THE ILLIBERAL MEDIA
Edward S. Herman
source: http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/jan97herman.htm
Claims of a pervasive "liberal" or "left" media bias are heard repeatedly in the allegedly liberal/left media, but counterclaims of exceptional "illiberal" or "conservative" bias and power in the media are exceedingly rare. This is hardly a reflection of reality: there is a huge right-wing Christian radio and TV system; the right-wing Rupert Murdoch owns a TV network, movie studio, 132 newspapers, book publishers (including HarperCollins), and 25 magazines, among other holdings; Rush Limbaugh admirer John Malone's Tele-Communications Inc. is the largest cable system in the United States (14 million subscribers) and has interests in 91 U.S. cable content services; the editorial page of the largest circulation national newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, is aggressively reactionary; the talk show world on radio and TV is dominated by the likes of Robert Novak (CrossFire), the McLaughlin Group, and Rush Limbaugh and Limbaugh clones; and even PBS is saturated with right-wing regulars (Buckley, Brown, McLaughlin, Wattenberg).
The Pitiful Giant Syndrome
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently listed 52 national media figures of the right, from Roger Ailes to Walter Williams, most of whom have proclaimed the media's liberal bias while occupying positions of access and power vastly more extensive than liberals could ever hope to attain. And leftists are an extinct species in the mainstream media; the firing of Jim Hightower by ABC, immediately following the Disney acquisition, was like the passing of the last carrier pigeon, or dodo bird. This doesn't prevent the pundits, and even the media moguls, from making bitter complaints about the power of the "left." Rupert Murdoch and John Malone vowed a year ago that they were jointly planning a news channel in order to combat the "left bias" of the media. The right-wing Canadian mogul Conrad Black, who owns more than half the daily newspapers in Canada and over a hundred in this country (including the Chicago Sun Times) is also constantly whining about the liberal-left bias of the press.
The reason we only hear plaints of a "liberal" media is that the right-wing is so well entrenched and aggressive that its members can pretend that their own potent selves don't exist when they speak of media bias. Just as power allowed the right-wing and a complicit "liberal media" to label university dissidents a PC threat, while ignoring the massive right-wing attempt to impose its own political agenda on the university, so in the case of the media, views disapproved by the powerful are "liberal" or "left"--the views of the numerous right-wing moguls and pundits are implicitly unbiased or merely countering those of the omnipresent, subversive, but elusive "liberals." We can call this the "pitiful giant syndrome," harking back to Nixon era claims that the poor USA was a pitiful giant being pushed around by Third World upstarts. The pitiful moguls are of course in the supremely privileged position of being able to create their own right-wing news and commentary operations and exclude those that don't meet their political standards. Murdoch personally funded the new conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, and he has placed Roger Ailes in charge of his new cable news services--Ailes is the Republican specialist in media dirty tactics (famous for his role in the Willie Horton ploy in 1988), who came to the Murdoch news operation after a stint as Rush Limbaugh's producer. Malone recently created his own new talk-commentary program, "Damn Right!," hosted by David Asman, the Wall Street Journal editorial page's noted apologist for state terrorism in Central America, along with another "citizen education" show, "The Race for the Presidency," under partisan Republican management. He has also welcomed to TCI cable Pat Robertson's Family Channel and the new, exclusively right-wing, Empowerment Channel. At the same time, Malone succeeded in killing The 90s Channel, that rare (and now approaching the extinct) entity called a "liberal" channel, by raising its entry rates to his cable system to prohibitive levels. The pitiful giant was exercising raw economic power in pursuit of his political agenda, but the liberal media didn't notice or complain. (And the Clinton FCC, while sanctioning one giant monopoly power enhancing merger after another, refused to intervene.)
Flabby Centrists versus Aggressive Right
In the real world, the resurgent power of corporate and financial interests, an increasingly concentrated media ever more closely integrated with advertisers (now spending on the media over $75 billion a year), the proliferation of corporate-funded thinktanks and the corporate "leasing the ivory tower," has shifted political power and media opinion sharply to the right. At this point, "left" in the media is conservative, centrist, and in a defensive mode, accepting without question the premises of corporate capitalism and the imperial state, but weakly supporting the preservation of an eroding welfare state. The strong liberalism of L. T. Hobhouse (Liberalism), Louis Brandeis (The Curse of Bigness), and John Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy), with its powerful strain of equalitarianism and opposition to concentrated economic power, is still deeply rooted in the public, but is hard to find in mainstream politics or the media. The centrist-conservative media "left" is epitomized by David Broder, although Mark Shields, Roger Rosenblatt, or Jack Germond would do just as well. In the late 1980s, when a Central America activist asked the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer to identify his left columnist who offset Charles Krauthammer and George Will, the editor answered: David Broder. But Broder's views are pure establishment; he evades tough issues, joins almost every establishment crusade (NAFTA, Persian Gulf war, Soviet Threat and military buildup, welfare and entitlements out of control), and devotes maximum attention to election horse-racing. He also never fights for principles against strong establishment opposition-- thus, while disliking Reagan's Central America wars, he simply abandoned the subject, giving the floor to Will, Krauthammer, and the administration. So Broder never bothers anybody important, adapts beautifully to class and imperial warfare, and is the ideal liberal for an era of counterrevolution. (For a fuller treatment, see my chapter on Broder in Triumph of the Market).
Meanwhile, the right-wing opposition to Broder and company--Will, Krauthammer, Robert Bartley, Fred Barnes, Mona Charren, the Kristols, John Leo, and dozens more--are not conservatives, they are reactionary servants of the corporate community, which has been on the offensive for over 20 years, striving to remove all obstacles to its growth and profitability. These obstacles include the welfare state, regulation of corporate practices, and an organized labor movement. Removing these, and returning us to nineteenth century socio-economic conditions, is not a "conservative" project, it is reactionary. So is the support of the "strong state" in the Pinochet-Reagan-Thatcher modes, featuring ruthless law and order regimes, imperial aggressiveness, and military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes riding high.
Edward S. Herman
source: http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/jan97herman.htm
Claims of a pervasive "liberal" or "left" media bias are heard repeatedly in the allegedly liberal/left media, but counterclaims of exceptional "illiberal" or "conservative" bias and power in the media are exceedingly rare. This is hardly a reflection of reality: there is a huge right-wing Christian radio and TV system; the right-wing Rupert Murdoch owns a TV network, movie studio, 132 newspapers, book publishers (including HarperCollins), and 25 magazines, among other holdings; Rush Limbaugh admirer John Malone's Tele-Communications Inc. is the largest cable system in the United States (14 million subscribers) and has interests in 91 U.S. cable content services; the editorial page of the largest circulation national newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, is aggressively reactionary; the talk show world on radio and TV is dominated by the likes of Robert Novak (CrossFire), the McLaughlin Group, and Rush Limbaugh and Limbaugh clones; and even PBS is saturated with right-wing regulars (Buckley, Brown, McLaughlin, Wattenberg).
The Pitiful Giant Syndrome
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently listed 52 national media figures of the right, from Roger Ailes to Walter Williams, most of whom have proclaimed the media's liberal bias while occupying positions of access and power vastly more extensive than liberals could ever hope to attain. And leftists are an extinct species in the mainstream media; the firing of Jim Hightower by ABC, immediately following the Disney acquisition, was like the passing of the last carrier pigeon, or dodo bird. This doesn't prevent the pundits, and even the media moguls, from making bitter complaints about the power of the "left." Rupert Murdoch and John Malone vowed a year ago that they were jointly planning a news channel in order to combat the "left bias" of the media. The right-wing Canadian mogul Conrad Black, who owns more than half the daily newspapers in Canada and over a hundred in this country (including the Chicago Sun Times) is also constantly whining about the liberal-left bias of the press.
The reason we only hear plaints of a "liberal" media is that the right-wing is so well entrenched and aggressive that its members can pretend that their own potent selves don't exist when they speak of media bias. Just as power allowed the right-wing and a complicit "liberal media" to label university dissidents a PC threat, while ignoring the massive right-wing attempt to impose its own political agenda on the university, so in the case of the media, views disapproved by the powerful are "liberal" or "left"--the views of the numerous right-wing moguls and pundits are implicitly unbiased or merely countering those of the omnipresent, subversive, but elusive "liberals." We can call this the "pitiful giant syndrome," harking back to Nixon era claims that the poor USA was a pitiful giant being pushed around by Third World upstarts. The pitiful moguls are of course in the supremely privileged position of being able to create their own right-wing news and commentary operations and exclude those that don't meet their political standards. Murdoch personally funded the new conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, and he has placed Roger Ailes in charge of his new cable news services--Ailes is the Republican specialist in media dirty tactics (famous for his role in the Willie Horton ploy in 1988), who came to the Murdoch news operation after a stint as Rush Limbaugh's producer. Malone recently created his own new talk-commentary program, "Damn Right!," hosted by David Asman, the Wall Street Journal editorial page's noted apologist for state terrorism in Central America, along with another "citizen education" show, "The Race for the Presidency," under partisan Republican management. He has also welcomed to TCI cable Pat Robertson's Family Channel and the new, exclusively right-wing, Empowerment Channel. At the same time, Malone succeeded in killing The 90s Channel, that rare (and now approaching the extinct) entity called a "liberal" channel, by raising its entry rates to his cable system to prohibitive levels. The pitiful giant was exercising raw economic power in pursuit of his political agenda, but the liberal media didn't notice or complain. (And the Clinton FCC, while sanctioning one giant monopoly power enhancing merger after another, refused to intervene.)
Flabby Centrists versus Aggressive Right
In the real world, the resurgent power of corporate and financial interests, an increasingly concentrated media ever more closely integrated with advertisers (now spending on the media over $75 billion a year), the proliferation of corporate-funded thinktanks and the corporate "leasing the ivory tower," has shifted political power and media opinion sharply to the right. At this point, "left" in the media is conservative, centrist, and in a defensive mode, accepting without question the premises of corporate capitalism and the imperial state, but weakly supporting the preservation of an eroding welfare state. The strong liberalism of L. T. Hobhouse (Liberalism), Louis Brandeis (The Curse of Bigness), and John Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy), with its powerful strain of equalitarianism and opposition to concentrated economic power, is still deeply rooted in the public, but is hard to find in mainstream politics or the media. The centrist-conservative media "left" is epitomized by David Broder, although Mark Shields, Roger Rosenblatt, or Jack Germond would do just as well. In the late 1980s, when a Central America activist asked the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer to identify his left columnist who offset Charles Krauthammer and George Will, the editor answered: David Broder. But Broder's views are pure establishment; he evades tough issues, joins almost every establishment crusade (NAFTA, Persian Gulf war, Soviet Threat and military buildup, welfare and entitlements out of control), and devotes maximum attention to election horse-racing. He also never fights for principles against strong establishment opposition-- thus, while disliking Reagan's Central America wars, he simply abandoned the subject, giving the floor to Will, Krauthammer, and the administration. So Broder never bothers anybody important, adapts beautifully to class and imperial warfare, and is the ideal liberal for an era of counterrevolution. (For a fuller treatment, see my chapter on Broder in Triumph of the Market).
Meanwhile, the right-wing opposition to Broder and company--Will, Krauthammer, Robert Bartley, Fred Barnes, Mona Charren, the Kristols, John Leo, and dozens more--are not conservatives, they are reactionary servants of the corporate community, which has been on the offensive for over 20 years, striving to remove all obstacles to its growth and profitability. These obstacles include the welfare state, regulation of corporate practices, and an organized labor movement. Removing these, and returning us to nineteenth century socio-economic conditions, is not a "conservative" project, it is reactionary. So is the support of the "strong state" in the Pinochet-Reagan-Thatcher modes, featuring ruthless law and order regimes, imperial aggressiveness, and military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes riding high.
