Ok, for the few of you who have been following my diaries lately you know that I have been deeply involved with a local San Jose city council "special" election. Today is election day, and I am getting ready to spend all day GOTVing....but first, once again, you need to know why this local race is so important to you, no matter where you are.
San Jose is one of the largest cities in our nation, 10th to be exact, and we are the third largest city in California. We have ONE daily paper, and we have ONE local TV station, and a few radio stations. Why does this matter to you? Because our local paper has demonstrated a complete dereliction of duty regarding this campaign, and it should scare the shit out of you because it forebodes a trend many of us are already familiar with.
More.....
This "special election" involves the representation of almost 100,000 people in San Jose. And given that this election is an off election, given that only those in that district will be voting, and given that many people fail to vote even when they are aware that a MAJOR election is held, today's failure by our ONE local paper is another HUGE wake up call to you all.
There was not ONE word today in the paper about his election (the paper did run a story two days ago, but NOTHING today). Nada, zip, zilch, nothing. It was as if the election wasn't even happening. Usually the paper runs a reminder list of who they recommend in the opinion section, but they failed to even do that today. Not only did they fail to note today's election, during the whole campaign they have failed to cover much of what was really going on.
There are a number of video clips posted of a forum between the two candidates, and also there is a full video of that same forum available online. One of the candidates is so bad, and a Goper to boot, you would think that the local paper would at the very least let readers know that voters in the district could view the video and judge for themselves who deserves their vote. The Mercury was aware of the full video, they never linked to it, they never even mentioned it in their paper. Rather, readers of the paper would have no way of knowing that there was a way to see both candidates in action, no commentary, no edits, and the Mercury failed to tell the public anything about the video.
We are quickly coming into another election cycle, and we need to realize that in no way can we depend on local media to do the job that they once at least partially fulfilled. Not only will our nation be electing a president, local elections for congress, state reps, governors and more will be going on, and as my local experience shows, we must seek untraditional means of media if we want to make sure that our message, our candidates, are heard fairly and fully.
Start now, do what you can to get local forms of nontraditional media going. Blog, use youtube, start your own online "paper," where you can report on local events, but whatever you do, DO NOT depend on any of your local media to do even the most basic of balanced coverage. Work with your local League of Women Voters to help them become a better used source for elections, help the LOWV with their websites, help get the word out that they are there for voters.
My experience is the canary in the coal mine folks, and if we don't take action it is going to get worse. Many of us here have seen the demise of the the media, however it really is worse then we can imagine. Once we have the White House we NEED, we MUST change the media ownership laws to return to a time when our media was owned by many rather then a few.
Our very freedom depends on the free flow of information, and it is clear that our current "traditional media" will do more harm to our democracy and freedom then one can imagine.