National Media: advantage Bush

[jocapo]

We've moved into the period of the campaign where the incumbents natural media advantage is overwhelming Bush's and Kerry's advertising campaign. Bush doesn't have to make news to be covered, they only need to control the message (which they are doing very well). Kerry NEEDS to make news. So far all of the news about Kerry is negative, petty and un-presidential. Kerry has to do something to get his positive forward-looking presidential message on the nightly news. After the democratic convention the bus trip had 2 weeks of coverage, maybe they should do another bus trip. Or they could go to Iraq for a first hand look at the situation.

[DarthDem]

1. Since the Media

. . . does not hate Kerry like it did Gore - - see, for example, the positive coverage of Kerry's DNC speech - - I am very hopeful that if he does well in the debates, another forum in which they cannot ignore him, they will give him more attention. And, yeah, the bus trip plan always seems to work well for media coverage. If I were running the campaign (not that I'm the least bit qualified), I'd send Kerry and Edwards out on a bus tour of every county in Ohio, and to every major city in West Virginia. Then I'd do the same in Arkansas. I doubt anyone would accuse this strategy of being a time-waster . . . I wish they would do it.

[bain_sidhe]

2. Just posted on another thread

but I think this deserves wide dissemination, so...

More people (especially the "non-political" people who make up the bulk of the undecided) get their news from broadcast networks. With that in mind, take a look at this graphic from MediaTenor on broadcast media coverage from August 30 to September 9:



The graphic is found at http://www.mediatenor.com/slant.html which includes some text about their findings and a short blurb about their methods.

Is bu**sh** pulling ahead, or at least staying even despite his horrible record on both the economy and war? The above graphic is the reason why, IMHO.

[grasswire]

4. that is a FASCINATING graph

Thanks so much for posting it. Very useful.

[jocapo]

6. Great site!

.

[SeekingTruth]

3. Here is what Edwards can do......

To get this going, let me first ask a question - When Al Gore and Ross Perot were on Larry King together, what is about the first thing that anyone can recall from that appearance?




Yes, the charts Perot held up......


Edwards could appear on Larry King with the chart in this thread...and hammer that home...as Eric Alterman has stated over and over again, we have got to work the ref on this and work the ref hard (in this concept, Alterman is referring to how in sports a manager will hammer a ref on a close call so bad that on the next one the ref might think, "yeah, I did cheat them a little, so I'll make up for it a bit on this call.."....)

[jocapo]

5. Graphics!!

Great idea for Kerry/Edwards because their "message" is explaining the truth about complex issues which is hard to do in a sound-bite. If they were to start with a very simple and dramatic visual that gives the audience a simple picture to take away the explanation would have context.
There are so many issues that could be dramatically represented with a graphic: 1) the deficit 2) the debt 3) the deaths in Iraq 4) the cost of Iraq 5) the coalition of the willing v the rest of the world (number of troops per country, number of deaths per country, $ contribution per country)
etc., etc., etc....

[bain_sidhe]

7. Not to hijack the thread or anything, but...

this one's my favorite so far (my own work) - needs cleaning up though.

[jocapo]

8. Post away

Anyone else with graphics that Kerry/Edwards should be using? Subject.

[21winner]

9. Kerry knew this in April.

He has run against the National TV media ever since. Will it work? I hope so. Kerry has a lot courage because its a hard way to go. A win would give him the
worse mess ever. He has more money than God and has a great place in the Senate. Why he wants this job makes me think that he might do it well.