First, let me state flatly that this is not intended to be the 347,865,292,857th thread about whether or not the media has a liberal bias. It is, rather, an attempt to expose what the Republicans are really saying when they complain about liberal media bias.
Their standard narrative goes like this. The majority of Americans hold good, old-fashioned, conservative values. However, the liberal media causes those ordinary Americans to support liberal programs and vote for Democrats.
There are two basic ways that such a thing could, theoretically, happen. First, liberal control over the media is so overwhelming that it just can’t be avoided. That proposition, however, is ludicrous. Americans have always had dozens of media outlets to choose from. In the internet era, the number has expanded to thousands. There are plentiful conservative media outlets. This theory falls on its face.
The second possibility is that many media outlets have a liberal bias, but conceal it so cleverly that the good, conservative majority never realizes that they’re being manipulated into abandoning conservative positions. But this is really a long-winded way of saying that the conservative majority is full of idiots. If they’re so stupid that we should not respect their choice of news sources, then how can they simultaneously be so smart that we must respect their values? Again, the theory falls apart once we give it a little inspection.
CNN looks ridiculously centrist next to Fox, if you want to talk about regressive media. Yes’ that’s regressive media as compared to progressive media, that in my estimation would be better terminology. It shouldn’t be defined so narrowly as liberal and conservative media and linked to something so internal as politics, it should be applied to the external and general times and be reflective of progression. Unfortunately conservative media will never be progressive by definition.
A Maverick American liberalism in a Western and Southern bent… envisioned, controlled, and native to a Multimillionaire Cincinnattian American.
I’ve gotta be patriotic here and go with my gut.
Personally I blame America’s decline on very dangerous Australian Political radicals, as well as the last 8 years.
I’ve always thought it was a long-term, dogged, quiet campaign to slowly define liberalism further and further rightwards, so that eventually people won’t even be able to conceive of truly liberal values. Anything approaching them will simply be off the table for meaningful debate.
The media, and particularly the news media, is no longer investigative and doing a public service. They are entertaining an audience to hold them through paid advertising. Cross-Fire as critiqued by Jon Stewart was exemplary of the problem: false conflict presented as news and analysis. The missing white woman of the month. Nancy Grace.
The NewsHour and The Daily Show are the only TV media news shows I can tolerate. I get most of my international news from the internet and read a bunch of daily papers on the internet.
Are any of these consistently liberal? Only The Daily Show. The rest are very far to the right of where the middle of the road was 30 years ago. And Fox is even further to the right.
First of all, I would guess that about 98% of all talk radio shows are screaming right-wing idiots spewing outright lies and innuendo to their equally rabid listeners. So if you want to bitch about liberal media, I guess you can strike “radio” from the list of media outlets.
Fox Television doesn’t even pretend to be anything but a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. Obama could single-handedly discover a cure for cancer and they would open the news with, “Obama Once Again Fails To Help People With Diabetes!”
Actually, I think the so-called “liberal media” is far too kind to the Republicans. Palin has a resume thin enough to use as a sushi wrap, but instead of slamming her for being woefully incompetent, they played the game and just glossed over the fact until finally the polls showed that most Americans have figured it out for themselves.
Also, the so-called liberal media constantly allows the Republicans to belch irrelevant tidbits as if they were big issues and nobody calls them on it. Just once I would like to see the media look at some of these comments and say, “McCain seems to be more concerned about an aging 70’s radical than the economy right now.”
CNN and MSNBC always have at least two talking heads - one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans whenever they discuss political issues. They also give equal time for both to speak. It is not their fault that the Republicans talking heads seem to be tap dancing around real issues and piously resorting to turning the conversation back to some scandal du jour. With all the crap going on in the world, how the hell did “lipstick on pigs” remain a news story for over a week?! Easy. The Republicans manipulated the press into believing it was newsworthy.
I disagree. I think the standard narrative is: “I make my decisions by carefully considering the facts as laid out by informative, non–biased journalists. You fucking sheep get manipulated into forwarding the liberal agenda because you’re all brainwashed by THE MEDIA!!!”
It is one of those malformed adjectives or whatever the hell that Pit thread was about.
Actually, the standard narrative is “the mainstream media in the US, for the most part, assumes that the liberal point of view is the norm, and that anyone who does not share that is wrong or extreme. Therefore, they tend to slant their coverage, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes not.”
The standard narrative on the other side is, “none of the mainstream media in the US are biased, except FoxNews”.
Put me down for “All of the mainstream media are superficial, unquestioning and tailored toward people with microsecond attention spans, except for FoxNews who are all of the above AND acting as WH mouthpiece.” Seriously, the last time I watched CNN the segments were so choppy and devoid of any content that I 1) learned nothing of use and 2) developed epilepsy.
In general, liberal in the MSM means pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-Democrat, pro-big government, and so forth. The alternative would be conservative, or neutral (or, I suppose, libertarian or socialist or something).
Do you have a different definition of liberal?
I am not sure what you are getting at here.
I suppose the Halperin memo is a good example of the sort of thing I mean. “Both sides lie, but if we call both sides on it, Bush will win, so we can’t do that.” That;s what I mean by taking a liberal point of view.
A conservative point of view would be to say something like “lies and distortions are more central to Kerry’s campaign, so we need to cover those more than the other side’s.” A neutral point of view would be to cover both sides equally, and refute those lies (that were actually shown to be factually incorrect) and let the chips fall where they may.
I think the top Fox News story on November 5th will be: "McCain 1st runner -up, Obama comes in next to last"
I was going to start a thread on this, watch Fox News, it is really funny at this point. Last night they were obsessing over the fact that Pennsylvanians will be voting for Obama in spite of the “bible and guns” comment months ago…or I should say they were insisting that this comment would make PA go for MCCain in spite of evidence otherwise, citing “secret polls” that no one but Fox knew about.
I was saying to myself…the problem with this rational is… say you have 3 complete and total gun and Bible Bubbas. They would each hear that comment and laugh, saying…Boy, that guy has my friend Bubba and my other friend Bubba down pat…but they don’t see themselves as fitting the stereotype.