The frustrating lack of in-depth coverage by mainstream media on the very real evidence of Trump’s many unethical and illegal activities infuriates me, and many of the rest of you too, judging by the number of posts about it. How can we change this? (I think this is actually part of a broader conversation that needs to happen about restoring integrity and honesty to journalism, but let’s start with a more concrete, hopefully achievable goal.)
It seems that people’s opinions on social media are now a common source for news fodder if interesting enough to catch a lot of attention. @dailykos has 214K followers on Twitter alone. If we could organize even a small fraction of the Kossacks in an online event could we force a conversation or at least an acknowledgement of the issue?
This may not work, but I’m feeling the need to try something. So, here’s a suggestion. Please feel free to point out flaws and offer better suggestions. It seems that as a group we should be able to find some way to make this happen. And maybe learn along the way, through trial and error, the best way to get our voices heard in a wider venue.
So, my draft plan for a Twitter event would look something like this:
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Identify the top, most important stories that we think are underreported, with links to reliable research about each issue
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Create a list of the twitter handles for the media targets, both network accounts and reporters we want to talk to
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Agree on a hashtag for the event (eg #CoverTrumpScandals)
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Pick a day and a 2-3 hour block of time that is accessible for all US time zones and doesn’t coincide with any known major news events and would be less likely to get buried
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Get the word out to the Kossacks
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Ask everyone who can participate to send out 10-20 tweets over the time period all with the designated tag and to different media outlets covering different prioritized stories. (Too many tweets too quickly can cause account problems.)
My thought in compressing the time frame is to try to get the tag trending and to reach a volume that couldn’t be easily brushed off.
Could something like this work? Are there better ways to do this?
Thursday, Sep 8, 2016 · 9:03:41 PM +00:00
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goLeft
Since there was a fair bit of consensus that money is the best way to get the attention of media outlets, followed by Twitter and phone, I’ve decided to move on to a new question. If we do a weekly push as we discussed in the comments, which day of the week is best for it?
As a second question, what would be a good #hashtag? Should it be a different one each week focusing on a specific media failing of the week or an overall one to designate the campaign for improving media standards? Or even 1 of each? I’ll pull most popular choices from the comments for another poll later.
Friday, Sep 9, 2016 · 6:51:21 PM +00:00
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goLeft
Someone has started putting together lists of articles to click on and hopefully will continue to do so. And there is lots of good discussion in the comments on how to make the impact of those clicks even greater. I don’t want to dilute or duplicate efforts, so, I’m going to join the discussion over there and suggest that everyone go click on those links and get involved on that diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/9/1568295/-Getting-the-Press-to-report-on-Trump-s-Scandals-Click-It-s-just-that-easy