An insider's guide to using Internet strategies to overcome mainstream news media bias and bring your message directly to the people
Published July 2009
How to use the Internet and New Media opportunities to make your message more effective in a hostile environment of mainstream media bias and exclusion. This book will help you build your own Cyber City, and create a New Media Internet Network where people will come to be educated, find news or just be entertained. It's your place on the Internet. Easy to create. Driven by your content and imagination.
Product Details:
· Paperback: 237 pages
· Binding: Perfect
· Publisher: Hanania Enterprises Ltd (July 2009)
· Product Number: 030-399300891
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CONTENT BY CHAPTER
Introduction........................................................................................................................... 7
Chapter 1: Getting your message to the people................................................................ 13
Building a virtual cyber city.......................................................................................... 14
How the news media used to work.............................................................................. 14
Creating your own New Media Internet Network........................................................ 26
Chapter 2: A Moral Compass............................................................................................. 33
Strategy not truth determines what someone believes.................................................... 39
Becoming independent and free................................................................................... 43
Dynamics of the moderate........................................................................................... 48
Poor communications.................................................................................................. 53
Addressing the challenges............................................................................................ 54
The Challenge of leadership......................................................................................... 58
Chapter 3: An American Arab Experience......................................................................... 59
A minority journalism experience.................................................................................. 60
Life before Sept. 11: “Vampires”.................................................................................. 67
If you are not a writer................................................................................................... 74
Changing the victim paradigm....................................................................................... 77
Is the Media Biased?.................................................................................................... 78
Chapter 4: Fundamentals of Communications.................................................................... 84
Fundamentals of communications.................................................................................. 85
Changing the public’s perceptions................................................................................. 87
Communication is more than just speaking English......................................................... 89
Understanding American society................................................................................... 91
Power of Humor.......................................................................................................... 93
Chapter 5: Perception is Reality....................................................................................... 103
PR Tips for effective messaging.................................................................................. 104
Common Mistakes by ethnic minorities....................................................................... 114
Fundamentals of Business Media Relations................................................................. 117
Writing a press release............................................................................................... 126
Everyone is a Journalist.............................................................................................. 127
Strategic Overview.................................................................................................... 130
Chapter 6: How Mainstream Journalism Really Works.................................................. 134
Understanding American journalism........................................................................... 135
The Journalist............................................................................................................ 138
Reporting versus Op-Ed............................................................................................ 143
Journalism is a partnership.......................................................................................... 148
Chapter 7: New Media Network Strategies..................................................................... 159
Public Release vs Press Release.................................................................................. 167
Strategic components of the New Media Overview..................................................... 169
The Internet Web Site................................................................................................. 170
Broadcast Media........................................................................................................ 189
Print/Print Online Media Options................................................................................. 200
Social Media on the Internet........................................................................................ 214
Bringing it all together.................................................................................................. 228
Book Introduction
The Ray Hanania Network
I didn’t become a journalist because I was nurtured to that career path by liberal parents who viewed communications as the powerful and creative institution that it is.
I stumbled on journalism on my way to becoming a doctor. It’s an Arab cultural thing. As I explain later in this book, I was watching TV while training at a U.S. Air Force base in Mountain Home Idaho during the Vietnam War when I stumbled on a TV debate between an Arab and an Israeli. Right away I could see the problem. The Arabs just don’t know how to communicate.
Ever since that evening out in the deserts among the tumbleweeds and an environment of growing fear and animosities towards American Arabs, I have been a crusade for the truth. Truth at first about the Middle East – I’m not anti-Israeli I am pro-peace and a vocal outspoken opponent of all forms of violence. And on my way to trying to help the American Arab community – many of the issues I confronted and addressed and dealt with in this book – I found myself becoming more and more in love with communications and journalism.
I quickly became a reporter – with no professional journalism college training whatsoever. And just as quickly, I rose to the top of the Chicago journalism field, until the oil and water of journalism and the Middle East collided in 1992 and I was sent packing by the Chicago Sun-Times into a successful career in media and political consulting. I learned a lot about communications working as a journalist for 17 years covering Chicago City Hall from “Daley to Daley” and I put that to work to help more than 60 candidates for public office, the most challenging women and underdogs outside of the political system.
I expanded into Middle East peace activism, spending time at the table with President Bill Clinton and Palestinian President Yasir Arafat in Washington D.C. during and after the Oslo Peace Accords and was awed to watch mortal enemies Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who I had a chance to meet) sign the 1993 peace accords that later collapsed in the face of extremist opposition from Israelis and Arabs alike.
I then returned to journalism.
And when I looked back I realized that I have always been on the cutting edge of technology as a journalist, bringing the first computer to the City Hall Press Room to cover the newly elected Mayor Jane M. Byrne who made news so fast and so furiously that her top aide, Bill Griffin, a former City News Bureau reporter once remarked that “Following Jane around is like following a B-52. She drops bombs all over the place.”
Jane Byrne made news so fast it was not possible for journalists covering her to use the traditional forms of communications. My friend and mentor Harry Golden Jr., would call in breaking news stories by telephone with the phone huddled up to his mouth and ear and hand over the speaker as he “whispered” in his loud and raspy New York accent that echoed throughout the marble-floored halls around the press room that was later named in his honor after his death in 1989.
Byrne would come in to City Hall in the morning and make news. By lunch she would reverse herself, and make news again. After lunch, on return to her office, she would say something else and make another headline. Between then and the end of the day, usually around 6 pm, Byrne would make four more big news stories. Byrne was the “David” who brought down the “Goliath” Chicago Democratic Machine defeating its mayor, former Alderman and acting Mayor Michael A. Bilandic who succeeded the late great Mayor Richard M. Daley who died days before Christmas in 1976.
So that summer, my community newspaper installed a computer on my desk that connected to the outlying offices 8 miles southwest of the Loop by telephone. And I would type in my stories and send them via a 300 baud modem on the Rockwell computer word processor. The modem at the time moved copy faster than Golden could call it in. But in today’s world, the pace would be turtle slow. I could watch each line of my article appear on the screen and transmit across the telephone line one every two seconds.
I would send five to seven stories each day to the daily community newspaper. Eventually, I purchased a Tandy Laptop that I used with a small modem to transmit stories from wherever I could connect to a phone line.
It was using technology to adapt to the fast-paced changing news times. The future was not the old days of the Front Page Journalism that so often tug at our nostalgia.
But I soon realized that technology had its place in serving the rest of the world. And I just as quickly learned that when it came to me being an Arab and especially being a Palestinian Arab, and the Middle East, the mainstream news media was biased. Not out of control or some sinister and stupid theory of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was an anti-Semitic explanation for the success of Israel and Zionism. The bias was driven by many factors including the fact that I was one of the few American Arabs actually working in fulltime journalism. That the Middle East was a land of tyrants who oppressed their people and punished free speech, especially speech critical of their governments or that did not toe the line against bashing Israel, with jail and even death. A world where Arabs who immigrated to America, because of that Middle East resistance to free speech, directed their children to become doctors, lawyers and grocery store owners and felt shame when a son became a journalist rather than a successful entrepreneur with great wealth.
Journalism was not a wealthy profession but it helped me understand the fundamentals of communications.
It is not what you have to say but how you say it that is important in American communications. And that simple fact is a stumbling block for most non-American foreign to the privilege of free speech.
But while free speech was discouraged and punished in many Third World Countries, the free speech in America was also being censored. Not by jail, threats, violence or death. But by exclusion and unachievable requirements and even some smattering of racism on the desks of the mainly White and Presbyterian influenced news media.
Did “Jews” control the media? No. But that’s how most American Arabs explained their absence from the media and their failure to get the mainstream American news media to cover their communities the same way the media covered the Jewish American community and other ethnic and religious groups. It wasn’t just a problem with the news media. Communications includes Hollywood, TV, the entertainment industry and the book publishing industry. If you are not at the table helping to make the decisions, then the decisions made will certainly result in you being excluded. Blaming the “Jews” was a stereotype. But stereotypes are often easier to comprehend than the complicated truth. Not being familiar with the fundamentals of communications – it’s not enough to speak English you have to speak American to communicate effectively – most American Arabs saw only one answer. Bigotry and stereotyping of “Jews.”
I saw through that right away. I saw that supporters of Israel were not only present and participating in the news media, but they were also educated in the fundamentals knowing that the key to winning a debate is not winning the argument. You win the audience. If you can "win” the audience, you can more easily win the argument. Winning came from familiarity and understanding that has to be in place before an audience tries to decipher through complex issues like the Middle East or the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Over the years I have come to see the futility of trying to fight with the mainstream American media until one day sometime in the mid-1980s, a word came across my desk called the “Internet.” Computers and communication began to grow and expand. I soon learned how to program the IBM PC Junior, and later create software programs for the IBM. It was all mathematics and creative intelligence combined with common sense.
I soon mastered the technology and as I made money, I poured money into the new technologies expanding and moving with the technology as it advanced.
No one wants to battle the news media. But sometimes and in some cases, the battle is unavoidable. I’ve been at war with the media from the very first day I received my news media ID Card. I recognized that the mainstream news media is no different in many ways from the partisanship of politics in Chicago. The media is a business and they sell a product (truth) to an audience that has to want to buy that product. You can’t force an audience to buy something it doesn’t want. And audiences (the public) want what they feel comfortable with. And the American public did not feel comfortable with the Arabs. The Muslims. And the media enhanced image of Arab terrorists that began long before Sept. 11, 2001.
This book uses my experience in the American Arab community not as an effort to proselytize pro-Arab support. Rather, I use my experiences in the American Arab community and their lifelong difficulty with the language of American politics as a foundation to show you how you can build a New Media Internet Network that can off-set the bias of the powerful mainstream news media.
If the news media does not want to cover you, thanks to the Internet, you no longer have to sulk and sit alone wondering hopelessly how to get your views out to the public. The Internet makes this process easier and is the alternative route to public enlightenment.
This book is not about being pro-Arab or pro-Israeli. It is about making the news media process work for you. If the mainstream news media won’t cover you, you can tell the mainstream news media to go f-off. And you can create your own news media and get your voice out.
In 1976, I did that by launching my own American Arab newspaper, the Middle Eastern Voice. It lasted about two years.
Then, the Internet allowed me to take that effort of seeking balance and fairness and understanding to a new level.
I’m going to show you how I did that and I hope this book helps you with bringing your message, regardless of your race, religion or national origin, to the American public and the world public. I do stress that the message needs to be fair. Moral. And just. I’m not interested in helping someone defeat someone else. To me, the Middle East is about principle. Apply the principle of fairness and the Rule of Law fairly to all sides, Arabs and Israelis. If we did that, we would have had peace a long time ago. And, I hope this book helps you apply principle, morality and the Rule of Fairness and objectivity to a new heights in your battle with the mainstream news media which is down and out for the count as the Internet pushes it to a just grave.
The mainstream American news media has never been truly professional. Nor has it been ethical. Nor has it been objective. It has been driven by greed and politics.
Maybe these strategies can help forge a new news media that is based on justice, fairness, respect, objectivity and the principles of journalism that look great on the mastheads of newspapers but have long been forgotten by its pencil pushing practitioners. Maybe we can create a truly free news media and strengthen genuinely free “free speech.”
Ray Hanania
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Ray Hanania
July 26, 2009 rayhanania@comcast.net
Book details insider tips on using the Internet to
side step the biased Mainstream American News Media
(Chicago) Veteran Journalist and award winning columnist Ray Hanania has been battling bias in the mainstream news media since the day he picked up his first newspaper in the suburbs of Chicago.
An American Arab, Hanania believed that the media was unfairly covering the Middle east conflict and was intentionally portraying American Arabs as terrorists, always ignoring their positive contributions to American society.
That battle has become his lifelong avocation and this week he announced the release of his latest book, a battlefield manual to fight against the inherent bias in the mainstream American news media using Internet networking strategies.
“Too often people in my community blame media bias on another race or religion but this is mistaken stereotyping to excuse away their lack of understanding of how the mainstream news media really works,” says Hanania who entered professional journalism in the early 1970s.
“In the past, the only way to battle mainstream media bias was to enter journalism as a profession and balance the two goals of journalism professionalism against activism. But with the rise of the Internet and the collapsing mainstream news media, you do not need to go to the mainstream news media to reach the public.
“You can do it on your own. ‘Secrets of New Media Networking’ helps you understand not only how to set up an effective Internet Media Network to promote your community, views, activities, opinions and more. But it also walks you through a real understanding of communications in America and the principles that make message compelling.”
Hanania manages a network of four major web sites, 11 blogs, writes for more than two dozen newspapers in print and online, manages several online news organizations, hosts his own morning radio show and weekly cable TV show, and uploads his radio and video broadcasts to the Internet. Merging in social networking strategies and other online assets, his network reaches millions of people every year.
“The mainstream news media is biased and they won’t change. That bias more than any other factor is what is helping to undermine the media and force many mainstream newspapers to close,” Hanania says.
“You can still use the mainstream news media, but you do not need them to get your message out. You can create your own media and my book helps you do it in a professional and effective manner.”
For more information on Secrets of New Media Networking, visit www.TheMediaOasis.com.
Contact Ray Hanania at rayhanania@comcast.net
237 Pages, $34.95. Published by Hanania Enterprises Ltd., and CafePress.com
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August 1, 2009 Arab News, Saudi Arabia Read?
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