Yesterday's diary was a general overview of Democratic media needs. Today's is more specific, and suggests three concrete projects we could undertake to address the current Republican dominance of media cycles.
In my last diary, I made some general suggestions about the direction Democrats should take their media strategy. I didn't get much response, and a lot of it was pretty defeatist. Yes, the Republicans have been largely successful in buying up and utilizing media at all levels, creating a vertical media monopoly, and managing horizontal monopolies in some media (like radio) as well. Yes, we Democrats dropped the ball on fighting for all sorts of media equity and anti-trust and regulatory issues. Yes, we're behind the 8-ball. But that doesn't mean we should lay down and die.
So here's a concrete suggestion: let's use what we have to get what we need. Let's start with what we have:
- We have the truth on our side. This may not have seemed like much of a help lately, but it's only because we haven't defended the truth vociferously enough. The beauty of being reality-based is that if we can get our points across, the Big Lies that the Republicans love so much will crumble under their feet. To perpetuate a Big Lie requires a virtually seamless irreality bubble. The pinprick of truth can burst it, if properly applied. So our job is actually easier than the Republicans's job. They need more resources than we do.
- Because we have a lot of truth on our side, we have a lot of expertise on our side. The Republicans have spent a ton of cash over the last 30 years trying to make expertise irrelevant, and they're seeing some success in areas like global warming, historical revisionism, etc. But the majority of Americans do still respect expertise, and we should take full advantage of the experts on our side, who are legion. We should be recruiting and organizing our experts, helping them find venues for their messages, and doing everything we can to remind Americans that, compared to the Republicans, we actually feature talking heads who know what they're talking about.
- We have a huge base who can contribute to Democratic media efforts, if we only provide them mechanisms for doing so. This includes people connected with the academy (graduate students, contingent faculty, who are majority Democrat) and virtually every liberal and progressive community organizing group in the country. These are people who can and would help us get our message out effectively, if only we gave them the resources and an publicity engine.
Now, let's go to what we need:
- There are a lot of progressive & liberal geek Democrats. We aren't coming close to making full use of their capacities. Why don't we try and gather them together into a techno-army who can build what we need? Why aren't we working with EFF and CPSU to create a volunteer bank of liberal & progressive coders who can help with our media projects? Here are a couple of good projects I can think of:
a) The volunteer bank itself. A list of progressive coders and designers willing to take on Democratic media projects.
b) A project bank -- list of all media projects seeking funding and volunteer assistance. This would be something like Donor's Choose for local media projects. It would allow local groups to fundraise nationally to publicize local issues of import to Democrats. This would offer a grass-roots, bottom-up approach to Democratic media and could cover requests as simple as funding for making copies of flyers, and as complex and seeking money to pay for production of a video or documentary. Established liberal web sites should support and point to this project bank, and publish the best projects.
- We need a national Democratic media strategy think-tank, specifically dedicated to formulating Democratic messages and disseminating them via traditional and non-traditional media. This would have more of a top-down approach, in terms of outlining general strategies for national campaigns, but it should also be responsive to and provide resources for local groups. Its goals should be to mobilize the Democratic big money, to bring funders together with media producers, and to hammer on the idea that Democrats need to present a coherent, powerful, positive message to the public. The approach should be multi-pronged, focusing not just on media news, but also on pop culture productions, the arts, the internet, and other venues for disseminating opinion. The think-tank would host seminars, workshops and strategy sessions, inviting the best progressive media theorists to work with the most influential content producers and providers in the radio, film, music, TV and new media industries. It's crucial that this not be a venture led by the usual crew of elites, who are clearly out of touch with what the Democratic public wants. Strategies need to be based on real needs, as ascertained by Democratic focus groups that represent our widely diverse base. This think-tank would take no group of Democrats for granted, and be geared towards not only influencing opinion, but getting voters motivated to go to the polls.
- We need to pressure Democratic politicians, through the mechanism of a Democratic media, to push the interests of those who elected them. This means that if a majority of their constituents are anti-war, we need to use our own media to hold our politicians' feet to the fire and insist they stand up for pulling out of Iraq & Afghanistan. If most Democrats favor ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, it we should shame those Democratc politicians who wimp out on gay rights. Conservative media does this job very well, posing litmus tests for conservative politicians, and pushing Republicans further and further to the right. We need to be as savvy at pushing our own politicians first back to the center, and then further left. Do do that, we need a media powerfully unafraid both to embarrass its own, and to present credible arguments that the more progressive route is, in fact, the stronger, better and more widely supported route.
Most of all, we need to stop helplessly rolling over and letting the right wing set the agenda, leaving us endlessly defensive (and failing miserably even at that). This is just the beginning of a list of things we can do to help ourselves -- I'm sure you all can think of dozens more useful and do-able strategies.