Here’s something interesting, this video from Bill Moyers Journal, 3 april 2009. ‘Moyers talks with alternative media heavyweights Glenn Greenwald (Unclaimed Territory) and Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!) about what can and can’t be addressed in big corporate media. Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald are the first recipients of Park Center for Independent Media Izzy Award (named for I.F. Stone).’
Video streaming.
Download .m4v.
From the transcript:
GLENN GREENWALD: If you only speak to a very narrow slice of people. If you spend most of your time in Washington only speaking to political elites in both parties, or corporate executives and lobbyists, you have a very distorted picture of what public opinion is. I mean, a lot of times both political parties will agree on a certain position that a huge number of Americans, often even majorities actually reject. And yet, if all you’re doing is talking to people in political power and political and financial elite, you will believe that the range of opinion is much narrower than it actually is. And so, it’s not even some sort of Machiavellian or conspiratorial effort, sometimes, to exclude certain opinions. It’s actually the fact that reporters and media stars and corporate and establishment journalists are so embedded into the establishment as a cultural and sociological matter. That they’re so completely insular and out of touch from what public opinion actually is. And polls show that huge numbers of issues and positions that are held by large numbers of Americans are ones that are virtually never heard in our media discussions.
AMY GOODMAN: I think the way the media works is they show the spectrum of opinion between the Democrats and the Republicans in Washington. Often that is very narrow. You look at the lead up to the invasion in Iraq, the core, the major Democrats joined with the Republicans in enabling that. And you look at now with health care, the same thing. But the fact is, the majority of Americans fall outside of that opinion.