FREEDOM & JUSTICE

Mainstream Media Too “Liberal”? By Josh Oakley THE LIBERAL MEDIA . . . NOT Many pundits, officials, and private citizens say the mainstream media in this country is too “liberal,” but in 2005 this claim is a myth--just as it was in 1996 and just as it will be in the future. Not only do a majority of news commentators profess a personal ideology that runs from centrist to conservative, but the issues they choose to discuss, and the way those issues are discussed, have shifted to the right over the past twenty years--mainly because of a handful of corporations who, as an oligopoly, own America's national media outlets (mainstream and otherwise) THE MEDIA'S RIGHT TURN There is a fundamental conflict of interest that promotes censorship of stories that might interest the average American. For example, most people on either side of the political fence today realize that Rupert Murdoch's brainchild of a news network, FOX NEWS, is part of a worldwide effort of acquisition and takeover of all forms of media. FOX NEWS is biased toward a conservative agenda and gives its services for free to the big businesses that support it with advertising twenty-four hours a day. Each of the handful of major media corporations owning news outlets in this country has extremely powerful clients, advertisers, stock holders, and personal lobbying groups fueled by millions of dollars donated by other corporations. In addition, right-wing think tanks (such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation) work tirelessly with Congress and state legislatures to promote deregulation of telecommunications under the guise of “increased competition,” “higher quality programming,” and “capitalism.” THREE BLIND MICE (ABC, CBS, NBC) Just as you do not get a “fair and unbalanced” approach to “liberals” on FOX NEWS, you do not get a “fair and unbalanced” approach to progressive social values on the other major news networks, either. Some of the people who see the inherent conservative bias of FOX NEWS realize what Ben Bagdikian saw: “During these crucial years the American economy was undergoing an astonishing phenomenon that the mainstream news left largely unreported or actually glamorized in its infrequent references: the largest transfer of the national wealth in American history from a majority of the population to a small percentage of the country's wealthiest families” [Preface to sixth edition of The Media Monopoly, 2000]. But very few people--and not one conservative worth his weight in GOP- or Libertarian-issued talking points--mentions that the so-called liberal mainstream national media coverage has been drifting towards the right for the past twenty years. Calling NBC (owned by General Electric) a “liberal”-leaning station is like calling Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reily paragons of virtue and open mindedness. No matter how much General Electric tries to clean up its image by polling industry insiders for “most trusted corporation” awards, it is a well-known supporter of nuclear weapons and a staunchly conservative national defense contractor that was accused of cutting light bulb lives by 1/3 during the Great Depression and of helping Nazi Germany to manufacture weapons during World War II. As the conservative parent of NBC, General Electric enjoys the peculiar advantage of being a staunchly conservative corporation in control of what once was a liberal-leaning television network--at one time the most trusted network of them all (back when liberal wasn't a dirty word). Try finding that story on ABC, CBS, or NBC headline news; all three stations are much too busy covering stories that please their corporate masters. THE “RIGHT-WING” STUFF We can see a surprising corollary between corporations that advertise on national news media, “not-for-profit” conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, and right wing Libertarian think tanks such as the Cato Institute. The Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute are two of the most-quoted right wing think tanks on FOX NEWS, GOP “fact sheets,” and yes, even ABC, CBS, and NBC. Rupert Murdoch's media empire--the President's personal favorite channel FOX NEWS--and all of their affiliated talk radio hosts simply do a much better job, for free, of promoting big business and the conservative agenda than ABC, CBS, and NBC. VIEWPOINTS FOR HIRE Armstrong Williams, our current President's favorite paid “news” commentator, duped everyone in the mainstream media. Even CNN, which usually reports the news instead of editorializing, suffered the insights of Armstrong Williams on key issues in the Bush re-election campaign. The fact that this man might have helped hide the radical right's agenda of wealth redistribution from the poorest to the wealthiest Americans is a sobering thought. I can only hope spiritual and political leaders continue to come together to denounce and oppose right-wing-funded propaganda at all levels of the media--especially when such propaganda hides under the guise of family values. THE NEWS -- NOT “LIBERAL,” JUST LAME I think if there really were a “liberal media,” we would recognize it as soon as we saw it. But we are living in an age of backlash against the social revolutions of the 1950's and 1960's. In a media oligarchy in which stories about corporate malfeasance, costing the American people their very right to a free and open press, get less exposure than Britney Spears telling Tucker Carlson on CNN to trust every word President Bush says, we must ask ourselves: Are liberal media any worse than what we have now? Do we really think the conservative media empires owned by a small corporate oligarchy will report the news from any position other than one promoting the radical right and conservative agenda? Even the famed bastion of liberal power, NBC, is nothing more than a token opposition to the forces of globalization, privatization, and centralization of the corporations to which the mainstream media owes its undying loyalty. RELATED BOOKS: Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News. Basic Books, 2003. David Brock, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. Crown, 2004. Joe Conason, Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth. Thomas Dunne Books, 2003. Al Franken, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Dutton Adult, 2003. RELATED DVD: “Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.” The Disinformation Company, 2004. A CONTRARY VIEW: L. Brent Bozell, Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media. Crown Forum, 2004. Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News. Perennial, 2003.