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TechnoratiBig Election Winner: Indy Media
Of all the factors contributing to Obama's victory – luck, economic crisis, Bush, Palin – a major factor is now so second-nature to us that we may overlook its transformative impact since just four years ago: the Internet and the progressive online boom.
First off, without its record-smashing Internet fundraising there would have been no Obama campaign. And without the February 1 endorsement from Netroots powerhouse MoveOn, and its infusion of energy and volunteers, Obama may well have lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton. This week, no age group voted more for Obama than the young generation that grew up online – 70% of voters under 30, according to exit polls.
More important, the media terrain has changed dramatically since 2004 when Matt Drudge dominated the Net with his anti-Kerry vendetta. Today HuffingtonPost – which didn't even launch until 2005 – gets more visitors than Drudge. While conservative and establishment pundits still dominate TV and radio, progressive dominance of the Internet has made it easier for media critics and bloggers to instantly rebut the kind of hoaxes and smears that so damaged Gore and Kerry.
This time Swift-Boating was often countered – as when Obama refused to be eclipsed by TV clips of Rev. Wright and made his speech on race that became the top video on You Tube (1.5 million views, 4,000 comments in 36 hours.) With Wright a media obsession, indy journalists from Glenn Greenwald to David Corn exposed McCain's bigoted preacher/endorsers.
Years ago, rightwing smears would flow up the food chain from Drudge to Fox News/talk radio into mainstream media. This year, the flow of serious, accurate charges about McCain got a push from progressive media – like the story of "McCain's Mansions," which sailed from blogs to mainstream via the hugely successful Brave New Films viral video. Few will forget McCain's stunning answer when asked how many homes he owned: "I think – I'll have my staff get to you."
The Nation's Net movement correspondent Ari Melber reports that muckraking bloggers have rendered Rovian attacks less effective than in past elections – including coded "dog-whistle" messages that activate rightwing audiences "while avoiding a backlash because the reference is lost on others." Melber writes: "Small groups of people are using the web to expose the targeted appeals of the analog world, and then injecting them into the mass media for the whole nation to assess."
To succeed, robocall smears need to operate below the radar. But this year, a backlash erupted over McCain's robocalls saying Obama supported baby-killing and "civil rights to terrorists." Talking Points Memo blog and its active readers were quickly exposing the calls – providing sound and transcript. Several Republican senators denounced the calls.
Beyond their partisan role in this year's election, independent media also took the lead in using the Web to furnish objective source material. For example, HuffingtonPost's Off the Bus recorded and uploaded the previously press-only conference calls from both the Obama and McCain camps so members of the public could hear how campaign leaders spin the press. During the primaries, a collaboration of citizen journalists (involving groups like Off the Bus and Center for Media and Democracy) objectively monitored the leanings of Democratic superdelegates nationwide.
One of the ironies of 2008 coverage is that it was the Obama-friendly HuffingtonPost that published the reporting that nearly derailed Obama. Covering a San Francisco fundraiser closed to mainstream reporters, Off the Bus citizen journalist (and Obama donor) Mayhill Fowler posted a Web dispatch quoting Obama's lucid remarks about the cynicism of Midwesterners in economically-deprived small towns toward politicians' promises, including one poorly-worded sentence: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Fowler had hesitations about reporting comments that could be exploited by Obama's opponents, but she and Off the Bus felt it their responsibility as journalists to publish.
Blown out of context and proportion, the remarks – soon dubbed "Bittergate" – proved more damaging to Obama than all the venomous bluster from the Limbaughs and Hannitys.
The incident was yet another sign of the reach and impact of independent media. And perhaps its growing maturity as well.
10 Comments so far
Show Allprogressive -
If Barack Obama had gone about the country giving stump speeches against imperialism, corporatism, militarism and American exceptionalism, he never would have come out of the Democratic primaries with the nomination. If Obama had somehow secured the nomination and then campaigned against McCain that way, Sarah Palin would be field dressing a moose in the Rose Garden as a Faux News special before spring of 2009.
If Barack had tried to develop serious campaign themes along the lines you suggest, you can easily envision how McCain's spinmeister's would have gleefully turned any discussion of imperialism into a rehash of what Bush/Cheney's "real" motives were for invading Afghanistan and Iraq as a part of their global war against terrorism. Do you really think it is effective politics to accuse the 70% of the American public who followed the flag behind Little George into his Mesopotamian cake walk in 2002 of being either stupid dupes, or believers in colonial empire?
Discussion of corporatism would have morphed into fear mongering over anti-business, anti-entreprenurial, anti-free market biases that have always been an integral part of the "international socialists' agenda".
Discussion of militarism would have been instantly demagogued as wimpery - not supporting our brave troops, and shamefully impugning the genius and integrity of General David Petraeus.
Discussion of American exceptionalism would have legitimized a wholesale dumbing down of all political discourse into a silly sandbox quarrel over which candidate is the most patriotic, and who has the firmest vision of America's true history and imaginary destiny. That scenario is just what the GOP wanted to bait Obama into doing.
Also, although Barack Obama was minimalist about it, he very much did run as an antiwar candidate both in the primaries (compared to Hillary) and later in the general election campaign (compared to "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran" John McCain).
Obama's stump speeches and TV spots invariably repeated his pledge to end the occupation of Iraq that is needlessly "costing us ten billion dollars a month" while the economy is in crisis. Granted, this approach is not as morally uplifting as a call to beat our swords into plowshares and study war no more, but it is a hell of a lot more effective way to sell an antiwar policy approach to real world voters who reside out there in red and purple states.
I wholeheartedly agree we should have a long overdue, serious adult discussion about imperial overreach, corporate greed, crony capitalism, and the dark side of American exceptionalism, along with some talk about how to restore respect for the rule of law and the Bill of Rights after eight years of the Bush/Cheney regime.
Better to get elected and sworn in first, I figure, and then do it - maybe in a fireside chat, preferably linked to some meaningful proposals for legislative reform.
In short, I really don't see where a "progressive" political agenda gets enhanced by bewailing how president-elect Barack Obama supposedly "pretended he was an anti-war candidate due to one speech he made....." as you assert.
There's much more in the historical record if you care to take the ideological blinders off, and much, much more in both the man and the moment.
Bill from Saginaw
Now, that's realism. Well said. Thanks.
If we want Obama on the left, we'll have to push pretty hard, but I'm glad I'm not stuck pushing McCain.
Meanwhile, I don't see how Cohen's major point here stands in reasonable doubt. Does anyone seriously feel informed by commercial television news? How many times can one go back to the NY Times when they can't or won't get things right that are well documented outside of commercial productions?
By contrast, how long after an election would something like Nader's november5.org have taken to get started?
I too have seen some lousy blogs. But why stay with them? The structure of the media environment has a whole has changed. It'll take some doing to ferret out how, but things do not look like they did.
How Jeff Cohen could discuss the Indy media's positive effect keeping us informed and not mention Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez is beyond me. They truly go to where the silence is and give it a voice. Also Free Speech Radio News and weekly programs like Alternative Radio, Between the Lines, Making Contact, TUC Radio, and Counterspin are must listens to keep up with what's going on.
Poet
I think that the point of his message was about the indy media that was born and developed on the Internet. Most, if not all, of the ones you mention he omitted, were active before the growth of the Internet and developed outside of it.
I used to listen to Democracy Now, Alternative Radio, and Pacifica Radio long before there was Internet. So, although it is great to mention those sources, the article was not intended to be about them.
The real Indymedia ( http://www.indymedia.org ) with branch sites in hundreds of cities around the world, was founded in the cauldron of dissent fueled by the last Democrat president. So, I don't think they would agree with very much of this article.
And, although they don't believe in "intellectual property". I still think they would be a bit upset at Mr. Cohen's unattributed stealing of their name.
Third Party Candidate Results:
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/11/05/third-party-numbers
For right now, enjoy the moment and wait to see who Obama selects for Treasury Secretary, Defense Secretary and Secretary of State. If they turn out to be graduates of the Snake Oil Institute and Scoop Jackson Academy of Statecraft, you'll be able to say, proudly, I Told You So.
"And perhaps its growing maturity as well."
A sign of maturity is an understanding of the effects of censorship on the democratic process. Huffington has yet to learn this lesson. The degree to which they censor is intolerable.
CD has a MUCH more mature view on allowing opposing viewpoint. For that, I congratulate them. HuffPuff could learn a thing or two.
I do agree with your general assessment on indy media as increasingly playing an important communications role... both as information/news/opinion source and as an integral part of a trend towards real participatory democracy, realized by facilitating growth of community.
Stick with it CD.
Experience is the best teacher,
but here’s what makes me burn:
it’s always trying to teach me things
that I don’t want to learn.