A Democratic media strategy to save journalism and the nation -- Cory Doctorow

[erronis]

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/12/the-view-from-somewhere/#abolish-rogan

As unbearably cringe as the hunt for a "leftist Joe Rogan" is, it is (to use a shopworn phrase), "directionally correct." Democrats suck at getting their message out, and that exacts a high electoral cost.

The right has an extremely well-funded media ecosystem of high-paid bullshitters backed by algorithm-gaming SEO dickheads. This system isn't necessarily supposed to turn a profit or even break even: the point of Prageru isn't to score ad revenue, it's to ensure that anyone who googles "what the fuck causes inflation" gets 25 minutes of relatable, upbeat, cheerfully sociopathic Austrian economics jammed into their eyeballs. Far right news isn't a for-profit concern, it's a loss-leader for oligarch-friendly policies. It's a steal: a million bucks' worth of news buys America's ultra-rich a billion dollars' worth of tax-cuts and the right to maim their workers and poison their customers for profit.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have historically relied on the "traditional media" to carry their messages, on the ground that reality has a well-known leftist bias, so any news outlet that hews to "journalistic ethics" will publish the truth, and the truth will weigh in favor of Democratic positions: trans people are humans, racism is real, abortion isn't murder, housing is a market failure, the planet is on fire, etc, etc, etc.

This is a stupid policy, and it has failed. The "respectable" news media hews to a self-imposed code of "balance" and "neutrality" that is easily gamed: "some people say that Hatians don't eat pet dogs, some people do, let's report both sides!" This is called "the view from nowhere" and it gets Democrats precisely nowhere:

Balance and neutrality are bullshit, an excuse that has been so thoroughly weaponized by billionaires and their lickspittles that anyone who takes it seriously demonstrates comprehensively that they, themselves, are deeply unserious:

Press neutrality – the view from nowhere – isn't some eternal verity. In terms of the history of the press, it's an idea that's about ten seconds old. The glory days of the news were dominated by papers with names like The Smallville Democrat and The Ruling Class Republican. Most of the world boggles at the idea that a news outlet wouldn't declare its political posture. Britons know that the Telegraph is the Torygraph; that the Guardian is in the tank for Labour (and specifically, committed to enabling Blairite/Starmerite purges of the left); the Mirror is a leftist tabloid; and the Mail is so far right that its editorial board considers Attila the Hun "woke."

Writing for The American Prospect – an excellent leftist news outlet – Ryan Cooper proposes a solution to the Democratic media gap that's way better than the hunt for the elusive "leftist Joe Rogan": sponsoring explicitly Democrat news outlets:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-12-democrats-lost-propaganda-war/

[CousinIT]

1. This is worth bookmarking and when the head of DNC is chosen.

make sure they SEE it.

Also sent it on social, via email or otherwise to Dem congresscritters.

[mcar]

4. This recent column by Greg Sargent about the DNC candidates

is pretty interesting and indicates that they do get it - Wikler the most.

https://newrepublic.com/article/189147/musk-250-million-campaign-finance

Elon Musk’s Stunning $250 Million Favor to Trump Should Wake Up Dems
Musk and others helped the GOP run rings around Democrats in the info wars. I asked three leading contenders for party chair how they’d fix this.

We have now learned, belatedly, that billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $250 million to help billionaire Donald Trump win the White House. One key part of that spending came in the form of the $20 million Musk dumped into a brazen pro-Trump propaganda campaign. The move highlights with new urgency what you might call the “information gap”—the deficit Democrats face in the info wars, which the next Democratic National Committee chair must have a comprehensive plan to address....

For Wikler, the party’s central problem became visible back in April, when a little-noticed NBC News poll showed Trump with the support of 53 percent of people who don’t follow news at all and 55 percent of those who get news from YouTube and Google. By contrast, President Biden (who hadn’t yet left the race) earned 55 percent from those who follow network news and 70 percent from those who read newspapers....

Wikler says Democrats must appear far more on right-leaning political shows—not just Fox News but also podcasts and YouTubes and streamed interviews and the like—especially in nonpolitical spaces. Democrats must “disrupt the right-wing narrative about Democrats,” Wikler says, especially in mediums “that are not particularly political.”

Wikler says he’d invest substantial resources in training armies of surrogates to carry out that mission in all these mediums. Wikler would launch research designed to “build a deep, shared understanding” of how these mediums function and who is getting information from them, and how, and then “train, support, and deploy more communicators” to appear in these places.

[UpInArms]

2. The Washington Times

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times

The Washington Times is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It covers general interest topics with an emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout Washington, D.C. and the greater Washington metropolitan area, including suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia. It also publishes a subscription-based weekly tabloid edition aimed at a national audience.[3]

The first edition of The Washington Times was published on May 17, 1982. The newspaper was founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, and it was owned until 2010 by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate founded by Moon. It is currently owned by Operations Holdings, which is a part of the Unification Church movement.[4]

The Washington Times has been known for its conservative political stance, often supporting the policies of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.

… snip …



A Washington Times dispenser
In 1991, Moon said he had spent between $900 million and $1 billion on The Washington Times.[23] By 2002, Moon had spent between $1.7 billion and $2 billion, according to different estimates.

It never turned a profit financially.

[erronis]

3. But it wasn't really expected to make money - just influence people.

And like many other outlets that are funded by mega$ owners, the purpose is propaganda.

Had a good friend who wrote for the Washington Times knowing that it was a RW rag. She understood what she was doing but justified it for the pennies she got per word.

[lame54]

5. Republicans are relentless at what...

Steve Bannon calls fllooding the zone with shit
Dems are always on the defensive
Many of these lies are farcical on its face but time has to be spent convincing people there are no litter boxes in schools because Joe Rogan says there are
Get our message out?
Too busy digging out of an avalanche of straight up lies