The (Myth) of the Liberal Media

Most mornings I will workout in the fitness center of the university where I teach. I find it a great way to start my day. The equipment is top-of-the-line and I enjoy socializing with my fellow “workout warriors.” The only down-side (if I can all it that) is that the news station of choice at the gym is FOX News. So each morning I not only spend my time with my workout buddies but also share intimate moments with my FOX & Friends.

Lately, my (not so much) FOX friends, have been having a difficult time. With Obama ahead in most presidential polls they have been trying, in their interminable “fair and balanced” style, to explain how such a situation could happen when (obviously) most of nation would be hurt by having a Democrat (any Democrat) in the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or even existing on the planet. This morning they belittled Colin Powell for his endorsement of Obama (he was never a real conservative anyway), have cried “sour grapes” over Obama spending more than McCain (apparently this wasn’t an issue when Bush out-spent Kerry in 2004), and complained about voter fraud (no mention of 2000 or 2004 and, since voter fraud is a felony, they fail to mention that no criminal charges have yet been filed). FOX has been painfully silent on the abandonment of conservative intellectuals from McCain (another possible topic). The biggest explanation, however, for this troubling turn of presidential politics (for FOX) has been the influence of the mainstream or “liberal media” and its impact on voter perceptions.

The idea of (as well as the phrase) the liberal media, as former GOP media specialist David Brock points out in The Republican Noise Machine, was created by Vice-President Spiro Agnew, as a “straw man” to the “silent majority.” The mainstream media was consistently critical of then President Nixon’s Vietnam War policies and Agnew used the idea of the liberal media (and the elitists that worked there) to note that they should be more responsible to the general public whom they were to serve. While some media critics noted that a slight anti-war bias may have existed, opinion polls at the time of Agnew’s criticism showed that most people viewed their news (both television and print) as essentially objective.

The idea of a liberal media has been used by conservative media outlets (most notably talk radio and FOX News) as a way of marketing themselves as voice of the majority and as a way of discrediting anything that might be said by the “liberal elite” (as if getting a good education from a great school violates the American Dream and renders you unfit for public service). Of note, however, is that the term “liberal media” has been reduced to a rhetorical term—one that generates negative emotional responses but which has been separated from thought. In essence, what conservative media has successfully done is, by defining the opposition before they can define themselves, “hijack” language and separated it from rational discourse.

The term “liberal” can have many meanings. Now, to be fair, the mainstream media can, in fact, be liberal to a particular position. For example, if the mainstream media promotes a position that is pro-choice it will be perceived as liberal by social conservatives that are pro-life. If this is what my friends, who complain about the liberal media, mean by the term then I concede the point—the mainstream media is (in this regard) liberal. This, however, represents attaching content to the term. Rarely is this the way the term is used in conservative media. In most cases the term liberal is left undefined in order to allow conservatives to elicit a negative emotional response to criticisms leveled against conservatives by the mainstream.

What is the substance of much criticism by the mainstream media (when it actually is substantive)? They are varied but generally they have to do with calling into question the unmitigated extent of corporate power and wealth elites on all aspects of public life and the resulting damage of commercialization on individual, social, and environmental health. To this extent conservative media helps to perpetuate an ideological position that bolsters the interests of the corporate elites by presenting their interests as those that are in the best interests of the “silent majority” of Americans.

The problem is that, aside from a few socially conservative positions (like abortion), the liberal media may not be that liberal at all. A recent examination of the all presidential media coverage by the database giant Lexus Nexus concluded that 26% of all news was slanted in favor of Obama and 22% was slanted in favor of McCain. OK, granted a bias but not nearly to the extent that you would conclude by listening to the righteous indignation of my Fox Friends. Lexus Nexus concluded that 52% of news coverage regarding the presidential election was essentially objective.

Now, I will grant the point that most reporters in the mainstream media are registered Democrats, but the majority of editors, and most publishers, are not. First, corporate media (of which all of the mainstream media is a part) benefits from a corporatized view of the world. To call that view excessively into question would be to work against its best interests which is, after all, to sell news. Second, especially in the case of television, revenue is generated by corporate sponsorship. If the public was truly as conservative as FOX and others contend, they could not exist because a) they would not have viewership and b) they would not be able to sell advertising time. Granted, news viewership is down (as is newspaper readership) but not necessarily because the mainstream is selling an ideological position that no one is buying. Rather, it seems that the corporatization of media has placed a premium on entertainment and helped create a general apathy about politics so that, as media research tends to show, the younger an audience the less interested they tend to be in more serious journalism.

So, is the mainstream media liberal? I would contend not. It is, at best, moderate. Some outlets may run moderate-left (e.g., CBS) while some moderate-right (e.g., ABC—any network that gives John Stossel regular air time to hawk his extreme corporate views cannot be called liberal). If you want to really want to experience liberal media read The Nation or Mother Jones magazines (if you are a staunch conservative don’t start with The Progressive unless you have a Cadillac health insurance policy), listen to Air America or the Pacifica radio networks or tune into the Randi Rhodes Show.

Rhetorical language, like any other form of symbolism, is wrapped up in power, and power (first and foremost) seeks to preserve its own position of privilege. The use of the term “liberal media,” when used by conservatives, devoid of content, is a rhetorical term designed to generate more heat than light. In the end such rhetorical devices are like the carnival shell game, except in this game one must not only ask where is the pea but also why is the illusionist trying so hard to hide it? In the carnival game if you find the pea the illusionist loses; in the conservative media shell game if you begin to discover what the conservative media is hiding they also run the risk of losing—and for them the stakes are much too high.