When are Progressive Billionnaires going to use their wealth to buy media companies and keep them

[samsingh]

independent of corporate influence.

We are losing that battle to the republican traitors. CNN is now conservative, Fox is a traitorous disgrace, newsmax is fascist.

We only have MSNBC and the other networks sway to the right. Even MSNBC does too much both siderism.

[harumph]

1. Maybe they're not really that progressive or are worried

about being linked strongly to a party. Maybe they have no backbone.
Maybe they're only a brand - lacking any principles.

[pwb]

2. Cable is against us.

Try You Tube for news. They have Network and Cable highlights and you can skip commercials.

[brooklynite]

7. YouTube? Seriously?

Name a YouTube program that has its own reporters doing real journalistic investigations.

All YouTube does is let people seek out voices that will agree with their existing opinions.

[Dorian Gray]

72. totally agree with this

You tube isn't a proper source for anything other than surprise egg unwrapping videos.

[Ocelot II]

12. Youtube is just an aggregator. They don't do their own research or reporting.

[JI7]

3. Who are the progressive billionaires you are thinking of that should do this ?

[quakerboy]

18. This question, exactly.

[gab13by13]

4. You are correct about MSNBC

it's major shareholders are BlackRock and Vanguard. Other than Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes, and Mehdi Hasan I won't watch MSNBC.

There are liberal outlets, I listen to Zerlina Maxwell, Stephanie Miller, and Thom Hartmann.

Your thread is spot on. Democrats are always behind the 8 ball because the MSM is right wing, sometimes it is subtle like;

cable news anchors not using the term, "The Big Lie."

Changing definitions of words;

Fence to wall
Gang of domestic terrorists to militias
Search to raid.

It all adds up.

[Autumn]

5. The more money you have the less progressive you are. IMHO. nt

[Just A Box Of Rain]

43. The problem with a populist mentality in a nutshell.

[JHB]

6. Billionaires would be nice, but there should be enough millionaires to do better

If only they'd spend resources toward something more effective than billboard stunts or throwing money at conservative ex-Republicans for making anti-trump videos that make them squee.

Even if one can't spring forth a media empire ex nihilo, you can at least form an organization that provides promotional services for liberal and progressive voices already out there. Help them get seen and heard.

It's the neglect of this sort of investment that let RT make such inroads to progressives, and was able to amplify the worst, most destructive of them.

[certainot]

39. it wouldn't take much to destroy the only rw medium that can create the alt reality. RW radio is

the biggest problem the last 30 years. the other media are more notable for repeating the lies or , like major media, ignoring the truth

waiting for billionaires or millionaires is the wrong tactic. it would help but talk radio is the major prob and there's an easy fix for that.

all other rw media is visible and is often challenged. those other media forms, like fox, rw internet, rw social media has a democratic counterpart.

only rw radio can do the unchallenged repetition needed to sell these vast alternate realities the modern trumpers operate on. the other media forms piggyback that repetition, whoever gets it started, whether it's a rw think tank here or in another country.

two ways to get the radio ad agencies to start democratizing and breaking up the talk radio monopoly:

advances in artificial intelligence make if easy to automatically record, transcribe, and analyze large acts of talk radio without listening. same on a smaller scale to identify advertisers, and the sports teams that endorse those statiosn, and associate them with content. MIT media lab prototyped using it to analyze billions of words of talk radio for a non political purpose and that could be modified.

the other thing is for democrats to start complaining to their university (like these 87 at fakenewsradio.org) and pro sports teams to get them to look for apolitical alternatives to broadcast sports on. one school could start a snowball rolling.

either of those two, or especially both those tactics would scare the crap out of the radio ad industry and they'd have to figure out a way to fix the problem before ether lost an avalanche of advertisers.

[JHB]

47. And where do you propose to get the resources to do that in any organized fashion?

It gets back to funding organizations and people to do it. The Right has enough sugar daddies provide that to their worker bees, while our potential ones don't think strategically about it.

[certainot]

58. it's free to complain to universities and pro teams. black athletes are being used to spread racism

and call kneeling athletes unAmerican and calll BLM a terorist org. there are hundreds of schools and pro teams involved and close to 50% of the major radio stations. one famous athlete or sports celeb could start the avalanche.

get one school to announce it will start looking for apolitical alts and others will have to start rereading their mission statements and following.

what school will lead? in florida for eg FLORIDA 20 Florida 10, Florida St. 4 Miami 2, South Florida 2, Central Florida 2 ----- south florida might want to stop supporting climate denial and UF would feel a lot of pressure to follow.

that would destroy Florida GOP chances as everyone started noticing the crap on those stations

on AI: fakenewsradio.org describes a simple way to analyze local rw radio and list advertisers without much listening - there are many alternatives and a lot of it is free.

a larger scale use of the MIT model would cost very little and a techie or two or a mediaa org to do a lot with few resources. someone with a gofundme could get it done.

[Hekate]

63. I don't know if there are any independent radio stations surviving. They were bought up years ago

They play music and news on a continuous loop. No DJs required. Emergency news relevant to your area, like floods and tornadoes, is not there anymore.

Last I heard, there was only one talk-radio show available to the US Army, and it was right-wing. You could check that out and start bugging your congresscritter and Senator.

As for local TV stations, they too have been bought up in recent years, by Sinclair I think. If you want to retain your newscasting job, read the script. When DeJoy started dismantling post offices, the station covering my former town reported that all drop-off boxes but one had been removed from the street in front of X post office. Fine as far as it goes. What they didn’t say was that this was an incredibly busy street near a freeway onramp, and they didn’t ask why.

[Bettie]

8. They're not going to do that

because they benefit from the system as it is.

They can pretend to be the good guys while reaping the rewards of our twisted and broken society.

They have enough money that, in the end, it doesn't matter to them who is in office as they can leave the country at any time should it become too dystopian.

[TeamProg]

23. +1

[DFW]

9. We've never had it that easy. It's why GOTV is our slogan, not a Republican one

Telling people with a lot of money what to do with it has never been a tactic of great persuasion. Confiscation by force, from one end of the political spectrum to the other, from right (eg Hitler) to left (eg Stalin) has always ended up with those doing the confiscation keeping it for themselves. The only ones who will save us are the ones we see in the mirror every morning.

[MichMan]

10. Like to see them buy up a lot of rental properties and cut rents in half.

[Rebl2]

11. Like that idea

[Demsrule86]

13. I don't know about you guys, but I think we have chased out Democratic money people in

the name of purity. I know some liked it but I thought Elizabeth Warren's attack during the last primary on Bloomberg was not wise. He has not lifted a finger to help us since then that I have seen.

[LonePirate]

16. Bloomberg is planing to spend $60M this year per WaPo

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/18/bloomberg-spending-democrats-midterms/

Top Democratic donor Mike Bloomberg, a billionaire former candidate for president, plans to spend more than $60 million on this year’s elections, according to his advisers, opting for a lower public profile than he has taken in recent years.

[Demsrule86]

46. When? The election is less than three weeks away...He always says that.

[Hekate]

65. I'm sure there is a way to track his donations. Oppo research certainly finds it out fast enough.

Have you tried?

[quakerboy]

20. Whereas I think we have given money a lot of control of the party

in the name of power. I know some like it, but it turns off a lot of voters, so I think its not wise.

[KPN]

28. Touch

[Demsrule86]

48. We need to be able to fight fire with fire...we will accomplish nothing if we don't have money.

I don't like the United ruling, but thanks to Nader and the Greens it si there so we have to fund our candidates...and that needs to include state candidates.

[Polybius]

44. Besides Biden, I think Bloomberg was the only one who would have beaten Trump in 2022

Not sure if anyone agrees, but I liked him as Mayor.

[Demsrule86]

49. He would have had a chance but being from New York like California makes it hard to win a

presidential election.

[Polybius]

54. This is the closest that we have come to agreeing in a while, haha

But I do think that Bloomberg would have spent a massive amount of money on the election. He also has moderate Republican appeal. I'm in NYC, and know Republicans who love him.

[Demsrule86]

56. He would have had plenty of money for sure...I always vote Democratic. So he would have had

my vote and yours...

[betsuni]

55. Demonizing billionaires as mustache-twirling cartoon villains.

A populist favorite.

[DFW]

71. As soon as your net worth crosses the billion mark

Apparently some people would have you officially entered into the Snidely Whiplash club.

[DFW]

70. It doesn't seem to have fazed Ted Turner any

He's worth a couple of billion.

According to "Celebrity Net Worth:"

How much money has Ted Turner given away?
OVERVIEW: Since 1990, Ted Turner has given more than $350 million in grants, mostly to conservation efforts and other environmental causes. Another $1 billion has gone to the United Nations Foundation, and $250 million to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which Turner also helped to create.
------------------------------------

I've met the guy, and he is totally sincere, he doesn't do this for show. Indeed, he has kept himself out of the headlines and the limelight for years.

But, he IS a billionaire, and therefore, by definition, evil. Right? (Ummm, no)

[Ocelot II]

14. What I want is a scrupulously neutral news outlet and not a biased one,

even one that's biased in ways I agree with. The problem we have now is that everybody is huddled in the news silos of their choice, watching only "news" that's interpreted according to their personal bias. It's to the point where people can't even agree on facts, let alone what the facts mean. I miss the days of Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley, where you got straight news without editorializing. The cable news shows and talking heads we like, Maddow et al., are liberals, and they don't pretend not to be. They don't offer up lies like the Fox people, but they are editorialists and not news reporters; they are the equivalent of newspaper op-eds. When we evaluate news sources we need to consider the psychological phenomenon of confirmation bias and think about whether we are getting accurate information or just information that pleases us.

[Justice matters.]

19. When you have millions of citizens with near zero or no critical thinking skills for themselves,

they will watch news sources and won't be able to understand what the "news" is about.

Jimmy Kimmel's sidewalk interviews show the average citizen can't name the French capital city... or many other "easy" answers that can be found in less than a 5-second online search!

Maybe that's why cable op-eds are that popular?

[Ligyron]

27. Even Hunt and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite were thought of and smeared as liberal by many.

They just didn't like facts as they tend to support a more liberal interpretation of reality.

Kinda like science.

PBS was pretty neutral for a long while, but then no money or support for that type of thing anymore it seems.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

38. I'm with you. Let's see a return of honest journalism instead of 24/7 opinion-entertainment

shows aimed at supplying confirmation bias to niche audiences.

[Demsrule86]

50. We don't have a silo...our people get hammered from everyone. MSNBC is not a liberl media source.

[iemanja]

52. Cry me a river

You want a government propaganda station, not news.

[Ocelot II]

60. The problem is that we create our own silos. We watch only those programs

and people who say what we want to hear. Whether or not MSNBC is a "liberal" media source isn't the point I'm trying to make; it's that there are only liberal or conservative outlets and people choose only the ones they already agree with.

[Hekate]

59. This

[LonePirate]

15. It seems like progressive billionaires are more focused on saving the environment.

Maybe I am wrong. The right’s billionaires are seizing communication and media channels in their quest for control and power. The ones on the left are trying to save the planet and the species.

[MichMan]

17. Are they setting an example by selling their private jets and their mansions?

[Heather MC]

21. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Because there's no such thing as a progressive billionaire🤷🏾‍♀️

Can we stop pretending the wealthy or some kind of Superman that's gonna swoop in and save the day.

Why would they fix a problem they're actively causing because they feel like they'll be insulated from the effects of climate change because of their money

[Marthe48]

22. The best remedy is gathering news on your own

and sharing it on sites like this.

The cable news channels are not really reporting news as much as the personalities are commentating. We already know that MSNBC is going to lean left with their comments, and other stations are going to bend over and grab their ankles going right. As soon as the kernals are dropped, turn down the volume and consider what you think about the news story. We should not rely on much that we hear on tv. The stations want us to stay tuned, so they can try to sell us stuff, so it is light on the content and heavy on the entertainment. Go outside if you can and notice what the world is like in your corner of it, get your own perspective. Part of our responsibility in our culture is to take in information and process it in a way we understand it, and then share it in a way that others can understand it.

I'll listen to legal experts, because I'm not a lawyer and reccently many news stories involve interpreting the laws. Some of the decisions seem unfair, but if a legal expert offers reasons, I think over the reasons and try to understand how the legal decision was made.

Around 90% of the media outlets are owned by 6 companies. You can bet they want to maintain or grow the status quo. Something we should ask ourselves is why liberal media is not as popular or long-lived as rw media? Maybe it is because liberals can think for themselves, and rw can't. Maybe because liberals are active in our lives, showing by example what freedom and free thought look like. I don't think the rw base has the inclination to make up their own minds.

[louis-t]

24. I remember 40 years ago when repugs were whining

that all media was liberal. I kept thinking "there are enough rich Republicans, why don't they start their own media companies." I thought at the time that it was more beneficial to them to have something to whine about. Who knew that 14 years later they would start faux news for the purpose of brainwashing their listeners. Even Newt Gingrich admitted once that the "liberal media" whine was a lie.

[jaxexpat]

25. I'm not sure there is a thing called "progressive billionaires".

I'm totally certain that billionaires could not care less about the masses aside from maintaining a ready pool of slaves, investors, victims or enforcers.

Progressives are the people who see financial success as a state wherein it is painless to help the helpless through support for causes which will benefit the general public. Further, Progressivism is when extraneous wealth is useless unless invested in justice.

One does not become a billionaire harboring such philosophy or entertaining notions of altruism. One becomes a billionaire by harboring one's great/lucky success in highly profitable/lucky investments. Add a dash of ruthlessness and voila, billionaire.

[TeamProg]

35. +1

[SheltieLover]

26. I've been wondering the same thing.

They know psy ops work! Why not use their wealth to buy up media outlets & use them for the greater good?

[NullTuples]

37. Maybe because that is a bridge too far & would cut into their wealth by changing society.

They are a product of our society as it was and as it is now. Their wealth came from concentrating wealth away from workers and toward themselves, even if they espouse liberal or progressive values. They're playing from within the system which means they are also limited by it. But also, the status quo maintains their wealth & power & safety. Changing society too much might do the opposite, and they may not be willing to risk it.

[SheltieLover]

40. I suppose perhaps you're right.

No other explanation I can think of.

[dlk]

29. Generally progressive billionaire is an oxymoron

Outside of George Soros, who has personally experienced the horrors of fascism, American billionaires are generally about amassing their own wealth and noblesse oblige has become a diminishing value. The mainstream media is deeply invested in toxic bothsiderism because they see it as the optimum choice for generating their revenue stream. There are a few exceptions, however, but whether billionaires or the media, it’s usually all about the money.

[NullTuples]

30. Remember 10-15 years ago when it seemed like journalism just...quit?

Turns out it was because Alden Global Capital - a far right wing investment group - started buying up newspapers, especially in cities. Then they systematically did what private equity companies do: they began to extract all value from each company to boost investor returns. One of their first steps is typically to fire the entire newsroom and sell off the presses & real estate. The news outlet then survives off what advertising it can still get, but mostly they keep it running to continue bringing in the revenue stream from longtime loyal subscribers. Meanwhile, what was once a news reporting company that gathered information becomes one that for the most part reformats story feeds from regional/aggregate sources, even when they appear to be "local" stories. Just Alden Capital alone has done this to many hundreds of city newspapers in the last decade or so, and they aren't the only one. Just the most notable due to their size, drive, secrecy...and overt financial support for the Republican Party.

Google your local paper's name + owner. Then do the same for whatever company name turns up. Keep going and it's highly likely that after three or five layers you'll discover a private equity company.

[Hekate]

64. This, precisely

[Pepsidog]

31. Good question I often ask as well. Most progressive news and commentary behind a pay wall.

[SheltieLover]

42. And many in rural areas don't have cable to even get MSNBC!

So they have NO idea what's happening!

[ancianita]

32. Because autocratic corporate media monopolies cockblock democratic messaging.

[relayerbob]

33. I doubt there are too many progressive billionaires

A few, sure. But, by and large, the mindset that causes people to become billionaires is the antithesis of "progressive thougt"

[TeamProg]

34. I don't think having a large Lib. Media Outlet would matter. Viewers are going to seek out what

they want to hear = Confirmation Bias.

Plus, liberal viewers aren't nearly as excited about 'outrage topics'* like Repukes are.

* The abortion issue IS taking liberals to a point of outrage / motivation for sure, but this is an anomoly, libs don't generally group-think.

GOP outrage topics:
Voter fraud
George Soros
Pedophiles
Teachers
Gay marriage
Alec Baldwin
High crime
Taylor Swift
Gas prices
Books
Hilary
Student loan forgiveness
Nancy Pelosi
Public debt (but, not really)

to name a few..

[iemanja]

53. Hence the complaints here about MSNBC and PBS

Not sufficiently spreading the word of the Democratic Party. People want confirmation bias, and clearly that is what the OP is seeking.

[BlueKentuckyGirl]

36. So true.

Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, both millionaires or maybe billionaires, tried to buy themselves into the Presidency when they ran in the 2020 race. Not a peep out of either one of them since they had to withdraw. Seems they could put some of their millions to good use supporting progressive causes and media!

[Midnight Writer]

41. I'm done waiting for a savior. He ain't coming. We need to do this ourselves, working together.

[SheltieLover]

45. Yup!

[ancianita]

51. We have some progressive billionaire/millionaires, but media monopolists would drive them out.

Last edited Sat Oct 22, 2022, 04:04 PM - Edit history (1)

Thomas Steyer
Fred Eychaner
S. Donald Sussman
George Marcus
James and Marilyn Simons

Deborah Simon
MacKenzie Bezos
Andrew Yang
Oprah Winfrey
Warren Buffett

Bill Gates
Mike Bloomberg
George Soros
George Lucas
Meg Whitman

Howard Schultz
Tim Cook
Mark Cuban
J.B. Pritzker
Eric Schmidt

Dustin Moskovitz
Reid Hoffman
Laurene Powell Jobs
Michael Moritz
Kenneth Duda

Seth Klarman
Stephen Mandel
Phillip Ragon
Henry Laufer
Stewart Bainum Jr

Kate Capshaw
Jeffrey Skoll
Seth Macfarlane
Kathryn and James Murdoch
Sam Bankman-Fried

[Hekate]

57. #1 It's their money & they get to decide. #2 Are any of them interested in a media empire?

#3 If someone is “progressive,” they generally don’t go in for propaganda & lies, do they? #4 What is your plan?

[betsuni]

61. And if they did there'd be endless complaining, how they hate this or that show, that host,

how dare they have THAT guest on, blah blah blah.

[keep_left]

62. One possible solution would be for the labor unions to create a media startup--or fund one.

Many years ago (around the time of the founding of DU), the UAW was trying to start a radio network. I forget why that didn't work out. The other side does tend to have money to burn, and that is always a problem because the "left", such as it is in this country, is usually resource-constrained.

As one example of the folly that the right can afford (and we can't), there's CatholicFamilyRadio (yes, all one word). It was an ill-fated network funded by some really reactionary radtrad Catholic billionaires like Tom Monaghan (Domino's Pizza founder) and Peter Lynch who got together to bankroll a national rollout of their "brand" in the late '90s. They claimed they would topple people like Rush Limbaugh and get everyone listening to far-right Catholic radio. They cheaped out on the "talent", hiring a bunch of third-stringers like Dan Lungren and Al Kresta (a Catholic Limbaugh clone). The programming was so awful that they were out of business in a year and a half, burning through something like $150 million. Nothing like that sweet sugar daddy billionaire money.

This kept going with other sugar-daddy-funded radtrad experiments like Ave Maria Radio and (Ir)-Relevant Radio; the latter continues today (and was recently bailed out by EWTN).

Probably the easiest thing to do for the labor unions would be to start up some YouTube channels, etc. which are very cheap. While talk radio is still a political force, its audience continues to trend older year by year, and it is not nearly as feasible to groups that are not well-funded.

[ancianita]

66. Good information, thank you. Re union YouTube channels, I've looked. The closest I could find

is this Fusion Channel talk with Bernie Sanders on unions. This is good. Also included are "Fusion Friends" YouTube links:

Splinter: https://goo.gl/BwuJiy
F-Comedy: https://goo.gl/Q27Mf7
Fusion TV: https://goo.gl/1IbZ1B
Gizmodo: https://goo.gl/YTRLAE
Kotaku: https://goo.gl/OcnXv7
Deadspin: https://goo.gl/An7N8g
Jezebel: https://goo.gl/XNsnCJ
Lifehacker: https://goo.gl/3rNmzw
Io9: https://goo.gl/ismnzP
Jalopnik: https://goo.gl/u7sDEk
Sploid: https://goo.gl/4yq2UY
The Root: https://goo.gl/QMOjBE

[keep_left]

67. Thanks for the good info. The Fusion channel is a good example...

...of what is needed. I know that the late Senator Mike Gravel founded the Gravel Institute, which was created to oppose the total nonsense from Prager U that pollutes YouTube. Now the labor unions need to do their part.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC95fKRwnEvd8RTX74Iz3TcA

[ecstatic]

68. It's not profitable for them. The vast majority of liberal/progressive folks do not partake

in radio or TV talk /news shows that are specifically focused on political issues. Besides my parents, nobody else I know watches MSNBC. That's why I post here and sometimes Twitter... because there's literally nobody else to discuss the day to day political news with other than my parents. There was an interesting period when tfg was in office where just about everyone was tuning in to MSNBC/CNN to watch the reality show nightmare, but once he was gone, that was it.

The best we can do is inject liberal views into the shows that are actually watched, and luckily that already happens for the most part. The problem is that it needs to go a little further and brainwash people into actually VOTING, and for democrats. Brainwash sounds harsh, but yes, people need to programmed into actually taking part in democracy and not just watching and complaining from the sidelines. Just my opinion.

[TheFarseer]

69. They are really progressive

When it comes to stuff that won’t cost them any money like same sex marriage or virtue signaling to women or trans. They are even friendly towards the environment when it’s not a solid plan where they actually have to do something. They are very much against increasing minimum wage over what they have to pay anyway or making the rich pay their fair share in taxes or giving workers rights or campaign finance reform. But progressive billionaires are definitely on our side if it’s just worthless virtue signaling. Of course I am speaking in general.

[Bucky]

73. There's not many of them.

To become a billionaire automatically incentivizes you to support right-wing policies

Worry about losing the power of the people's voice to the elites when you're an elite

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

74. K&R