Time for Democrats to Abandon the Mainstream Media
prospect.org
The ‘liberal media’ was in the tank for Trump. Democrats should take their subscription dollars elsewhere.

Websites, radio stations, podcasts, and so forth ought to be stood up by party members with access to money—the Harris campaign and associated groups, by the way, spent about $5 billion losing this election—particularly if they can replace genuine local news that has been gutted by private equity and Facebook, or if they are centered on subjects typically neglected by liberals like sports or gaming. The core strategy is to set up publications with progressive views but likely to have broader appeal. Honest partisanship should be the standard, rather than a pretend above-it-all “objective journalism” that in practice means bending reality completely beyond recognition to benefit Donald Trump.

  • dragontamer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    682·
    13 days ago

    This is a major issue.

    X is Elon Musk.

    Facebook/Meta/Instagram is Zuckerberg.

    Washington Post is Bezos.

    LA Times is Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire who is deeply tied into the tech world’s startup culture.

    Reddit is … Reddit.

    When we are talking about the missing 10-million votes for Kamala, it starts with media. The media wasn’t on our side this time around, and it showed. It was impossible to get Kamala’s messaging out, and Trump’s messaging always got screentime. It wasn’t an accident.

    To rebuild means getting solid news sources, solid online / social networks. It was no accident that the Elon Musk loving Cryptobro billionaires in charge of tech-companies, social media, and (now) are so rich that they’ve bought our old News Institutions.

    This is where we start rebuilding. Lemmy.world is a small piece of it but it needs to be bigger. We absolutely need an independent location to organize online and counter-program the public.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
      44·
      12 days ago

      Local news in the US is all owned by Sinclair.

      The propaganda machine started running 12 years ago, and nobody stopped it. Nothing to stop it for another 4 years either.

    • fluxion@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      12 days ago

      Unfortunately, places like Instagram, X, and Facebook are where all the late-deciders get their political messages from. My wife completely non-political because she didn’t grow up in a democracy and she is constantly surprised and in disbelief when i mention what Trump is up to. She’s used to periodic meme’s about Biden causing inflation and her general takeaway is “Trump is good for economy” even though she knows he is a horrible person who cannot be taken for his word on anything… almost purely thanks to me. Sometimes she thinks I’m the one that has gone extreme and am just talking crazy until I bring the receipts.

      At work, she speaks to a lot of customers who are mostly the same. If they get mobilized to vote…they are doing so off similar information avenues.

      So i think we should be careful about building ALL our information around sources that are essentially preaching to the choir, and make sure to still actively post to other media even if its not the main/trusted source so it’s not just a firehose of unchecked Republican talking points.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
      10·
      12 days ago

      NPR Morning Edition is my jam. Tells the truth, still leaves me with enough hope to go on. And PBS News in the evening.

      Of course they’ll probably lose funding because the Wrong Wing sees them as a threat… Fortunately they mostly operate on individual donations, so I’ll keep sending my little bit in monthly.

    • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      12 days ago

      You’re telling me that the billionaire owned media didn’t want people to know she had a plan to tax billionaires?

    • VintageTech@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      12 days ago

      meh… I think we need to start firebombing their residences. Then when we’re all in Prison we start crazy orgies so the churches will want to shut them down because they’re spawning grounds for demons. Once we’re out, start firebombing again.

      It’s so nuts it just might work.

  • theluddite@lemmy.mlEnglish
    301·
    12 days ago

    I just want to emphasize that to set up a truly independent and unpaywalled piece of media, you probably need to abandon hope of it being even a viable side hustle. Quasi-independent media on, say, YouTube or Substack can make some money, but you’re then stuck on those corporate platforms. If you want to do your own website or podcast or whatever, that’s more independent, but you’re still dependent on Google if you run ads, or on Patreon if you do that sort of thing. The lesson of Twitter should make pretty clear the danger inherent to that ecosystem. Even podcasts that seem independent can easily get into huge trouble if, say, Musk were to buy Patreon or iHeart.

    I’ve been writing on my website for over two years now. My goal has always been to be completely independent of these kinds of platforms for the long term, no matter what, and the site’s popularity has frankly exceeded my wildest dreams. For example, I’m the #1 google result for “anticapitalist tech:”

    Screenshot of the google results

    But I make no money. If I wanted this to be anything but a hobby, I’d have to sacrifice something that I think makes it valuable: I’d have to paywall something, or run ads, or have a paid discord server, or restrict the RSS feed. As things stand now, I don’t know my exact conversion rate because I don’t do any analytics and delete all web logs after a week, but I did keep the web logs from the most recent time that I went viral (top of hackernews and several big subreddits). I made something like 100 USD in tips, even though the web logs have millions of unique IPs. That’s a conversion rate of something like 0.00002 USD per unique visitor.

    Honestly, if I got paid even $15/hr, I would probably switch to doing it at least as a part time job, because I love it. Compare that to the right wing ecosystem, where there’s fracking money and Thiel money just sloshing around, and it’s very very obvious why Democrats are fucked, much less an actual, meaningful left. Even Thiel himself was a right wing weirdo before he was a tech investor, and a right wing think tank funded his anti-DEI book. He then went on to fund Vance. It’s really hard to fight that propaganda machine part time.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      12 days ago

      You can always add a donate button without paywalling anything. There’s nothing wrong with having one at the end of each post. It’ll only push users away if you make it flashy or sticky.

      Label it “buy me a coffee” and it signals it’s more of a tip than an attempt to monetize.

      • theluddite@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        11 days ago

        I’ve tried it all: modals, banners, rewording it, … and, like, I get it. If I contributed a few bucks to every worthwhile thing, I’d run out of money quickly. There actually is one at the bottom of every post right now, though it’s quite small, because I’ve learned that it really doesn’t matter.

        Also, to be clear, I didn’t mean to complain or anything. I just wanted to explain the reality of the ecosystem as it currently exists, to the best of my knowledge.

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
    133·
    13 days ago

    You need to have a degree of awareness that you are just being circle jerked by publications like the NYT or WaPo.

    We need to reject elitism: its what drives people away from the DNC.

    • dragontamer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      35·
      12 days ago

      WashPo is literally run by a former Murdoch executive and is owned by Bezos.

      Wake up and smell the 2024. Its not 2014 anymore. Its not “circle jerked by WashPo”, its “WashPo bans endorsements days before the election, timing maximum damage to the Kamala campaign”.

      We need to reject elitism: its what drives people away from the DNC.

      You’re falling for the fucking trap. The elites are Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, LA Times, and all the other billionaires in charge of internet media, newspapers, and cable.

      The “elites” are on one side. And they made their point very evident this past election.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        118·
        12 days ago

        Yes and…

        Yes, and also everything you’ll ever get from them is filtered through a lense of kids who graduated from elite, ivy league institutions. Its not JUST that its owned by billionaires, but also that the culture there has been selected to be membership of the petty bourgeoisie

        • dragontamer@lemmy.worldEnglish
          252·
          12 days ago

          Its way more obvious that WashPo was used as a backdoor to get conservative speakers into a liberal space this past year. It was effective, and they only revealed the treachery late in the game.

          Democrats 100% need to rethink their media strategy. In fact, I’d dare argue that the media problem is Democrat’s #1 issue above all else. The infighting about 100k-ish votes in Michigan and blame to minorities needs to stop. Lets start thinking about the 10-million votes problem and really what we need to do to recapture / re-energize that.

  • ctkatz@lemmy.ml
    8·
    12 days ago

    I’ve been saying this for years.

    why is it that there’s no liberal media distribution network? take a look at free streaming services for example like plutotv. last I checked there were 4 or 5 right wing free propaganda networks right there available to anyone with a stream stick, smart tv, or internet browser. know how many I saw for left wing viewers? one. and it’s production quality is night and day to the other side, as in the right wing nets were the day and the left wing one was somewhere above a good cable access show.

    there are many liberal minded people who go on these “friendly” cable news shows and complain endlessly about fox, and outlets like the daily wire, oan, newsmax, and content creators on the various streaming outlets. but you know what my major fucking issue is with those people?

    THEY ALL HAVE THE MONEY TO COUNTER ALL OF THIS. MANY OF THESE PEOPLE ALSO HAVE THE MEDIA EXPERIENCE TO MAKE IT WORK.

    I’m sorry, but I am sick and goddamned fucking tired of a bunch of liberal elitists who go around removed to everyone who will listen about how bad democratic messaging and talking point distribution is and refuse to lift a fucking finger to do something about it. in my mind they are as culpable of the right wing disinformation era we’re in right now just as much as those who spread it. until they themselves do something about it they are dead in me. get out and do some work yourself or just shut the fuck up since that’s essentially what you have been doing.

    and don’t talk to me about air america radio. the idea was sound but executed extremely poorly if you call that execution at all. at the start of the network, run by not-radio people, it had more writers on staff than they did on air talent, including the people who read the news at the top and bottom of the hour. it was a venture doomed to failure because the people who owned and ran it had no idea what they were doing.

    so because the people who know how to or know the people who know how to get the message out in a 24/7 manner chose to literally not put their money where their mouths were, we will descend into right wing religious race based fascism. but don’t worry. they’ll still advocate for us on that famously well known liberal media from the comfort of their homes in their gated communities.

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.world
      61·
      12 days ago

      why is it that there’s no liberal media distribution network

      1. Things like Fox are backed by billionaires who don’t care what it costs or if it’s profitable. They are ideologically driven like no one else. So ad free radio, whatever. Listening to mainstream is excruciating because they have so many god damn ads.

      2. Left media is simply not as good. Right wing will lie straight out and propagandize everything they can. They don’t care. Left wing media is beholden to the truth. They can try to copy some of the sensationalization but it doesn’t hit nearly as hard, it’s just reacting to the right wing nutso because they can’t make their own nutso.

      3. Hate and anger are easy emotions. The right wing media loves this. On the left side you have to think and analyze issues which is much harder.