Ladies, and Gentlemen: The Time Has Come. We Must Do Something About Our American Press Corps.

Imposing tighter and more forceful controls on the “fourth estate”, requires serious consideration.  And such a proposal being in itself, “politically charged”, guarantees nothing will be done unless there is a single party in firm control of all three forms of government and that includes the courts…

There has to be a faster way, a better way.

That is what I am to propose.We have found (particularly in this election year) that to get things done quickly,  “We, The People” have to get involved.  It is what propelled Donald to the forefront of his party’s nomination over the stale platitudes of people who were competent.  It is also what gave Bernie’s campaign far more power than any insider could have ever considered as late as last December a mere 9 months ago.  So whether you like either of the two campaigns or not, it is “We, The People” who manifested them in our own two diverse images….

The problem with today’s press is not so much its partisanship. The reason calling out such partisanship from BOTH parties is justifiable, is because the press plays itself against BOTH sides.  Indeed in social issues it does tend to side with liberals and lambastes both conservatives and Tea Party Republicans. Most of our media is liberal on issues supportive of prisoners, gays, minorities, and women’s rights. But when it comes to a government using its power to get things done, the media’s business-identity takes over and it becomes strongly Libertarian. Here keeping government in a box seems to be its prime directive. Those of you with sharp minds can already see where this is going: both socially and governmentally our press is almost pure Libertarian. On the social side it mimics Liberalness while on the business side, it’s conservative. Both which are planks of the Libertarian party.

Because of this dichotomy,  both sides can and do look at the American media as its enemy…. while the same both sides ignore and dismiss the side which is a partial friend of it .Therefore for citizen’s groups to attack the media on its partisanship is probably a moot endeavor.  For if there is no partisanship actually there, one will come up empty handed. No, for any change to occur, there first

a) has to be a problem, then

b) that problem has to become common knowledge, then

c) movements towards change have to campaign to attract followers, and then

d) the number of “pros” has to outweigh the number of “cons”, and

e) only then, does change occur.  But is has to start with a real … problem.

We have a real problem.  Our fourth estate refuses to report real facts and lets lies slip by without comment every time those facts or lies fly in the face of its Libertarian nature.  Take the climate-change debate: since governments should not enforce Draconian rules upon private business so the press mitigated the compelling facts of global warming with opposing opinions funded by Big Oil.  Flip that over to the other side: gay marriage.  Government should not enforce Draconian rules upon private citizens; therefore it cast and painted those who were traditionalists into caricatures of silliness, to which most of “us” (long oppressed) took delight.  Take religion:  all those enforcing a “state’ religion, be they traditionalists of Muslim, Jewish, Old School Catholic, or Fundamentalist Christian get parodied and those actively involved in the “serving” nature of religion as in “creating good here on earth” get support… Take taxes: raising them though obviously the glaring solution to almost every problem and concern, also involves taking resources away from private citizens and putting them into the hands of a “government” … Hence, no commentary is ever given towards how raising taxes would swell the “people’s” economy, raise all wages, and allow us to all live much wealthier than we can today, despite all the evidence out there crying for it to be noticed and upheld… The trend has been consistent.

The point I’m making is that when progressives look at this monolith, and when conservatives look at this monolith, they both see the monolith fighting strictly against them.  They don’t see it actually is fighting against all government in general….

One could talk about this “problem” of the media for hours.  In just the few short minutes of typing I already have cooked up enough mental outlines and supporting examples to write a whole book. We don’t have time for that. Let’s accept step a) (There has to be a problem) is legit and move onward to where we need to go to make our stamp as We, The People, felt…

 

We need to quickly move over to step (b) (that problem has to become common knowledge), as well as setup the future stages of c) (movements towards change have to campaign to attract followers) and d) (the number of “pros” has to outweigh the number of “cons”…..) 

We know how to do this because we did it to Rush Limbaugh… We attack their advertisers… Both due diligence and concerted effort are needed as was bravely and methodically accomplished against Rush Limbaugh.

The plan simply involves holding advertisers accountable for the News shows they sponsor.  We write to advertisers supporting some of the most hateful one-sided shows and ask them if they were aware they were supporting bigotry, we ask them if they were aware they were supporting misogyny, we ask them if they were aware they were supporting a “state religion”, and we ask them if they were aware they were supporting climate change denial….

Make sure you offer the examples… quotes and times of what was directly said.(Twitter makes it easy).. Then politely inform them that for the life of you, you cannot conscientiously buy another of their products until you are sure they have changed …. and that one way for them to gain your future support, would be to take public action and combat those issues which by their association through their advertising, they seem to support.

We know this is effective…. The power of association is a very motivating human trait… “Ew, I don’t want people to think I’m with them….”

And we also know it does not take many such letters to make an impact… It is one of the reason true Conservatives appear almost equal in power though their numbers are a very minimal percentage of the population.(17%)… Because almost the full 100% of them write protests to businesses including those in the press themselves.. Therefore no matter how ridiculous is their claim, one needs to pay it respect to mitigate any financial impact to oneself.

The reason such small numbers can impact business is because businesses depend on revenue streams.  As you know profits are only the tip of the pyramid after all other expenses have been paid down and off. So by taking a block of two off the top, they who live or die by their profit dollars, are impacted immediately…  They cannot ignore your threat….

Now some may say that the press doesn’t matter.  Because to most people,  the press is just something out there… an irrelevant entity that no one seems to watch…  When we hear that 2.4 million watch Fox’s “The Five” we should also calculate to ourselves that means there were also an estimated 322 million who did not watch. And that does indeed correlate to the reality of our lives.. At work, no one comments on politics unless that happens to be all they live for.Sports, entertainment, family, problems with coworkers, traffic, all seem to take precedence in our lives over the fate of our county, state, or even federal electees…

But Brexit pointed out a glaring problem to ignoring this.  When Brits were asked from where they got most of their opinions prior to voting, a high majority responded with the BBC. And this makes psychological sense. When confused it is natural to turn to where your parents used to get their source of information.. which was the BBC.

Now throughout the argument of Brexit, the BBC as is today’s American media dealing with Trump, tried to play both sides evenhandedly; to do so they let tons of lies simply slide by without context which caused quite a few votes going Brexit’s way.  Brexit proponents made promises and charges that were completely unfounded, but due to any silence of a rebuttal by BBC, they were allowed to hang out on the line as truth.   Proof of of this being that the promise to transfer moneys being sent to the EU  (350 million each week) over to the NHS, was pulled less than 24 hours had expired since the vote went Brexit’s way… That misinformation bubble on which many used to cast their vote, could and should have easily been popped before the vote…

The BBC let down Britain, and today, we see our American press doing the exact same: letting down America to keep up the semblance of a tight horse race… We see click-bait headlines pushing “something’s very wrong” in a squeaky clean Clinton Foundation even when inside the same article they mention there was no wrongdoing found; on the other hand we see them completely ignoring outright bribery looking at them in the face…as in Trump paying off the Florida AG to make a “We, The People’s” investigation go away….

The press has the ability to spin an election cycle. This is very true.  This happened in 2000 and the USA is still digging out from that tragedy… All the facts back then said tax cuts and deregulation would cause immense economic trouble, but those effects were never publicly discussed by our press. Instead we were treated to media storms of:…”who would you rather have a beer with?”  Duh, the obvious answer would be a Texas Rangers baseball team owner over the other choice, one who’d been a governmental bureaucrat all his life.. But that shouldn’t have been the question!.. But solely because it was, and many more voters back then looked at the press for guidance than dare do today, it spun the election criteria out of the field of economics over into La, La, Land.  So instead of having our national debt completely paid off back in 2008 to which we were on track to do, we now have $16 trillion new dollars yet to pay.  So now instead maintaining certain regulations to keep businesses from immorally gouging consumers without consequences, we had a crash rivaling the Great Depression. So now instead of nipping Global Warming in the bud by 2004, we have oceans crashing into our houses, wiping out recreational shoreline yearly and species living 30,000 years disappearing without trace.

Elections have consequences and if “We, The People” are to truly remain in charge, we need to apply our control over this press as well as we apply it over our government… And our tool for that is economic. And it must start with you…. 

One… Personally comment somewhere every time you hear misjudgment made by the press.

Two… when you do hear a particular misleading comment, note the next three advertisers.

Three… do a search, find those advertisers’ customer service, click send email, and type a few sentences.  Like this..

“Did you know your company’s ad was the first thing I saw on Politico after its host seemed to support Trump’s misogynist agenda and did not comment against Donald Trump’s slur against women!  How can you advertise on such a vile channel?

Or..

“What are you trying to do!  Just saw your ad on ABC who just gave credence to Trumps’ immigration policy by not calling out the lies Trump spewed…especially that all Hispanics are rapists.   I will no longer support a company who indulges in prejudice and hate.. Good bye

Or…

Did you know that CBS just let Donald Trump’s assertion go unchallenged that there was no global warming? … Did you know your advertisement came immediately after cutting away from that?  I’m sorry but my dollars cannot go to a company who associates with networks who will not correct such lies and misinformation….

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It’s a start. The benefit is that we know it works…  “Rush who?” you ask.