By our guest contributor Angi Bryan
People are waking up. One of the most visible reflections of this is the fact that mainstream media is beginning to take a nose dive: MSNBC and CNN have lost almost half their viewership since this time last year. Some outlets are desperately scrambling to save face now that the reality about Obamacare is starting to seep out. If you pay any attention to social media, you see people tweeting and posting the lies and bias of the MSM with their own commentary and feedback, speaking out against the obvious deceptions. There has also been a surge of digital traffic to alternative media in the last year. Many are turning away from the dominant media networks and going to those alternative sources for more reliable information. In fact, according to a Pew Research study, people are turning to youtube as a news source in increasing numbers
One can probably attribute much of the recent rejection of the mainstream media to the failure of the Obamacare rollout and the exposure of the flagrant lies leading up to this event; this is probably the most obvious reason for the awakening. People aren’t just blaming this administration – they are blaming the media for refusing to not cover the realities of this law. While alternative media was predicting what is now coming to light about the failings of Obamacare, the MSM was doing cartwheels to push it “forward.” It’s not as if no one knew. It was all over the internet, if you knew where to look. People are realizing that these “professional journalists” of the major networks who are supposed to be trained, educated, knowledgeable and analytical didn’t just make a mistake. They weren’t fooled by the administration; they simply ignored the facts and deliberately failed to report the truth. It’s grossly obvious in retrospect.
In light of these factors and giving credit to alternative media for revealing the facts, I believe that the Facebook and web presence of Rage Against the Media has played a key role in this awakening; after all, we’ve been at it for more than a year: planting the seeds of reality in the illusion that the media would have you believe, injecting truth where the Mainstream Media lies, bringing to light what the media tries to hide. Thanks to many of the alternative media sites like Breitbart News, CNS News, IJ Review, Townhall, Daily Caller, among countless others, we’ve had the factual ammunition, the real information to spread, not just on our own social media sites, but on the social media pages of the “news” networks, with our flyers and at our rallies. A group of nearly 8000 activists acting together on social media is a force to be reckoned with.
RATM is a group of activists: our members don’t just sit back and complain or “preach to the choir,” passing articles around among ourselves in the conservative echo chamber. We take the truth to the source of the misinformation, and speak out to the misinformed online and on the street. We’ve grown and broadened our reach, we’ve refined our strategies and honed in on the most heinous targets. We’ve tackled Benghazi, race-baiting issues, the Gosnell Trial, wasteful spending and one of our targets has also been Obamacare, since long before the failed roll-out. You can see on our FB group page all of the topics we’ve covered and how far back they go. RATM has been outing these issues and more, not just to each other, but taking it to the sources for over a year. We’ve addressed the MSM complicity, bias and lies directly by getting out there in the “trenches” of social media, admittedly a cliché but an apt one, revealing the truth and exposing the omissions directly to the followers of ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and, yes, even the particularly swamp-like Huffington Post.
We’ve also been out there in the real world handing out flyers, holding rallies and reaching out to the shockingly ill-informed. We’ve protested in front of major networks, asking why they lie to their readers and viewers, and why they don’t investigate or report on the most important issues. We might not have made the network news, (yet) but then, why would we, when we’re exposing their betrayal of their audience. We’re revealing what the masses might not otherwise know because they aren’t looking for it and the “news” sources they rely on are NOT telling them; we don’t just arbitrarily post information, we put it where those who are not looking for it will see it, and we provide sources.
Having said all that, now is not the time to sit back and watch. Now, more than ever, is when we need to push even harder and we need everybody on board: handing out flyers, participating in our “Facebook Flash Mobs”, tweeting, e-mailing, organizing and attending rallies at your local MSM outlets and/or simply speaking out in your everyday lives. If you can’t do anything else, spend just five minutes of your day going to some of the media’s Facebook pages – like the ones linked above – and inject a little truth, ask them why they lie or why they are only telling one side of the story. We need to continue to push now that we have momentum. There are still millions of VOTERS relying on these lying media sources. We have to drive it over the top and reach everyone we can so they, too, can be informed.
In essence, if we can’t get our mainstream media to be objective, do some investigating and report the facts, we’ll do everything in our power to make them obsolete by spreading truth, reaching beyond the partisan divide and supporting and endorsing reliable alternative media sources.
Angi Bryan has been a passionate advocate for truth in media for the past 15 years. Feeling strongly that it is the dishonest media that is causing the decline of this country, she dedicates her time to fighting their destructiveness in various ways. She is a contributor to a number of websites including Intellectual Froglegs and is an administrator of several Facebook pages including Rage Against the Media.