I don't think I have said it on this blog although it is something I consistently advice to advocacy organizations whenever I am on the conference trail : If you want to put a dent into mainstream media, you need to start investing into your own new media alternatives.

Here's an AP newsbit that Zuzu over at Feministe has blasted to pieces because, as an AP article, they get to set the tone of this act of agression and terror perpetrated against workers and patients of a reproductive health clinic in Texas :
Feministe » The terrorism that dare not speak its name:

For some reason, terrorism doesn’t count if it’s directed against women and their health care providers. It’s just not news, and the fact that it goes unremarked in the national media — and hell, even in the local media, as in the case of the Austin bomb — contributes to the idea that women are not important and that violence directed at women is not only to be expected, but to be dismissed.

[...]

We saw something similar with the Virginia Tech shooting — the campus police initially dismissed the idea that the gunman would be a danger to anyone else — even though they hadn’t identified or caught him at the time — because they saw a dead woman and just assumed that it was a “domestic incident” and there would be no further violence. Clinic bombings are treated as the equivalent of shrugged-off “domestic incidents” — hey, it’s just violence against women. It’s not like it’s going to affect real people or anything.

And they never call it by its name: terrorism.

AP, UPI, Reuters and AFP are basically the only journalism engines that move propaganda through every single major media stream; from newspapers to online publications and newswires to radio and TV news broadcasts. Their system is efficient because through mostly anonymous writers they get to set the messaging frames for all news. This quasi anonymity brings them the perfect lack of accountability that is so typical of news articles like the one Zuzu shreds to pieces.

Yet what is worse is that by setting the mainstream messaging agenda hey also set the mainstream opposition frames. And MSM quoted blogs become just another cog in the big media machine. Yes, even if these new media dissenters are meant to 'debunk' their bunk. Why? Because there is no such thing as bad press.

BTW : The irony of this blog post is not lost to me

For blogs to be a true media alternative, they have to be able to influence directly not just their everyday audience, but influencers and policy makers as well. That means that, not until bloggers can become main sources of news, opinion and knowledge without the filter and intermediation of the MSM, we will always be caught in their web as the naysaying sideshow entertainment they've already decided we are.

At this point it takes more than grandstanding talk. We need money to build the backend systems to turn blogs and other new media assets into true broadcasting networks.