Liberal Media?

Over and over again, Republicans call into question the "fairness" of journalists; they can't refer to the media without their favorite pejorative adjective "liberal"--the "liberal" media. In sticking to the claim that journalists cannot be trusted, they have successfully convinced millions of Americans that Republicans are the victims of a liberal media.  A tally of the guests on Sunday talk shows, however, indicates that Republicans are guests on those shows more than Democrats. According to Roll Call (24 January 2012),

"GOP lawmakers appeared on the Sunday shows nearly twice as often as Democratic lawmakers in 2011, a dominance far greater than the prior two years, according to a Roll Call database of Members' television appearances....[snip] the GOP lawmakers captured 64 percent of the Congressional appearances on the five shows that Roll Call tracks, and every network featured more Republican lawmakers than Democrats. Of 330 Congressional appearances tallied by Roll Call last year, 210 went to Republicans and only 120 went to Democrats — fewer if you subtract the eight appearances made by Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent who caucuses with Democrats."

One of those popular media guests from the American Enterprise Institute, Norman Ornstein, has observed that his appearances on those Sunday news shows have plummeted since he and Thomas Mann, congressional scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, published a book that's created a great deal of interest--It's Even Worse than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism.

Greg Sargent, of The Washington Post asked Ornstein about the media reaction to their book, in which Ornstein and Mann lay most of the fault of government gridlock at the feet of Republicans. Sargent writes (Washington Post, 14 May 2012) that Ornstein:

confirmed that the book’s publicity people had tried to get the authors booked on the Sunday shows, with no success.

“Not a single one of the Sunday shows has indicated an interest, and I do find it curious,” Ornstein told me, adding that the Op ed [published in the Washington Post 27 April 2012] had well over 200,000 Facebook recommends and has been viral for weeks. “This is a level of attention for a book that we haven’t received before. You would think it would attract some attention from the Sunday shows.’

Ornstein also noted another interesting point. Their thesis takes on the media for falling into a false equivalence mindset and maintaining the pretense that both sides are equally to blame. Yet despite the frequent self-obsession of the media, even that angle has failed to generate any interest. What’s more, some reporters have privately indicated their frustration with their editorial overlords’ apparent deafness to this idea. [h/t, Kevin Drum]

So take that 'liberal media bias' meme with a huge container of salt. Republicans have little difficulty getting their views taken seriously in the news media and having oppositional views muted.

Darker and Deeper: Murdoch and the Phone Hacking Investigation

The investigation into how reporters for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World hacked into voicemail of murder victims and their families, members of the royal family, celebrities, and, perhaps even dead soldiers and victims of the London Underground bombing continue. Why should we care here in our bright "city on a hill"? Well, Murdoch is a media mogul whose print and cable media stretch from Australia to Great Britain to the United States (Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post) to Asia. The woman who managed the newspaper charged with these illegal acts, Rebekah Brooks, is very close to Murdoch. He treats her almost as his own daughter. But even more importantly, as print, cable, television, and online media become more and more consolidated, under the control of one corporation or one multi-billionaire, the news we receive is all the more susceptible to being manipulated by people with immense power. I think we have to be vigilant and to fight against misuse of that kind of power.

First, a little bit of background about the despicable practices of Rupert Murdoch's reporters, from the epicenter of the scandal  [h/t to Jack Shafer for most of these links]:

• A timeline of the scandal: "Phone hacking: timeline of scandal," The Telegraph, 5 April 2011.
  
• Nick Davies and Amelia Hill, "Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by News of the World," Guardian, 4 July 2011.
  
• Sandra Laville and Vikram Dodd, "News of the World Paid bribes worth L100,000 to up to five Met officers," Guardian 7 July 2011.
  
• A British reporter deconstructs Rupert Murdoch's statement about the investigation: Roy Greenslade, "Phone hacking: reading between the lines of Murdoch's statement," Guardian 6 July 2011.
  
• Andy McSmith, "Behind Rupert Murdoch's Throne: The story of Rebekah Brooks," The Independent Press, 6 July 2011.
  
• On Murdoch's decision to allow Rebekah Brooks to lead an internal investigation on the phone hacking: Helene Mulholland, "Letting Rebekah Brooks lead enquiry is 'extraordinary,' says PCC chair," Guardian, 7 July 2011.
  
• On News of the World journalists spying for murder suspects: Nick Davies, "News of the World surveillance of detective: what Rebekah Brooks knew," Guardian, 6 July 2011.  

Another connection between our shores and the shores of the white cliffs of Dover:

Peter Hutchison, "Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch brings in Joel Klein to oversee investigation," The Telegraph 7 July 2011.

Today's headlines at The New York Times online:

• Sarah Lyall and Jo Becker, ""Woman Rises to the Top in Male Tabloid Culture," The New York Times, 7 July 2011.
  
• Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell, "Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury over Hacking,", The New York Times, 7 July 2011.
  
• Jeremy W. Peters and Brian Stelter, "The Murdoch Style, Under Pressure," The New York Times, 6 July 2011.

Today, Jack Shafer turns the investigation into film noir on Slate: "Rupert Murdock: Film Noir Villain"

And, for background on Rupert Murdoch, The Atlantic provides a link to an article in their archives by James Fallows: "The Age of Murdoch," first published in 2003.

The Press Should be the "Friend" of Political Candidates?

Every political candidate and elected politician would love to be questioned by "friendly" reporters, of course, but more and more far-right candidates refuse to speak to any reporters other than those they believe will shill for them. Sharron Angle, the far-right candidate running against Henry Reid in Nevada, has avoided all press questions from any but the friendliest news outlets--and friendliest for conservatives and the far-right is Fox News. On Fox News yesterday (h/t to Matt DeLong, Washington Post) Sharron Angle said that she wanted the press to be the "friend" of her campaign. That would mean asking no difficult (or serious) questions and allowing her to advertise her campaign for free in any interview or press session:

We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer, so that they report the news the way we want it reported.

Voting for Sharron Angle is voting for someone with a warped view of the responsibility of the press. Her view, however, is becoming less and less radical and more and more mainstream, as the propaganda of the right that the press cannot be trusted gains more and more ground. Without a free and robust press, we're sunk. Of course, Fox News is just the kind of press the Sharron Angles, Sarah Palins, and Rand Pauls of the world want, a press that will not report on their truly radical ideas and that will ask only softball questions, as Angle herself described in an interview with David Brody:

Well, in that audience will they let me say I need $25 dollars from a million people go to Sharron Angle.com send money? Will they let me say that? Will I get a bump on my website and you can watch whenever I go on to a show like that ["Fox News or more conservative outlets"] we get an immediate bump. You can see the little spinners.

Additional note: This kind of use of the press is the wave of the future, Kevin Drum points out. Conservatives and right-wingers have led the way, but liberals will follow suit--so he thinks.

"The Liars Win" when Propaganda is Conflated with News

E. J. Dionne's editorial in The Washington Post today accurately describes what is happening in the media today as propaganda and outright lies are being treated as "news." (hat tip to Steven Bennen for the link) There has long been a tradition in the media (if imperfectly executed) to provide "both sides" to the story. This approach works if both sides act, at least relatively, in good faith. But people with an agenda can take advantage of this approach by promoting lies and propaganda as news. As long as citizens can recognize the difference, the republic stands. However, in recent years, the liars seem to be winning.

The first step, it seems to me, was to fuel people's fears that journalists could not be fair if their personal views leaned in one political direction. This, of course, meant completely denying the professionalism of journalism. So the meme has become "the liberal media"--and in spite of all evidence, the public at large believes that this "liberal" media is bent on promoting only its "side." Yet as many analysts have pointed out, the talk shows on radio, the guests invited to speak on those Sunday shows, the folks interviewed on the major networks are most often conservatives. Just look at how often John McCain, a twice-failed candidate for president, gets a slot on those shows. Mike Huckabee gets his own talk show. Did John Kerry get his own talk show? Or Howard Dean? But if you can convince the public that "the media" is "liberal," then you have convinced the public not to trust journalists' pursuit of truth--and then you can take advantage of that mistrust by promoting your own "truth."

The firestorm over the Journolist (a listserv for journalists) is the latest attempt at totally annihilating trust in journalists. "Journolist scandal proves media bias" screams a headline--and people fall for it without reading any more of the details. Tucker Carlson, a conservative pundit, has been milking this "scandal" for all its worth--but he refuses to release the full e-mails on which he is basing his claims of a liberal conspiracy among the members of that listserv, a listserv that included one of his own conservative reporters (so how conspiratorial could the listserv be?!). Ezra Klein, the creator of Journolist, explains why he created the listserv here: on his blog for The American Prospect. Most of the members on that list lean center-left, but their participation was not conspiratorial but empirical: they needed a place to discuss their ideas and to access experts who might be less willing to answer questions elsewhere. (The thing is, most of the public probably doesn't even know what a listserv is--and how many there are for every subject and interest.) Sure, ideas were raised that others in the listserv shot down--but Tucker Carlson and his ilk don't reveal the shooting down, the consequences of debate. Of course, right-wingers love conspiracy theories (uh huh, and left-wingers do, too, but for some reason, the left-wing doesn't carry the day, does it? Does anyone with any sense REALLY believe the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11? Oh, but how many on the right believe that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States--and that he's a commie pinko?) To further support their view of the leftist conspiracy of Journolist, radicals claim that liberal pundits such as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were on the list. Not so, says Klein. But who's listening?

And that's the point, isn't it: to get people to stop listening, to stop thinking. When the majority of the public believes that journalists cannot be trusted, then the power-hungry win. The liars win.

This trend to conflate propaganda with news is evident in the recent Andrew Breitbart/ Shirley Sherrod episode. And here, the purpose was not only to conflate propaganda and legitimate news but to push the idea of the equivalency of white racism and black racism in this country. The NAACP had called on the Tea Party to repudiate racist elements in its ranks. Now, anyone who has listened to Tea Party participants in interviews and who have watched videos know that there are racists in the party. That's not to say that every person involved in the Tea Party is a racist. A radical group is going to attract un-desirable elements. But wouldn't it be best for the country if a group such as this said, "We're in opposition to the government led by a black man, but we're not against a black man being president. Racist literature, signs, and statements are totally out of character in our movement." But instead of doing that, radicals such as Andrew Breitbart go about trying to prove that white racism can't be so bad because there are black racists, too: the stupid (yes! stupid!) argument of equivalency. It's the childish argument that what I'm doing isn't so bad because others--especially those who claim some kind of moral superiority--are doing it, too. Only in this case, Breitbart chose a woman who was communicating exactly the opposite of what he purported that she was communicating. Here was a woman who had experienced racism of the worst sort--the kind that led to a miscarriage of justice. Yet here she was, telling her audience of how she rose above hate and how she believed that they should all work together to create a society where people of all ethnicities could live in better communities. And her audience demonstrated their understanding of her message with "uh huhs" and "alrights" and "amens" and their sympathy with her feelings and experience, likewise.

Here, again, the purpose is to call into question any sense of fairness and justice on "the other side"--and to use race to do that. The far-right has the media and the government so scared of being accused of unfairness, that they bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of unfairness and thus give credence to lies. Breitbart got what he wanted: a larger audience, a national presence in the media, and more white followers who believe that they are just as discriminated against as blacks in this country--contrary to evidence. Because, guess what, they've been gradually led not to believe in evidence, to conflate propaganda with news.

Without journalists being able to ask hard questions, without people having some trust in the professionalism of journalism, a country's citizens are at the mercy of the powerful. Just look at dictatorships such as Burma, which routinely arrests journalists and passes jail sentences of twenty years on those who speak truth to power. The rodeo clowns win; the man (or woman) in the saddle loses.

More Conflation, Propaganda vs. News, black racism vs. white racism

• "Fox News, the DOJ Pseudo-Scandal, and White Racial Hysteria," Jonathan Chait, at The New Republic
  
  
• And now the back-tracking to find SOMETHING to hang around Shirley Sherrod's neck: "Defining Lynching Down," Adam Serwer, on Jeffrey Lord's claiming that Shirley Sherrod lied when she described Bobby Hall's being beaten to death by Sheriff Screws and his colleagues as a "lynching." Disgusting. Having been called out for lying about Sherrod's hopeful message, the right now is looking for any mud to sling on the woman.