*Email Bank* (aka the Back to Texas Email Depository)

[troublemaker]

The DU Campaign Underground email blaster will send a message to a large number of media outlets and it’s very easy to use. Since so much has been automated, now the only hard part is the content of our blasted mail.

If we post examples of emails to media on various topics here (in this thread... this one, right here) then others can easily go through a variety of emails to use for inspiration, or to appropriate parts they like. Anything posted here is up for grabs. You can even copy and paste an entire letter from this thread, though it’s best to personalize it a little.

The local media blaster is here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=announcement&id=94

The first reply in this thread (below) is a list of suggestions for effective media email.

[troublemaker]

1. 5 effective email suggestions to cherish or ignore:

Effective blasted media emails are:

*** Very, very short After about 50 or 100 words you can bet nobody’s reading any more.
*** Personal and Real A few personable lines from a real person mean more than a pre-packaged ten page single-spaced history of everything. If you are using the email blaster the same thing goes a lot of places, but it should still seem personal. For instance, leading off with “Dear News Person” tips off that it’s a mass mailing. “Dear Sir or Madam” is safe, but not attractive. “Hi! I usually love the job you do with the news, but…” sounds personal and will get read for at least another few words. Mentioning a spouse or children is good. “My husband and I usually enjoy your coverage of the news, but…” or “My wife and I really enjoyed the job you did on…”
*** Friendly Angry, abusive letters don’t get read, and direct accusations of bias (“What is Bush paying you?”) are ignored. We don’t want to make people cry. We want influence what they run tomorrow. Comment on the coverage. I want to see stories about X. Why are you overplaying Y? Shouldn’t somebody ask Z? And complimenting news coverage we like probably works as well as being negative… assuming you can find something to compliment. It’s okay to pretend, like “Jane did a good job interviewing that guy, but why didn’t she ask X?”
*** Front Loaded Make a specific observation or comment and make it clearly up front. (Remember that the subject line determines whether an email is read or deleted.)
*** Non-partisan Media people want to stay in what they perceive as the center, so they value centrist voices. For instance, imagine an email with the subject line, “About your coverage of the Swift Boat Liars.” Nobody will read that because they know it will be partisan and they already know what the two partisan positions are. A more effective subject line would be: “I think some of the Swift Boat Veterans are lying.”

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

2. excellent advice

I may not agree with everything you write, but you DO write it well. ;-)

[troublemaker]

5. I know you write a lot. (wink) So you must have some emails to post here.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. *snicker* I'm going out now

I'll do my best to get to it by Sunday...fair enough? :D

[NMDemDist2]

3. good suggestions all n/t

[troublemaker]

4. EMAIL: The second Swift Boat ad

This was a little longer than it should have been, but I sent this to a lot of folks when the second SBVFT ad came out. (And I was able to get WV and OH outlets from the local blaster) I doubt Deborah Norville actually read this email, but I was still gratified when she did a segment on this editing trick.
_____________________
Hi,

I’m writing to give you a journalistic heads up. In your reporting on the Swift Boat Veteran’s advertisements you may have inadvertently endorsed a falsehood as fact.

The text and video of Kerry’s 1971 congressional testimony used in the second Swift Boat ad is edited to create the impression that Kerry is personally testifying to the catalog of atrocities. (The ad even says "accusations") In the transcript and *unedited* videotape Kerry clearly identified the catalog of atrocities as a list of things that other individual veterans had stated publicly about their own conduct.

I am not asking you to editorialize or speculate, merely that you let us know the ad uses video edited to create an inaccurate impression.

Thanks for your attention.

Sincerely,
Charles Franklin
Warrenton, Virginia

I copied the relevant part of the transcript (below)), but I encourage you to check the original transcript to remove any doubt. (It would be pretty ironic if I asked you to rely on my editing.)
________________________

Mr. KERRY. …I am here as one member of the group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country.... I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

*** Excerpted from COMPLETE TESTIMONY OF LT. JOHN KERRY TO SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE From the Congressional Record (92nd Congress, 1st Session) for Thursday, April 22, 1971, pages 179-210.

[troublemaker]

7. EMAIL (cable news) Swift Boat coverage

Hi,

I want to say thanks for the great job, but I can't just now. In your recent campaign coverage you have repeatedly discussed the Swift Boat Veterans with a studied pose of objectivity, implicitly giving weight to a series of allegations that have no substance, at least not by the time-honored standards of journalism. There is not a single piece of documentary evidence (or even rebutted recollection) to support any of the substantial SBVFT charges, and quite a bit that refutes them.

"Showing both sides" is a concept reserved for things with two sides. I hope that in the future you will identify things you know to be lies as lies.

Thanks,