I think I've realized where the difference between you and me on the media really stems from, Dan. You think that they're good at their jobs, and I think they're inept.
Inept, but still able to coordinate the release or restriction of certain videos (Berg, 911 jumpers, etc)? I suppose it depends on what ineptitude you're calling them on.
We agree that most of mass media is corrupt, but I think we disagree as to the source of that corruption. It is not, as you make pains to insist, that they are leftist dupes. It is that they are greed
Fox exploited a fairly obvious market niche (a news broadcast not skewed to the left)
That's like saying that white is a color "not skewed towards the black." I'm sure that it would be possible to create a "news" network to the right of Fox, but I think that people would catch on the first time that swastika logo showed up.
They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal
shared sense that liberal political positions on
social issues like gun control, homosexuality,
abortion, and religion are the default, while more
conservative positions are "conservative positions."
ABC, CBS, NBC, et al, are entertainment businesses that have entertainment programs structured around the events of the day. Broadcast news is hardly much more than a reality-based TV show. They don't sit around figuring out what stories to cover (and how) based on how they'll support their supposed liberal agenda. I've worked in a broadcast news organization that had its share of conservatives, liberals and people on all sorts of political dimensions. I'm sure that any individual story reflected the biases and experience of the reporter, but I'm equally sure that the overall mix did not.
As for your earlier claim that TV news didn't show the 911 jumpers or the Berg murder because it didn't support their biases, I think not. What's more, I don't think America needs any more whipping-up.
More systematically, the press believes that fluid
narratives in coverage are better than static
storylines; that new things are more interesting than
old things; that close races are preferable to loose
ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning,
somehow.
Oddly enough, we agree here. The "fluid narrative" is part of TV's need to keep you watching through the next commercial set: "We'll be right back with continuing coverage of the latest bloodshed, but first..."
As for the rest, people watch contests: football, baseball, basketball, horse racing, etc. TV news gives you both sides of the story, no matter how many sides there may be.
It is not a sign of media bias that TV presents everything as black and white, but it is a sign of black-and-white thinking that you and others persist in the "liberal media" witch hunt.
The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush's justifications for the Iraq war -- in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations.
They're not alone in that. Most of the rest of the world kept its distance.
It does not understand how educated, sensible people
could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or
friendly, sophisticated European allies.
Perhaps "it" (this monolithic vast left-wing conspiracy you imagine to lurk behind media) *does* understand, but doesn't organize its programming around any particular small constituency.
Now, that's not me talking. That's an employee of ABC News in an official writing, not even something published independently.
The media -- left, right, center -- *loves* to talk about itself, and since it has a bias towards controversy, what better than a hit piece on itself?
I think that the Democratic Party (for example) is going to have to figure out how to operate in an environment where every story is not pre-spun to their benefit, as it has been for the last 30-40 years.
Yeah, all that crap about Clinton and his blow jobs was pre-spun so nicely....
And as for the right exploiting the mistakes of the liberal media, well, "Nobody ever went broke understimating the taste of the American people."
Dave
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