David Swanson’s latest piece in OpEd News (10/1/08) chronicles the fight against corporate media that report on the economic crisis as if, Swanson paraphrases, “the stock market is the same thing as the economy”:
Small and independent media outlets are trying to do the work of a democratic communications system right now on this issue, as always. And grassroots groups that understand the problem are buying advertisements stating their admirable viewpoints in the New York Times, funding a company that daily defends the military-banker complex. They hate to do it, of course. They feel really, really bad about doing it. But what choice do they have? The smaller outlets are too small. And all the money we aren’t giving to message ads we’re giving to political campaigns to spend on election ads on corporate television—more than enough money every election to have gone out and created new television networks from scratch.
Swanson’s overarching point: “Small media outlets are small because WE DON’T FUND THEM. The right-wingers have the Washington Times and Fox News because THEY FUND THEM.”
