Why is a convention that only drew about 500 people being covered like the Second Coming?

[gauguin57]

(Yes, the question is pretty much rhetorical at this point. The media just looooove those crazy "populists.")

I'm sure there are more than 500 people at the Pennsylvania Democratic Convention here in Lancaster County this weekend (they endorsed Specter for Sentate, BTW). Why aren't THEY on CNN?

This is rediculous. There are probably conferences/conventions happening all over the U.S. this weekend that drew way more than 500 people. What the hell?

[FrenchieCat]

1. Many of us were wondering the same thing.

Join us! We are writing to the media asking them that question
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x171274


I mean, come on!
a screen shot of the convention ROOM during one of the speeches on C-span.

[Webster Green]

2. Because the so called "MSM" is actually a monopoly specializing in propaganda?

Liberal media my ass!

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that they get their talking points from Rove, Cheney and other shadow government traitors.

[Chipper Chat]

3. Ed Schultz sounded annoyed and disgusted after the speech

like he couldn't wait to go off the air. I dont blame him.

[csziggy]

13. It was probably his punishment for calling Lieberman a coward the other day

Just reading the coverage of the Tea Party Convention from here has been far too much for me. I cannot imagine having to actually sit through it and then talk about it as if there was any serious content the way Ed Schultz must have had to do. Poor Ed!

[krispos42]

4. Liberal media deliberately over-covering the Democratics

*snerk* :rofl:

[The Straight Story]

5. Easy answer as to why - They cover palin because we watch, and on DU tonight we see how much

discussion she and the tea baggers generate. Specter on TV? Probably most would not watch and few would post about it.

It's as simple as giving people what they want to see, and posting about what people want to discuss.

[Bucky]

6. 500*$550 = $275,000

You can figure about 2/3 of that went into expenses--rooms, catering, consultants, speaker fees. So someone made about $80-90k profit on this. Not terrible, but probably the real money would be in the merchandizing--tea party hats, tea party lunch boxes for the kids, "naughty" tea party lingerie for the missus...

[HughBeaumont]

7. They have to be kind of embarrassed.

Shots of empty rooms sure doesn't make for compelling TV. Yet they couldn't be bothered with the protests of 100-500 thousand people voicing progressive issues during King Bubblesock's reign.

[Political Heretic]

8. RATINGS. If a hard D forum like DU can be obsessing about it all day today....

then it seems pretty clear that people want to watch... why WOULDN'T for-profit cable outlets cover it?

[tom_paine]

25. What people are concerned about here is Orwellian Double Standards, not Teabaggers

It is the Media Hologram that drives what gets talked about, in DU as much as anywhere else in the Empire.

As some US official commented upon returning from an assignment in Nazi Germany in the early 30s, "The propaganda just sort of seeps in."

Indeed it does. And our propaganda is hundreds of times more powerful in it's technological "delivery systems" and sophistication as the Nazis' ever was.

It's the old cliche of putting the cart before the horse and the other old cliche of which came first, chicken or egg?

Like the Swiftboaters putting a handful of ads cost a couple hundred thousand and the RW Lie Machuine/"me too" Corporate M$M giving it months and months and months of free airplay and thus laundering it into the National Mind.

How many small issue advocacy groups put out ads like that in a given presidential election year?

The OJ Trial showed our Corporate Overlords and masters of manipulation alot about the weakness of our National Mind. They have vastly progressed from that point and now thanks to legislation, intimidation and Corporatization, they own the media, lock, stock and barrel.

[FLDCVADem]

9. Do you mean by the media or by DU? n/t

[PSPS]

10. Because, if DU is any indication, it rivets people to their TEE VEEs.

[Zoeisright]

11. Because the M#@#$@#M is owned by repukes.

And they want to make sure that the myth that is the teabaggers is perpetuated to keep the lie that repukes are legitimate going.

[Kablooie]

12. It's a strange, quirky thing that's happening and that interests their audiences.

The problem is that they are treating it seriously.
I've heard over and over again that it is a popular uprising.
If people hear it often enough, it will become true.

[kywildcat]

14. Because CNN is desperate

for ratings. But think about it-all that ugly captured in one festering seething place. I'm waiting for some creative backroom person to caption the teabaggers with "Hoodless KKK Convention". Just once. I'd pay big to see it happen.

[kickysnana]

15. And...about 100 our outside observers

Which is why I don't subscribe to the local rag or deliberately watch cable or network news. Bad enough I have to skip over so many threads here.

Maybe we should start alerting on multiple posts on this subject.
:sarcasm:

[Joanne98]

16. Because the "lamestream" media wants Republicans to win in the Fall.

Can't you tell? Just like last year when they let the Republicans get on TV and lie lie lie without ever saying a word. They're corporations and they hate democracy!

[spanone]

17. because we have a liberal media

[City Lights]

18. Because the corporate media loves and promotes the GOP.

The GOP and the corporate media are two sides of the same coin.

[pipi_k]

19. Because they're a bit short on car chases, missing blonde girls, and shark attacks in Utah? n/t

[tomg]

20. Because it is the Second Coming

of the Know-Nothing Party.

[B Calm]

21. The right-wing corporate owned media speaks for itself!

[CrownPrinceBandar]

22. Because they ran out of things to say about the snowstorm.

"Well Jim, its cold, white and there seems to be an awful lot of it. Back to you."

[Mari333]

23. when I think about the MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO WERE AT ANTI WAR RALLIES

AND 400,000 PLUS AT THE LGBT MARCH THIS YR

AND WHAT DOES THE MEDIA DO..IGNORE THE FUCK OUT OF ALL OF US..NO GODDAMNED COVERAGE OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE PROTESTING

AND THEN THIS SMALL MINISCULE 600 CONTINGENT OF IDIOTS GETS PRESS

I WONT EVEN TURN ON THE NEWS

WTF IS THIS ALL ABOUT..A FUCKING NEED FOR CIRCUS RATINGS?

[tom_paine]

24. Because the RW Lie Machine and the "me too" Corporate M$M are basically one entity

devoted to ultimately the same goals, full-spectrum dominance of the Busho-Corporate-Military-Intelligence-Congressional Complex (or whatever the hell you want to call it, from an economic standpoint it is by far the largest force in our nation and possibly our world).

They drive the National Dialog, what The Bushies want to discuss is what the TV discusses, and TV is our National Mind. Rational assessments have nothing to do with it, nothing at all. 600 people equal or greater in "news" coverage than gatherings and conventions with 10 or even 1000 times their number? Why and how was the Gary Condit/Chandra Levy Show given weeks and weeks and weeks of monomaniacal coverage while at the exact same time, the Joe Scarborough/Lori Klausutis Show was silenced, 100% silent except in a a couple of local papers, even though it was a far more interesting and luridly newsworthy story. As in, Scarborough's office lied about the ill health of Klausutis when she was a marathon runner, and a crooked coroner kicked out of Missouri for falsifying autopsy reports was "brought in special" to do the autopsy. He also lied here, omitting a bruise on Klausutis' forehead and when pressed about it replied, "I didn't want there to be undue speculation about the case."

Nope, that's not a newsworthy story there. No details of interest, eh? And that was 2001. Since then there have been hundreds of Orwellian examples like that and this Teabagger coverage is pretty much Standard Operating Procedure and almost ho-hum to be expected.

Since 2000, we have witnessed literally hundreds of examples of this new fusion and RW Propagandistic "soft control" of the Corporate Media (which is almost all of it, these days). Who can truly know 100% of the details, even as the results are obvious? Some combination of intimidation, Corporatization, intelligence apparatus infiltration (see "Operation Mockingbird"), and of course pro-corporate legislation.

What you are seeing is a Media Hologram, as Joe Bageant described it, that has been in place for at least a decade and decades before that was building and taking over post-WWII media from within and without.

Google "Operation Mockingbird" and "Operation Paperclip" if you don't know of these things already.

Read "Blinded by the Right" for the genesis of Phase 2, so to speak.

Again and again it built and flexed it's muscles in building new realities.

Ollie North had a 92% approval rating, and even Dan Rather broadcast this lie. I suspect that was something of a "prototype/early test of the growing power of Bushie Apparatus".

For whatever reason, at every step the power of the Bushiganda grew, Democratic Leadership did nothing to counteract it or give any indication that they knew what was going on. Again, it is impossible to know with 100% certainty why and there are numerous theories, not the least of which is Corporatization and DLC-ization of the Democratic Party.

But, this stuff is old hat and, now that you've noticed it, you will see that it is ubiquitous like the Hologram, all around us and worked into almost everything in ways so subtle to blend into the walls of the Hologram.

How is it that the Bushies have been templating Letters to the Editor in a corrdinated fashion for decades, now easily observable using Google, but one poor lone Obama-micro-astroturfer does it ("Ellie Light") and suddenly the lid's blown off? There are hundreds of stories like that, and thousands of DUers have made tens of thousands of calls and letters written, to no effect.

Again and again and again it happens, it never lets up. Now that you see it, you won't be able to close your eyes to it again. It IS our National Dialog and our National Mind, engineeered with as much manipulative fiendishness characteristic of all Totalitarian movements.

[Odin2005]

26. The MSM's purpose isn't truth, it's about the manufacturing of reality.

To most people if they don't see it with their own eyes, or it's not on the MSM, it doesn't exist.