nimh wrote:
Quote:A particularly strong (and IMO, pernicious) effect has been had by the targeted discrediting of mainstream journalism. A real or perceived bias in the standard news media has triggered (or been used to create) a parallel, conservative news space. The problem here IMO is not, per se, that there is a news station with a far-right slant alongside to one with a [mainstream/liberal] slant. It's that those who rail against the "MSM" have targeted the notion of there being a mainstream journalism as well as the mainstream media themselves.
It's not just the NYT or the WaPo that was "exposed", but the entire concept of there being a kind of 'straight' news reporting, focused on narrating the basic facts and events of a story. All of that so-called straight news, say the conservative critics, all has a bias too, so whats the difference - and on Fox, the Washington Times or talk radio proceed to mix up opinions, facts, ideological fervour and news reporting in a kind of propagandistic brew.
This is a meaty subject area, and there are lots of particular angles where one could jump in and begin discussion. Let me pick this one above, but with a quick little bit preceding on something more general.
We make a mistake, or at least are in grave danger of making a mistake, if we begin with the uninspected assumption that this period of time is just like any other period of time in American politics - that there is nothing much going on in the present which we haven't seen before and therefore anyone getting excited is merely falling prey to some personal or group hysteria. A related or similar assumption, which prudence ought to tell us is potentially delusional and dangerously so, is that the American system of governance is so robust and so near perfection that nothing can go seriously wrong. One can find numerous quotes from earlier periods and other great nations which were based on similar assumptions. And then, the **** hit the fan. Anatol Lieven's recent book on American Nationalism is a bright and sobering look at such assumptions
interview here
What Nimh alludes to in the two paragraphs quoted above constitutes, for me, the most dangerous modern phenomenon in US politics...the creation of an alternate media system (TV, radio, internet, publishing, newspapers - along with the design/adaptation of PR/propaganda techniques, and the training and provision of individuals to work within this alternate media system). There are two seminal works on this new arrival to the US political scene, and both are required reading for anyone who wants to get a thorough understanding of just what is going on and how profound are the risks to democracy...Eric Alterman's "What Liberal Media?" and David Brock's "The Republican Noise Machine." (There are others as well, but these two books are both marked by top quality journalism). My signature down below quotes Gingrich on this strategy. Believe him.
This alternate media system has no intention of forwarding either an objective or a balanced commentary on the political scene. Their mission statements are often quite explicit on what it is they are going to pass on to you, the reader - conservative views, conservative ideology. And they have a justification/rationale for proceding in such a partisan ideological manner...they say (and some of their principals believe though many do not) that the Mainstream Media is overwhelmingly leftist in membership and ideological coverage/commentary. Thus, the conservative media are merely bringing about a balance.
When the MSM folks argue that they strive for objectivity and to be free of partisan bias, the response from this conservative structure (and those who support it...eg, tico here has voiced exactly what follows) is that both are equally biased but that the conservative media possesses superior integrity on the basis that
it admits it is biased while the MSM either merely deludes itself or tries to delude its readers.
Of course, if the goal of a commentary or a commentary medium is, at its most basic, to forward an ideology, then the qualities we look to in a free and independent media - accuracy and truthfulness and data/context as fully fleshed out as possible - fall junior to the forwarding of ideology and support of a single party.
So two questions become paramount...is the MSM markedly or profoundly or even measurably biased towards the Democratic party and to Democratic ideology? Alterman's book addresses exactly this question. For example, if the thesis of pervasive liberal bias in the MSM were true, then one could predict, for example, that the preponderance of newspaper editorials would come out in support of Democratic presidential candidates. Yet over the last thirty years, the converse has actually been the case. If such a bias were so, then Democrat politicians would be relatively free from criticism and attack, and yet Alterman's research on how, for example, Clinton's presidency was covered shows that assumption of bias which would let Democrats off the hook to be false. There's much else in the book, carefully researched and richly cited, and I can recommend few books more than this one.
The second question...is this alternate conservative media actually engaged in such a singular (and even covert) purpose. On this question, Brock's book is particularly valuable. All (or something very close to all) of the major examples of this new conservative media are originated by or funded by a small group of very wealthy extreme conservative activists. They've been busy at this task for three decades. They've been effective. Like Ailes at Fox, they aren't interested in educating the public, but rather in forwarding what is truly a form of propaganda.
Of course, such a media machine is less dangerous when the party it supports is out of power. But when its favored party is in power, then it operates exactly as Goering's media machine, or Pravada in the USSR, or China's media operates...as a state propaganda organ.
