THE GLASS WALL OF MEDIA COVERAGE

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.