WHILE you are educating people, becoming your own information-broker, your own little "independent news agency," the following is also recommended:
CONTACT PEOPLE! CALL YOUR REPS - and start planting seeds about reinstituting the Fairness Doctrine! Start planting seeds that gets them started thinking about it. CALL CNN, MSNBC, ETC AND COMPLAIN! If Lou Dobbs does something you approve of, LET HIM KNOW.
Also, Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" on MSNBC is VERY good - call HIM and let him know. He has very thoughtfully provided us all the proof we need - in his interview with Joseph Wilson a few weeks ago. It was the day after Wilson appeared on "Meet the Press," and had told Tim Russert about his encounters with media bias. He told Russert he's had journalists actually tell him that they are AFRAID to write (suggests these were print people, specifically, but I bet it goes to broadcast folks also) ANYTHING even slightly critical of the bushies because if they did, they'd get a nasty phone call from the White House, or THEIR EDITOR OR PRODUCER, above them, would get an angry or even threatening phone call from the White House. Wilson quoted one of them as telling him "I've got two kids in private school and a mortgage to pay." THEN, on the heels of that, Wilson comes on with Keith Olbermann. Olbermann has him on two segments in the same show. As he's speaking to him the first time (Wilson was on a monitor - from someplace else and Olbermann was in studio) he holds up these pieces of paper for the camera. Olbermann waves them in the air, slightly, to draw further attention to them, and states - these are THREE pages of emails (emphasis, his) that we (referring to his show - producers and the like, and possibly also he himself) got just earlier today from the White House. Somebody there found out you were coming on this show today and emailed us with questions we should ask. That's as close to verbatim as I can recall at the moment. THEN, Olbermann added - oh yeah, and they also added "please call me!" He then went on with the interview, specifically about this type of White House pressure, having clearly noted what Wilson had told Tim Russert the day before, and also indicating that they had resisted the urge to call the White House back.
By the way - for calling, communicating, complaining purposes, by all means take advantage of this:
PLEASE NOTE MY SIG LINE – TO CALL YOUR REPS, TOLL FREE!!!
OR, TRY (877) – 762 – 8762. It’ll get you there, too! (Thank you, DUer redqueen!)
Please note, here, The World's Greatest Lists of Media Contacts – updated May 5, 2004– in the following thread:
LINK:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1533796#IF THEY THINK WE DON’T CARE, THEY WON’T, EITHER!
And by the way, part two: If your choice is to turn off your TV or not watch whoever or whatever anymore, it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you communicate THIS to them, as well. They need to hear specifically and pointedly that their stuff is turning much-needed viewers away, and that those viewers are turning away from their sponsors as well. They'll never know if they don't hear about it - like that proverbial tree that falls in the forest but nobody sees it so nobody knows it ever fell. Olbermann, in fact, was quoted once, somewhere here on DU, as saying if he got more encouraging emails from people, or MSNBC in general got more favorable feedback about him, then upper management would let him do whatever he wanted. It's REALLY true. I've said it before here, myself: MY OWN job on the radio was saved during a time of great instability, management changes, and head-rollings at one station where I worked - simply because I got a favorable mention, by name, in one ratings survey. Pink slips were everywhere, but nobody touched me for about a year.
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