From: harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (Harel Barzilai)
Newsgroups: alt.news-media
Subject: MEDIA BLACK-OUT of LARRY AGRAN '92
Date: 8 Apr 92 07:47:18 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB

The following (part III of an) article just posted
elsewhere gives a fairly detailed history of the 
media shut-out of presidential candidate Larry Agran.

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Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Subject: AGRAN, Democracy, and UseNet (III)
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[see part (I)]

[...]

CONT:
Re the lies and hatred of democracy, here are the facts and analysis:

Regarding:
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** You can't include every one -- some 117 people run for Pres.

and

** Let's see Agran get a 5-10 thousand person crowd, then he'll get
	[or: deserve] publicity.
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Both of these indicate either ignorance of the facts of a deliberate
deception buy those who are in full agreement with the anti-democratic
system in place and who would look for and "find" excuses to exclude
Agran and others in any situation.

Re 117 people,

(1) In January USA Today Pundits tried to pull the same line, with
"36" this time; as Steve Smith of the Agran campaign pointed out
at the time:

	   The USA Today article totally ignored WHY Larry Agran
    should be considered a serious, legitimate candidate.  To quote
    the article, "former mayor of Irvine, Calif., and one of 36
    Democrats who paid $1,000 to get on the ballot for New Hapmshire's
    Feb. 18 primary."
	   Of those 36 candidates, there are only seven or eight who
    are running nation campaigns, recruiting delegates, raising funds
    nationally, and have qualified for the ballot in states across the
    nation.  Larry Agran is one of those candidates.

(2) In New York, Agran was one of *four* active candidates on the
ballot.

Yet he was not included in the debates.

The comment regarding the crowd of several thousand is equally absurd.
Yet again lack of media coverage is retroactively justified because
Agran is "not a major candidate" this being the case precisely because
the medi declared him so (why they did this is an issue not without
significant interest, but that analysis does not belong here).

Let us review once again:

Leaving aside, out of charity, the poll showing Agran ahead of Brown
and not behind Harkin which is "statistically insignificant" (charity,
because it is as plain as the light of day that mass-media concern
over how reliable said polls are had nothing to do with their
systematic exclusion of Agran, nor do I believe that the poster
for a moment believes this to have been the case. Such obstacles to
media acceptance are not meant for the Insiders and the powerful, but
only for the rest of us.

At around the time of the poll, not only was Agran one of only some 7
or 8 such serious nation-wide candidates, but had also

Raised over $200,000 in non-PAC (refusing such) contributions. To put
this into perspective, Agran, unlike e.g. Brown, had essentially zero
name-recognition outside of California;

Agran was on the ballot in twenty-seven  states across the country;
    [See article, released January 28, 1992, by syndicated columnist
    Colman McCarthy of the Washington Post, who also added, "What's
    minor about having repeatedly won elections for 12 years as a
    liberal Democrat in conservative Republican Orange County,
    California?"]

Had been profiled in this early period by national media such as The
CBS Evening News, The Larry King Show, The Discovery Channel, CNN,
C-SPAN --and, indeed, MacNeil/Lehrer, and. covered by scores of major
newspapers across the nation, including USA Today and The Christian
Science Monitor.

Larry Agran had a distinguished past. Along with the U.N. award to
Irvine for the Agran's CFC ordinance, his record included:

    In 1982, Mr. Agran authored an initiative on the CA ballot.  It
    required the Governor of CA to write a letter to the President
    demanding that he negotiate a bilateral nuclear freeze with the
    General Secretary of the USSR.  The initiative passed.  (And who
    was that Governor who had to be mandated by the people to write
    that letter?  Jerry Brown.)

The New York Times described his administration as "a crucible of
municipal innovation.

On January 24th, in a story about a candidates' forum in which Agran
*was* included, the New York Times essentially declared Agran the
winner, saying

    "After hearing pitches from the Democratic Presidential contenders
    on how they would revive America's cities, dozens of mayors
    meeting here today seemed to agree on one thing: the single
    candidate who truly understands urban needs is Larry Agran."



**FOLLOWING** this state of events, MacNeil/Lehrer SHUT OUT Agran from
the first major (and nationally-broadcast) Debate [Jan. 31]

Transparently, such debates are the only avenue a candidate (who is
running a campaign not dependent on the Big Money special interests)
has to reach Americans, to make up for the name recognitions other
candidates already have, and more importantly, to let Americans know
not only who you are but what you stand for.

But back to the point: Since Agran was excluded when his performance
was substantial, and not in any way less than the other 6-7 candidates
running nation-wide Democratic campaigns, on the ballot across the
country, etc, evidently, any claims that his exclusion then or now has
anything to do with "fair" or "reasonable" standards about who is a
"major" candidate cannot be taken seriously.

That the press was not biased against Agran before the fact is even
more laughable when we look at the earlier record, back in the fall,
where the following KGB/CIA-type photo-"doctoring" was done by none
other than the New York Times. In Agran's own words:

	    Still, some took note.  I was invited along with Paul
    Tsongas to address the Tri-State Democrats Unity Dinner in Sioux
    City, Iowa.  (At the time, we were the only declared candidates.)
    The hosts also invited potential candidates Tom Harkin a nd Bill
    Clinton to speak.  All four speakers were treated as equals.  My
    speech was broadcast on C-SPAN with the others, and I was included
    in the group photo of the candidates.

	    But if you asked the national media, I wasn't even there.
    The New York Times published a version of the group photo in which
    I had been cropped out.  (As Casey Stengel used to say, "You can
    look it up."  The national edition, Sunday, September 8, 1991, p.
    16.  I'm standing just off to the right, where the other
    candidates are gesturing.)  The extensive article on the event
    quoted the other three speakers at length -- two of whom were not
    even declared candidates at that point.  The Times deigned only to
    mention my presence with one sentence near the end of the report,
    calling me a "dark horse" candidate.

[In These Times, Feb. 13, 1992]

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Of course, the defenders of the faith will go on and on about how it
is only because Agran had no support and made more serious showing,
etc, that he was excluded, the facts and chronology notwithstanding
with regard to the televised debates, the earlier coverage, etc.
Serious and honest people will chose another path.

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One other comment merits a response, a comment made in the same
anti-democratic spirit of the declaration that "I don't CARE whether
or not" (a candidate faces a black-out and is excluded from a debate),
namely, that

	it's THEIR party and THEY decide who is included [in the debates]

precisely the sentiments any Stalinist of petty dictator would
sympathize with. Those to believe in democracy understand that the
Democratic [capital "D"] party is not THEIRS but OURS and it should be
the votes who decide who the candidate should be for their party, and
not Ron Brown and his fellow Party Managers who decide who Americans
do or do not get to vote for. So here is another remarkable example --
along with the fellow who suggested Agran is free to buy air-time,
evidently feeling that any candidate running a low-budget campaign
free of PACs and big-money special interested is not a candidate after
all (or the person who "understood" Brown's complicity in the
black-out, exclusion, and rough-up arrest of Agran since Brown, he
noted (quite accurately) is facing serious trouble and unfair media
bias of his own -- of the anti-democratic political culture which has
reached impressive levels in this country.

[As Agran added in the ITT article:

	    Appearing in late December on ABC's Nightline, Mr. Brown
    said that it was his hope to eliminate all but three candidates
    from the race after the New Hampshire primary, and to have all but
    one candidate eliminated by "Super Tuesday," March 10.
    Apparently, Mr. Brown felt that it was more important for the
    powerful insiders of the Democratic Party to protect their jobs by
    quickly choosing their personal champion to oppose George Bush,
    instead of allowing Democratic voters across the nation to choose
    for themselves at the ballot box.
]

--Harel Barzilai (serious responses only to harelb@igc.org)

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A footnote for those interested in the workings
of the UnDemocratic Party and (part of) the reason
Agran lost favor with it by sticking to his democratic
(note the small "d") principles:

       The very day that Agran announced for his candidacy, on August 22, I
personally called the NH State Party to notify them of Agran's candidacy and
his intention to participate in all Party-sponsored events.  When the Party
scheduled its convention for November 2 and stated its intention to use the
convention as a candidates' forum, we were told that if Larry Agran wanted
to address the convention he'd have to pay the party money.  Harkin's
$50,000 "donation" was cited as an example.  They wanted $2,000 for a block
of 300 seats we wouldn't use; $800 to construct a booth we wouldn't use; and
$10,000 for a voters' list that we could get far more cheaply from the NH
secretary of state.  We were told that if we wouldn't pay the money, Larry
Agran would be barred from speaking to the convention.
       Larry Agran refused.  He believes in free speech, not fee speech.
       After that, the state party repeatedly refused to return our phone
calls.  When we DID get through, they made only vague promises that Agran
would have some role in the convention.

	Steve Smith, Issues Director, Agran '92
	75300.3112@CompuServe.COM