Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Your media narrative is going kill us all (part 2 - updated)

The current media narrative is that the elections in November are going to be a disaster for the Democrats, with massive numbers of Republicans getting elected. (This message is often accompanied by metaphorical battlefield narrative, with the victorious conquerors striding over the bleeding bodies of their fallen foes.)

And this has many people panicked about the fate of America, with teabaggers coming into office and strengthening the obstructionist Republicans who are doing their best to ensure that the first black president's term in office is an abject failure. Because, after all, Americans have notoriously short memories and will always choose instant gratification over long-term gains: it actually sounds plausible that, since Obama did not immediately create untold wealth and prosperity, the small-minded people will decide to give the keys back to the people who drove the car into the lake in the first place.

What they're failing to rememeber, of course, is that the media narrative is usually wrong. For one thing, it's being driven by people who are motivated to tell you that the Republicans will save us all.
While right-wing media chooses stories that serve its political agenda, progressive media increasingly covers the same "news." True, the focus is on disproving right-wing accounts, but from the "death panels" for granny to the alleged "Ground Zero" mosque, the right wing is setting the agenda for the progressive media.

No wonder Americans are unaware of President Obama's many accomplishments, or think that he, rather than President Bush, signed the unpopular bank bailout bill. With progressive media primarily focused on rebutting conservative "news," little time is left to promote stories that build support for progressive policies.
...

And, unlike progressive media, Fox and right-wing radio feel no obligation to cover stories that boost their opponents. The right-wing media avoids news that does not serve their cause, which limits stories from echoing through the broader public.

That's why so few Americans know about the Ensign, Vitter and other Republican political scandals, but everyone knows about Charles Rangel's problems. And why so many are unaware of the jobs created and preserved by the Obama stimulus, or about the many positive actions Obama officials at the EPA have taken to improve the environment.

Many noted how the media never connected former President Bush to the Exxon Valdez spill, but directly associated Obama with BP's reckless conduct. That's because Fox News and others made Obama the issue from the start, and traditional media either parroted this line or joined progressives in noting that the Bush Administration imposed lax oil drilling regulations; either way, Fox's framing of Obama as a central figure in the spill prevailed.
The slant even makes itself apparent in who they choose to tell the narrative. A new study from George Mason University School of Law shows that among the panel guests making up the Sunday Morning talk shows, "diversity" is a myth. The most common panelist is overwhelmingly an older, white, male Republican.
The study, of the five network Sunday shows from February to December 2009, found that while 14.6 percent of members of Congress were minorities, just 2.5 percent of the Congressional TV guests were minorities; and that while 16.9 percent of members were female, 13.5 percent of the guests were female.

A supplement to the study also singled out a group of “30 white, male U.S. senators in office six plus years” who represented 5.6 percent of the Congressional populace, but 61.4 percent of the TV guests.
Other fine examples of media compliance with promoting a false narrative can be found with allowing Republicans to call the act of allowing the Bush tax cuts expire a "tax increase." Or the continual references to a community center as the "Ground Zero Mosque." Despite the fact that it's partly modeled on the 92nd Street Y, which is a Jewish community center, which nobody ever calls "the Upper East Side Temple".

So, where does that leave us? Where should we turn?

Perhaps to the facts.
Flash back with me to February, 2008. Check out the headlines. If you alter the search terms from "Clinton leads" to "McCain can win", you get results like this. I love that first headline, don't you? October 29, 2008, just a couple of days ahead of the election, and the headline from the Seattle Times and others around the country is "McCain can still win..." Just for more fun, look at the news results for August-September 2008 when Palin came onboard -- she was a "game-changer".
We don't know what will happen. But really, we almost never do.

In the end, all we can bring away with us is that things are probably not as cut and dried as the "liberal media" would like us to believe.
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Update (9/16): So meanwhile, if you're looking for more reasons to doubt the media's narrative about the unstoppable GOP machine, perhaps you should consider that the Republican party is currently curled up in the corner, trying to gnaw its leg off. And as for the public, well, it turns out that while they don't like the Democrats much, they like the Republicans even less, and they believe the Democrats have a better chance of fixing the mess we're in. So, you know, calm down. And don't forget to vote.

12 comments:

  1. "So, where does that leave us? Where should we turn?"

    I can't speak for anyone but myself, but having witnessed 65 years of racism and stupidity dressed up in red, white and blue, I'm fed up.

    How long can I love a country that hates me, hates everything I value? The idea that there can be adequate checks and balances that work effectively for centuries seems naive and that they can work at all given the modern science and technology of uniting the fringes, enraging, misinforming and organizing the public to support their own overthrow is more than naive - it's delusional in itself.

    Perhaps the Peter Principle applies to societies as well as to individuals and perhaps the increasing complexity of things has brought us past the point where mediocrities and morons can or want to cope with it all, but I'm quite convinced that that principle is as universal as Darwin's.

    Where that leaves me is in a place where I don't want to care any more and I can't hope any more and I'm so alienated from my fellow Americans that I wonder why I call myself one.

    Leave it to others to try one more transitory and probably futile intervention with America, the hate addict, because although I used to love her, it's all over now.

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  2. About the masturbation-hating tea bagger who won the Delaware primary, I noticed in her victory speech last night that one of her arms is shorter and thinner than the other.

    Our mainstream media never noticed because their right ears have grown much larger than their left ears.

    What a bunch of misshapen mutants Americans have become. Must be some kind of strange anti-evolution string passing through our Universe ... invoked by archangel Apoca-Lips Palin.

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  3. Octo - true story. I was deployed in Iraq, sitting on my cot one evening, when two of the guys in my squad came up. One of them said "Hey, check out Harris!" (Name changed for obvious reasons)

    Harris held out his arms, and the right one was notably more toned than the skinny left one. "It's because he jerks off!!"

    Apparently, he'd been lusting in his heart for a lot of women.

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  4. Excellent post, Nameless. And it further confuses things that the Media (which, these days, largely means television and talk radio) is labeled "Liberal, except for ______" (fill in the blank with the unabashedly right wing entity, which then gets to stand out as one of the few and the proud). Could we be more flatfooted, more gulled?

    Last night, I watched an HBO docu-drama, "Recount," recalling the 2000 victory the Supreme Court handed to George Bush. In it, there was a scene where it was up to Warren Christopher, who had been sent by the Federal government to supervise the contested Florida recount, to make the call on whether to continue to fight on or concede the field. Christopher, ever the gentleman and scholar, chose to lie down, not to fight on despite knowing that there were thousands of voters who were blocked from entering the polling place. He was concerned about putting the American public through more stress by delaying the outcome of the election. He was concerned about what it would say to the world about democracy if things got rowdier, still.

    And, yet, it didn't have to be ugly; it just had to be persistent, righteous, determined. And cagey. Democrats tend to be lousy at cagey. Personally, I suck at cagey.

    That was an old movie. Ten years ago, we were letting others control the message--with dire consequences that are still playing out in every American home and everywhere throughout the planet.

    There are so many, many ways to give up.

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  5. NC, I find your post comforting. We really don't know what will happen and as has been duly noted many times, "It ain't over 'til it's over."

    Facts don't play a leading roll in right wing generated news. I think that it's up to those of us who care about truth and accuracy to meet the right's bias head on with facts.

    Thanks for the pep talk. I'm breaking into a chorus of "I Will Survive." There's nothing like a little old school music to perk you up.

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  6. Nance,

    There is no "liberal media," despite what our "friends" on the right want to claim. Yet another chunk of the narrative they control.

    Sheria,

    Just for you.

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  7. LMAO! Thanks NC for the very humorous link. THis tops the one with the Thanksgiving Turkey belting out I Will Survive.

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  8. One of the things I do on the rare occasion I comment on a news media story is to criticize the outlet for the way they have presented the story. For some reason I don't think they're listening.

    Excellent piece. I think a lot of moderate Republicans are going to have a hard time voting for these buggers when they get in the booth. At least I hope so.

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  9. One of the things I do on the rare occasion I comment on a news media story is to criticize the outlet for the way they have presented the story. For some reason I don't think they're listening.

    Excellent piece. I think a lot of moderate Republicans are going to have a hard time voting for these buggers when they get in the booth. At least I hope so.

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  10. Of course they're not listening. The media outlets who aren't right wing tools are still happy to give something the most controversial slant they can, just for ratings.

    (Oh, and I'm glad I'm not the only person who double-posts on occasion. I think it's due to hitting submit, assuming you missed because nothing happens, hitting submit again, and it takes both. Seems to be a Blogger issue, if I'm right.)

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  11. Re: the "liberal media."

    My point, exactly. That the right claims that all print journalists are liberals, every one, ignores the fact that the majority of them are can trace their paycheck back to large corporations like Murdoch's. Periodicals can claim their niche and pay writers to produce accordingly, but, in the end, advertising rules the day. Ditto for radio and television.

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  12. p.s. Fabulous video, dahling!

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