Is there any way to suggest discrepancies or fallacies in the media without sounding like a conspiracy theorist? I hope I don't commit myself to endless profiling and labeling with this post, but honestly, I think something needs to be done about mass media in the United States. Let me preface this by saying that the situation is probably worse in just about every other country, so no complaint about that. I just think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard, and we have no one to blame for the current situation but ourselves.
Mass media contains a shameless liberal bias. There, I said it. Now, you probably all immediately think I'm a gun-toting, warmongering, racist, backwoods Republican, but in case you missed it, I voted for Obama. I belong to neither party. And I don't believe the media is any sort of grand conspiracy. In fact, I very much agree with the sentiment of Bozell and Baker: "though bias in the media exists, it is rarely a conscious attempt to distort the news. It stems from the fact that most members of the media elite have little contact with conservatives and make little effort to understand the conservative viewpoint. Their friends are liberals, what they read and hear is written by liberals." Such a minor oversight in this line of business, unfortunately, has broad, sweeping effects. Where can we turn for balanced truth? According to a study done by two university professors in 2004, 18 out of the top 20 mass media outlets in America had a significant leftward lean. Now, obviously it's hard to know about the objectivity of any such study, but please check it out here and see for yourself. The stats are toward the bottom. Anyway, it's not the fact that it's liberal that scares me. Not in the least. It's the fact that it's nearly a monopoly. Obviously every imperfect newspaper or magazine or news network run by imperfect people is going to produce bias of some sort, but what's dangerous is the power they possess to completely alter the thinking of unwitting citizens, simply by shifting the labels of "right," "left," and "center."
Fox News is considered "conservative media" and is generally regarded as unprofessional, but who's labeling it that way? According to the aforementioned study, Fox is in fact one of the two of 20 that lean right, but also, it's statistically closer to the so-called center than CBS, NBC, and ABC. Fox is called conservative media, but liberal media is known simply as national media. Newsweek has a department called "Conventional Wisdom." Well, that sounds like it must be balanced, right? Well done, rhetoric. This past weekend, I read through the last four issues of Newsweek, and found in each edition of "CW" deifying, unstinting praise for the president and anyone aligned with him. and continual bashing on all things right. That's nothing new. It's been that way in every single issue I've read. The notable quotes page from an issue this past month included a very kind apology from President Obama for his Special Olympics slip-up on the Tonight Show--an honest flub. Still, they printed the apology, not the quote itself. I'm no advocate of mudslinging, but the quote page during the Bush administration was a constant litany of examples of him screwing up here and there and everywhere. Can you imagine what would have happen if Bush would have made that remark instead of Obama?
I could go on with plenty more examples, but there's no point. Doing so makes me look like...well, something bad. Media bias an untouchable topic, unfortunately, which makes for pretty good job security for those involved. It's just a shame that we have to deal with the fact that media is a business, and liberal politics is what sells. Successful journalists are those who connect with people. But the GOP is the party of personal responsibility, and who wants to hear that? It's far easier to agree with the policies of a party reliant on the mantra of collective responsibility, and therefore have someone else to blame our problems on. If we don't take enough personal interest in discovering the truth, maybe this is exactly what we deserve. I just wish there was a way for people to get the unbiased, unmitigated truth when they want it, whatever it may be. Then, they could actually understand the notion of thinking for themselves, (which notion, I might add, has been completely commandeered by the liberal left as well--nice job with that one).
So there's my rant for today. I'm sorry if I've lost some respect now. Maybe I read too many dystopian novels. Again, I have absolutely nothing against the intellectual left. I just don't like it being sneakily forced upon me. Liberals should understand that tendency. They're not supposed to like it either.
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I am enlightened, but I chose to disregard my new knowledge and watch Entertainment News. I am what is really wrong with America. Good thing I have you to help me out. :-D
Here's my opinion, and all this aside from Fox:
Most news workers are liberal.
Many news stories slant right, or just slant stupid, on health care and tax policy, and wars.
most news stories slant left on social issues and most other issues besides health care and tax policy.
Most news GAPS, as in, the stuff that doesn't show up, suggests a conservative/corporate agenda. This makes sense since all the news agencies are owned by huge corporations who profit from things like tax cuts for corporations and definitely wars.
All in all, the problem in identifying left and right news sources is that there is no such thing as left or right, given that the political spectrum is not a two dimensional line. If I had all control of a news source, and felt no need to attempt to be objective, I'd be interpreted as very far left on tax policy, left on "free trade", socialist on health care, moderately left on big businesses, center on small business, right on gun policy.... so obviously left most of the time. But when I have an article critiquing gun restrictions because I think they are stupid, I might look like I'm on the right.
I think CNN is a good example of a news organization that I'd argue is a corporate shill when people think they are lefties. The anchors are all probably liberals, and yet, they never actually explore leftist tax policies because that would be highly detrimental to Time/Warner.
This is all opinion.
That's the other thing, I prefer hard-leaning news sources, like daily kos (really liberal blog) because I know what I am getting and who I'm getting it from. Since unbiased might be something impossible to find, I'd prefer to have biases revealed up front.
At the risk of oversimplifying everything, I agree. I suspect that a number of journalists feel a need to swing more visible personal bias (esp. on social issues) to the left in order to counter their agency's corporate interests. But you're absolutely right--the spectrum's far from linear, and such issues are far from clear-cut, despite the way they are often painted. In my opinion, this polarization and oversimplification of politics by the media is in fact the greatest crime of all.
I do wish there was a way to get such biases in mainstream media out in the open right up front, or at least alert people to differing opinions, just so audiences don't assume issues to be so black and white. That's precisely what causes people to lapse in their thinking and therefore accept whatever is fed to them.
Most of our political and ideological discrepancies such as these are products not of coercion, but of basic psycho-emotional human tendencies. We want the quick answer, the easy explanation, the clear-cut enemy, like in 1984. Of course, if we were actually able to overcome such lazy tendencies and had the capacity to take in the entire scope of the issues that face us as a nation and a human race, there probably wouldn't be as much of a need for so many political analysis news programs, or so many different news outlets.
I guess that begs the question as to precisely what aim mass media intentionally dumbs things down for us.
Of course, this is all uninformed observation and speculation. I'm an English major, as much as I'd like to pretend poli sci also.
I think we have this pretty well nailed down. The entire political-media argument summed up in about 600 words between us.
Yeah, I'm glad we got that figured out.
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