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Chapter 19
The Mass Media
Male Narrator: You may know the winner of the Democratic Presidential Primary campaign and you probably know the Republican candidate, but behind the scenes there is also a third key player, a campaign worker popular enough to reach millions of voters inspiring enough to attract thousands of volunteers and powerful enough to change the election process forever.
And who is this great communicator, its not a who, it’s a what, it’s the Internet. Now the Internet was around during the last presidential elections but this year everything is different for one thing a lot more people are online in 2004.
Joe Trippy: The net wasn’t mature enough prior to now. You needed all those Americans to buy a book at amazon.com or to do an eBay auction and to get use to using their credit card or doing something online.
Male Narrator: Joe Trippy was Howard Dean’s Campaign Manager and the man who first exploited the Internets power to connect with the voting public.
Joe Trippy: What’s important isn’t that we raised more than money anybodies ever raised. How we did it $25, $75 American people actually owning a campaign instead of sort of going on for ride with the campaign owned by the special interest.
Male Speaker: A blog is a journal that’s all it is, it’s short for the word “web log” up until the Howard Dean campaign we thought of a web log as a changing site that’s a journal that an individual publishes and now all of a sudden its this place where hundreds or even thousands of people can add comments and the people who are adding the comments are busy looking at each others comments.
Joe Trippy: Television and print media is one way; the Internet is two-way communication between the candidate and his supporters and its multi way the supporters can talk to each other they can all talk to the candidate in the campaign.
Male Narrator: But is the Internet really bringing democracy back to the people? I mean, let’s face it so far none of it is really added up too much, Joe Trippy wound up getting replaced, Howard Dean bombed at the polls and move ons candle light vigils did nothing to stop the war in Iraq. So the digital democracy might be newsworthy but does it work? Well conservative Bill Greene thinks so.
Bill Greene: You’ve got people that haven’t been able to be involved politically suddenly they get onto this email list or go to that website or what have you and they find a way that they can actually be a part of the political process and say yeah, here is my voice too.
Male Narrator: Liberal Wes Boyd things so.
Wes Boyd: Our view is we’re all Americans that we have so much we can come together on like that the deficit is a bad thing and that when we put out messages like that, people say yeah and it works.
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