What is behind the recent rise of the liberal media

Great Debates
1

By liberal media, I mean the real liberal media (PBS, MSNBC, air america, KOS, etc). I don’t mean ‘everything except fox news and talk radio’ (aka all non-conservative media outlets) which most people mean when they use the term.

In the last 10 years it seems liberals have gone from having pretty much no media outlets to having a very strong, interconnected network of them.

Several popular blogs have come up including DU and KOS

MSNBC has moved to the left, they have a 3 hour block of TV in primetime (Olbermann, Maddow, Ed Schultz) promoting liberal views

PBS has (has one fewer now that moyers is gone) several liberal perspective shows

Air america tried to develop national progressive radio starting in 2004, but failed.

Various writers have come out in the last 10 years promoting liberal POVs and selling bestselling books as well as popular newspaper columns and websites (Thomas Frank, Paul Krugman, David Brock, the NYT opinion page)

Comedy central has a couple of liberal shows. That may not sound important, but using ridicule is extremely effective at undercutting your opposition.

There are probably many more examples.

Because liberal media outlets promote viewpoints that are anathema to the economic interests of wealthy individuals and wealthy corporations, they should have trouble getting funding. This has always been my understanding of why the media leans conservative. Wealthy individuals and corporations are not going to fund and buy airtime in networks that promote estate taxes, corporate taxes, corporate regulation, progressive income taxes, etc and that encourage people to vote for politicians who support those agendas.

But lately it seems liberal media has gotten funding. Where have they gotten funding from? Groups like the democracy alliance have formed knowing they are voting against their economic interests (they are a group of millionaire & billionaire liberals trying to create grassroots liberal political machines). But they came late in the game. Is the whole thing really funded by a small group of wealthy liberals (the clintons, Soros, the democracy alliance, etc)? Or is it that corporations want to invest because they want to advertise to a certain audience who can be reached through liberal media outlets (younger people, as an example).

Was the whole thing an opposition to Bush, his policies and a response to the closeness of the 2000/2004 election?

2

Media gets funding for whatever gets viewers, regardless of point of view. My guess is some outlets saw the successes of the FOX News model and attempted to copy. If 20% of the population agrees with a point of view, that seems like a valuable audience to go after.

3

You must be a young whippersnapper.

The mainstream TV media has been slanted liberal since forever. Your redefinition of “liberal” in the 1st sentence of your post doesn’t change that.

Gilligan’s Island from the 1960s is a liberal show. So is the The Honeymooners – a populist blue collar show from 1950s. So is virtually every other show for the masses – except for Bible sermon shows on Sunday mornings.

You can also view archive episodes of CBS 60-minutes from 50 years ago and see the slant to the left.

4

Nonsense. It’s all right wing; corporate media dedicated to serving corporate interests. It’s never been liberal.

5

Yes, you’ve tried to emphasize before that even an ideology of Sweden’s flavor is too “right wing” for you.

Setting aside Der Trihs impossibly hardcore version of “liberal”, the majority of shows on TV and movies in theaters are liberal. Here’s a blurb about Sherwood Schwartz, the creator of both Gilligan’s Island and Brady Bunch.

*Creator Sherwood Schwartz said that he dreamed up the idea of the show because he wanted the castaways to represent a microcosm of society and he wanted to show how they worked together to help each other when in trouble.
*
He “wanted to show how they worked together to help each other when in trouble” … yeah sure, that’s your typical right wing mantra, isn’t it? (Nope.) It’s not just that one quote. Research his bio. He’s a left wing guy. So are most folks in Hollywood.

I’ve quoted you again to address your perception differently. If we look at the ownership of mainstream media, then yes, many are conservative and work in concert with corporate interests. However, the product they put out for public consumption is liberal through and through. Maybe that’s your confusion.

Wesley Clark’s OP was talking about the product consumers feed on such as MSNBC. He was not talking about the ownership interests of MSNBC and what their agenda is (left or right.) Read the OP again.

6

Come on. I am as liberal as they come, but the examples the OP gave (aside from PBS) are clearly liberal news outlets.

7

Welll . . . MSNBC is not the left-liberal analogue of Fox News; there is no such animal in America. Nor are there any LW analogues of the Washington Times, the WSJ, or Rush Limbaugh. The really liberal media are comparatively marginal outlets like Pacifica Radio, Democracy Now!, The Nation magazine.

8

I do not mean to say MSNBC is the equivalent of FOX News. I am saying they learned from FOX News that heavily opinionated gossip sells more than straight up news. And they tried as hard as they could to fill their lineup with that. Their approach is from a liberal viewpoint. Not a Marxist/far left/whatever Limbaugh buzzword viewpoint, but liberal nonetheless. Same goes for Kos and Air America.

9

Perhaps you could cite specific facts about the show itself which support your view. ‘Cuz I’m havin’ a real hard time picturing Gilligan’s Island as commiesymp agitprop.

10

The show brings together people from all classes (rich Mr Howell and modest Mary Ann farm girl, etc) and shows how everyone is valuable and contributes to the island’s mini utopia.

Mr Schwartz himself already cited the facts about that show.

I didn’t say the show is a call to arms to build a Stalinist regime.

11

Surprising nobody, this thread immediately turns into a “The media is liberal!” “No, it’s conservative!” back-and-forth. I think we can ignore the question whether CBS, ABC, and formerly NBC are liberal or conservative — they clearly are/were very different beasts than MSNBC, Air America, etc. I suspect that the development of these new beasts really needn’t be explained beyond “There was a space in the market. They filled it.”

Similarly, the question of whether Hollywood is liberal has nothing to do with the question of whether news organizations are liberal.

Finally, I agree with kingbighair —PBS really doesn’t belong in the same category as the others. At all. Among other things, Frontline has no equivalent elsewhere (domestically, I mean), and The News Hour and The McLaughlin Group are far quite even-handed.

12

I’m sorry. The idea that people work together to help each other when in trouble is a liberal idea?

I’m flummoxed. How are conservatives supposed to respond when people are in trouble? Tell them to bugger off?

I realise that “liberal” is used in a fairly unusual sense in US political discourse, but help me out here. Do US posters think that people working together when in trouble is a distinctively “liberal” idea?

13

Working togeather is a left-wing value? I mean, even if it is, a group of castaway Republicans stuck on an island that immedietly resort to tribal warfare and cannibalism isn’t really going to make a great comedy.

People that try and see every single bit of pop culture through the lens of contemporary politics are silly.

ETA: As to the OP, I don’t really think there’s been a huge upswing in the amount of media outlets catering to liberals. There were some before and there are some now. But what new ones there are (the Daily Show, MSNBC, etc) probably owe the anger with the Bush Administration for much of their success. Just as Limbaugh and FOX owe a great deal to the Clinton Admin.

14

No of course not. People helping each other is a universal idea. I agree.

It’s the concocted premise of the show (force the proletariat and the bourgeoisie into the same space) so that it creates a vehicle for helping each other is the component idea that’s liberal.

15

No they don’t. In fact, it might just as easily be seen as a conservative ideal, because the castaways volunteered thrir services to the common good instead of distributing benefits through a public apparatus controlled by democratic-republican government.

16

And people that view the artifacts of pop culture as completely value neutral are misinformed.

17

Public education is liberal, the fire dept is liberal, women voting is liberal. not lynching black people is liberal, the minimum wage is liberal, workers comp is liberal, not allowing companies to pollute the water is liberal, inspecting meat is liberal, the County Extension system is liberal, not making kids pray in school with prayers from a religion that is not their own is liberal, funding DARPA to create the internet was liberal, fucking progress is liberal.

18

And it’s not like Gilligan seized Missy’s jewels and gave them to Mary Ann.

19

Hey, at least we have someone here embracing liberal as a badge of honor instead of ducking it. :slight_smile:

I don’t know why so many folks sidestep the term. It’s not a derogatory label.

20

It’s not that people are ducking the label. It’s the fact that if the mainstream media mean to be liberal then they’re doing a bloody poor job of it.