Pass It On Invitation
The Nader Team is launching an exciting new e-mail campaign, called Pass It On, that will feature an important news article from the mainstream, Internet, or alternative media. These e-mails will give readers crucial information about important election issues and prepare them to make educated arguments to their friends, families, and news outlets.
With so much news happening out there, it can be difficult to sort through it all to find relevant information on important topics. This becomes increasingly frustrating in an election year, when there is more news than ever and a good knowledge of the issues is imperative to voters. In an election dominated by corporate media, it is vital for informed citizens to counteract misinformation with intelligent, articulate arguments.
But why do we need to do this ourselves? Aren’t the mainstream media providing enough information in their round-the clock news programs?
Quite simply, no, they’re not.
Here’s an example. While stuck at a Greyhound bus station last month, I had the dubious fortune of watching fours hours of unrelenting election coverage on national television. A dozen different pundits, bloggers, and politicos came on, ostensibly to discuss pressing issues in the campaign. The strange thing was, not one of those speakers addressed a single substantive issue. Instead, they spouted strategy and traded in trivia: who had collected the most money, who was or wasn’t wearing a flag pin, the effect smiling had on a candidate’s electability.
This is the national network news, the place where millions of Americans get their information on critical issues. Yet in an election year when so much is at stake — when we have to make decisions about war, recession, healthcare, poverty, and global warming — we are being given virtually no valuable information that could help us make good decisions.
As Bill Moyers reminds us in "Moyers on America," the media aren’t so much biased as they are plain bad. Not only do they commit egregious errors of omission — refusing to cover third-party candidates and failing to convey the context of a situation — they also fail to fact-check the information they present, choosing instead to quote from two equally vapid and opposing sources and then hastily ending their reports.
These media failures have a doubly negative effect on candidacies like Ralph Nader’s. As a corporate critic and third-party candidate, Nader threatens both the two-party system and the media conglomerates — which then prove him right by refusing to cover his campaign! As a candidate who tries to address the roots of problems, Nader is misrepresented by a sound-bite media that depends on bipartisan platitudes.
The result?
Millions of voters don’t know Ralph Nader is running and don’t understand the significance of the critiques he is making. Without a responsible media articulating the cause and effects of the different crises we are facing, we will continue to throw $500 rebate checks at a failing economy and ethanol at oil.
With that in mind, we are pleased to introduce our Pass It On campaign. On a regular basis, we will send you a compelling, well-researched article about a pressing election issue — something you won’t get from the sound-bite media. Reading the article will help you stay informed. But the next step is most important — and this is where you come in. You become the alternative media by passing the article on to your friends, family, and co-workers. Think of it as information’s pay-it-forward movement: regular people circulating good articles until they go viral. With this kind of concerted grassroots media effort, we can change the conversation, educate the electorate, and pass along Ralph Nader’s ideas.
Sign up now to become the new media!
Yes, I’m in! (Fill in your e-mail address in the form below.)
No, I’ll trust the mainstream corporate media to provide all the info I need.
Onward to November!
Ashley Sanders
The Nader Team
Note: By submitting your comments you acknowledge that Nader for President 2008 has the right to reproduce, broadcast and publicize those comments or any part thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please note that due to the volume of comments we receive, not all comments will be published and it may take several hours for your comments to be reviewed, and those that are published will not be edited. But all will be carefully read, considered and appreciated.
Your comment will be visible to you (and only you) after you post it, at which point it is queued for consideration and no longer visible. Please refrain from submitting your comments multiple times.
Note: By submitting your comments you acknowledge that Nader for President 2008 has the right to reproduce, broadcast and publicize those comments or any part thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please note that due to the volume of comments we receive, not all comments will be published and it may take several hours for your comments to be reviewed, and those that are published will not be edited. But all will be carefully read, considered and appreciated.
Your comment will be visible to you (and only you) after you post it, at which point it is queued for consideration and no longer visible. Please refrain from submitting your comments multiple times.
