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Edited on Wed Aug-05-09 06:10 PM by Writer
Yes, there are bad journalists out there, and yes, there are news organizations that have abandoned independence to promote a specific political viewpoint, but this canard that they all work in unison with a committed purpose of destroying our ideological goals is as unfounded, and as downright irrational, as claiming that all the media are "liberal."
Many Democrats complain that NBC Universal and its cable news nets - CNBC and MSNBC - are at the behest of corporate parent GE, and yet MSNBC gives voice to Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz. Why? They know there's a strong liberal audience out there. US.
A recent UCLA study (2005) looking at political skews of various newspapers demonstrates that, for the most part, the media do skew slightly left, but to broad brush even a single newspaper with a political tone can sometimes be problematic. For example, this same study found that, while the Wall Street Journal's editorial page demonstrates a strong conservative bias, the news sections display either a center or center-left skew. Now how can that be when our assumption is that they're all "conservative?"
Even Bush-backer Clear Channel Communications - the largest radio owner in the nation based in San Antonio, TX - began opening up some of their AM stations to Air America Radio during AAR's nascent days. In fact, AAR's broad reach is likely due to Clear Channel's continued support of AAR content. Why? Like MSNBC, they know there's a strong liberal audience out there. US.
Why do we continue with these tropes while overlooking these inconvenient facts? I think it's because it's so much easier for us to attack the messenger than to accept that, sometimes, the news doesn't always play into our ideological favor. Yes, corporate ownership of news media has its problems - as the three examples above demonstrate - because under such ownership marketing displaces public service. However this committed drive to broad brush and characterize all media in such a cynical political context destroys any means of REAL media reform.
If you haven't yet, I highly recommend you get a copy of Craig Crawford's "Attack the Messenger." In that, he details how politicians over the 20th Century have expertly convinced us to disbelieve the messages we're hearing so that we concentrate instead on politicians' rhetoric. Think tanks in Washington have committed many years, dollars, and research to finding ways to make sure that we focus on the messenger and not the message - that we blame not the information, and the bad politics behind it, but instead blame the media.
By believing that all the media are conservative, what good are you doing the liberal cause? The only answer is to believe those few bits of media that are purportedly "trustworthy" - which are also likely forms that themselves are slanted in our direction. Are you truly informing yourself in that case? No.
So what's the answer? We need to strive for nonprofit news media. The problem is that, in the United States, the media have always been in the private sphere because constitutionally we oppose the idea of the government being in charge of information. We will have to find ways to advocate - LEGALLY - to find a means of establishing more public media without tripping First Amendment challenges. We do free speech differently here than they do in Western Europe - legal precedent does not permit the government to step in on behalf of "human interest." We need to press for both legal and congressional action (all of which would likely end up in the Supreme Court) to establish more space in the public sphere for news media. That's REAL media reform, not this partisan canard that I keep reading on political sites.
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