Well it super sucks, we have sleazy ass Dems voting for Roberts and we are fighting and bickering amongst ourselves now because we feel powerless. Booman and Kid Oakland take their jobs as bloggers very seriously and everybody feels they are doing all they can to bring some change and still we feel and experience our voicelessness.
I saw something in Crawford take place though, something that I had heard rumors about but certainly it couldn’t be that bad! It all just had to be rumors but it isn’t. The right has their own film crews that travel about and take film footage of what the Bushies want footage of from the angle that causes them to be perceived as powerful. I saw the film crews in Crawford and they were only there to shoot the counterprotest and they cut the protesters out of every shot and made sure that they were shooting when the counterprotesters were in their maximum numbers which only lasted two hours usually while the Cindy Sheehan protesters LIVED out there. I suspect that that film footage was provided to the networks free of charge and it hit the television so fast and it was every where on the air so quickly my head was spinning!
It wasn’t as if I didn’t see CNN or MSNBC out there because I did but they didn’t orchestrate much to make sure they got certain things on film. They like hotel rooms and showers and they would show up around noonish and be gone around fiveish. The Bushies filmers go where they need to go when they need to go to shoot what they are supposed to shoot and then they get that free footage right to the networks as fast as they can and the networks use it! People still watch T.V. more than anything. Where is our press coverage people? Where is our independent press coverage that will shoot D.C. and every other protest out there and send that footage to the networks for free?
I know that it is no guarantee that it will be used but at least we would have a leg to stand on then that the media is bought off. If it started being used though there would be more than a couple of sleazy ass Dems sweating! Doesn’t Soros have a couple of bucks laying around and isn’t there any real journalists out there tired of this bullshit and wanting some full coverage of all this? I swear to God if I didn’t have a disabled child to care for I would create my own job. I know nothing about filming events but I’m not afraid to make calls, tell people what I need and where I need them, and talk to people to start certain balls rolling! The Bushies have better financing than we do but that is a pitiful excuse if anybody attempts to use it! I couldn’t believe what a little bit of heart and little bit of soul and little bit of elbow grease accomplished in Crawford, the Texas no where town from hell!
Excellent idea. I have long heard that one of the reason conservative ideas and spin get so much play in the media is because they package it up for the reporters to use, and the reporters are lazy. There are many other reasons as well, of course, but that one we could do something about. I think that is the idea behind Media Matters on the print side, though I don’t know how well it is working.
told me that most reporters are lazy and want it served up on a silver platter for them. He didn’t give me many further details and I didn’t know who he was that day. I just shared a van ride to Camp Casey with him and I was impressed when he called the local radio station who had a talk show host making up stuff that supposedly happened to him at Camp Casey and he challenged the “story” that they were putting out. When he hung up the phone I was so damned impressed I asked him why the press didn’t seem to cover the other side (my side) of the issues right now and he told me I needed to understand the type of person who becomes one of the press these days and the first word he used was lazy and the second one I think was scumbag. I can’t remember everything word for word…….it was a while back.
Your right Tracy, there has to be some way to break through to the media..that is the major stumbling block to getting regular Americans informed of what is really going on in this country-what’s happened under bushco.
Yeah I believe reporters now are lazy or only want to see their name in lights..we do need some sort of underground media of our own to start filming things that are happening and start bombarding the media with prepackaged little film bits..maybe that way they would actually put some of it on?..
Excellent article: They Shoot News Anchors, Don’t They?
by Nikki Finke
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0917-29.htm
Maybe Nikki has some suggestions ?????
Great article and yeah I bet she’d have some good suggestions for real news stories for the American public. Start by reading her article on the air..boy I’d love to see that.
Commondreams is great, go there every morning before I head over here but somehow missed that article. Thanks much for that link EtJ.
Chocolate Ink,
You are soooo very welcome….. Keep up the fight, EtJ
Boy, do I feel stupid ! I should have known this.
For years I worked with our little symphony, choirs, and community theatre. We got NO support from the local paper until I started spoon feeding them ready-to-print articles weeks in advance, then making follow up calls to remind them some more.
Until this moment it hadn’t occurred to me that the same tactics would (or should) work on big media. It sound like we need access, some showmanship, and persistence.
Michael Deaver, communications director for Reagan, mentor to the odious Lee Atwater who in turn was Karl Rove’s mentor and idol, institutionalized the program of giving out complete, pre-packaged press packets to all the media, knowing they’d never bother to do their own digging for stories or truth.
The legacy continues, only now they’re using paid shills in the media as well as these (?private?) film kamikazes to orchestrate and deepen the grip of the propaganda machine.
With our current crop of bullshit Dems, is it possible to beat the Repub propagandists at their own game? I have my doubts.
Exposing the broader public to more of the truth is a fundamental challenge, and of course the corporate media stands firmly in the way of this. Even so, if we can steadily spread more truth around, if we can help the broader public understand that the truth is more valuable to them than the little deceptions and illusions they prefer to believe, then the tide will begin to turn.
The extremists who’ve hijacked the Repub party are already spinning out of control. Sadly this doesn’t mean they’re done creating tragedy and catastrophe. I think they’ve seta template for disaster that will last for generations to come. But, soon, real Repubs, real conservatives, (those who recognize that democracy is governance through mutual respect rather than domination), will begin to attempt to take back their own party. In the meantime, we need to clear out all the dead wood in ours, and continue to repudiate the failure of the MSM to perform the function for which it received constitutional protection.
Agree with every word of your post.
Tracy, you are absofuckinlutely right on. All the more so because a big whopping girl named Rita is going to be the main focus for a while. Contrary to rumour, big media can’t walk and chew gum at the same time… more than one story confuses them. This event may just be covered more extensively after the fact because of that. Damn good reason to have the liberal press there, front and center… photographing, taking video, writing and blogging. I can’t be there and I’m counting on the liberal press, and bloggers. I know MaryScott will be blogging the event and I expect others will as well. I’ll be hanging on every word.
that I’m gonna do, is buy you a fucking drink Friday 🙂
When you get to the DC hotel, ask if you have any messages at the desk and it’ll have the doorkey for you.
sounds great and have a Kaluha and coffee for me-with lots of whipped cream on the top. Either that or I’ll break out my bottle of Kaluha and have a drink Friday night here and think of you all.
here
…
John J. Tierney, a scholar at the Institute of World Politics and author of “The Politics of Peace: What’s Behind the Anti-War Movement?” said the core of the protesters are “ideologically very hard-core left” and that their agenda goes far beyond merely protesting the Iraq war.
“They’re not anti-war. They are anti-West, anti-capitalism and anti-American political culture,” Mr. Tierney said. “You see the speeches, the flags, the posters, the speakers and the pamphlets cover a whole host of revolutionary causes, literally everywhere.”
The question of who is funding the protests remains clouded. Billionaire George Soros has funded various left-wing groups that will have a presence at the protest through his Open Society Institute, as has the Tides Foundation, created by Theresa Heinz Kerry, heir to the Heinz food fortune and wife of Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat. Money from both of these groups is filtered down to other groups and then filtered down to yet others, Mr. Tierney said.
(those damn commies!)
“It’s a trickle-down structure that is very difficult to trace without being an inside intelligence agent,” he said.
But Mr. Dobbs said his group relies on individual donations.
“[Soros] doesn’t fund us, at least not to my knowledge. … What we do, we do on a shoestring,” he said.
The commies are coming! The commies are coming! Quick! Hide the children!
Smear, slander and misrepresent. God that sucks what a rag of a newspaper.
(Institute of World Politics) So let me guess. Right wing think tank? Gee where do they get funding.
They don’t call that rag the Moonie Times for nothin’. Those who smear must be reminded of the wheel of karma.