by Kiersten Marek, Kmareka.com
In early November 2003, lots of people called Senator Lincoln Chafee's office. They wanted to demand that he veto the energy bill being put forth by the Bush administration because it was chock full of pork-barrel giveaways for corporate America. Many of the people who called Senator Chafee did so after receiving an email from the influential new nonprofit organization, Moveon.org, informing them about the pending vote. After receiving many phone calls, on November 21, 2003 Senator Chafee voted against the bill, along with 40 other Senators, and the Bush-Cheney Energy Bill was rejected.
Ten years ago this wasn't happening. Ten years ago it was harder to get ahold of droves of people all over the country and quickly inform them about an important piece of pending legislation. Moveon.org estimates that 20,000 people responded to the energy bill email alert campaign, demonstrating an amazing mass of voters concerned about the direction that the Bush administration is trying to take the nation on energy policy.
Because of organizations like Moveon.org, the Union for Concerned Scientists, and FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), ordinary citizens are becoming more active in local, state, and national politics, and are holding both politicians and journalists more accountable.
FAIR to Journalists: Quit Sucking Up!
Since 1986, FAIR has advocated for accurate and independent journalism as an essential underpinning of a functional democracy. While FAIR is a professional watchdog organization rather than a citizen activism organization, it plays an important complementary role to political action organizations like Moveon.org.
Recently, FAIR studied the media coverage of the Iraq war and found that only 3% of guests on major network talk shows voiced an antiwar opinion, while polls showed that 27% of Americans were against the war. Consequently, FAIR has done action alerts to prod the network media into providing coverage that more accurately reflects the American public.
"Rather than sucking up to those in power, we ask that journalists go to those in power and hold their feet to the fire," says Steve Rendall, a Senior Analyst for FAIR, who has been with the nonprofit organization since 1988. FAIR recently did an action alert about NBC's decision to no longer provide coverage of the democratic presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, and Al Sharpton. While NBC did not change its plans to stop covering these candidates, FAIR's action alert caused them to explain their decision, and might influence future decisions on when and how candidates are narrowed out of the field.
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