An earlier diary of mine several weeks ago dealt with the realization that the media’s double standard must be target #1. I flatly reject the commonplace resignation about the damage that media dishonesty is causing to society through politics.
This diary is a discussion of why the Democratic Party should make appointing a National Democratic Media Secretary a matter of the highest priority, as foundation of a general offensive on antidemocratic bias in the media. The exclusive job of this person should be to deal with the NATIONAL media’s double standard. This position should be fully funded, senior, permanent, and full-time. It should deal proactively with all the 'gotcha' questions in the traditional media, and be the focal point for counterattacks on all the national media's distortions, and monitor and report on the state of the media's double standard.
The media’s double standard must be target #1, if the country is going to approach electoral results that reflect the percentage of the people whose actual interests are embraced by the DEMOCRATIC party.
The policy positions of the Democratic party are at least better than those of the the repubs for at least 90% of the U.S. population, and the media's dishonest bias is one of the primary reasons why the electoral results don’t reflect that.
In the face of things like this and this, it is impossible to argue seriously that the media bias is due to lazyness. Pure and simple bad faith is a far more convincing explanation.
A lot of people say, directly or indirectly, more or less that media dishonesty is a given and that we should learn to live with it like with the weather, so that we would need to have overwhelming, landslide support in order to squeeze by with a meager margin of a few percentage points. Others are willing to wait hpefully until the 'New Media' overtakes the mainstream. I completely reject both resignation and complacency. Rationalizing inaction is one largely Democratic self-defeating habit. The media’s double standard got so bad in part because it hasn’t been challenged. Somebody has got to do the job, and that’s where it has got to start.
Assuming that the leadership of the Democratic party is actually interested in wining elections:
the Democratic Party should make appointing a National Democratic Media Secretary a matter of the highest priority. The exclusive job of this person would be to deal with the NATIONAL media’s double standard, as required foundation of a more general initiative to remove the biased media filter.
The National Democratic Media Secretary should be a party position, unaffiliated officially or unofficially with any campaign, other than through the party. They will need a complete staff and office working for him or her in order to do the job.
The position should be:
Nationwide, because the media’s distortion campaigns are national in scope.
Permanent, because the media double standard isn’t going away when elections are over, and it won't be defeated in a couple of months.
Full-time, because the media isn't working part-time, but overtime, to tilt the playing field towards McCain.
So, even though Howard Dean would be great in the role, unless he leaves his current job, he should continue to do the chairman of the DNC. Whether the DNC Chair's job includes dealing with the media’s, that depends on the party, and there is no requirement that the DNC Chair act as its spokesperson. However, it would be ok if the office of the Media Secretary reported to the DNC Chair, if the party base and the other leaders were OK with that.
Also, dealing with the media's double standard isn’t the primary responsibility of the Netroots. This is dealing with 'Old Media', not 'New Media'.
'New Media' is the place where the next, fact based narrative about conservatism and liberalism are being shaped.
This is a hugely important task, and pointing out Old Media's bias to the New Media audience is just a pointless distraction. Liberal blogs have a powerful presence in New Media, but when it comes to getting to the full national audience, they have to go through the Old Media filter like everybody else. On the other hand it may be very good if the person for the job – or their staff – came from New Media, as long as they have relevant Old Media experience as well.
The job of fighting the media bias should be at a senior party leadership level, but should not be filled by a past or present elected official. Instead, former media or communications types would be especially indicated, as long as they are impeccably devoted to the democratic ideals. Self-described 'strategists' need not apply. There is no strategizing here, especially by any of the failures who 'strategize' serially for the democrats. There is a strategy already, if the democratic party is ready to admit it: is to go after the media for its double standard. For that, what is needed is people who are good at what they do, not people whose individual best performance consists of peddling obsolete former platitudes.
This Office of the Democratic Media Secretary, with at most a very limited number of surrogates, should swat back all the ‘gotcha’ questions in the national media, ideally before they are even asked. After all these years, it’s become very easy to predict where the media slant would go. This would allow elected officials and local press secretaries to focus on pushing their own tailored message, without the distraction of dealing with what another party person may have said on the other coast. Let's be clear. I’m not saying that elected officials shouldn’t talk to the media. They (and their campaigns) should be free to articulate their own positions for themselves, and defend those positions themselves. What I’m saying is that they should resist the urge to put in their commentary when the problem with the media is what another member of the Democratic party says. the only sure way to do that is to make transgressors feel the consequences.
This doesn’t mean that the National Democratic Media Secretary should play a defensive role. Quite the opposite.
In the short term, the best hope for neutralizing the media’s double standard is to put the media itself on the defensive, so it has to be careful when it uses it to attack a Democrat.
So, anticipating the media’s campaigns of distortion, and counterattacking frequently, is essential. Another way in which the Office of the Democratic Media Secretary can do that is to research and monitor the all-too-easy-to-spot double standard, and giving its statistics wide circulation to party leaders, candidates, campaigns, and individual activists for use in interacting with the public.
Giving somebody this job would be only the first step. Congress can take an active role in fighting the double standard, with public hearings, to start. But this would work much better with a National Democratic Media Secretary in place first, pushing for that. So, I will deal with the opportunity for Congress in a later diary, if somebody else doesn’t do that before then.