so much commentary on what Dems should be doing at this moment has an unspoken Step Zero of “get the media to pay even a little bit of attention to you”
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Part of the problem is people still see mainstream media as impartial arbiters whose attention must be captured instead of slanted bias pushers for their corporate paymasters. They are *choosing* the stories.
This was the whole reason behind the Twitter buyout and attacks on social media companies.
imo a lot of this "make them cover you" or "spend on our own media" stuff misses the mark on the idea of If People Wanted It, or were willing to spend money & attention on it, it would Already Exist. Why? Look at the MeidasTouch podcast for example. It's become more popular than Rogan on Spotify...
...but it already existed before the election! you can't in-organically make that happen, not to the degree I think many people are imagining.
that's not to say there's nothing to be done...what I think we need as a step 0 is *structure* more than anything. Coordination on basic social media stuff
I say "pivot to wiki" a lot but we simply do not have the power or coalition to blast a bajillion false messages to find the 3 best ones because our information-dominant elites aren't those kind of people! we have to be in the business of connecting each other to the information we already have
For example: does anybody know what was said during this meeting? 3 key takeaways? (I couldn't watch because it was late on Eurotime). How can we ask the media to do more when we don't pay attention to what we've already got?
But it would ALSO be good, and equally important, for @democrats.org to be posting such summaries/key takeaways themselves. You'd expect that from any other organization
The other part of the assumption is the belief that Democrats just need to call a press conference and the media will be forced to cover it as major news.
Like call an effing press conference to talk about the signal dumpster fire and frame it as what it is, the most consequential lapse of security for the DOD in….recent history? How many Hillary email servers does this count as
Those most to blame for the rise of trump are Dems who didn't find someone with enough star power to attract the attention of the media and low info voters
I keep waiting to hear from someone who isn't GOP who HAS managed to “get the media to pay even a little bit of attention to you" WITHOUT having to self immolate.
Is there anyone? Hillary got some attention, all bad, but media STILL covered Trump more. Harris couldn't get it w/o Trump being on stage
I see more about the protests in France and Turkey than I do about what's going on here.
At least YouTube isn't censoring it, but local news at least should start picking up the dozens of protests!
The problem is that resistances and revolutions are won by assholes. People willing to be belligerent, make waves, upset established norms, and be a pain in power's ass.
Democratic leadership is too tamed by civility and norms.
Step -1: create a hermetically sealed, lavishly funded, money-losing mediasphere large enough that anyone anywhere can access it for free (as opposed to current practice of a paywalled “liberal” media with a bunch of republicans on it)
The media is attracted to fantastic, bombastic stories that have little or no significance. It’s all clickbait. That’s what trump is. How do you suggest we retrain the media and/or its audience. Have the democrats claiming bizarre threats and conspiracies as well?
That’s kind of the point. Republicans can get the media amplify anything with very little effort. Our Reps really need to make a spectacle to get their attention. That’s what I’m asking for.
That's not even how they do it. The GOP gets their talking points from the right wing media. Once Fox, now whatever's trending on Musk's site.
It's not so much that the GOP has the secret to getting media attention, it's that the right wing media bought a political party.
That's a little more difficult because the media aren't generally expected to represent us. We can hope that our consumption patterns will encourage good coverage and discourage bad, but there's a reason why no one says, "Fight this government overreach by calling your news anchors."
Yes, the GOP did. Not Republican *voters*. Part of the reason why people yell at politicians instead of the media is because politicians are more capable of making the sort of noise that media outlets pay attention to. That's less true on local levels, but thats not what we're taking about here.
That's a bit of a narrow genre you're requesting, but I would point you at the real-time coverage of literally any Democrat that voted against the Iraq war. Basically they weren't serious people like the people voting *for* the Iraq war.
Tbh, we are seeing the fever break a little on here. It seems like most media posters saying "if dems don't make X an issue" are getting more "than why don't you run a story on it?" comments
There was a lesson taught on Jan 6th about how to get Congress to act in your favor.
As long as the only thing they're telling us to do is "go out and vote", Congress won't listen. They have two sides to consider, and one is just saying "we won't vote". The other went to their offices with weapons.
It's really no wonder why they're flipping like pancakes. One side threatened their lives. The other offers toothless platitudes and hashtags on social media.
It's a self-fulfilling loop. A couple of Dems make a little noise on something, media doesn't really pick it up because it's just a couple of Dems, rest of the party assumes nobody cares and drops it. The Right is constantly blasting this stuff in their echo chambers to see what breaks through.
A press conference is good but no reason to wait for one. There are reporters & photogs all over the Capitol. There’s no excuse for not buttonholing every single one.
and the strategies that the GOP uses to get the medias attention do not work for Dems. I dont know how that gets fixed, but Dems have to work twice as hard to get the same kind of coverage it seems.
…The GOP: 1) sticks to a uniform message & pushes that message aggressively & non-stop; & 2) uses the tools available to them to force the spotlight onto issues they want heard. Yes, they get help from media, but…
…watch a Sun morning show. They get asked about Ukraine & they pivot to “Biden = inflation.” They scream “Benghazi” & hold hearings into Benghazi til the electorate knows “Benghazi = some scandal by Dems.” They use the rules to run out the clock on enforcement of subpoenas. And Dems let them…
…Dems are still stuck in the “when they go low we go high” framework.
You know how Ds can grab spotlight? By refusing unanimous consent, refusing to vote for a single Trump nominee, etc., unless & until Rs make certain concessions (disband DOGE, rehire fired feds, agree to fund Ukraine, etc.).
A lot of the attention GOP gets is for being outrageously awful people- MTG and the freedom caucus are treated as rascals by right leaning media, whereas if a Dem was similar they would (rightfully) get crucified. So it’s how can we be bombastic and draw attention to ourselves without being PoS
Dems issue is they don’t even try to be bombastic or in-caucus shut that shit down. They need to be attention grabbing, which goes against the very nature of the party as “keep your head down and work hard” lol
Yes, it's not the GOP that pushes a story until the narratives break into mainstream outlets. It's the right-wing-media-sphere that does the work. Without them pounding hammers on the wall, MTG and the like would be ignored for the most part.
I was going to say, I think a huge part of this is that Fox News is considered a news company In Good Standing, so if they're chasing something, all the other major news companies feel the need to chase whatever it is, too
Without acknowledgement that Fox is just an arm of the GOP explicitly
GOP has a propaganda network, plus the socia media algorithms reward right wing content. Both of those help keep stories going long enough that the MSM begins chiming back in with ‘just reporting on the controversy’ stories.
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This was the whole reason behind the Twitter buyout and attacks on social media companies.
They are being told not to report on any of this… it is done by design
that's not to say there's nothing to be done...what I think we need as a step 0 is *structure* more than anything. Coordination on basic social media stuff
https://bsky.app/profile/democrats.org/post/3ll4s3gwyy22j
(Jeffries quoted in the article too)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/leading-democrats-react-reports-trump-administration-inadvertently-sharing/story?id=120116950
Is there anyone? Hillary got some attention, all bad, but media STILL covered Trump more. Harris couldn't get it w/o Trump being on stage
At least YouTube isn't censoring it, but local news at least should start picking up the dozens of protests!
And it's a bad look.
I just read a whole thread where basically no one had a clue about this:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/leading-democrats-react-reports-trump-administration-inadvertently-sharing/story?id=120116950
Democratic leadership is too tamed by civility and norms.
And that's part of the issue with Step 0.
Thats how they get it.
That's probably not what we want to do.
It's not so much that the GOP has the secret to getting media attention, it's that the right wing media bought a political party.
It used to be *exactly* "fight this overreach by calling your news anchors", local journalism would fight local politicians *constantly*.
As long as the only thing they're telling us to do is "go out and vote", Congress won't listen. They have two sides to consider, and one is just saying "we won't vote". The other went to their offices with weapons.
Just look at what they're doing when asked RIGHT NOW.
But, respectfully, those replies miss the broader, more fundamental points that Ds need to learn from…
You know how Ds can grab spotlight? By refusing unanimous consent, refusing to vote for a single Trump nominee, etc., unless & until Rs make certain concessions (disband DOGE, rehire fired feds, agree to fund Ukraine, etc.).
Without acknowledgement that Fox is just an arm of the GOP explicitly
https://bsky.app/profile/smullins3000.bsky.social/post/3ll7ll47gls2h