The other day, a Howard Dean supporter at a rally in Santa Fe, N.M. urged the audience to yowl at the media. People turned to reporters and camera crews at the back of the hotel ballroom, booing and hissing, as Patty Boucher accused reporters of slanting coverage to hurt Dean.
To Boucher, the media are part of an establishment that fears the radical change promised by Dean, with his calls to cast "insiders" from the temple of power. Media persecution is a common theme on the Dean Web log, and fervent supporters send flames to reporters who write critical articles. There is even a group of Web-savvy volunteers called the Dean Defense Forces, who monitor media coverage, write letters to the editor and respond to attacks by other candidates and Republicans.
Of course, blaming press coverage is a common refrain from slumping campaigns, and Dean is on the ropes. Conservative Republicans often use media bashing to whip up their political base. Think of Richard Nixon, and in particular his Vice President, Spiro T. Agnew, who famously attacked the "nattering nabobs of negativism" in the press. But Dean's critique is part of a broader worldview: The consolidation of newspapers and broadcast outlets into a handful of conglomerates is all part and parcel of unchecked corporate power strangling American democracy. (He rails against Wal-Mart destroying small towns, too.)
"I think it's the government's job to make sure that media doesn't have too much power, which they do right now," Dean said on KZOK radio in Seattle Friday. Bantering with the hosts, he asked if their station was of the cookie-cutter Clear Channel chain. (It is not, they said.) "We really need a diversity of opinion," he said.
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