Fighting news media bias and my new book Secrets of New Media Networking

I just finished my first edition of "Secrets of New Media Networking" my collection of ideas on how to overcome bias in the mainstream news media.

It's not about putting a check on someone else's opinions that you like or do not like, but about getting your own opinions into the mainstream news media. The mainstream news media, when it comes to "certain topics," is biased. Plain and simple. I know that because I have been in the news media now 32 years, not including six years working in high school and college newspapers.

The reality is that the extremism in the mainstream bias is the primary fuel feeding the extremism that we find in communities like the American Arab community. The bias reinforces the frustrations of the public and that frustration is consumed by anger, emotion and turns into an unreasoned support of the only option they then feel is out there for them, the loudmouthed, extremists who use violence and hatred to 1) keep their followers in a continued state of frustration and 2) provoke the conflict into more conflict and greater violence which gives them a reason to exist.

If we EVER achieved a real and genuine peace in the Middle East, for example, hundreds of thousands of activists on both sides would find themselves out of a job.

I want to put a lot of those biased activists on both sides out of a job and create a new environment where peace creates a new market that creates jobs promoting reason, moderation, understanding and truly free speech.

But my book is not about the Arab-Israeli conflict, although I do use it as an example -- my personal example of how the mainstream news media bias works. My book is about how to take the bias that YOU see in the mainstream news media to motivate you to easily create an alternative using the Internet to get your message, your views and your products out to the public. It's not hard to do using web sites, blogs of different strategic focuses and topics, social media like Facebook and MySpace, and Twitter and even brokered radio and cable TV public access. It all can come together and create a powerful market place for your views.

The book also discusses the moral responsibility of the media and journalism. It's not good to simply replace one biased media with another biased media. You want to add your views to the public discussion not stereotype, slander or discriminate against the free speech of others. You want to make the mainstream news media objective, not biased towards your opinion. You MUST adhere to principle, fairness, and give others the same that you demand, an opportunity to be heard.

The best strategy to fight extremism, terrorism and violence from extremists is to insure that your strategy includes a significant component that truly expands free speech to everyone. Achieving a fair news media system will do far more to undermine the extremists than all of the military conflict that has been launched in our history as human beings on this planet.

We would have won the Iraq War long ago if we had been more sensitive to the moderates in the Arab World who were shut out of the American effort not because of the war but because the American effort never treated them with respect or respected their views.

I hope you get a chance to check out the new books. CLICK HERE TO GET more information on the book.

-- Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com

Hard to feel sorry for complainers in the mainstream media

There is no question that the mainstream news media -- print newspapers, mainly -- is falling on hard times. Recently, the Rocky Mountain News Newspaper closed its doors writing its own front page obituary. A few weeks back, the broadsheet Chicago Tribune that once looked down its long elitist nose at the tabloid Chicago Sun-Times, converted its street sale papers to a -- gasp! -- tabloid that looks exactly like the Chicago Sun-Times.

And last week, mostly mainstream traditional journalists from the print and some broadcast media, plus a handful of online bloggers and members of the growing "New Media," gathered at a conference to discuss the future of journalism. Some reported the meeting turned into a brow-beating session where ivory tower mainstream media tried to lengthen the nose they used to look down upon the "New Media."Of course, the problems of the mainstream media are of their own making. One cause focused on at the journalism conference is the assertion that the New Media is canibalizing from the mainstream media -- stealing content.

Wow. I remember years ago when the mainstream media consisted of two classes, the big city dailies and the smaller community press. The bigshot newspapers used to brag that they owned the media and they frequently stole news fromt he smaller community newspapers. One Tribune reporter told me in the early 1980s that "The news isn't reported unless it is reported in the Chicago Tribune," explaining how he explained the theft of a scoop from the Daily Southtown where I was working.

That was before, of course, the big newspapers gobbled up all the small community newspapers, gutted them, and stole their content and advertising revenues.Now, the New Media is stealing from the mainstream media? The truth is the New Media is helping to keep the media alive.Many of the New Media are in fact former members of the mainstream media, print, radio and TV who blog. Steve Rhodes and I discussed all this during my non-mainstream radio show this morning's radio show.

ANOTHER FACTOR ignored at the conference is the FACT that the mainstream news or traditional news media has defined "diversity" in its narrowest form, focusing only on the traditional minorities (Blacks, Hispanics and Asians) while excluding most other minorities and ethnic groups, including and especially American Arabs who are a growing population in many markets.

In fact, my morning radio show, "Radio Chicagoland" (http://www.radiochicagoland.com/), shows that there is support from the excluded minority communities like the American Arab community. Most of my ads come from businesses shunned by the mainstream news media. Had the mainstream news media embraced rather than exclude non-traditional minority groups like American Arabs, they might be able to tap that advertising revenue pool. Instead, many non-traditional minority groups boycott the Sun-Times and the Tribune because of the exclusion.

There is also a growing army of two kinds of "New Media," those who are former mainstream journalists (like myself and Steve Rhodes) and those who are "Citizen Journalists" who don't have the professional journalism training but oftentimes have a better determination to get the truth and to fill in the gaps left empty by politics and bias in the mainstream news media.

The New Media is filling the gap in the one area where the gap has always been large, in suburban community news coverage. A group of New Media consisting of Citizen Journalists and former mainstream journalists are working to launch the "Chicagoland News Network" at www.ChicagolandNewsNetwork.com. Watch for its launch.

Things are changing, but not fast enough. It's too bad, especially for the slowly vanishing mainstream daily newspaper. The ink-based print papers are being replaced by pixelized computer screens.

-- Ray Hananiahttp://www.radiochicagoland.com/