Help Bust the Media Blackout on Edwards!

John Edwards is the candidate whose positions on the issues are closest to mine -- he's the only one besides Kucinich who seems willing to take on our corporate masters -- and who I believe has a real chance to win -- last I saw, polls showed him more electable than either Clinton or Obama; see, e.g., here.

But the corporate media's pretty much blacked out coverage of his campaign. E.g., in Iowa, where all three top Dem contenders campaigned hard, he beat Clinton, even though I understand she outspent him 7 to 1 -- yet media coverage of the results barely mentioned him. CNN has simply stopped including Edwards in their polls, while continuing to include all four of the top Republican candidates -- even though, despite the dearth of attention to Edwards, the last poll CNN did that included Edwards showed him beating all four Republicans handily (see here).

Let's make it impossible for the media to continue to ignore Edwards. This Fri., Jan. 18, has been designated for an effort to break all records for a single day's donations by raising $7 million for Edwards on that day.

Ask yourself why the corporate media prefer to ignore Edwards. (If nothing comes to mind, see, e.g., David Sirota or jamess on Daily Kos.)

If you like Edwards, put a tickler in your calendar and make a donation on Fri., Jan. 18 -- you can do it here. Remember, all donations will be matched.

(Thanks to KingOneEye on Daily Kos and News Corpse, The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay, for the info on this initiative).

Last night I happened to see Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961, script by Irwin Allen & Charles Bennett), which yielded this memorable quote, among others: "Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who give up without a fight."

UPDATE: It's official. The Project for Excellence in Journalism's latest campaign coverage index for January 6 - 11 shows that Edwards got only 7% of the political coverage during those days -- less than one-fifth of what Clinton got, less than one-fourth of what Obama got, and substantially less than that given to Huckabee, even though he, like Edwards, finished third in the New Hampshire primary.

In a recent article, "Study: John Edwards Doesn't Exist," Greg Sargent writes, "Indeed, the virtual media blackout of Edwards got so glaringly obvious that even New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt urged his paper to give Edwards more attention back in November. At a certain point we should just acknowledge that Edwards basically got screwed . . . ." Make that present tense.