On Message
Flash at Centrisity makes a key mistake; he quotes Ezra from Pandagan.
Flash says:
Ezra over at Pandagon nailed it yesterday: Democrats, we all know, have the message clarity of a coed at her first kegger. But they're only partly to blame for it.
Ain't that the truth. It seems we are so intimidated by the Right Wing media machine, that we play catch-up most of the time. We need a more aggressive style. We need to be able to take command of any issue and claim our equal time.
Liberals up and down the scale, from atrocities like Ollie Willis to relatively rational guys like Flash - keep repeating this as if it's a generally-accepted fact; that there's a "right wing media machine". Let's look at the numbers:
Broadcast Networks with News Divisions:
Liberal: 3
Conservative: 0
Cable News operations:
Liberal: 3
Conservative: 1
Political Identification of Newspaper Reporters:
Liberal: 61 Percent
Conservative: 15 Percent
Presidential voting patterns of reporters and producers, on average, since 1984 (LA Times):
Democrat: 85% (give or take a few)
Republican: 9% (ditto)
So about that "conservative media machine" - you're saying that one cable network, the talk radio industry, and one in seven reporters dominate the entire rest of the media?
Flash continues:
Pandagon's method: Democrats need to pick an outrage of the week and pound on it until they win. No diverting attention, no denunciations of new and upsetting bills, no distractions. We must pick and choose among the Republican's unjust, unfair, unpopular actions and settle on one to obsessively publicize and publicly reject.
Like you (collective) did with the Texas Air Guard stuff? With Florida in 2000? Like Halliburton and "Yummy Yummy Yellowcakes" and the successive injustices of every American military action in the past forty years and...
Go for it, Dems. It's served you so well so far.
Flash:
The left has been playing nice too long. It is time we put away the White gloves and chiffon dress, and slip on the boxing gloves and sweat suit. We need to confront the opposition with our own brand of delivery. And if we wait till the next election cycle, we'll lose again.
Question, for all of you: What was MoveOn? What has George Soros (and his little clacque of bought-and-paid-for bloggers) been?
And the notion of Oliver Willis in a chiffon dress - gaaaaah. Guess I don't need to fix lunch, anyway...
Posted by Mitch at
November 29, 2004 08:26 AM
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I am not implying that the Main Stream media is conservative. But I do insist that the Right Wing Media machine has forced the MSM to shift significantly to the Right. The Peace at all Costs wing of the Dem party just sits back and watches. It is time for that to change, if they want change.
CNN is a GREAT example of a Network that has run to the Right so fast it is painful to watch at times, especially with Rush's sweetheart driving the news cycle all day long.
I expected you to speak up, you don't want to lose the opportunity to say 'Even the Liberal Media "insert favortie Right Wing Meme of the week' is supporting us" bantor you love to echo, while periodically cherry picking a lefty extremist editorial to support the so called Liberal Media claim.
I'm on to ya, unfortunately, there aren't enough of us that truly 'get it!'
Flash
Posted by: Flash at November 29, 2004 09:55 AMFlash, I may "run to the right" for several hours, but if I'm three days to the left of center, I'm not gonna get there. Yeah, there was market pressure on the LMSM to correct, and they may well have leaned in a bit more towards center, but that was for appearance's sake, and so people could claim the shift without having to acknowledge the final relative position.
Like, um, well, you.
Posted by: Bobby at November 29, 2004 10:14 AMFlash,
" while periodically cherry picking a lefty extremist editorial to support the so called Liberal Media claim."
Did you actually read the stats I cited? The percent of people in newsrooms who identify themselves as liberals? The perceived slant that even news people themselves are admitting in growing numbers?
I don't expect the giggly fratboys at Pandagon to read actual sources, Flash - but c'mon, certainly *you* should...
Posted by: mitch at November 29, 2004 01:00 PMI do not dispute your sources, and yes I do read them, but I still don't have to buy into a Liberal Media meme that is pushed by the Right Wing media machine for the sole purpose of using it against the left themselves. In fact, one may even argue that since one is leaning in a particular direction politically, they may overcompensate for that in an attempt to shroud their bias.
Is there a bias, yes, does it lean left, probably. Did the AWOL story get anywhere near the constant bombardment of the media as the Swift Vet story, not even close. And that is only one example.
My point was only that if the Media arm of the Democratic party wants to play with the big boys, then they need to play by the same rules. The Left can't continue to play touch football, when the Right is playing tackle!
You, of course, don't want that to happen, because then you would probably lose.
Flash
Posted by: Flash at November 29, 2004 03:23 PM