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The Media's Obama Narratives

Submitted by Jon Henke on Fri, 05/30/2008 - 15:20
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The Leftosphere has long (and correctly) been frustrated over the media tendency to adhere to narratives and ignore contradictory evidence.  See the Daily Howler's incomparable archives or the late, sorely missed Spinsanity for examples from the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.  However, this media problem is not unique to the Left.  They have just been more aggressive at exposing and fighting back against it online and in ways that are likely to impact media coverage. 

Unfortunately, while the Right has a long, and sometimes effective, tradition of media criticism, it has never really evolved that media monitoring apparatus for the new media and social media age.  I'll have more to say about that in time. 

In the meantime, with Obama largely getting the glowing, Messiah treatment from the media, the Right has some current Narrative VS Evidence problems.  

These narratives have taken hold, and despite evidence to the contrary, it's very difficult to break them without organized emphasis on a counter-story that is consistent and sustained.  The Right does not have the online infrastructure to do that well yet.

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Wrong on this one, too, Jon

Submitted by Danny Glover on Fri, 05/30/2008 - 23:03.

See my comment on your other post. The right has the online infrastructure now, and at the Media Research Center, the premier watchdog of the liberal media, our media-monitoring apparatus is rapidly evolving. It's not just evolving for us, either. We're making it available to the entire conservative movement for free.

The counter-messaging mechanisms are in place. Conservatives just need to use them.

You really should have stuck around after your great blog talk at the Leadership Institute a few weeks ago to hear my presentation on this topic. :)))
 

What is it?

Submitted by Jon Henke on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 01:18.

What does Eyeblast have that YouTube doesn't?  What missing gap did it fill?

I would be glad to see MRC evolve into the Web 2.0 world, both sylistically and with content.   When does that happen? 

Eyeblast vs. YouTube

Submitted by Danny Glover on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 08:30.

Asking what Eyeblast has that YouTube doesn't is like asking what National Review has that The Washington Post or The New York Times doesn't. Or what washingtonpost.com has that Townhall.com doesn't. Or what The Ruckus, the group blog at Newsweek, has that The Next Right or RedState doesn't.

The gap we are working to fill is the one that you rightly recognized needs to be filled -- a major investment in online infrastructure for the conservative movement. YouTube has no interest in promoting conservative ideas. It has no interest in recruiting, training and coordinating a network of citizen video journalists to achieve the kind of digital advocacy and strategic messaging of the left's online activism and networked journalism. Eyeblast does.

Oh, and good luck getting YouTube to promote conservative strategic messaging. They'll allow it, but most of the time it will be buried deep inside the site or even ridiculed, just like the conservative message gets buried in the rest of the mainstream media. Sometimes YouTube goes further and finds an excuse (a bad and biased one) to delete conservative content. This year, they did it to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's video against global warming and the American Life League's criticism of Planned Parenthood. Eyeblast is committed to promoting the conservative message in the online world, with the latest Web 2.0 tools, and has a team in place to do it.

Did you know that YouTube (and Google) went "green" for Earth Day by changing their logo and turning over the entire featured video section of the home page to environmental messaging? But on Memorial Day, a holiday of much greater import and historical significance, YouTube didn't change its logo. It also promoted fewer videos related to Memorial Day -- and two of them were decidedly NOT about memorializing the troops. One prominent "spotlight" was an ACLU message about the body count in Iraq and another was a critical "Memorial Day" message to President Bush.

You're not going to see that kind of liberal bias at Eyeblast.

And Eyeblast is just one piece of the Web 2.0 puzzle at the MRC. We have the NewsBusters blog that, by using Eyeblast, drove the story about Hillary Clinton's Bosnia lie into the mainstream media (including YouTube). We also have the Cybercast News Service that will celebrate its 10th anniversary next month. There's more to come, too.

Your ideas, and those of readers at The Next Right, are definitely most welcome on how we can move further in the Web 2.0 direction, especially at Eyeblast. We obviously have ideas of our own, but we are committed to letting conservatives, and particularly young conservatives, make the site what they want and need it to be.
 

But..

Submitted by Jon Henke on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 22:07.

What I'm getting at is this: YouTube and Eyeblast are just tools. The ideology of the owner doesn't really matter, because - with exceedingly rare exceptions - the ideology doesn't matter.   Content put on either tool will operate the same.  

I'm just not sure I understand why we need to reproduce, at great expense, a tool that already exists (in dozens, hundreds of versions).