"The right-wing talk-merchants who, until Air American Radio came along
had the AM dial pretty much to themselves, complain constantly that the
mainstream media has a left-wing, anti-Bush bias. So too the cable news
chatterers. Much of the public believes this myth because it is
repeated so often – not, to be sure, on the strength of the evidence
which clearly proves otherwise."On CNN’s "Crossfire, Paul Begala reported the following results of a Nexis-Lexis Search:
"There
were exactly 704 stories in the [2000] campaign about this flap of Gore
inventing the Internet. There were only 13 stories about Bush failing
to show up for his National Guard duty for a year. There were well over
1,000 stories – Nexus stopped at 1,000 – about Gore and the Buddhist
temple. Only 12 about Bush being accused of insider trading at Harken
Energy. There were 347 about Al Gore wearing earth tones, but only 10
about the fact that Dick Cheney did business with Iran and Iraq and
Libya.""The advantage of the myth of the liberal media to Bush and the
Republicans is enormous. To those who believe it, if a story favorable
to Bush and the GOP appears, the response is "it must be true, since
even the liberal media reports it." And critical stories? "Don’t
believe it, it’s just the liberal media dissing our President again."
The "Liberal Media" myth is a laughable farce, but it’s a tribute to the tenacity of the Right Wing Noise Machine that it’s become accepted fact by so many otherwise intelligent people.
Link to full post, at spun and spinning.
Discover more from WIL WHEATON dot NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You see, Wil…this is what infuriates me about you. You associate intelligence with being liberal! There are intelligent people in all areas of the political spectrum, not just the area in which you reside. Having opinions that differ from yours does not signify diminishing returns on intelligence!
I really like and respect what I know of you, Wil. YOU are an intelligent person, and very passionate about your beliefs. I know because I share a few of them, and I feel the same passion that you do on those issues. But don’t let your passions overrun your ability to effectively and respectfully deliver an argument.
And thanks for the link. I always appreciate the opportunity to keep my own views in check!
I disagree, David. I don’t associate intelligence exclusively with liberalism, and I regret leaving you with that impression. There are tons of kookoo liberals out there, and I think they are just as idiotic as their kookoo counterparts on the right. For every Ann Coulter, there’s a Michael Moore, in other words.
What I am suggesting is that it surprises me that otherwise intelligent people believe the myth that there is a liberal bias in the media, when there is overwhelming evidece to the contrary.
To be clear: I do not mean to insinuate that all Republicans are stupid, or that all Liberals are of superior intelligence. It is in this instance, when we are talking about the myth of the liberal media (read: media which is “out to get” conservatives, instead of objectively reporting on the facts) has taken such a firm hold for so many people.
Wil,
I disagree with david completely on this point.
Moreover I applaud you for going back to your roots. I have always ejoyed it when you pipped in with commentary about your political beliefs(beliefs I share).
I am an activist for the Democratic Party in Minnesota, its a shame you aren’t more heavily involved in the California one, we benefit strongly from Josh Hartnet’s participation and I would love it if you would get involved!
Ok- shameless plug over- Thanks for the insights and the hard work (even in exile!)
~Evan
It’s all about markets. Certainly a biased Liberal targeted news media does exist, or there would not be a market for Right Wing biased news media.
To start, this CNN story uses choice of keywords at Lexis-Nexis to produce a charge of right-wing bias.
Here is an example of a Lexis-Nexis search showing a Liberal Bias:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4509
The choice of keywords here probably reveals more about the searcher than anything else, though the distribution of keywords by publication is interesting.
As for overwhelming bias? That’s something that would be hard to sustain
For a really boring economic analysis see:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj20n3/cj20n3-7.pdf
(Bias? What does my use of Cato links lead you to think about my bias?)
I watched a movie for a class I took last year called “The Myth of the Liberal Media”, featuring Noam Chomsky among others. It was very interesting.
I’m sure you don’t have tons of time, but if you’re interested you can find it here http://www.mediaed.org/
speaking of media – have you seen what’s going on over at Penny-Arcade w/ Jack Thompson?
Finally.. I can give this link to people who criticize liberals
and say we all are nothing
but Bush-haters. I don’t hate bush.. I just don’t like him very much.
Now perhaps we can get people to stop perpetuating this myth.
“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.” — Carl Rove
While I don’t necessarily think that the media has a “liberal bias” against Republicans, I DO think that more often than not they tend to report more of the bad, than the good because, let’s all be honest now…who wants to hear about good news?
We seem to like hearing about the dirt that’s been dug up on Joe Blow who’s running for public office, rather than a story about Joe Blow donating a month’s pay to charity or something else like that.