So much for the online revolution (The triumph of Fox, Limbaugh and the rightwing noise machine)

[PeteNYC]

http://peterdaou.com/2010/11/so-much-for-the-online-revolution/

The story of the 2008 election was the coming of age of online politics. Hundreds of millions of dollars raised. Unprecedented macro and micro-organizing. Citizen empowerment. Humongous email lists that would deluge politicians who stood in the way of the Obama Internet juggernaut.

Of course, it hasn’t turned out that way.

The story of the 2010 elections is the triumph of the rightwing noise machine, a lumbering, well-greased behemoth created and honed over the course of three decades. Anchored by Fox News and talk radio, amplified by blogs and chain emails and juiced by the Drudge Report, this machine cranks out think-tank crafted soundbites that dominate the national discourse. Perennial terms like “big government,” “socialized medicine,” “judicial activism,” and “tax and spend,” are imbibed, regurgitated, magnified and proliferated, shaping perceptions and inflaming passions.

A million reasons have been put forth about how and why Democrats squandered their singular moment in 2008, everything from the economy to badly timed health insurance reform, but one thing is indisputable: the 2010 midterms are a clear victory for the right’s old-school messaging operation.

No one can argue that there weren’t warnings about putting too much faith in the Internet. A year into the Obama presidency, Zephyr Teachout predicted that Organizing for America Will, and Should, Fail:

"Organizing for America sent out a request for house parties today, asking people to watch a video about Obama’s economic recovery plan, talk about it with their friends, and build support for it. While there will be tweaks, this is the kind of action we can anticipate from OFA. I predict that there will be perhaps a thousand of such parties, then hundreds, then dozens. I think OFA will fail in its mission to directly engage Obama supporters in supporting Obama’s executive actions. And I think this is a very good thing.

"It will fail because Obama–suiting a President–is not oppositional, conflict-driven, and not likely to pick out particular targets to be won over–all things that are likely to engage people. It will fail because it is from OFA, not from Obama. And it will fail because OFA cannot be a new democratic party, but will have a hard time defining what it is, and what kind of real power ought exist at every level of the organization."

During the health care debate, I posted The Health Reform Fiasco Is an ‘Old’ Media Triumph — and a Red Flag for Democrats:

"Political and policy battles are primarily about messaging, about shaping public perceptions; despite widespread Internet triumphalism in the wake of the 2008 campaign, ‘old’ media mechanisms are not only relevant, but potent; Obama’s victory was predominantly the result of a well-conceived and executed traditional campaign strategy (i.e. creating effective positive and negative message frames and adhering to them).

"A striking fact about the current political environment is that despite the ground-breaking Democratic victory in November, the new administration is dealing with an oddly familiar political brew: the “liberal media” mantra is rekindled, conservative talk radio (i.e. anti-liberal radio) is resurgent, Rush Limbaugh is more relevant than ever, Ann Coulter is once again doing the network rounds, and if online commentary over the past month is any indication, many progressives still feel disconnected from the levers of power. The dynamics and tensions of the past decade remain firmly in play: rightwing noise machine (albeit denuded) versus progressive activists, old-school pundits and politicians versus online powerhouses, netroots versus DLC, frustrated outsiders versus back-scratching insiders, partisanship versus bi/post-partisanship, media versus bloggers, and so on. Democrats would do well to note how unpredictably the Conventional Wisdom Machine has operated (or how predictably for those who are less sanguine about the fungibility of a web-fueled grassroots campaign).

"Setting aside strategic errors by the Democrats (and there have been several in this fight), just look at how reform opponents have outgunned the White House using town halls, cable news, newspaper editorials, Freepers, Drudge, talk radio and chain emails. If I close my eyes, I’m transported back to my days on the Kerry campaign and the summer of Swift Boats, Purple Heart Band-Aids and rightwing attack machine antics. It’s as though a half decade of technological advances disappeared in the blink of an eye. Forget Facebook and Twitter, it’s all about Fox and MSNBC and CNN replaying images of angry protesters at town hall meetings railing against ‘government takeovers.’ It’s about Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh spreading fear and fury. It’s about anonymous emails zipping across the country, distorting the facts and sowing confusion. It’s about rightwing pundits setting the terms of the debate by foisting radical ideas on the public.

"Paradoxically, the attempts by Democrats to counter all this by sending emails to Obama’s list and creating campaign-style fact-checking websites seem almost quaint by comparison. When a woman at a town hall spoke about “awakening a sleeping giant,” she may as well have been alluding to the old media tools and techniques that have been dismissed by pundits and tech evangelists as anachronistic in the Internet age. Simply put, despite volumes of cyber-ink about the left’s online prowess, and despite Democrats controlling the White House and Congress, the right can apparently dominate the national conversation using the same outlets they relied on five and ten years ago."

That was a year and a half ago. The midterms further cement my view.

The beliefs that have shaped the 2010 midterms can be traced directly to the likes of Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. In a post titled The unbearable lightness of being a Tea Partier, I outlined the process by which rightwing soundbites transform conventional wisdom...

http://peterdaou.com/2010/11/so-much-for-the-online-revolution/

[mazzarro]

1. Still Mystified Why There Are No Wholly Owned Progressive Counterpart To Faux Noise!

When will progressive monied people help out with setting up true counterparts to some of the most vehemently partisan rethuglican noise machine? Progressives keep trying out this mantle of being the grown ups but the battle is constantly being won by the rethugs - we are only playing catch-up with them.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. I think advertisers may well recognise the Fox audience as more gullible

and thus more worthwhile to target. Sure, there are some products that are worth advertising to anyone, and a few especially to progressives. But not as many as you can market to the more easily-led Fox viewer, who is probably more interested in acquiring more goods as well. Since studies tend to show progressive people are more likely to have a wider use of media as well, it's also easier to persuade Fox viewers that what you're telling them is the whole truth, since they don't hear from other areas. That goes for the ads as well as the RW propaganda, and that helps sales too.

So the bottom line is there is more money to be made from right wing viewers than left wing ones. And so a right wing channel is more profitable. Murdoch makes money from his operations. He may have ploughed cash into them at the beginning, but it was never just a opportunity to set up a partisan channel; he was looking for a return on investment too.