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The Spotlight Project believes that a truly independent and aggressive press is the best tonic for the current political situation.

The following list of articles provide a comment on the media, what works, what doesn't, and how it affects us. Over time, (and as the site is fleshed out) this list will be regularly updated. In the mean time, please send suggestions for additional articles.

Jamison Foser of Media Matters for America has written a series of articles that provides a very good overview of how the media shapes public opinion and of the disparate media coverage between progressive and conservative causes. The series starts with the simple statement "The dominant political force of our time is the media", it then provides numerous examples of how the media supports the right and disparages the left, and finally ends with a number of suggestions about how we can make a difference. Read the entire four-part series. Parts I, II, III, and IV.
"Media Matters" by Jamison Foser

...The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruthlessness or the tactical and strategic superiority of the Republicans, and it is not your favorite theory about what is wrong with the Democrats.

The dominant political force of our time is the media.

Time after time, the news media have covered progressives and conservatives in wildly different ways -- and, time after time, they do so to the benefit of conservatives.

Peter Daou, a blogger and political consultant has been at the intersection of blogs, politics and the media for a number of years. His article below examines the relationship between blogs, the media and the political establishment. He also examines the differences in the Triangle from the Left and the Right and concludes that the Left's Triangle is currently broken. Lastly, he suggests "that the best strategy for the progressive netroots is to go after the media and Democratic Party leaders and spend less time and energy attacking the Bush administration."

The blogger Shystee comments on Daou's Triangle article and and provides graphic illustration. See Shystee's Daou's Triangles, Illustrated and an Daou's Triangles, Expanded AKA Shystee's Media Kabbalah.
THE TRIANGLE: Limits of Blog Power by Peter Daou

...Looking at the political landscape, one proposition seems unambiguous: blog power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment. Forming a triangle of blogs, media, and the political establishment is an essential step in creating the kind of sea change we've seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Simply put, without the participation of the media and the political establishment, the netroots alone cannot generate the critical mass necessary to alter or create conventional wisdom. This is partly a factor of audience size, but it's also a matter, frankly, of trust and legitimacy. Despite the astronomical growth of the netroots (see Bowers and Stoller for hard numbers), and the slow and steady encroachment of bloggers on the hallowed turf of Washington's opinion-makers, it is still the Russerts and Broders and Gergens and Finemans, the WSJ, WaPo and NYT editorial pages, the cable nets, Stewart and Letterman and Leno, and senior elected officials, who play a pivotal role in shaping people's political views. That is not to say that blogs can't be the first to draw attention to an issue, as they often do, but the half-life of an online buzz can be measured in days and weeks, and even when a story has enough netroots momentum to float around for months, it will have little effect on the wider public discourse without the other sides of the triangle in place. Witness the Plame case, an obsession of left-leaning bloggers long before the media and the political establishment got on board and turned it into a political liability for Rove and Bush...

Eric Boehlert's recent book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush chronicles how the Press handles Bush with kid gloves where they would have been in a tizzie a few years before. Eric's article below discusses the reaction of the Press in the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina. For a brief while it looked like the Press was waking up. Nah, they stirred for a bit and then mostly rolled over and went back to sleep.
Katrina jolts the press By Eric Boehlert

...Even on Sept. 2, when the New York Times acknowledged that Bush was taking heat for his handling of the crisis, the paper couched it in purely partisan terms, under the headline: "Democrats and Others Criticize White House's Response to Disaster."

Eventually, though, the pictures from New Orleans became too ghastly to ignore and reporters turned angry.

For years, frustrated news consumers have wondered what it would take to finally awaken the press from its perpetual, lazy slumber. Now we know the answer: one ravaged American city and a few thousand dead civilians.

Paying attention to the news can be very frustrating. We're often left wondering how a news reporters can ignore the facts or simply repeat talking points and spin. People typically go into journalism, in part, to get at and report the truth. There seems to be a disconnect. Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, suggests that reporters often operate in a manner that reduces the risk to themselves at the expense of informing readers.
Reporters: Informing Readers vs. Minimizing Risk By Jay Rosen (commenting to a post on Brad Delong's blog)

Brad: Those "patterns" begin to find some explanation when you realize that categories like "hard news" rather than "analytical piece" are simultaneously serving as a reality-reporting system, and a risk-reduction method. Hard news is supposed to be lowest risk, not necessarily harder information. It's lower risk to just say what happened ("Rove said...") without saying what's true. An "analysis" piece means you can speculate about motives and what might happen from here. Slightly higher risk, but not necessarily more "analytical."

Or let's take the classic in press watcher frustration... He said this happened, she said that happened. It tries to inform you in a half-hearted way, but it secures protection from being wrong in a full-throated way. "I'm just telling you what they said." It's not truthtelling but innocence-establishing behavior-- see? no agenda.

Here's the catch: officially, journalists only engage in truthtelling. That they would the choose the more innocent account over the more truthful one contradicts the professional self-image. So it doesn't happen, even though it does. When what journalists are doing makes no sense at all to you on the reality-reporting scale, switch yourself over to the risk-reduction (or "refuge") scale and measure it there...

The Press can be instrumental in developing a story and giving it life. Likewise, if the Press ignores a story, we may never hear about. For instance, President Bush's use of signing statements is unprecedented and according to critics suggests a constitutional crises that is much more serious than a failed land deal or a stained dress. Yet, where is the 24x7 coverage? It sadly lacking. Dan Froomkin's article below examines the converage and suggests a number of questions that the Press should be asking but aren't.
Bush's signing statements: Constitutional crisis or empty rhetoric? By Dan Froomkin

President Bush's unprecedented use of "signing statements" to quietly assert his right to ignore legislation passed by Congress - including its ban on torture - first came to light in January due to some aggressive reporting by Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage.

In April, Savage reported his astonishing discovery that Bush has claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws in all since he took office:...

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files "signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register. . .

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

Since then, a few major news organizations have taken note of this amazing story -- then let it drop. Most haven't covered it at all. Up until this morning, not one reporter had asked the president, the vice president, or even the press secretary a single question about Bush's penchant for signing statements...

We are at war in Iraq, in part, because the media didn't do its job and, in some cases, enabled the administration. The following article describes a study that links peoples misconceptions and support for the war to their primary source of news. The full study provides all of the details. NPR & PBS came out looking good, followed by print news. Fox, not so much.
Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War

A new study based on a series of seven US polls conducted from January through September of this year reveals that before and after the Iraq war, a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions and these are highly related to support for the war in Iraq.

The polling, conducted by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland and Knowledge Networks, also reveals that the frequency of these misperceptions varies significantly according to individuals' primary source of news. Those who primarily watch Fox News are significantly more likely to have misperceptions, while those who primarily listen to NPR or watch PBS are significantly less likely.

An in-depth analysis of a series of polls conducted June through September found 48% incorrectly believed that evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda have been found, 22% that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, and 25% that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq. Overall 60% had at least one of these three misperceptions.

Such misperceptions are highly related to support for the war. Among those with none of the misperceptions listed above, only 23% support the war. Among those with one of these misperceptions, 53% support the war, rising to 78% for those who have two of the misperceptions, and to 86% for those with all 3 misperceptions. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments, "While we cannot assert that these misperceptions created the support for going to war with Iraq, it does appear likely that support for the war would be substantially lower if fewer members of the public had these misperceptions."...