The PL Guide to Progressive Media

"Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch's empire, to the nattering nabobs of know-nothing radio, to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates – the religious, partisan, and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents."

Bill Moyers

"The deregulation pressure began during the Reagan era, when then-FCC chairman Mark Fowler, who said that TV didn't need much regulation because it was just a 'toaster with pictures,' eliminated many public-interest rules. That opened the door for networks to cut their news staffs, scuttle their documentary units (goodbye to 'The Harvest of Shame' and 'The Selling of the Pentagon'), and exile investigative producers and reporters to the under-funded hinterlands of independent production. It was like turning out searchlights on dark and dangerous corners. A crowning achievement of that drive was the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the largest corporate welfare program ever for the most powerful media and entertainment conglomerates in the world – passed, I must add, with support from both parties."

Bill Moyers

US Media

To qualify as a "newspaper" for our purposes, a publication must publish daily, carry more than local news, and have news as its actual focus (as opposed to, say, entertainment or "bidness").
A bare handful of papers of any persuasion do much serious investigative journalism, and most rely entirely on a single "wire service" (usually AP, Reuters, or UPI) for the entirety of their overseas news (what little there is). There are astonishingly few genuinely Progressive dailies in the US, if indeed there are any. In all, US newspapers are in possibly the worst state of journalistic decay in American history. (How about some real tort reform, that would make frivoulous lawsuits against investigative journalists a difficult and extremely expensive proposition?)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is easily one of the best US dailies, and probably the closest thing in the nation to a genuinely Progressive newspaper.

http://www.startribune.com/nationworld/
The Star Tribune provides good, solid, responsible reporting.

http://www.latimes.com/
The LA Times site does a lot of cookie setting, pops annoying ads galore, and the good content requires registration. Still, some good journalism can be found here from time to time. NOT truly Progressive, however.

Progressive voices are far more often found in weeklies than dailies. Unfortunately, many suffer from a lack of international, and sometimes even national, awareness, and suffer from the same hollow "infotainment" orientation as the corporate news. We think Americans are plenty "entertained" (or is it "distracted and misinformed") already.

http://www.texasobserver.org/
The Texas Observer is pretty much the high water mark in weeklies. In fact, by comparison, one hesitates to mention other weeklies in its presence. Feisty, insightful, and always a good read, but only some of the content is free. Imagine that.

http://www.agrnews.org/
Asheville Global Report. I don't know how these guys are able to provide the kind of in-depth coverage of national and global events that they do, but there they are every week, punching through the omissions, half-truths, and spin of the corporate junk media.

People's Weekly World
PWW covers the entire spectrum of social justice issues, particularly those of working people. Some content in Spanish.

http://www.american-reporter.com/
American Reporter is something of an oddity: a daily electronic tabloid of opinion, rather than news. Lots of good stuff, though.

http://www.villagevoice.com/
The Village Voice is, like American Reporter, a kind of daily round up of opinion with little news. At the moment, the Common Dreams website is doing the best job of staking out this turf. Unlike VV, however, it doesn't present original material.

http://www.thecommondenominator.com/
The US capitol has turned into an armed compound, where the idea of civil liberties has been abandoned. It's worth keeping an eye on what's going on, and The Common Demoninator does just that.

US radio is a virtual wasteland of pseudo-conservative toxic blab with just one, or possibly two, exceptions (so far): Pacifica and Air America radio. Of the two of these, it is the hard-hitting Pacifica that currently provides the gold standard in radio. Air America radio may yet come into its own. We think it will be worth watching.

(Analysis of the content of the supposedly "liberal" NPR has shown that it exhibits an overwhelming pro-corporate bias, as well as a slightly weaker conservative bias. To regain its balance and credibility, it should begin by booting the likes of Walmart and Archer Daniels Midland off its list of corporate sponsors, and give liberal think tanks and labor representatives vastly more airplay.)

http://www.pacifica.org/
It was a disgraceful day for the US-based corporate media when little Pacifica broadcast the truth about the coup in Haiti and virtually everyone else rubber stamped government propaganda without a glance at reality; yet, incredibly, this is what actually happened. This is the single most important place to go for news in the US today.

http://www.airamericaradio.com/
Air America. An attempt to counter the rabid, attack-dog propaganda of pseudo-conservative AM talk radio.

http://www.npr.org/
For the FAIR story that decisively debunks claims of liberalism at National Public Radio, see this link. We think all donors to NPR ought to be demanding a fairer shake for voices speaking on behalf of working Americans.

The best in American journalism is often found in magazines. In-depth coverage of an issue virtually demands more time than radio or television typically devote, and magazines probably provide the best format for providing such coverage.

http://multinationalmonitor.org/
If you don't have time to do much reading, then at least have a look at Multinational Monitor once in a while. Corporations already run the US, and via the WTO are making an all-out assault on running the entire world. Keep abreast here.

http://www.dollarsandsense.org
Dollars and Sense calls itself the "magazine of economic justice," and so it is. Very hard hitting, very incisive, and goes about overturning globalization propaganda with a vengeance. Go team, go!

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=8917
Somebody over at American Prospect is paying attention and thinking clearly. They run both a magazine and a first-rate web site as well. And they seem to be getting better as things get tougher. The kind of guys I think most Americans would want on their team.

http://www.thenation.com/
The Nation has been a standard bearer of Progressivism for nearly as long as Progressivism has existed. The country would be enormously better off if everyone read it.

http://63.135.115.158/
Yes! is the on-line presence of the husband and wife team of David and Frances Korten. A more dynamic duo has rarely existed. David is the author of the indispensable "When Corporations Rule the World." I regard him as one of the most important living writers, and Yes! is the place to get his latest thinking.

http://www.motherjones.com/
Mother Jones (named after the venerable lady pictured at the upper left above) has been kicking butt recently. Feisty, insightful. Check it out.

http://www.prospect.org/web/index.ww
The American Prospect. Lots of outstanding resources. You'll find a Progressive perspective concerning just about any topic of interest here.

http://www.secularhumanism.org
Free Inquiry is a publication of the Council for Secular Humanism. These are the folks the religious right foams at the mouth over. Well, yes, one might see where rationality is something that the moral entrepreneurs of the Christian Right wouldn't think highly of.

http://covertaction.org//content/view/13/41/
Covert Action Quarterly digs into the dismaying world of dirty government doings. Often disturbing reading, with material not likely to show up anywhere else. CAQ has recently joined forces with the Institute for Media Analysis, which looks at US corporate media in the light of its corporate propaganda function. Also disturbing.

NOTE: The Progressive magazine has ties to the Council on Foreign Relations. Not our cup of tea.

If we routinely heard from "think tanks" representing the economic interests of, say, redheads, it would surely strike everyone as an oddity. Yet we do hear routinely from think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, that represent nothing but the economic interests of the wealthiest 1% of Americans — and we somehow think nothing of it. Stranger still, the underlying viewpoint and agenda of these organizations is never stated clearly as what it is: anti-employee, anti-family, anti-environment, and anti-democracy. It's surely worthwhile to hear from the other side a little more often — indeed, it's far from clear why we should be hearing more than once in a blue moon from AEI or HF.

http://www.epinet.org/
Want to know the truth about unemployment, globalization, taxes, poverty, living standards, and just about anything else that has to do with money? The Economic Policy Institute has got the goods.

http://www.opensecrets.org/
The Center for Responsive Politics is a little difficult to classify, but their mission is urgent: to highlight the connection between corporate money and politics. Needless to say, they stay very busy. This is the place to go to find out who tells your misrepresentatives how to vote.

http://www.cbpp.org/
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities offers analysis of domestic policy in an economic perspective. They are especially good in watchdog mode, keeping track of where the economy is with respect to the historical track record. (The recent news in this regard is all atrocious.)

http://www.americanprogress.org
American Progress. This is one of the think tanks the media should be interviewing. Sharp analysis.

http://www.drummajorinstitute.org/plugin/template/dmi/14/*
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy. The oddly-named Drum Major has provided an indispensable voting record for Congress, revealing how they voted on issues of importance to the (shrinking) middle class. (Mostly against.)

We hear daily how the market is doing, and there are endless reports concerning the GNP. But we don't hear daily about the average wage (the news is bad), and while the daily newspapers all have business sections, they don't have employee or union sections (this, in itself, should tell you everything you need to know about American "journalism.") When Alan "enrich the rich" Greenspan belched, the corporate press could hardly wait to report it, but there's almost nothing heard from labor representatives. There's a "Wall Street Journal," but no "Main Street Journal." In short, we think it's about time the media primarily reflected the concerns of working people, and until they do, it's advisable to hear much more from representatives of working people. By the way: if you work, if family values matter to you, unions should matter to you, too. There's no other organized group looking after benefits and salaries, and nothing affects families more directly than that.

http://www.labornotes.org
If you work, then "labor" is you. The folks at "Labor Notes" say that they're putting the "movement back into the labor movement." Someone had better, before we all end up working at Wal-Mart for $8 an hour.  They're already the largest employer in the US.

http://www.afscme.org/
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Lots of good news here on many fronts.

http://www.uaw.org/
The United Auto Workers remain a feisty group. Keep track of the issues affecting working people here.

http://www.aflcio.org/
The AFL-CIO is the granddaddy of all unions. Another good place to keep track of what current politics imply for working people.

http://www.iamaw.org/
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. We love their Action Alerts & Advocacy page.

Like it or not, the world today is a complicated place, and it's almost impossible to deal in sufficient depth with its problems in the scope of a newspaper article, let alone a TV show. But Americans are inundated with books, and don't have a tradition of classics — books of permanent, or at least enduring, importance. In our PL Field Guides we've sorted out the wheat from the chaff. Links below.

The PL Economics Field Guide

The PL Political Field Guide

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/
NOW, the TV news show created by Bill Moyers, is the only news worth watching on TV. Everything else is distorted by the corporate bottom line. It appears on PBS. Don't miss this show!

Representative John Lewis

Representative John Conyers

The Progressive Caucus

Representative Dennis Kucinich

Representative Gwen Moore

Not every US representative is out lining their own pockets or accepting corporate bribes to further their own political ambitions.  Above you'll find links where you can sign up for newsletters from the best of the Congressional best, as well as a link where you can sign up for news from the Progressive Caucus - the most democratic of the Congressional organizations.

http://www.citizen.org
The sickening epidemic of Bush-inspired corporate crime is chronicled at the Nader-inspired Public Citizen, which also keeps an eye on the lousy products and destructive, anti-consumer legislation spawned by corporate cronies. Must reading.

http://www.corpwatch.org
The motto of Corpwatch is "Holding Corporations Accountable." As the large corporations have one hell of a lot to be held accountable for, Corpwatch has a gargantuan task on their hands.

http://www.commondreams.org/
Common Dreams does a great job of providing up to the minute commentary on the news. One of the best places on the net to go for Progressive editorial opinion.

http://www.aclu.org
Personal freedom? Plutocrats hate it. Every time Bush talks about freedom I experience a wave of nausea. If his plutocratic friends love freedom so much, why don't they believe in workplace democracy, instead of the workplace dictatorships they run? The ACLU is the forefront of the struggle for personal liberty. Not a bad idea to support them, while there's still some small sliver of freedom left.

http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=325&projectId=5
The Federation of American Scientists (Government Secrecy page). When governments start getting secretive, citizens ought to start getting suspicious. Our government gets more secretive by the day.

http://www.bullatomsci.org/
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists provides authoritative and insightful analysis of defense-related issues.

http://www.cdi.org/about/index.cfm
Defense Monitor is in the know about matters military and defense, and they're tough and skeptical. Not a lot of Progressives at this site, if any, but a good place to get the facts.

World Media

http://www.un.org/
Pseudoconservatives hate it, but hate it or not, the United Nations is the world governing body. Is it in need of reform? Of course. Is it in need of US support. Of course. But the US uses and abuses the UN more than supporting it, even going so far as to spy on member nations. Keep an eye on the UN page to get a better sense of what's going on worldwide.

http://www.icj-cij.org/
The World Court terrifies George Bush, as well it might. Bush himself might find himself before the court for violations of international law, and many of his "diplomats" would surely be making appearances there to explain their support for state terrorism. Like the UN, this is a good place to get a sense of what's going on in the rest of the world.

http://www.amnesty.org/
In a world in which transnational corporations are seeking global rule, it's no accident that human torture is a commonplace. Amnesty International does its best to call attention to abuses, and to halt them. If there's a more important cause than that, I don't know what it is.

http://www.ifj.org/
Fascist states hate the truth, and therefore hate honest journalists. Among the most important of the silent wars is the information war. The International Federation of Journalists looks after its own, and does its best to protect journalists from those who hate the truth. Keep an eye on freedom of the press and freedom of expression here.