Mainstream Media Bias

The effect of the mainstream media bias on the outcome of the 2008 election should not be ignored.  The third estate enjoys certain special privileges in our constitution and legal system because the founders envisioned that this group would create  well informed voters who would make good decisions.  The schools that educate our journalists still give lip service to the idea of an unbiased press.  They teach a separation between news and entertainment, and between news which is theoretically unbiased, and editorial opinions which are clearly separated from news and are allowed to be biased.  The graduates of these schools do not follow these theoretical teachings and so the concept intended by the founders no longer works.  The main stream media has become the propaganda arm of Democratic party.  

Republicans have pointed out that the mainstream media is blatantly biased to the left, but accusing these people of biased reporting has had no effect on their behavior.  If news coverage had been as the founders had intended would we  have lost the 2008 election for president?  Maybe, perhaps even probably not.  The mainstream media had their candidate, and they promoted him with enthusiasm and good effect.  To our claims of bias they do not even need to reply.  

I contend that the Republican party and the mainstream media are in fact locked in a life or death struggle with each other.  They just don't know it yet.  It is a struggle in which one must necessarily destroy the other completely to survive.  Certainly the Republican party has not acknowledged this. Currently, the mainstream media does not need to acknowledge this.  It is not a foregone conclusion which entity must win this struggle.  Although to many it seems that we are powerless to effectively attack the mainstream media, while they are able to deliver one crushing blow after another to the Republican party.  Actually, we have the means to effectively fight back.  Our actions can, and must be ethical and legal, but beyond that we must acknowledge that we need to destroy the mainstream media.  We have tried raising the objection to their bias, and it has done no good.  Past that ineffective effort we must recognize that we are in a fight to the death with this institution, and must destroy it before it destroys us.  

The current presumption is that we are powerless to confront mainstream media.  That seems to be the attitude of both protagonists at the moment, but it is wrong.  The reason that we  have been ineffective in this matter is that we have presumed that if we simply proclaim bias, and even prove bias on the part of the media, the media will correct its behavior.  We must recognize that we are not going to change the mainstream media.  They are doing what they want to do and they are getting away with it.  The first step in dealing with this problem is to recognize that it is a life or death struggle that we must win to survive, and that we must destroy the mainstream media to win.  Half measures here will not work.

I'm not advocating illegal or even unethical activity.  In fact what we do must be both legal and ethical.  This is essential, or the plan won't work.  The plan also won't work if we set upon some moderate course that would allow for the MSM as we know it to survive.  Sorry, but we have to be tough about this.  It is not nice work, but if we are squeamish we will not win.  If we don't win we will be destroyed.  This thing cannot end in a stalemate or a tie.

So what powers do we actually posses that will allow us to destroy the mainstream media before they destroy us?  Bear in mind that we lost the 2008 election with a popular vote of 46%.  46% was not enough to win  an election, but it is more than enough to wreck havoc on the mainstream media.  

If you were to approach almost any businessman and ask him what would happen if he lost 46% of his customers you would get the answer that it would destroy his company and he would be out of business.  The key here is that the mainstream media are a collection of rival businesses.  They can be destroyed by simply making them unprofitable.  This needs to be done quickly enough so that they cannot simply downsize and survive.  The goal here is their destruction.  Remember that our base here is about half of their customers.  If we do this right they won't even know what hit them until they find themselves mentioned in a museum somewhere alongside buggy whips.  

The credibility of news organizations has been very bad for a long time.  This is their weak spot, or perhaps their weakest spot.  Instead of attacking first with claims of bias, we need to attack their credibility.  This will not be difficult.

The mainstream media currently offers a glut of badly prepared misinformation.  Inaccuracies are numerous and major.  If we could put together a group that would hound the mainstream media over their inaccuracies we could destroy what remains of their credibility.  I believe bloggers are well along on this work.  They know how to do this.  We simply need more dedicated people to find inaccuracies and make them public.   Once this effort is in full swing, we may even be able to use one news outlet against another, but publicizing the errors of the mainstream media broadly enough will be hardest part.  Finding the errors will not be much of a problem.  It would be exhausting to find all the errors, but we don't have to.  

Only after the mainstream media has a credibility near zero should we mention their bias.  After the mention of bias, we move on with two other elements of attack.  

First we create alternatives to the mainstream media that attempt to be the source of error free information.  Ideally these would be constructed along the lines of the model taught in at least some journalism schools but quickly abandoned in practice afterwards.  That is to say, the news would be without bias, and the opinion would be clearly marked as such and not mixed into the news to make entertainment with a bias.  This will be a challenge because there is a natural tendency particularly in bogs to be all bias and use only information that supports the bias.  The alternative we create must be better than that if it is to displace the mainstream media.  We are trying to create an offering like journalists tried to create fifty years ago, and we must do it with a low cost infrastructure.  The internet seems the likely place for this, but not the only place.  

Second we invite everyone, but particularly our base (remember they are half of the mainstream media's customers) to abandon the mainstream media in indignant disgust and embrace alternatives that actually do serve the purposes intended by the the country's founders.  At some point this means an organized boycott.

Could some mainstream media survive this kind of attack by changing to a model that was in line with role the founders intended for the third estate?  Sure, but in effect they would have been destroyed and rebuilt so as to be a servant to neither party and a threat to the veracity of both.  That is OK, we are not trying to control the flow of information the way the Democrats do now. We are only trying to protect the flow of high quality, unbiased information to the public so that it resembles the intention of the founders.  If we try to do more to make the situation favor our own interests the attack will fail.  

Having said that some of the mainstream media might survive in an acceptably altered form, I think the more likely outcome is that alternate methods of distribution will displace the majority of the mainstream media, which is a thing they fear even now.  Our attack and our determination to proceed with efforts likely to cause their total destruction are essential, and if done thoughtfully may help to launch alternative means of distribution on a trajectory that better serves the nation and not incidentally treats our own party and causes more fairly.

 

Jerry