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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Off topic, but important
NLRB case..
“They made their ruling. Now let’s see them enforce it.”
To paraphrase Joseph Stalin: “How many divisions does the court of appeals have?”
Good luck.
Don’t drop the soap in the shower.
I think the best point Ace makes is the fact the Fox News has no competition.
I’ve made the case that “Fox News”, as a brand has been destroyed, just as the “tea party” brand.
Most students on any given university campus and most young professionals know that it’s spelled Faux News, and it’s “tea baggers”.
Brietbart was starting to make the case that we need a presence in pop culture.
Sarah Palin made that case, hence “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”, and she was crucified for trying to be a celebrity.
Stewart and Colbert are cultural icons because they mock conservatives.
Did I say cultural icons? I meant primary news source for the under 30 crowd. Yea, the one’s that will be running the country in 30 years.
We counter liberalism with deadly serious dialog and debate–because it is deadly serious.
We need to start mocking and laughing at them, playfully.
It’s not like there isn’t any material to work with.
Playfully is the first mistake. Mock and laugh, yes; lose the “playfully.” There is nothing playful about any of these organizations or people.
Merciless, relentless lampoon.
How about thinking of it less in terms of competition and more in terms of having a second player on the field? When the lib media is confronted – it points to it’s fellow lib outlets to justify its editorial decisions.
I’m not sure I explained myself well here – I was visualizing something along the lines of a military pincer strategy by two armies with a common enemy they wish to defeat.
For the long term – start at the two sources: money and how children are raised. As a Pope said: Give me a child until they are 5, and they will be a Catholic for life.
Go push for Charter schools – how can a Charter teach Socialism when its entire reason-for-being is competition? Help anybody who home-schools. Work to get voucher laws passed. All of this changes how kids are taught, and reduces teacher-union funding.
Intermediate/short-term: (1) get Conservatives who can be as sarcastic as Stewart and Colbert. (2) Create a ‘Faux News’ website, but have it be all about pointing out where Liberal media lied, with that Stewart/Colbert snarkiness. (3) stop watching MSM, and encourage others to do the same (4) Get a few sites put together that are SERIOUSLY respectable – with 100% facts. Look at snopes – people really trust it (I don’t, but we’re talking brand image here). People are hungry for the truth, and be sure to hit that. Have lots of facts and if possible multiple analyses on the topic.
I don’t think one needs billions and buy a network – you’ll just get a bunch of people who are utterly hostile to your message, and will sabotage you every step of the way. It’s far better to bankrupt them with something new, using new media, for far cheaper. I know lots of people who don’t even HAVE a TV any more. They just watch online.
Oh – can somebody please start ridiculing Stewart and Colbert? They’re so wrong so often. It’s a win-win: if they ignore you, you make them look bad. If they respond, they’re giving you free advertising.
Newt took one positive step in questioning the basis of the question.
The next step is to question the questioner.
That is, any time someone not of the Manchurian media/DNC complex is confronted by a member of that cabal he or she should begin the encounter by calling the inquisitor to task – e.g. ask for an opinion on the propriety of a major network’s political director stepping into the role of a partisan editorialist.
And head them off at the pass, no we are not asking them to speak for, much less defend CBS or Dickerson, we are merely asking for their honest opinion on the journalistic integrity of such behavior.
Better yet, ask them if they are familiar with the Journolist controversy, then ask them if they have ever participated in any similar types of endeavors.
Make these people own their stench.
If they refuse to answer then refuse to play.
Also, every public figure who might be approached by the media simply must have an aide or companion with a flip camera handy, and then roll the thing whenever a public conversation starts.
The internet can do the rest.
In the runup to the election, I made the point many times to family (who should know better) that to watch 30 minutes of Good Morning America was equivalent to giving the Obama campaign a dollar.
I still feel that way – allowing the lies into your home is allowing the people who want to destroy our values time to argue their case.
Actually you were only off by about $179,999. My calculations are a little rough and probably understated – but any given half hour on “Good Morning America” draws 4.5 million viewers and is worth roughly $180,000 in free advertising. What matters the most is if they are saying positive or negative things about your product during that time.
Now think about all that free positive air time the Dems got during the campaign.
Which brings me to a point I have been trying to make for the last few years; the power of consumerism.
Here is an example: let’s say you are watching Chris Matthews, radical leftwinger, and you see that one of his advertisers is, let’s say, Home Depot. Do you just take that sitting down? Nope, you call Home Depot corporate offices and tell them that you are going to a) cancel your credit card with them and/or b) you will not be shopping with them anymore and will instead patron their competitors. Be sure to tell them that as long as they advertise on the Chris Matthews show, they have lost your business. By the same respect, if you find an advertiser of someone like Rush, support them.
The left learned a long time ago that that pure capitalism can be used to their advantage. Companies are not really concerned with the political bent of the programs they advertise on. They are concerned with the profit margin and the number of customers they gain from that advertising. If the NYSlimes lost all its advertisers, it would go out of business, OR change direction to stay solvent. Don’t fool yourself, the advertising revenue is the meat and potatoes of these media outlets; subscription rates only provide the gravy.
We have to stop turning up our noses and saying “Ugh, I’m not going to do that. It’s sooooo Saul Alinsky.” Darn straight it is, and the left uses it with great success while we lose elections. If your enemy has a tactic that is a winning one, you employ that tactic. Only you do it better. What good is the moral high ground if we are not going to use every weapon in our arsenal? We’ll just die on that hill.
Along those lines, the Internet Archive recently started a site that allows people to search through recordings of news programs (using closed captions for the text part). Besides the cable news networks, it includes a few local stations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
If the list of local stations could be expanded, or if a similar service with this model could be launched, it would be a valuable tool to track the media at lower levels. We already have T.V. tuners and video capture devices for computers, we just need to aggregate the video online and prepare it for search and analysis.
Your idea is very doable and in fact, these capabilities already exist provided by many broadcast monitoring services all over the US. In fact, I run one those companies. The problem is that to do everything you want is not cheap and cannot be offered in a comprehensive service for free. Just operating a single market for a year is roughly $25K in expenses and that’s if you don’t mind working for free. That’s before you get into dealing with situations with outlets like CNN who have exclusive source deals for their materials.
Indeed, the data storage itself would consume resources, well before setting up public access or digging through the video (whether by hand or algorithmically). That’s where a subscription model or M.R.C.-like donations could be used. Perhaps the focus could be on certain targeted markets at the outset.
This seems like a smart cow problem for sure: resource-heavy and challenging to set up at first, but made simpler after the first wave of pioneers.
If someone runs with this idea, I hope they get in contact with you, 2nd Amendment Mother.
I already have the resources and systems in place and operational with nationwide local, network and cable capability. Subscriptions are no problem, pricing is dependent on scale.
(Dear Prof – Please excuse the shameless marketing here – It just happens to be relevant.)
Yes, by all means be creative in deploying resources to combat the DNC press hegemony:
Boycott sponsors
Use social media at the local-news level
And create a national magazine AND a national cable outlet, similar to FOX but without the Saudi influence.
But still, until the vessels into which this conservative viewpoint is being poured are themselves willing vessels, all the effort in the world will not move the needle to the right. That is to say that the left has control of the indoctrination centers via K-12 education — they get them when they’re young and deliver the fatal postmodern/leftist dose at state-run universities; and students so “educated” — with a lot of help from a degraded popular culture — are not going to be receptive to the extent where it will make a difference.
So while we’re addressing mass propaganda via the press, we need also to undermine propaganda in the classroom. Where is the RNC on dismantling the Dept. of Ed, for example? If they’re silent it’s because the Repubs like too well their power-sharing agreement with leftists.
All these are good ideas. Grassroots watchdogging is important. But in my view nothing changes until it changes at the top. A major conservative or Republican leader needs to radically shake up the “national conversation” about the media, ideally in a high-profile series of speeches on the history, purpose and corruption of the media and its implications to our republic. This needs to be framed as a threat to a civil and informed society. It can’t be one speech, a one-shot deal. It needs to be a sustained commitment, a deliberate, calibrated and scholarly assault on the modern institution of journalism and why and how it has perverted its mission.
The goal here would be to force the media to talk about itself, and at the same time challenge their authenticity and legitimacy. This would be a mortal shock to their system. They hold a self-identity as the highest social authority and even as a fourth branch of government, above the others. They are in the business of attacking the legitimacy of others, not having their own challenged.
Simultaneously (and a much harder challenge) we need to change the mindset of respect for the media among the Right. Republicans and conservatives generally feel a natural deference to journalism and the First Amendment. We need to train conservatives to identify the media not as the tribune of free speech, but as its enemy. We need to challenge our assumptions of good faith about the media and approach every interview and every encounter with the intent to question their premises and their questions. Every interview should be seen as an opportunity to confront the media, not just deal with “the issue” at hand. The media is the issue. Make the media the issue. This would also make all these encounters actually interesting and worth watching, in ways the media would find upsetting and could not control, thereby adding to the potential of meltdown necessary to the cause.
Here’s two more examples from the Daily Caller:
The documents, which The Daily Caller had obtained hours earlier from an anonymous source, also indicate that Carrie Levine, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), was alerted on April 9, 2012 to Menendez’s habit of paying for sex while outside the United States.
ABC News senior investigative producer Rhonda Schwartz was aware as early as May 2, 2012, the documents show, when Levine wrote a source in the Dominican Republic to say that she had “shared your allegations, but not your identities, with a respected, trusted journalist with whom we have worked on other stories.”
http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/25/emails-show-fbi-investigating-sen-bob-menendez-for-sleeping-with-underage-dominican-prostitutes/
There were on top of Mark Foley .. how fast ?
I think new media is our best bet…even if we find a white knight with a lot of money to buy or start one network we will be depending on one person….
Re: the government-run schools.
I’ve had this idea, whether good or bad I don’t know yet but it involves privatized education. For lack of a better term I would call them school “malls.”
Subjects could be taught by independent and competitive companies. Science, English math, social studies, history, economics, Greek, Latin, etc. would be offered by “sectored “ companies specializing in science and/or math or what ever subject is their bailiwick. The “stores” offering the education would all be in one big “mall.”
Standardized tests (ACTs, SATs, etc.) could be offered by a privatized company as well..
There would be no government to tell you to go to school and learn to be a Democrat voter. There would be no teacher unions, no teacher pensions, no ugly strikes and no property taxes for school buildings.
You pay as you go, you learn what you need. You co-op you rides to school. You learn that you need to learn. I am still thinking through this so I put it out there for whomever.
The current public school system is a coercive demagogue for the Left.
I like it. Education needs an overhaul and one is coming. But the powers that be are going to resist. They know how fundamentally they’ve succeeded in rewiring the civic disposition of our young people.
and classes could be shopped online. With Skype style interaction, and lectures online that a student could pause and back up, in case he was unclear. He could click again for additional info … probably could ask questions that would have a ready digital response.
The current system teaches to the slowest, and drags students active minds down to a crawl to where they text or day dream, losing the zeal. Kids are not just brainwashed in public school, they have the joy of learning extracted.
The media and old establishments like education need to be stigmatized for what they are … archaic and dogmatic propagandizing establishments of the past, designed by “communists” to destroy our free society. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” has put us in the current sad shape. The 60’s commies were and are wrong.
For background to this problem of an entrenched, government power loving media, may I suggest a viewing of the documentary Behind the Big News,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYVXl5tKxZc
From my experience, it can make a difference to rag on local network stations. Speak to the news director.
Never underestimate the supreme laziness of local market media. Half of the newscast is nothing but video news releases put out by companies or individuals shilling for something or someone. Everything from ‘check out this restaurant’ to ‘oh my here is the latest scary product failure’ is a video news release. Tap into that laziness and you might be able to get something else in the mix. Also, never underestimate the lack of intelligence on the part of newsreaders. The haven’t a clue what they are reading; they don’t bother to even look it over before the broadcast.
There are two ways to build a major network channel; buy one of the existing ones (ABC, CBS or NBC), or build one, station by station.
Buying an existing network is the only way to go. Remember, every time a conservative coalition attempts to buy any kind of network access, in order to balance media reporting, there will be endless third party lawsuits to prevent it.
Liberal groups will claim that the purchasing conservative group is racist, etc, simply by dint of being conservative, and therefore undeserving of first amendment rights.
Much better to fight such a battle once, by buying an existing network, then to do so in each case for hundreds of stations.
Yesterday, emailed Ace’s link to the GOP after taking its survey (http://growthopp.gop.com/default.aspx) hoping it was capable of taking a hint.
It seems to me that watching cbsabcnbc is a passive, “feed me your spin and fluff” pursuit – I can’t even call it “activity” because the viewer is spoon fed.
Local “news” affiliates just regurgitate New York.
Is Donald trump still interested in buying the New York Times as reported by Drudge? Now, that would be a game changer.
Years ago, when media news people started interviewing other media news people and called it reporting, I couldn’t figure out why they thought that was “news”.
“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”
You are absolutely correct on this point. You will be shocked at how much discretion local reporters have to shape their stories to fit their (or their bosses) agendas. I know the best example out here is to compare the top national news story on our local affiliate to how it was covered on the network. Even for Fox, it’s like you’re not even watching the same story.
In the days of old, younger reporters exercised a bit more discretion because the goal is to move up the food chain to major markets. Just yesterday, I happened to notice that two reporters were mocking a new sheriff’s deputy on Facebook posts linked to their station’s story.
But even then, where are they pulling their information from? AP, Reuters, PR Newswire and so on, which flood their newsrooms daily with pre-written copy to support any agenda from “anti-kitten juggling” to “zebra striping ordinances”.
We need a new large network.
We already have our star anchor.
Meghan McCain.
I think it’s time for the first wave of successful bloggers … Professor Jacobson, Professor Reynolds, Ed Morrissey, the Powerlineblog guys, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt etc., etc., to band together and get some financial backers and start a network.
They join the major leagues to do battle against the established big-boy teams (who’ve grown fat and lazy and corrupt) and then a whole new generation of bloggers fills the blogosphere void the trailblazers left to prove their mettle.
MMc? Shirley, you jest! Fight snideness with airheadedness?
Good Idea, LHC. I would suggest PJTV since they are already formed and operating. Just transfer their operation to the real deal. Add those you mention to this mix and it would be a great lineup. Get a couple of high-powered folks to talk to Adelson and the Koch brothers for support.
Most local newspapers allow comments following their articles. Use those comments to point out bias and/or errors in each story.
The main change has to come at the school/college level. The institutional liberalism that has infested almost all colleges and universities is where these “classically trained professional journalists” get their training wheels.
Many of these schools are public schools using dollars taken from the public to proselytize a view that the paying public disagrees with. Start by going after public university funding, tenure and liberal bias through your local state elected officials.
It took 30 or 40 years for the left to take over education and the mass media, don’t expect it to change overnight. The new media, as represented by this site and College Insurrection, will be one of the primary vehicles for forcing balance and change.
Advertising dollars are media’s lifeblood. Form a citizens group or two. Have members keep a log of the most biased local outlet’s evening news broadcasts for several days to identify its major advertising clients. Then use citizen group complaint tactics to force the top five advertisers to reconsider their strategies involving that station. This will take a little time, so keep it up and keep logging.
Most advertisers will react to steady, widespread long term pressure. (Possibly reinforced with a well-publicized local demonstration or two at sale sites). Once an advertiser (or those advertisers) stops or limits airing ads on the station (they are called “buy’s”) do a press release from one of the groups (to local and new media) announcing “victory” in the first phase of the operation and describing the role the group played in affecting the station’s economy, and this is important, because of their long lasting and egregious bias.
THEN contact the station manager and offer to meet with her/him only offsite to discuss your previously well-researched and written concerns. Do not actually mention or hand over those documents before the meeting.
Know what you specifically want from the station. Be prepared to name resources you’ve vetted, otherwise generalities will only ensure unfulfilled promises.
It’s time to take on the media
For example, there was a huge turnout at the annual March for Life in DC today, maybe close to a half-million. No coverage. No coverage on Breitbart. No coverage on Drudge. No coverage here. Rush is about it.
Now, what was that about the media?
Where were you Anne when Sarah Palin took them on calling them the lame stream media? We’re you one of those mocking her from the sidelines?
Palin started the fight with the LSM, Breitbart, if my memory is right, picked it up. She was consistently ramming their nonsense down their throats. Nobody stood up for her. I guess she didn’t go to the right schools and chose life for her beautiful Down syndrome boy.
Breitbart was in her corner. Everybody else was following the lead of the LSM and accusing her of being stupid, etc. now you say “it’s time to take on the media.” Late to the dance, baby girl.
Interesting to see how & where Palin operates – now that she is free from Fox.
She is looking quite glamoured up & operating out of Arizona mostly it seems. if I were her advisor I would be cultivating the mid to west for media exposure & forget the NE completely..
A SP show out of LA would rock the market & be very saleable internationally. The growing Pacific Asia market is where it I at not the east / Europe. And of course it has Russia again to peer at.
I agree that the liberal media must be lampooned. I suggest that each of us start by doing what Barry’s paid trolls do — choose a media site and post on it.
For example, the NYTimes blogs need a conservative, mocking voice.
One example is to make fun of the liberal gods. Barry, Joey the Clown, Hillary the Queen of Benghazi, Swiftboat Kerry. You get the idea. It will drive the libs nuts.
Also, just as the libs love to repeat, over and over, what they think is a mockery of the R’s (for example, how many times have you heard “Mission Accomplished”) so too you need to repeat the stupid statements that the left makes. For example, “What’s the difference at this point in time?” is a classic, which can be applied to everything. Just assert: Asked why Obama failed to do anything about saving the four men at Benghazi, he said “What’s the difference at this point in time?”
In keeping with ridicule as a new GOP propangandic tool, I hereby nickname MSNBC’s blowhard Ed Schultz as The Great Bornado.
The easy way to resolve this issue is through communication. By that I mean communicating with your local media people, their families, their friends and advertisers. Remember, “all politics are local”. Tell your media people, their friends, their family and the advertisers in public, on the phone, in harsh words how they appear to be traitors to this Nation. You don’t make threats. You express disgust. You degrade them. You tell them to their face your are sick of their kind and what they represent. You let them know you think they are stupid. You embarrass them. You make it hurt. When you see a local advertisement you call that local company and tell them you that advertising on that channel or station is enough to make you not spend another dime in their establishment and they are part of those who are hurting “our” country. Always make them feel that they are part of the “bad” team. The effort must be Nationwide. When you pass a media van doing a story stop and spit on the ground in front of them. Call them trash. When they give the excuse “hey we are just trying to do our job” let them know that drug dealers and pimps are just trying to do their jobs as well and they are all from the same bucket of crap.
Until we attack the MSM and local media, until we let them personally know, they will not change. We are not dealing with smart people in the media. We are just dealing with the people who have the microphones. I say “GIVE IT TO THEM!”
[…] As we all know, the media is fully “progressive,” helping steer a course that will make America even more repressive than Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Posting at Legal Insurrection, Anne Sorock lays out the reasons it is time to take on the media. […]
[…] It’s time to take on the media […]
I think all of these ideas are great. However, the point missing is that the Republican Party has to develop an integrated strategy, including many of these points. The strategy has to be constantly monitored through a sophisticated data organization like Obama’s. Also, they have to hire the Republican equivalent of Stephanie Cutter.
The key phrase has to be “Never let one lie stand unchallenged”
The entire education structure has to be challenged. It starts with Teacher Training Colleges. That is where the rot is developed. They develop the soldiers who then go out into the classrooms to teach their philosophies. Unfortunately, the universities hire only those who have similar views. We have a professor of Political Science who blogs and is probably three degrees to the left of Obama. She also distorts the truth. When a conservative comment is made, it is uniformly ignored by this Professor and her lapdog commenters.
nkbay~ I agree to a point but you and we have no inside track to change how colleges train teachers. heck, most schools are already in a brutal fight to keep CPM out of the Math classroom. “integrated strategy”? fine but in the end someone has to call someone else out. Generational change is fine but we don’t have generations to make these changes. I am one of those that thought seriously about going Galt but I can’t. (nasty language follows) I just hate letting pussy liberals have anything without a little blood left on the street. I may go Galt in the future but right now I want to make our local media and advertisers a little nervous. Have a great evening. I’m going downtown. 😉
How about these ideas?? http://bit.ly/SIfxyT
I think a lot of the problems with the Fourth Estate becoming fifth columnists (pun intended) is that the increasing number of one newspaper towns and cities quashed competition and adversarial reporting to the point that the newspaper editors, always liberals, but now unrestricted (or unchallenged)have free rein to bloviate as they please.
In other words, they are reveling in their new found power to influence, well, everything.