Posted on 10/21/2005 1:26:29 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
(Talk radio, other conservative outlets will keep gaining audiences)
Mark Belling’s Free Consultation Service For the Mainstream Media (MSM): Stop condescendingly insulting your target audience. Doing so merely alienates them and drives them toward the new media (talk radio, Internet bloggers, Fox News) that actually respects their intelligence and programs for them.
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I don’t suspect the above advice will be taken. Instead, members of the MSM will continue to assault their readers and viewers with a barely disguised leftist agenda under the pompous pretense that they are trying to "inform" them. As the audience continues to abandon this heavy-handed rot and instead gravitates toward more satisfying alternatives, MSM wretches will grow ever more jealous and bitter.
Picture Dan Rather holed up in his Park Avenue penthouse. He was going to bring down President Bush with his big National Guard "scoop," he thought. Instead, the bloggers brought him down. Exposed as a fraud, Rather’s story did in Rather (and actually helped Bush). The unfairness of it all, Rather seethes. Here I am, Dan Rather, finished off by a bunch of Internet bloggers who’ve never even been to Georgetown. Why, they are even conservative!
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Nothing drives these has-beens battier than talk radio. A column in this newspaper Saturday by Dennis Shook railed against myself and WTMJ’s Charlie Sykes for "intervening" (Shook’s word) in the election held Tuesday for Waukesha County executive. (When the MSM gets involved in an issue, it’s "reporting." When talk show hosts offer comment, that’s "intervening.") Shook is apoplectic that Sykes and I have commented on the very un-conservative past of candidate Jim Dwyer by reporting on leftist stances he’s held over the years. Shook somehow feels these positions are not "news." Instead, Shook urges readers to read his stories in this paper or, I love this, listen to the debate he moderated.
This column was written before the results of the election are known. Maybe Dwyer won. Maybe it was Dan Vrakas. Regardless, Shook seems genuinely appalled that someone other than him gets to comment on the race. He complains that talk radio is impure because it isn’t "journalism." He’s right about that. Talk radio isn’t journalism. The MSM’s bastardization of journalism has discredited the entire form.
I’ll remind Shook that the two biggest stories of the campaign came from talk radio: Daniel Finley’s decision not to run in the first place (my scoop) and Finley’s objection to Dwyer’s misleading use of Finley’s name in an ad (Sykes’ story). That Shook doesn’t think the backing by Dwyer of the state liberal establishment and Dwyer’s opposition to tax freezing and past support of light rail and coziness with Milwaukee officials responsible for the pension scandal isn’t newsworthy speaks more of his lack of "journalistic" ability than of the supposed hackery practiced by me and Sykes.
While I’m at it, since this column actually appears in the MSM (the paper you are reading), I should note that every time I write Dan Finley’s name in one of these columns, some editor changes it to "Daniel Finley." (Maybe Shook is that editor). Earth to MSM: Nobody - I mean NOBODY - calls him Daniel. Stop changing my stuff.
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Former MSM member Jessica McBride (formerly of the Freeman and the Journal Sentinel) is now a blogger. Her old colleagues are apparently aghast that she dares to report on the unending bias demonstrated by her former employers. McBride seems shocked that they’re mad at her. As she is new to this new media/counterculture thing, I’ll warn her that it’ll only get worse. They can’t stand a turncoat.
On the other hand, McBride likely will find a much larger following on her obscure blog than she ever had in writing for the old-line newspapers. The more she dares to present conservative views, the larger her audience will be. The MSM seems unable to grasp this. People are fed up with the monolithic voice of major media. They’re all for higher taxes, same sex marriage, abortion and treating terrorists like shoplifters. They don’t like cops, the military and they especially despise evangelical Christians. Guess what? Very few people share those views. They are looking - no, crying out for - alternatives.
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Shook writes that talk radio is "smack talk" and that listening to it is akin to getting hit in the face with a pie. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. I read his column and imagine a doddering old buggy whip manufacturer sneering at all the automobiles while wailing, "it’s all a fad!"
Guess what, old boy. It’s not a fad. The Web, radio talkers, bloggers and the rest of us party crashers aren’t going anywhere. Your monopolistic game is up. You’re dying and the wound is self-inflicted.
What fox needs to do is have a FOX HEADLINE NEWS.I would watch them allot more if they did. I dont care to watch video talk shows or the stupid fox and friends in the morning. I turn the tv on to watch news. so generally I have to turn to cnn headline news but it is rare when I watch news since I get most of it off the net anyway.
The death spiral formula. Go MSM!
Gotta love this guy - he says what we all feel and does it SOOO well!
Send Email to all the MSM and tell them they are losing the fight against common sense !!
NY Times revenue is down 25 million Dollars (48M to 23M)
Call me a contrarian, at least with regard to the television networks. If their corporate shareholders and advertisers are willing to continue to support this liberal drivel, I have little cause for optimism.
I see no movement that either entity will put a stop to this nonsense.
"NY Times revenue is down 25 million Dollars (48M to 23M)"
If only it were true. I wish the NY Times only had revenues of 23M. Unfortunately, you are referring to net income.
The same reporter called belling and sykes 'out of touch' with waukesha county because of their support for vrakas.
Vrakas then won the election, 68% to 32%
One thing that I cannot get off my mind though and I may be completely mistaken is this. During the unfortunate arrest of an apparently solid citizen in New Orleans, a video caught a nasty situation. Very damaging to the police.
Now I am taking a chance here. My spouse had on an American news network of some size. It showed a still shot of the ex-school teacher on the ground. There were about four to five big blotches of blood by him. Why this only dawned on me, I regret to say.
Somehow the blotches were almost an orange fluorescent colour. Just an off chance, someone may have seen this. Or maybe I am off course.
Just reflection from the florescent lights. It reflects and makes things look all different colors.
Oh they're not biased at all!
I read yesterday that Ramsey Clark was trying to get some lefty show on Armed Forces Radio. The military said no. The liberal site I was on was stunned that "they're not showing the other side."
Meanwhile Ivy League schools are tossing out ROTC programs and banning conservative speakers. The galling part is they call this "open minded and tolerant."
Ninety percent of journalists vote liberal Democrat in any given election. Yet the left talks about how impartial these people are.
Meanwhile Bush is simply friends with people in the oil industry and every environmental/foreign policy decision is met with suspicion. This is so bankrupt. The media is just mad that they're being pushed out at every level.
Oh well take heart my leftist friends, you can still force your propaganda on school kids (unless vouchers get passed.)
That's why Chris Matthews makes me angry ... he INSULTS me. Finally the right word for it. Fun to turn him on and see how long it takes for his attitude or his words to make me angry enough to turn the channel ... I actually counted up to about 23 or 24 the other day before I zapped him. NPR usually doesn't make it to 20, so by my rating he's still a tick above NPR.
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