A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
 ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

View this email in your browser

A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

What Takes the Place of Local News Ain't News

Right-wing propaganda that looks like local papers is flooding
America's towns

First, a PSA: You can now find a complete archive of more than 22,000 of
Terry Gross's invaluable interviews on WHYY's Fresh Air stretching
back 40 years here , and I literally
cannot think of a better or more entertaining way to educate yourself
about whatever important issue or famous person might interest you. (If
you listen to Terry with, say, David Letterman from 1981
,
you'll find it is also a fun time capsule.) I imagine if you went
through the entire archive, you might not know as many facts about the
world as my new hero, Matt Amodio
, but you might know almost
all you need to know to be a well-informed citizen.

My crush on Terry began in September 1992, when she interviewed me for
my first book, Sound and Fury
.
I admit to having just listened to it, here
.
What strikes me now is just how meager and relatively manageable were
the problems with America's mass media back then, There was no Fox
News, no Facebook, no Breitbart, barely any Rush Limbaugh, and the word
"Trump" was confined to the gossip pages of New York City tabloids,
with stories based on lies passed along by the fictional PR flack
"John Barron
."

My book was a portrait of what I therein dubbed the
"punditocracy"-a word I am proud to say has, since 2004, appeared
in the Oxford English Dictionary
. One of
the stories I tried to tell was the manner in which the values of
Washington's insider class were spread throughout the media by virtue
of the punditocracy's prominence in local newspapers and the
broadcasts of the roundtable shows such as the network's Sunday
broadcasts and "pundit sitcoms," like The McLaughlin Group
,
often on local NBC stations, and Agronsky and Company on PBS.

More changes have taken place since then than I can even begin to
enumerate in this space, but almost all of them have served to ensure
that "everyday people " have to work
harder and harder if they want access to reliable information about
what's going on in their communities and their country.FiveThirtyEight
notes

that "[f]rom 2000 to 2018, weekday newspaper circulation fell from
55.8 million households to an estimated 28.6 million
; between 2008 and
2019, newsroom employment fell by 51 percent
;
and since 2004, more than 1,800 local newspapers have closed

across the nation."

Writing in The Atlantic, Elaine Godfrey

recently published a thoughtful meditation on the meaning of the
decimation of a local Iowa newspaper by Gannett, which merged with the
media corporation GateHouse in 2019
,
and now owns one-sixth of America's newspapers. As Godfrey notes by
way of introduction, "By now, we know what happens when a community
loses its newspaper. People tend to participate less often
in municipal
elections, and those elections are less competitive
.
Corruption goes unchecked, and costs sometimes go up
for town
governments. Disinformation becomes the norm, as people start to get
their facts mainly from social media." The results are almost always
that "the most important stories ... will go uncovered: political
corruption, school-board scandals, zoning-board hearings, police
misconduct."

The political impact of these losses goes beyond the local. "In the
absence of local coverage, all news becomes national news," she notes.
"Instead of reading about local policy decisions, people read about
the blacklisting of Dr. Seuss books. Instead of learning about their own
local candidates, they consume angry takes about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Tom Courtney, a Democrat and four-term former state senator from
Burlington [Iowa], made more than 10,000 phone calls to voters during
his 2020 run for office. In those calls, he heard something he never had
before: "'People that live in small-town rural Iowa [said] they
wouldn't vote for me or any Democrat because I'm in the same party
as AOC,'" he told Godfrey. "'Where did they get that? Not local
news!' Courtney lost in November."

It's not much of a stretch to connect two stories on the Times home
page this past Tuesday morning: "Democrats Lost the Most in Midwestern
'Factory Towns,' Report Says
"
and "Why Democrats See 3 Governor's Races as a Sea Wall for Fair
Elections
."
Unfortunately, in neither story do the Times reporters identify the role
that deliberate media misinformation plays in enabling the Republican
Party's destruction of democratic norms on behalf of Trump and
company's open coup-plotting for the 2024 election
.

Last week, I wrote about the outsized role played by Facebook as a
purveyor of dangerous misinformation
,
abjuring the role that traditional news organizations once played in
helping people determine what's true and what's not. The shocker
identified in the 2020 study quoted in this article

is that on Facebook, "those self-identified as extremely
conservative-7 on a scale of 1 to 7-accounted for the most fake news
shared, at 26%. In the Twitter sample, 32% of fake news shares came from
those who scored a 7," significantly more than those who identified as
extremely liberal, and in far greater numbers when it comes to shared
articles, though the article-and to be fair, the study-attempts to
put an inappropriate "both sides" gloss on the study's findings.

One aspect of the "news desert/misinformation flood" that seeks to
further undermine our democracy and does not get nearly the attention it
should is the manner in which "local 'fake news' websites spread
'conservative propaganda' in the US." This effort, as this
Guardian report

explains, is led by "Locality Labs, a shadowy, controversial company
that purports to be a local news organization," but in reality is
"part of a nationwide rightwing lobbying effort masquerading as
journalism." The firm "operates scores of sites across Illinois,
Michigan, Maryland and Wisconsin, often sharing content. In Michigan
alone, the Lansing State Journal reported
,
almost 40 sites opened in one fell swoop." The company's websites
mimic those of the newspapers whose (relatively) truthful reporting they
are seeking to undermine. The company's outlets come from the same
cookie cutter: "The Great Lakes Wire is similar to the Ann Arbor
Times, which bears a striking resemblance to the DuPage Policy Journal
and the Prairie State Wire." But they don't just resemble one
another: "Each has the look of a local news organization, with
information on gas prices and local businesses." Some contain
(usually) buried information identifying their sponsor; many do not. But
"[w] hat the sites all have in common is praising Republican
politicians, and denigrating Democratic ones."

Tucker Carlson recently visited with Victor Orban, the destroyer of
Hungarian democracy whose party, Fidesz, ran an anti-Semitic campaign
that all but pretended Orban was actually running against the liberal
billionaire philanthropist George Soros. The Times recently ran a piece
reporting that Orban has "spent millions on lobbying, support for
think tanks and cultivating allies in Washington
."
Now I learn from Andrew Lawrence on Twitter
, that
Tucker Carlson announced he has an hour-long special coming in December
on how Jewish billionaire George Soros is "harming civilizations
around the world." The Hungarian-born Soros, a 91-year-old Holocaust
survivor, has long been a Carlson target: "If you're wondering why
so many people are being robbed, raped and killed in American cities
right now," he remarked on an episode last year, "George Soros is
part of the reason for that." I've written many columns about the
anti-Semitism that lies at the heart of conservatives' anti-Soros
campaign, one that has been embraced by not only top Republicans, but
also a number of right-wing Jews-most prominently, ex-Israeli Prime
Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Here

is a column on the subject from 2017.

Oh, and you can apparently thank AT&T for OAN (and Reuters for that
story, here
).

Have I made you sad? Let 200 or so Belgians
lift your spirits. Not enough, you say?
Here's some other guy singing that same
song. Check out the star turn around 4:40.

You may have noticed that that Springsteen fellow turned 72 on September
23. He was sweetly celebrated in McSweeney's with tributes here
,
here
,
here
,
here
,
here
,
here
,
and my personal favorite, here
.
I cannot let mention of that date pass, however, with noting that Bruce
shares a birthday with John Coltrane. His many versions of this song
constitute a few of my favorite things.

Finally, I was among an extremely enthusiastic crowd Wednesday night at
the Beacon Theatre where a remarkably still nimble-fingered (at 80)
Jorma Kaukonen warmed up the Tedeschi
Trucks Band with a solo acoustic set and then joined them for "Don't
Think Twice" and "Key to the Highway." I can't remember the last
time I saw a warm-up act leave with a prolonged standing ovation. As you
were likely not there, here
is TTB, joined
by the excellent Trey Anastasio on guitar, playing "Layla," from the
recently released live recording of an entire Derek and the Dominos
classic album, starring the world's greatest anti-vaxxing guitar god,
together with the late, great Duane Allman, whom you can hear on the
original, here . Trucks, who in the
estimation of those of us at Altercation is currently the world's
greatest guitarist of any kind, sort of replaced Duane in the Allman
Brothers, and, as part of the band's 40th anniversary celebration,
played "Layla" with said anti-vaxxer, here
, also at the Beacon in 2009.

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most
recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie-and Why Trump Is Worse
(Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal Media"
column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman

A MESSAGE FROM A PROSPECT PARTNER

Today, corporate narratives dominate our media.
Want an alternative?

Welcome to OptOut, a new network of independent, diverse, truth-telling
news outlets. We're all about justice, labor, the environment, and
voices that the corporate media overlooks. There, you can read Prospect
stories alongside your other favorite outlets. Sign up for our free
weekly newsletter and learn about our app here.

CLICK TO SHARE THIS NEWSLETTER:

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

 

[link removed]

[link removed]

 

To receive this newsletter directly in your inbox, click here to
subscribe. 

 

[link removed]

YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION SUPPORTS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Thank you for reading, The American Prospect, Inc.
1225 I Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC xxxxxx
United States
To opt out of American Prospect membership messaging, click here
.

To manage your newsletter preferences, click here
.

To unsubscribe from all American Prospect emails, including newsletters,
click here
.

Copyright (C) 2021 The American Prospect. All rights reserved.