The 'Liberal Media' Bogon This was begun as a comment to a friend's journal,
but it's something I'd been meaning to write something about
for a while, so I'm reposting it in my own. The trigger was
yet another gripe impugning the "liberal media", as though
the existence thereof were completely obvious.
"Liberal media"? What liberal media? There's,
uh, Alternet, Air America, and maybe various City
Paper franchises? A few newspapers targeted to the
TBGL[1] community? Hardly major players; barely enough to
notice when describing the industry as a whole.
Some reporters lean liberal. Many owners lean
conservative (more specifically, Republican). Some owners
lean toward whoever is in power at the moment if they're
afraid of pissing them off or think they can suck up --
especially if a bill regarding media consolidation is in
front of Congress -- or the opposition if they think the
group in power is being mean to them. Even most reporters
are conservative by any standard except our peculiar
American one.
The net result is that, with the exception of the few
outliers -- the conservative CNN, FOX, and much of
talk-radio, and the previously mentioned liberal bit-players
-- most media organs tilt slightly 'conservative' in the
sense of preferring the status quo, and lean heavily toward
spinning any story to make it look more dramatic, more
controversial, in order to attract viewers. The media don't
want an Obama or McCain landslide; they want nervous
audiences glued to their televisions awaiting the outcome of
a close race, and if it goes into overtime, so much the
better. They don't even really want to tell us about issues
and do fact-checking, because they fear we'll get bored and
tune out. They want anything they can spin as "oooh, did he
really just go there?", or that they can portray as
shocking, or that raises more questions than it answers.
Personality clashes work well for the media; much more so
than issues, because if they provide useful,
factual information about The Issues, they're going to piss
somebody off, and the folks they piss off might not look at
as many advertisements. It's safer to make all the
arguments about issues look like stories about the
argument, and most of all about the people arguing,
instead of about the issues. (Note also that when
someone does cover an issue in depth, they often get accused
of "obvious liberal bias" whether the reporting was fair and
accurate or not.) A modern reporter can't reveal whom sie
knows is lying, sie only tells us what each side has said
and acts as though each is equally credible.
There is no "liberal media" to any meaningful degree.
When The Media as a whole help the liberal agenda, it's
because the so-called liberals[2] happened to be more
sucessful at manipulating the media that
week, or because the conservatives seemed to be getting
too far ahead and the media needed to make the race closer
to make it more exciting. If you take CNN, FOX, and the AM
radio blitherers out of the picture, the same can pretty
much be said from the opposite point of view as well. (But
CNN and FOX are big enough players that I dare say they do
tip the balance.) Remember that these are the media who
routinely read administration press releases unchallenged,
gave Bush a free pass on the excuses for going into Iraq
until it was too late, were all over the Lewinski affair
("controversy! drama! read us!"), and can't be arsed to
cover frightening civil rights violations at the RNC
even when members of the media were being arrested
because they're too chickenshit to rock the boat that much.
(Gotta keep the audience scared, angry, or titillated, but
not so angry that they want to fight instead of buy stuff.)
Liberal? Hah! But of course they're going to go after
Palin -- she's a mostly-unknown -- fresh meat! -- and if
they can find Interesting Scandals And Controversies, that
sells advertising. If she pumps more life into the
McCain campaign -- even if the media have to help -- that
too sells advertising. If they can build her up and tear
her down at the same time, without the audience catching on
and leaving in cynical disgust, that'll sell lots and
lots of advertising.
Some (many? maybe; I dunno) reporters want Obama in the
White House. Many media-owners want McCain in the White
House. Other than the most egregious couple of networks,
neither of those opinions is driving reporting. "Pump up
the drama so we can sell readers/viewers eyeballs to the
advertisers" is what drives the reporting. Individual
members of the media -- and I mean individual employees,
executives, and stockholders, not individual corporations --
may be cheering for Obama or McCain, but as a complete
organisms, most media outlets aren't worrying about whom
they help win; they're worrying about whether they attract
viewers/readers with tittilation and controversy, or go too
far and push viewers away in disgust. The media just want
us to keep watching the game (and the commercials) all the
way to the final buzzer, and if it goes into overtime, so
much the better.
When anybody uses the phrase "liberal media"
non-ironically, it makes them sound like a whiner and a
fool, or a paranoid reactionary. Okay, most people
who use the phrase have simply fallen for the myth after
hearing the phrase repeated fourteen thousand times too
many, but to anybody seeing clearly, using the phrase makes
the speaker sound so very partisan as to be beyond
reasonable conversation.
Note also that Obamaphiles who think the media are on the
correct side for a change and take hope from that, are
making the same mistake from a less paranoid angle. When
propping up McCain sells more commercials, the media will
prop up McCain; when propping up Obama does, they'll prop up
Obama; and when homing in on the phrase that can be used to
start a fresh argument, buried in the middle of a reasonable
paragraph with reasonable context, the media will pluck that
phrase regardless of which candidate uttered it. Note how
easily the media were manipulated into making the news all
about Palin ("ooh, shiny new person most of the audience
wants to learn more about!") and forgetting everything worth
examining in more detail from the Democratic convention, and
my comment above about how if they can build Palin up and
tear her down at the same time, they win twice. Regardless
of what any individual reporter, analyst, editor, camera
operator, or owner would prefer, "The Media" are not on
Obama's side, nor on McCain's side. They're on the
"sell more advertising" side.
Note that this means that the press have, to a large
extent, abdicated their cultural responsibility, their
historic role in preserving democracy by shining light into
the corners and creatining/maintaining an informed voting
population. In the long run, will this sell more ads by
avoiding pissing off portions of the audience, or sell fewer
ads by having disappointed knowledge-seekers flie to the
blogosphere? I'm not sure, but I can see which way most of
the media appear to be betting currently.
Finally, because the entry this was started as a reply to
had to do with accusations of media sexism: As to whether
the media are sexist, well they're going to have
some pretty big blind spots there, and the industry as a
whole does not have a good track record when it comes to
critical self-evaluation on such things. Expect much of the
media to get all defensive about the complaint, rather than
trying to police and correct sexism within itself. But also
note that sexism ... is not exactly a liberal value, is
it?
[1] Also known as GBLT, LGBT, LBGTQ,
etc.
[2] Note that much of the rest of the
democratically-governed world describes our parties as
"conservative" and "ultra-conservative". Considering that
our nation was founded on liberal principles, how we got
this far to the right is a bit of a
head-scratcher.