Sunday Discussion Group

June 4, 2006

This week, the AP’s John Solomon decided that he wanted to tarnish Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. One story, followed by another, and then a third, tried to characterize a non-story as an ethical scandal from a man who not only has great integrity, but who hadn’t done anything wrong. It reached a point in which Solomon felt it necessary to mislead readers, it would seem deliberately, in order to make an argument the facts wouldn’t support.

Media Matters’ Jamison Foser offers a powerful argument that the AP series was inevitable — Reid is a Dem leader, so he had to be taken down.

The recent media treatment of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) illustrate this point: No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they’re in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men’s own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they’d have gotten better press coverage. That’s naive. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in.

It’s not just about lazy journalism — though that’s a factor — it’s also about creating narratives. Foser offers a compelling case and a disturbing series of examples: Whitewater was a “scandal”; Gore was an “exaggerator”; Dean was ultra-liberal and “unhinged”; Kerry was a “flip-flopper”; Murtha is “anti-military”; Hillary Clinton’s relationship with her husband is worthy of more scrutiny than anyone else’s marriage.

In each instance, conservative attack dogs pick a message they think might work and traditional media outlets run with it, regardless of merit, until a public perception is firmly in place.

Digby noted yesterday that Eric Boehlert, in his exceptional new book “Lapdogs,” explained:

[J]ust four months into [Clinton’s] first term, the Post published a lengthy, mocking feature on Clinton’s soft approval ratings. (“The Failed Clinton Presidency. It has a certain ring to it.”) Yet in 2005 when Bush’s job approval rating plunged into the 30s, the Post refused to print the phrase “failed presidency” to describe Bush’s second term. To do so would simply invite conservative scorn; something the newsroom seemed to go to extraordinarily lengths to avoid.

Digby wrote, “After reading all of that the question is — how do we fix this?” I’m open to suggestion.

The internet is a big part of fixing this.

How long before the Republicans regulate this news source out of existence?

  • You are asking what may be the most important question in progressive politics today. We’ve all watched as Al Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000 (and probably actually the election) has been consistently minimized and ridiculed every time he says just about anything. As you and others have noted, this happens to every prominent Democrat. Another blog recently mentioned that the MSM loves to tag dems as “shrill” and “weak.”

    Fortunately I think the answer is at hand. Your site, dKOS, TPM, and others have an army of very well informed and rational readers who are also utterly sick of all this, and when a Soloman, or Howell, Hiatt, or any number of others commit the sin of lousy and biased reporting they are hounded with the facts until they have to correct their reporting, or their bosses do. Up to now, the opposition to factually incorrect anti-dem reporting has been scattered and ineffectual. With the emergence of the progressive blogosphere that has clearly changed.

    I’m not naive enough to think this problem can be corrected easily, but I am hopeful that there is enough integrity left in MSM journalism, or at least fear of unstinting and widespread ridicule, that change will occur. Maybe the MSM will even grow up and figure out that what is actually happening is a sort of real time peer-review of their work that will make them vastly better at what they do if they pay attention.

    So far, of course, they don’t like it very much. But they can’t ignore it, and that’s a start.

  • Solution?

    Give a Howard Dean a microphone on a weekly basis to expose bias and poor reporting. In fact, Dean could give out the email addresses for the offending “reporting,” so that the Democratic faithful could bombard the offending MSM outlets of the week. (Helpful hint to avoid mass email deletion: Create an non-obvious–even nonsensical–subject line.) Better yet, at the end of the weekly radio response by the Democrats, point out clowns like John Solomon and their smears.

  • Somehow I just can’t shake images of pre-revolutionary France. Our “aristos” (conservatives, yes, but also most elected Congress people, Rep and Dem, along with the real powers-behind-the-throne, corporation executives) taking self-amused pot-shots at any “radicals” (working people, academics, bloggers) while the “press” (the court jester) applauds their powerful handlers.

    I don’t know when or how someone someday is going to expose all this wasteful nonsense in a way that captures the imagination of the working people of this country, but when it happens it’s going to be ruinous to everybody. And the longer we wait for the guillotines to begin falling the more ruinous it’s going to be. It may already be beyond hope.

  • How about an award for press hatchet jobs in the service of being a right wing lapdog. Since Shihtsus are lapdogs of a sort, they could be called the Shihtsu Press Awards, or Shitty Press awards for short. The AP’s John Solomon articles on Harry Reid and the New York Times hit job on the Clinton marriage definitely earned their Shittys.

  • Act like Big Dogs.

    Particularly… act like Big Dogs who don’t like yappy lapdogs.

    1) Pick eloquent leaders who are willing to explain the origin and history of the smear machine –exactly as you have done it here– to the American public.

    2) Have a website dedicated SOLELY to documenting the offenses. The democratic party should be employing people right now in this endeavor.

    3) Spot the memes as they are being minted.
    Who couldn’t see “flip-flopper” coming down the media pipeline? As soon as you see one coming… run a multitude of attack ads accusing your opponent of the very same sins.

    To summarize:

    When Big Dogs get smeared with water…
    They stand up and shake it off right back at you…

  • Well, I suppose before much headway can be made on fixing the problem, we need a better sense of what causes the problem in the first place. And I suppose I buy into the Conason-Alterman etc story about conservative institutions “working the refs”. So, e.g., whatever Solomon’s motives may have been for his stories on Reid, those stories made it past his editors, because those editors are used to thinking about how ensure that their news organization isn’t open to charges of liberal or Dem-leaning bias.

    I also suspect that reporters and editors like to flatter themselves in something like the same way that “independent voters” like to flatter themselves. In the case of the reporters, they’re Dem-leaning if not actually Democrats. But of course, they want to see themselves as independent and apart from the herd. So they gravitate to shallow displays of that independence. Reporters’ having it in for Dems, like Kaus-style (“I’m a Dem who hates Dems! Oh, how contrarian am I!”) punditting, is way pretending you’re not part of the herd.

    So what’s a Dem to do? Work the refs ourselves. To a very limitted extent, this is already starting to happen. (Witness to the JMM/Paul Kiel ass-whomping of Solomon.) But the institutions really aren’t there for it to happen in a big way. Liberals have nothing equivalent to the WSJ editorial page and Fox News. Air America is a voice on the radio, but it doesn’t compete with the kind of influence that Rush had in his hey day.

    I guess my pipedream is that some left-leaning Richard Scaife appears out of nowehere and dumps millions and millions into creating left-leaning media institutions that can spend all of their time criticizing the Time, the Post, and netowrks, and the the cable news channels for their “conservative bias”. The hope is that would pull them back to reporting that actually is balanaced.

  • I’m not sure there is anything anyone can do about the establishment mainstream media (MSM), they are owned and controlled by conservatives, and its clear that now so are their newsrooms. I hate to sound like a shill for Glenn Greenwald, but he’s that other blogger I love to read, and I can only recommend a few things he said. 1) Write letters to the editor to all the newspapers you have any local connection with, whether you grew up in that newspaper’s area, whether you live there now, heck, maybe even if you only like to vacation there. But they do print those, and the more letters they get from people like us, the more likely they are to publish our sentiments. And 2) never underestimate the power of the blogosphere. I just bought Glenn’s book, which is an entirely blogosphere book in that Glenn was recruited by a publisher purely on the basis of his blog. (Hint to CB: start contacting book publishers!) So it’s clear that it is possible for the blogosphere (and by extension, us who participate in it) can have an impact outside the blogosphere. Work that angle. attempt to get your message out whereever possible. Guest blogging, radio interviews on Air America, people with blogging credentials such as CB could start talking to alternative magazines such as Utne Reader, The Nation, In These Times, etc, about getting columns published. If they won’t come to us, we will need to proactively go to them. The people who published Glenn’s book, How Would A Patriot Act, have a plan for rapidly publishing relevant material, using folks like bloggers who can quickly write about it. The point is a publishing format that is fast enough to keep up with today’s fast-paced news cycle and to get a book published before it becomes irrelevant. I wonder how many writers Working Assets already has lined up?

    There is a whole network of message promotion that is being built to finally counteract the dominance the right has had in this field for a decade. Become a part of it. (I of course need to heed my own advice and start my own blog or discussion forum or something. BTW I finally registered a domain for work that you can view, shivermetimbers.org )

  • First, we have to recognize that the press is not misled, or duped, or badgered into acting this way. What Solomon did was intentional. He is not being fooled, he isan intentional actor in this game. Nor was he a mole. His editors furthered his fabrications, and stood behind him, long after his fabrications were shown to be true. The press is not the referees, they are on the other team.

    Once we recognize this, we need media criticism to be as much a part of the Democratic discussion as it is for Republicans. When CNN analyst Bill Bennet is interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, he attacks the bias of CNN. Any Democrat ought to do the same. Media reform ought to be part of our platform to show our disapproval of it, and at least force the press to say both sides think they are biased, rather than focusing solely on the question of whether the Iraq War is going great, if only their liberal bias would allow us to see it.

    Rather than trying to lick the hand that slaps us, we should demand respect, and not be afraid to loudly denounce the fiction written to smear Democrats and Protect Republicans. Then, when we are attacked, we have provided ourselves cover: they are attacking us because they are protecting the status quo. It says that they are part of the establishment, and that they will say and do anything to destroy us to protect that establishment.

    We need to stop appearing cozy with the media, and be antagonistic. This says that we are not happy with how the media treats us, and provides an understandable explanation for the public of why they would attack us unfairly, and it will provide a counter argument to the liberal bias meme.

    Yes, the press will then claim that being attacked by both sides shows their fairness. But that’s an improvement over the “are we too liberal?” storyline. And it demands a “he said/she said/we’re clueless” debate — and that’s a debate we will win.

  • 1.) Democrats need to take editorial control of one of the major cable news networks, and run it, not as a propaganda operation, but as a reliable source of news. Such a news operation would eschew the Star System employed by CNN, as well as the blonde woman lost in Aruba syndrome, but would employ, and/or provide an outlet for young talent — it would become a farm team for liberal journalism, progressive punditry of a brand other than the self-hating variation subsidized by Marty Peretz, and news documentaries.

    2.) Democrats should adopt as a priority one policy goal, the complete reversal of Media Consolidation, breaking up the giant Media corporations, restoring fairness and requiring public service. Net neutrality should be supplemented by efforts to promote municipal ownership of fiber optic nets. Radical reduction of copyright terms, especially for corporations, should be part of the package, as should a tax on advertising to support public financing of election campaigns.

  • Following up on Bruce Wilder’s train of thought, media (read “television”) corporations make millions and millions of dollars on political (attack) advertising. All campaign corruption stems from raising money to buy expensive television ads. Just ban political advertising on television across the board for everyone.

  • Cancel subscribtions to newspapers and emailing TV networks saying you are not going to watch their news in favor of the more truthful internet sources for news. Write letters to the editor of newspapers expressing your dissatisfaction with the performance of the main stream media. This is a huge problem because they are trying to tell us what to think and what politicians get exposure on TV. The MSM represents corporate America.

  • Dems have to speak more bluntly and stick to their guns. Gore seems to get it, and it’s given him tremendous traction. When a reporter tries to point toward ‘controversy’ in global warming, Gore cuts to the quick and calls them liars. He doesn’t back off an inch.

    Another problem is the media tries to achieve balance by playing he said/she said. We all know that honesty is a rare commodity among contemporary republican’ts. So when they try to muddy an issue with a lie, turn the tables and make the lie the issue – the only issue – and don’t back down.

    Also, the repubs have developed this curious tactic of demanding Dems refute, or disavow what someone else says. The media happily plays along, and so have Dems. That’s got to stop. When right wingers get the vapors over something Dean said, for crying out loud – don’t agree with them. Talk past it. (are you listening, Mr Biden?) Suggest they go talk to the source, and stay out of it.

    I guess the short of it is that despite the sad state of media, it is what it is. It’s a given, and we’d better learn how to play it.

  • I’m listening to my newest CD purchase, Taking the Long Way . .by the Dixie Chicks.

    I bought it initially to support the group that that dared to criticize King George and then suffered the MSM narrative that the Chicks destroyed their career and lost playtime on country radio for being out of step with heartland America.

    The Chicks are now NUMBER ONE billboard’s top selling album on Pop and Country charts.

    I resonate with the lyrics… and the music. The clear voice of strong conscience and firm resolve.
    It’s now time for defiance and strength not whimpy liberal angst and self doubt.

    ********************
    “I’m not ready to make nice, I’m not ready to back down. I’m still mad as hell, and I don’t have time to go round and round and round. It’s too late to make it right, I probably wouldn’t if I could.”
    *********************
    This MSM conservative narrative that country singers can’t criticize Bush was destroyed by consumer behavior, because the Chicks by-passed the talking heads and spoke directly to the hearts of the American people..

  • This is a big problem with many facets. I don’t pretend to have a comprehensive solution.

    One part of the solution is that liberal blogs must call out the likes of Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd when they pick-up on the GOP inspired scripts. (For Rich’s most recent foray into trashing Gore see Friday’s Daily Howler and look over Somerby’s archives for plenty more examples.) When these “liberals” write bad thing about Bush the liberal blogs trumpet their wisdom. However, when they trash Democrats the liberal blogs are mostly silent. Liberal blogs must hold their feet to the fire when trash Democrats.

  • Slip Kid No More,

    No, I have to credit the fine folks at deadmonkeycomics.com for that, but I needed something to keep people entertained while I figured out what to put up. 😀

  • As Rian and Memekiller both touched on, it’s transparently clear that much of the MSM is under the control of conservative puppetmasters. Every Dem is swiftboated for even the most imaginary of offenses while anything they say or do that’s remotely positive is ignored, attacked or marginalized. Even Republicans who stray from the party line are subjected to the same treatment. In the same words!

    The problem is that no one has dug into the web of interconnected holding companies, dummy corporations, investor groups, etc. to track back to the real media owners and power brokers who are really in control of what is going on.

    I don’t have the resources to do it myself or I would have been on it long ago. But there are people out there who do and it would be an incredible coup to launch an investigation of exactly who really owns the media these days.

    The Republicans didn’t spend years just building up their political machine. They also deliberately and with great foresight quietly worked behind the scenes to buy control of the media to support and perpetuate their political dominance.

    This is not a new idea, it’s been tried with varying degrees of success many times throughout history. It continues to amaze me that no one has bothered to really check out the facts to date.

    Memekiller nailed it when he said: “First, we have to recognize that the press is not misled, or duped, or badgered into acting this way. What Solomon did was intentional. He is not being fooled, he is an intentional actor in this game. Nor was he a mole. His editors furthered his fabrications, and stood behind him, long after his fabrications were shown to be true. The press is not the referees, they are on the other team.”

    I presume he meant “not true” there, but otherwise it’s spot on. There are absolutely legions of honest, hard-working journalists out there, but they are not the ones who make the decisions about what goes out to the public day in and day out. The problem lies at the top and the sooner the facts are laid out to the public the sooner we can end the nightmare we’re living in right now.

  • We have to log them, analyze them and then expose those who seem so “in bed’ or “prone” to this reactionary type press. It would be very interesting to “get them all in the same room” and expose them for what they are. They certainly are not ethical journalists but more like “mental masturbating shills”. Media Matters does great with TV/Radio but the print media has not had enough exposure that the Intertnet is now starting to give them. I’ll be the first with Solomon’s name. Who’s next?

  • One of the quickest ways to stop the bleeding is to regain control of the Congress and pass a law reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

    With triage done, we can then work on the longer term solution. One thing Dems have to learn is to be patient. The Rethugs didn’t roll the MSM overnight — they literally wored it for decades. At first, their whining about a biased media sounded shrill, silly, and sour grapes. But repeated long enough, often enough, in enough fora and with the inevitable anecdotal stories (no matter how rare), it began to take hold. For a while, the MSM fought back, but as R’s began to get control of more offices (and therefore bully pulpits) the MSM began to cower from the accusations and overcompensate. Eventually, such pro-right compensation became ingrained habit.

    There are two lessons to this, one obvious, one less so. The obvious is that winning cures most ills. Yeah, yeah the media was a lot harder on Clinton even though he was a winner, etc. But in the real timeline at issue, he was a passing flash — add to that the fact that (a) he provided a lot of fodder and (b) while he personally was victorious, the movement held power only part of his tenure and it is no surprise he fails to prove my premise. In the long run, however, the winners have microphones, the winners control what “properties” the talking head shows get to help or hinder their ratings, the winners decide whose questions to take in the WH press room, and the winners regulate industries, including the media. Overtime, a philosphy that wins consistently for a period of years will bring the media to heel.

    The other lesson is to start now in attacking the media. The right had and has many “whistleblower” organizations that are well-funded and aggressive about perceived media slights, campus slights, etc. We need to match that effort (FAIR is not quite it). We cannot give up just because it doesn’t create immediate change. The Rethugs’ campaign of intimidation took 20 years, but look at the fruit it has borne for them!

    One final point, and this is the trickiest one. As “progressives” we often pride ourselves as a community on intellectualism over dogma, reason over spin, accuracy over manipulation, and fairness/integrity over lies. Even entities like FAIR are, too be frank, too “fair” to be an effective counterweight. I’m not quite sure how we intimidate without selling our ideals, but the reality is we can’t just settle for “right wing spin vs. the obvious objective truth” and hope the truth will prevail. Too many people – media and laypersons – will, Solomon-like, split the baby and the presumed “truth” will be a compromise that is in reality center-right. We need to learn to fight as partisans. If the right wing is always the right wing, and we see ourselves as high-minded neutral brokers, the referees in a sense, who in the ring is actually opposing the right?

  • (To clear up an unfortunate ambiguity, in #21 when I say “Solomon-like” it is a purely biblical reference, not a reference to John Solomon. Sorry, I should have been more sensitive to context.)

  • We certainly should stop watching these shows — I have stopped watching Sunday morning shows and cable news since Bush won re-election, and I’m much better informed for it. The problem is that this is about more than ratings. There’s a market for a non-Republican news show, as Colbert has shown, yet they won’t do it (The few exceptions, like the Daily Show and Countdown and Cafferty, are expected not to push a particular party line – they will all become critics of a Democratic Administration if one comes to power). MSNBC cancelled their highest rated show, Donahue, even when it had a two-conservatives to war-critic ratio, and three wingnut to Michael Moore ratio mandated by management. People watched it, and MSNBC cancelled it, because as lopsided as it was, it still allowed the other view to be aired.

    This is also the problem with the notion that TV makes money with these political ads. It’s true, yet the media consistently refuses to accept this money and air non-Republican, or moderately-Republican (in the case of the Log Cabin Rs) advertising. Sinclair aired, commercial free, a two-hour campaign commercial. Clear Channel has still blacklisted the Dixie Chicks, despite their Billboard success, and paid money to hold pro-war rallies.

    This is beyond money and ratings. They are activist Republican organizations. You can’t win them over any more than you can have bipartisan reaching-across-the-aisles with the GOP. For whatever reason, they are activists, not businessmen. Either that or they are lobbyists, paying for their sweet legislation by being GOP activists, which is much the same thing.

    Whatever. The point is, in either case you’re never going to strike a deal or win them over. You can either fight them, or succumb to them. Those are your options.

  • As I said in my letter to the Associated Press:

    “Back in the day, when I was a working reporter, had I written a piece like Mr. Solomon’s first article on Senator Reid, my editor would have retracted it, issued a public apology, then taken me into the back room and done things that were Not Nice to me. And it would have been a very long time before I would have had another shot at a major article. The fact that you not only have defended the first article, but allowed a second and third that are even more obviously egregious, and that you now defend Mr. Solomon’s proven lies and fiction-masquerading-as-news in officially-sponsored attacks on those who point out his mendacity, is proof that this is not the work of some out-of-control or poorly-supervised reporter, but is rather the result of a conscious decision on the part of top management to commission this hit piece. That’s too bad, because I am old enough to remember when the Associated Press was an organization of reporters who were committed to presenting the facts. From now on, when I see a report by the Associated Press that it’s Monday, I’ll believe it after checking the calendar and confirming it from two independent sources, like a real reporter does. In the meantime, in the immortal words of your favorite Vice President, go fuck yourself.”

    To which the following day I received an e-mail from the public relations department of AP, which was the same piece they published attacking Media Matters and TPMuckraker.

    I finally have something to agree on with The Drug-Addled Moron, with his new phrase “drive-by media.” Of course, we still disagree strongly on what exactly that relates to. But it is an accurate term for these corporate scumsuckers.

  • What about libel? Do you have libel laws in US of A? Sorry, I’ve no idea. But if you do, or some approximation, and someone publishes a provable untruth about you, knowingly, you can sue them. Can you do that in USA?

    Elsewhere it works magic. Huge sums are usually awarded to the defamed party which certainly makes the media think twice about what it publishes.

    A few landmark cases could put a break on press lies and libel. The Solomon / Reid stroy could be quite a good starting case. But maybe you don’t have that option in America.

  • We have libel laws, but because technically they are an abridgement of free speech, they are construed narrowly. There is a particularly solid line of Supreme Court cases saying that political speech, speech by newsmedia, and speech targeting celebrities (of which politicians are one stripe) are all uniquely unlikely to be covered by the libel laws. So the Reid/Solomon case would almost surely fail.

  • Some amateur advice for Democrats on how to deal with the MSM.

    1) Don’t talk to Fox. This one shouldn’t really need any explanation.

    2) Recognize that the MSM is not an arbiter of fact.

    Contemporary journalism values a simple narrative above all else, and are never inclined to let pesky facts get in the way of making Processed Pasteurized News Product(TM). They are trying to tell a story(often a fairy tale), not call balls and strikes. In their dealings with the MSM, Dems often act as if they are pleading a case before Judge Wapner, rather than getting their message out to the public. This is useless and only serves to make Dems look weak.

    3) Don’t be afraid to smack ’em around a bit, especially on TV.

    There’s not much love for Carville and Begala here on the left side of the blog-o-sphere, but they are dead right on this point. The smartest Dem media play of 1995 was when Nancy Pelosi suggested to that airhead TV reporter that she try try to get a job with the RNC. If you’re on TV and your interviewer insists on vomiting up RNC talking points, call them out on it. Embarass them. Make them look stupid. They deserve it. Send the message out to any would be “tough interviewer” that they regurgitate Karl Rove’s bullshit at their own peril.

    4) Obey the Eleventh Commandment.

    Ronald Reagan famously coined the Eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans.” While it would be contrary to our party ideals(and our nature)to adopt the robotic message discipline practiced by the right, Democrats would be wise to avoid publicly attacking other Dems. It really isn’t that difficult to express the fact that you disagree with a fellow Democrat’s public statements or their stance on a particular issue without creating the appearance of personal animosity or a party rift. For Example:

    “While Howard Dean and I agree on a lot of things, I don’t happen to share his opinion that Ken Mehlman is a trucker fellating closet case intent on making the world suffer for his own self loathing.”

    Sounds a lot better than “Howard Dean doesn’t speak for me,” doesn’t it?

  • There IS a solution — at least a counterweight to conservative bias. Make fun of the bastards. Mock Republicans without mercy. Laugh at them. When Wolf Blitzer quotes a Republican soundbite for a Democrat to respond to, the Democrat must respond by saying, “He said THAT? That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard! Who’s advising him, anyway? Richard Simmons?”

    I’m serious about humor. Some of my favorites have been Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, and my favorite of all: Ernest Hollings. When some Republican upstart ran against him, the media asked Hollings if he would accept his opponent’s challenge to take a drug test. Without missing a beat, Hollings drawled, “Ah’ll take a drug test when my opponent takes an IQ test.”

    Again, I’m not joking. When Democrats come out looking serious and sanctimonious, they are sitting ducks for talking heads. Some humor, real sarcasm, would get attention. Dems haven’t noticed that it works for the Daily Show.

  • Thanks, Tom. An excellent piece. And I agree with your observation about passion, power and truth. Such an accurate, “American” statement is what I think people have been waiting to hear for a long, long time (Democrats AND Republicans).

    And if it were delivered as a speech from the House floor by any Democrat, it would never be heard outside that chamber.

  • I’m with you, Alibubba. Your three faves are mine, too. When that Texas senator was up for Defense Secretary there was a rumor that he had a drinking problem. The Sentate committee asked Hollings if he had ever seen the guy drunk. “Drunk?” blurted Hollings, “Ah have seen him Coh-mah-TOSE!” I think that’s what cooked the nominee’s chances. It’s all I can do to hold back the cheers when Barney Frank or Charlie Rangel come on (I need to hear what they have to say).

  • Democrats should call newsreporters on the fact that Republicans have repeatedly made monkeys out of them. Remind them that the Clintons were found innocent by three separate investigations and that the media was manipulated into reporting a non-scandal for eight years. Call them stooges for saying that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet and demand that they produce the quote where he actually said that if they go into denial. Ask them how it was possible for 77% of Americans came to falsely believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the 911 attacks if they were doing their jobs properly. There’s so much more. But the thing is, we should seize the initiative and put them on the defensive. Worked well for the Republicans and they are full of shit.

  • Solution?

    Give a Howard Dean a microphone on a weekly basis to expose bias and poor reporting. In fact, Dean could give out the email addresses for the offending “reporting,” so that the Democratic faithful could bombard the offending MSM outlets of the week. (Helpful hint to avoid mass email deletion: Create an non-obvious–even nonsensical–subject line.) Better yet, at the end of the weekly radio response by the Democrats, point out clowns like John Solomon and their smears.

    Comment by slip kid no more — 6/4/2006 @ 10:01 am

    We did that. remember the Dean scream? One mike, pulled out of the mix, the recording enhanced and filtered so that only Dean’s voice was heard.

    Remind me again, how many news outlets showed that the Dean scream was a manufactured sound byte for the Repugnicant Party? And how many just ran it as is, or even tried to imply that this was what everyone heard at that rally? Faux Snooze would have a field day with stuff like that.

    I like your idea, but control of a progressive media outlet would need to be part of the plan, so that the weekly Dean speeches you talk about are received unaltered by the media consumers.

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