Looking to the future: the Dems need a long-term media push-back strategy

[dolstein]

Media Matters and Air America is a good start, but as the campaign coverage during the past few weeks has reminded is, we have a long we to go before we can expect to see anything remotely approaching "fair and balanced" coverage from the news media.

Here are a few thoughts:

1. We need to make life difficult for those reporters and columnists who repeatedly cross the line between objective reporting and partisan advocacy (especially GOP advocacy). No, I'm not talking about physical threats. I'm talking about flooding their e-mails and cable channel bulletin boards with complaints whenever these guys screw up. We have to be prepared to do to Fox what the right wingers did to CBS over the Rather story. We need to publicize coflicts of interest -- like Mrs. Alan Greespan posing as an unbiased reporter on the MSNBC roundtable. We need to publicize their errors regularly and repeatedly in order to cast doubt on their credibility. In short, we need to keep them honest, which is a tough job, given that the right-wingers are working 24/7 to keep them "honest" (i.e., biased towards the right).

2. We need to challenege each and every Sinclair broadcasting license when it comes up for renewal.

3. We need to get more radio and television stations and newspapers under liberal ownership, not necessarily as a way of spreading left-wing propaganda, but as a way of marginalizing right-wing propaganda.

4. We need our own Drudge. Josh Marshall, Salon and Kos are starting to fill that role by feeding stories to Air America. But we can do better.

5. We need much better surrogates. The reason the GOP is so much better when it comes to creating the "echo chamber" effect is because they all stick to their talking points. The Dems still haven't mastered this.

[diplomats]

1. I agree

Excellent post.

[DaveinMD]

2. After the election

I am going to begin work on forming a liberal cable news channel. I've been talking to a couple of folks about this and I think I can get the financing together. I will keep everyone here informed.

[mcg]

6. I'll invest, and we need broadcast also

Yes, we need to buy some media, both cable and broadcast.

[Nordic]

3. agreed. Rich repubs started this 30 years ago

and it's now finally under their control.

We need to take it back, and it's gonna take $$$$$.

Read this to see how it all worked:

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1sep04.htm

[leftofthedial]

4. we need to make the "news" media irrelevant

trying to play their mass disinformation game might be one way to do it, but it will not succeed in getting our message out. we'll just be in perpetual shouting matches with our spin versus their spin.

I disagree about physical threats.

I think lying to the public should be a serious crime. I think journalists should be licensed. I think "news" media needs to be regulated into oblivion. As for first amendment issues, partisan disinformation that leads to thousands of deaths is every bit as excluded speech as the proverbial yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.

[BrendaStarr]

5. What media really fear is competition

I really feel and seeing how they have acted in the last four years that media doesn't care what you say as long as you are not signing a major check to them like their fat cat advertisers do.

As a Guardian writer pointed out, what they really fear is competition.

Giving people something else to look at than them.

Now we have ourselves covered with that. We might go for news, but we are back online to talk to each other read each other's blogs etc.

We need to reach out to the undecideds and the young people where they are online.

We need to attract their eyes and argue our cause with them.

Then we can lead them back to our blogs.

We've all shown we can write blogs now. Nearly everyone has one.

It is time to be brutally honest with which blogs actually serve our purpose. We have very popular bloggers out there that do little beyond put down our own candidates.

And then we hide in our liberal groups for conversation and avoid going out in the big mean world.

If you want to let the Republicans rule for the next 50 years, that's the way to do it, it seems to me.

What we really need to do is

1)Get out and mix it up in chat rooms and message boards visited by the rest of America and respond when the Republican liars invade and start spewing their lies.

2)Make blogs that fight for our ideals and don't take the easy route of putting down our candidates. Our candidates have to deal with reality, not our fiercest desires. We have seen the result of the current way of pushing for a more liberal agenda. It's not working. Gray Davis fulfilled our fantasies in CA during the recall election and he lost pretty badly. The way is not to demand that Democrats move to the left at this time, because we haven't paved the way for them to do that.

If you are a blogger though you should also be a message boarder or chat room helper so you will learn what people need to know there.

3) Do this for 4 years. The Republicans will be there, and when the large paid or pumped crowds of Republicans are not there and we get the mastery of the boards and chats, that's we our numbers go up and they lose favor. They have paid crowds to do this. We don't. We have to get over it and do it ourselves like the working class has always had to do. All we are missing are the huge crowds of people in the mixed venues that they are able to dump in them.

In fact it was right after the Rs put a call out to their people to help by joining the internet fight that Kerry started losing the ground he gained in the debates.

And let me tell you the Republican message boarders and chat room hoards responded big time to that call.

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