The Pentagon was recently exposed to have hired a private company to research the backgrounds of journalists covering the war in Afghanistan. The story was first printed in the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes and then profiled on Democracy Now. Today, August 29th, a new story exposed that the rating system devised by the private company was used to deny access to U.S. Troops or steer reporters away from negative news if they fell into the “negative” category.
This is both obviously terrible yet a tactic that the military would obviously use. It is also a tactic the left should be using.
Why? In a similar way that the military is afraid of negative coverage of their doings, social movement organizations should too are frightened to the point that they no longer have any faith in the mainstream media covering a story of theirs.
Instead of rejecting the mainstream media outright, the Left needs to begin to frame their issue in a way that the reporting will be positive. One easy way of accessing positive reporting is to find out which reporters are already on your side, or which are likely to be based on previous stories they have written.
By “profiling” local reporters, the Left can figure out who they want to contact when they put on an event or when they want to frame an event that they have a stake in. Clearly those reporters who receive a “positive” rating from your organization is a great person to write a story about you but we don’t always get a choice in which reporter covers our story.
Don’t lose hope. If you are familiar with the perspective a journalist takes on their other stories, you can use that knowledge to frame the issue to the journalist to at least get a more positive coverage. For example, if a journalist is known to have written articles negative of activists who appear radical but positive of organizations that simply provide some basic service (such as a soup kitchen), try to frame your organization as a service group for the community.
Basically find out what the reporter finds favorable and frame your organization or an issue in that way. Are they patriotic? Frame the issue as unAmerican (if something happened that you are opposed to) or speak of your organization as “modeled on the ideas of our forefathers”.
Remember, people who already agree with your organization or cause don’t need to be swayed so don’t worry too much about “alienating your base” by switching your rhetoric for journalists.
If you have tried out these ideas please comment on how the experience went. Was the reporting favorable or not?
