No doubt, this backlash perfectly reflects that larger success of the media machine's propaganda - the kind that teaches news consumers to see the world in us-versus-them, summer camp color-war terms.
Some conspiracy theorists have even claimed that conservatives within the Clear Channel company saw the big ratings success of my show in a political swing state, and decided I had to be moved, so as to not aid the Obama campaign (these people apparently haven't listened much to my show, which is hardly a water carrier for a particular party). They insist that after three years of hosting a successful program on my own, I am "selling out" the progressive cause. Because the content of my AM760 show was broader than just politics and more non-partisan than most progressive-themed shows, much of the self-selecting audience it attracted has been very supportive of the move. Since Clear Channel made the announcement about the new show, I've been hit with a wave of feedback. In other words, to reach as broad an audience as possible, the show will air on a station that has carefully avoided branding itself to any specific political ideology (you can listen, Colorado, on AM630 on your radio or from anywhere online at or on the iHeartRadio app). It is a station that mixes together all sorts of different voices, from consumer watchdog Tom Martino to Glenn Beck. Rather than being on a station branded to one ideology or the other, it will air weekdays from 3 p.m. Just as important as the program's transpartisan complexion is where on the radio dial it will air. As evidenced by our joint refusal to demagogue our extended local coverage of the Aurora massacre last week, we both come to the microphone with a desire to dial down the rhetorical volume and engage in an honest dialogue about the toughest issues of the day. He is a guy whom I don't agree with much, but who comes to conversations with principle and integrity. Launched in July and called "The Rundown With Sirota and Brown," the program is co-hosted by myself and President Bush's former Undersecretary of Homeland Security, Michael Brown. Utterly disgusted and frustrated with this reality, last month I made the decision to leave my morning radio show on Colorado's progressive talk station, Clear Channel's AM760, and accept Clear Channel's offer to launch a new weekday afternoon radio program - one whose goal is to do something wholly different. In visual terms, the predictable result of this has been an audience transformed into the bored, annoyed and deflated people in this brilliant commercial - only it's not the "special interests" who are pulverizing us with the same vapid red-versus-blue messages over and over again, it's the media itself. This two-pronged message is so homogenous and so constantly repeated across so many American news outlets that it likely makes foreign totalitarians and their state media apparatchiks jealous.
In almost every medium, the consensus message is one telling Americans to ignore their local communities and to think exclusively in Republican-versus-Democrat terms about everything. Put all of this noise together, and it's easy to conclude that the media world is as politically and ideologically polarized as the country it purports to reflect.īut listen, look and read more closely, and you slowly realize the mediasphere is not polarized at all - it's more unified than ever before. Instead, it has ignited an offensively reductionist screamfest that pretends there are simple bumper sticker-ready answers to incredibly complex problems. Indeed, the horrifying atrocity in an Aurora movie theater has prompted media coverage revolving not around tempered soul searching or the nuanced issues leading to such disasters. In the last few days, this sad reality has been underscored by the media coverage of the largest mass shooting in American history. scandal, and the blogs and Op-Ed pages teem with hysterical and increasingly incoherent screeds. Booming screams of "socialism!" or "facism!" or "Bill Ayers!" or "offshore bank accounts!" pervade the radio dial, red-faced TV pundits scream at each other about the latest D.C. The stakes are higher than the rock-climbing wall….Turn on the radio, flick on the television, fire up a news website or flip open a newspaper (if you can still find one), and you are treated to what looks like a real-time melee. After an explosive rehearsal, the Wildcats are launched into battle: Color War, an annual all-camp competition where rivalries are not only formed but encouraged.
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