Posted on 03/03/2006 2:53:07 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Eric Alterman, a columnist for the Nation magazine, has been one of the country's most outspoken critics of those who claim that the U.S. media slant toward liberals.
His 2003 book, "What Liberal Media?," did a masterful job of exposing the myth that the right wing in America has been peddling for years. Yes, there are "liberal" publications The Capital Times and the Nation would fit in that category but they are few and far between in this country, Alterman contends.
He always points to the old studies that purport to show reporters vote Democratic. When not biased in the first place, he says, the studies never tell anything about the content of news. A number of Rupert Murdoch's top lieutenants, for instance, claim to be liberal Democrats. That fact certainly hasn't made Fox News liberal.
Alterman contends that the country's mainstream media have actually lurched to the right "thanks in large measure to an extremely well-funded, well-organized and well-disciplined conservative political assault comprising, essentially, two tactics: a willingness (and ability) to make life miserable for those who don't go along, and a determination to shape the zeitgeist in such a way that those who do go along may not even know they're doing so."
In a recent column with the headline "The Gasbag Gap," Alterman takes aim at the Sunday morning talk shows on the major television networks to make his point.
He cites a new study by David Brock's Media Matters for America titled "If It's Sunday, It's Conservative." The study analyzed the content of ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," CBS's "Face the Nation" and NBC's "Meet the Press," classifying each one of the nearly 7,000 guests from Bill Clinton's second term, George W. Bush's first term and 2005 as either Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive or neutral.
The balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives during Clinton's second term, he reports, gave the GOP/conservatives a slight edge over the Dems/progressives 52 to 48 percent. In other words, fairly equal.
During Bush's first term, though, the right held a dramatic advantage over the left, 58 to 42 percent, and the same ratio carried through in 2005. When the shows were contacted, Alterman wrote, they explained that happened because today the action is Republican/conservative. But if that were true, how come the guests didn't tilt the Dems' way when Clinton was in power?
The networks seem to think that a William Safire or Bob Novak, two staunch conservatives, can be balanced by a Gwen Ifill (PBS) or a Dan Balz (a Washington Post reporter), two neutral journalists.
"Indeed, as far as critical commentary goes, with the occasional exception of E.J. Dionne, there's not a single unapologetic liberal on any of these shows, save perhaps an annual appearance as a kind of anthropological curiosity," Alterman opined. "Tune in to every show every week for a year and you are unlikely to see Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Rick Hertzberg or anyone associated with the Nation, the American Prospect, the Washington Monthly, Mother Jones...
'When you think about it, it is a tribute to the American people that they remain as receptive to liberal arguments as they do, given how infrequently they hear them," he added.
Excellent list! Thanks! :)
Thanks for looking.
alterman is a horse's ash who has been insisting for years that the ratmedia is not a bunch of leftist scumbags. I guess when you are as far to the left as this guy, almost anybody looks conservative, but that doesn't make it true.
Let's just all be thankful that he didn't obsess about FReepers. Again.
Or was that Altman? Note to self: Straighten out your @$$clown folder....
Libs are pining for the return of the so-called "fairness doctrine", that made the three TV networks the filter for all the news the public heard. If Hitlery manages to cheat her way into the White House, expect the fairness doctrine and the control of the internet to be two of her first goals. The Left hates freedom of the press. Thought-control has always been a pillar of Communism.
Anti-life, anti-freedom socialists and their indoctrinated, irrational enablers have infiltrated so many facets of our lives.
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