| Posted: 30 April 2010 at 11:23am | IP Logged | 11
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But at what point did liberal become such a dirty word? That, Jodi, is the $64,000 question. Liberal certainly wasn't a bad word back when I lived in Canada: the Liberal Party there governed for the vast majority of the 20th Century, while the Conservative Party was thrice reduced to a rump caucus. (Things were so bad at one point for the Tories, the Conservative Party merged with the Progressive Party to become the Progressive Conservative Party. I bet THAT would get Glenn Beck started!) I think the word Liberal is being reclaimed in the United States thanks to Obama. These things go in cycles. We've had 30 years of Liberal being a bad word, and there was a time from the New Deal to the to the mid-1970s when it wasn't very flattering to be called a Conservative. (They are all kooks like Barry Goldwater!) On the issue of media, I throw three thoughts out for discussion: the false belief in an "objective media", the Liberal predisposition amongst individual reporters, and concentration and corporate control of media sources. In the early days, each viewpoint had their own newspaper. You had the more conservative paper (usually a business rag) and the more liberal paper (usually a bit sensational, advocating for reform and progress) and a mixture of others. The papers catered to the preconceived notions of their readership, and people self-selected to their paper of choice. As the media moved into the electronic age, given the limited number of frequencies available, this gave rise to the idea of an objective media. Simply, there wasn't enough bandwidth available for partisanship and a separation of points-of-view. Print media followed to a degree as well as competing newspapers began to wither away. And when you had NBC, CBS and ABC pretty much speaking in one voice and dominating the airwaves, you had a relatively small group of editors, reporters and anchors directing the content and deciding what was important news. But objectivity is a false premise. We all have predispositions, and reporters are no different. Take virtually any news story and deconstruct it. How is the issue framed? What is the story shape? What's the lead? Do you see the commentary mixed in with the reporting? So, there's no objectivity, but perhaps an effort at balance. And in a field that is more attractive to those of a liberal bent, one should not be surprised at stories being framed in more of a liberal context. There really shouldn't be much argument over this point. Indeed, the journalists we look back upon with the greatest praise are those impassioned advocates, the muckraking crusaders. BUT -- and it is a very big but that I interject at this point -- what gets lost in the mix of the "Liberal Media" debate: Corporate control and concentration. We only see the stories that make it to air and to print, and some complain about their tilt to the left. But what stories get spiked or downplayed because it is bad business to upset a sponsor, or goes against the corporate interests of ownership? Project Censored annually lists the Top 25 Under- and Unreported News Stories of the year. Here's the top five from 2009 and see if you detect a pattern: - US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street (Since 2001, eight of the most troubled financial firms donated $64.2 million to Democrats and Republicans alike. Considering the billions awarded from TARP, not a bad return on investment...)
- US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s (2 out of every 5 latino and black students attend intensely segregated schools. Not the right message to be sending out when we have a Black president who broke the colour barrier and we are all one big happy now...)
- Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates (The fishermen chose piracy after western nations polluted their traditional fishing waters and destroyed their livelihood. Doesn't excuse their villainy, but sure muddies the waters somewhat.)
- Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina (The Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant is a major storage facility for spent fuel rods from other east coast plants and 2 million residents are in harm's way should cooling systems in these ponds fail. Big cancer risks.)
- Europe blocks US Toxic Products (Did you read about all the bad stuff that came here from China? Did you ever hear about the bad US-made stuff we shipped to Europe, like lipsticks and cosmetics that contained lead?)
It's pretty easy to see why some of these stories didn't get much traction. How many full page ads in newspapers and glossy commercials on television do you see for banks and investment firms? And do you think Revlon might pull their ads if we start detailing how they are poisoning Europe?
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