Highly recommended. Available from various sources including Amazon.com
Collusion, How The Media Stole The 2012 Election — And How Top Stop Them From Doing It In 2016, the new book by Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell and Tim Graham is highly recommended as a chronicle of journalistic bias, malpractice, perfidy and unaccountability. Because it documents truth on key issues of the day, it is an important current affairs resource on many topics. That half of the book’s promise, as laid out in the subtitle, is well fulfilled. Own it for that portion alone.
There is more, but not the half implied. The other part of the “promise” — “how to stop them from doing it in 2016” is fulfilled more by implication than the ostensible chapter devoted to it. We expected more elaboration, but maybe brevity is the soul of the solution. The “how to” in the last chapter is more general admonition then a step by step specification of procedures.
We should not expect it to be a media relations course or seminar on new media but some deeper foray as such would have been appreciated. For example, admonishing Republicans to pursue social media is now almost a consultant cliche.
Ironically we found that the introduction proved as insightful for the “how to” normally reserved for the conclusion (epilogue in the book). Excerpts: from the introduction:
Every conservative in America knows the liberal press has an agenda against them. What they cannot understand is why Republicans are so incapable of solving the problem. We share this frustration. We see the damage done daily, with virtually no GOP countermeasures, ever. . . .
The answer, I tried to tell them, as otherwise, a three-part exercise. First, present your argument intelligently and cogently. Second, if your message is distorted by the press, give them the benefit of the doubt. Bring the offense to their attention, and give them the opportunity to correct it. Third, if they are in the wrong, and they refuse to correct the error, beat the hell out of them. Make them the issue. But there was not much chest thumping in return as one by one they gave their speeches endorsing a declaration of war on the media. By and large that never happened. Instead they return to fretting about what the media might do to them in response and a return to the tall grass from whence they do not emerge.
That was then. We are in the midst of the most profound communications revolution in history, with extraordinary new opportunities presenting themselves to us, each one making the left-wing news media that much more irrelevant — before smart enough, and eager enough, and courageous enough to go there.
From the epilogue:
. . . Journalism is no longer a prize endeavor for the privileged and trained a few. In the era of blogging, everyone is a pamphleteer
. . . conservatives must become far more educated about the (media) industry, selective in their choices, and confrontational when attacked.
Conservatives must understand that in the information age that cultural trumps the political. It is a lesson learned by the left years ago, and one they’ve perfected, projecting their vision to tens of millions of people daily, nightly, using the entertainment television, movies, music, digital media — all the media formats were celebrities they recruited, not politicians, champion the cause to shore…. when the cultures change the political battle is a mop up operation, simply codifying the new cultural norm into law.
Why conservatives ignore the popular culture’s puzzling, to say the least. Naivete? Laziness? Intimidation? Arrogance? Take your project — but until they focus their energies on the cultural media, were many, many times more people can be found than in the public policy arena, and make your voice heard loudly in the popular culture conversation, they will never succeed. The opposite also holds true: should conservatives choose to enter this arena, the results could be electrifying. . . .
Finally, conservatives must commit to devoting the necessary resources to the technologies of the future. Social media is here to stay, and the right has been AWOL…. they are free, absolutely free of liberal control. Conservatives can now communicate directly, instantaneously with millions upon millions of people, . . .
At one point the authors gratuitously stated to the effect that the turn-out machine by Republicans was poor. We find that to be a common but superficial analysis and ironic given the authors’ keen understanding and insight into “message.”
Frankly our view is that the trump card for Republicans in any election is giving voters compelling reasons to vote, and because there is so much redundancy on when, where, and how to vote, that “they” will turn themselves out to vote. Indeed the only dependable turnout machine is message. Voter integrity, “true the vote” and insuring against voter fraud are separable issues from message, but “turn-out” in our judgement is not.
We would add also that as regards “message” that Republicans address and target audiences’ predictable level of moral and political development and use messengers that facilitate the delivery (add authenticity) as much as possible. We are also advocates of the use of shame and ridicule as part of moving public opinion. Further, the messaging must start now, inoculating people with logic and emotional defenses against the assault on the same from liberal politicians and the media. We cannot succeed waiting to place conservative messaging only in the late summer and fall of 2014. R Mall
