The true power behind the RW. It is called NET

[ck4829]

William Bennett has been chairman of the Free Congress Foundation's National Empowerment Television (NET). According to the Anti-Defamation League's book, The Religious Right, "NET addresses the religious right's meat-and-potatoes issues - including coverage of abortion, gay rights (NET has broadcast the homophobic video, "The Gay Agenda"), school vouchers, and public school curricula developments." NET was a decisive factor in obtaining confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas by encouraging viewers to pressure their congressmen. Burton Pines, Vice-Chairman of NET, calls the project "C-Span with an attitude."

Behind this blizzard of cultural and religious extremism is the desire of the economically greedy for a no-holds-barred laissez faire commercial climate. This group of fiscal conservatives is interested primarily in the passage of legislation which fattens their pocketbooks. They feel insulated from extremism by their individual wealth and power. They care little about the freedoms and opportunities of this or future generations.

...

With FCF's National Empowerment Television (NET); right-wing talk-show radio personalities such as Rush Limbaugh; columnists like Cal Thomas; organizations such as the Christian Coalition; James Dobson's Focus On The Family; the Coalition On Revival (COR); Promise Keepers; Citizens for Excellence in Education (CEE); homophobes such as Jerry Falwell and Lou Sheldon; Christian Reconstructionists; and even anti-government militias and racist organizations, Heritage can propagandize and rally both collaborating and unsuspecting "ditto heads."

Voters with negative and/or selfish motives such as: racists (anti-Semites, skin-heads, survivalists, militias, white supremacists); anti-feminists; pro-lifers; pro-gun fanatics; home schoolers and voucher advocates fall prey to demagoguery and are being blatantly used to reduce this nation to an anti-democratic, two-class social and economic system. Diehard party supporters who ignore the demagogic positions taken and vote for the political party rather than the candidate are witless enablers in this scenario.

http://prosocs.tripod.com/jazzbnd.html

This should give us a clue as how to regroup and win.

We will need our own form of NET

Thankfully, NET is gone. So, it should be fairly easy to build something that can compete with the RW Media Machine.

[SariesNightly]

1. Disinformation is King

This great article about the current media climate was written by Jeff Cohen, the picture is pretty grim to say the least,


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In 2002, I was an on-air commentator at MSNBC, and also senior producer on the "Donahue" show, the most-watched program on the channel. In the last months of the program, before it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war, we were ordered by management that every time we booked an antiwar guest, we had to book 2 pro-war guests. If we booked two guests on the left, we had to book 3 on the right. At one meeting, a producer suggested booking Michael Moore and was told that she would need to book 3 right-wingers for balance. I considered suggesting Noam Chomsky as a guest, but our studio couldn't accommodate the 86 right-wingers we would have needed for balance.

When we look at the media's role in the 2004 election, we make a mistake to focus on election coverage per se. The basis for Bush's victory was in place way before 2004. At the end of last year, a huge study done by the University of Maryland's PIPA, the Program on International Policy Attitudes, found that most of those who got their news from the commercial TV networks held at least 1 of 3 fundamental "misperceptions" about the war in Iraq (and some held 2 or 3 of them):

-- that Iraq had been directly linked to 9/11
-- that WMDs had been found in Iraq
-- that world opinion supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Viewers of Fox News, where I worked for years, were the most misled. But strong majorities of CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN viewers were also confused on at least one of these points. Among those informed on all 3 questions, only 23 percent supported Bush's war
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EDIT -- almost forgot the link,
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1041