From oft-acclaimed and criticized political cartoonist Ted Rall, writing for Al Jazeera:

The American media deploys a deep and varied arsenal of rhetorical devices in order to marginalise opinions, people and organisations as “outside the mainstream” and therefore not worth listening to. For the most part the people and groups being declaimed belong to the political Left. To take one example, the Green Party – well-organised in all 50 states – is never quoted in newspapers or invited to send a representative to television programmes that purport to present “both sides” of a political issue. (In the United States, “both sides” means the back-and-forth between centre-right Democrats and rightist Republicans.)

Marginalisation is the intentional decision to exclude a voice in order to prevent a “dangerous” opinion from gaining currency, to block a politician or movement from becoming more powerful, or both. In 2000, the media-backed consortium that sponsored the presidential debate between…