Rebuild The American Dream: Shame The Press

[Babylonsister]

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=3947

Rebuild The American Dream: Shame The Press
Posted by Mark on February 26, 2011 at 10:28 pm.



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For the hard work and positive energy of this movement to reap benefits, we are going to have to make the media do its job. They didn’t seem to have any problem covering sparsely attended town halls last year where Tea Baggers harangued their congressmen. Of course the Tea Partiers had the advantage of their own house news network, Fox News. When you can organize through a nationally broadcast platform with buses and PR provided by lobbyists (FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity) and billionaires (the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch), you enjoy a valuable advantage that the grassroots doesn’t have.

That’s the challenge we face today. Getting people to commit turns out to have been the easy part. What do we have to do to get the media to do their job and provide honest coverage? This weekend the Sunday morning news shows will be populated almost entirely by Republicans and right-wingers. NBC’s Meet the Press added AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka late yesterday after being shamed by the brazenly biased lineups that were released by the networks.

This is further evidence of the favoritism that business receives from the press. Every local newspaper has a business section. There are three business channels on cable TV. Where is the labor section of the paper? Where is the Labor News Network?

Shame appears to be the best weapon in this battle and people should make generous use of it. If we contact both local and national media and insist that they cover these events, the people will do the rest. It’s clear from the demonstrations today there is sufficient passion to fuel this movement. Now let’s get the media on board and produce some results.

[Treestar]

One would only hope that people will notice that only Republicans are on and want to hear the other side.

[KonaKane]

I'm usually an optimist, but frankly I don't think they will care if its all one sided. People have gotten too lazy on their information gathering. It used to take some intellectual curiosity and some effort to obtain good reliable information about the nation and world around you. Now, that low-credibility information is delivered to your lap in 50 different versions with flashy graphics and other "carrots" to entertain you. From the ratings I see, people are quite happy to have a plate of colorful entertaining horse shit over a small bland plate of facts, any day.

The only solution I see to this is twofold. One, stop trying to change the media as it has become. Aint gonna happen. As Ted Koppel noted, the second the media went from public service to for-profit venture, it was all over. They smelled money and once you do that, its like heroin. You don't go back. Two, it's time to use the technology available to us now that wasn't there two decades ago, and MAKE new media. It will take time and mountains of effort, but I'm confident that new media can overtake the old corrupt format.

I really don't see any other way.

[NJMaverick]

I wish their was a way to shame the billionaire owned media. I think the key is for the internet to supplant the right wing MSM as the source of news for people.

[Cha]

We'll have to do more than "shame the press"..they have to be losing money not to cover Democracy.

[Willinois]

I posted links at my blog to the news coverage, photos, videos and blog posts I've seen for the rally in Springfield Illinois. I mentioned that the local paper didn't cover it even though they always cover tea party rallies.

http://www.thereisaway.us/2011/02/springfield_226.html

[atomic]

I am absolutely furious the MSM has ignored the protests across the country.

They've covered as little as a handful of teabaggers whenever their ugly heads pop up.

Shame, shame, shame on the MSM trying to sculpt the narrative "If we don't cover it, it doesn't exist."