Organizing for America | Lan's Blog: The media "narratives"

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The media "narratives"

By Lan Fleming - Jul 5th, 2008 at 5:48 pm EDT

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The corporate news media no longer provides news; they manufacture "narratives." And those narratives are generally favorable to Republican candidates in every election and damaging to Democrats. The flip-flop narrative, effectively used against John Kerry is now being dutifully echoed in all the major newspapers and broadcast TV and cable channels in a barrage of media attacks against Obama, thinly disguised as objective news stories.

Obama says he's puzzled that his statement about refining his policy on Iraq as facts warrant has caused such a stir. I don't think he should be puzzled; his statement was deliberately distorted by the media, as were Wesley Clark's comments, which were twisted in order to fit the media's "doubtful patriotism" narrative.

Every time Obama elaborates or clarifies his position on some issue, the media now try to shoe-horn it into their "flip-flop" narrative. John McCain's radical changes in position such as opposing off-shore drilling in May but favoring it in June never gets covered in the media (I learned about McCain's off-shore drilling flip-flop on the Daily Show).

The website MediaMatters.org keeps an updated list of reports of the latest media distortions and outright lies, most of which in this election year are targeted a Obama. I hope Obama's campaign staff uses it as a resource. I'm not sure what Obama can do when the media act in concert to distort his words and his record. One suggestion I have is for Obama's campaign to comment on the stories in MediaMatters and similar sources in their teleconferences with the corporate media reporters whose colleagues are responsible for the distortions and call them out for it in no uncertain terms. I think Obama's campaign should also go after McCain's flip-flops more publicly than they've done

When a candidate or his top advisers talk to reporters about a subject, they really have no choice but to report on it publicly. At least that's true of the Republican candidate. Let's see if it holds for a Democrat.

BTW: I'm opposed to immunity for telecoms that have committed crimes. I'd be happy if Obama actually did (gasp) flip-flop a little on this and work to get this malodorous immunity provision removed from the FISA bill.

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dead on | Report to Admin

By jude jones Jul 5th 2008 at 7:06 pm EDT

You are absolutely right about the narratives. I despair that anything can be done about it, but they are in the business of building whatever narratives will best fuel conflict. "Heck, we hope the primary will go on forever! This is great for us! (paraphrase)" Chris Matthews said when he and others were accused of pushing Hillary to get out of the race. Jon Stewart's satire of broadcast media as brain-hungry zombies is somewhat accurate--they are habituating people's brains into thinking that thinking is conflict/opposition/polarizati on. And that undermines Reason itself, as Al Gore has eloquently argued in his most recent book, "The Assault on Reason".

What can we do to push back?

Re: dead on | Report to Admin

By Lan Fleming Jul 5th 2008 at 7:33 pm EDT

[[And that undermines Reason itself, as Al Gore has eloquently argued in his most recent book, "The Assault on Reason".]]

When the media redefines a word like "refine" to mean "flip-flop" it is an assault on reason. The way that the media people all start singing the same silly chorus is either a deliberate attempt to influence the election or it's just some weird mob psychology. I'm not sure which.

[[What can we do to push back?]]

I don't know. I frequently write responses to articles on media web sites where they let you do that. It may help in some minor way, but mostly I think it's only blowing off steam. As I mentioned, I think the Obama and his staff are the only ones who can have any real impact, because when they speak they make news. When their words are distorted, I think they should make the distortion the news. Even that can be tricky, since they don't want to be accused of "blaming the media" for their problems.

I think perhaps what is needed are press conferences and press releases where they lay out the facts in a matter-of-fact way the way the MediaMatters.org stories are done. MediaMatters is largely ignored by the mass media, but if a high-level Obama staff member is speaking forcefully enough, I'd think the media would have a hard time ignoring it. (I'd leave that sort of thing to the staff rather than to Obama himself, though).

Re: dead on | Report to Admin

By jude jones Jul 5th 2008 at 8:12 pm EDT

You're right, it is precarious to encourage any candidate to do anything that looks like they are blaming the media, as the media tends to strike back against any such thing.

My thinking, and observation, is that the push back from the campaign works best when it is done with humor--Gibbs has been extremely effective this way on Morning Joe and other MSNBC shows I've seen him on. A more orchestrated comedic presentation of the distortions or potential distortions would be good. Since we are coming up on convention time, for example, the dems need to do something to pre-own the "flip-flop" metaphor in order to avoid another fiasco like the giant sandals the RNC had everyone waving last time. Some really effective user-created content to this effect on You Tube would even get some play, perhaps, the way Colbert's "Make McCain Exciting Green Screen Challenge" fan-made videos have been getting replay on news networks. Such a strategy would be a way to "make the distortion the news" without being shrill about it. Jon Stewart is great at culling the repetitious media narratives into ensemble pieces to ridicule.

I think MediaMatters is largely ignored because, in part, the Right has been successful in widely defining them as "left wing propagandist" at least in some outlets. But they are great, and wouldn't be targeted by the right if they weren't so dangerous to them.

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