IN THIS year's first presidential debate, television shots from behind his podium showed a boxy bulge on the back of President Bush. Since the broadcast on Sept. 28, bloggers have suggested that during the debate, aides were wiring responses to Bush from offstage. The Bush-Cheney campaign has denied the accusations, without specifying what had made the bulge.
These accusations are incredulous, especially considering the quality of President Bush's answers. Most likely, the president had just ruffled his suit. But more interesting than the rumors themselves is how the news media have reported them. Seeing how the media slobbered over innuendoes this summer, one might be surprised at their silence over this accusation. The fact is, however, that rumor mongering is a dirty art that the right dominates. And until the left can build a machine to effectively counter the right-wing media, Democrats -- as well as the ideal of an issue-based democracy -- will be fighting uphill battles.
In recent years, the right-wing media have developed an effective pattern that gives them advantages in dominating the media cycle. The process is founded upon right-wing media and candidates constantly deriding the mainstream media's "liberal bias," even though numerous studies (including several by the nonpartisan Pew institute) show that partisanship rarely bleeds through into stories and that these media have an interest in appearing objective. The mainstream media then feel a need to prove their impartiality, and their opportunity arrives when the right grabs a dubious story that its media outlets continuously report, directly or indirectly. Right-wing sources like Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Rush Limbaugh, the New York Post and (most recently) Sinclair Broadcasting Group repeat the story (or make themselves the story) with such persistence that mainstream outlets have to report the story to avoid accusations of bias. Right-wing outlets pound in their propaganda so thoroughly that it becomes legitimized by its presence in the mainstream media, giving partisan innuendoes free airtime and, typically, undue credence.
The past four years are rife with examples of this strategy at work. In the 2000 election, right-wing media dedicatedly exaggerated former Vice President Al Gore's exaggerations. In numerous instances, these outlets promulgated damaging twists of his words (Gore, for instance, never claimed he "invented the Internet") and when he in a presidential debate he confused which natural disaster he had visited with Texas official James Lee Witt, the right-wing media pushed through a Gore-bashing field day based on the detail.
Fox News and Rush Limbaugh played huge parts in casting the memorial service of the late Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone's as a partisan event at which 20,000 mourners booed Republican senators. These reports helped tip the scales to the Republican Senate candidate. In reality, boos coinciding with Trent Lott's appearance were barely audible on a broadcast of the service. Last year, the right-wing media machine accused California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante of racism for his ties to the Latino student group MEChA. The propaganda produced a dent in the polls that snowballed into huge momentum for Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in the gubernatorial recall election. This year, right-wing media pressure transformed a tiny ad campaign by the unknown Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose accusations of Sen. John Kerry have no basis in fact, into a national issue aimed at crippling his candidacy.
The popularity of some left-wing blogs on the Internet is beginning to counter the right's power, as shown by a story on Bush's boxy bulge that appeared in The Washington Post a week and a half after the debate. But a similar media machine working on behalf of the left could have made the same story into a full-fledged liability for Bush.
Clearly, until Democrats develop a counterweight to the right-wing media machine, they will constantly face an uphill electoral battle in major elections. In this sense, first steps like the left-wing blogosphere, Air America Radio, Michael Moore and the small youth-oriented cable network Al Gore is piecing together won't measure up; none of them can successfully force mainstream outlets to treat their pet stories with legitimacy. Until the left develops a working apparatus to spread its own propaganda, it will run on issues while conservatives will run on lies of their own design. Today, rich Democratic patrons are emptying their pocketbooks into the coffers of 527s. But they should be investing in the long-term solution to Democratic losses: a true media apparatus that fights the right on the airwaves.
But in the end, the right's domination not only victimizes Democrats, but the foundation of democracy. Hopefully, by balancing the right-wing media, liberals will be able to banish the entire category of lies from the mainstream; instead of demonstrating their impartiality by reporting on right-wing lies, mainstream outlets will be able to demonstrate their fairness by equally ignoring both sides' screed. The left has to learn that ideas and policies won't win it power as long as its opponents can propagandize with impunity. Until liberals restore a balance, a democracy based on important issues will fall to a political system hugely influenced by rumors, lies, personal attacks and the vapid discourse that provides no answers for our country.
Michael Slaven's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mslaven@cavalierdaily.com.
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