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Jelyn Diaz

Composition II

Prof. Dr. Patricia Jones-Lewis

May 1, 2011

The Myth of the Liberal Media:

How Elites Fool the Masses

For at least fifty years, there has been a conventional wisdom that the media

in the United States has had a liberal bias. One of the best books on the media is

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S.

Herman and Noam Chomsky. In that book they explained that “the mass media

serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general

populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate

individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them

into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated

wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic

propaganda.” (1)

The “propaganda model” that those authors present says that the media is

dominated by the elites in the United States, where wealth and power decides what

and how the news is presented.

Those in power use “flak” to help support this model. “Flak refers to negative

responses to a media statement or program.” (26) This flak is created by people or

a group with lots of money and resources to put pressure on the media outlets. This

claim by Herman and Chomsky goes against the conventional wisdom that the
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media is liberal. In fact, it says that there is pressure by the government and

corporations to make sure that their interests are reflected in the news. Those

interests are usually not thought of as being on the left, or liberal.

This research paper will make the argument that contrary to popular opinion,

the media is really not liberal, and in fact if it has a bias it is center-right or

corporate. We will look at claims of liberal bias made by conservatives and show

how these do not prove anything. We will also look at actual cases of the media not

being liberal. We will look at cases going back for years, and up to current events.

Data made by researchers about how conservative and liberal issues are actually

shown in the media will also help prove that that the “liberal media” is a myth.

The book Bias was written by Bernie Goldberg, a former employee of CBS. It

claimed to be an expose of how CBS had a liberal, left wing bias. But it has been

shown by book reviewers, and writings by Al Franken Eric Alterman, that his claims

were not supported. In his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Franken

recounted a story about when he was part of an interview on MSNBC with Goldberg.

In a chapter of Bias called “Liberal Hate Speech”, Goldberg cites twelve examples of

“liberal hate speech” in the news. “Goldberg admits he got them from the Media

Research Center, a right-wing media-watch group which sends out regular

newsletters chock full of “outrageous” quotes from the liberal media. Now

considering the hundreds of thousands of hours of mainstream media coverage

over that period, you’d think Goldberg would have some pretty choice examples to

pick from, right?” (28) Franken then proceeds to point out that the conservative

research took things out of context, like John Chancellor’s reporting on the NBC

Nightly News in 1991. (30) Instead Goldberg just repeated propaganda that he got
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from a right-wing group. When reviewing Bias, Dan Kennedy pointed out that it only

occasionally criticized what he called liberal bias, but was so badly written that

when Goldberg mentioned “NBC’s failure to report on dangerous flaws in jet engines

manufactured by General Electric, the network’s corporate parent. There’s a name

for that, although Goldberg doesn’t use it: corporate bias, and it’s the sort of thing

documented with depressing regularity by FAIR, a liberal media watch group.” (The

Boston Phoenix). Eric Alterman pointed out that “roughly 72 of the 232 pages of

Bias are devoted to attacks or score-settling with Dan Rather, whom Goldberg

believes to have ruined his career” (5) and “during the course of over 220 pages of

complaining, Goldberg never bothers to systematically prove the existence of liberal

bias in the news, or even define what he means by the term.” (6)

Other “evidence” used to claim that the media is liberal was polls of

journalists that found the majority of them identified themselves as being

liberal. However there are several reasons why this does not hold water.

For example, people like Goldberg cite a survey by the Los Angeles Times of

one thousand journalists that they have more liberal views than the general

public on things like gun control, prayer in schools and the death penalty.

But this survey was done over 25 years ago, and there is evidence that

journalists have changed their views and are now hold views more

conservative than the general population (especially when it comes to

economic issues). In a 1998 survey of 141 journalists at mainstream

newspapers and news agencies conducted by Fairness & Accuracy in

Reporting, the “liberal media” claim was examined. The survey found that

on “select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and

Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists were actually more

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conservative than the general public, and are mostly centrist in their

political orientation.” (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) The point is that

the media people are paid a lot more money than they used to, and that

with being educated professionals, they are now part of the elite. The New

York Times columnist Russell Baker was quoted in The Problem of the Media

as saying “Today's topdrawer Washington news people are part of a highly

educated, upper middle class elite; they belong to the culture for which the

American system works extremely well. Which is to say, they are, in the

pure sense of the word, extremely conservative.” (106) Also, whether now

or a generation ago, while a journalist may hold liberal views (especially on

social issues) that does not mean they expressed them in their reporting.

That is because it is the editors and publishers -- those people who really

decide what gets published and aired on television – that are more

conservative, or at least will make the news respond to the “flak” that they

get.

“Working the refs” is an idea similar to flak that Eric Alterman uses in his book

What Liberal Media. Alterman explains how the right wing groups will put pressure

on the owners and managers of newspapers, television and radio stations to affect

their reporting, just like a baseball manager or basketball coach will “work the refs”

by complaining about calls made by the referee in a game. By constantly

complaining and pressuring the referee, the coach will get the ref to make more

calls favorable to the coach’s team. This works the same way in the media world. It

used to be that the media was just newspapers and broadcast radio and television

news. But for the past twenty to thirty years there is now cable television news and
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talk radio. These newer media tilt to the right, and as mentioned the traditional

news is under constant pressure to avoid being seen as liberal.

With Fox News getting so many viewers, it even gets worse than just affecting

the slant of the news. Now there is a whole process where crazy right-wing “talking

points” can be brought into the mainstream media as real issues to be taken

seriously. E.J. Dionne Jr. showed how the media tilts to the right and blocks out any

discussion of liberal ideas that President Obama may be interested in, by “regularly

treating far-right views as mainstream positions and largely ignoring critiques of

Obama that come from elected officials on the left. For all the talk of a media love

affair with Obama, there is a deep and largely unconscious conservative bias in the

media’s discussion of policy. The range of acceptable opinion runs from moderate

left to the far right and cuts off more vigorous progressive perspectives.” (“Rush

and Newt Are Winning”) This process has happened with recent manufactured lies

about the New Black Panthers trying to stop voting, the videos of ACORN, Obama’s

“relationship” with Bill Ayers, and the “Climategate” scandal. They follow a similar

pattern:

1. Right-wing bloggers, talk radio hosts, and other conservative media outlets

start promoting and distorting the story.

2. Fox News picks up the story and gives it heavy, one-sided coverage.

3. Fox News and conservative media attack the “liberal media” for ignoring the

distorted story.

4. Mainstream media outlets eventually cover the story, echoing the right-wing

distortions.
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5. Fox News receives credit for promoting the story.

6. The story is later proven to be false or wildly misleading, long after damage is

done. (“The Fox Cycle: From bogus right-wing attack to mainstream news.”)

And it is not just the right-wing media forcing their views into the mainstream

media. This “working the refs” has been so taken in by the media so that they

automatically present right wing views in advance, in order to avoid the claim of

liberal bias. “Because the drumbeat of conservative press criticism has been so

steady, the establishment press has internalized it.” (“The Rightward Press”)

McChesney noted that CNN used to be considered sort of liberal, but by 2001, CNN's

chief Walter Isaacson was working with conservatives to see how he could make

that cable television news network something they would like. (115)

Arianna Huffington notes how the extreme right-wing takeover of the

Republican Party spread to the rest of the country by infecting the mainstream

media. “Without the enabling of the traditional media – through the obsession with

“balance” and their pathological devolution to the idea that truth is always found in

the middle – the Radical Right would never have been able to have its ideas taken

seriously.” (5) Huffington explains that “the media’s appeal to balance (seeing two

sides to every story, no matter how crazy one side is) results in seeing political

battles through the lens of right vs. left, instead of the big story of the highjacking

of America by the Right.” (6) But what Huffington does not mention is the story of

the highjacking of America by the corporations. Big business has worked with

Middle American conservatives, especially the Religious Right, to form an alliance to

get those people who are socially conservative to buy into the conservative

economics. They use these people to get votes for the politicians that they own.
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“Chris Matthews of MSNBC is considered a little liberal. But he worked for NBC

News – and NBC News is owned by General Electric. GE is one of the world’s largest

corporations – and during most of the period was run by Jack Welch, a near-

billionaire conservative Republican not given to left wing causes. Matthews bought

a multimillion-dollar summer home near Welch’s own home in Nantucket. After

thirty years of conservative complaints about the press corps’ liberal bias, are we

supposed to imagine that Welch hired a bunch of “left-wing” liberals to drive his

news network? Are we supposed to assume that Welch’s corporate agenda had no

influence on Matthews, Russert and Brian Williams?” (Daily Howler)

There are plenty of cases of the media pushing the interests of the corporate

elites and government. Just in the past ten years, we saw how the entire media was

behind George Bush in the lead up to war with Iraq. When the Bush people tried to

connect Saddam Hussein to Osama Bin Laden and 9/11, the press did a terrible job

of exposing that as lies. When Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the

case for war (and presented untruths) the media stood up and applauded. Even the

conservative’s #1 target of the “so-called liberal media,” Dan Rather, cried on the

Letterman show right after 9/11 and said he was ready to “report for duty” to Bush.

The so-called liberal New York Times published false information about weapons of

mass destruction in Iraq, which helped Bush go to war. The highest rated program

on MSNBC, the Phil Donohue show, was cancelled in 2003 because his was the only

television program that actually brought up points of view which did not agree with

invading Iraq. Any voices that questioned going to war in Iraq did not make it on

the mainstream media. There was a war machine being built, and it became

obvious that the media had to serve that destructive machine.

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From one and two years ago the battle over health care insurance reform is

another case of how liberal views were shut out of the national debate. For example

“in a June 22, 2009 Good Morning America interview with members of the Obama

administration’s health care team, none of anchor Diane Sawyer’s questions

reflected progressive’s concerns or positions. Indeed, some echoed conservative

arguments and talking points regarding Obama’s health care reform efforts.” (“GMA

interview of Obama health care team ignores progressive concerns”) This is

because the health insurance companies and other corporations did not want

progressive health care reform, and made sure it did not happen.

Another example is the current debate about the United States budget deficit

and the how taxes and spending will happen. The Republican’s proposal is an

extreme right-wing plan that gives the richest 2% of the population tax breaks, and

pays for them by cutting Medicare and Medicaid. Then there is President Obama’s

plan which is seen as being on the left (the other end of the political spectrum) but

it still cuts social programs and cuts some taxes. Meanwhile there is a third plan by

progressive Democrats in Congress called the People’s Plan, which does not cut

Social Programs and does not cut taxes. But even though the chances of that plan

becoming law is just as bad as the Republican plan, it is not discussed in the “so-

called liberal media”. The debate is only between the center-right plan and a far-

right plan, where the final budget will probably be between the two. This is because

the corporate-controlled media wants to make sure that the taxes for their rich

owners are lowered, and that they take money away from poor and middle class. So

this is further proof of a corporate bias of the media, not a liberal bias. In fact

liberal views are completely overwhelmed by the right.

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There are many other cases where we can show that the media does not

have a liberal bias, but instead a corporate bias to serve their owners. But we will

let conservatives give the last word by admitting the myth. Alterman recounted how

“William Krystal, without a doubt the most influential Republican/neoconservative

publicist in America, has come clean on this issue. “I admit it, he told a reporter.

“The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as

an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures.”(2)

In conclusion, we have shown that as big business has bought up the media

companies, not only do they present the news to their own advantage, they have

also used propaganda to make sure that all mainstream media presents their views.

They convince average conservatives to serve their own corporate interests, and

set up a mythic “liberal media” to serve as a bogey man. It is more effective to set

up this false target then to have people look at how much the Right has taken over

all debate in the media. The conversation one hears in media has moved so far to

the right that it is a joke that anyone might still make the claim of the Liberal Media.
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Works Cited

Alterman, Eric. What Liberal Media. New York: Basic Books, 2003.

Daily Howler. Homepage. 30 June 2008, 18 April 2011

<http://dailyhowler.com/dh063008.shtml>

Dionne Jr., E.J. “Rush and Newt Are Winning” The Washington Post. 4 June

2009.

Dionne, Jr., E.J. “The Rightward Press” The Washington Post. 6 December

2002.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. “Examining the “Liberal Media” Claim.” 1

June 1998. 19 April 2011 <http:///fair.org/index.php?

page=2447&printer_friendly=1>

“The Fox Cycle: From bogus right-wing attack to mainstream news.” Media

Matters for America. 12 July 2010. 17 April 2011

<http://mediamatters.org/print/research/201007120005>

Franken, Al. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. New York: Dutton, 2003.

“GMA interview of Obama health care team ignores progressive concerns.”

Media Matters for America. 22 June 2009.

<http://mediamatters.org/print/research/200906220015>

Herman, Edward and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent. New York:

Pantheon, 1988.

Huffington, Arianna. Right is Wrong. New York: Random House, 2008.

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Kennedy, Dan. “The ‘L’ Word” The Boston Phoenix. 17 January 2002.

McChesney, Robert. The Problem of the Media. Monthly Review Press: New
York, 2004.