Right now, as we all know, the media is in a tizzy. At one time, they owned the airwaves, and everyone had to report whatever it was that the letter agencies (ABC, NBC, AP, etc) found out at the White House press room. All the “little people” were forced to get their news from the NEWS agencies. That’s not the case, these days. Leavitt has opened the press room to other media platforms, and routinely makes certain that people other than the letter agencies get to ask their questions. This makes Big Media very angry.
We can speculate about who owns Big Media, but it seems fairly obvious to most of us, I believe. In the end, it doesn’t really matter who owns them; what matters is that the “standard” news is being used to wage war. For those who’ve known this for a long time, you may not realize just how difficult that is to swallow, especially if you’re generally a thinking person.
I grew up with news being the place to turn to for up to date, factual information. I could look at news on the television at 6pm, or I could look in one of the newspapers local to me. Sure, there were some less than savory newspapers, but we all knew they were only good for their page two girlie of the week. It was easy to know what was good news and what wasn’t. It was obvious for a number of reasons, and there wasn’t any confusion over it.
I consider myself a thinking person. I am not traditionally educated, but I have put a lot of effort into keeping myself educated. I’ve attended classes, both formal and informal, I’ve gotten certificates, I’ve always achieved good grades. I can think my way through most problems, even if I do still struggle with the math**. When Chris started telling me that the media was lying to me, I was disbelieving. Sure, Weekly World News was all made up, but ABC nightly news? That was just the facts. How did I know this? Because all of the news agencies reported the same thing. Statistically speaking, it is quite silly to think that the entirety of every news agency out there would be lying, and lying in much the same (or sometimes exactly the same) way. That would be a statistical anomaly the size of New Jersey.
It’s a hard mouthful to chew, the idea that ALL of the news agencies are telling whoppers every day. The problem, of course, is that anything they say could be true, or might not be. There must be a balance of actual facts thrown in there. It allows newscasters and stations to say, “Hey, look, we covered that thing at the library, all that was factual. What makes you think the rest of it isn’t?” Plausible deniability, I think it’s called. Regardless, it’s been quite the eye opener realizing that basically none of the news stations I’d counted on (even ones like AP) were accurate or to be trusted.
This brings me to the concept of capturing minds.
I connect with a very disparate group of people because of the places I hang out (ren faires, 18th century reenactments, TikTok, and FB). Among those very strange and widely different people, I hear a lot of strange things. I also get a feel for what I consider to be a decent cross section of the population of the States. There are Leftists, yes, probably way more than y’all would be comfortable with. But there are also people in the middle, people so far Left that even Harris would consider them too Left, and people who are staunchly Right (largely in the Norse Viking community, funny enough), of varying degrees. So it’s really a mixed bag.
Of those who are in the middle (ie the majority of the people), most have a hard time believing the concept that ALL of the media is lying to them. Their experience, their common sense, says that just shouldn’t be. And they’re correct, it shouldn’t be, even if it is. It is partly because of this logic that it is so difficult to capture the minds of the huge middle camp. If they look at the news at all, they’re just inundated with the same story a thousand different ways, and logic says it MUST be true. And frankly, Trump and his people yelling, “Fake news!” all the time doesn’t help; it hinders.
The other reason it’s difficult to get through to the middle folk is because a good portion of them are so shell shocked over the last 8 years that they simply can’t even look at the news anymore. They’re leaving social media in droves. My boyfriend avoids social media lest he accidentally get hit by media storm. It isn’t that they (and he) aren’t intelligent or thinking. It’s that they’ve been beaten so often with the “news is truth” stick that they’re bloody and battered and suffering from PTSD.
I wish I was joking or even exaggerating about this, but I’m not. My boyfriend is very intelligent. He served in the army. He’s soft spoken, smart, reads as if he needs books to breathe, and is a real problem solver. But he can’t solve the problem of the government, and he is so stressed out by everything going on that he just can’t. And he isn’t the only one. I see it all over the place. The people who could make a difference, the folks who are smart enough to vote well and hold our government accountable for its actions, they’re all hiding in their blanket forts. They’ve been beaten often enough.
I could be an ass and just say, “Boo hoo, they should fucking deal.” But I can’t. I’m close to that myself, and I have a massive support system keeping me afloat. Expecting these people who are affected by this constant barrage of meaningless tripe to simply put on their Big Girl Panties and move on is just too much.
If Republicans and Conservatives want to win over the middle people, and I truly think we both could and should, then we need to find a way to gently get good news, non-sensational news, standard good ol’ NEWS news, to those middle grounders. It’s necessary. More importantly, though, it’s the right thing to do.
Karoline Leavitt is a good start, in my very strong opinion. She gets up, day after day, and has her bright smile on. She’s a powerful woman, and damn good at her job. She’s a word smith. She’s a thinking person. She’s intelligent, articulate, and above all, ridiculously polite. Even when she’s trashing someone, she’s excessively polite. Every time she comes on screen, I smile, sit up, and pay attention. She’s not afraid to hand the podium to an expert, if that’s what a question calls for. She isn’t afraid to say she doesn’t know, and when she admits that, she always gets back to the reporter in question when she does know. Her redesign (or her people’s redesign) of the press room is just amazing.
I’m not saying we need to become the champions of lost causes. I don’t want to tilt at windmills. But I see WAY too many people, smart people, who are basically sitting with their fingers in their ears singing “la la la” quietly to themselves, these days. Battering them with more of anything isn’t going to help. We need to find a way to convey information that is calming, not screaming from the rooftops.
** Just a random thought: why is it considered okay to struggle with math, but struggling with language is wrong? As an example, while I can do enough math to balance my checkbook and figure out whether I can afford something, I’m definitely not great at it. It takes me longer than it should to figure out the math for sewing patterns, for instance. And math is difficult for a lot of people. It’s unyielding, and there is only one answer (leaving aside some obscure quantum studies). Language, which has multiple answers to every question and is arguably much more difficult to master because of the complexity of the rules set, is something everyone’s just expected to be adequate at. If someone is less than adequate (or even less than “better than average”), they are mocked. Why is that? Could it be that the soft science Lefties have poisoned people into thinking that one is more important than the other, when in fact they are both equally important?
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