A letter from CNN managing editor and news anchor Aaron Brown has given us pause. Over the past five days, Media for Democracy members have sent more than 10,000 letters to television media executives asking them to devote more airtime to the problems of electronic voting machines.
On Monday our efforts seemed to have yielded fruit. CNN ran a story on these machines. Yesterday, I wrote Brown to thank him and ask that he engage Media for Democracy members in a constructive dialogue on CNN standards for election coverage.
His reply follows:
"No I will not. Further because this cut and paste campaign has annoyed the hell out of me for a week I won't even pay attention to what you guys want or say or think or do. There is no skill and no passion in cutting and pasting. It's just what lemmings do. I can't begin to tell you how offended I am by it all. You may feel free to pass this along to the rest of the group."
Is his reply a legitimate complaint about our methods or is it another case of a media executive refusing to be responsive to his public? Does this executive consider "lemmings" those CNN viewers who are concerned enough about an issue to send him a letter? If his complaints are legitimate, what then should CNN's viewing public do to get the right attention of media executives?
In the past, individual letters to media executives have tended to go unanswered. Our cumulative effort (more than 10,000 letters sent thus far), did receive a reply, but this was not the constructive dialogue we had asked for.
We thought it would be best to send the issue back to you for suggestions:
What more can we do to make mainstream media responsive to our concerns about their shortcomings in election coverage? Or should Media for Democracy stay the course and continue our methods to disrupt the Big Media status quo with mass-email, fax and phone requests for more accountability?
Please respond via our citizens' forum at:
http://www.mediachannel.org/forums/mfd.html
You can also email me directly at [email protected].
Best regards and thank you for participating.
Tim Karr
Executive Director
Media for Democracy 2004
Posted by P6 at March 3, 2004 11:03 AM
Trackback URL: http://www.niggerati.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/671
Comments
I've often wondered about this. Still, his response seemed unreasonably rude. These days, every activist group seems to offer "copy and paste" letters to send.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at March 3, 2004 04:25 PMWhat's interesting to me is not the tone but the significant impact his moods have on the national debate.
Posted by P6 at March 4, 2004 07:09 AMWell, yes, that too.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at March 4, 2004 04:15 PM