I’ve been very disappointed with the media coverage of the convention. Take a quick perusal here and you’ll see that there is an overwhelmingly negative tone that belies the mood and atmosphere those of us in attendance felt. I understand this somewhat, it’s well-known in political science and media studies circles that the media have a bad-news bias (studies show at least three bad stories are published/aired for every one good story). And you can understand the pack mentality and laziness of the national media, since this isn’t a major story to them. The state media don’t have that excuse, though.
The stories feature headlines with words like “frustration,” “snubbed,” talk about “punishment” and call the convention a “bust.” These things are almost 100% inconsistent with the experiences I had at the convention. The media are focused almost solely on the lack of presidential candidates. But of the 100-150 people I talked to at the convention, not a single one of them talked about the lack of presidential candidates. It wasn’t an issue to us, we already knew they wouldn’t be there and we had long since gotten over it. For the media to focus on this was irresponsible journalism at the least. The lack of candidates was not a story. It was old news and it had already been reported on in all major media outlets. I wonder if some of these stories weren’t even new, but simply rehashes of earlier stories on the same topic.
The rest of the stories from the media, including the state media, were heavily focused on the few bad things that happened at the convention. Like for instance, the story of the buttons. Multiple media outlets reported multiple stories about buttons that said things like “Screw Dean” or “No Money, No Votes” or whatever they were. Almost every story I saw had an interview with someone wearing one of these kind of buttons. Most of the stories were all about division and divisiveness. This is a typical media tactic, find a anecdote that represents the extreme or a small percentage of the whole and focus on that, making it appear to be more representative of reality than it really is. In fact, people wearing buttons like these were worn by much less than 1% of all delegates and were not representative of a broad selection of the delegates. Many of the delegates, including myself and almost everyone I talked to (such as the DFA people and many in the Netroots) have no problem with Howard Dean and it’s clear that the candidates are having no problem raising money in Florida. Other stories focused on the fact that there were only 2600 delegates instead of the expected 3000 or the 30 minutes that John Russell created a disturbance or the fact that as many as two people attempted to remove chair Karen Thurman during the Executive Committee meeting. Again, none of these things were very representative of either the convention or the mass majority of the delegates in attendance. People were excited, every event was overflowing and people were united and ready to work to change the state for the better.
The worst part about the whole media coverage of the convention is that the stories played right into the hands of the Republican Party of Florida. They found the Los Angeles Times story on the convention so suited for their propaganda purposes that they included it verbatim on their website. They didn’t even have to spin or distort it, the media did that for them.
I’ve got enough media training to know that there were many stories at this convention that could’ve been covered. There were a lot of new and cutting edge things going on. The Netroots Conference (naturally) was a big story. What other states are doing things like this? One or two maybe? Beyond that, we are breaking ground with the integration of Netroots activists and the political party. What other state party convention has had participation of two of the top bloggers in the country? We aren’t just talking about some obscure individuals, we’re talking about people that regularly appear on CNN and have regular influence on politics at the national level — and they thought our activities were important enough to give their time to. To me, that’s news.
The media could’ve talked about the large and growing influence of progressives within the party — one of the best-attended events at the convention was the Netroots, DFA, Progressive Soiree, the only event at the convention to get a full speech from a presidential candidate. And we know the media was there, we saw them. They could’ve talked about the new efforts by the party to reach out to Hispanic and Latino voters or the huge demographic trends in South Florida that are changing the future of politics in the state (there was an article on this in the St. Pete Times). They could’ve talked about the outreach to young voters, whether it be the full integration of the top level of the party with the Young and College Democrats or the new youth outreach coordinators the party announced they were hiring.
The point is, there were many, many positive stories at this event that were key parts of the overall convention. The media chose instead to primarily focus on negative things that were a tiny part of the event and unrepresentative of the overwhelming majority of attendees. Shame on them.
What else should we expect??? There is no such thing as a liberal media, and as you say, divisiveness sells in the news business.
Personally, I think the Convention went well for all in attendance…and Kudos to everyone for gaining a seat at the Party table (another story that went unmentioned). But then, what is interesting about that if you are trying to attract viewers to your news program???
That’s why it is our job to call it like we see it, ignore the divisive lines of politics, and work toward common goals…we cannot let things like this disturb us, or we would never get anything done…after all that is the strategy of distraction…just as in a debate, red herrings are thrown in to distract an opponent and get him/her off message. The key is to always stay on message, and not allow the negative to infiltrate.
Great job over the weekend, Ken!!! Keep up the great work!
-Dave
You had to be there. As you point out, the bad/sad news stories pushed by the MSM gave a wrong presentation. Those attending the convention were upbeat, positive and optimistic. The Saturday morning general session was dynamic, funny, and clear in focus. The FL House and Senate members who spoke gave much strong insight about the property tax issue.
All the reporters had to do was watch what was going on and talk to people in attendance. Instead they promoted the story they wanted, rather than the story of what happened.
Thanks, David. I don’t point this out because I’m upset by it or distracted by it, I point it out to show the readers how the mainstream media fails to do its job and how we, quite frequently, have to do their job for them.
Kenneth, why didn’t you organize your netroots buds to live blog from the convention and report the stories that went uncovered? That would have been more productive than complaining about the media coverage and, better yet, the stories you believe should have been covered would have been published, if only on your blog. Sure, it’s difficult to cover a conference live, but it can be done. I covered the two-day Governor’s Climate Change Conference for Pensito Review single-handed. (http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/07/12/live-from-miami-its-the-global-climate-change-summit/) It would have been easier if I’d had some help, but I got it done. Seems to me that with a little organization of your colleagues, you guys could have taken up the MSM’s slack.
Oh, and congratulations on the coalition’s recognition. Best of luck to you guys.
Thanks, Buck, I had planned to cover it live and have covered other events live, for me it just didn’t work out because when I wasn’t presenting during our conference, I was busy organizing it. My original plan was to have someone during our conference liveblog the whole thing, but the idea got lost in all the other preparations. Some of the other bloggers did report on these other stories. The point of the post was that we shouldn’t have to do these things because the media exists to report on reality, not just one side of the story. Yes, that is the ideal and rarely the reality, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t call them on it.
The WiFi situation wasn’t quite as promised, so unless you had a laptop connect card, liveblogging wasn’t really an option. Besides, there were media at the Netroots Conference and at the Soiree, but I haven’t seen the former covered in the media at all and mention of the later only includes a sentence or two about Mike Gravel. At any rate, I agree with Ken that the media painted a distorted picture of what actually went on.
Ken is right on. The media only wanted to cover the few negative portions of the convention and that’s what they did. The traditional press seems to be a lot more focused on selling more papers for their corporate overseers rather than being good journalists.
Particular shame on the St. Pete Times, who happen to be run not by a corporation, but by a nonprofit (and is consequently Florida’s largest daily newspaper.) You folks can do a lot better than this.
Indeed, it’s all the media can talk about. They’re really trying to drive the negative stories on the Democrats.
I quoted the Miami Herald and the Orlando Sentinel in a favorable light in my roundup (posted on Florida Politics and my home blog). But they were things said toward the bottom of stories that otherwise were downbeat, to be sure. I’d like to have a tap on the editorial meetings where the reporters get their marching orders and the editors sharpen their pencils to edit out any favorable stuff. I didn’t note anything from the Republicans, and did I hear somewhere they were having a convention at the same time? Maybe they got the same treatment.