It’s almost weird that so many on the left remain mystified about why corporate-owned cable news outlets simply refuse to cover any evidence of discontent on the left. We can hold the biggest rally in Washington of the decade (against the war, in favor of abortion rights, etc.) and it will be a footnote. Meanwhile, all evidence of discontent on the right is covered, and covered some more, and covered to death. But there’s a simple reason for this. Discontent on the right, no matter how racist, nativist, or religiously intolerant, no matter how baseless and fact-challenged, does not threaten the pocketbooks of rich people. It’s that simple. This also extends to foreign policy coverage. Right-wing death squads are not news. Any leftward drift in the politics of a resource-rich country is met with a flurry of demonization.
Deal with it people. This is why the blogosphere exists and deserves your support.
If the protesters in Madison would just wear some tricorn hats, misspell some signs and drive around on motorized scooters, the press would be there in droves.
Cheeseheads are tri-cornered. That apparently hasn’t helped.
(February 18, heading for News Corp.)
Actually, no, they wouldn’t. Because it’s their message that is being ignored to prevent it from resonating or gaining power. The converse was the case with the Tea Partiers. They’ll were transparently misinformed, obviously astroturfed, conspicuously unserious, but their message was to REDUCE TAXES, and therefore they were given 24-7 amplification.
In addition to their pro-rich message, The tea partiers are older and whiter, which means the media can run with a story about conflict without having to worry about scaring their viewers in the way that they would if the protesters were young and brown. Its easy to see why they love covering them.
You’ve not seen who the folks in Madison and in the 50-state solidarity demonstrations were. Cross-section of ordinary folks – older, whiter, minority, blue collar, white collar. By rights, the demographics of the public sector union struggle should get the same attention as the Tea Partiers.
It was not the demographics that caused the media to cover the Tea Party folks, it was the deliberate placement by the media firms working on astroturfing this effort.
I think the issue with the union demonstrators isn’t that they aren’t getting coverage, its that the media is so rusty (or corporate biased) with respect to talking about labor and class issues, that its almost as bad as no coverage at all.
They’re not mystified in the least. They blame Obama.
It would be better if they WERE mystified. lols
There are three means of communication left to people seeking to restore representative government in this country:
On the third point, self-discipline imposed by the union organization has made a huge difference in Wisconsin. Your average anti-war protest, no matter how enormous the crowd and how pointed an issue it is in response to, has myriad messages and a minority who invariably use the “we need a diversity of tactics!” cover to justify doing whatever they feel like doing, no matter how harmful to the overall goals of the organizers. (See: the Seattle anti-WTO protest, and subsequent trade summits.) That makes it easy to dismiss protesters as either uninformed, thugs, or dilettantes. Most third-world street protests (Egypt being the latest example) would be horrified by that level of self-indulgence.
Sustaining the protest has also been huge. Way too many people on the left go to a march for two hours, go home, then wonder why they’re not on teevee that night.
I would add another reason why cable & legacy news outlets downplay protests on the left: lack of elected officials who champion their causes. With the Tea Party, it was obvious that any number of leading R’s were happy to jump on the bandwagon. The astroturfing actually helped TP protests’ legitimacy in this regard. Aside from a few easily dismissed outliers (cf Kucinich) there’s usually no equivalent championing by establishment D’s for left protests, and thus much less chance the demands will be acted upon.
That’s really the bottom line for a lot of these outfits: does the protest matter inside the Beltway? Most established news outlets are strikingly contemptuous of the power of ordinary people, regardless of ideology.
“The major media are large corporations, owned by and interlinked with even larger corporations, they sell a product to a market The product they sell is the popular viewer, their customers are the corporations that buy advertising, the picture of the world represented reflects the narrow and biased interests and values of the sellers, the buyers, and the product. Profits and the issues drive the media and items reported are for the financial benefit of the companies that own these enterprises. The fact that the posing of the information delivered is not for the benefit of the people, as we would define the presses role is obvious. No issues will be debated or given much play that make the audience, advertisers or press themselves uncomfortable, regardless of its value to the nation and its people.”
Noam Chomsky
The concentration of ownership of the media has meant the homogenization of the content and views to suit the owners, who run large corporations and hobnob with CEOs of other large corporations.
Fifty years ago, a local radio station had a staff of four, advertised events in the community and the local Main Street businesses, had a few network programs, and played music. They responded to the local audience. Today, that same station is owned by ClearChannel, might be only a repeating station, and carries what the ClearChannel management figures will sell in that area. Plus Rush Limbaugh.
Not only are media private business corporations that have no interest in the public good. They are national or global corporations that have no interest in their local audience.
I don’t own a tv. I gave mine away some time ago. I don’t miss it at all.
I always thought that cable tv could have done real information because they had the time. I also knew that they wouldn’t because it would take work to research etc.
When I see CNN in a bank or elsewhere, it annoys me.
I read news online and have the NYT online. I have online news from other countries. I listen to Bloomberg Radio in the a.m. because it doesn’t annoy me.
So far, I am informed and the blogs are good for me. I read other peoples opinions and think about them.
The thing about cable tv is that they don’t report what Obama does a lot of the time so people think he’s not doing things.
It’s like these bloggers who majored in PSCI forgot something you learn — or should? — in US government and politics 101: THE MEDIA HAS A “STRUCTURAL” BIAS. Not a left bias; not a right bias; neither has any evidence, although journalists in general do tend to be more liberal than the rest of the public.
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Actually, you can make a pretty good case that legacy media has a liberal bias (it does, culturally), and a conservative bias (it does, economically). But both pale next to the structural bias of deference to power. And self-censorship is much, much more pervasive than the sort of naked “corporations demand that editors and reporters toe the line” vision many progressives have.
yeah, this is pretty much why i can’t deal anymore.
it’s all lies and blackout, and anyone who uses facebook knows it.
i find myself unable to stomach it. Today that useless slab of beef jerky Cokie Roberts was blabbering about public workers’ “outrageous” benefits, like “plastic surgery for police officers.” She actually bitched about that, oblivious to the fact that, ya know, on eof the risks of being a cop is being SHOT IN THE FUCKING FACE. No one challenged her on that. That was pretty much the end of NPR for me for the day.
tell the truth
The blogosphere and social networks are filling the void. On Twitter, just use the tags #wiunion #wearewi #solidarity #notmywi or #walkerville and you’ll get a pretty good idea on how the protests in Madison are going. CNN (Contains NO News) and its ilk are increasingly irrelevant, and cable “news” stations were pretty hopeless anyway.
Well said, Booman. It’s all showbiz.
Non-violent resistance is super effective, but it is not good television.
Seems like lately, television is the only accepted truth for many people. Drama makes it real to us.