"Working the Ref" The "Liberal" Media Myth Exposed

[Joanne98]

The media do not have a liberal bias. Conservatives even admit it, when they're being honest.

The Most Biased Name in News, Seth Ackerman, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, August 2001

“Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of ‘liberal bias’ in the media were part of ‘a strategy’ (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: ‘If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is “work the refs.” Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time.’”

The Liberal Media, RIP, Eric Alterman, The Nation, March 13, 2000

“Bill Kristol, perhaps the most honest and intelligent conservative in Washington (excluding, of course, that funny, friendly, charming McCain fellow). ‘The press isn't quite as biased and liberal. They're actually conservative sometimes,’ Kristol said recently on CNN. If Chris missed that one, he might have come across a similar admission by Kristol offered up in the spring of 1995. ‘I admit it,’ Kristol told The New Yorker. ‘The whole idea of the 'liberal media' was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.’”

Spinning Populism In American News Media, Norman Solomon, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, undated

“‘The truth is, I've gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive,’ Buchanan acknowledged in March 1996. He added: ‘I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage -- all we could have asked.’”

The Nation

What Liberal Media?

by Eric Alterman

Conservatives are extremely well represented in every facet of the media. The correlative point is that even the genuine liberal media are not so liberal. And they are no match--either in size, ferocity or commitment--for the massive conservative media structure that, more than ever, determines the shape and scope of our political agenda.

In a careful 1999 study published in the academic journal Communications Research, four scholars examined the use of the "liberal media" argument and discovered a fourfold increase in the number of Americans telling pollsters that they discerned a liberal bias in their news. But a review of the media's actual ideological content, collected and coded over a twelve-year period, offered no corroboration whatever for this view. The obvious conclusion: News consumers were responding to "increasing news coverage of liberal bias media claims, which have been increasingly emanating from Republican Party candidates and officials."

The right is working the refs. And it's working. Much of the public believes a useful but unsupportable myth about the so-called liberal media, and the media themselves have been cowed by conservatives into repeating their nonsensical nostrums virtually nonstop...

Continued>>>
http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/LiberalMedia.htm

[AndyTiedye]

1. "Cowed by Conservatives" or "Ordered by the Owners"?

[tanyev]

2. "The right is working the refs."

Yep. Phil Gramm was almost right. We're not a nation of whiners, but they are a party of whiners.