Other ostensibly liberal and progressive publications followed a similar route, like The Atlantic and the Village Voice, falling into the hands of neocons and conservatives -- thus giving an extra jolt of "credibility" to right-wing arguments because of the publications' old reputations as voices of the Left.
While progressives were shutting down or selling off valuable media properties, the Right was busy building its own media institutions. The strategy was pushed by Richard Nixon's former Treasury Secretary William Simon, who used his perch as head of the Olin Foundation to pull together likeminded foundation executives to direct money into media outlets and anti-journalism attack groups.
Sometimes, the right-wing benefactors conditioned their support by requiring changes to maximize the impact of the media recipients. The American Spectator, for instance, was instructed to move from Indiana to Washington, D.C., where it could be a more influential voice in defending Republicans and attacking Democrats.
In 1982, South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon, who was eager to buy influence in the U.S. capital, began pouring his mysterious fortune into a new Washington-based newspaper, The Washington Times, which was praised by President Reagan and his successor George H.W. Bush as an important voice supporting their policies. [See Consortiumnews.com's "WTimes' Hypocritical Obama-Nazi Slur."]
Also in the 1980s, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch expanded his news empire into the United States.
Right-wing money went into attack groups, too, targeting mainstream journalists who refused to toe the Reagan propaganda lines.
One National Security Council memo dated May 20, 1983, described U.S. Information Agency director Charles Wick bringing private donors to the White House Situation Room for a fund-raiser which collected $400,000 for Accuracy in Media and other pro-Reagan propaganda fronts.
By the end of the 12-year Reagan-Bush-41 reign, the Right had assembled an impressive media arsenal -- and the Left continued its unilateral disarmament.
Eyewitness
I had watched much of this development first-hand as an Associated Press investigative reporter who often angered the Reagan administration with my articles about Central America and what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. I also saw the growing timidity of the mainstream U.S. news media to take on these tough stories.
In 1987, I moved to Newsweek where the Reagan administration's success in taming the mainstream U.S. news media became even more apparent to me. After I lost internal battles over the need to investigate the brazen cover-up of Iran-Contra crimes, I left Newsweek in 1990.
At that point, I began approaching liberal foundations and wealthy progressives -- explaining the emerging media crisis and stressing why it was imperative for them to begin investing in a counter-media infrastructure to restore some balance to the American media world.
What I discovered was a deep-seated bias against investing in media. There seemed to be a consensus that media was a waste of money and that resources instead should go directly to worthy causes, like feeding the poor or buying up endangered wetlands. One bumper-sticker favorite was "think globally, act locally."
The Left also displayed what I considered magic thinking, seizing on gimmicks that were seen as substitutes for the hard work of building a messaging system that could communicate regularly and reliably with the American people.
At liberal conferences, there would be hearty applause when someone would use the word "organize." But there was little recognition that the Right's success in organizing its "base" among conservative Christians was greased by the oily appeals of right-wing TV pastors, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and later by talk radio and Fox News.
When liberals and progressives did grudgingly focus on media, they mostly wanted to spend money on meetings to talk about it. Rather than build media, there was a view that media was an issue that activists could organize around.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
