Be sure to watch the video above and spread it widely. It is also available on YouTube for ease of dissemination. The only way out of this mess is to improve the media diets and civic consciousness of all Americans.
“Working the refs,” the conservative strategy to earn favorable news coverage by habitually complaining that mainstream journalism is biased against them, is a time-honored tradition amongst the right-wing of the Republican Party. The history of the tactic stretches back to at least the 1960s when presidential candidate Barry Goldwater attacked the “Eastern liberal press.”
Goldwater was widely considered to be an extremist when he ran for president. In a test election run by Gallup 6 months before JFK’s assassination, Kennedy beat Goldwater by a whopping 67%-27% of the vote. When he eventually lost to Lyndon Johnson, Goldwater and his conservative supporters convinced themselves that it was because the “liberal press” hadn’t given him a fair shake. And they set out to convince everyone else of this conspiracy theory ever since.
As historian Nicole Hemmer put it:
It was his fringe position, not the press, that contributed to Goldwater’s loss in a historic landslide. Yet even in defeat, he’d pioneered an argument that would become a staple of Republican campaigns: the US media favored Democrats and liberals, and skewed their reporting to help their preferred candidate.
When we look at our current media landscape it is easy to recognize that conservatism dominates. The top ranking cable channels, legacy newspapers, podcasts, and influencers are all owned or controlled by conservative billionaires. This near total takeover of our information system by pro-Republican forces speaks to the paranoia these men suffered and the deep need for control that it generated. After Goldwater’s loss and Nixon’s Watergate humiliation, America’s conservative business elite were determined to claw back society from the progressives they feared would eliminate them altogether. One of their tactics was to make their own media.
Nicole Hemmer says Roger Ailes’ creation of Fox News was a continuation of the conservative strategy to create an alternative media ecosystem:
By the time Ailes entered the game, the American right had spent a generation seeking out conservative alternatives to the “liberal media,” and America’s news media was already in the midst of a revolution that made Fox News possible.
A Myth Is Born
There’s no such thing as liberal media bias, but try telling that to your average American. The liberal bias accusation has been levied since before most of us were alive. The campaign has been so successful that liberalism in media is assumed to be simply common knowledge by many.
Up until the 1970s the liberal bias claims were all talk. Conservatives were griping about the raw deal they endured ever since the creation of the Fairness Doctrine in 1949. It mandated that broadcasters couldn’t air partisan opinion without providing airtime for an opposing view. In the minds of some Republicans, however, the conservative outlook was the opposing viewpoint in a media system they already saw as inherently liberal.
The “liberal bias” attack strategy gained ammunition in 1971 with the publication of News Twisters, a book claiming to provide a bias free evalution of news coverage about the presidential candidates for 1968, Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. News Twisters concluded that the mainstream press was hopelessly biased against Nixon. The book’s claims of impartiality fall apart under scrutiny. Author Edith Efron’s work was funded by the Historical Research Fund whose chair was conservative superstar William F. Buckley Jr. The book’s methodology was entirely Efron’s creation.
The Money Is The Message
Nowadays conservative media dominates MAGA Republican information bubbles.
Outlets like Fox News, The Daily Wire, and Breitbart deepen partisan divisions, telling their audiences that anything that’s not produced by a conservative outlet must be dismissed as “fake” or “liberal.” This is the stuff of George Orwell’s book 1984. Essentially, if fact-based news of corruption originates from a perceived liberal source the Republican party and its media operatives tell “you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It [is] their final, most essential command.”
Like lots of effective propaganda there is a small kernel of truth in conservative attacks on the legacy press. American mainstream media does have a bias. It’s towards making money.
In 2016, then CBS CEO Les Moonves said Donald Trump may not be good for America, but he’s “damn good for CBS.” Moonves added, “Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now? The money’s rolling in and this is fun.”
Rather than being run by liberal propagandists, our mainstream media is run by business executives who are trying to attract the widest possible audience so they can make as much profit as possible. We have a commercialized, corporate system of information distribution that prioritizes earning a profit over informing the public of harms and threats to democracy.
To increase profits, the bias of mainstream media is towards being inoffensive and neutral.
This is why trust in media is at an all time low.
Liberals are fed up with the neutral tone mainstream media adopts towards corrupt figures like Donald Trump. And conservative viewers assume bias when the mainstream doesn’t cover the same conspiracies and culture war topics that appear on their hyper-partisan outlets.
So what feels like liberalism to conservatives—in mainstream media’s tolerance and embrace for all types of Americans—and conservatism to liberals—in mainstream media’s support of the status quo even in the face of rising extremism—is really just a strategy to keep people watching so their attention can be sold to advertisers. Democracy weeps.
Whoever Owns The Media Controls The Narrative
The myth of liberal media bias further evaporates when we consider who owns the means of communication. Most of our media is owned by business conglomerates or conservative billionaires.
This reality is undeniable.
The billionaire owners of the LA Times and the Washington Post each want to secure big government contracts for their other business, and both interfered with their newsrooms to cancel endorsements for Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election. The media owners interfered with the journalism of their newsrooms to directly impact their business prospects, not to advance a liberal agenda.
Mark Zuckerberg has changed Meta’s policies to be pro-Trump. Elon Musk owns Twitter. The largest US investor in TikTok is major Trump donor Jeffrey Yass. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News, Tubi, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the podcasts of Piers Morgan, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson. Sinclair Broadcast Group, owned by the hyper-conservative Smith family, operates 193 local television stations that reach 40% of US households. They literally made their local anchors read the same piece of propaganda about how, you guessed it, all of media has a liberal bias.
The largest shareholder of CNN’s parent company, John Malone, is on record saying he wants CNN to be more like Fox News. And a recent Media Matters For America study found that 9 of the top 10 online shows are conservative–with a combined total of 197 million followers and subscribers.
The mainstream media is conservative and capitalist.
Choose Media With A Bias Towards Facts and Democracy
All newsrooms have a bias of some kind. There’s just no proof to back up the claim that there is a large scale liberal media bias in this country and plenty of evidence to support the claim that our mainstream media leans conservative.
To push back on the hatred and division being spread by the billionaires who own our media ecosystem, every American should support fact-based newsrooms with a bias towards democracy. It’s the only way we are gonna get out of this mess.
For more of the context we need to understand the news check out all the other articles here at Public Enlightenment.
And be sure to be a Fact Warrior every time you are online. Spread fact-based information that aligns with democratic values. Otherwise, log off and read a book, call a friend, or go for a walk.
Public Enlightenment provides the context we need to understand the news. When you sign up as a subscriber or pledge a paid subscription, you're agreeing that we’re in this mess because of our toxic information ecosystem. You know that we must fight like hell to improve everyone’s media diet. Every single day.
Click below to help me keep up the fight for better outcomes for everyone!
Here’s to healthier information,
Brian
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