The e-mails to journalists are plaintive:
"Hello, I would like you to know about automatic calls by the McCain campaign that are libelus and may be illegal." [sic]
"This is pathetic, and horrible, and needs BIG attention, worth investigating.""Please take a moment to consider this horrific recent event that has received so little attention in the media.""
"Why isn't the mainstream media talking about voter suppression in 2008? Why does it take the BBC to expose the truth?"
"McCain's negative tactics have reached a new low that deserves to be covered by the mass media. Listen to the robocall and see for yourself."
And ostensibly, they come from concerned citizens, independently, creating the impression that there's a mass of worried consumers of politics who are pressing the media to do their jobs, dammit.
But here's why these e-mails lose their effect. Here's why journalists ignore them.
They're part of an organized effort -- one that aims to create the appearance of being a spontaneous, grassroots uprising but isn't. It's simply a group of people who've subscribed to a Google Group -- or Yahoo Group -- who are waiting to be outraged and conscripted into the army of Obama rapid responders, ready to take on the media.
The e-mails come, like clockwork, touting stories that apparently deserve more attention, like Murray Waas's reporting on the ties of John McCain's transition planner to Saddam Hussein.
Of the 35 or so e-mails I've received about the subject of the RNC's robocalls, about 30 of them are addressed to the exact same universe of journalists... these folks... (personal e-mail addresses redacted.)
The fact that the pressure isn't organized doesn't make the underlying stories less valid. It just makes it more likely that journalists will ignore the e-mails, rather than respond to them.
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