Sam Smith – I got involved in progressive journalism
in the 1960s not just because of the wrong doings of the political right but
because of an appealing assortment of reforms the good folks were pushing. What
I find strange about our current state of affairs is that, while Donald Trump
is properly criticized, the advocacy of new approaches is nowhere near as
powerful as it was, say in the 1960s.
We need to create a vision of the good as well as condemnation
of the evil. One reason this hasn’t happened well so far is that the conventional
media is far more accepting of the right
than it should be. It even sometimes condemns the sensible as “socialism”
in a country that already has Social Security, Medicare and other reforms that
haven’t hurt conventional businesses in the slightest.
Because large media largely defines journalism there has
been a little noted drift towards institutions controlled by large media corporations
telling how we think about political issues. This post is a rare exception:
Major media can be very useful in uncovering the evils of politicians
like Trump but don’t count on big support for the best reforms.
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