Throughout the last two weeks television news reporters and pundits have continued to repeat and air blatantly false claims by the McCain campaign without any critical verification of the factual veracity of their claims. There are far too many examples, of which that list is by no means exhaustive. And let's be clear, that's the freak'n job - that's what journalists are supposed to do. They have violated their trust with the viewers in ways that deserve audience reprimand.
It's time we got medieval on their asses.
This is what citizens are fighting against folks:
(already front paged, don't rec over just this video)
From liberal blog authors like Josh Marshall and Dailykos to conservative and staid official press like the Wall Street Journal, the lack of factual substance, repeated false claims, and a continuing smear campaign against Barack Obama has been thoroughly verified in print. In response, here on dkos, we have seen no end of diaries wondering what the Obama campaign is doing (or not doing), a prodigious number angry rants about Ms. Palin - many of which, it would appear, were posted by the opposition as a political dirty trick and not submitted by regular dkos members. Given these circumstances, what is one to do?
This issue is only partisan to those who consider such activity to be legitimate political campaigning. And if a journalist does consider such behavior appropriate, that journalist has violated his or her most basic ethical standards. Just head over to Poynter and dig through their journalism ethics archives for confirmation.
Those who engage in this behavior, whether in print or on television, do not deserve your money. They have sold out their social and professional responsibilities in order to engage in partisan wrangling. In the process, they actively misinform the public. It is a new wild west, where William Randolph Hearst's media monopoly offering of Yellow Journalism has reemerged under a new umbrella of ownership, all of which lead back to partisan bias. And I don't mean that old canard, the so-called "liberal media".
They who own the press set its editorial standards. And the standards we have seen do not warrant the offering of our dollars. They are yellow. Disgustingly yellow.
To make this suggestion a success, the project would need heavy hitters from the liberal blogosphere. May I suggest to the big-whigs here at Dailykos and elsewhere that the time is NOW to organize a boycott of all television news media. The goal would not be to end television news viewership, as that is not a viable expectation. However, if the liberal blogosphere organized, and, with a single unified voice, promoted that media boycott every day of the week with regular banner advertising and regular screen time similar to how Markos publicizes a book tour, one might see viewer-ship diminish by several hundred thousand to a few million. That's enough to force all the major news networks to reset their advertising rates based on new - reduced - Neilsen numbers. And let's be clear, that would hurt.
Ask yourselves: Just how long would their corporate parents accept that loss of revenue? And a better question: If they are willing to take a loss in order to promote their propaganda campaign, just how would investors on Wall Street react? Because they want to make money too.
Folks: complaining will get you nothing more than contempt with these folks. HIT THEM BACK HARD. HURT THEM. That would take organization to do properly. It's a good test of the power of the liberal blogosphere. Can we make they cry uncle? I say we try.