Hi Everyone,
Well, I'm back again. Work doesn't start as soon as I thought. Friday was just an orientation session, I go to a training session tomorrow, and I start the actual work sometime after that. I thought I'd just clarify that for you all. I don't want you thinking I'm slacking off at work now. Anyway, I thought I'd address this ongoing myth about some "liberal bias" in the media. I don't want to turn this into a partisan or ideologically driven blog. However, this time I must delve deep into this illusion, because it really is false and needs to be debunked.
The truth is that far from there being a liberal bias in the media, the media is very corporate friendly. As we detailed with the passing of Walter Cronkite, nearly all the major news outlets are owned by a collection of five big corporations, Time Warner, Viacomm, Newscorp, and a few others whose names escape me. Liberal, progressive views, whatever you want to call them, emphasize strong social safety nets and keeping corporations responsible for thier actions. You think that these companies want to be held responsible for what they do? They want more money and power, and those so-called liberals and progressives want to hold them responsible. These are incompatible views.
Another thing is the tone all the liberal commentators and politicians talk versus the way the conservative commentators talk. Those on the liberal side who overstep the line (getting too extreme in their positions or advocating violence against opponents, for instance) are immediately either told to renounce their statements or effectively barred from media appearances, banished to the wilderness. Conservatives, on the other hand, routinely get away with the most blatant of falsehoods and the most vicious of attacks against their opponents while on the national media circuit.
Anyone on the left who had routinely misled his viewers like Sean Hannity does or advocate violence against others like Ann Coulter, they would have been banned from all the media outlets. There's no doubt about that. And yet the news anchors continue to invite Sean, Ann, Rush, Glenn, and all the other shills. And they continue on with their slots, appearances, and they continue to rake it in after having made numerous false statements, misrepresented facts, and villified, marginalized and advocated violence against anyone who disagrees with them. Yet all that, say, a Democrat or an Air America host has to do is make one out of line comment, and their career is either seriously derailed for a time or finished. Some liberal bias.
Remember that episode in Tennessee where some nut went to kill people in a church because he wanted to kill liberals? Remember that he had numerous books by Sean Hannity and Bernard Golberg in his possession? I asked you in a post last month to imagine if a democrat had gone into a megachurch and shot people up because he wanted to kill conservatives. Imagine the noise there would have been all over the media. Imagine the outrage of Republican commentators. Then imagine if that killer had had books by Thom Hartmann or Keith Olbermann in his possession. Their careers would be finished. People would be calling for their heads. They would have faced numerous lawsuits, and maybe even criminal prosecutions.
Yet the viciousness of commentators of the right have led people to harm, even kill, other Americans who see the world differently than they do (it has been demonstrated again and again) and few, if any, conservative commentators have accepted any responsibility and denounced violence as a tactic. Let me stress here, ANYONE, left or right, who advocates violence against anyone, should be thrown out of the media and held responsible. It's just that there has been a link developing in recent years between extremist language of conservative public figures and violence against those of the opposite variety, and no one in the media (except for a few) is stepping up and calling it like it is.
Republican and conservative establishments, going back to the Nixon Administration, have had a tradition of disdain for reporters. They used phrases like "liberal media," "mainstream media," "media elite," to marginalize any media critics of their policies. Any time news outlets would publish any criticism of a right-wing figure or their actions, and they would be lambasted for being part of some "liberal conspiracy," or some "snobby, elite cadre." This is a carefully manipulative way of marginalizing and villifying anyone in the media who reported negatively.
Any organization interested in gaining as much power as possible must intimidate any potential critics into submission or silence. This is how the conservatives were able to gain so much power over the public perception. But with great power comes great responsibility, and the conservative establishment under Bush became so preoccupied with keeping power for themselves that they ignored their responsibility to the people of America and the World, and it cost them.
My closing thought is this: left-wing, liberal, progressive commentators, the vast majority of them, would rightfully cringe at the thought of advocating violence against people on the other side. That's because most progressives, though they, too, wouldn't mind getting power, recognize that even those with power have to play by the rules, and strive to be better people, just like those of us with less power. That's why people keep coming to this country. What you do still has consequences when you have more power and influence, more so the more you get. This whole issue of media bias in favor of corporate wealth is an issue of a lack of this principle.
This principle needs to be remembered and reinstilled in our socio-political-economic structure. Political leaders, corporate executives, and others with power and influence need to come to their senses, realize this. Realize that when you gain power, wealth and such, you get more responsibility, not less. Most of those on the left side realize this, and predicate their work on this. The media, in their desire to keep their ratings and wealth, have played along with the corporate and political bid to gain power, presented favorable images of them and ignored the damage it was doing to our culture. Everyone, liberal, conservative, and every variation in between, needs to realize this and predicate their work and actions based on it.
This is the Daily Reeder, Over&out.
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