Let's hear no more about the liberal media

[gonzomax]

According to the story, Palin started out with very positive coverage. If she just did not open her mouth and ruin it .

[Revenant_Threshold]

@ITR_champion

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.

Actually, generally the claim is that the mainstream media is liberally biased. Not all media. And while there are certainly plentiful media outlets of every stripe, the mainstream media is, well, mainstream. It’s more obvious, you generally throughout a day will see something of it, and quite a lot of people probably do get most of their news from it. So in fact the theory only falls on its face when you misinterpret the theory as you have done here.

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.

Nonsense. You don’t have to be an idiot to be manipulated. If all you see every day are suggestions one way, repeated, little reminders that things work a certain way, it’s going to worm its way into the smartest person’s skull. And it’s probably reasonable to point out that quite a few conservatives have said they believe there’s a liberal bias, which would suggest wiseness on their part anyway (if they’re right). And it isn’t necessarily an “abandoning of conservative principles”, but rather a suggested phrasing of news so that conservatives (or indeed anyone) don’t realise that there’s a potential question of principles at all. Plus, as with the current Presidential election, a liberal bias could mean an emphasis on good things about Obama and bad about McCain (and/or their running mates) skewing voters without actually touching on liberal/conservative issues at all.

I’m going to have to agree with** John Mace** that this is a false dichotomy; but i’d add that it’s not even a false dichotomy that works. A false false dichotomy?