press wants to know which issues are important to you

I got this email the other day. This is a great opportunity to sound off to the press about the issues which are important to us and are largely ignored. It takes only a few minutes to fill out and may give us a chance to reframe the debate at least during the primary season.

Here is what they said:

We're contacting people who have emailed us in the past about our coverage, in case you have an opinion on this:

As the Election 2004 season begins, we want to invite you to help determine what issues you want to see covered. The Associated Press Managing Editors Web site has a survey we'd like to ask you to fill out: http://www.apme-credibility.org/survey

Our newsroom has joined a nationwide network of newsrooms in about 35 cities and towns across the country, asking these same questions. This project is part of APME's Credibility Roundtables Project, which works to encourage communication and build trust between journalists and the public. We need your support for this project to succeed.

Not only will your answers help us guide coverage in our newsroom, but they will be used as part of a nationwide survey of readers that could help guide coverage on a national scale. Your responses might be used in stories produced for either a local or national audience, so we ask that you provide the contact information (which might be used by reporters but not otherwise shared with anyone) in the space provided on the survey page.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this process, please let me know. Also, you can reply to me if you don't want to hear any more from the Daily News about this. To all those who participate in this important project, thanks very much for your time. And thanks to everyone for contacting the Daily News in the first place.

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I listed some issues I'd like to see more of as:

intelligence failures leading to 9/11
PATRIOT ACT I and II
corporate malfeasance
defunding education
failure of War on Drugs
privatization
record unemployment
erosion of workers', women's rights
global outsourcing
deregulation
failure of any coherent plans to deal w/ subsequent terrorist attacks
Republican-owned and operated voting machines w/o accountability
the Energy Bill
war profiteering (Carlyle, Halliburton)
shadow government
secret detentions
outing of Valerie Plame
Enron's role in energy gouging in California

of the theft of the 2000 election?

Deregulation turning the media into fucking whores.

and got a call this morning from them to use snippets of my answers in the piece! Cool! I mentioned that the one thing I would ask a presidential candidate was where the hell were you when we were being led into invading a country, and also said that everything this political season began and ended for me with that question.

The piece should be out on the AP site by early next week.

I used your list to jog my memory...I added R&D of renewable energy sources, lack of Health Care Ins for 43 million of us.