"A spider big enough that you can see the light reflecting off its eyes is more spider than should be allowed." -- 'patrice', 2007-10-25 (responding to "The Year of Ninja Spiders", by Paul M. Berger)
This was begun as a comment to a friend's journal, but it's something I'd been meaning to write something about for a while, so I'm reposting it in my own. The trigger was yet another gripe impugning the "liberal media", as though the existence thereof were completely obvious.
"Liberal media"? What liberal media? There's, uh, Alternet, Air America, and maybe various City Paper franchises? A few newspapers targeted to the TBGL[1] community? Hardly major players; barely enough to notice when describing the industry as a whole.
Some reporters lean liberal. Many owners lean conservative (more specifically, Republican). Some owners lean toward whoever is in power at the moment if they're afraid of pissing them off or think they can suck up -- especially if a bill regarding media consolidation is in front of Congress -- or the opposition if they think the group in power is being mean to them. Even most reporters are conservative by any standard except our peculiar American one.
The net result is that, with the exception of the few outliers -- the conservative CNN, FOX, and much of talk-radio, and the previously mentioned liberal bit-players -- most media organs tilt slightly 'conservative' in the sense of preferring the status quo, and lean heavily toward spinning any story to make it look more dramatic, more controversial, in order to attract viewers. The media don't want an Obama or McCain landslide; they want nervous audiences glued to their televisions awaiting the outcome of a close race, and if it goes into overtime, so much the better. They don't even really want to tell us about issues and do fact-checking, because they fear we'll get bored and tune out. They want anything they can spin as "oooh, did he really just go there?", or that they can portray as shocking, or that raises more questions than it answers. Personality clashes work well for the media; much more so than issues, because if they provide useful, factual information about The Issues, they're going to piss somebody off, and the folks they piss off might not look at as many advertisements. It's safer to make all the arguments about issues look like stories about the argument, and most of all about the people arguing, instead of about the issues. (Note also that when someone does cover an issue in depth, they often get accused of "obvious liberal bias" whether the reporting was fair and accurate or not.) A modern reporter can't reveal whom sie knows is lying, sie only tells us what each side has said and acts as though each is equally credible.
There is no "liberal media" to any meaningful degree. When The Media as a whole help the liberal agenda, it's because the so-called liberals[2] happened to be more sucessful at manipulating the media that week, or because the conservatives seemed to be getting too far ahead and the media needed to make the race closer to make it more exciting. If you take CNN, FOX, and the AM radio blitherers out of the picture, the same can pretty much be said from the opposite point of view as well. (But CNN and FOX are big enough players that I dare say they do tip the balance.) Remember that these are the media who routinely read administration press releases unchallenged, gave Bush a free pass on the excuses for going into Iraq until it was too late, were all over the Lewinski affair ("controversy! drama! read us!"), and can't be arsed to cover frightening civil rights violations at the RNC even when members of the media were being arrested because they're too chickenshit to rock the boat that much. (Gotta keep the audience scared, angry, or titillated, but not so angry that they want to fight instead of buy stuff.) Liberal? Hah! But of course they're going to go after Palin -- she's a mostly-unknown -- fresh meat! -- and if they can find Interesting Scandals And Controversies, that sells advertising. If she pumps more life into the McCain campaign -- even if the media have to help -- that too sells advertising. If they can build her up and tear her down at the same time, without the audience catching on and leaving in cynical disgust, that'll sell lots and lots of advertising.
Some (many? maybe; I dunno) reporters want Obama in the White House. Many media-owners want McCain in the White House. Other than the most egregious couple of networks, neither of those opinions is driving reporting. "Pump up the drama so we can sell readers/viewers eyeballs to the advertisers" is what drives the reporting. Individual members of the media -- and I mean individual employees, executives, and stockholders, not individual corporations -- may be cheering for Obama or McCain, but as a complete organisms, most media outlets aren't worrying about whom they help win; they're worrying about whether they attract viewers/readers with tittilation and controversy, or go too far and push viewers away in disgust. The media just want us to keep watching the game (and the commercials) all the way to the final buzzer, and if it goes into overtime, so much the better.
When anybody uses the phrase "liberal media" non-ironically, it makes them sound like a whiner and a fool, or a paranoid reactionary. Okay, most people who use the phrase have simply fallen for the myth after hearing the phrase repeated fourteen thousand times too many, but to anybody seeing clearly, using the phrase makes the speaker sound so very partisan as to be beyond reasonable conversation.
Note also that Obamaphiles who think the media are on the correct side for a change and take hope from that, are making the same mistake from a less paranoid angle. When propping up McCain sells more commercials, the media will prop up McCain; when propping up Obama does, they'll prop up Obama; and when homing in on the phrase that can be used to start a fresh argument, buried in the middle of a reasonable paragraph with reasonable context, the media will pluck that phrase regardless of which candidate uttered it. Note how easily the media were manipulated into making the news all about Palin ("ooh, shiny new person most of the audience wants to learn more about!") and forgetting everything worth examining in more detail from the Democratic convention, and my comment above about how if they can build Palin up and tear her down at the same time, they win twice. Regardless of what any individual reporter, analyst, editor, camera operator, or owner would prefer, "The Media" are not on Obama's side, nor on McCain's side. They're on the "sell more advertising" side.
Note that this means that the press have, to a large extent, abdicated their cultural responsibility, their historic role in preserving democracy by shining light into the corners and creatining/maintaining an informed voting population. In the long run, will this sell more ads by avoiding pissing off portions of the audience, or sell fewer ads by having disappointed knowledge-seekers flie to the blogosphere? I'm not sure, but I can see which way most of the media appear to be betting currently.
Finally, because the entry this was started as a reply to had to do with accusations of media sexism: As to whether the media are sexist, well they're going to have some pretty big blind spots there, and the industry as a whole does not have a good track record when it comes to critical self-evaluation on such things. Expect much of the media to get all defensive about the complaint, rather than trying to police and correct sexism within itself. But also note that sexism ... is not exactly a liberal value, is it?
[1] Also known as GBLT, LGBT, LBGTQ, etc.
[2] Note that much of the rest of the democratically-governed world describes our parties as "conservative" and "ultra-conservative". Considering that our nation was founded on liberal principles, how we got this far to the right is a bit of a head-scratcher.
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