and until the progressive left develops an effective media voice, there can be no restoration of American democracy, no return to political sanity, and no establishment of economic justice.

The oligarchy that owns and runs our government and controls our mass media has learned Goebbels's lesson well: A lie unanswered is a lie believed – more so if the lie is repeated, over and over again.

More about the problem, the lies and possible remedies:
http://www.truthout.org/why-left-has-no-answer-right-wing-lie-machine59220

We need to find an answer and fast. At least we need to try to start something else that has a chance.