Sunday Discussion Group

April 2, 2006

Consider a few newsworthy items from the last week or so, and the responses they generated from the national news [tag]media[/tag].

* The Boston Globe reported that President [tag]Bush[/tag] believes he is not obligated to follow the Patriot Act’s provisions that require him inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act’s expanded police powers. The law is clear, but Bush doesn’t feel like he has to follow it. The revelations were on the Globe’s front page, but were completely ignored by every other national newspaper and went unmentioned on the TV news networks.

* The New York Times reported on a pre-war memo that added shocking insights into the president’s discussions with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, including the fact that Bush not only decided in January to go to war, but also that he was prepared to provoke a war, through fraud if necessary. The memo was confirmed to be legitimate and ran on the Times’ front page. The rest of the major news outlets ignored the stunning revelations.

* On Wednesday, congressional Democrats unveiled a major new foreign policy/national security strategy, in a high-profile DC event, after months of preparation. [tag]Print[/tag] and [tag]TV[/tag] media, both of which have told Americans repeatedly that Democrats “have no plan” to deal with national security, decided the detailed new strategy wasn’t worth mentioning to the public.

* A day later, National Journal’s Murray Waas published the latest in a series of blockbuster revelations about pre-war intelligence, this time on the fact that Karl Rove knew Bush had repeated bogus claims about Iraq, despite having briefings on the subjects, and was very nervous in the summer of 2003 that “Bush’s 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration.” These revelations were all over the blogs — and were completely ignored by major news outlets.

On that last point, Dan Froomkin wrote, “[I]n the traditional media, the reaction has been utter and complete silence — both after Waas’s well-documented March 2 story, and again today. There’s not one word about it in a single major outlet this morning. And that’s just not acceptable. Waas’s fellow reporters at major news operations should either acknowledge and try to follow up his stories — or debunk them. It’s not okay to just leave them hanging out there. They’re too important.”

Indeed, in each of these instances, the establishment media has been woefully negligent. In Froomkin’s words, their coverage is “not acceptable.”

My question is a two-parter: One, why have the major news outlets been so irresponsible on following up on these major stories? Are reporters that opposed to covering news that first appeared elsewhere?

And two, what on earth can anyone do about it? Letter campaigns? Boycotts? Protests?

Discuss.

1. Oversaturation. These things are just more evidence of the same things we’ve been pointing out for some time now. As for the Democrat’s Security plan, like everything else however well thought out by them, it wont catch Americas attention untill it fits in a shorter sound bite than, “support the troops.” We should go with the Newt Gingrich suggestion, “Had enough?”

2. The hope for change doesn’t revolve around spreading the message. We have to do what the Republicans have done and turn out the vote. Voter registration drives. From there election reform. Instant runoff ballots and secure voting with a paper trail. And from there the true will of the American people will have been heard. Everything the Democrats support polls widely with the American people. Health care, Education etc, etc… same stuff you hear for a split second between the roaring echo in the MSM. We have to put in place the means for the People to be heard above the roar.

  • Since corporately-owned media won’t do its job and inform the American citizenry on a timely basis, we should encourage (tell) our friends, our family, our co-workers, and our acquaintances to read the alternate media found on the internet. There are many sites that allow internat surfers to gather real news from Google News to blogs to RSS. As the saying goes: “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

  • i think the public knows it’s been had. ‘bush lied’ is a pretty old story now, innit? sad to say, but it is not news anymore. however this sorry state of public affairs is not ‘good news’ for the administration either.

    u.s. fatalities were at a low last month, too. the story would have had more front page bite were that otherwise.

    as the situation in iraq dramatically worsens, i think the latest revelations will come back into the mix. and in light of that, i think helen thomas’ question of bush, and his lying reply, will eventually be seen as bush’s ‘i am not a crook’ moment.

  • Today, I turned off Howard Kurtz’s “Reliable Sources” on CNN when I saw that the lead story was Jill Carroll and the question of whether or not she’d been manipulated by her captors. With Kurtz as a measure of the big media’s own self-policing it’s no wonder that the carpetbagger’s question gets little play.

    Some specualation. First, it doesn’t fit the “are we too liberal?” framework. Second, attention to the big media’s silence on these issues leads only to bad conclusions about the way they work. Third, the coercive power of the admin, the GOP, and their conservative allies in business and the think tanks influences the absence of heavy coverage of the recent revelations on W, and exposing that influence is both bad for individual careers and even more damning for the media’s self image.

    Better to wonder about the awesome propganda skills of Jill Carroll and urge a tougher stance when interviewing ex-hostages. It’s the disproportionality of it all that stands out.

  • The fact the NY Times ran the pre-war memo story a month after the British press covered it suggests the media isn’t adverse to copying each other. Ditto for the Washington Post picking up the NSA story from the NY Times.

    Looking at these stories and every other story about Bush’s misdeeds, one important thing seems to be missing: There aren’t high profile figures raising a huge stink about it and making moves to hold Bush accountable. “Moderate” Congressional Republicans express some mild annoyance then write legislation that retroactively legalizes Bush’s lawbreaking. I said it yesterday in another post but I’ll say it again. Democrats are Missing In Action. With the exception of Feingold and Murtha, the Dems have yet to express anything even approaching appropriate outrage at Bush’s criminal bungling. Hear anything from Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid on any of these items besides the Democratic security plan? How about presidential hopefuls Joe Biden, Hilllary Clinton, John Edwards or Wesley Clark? Anything?

    To give these stories any sort of “legs” there has to be someone who’s outraged and angry enough to take some action. Any of these stories are outrageous enough and, frankly, impeachable offenses. But if each story is met with a yawn or worse resounding silence, there isn’t much point to waste time covering it further.

  • The corporate, right-wing Media will have to be destroyed, if we are to save our Republic. Media consolidation will have to reversed. The giant conglomerates, which control Media, will have to be dismembered. Committment to a publicly financed broadcasting system should be renewed. The Democratic Party and/or its liberal and progressive allies must seek editorial control of one of the major cable news organizations. The fairness doctrine will have to be revived. The American People will have to care about having been lied into an aggressive war by a corrupt, incompetent moron, enough to remove said moron and his cronies from office and try them for war crimes.

    I am not optimistic.

  • I see three separate issues in today’s Sunday Discussion Group topic.

    First it is hardly fair to group the first two items with the rest when contemplating the failures of the MSM. Both the Boston Globe and the New Times are part of the mainstream media.

    Second, it is the responsibility of the Democrats to get their message out. The press should not be the PR arm of any party. The fact that the MSM media often appears to be the PR arm of the Republican Party is testimony to the Republican’s ingenuity. Not that the Democrats didn’t try on the PR front. The president played good defense on this by scheduling an event which preempted press coverage of the Democrats news conference. Just because the Democrats didn’t get the coverage they wanted doesn’t mean the game is over. One thing they may want to do is what a corporation does when no one pays attention to the launch of new product: re-launch to product. The will only be over if the Democrats throw up their arms in disgust and walk away. They should keep fighting.

    Third, the Murray Wass story does deserve more coverage. However, since the story was in the National Journal, it will only be picked up by other outlets if they can expand or move the story forward. The National Journal could try to promote the story by getting Wass booked on talk shows, but that’s the National Journals job.

    Let me close on a personal note concerning Bush’s misleading us to war. For me the evidence that we were being mislead was apparent early on, even before the invasion. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence from that time was the removal of the weapons inspectors before they finished their job. The administration has said prior to the inspectors’ return that they knew the exact locations of the weapons. Hence it should have been a perfunctory matter for the inspectors to find them. The failure of the inspectors to find the weapons when they returned puts the lie to that administration claim. When the administration pulled the inspectors, I concluded that it was because they didn’t want a conclusive report that there were no weapons. All of the evidence which has come out over the past two years has only reinforced my opinion and the bottom line is that I don’t need further convincing.

    I no longer argue with my Republican friends and Bush Kool-Aid drinkers and in some instances I have simply ceased associating with them. I did this because I concluded that all of the evidence in the world would not alter their opinions. I will close with a question of my own. Are there any reasonable people out there that don’t believe that Bush misled us to war and for whom more evidence of this would alter their opinion?

    PS. It took me a while to compose this. So I apologize in advance to anyone that posted similar thoughts while I was writing.

  • Yes, the corporate media is giving us the news they want us to hear not the true news. They want to 1.) only report items that will advance the corporate agenda and 2.) provide entertainment, not true news, to attract mindless viewers and increase their bottom line. There needs to be a well funded, well publicized, independent national news network staffed by objective, non biased reporters and anchors with integrity. This is a very serious issue. Thank god for the blogs.

  • People should protest at the offices of media outlets that continually ignore the news. They should learn about the most egregious examples a particular channel or paper has pulled off from Media Matters and they should prepare fliers explaining it, + prep themselves on it so that when they’re interviewed / debate Republicans about it and are challenged with a bunch of bluster, they can say, “No, this paper did A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. This is a real problem. If you’re asking us to ignore that there’s something wrong with you.”

  • John Nichols at the Nation has interesting artilce up concering the sale of Knight Rider and the oportunity it may present for a more professional news outlet. Take a look.

  • I think prm raises a key underlying issue, although I have a slightly different take on it (one suggested by Tired’s point (2)). To some degree, this is a chicken-and-egg problem.

    At the end of the day, media outlets are selling product. They are a for-profit enterprise. If a front page photo of a sculpture of Brittany Spears giving birth captures more eyeballs or sells more copies than a detailed analysis of the Democrats’ 123-page white paper on security, it is hard to blame the media for running the Spears story. To make a profit, they have to sell what people will buy. Which is to say, it is the bad taste of the customers that is as much to blame as the media. Is the audience dumbed down because the media made them that way, or is the media dumbed down because the audience wanted it that way?

    I don’t mean to cut the media too much slack here, because they have more than enough fault to bear here. But the people are woefully disengaged. Part of that is “fall of Rome” type stuff – for most people, even the biggest political issues impact their day-to-day lives at the margin. We have become comfortable, and thus have the luxury of becoming complacent.

    But part of it, too, is that politics is not a compelling topic for us anymore — so the coverage of it is not compelling, either (leading us to not buy it, and media to spend less resources on it). We don’t feel connected to it. We don’t see where it can do anything constructive for us. It is rich white men bickering with other rich white men in ways the remind us of kids in a sandbox, not grown adults. We can’t afford to go to the fundraisers where the “real” constituents go. When the US Senate race in our state costs $50 million dollars, we don’t feel our $100 contribution matters. In D.C., they fight and yell at each other about process and who filibustered what or who got invited to what committee meeting, while in our neighborhood more meth labs are discovered and our school roof leaks when it rains.

    When the masses find someone who can motivate them, who can make them believe politics has a higher purpose and government is not corrupt, when the system makes more Americans feel empowered — hell, it’d be a start if they could be sure their votes count — then they will care about politics, and they will care to keep informed and they will buy newspapers and magazines that have quality reporting on politics and the media will respond, as market-driven suppliers always do, with more and better political coverage.

  • Starting with the first question. I think that we need to come to the realization in a general sense that what appears on the front pages of our daily papers is not the result of what the reporters want to print but what is deemed appropriate by the editors. I feel pretty comfortable saying that most of the editors are in the conservative camp and are more committed to the agenda of their corporate masters than telling their readers the truth. While I’m on this topic I think that it’s important to consider all news sources and look at how talk radio influences what information people receive. There are people out there who get all their news, cough cough, from Limbaugh and Hannity. To sum up, from the media’s perspective they’re not being irresponsible at all, they’re acting entirely in their own self-interest and protecting their own.

    The second question is the harder one. If we are facing a concerted effort to deny Democrats a voice in the public sphere I’m not sure how we can fight back. I think that some of the more astute politicians are realizing they are facing an uphill battle with the press and have started to compensate by going to the blogs to get their message out. This is evidenced by dairies over at DailyKos by Kerry, Conyers, Kennedy and others. As someone mentioned above, getting more people to the Internet is probably our best hope, something that I don’t think will occur overnight.

    Even though I’m not very optimistic on this topic there has been one bright spot in my local Gannett owned paper. The lead, and openly conservative, editorial page editor recently left to take a position in another paper and the associate editor moved up to take his position. As a result it seems that there are more anti-Bush LTE’s than in the past. This is still along way from having the Downing Street Memo story spashed across the front page but it’s a start.

  • If you want the answers to everything the Carpetbagger asked, go down to your local (good) video store (i.e., not Blockbuster/Hollywood Video, etc.) and rent “Network.” Everything that needs to be said this morning was said 30 years ago, and he wasn’t predicting the future, merely pointing out what was actually going on then.

    The final nail in the coffin of the mainstream media was when the News Departments were turned into profit centers.

    That and the fact that when you’re dealing with those under 30, the majority can’t actually read, so it doesn’t matter what’s in the newspaper, while if you’re dealing with those under 50, the majority of them never learned squat in school about how things are supposed to work in government and politics. When you have people who can read and make sense of things, and know how things are supposed to be, you no longer have a “docile workforce.” And “a docile workforce” has been the corporate goal ever since there were corporations.

    I mean, go look at what’s on the “History” Channel this week: how to recognize Satan through the ages and an analysis of biblical battles.

    Sorry to be a pessimist on a nice sunny (but not so warm) southern California morning, but them’s the facts.

  • Tom — don’t completely give up hope. In a college course that I’m taking, where I’m the almost 50 yr. old in with a bunch of 20 somethings, we recently did short presentations on a business related topic of our choosing, the only requirement was that ethics had to be the focus. One group of kids did a really good job of tying the Tyco and Abramoff scandals together. Some of them are a lot more observant than we give them credit for.

  • Oh, I know some of them are more observant MAA – my partner at That’s Another Fine Mess is a senior at Harvard, and his only problem with the language is spelling (occasionally, when he’s hurried). And he’s brought some other 20-somethings aboard, but if you really want to be depressed, go look at 98% of what’s at MySpace.com – that and the fact they all wear those godawful 70s fashions that were terrible the first time around.

  • A big part of the problem is Republican dominance of the government. They thus get to control the media cycle. What happened when the Dems tried to unveil the national security policy is a good example: Bush had a public appearance at about the same time, which he delayed and drew out, knowing that the news networks would focus on him and ignore the Dems. This was obviously deliberate. This is part of why it’s so crucial for the Dems to take back at least one house of Congress. If they do so, they can start investigating and issuing subpoenas, and that will force these stories onto the front page.

  • Thanks Rege

    Interesting article. Maybe a backlash against trash news is possible.

  • The consensus on question one is that the news
    became infotainment years ago, and that it is
    corporate sponsored so it is naturally biased to
    further their cause – hence conservative Republican.
    I agree.

    What can be done? Nothing directly, unfortunately,
    but as one or more have suggested, turning things
    around in the elections is the key strategy. We have
    to put these Republicans out of office. We can all
    help in small ways that might make a big difference.

    We can also write our Democratic leaders and
    tell them to get off their asses and to start acting like
    an opposition party, and follow the lead of Feingold,
    Murtha and a few others. We can also begin a
    grass roots campaign to support Al Gore for
    president – he has certainly not been afraid to take
    on the Bush administration, unlike the DLC, which
    simply won’t oppose his policies, for reasons I
    can’ t understand.

    What is so frustrating is that I think the American
    people have had enough of the radical right
    revolution, but don’t have anywhere to turn, because
    the damned Democrats simply will not lead them
    out of this mess, toward a progressive agenda. The
    DLC seems committed to a Republican lite strategy.

    So I think the outlook is pretty damn gloomy. There’s
    no chance the Democrats will come out of their
    stupor, no chance Gore will run, and only the slightest
    chance that the voters will revolt in 2006, because the
    Democratic candidates won’t stand for anything
    really different from the incumbent Republicans.
    Why should they throw the bums out and vote
    for new bums? The devil you know will be the story
    of the 2006 elections.

  • Well anyway, thanks for the great post, Carpetbagger. I know that people with a lot more energy and commitment than I’m hearing in a lot of these comments will take actions to push back before the situation can get a lot worse over time.

  • Tom, I actually find myspace.com somewhat encouraging. Television and broadcast radio are positively poisonous in the way they encourage mindless passivity. Blogs, YouTube, podcasting, etc. are far more interactive; trying to write an on-line diary is trying to write, which is more than the previous generation tried to do.

  • Zeitgeist and rege offer some conventional wisdom, but they are wrong to do so.

    The News Media is an advertising-supported media, for the most part, and while they have to produce an editorial, which captures eyeballs, they also have to do it, with editorial, which can be sold to advertisers. A car magazine, which did right by its readers, would soon be out of business. A teen magazine, which focused on issues of the most intense interest to teens in a way, which was really useful to their readers (sex, certainly, but real relationships, contraceptives, venereal disease, etc.) would lose its cosmetics and fashion and music selling sponsors.

    The same is true of political News. And, since all News Media are part of a giant conglomerates, it is not just the interests of advertisers, which are satisfied, but the interests of corporate executives. Corporate executive pay is going to be an extraordinarily touchy subject; intellectual property legislation a big hot potato, etc.

    Ultimately, I believe, liberals and progressives will have to own control of one of the major cable news networks, before the Democratic Party will have a fighting chance to get out its messages in what would then be a “competitive” news market. Historically, before WWII, newspapers were closely associated with political parties, so this is hardly a revolutionary development. Abraham Lincoln secretly owned a German language paper, and used it to promote himself to the huge German-speaking community in Illinois. It is not a secret that Fox News is practically GOP TV. There has to be a Democratic equivalent. Air America is the right idea.

  • The answer to the first question is they have become whores that really enjoy their work.

    The answer to the second question is a revolution in the Democratic Party that replaces everyone except Feingold and one or two others.

  • I am not optimistic that we can turn things around.

    I see too much entrenched bullshit. The corporate media plays the same song – on the toob, in print, wherever.

    I think all of us need to figure out our tipping point, the dealbreakers. Where is our line in the sand that, once crossed, there is no turning back?

    For me, it includes the reinstantment of the draft. Put simply, if this nation reinstates the draft, I will pack my bags and leave for good.

    I am tired of letter writing and being placed on hold. Of course, living in Texas doesn’t exactly help my situaiton much.

  • Just to add to Bruce’s last comment about needing a Democratic voice in the media. There was an item I read over at RawStory last week that talked about a corporation that was looking into buying some of the Knight-Ridder papers. The interesting thing about the corporation was that Bill Clinton was on the board of directors.

  • I share the sense of gloom of others my age and much younger who grew up with the traditional media of politics – radio, TV, newspapers, news magazines, etc. Those are all corporate owned, and their directors see no profit in political news of any kind … not traditional Democratic (progressive ideas) or traditional Republican (call for fiscal responsibility, e.g.).

    They love the Bible thumping Pat Robertsons et al. because, like the circus freaks of old, they’re funny. They’d like to cover the “war” because “if it bleeds, it leads” but, first of all, they’rre not allowed to and, secondly, our frustrating quagmire there is a downer. Basically, the corporatized MSM is interested in feeding robots, not stirring action or even ideas. We need to forget them. As someone mentioned above, the real players in the old political system we’ve inherited are corporations with multimillion dollar stakes in the game. No politician – I don’t care who s/he is – gives a crap about us.

    Our only hope, I think, may the new media – internet, blogosphere, ipods, etc. Here we are the principal players, and what we say (or sing) still matters to people like us. The dinosaur media (country music stations, e.g.) can refuse to the play “I’m Takin’ my Country Back”; it doesn’t keep the song/lyrics from circulating. Anyone who wants the song/lyrics has but to google them, share them with friends. MSM has no understanding of this because there’s no profit in it. Fine! they can wonder what it’s all about when the world moves on without them. The internet grew (exploded) originally through the efforts of people who were not-for-profit (principally at universities).

    Dean was maybe the first to sense this shift in media technology, especially when it came to fund-raising. I believe Feingold senses it – he certainly used it to bypass the most bloated, lazy, Senatorial scumbags and get his censure proposal out — has any other Senatorial Democrat got anything out for any kind of action in the last five years? Reid and Pelosi are old-school has-beens. So are most of the rest of our so-called Democratic leaders.

    Forget about them. Off the top of my head, pay attention to Dean, Feingold, Conyers, Edwards and the “old one” who did in fact “invent the internet” for governing purposes, Gore. I still think a Gore/Edwards ticket would clean up in ’08, whatever happens in ’06.

    Speaking of ’06, this is a good time to try out the new technology. I’ve given up writing emails to my WA Senators, Murray and Cantwell. The reason is that in order to write them I have to fill out their corporate-framed choices of topic (never what I want to write about – usually something in the news, or bitching about our party’s lack of leadership), and I know I’ll get the standard “I like to hear from constituents like you, blah, blah, blah” when I know they’re only interested in hearing from mega-donors and I’m being “handled” by a machine. I wrote Cantwell’s primary opponent and he actually wrote me back a thoughtful email. Maybe, as a probable loser (the technology’s not there yet), he was obligated to offer something. But at least he tried. Cantwell can’t afford to give a shit.

    The fact is: No Democrat cares about people who work (or worked) for a living. They’re not as cozy with corporate wealth, so they can’t play the dinosaur government game as well as the Republicans do, and most of them think that’s the only game in town, so the working people are bound to lose.

    Gore/Edwards. Gore/Edwards. Gore/Edwards. If they, or someone like them, can’t take control of the party, then the party (and, I think, the nation) is doomed.

  • I’m with Bruce (#6 and #21). We have to own part of the media. Where are you George Soros? But as to Thor’s post above, reinstatement of the draft could be a great thing and reason to stay in the country. If you want to see people get incensed about Bush’s war outrages–and threats of more war–tell them they or their children will be the ones actually fighting it. Make it so that Republican fighting keyboardists can’t have deferments or “other priorities” and force them into the pool, this time. We would be out of Iraq in a week. And our citizens would become very, very politically aware. People in the Vietnam-era didn’t just protest the war because it was wrong, they protested it because they didn’t want to be forced to fight it.

  • On media, I can’t describe the change in Karen’s and my life when we were finally able to get Air America from Seattle. Hearing Stephanie Miller’s humor in the morning, and Ed Schultz’s passion for the working people, and Thom Hartmann’s intelligent review of world events, and Al Franken’s truth-with-humor, and Randi Rhodes’ biting blasts of both Republicans and Democrats, and Mike Malloy’s angry triades has gone a long way to convince me that there still are “warm bodies” out there, in spite of all the corporatized robots dominating everything else..

    Trouble is that too few people listen to radio anymore. They come home and plug in to the biggest corporate drug feed of them all, television. I don’t like TV (watch maybe six shows, and those are all taped in order to zap corporate ads). I even prefer to listen to radio broadcasts of baseball games (I can be doing something else). But most of America is hooked on TV, so we apparently need to go there, too.

  • I’m with you, Frak. Most European nations (Israel, too) have a universal draft. You can do “community service” if you choose, gays are welcome, but you must get away from control by your parents and peer groups. And it shows. We are the only modern nation which chooses to be continuously at war (why? because war is profitable). Unfortuantely, the swine sucking on the federal tits in Congress will never even consider bringing back the draft. Sigh.

  • A little off subject, but some interesting quotes:

    We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
    ~General Omar N. Bradley

    There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.
    ~Ralph Bunche

    The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
    ~Albert Einstein

    The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high.
    ~Sen. J. William Fulbright (Ark.)

    The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.
    ~A. J. P. Taylor

    Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
    ~John F. Kennedy

    If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another…after the war is on.
    ~Senator Robert M. La Follette

    Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak…
    ~John Adams

    Power always thinks…that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.
    ~John Adams

    Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.
    ~Marcus Aurelius

    Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
    ~Thomas Jefferson

    A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
    ~German proverb

    The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
    ~H. L. Mencken

    Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.
    ~Noam Chomsky

    Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.
    ~General Douglas MacArthur

  • “Liberal” media is all fine and good, and Air America is a great alternative to the Pill Popper where its available. But it’s not going to solve the Democrats’ woes. There is an immediate alternative: Democrats can start by meeting with their home-state constituents often. Congress is only in session for about a third of the year anyway. Why not spend that time getting message out and firing up the base and potential voters. I live in a fairly large metropolitan area, and its newsworthy when one of our elected officials deigns to pay us a visit. In addition to handing out pork, maybe Democrats should start talking about issues the national media is ignoring.

  • The Channel 4 report on the Bush/Blair meeting is here. The segment is about 8 minutes long and well worth watching. The written summary does not do it justice.

    As far as the NYTimes story coming almost two months after the Channel 4 story that, as I’ve written before, doesn’t bother me too much. The Times waited until they were able to review the memos for themselves. I think that is good journalistic practice.

    Don’t get me wrong, I think the NYTimes has screwed up plenty in the past several years. I just don’t think this is one of them.

  • One variable might be that the major television news outlets can define the Democratic party by giving exposure to certain Democratic politicians and not giving invititations to speak on national television to others. I see too much of certain senators and representatives and not enough of others. Who decides who gets TV time?

  • To the first query, my answer is simple: The MSM have tucked their tails and run away from anything that requires “hard work” in exchange for results. This is the logical conclusion to a premise based on “the Society of Me.”

    As for the second? The MSM’s weak spot—its “Achilles’ Tendon,” if you will—is its bank account. If you buy the paper, don’t throw it away. Give it to someone else who, instead, would spend money for their own copy. Or, read the paper at the local public library, instead of buying it. Do the same thing with the magazines. Then tell “such and such” print-media outlet that you’re doing this, to protest their lack of real news coverage. Let them know that they’re losing money. Will a couple dollars here or there hurt them? No. But, if several hundred—or even several thousand—individuals took to this strategy, and then got the word out to that print-source’s advertisers, I imagine that one might see some results.

    Television: If you’ve got sat-reception, disconnect the hard-wire of your phone service from the receiver. Now the sat-provider can’t monitor what you’re watching. They’re no longer able to produce updated viewing results to the poor souls at NBC…ABC…CBS…CNN…FOX…UPN/WB…and whatever-else-have-you.

    Computer: For example, a lot of what a newspaper, magazine, or broadcast source reports can be found on sites like AP, Reuters, BBC, or Canadian Broadcast websites—for free. Why pay tomorrow for yesterday’s news today? There’s lots of good stuff over at NPR, for example.

    The point is, even if it’s only “just a drop in the bucket,” it only takes one drop to make that bucket “no longer empty….”

  • We know how Bush supporters operate. If all of the newspapers and tv stations are owned by Bush supporters, then even easy to copy news that reflects badly on the Bush administration isn’t going to get repeated. People in these organizations must know that those who go against the tide get fired (whistleblowers) and those who go along, even if they are poor at their job, get promoted.

    Wish we had some stats on this. It’s the only explanation I can imagine.

  • It’s really, really simple: if the media’s really screwed up, then so long as no one seems to notice it, it will stay screwed up.

    If you want them to fall in line, then the more and more people start to notice what’s happening, the better.

    What’s the point of having a free media if it’s going to shake out this way? People should make sure that if the media’s going to live down to such a low standard, that it will be noticed and that those who notice will make sure that everyone else will notice. A person could make a life’s work out of it.

  • First, stop watching cable TV. They obviously don’t want any non-sycophants watching, and I’m happy to oblige. Second, don’t subscribe to the NYT or WP. They don’t want you reading, so I’m happy to get the stories online and avoid the products of their advertisers. Third, go to the Internet where the GOP hasn’t yet been able to badger average citizens into submission the same way they do corps. If the big boys won’t do their jobs, guys like Josh Marshall will do it for them. The slack will have to be taken up by political junkies in their freetime.

    Want me to watch? Want me to read your paper? Give me a reason.

  • 1. Conservatives have succeeded with their decades of accusations that the media holds a “liberal bias,” which is evidenced with the media’s insistence that both sides are given equal time, regardless of veracity or validty. I think the Ben Domenech debacle at washingtonpost.com is a perfect example of this demand from within and the consequences that it entails.

    As liberals, we often charge (rightly, in my opinion) that the Bush administration rules by fear in order to garner support for many policies (torture, warrantless domestic surveillance), armed conflicts (Iraq, possibly Iran) and also to stifle dissent in the population and the media.

    In the post-9/11 world, being called “un-American” or “unpatriotic” are commonplace for those who do not agree with the actions or the methods of those in charge. Operating as a defense mechanism, the media is playing ball with Bush and the Republicans out of fear.

    Or perhaps it does not involve a young White House intern and an unfaithful President because sex sells.

    2. To answer the second question as I believe it is being asked, in order to get the media to actually do its job, I think media watchdogs like Media Matters and highly-visited blogs are making real strides. Washington Post ombudswoman Deborah Howell’s dustup with the liberal blogosphere over the reporting on the Jack Abramoff story is a case in point. The strength of the blogs to inflict real change is also evidenced with the resignation of blogger Ben Domenech amid allegations (which were true and plentiful) of plagiarism and exposing Republican candidate for California’s 50th Congressional District Howard Kaloogian on his photo flub. Blog Power is growing and its credibility rising as an army of investigative reporters.

    Politically, it is our duty to forward these reports to allies in the power structure and make a scene about it. I am reminded of a quote by “Mr. X” played by Donald Sutherland from Oliver Stone’s film, JFK (1991), and pardon the language:

    “… [S]tir the shit storm, hope to reach a point of critical mass that’ll start a chain reaction of people coming forward, then the government will crack. Remember, fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth – and the truth is on your side…”

  • Laziness?

    It is easier to continue being “neutral” to the point of ennui than it is to work?

    It doesn’t fit into their story line? Conservatives have “big ideas,” Liberals don’t. Conservatives are good on defense and national security while Liberals are good on the homefront. While that was never really true it is easier and presents a “more compelling storyline” that is easier for them to present. The media like to stereotype just as much the producers of sitcoms and reality TV like to have types because it (supposedly) makes for more compelling viewing.

  • Despite all the obstacles the media put in the way of their reporting on Bush’s and Congress’s misdeeds;

    Despite a credit-addicted culture that allows everyone of whatever class to consume, feel comfortable, and thus not ask questions (as opposed to, say, the political movements of a century ago, when many people were genuinely miserable and demanded change);

    Despite the pervasiveness of television and the mental laziness it encourages;

    Despite the relentless demagogery of the right-wing media machine;

    Despite decades of a dumbed-down educational system that often doesn’t teach its students how to think critically;

    Despite an enfeebled Democratic opposition that wouldn’t know a good sound bite if it smacked them in the face;

    The fact remains that Bush is somewhere around 33 – 36% in the polls, and sinking, with the Congress even lower, and the Democrats as an alternative are slowly becoming more of a possibility to more people.

    People may not be reading Murray Waas’ latest article, and they may have been thoroughly bamboozled after 9/11 by Bush’s war cries, but they have a general idea of what’s going on these days.

    The glass may yet be half-full.

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