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It’s time to take on the media

It’s time to take on the media

Ace of Spades blog has posted a piece documenting the void of a Fourth Estate in America today, enjoining all of us who have been following its malpractice to do something:

The media no longer hides it in their actions. They are fully fused with the Obama Administration and DNC. The only way in which they do hide it is by simply lying when confronted about it: They’ll issue a snide denial, then go about doing precisely what it is they were accused of doing.

As I learned while interviewing veteran Kevin Tully, never bring up a problem without at least one solution. Ace suggests:

This is dangerous and unhealthy. I keep banging this drum but honestly, some patriotic billionaires do have to band together to purchase or build a media outlet. The outlet would be founded upon a simple premise: that it is dangerous and ultimately fatal for democracy for media power to fuse with government power, that the adversarial press is vital.

There are a few groups that are turning their attention to media malpractice, including Media Trackers. This organization is one that emerged around the time of the Wisconsin recall, including an investigation that uncovered massive SEIU voter fraud as well as exposing the judges in Wisconsin who signed recall petitions.

While I don’t have the answer, I have thought about a few solutions.

First, correctly identify the problem, as Ace has. It takes some reframing in our own minds, I believe, to grasp the idea that it is simply a political candidate or policy we are fighting. We must destroy the food chain that is rotting our country, the primary vehicles of which are the media and the government-run schools.

Second, I sometimes fear that we focus too much on the large national news outlets, when perhaps more Americans, more of the persuadable middle, tune in to their local nightly news broadcast than the politics-laden super media networks like Fox. Treat your local news anchors like your congressman. Call them, follow them on twitter, write about their biased reports, because they weave bias into their nightly news reports on fires and high school sports teams like you wouldn’t believe. Film them when they’re doing their job. Ask them why they didn’t film the people in the Socialist Worker t-shirts at the so-called teachers union protests. Hold THEM accountable, and you will do more to reach the persuadable middle than any large new network can.

And third, I’d like to call attention to graduate journalism schools for playing their part in this farce that we can call American journalism. As I was kicked out of the “Midwest Marxism” conference held at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism a few months ago for taking notes to report on what was going on, I felt I had a more than symbolic real-life experience with the rotting out of educational journalism institutions.

I’ve quoted an LI reader before who told me that, having left his native Vietnam in the 1970s, was left with a chill as he rode the subway to work each day to see everyone’s nose buried in a New York Times. It reminded him of the one-newspaper, the state newspaper, he used to see in his native country.

Competition, accountability, and some responsibility on our parts to take on the media, or take their role if need be.

What do you think? Do we need a new large network, or can new media and citizen action take on the media malpractice?

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