Clicks vs. Power: Why Left-Leaning Media Gets Rich But Can't Move Policy

[TygrBright]

2. The article merits careful reading.

The practical result of this asymmetry is exactly what the original observation predicted: left-wing outlets “getting rich on clicks by bitching about policies that right wing outlets move by doing the diligence to get full daily news access to powerful people.”

Consider immigration policy, where this dynamic plays out with particular clarity. Breitbart kept up “a steady flow of misleading stories that associated immigration with terrorism, the spread of incurable disease, criminality, and abuse of the welfare system,” making immigration the Republican Party’s main election agenda despite party leadership’s initial resistance.
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Left-wing outlets covered these developments extensively, generating engagement and revenue. But they didn’t shape the policy. They reacted to it.
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Right-wing media, by contrast, operates as integrated movement infrastructure. The Heritage Foundation donated $2 million to Premiere Networks to syndicate Rush Limbaugh’s show. FreedomWorks paid Glenn Beck over $1 million for reading “embedded content” on his Fox News broadcasts, described on tax disclosures as “advertising services”. These investments don’t optimize for engagement metrics—they optimize for ideological influence.​

To summarize, there IS a vast right-wing conspiracy, as the article notes here: "Conservative media has spent decades building what political scientists call an “ideological infrastructure”—a tightly integrated ecosystem connecting think tanks, advocacy organizations, academic centers, and news outlets. This machine doesn’t merely report on policy; it shapes it. "

I submit one reason progressive communications have so much difficulty replicating this is the inherent unwillingness of various progressive groups to subordinate their specific priorities to a larger strategic cooperation that would pilot and share messaging across the large number of progressive think tanks, advocacy organizations, academic centers, and news outlets.

MAGAt-think works to drive policy because of its strategic cooperation behind a unified agenda of creating an oligarchic elite with a monopoly on power:

• RW oligarchs willingly pony up vast sums of bucks to bankroll the effort at multiple points throughout the operation.
  
• RW thought leaders in the think tanks, funded by the oligarchs, look for 'unifying narratives' that don't actually have much to do with their agenda of creating an oligarchic elite monopoly on power. Narratives that suck in the useful idiots and voters, such as "immigrants lazing on welfare and/or stealing your job."
  
• RW communicators, funded by the oligarchs and unfettered by things like consistency or cognitive dissonance, test and develop the messaging. They set up a rotating array of 'fuel' focused not just on the useful idiots, but (and this is critical) on convincing elected officials and political appointees that there is vast groundswell of support under the narratives.
  
• RW advocacy organizations, funded by the oligarchs, build up a stable of litmus-tested reliable 'public figure' mouthpieces and advocates, and use the RW communicators to shine light on them, again with the objective of creating credibility for their helots' status as 'acceptable' to the presumed vast masses of MAGAt supporters out there.
  
• RW oligarchs use donations to buy influence with RW elected officials and political appointees, and use the influence to push these acceptable helots into positions where they have ongoing access and power to influence policy.
  
• RW think tanks and communicators potentiate the power by using the access granted by their helots to promote their messaging, and generate more support as the cycle keeps playing out over and over, with greater power and influence in each iteration.

Progressives, rather than unifying around an agenda of protecting democracy, and building strategic narratives to support that, splinter their efforts into multiple issues and foci - all of which are important, worthwhile, etc., but none of which can ultimately succeed once an oligarchy has established its monopoly on power, toppled any actual democratic structure, and consolidated its hold on every aspect of the economy, culture, and political infrastructure.

And progressive solons with the money to push a similar process get sidetracked by what the article correctly identifies as a futile attempt to build a self-perpetuating (through engagement and monetization) sphere of influence that rides off in a dozen directions at once, depending on whether climate change, immigration, or civil rights seems to poll better in the universe of clicky-clicky.

This is something we can learn from, without necessarily getting into the mudpit with the MAGAts, but will we?

ambivalently,
Bright