Obama White House mismanages mainstream media

As he proved during the campaign, President Obama can be a great "persuader." Watch this recent weekly address to the nation and you'll see his tremendous ability to speak clearly and convincingly.

Now the question is--did you see that speech before? No? I didn't either. Where is it shown other than online? I don't know, either.

While candidate and President Obama has been very smart with his online and new-media efforts, he's failing on the mass-media front. There, screaming, crying Republicans are winning--because they're making the most noise.

There, President Obama shows up only in a few short clips per week, while the cry-babies (why people would take a crying man seriously about political issues is beyond me) are getting air time, eyes and ears.

Most people still get their news through network and cable TV.

And this is key--on TV you can't choose the stories you want to hear about--they're pushed at you. So even if you don't want to hear about Obama's strategy in Afghanistan, chances are the newscasters are going to talk about it (even if briefly, except on days when Tiger Woods private life becomes "news that affects us all."

On the web--if you don't want to read about world events, if you don't want to read about politics or the president, you can easily avoid it. Then you never know. Which is the case with the uneducated and many Republicans--they want to pretend Obama wasn't elect (even better--pretend he's not really American!).

While I agree it's important for the White House to be on FaceBook and Twitter, to have a comprehensive and useful web site and email blasts, it's clear that these forms of communication still don't have the impact of mass media--network and cable TV.

So if you aren't getting your message out--clearly--daily--then your opposition will be, and you will lose the war of minds.

As incompetent as the Bush administration was at actually running anything, from hurricane Katrina to Iraq to the economy--that's how organized and effective they were at manipulating the US mainstream media.

The Bush White House's propaganda machine (starting with the 100% political Republican propaganda) managed to make reality take a back seat to staged events that were so simple it got their message out--with no possibility of the media re-interpreting them.

Despite some apparent blunders such as "Mission Accomplished" (or, to a lesser extent, the President continuing to read to children while the twin towers were attacked on 9/11 rather than actually doing anything about it), the truth is that the mainstream media never criticized those events.

9/11 became too sacrosanct ("we must all stand behind our president--unless he's a Democrat, in which case this would have been his fault!") and the propaganda effect of "Mission Accomplished" was that most people actually believed the words--it was accomplished.

Republicans understand that all you need are the words. You don't need the actions. That makes it much easier, because all you have to say is, "We've made America a safer place!" and that line is repeated over and over, despite the fact that what you did was actually make us more vulnerable to terrorists--and now financially, too! It doesn't matter, because the ignorant masses people have heard "We have made you safe!" repeated and repeated endlessly, so that's what they believe.

Democrats, the Obama White House included, mistake actions for words. They think if they actually do things, then people will recognize, appreciate and applaud their accomplishments.

But these accomplishments are bound to be complex--the way all political solutions must be, and therefore difficult to explain in under five words. And, being smart, if not "too smart for their own good," Democrats try to explain the situation or their accomplishments in 500 words.

Now--while 500 words can be more elucidating, most listeners won't know what "elucidating" means.

The bigger problem is that if you give the press 500 words, you give them the ability to edit them down to whatever 5 words they want. The ellipsis (...) is a powerful thing.

"Health Insurance companies are taking advantage of Americans. The citizens of the United States need and want quality, affordable health care, and it is the goal of this administration to finally bring true security to the health care of Americans."

can become

"Health Insurance companies... want... to finally bring true security to the health care of Americans."

Uh oh. Wrong message.

And when delivered on TV, where the "..." are invisible--there's no way to tell that the message was changed.

While this may be an extreme example, the truth is that if you give the mainstream media too much information, you give them the power to change your message.

The other truth is that if the mainstream media was really doing its job in news reporting, it wouldn't accept five word phrases as news, it wouldn't repeat them endlessly as if they were fact.

Reporters should go out, double check stories, demand two independent sources before quoting mere rumor as fact. That's what I learned when I got a degree in Journalism. For the most part, that's not what's happening today. Today somebody, anybody, even "Joe the Plumber" just has to say the words--words remember--doesn't matter if they're true or even actually make sense--and they're repeated and repeated until they sound true, and then are taken as fact.

Another twist on all this is that there's so much more noise and information from every direction--the TV, computer, radio, SMS, Social Media... So people have more information and less time. Which means that messages must be delivered in shorter, faster ways.

Complex stories need to be distilled down to bullet points.

While it's unfortunate, and leads to the oversimplification of complex issues, it's also necessary to get your point across.

This White House already does this online. Why did President Obama find it necessary to have a "New Way Forward" in Afghanistan? Well, first, "New Way Forward" is a great propaganda term--it sounds good but says nothing, and doesn't give any hint that the new way forward sounds suspiciously like the old way backwards.

But they distilled the issue to a few bullet points (originally posted on Twitter)--and to a 4 minute version of the President's speech (though they both should be on the same web page, otherwise the bullet points are under a 30 minute speech, which few are going to watch in its entirety).

But again we get back to the problem--did you see these bullet points? No. Did you hear the condensed version of the speech? No. Did the mainstream media get and regurgitate the bullet points? No (if they got them, they didn't spit them back out--and even if they got them--guess what--there are too many of them--guess how many--that's right, 514--ten times too many.

It doesn't matter that these were originally delivered via Twitter at 140 characters each--because they add up.

What could the White House have told the media?

"The Taliban still wants to kill us!!!," is 7 words (!!! doesn't count!!!), too long, but still simple and powerful--you are going to die unless we do this. Something even bawling Fox viewers can understand. And something that can't be as easily manipulated--at least not directly.

In today's newsless world (and I saw "newsless" because what passes for news is rarely straight reportage--it's most often now a form of editorial written in a newsy way) it will always be possible for pundits and commentators to outright lie--which is how Fox News operates. Because their lies are carefully crafted to be simple, they can be stronger than honest complexity.

So the best, if not only way to fight them is to fight fire with fire--be simple in return--make your message short, sweet, and clear even to third graders (which, thanks to another Fox show, we have learned that fifth graders can be smarter than most adults, so perhaps adults can understand at a third-grade level).

Remember the old adage: KISS=Keep It Simple Stupid

Let's hope the Obama administration can do that--if not, they'll continue to be too smart for their own good.