Media doing a great job reinforcing negative Kerry image

[Democat]

I was looking at the news today and yesterday and it struck me that the U.S. media, with help from the Bush team, is doing great at reinforcing a negative image of Kerry.

In some of the media yesterday, they had Kerry's message that he was going to reduce the price of gas. This seemed like a good thing for Kerry, but they were just setting him up for a fall.

Today Kerry has the exact same message, but the media is reporting, with much more effort and free air time, on the new Bush ad saying Kerry wants to increase the cost of gas.

So, in one day, the media has gone from reporting that Kerry wants to decrease gas prices to saying that he wants to increase gas prices. Suddenly, without him changing a single position, Kerry becomes a "flip flopper" in the eyes of the American people.

This is exactly what happened to Gore in 2000. It's not just the Bush administration doing it, but the U.S. media. You can't blame Bush for running ads (of course he has been lying in every ad, which the media won't report on), but why does the U.S. media report every Bush ad as a big news event, complete with 1000's of free showings of the ad and unlimited "commentary", which actually turns out to be praise and fawning?

It's also disheartening how the news media seems to get many of its story ideas directly from Bush advertising. For example, if Bush runs an ad saying Kerry wants to raise gas prices, suddenly every major network decides to do stories on "Kerry's history of tax raising." When Kerry or MoveOn run an ad about Bush lying about Iraq, you will probably never see a full half hour of news time devoted to Bush's lies.

Even though the liberal talk radio network is a good start, we need to get a real news network (like the right has Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc.) to get our message out, or we will have a very hard time winning.

[sadiesworld]

1. It's their job.

[Supormom]

2. Corporate media has a lot at stake in this election.

This is only the beginning.

[k in IA]

3. Reporting now seems to consist of regurgitating the PR handout

distributed by the * admin or campaign.

Why do anything else? That would take effort and work. It's much easier to just repeat what they say.

[izzie]

4. Odd the Republicans are saying they are doing the same to Bush.

It must be the filler it comes through, only I still say the news is mostly big business and we know where their heart is, and it is with Bush.