The more I watch national and local coverage of politics, the more I feel things are hopeless. Real news stories are not getting reported or they're not getting reported thoroughly or truthfully. We, here at DU and elsewhere, have tried to change this with our many letters, emails and calls to cable and network news stations as well as major newspapers. We're happy when our efforts have some small effect, but overall we haven't been able to really deflect the trend. The corporate media rolls on.
We talk about taking back the media, and rightly so, because the airwaves belong to us and not to the corporations. We are thrilled when we hear of plans for a "liberal" news network. We want something big to happen...a big change in the media that will overturn the corporate control. But i'm finally beginning to realize that big change can't happen overnight, especially when we are working against such a well funded movement. And, a liberal media network will be labelled as such and, by itself, will not be able to get the message out to those who don't regard it as credible.
I wonder if we are going about this in the wrong manner.
You know how we criticize the greens for running candidates in national elections before they've even organized at the local levels? I wonder if we need to take that "think globally, act locally" advice and change our course of action.
The other day I saw this thread on DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=319905By the time I had gone to check out the link to the story it had been removed and people started posting to the thread saying the media was covering up for the republicans again. I agreed. So, I called up WOI-TV in des moines and talked to the news director. I asked him why the story was pulled and he told me because it had been up since saturday and there were new stories to put up on the website. He said my call was the first but he had received several emails about it (from DUers, no doubt) and that he would put the story back up on the website. Later that day, the story was back. I don't think it was a conspiracy to remove it. But, I'm sure many of the stories that get pulled or don't get reported are the victims of right wing pressure or control from the top.
We can't change CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC or NBC. Our letters and complaints will have little effect overall, if any. Same goes for our boycotts. The progressive movement around the country is still too fragmented. But, the local media outlets could be an entirely different story. Look how easy it was to get a local Des Moines station to put back an important story that had been removed.
How many active DUers do we have on these boards? The home page shows more than 38,000 registered users. Surely there are enough of us in all the medium and large cities across the country that we can force a significant change in our local media. If we were able to simultaneously push on the local news outlets and force them to report the truth in places like New York, Chicago, Miami, Tampa, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, etc, then how long would it be before the big guys had to follow suit? and it's not just the big cities that we can effect, but the medium sized cities like Des Moines, St. Louis, Austin, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Jacksonville, etc....we have DUers everywhere. We might not be able to get our foot in the door at CNN (yet), but if enough of us team up we can surely get into places like WOI-TV in Des Moines or KEYE in Austin or even WGN in chicago and make ourselves heard. All we need to do is get the local broadcast TV news channels to be aware that we are policing them and that we will confront them when they aren't doing their job. Once we got a little momentum, we could start spreading quickly because despite the fact that these media outlets are corporate owned, the aspiring and seasoned journalists (who tend to be progressive) will report the news the way it needs to be reported when they see that the audience wants it that way.
Hey, aren't you sick of hearing stupid stories on the news about Democratic candidates' ugly argyle sweaters, or expensive haircuts or emotional outbursts being reported over and over and over again. Aren't you sick of watching important news stories like the charges against Bush and Cheney from Paul O'Neill's book or Kevin Phillips' book get ignored? Aren't you sick of seeing hypocrites like Rush Limbaugh getting a free ride over his $400,000 oxycontin habit...especially after having to be exposed to the white house's drug propoganda that equates marijuana users with terrorists? Aren't you sick of watching Bush/Cheney whitewash the 911 commission while the national media stands around with their fingers up their noses? Aren't you sick of seeing every important, damning story about the corrupt Bush administration get swept under the corporate controlled media's rug? I sure am. But the longer we let them get away with it, the more and more complacent we'll continue to become. How long did we have to hear that Clinton was a liar because of his covered up affair? Way too many to count. How many times have you heard the media call Bush a liar because he falsified evidence to take us into an illegal war that has killed thousands so far? Zero.
Why don't we organize in every large and medium sized market and start building a relationship with our local media outlets? There are certainly enough of us in every market to do this. and, I'm sure we all know non-DUers that we can enlist to help us out. In a short time we would grow in number, I'm certain of that.
How much effort would it take to start up an organized movement? I'm willing to take on a heavy load if everyone else would participate. But we need a big movement to be effective. One or two of us here and there won't do it. Organization: This is how the religious right was able to gain so much control. We outnumber them but they're more organized. We need to be organized. We've got a wealth of information built up here at DU. We've got people in the media and we've got great writers and activists. why don't we take back the media? If we're going to take back the country from these criminals, we need to have a free and fair media first.
I'm sorry for the lengthy post. I hope enough people will read this. I'd love to hear everyone's comments on this idea. This is something we could do. This is a way we could change things. We spend so much time sitting around complaining...if we put a fraction of that energy into something like this we could be the mechanism that turns the media back in the right direction. We don't need to spend money, we just need to organize. We need to build relationships with the local media all across the country and we have to direct them and show them how to do their job. If we don't do it, who will?
What does everyone think?
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