Democratic politicians refuse to debate on a network which they disagree with, and their activists demand an absolute ban on Fox News by their politicians, on pain of punishment.

Thus far, I think the most significant data point here is that Democratic politicians successfully behave this way, which indicates that their willing allies in the national news elite have to a very great extent conditioned The Will Of The People, or at least Joe Six-Pack’s sense of normalcy.

And….

More significantly, Democrats are dying for a chance to reimpose the fairness doctrine and silence conservative talk radio.

EXACTLY SO! And it is this which makes us, both as Christians (seeking to make our earthly affiliations count by keeping maximum space for the Word to spread) and as political conservatives/libertarians in the American tradition, behave utterly differently from our Democratic rivals (even when they, too, name Christ but seem mistaken on His relevance earthly matters).

Cheers,
PGE

I suppose you could define “media” to include the blogosphere, and then laugh about how liberals dominate the blogosphere yet decry a conservative media bias.

No Democrat or liberal thinks Hollywood is conservative. When the phrase “liberal media” is laughed at by liberals it is referring to news media - magazines, TV channels, newspapers. Hollywood is irrelevant.

What liberals get pissed about is when TV shows interview or newspapers quote almost exclusively conservative or Right-leaning spokesmen, for fear of otherwise being yelled at by Rush Limbaugh. In my estimation, most of the MSM is neither liberal nor conservative, but lazy/stupid and profit-driven.

How is Democrats boycotting Fox News “totalitarian”? Let’s see Bush and McCain give interviews with Keith Olberman. What, they won’t? Totalitarians! Democrats will only go on Fox when they have a specific goal. I think Obama and Dean went on Fox recently because they think McCain is weak enough among Fox viewers (drones =P) that they can successfully challenge him there.

Adrian-

“When the phrase “liberal media” is laughed at by liberals it is referring to news media - magazines, TV channels, newspapers. Hollywood is irrelevant.”

That’s awfully convenient, init? Arbitrarily discount the most uncontroveribly liberal segment of the media and then laugh at the inaccuracy of the term used to describe it? Conservatives use the term to describe bias from both the press and Hollywood.

“What liberals get pissed about is when TV shows interview or newspapers quote almost exclusively conservative or Right-leaning spokesmen, for fear of otherwise being yelled at by Rush Limbaugh.”

WHAT!? The idea of CBS News or the New York Times quivering in fear of Rush Limbaugh is one of the funniest things I’ve imagined in ages. What gave you (or libs in general) such a notion? So the Times isn’t concerned about the fascist legions of Chimpy McBushitler (as demonstrated by their relentless drumbeat of editorials against him), but is terrified of Rush?

“but lazy/stupid and profit-driven.”

They are that, but they’re also liberal. They say so themselves in every single poll I’ve ever seen done of major media figures.

“How is Democrats boycotting Fox News “totalitarian”? Let’s see Bush and McCain give interviews with Keith Olberman.”

Bush, McCain and the rest of the Republicans have often gone on CNN. There has been never been a major effort by Republican activists to ban members of their party from speaking to a news network. It was -controversial- that Obama and Dean broke the activist-imposed ban.

And yes, the concerted efforts of the Left to isolate, defund and silence Fox News does stem from a totalitarian impulse — the desire to stamp out rather than engage alternative viewpoints. It is entirely illiberal. As are speech codes, “hate speech” laws, and the Fairness Doctrine. That last is the scariest of the bunch — an attempt to literally put out of business an entire sector of the media in pursuit of an ideological goal. Regardless of your politics, you should be worried when politicians are willing to censor by fiat popular, influential voices in the public discourse.

I’ll do up a post on media bias and opinion polls among media figures. It’s a good topic to address. . .

UPDATE: It’s pretty late. I’ll do that post up manana. . .

Awfully convenient? Hollywood has a far smaller impact than right wing talk radio.

“What gave you (or libs in general) such a notion?”

Various news media people have admitted that post-9/11 and in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, they held off on any criticism of Bush’s policies for fear of seeming unpatriotic. For instance, Elizabeth Bumiller, NYTimes reporter:

“I think we were very deferential, because in the East Room press conference, it’s live. It’s very intense. It’s frightening to stand up there. I mean, think about it. You are standing up on prime time live television, asking the president of the United States a question when the country is about to go to war.”

The political views of individual journalists may be liberal, but are canceled out by the institutional constraints they work under.

As I understand it the Fairness doctrine doesn’t censor, it requires that opposing viewpoints be represented. But with satellite radio coming up that will be rendered irrelevant anyway, because there won’t be any more scarcity in airwaves.

Totally alone among his points, I find that Adrian’s argument that Fairness Doctrine may be rendered irrelevant by technological change has merit. Or at least I hope it does. Sadly, the fascistic methods of the modern corporate State have surprised me a lot in the last five years or so.

Adrian-

“Awfully convenient? Hollywood has a far smaller impact than right wing talk radio.”

Really? According to Nielsen, the average American watches 28 hours of television a week. That amounts to 9 years out of a 65 year life. And this figure doesn’t include movies watched at the theater.

Americans listen to an average of 19 hours of radio a week, and that includes every single format — from Rock to classical to NPR to talk to Tejano music.

In a postmodern world where image has replaced the word, television rules the mind in a way which radio could never hope to match. It’s the water in the lobster pot.

“Various news media people have admitted that post-9/11 and in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, they held off on any criticism of Bush’s policies for fear of seeming unpatriotic. For instance, Elizabeth Bumiller, NYTimes reporter:”

Do I need to point out how self-serving this is? The war becomes unpopular and when queried, reporters blame some vague fear for their inaction? In a country with a steel-reinforced, triple-ply guarantee of Constitutional protection for journalists, why would such a declaration of fear be in any way meaningful? And the context cited by Ms. Bumiller has nothing to do with an rightward ideological bias, merely the gravity of the historical circumstances and the White House location of events.

“The political views of individual journalists may be liberal, but are canceled out by the institutional constraints they work under.”

What restraints would those be? It’s traditional at this point to cite something about journalistic objectivity, but such a notion is now a leaking and sinking tub. It’s amazing to me that the same Po-Mo libs who will deny objective truth or knowledge in every other context of human actions are the first to cite objectivity when media bias is the subject. Our ideological outlook affects everything, as anyone without an ax to grind can see — our choice of which details to include, our choice in descriptive words which subtly shade our readers’ perception, the weight we give to various sources, the very stories we decide are newsworthy or not. All of these things are impacted by who we are ideologically.

If by “institutional restraints” you mean te editorial system, then I would still strongly disagree. While editorial page writers tend to be -slightly- more conservative than their newshound counterparts, it is a tiny difference. The editors are also overwhelmingly liberal, and provide no sort of check on journalistic bias.

Another institutional factor to consider is that the higher one goes up the press food chain, the more lopsided the liberal imbalance becomes. And, of course, big media such as network news and the NYT provide so much of the coverage which filters down to the little guys (and the big boys are watched by the largest number of viewers.)

So looking at the situation institutionally, things look even more bleak.

“As I understand it the Fairness doctrine doesn’t censor, it requires that opposing viewpoints be represented.”

Everyone knows that the compliance costs of “equal time” for liberal viewpoints would put talk radio out of business. Talk radio is an entirely editorial-centered medium. The Fairness Doctrine was intended for news shows which might have a small editorial at the end of its program, not radio stations with 24-hour programming.

Let me find an appropriate analogy. It’s kinda like if Congress put a 10,000% tax on IPods and then claimed, “There is no ban on IPods, this is simply a tax.” The means are simply a constitutionally-permissible way of banning something undesired by Congress.

This is the same. Pelosi, Feinstein and many others have made no secret about the ideological motivation behind reimposing the Fairness Doctrine. It really doesn’t scare you a little that they would use the power of the State to stamp out a medium which was built up by the listening choices of millions of Americans? It doesn’t trouble you that they would enforce de facto censorship in order to silence a political opponent? It sounds more like something Chimpy McBushitler would do!

What is instructive is to juxtapose the relative reactions of Right and Left in this. Conservatives ruled Congress and the presidency for several years. At the time, we complained bitterly and often about media bias against us. Yet there was never a peep about getting government involved in controlling public opinion. As a matter of fact, back in 1986, before talk radio and before Fox,Reagan was the one who lifted the Fairness Doctrine. Back when we had no real counter-establishment to the mainstream media. That’s telling.

“But with satellite radio coming up that will be rendered irrelevant anyway, because there won’t be any more scarcity in airwaves.”

I agree that satellite radio will make such considerations completely irrelevat. And given how near-term such a solution is, the Fairness Doctrine machinations of Pelosi, et al seem even more nakedly political.

But I would also dispute that there is any shortage of radio waves now. Liberal talk networks have not had difficulty finding stations; they’ve had difficulty finding listeners. This stems from several problems — 1. there are more self-described conservatives than liberals in the U.S.; 2. gross mismanagement by Lib radio network owners; 3. Libs on the whole are much more satisfied with MSM coverage and feel less of a need for alternative news sources; 4. Because of demographic factors such as education and economics, Libs tend to look to the Internet more than radio for their information.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, I’m impressed. As always, I enjoy sparring with you. I really appreciate the perspective you bring, even when I disagree with it.

I’m still surprised when I meet people who think the media is “objective”. . .

You’re so right on the point of, “. . .ideological outlook affects everything. . . our choice of which details to include, our choice in descriptive words which subtly shade our readers’ perception, the weight we give to various sources, the very stories we decide are newsworthy or not.”

While sometimes the lack of objectivity is overt, it more strongly impacts consumers of media through these more subtle means.

TG-

I’ve faced this in writing my thesis. I -want- to write as solid and “objective” a history as possible, but with literally hundreds of pounds of source materials, the triage process which decides what goes in and what doesn’t heavily impacts things. The periodization I choose impacts it. The descriptors for various factions does as well. And there are a million such factors which subtly shape the final, ‘objective’ result.

Let’s take for example Hollywood’s biggest (in all senses) liberal, Michael Moore. 10 million people who already agreed with him go see his movie, and then come out after two hours still agreeing with him. Maybe they get all agitated for a bit, donate some money or something, and then they forget about it and go on their merry way.

Compare that to talk radio, which you listen to every single day. It’s not a one-off, it’s a situation where people get bombarded with a specific message over and over again. In many areas of the country, conservative talk radio is the only media available - there’s no NPR, but there’s Rush. Hence, I think talk radio has a bigger impact than Hollywood.

The institutional constraints I was referring to aren’t ‘journalistic integrity’ which is a joke, it’s the profit motive. Missing blonde girls are cheap stories (no expensive foreign bureau necessary) that get good ratings, whereas covering the erosion of workers protection in coal mines makes for dry reading.

Let me make my argument a different way. If the mainstream media had a liberal agenda, would Heritage and AEI be quoted more often than CAP? Would CNN been so eager to hire Tony Snow and Fran Townsend? Would the press have paid attention to the Swift Boat lies in 2004, or his windsurfing, or to Edwards’ haircut, or Al Gore’s earth tones or sighing, or Hillary Clinton’s laugh, or Obama’s “bittergate”? Would Judy Miller and Michael Gordon have dutifully transcribed the Administration’s lies about Iraq in 2002 and 2003, and the NYTimes plaster it on the front pages?

I don’t chalk this up to a secret conservative agenda either. I think they write about it because they are lazy/stupid (or perhaps just working under intense deadlines) and its easier to write about Edwards’ haircut than it is his health care policy.

Sensation & horse race *are* larger bias factors than ideology, particular in television, among our national news elites. I’m sure of it. And that’s what gives Adrian’s arguments some sheen of plausibility.

What knocks them back down is simply the observation that while one distortion may be *greater* than another, thus producing many cases which obscure the lesser, the lesser may still be very significant.

And when we note that not only the schools which turn out high-ranking journalists, but the CEOs they work for, are consistently and measurably far to the left of the U.S. population as a whole, then we seem to have reached the end of the argument, so far as I can see….

Guys-

“Missing blonde girls are cheap stories (no expensive foreign bureau necessary) that get good ratings, whereas covering the erosion of workers protection in coal mines makes for dry reading.”

I definitely agree with this (and with PG’s analysis.) If my point was that every article was uniformly and inevitably geared toward a liberal political agenda, I would agree. But I’m not. The point is that when they DO report on “workers protections” or “coal mines” or any other political topic, their framing of these issues comes most often from a liberal perspective. And in the aggregate, this amounts to a significant leftward slant. PGs point about the political orientation of CEOs is also apt and accurate.

“Let me make my argument a different way. If the mainstream media had a liberal agenda, would Heritage and AEI be quoted more often than CAP?

This isn’t comparing apples and oranges, but apples and Buicks. Heritage and AEI are enormous, well-established think tanks with a solid group of scholars. Also, conservative think tanks benefit from the perceived hostility of academia — they have a much easier time recruiting good scholars. CAP may one day join the ranks of Heritage or AEI, but right now it’s the new kid who only arrived on the block in 2003. It’s a bit like asking why UT Austin doesn’t have the clout of Harvard.

“Would CNN been so eager to hire Tony Snow and Fran Townsend?”

Yes, because again, I agree that the profit motive is a big factor. And CNN was interested in surviving the Fox challenge and needed conservatives. The question is not whether or not liberal bias is the SOLE factor in media decision making. It is whether or not it is a factor. And it clearly is.

“Let’s take for example Hollywood’s biggest (in all senses) liberal, Michael Moore. 10 million people who already agreed with him go see his movie, and then come out after two hours still agreeing with him. Maybe they get all agitated for a bit, donate some money or something, and then they forget about it and go on their merry way.”

We’re completely talking past one another on this Hollywood thing. You’re thinking in terms of issue-oriented, partisan politics. I’m talking about the entire cultural climate of the United States. It’s TV that has done more than anything to normalize homosexuality, cohabitation, changed gender roles, evironmentalism, divorce, and virtually every other “social issue” in the minds of the American people. You may applaud these changes, but you need to acknowledge their provenance. People in Biloxi, Peoria and Scranton didn’t suddenly discover these new mores at the local grange hall — they acquired them through television, music and movies.

But I must ask for a third time — are you really not troubled by the liberal impulse to silence critics through the power of the State? If talk radio were instead lopsidedly liberal, and George Bush was pushing legislation to put it out of business, you would support him? Because if not, then your advocacy of Pelosi on this issue has nothing to do with principle and everything to do with the abuse of power. . . I ask this almost entirely rhetorically, because everything I’ve seen of your character shows you to be a principled liberal.

CAP itself is young, but many of the people at CAP are respected and smart. Another illustration of the same point - in 2002/2003, a lot of security/strategy experts (not partisan pundits) were submitting op-eds against invading Iraq. They couldn’t get the time of day, while pro-war opeds were everywhere. These guys had to pay out of their own pocket for advertising space to get heard. Liberal media!

Now I get your point about Hollywood. Sex sells. All your examples were partisan political pieces, which is what threw me.

“But I must ask for a third time — are you really not troubled by the liberal impulse to silence critics through the power of the State?”

If I thought that’s what was going on, it’d be troubling. But liberals look at it in a “yelling fire in a crowded theatre” way. This is how liberals who agree with the Fairness Doctrine frame it: “should radio hosts be allowed to slander and lie on public airwaves with no recourse for the targets of their slanders and lies?”

Anyway, you are framing this as if all liberals want to reinstate the Fairness doctrine. In fact the only people I’ve heard mention it are on this site (probably other conservatives as well) and people at DKos.

Finally, using the power of the State to silence critics is not a liberal or conservative thing - Don Siegelman can attest to that.

Dude, calm down.

It’s just a list of movies and a play that I thought Kos readers might be interested in.

Good gravy. Of all my posts at Daily Kos, you choose to harp on the most innocuous??

Good lord. Ratchet down your hair trigger, pal.

P.S. I have no screeds against right-wing media bias in the works.

-

Bill in Portland Maine -

First of all, thanks much for stopping by. Second, I am calm. I’m simply pointing out the irony of a site which routinely complains about right-wing media bias publishing a long list of evidence of just how left-biased the media really is.

Speaking of irony, how about the irony of a lead contributor to the world’s most virtriolic, vituperative, hysterical blog asking others to “calm down”?

Seriously though, thanks for engaging us on this.

- J.

Oh dear Jesus, you use emoticons. They were invented by liberals, you know. Probably in SAN FRANCISCO! [Duhn Duhn Duuuuuh!!!]

As for media bias, here’s my opinion. On the whole, I believe the media plays it pretty much down the middle. At the same time, there’s no denying that your nominee, Mr. McCain, has gotten fairly soft-glove treatment from the mainstream press. Take, for example, his wife’s assertion that she will never (NEVER, I tell you!) release her tax returns. If Teresa Heinz Kerry had made the same assertion four years ago, all hell would’ve broken loose immediately.

And let’s not even lump Fox News in with the mainstream media. No…don’t even go there. It’s a de facto arm of the GOP, and god bless ‘em for doing such an effective job of it. But there’s no reason whatsoever for a Democrat to appear on it, since the viewership consists of hard-right partisans who are locked into their views. Don’t even TRY to argue otherwise or you’ll force me to bring up Karl Rove, Tony Snow, John Gibson, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, Ollie North, Mort Kondracke, Michelle Malkin, Steve Doocy, etc. etc.—”Fox contributors all,” as Republican Brit Hume would say. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with a network that has a distinct bias—but to pretend like it’s “fair and balanced” is dishonest. At least Rush Limbaugh, for example, makes no bones about his conservative slant. Same thing with Air America on the left. Fox should come clean and say: “The Network for Unvarnished Conservative News and Opinion.” Why not?

I think you and I have a fundamental difference over the definition of “media.” I have never considered movies and plays to be “media” in everyday terms. Technically, of course, they are. But at their core I consider them entertainment (or, as you might consider them, attempts at entertainment), as opposed to day-to-day news and opinion, which is my—and I would contend, most Americans’—working definition of media. But, yes, there’s no question that there is more “liberal” entertainment coming out of Hollywood and New York. But let me be clear: I didn’t endorse any of the productions in my post. I simply spelled out what they were about and when they were being released. Yes, I made a snarky comment about Bush, but c’mon…even a lot of Republicans would agree that he hasn’t been the brightest bulb the last 8 years.

Anyway. I’m off to polish my flag pin. It’s 2 feet by 3 feet, weighs six pounds and, of course, it’s made in America. (I have a sneaky suspicion that most of the pins worn by politicians these days have the words “Made in China” on the back. Tsk Tsk.)

And since I know you’ll be disappointed if I don’t say something vitriolic, here ya go:

CHENEY IS SATAN! RAAAAAHRRR!!!

Thanks for the warm welcome.

-

-

Dude, he’s messin’ with Cheney. Quick, have Rove send him those duck-hunt invites….

Bill in Portland-

I’m genuinely glad you stopped by. If everyone on the Left had your wit, the world would be a brighter place.

As for Fox News being a GOP wing populated only by conservatives, a partial list of regular Democratic contributors kinda militates against this view:

Alan Colmes, Susan Estrich, Ed Koch, Laura Schwartz, Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers, Bob Beckel and Pat Caddell.

If these standards make Fox “Republican” then the New York Times is a titular wing of the Democrats. For the past couple of decades they have had ONE conservative on their editorial page — first Safire and then Brooks. Both are at best tepid conservatives. And the freakish anger shown by the Left when a second, non-RINO conservative was added, Bill Kristol, just shows how interested the Left really is in being “fair and balanced.”

As for McCain, I totally agree that he’s gotten soft-glove treatment. Both he and Obama have benefited from close press relations. This is almost unique in the history of Republican politics, and much of it stems from his stabbing us in the back so many times over the years. I don’t expect the soft-glove for McCain to continue once the general election begins.

I should also point out that I don’t think that the media is universally and always biased. In most articles and reports they are fair. But on balance, they lean to the center-left. In the aggregate this works out as a consistent bias and they create a constant headwind for Republicans.

I think you’re right that conservatives and liberals speak about media bias differently. Because liberals LIKE what Hollywood has to say about politics, they aren’t troubled by its monolithic liberalism. Republicans feel the impact of both Hollywood and the press, and so we oppose bias in both. The Left has no ability to tolerate dissent of any kind, and so work to stamp out even the small shoots of independent, non-liberal media whenever it appears.

“CHENEY IS SATAN! RAAAAAHRRR!!!”

Heh! I appreciate that. As that Onion t-shirt says, Stereotypes are a real time-saver!

“let me be clear: I didn’t endorse any of the productions in my post. I simply spelled out what they were about and when they were being released.”

I understand. Given our different notions of media bias, etc., I’m happy to change the wording of my post if you think I’ve treated you unfairly. I’ll get right on that.

In the meantime, thanks again for stopping by. God bless.

No need to change anything. Good lord, the world turns on diversity of opinion.

And as a little P.S. to the list of movies I wrote about last Friday, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that some of them will flat-out suck. I’ve already read some reviews that Cusack’s movie has “Bomb” written all over it. I haven’t been to a movie in eons because they sucketh donkey balls. Our side may dominate Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean they excel at entertainment.

And yeah, I think I’m a little less hardcore about partisanship because—I know this sounds cliched, but it’s true—I grew up Republican in a red little town (Mount Vernon) in a red county (Knox) in a red part of Ohio (North central). I still have a letter from my grandmother (who lived in Don Rumsfeld’s hometown of Winnetka, Illinois—my dad was a classmate of his) congratulating me for casting my first presidential vote for Ronald Reagan. She was thrilled that Carter got booted. So was I, because one of my classmates was the son of one of the hostages in Iran. It was a great day when he and the others were released once Reagan was sworn in (although I’m not thrilled with how Reagan went through back channels to orchestrate it, but whatever—it worked).

I gravitated toward the Democrats in the late 80s when it became increasingly clear that gay people were not only unwelcome, but villified by the right. Happily (not to mention “finally”), that poisonous sentiment seems to be on the wane. There never was a threat from gay people, there never will be a threat from gay people. We luvs America as much as anyone.

Truth is, I admire much about traditional conservatism. Unfortunately, I’ve witnessed with my own eyes a frightening transformation within the party over the last 20 years. It seems like many conservatives agree, and are going through some soul-searching of their own about what the Republican Party stands for. The DeLay-style thuggery was as hurtful as it was absurd. That the Democrats allowed it to happen with nary a pushback was just as absurd (yes, I take a sledgehammer to my own party when it’s warranted). Maybe I’m just too absorbed in the moment, but I can’t recall a time when it was this bad. I think it’s why Ron Paul’s campaign has been for Republicans what the Dean campaign was for Democrats: a lightning rod for people who want change.

Okay, enough civility.

I HATE YOU, WINGNUT!

…or are you a moonbat? I still get the terminology all confused. One of these days I’m gonna lose my partisan’s license (I hear they take your card away and then give you a wedgie).

-