Report: Progressive leaders urged to purchase media outlets for increased influence over Americans.

Progressive Leaders Urged to Counter Conservative Media Dominance

A recent report is calling on progressive leaders in the United States to take action against the perceived dominance of conservative media in the country. The report suggests buying or collaborating with media outlets and influence channels as a strategy to counter this trend.

The report, titled “Analysis of the Changing U.S. News Media Landscape and Strategies Toward Delivering Civic Value,” was released this month (pdf). It highlights the decline of left-wing outlets like BuzzFeed News and Vice Media as indicators of a “time of extreme transition in the world of news and media.” According to an Economist/YouGov survey cited in the report, liberal or progressive media reaches the “lowest share of Americans and reaches less than half of the number of consumers reached by conservative media.”

The report recommends that liberal supporters invest more in for-profit media companies and social media influencers.

Arkadi Gerney, a longtime Democratic operative, is one of the authors of the report. Other co-authors include Sarah Knight, a former director at the George Soros-backed Open Society Foundation, and Tim Hogan, a presidential campaign communications director for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in 2020.

The report, consisting of 85 pages, was prepared for a gathering of progressive leaders in Washington in May, as reported by Semafor.

“The increased concentration of media among wealthy and conservative owners—and particular local media—presents significant risks that political information will become both more scarce and more skewed toward right-wing perspectives,” the report states.

In an interview with Semafor, Gerney expressed his hope that the report will be utilized by centrist and left-leaning investors to counter the influence of conservative media.

However, a study published at ResearchGate in July 2021 found that journalists in the West, including the United States, are mostly biased in favor of the left.

The report suggests that “progressive” supporters collaborate with online creators and individual journalists who are engaging a larger share of the American public with news, explainer content, opinion, and personal narrative. It also recommends investing in profitable local TV networks to expand the reach of progressive ideologies.

“We believe that many of the best opportunities for cause-motivated investors lie in diverting a share of the investment that’s going into exclusively cause-funded nonprofits toward sponsored content and into direct investment in hybrid and for-profit enterprises with large audiences,” the report explains.

“Likewise, rather than continuing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on TV ads, we believe that there is more long-term value for nonprofit investors… in diverting a share of that investment into sponsoring topical reporting in a for-profit, or simply in buying some of the stations on which they are now advertising.”

Sinclair Group and Leftist Bias in Media