Taking A Strategic Dive
May 27th, 2005 at 12:41 pm by Susie
Professor Alterman on how the right wing is “working the refs” :
On the cable news networks and Sunday shout fests where conservatives love to pull the “liberal bias” charge out of their bags when confronted with facts they don’t like, you would be hard pressed to find much liberal representation. It’s odd that of most prominent liberals writing in the nation’s newspapers and opinion magazines – E.J. Dionne, Robert Kuttner, Paul Krugman, Hendrik Hertzberg, Molly Ivins – not one has ever been given a regular slot on television, like say, Bob Novak, Fred Barnes, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Tony Blankley, Pat Buchanan, Bill O’Reilly or Brit Hume. Even PBS of late is populated by more journalists of the extreme right than of the moderate left. Indeed, one is hard pressed to come up with a single journalist or pundit appearing on television who is even remotely as far to the left of the mainstream spectrum as most of these conservatives are to the right. Indeed, if the current leadership of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets its way, PBS will one day be difficult to distinguish from Fox News or even Sinclair Broadcasting.
And yet, conservatives complain about the “liberal media” from within the confines of their own ideological media empires. In other words, the right is most defiantly working the refs. And it’s working. Much of the public believes the myth about the so-called liberal media, and the media themselves have been cowed by conservatives into repeating this lie virtually nonstop – lest they too be branded “liberal.” The pundits who are given so much air time and ink to cry foul about their lack of representation are the very same ones who are pulling this massive bait-and-switch on a public that apparently doesn’t see the irony of someone on television complaining that his side isn’t being heard.
I have this standard blurb I have saved when I have to deal with some knuckle dragger who insists on the media bias crutch:
You say the Liberal is Media?
Is that because Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Brit Hume, Tony Snow, G Gordon Liddy, Dr. Laura, Michael Medved, George Will, Ollie North, Robert Novak, Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingrahamn, Peggy Noonan, William Safire, Andrew Sullivan, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Bill Krystsol, David Frum, Brent Bozell, Charles Krauthammer, David Horowitz, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes,Fred Barnes, William Bennett, Lawrence Kudlow, Steve Forbes, Dennis Miller, Matt Drudge, Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, Clear Channel, the National Review, The Heritage Foundation, The Hoover Instutution, The Weekly Standard, The American Enterprise Institue, The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), The Cato Institute, The Club For Growth, The Federalist Society, NewsMax, TownHall, The NY Post, FreeRepublic.Com, any number of Christian Funamentalist ministers, and the NRA
TOLD YOU SO?
That’s great, Robert. I’m going to have to steal that one. It’s a lot to remember though. It would make for one humungous bumper sticker.
Corporate Media
Does this whole “White Male as Victim” thing go back to Norman Mailer and the White Negro thing of the Fifties?
Bravo to Robert, but Doug’s point is the most valid answer.
The prevailing and underlying issue is that of network ownership and the age old dictum that, in the final analysis, whoever writes the checks, either directly or indirectly, as in the case of advertisers, determines the policies and makes the rules?
It’s the Golden Rule, Tom: he who has the gold makes the rules…
My Fox watching Republican Uncle tried to explain it all to me at Thanksgiving. (he knows that Fox is Republican, “but at least they’re honest about it.” He told me that you could see that Katie Couric wasn’t impartial the day after the election. I don’t know where he got that from.
Way to go, Robert! I love it!
[...] shington Monthly. Well, technically it goes back to Suburban Gorilla and Eric Alterman, but I already have plenty of stuff to read. [...]
I think the media is EXTREMELY liberal and here’s why:
When’s the last time the media did a PRO-gun story? When’s the last time the media did a story of racism when it’s BLACK on white?
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the rest all TELL you they are conservative, whens the last time Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Katie Couric, etc. TOLD the audience about their liberal slant?
Foxnews appears republican only because they are NOT liberal slanted like the rest…Alan Colmes, Geraldo Rivera, Juan Williams, Greta Van Sustern, are not conservative republicans last time I checked, and hey Susan Estrich is always on Foxnewschannel.
For liberals to be taken seriously on any of these morning shows and weekend news shows they will have to come up with some kind of platform other than gay marraiges, gays in the military, forced bussing, raising taxes even though the government wastes tons of money every year, taking guns away from LAW ABIDING citizens, taking IN GOD WE TRUST off the dollar, burning the American flag, bashing Bush, etc.