Planting Liberally

There have been a lot of interesting stories running across the wires in the world of progressive culture this week.  Unfortunately I don't have time to really analyze each of them in-depth, but I thought I'd point them out here:

• Michael Wolff profiles Roger Ailes, owner of Fox News Channel and the Wall Street Journal, in Vanity Fair.
• David Moberg has a great piece on Working America in The Nation.  Working America is the AFL-CIO's "community affiliate".  Essentially it's a large (2.5-million-member) list of non-union members who sympathize with the union's position on a number of bread-and-butter issues, and it gives the union the ability to extend its electoral might outside the boundaries of its membership.  What's more, Working America has also started enlisting its members in support of labor organzing drives, picket lines, and the like.
• Over at Build the Echo, Tracy van Slyke talks about digg moving to the left, and progressive new media activism inspired by The Young Turks. Progressive media creators, especially vloggers and podcasters: read this post!  Disclosure: van Slyke's organization, The Media Consortium, is a client of my company.
• Again at Build the Echo, Jessica Clark highlights this great video (another good example of progressive new media activism) about Obama's Challenge:
  
  That Amazon discount code, again, is: RGVTUIQY.  You can also buy the book at Powells.
• Global Labor Strategies has a challenging, thought-provoking post about the big-picture problems facing the labor movement, both in the US and abroad.  They argue that service sector organizing and EFCA won't cut it, given the ways corporations are reorganizing globally.  It's a fascinating piece, and well worth consideration.
• The UFT announces the opening of a labor-friendly charter school in New York City, by Green Dot Public Schools.  Given the way charter schools often pit public education advocates against teachers unions, and especially in light of all the hey made about the tiff between the DC city council and DC teachers' unions, I think this is an important development.  It's not a revolutionary one - Green Dot operates a number of schools in LA already - but something we should be keeping an eye on nonetheless.  Still, I think it is one more bit of evidence that these two progressive cultural institutions don't need to be at odds.

Whenever I write about progressive TV, I inevitably get a healthy dose of criticism in the comments from folks who think that progressive TV should be dispassionate, non-partisan, objective, and truth-focused - essentially, a recreation of PBS. (In fact, the last post featured a commenter who asked why more progressives don't just support PBS.) I also get a reasonable amount of pushback every time I suggest some variant on the notion that progressives should develop a mirror image of Fox News - a hyper-partisan, foaming-at-the-mouth progressive channel.

For the record, I don't think that creating a mirror image of Fox News is a good idea, for several reasons. One, I don't think progressives react well to that style of news, and a progressive channel that can't do well within the progressive base is a non-starter. Two, I think Fox News isn't so much a conservative channel as a Republican Party establishment channel. As Eric Boehlert pointed out earlier this week, Fox's cozy relationship with the Republican Party is now putting its audience share at risk, and I'm not sure I want that kind of future for a progressive TV channel. Finally, I think the core tenet of progressivism - "we're all in this together" - simply doesn't have room for Fox's aggressive, divisive, insipid style.

On the other hand, I firmly disagree with the notion that progressives need to build their own PBS. Many progressives seem to think that it's possible to build a TV channel which trades in fully objective journalism, and that doing so would benefit the progressive movement as much as Fox has benefited the conservative movement. I think that it's both impossible and non-beneficial for the progressive movement besides. Follow me across the flip for details.

I think objective journalism is simply impossible, at every level of the journalistic enterprise. At the highest level, which stories does a journalistic enterprise pursue? On a given day, do we track the latest news about Britney Spears, or about the future of the wind power industry? For a more substantive question, do we follow the debate on Iraq among Democratic presidential hopefuls, or the debate on taxes among Republican presidential candidates? It's possible to build a truthful channel which focuses on any of those story lines, but the choice of story lines is certainly not objective, and does tend to promote certain value systems over others.

At a more granular level, there are questions regarding how a story is put together and packaged which make objectivity impossible. What headline should we use to describe the Democratic presidential debate, or the State of the Union address? Who should we call for comments on the bids in the FCC's 700 block auction? With limited resources and space, it's impossible to answer any of these questions in a trully objective way. Every choice along these lines introduces some bias into a story.

There is, I think, some nostalgia in progressive circles for the "golden age" of journalism, covering approximately the New Deal through the beginning of the Reagan years. The story line goes that journalism during that time was honest, unbiased, and objective, and that government during that time was regularly hounded by the press and forced to do the right thing. The pinnacle of this story line includes the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the unveiling of the Watergate conspiracy. Believers of this narrative argue that we need to somehow return to that golden age, and all will be right with our media.

I think this narrative is deeply flawed. This reading of history ignores the overwhelmingly white, male, and upper-middle-class nature of the power structure of those years, and the ways in which the news media often enforced that power structure. While it's true that journalistic enterprises may have lavished more money on reporters and supported more in-depth coverage of important stories, the impartiality which news media rigorously claimed was actually deeply deceptive, and may have served to undermine emerging progressive movements of those times. This is not unlike Pastor Dan's point on civil religion, namely, that it's really the establishment of the values of a certain segment of society (mainline Protestant denominations) as normative. (Full disclosure: my wife is a once-a-week front pager at Street Prophets.)

Moreover, I think that even if it were possibe to develop a modern objective news channel, it wouldn't be much help to progressives. Sure, such a channel could investigate the reality behind the talking points of each party, and could help viewers judge which politicians are lying and which aren't. Sure, such a channel could put today's arguments in proper context, reminding viewers that we've heard the "six more months" argument countless times. But what then?

This sort of journalism is obsessed with hunting down facts and reporting them, but not with examining social narratives and questioning or event overturning them. Journalism of this sort is more-or-less incapable of questioning the political environment. Instead, it accepts that environment, asks questions about the policy details, perhaps examines proposals for reform along the way, and doesn't do much more. The result of this model of journalism is is technocratic liberalism, the governing regime of the late 20th century. Technocratic liberalism is a regime primarily concerned with finding the best technical solutions to a variety of social problems, and tends to be remarkably wonky. It's a a fine way to go, I suppose, in that it produces a government which does a reasonably good job at solving problems. It's certainly a lot better than our current Shock Doctrine regime. The trouble with technocratic liberalism is that it's technocratic - it tends to elevate bureaucrats and technical experts while disempowering ordinary folks, and doesn't address problems underlying the political environment as a whole.

If our only choices in political and journalistic models were, on the one hand, fear-and-gossip journalism coupled with Shock Doctrine politics, and objective journalism coupled with technocratic liberalism on the other hand, then I'd choose the second, in a heartbeat. But it's not clear to me that, the second option is even possible. That's not just a philosophical point about the nature of journalism, but an economic point about the business of journalism. Now that Fox has unleashed dishonest, partisan, sensationalist journalism on our media landscape, it's not clear that the news media can return to the purported golden age of journalism without losing significant audience share to Fox.

Instead, I think that the solution is to take the model that we've developed and nurtured in the progressive blogosphere, and make it available in a more accessible format on TV. Whereas the conservative model of journalism is "fair and balance (and dishonest)", the progressive model of journalism should be "biased, active, and proud of it." Progressive TV should have a progressive bias, and should be proud of that bias. Our journalistic enterprises should make their viewpoint obvious, and, from time to time, should remind viewers why it's a valid and worthwhile point of view to hold. More than that, our journalistic enterprises should be action- and engagement-oriented, as the blogosphere is. There may be good reasons for progressive TV to avoid explicitly endorsing candidates, as bloggers do, but there is no reason that progressive TV can't explicitly encourage viewers to vote, contact their elected officials, start their own blogs, and run for office. Indeed, progressive TV makes a whole new kind of engagement possible, thanks to interactive TV formats like Current.

If "objective" journalism creates technocratic liberalism, and fear-and-gossip journalism creates Shock Doctrine politics, then biased-and-active journalism will create, I hope, a highly engaged, populist, and tolerant politics. After all, such a journalism is emphatic in its embrace of engagement, and encourages people to create and explore a diverse, Long Tail media landscape. It tends to disempower powerful media enterprises; it tends to make debate on a very wide range of subjects possible, via the massively parallel architecture of the web; and it can support discussions which fundamentally alter the terms of debate. This kind of journalism doesn't guarantee progressive victories in elections and policy per se, but it heavily rigs the rules of the game in our favor.

Naturally, such journalism still requires fact-finding, and all the resources necessary to do good investigation. I am not suggesting that we abandon our zeal for rigorously collecting and analyzing hard data. Instead, I'm suggesting that we do so with an explicit and transparent point of view, and that we attempt to reorient the structure of journalism and politics along those lines.

I had a lot of fun reading Alternet's report of trouble at Fox News today. As the main cheerleader for the Bush presidency and the war in Iraq, this channel has a lot of blood on its hands, and I'm glad to see they're having trouble keeping their dominance of the cable ratings wars. I also think the fact that the channel's bad fortunes are coinciding with a generally lackluster Republican presidential primary speaks to a deeper, more general distaste for conservatism as a whole, and that's great.

Then again, I don't think it's all over for the channel, or for the conservative movement. The movement is still incredibly well-funded and savvy at using new media, and is fully capable of launching some pretty nasty attacks. We have yet to see how Republicans will do at the congressional level, or at the local and statewide levels. In some ways under-the-radar electoral wins are more dangerous than big-enchilada wins, and a kinda sorta victory at the presidential level should not leave progressives the least bit complicit at other levels.

Moreover, the election is just the beginning of the story. Will a Democratic President and Congress be able to enact progressive laws, or will we have a reprise of the disastrous 1993-94 legislative session? I was just coming of political age back then, and I can easily remember how chillingly effective the vicious conservative media machine - which was still then in nascency - was at stopping progressive reform.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this piece serves as a warning for progressive TV programmers. Tying our fortunes up too tightly with our favored elected officials opens us up to the dangers of losing audience share if those officials ever lose favor. We shouldn't be the sycophantic cheerleaders Fox News has been. We want progressive TV to be progressive first, and partisan second.

Update: Fox won this year's State of the Union coverage, but the margin between Fox and CNN is shrinking.

More and more, it seems, we in the progressive movement are bumping heads against what appear to be more-or-less insane corporate policies which are not only harmful to society at large, not only unprofitable, but more or less the conventional wisdom within an entire industry.  There are a couple of examples that come to mind immediately: the consensus opinion among cable news channels that talk shows should be predominantly conservative or right-center, and the consensus opinion in big business that unionization is bad and should be thwarted, even using illegal means.

These are just a couple of examples, but even these two have devestating consequences for the progressive movement and the country as a whole.  The conservative domination of cable news is part of the reason we're bogged down in Iraq, and it's a very powerful echo chamber that tends to silence the progressive voices in our party, and favors Republican and conservative Democratic candidates.  Meanwhile, the relentless union-busting ethos in corporate America is wreaking havoc on the economy, because it sharply exaggerates economic inequality; at the same time, it deflates the idea of solidarity in the workplace, which is one of the pillars of the progressive movement.

I became very curious about these phenomena when I read Jeff Cohen's book, Cable News Confidential.  The book provides incredible detail on the atmosphere at MSNBC in the months leading up to the war in Iraq, and some of the reasoning behind the managerial decisions which led to the failure of Donohue on MSNBC, and the increasingly shrill pro-war views expressed on all three cable news channels.  What's interesting is that, from Cohen's vantage point, these decisions were remarkably boneheaded, and appeared to defy simple business reasoning.  MSNBC was not trying to find a way to attract more viewers than Fox News Channel, it was simply trying to imitate Fox.  MSNBC did not shrewdly ascertain that Fox's success was based on its cultivation of a niche audience, and that the secret to success in cable news was finding a different niche and attracting that niche in novel ways; instead, it obtusely assumed that cable news consumers were emphaticaly right-leaning, and so it attempted to mimic Fox rather than provide an alternative.  CNN, which should have naturally been the beneficiary of MSNBC's bumbling inability to compete with Fox, instead appears to have done much the same.

In addition to being a terrible story of journalism gone horribly wrong, this is a fascinating case study of an entire industry failing, and failing badly.  Our textbook understanding of capitalism would suggest that large companies should be constantly doing battle with one another, looking for opportunities that their competition has not found, and exploiting those opportunities for profit.  In the case of cable news, we'd expect at least one of the channels to recognize that no one was adequately serving the needs of progressive cable news consumers, and to attempt to exploit that opportunity before the competition did the same.  Not only did cable news executives not notice this opportunity in the rabidly pro-war days of early 2003, they still haven't learned the lesson, despite ample evidence that there's a large audience of progressives hungry for round-the-clock news and opinion, and despite ample evidence that the few cable news shows which do cater to a progressive audience (Countdown, Daily Show, Colbert Report) do remarkably well.  So why aren't the cable news executives rushing to exploit this opportunity, and gain ratings and ad dollars while the competition sits on its hands?

I think part of the answer lies in the concept of "information cascades", described in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki.  In chapter 3 of the book, Surowiecki explores the concept of herding, which is a case of a large group of people imitating each other, on the assumption that some of the people in the group have a good reason for their behavior.  In many cases, this can be natural and beneficial behavior - Surowiecki cites the example of looking out the window to determine whether people on the street are carrying umbrellas, in order to determine whether it's likely to rain.  In other cases, however, this kind of behavior can be anti-competitive - Surowiecki explores data which shows that NFL coaches are overly cautious in football games.  The book also considers the case of the plank road industry, which appeared to be a profitable way to improve transportation between small towns in the early 19th century, and in fact proved to be a colossal investment disaster.

So what is behind such anti-competitive behavior?  There are a many competing theories.  Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point suggests that there are certain individuals who have unique skills which are instrumental in creating an "epidemic", which can range from a medical epidemic, to a crime epidemic, to an epidemic of stupid business decisions.  Surowiecki explores the research of economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch, which suggests that in cases where individual decisions are made with knowledge of prior decisions made by others, and where those decisions appear to have beneficial outcomes, an "information cascade" can form, allowing a large group of people to erroneously decide that the first early decisions were th right ones to make.  Welch, in fact, maintains a bibliography and resource reference on information cascades.

It's important to understand the anotomy of the right-leaning mindset in cable news, and the anti-union mindset in big business, in order to conquer and reverse these mindsets.  If there is, indeed, an information cascade among cable news executives which favors promoting conservative commentators, how do we stop that cascade?  Is the solution to boycott the news channels, regulate or sue the channels into providing balanced opinions, put public pressure on the executives through letter-writing campaigns?  Is it possible to create the competition we want to see - i.e., to start a new cable news channel which would consistently provide progerssive opinion and news, and thereby to capture audience share and advertising dollars from the current cable news channels?  Or is there some way to stop or reverse the information cascade, to flood the channels of communication that inform cable news executives, and thereby to convince them that conservative opinion per se is not the way to gain ratings on cable news, but niche-oriented programming is?

All of these questions could be applied to the union-busting industry, the gas-guzzling-cars industry, the anti-music-sharing industry, and any number of other industries in which corporate policy seems to herd around an anti-competitive and unprofitable consensus.  In this post, I've merely explored the question as it relates to the conservative-cable-news industry for the sake of example.  But I'd love to hear from you, particularly if you have some expertise on information cascades and similar fields of study - what do you think?  What is the smartest strategy for putting an end to anti-competitive conservative corporate behavior?

For those readers who are not experts in the field - would you be interested in a little bit of homework?  I'd like to see what we could accomplish by scouring the information cascade resources that Ivo Welch putting together, and seeing whether any of that material contains interesting ideas for understanding, and perhaps reversing, the information cascade in conservative cable news channels.  Let me know if that sounds interesting, and I'll try and organize it.