Liberal media has to face its pro-Russian tendencies if it ever hopes to fully capitalize on the Mueller investigation.

Ed Schultz, a former liberal host who is now a strong Trump and Putin supporter. Citation: LA Times

Editor’s Note: This article, my first ever, was completed in July 2017.

After he announced his run for president, I began to brag to my friends that I was a Bernie Sanders hipster. I knew about Bernie in January of 2010, long before Occupy Wall Street or even the December 2010 filibuster against renewal of the Bush-era tax cuts that began his rise to fame. My first interaction with Sanders was not as a wide-eyed socialist senator from Vermont, but as an authoritative voice on the radio with a thick Brooklyn accent, a mainstay of the once-formidable world of liberal talk radio.

Bernie co-hosted a weekly segment on The Thom Hartmann Program, one of the most heavily listened-to liberal talk shows on terrestrial radio today. He and the eponymous host, an ADHD researcher turned erudite pundit, would discuss the issues of the day and take calls for an hour every Friday, senatorial votes permitting. Hartmann’s audience reached over two million throughout the period of Bernie’s appearances, a platform Bernie used to gain exposure with a wide audience at a time when he received almost zero press coverage from traditional media sources. Listening to Hartmann today, one can see why his show could elevate a democratic socialist to stardom. The host’s monologues and frequently released books delve into topics such as NAFTA’s adverse effects on the American worker, the fifty-year Republican plot to take over the American government, and the crises resulting from the numerous court rulings establishing corporations as persons and money as speech.

But one place where Sanders and Hartmann diverge is the issue of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, which Sanders clearly accepts but Hartmann equivocates on. At times, Hartmann directly questions the idea that Russian intervention made much of a difference, or that intervention meant much of anything in Donald Trump’s victory compared to Hillary Clinton’s centrist platform and negligent campaign strategy. In other instances, he brings on Stephen F. Cohen as a guest, an NYU professor once described in this magazine as Putin’s apologist and a man who has spent much of his time recently making excuses for Putin’s regime.

This divergence from the standard liberal view on Russia is shared by several of Hartmann’s closest associates in the world of talk radio. Mike Papantonio, a talk radio host and frequent guest on Hartmann’s show, recently claimed that Democrats had been just as responsible for collusion with Russia as Republicans ever had. Ed Schultz stunned liberals who had not been paying attention by speaking at CPAC this spring, using his time slot to praise Trump and bash those who believe Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Chris Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent and frequent Hartmann guest, denigrated the argument for Russian interference as a “McCarthyist smear campaign.”

What do these liberal figures have in common? They all have shows on Russia Today, a proven propaganda arm of the Russian government.

To understand this proliferation of liberal shows on RT, one must go back to 2004 and the birth of Air America, the first serious liberal attempt to challenge conservative dominance of talk radio. Since the early 1990s, conservative talk radio has grown into an economic behemoth led by Rush Limbaugh and his syndicator, Premiere Networks. After purchasing Limbaugh’s first two syndicators, Premiere signed a raft of conservative commenters (Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity among them) and distributed their shows to dozens of affiliates across the country, sometimes for free in exchange for ad space. The distribution network meant millions of listeners, a wide geographic reach, and a lower average cost of carrying each show.

Air America attempted to copy the Premiere formula. The group began with liberal talkers such as Thom Hartmann and Randi Rhodes, as well as famous entertainers like Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo. During the years of George W. Bush’s chaotic second term, their approach met with success both for the hosts and for the visibility of liberal talk radio. Hartmann’s show steadily rose in listenership, leading to a Free Speech TV simulcast and a move to Washington, D.C. Franken used his talk radio career in combination with his comedy background to capture a closely contested U.S. Senate seat in 2008. Rachel Maddow made the jump to primetime on MSNBC that same year and never looked back. Even hosts on the periphery of Air America still found success. Both Stephanie Miller and Ed Schultz, two liberal talkers who never joined Air America but maintained close ties to its hosts and guests, gained MSNBC shows out of their talk radio careers (Miller’s show only lasted for a week before being replaced by Beltway favorite Morning Joe).

Air America never could replicate the success of its early years during a Republican administration. The organization filed for bankruptcy and disbanded in early 2010. Liberal talk radio’s fortunes took a subsequent nosedive. Over the next few years, several liberal hosts and former Air America personalities ended or left their shows. The hosts that remained lost affiliates in most major markets, including the Raleigh-Durham area, where my local affiliate WCHL moved from talk radio to music in 2016. Soon after the bloodletting of liberal talk radio began, talkers began to turn towards television shows on Russia Today.

Russia Today, an international cable network launched by the Kremlin in 2005 and exported to the U.S. in 2010, proved attractive to liberal talkers for a number of reasons. The network promoted narratives and viewpoints opposed to what many liberals saw as the corporate-controlled mainstream media and the military-industrial complex. RT hosts critiqued the American capitalists and imperialists that Air America had opposed since its inauguration. Hostility to the American establishment also helped justify working with an outlet like RT. If the goal is to undermine American imperialism, and increased Russian power accomplishes this goal, then what’s the problem with working for Russian propaganda?

Perhaps more importantly, RT gave liberal talkers what Air America had been able to provide: distribution. RT reaches 85 million households in the United States over cable and satellite networks, millions more than other outlets. The desire for a greater public profile is clear in the example of Hartmann’s show, The Big Picture. (Editor’s Note: The Big Picture ended in September 2017) Hartmann hosts and produces the show with his own staff, only relying on RT for a television studio and access to its cable and satellite network. RT’s funding from the Russian government may not gain liberal talkers high revenues on its own, but wide public exposure on television brings both political impact and greater revenue from the hosts’ lucrative online and talk radio properties.

Liberal talkers make a dangerous gamble when they turn to RT. They may gain access to viewers’ living rooms, but the price comes when the subject of Russia appears in the daily news that their shows revolve around. That subject does appear nearly every day with a new, earth-shattering revelation which is often undermined on the Kremlin-owned network. How many times can Schultz or Hartmann redirect to the evils of Debbie Wasserman Schultz when everyone else is talking about possible treason charges for the president’s son? RT’s hosts risk sinking their network and their reputations even further into the anti-Russia morass that they already find themselves in. On a smaller scale, they are reminiscent of Fox News’ recent woes, where attempts to run interference for Donald Trump have led them to miss one of the most closely followed stories of the 21st century.

The suggestion has been made that liberals no longer need talk radio. As the thinking goes, talk radio focuses on a target audience much older, whiter, and more conservative than the groups liberals want to target. But political podcasts, the main alternative to talk radio, still reach a much smaller, less established, and more niche audience. According to an Edison Group study cited by the Pew Research Center, podcasts make up only 2% of all audio listening hours. Also, to repeat one of the most hackneyed clichés of 2017, the podcast market focuses much more on coastal elites, the Serial-following millennials unable to give Hillary Clinton a win last November, than the millions in fly-over country who listen to talk radio. For evidence of talk radio’s focus, look no further than the vulgar comedy of conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Todd Schnitt, or the folksy blue-collar feel of Schultz’s show before its end in 2014.

Liberal talkers need not sell their soul to Russian propagandists in order to reach a wide audience. What they need to do is recapture the spirit of Air America and find some sort of distribution system that will give their industry both reach and popularity. A new liberal talker network could help move American media further to the left, bringing new perspectives and helping overcome the shallow analysis seen on cable news for much of the day. It could deliver a new set of hosts for MSNBC to pick from when their newly-hired, poorly-rated conservative commentators fizzle out. The new Air America might even lead to a new liberal hero in the Senate, a feat that contrarian liberal shows on a Russian cable channel will never accomplish.