Quote:
|
The bias usually favours the conservative right, but thats mainly because almost the entire north american news media is owned by a few conglomerates and corporations are by their very nature conservative.
|
I tend to take issue with that. Yes, conglomerates own the media and they really don't have a vested interest in riling up the government that can regulate them or cause trouble when mergers roll around. However, there is a tradition of journalists as being a Fourth Estate of government - that they have an informal role, implied by the freedom of speech mandated in the constitution, as part of how a democracy governs itself. They look at what's really happening in the country, the world and our government and let the people see for themselves, with sources and access the people can't get on their own, what's going on.
These days it's fair to ask whether they really are doing a good job fulfilling that duty and I'd say it's fair to conclude that, by and large, they are not. The reason for this has to do with the news media being seen more and more on the same terms with other products as profit generators rather than institutions that lend prestige to the owner. Papers get sold, staffs are slashed, and the content is remodelled to be more commercially viable. Same story with broadcast news. More color, more drama, more editorial opining, more blondes - less depth and breadth of coverage for real news, investigative reporting and contextual analysis. The other aspect to this is that politicians are much more cagey about granting access and levels of access to reporters that are willing to play ball with them: to write down what they say off the record, to take them at their words, to socialize with them at parties in Georgetown.
After 9/11 there was a tendency for all Americans to want to pull together. I donated blood and money, I even bought an American flag magnet for my car. We were in this as one nation. I think this spirit also consumed the news media and muted political opposition. Since Republicans were running the show you'd naturally have reporters featuring what they had to say more and more. But it lacked all sense of perspective or doubt. People who did question were treated as freaks or traitors even by outlets that aren't superglued to Republican doctrine like Fox News. And when an enterprising reporter like Walter Pincus of The Washington Post went after sources inside who did offer pre-war warnings about what the Administration was up to his stories about the warping of intelligence got jammed back to page A18 or so.
But I don't think you can just say that conservative conglomerates are pushing out propaganda in mainstream American media (aside from the Murdochs of the world). What we have is a public that will watch a car chase before a talking-head policy discussion and that for a very long time was unwilling, because it seemed so unlikely and troublesome, to believe an administration would lie to them in a time of war. And we had a media that was chasing that market more than the underlaying stories.
Edit: Now I've had time to read it I think that article is a pretty good summation of the situation.