Price of the 'Liberal Media' Myth

The Consortium News ^ | 1/1/2003 | Robert Parry

[Thank You Rush]

What a bunch of clap-trap! Fox News was not the first to project the winner of the 2000 FL presidential race. At Any Price by Bill Sammon begins with the premature announcement of Gore winning FL's 25 electoral votes, before the polls closed in the panhandle and that was done by NBC @ 6:49pm.
Anyone in line to vote at 7pm in the panhandle would have been permitted to vote until the voting was completed.
Since I am reading the book at this time, this erroneous information from the article leaped out at me. Fox called FL for Gore at 7:52pm.
Very interesting book and I recommend it. Not so this garbage. As to Clinton and Whitewater - not to get excited about a criminal enterprise? I guess it's where your priorities lie.

[mrustow]

The worst part is that they stubbornly refuse to admit having any bias, any position, or any agenda.

Yeah, but they admit it among themselves.

[Missouri]

>>On the other hand, for Republicans and conservatives, the secret to their continued success will be, in part, to keep the “myth of the liberal media” alive.<<


A guy at work said " There is no liberal media " ( He reads Bartcop). I told him just take a look at the local newspaper, the St. Louis Post Dispatch endorses 90% dems, is openly pro-abortion, anti 2nd Admendment, pro-busing, pro-quotas, and pro re-distributing the wealth. We've been reading this paper for years I told him so how could he say such a thing. He mumbled something and walked off.
How come these liberals-in-denial never mention the newpapers?

[Thank You Rush]

I goofed - At Any Cost - not At Any Price - when it comes to demoncrats, both words fit. Sorry.

[Thank You Rush]

I'll get the hang of this yet......Bear with me.

Re-reading the article, Parry said that Fox News was the first to call FL for GW......I'm truly sorry and embarrassed. I'm beginning to sound like Lott.

Well, anyway the article is still clap trap. Why did he feel such a long article was necessary to defend something that he obviously believed didn't need defending?

I will stick to reading this evening and keep my foot out of my mouth.

[fightinJAG]

Exactly, blue screen.

This guy wasted a bunch of pixels on trying to lay out all the "evidence" that the media is not liberal, yet he never bothered to make the obvious inquiry: do conservatives, upon consideration of all the factors relevant to them, conclude that the media is liberal?

If yes, then yes, it is liberal. End of discussion.

Note to author: The media is defined by the audience, pal, not by polls on how anchorettes voted, etc. etc. The media must meet the audience's standard of "fair and balanced," and we make that evaluation when we view the media's product.

[fightinJAG]

I do like that "Sore Loserman" has made it into the permanent political lexicon.

[johniegrad]

From "Consortium.com"'s archives:


Emperor Bush
A closer look at the Bush record

W.'s War on the Environment
Going backward on the environment

The 2000 Campaign
Recounting the controversial presidential campaign

Media Crisis
Is the national media a danger to democracy?

The Clinton Scandals
The story behind President Clinton's impeachment

Nazi Echo (Pinochet)
Fascism's comeback

The Dark Side of Rev. Moon
Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics

Contra Crack
Contra drug stories uncovered

Lost History
How the American historical record has been tainted by lies and cover-ups

The October Surprise "X-Files"
The 1980 October Surprise scandal exposed

International
From free trade to the Kosovo crisis

Other Investigative Stories

Editorials

[Question_Assumptions]

This author is trying to be clever. He thinks that Conservative anger over fake media bias led them to fund and create a conservative media juggernaut. He therefore wants to create Liberal anger over fake media bias in the hopes that they will take back the media for him. Whatever.

[Lancey Howard]

...as columnist Joe Conason has noted...

This guy Parry is a liar and a scumbag. All you need to do is take a look at the country's major daily newspapers and peruse the history of their election endorsements for the last forty years to see if they tilt left or right. (Wanna report back on that Parry? Ya mouse....)

Does Parry think Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw voted for Bush?

Does Parry think former CNN head Rick Kaplan was going after Clinton when he told his news staff to refrain from using the word "scandal" when reporting on the Clinton scandals?

Does Parry think that what we see on television and at the movies is unduly influenced by those right-wing extremists in Hollywood?

It appears that Parry has taken the baton from fellow scumbags Gore and Daschle and is whining like a baby because talk radio and the internet - - two places where normal people can now go for truth and political sanity - - have destroyed the Democrat monopoly on the dissemination of news.

No longer are traditional American families held captive at dinnertime by the liberal spinmeisters at ABC, CBS, and NBC, who for decades took it as their job to promote the daily DNC talking points on the 6 o'clock news. Never was there a smoother lying liberal than Walter Cronkite - - he fooled the country for decades, and only recently has the extent of his Democrat Party advocacy come to light. And who can ever forget Canadian socialist Peter Jennings' daily opening line for ABC World News Tonight during the '92 campaign? - - "More bad news for George Bush tonight...." as he then proceeded to report on the latest phoney-baloney looming economic depression indicators. (Reports on "the economy" ceased, of course, the day Clinton was elected.)

But I digress.... this "Robert Parry" is a little mouse - - a liar and a scumbag who has crafted a nice little crying towel for his fellow Democrat whiners. LOL, some of them may even buy it, but who cares? (Will even a 100 people outside of Free Republic read this worm's whole tortured, silly thesis?)

But meantime, 'the truth', which first spread its wings the day C-span began broadcasting the daily shenanigans of the scumbag, Democrat-controlled Congress, has taken flight with the ascension of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, and Free Republic and the world-wide web. History doesn't lie - - as the truth became available to the public through talk radio and the internet, Republicans took over the House for the first time in forty years, and now have control of Congress and the White House. The rise of conservatism and the decline of liberalism marches on relentlessly.

LOFL, and Parry wants us to believe that this happened because of the newspapers and the network news? Hahaha... what a maroon....

[ninenot]

Sorry to say so, but it seems that the author lives on a different planet. Two local examples: 1) The Vatican recently handed down documents which make it clear that ordaining homosexuals is to be avoided. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has yet to report this, despite the fact that I personally emailed the Zenit report AND the AP report to the "religion editor," (a Catholic!) 2) A television anchor reported that missile defense would be implemented "despite the fact that the system FAILED in three of eight tests" (emphasis was in his voice.)

Well.

The Vatican's guidance ought to have been major news in Milwaukee, if nothing else for the fact that our homosexual Archbishop had been (in effect) FIRED when one of his affairs became public knowledge.

And the report on missile defense could as easily have been that "it WORKED in five of eight tests."

There is no question that the media chooses what to report, and how to spin the reporting.

Both of these display a decidedly liberal bias.

[Dutchgirl]

The rest of the articles posted at the site debunk the title of this one. A quick glance at the editorial page is also worth a chuckle. Somehow none of the articles seem to show any comprehension that the American public likes and approves of GWB. The oxymoronic name of the group says it all.

The Consortium On-line is a product of The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc. To contact CIJ, click here.

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Emperor Bush A closer look at the Bush record

W.'s War on the Environment Going backward on the environment

The 2000 Campaign Recounting the controversial presidential campaign

Media Crisis Is the national media a danger to democracy?

The Clinton Scandals The story behind President Clinton's impeachment

Nazi Echo (Pinochet) Fascism's comeback

The Dark Side of Rev. Moon Rev. Sun Myung Moon and American politics

Contra Crack Contra drug stories uncovered

Lost History How the American historical record has been tainted by lies and cover-ups

The October Surprise "X-Files" The 1980 October Surprise scandal exposed

International From free trade to the Kosovo crisis

Other Investigative Stories

Editorials

[Stultis]

One of the clever ways that some print reporters express their bias in a subtle fashion is the counterpoint.

Excellent commentary, but I think you posted it to the wrong article. I don't see how this diatribe could in anyway be described as "subtle"!

[okie01]

"That theory is more an artifact of how their minds work -- centralized economic planning and control -- than how it actually happened."

The accusations that liberals direct at conservatives are instructive. They are, in fact, a window into their own mind and methods.

[Stultis]

If there's a "myth" here, it's the one in the liberal mind that says that conservatives got together and planned some big media empire. That theory is more an artifact of how their minds work -- centralized economic planning and control -- than how it actually happened.

I have a couple of liberal friends who become very upset at our disagreements. In hopes of reducing the frustration I've repeatedly tried to explain our differences at the "world view" level, including how the differing conservative/liberal economic thinking (market based individualism versus the command economy) permeates other issues as well. Both friends think this notion of mine is nonsense.

Recently I was discussing one friend's panic about the "devastating" environmental changes from "global warming". He sees the environment as so complex that minor changes, like temperature cued insect larvae emerging early, before predators normally arrive in the spring (I actually had to provide the example), will "throw off" and "destroy" this delicate complexity.

"There's that same difference in outlook," I said. "You're looking at this whole thing from the top down" (this started to piss him off, as he thinks it's conservatives who are "top down" thinkers) "and ignoring the ability of varying individual action to establish and reestablish order."

"Nobody sat up in heaven with a calendar and figured out when the insects should emerge and when the birds would have to arrive. The birds have always been tracking the availability of insects, along with numerous other factors; too numerous for any one entity to calculate or plan. How much earlier are those insects going to emerge," I asked, "with temperatures creeping up by fractions of degrees over years, and that only as an average over years? Since variation about a mean is the norm in nature, won't there always be at least a few birds that will head north a little earlier than the rest? Won't their success in foraging, finding plenty of food with little competition" (I digressed to cover the obvious economic analogy) "and their consequent reproductive success, skew the population toward earlier migration?"

I tried to explain that economies, like ecologies, can become more productive and complex when individual agents are allowed the maximum freedom to track changes and exploit and benefit from opportunities, and all the more so with rational agents versus the random variation provided by nature. By this time, though, my friend was becoming irate and no longer paying any real attention to the argument. "You Republicans," he said, "are just obsessed with MONEY!"

I've fared no better on this tack with my other friend. (I have to admit, however, that I am an opinioned SOB and not particularly irenic.)

[Nick Danger]

how the differing conservative/liberal economic thinking (market based individualism versus the command economy) permeates other issues as well. Both friends think this notion of mine is nonsense.

The best expositions of this idea are in Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Anointed. Of the two, A Conflict of Visions is probably the easier for liberals to digest.

[Stultis]

Thanks for the recommendation! I owe one of my friends a birthday gift.

[winner3000]

For Democrats and liberals, however, the political message should be clear: only by countering the powerful conservative media machine can they hope to change this dynamic. There is no reason to believe that simply complaining about the situation will do much to alter the behavior of the national press corps. On the other hand, for Republicans and conservatives, the secret to their continued success will be, in part, to keep the “myth of the liberal media” alive. In the 1980s, as a correspondent for the Associated Press and Newsweek, Robert Parry broke many of the stories now known as the Iran-Contra Affair. That poor reporter, just by writing this article, proves the point he is trying to defeat!!!! He was a reporter who supposedly should have been objective. And yet he writes this article which is so obviously partisan! Obviously, there is no liberal bias there! Thank you so much for defeating your own argument, sucker!

[rwfromkansas]

I have wanted to read their explanation of the media, so thanks for posting. It still is a bunch of hooey though. What a bunch of crap!

I notice the author did not mention how multiple editors from the top on down at CBS tried to include liberal slants to media stories (as revealed by Bernie Goldberg). Contrary to this story, editors are not concerned with what the parent companies....Viacom etc. think. It isn't like the parent companies will fire the editor for a liberal comment! I don't believe the media is liberal because most of the people are Democrats; I don't care what they are if they report in a fair and balanced manner.....and I am against CONSERVATIVE bias as well. I allege a liberal bias because of what the news produces COMBINED with the political leanings of the reporters. As for this article, focusing on the owners of the companies to allege a conservative bias when NOT LOOKING AT WHAT THE NEWS PRODUCES is just as fallacious as saying the news is leftwing because most of them are Democrats.

Next, why didn't the author mention these things:

1. Dan Rather saying over and over that Katherine Harris was doing what "she declared" to be the victory in Florida when certifying Bush the winner.
2. The focus on business scandals in the summer of 2002 and trying to paint it as a Bush scandal.
3. While the news media did focus a lot on Lewinsky and some on Watergate, investigative journalism played hardly any kind of role at all in this....reporters refused to report anything but what Republicans were claiming and what the WH said in response. Hardly an attack. The media refused to investigate rape allegations as well or other scandals beyond Lewinsky.
4. Alleging Bush was "talking down" the economy before the election, but not criticizing Dems for doing the same after he won the election.
5. Covering the Lott misstatement, but refusing to cover the allegation of what Hillary said regarding Jews or the NAACP suit against Clinton etc.
6. Reference to "right-wing" or "conservatives" but almost never calling someone "liberal" or "left-wing."
7. Downtalking plans to reform social security as unworkable and attacking tax reform in the 1996 campaign.
8. Alleging Bush was responsible for 9-11, all the while refusing to cover allegations that Clinton ignored Bin Laden, even when knowing where he was.
9. Never allowing a Republican to effectively dispute the charge that GOP tax cuts are "just for the rich." I have yet to remember hearing one news article on tv where the reporter allowed a Republican equal time as the alleging Democrat to give the GOP side of things.

I am sure there is more, but I can only remember so much. I wonder why the article's author did not mention these points?? Could it be because he knew they would shoot his case that somehow the media is conservative?

BTW, there is a big difference between opinion media, which is under no obligation to be fair, and the news media, which is supposed to be. The latter is what the Dems own....and this much more effective at pursuading middle-of-the-road voters that don't believe Rush.