I've been making my calls. A lotta god damned calls actually.
This is essentially a repost of a diary posted late Friday. Given the media bias against health care right now, this warrants another quick look.
I watch Maddow doing such a great job, along with others of course, but she is the stand out for me! I listen to people doing a good job on Progressive / Liberal talk. All good, but it's just not enough.
What I have done to change media stories and have some impact below the fold:
In a nutshell, it's time to start challenging the stories. Every single one of them. When we had a more heavy electronic voting discussion, I successfully got headlines and stories changed with simple and timely challenges written directly to the reporter / author / producer.
It works like this:
First, you've got to get your key facts down cold. It helps to have a few, but even one fact, totally researched to the point where you just won't lose in a discussion is enough.
You take that fact and have your write ups ready. They range from a single sentence, to several paragraphs, with sources and citations as needed. Vet these with your buddies, and those not with the program people you know well enough to hash it out with.
Once you've nailed it, and you do well in debates, or have vetted your stuff here in comments and other venues, you are ready.
When a new story is published online, or broadcast or printed, you get on the phone and or e-mail, and call them out. What you want to do is ask one really nasty question that puts the headline at risk. You follow that up with your sources, if you have them and it contradicts the headline; otherwise, the question itself does the job.
I have an example from electronic voting to share. (not the subject right now, but just a good illustration ok?)
In the case of the voting, I saw a story that was headlined "VOTING MACHINES WORKED PERFECTLY!". The nasty question was, "How do you know they worked perfectly? Can you pass your authoritative source confirming that?"
to: lamer@biasedmedia.com
re: HOW DO YOU KNOW THOSE MACHINES WORKED PERFECTLY?
Please cite your authoritative research that confirms the machines operated perfectly.
Thanks,
Interested Citizen
Of course, the reality is the machines worked exactly like the creators of them wanted them to work, and that's way different than perfectly.
That reporter e-mailed me back, and THE DOOR WAS OPEN!
If you get here, you get one solid shot at advocacy. You get to make one point, and make it solid. So do exactly that, including your source material. Keep it very brief, and follow it up with solid requests to pull the story, or modify it to reflect the factual reality and less spin.
If you are lucky, and the job was done well, that story will get changed! It's most important that those of us with significant media contacts do this, but the truth is anyone, who is well armed and ready can successfully do this.
UPDATE: (I forgot this part)
The reporter changed the headline to read: "VOTING MACHINES WORKED AS DESIGNED", and clearly got the message I was trying to send, which was that law doesn't govern those machines, computer code does. The designers can call the election, and we can't do much about it. That issue is for another day. The take away was that I got to impact that reporter with a nice dialog about the nature of the machines. Subsequent stories were less friendly to the creators of the machines, and that's what this is all about.
We, of course follow this with the changed stories being sent around to other media outlets, mailing lists, diaried here, etc...
Add this to firm pressure on advertizers, and it's a kind of blowback that hits home, right in the cube, or home office, and it's fairly effective when done on a larger scale.
This works because nobody wants to publish a gaffe. It doesn't work so well with sourced material, like AP stories. Those are harder, but still possible to change where there is a contact address. The gold is original stories, with an author citation in a regional, or local media venue. Those hit home, because those people do, in fact, read their e-mails.
If you are quick, they see it in time to reconsider, or at least know they are going to catch some heat.
What doesn't work is ranting, or lots of convoluted information. Don't write a short book, just nail them on one fact hard. That is what gets them to thinking that perhaps people are up to speed on the issue and some greater care is warranted.
Some good sample facts are the easily refuted lies about seniors not getting care, the fact that this is really just Health Care Insurance Reform, and the all important astroturfing going on. There are lots of others, like we pay twice as much per capita as our peer nations do, yet get much less in terms of care cost for access and overall outcomes.
(wouldn't be surprised to see a fair amount of sock puppets being used here too, but those are largely limited to small forums and such.)
This diary was prompted by one of the hosts on the KPOJ morning show pushing back on mis-information send on their news feed. She got the story changed that morning! I remembered some success on voting and thought, "now is the time to revisit this!"
The other thing we can do is each pick a secondary venue. All of us, who hang out here on happy fun mojo threads, could easily spare some of that time to hammer down on the smaller forums that litter the web. People are now talking in those things, and the stuff that gets said does matter.
I've got one or two that I frequent, and the result of consistent Progressive push back and bull shit clearing happens to be louder progressive voices!! All it takes is to be there regularly, be nice and firm, and just call out the asses one by one. You will make some friends, and some timid progressives will see that and pile on. This is exactly what they do, and it's a very simple matter of speak or be spoken for.
Do these things. It will matter.
We are not gonna get the Medicare for all deal. But, I still think we can get a pretty damn strong public option, and that seems to be something that will lead us farther down the road.
I'm still calling, e-mailing, faxing, etc... But, I'm also now spending a bit of that time calling advertizers and pushing back on bull shit stories.