He has his own media ecosystem now? How about at least the last decade or longer. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 has led to this disaster. And, while I believe in freedom of speech, I can't accept lies, misinformation, and disinformation as being protected speech. Oh, ditto for corporations being people and money being speech. Total BS.
No, the Fairness Doctrine repeal didn't lead to this, although it certainly accelerated the establishment of a right-wing media sphere by allowing for the first major form of right-wing mass media: AM talk radio. Had the Fairness Doctrine remained in effect, the rise of Rush Limbaugh and his multitude of clones couldn't have happened in the same way.
However, the Fairness Doctrine would not have done a thing to stop the rise of Fox News, since it never did apply to cable networks and the regulatory justification for it was such that it could not be applied to cable networks. The same thing for the Internet.
So if we thing of AM talk radio, cable news, and the Internet as the three legs of the right-wing media stool, the Fairness Doctrine would only have impacted one of those legs.
I must point out thaf with every three-legged stool, if you take out one leg then the stool will fall. So let’s pick out one of the legs and go after it.
But remember that the analogy only goes so far -- Paul Krugman used the three-legged stool analogy for the ACA marketplaces for years, and yet when Republicans eliminated one of the legs (the insurance mandate) it proved to be sturdy enough to withstand the loss of that leg.
So weakening one or more legs of the right-wing media stool is a good idea, but it likely won't lead to the stool collapsing.
"The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 has led to this disaster."
No, the repeal of the "Fairness Doctrine" resulted in an explosion of alternative media outlets to include social media. All manner of people with all manner of topics and opinions, all vying for your attention, and that's a good thing.
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by the Reagan administration made it far easier for bad faith actors like Rush Limbaugh to spread conspiracy theories and political propaganda over the radio airwaves because there were no regulations anymore requiring political commentary to be rebutted by anyone.
Don’t you follow the news? Top government scientists have been fired by his fascist regime in the name of government efficiency and the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, and the National Weather Service have been gutted through its illegal impoundments.
It would behoove you to turn off Fox Noise and OANN so that you are not so ignorant and misinformed.
And the problem with that is what? Are you some authority on what is and is not "conspiracy theories and propaganda"? There are plenty of outlets one can listen/watch/read every single day and most hew to one political ideology or another. The world has not fallen apart.
Thank you for replying to my comment, Hal. When malicious lies and deranged conspiracy theories are platformed by media outlets and influencers it tends to have horrific consequences for the rest of society because citizens who are less informed tend to believe them many times unless they are specifically refuted by someone.
Who gets to determine what are "malicious lies and deranged conspiracy theories"? When does "refutation" simply become suppression or censorship? We saw that with Iraqi WMD, Hunter Biden's laptop, Covid, and Joe Biden's cognitive decline.
Ultimately, the American people have to decide for themselves what is true and what is a lie. No one can force someone else to believe the truth if he/she is determined not to.
But I think that if the federal government had done a better job of rebutting the disinformation around COVID, for example, many lives could have been saved.
I oppose government censorship unless a specific law is being broken unlike the Trump regime.
So bottom line, continue to support the Contrarian and other substacks with authentic voices.
This Hands Off, country loving protestor, acknowledges the other sides media ecosystem but has no interest in creating a countervailing ecosystem. And I would never. describe the news I rely on from The Contrarian as an ecosystem. The Contrarian invites its readers to think for themselves.
Agreed. The article is about what Democrats should do differently, including learning from Trump (take the good, leave the bad). What can traditional media do differently to better support democratic engagement?
Trump doesn’t just ignore traditional media. He jerks it around everyday. He excels at the negative version of “earned” media. Instead of press releases to make the news, he does something wild to make the the news. Traditional media chases the bone while we gnash our teeth, shake our heads, etc (as if feasting on 🍖). On and on it goes. Trump has got a grip on both media systems.
Going forward, I would like traditional media to standardize the way it reports on Trump’s wild actions, maybe with a label like TWA Day#23 (Trump’s wild action Day#23). An attempt should always be made to identify the news Trump intends to distract from. “How the action is authoritarian in nature” should be a standard field, as should “criminal and/or unethical intents.” “Abject incompetence or stupidity of the action” should be a consideration. The Contrarian does a lot of this, though I still doubt that it protects us sufficiently from the exhaustion of chasing the bone. HCR lets news accumulate over days, which is helpful.
We have to learn to interrupt our in-the-moment responses because a new moment is just ahead of us with anther TWA. The way to respond to Trump’s craziness is to standardize/regularize the reporting without normalizing it. Doing so will probably drive Trump crazy, which means we’re on the right path.
Dems have been sleeping for decades, unaware of how Orange Face & his flunkies were successfully undermining our Democratic Republic; tragic & way late in the game, possibly too late to recover. I really fear for my grandchildren; am happy my two uncles who fought in the Pacific in WWII aren’t alive to see what has become of our beloved country.
This fits with what I've been noticing on the local stations in Washington DC. During local news, and sometimes national news (on ABC and NBC) there are 1-2 "Trump Commercials." They start with "pride in America" and then move quickly to whatever the topic of the day is. Implying that to be American is to support Trump. It initially sounds trivial, but the drip-drip-drip of the message is an effort to change viewers' minds. My husband thinks I'm over-reacting, but this bothers me A LOT.
The Meidas network is one of the few left leaning digital media challengers to the right wing disinformation brainwashing digital network. I support The Contrarian, and several other substacks. I am disheartened by this column. The DNC doesn’t seem to hear our calls to change their methods. I have been commenting on this on DNC message boards. I don’t understand why they don’t change with the times. It’s enraging when we are all protesting and wronging so hard to change this mess. I don’t understand why Ben Wickler wasn’t made head of the DNC. He seems to understand this situation clearly.
Thank you Jeff Nesbit and The Contrarian for this INCREDIBLY important Media Matters study. The conclusion was that this Republican media ecosystem is what resulted in a 34-count felon being elected for a second time. We need to "find" our billionaires real quickly!!
Crystal clear and coincided, it should be a mandatory read for any Democratic representatives! And to Rubin too, who only this am was naively positing (like Carville did,) that Americans will come around just about "naturally" to truth and justice in 26 (yeah, right...)
I do however have a question. I am annoyingly curious to learn if Democratic Congress and Senate offices, political organizations, unions, opinion groups and even lobbyists are in fact paid subscribers to the Contrarian, Krugman, and such - all places where it seems to me the highest caliber information and analysis routinely resides, and is readily available for formulations and strategies.
Unless there's some harm I genuinely can't see, sstacks should be able to present these separate lists, should they not?
If a House member or Senator is in a leadership role they should be required to be open to accepting comments on their government communications from the general public.
This needs to be read by Democrat "leaders," especially Ken Martin, the chairman of the DNC, stat!
I don't see how our democracy can survive with so many fascist propaganda outlets. To hell with the First Amendment. One shouldn't be free to misinform the electorate. Look at what has already happened because of it!
I absolutely believe this is why Democrats lost in 2024 and in the soul searching that’s followed, it’s so rarely mentioned! It’s not that the message was wrong, it’s that it was drowned out by the lies perpetrated and so widely disseminated.
The point about donation emails and texts is spot on. They feel tone deaf. And very tired and repetition. It's a waste of communication space. For most of us right now, we want to know why you want the money, where you stand in these dire times, and results.
We need brilliant minds to strengthen the fourth pillar of democracy, keep news outlets independent, and make truth great again...
Jeff’s point is well taken. Most Democrats at the national
level lack good communication skills and it definitely has some impact on their electoral prospects. But I think the necessity of good communication skills for elected officials is many times overblown. Biden did well in 2020 in spite of not being a great communicator.
"The reason autocrats and dictators seize media when they take power is this: if you control the message, you control the people. That is the central goal and art of effective propaganda."
He has his own media ecosystem now? How about at least the last decade or longer. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 has led to this disaster. And, while I believe in freedom of speech, I can't accept lies, misinformation, and disinformation as being protected speech. Oh, ditto for corporations being people and money being speech. Total BS.
No, the Fairness Doctrine repeal didn't lead to this, although it certainly accelerated the establishment of a right-wing media sphere by allowing for the first major form of right-wing mass media: AM talk radio. Had the Fairness Doctrine remained in effect, the rise of Rush Limbaugh and his multitude of clones couldn't have happened in the same way.
However, the Fairness Doctrine would not have done a thing to stop the rise of Fox News, since it never did apply to cable networks and the regulatory justification for it was such that it could not be applied to cable networks. The same thing for the Internet.
So if we thing of AM talk radio, cable news, and the Internet as the three legs of the right-wing media stool, the Fairness Doctrine would only have impacted one of those legs.
I must point out thaf with every three-legged stool, if you take out one leg then the stool will fall. So let’s pick out one of the legs and go after it.
But remember that the analogy only goes so far -- Paul Krugman used the three-legged stool analogy for the ACA marketplaces for years, and yet when Republicans eliminated one of the legs (the insurance mandate) it proved to be sturdy enough to withstand the loss of that leg.
So weakening one or more legs of the right-wing media stool is a good idea, but it likely won't lead to the stool collapsing.
"The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 has led to this disaster."
No, the repeal of the "Fairness Doctrine" resulted in an explosion of alternative media outlets to include social media. All manner of people with all manner of topics and opinions, all vying for your attention, and that's a good thing.
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by the Reagan administration made it far easier for bad faith actors like Rush Limbaugh to spread conspiracy theories and political propaganda over the radio airwaves because there were no regulations anymore requiring political commentary to be rebutted by anyone.
Don’t you follow the news? Top government scientists have been fired by his fascist regime in the name of government efficiency and the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, and the National Weather Service have been gutted through its illegal impoundments.
It would behoove you to turn off Fox Noise and OANN so that you are not so ignorant and misinformed.
And the problem with that is what? Are you some authority on what is and is not "conspiracy theories and propaganda"? There are plenty of outlets one can listen/watch/read every single day and most hew to one political ideology or another. The world has not fallen apart.
Thank you for replying to my comment, Hal. When malicious lies and deranged conspiracy theories are platformed by media outlets and influencers it tends to have horrific consequences for the rest of society because citizens who are less informed tend to believe them many times unless they are specifically refuted by someone.
Who gets to determine what are "malicious lies and deranged conspiracy theories"? When does "refutation" simply become suppression or censorship? We saw that with Iraqi WMD, Hunter Biden's laptop, Covid, and Joe Biden's cognitive decline.
Hal,
Ultimately, the American people have to decide for themselves what is true and what is a lie. No one can force someone else to believe the truth if he/she is determined not to.
But I think that if the federal government had done a better job of rebutting the disinformation around COVID, for example, many lives could have been saved.
I oppose government censorship unless a specific law is being broken unlike the Trump regime.
So bottom line, continue to support the Contrarian and other substacks with authentic voices.
This Hands Off, country loving protestor, acknowledges the other sides media ecosystem but has no interest in creating a countervailing ecosystem. And I would never. describe the news I rely on from The Contrarian as an ecosystem. The Contrarian invites its readers to think for themselves.
Agreed. The article is about what Democrats should do differently, including learning from Trump (take the good, leave the bad). What can traditional media do differently to better support democratic engagement?
Trump doesn’t just ignore traditional media. He jerks it around everyday. He excels at the negative version of “earned” media. Instead of press releases to make the news, he does something wild to make the the news. Traditional media chases the bone while we gnash our teeth, shake our heads, etc (as if feasting on 🍖). On and on it goes. Trump has got a grip on both media systems.
Going forward, I would like traditional media to standardize the way it reports on Trump’s wild actions, maybe with a label like TWA Day#23 (Trump’s wild action Day#23). An attempt should always be made to identify the news Trump intends to distract from. “How the action is authoritarian in nature” should be a standard field, as should “criminal and/or unethical intents.” “Abject incompetence or stupidity of the action” should be a consideration. The Contrarian does a lot of this, though I still doubt that it protects us sufficiently from the exhaustion of chasing the bone. HCR lets news accumulate over days, which is helpful.
We have to learn to interrupt our in-the-moment responses because a new moment is just ahead of us with anther TWA. The way to respond to Trump’s craziness is to standardize/regularize the reporting without normalizing it. Doing so will probably drive Trump crazy, which means we’re on the right path.
Dems have been sleeping for decades, unaware of how Orange Face & his flunkies were successfully undermining our Democratic Republic; tragic & way late in the game, possibly too late to recover. I really fear for my grandchildren; am happy my two uncles who fought in the Pacific in WWII aren’t alive to see what has become of our beloved country.
This fits with what I've been noticing on the local stations in Washington DC. During local news, and sometimes national news (on ABC and NBC) there are 1-2 "Trump Commercials." They start with "pride in America" and then move quickly to whatever the topic of the day is. Implying that to be American is to support Trump. It initially sounds trivial, but the drip-drip-drip of the message is an effort to change viewers' minds. My husband thinks I'm over-reacting, but this bothers me A LOT.
The Meidas network is one of the few left leaning digital media challengers to the right wing disinformation brainwashing digital network. I support The Contrarian, and several other substacks. I am disheartened by this column. The DNC doesn’t seem to hear our calls to change their methods. I have been commenting on this on DNC message boards. I don’t understand why they don’t change with the times. It’s enraging when we are all protesting and wronging so hard to change this mess. I don’t understand why Ben Wickler wasn’t made head of the DNC. He seems to understand this situation clearly.
Thank you Jeff Nesbit and The Contrarian for this INCREDIBLY important Media Matters study. The conclusion was that this Republican media ecosystem is what resulted in a 34-count felon being elected for a second time. We need to "find" our billionaires real quickly!!
He created that ecosystem by manipulating his followers into believing in a false narrative that he conjured up.
Crystal clear and coincided, it should be a mandatory read for any Democratic representatives! And to Rubin too, who only this am was naively positing (like Carville did,) that Americans will come around just about "naturally" to truth and justice in 26 (yeah, right...)
I do however have a question. I am annoyingly curious to learn if Democratic Congress and Senate offices, political organizations, unions, opinion groups and even lobbyists are in fact paid subscribers to the Contrarian, Krugman, and such - all places where it seems to me the highest caliber information and analysis routinely resides, and is readily available for formulations and strategies.
Unless there's some harm I genuinely can't see, sstacks should be able to present these separate lists, should they not?
Traditional DNC outreach is
- a text with some half-baked appeal to 3rd-grade logic. "We need ONE MORE PERSON to ....!!!!!"
- a donation link.
It's all incredibly useless.
If a House member or Senator is in a leadership role they should be required to be open to accepting comments on their government communications from the general public.
This needs to be read by Democrat "leaders," especially Ken Martin, the chairman of the DNC, stat!
I don't see how our democracy can survive with so many fascist propaganda outlets. To hell with the First Amendment. One shouldn't be free to misinform the electorate. Look at what has already happened because of it!
Democrats are not “the Left” but rather Centrist. GOP/MAGA are “Fascist/Right”, and right is wrong.
Don’t let GOP/MAGA frame our narrative.
The Dems seem completely out to lunch on this core issue.
I absolutely believe this is why Democrats lost in 2024 and in the soul searching that’s followed, it’s so rarely mentioned! It’s not that the message was wrong, it’s that it was drowned out by the lies perpetrated and so widely disseminated.
The point about donation emails and texts is spot on. They feel tone deaf. And very tired and repetition. It's a waste of communication space. For most of us right now, we want to know why you want the money, where you stand in these dire times, and results.
We need brilliant minds to strengthen the fourth pillar of democracy, keep news outlets independent, and make truth great again...
Jeff’s point is well taken. Most Democrats at the national
level lack good communication skills and it definitely has some impact on their electoral prospects. But I think the necessity of good communication skills for elected officials is many times overblown. Biden did well in 2020 in spite of not being a great communicator.
"The reason autocrats and dictators seize media when they take power is this: if you control the message, you control the people. That is the central goal and art of effective propaganda."
Has Trump seized liberal media outlets?