Without going into detail of what exactly it is that they think, because it is the usual fare that we are all too familiar with by now, stuff about the president, I would like to reflect upon the “mystery” of why these likely caucus-goers believe things that are demonstrably false.

We'll take as a given the idea that they fall into the category that campaigns refer to as “low information voters.”  These are folks that for some reason, are apparently easy to dupe. Maybe they just like to believe lies.  This wouldn't be so strange in America.  We're a culture that lives in high denial and we spend billions distracting and entertaining ourselves so as not to live our daily lives in unpleasant reality. But this article isn't so much about that.  

To me, the more worrisome denial involves the well-educated who express shock and disbelief that fellow Iowans are so terribly misinformed. I can relate to this reaction, certainly, but let's stop and think about this for a minute.  It is shocking at first, but not so much when you stop and consider the huge media industry that sells the lies, then supports and affirms the deludedness (sic). 

The thing is, the conservatives have been building their own media infrastructure for the past 40 years of which the sole purpose is to promote conservative ideas. (Read the Powell Memo of 1971 if you really want to be shocked).  

Media consolidation, killing the fairness doctrine [see: Grassley sees to it that Fairness Doctrine stays dead], and other media policy (or lack of) have resulted in a handful of huge corporations owning the vast majority of the media in this country – including in Iowa.

Think Clear Channel which owns most of Iowa's “local” radio stations.  

Think Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest owner of Local TV stations that bought up stations in mostly rural swing states and destroyed local reporting.  

Think Gannett.  No more locally owned newspapers.

Think Rupert Murdoch…Think Comcast…

The right launched Fox “News” and Rush Limbaugh and dozens of conservative think tanks during this period. I heard Thom Hartmann say on his show yesterday that Faux lost $500 million a year for several years before they built themselves enough of an audience to make money.  David Brock has written about this in Blinded By The Right, his first book before he started Media Matters for America.

On and on..  The point is, the right is purposely going for exactly the results they are getting, as illustrated in the Fox News/Iowa GOP focus group.  We should not be surprised at the natural and logical consequences of years of advertising conservative ideas. 

The conservatives invest in, and have the money to pay for their media. Example: Glenn Beck.  They keep him on the air despite over 300 sponsors refusing to air ads on his show and despite falling ratings. They recently added him to the public airwaves in the Quad Cities on WOC to replace Dr. Laura despite the results of their own online survey in which progressive talk host Stephanie Miller soundly trounced the right wing competition.

Try to get a Clear Channel station in  your community to see that locals don't want to necessarily listen to right wing wackiness all day long, day in and day out, and see how far you get. You will most likely be ignored.  Here at BFIA, we have been involved in several actions with local media, and this is a very common tactic. We were successful once, but it took a petition of a few hundred names, and a 6-month sustained effort of pressure on the local station to add progressive programming.  They finally did.  Three months later, the progressive programming was gone and the programming manager was also gone. Clearly, a highly progressive community such as Iowa City, would prefer more progressive programming than Sean Hannity, but that is what we are stuck with.
   
All of this points to the fact that the reason so many stations air Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and the others is not because it is market-driven, as their listeners sometimes argue.  It's what people want to hear, they say.  To be blunt, that is false.  It is not because this is what communities are choosing.  Right wing talk is being force fed to us by huge media companies' interests.  It is corporate propaganda, pure and simple. They simply don't have to care if we like it or not.  Their monetary reward is in the resulting corporate-friendly public policy that makes them so rich that they don't have to really worry about things like ratings or even advertiser dollars.

For local stations, the right-wing syndicated shows are so cheap they are virtually free. We're  not making this up.  This is what we were told by our local station's management.

The point is, we  have to get out of our own deludedness that people come up with these ideas just because they are stupid or crazy. The reality is, the right wing media machine has created an entire class of fear-driven and badly misinformed individuals who vote.