Several times a year, I come across an article that I feel absolutely compelled to recommend. Some months ago I stumbled upon Iron Shrink’s piece on the methodology of the “study” demonstrating that conservatives suffer from arrested psychic development that leads them to desire the strong-handed guidance of patriarchal authority figures. You’ve seen how this smug-inducing meme has circulated around the nets in various strains, up to and including the idea that all conservatives are closeted gays.
Today, The Telegraph posted a confessional piece by an ex-BBC employee, who, one might imagine, has gained a certain wisdom and insight from his own experience and self-reflection, but who will be denounced to much screeching as being a “sell-out” instead. He is Antony Jay, and the article is entitled, “Here is the news (as we want to report it).” The immediate occasion for the article is the revelation regarding the BBC’s deliberate snipping of footage to create the impression that Her Majesty stormed out of a photo shoot:
This week the BBC was forced to apologise to the Queen for falsely claiming that she stormed out of a photo shoot. We shouldn’t be surprised, says former producer Antony Jay. In this exclusive extract from a brilliant new CPS pamphlet, he argues that the anti-establishment views at the heart of the corporation have always dictated its mind set
A few highlights:
We belonged instead to a dispersed ”metropolitan-media-arts-graduate” tribe. We met over coffee, lunch, drinks and dinner to reinforce our views on the evils of apartheid, nuclear deterrence, capital punishment, the British Empire, big business, advertising, public relations, the Royal Family, the defence budget… it’s a wonder we ever got home. We so rarely encountered any coherent opposing arguments that we took our group-think as the views of all right-thinking people.
The second factor which shaped our media liberal attitudes was a sense of exclusion. We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual élite, full of ideas about how the country should be run, and yet with no involvement in the process or power to do anything about it. Being naïve in the way institutions actually work, yet having good arts degrees from reputable universities, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge. We ignored the tedious practicalities of getting institutions to adopt and implement ideas.
This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world. We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. Some people called us arrogant; looking back, I am afraid I cannot dispute the epithet.
We also had an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there. Say ”Tesco” to a media liberal and the patellar reflex says, “Exploiting African farmers and driving out small shopkeepers”. The achievement of providing the range of goods, the competitive prices, the food quality, the speed of service and the ease of parking that attract millions of shoppers every day does not show up on the media liberal radar.
The third factor arises from the nature of mass media. The Tonight programme had a nightly audience of about eight million. It was much easier to keep their attention by telling them they were being deceived or exploited by big institutions than by saying what a good job the government and the banks and the oil companies were doing.
Our knowledge of public events and political arguments come direct from the media rather than from a face-to-face group. We still have some local, territorial group memberships, but their importance is now much diminished and their influence weakened.
These four factors have significantly accelerated, and indeed intensified, the spread of media liberalism since I ceased to be a BBC employee 40 years ago. It still champions the individual against the institution. The BBC’s 2007 impartiality report reflects widespread support for the idea that there is “some sort of BBC liberal consensus”. Its commissioning editor for documentaries, Richard Klein, has said: “By and large, people who work in the BBC think the same, and it’s not the way the audience thinks.” The former BBC political editor Andrew Marr says: “There is an innate liberal bias within the BBC”.
For a time it puzzled me that after 50 years of tumultuous change the media liberal attitudes could remain almost identical to those I shared in the 1950s. Then it gradually dawned on me: my BBC media liberalism was not a political philosophy, even less a political programme. It was an ideology based not on observation and deduction but on faith and doctrine. We were rather weak on facts and figures, on causes and consequences, and shied away from arguments about practicalities. If defeated on one point we just retreated to another; we did not change our beliefs. We were, of course, believers in democracy. The trouble was that our understanding of it was structurally simplistic and politically naïve. It did not go much further than one-adult-one-vote.
We ignored the whole truth, namely that modern Western civilisation stands on four pillars, and elected governments is only one of them. Equally important is the rule of law. The other two are economic: the right to own private property and the right to buy and sell your property, goods, services and labour. (Freedom of speech, worship, and association derive from them; with an elected government and the rule of law a nation can choose how much it wants of each). We never got this far with our analysis. The two economic freedoms led straight to the heresy of free enterprise capitalism – and yet without them any meaningful freedom is impossible.
But analysis was irrelevant to us. Ultimately, it was not a question of whether a policy worked but whether it was right or wrong when judged by our media liberal moral standards. There was no argument about whether, say, capital punishment worked. If retentionists came up with statistics showing that abolition increased the number of murders we simply rejected them.
*****
I do not think the same is true today. The four mitigating factors above have faded into insignificance, but the media liberal ideology is stronger than ever. Today, we see our old heresy becoming the new orthodoxy: media liberalism has now been adopted by the leaders of all three political parties, by the police, the courts and the Churches. It is enshrined in law – in the human rights act, in much health and safety legislation, in equal opportunities, in employment protections, in race relations and in a whole stream of edicts from Brussels.
It is not so much that their ideas and arguments are harebrained and impracticable: some of their causes are in fact admirable. The trouble – you might even say the tragedy – is that their implementation by governments eager for media approval has progressively damaged our institutions. Media liberal pressure has prompted a stream of laws, regulations and directives to champion the criminal against the police, the child against the school, the patient against the hospital, the employee against the company, the soldier against the army, the borrower against the bank, the convict against the prison – there is a new case in the papers almost every day, and each victory is a small erosion of the efficiency and effectiveness of the institution.
Commence vitriol spewing, trolls.
If schools are going to be in the business of indoctrination, that analysis should be it.
TW: name disdain. As scary as ever.
I am downloading this and sending it to the “Public Editor” of the Orlando Sentinel. This article should be required reading by every journalism professor in the U.S.
Wow. That guy gets it.
The one thing I have noticed about people in the “metropolitan-media-arts-graduate” (MMAG) tribe is that while they champion free speech and freedom of inquiry and thought and open-mindedness, they are almost never found questioning their OWN assumptions about reality. And as Jay noted, they’re not too bothered by practicalities.
I remember hearing some caller to talk radio say that “this country was founded on dissent.”
Uh, no. This country was founded on the following assumptions:
• The greatest political evil is tyranny; the greatest political good is liberty.
• No government is legitimate unless it rules by the consent of the governed.
• People in power will abuse it; therefore, put checks into the system that harness people’s innate desire to promote their causes so that no one entity has all the power.
• The maintenance of a free, civil society requires that the citizens be free to criticize government without penalty, and that they be free to believe what they please about anything at all.
Etc.
That last point is what the MMAG tribe gets right, at least as far as the necessity to criticize those in power. But they don’t get the rest of it. As Jay says:
So yeah, caller, dissent was necessary in the 1700s because that system didn’t honor the principles outlined above. But does that mean that it’s good to dissent and rebel against a system such as the one we have? Is rebellion a virtue in and of itself?
No, rebellion is good only if you rebel against that which is evil. Rebelling against good things itself constitutes evil.
But now that “up is down, black is white, Potsie is the Fonz,” it’s no wonder that otherwise decent people rebel against what is good and cling to that which is bad.
TW: significs acquitted. I thought as much.
it’s a wonder we ever got home
Indeed.
We so rarely encountered any coherent opposing arguments
We encountered no opposing arguments.
Ever.
BTW, guins–thanks for dropping by Bloody Scott.
Would it be fair to note then, that this man, and those like him went into the news business with the intention of effecting political change rather than simply getting the facts straight.
He sort of neglects a key point, and that’s that as much as many of them may be reprehensible unidimensional sad little creatures, people who work at the Los Angeles Times, at Disney, at Warner Bros., at Newsweek or the NYT, even at fucking GSN, have status. Lots of people there, of course, are real people, and as unhappy as so many of these people at these companies are, they find these to be very, very difficult jobs to leave. You accept the status, you make it part of who you are, and what kicks in? Fear of losing that status and, hence, an unusual degree of conformity. Think on this guy, 40 years later, still identifying as “a former BBC producer.”
Happy has a point this story shows that many in the media business must necessarily have a certain contempt for one’s work, the truth, one’s customers, and one’s self.
With the objective, naturally, of substituting the new institutions of, by, and for the elites for the ones they have relentlessly delegitimized. Yet, as Mr. Jay aptly points out, these elites haven’t the foggiest notion of how to establish or operate these new institutions and therefore will tend to mandate compliance via threat in the form of laws requiring people to deal with them.
guinsPen: Oooh yeah, status uber alles. Real status, too, not like being a guest-blogger at PW, but having your face seen all over the place, being recognized, having press credentials to get you in doors, hobnobbing with the rich and famous even if you’re “apart” from them.
And being right about everything, all the time. Who’d want to give up such a cushy spot? I doubt I could.
Oops, sorry guinsPen. I was quoting happyfeet.
TW: practised women. Apparently not.
One other thing I think the media elites forget, is that a democracy is not born of itself, and is only a strong as those committed to the ideal, in it’s entirety, from the beginning.
The media elite, seeing themselves as “clever people in a stupid world” have more loyalty to the ideals made possible by democracy, but a fundamental ignorance of democracy itself.
This mental sloth is natural, I suppose, when the freedom of one’s country allows it to occur with no consequence. But wiser heads should have prevailed and they didn’t.
“Would it be fair to note then, that this man, and those like him went into the news business with the intention of effecting political change rather than simply getting the facts straight.”
It would probably be fairer to say that the news is a decent choice for those unable to get through that Algebra I course in the 7th grade. As happyfeet notes, there is some “status” involved, possibly more than the average grade or high school teacher holds. Not much money at the bottom and a very tight group at the top, mostly living off of reputations built long ago.
As a group “bright” is not an adjective that would fit unless it was modified by “not too”. I generally picture a herd of musk oxen in a defensive circle when thinking of the press as a group.
I believe that the “change agent” garbage is after the fact justification – it ain’t like they give up a sparkling future in engineering or law to take the job.
Rick,
It certainly doesn’t seem to be a meritocracy, does it?
Working my way down the post, I had to stop here:
So how does this account for those of us who started out all liberal and presumably idealistic but have become more conservative with age and experience and a bunch of empirical evidence that liberalism simply doesn’t work?
This is where you land when you can’t be bothered to think things through.
HEH – Liberal media elites – empty, vapid, crusty, dusty old fuds that just keep on truckin’
It goes deeper than that, d. There’s a professional status as well (he’s odd about the oblique way he discusses tribalism, particularly in relation to media companies). It’s everybody, and it definitely starts at the bottom. The person that handles affiliate relations for Ovation is effectively doing the same job as the guy at A&E. They are effectively peers, and the Ovation guy fancies that they sorta kinda run in the same circles. And there are lots of people at A&E, whose names you’d never know, that go home at Christmas to Boise and Little Rock and Tampa, and they see friends and family and somehow find it relevant to sneak a relevant bit from a Biography episode into the conversation, with an aside maybe that it sure didn’t do as well as *we’d* have liked…
TW: though entitled. I almost could have just posted that.
Oh – meant to say they sound like a colony of ants.
I generally picture a herd of musk oxen in a defensive circle when thinking of the press as a group.
Or a heard of musk oxen.
Does anyone recall that weird story about 4 or so years ago about a cow that suddenly committed suicide off a cliff in Sonoma? county – and then the rest of the heard followed suit leaping off the side of the cliff too? That’s our news media reading the NYT’s everyday to format their programming.
And to think liberals get pissed if you this bright animal!
And since professional, and financial status is based on what one belives as opposed to what one does it is very simple to understand why the whole enterprise is more concerned with stating certain “truths” over and over rather than finding things out. The facts interfere with the story. Question: How can these guys hold advertising people in contempt?
eat?
Corvan,
If talent, accuracy and persistance were qualities of merit within the journalism business then Bill Roggio and Micael Yon would not be soliciting funding, Jeff would have a well paying gig and be competing with Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club) for market share.
There are good journalists with steady jobs, there are just many, many more journalists for whom “good” could never be used in relationship to a description of their performance. It’s a jungle out there – they never know which ass to kiss first.
Rick,
That’s the problem. That’s also why reporters never, ever, ever report about their own…except of course for the occasional hagiography. Still its an interesting psychological phenomena insiders convinced that they are crusading outsiders.
This guy sounds like a British version of Bernard Goldberg.
“they see friends and family and somehow find it relevant to sneak a relevant bit from a Biography episode into the conversation, with an aside maybe that it sure didn’t do as well as *we’d* have liked…”
Happy,
They also get a bit tweaked if you play Colombo with them – Socratic discourse isn’t high on their “fun things to do” list. For some reason, Dan Rather is a sore subject with them.
Of course this sort of thing, and to a certain extent Goldberg’s thing is a cop-out as well. When Walter Duranty covers up genocide, or some AP hack buries a massacre it’s not the culture that’s guilty it’s them. Other journalists should blame them, the same way they blame Scooter Libby for the destruction of western democracy. But they don’t. The NYT still proudly displays Duranty’s Pulitzer. The AP gets a pass on burying the massacre. A culture isn’t responsible for that…reporters and editors are responsible for that, personally. And unitl the profession reports on that sort of thing it will be an obstacle to civilization in the third world, and every where else.
Journalists, or what passes for that, are a club unto themselves within media more broadly defined. I am pretty unfamiliar with “real” journalism. Producers like this guy are interesting in that they straddle the line between the guys who think of the “journalism” and the guys who think of “the product” or the “content.” My only insight into journalism is not to ever underestimate how many people it takes to produce a given segment or story. That sort of fundamental teamwork is another thing that privileges consensus thinking, I’d guess.
Good point corvan – you’ll never read a Washington Post editorial calling out a New York Times editorial, however enthusiastic about genocide the latter might become.
Happy
eat?
Yes- sorry.
It’s not the editorials, happy. It’s the reporting. you will never see the WaPo question the NYT’s reporting. Or CNN question MSNBC’s or FOX questioning either CNN or MSNBC. What they learned from the Rather thing is this. If we close ranks hard enough no one can stop us. If one of us wanders of the reservation we’re dead. And don’t even get me started on “Sometimes the Media is Right.” I fear everything in that business really is about protecting market share.
I guess what I’m saying is that in the media business opinions are set in stone, but the facts are fluid. Which is as good a reason as any to hope the whole business strangles itself to death.
That’s also why reporters never, ever, ever report about their own…except of course for the occasional hagiography.
And occasionally report what they – the media – are saying amongst themselves if it hurts or they think they can make it a negative for a conservative
Case study – Jeri Thompson-
So they will report on themselves, if they can make up “news” with it. Contrast this with their blackout for months on LA Mayor Villiarigosa – their embargo made them the subject of the news.
This week they all ran in lockstep with the fiction that there was some sort of plausible effort underway in the Senate to derail the Iraq mission. They all knew there was no way 60 votes would be found, but no one wondered on Friday how Thursday morning’s stuff could have been so wrong.
Happy
Yaeh, that instant media good graces upgrade – the Senators became “Key”. I thought the Domenici as “key” was interesting becausee a few months ago he was the Devil incarnate on the US Attorney’s firing.
Damn – I wished I”d asked ABC news in a timely manner what they say about David Gregory behind the scenes. I mean he has got to bug them too – “Dick” “Permanently arrogant” “Shitty Proxy”
And to exapnd on the opinions set in stone thing. Let me point this out. Fox goes red state, everyone else is some shade of blue. They all report stories in a manner that benefits their appeal to thier audience share. The whole game, now, is working on the assumption that everyone is entitled to their own facts, not their own opinion. MSNBC is perfectly justified in Fox’s eyes with presenting Olberman as serious news, so long as no one notices Doocy and the rest of the Fox morning crew.
Each is perfectly justified in making up thier won facts, its only thier opnions about thsoe facts they all made up that they debate. Maybe that’s why they never question reports that are obviously in error or fantastical. They are not in the fact business, And I suspect they never were. The difference is the right has manged to fund Fox. But I suspect bloggers, at least the ones who haven’t attached themselves to a political party or a media outlet would be very foolish to believe that any of these people have anything in common with them, or that they are much interested in anything beyond their own particular agenda.
Good gawd my typos – sorry.
corvan, I see more of a dynamic whereby the media built Fox into a conservative “juggernaut” and took license for that to slant and lie in the name of a fictitious “balance.” tsk9, would you go a step further and suggest that Domenici’s epiphany was directly pursuant to his role in the USA deal?
*from that*
Yeah, my typos are pretty unforgivable as well. I would also posit the theory that the media has sanctified the opinion at the expense of the fact as a reason why no one in the business on either side of the aisle has questioned Gregory or Russert or Mitchell about the Libby case. Since facts don’t much matter any more making the news, or even making the news up (Jayson Blair) is perfectly acceptable. Se guys like Yon don’t matter anymore. If anything they are a hinderance. The people that matter are the opinion mavens. And they don’t much care about facts one way or the other.
I love that Fox pisses Liberal off – Fox is more conservative (filling a niche) but by no means heavy conservative – they have plenty of liberal news presentations and figure heads.
The reason fox has knocked the socks off of news and again pissed the industry off is they are “fair and balanced” compared to every other new outlet network, cable and print
It used to be on a network they present the story and invite “liberal” pundit to discuss and “Extreme Liberal” to discuss and debate (Liberal pundit was presented as sort of the conservative moderate and “Extreme” was presented as “liberal”) and If they did have a moderate conservative on, they were took great pains to alert viewers this was an “extreme right wing cross burning conservative” POV.
Fox just gave equal time –fair– to both points of view –balanced –
Unheard of format. Has rocked their precious little monopoly to the core.
Is it just me – or is this captcha check a tough one to read?
Nahh, I think the media has been pretty conclusively dishonest since the beginning. Remember the Tet offensive. Fox just reaches a group of people they hoped they had stamped out. What troubles me is that Fox, and several other outlets are more than happy to let any piece of dishonesty from other net works slide. But it makes sense that they would. They aren’t chasing facts. Their chasing market share. Why fued with someone that doesn’t intrude on your profits? It’s sort of a fancy way of playing both ends off agaist the middle. Everything just becomes red meat for the poor saps on the toher end of the pipeline. (BTW, you see a little of that red meat thing in the blogosphere as well) Of course it wouldn’t be so troubling except for the war. Playing both ends off against the middle during time of war… well, that’s pretty bad.
And sadly, both sides are doing it. The left happens to be morwe guilty of the twisting and shaping the right more guilty of the red meat stuff. At least that’s what I’m seeing.
The only tv I have is in my closet. Sometimes I turn it on when I travel, but even then Fox News is hard to come by. Can’t help but notice though how often Fox News figures in NPR’s media discussions. It’s very very important to them that Fox News be perceived as screamingly conservative, since they want to suggest that there’s a role for them in balancing FMC coverage. They seem to mention Fox News quite a bit at pledge time, anyway.
it was just the *them* what was supposed to be italicized. I am getting better at this
Actually, that plays into the Red meat part. FOX balances NPR, NPR blanaces FOX, NRO balances Salon. They all advertise themselves that way, but none of them advertise themselves as being especially factual. Hell, they’re all mosre than happy to use (and defend) the same wire services. Because the reporting isn’t all that important. It’s how that reporting is shaped. If they cared much about the reporting they would all know damn well who the AP’s stringers were and what they were doing. But they don’t, and they don’t because they don’t care. it ain’t the facts. it’s the opinion. The opinion gets them their market share, the opinion gets them in the good graces of the politicans that will give them interviews, the opinion gets them their promotions and raises.
The objectivty and the devoion to facts nonsense is just the bill of goods they sale the rest of us so that we will pay them a little attention.
I bet our political class likes it that way to. After all its much easeier to mke one organization (the WSJ for instance) happy than millions and millions of individual constituents. That’s the reason otherwise sane politicans are willing to go crazy and listen to a big orgnaization ( the WSJ for instance) at the expnse of their millions and millions of thier consituents. (on immigration for instance).
Which is another reason you will hear from the fairness doctrine again, and another reason uncommitted bloggers would be foolish to count upon the support of journalists, or bloggers who have attached themselves to a particualr party for support every time it shows up.
NPR takes money from the government and uses it to promote policies that will stain the US as a genocidaire for a century. They’re not about balance, they have a distinct agenda. Gay marriage, performance-enhancing drugs (someone please explain their obsession with that), socialized medicine, transnationalism…
–corvan-
totally cool with your typos if you are with mine.
-Fox just reaches a group of people they hoped they had stamped out. –
I don’t know. I don’t think they ever thought they stamped out conservative point of view, just marginalized it to the point of comfortably ignoring it and the mid-west and the south (although you are probably right that a few snotty media elitists believed conservatives were extinct)
I think Fox’s appeal is the equal time to both POV – and that is why the loony base is demanding Dem’s forsake free airtime (precious commodity) and boycott Fox. Dems are getting killed when the debate is fair and not fixed (the media format norm)
–tsk9, would you go a step further and suggest that Domenici’s epiphany was directly pursuant to his role in the USA deal?–
Hmm maybe – but that aspect had sorta blown over by this time. I think it’s just a moment to be amongst flash bulbs he craved. But who knows?
All of which is why they have such a problem with the Internet, and why they’re sitting still for the “Fairness Doctrine” — which they know damned well will get extended to bloggers as soon as the FCC gets the machinery back in place.
A huge part of it is the influence of what I think of as “corporatism”, though that isn’t really fair. What I mean is the emphasis on current results that deprecates things like preservation and forward planning in favor of immediacy. What Yon and Roggio do is expensive — and if you’re going to do it the NYT/CBS way, it’s even more expensive. Business class air tickets, at worst, is only the tip of the iceberg. Suites at top class hotels, expensive camera and recording gear, the list goes on. If you count up the expense account, the insurance, the Blackberry bill, and all, it wouldn’t surprise me if keeping a middle-class journalist in the field costs a million bucks a year. Opinion, by contrast, is relatively cheap. Minimal travel, modest expense account, and best of all they’re right there in the office where you can keep an eye on them. For an eagle-eyed corporatist eager to fatten the bottom line, the choice is obvious. Unfortunately —
It has been said that opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one. That’s not quite correct — opinions are like turds; any asshole can squeeze one out. Before the Internet, the media could pretend that their opinions were informed ones because the opinion-offerers got to hobnob with the Important People and share the info collected by the field reporters. Now that the Internet can dredge up an expert in the history of typewriters or the effects of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds at the drop of an IP packet, it’s becoming more and more apparent to everybody that the opinions of “media figures” are no more valuable than anyone else’s — less, perhaps, because it’s also becoming apparent that their informed state is more imaginary than real. So the media’s opinions are becoming less valuable, in strict response to the law of supply and demand — if better quality is available at a low price or free, it’s hard to charge high.
But the corporate planners and bean-counters have invested heavily in opinion, because reportage is expensive, opinion is cheap, and under the previous condition opinion was more profitable. If what they’re selling is available for free on every street corner, there won’t be much profit in it. That’s what’s behind the drop in circulation and viewership — it’s not that people don’t agree with the opinion, whether they do or not; it’s that all that’s there is opinion, and they can get either a wider range of opinion or deeper confirmation of their own, whichever they prefer, in any quantity they like at any time they like, so why dig through the brassiere ads for it?
If the media news organizations move quickly enough, they can save themselves. What they have to do is emphasize reportage — who, what, when, where. They still have the troops on the ground, and if they can convince them to go over to the new paradigm they can leverage that into a future advantage. Many of them dimly see that, but they also know that it’s going to take time and a gigantic supply of clue-sticks to get the present set of “journalists” to go along with such a massive change. Here, finally, is the reason for their hostility to Yon, et. al. If independent reportage takes off before they can get their asses in gear, they will have absolutely nothing left to justify their existence. Hostility? Betcher ass.
Regards,
Ric
Of course they do. Now when was the last time another media organization right or left castigated them for it? How many exposes has FOX done on the crimes of Walter Duranty? Look, FOX and the rest deserve great, great credit for at least not being pro-genocide, and pro-terrorist and pro-dictator (that’s more than you can say for the rest) but they certinaly haven’t made any effort to point otut that the rest are or why they are. They are all, instead,collegial adversaries each dependent upon slanting the facts in the direction they want. Once you become use to the facts that facts can and should be twisted the severity of the bend no longer seems so important to you.
NPR takes money from the government and uses it to promote policies that will stain the US as a genocidaire for a century.
Like the BBC – I bet it just makes NPR cringe when they hear a former BBC’er tell it like it is.
Incidentally, does anyone recall a time way back when NPR was found to have a DNC donor list or something like that – I’d appreciate if anyone can remember (i’ll google too) I seem to recall it was in Boston?
Pete Domenici had been a steadfast supporter of Iraq policy until faced with trouble related to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Is his shift an attempt to curry media favor as he heads into a tough reelection battle? NPR’s Don Gonea has the story.
I remember that – a local gave a donor list to the Democratic Party. Kind of on topic though is this, which definitely says something about the culture there.
Warlock is right. But for it to work the media will first off, have to be willing to report about itself, aboput it’s errors, about its oversights, about its screw ups. It will have to ditch the teaching and preaching and just freaking report. I don’t think they have anyone in house that can do it. I think they know it, and I think they are all defending their turf furiously.
Man, warlocke Ric, you may need to hide – they may come after if they read that.
Ric is write, but I think they are way past the point that cleaning up their copy an emphasizing basic reportage would do the trick without some pretty dramatic accompanying gestures to reposition their brands. And by dramatic, I think they would have to actively piss off the left, since that’s the slant they would be trying to correct for, and I don’t see that happening. Cause they’s them.
*right*
sheesh – i am going to watch the episodic televison now kthxbye
*tv*
oh – i watch the episodic television on my pc just so you don’t think i was insincere about the tv thing earlier –
And unfortunately, the 24 hr. formtat tends to substitue ever more opinion for reporting…
Happy
I think you caught it from me ::wink::
“The only tv I have is in my closet. Sometimes I turn it on when I travel, but even then Fox News is hard to come by. Can’t help but notice though how often Fox News figures in NPR’s media discussions.”
Oh happyfeet. If you look I bet you could find Rush Limbaugh’s radio show everyplace you find NPR. Wouldn’t that be a kind of balance for you? He’s not an ogre, really. He’s just a big loveable fuzz ball.
Btw, great post Dan.
The only tv I have is in my closet. Sometimes I turn it on when I travel,
Why do you turn it on when you travel? Does it keep your cats from getting lonely?
Faith and Doctrine…
Turns out all leftist opinion is rooted in a dogmatic reflex that exists even in those who conspicuously claim to be free of any such inclination. Like it's an integral part of the human condition or something, and resists even the most determined…
“For a time it puzzled me that after 50 years of tumultuous change the media liberal attitudes could remain almost identical to those I shared in the 1950s.”
Which just goes to prove that I’m right when I use the term “reactionary” every time I type either ‘liberal’ or ‘leftist’.
“Can’t help but notice though how often Fox News figures in NPR’s media discussions. It’s very very important to them that Fox News be perceived as screamingly conservative, since they want to suggest that there’s a role for them in balancing FMC coverage.”
What would it take to balance extreme conservatism? Kind of odd how NPR also proclaims loudly their own neutrality, no?
And this is where marxist analysis is useful, to wit: journalists are every much a class just like the “capitalists” and “the bourgeiose” (which I just dreadfully misspelled, thankyouverymuch) and, as such, they will naturally do things to further their class interests and will avoid doing things that hurt their class interests. So you will not see a WaPo expose on the Duranty story, nor from FOX news, either, or from any other professional news organization because they know that what they dish out to others can be easily dished out to them.
You will, however, see many stories of them congratulating each other on what a fine job they’re doing (i.e. Katrina (snicker))
the caption on the photo accompanying the article reads:
Along these lines I have heard that during the 70s-80s time frame, in Washington DC, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade each year was marked by very large, peaceful demonstrations, typically attended by tens of thousands of pro-lifers. But you’d never hear about because it was simply not considered news by any of the East Coast media and ignored.
II think Oregon Muse has a point about the class thing as well. How it all fits together I don’t know, but I know this. To news people the filter has become more important than the facts. That’s a problem.
It’s pure Lakoff, least on NPR. They commonly will unabashedly will refer to Bush or Snow’s pathetic feeble attempts to “frame” an issue and then offer a detailed “correct” frame of their own.
with persevere I do the sentences good making
Lakoff is just a microcosm of the leftist projection macrocosm.
An example, if you will.
Interestingly enough, N. O’Brain, the first person I ever heard refer to the left as “reactionary” was a Democrat (though an extremely conservative one).
Lugar and Warner, who enjoy respect bordering on reverence among Republicans, used their own talk-show hearing to spell out why time is running out for Bush’s profoundly unpopular campaign in Iraq.
Warner, known for his habit of standing nude before a full-length mirror, tucking it back between his legs and spending long minutes admiring his “mangina”, said today that “Iraq is piffle. Piffle, I say.”
The worse the economics of the Mighty Selective Media get, the tighter the musk-oxen circle becomes. It will eventually implode, but no one can be really sure what will replace it. Hundreds or thousands of Yons? That would be good …
Bernie Goldberg has made a fortune off of this. The guy pops up every 10 months just like Ann Coulter. What a great gig.
“Confessions of a Reformed BBC Producer” Jay Antony – Price £5. 40 years later? rofl.
Political epiphany books sell to the right and are ignored by the left.
I just realized, with absolute clarity, that’s the biggest pile of crap I’ve read in awhile.
you had an epiphany?
Considering how dense it already is, without having imploded, I’m thinking “black hole.”
TW: STATES tints — a concept brought to us by the musk-oxen circle about which we were just talking. Not bad.
The BBC and much of the Liberal Press opposed Labour and Pro-War Tories who sought to unseat Chamberlain in 1940. Until they personally heard stories of what Hitler was doing did they start to switch sides, barely in time.
How old is the BBC anyway?
I guess I could google that.
It has a very tedious history. I don’t care that much.
“Political epiphany books sell to the right and are ignored by the left.”
Well, when you have The Narrative™, epiphany and self awareness are replaced by dogma and aggressive rote.
Critical thinking? Not so much…
Comment by Dan Collins on 7/16 @ 3:49 am #
Political epiphany books sell to the right and are ignored by the left.
I just realized, with absolute clarity, that’s the biggest pile of crap I’ve read in awhile.
I think that’s correct. The copy of Bernie Goldberg’s blather tome “Biased” remains on my bookshelf, unread after I couldn’t past page 13 (poorly written and bullshit! Quite an achievement for a “pro” like Goldberg. hell, I do that here for you guys and don’t even charge you). Whereas, Al Franken’s “Lying Liars” has been perused numerous times, partly because it’s funny and partly because it makes fun of Bernie Goldberg and partly because it is consistent with my politics.
Not sure how many of you have read “Bias” or “Lying Liars”, but I will posit the former outnumbers the latter by 100 to one. We read what we like, and you guys like the idea of leftward “media bias”, whereas the Eric Alterman crowd likes the idea of rightward “media bias.”
I think the solution is to get to both sides, ergo I read PW.
Or, maybe we do not need Goldberg to state the obvious for us, and suspect that Alterman’s screed could be written by any one of us as a parody, quite easily.
timmah – Didn’t you get banned for really showing your ass last week?
Jeff is most merciful when it comes to the tim-berine.
BTW: Short timb:
Yon – BIASED! Goldberg – BULLSHIT! BBC guy – OLD! Left Wing Government Functionary 6 Months Removed from Service – SELFLESS DEDICATED GIVER (who, just by coincidence, hates W with a passion.) Franken – FUNNY AND SMART Yon – BIASED! (Whoops, said that already.
timb, you may come by your opinions honestly but you argue with all of the partisan dishonesty that anyone could possibly dredge. Yea, I read Franken’s book and found it occasionally funny, consistently incoherent and nothing new that deviated from The Narrative™. Goldberg, regardless of your educated evaluation of his writing skills, at least broke some new ground and wrote some things that haven’t been written by a broadcast news insider before(for which he paid a pretty big personal price if not economic.)
So, we get it. You like liberal/progressive writers who speak The Narrative™ (for the most part) and the rest of the world can just piss off. I’m sure that you were thrilled that Time’s Joe Klein made his way to Iraq and kept that drumbeat hammerin’.
Can’t stand Joe Klein. He’s a prick.
You can’t compare Franken and Goldberg with Yon. Yon claims to be an unbiased, objective reporter, Franken and Goldberg claim neither. I like the Goldberg broke “new ground”. That was special in that I did not know hating Dan Rather was “new ground.” Now, was I aware that the “liberal” media bias droned on and on by the Right since Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativity” was new ground. But, thanks for the education.
Point of Order: Is your world, BJ, so tiny now that only people who agree with the President can be “selfless” government servants? Is it a new loyalty test? If so, that’s very sad. By implication, you are arguing Ms. Munshi, who came out of retirement to go to Iraq, is a lying, partisan hack. I submit that just because one believes something different than you, does not make them a liar.
But, I’m naive that way. Oh well, of to Balloon Juice where I can hear the other side.
Ms. Munshi is just saying what she needs to say to whore for a gig in a Clinton Administration. That’s not the same as lying.
timb – She thought Irak was a folly, yet she went there out of some moral imperative? It takes a person willing to live with a certain level of cognitive dissonance to think that there were no underlying partisan motives on her part.
80
Timmah – in polls of the media, 80+ percent identify as being Dems/liberal, and we are simply to assume that they play the story right down the middle because, you say so? Maybe they are to the right of you, but that does not give them a right wing bias.
Disingenuous, as always.
No. I didn’t mean that she was a lying, partisan hack. The point was that your description of her bordered on the angelic while you dismissed Yon with a wave of your hand. Your world is smaller than you think and my world is just fine, thank you. You manipulate the argument and then accuse me or someone else of being cloistered in the conservatory, listening to endless loops of Hannity. You have a cartoon image, wilfully built, of people like me and others that allows you to be disingenuous and just tut-tut the answers as narrowly framed dogma. Your certain rage about Iraq and Bush colors everything you write and closes the walls in on your “big” world.
Go sell it on Balloon Juice where The Narrative™ lives and is worshipped with fundamentalist fervor.
Being called bias and a partiosan by you is like being called ugly by a bull frog. How many times do I have to write my problems with Bush, from spending to immigration to Harriet Miers to Gonzales to, worst of all, a vacuum of real leadership and the inability to step up and define a common cause. There are other things I like so I can say with impunity that I have that favorite Jeff word nuance. You, on the other hand, write a good game but you continue to be the very same one trick Iraq/Bush hater pony that started plopping turds from that really high hobby horse several months ago.
Lastly, I agree. Joe Klein is a prick. See? Common ground!!!!!
Jd, throw me a citation.
I never said the media has a right-wing bias.
A citation to what ?
Well said, BJ, though you are still evil.
Your anger is misplaced, BJ. I am not angry over this issue. It is as tired as the day is long. That is why I scoffed at your Bernie broke new ground argument (which was the main thrust of the discussion).
My point was to dispute Mr. Collins, in that no one on the left pays attention to these books and no one on the right pays attention to lefty books. Dan was wrong; the left yawns at this conservative gotcha whining, just like the right yawns at the latest liberal gotcha whining.
BTW, if you want to get lost on the Yon thing, you can go to the post that discusses it, where my opinions are located.
You cite an 80% statistic and I fear you cannot prove or find that stat.
BJ says everything well, even when he’s wrong. That’s why he’s the only cool member of PW. I did enjoy how he’s calling everyone who disagrees with him a liar. First, that Munshi chick has “an agenda.” Now, because I say his ise of the word “agenda” implies he thinks she’s lying, I’m “disingenuous”. Yes, JD, anyone who believes differently from you guys is just a liar. There is no principled opposition….oh, hold on Riyadh is on the phone and I have to take this so we can plan our next strategies.
Come on, JD, that’s what you thought was happening, right?
So, anyway, proud insurance man, produce for me a stat to back up your 80% assertion.
I read all of that stuff on Yon and you never really articulated why you thought Yon was biased compared to Munshi. That was your statement. That little snark at the end about my world being “small” when you demonstrate every bit as much idealogical bias as anyone on this page was disingenuous. I’m being charitable by not calling it obtuse because I think you do have a brain.
Don’t prove me wrong.
If you want to have a discussion, cut the crap with “do only people who agree with George Bush?” The implication that I can’t think for myself, don’t read enough and have insufficient brain power to handle the nuance of the issues is insulting and, quite frankly, laughable coming from someone who just blows up Goldberg because of his reasoned conclusion after thirteen pages that it was bullshit!
Get off the high horse, sparky! You are no better than the rest of us dogmatic loonbinkies. Perhaps, in some ways, even worse…
Oh, and the new ground was being the first insider in broadcast television to whisper an opinion as to the editorial and idealogical mindset of his co workers, a view consistently buttressed by the overwhelming advantage the Democrats have in prying money out of those “unbiased” journalists, boith print and media. Fer cryin out loud, even Fox employees identify with Democrats at something like a 70% level. If it walks like a duck and squacks like a duck…
DUCK!
Where, exactly, did I say that everyone who disagrees with me is a liar? And where did I use the word agenda when discussing the angelic Ms. Munshi? Stop mixing me up with someone else.
timb
“You cite an 80% statistic and I fear you cannot prove or find that stat”
Well, as a start, how about this from that bastion of conservatism, MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/
With this quote at the end:
“the adjusted tally is 143 journalists: 125 giving to Democrats and liberal causes, 16 to Republicans, and two to both parties.”
While this is a relatively small sample, it does prove that you were right in that JD got the percentage wrong. This one adds up to 87.4%!!
But hey! That Bernard Goldberg: Bullshit! Your world seems to be a little small now, timbo…
Finally, here’s a money quote exhibiting some teh serious moral relativism from the MSNBC piece:
“Or we could ask Randy Cohen, who writes the syndicated column “The Ethicist” for The New York Times. The former comedy writer gave $585 to MoveOn.org in 2004 when it was organizing get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bush. Cohen said he understands the Times policy and won’t make donations again, but he had thought of MoveOn.org as no more out of bounds than the Boy Scouts.
“We admire those colleagues who participate in their communities  help out at the local school, work with Little League, donate to charity,” Cohen said in an e-mail. “But no such activity is or can be non-ideological. “
Yup. moveon.org, just another community based support organization like your local church or boty scouts. I’m going to donate to my local strip club as they are community based and perform a … er … necessary service.
Yeesh!
Apologies, BJ. I was unaware I had to quote post 7 in its entire form. Here for you in blog language Shorter BJ: chick had an agenda because she didn’t like the war (I don’t recall her saying she hated the President or even disliked him, only that she opposed the war). Interesting swtich you pulled there.
BJ, I haven’t followed your link yet, but, if I may, why do you guys always have to argue in tandem? Simply put, this is JD’s point (wholly irrelevant to my original comment, but I’m allowing it). JD has admitted that he will not follow links. This was a chance for him to grow as a commenter, instead of calling names, he threw a stat out and he needed to defend it. He did need the Lisbon Assassin to do his homework. Now, he’s just gonna get lazier.
Anyway, I have a paper to research, so I will click on the link tomorrow morning at work to peep it out. If it says something like “80 percent of partisans pay no mind to books written by the other side, I will gratified to know that the non-sequitors have been put to bed)
timmah – I “admit” no such thing. I pointed out that you used links rather than making an argument for yourself. You are an ass, of the highest order. If you so wish, you can look for the stories relating to the Dem candidate receiving a 15% boost from media coverage, you can look at the UCLA study on journalism and bias (a notorious right wing institution if there ever was one), or any study done on the media and their voting/donation patterns. I erred on the low side (80%), because I did not wish to overstate the position.
Unlike you, timmah, I am able to recall studies, facts, tidbits, little nuggets of information. I do not rely on some WaPo or firedoglak “unbiased” reporter or blogger to formulate my opinions for me. Was I wrong? In this case, I erred on the low side, but that only serves to illustrate my point even more.
Timbo;
You need to stop summarizing my position. You suck at it.
The point about Ms. Munchi was never about her views on the war It was about your swift dismissal of Yon and you bestowing upon her the mantle of “selfless public servant†or some such. It was about trying (and obviously failing) to get you to see that leaning towards someone who hadn’t been in the area in question for six months coupled with her avowed disagreement with the Bush administration Iraq policy (which she says was the reason she resigned from the foreign service) was in and of itself an exercise in partisan bias. Yours. You extended this ideological snit fit by asking why Yon calls the soldiers with whom he’s embedded “We,†such as, “We moved into a notorious neighborhood.†Normally I would agree with you (I’m always a little uncomfortable when people refer to sports teams in the collective possessive,) however it should be noted that Yon was in special forces in the 90’s so, perhaps, he’s earned the right.
The BBC report, while dated, reflects much of the same internal cultural norms that Goldberg outlined in his book (you know, the one you stopped reading on page 13 because your inner eye determined that it was all Bullshit!) As far as the factual basis for these contentions, there have been several over the last 5-6 years. Much of the argument ends up breaking down over what constitutes the center of the political spectrum. I’ve read only short excerpts from Eric Alterman’s attempted deconstruction of the liberal media bias “myth.†My impression of him (and some others) is that they argue the lack of bias by moving the center line so far left as to blur the distinctions. That having been said you might take a look at the UCLA study at http://www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/groseclose/Media.Bias.pdf, where they actually attempt to provide a baseline center point by using congressional evaluations rather than personal opinion. There are several other studies in addition to the above linked MSNBC story and if you Google for it you’ll find that the 80% figure quoted by JD is reasonably accurate.
So no, timb, it’s not about supporting Bush, it’s about framing an argument supported by facts to develop an educated opinion. It seems that more and more you’re determined to characterize the commentators in sweeping generalities (and, no, I’m not talking about the gratuitous insults that fly back and forth) about ideology and cloistered partisanship. Physician, heal thyself! Your commentary on this thread has been nothing more than unsupported partisan sniping with no self awareness as to your own bias.
As for stepping in to the argument, your paranoia is getting the best of you. I jumped to the thread after a being away and was inspired by your uninspired sniping. JD’s a big boy and can take care of himself (despite his gibbering phobia of the vertically challenged.)
Bottom line; there is ample evidence available that mainstream media leans to the left in its institutionally held principles and in its reporting style. It is perfectly reasonable to question the motives behind a WaPo report from a former foreign service officer opposed to Admin policies who hadn’t been in country at Baqubah for 6 months when Michael Yon is on the ground today and could provide something more than old second hand information. Perhaps the AP would be better served by establishing a stringer relationship with Yon rather than handing over wads of cash to shadowy insurgents and Iraqi policemen. None of this indicates an unthinking support for the war and all things Bushian and, um, Cheynian. It simply is an attempt to focus the discussion to that elusive ideal called the topic at hand.
I now await your inevitable reframing and characterizations of my small world like a closet with old socks and dog eared back issues of Reason and National Review. And Cheetos; old, moldy Cheetos.
MMMMmmmmmmm, Cheetos….
Summary of the drivel on this post: books confirming right wing positions are scholarly tomes and help set policy for right-thinking people all over the world.
Secondly, BJ and JD are allowed to cite studies and stats from memory, but, if I point out that 40 percent of the public this spring believed Bush should be impeached, I must show my work, because the two of you don’t remember studies that do not confirm your beliefs (http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15689)
See, JD, how easy that is. I could have asked BJ to do it for me, but Pablo and BJ don’t like it when I tell them to use Google.
Thirdly, BJ your weird defensiveness on this thread, while impressive, is mis-placed. Dan was wrong. Partisan books have no reach beyond their partisan audience (ever read any of Cobra II, The One Percent Doctrine, or What Liberal Media? Didn’t think so).
Fourthly, if Mr. Yon’s reporting had value, a major network would use him. I know this hard to understand, but networks report news. they can get Camp Victory Press releases from Camp Victory and cut out the middleman (Yon). And, yes, I know the AP and ABC and NBC and the New York Times are all in collusion with the Iraqi insurgents AND Al Queda because they all want us to lose this war and that’s the secret of why they won’t pay Yon, but I’ll go with Occam’s Razor on this one and just imagine that Mr. Yon is a blogger, not a journalist. Nonetheless, you stick to your grand liberal conspiracy theory, while I wonder how conservatives came to control the entire US government for half this decade, despite all their efforts.
Fifth, shockingly, your link doesn’t work, but you remember it, so that’s good enough.
Sixth, I think the press leans left on social issues. Certainly, most report types are tolerant of gays, distrust fundamentalist types, and are for unfettered access to “creativity” (by that I mean, no censorship of entertainment). But, it stops there. I have in memory (and that’s good enough) various media types referring to Don Rumsfeld as “sexy” and “powerful” in the 2002. I have in my memory the fact that the media completely ignored and even ridiculed Scott Ritter in the run up to the war. And, I remember Judy Miller and Michael Gordon’s love of the VP’s office and Ahmad Chalabi. Lastly, I remember the VP’s office saying the VP should go on Meet the Press, because he could “control the message.” Seems to me if Timmy Russert were the lib you guys say he is, he’d be hard on Dick Cheney.
Meanwhile, I got to go, I hear Chris Matthews is on TV talking about good Fred Thompson smells, how Rudy is a born leader, and how Hillary is a shrill bitch.
Media bias, indeed.
Timmah!, you must show your work because you have a long history of either misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting the things you read. For instance, the study you linked above, with it’s rather small sample size, does not say that 40% of Americans wanted Bush impeached.
But that’s really beside the point. Didn’t Jeff tell you to piss off?
Nice work, Pablo, but here’s the freakin quote: Polling Data
Would you favour or oppose the impeachment by Congress of U.S. president George W. Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney?
Favour
39%
Oppose
55%
Undecided
6%
Two in five Americans! That is a huge deal. And, that was in April. It might be higher now.
Here’s an idea for you Pablo, go bother Professor Ric and leave your little brother BJ to fight his own battles. Or, alternatively, since you are a braying ass, show me where I misrepresented and/or misunderstood what I read. Do your freakin’ homework, Pabs. Just because we disagree on politics Pablo, doesn’t mean I’m less honest than BJ or JD.
Or, in your world, it probably does.
So, your thesis is that 39% = 40%?
You’re an idiot, Timmah! And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
So, you’ve never heard of margin of error, or that one percentage point is not a lot. It is after all, the title of the freakin’ article. How many angels can dance on the head of pin, but our resident moron, Pablo.
Jesus, you’re stupid.
what did you think of my new name? I’ve been thinking of changing the nom de guerre because it seems to make you mad. I like Kell Varnsen.
Yes, and I see 4%, which could make it 35%, which would not be 40%. It could also make it 43%, but not 44%, because 39 is not 40, no matter how much you’d like it to be.
Headlines are not data, genius.
I have no idea, but if I saw some data on it, I’d be able to relate it accurately. You, Timmah!, have a long history of not being able to to that, which was my point in the first place, dipshit. And who is this “our” you speak of? As the great philosopher Foghorn Leghorn once said…
Hey, don’t talk to Jesus like that!
BTW, what makes you think I’m mad?
One of timmy’s favorite tricks when he is getting his ass pounded like a two dollar steak is to proclaim victory as indicated by his opponents use of foul language, personal vindictive or other such nonsense. Up thread he tried to use two people ganging up on him to swing the debate. Now he is apparently going to change his name, presumably so we will quit making fun of his name and debate the real issues, even though he is the one constantly spinning the topic. Your schtick is really getting old, dude, whatever the fuck you chose to call yourself. I think you should go back to neoconstink, it is by far the most profound statement you have made here.
nah, you and I are done. If you can’t do me the favor of having a legitimate discussion (in which you arrived as an unwanted guest) and insist on being dishonest, concrete and legalistic, then I have no use for you.
I will, of course, continue to speak to BJ and JD, who at least have a modicum of values and decorum. You do not, so go argue with someone else or tell Darleen how she is.
Who are you calling an unwanted guest? Christ almighty that is the best laugh I have had in weeks.