roundtable: RE: MEDIA BIAS

roundtable: RE: MEDIA BIAS

RE: MEDIA BIAS

Mike W. Perry (discover@halcyon.com)
Sat, 21 Jan 1995 01:15:26 +0800 

Message-Id: <v01510106ab4581471944@[204.29.16.45]>
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 01:15:26 +0800
To: roundtable@cni.org
From: discover@halcyon.com (Mike W. Perry)
Subject: RE: MEDIA BIAS


>I agree with Jack Hirschfeld's response to Mike Perry's characterization
>of the New York Times as "establishment left" as being a bit of
>doublespeak (has anyone taken the time to read Herman's "Beyond
>Hypocracy?-It's very germaine to this discussion, germaine to this
>discussion group, and includes a doublespeak dictionary helpful to the
>uninitiated).
>
>... The objective,
>demonstrable fact (verified by study and reading) is that - yes, indeed
>there is an elite (GE being a key node as owner of NBC, underwriter of
>McGlauthlen (sp)on PBS, as well as funder of think tank pundits who
>appear as eminences grises on other networks ....


While I believe as strongly as any in the ability of money to corrupt 
and control, I'd make it a secondary factor in understanding the media 
elite. Studies I've seen show that at equivalent levels of income 
(often obscenely high by my lights) the business elite and the media 
elite have quite different attitudes toward many of our political, 
social and cultural conflicts with the business community being much 
closer to the average citizen and even the proverbial "Joe Sixpack" 
than the media elite. The media elite has lots of money, but it is 
more than a monied elite.

The media elite is not an elite in the sense of say knights in the 
heyday of armor. They don't have exclusive control of the tools of 
mass communication or even the near monopolies of TV broadcasting that 
the three television networks had in 1960s. And the new technologies 
mean still more diversity. For instance, when one Seattle-area cable 
system modernizes, it is planning to include National Empowerment 
Television with 24-hour-a-day conservative interviews and news. No 
wonder conservatives from Gingrich to Gilder are delighted by the new 
technologies. I believe it was John Locke who wrote strong words about 
the inability of any cabal to maintain a monopoly. The very abuses a 
monopoly engages in stimulate competition.

The media elite is also not an elite in the sense of being widely 
respected and trusted. Pharmacists and pastors/priests have about twice 
the public respect as the news media. While technology is weaking the 
raw power of the media elite, abuse of what power they have is weakening 
the respect they receive. (Does Clinton's almost daily lies get the same 
attention as Gingrich's flights of fancy? Hardly.) And alternative 
sources of information expose "mainstream" media errors. The author of 
Jusrassic Park pointed that out when he spoke to the National Press Club, 
stressing that speeches he sees on CSPAN are not accurately covered in 
the next day's NY Times. I felt the same during the Gulf War. I was 
quite certain the many dumb questions reporters asked never made the 
evening news.

The media elite is an elite in the sense that it regards itself as 
superior in intelligence, ability and moral values to the rest of 
society. Unlike talk radio or completely donation dependent 
organizations (note how PBS and NPR are fighting the possibility of 
being placed in that position) it has a top-down, uni-directional 
hierarchy. Very few ideas flow upward, virtually all the information 
flows downward. Though the technology has been available for decades, 
the networks never adopted a viewer call-in format. In the case of 
network television, even its income flows from large corporations (not 
viewers) that still feel it is virtually the only way to reach a large 
and diverse audience. (Cable channels tend to attract specialized 
audiences.)

This arrogance slips out from time to time. Few business leaders, 
whatever their income, would have caricatured vote in the recent 
November 8 elections as the temper tantrum of a two-year-old, as did 
one of the network new anchors. People like Rush because they know he 
likes them and takes seriously what they believe. Network news anchors 
who refer to most of the landmass of the country as "fly-over-
territory" don't attract the same affection and trust. Nor should 
they.

To some extent, the media is reflecting changes in our politics. We 
have had three major political crises in my lifetime. The first came 
during the social unrest of the late sixties when fear drove the left 
into massive social programs to pacify the underclass at the expense 
of the working/middle class. (And legalized, tax-funded abortion to 
reduce their numbers.) Far from being a harmful side-effect of the 
welfare state, dependency is the very reason for its existence.  Last 
year's attempt to federalize health care was, as it is in Europe, an 
attempt to bring the middle class into that circle of dependency before 
the tax and regulation rebellion could take hold.

(Historical background: Bismarck and German liberalism spent the 1870s 
trying to crush the worker and minority oriented Catholic Center party 
and the 1880s trying to crush the worker-oriented Social Democratic 
Party before conceeding to the creation of the first modern welfare 
state.  Government run social programs (Catholics and labor wanted the 
programs to be legally mandated but privately run) were created to 
provide the kind of control liberalism failed to achieve with political 
repression. Its goal was to produce obedient citizens who would follow 
neither the Pope nor Marx. Nazism benefited enormously from the 
resulting servility. Government as father is not that far removed from 
government as fatherland. End history lesson.)

It was during the sixties that the left/liberal "McGoverniks" broke 
with the mainsteam of society. Normally, their rapidly growing 
political unpopularity ("Natering nabobs," Nixon's landside victory 
in 1972 and the continuing Republican dominance of the Presidency) 
would have pushed them back to the center. But our second crisis 
arrived, Watergate. Nixon was removed giving the left an unjustified 
air of moral superiority and a Democratic party dominated Congress 
which pushed through changes that gave incumbents enormous power to 
stay in office. During the 1980s, the Demo/left was able to maintain 
the semblance of power against continuing public dislike thanks to 
the brutal use of its majority position in the Congress and its 
control of most of the media.

This fall has brought political changes that are creating our third 
crisis.  Public anger at an unresponsive Congress has led to 
widespread support for term limits and a Republican sweep of Congress. 
(Only prolife Democrats were spared.) Stuck in the fear-engendered 
ideas of the sixties, the left is unable to change and media attempts 
to block change are likely to get increasingly shrill and ineffective. 
Clinton and Whitewater are likely to be a Watergate in reverse, 
further dragging down the moral standing of Demo politicians.

Where it will end is anyone's guess. Politics, like warfare, is 
dependent on a complex set of factors whose total effect no one can 
judge. And history always has its wild cards. Whitewater could 
destroy Clinton (likely) or the desperate media attempts to find dirt 
on Gingrich could hit pay dirt (unlikely but possible). The key may 
lie in the 1996 turnout. If devout Catholics and evangelicals 
continue to be energized by social decay, Republicans will do well. 
If they can also begin to reach the many conservative sentiments of 
black voters, Democrats could shrink into oblivion. On the other hand, 
if wishy-washy Senate Republicans obscure party differences, if the 
"media elite" succeed in persuading/scaring the country one last time, 
if voters turn their attention elsewhere, then the Kulturkampf could 
last for decades and leave the country in an even worse mess.

('Nother history lesson: The Kulturkampf occurred in 1870s Germany. 
It represented Bismarck's attempt to crush the troublesomely 
independent Catholic Center party. Bismarck was allied with 
liberalism's drive to force German into a single, highly 
nationalistic cultural mold. Religion, since it "divided" Germans, 
was to be stripped from the schools. The Center party, on the other 
hand, represented German "particularism" (in our context, leaving 
most political and cultural decisions at the local level). The Center 
party drew support from other cultural minorities: Poles resisting 
Germanization, devout Protestants who wanted decisions about 
schooling to remain in the hands of parents and Orthodox Jews who, 
unlike liberal Jews, did not want to be forced into becoming part 
of a single German culture. One of the more interesting events 
during the Kulturkampf came when a conservative Protestant magazine 
published an article by an Orthodox Jew who attacked how liberals 
were treating the Catholics. Politically, the Catholics won the 
Kulturkampf, handing Bismarck a rare defeat and leaving liberals 
so disliked they never recovered. But unfortunately, "one Reich" 
nationalism stayed in the schools, aiding the Nazis. Shortly after 
they took power, the Nazi party crushed the last remenants of 
particularism, proclaiming an end to the "century old struggle" with 
the Catholics. After the war, Germany learned its lesson and created 
a "Federal Republic" with more power at the local level, returning 
to some measure of particularism. And recognizing that the Center 
party was a good idea, Protestants joined it, creating the Christian 
Democratic Union.)

One final note before I turn out the light. Jeff Briggs seemed to 
suggest that in the Gulf War's smart bombs killed 100,000 civilians. 
Nonsense. The gadgets are so dreadfully expensive compared to 
ordinary bombs, it would be stupid to use them on targets like 
civilian populations where virtually any bomb hitting a metropolitian 
area kills people. Their real value comes with taking out bridges or 
going down air shafts into seemingly bomb-proof aircraft bunkers.

Since the smart bombs were used to take out power stations and water 
pumping stations it is possible to argue that the widespread civilian 
deaths from disease and malnutrition following the war are an indirect 
result of the bombs. But it would be far more sensible to blame the 
war's unsatisfactory ending on Bush's lack of understanding of history. 
(Wars that don't have a clear, quick, definitive end--i.e. WWI--create 
problems). And even more important was the typical spinelessness of 
the parliamentary leaders of Western Europe who insisted, for no 
intelligent reason, that the war wasn't to remove Sadam from power. 
Wars need to end in clear victory so you can treat the defeated 
nation decently and fairly rather than have an inconclusive ending 
that creates the climate for the next war. We haven't seen the end 
of our troubles in that part of the world.

Better go. It's almost 1 am and I've told myself I must break my 
listserv junkie habit if I am to survive as a free-lance writer.

--Mike Perry in sunny and warm (for a change) Seattle

    Mike Perry, 11537 34th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98125 (206) 365-1624
* * * *
Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature. But he is a thinking reed.
It is not necessary, in order to crush him, that the entire universe should
take up arms: a mist, a drop of water, will suffice to kill him. But even
if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his
destroyer, because he would know himself to be dying, and he would know in
what respect the universe is mightier than he; but of these things the
universe knows nothing whatsoever.--BLAISE PASCAL, Pensees
* * * *

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