Rather, we the American people are being manipulated by Big Media. In this journal entry, I explained the economic reasons why Big Media favors the Republicans:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Median%20Democrat/33Big Media is not stupid. They are not passively being mislead or manipulated by the GOP. Rather, Big Media's support for the GOP is carefully calculated and executed by Big Media to achieve the goals of Big Media and its sponsors. THIS IS THE STORY BIG MEDIA NEVER DISCUSSES. Instead, we are mislead with a bullshit focus on "liberal bias," which is designed to obscure the real truth.
What I wonder is whether after the Clinton years, the 2000, 2004, and finally this election, we recognize that the biased coverage that the Democrats receive is not due to some really clever strategy by the Republicans nor is it due to some poor strategy by the Democrats. Big Media keeps saying this, because this is what they want you to believe. However, if you have watched convention, no one is forcing CNN to track down PUMAs in a sea of Obama supporters. No one is forcing CNN to decide to conduct interviews of GOP politicians in the middle of a speech by Ed Rendell ripping John McCain a new one. No one is forcing the vast majority of convention coverage to be less on the issues or the speeches, but on Democratic disunity. Even before the convention, CNN was interrupting its interview of Janet Napolatino, the Governor of Arizona, by showing a clip of Biden criticizing Obama, then a full freely played clip of McCain's newest attack ad. Again, this is Wolf Blitzer, not some official GOP operative who is doing this.
Seriously, when you hear Romney repeat the talking points, they really come off pretty mechanically and they are not credible. In other words, the actual GOP hacks and commercials are not that credible. However, the real danger is Big Media essentially censoring the convenion by refusing to show the actual speeches or discuss the issues being raised during the convention. Why not a few minutes of substantive discussion of Obama's energy proposals? Instead, given its false veneer of neutrality, Big Media has more credibility than the participants, thus whem they tell the American public what to think, the American Public and DUers on this board tend to bite on such themes.
That is why all these critiques about the DNC's media strategy in prior years are full of shit, because they assume an unbiased media that will actually portray a message accurately. However, the fact of the matter is that Big Media is taking matters into its own hands, and actively trying to control what people think. Even if you have a great speech or a great message with red meat attacks, that does not stop CNN from simply muting the speech, and talking over the speaker. Of course, I am not mentioning, but needless to say, Fox is much worse.
The only real critiques that I think are helpful are those that do not begin with the false assumption that Big Media is unbiased. We like to dismiss Fox and CNN, but we need to stop being naive, and deal with the fact that they exist, and people listen to this propaganda for better or worse. With that in mind, how does the DNC deal with this?
I think Obama use of alternative media is a good step, as well as his unprecedented reliance on grassroots efforts. Still, the question remains whether it is simply too late to save our democracy. Will Big Media succeeds in its pursuit of the Election Trifecta: (1) Win one for McCain; (2) permanently weaken Obama; and (3) permanently weaken the Clintons.
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