People are naturally drawn to controversy thats why good news largely gets overlooked

[kratos12]

The last combat troops leave Iraq and the story gets covered less rigorously than the manufactured ground zero "mosque".

The Dems pass legislation saving hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, yet Gibb's insult dominates the news cycle.

Obama took office with the DOW under 7K, the auto makers and banks in collapse and the economy shedding 800k jobs a month. 18 months later the DOW is over 10k the auto makers are stabilized, the banks are awash with cash, job losses have slowed but the story is that Obama hasn't done enough.


See a trend?

It seems to me that we as a people (and on this board as well) have collectively fallen into the right wing trap of constantly and purposefully insisting that the cup is "half full". The democrats have received little more than scorn for their myriad number of positive accomplishments and have simultaneously had their shortcomings magnified and repeated ad nauseum.

I believe this phenomenon is directly responsible for the nation's general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country as they are generally shielded from hearing any good news while having any and all bad news force fed to them.

I also think think that this is largely the result of both the right and left wing's media "echo chambers". We all know that the right wing takes any story no matter how trivial (Michelle's dress, Obama's vacation, etc.) reports it with a negative slant and then repeats it (The Big Lie technique) until it's recognized as fact by their audience and then gets picked up by the MSM (don't get me started).

The right wing liars efforts are conscious efforts to smear and misinform, but the left wing media's contributions to this "bad news/controversial news" phenomenon is simply driven by the marketplace. Left wing bloggers, authors, pundits, etc.... know that simply reporting on a successful policy initiative or event isn't going to garner them much attention. It's far more compelling to criticize or attack, it's the "car wreck" that turns heads and grabs attention after all.

Now before you get all mad at me for pointing this uncomfortable yet obvious fact out, please wait for my conclusion on what should be done about it.

The right wing media rarely reports on stories that are hurtful to their cause, they are also masters at taking trivial non-stories and turning them into national scandals like Acorn or the NYC Mosque.

The left wing media is largely driven by a code of journalistic ethics that prevents them from ma manufacturing stories about the right but they really don't need to make stuff up about the excesses and insanity of the right now do they? THe only thing the left wing media has to do is take a cue from the right, tighten their ranks, coordinate their message and when handed a golden story about the right's insanity (take your pick: Anything Angle, Gomert, Palin, Boner, etc..) and then KEEP BANGING IT INTO THE NATION'S CONSCIOUSNESS just like they do.

My last suggestion won't be very popular but I think it's necessary to say. The left wing media has to reign in their natural sense of moral outrage when it comes to their own side's shortcomings. We cannot hope to win if our own side lingers on stories that hurt our base's morale while underreporting or outright ignoring stories about our side's successes.

If we continue to do what we did last two weeks, which was essentially ignore the saving of 300k public sector jobs while lingering on Gibb's fuck up then we have little chance of consistently winning and thus taking the nation in a progressive direction.

[HopeHoops]

1. So, How's Linsey what's-her-name doing?

"Give us dirty laundry"

Most people aren't interested in understanding the realities of our world, just the shit they can talk about in the beauty parlor, bar, or grocery checkout lane.

[zipplewrath]

2. Success is resolved, controversy is not

Even failure is "over". When health care died under Clinton, it didn't continue to dominate the news. It was over. The news media need "content" and it can't just be a celebration of the past. We do get new stories about the continuing effects of HCR, both good and bad. The hard part for Obama is that the economy is really bad, and his successes haven't resolved that, so the story, as good as it is, remains that the economy is bad. He is left going out to campaign that "it coulda been worse" instead of "things are good". They aren't going to write alot of stories about "what coulda been". They are going to write about "what is and likely might be". And right now, that's not a favorable story for Obama.