Leave it to Forbes to get someone from the Hoover Institution to do an “in-depth” feature on “The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media” (1/22/09).
The results are about as bogus as you might imagine, including a number of people who are not only not liberals, but who are actively loathed by the actual left end of the media spectrum—and the feeling is generally mutual: folks like Fred Hiatt, Thomas Friedman, Fareed Zakaria, Christopher Hitchens (did their Nation sub lapse in 1998?), Maureen Dowd, Chris Matthews and Andrew Sullivan.
Then there are some corporate journalists whose “liberalism” seems entirely resume-based: Kurt Andersen founded Spy and does a culture show on NPR! David Shipley wrote speeches for Bill Clinton and works at the New York Times! Gerald Seib works at the Wall Street Journal but doesn’t write for the editorial page! Andersen is the kind of “liberal” who writes about “the Democrats’ ‘mommy party’ M.O. of naivete, mollycoddling and profligacy,” Seib does pieces like “Bipartisanship Could Help Victorious Democrats,” while Shipley’s Times op-ed page has been the object of repeated complaints from FAIR for its right-slanted choices.
There’s a couple of people on the list—Jon Stewart and Oprah Winfrey—who are indeed influential liberals who are “in U.S. media”…but if by “media” they don’t mean journalism, why not include Steven Spielberg or Bruce Springsteen? They’re “in U.S. media” too.
Then there’s the bloggers, who largely define themselves as not being part of the “MSM”: Arianna Huffington, Kevin Drum, Glenn Greenwald, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and Joshua Micah Marshall.
That leaves six people on the list of 25 who actually are liberal journalists with a regular platform in traditional U.S. media: the New Yorker‘s Hendrick Hertzberg; the Atlantic‘s James Fallows; Michael Pollan, a freelance writer for the New York Times; Times op-ed writer Paul Krugman; MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow; and PBS‘s Bill Moyers. What does this say about the myth of the liberal media? Maybe the Hoover Institution can study that.
What would a real list of the most important progressive media figures look like? Feel free to leave suggestions in comments.
Well, we’d have to define “liberal” and “progressive” … and the difference between the two, wouldn’t we?
Also, what do we mean by “most important”? I’ll go with who’s most important to me.
I guess for me it comes down to who I can (mostly) trust. It’s a short list, and I really can’t think of anyone in the corpress who qualifies … so I’ll just list folks whom I read and generally respect.
By no means do I mean to imply that I think they hung the moon … I just feel that they largely aren’t blowing smoke.
So, in no particular order …
Dean Baker, Ali Abunimah, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Danny Schecter, Jeremy Scahill, Naomi Klein, Allen Nairn, Walden Bello, Patrick Cockburn …
My memory’s not what it never was, so I know I’m leaving some solid intellers out … but there it is, for what it’s worth.
I left out persons like Chomsky and Zinn, as they really don’t qualify as “media figures” … or do they?
One other thing …
To me, part of being “progressive” is sussing that we’re all in this together … and part of that is encouraging, acknowledging and responding to feedback from your readers/listeners/watchers.
I understand time constraints, but if you can’t make time for that …
And there’s precious little of that going on, in my experience.
That needs to change … and soon.
Hertzberg, Fallows, Pollan, Krugman, Maddow, Moyers: There’s a roll call I’d be proud to be associated with.