I was reading this post at Echidne of the Snakes (the site which bans people for disagreeing with her). She says the article had been rejected, and I can see why (although I'm sure my reasoning is different from hers). For fun, let's dissect it.
The conservatives are right to worry about liberal media bias. I worry about it every day, because there just isn't enough of it. Political talk radio airs mostly right-wing anger and hatred, political debates on television match several fire-breathing Republican dragons against one centrist Democrat who had milquetoast for breakfast, and Fox News has taught us all that "Fair and Balanced" is just a trademark. A recent study by Media Matters for America confirmed my suspicion that "liberal" or "lefty" has a new meaning: centrist or neutral journalists are selected on panels to keep company with right-wingers just a tad to the left of Attila the Hun and this is viewed as balance. If you doubt this, tell me when someone from, say, the American Prospect last took part in these debates.
The complaints about liberal bias in the media are long-standing and well-documented. We can look at the coverage of Vietnam, for instance, when Walter Cronkite declared we had lost the war after the Tet Offensive. There are plenty of other examples: the far-more-critical reporting of Republican presidents than Democrat ones, the pro-liberal language used to frame debates such as abortion, the dismissal of conservative concerns by journalists as "fringe groups," the depicting of religious people as racists, bigots, and homophobes. The list could go on.
What Echidne dislikes is that, with the rise of cable television, more conservative voices have been heard. More conservatives get time to air their views in debates with liberals (whom she dislikes, I suppose, for not being rude enough). As ratings for shows with conservative viewpoints go up, the businesses which own these entities present more shows with conservative viewpoints. In other words, in the marketplace of ideas, where conservative ideas sell, businesses sell more conservative views. Perish the thought!
How did we get into this mess in the first place? It may have started when Ronald Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine in electronic media. This paved the way for the Limbaugh revolution in talk radio and for the Fox News in television as fairness and balance were no longer important.. At the same time, the conservatives launched their successful campaign of painting the media liberal.
Banishing the Fairness Doctrine was the right course of action in the 1980s. Why? Because forcing broadcasters to "balance" viewpoints created an unwieldy situation most radio and television stations were unwilling to tackle. It was much easier to put on gardening shows or car shows. With the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine, free speech on the airwaves flourished. People of all political stripes suddenly took to radio to produce talk shows of every persuasion. How do I know this? Because I have listened to talk radio since about 1985, and listened to shows of all stripes from Rush Limbaugh to Diane Rehm. I've listened to locally produced talk shows from the left and the right, including Bob Ray Sanders, Kevin McCarthy, and more recently Mike Gallagher and Mark Davis. The phenomenon that Echidne despises is the ability--and popularity--of discussing conservative viewpoints.
Like most liberals, Echidne beings attacking Fox News as not being "fair and balanced" because it says it is. Let's me point out the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Far more people still watch network television news than Fox.
"World News Tonight" averaged 7.3 million viewers and "Nightly News" had 7.2 million (both 5.1 rating, 11 share). The "CBS Evening News" averaged 6.5 million viewers (4.6, 10).
In prime time, CBS averaged 6.5 million viewers (4.4 rating, 8 share), NBC had 6 million (4.1, 8), Fox had 5.1 million (3.3, 6), ABC had 4.8 million (3.3, 6), UPN had 2 million (1.3, 3), the WB had 1.7 million (1.2, 2) and the i network had 590,000 (0.4, 1).
This is an inconvenient fact for the "Fox News is brainwashing America" bunch, but the truth is that Fox News averages at least a million less viewers than do the three major nightly newscasts. It's really difficult to paint Fox News as taking over America when it has fewer viewers than even the worst nightly newscast. But that doesn't stop moonbats like Echidne from trying.
So, back to her "abandoned article."
And what a curious campaign it has been. Illogical, even. For consider one of the lodestars of conservative thought: that unencumbered markets bring good things to life and that there should be minimal interference with market forces. After all, this is how Ronald Reagan justified the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine: its controversy-chilling effect would be gone and all voices would harmonize in the new vibrant market-based debates. But somehow this didn't rid us of the liberal bias in the media. Conservative ownership of most media couldn't do that, either.
Like most liberals, Echidne confuses corporate ownership with journalists. Having been one in a former life, I can tell you that journalists don't really care who owns their organization. They continue to report things from the viewpoint they hold or the editorial viewpoint of the organization. So, if a newspaper leans to the left or right, you will see reporting that reflects that. That doesn't really have much to do with corporate ownership. It does have to do with the audience first and with the particular human beings functioning as journalists second.
Some newspapers, radio shows, magazines, and so forth appeal to liberals. That's why you have alternative newspapers which are overwhelmingly leftist in nature. It's why you have magazines like Utne Reader and Ms. Magazine. They produce more articles from a liberal perspective because the audience is interested in those opinions. Similar things are true of the Weekly Standard.
What Echidne is being deliberately obtuse about is the liberal bias of most reporters and editors as demonstrated by their political donations, as well as their voting habits.
Now, everybody is free to vote for whoever they want. What I'm mainly concerned with is the way they report the news. This is where the language used--something Echidne doesn't discuss--is important. I've posted many examples of journalists' bias in reporting certain topics. It's no coincidence that reporters use biased language in discussing abortion and that most reporters agree with the pro-choice position. Nor is it a coincidence that certain stories always elicit quotes from liberal organizations.
This is what makes Echidne's logic--and that of most liberals where media are concerned--so flawed. They think conservatives just "discovered" liberal media bias with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. Nothing could be further from the truth. Conservatives have known for generations that journalists are biased against them. But it's only been in the last 20 years that conservatives had much of an impact on the debate about objectivity and advocacy in journalism, which is why Echidne and her ilk noticed. It's hard to realize there's a debate about a subject when one side is always muzzled.
More Echidne:
The explanation for this is even curiouser: Conservatives blame the foot soldiers of the media for the bias they so deplore. More journalists define themselves as liberals than as conservatives, and this supposedly explains why markets have been unable to balance themselves. Never mind that most media outlets are owned by conservatives, never mind that journalists are trained professionals who might even be able to distance their own political views from the topic they are working on, and never mind that in no other firm do conservatives regard the floor-level labor force as responsible for the design and marketing of the firm's products. None of this matters as much as the party attachment of journalists.
The problem isn't that journalists can't prevent themselves from displaying bias, although we used to debate how objective any particular person can be. It's that most journalists don't see their job as simply being objective. They want to be advocates, and that advocacy affects what they write and how they write.
This diagnosis is sometimes followed by an even less conservative recommendation for treatment: affirmative action based on the journalist's political views. The New York Times should make an effort to recruit religious conservatives from the red states, for example.
The horror of it all! Liberal media bias is such a problem for conservatives that they are willing to give up all their conservative free market and anti-affirmative-action principles if that is what is needed to get fair treatment of right-wing policies and views. Or what they regard as fair treatment.
Interestingly, when conservatives point out how their viewpoints are shut out of MSM, they are being hypocritical for suggesting editors make a bigger effort to be more inclusive. Strange. Thanks for supporting the "liberals only want superficial diversity, not diversity of thought" argument, Echidne!
And what is it that they demand, exactly? Well, according to the websites which criticize the left-wing slant of the media what is needed are more positive appraisals of George Bush's job-performance, more coverage of success in Iraq and more positive coverage on religious fundamentalists (though only of the Christian sort). On one randomly picked February day these sites also criticized newsreaders for not using the term "partial birth abortion" without the qualification that it is a conservative term, berated certain television presenters for not exhibiting the "correct" emotions when reporting on a story and even speculated on the possible hidden motives these presenters might harbor.
It isn't hard to argue that the Washington journalistic tendency to ask slanted, harsh, and frequently unnecessarily rude questions of the president (when they ask questions rather than simply make statements) is an example of bias. There are plenty of ways to ask questions without resorting to calling the POTUS a liar, for example. And pointing out that journalists refuse to call a legislative act by its name, but, instead, continuously refer to "so-called partial birth abortion" is, indeed, an example of bias in reporting. These same journalists had no problem referring to the Strategic Defense Initiative as Star Wars repeatedly and continuously. In other words, Echidne, your selective search for examples exposes your own cherry-picking.
It's tough to weed out liberal media bias of such depth! The very facts themselves might be liberal and the innermost thoughts of journalists are fair game for spotting bias. The media can bend over backwards to appease these right-wing critics. It can even adopt the ultimate "neutral" stance of impartial commenting on the most inane assertions ("Some argue the moon is made of green cheese. Others disagree."). But this will not satisfy those who can see the wild liberal glint in the eye of the newsreader or those who can discern the real leftist thoughts of an apparently objective journalist or those who equate criticism of the government with treason.
I suppose when your argument fails, you have to resort to straw men. It's not unusual to see this on liberal sites such as Echidne's. What's difficult to believe is that she's genuinely this stupid. To dismiss all examples of liberal bias in reporting--from the language used (abortion) to the subjects covered (the U.S. Attorneygate "scandal") to the subjects not covered (Hillary Clinton's various scandals)--as demanding meaningless balance is insulting to every thinking person.
No, the only solution to our current problems with media bias is to reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine. This will protect the conservatives against the dreaded liberal bias in the media and it will protect the liberals from the right-wing hate radio. Fair and balanced?
Showing why she doesn't get it, Echidne comes up with the liberals' favorite solution to a problem: regulation and stifling of speech. Conservatives don't need the Fairness Doctrine. They don't even need network news to be less biased. Through Fox News, talk radio, conservative publications, and the Internet, we've discovered ways to counteract the liberal bias presented from Echidne's ilk.
Liberals, on the other hand, need the Fairness Doctrine. Why? Because their ideology fails when held up to the harsh light of day. They can't get a radio audience as demonstrated by the bankruptcy of Air America and the closure of the liberal women's radio network. Liberals are terrified that Fox News will (and has) changed the way Americans get their news. That's why they have to target Fox News advertisers. That's why they've spent years trying to bring down outspoken critics of the American Left like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
It's sad when your ideology is so bankrupt it cannot stand on its own. It's sadder when you must advocate restrictions on speech because you hate freedom of expression so much. But, given Echidne's penchant for banning critics, it's not surprising at all.
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