There has been a recent flurry of comments regarding the media’s malfeasance: posts here at DKos and a few articles by the print media calling out of the whole media. Calling the media out is urgently necessary, but it’s not sufficient. The Clinton campaign needs a two-pronged attack, and there is a proven technique available.

The media bias can no longer be ignored. Donald Trump, a candidate who should not be even registering in the polls, is narrowing the gap. Yes, much of the electorate is lazy and grotesquely ignorant or just racist. But look at where we are.

Trump has financial ties to highly placed Russian oligarchs and is infatuated with their authoritarian boss-for-life, maybe even sharing his goals.
Those Russian ties might even have something to do with the mob.
The man who would have to staff an administration cannot competently staff his campaign.
His listens to a brazen white nationalist.
He himself is openly a white nationalist with a history of racial discrimination who actively courts hate groups and who’s campaign is designed to appeal to the worst of human instincts.
Though touting his business acumen, he clumsily has tanked not 4 but 6 businesses, walking away while others suffered. His remaining companies have massive debt. He even is part owner of a building on which is owed just under $1 billion to the Bank of China — China!
He routinely stiffs working men and women. He uses union-busters. He says that that American workers make too much money. He hires undocumented workers.
He defrauds the public then uses political connections and outright bribery to get away with it.
He flatly refuses to release his taxes.
He is shockingly ignorant of government, the Constitution, foreign affairs, and economics.
He claims to know more about ISIS than do the generals, and has made proposals regarding nuclear weapons that are dangerously destabilizing.
He promotes violence and has suggested the assassination of his opponent, though perhaps as a light-hearted jest.
He is all too likely to start a war.
He lies like other people breath (sorry, too many sources to reference here).
He has destroyed our political conversation (again, too many sources).

Against this, we have Hillary Clinton, a serious, qualified candidate of substance. Yet the media remains fixated not on any of Trump’s infamies, not on any of Clinton’s qualifications or policy proposals, but on Clinton’s negatives, lack of press conferences, and emails. This is criminal malfeasance. The media have normalized Donald Trump and, thereby, his behaviors. In fact, the media created Trump, and they energetically will sustain him. Democrats are fools if we let this continue.

The recognition that the media are culpable is growing, but it’s far from a rising tide and time is short. Further, as noted above, calling the media out necessary but not sufficient. The Clinton campaign needs a two-pronged attack.

Attack the media directly, naming names and assigning blame.
Help them create the Trump stories that a responsible media would have done on their own.

The plan of attack, in both cases, is critical. Fortunately, we have an example to follow.

THE TECHNIQUE

Todd Gitlin, at Moyers and Company, wrote a piece subtitled “The media picked up on Benghazi and it spread like wildfire. Let's see how long it takes for the Trump scandals to catch up to him.” That was published back in June. Nothing yet, but that was the point. Gitlin’s piece was about how the Republicans made Benghazi happen through the media.

“Repetition that dovetails with an emotional charge. Repetition and charge. Repetition and charge. The name, the term, the place hooks into emotion. When media repeat the name, they trigger the emotion along with a whole complex of images and thoughts that accompany it. Drummed home repeatedly, ….”

The key is “to understand that pseudoscandals don’t invent themselves,” rather, they happen “when media piggybacked on Republican-dominated institutions and campaigns.” (The emphasis is mine.)

Trump has real scandals, but we still have to spoon feed the media. Choose the topics, distill them down to one or two words, and associate a gut-level appeal to each. Find the emotion, the hook. Then, it’s just repetition: every candidate, every Democratic spokesperson, every one of us.

We can use this technique to create Trump stories but also to distract the media from their adventures in Trumplandia, given that nothing in the Clinton campaign resembles a shiny object.

1. THE ATTACK

To craft a charge and hang an emotion on it, it might help to look at why the media has failed so badly. In another article, Gitlin offers possible explanations.

A “shortage of experienced newsroom eyes.” (Incompetence)
It’s “too expensive — though the cost to democracy of not pursuing such obvious leads is a question that publishers might well be asking themselves.” (Actual reporting costs too much.)
The media “fear Trump’s hair trigger when it comes to lawsuits.” (The media have been bullied.)
Networks, “aware of how juicy Trump has been for their bottom lines,” also are aware that, as President, he might “appoint unfriendly members of the Federal Communications Commission ….” (Trump means ratings means profits. Conversely, he might turn the power of government against his enemies. Might?)

My favorite reason is not on Gitlin’s list. I believe, the media are afraid, probably of lawsuits but of more as well. The conservative meme that the press has a liberal bias dates to the 1964 primaries, when Barry Goldwater complained that the press was reporting negatively on is campaign. At the Republic convention, that year, “former President Dwight Eisenhower” repeated the claim “to wild reaction.” The highlights of this press-scapegoating run through Vice President Spiro Agnew, the Nixon “enemies list,” and George H. W. Bush’s campaign. The “criticism has become noticeably bolder since the 1990s, when Newt Gingrich, representing the second generation of movement conservatism, took power in the House.” Today, we still have Newt, for some reason, along with Sara Palin and the Tea Party.

I think it’s likely that the media have become overly concerned about, if not outright frightened of, these right-wing attacks. They lean over backwards (now there’s good imagery) to acknowledge equivalencies that don’t exist and to balance their reporting of a clearly unbalanced candidate.

“False equivalence” is not as simple or obvious as “liberal bias.” Coining the charge is going to take some work. This post already is too long, so better political minds than mine can sort that out (or you can in the comments). This is how the process starts, though.

The hook? The emotion? Maybe Jim Inhofe in the well of the Senate holding a snow ball which the media sheepishly accept as evidence that 2% vs. 98% of scientists is a balanced argument. Okay. Again, better minds than mine.

Maybe we can make use of the corporate ownership of the media: “Massive corporations dominate the U.S. media landscape.” They “have concentrated their control over what we see, hear and read.” Time Warner Inc. owns CNN. NewsCorp (Rupert Murdoch) owns Fox News. Comcast owns NBC and MSNBC (such as they are). National Amusements owns CBS. The Walt Disney Company owns ABC (you sort of guessed that one, right?). The AP is owned by its contributing media resources, which include the above. So, which side of the political spectrum is likely to be favored by parent corporations with billions in market capitalization and with CEOs earning tens of millions?

Whatever attack we might choose in this pretend scenario, we would need to hit them hard and loud and over and over. Even then, we end up just hoping that the media pick it up. Republicans have had 50 years and the media friendly power of congressional investigations – endless investigations. We have 2 months. Find the imagery, find the emotion, and make the charge loudly and repeatedly. “Repetition and charge. Repetition and charge.”

2. THE TRUMP STORIES

We have an embarrassment of riches, here, mostly because the media have ignored everything Trump has said or done, so his “fails” still all are out there just waiting for someone with enough sense to come along and use them. But this post still is too long, and there really is no point in trying to create examples for two reasons.

One: better minds than mine. As a group, we are more experienced and knowledgeable than individually (and I’m tired, now). An exercise for the reader, then. Go to it in the comments. Just for good measure, throw in a few about Republican suppression of the vote, Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and Republican do-nothing congressional know nothings.

Two: and here’s the rub, while there has been a flurry of posts here and a few in the media, little will come of them. goLeft suggested the use of social media, specifically, twitter and its hash-tags, to force a reaction. That should be a substantial part of any effort, and kudos to goLeft for one of the few posts on the topic that offered an actionable suggestion. Still, nothing will happen unless it is done under the auspices of the Clinton campaign. Maybe a twitter storm can catch the attention of the campaign, but a few such events by themselves will not do the job. It will take every candidate, every party advocate, everyone who writes letters to the editor, every registered Democrat keeping up a daily attack. That requires campaign-level funding, action, and coordination. I don’t have an answer to that. Maybe goLeft does or someone else out there does, but I don’t.

However, I believe that, if the Clinton campaign continues pretending that reasoned policy will appeal more to the electorate than a massively over-simplified scandal, pretending that a multi-word ad will appeal more than “Benghazi!,” pretending that the media are seasoned, responsible reporters in search of truth, all while Trump continues to invent scandals that a compliant if not supportive media treat as commensurate with if not worse than Trump’s real scandals, we’d better start praying.

I don’t believe in prayer, myself, but even I’ve started chanting an updated traditional Scottish prayer.

From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go Trump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!