The media is going to continue to do what they do unless enough people demand that they STOP!

[maxrandb]

If you want to know why there is so much emphasis on the Jussie Smollet story, and near radio-silence on much more pressing and important news, you need look no further than the “Right-Wing-Echo-Machine”.

It starts out with a big push from Hate Radio on close to 1,200 stations in every nook and cranny of our country. Hate Radios audience is whipped into a frenzy AND they actually start contacting major news outlets demanding “coverage”.

Faux News takes it up and ratchets it up a notch.

Soon, the demands are made that “mainstream” media cover the story and if they don’t…they’re labeled as “liberally biased”.

Mainstream sites are so “kowtowed” by the unrelenting charge of “bias”, they devote more coverage to what the Right-Wing-Noise-Machine wants them to cover.

Destroy or significantly diminish the “Hate-Radio” linchpin, and you’d see the insane coverage of these kinds of stories decrease by 90%.

So I will ask again. “Why aren’t we taking Hate-Radio the ‘EFF’ down in this fucking country”?

Why is there a single Hate-Radio station still operating in “blue” California, or any of our overwhelmingly “blue” cities, that is NOT being actively and relentlessly boycotted and protested?

These “radio” stations do nothing but DEMONIZE THE VERY CITIZENS THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO SERVE and we do NOTHING!

These “radio” stations just caused a record 35 day shutdown of the Federal Government, COSTING US BILLIONS and we do NOTHING!

And before all the “hand-wringers” on DU come here and accuse me of being “anti 1ST Amendment”, I would like to point out that boycotts and protests ARE THE 1ST AMENDMENT

Those Hate-Radio stations have a 1St Amendment right to demonize and dehumanize vast swaths of the populations they serve

The people have a 1ST Amendment right to tell the advertisers, station managers and employees of those stations that they WILL NOT STAND FOR THE DEMONIZATION OF vast swaths of the population they serve.

If you want to change the media, we have the power to do that.

Hate Talkers like Limbaugh, Hannity and the thousands of local “cookie-cutter” hate-mongers should be run out of our cities and towns on a rail.

Before you know it, they could do real damage, like helping elect a evil, racist, fraudulent piece of orange amphibian shit to the highest office in the land.

[ripcord]

1. Liberal politicians and entertainers

These are the people who caused this story to blow up, after a dramatic 180 turn the media isn't going to drop it and there is no reason they should.

[treestar]

2. The Mighty Wurlitzer

They keep repeating each other's stories and interviewing each other about the same stories until they have built up the propaganda to a fever pitch.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Your point is great. Here is the concept of counterspeech:

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/940/counterspeech-doctrine

excerpt:

The counterspeech doctrine posits that the proper response to negative speech is to counter it with positive expression. It derives from the theory that audiences, or recipients of the expression, can weigh for themselves the values of competing ideas and, hopefully, follow the better approach.

The counterspeech doctrine is one of the most important free-expression principles in First Amendment jurisprudence.
Brandeis, 1927: "More speech, not enforced silence"

Justice Louis D. Brandeis established it in his classic concurring opinion in Whitney v. California (1927), when he wrote:

“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Counterspeech not always a perfect remedy

[brooklynite]

4. Your argument seems to be that "they" compelled the "MSM" to cover the Smollett story...

I would argue that the Smollett story is perfectly reasonable for media to cover. If your claim is that the media is being compelled to NOT cover another story, please specify what it is.

Frankly, I lump this attitude in with that of the people complaining that the media was covering Northam/Fairfax when we all apparently "knew" that it was just a Republican setup.

[frazzled]

5. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary in it

That is what cable "political" news does, and has been doing for years: it picks out a single story, sometimes a dumb and fleeting one of little lasting significance, sometimes something of more substance, and beats it to death for 2 or 3 days. It's their MO (and why I rarely watch it anymore).

The cable networks leave out many stories every single day of the year: what's happening around the world, in Africa, Europe, Asia; what's happening in science or business or the arts. They leave out stories with longer arcs, or stories about policy. It's all about the tingle of the moment.

I would suggest that the uproar about the media's coverage (which I agree was excessive, though not unusual) is selective. We love it when it's something we want to hear, like about a Trump tweet or some infraction of a cabinet member. We don't notice that MSNBC has spent three days talking about a tweet. Indeed, many eat it up. But it becomes an outrage when it's something we don't particularly want to hear about: that a gay, black man of some national celebrity orchestrated a fake hate crime. Well, that's pretty much my take on it.