I Don’t Dally Around Dangled Media Bait
The media has a terrible addiction to the immediate outrage. Social media too. I look at the decades-long subversion of the Constitution, and our democracy
PREFACE
I hate being right.
Especially years ahead of the punditocracy. Time is not on our side.
The issues that I particularly wrote about, in the late 2000s, to when Romney was the Republican candidate, in the 2012 cycle, have been arriving at our doorstep, for years.
The GOP (Un)Civil War, between Saudi-backed Neocons, and the Russian-backed Tea Party? I was talking about it in 2009, three years before the mainstream media caught on.
In 2012, during the Obama-Romney election, I put out this caution, to voters:
I have written hundreds of articles, for the pre-AOL HuffPost, DailyKos, and Truth-2-Power, amongst others.
I “retired,” for a few years, under Biden, hoping that we finally turned the corner. I really hoped that the Democrats would rally, under Biden, and right the ship of state. That America would wake the f**k up, and realize that defeating the Funders, who have spent decades, and billions, to undermine small ‘d’ democracies, worldwide.
Didn’t happen.
So, back to fighting the good fight we go.
MEDIABAIT ANONYMOUS
“Hi, I’m John.”
“Hi John.”
“I chased another Trump wild rabbit. UFC Dana White, on the Meta AI Board. Total patronage move.”
Everyone: “Ooooooooh.”
Leader: “Remember! Resist the urge to take the bait.”
How does DemoDirge differ from your mainstream media sources?
I don’t chase crap. I chase the people who spend the money on the crap, to manipulate the media, and you, while they quietly crater our nation, from within.
You learn, at the higher altitudes, of the economic mountains, where the cash flows, to the political valleys, below, that it’s not enough to win an election cycle, or two. To really change America, to do the bidding of the richest, you have to spend generations, culling out opposing thought, and pacifying an electorate, with enough indoctrination that they would slit their own throats, in service of the 1%.
Who needs expensive guns, tanks, and bombs, when you can just bribe the malleable, and silence protest through propaganda, dirty tricks, and, soon, law?
If you want to reverse decades of this, you have to see the big picture.
Why don’t I just go re-up at a big, well funded news outlet, you ask?
The News Media is a (Corrupted) Business
News, in 2025, is a business, largely devoid of even the pretense of journalistic ethics. Run by oligarchs, and outsized entertainment companies, how can it be otherwise?
As the movie “Network,” in 1976, brilliantly predicted, corporate media would come to see News not as a service to the democracy, but both a profit source, and a means of controlling the masses, in service of the corporatocracy.
The 2024 U.S. election cycle saw total spending reaching approximately $15.9 billion across all federal campaigns, including presidential and congressional races. The most expensive in U.S. history.
Of that, Broadcast and Cable Television received approximately 50% of total political advertising dollars. Broadcast, most likely to reach low-information voters, received at least $5.1 billion, Cable? About $1.9 billion.
Print media doesn’t have a readily available tracking service, for political advertising demographics, but it tends to be smaller than TV. Sad, but fewer, and fewer, people read the news.
Those who feel like “the media” isn’t telling them the truth, are generally right. Advertising, alone, has always made the “spin” to keep stories that generate eyeballs alive, a constant distraction from the job of reporting without fear, or favor.
Beyond that, Trump has been making existential threats to media companies, and individual journalists, as well as social media, that removed him from their platforms, or restricted his ability to lie, without consequence, as a danger to the public good.
In November, 2024, Comcast, which owned NBC/MSNBC, spun MSNBC into a separate entity, unoriginally called “SpinCo,” along with several of its new media properties, and less profitable cablers. MSNBC’s relationship, with NBC, is now in question.
The format, and direction of the only liberal-leaning network, are in flux.
Trad Journalists & Punditocracy
Journalists are a mixed bunch.
The best?
Propublica has an exceptional stable of investigative journalists: T. Christian Miller; Joshua Kaplan.
Jane Mayer, at The New Yorker.
David Corn, at Mother Jones.
Scott Higham, even if he works at The Washington Post.
The Center for Investigative Journalism’s: Robert J. Rosenthal (Philadelphia Inquirer/San Francisco Chronicle); Ryan Gabrielson (Polk Award; Pulitzer Prize - Local Reporting); Lowell Bergman.
The Guardian’s Paul Lewis; Manisha Ganguly; Michael Hudson (Pulitzer Prize - Investigative Journalism); Nick Hopkins (Team Pulitzer Prize - Snowden); Henry Dyer
I encourage you to seek them out, and whatever publication, or substack, from which they work.
TV Punditry too. There are those rare ones, Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver, who get it right, with a lot of flourish, and humor.
Then there’s the 90%. If it bleeds, it leads. Follow the shiny object. Report based upon others reporting, without verifying. The subtle spins of managing editors, news directors, coming from the CEOs’ direction, up the line.
And… TikTok.
Last, and certainly least ethical, are the 5% who are sheer propagandists, with little, to no regard for the truth. These days, spinning outright lies, without consequence, has become normalized. Fox News. OAN.
Sadly, more humans take their “news” from the 90%. An ill-informed public cannot have a functioning democracy. It will get whatever those who manipulate them serve up.
ANALYSIS ISN’T NEWS
News has moved away from actual investigative journalism, to analysis on news, from experts, and journalists, giving their takes on what is out there in the news cycle of the day. It’s superficial. It’s sensational. It’s a HUGE disservice to you, the news consumer.
A few investigative journalists do the hard work. The rest of the newsosphere profits off of talking about it, filtering it, and/or getting takes on it from news analysts that can legitimize, or delegitimize it.
Most Americans tune it out, altogether. The more politically aware ones regurgitate what they hear from their favorite pundits, but seldom, if ever, bother to read any of the source material being talked about.
The takes, right, or wrong, become truth.
The only way to recover our country from the decades long terraforming of the 1%, to bring it BACK to their control, in the early Industrial Age, is to educate ourselves to what they’ve been doing.
How can you unwind what has been wound, when you cure the symptoms, but leave the cause untreated?
Why Read Me?
I’m one of the oldest “veterans” in New Media. I was one of the first New Media managing editors, at MinorLeagueNews.com/ MLNSports.com the first sports eZine, dedicated to minor league and independent sports, on the Internet. Along with Slate’s Managing Editor, I was one the first eZine editors admitted to the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME).
I don’t put out a lot of fluff. I don’t follow the shiny objects. The work that I do takes time. Research. Thought. Unique perspective. On Substack, we don’t have a big “Times” label on us. We DO have to sing for our supper.
If you read the body of my work, the total library is available here, and sadly relevent, still. I’m, much to my regret, right, years ahead of the “common wisdom,” of the all but a few folks, whose amazing work I respect beyond measure.
Unlike Maddow, Oliver, or a site with six, eight or ten of me, to keep pumping daily content your way? I won’t deliver full feature articles daily. I will comment, with the bigger picture, in the chat, and have a few AMA days, too.
Let’s talk about the FOREST, not the TREES!
I look forward to serving you, and our country, to finally bring it to a place where the words of the Constitution, “We the People,” means EVERYONE, not just the select few, and powerful.
Democracy dies in ignorance.