(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Not messaging, propagandizing [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-19 A common explanation for why Democrats didn’t do better in this election is that there was a messaging failure. All of the effort we made to reach voters was not good enough to win the election. Republicans did better at it. While there is certainly some truth to this, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere until we start thinking about what it is Republicans are doing. Republicans, for example, don’t message. This is a euphemism. They propagandize. And they are doing it 24/7, 12 months a year on various platforms, including Fox News, social media, podcasts, and local news stations. The purpose of their propaganda is to get people to believe untrue things and motivate them to take actions that reinforce their power. That is what Democrats are up against. Not everyone, of course, is vulnerable to Republican propaganda. Many of us recoil in disgust every time we hear one of them pander their obvious lies and distortions. But many other people are. Republican propaganda is designed to exploit people’s ignorance and biases, and more particularly their ignorance of their biases. It is commonplace for people to hold, for example, anti-patriarchal and anti-racist views while simultaneously holding implicit gender and racial biases. That is why surveys of why people voted the way they did are untrustworthy. It’s also why people’s explanation of why they voted Republican are incoherent. The ASU student who said she voted for Trump because he didn’t plan to ban abortion but just wanted to send it back to the states—is she merely guilty of ignorance or an error in reasoning, or is there something else going on that she is dimly aware of? The Mexican immigrant and U.S. citizen who voted for Trump because of inflation and who dismissed his threats to round up undocumented immigrants—is that really all there is to his support for Trump? I have my suspicions, but without knowing more about these two people we can’t really say for sure what’s going on with them. However, what we can say is that whether they were exposed directly to Republican propaganda or whether they merely absorbed an “information ambience,” as Nathan Heller put it, they have been subject to a systematic program of deception designed to inculcate a distorted view of reality. Democrats will struggle to win back voters as long as they wait until a few months before an election to counter Republican propaganda. And we ought to know by now that we can’t rely on corporate media to counter Republican lies and deception. We need an ecosystem of media that is committed not to phony objective equivalences but to pro-democratic values. Here are the stated values, for example, of the Courier News Network: Our reporting will be rooted in facts, science, and the communities our newsrooms serve. We will strive to tell the truth and will tell you when we get it wrong. We will be intentional about centering the voices of the people in our communities, using our platforms to amplify their experiences, especially those who are most impacted by the issues being decided in their statehouses and in Washington. As a civic news organization, our journalists will focus their reporting around efforts to strengthen communities, rebuild struggling economies, expand access to health care and child care, address the climate crisis, and reduce inequality in all forms—and covering the leaders championing those efforts. We will relentlessly cover attempts or actions to undermine democratic institutions and we will make a special effort to report on actors who are advancing those efforts. We will never manufacture “both sides” to our stories, giving equal weight to conspiracy theories or junk science. We will always provide proper context in our reporting to help ensure we don’t continue the spread of misinformation or disinformation. We will be committed to holding accountable elected officials or politicians who betray our values, cause harm, or seek to cause harm to the communities we serve. We will publish our work where our audiences are: When they move to new platforms or technologies, our brands and journalists will follow. We will prioritize hiring and contracting staff who live in the communities we serve, and we will remain committed to sourcing our stories with the people who reflect the diverse and inclusive country in which we reside. Compared to the 24/7, 12-month a year propaganda machine of the Republicans, our pro-democracy media, including Courier News Network, Meidas Touch, Daily Kos and others, is miniscule. Democrats no longer have the bully pulpit of the White House or even one chamber of Congress from which to communicate with voters. It’s up to us to support our fledgling pro-democracy media with our eyes and with our dollars. The need for change is urgent. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/19/2287256/-Not-messaging-propagandizing?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/